Sermon Tone Analysis

/You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind/…[1]

 

How does one worship?

On every page of the Bible is found the concept that we are created to worship God who made us and who saves us.

However, so much of what passes for worship fails to accomplish the goal of worship.

We know that a great deal of worship so-called fails, because we fail to engage our beings.

Doubtless, God Himself is not engaged by such efforts.

Worship is not about me.

Worship is not about what benefits me or even about what God does for me, though worship does benefit me.

Worship is about God!

It is recognising that I am for Him.

I live for Him.

I focus on Him.

I serve Him.

God is not some exalted human being at the top of the chain of mankind.

God is Creator.

He dwells in unapproachable light [*1 Timothy 6:16*].

God is greater than man’s imagination.

Had He not revealed Himself to us, we would never be capable of searching Him out.

Therefore, the essence of worship is proclaiming God’s rightful worth and position.

It is recognising His glory and declaring that glory so that others might know Him.

This is one of the reasons we come to church.

Here, united in worship before the Lord our God we sweep away all that has crowded our hearts and minds, displacing God from His rightful place, the throne of our very lives.

In *Matthew 22:37*, Jesus was asked, Which is the great commandment in the Law?

Jesus answered, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

In our text, a similar statement is made.

However, this time, a lawyer provides the answer.

Indeed, the lawyer had initiated this particular conversation by asking how one inherited eternal life.

Jesus, as was His method, sought to draw out the lawyer’s understanding by asking him what the law said.

The lawyer responded with the answer which serves as our text—/You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind/.

Jesus affirmed his answer.

/You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind/.

This means that one it to love—worship—God with all that one is.

Careful consideration of these words will expand our capacity to worship God as we discover what is meant and apply the truth revealed.

Worshipping God is Expressing Love toward Him.

/You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart/.

In parlance of the day, the concept of love is intimately tied to the emotions.

Therefore, in our minds, love is an expression of how we feel about another.

The love which God has demonstrated toward us, however, really cannot be expressed in emotional terms.

The love which God has for us is an expression of His character.

Love is the very essence of our God.

God is love [*1 John 1:8*].

Similarly, the love which we express toward God does not flow from how we feel, though it will effect our emotions.

How does one demonstrate love for another?

A perfect example is provided in the love husbands are to have for their wives.

Husbands are taught to love their wives [*Ephesians 5:25*].

Moreover, the love which husbands hold for their wives is to be of the identical nature as the love which God has for us.

Therefore, we can discover the love of God for us through reflecting on the love which a husband is to hold for his wife.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.

He who loves his wife loves himself.

For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

[*Ephesians 5:25-31*]

To love one’s wife is to live sacrificially, considering her needs above your desires.

To love one’s wife is to seek her benefit in all things.

Love, therefore, is active.

In the same way, love for God is active and not passive.

What I feel is secondary to what I do for God.

To love God is to live sacrificially for God.

To love God is to seek His benefit in all things.

Let’s look at this business of the relationship of love and worship in some greater detail.

To love God is to live sacrificially for Him.

This means that when I worship, God has all of my attention and all that I hold.

Giving is an act of love.

If you are not giving sacrificially of the possessions you hold, you are not yet worshipping.

Worshipping is seeking the advance of God’s Kingdom work beyond what you desire for yourself.

The evidence that we worship is reflected in the record of our giving to His cause.

May I say candidly that if the support of one’s hobby exceeds investment in the advance of Christ’s Kingdom, that individual is failing to worship.

I suspect that many of us spend more on cosmetics and clothing than we do on Great Commission causes.

If your car represents a greater investment than does support for your church, you are not worshipping.

When we spend more on entertainment for our children than we invest in the outreach of our church to the youth of our city, we are not worshipping God as we should.

Can it be that poverty-stricken villagers in Peru know more of worship than do Canadians with sufficient food, clothing and money for sporting events?

The answer is, unfortunately, obvious.

However, living sacrificially is much more than a matter of surrender of my finances.

Living sacrificially speaks also of surrender of the claim on one’s time and talents.

Is one gifted in some area of the arts?

Let that one lend his or her talents to the cause of Christ, glorifying Him and honouring Him through encouraging others.

Does one have some particular ability, whether by virtue of divine gifting or as result of study?

Let that individual employ those abilities to the cause of Christ that the Faithful may be strengthened and knowledge of Christ be made known throughout the region.

One great concern worrying me as I survey the professed people of God in this day so late in the penultimate dispensation of God is that we live essentially for our own benefit.

We will not inconvenience ourselves to serve God.

We promote our desires over the needs of the Body of Christ.

We ignore the spiritual needs of our children and actually rejoice as we watch them stumble toward Hell.

We have prostituted the spiritual gifts we received as we promote our own causes in preference to building the Body.

Remember that I said that to worship God is to consider His benefit in all things.

Whenever I make a purchase, do I consider how that purchase will glorify God?

The home in which I live is either merely a roof and walls, or it is a tool for the advance of the Kingdom of Christ the Lord.

The vehicle I drive is either just a means of transportation, or it is a means by which I am enabled to serve God more efficiently.

The clothing I wear is either merely a covering for my nakedness, or it honours God and glorifies His Name.

In the smallest aspects of life, I either serve my interests or I serve Christ’s cause.

When I love God with all my heart, honouring Him above my own desires, I will discover the richness of worship.

There will be genuine emotion resulting from my worship.

I will rejoice in His love.

I will delight in His compassion.

I will exult in His goodness toward me.

I will be enraptured—carried into His presence.

Since that seldom happens among us, I suspect that few of us worship God from the heart.

I know there are individuals who have said they did not wish to come to church to be scolded.

They believe that if I speak of the failings of contemporary Christians that I am lecturing them.

No, my brothers and sisters, I am but a prophet of God, pointing to the ways in which we can yet honour Him.