Who Do You Worship?
April 19th, 2006 by Matt Heerema | Posted in Theology
(Posted on behalf of Tim Borseth, a pastor at Stonebrook Community Church. -The Management)
One of the things that set human beings apart from the rest of creation is our insatiable desire to worship. We are driven to worship something or someone whether it is a Deity or not is irrelevant.
Worship, in its broadest definition, is extravagant respect or admiration for or devotion to an object of esteem. In that sense, there are a lot of different things that we worship given the attention and attraction something has on our lives. A frequently used phrase is “worship of the almighty dollar”. Money is what really has our heart. Or the T-shirts that say, “Football is life”. A particular sport receives more of our time and interest than the things of God does.
Idolatry isn’t just some gold image of an animal. It’s anything that we love more than God. To us, that thing has won our respect, admiration, and devotion. In the book “The Vanishing Word” by Arthur Hunt III, he notes that in our culture, we are constantly being bombarded by images and the devotion that we pour into the rituals of watching TV and movies, the internet and computer games and all these spectacular graphics and pictures that are assailing us “approaches the same level of devotion that the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans had for their deities”.
According to Hunt, the main components of pagan idolatry are sex, violence, and the cult of celebrity, or person worship.
Let’s not be deceived. It’s so easy for our devotion to God to slip. It’s so easy to become deceived into thinking I’m okay I love God when in reality you’re not okay. You’ve given your heart away to an idol and God is grieved by it.
God demands of us our worship, not because he has some kind of inferiority complex, but because He knows (more than any of us do) that He alone is worthy of it. He knows who He is and what He has to offer us. He knows that we are created by Him for Him. So it’s with our best in mind that God commands our respect, admiration, and devotion. He is most deserving of it.
When Jesus said in John 4:23 that the true worshipers that God seeks are those that worship in spirit and truth, it could not have been far from his mind that Jesus Himself is “the truth” as he said later on in John 14: 6. The worship that the Father seeks is the worship of Jesus Christ. Did you realize that? Our object of worship should not be some vague concept of God or be in competition with the allurements of this world.
Our worship should be directed toward Jesus Christ alone. Philippians 2: 9-11 says that. It says of Jesus Christ that:
God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Regardless of where you stand before God, I have a question for you this morning. Is Jesus Christ the object of your worship? Is He alone what captures your attention, admiration, and devotion? Does Jesus Christ have your heart?
Right now, give your heart to Jesus Christ. Maybe you have never personally put your faith and trust in Him well now’s the time. There would be no greater way you could worship Him than to do that. Maybe you’ve known Christ for a long time and you need to have the joy of your salvation renewed. You need put Him first. You need to fall in love with Jesus all over again.
Let’s all of us quietly pray and let God know who it is we are worshiping right now. Let God know who has your heart. Bow your knee and confess with your tongue that Jesus Christ is Lord.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 19th, 2006 at 6:48 pm and is filed under Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I confess daily that I am a child of the Most High that I believe in Jesus because He is the Christ the Son of the Living God and I have followed Him for nearly 40 years. I have been off the path I have failed Him but my heart has never left His hand. This is the kind of confession that begins always before Worship it is the kind of confession that should begin each day we live. I believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God – the start of Worship. Thanks my brother for reminding us of this essential truth.
This reminds me of one of my favorite verses in Hebrews: “Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession.” -Hebrews 3:1 (ESV)
The word consider (Greek “katanoeo”) means “to perceive clearly, to understand fully, consider attentively, fix one’s eyes or mind upon.”
I’ve found that there is so much distraction in my life that this kind of consideration can be difficult – so many things are competing for my attention all day long. Even when leading a worship band practice sometimes I can completely stop focusing on Christ, the REASON I’m leading worship in the first place!
We must fix our eyes upon Jesus and study him. Milton, I like what you had to add – we must carefully consider the treasure that Jesus is, and that we are His children – EVERY day. He must be involved in everything we do. That’s where leading worship begins.