10-23-11 Serve: Worship and Serve

Big Idea: Worship and serve – These two words are deeply connected. The first denotes a deep vertical connection between us and God. The second denotes a deep horizontal connection between us and those around us. Serving authenticates our worship, if it’s done with a heart of love. Worship and serve are two words in the Christian faith that cannot be separated. Worship is seeking to put God at the center of your life.  Serving seeks to live and act in ways that align our lives with the God whom we worship.

What are the first things that come to mind when I say “Worship” (Write them down)? Ok, now, what are the first things that come to mind when I say the word “Serve” (Write these down)?

At first glance these two words seem to have nothing in common with each other, and yet these two words are found together again and again throughout scripture. It shows up many times in the Old Testament where God is warning the Israelites.

God says, If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Deuteronomy 8:19 (NRSV)

Here God connects “serving” and “worshipping” as though these two things go together like bread and butter.  Worship is this context seems to be deeply related to serving. God repeats this warning throughout the Old Testament and then at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, the Holy Spirit drives him into the wilderness where he fasts for 40 days and at the end of this time we’re told that Satan approaches him and tempts him four different ways. In one of those temptations, Satan tells Jesus that if he will bow down to him and worship him, that he’ll make him ruler over all the nations of the earth.

Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” Matthew 4:10 (NIV)

Sometimes people say things like, “I go to church at New Community,” but realize that what you are doing here today is not “Church” because the church is the people. The church has gathered here this morning to worship. However, worship is not just something that we do; it must become something that we are. Let me explain. To worship God means that God becomes central to your life and mine. Worship means to put something at the center of your life.

For instance, you can worship soccer. Your entire life can revolve around soccer. You go to work to make money to pay for soccer and soccer lessons. You can spend your time watching soccer, practicing soccer, and talking to other people about soccer. Soccer can become your god. Worship is about what’s at the center of your world. If soccer is your god, as I’ve just explained, then you interpret your whole world through the lens of your god, soccer. When something is your god, everything in your life finds its meaning from that one thing.

Jesus said this, “No one can serve two masters (you can’t have two things at the center, you can’t have two gods). Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve (There’s that word) both God and Money. Matthew 6:24 (NIV)

Money is one of the greatest things that people worship.  People worship money because in the world that we live in money is power. Those who have the most money have a certain kind of power. People want power because they feel like they will be more important and have greater value in the eyes of others. If money is your god, then you will focus your life on making it and spending it, and essentially serving it. You will spend the majority of your time earning it, counting it, grieving over the loss of it, figuring out ways to make more and drooling over the next thing that you can buy as soon as you make enough. If you live with money as your god, you will focus on it and serve it. Money will become the thing that you worship and you will focus on it and serve it.

What is most important in your life? Whatever you’ve give the value of “Most important” in your life, is the thing or the person, or the god/God that you will serve above all others. Satan loves to deceive Christians into thinking that God is who they worship because they come to this building and sing songs of praise for one hour a week on a Sunday, while spending great amounts of their time and energy focusing, and therefore worshiping, something else.

How about you? What or who are you worshipping? Don’t be too hasty in answering this question. This isn’t about giving the right answer! We’re all here as the church, so we all know the answer is God, but the right answer doesn’t count for much, unless you are living the right answer.

It’s easiest for you and I to figure out what we worship by asking the question, “In what ways are you serving God?” That’s what God commands us to do – worship and serve him, so if you think the answer to the question “What do I worship?” is “God,” then there ought to be evidence in the ways that you’re serving him, not just on Sunday, but every day of the week. Remember, worship is about focus and about what gives meaning and direction to your life ALL THE TIME.

Let me ask you a very difficult question. Why do you go to work? If your work is at home taking care of kid’s, then you need to ask the question specific to what you do each day. What’s the reason you go to work?

If we’re honest, the answer for why most people go to work is “To make money”. Who’s your god then? What is your focus during those 8 hours? Now, it’s ok to make money. We need money to purchase important needs in our lives, so making money isn’t wrong, but to have it be our focus is. Because as soon as it becomes your focus, it becomes your god and you will serve it.

So, how do we serve God while we work? Jesus gives us some direction in this statement. He says:

‘The greatest among you must be a servant. But those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’ Matt 23:11-12

‘The greatest among you (according to Jesus, according to God) must be a servant. My first question is, “A servant to whom?” The answer is, “to God”. The greatest person among us is the person who is a servant of the living God, who is serving God while he or she works.

We’ll how can I do that? Remember, the whole idea of being a Christian, a follower of Christ, is that you and I would serve God wherever we go. The kingdom of God is about being in right relationship to God, so that the kingdom of God, the goodness of God is growing inside of us, and overflowing out of us in ways that love and value those people around us.

Serving God means that we do the right thing, the good thing, the God thing even when nobody’s looking. It means that we don’t steal, no matter how small and insignificant the item might be. It means that we use the gifts God has given us with the right heart to bless other people, always. Serving God means that we love the people whom we work with through every word and action no matter how difficult that person is to love. And we do these things, because we’ve committed to following Christ, and because we are seeking to serve him in all the areas in our lives. Worship is about turning God’s love into action through serving him.

‘The greatest among you must be a servant. But those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’ Matt 23:11-12

Jesus makes it real clear here that if you chose to do life apart from him, with him not at the center, and if you choose to focus on something other than him and put something else in his place, and if you choose to exalt yourself and say, “I know what’s best at the center of my life and you chose to serve someone or something else other than God, you will be humbled, you will be brought down.

However, for those who humble themselves and bow before the king and say, “I’m here to serve you and your will, then those people God exalts. Those people God lifts up and calls great.

It’s important not to just say “I’m here to serve and worship you God”, but then not do it. Love is about action.

Remember where we started. Let’s go back and reread what God says.

God says, If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Deuteronomy 8:19 (NRSV)

God is basically saying, it’s not safe to worship and serve other gods. It’s kind of like a mother who is standing at the curb getting ready to cross the street with her three year old child in the middle of Chicago during rush hour. She tells her daughter “it’s not safe for you to let go of my hand while we’re crossing the street. She thinks to herself. If she does, she’ll surely die.” That’s just the reality of it. God is saying, “you can’t navigate life correctly with anything else at the center of you world, it just doesn’t work.

It doesn’t work, because God created you to be connected to him, not because he’s some egotistical, arrogant psychopath, but because he loves you and he knows that nothing else is able to replace him.

So, let’s make an assumption for a minute. Let’s assume that you want to both worship and serve God. If you genuinely seek to discover God’s unfolding purpose for your life, you must ask yourself this question: “How does God want me to serve him?” the answer God often gives us when we ask him how we’re to serve him is almost always, “Love others the way that I have loved you.”

Whatever your path, whatever your calling, you may be certain of this: serving others is an integral part of God’s plan for your life. Christ was the ultimate servant, the Savior who gave His life for humankind. As His followers, we, too, must become humble servants.

Every single day of your life, including this one, God will give you opportunities to serve Him by serving other people, of whom he is their Father. Welcome those opportunities with open arms. They are God’s gift to you, His way of allowing you to achieve greatness in His kingdom.

Worship is not worship apart from serving others. Worship is a way of living. This is why Jesus when asked about the greatest commandment couldn’t stop at “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” That’s worship! Put God at the center of your life by focusing on him in every aspect of your life. But the crazy thing is that Jesus can’t stop there. He was asked for the greatest commandment, but he gives two. He says “and there’s a second command much like the first, “Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.”

Worship is not worship unless it’s connected to serving others in love. Love is a feeling, yes, but not just a feeling. Love is an inner activity that must overflow into an outer activity. Love is about being a certain kind of person on the inside and that inner being overflowing into action on the outside. Serving other people is a way of acknowledging your love for them and for the God who created them.

The cross – the vertical beam of the cross depicts the work that Jesus did here to make it possible for us to worship and love God. Prior to this our sin separated us from God. Jesus made it possible for us to connect with God again. Worship is allowing God and his will and his love to be central inside of us.

The horizontal beam of the cross depicts the work that Jesus did to make it possible for us to love others like we love ourselves. Jesus, after removing our sin, gives us the Holy Spirit, part of God’s Spirit to counsel us and teach us how to love the way God loves. This is where God calls us to not just to love our neighbor – those people we find ourselves next to – but to serve them in love. Love isn’t love until you give it away.

James says it this way

What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone? Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do? So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless. James 2:14-17 (NLT)

Here’s what God is saying to us, “Don’t come to this place of worship and think that it gives you some sort of clout when you get to heaven, just because you came.  Singing songs of praise to God apart from living lives of service to him and others isn’t worship at all. Worship for God is expressed in how you serve him and those whom he loves.

Love isn’t love until you give it away.

Let me give you an example.

If you’re married, but you’re not serving your wife or your husband in ways that express your love for them in physical acts of serving, you’re not worshipping God.

Love is not passive, it’s active. Love is not just an inner feeling; it must manifest itself in outer expressions.  Worship is not worship until you’re serving God and others in a way that honors God. That’s why our passion is turning God’ s love into action. Love is not love until you give it away.

Jesus said, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” Matthew 4:10 (NIV)

How are you serving God? How are you serving your spouse? How are you serving your kids? How are you serving your parents? How are you serving those that are strangers wherever you go? True worship is about serving God by serving others, because that’s God’s will.

Now, here is an important question.

Can you serve God without worshipping him? Yes. Worship has to do with a condition of the heart. For serving to be worship it must overflow out of a heart of love for that person. Jesus harshly rebuked the Pharisees, the religious leaders of his day, because they served God out of obedience, not out of love. If we do the right thing with the wrong heart, God doesn’t receive it as worship. So be careful. You can do all the right things, but with the wrong heart, and still be no closer to God.

So, how does worship and service come together here on Sunday morning?

There are people that would love to sleep in late and drink coffee until 10:30 and move slowly into worship. However there are a few who sacrifice their wants and get here at 8:15 on Sunday morning to serve God and you. They set up all our worship gear, not because they like to per say, but because they have a servant’s heart. They have a heart of worship way before they begin worshipping at 11:00. Others get here at 9:00 and 9:30 and 10:10 and 10:30 and 10:45 to prepare this space for worship. They serve God and they serve you and their serving is received by God as worship if the serving is done with a heart of love for God and others.  It is received by God as worship, if their hearts are doing it for reasons of love. These men and women are worshipping God and serving him. They love God and you by what they do.

When we all serve our God in love, his kingdom is advanced. When we serve him in small ways, God multiplies our efforts to change the lives of other people. People who give a tithe – 10 percent of their income, are worshipping God by serving him and the others whose lives that are being transformed as that money is put to use. That money will help teach and train people in the ways of God and it will help us reach others for Christ.

Here’s the big idea of what I want you to take home with you today.

Serving authenticates our worship, if it’s done with a heart of love. Worship and serve are two words in the Christian faith that cannot be separated. Worship is seeking to put God at the center of your life.  Serving seeks to speak and act in ways that align our lives with the God whom we worship.

When you come to worship as each of you did today, we must ask the question, “How am I serving God? How am I serving the people of New Community? How am I serving those that I say that I love? When God is at the center, then all that we say and do ought to reflect him, not just in our hearts, but in all the things that we say and do each week.

Muriel, our Worship Admin. has been worshipping and serving God with her gifts in lots of wonderful ways in the past weeks, so that you could have lots of wonderful opportunities to worship and serve God among us.

Muriel, I want to invite you up, so that you can share with us the opportunities that are available to us.

Prayer

Song

Next week we’ll be having our kindness outreach event, where we seek to worship God by serving others in our community. So we invite you to come with serving clothes on. We need many people to bring garden rakes in as we’ll be spreading lots of mulch down at the elementary school. The maintenance supervisor will be there helping us move the mulch. As you’re serving him and helping him do a job that he couldn’t possible do without your help, remember you’re serving him and worshipping God as long as you do it with a love for him and a love for God who made him.

Remember, serving authenticates worship. Worship is the inner centering of our lives on God. Serving is the overflow of that love into the lives of others that God loves and even died for.