St Timothy’s Autumn 2017 Morning Preaching series
Worship
Week 1 - Worship God for His Character
Readings: Deut 32: 1 - 4and Psalm 96
Notes: One of the prime reasons for worshipping God is because of His character. God is creator not a creature he is thus beyond us and distinct from us not just greater than us. His character is ultimately good, kind, loving etc. We need to worship him for who he is, above us and his characteristics which are perfectly good. Worshipping in this way is different from thanksgiving which is worshipping for His deeds. Worshipping God for who he is, is I would suggest a difficult concept but perhaps begins akin to admiration and ends akin to friendship or even romantic love.
Questions: What are your top 3 favourite characteristics of God? Do you think more or feel more when you worship? Can you think of any good analogies of worshipping God for who He is?
Week – 2 Thankfulness (AAW)
Readings: Col 3: 15-17
Notes: As Madame Blueberry learns ‘a thankful heart is a happy heart’. Thanksgiving is the proper response to the good things God puts in our lives. It corrects the idea that we are self sufficient. It corrects the idea that we earn good things on merit. It gives us the correct perspective that God is our provider. It helps us to be generous, kind and less anxious.
Questions: What are you most thankful for at the moment? How much do you take for granted things you already have? Does being thankful change your perspective?
Week 3 - Worship God for His Deeds
Readings: Exod 3: 7 - 17and Eph 2: 1-10
Notes: Apart from God’s character the other reason for worshipping God is for His deeds. The Bible doesn’t very often clearly separate his character and deeds in single passages. Our worship is a response to God’s deeds. We love God because he first loved us. God’s primary action is salvation and the level of our response should be inspired by that. It can sometimes be hard to feel ‘saved’ and it can therefore be difficult to respond wholeheartedly.
Questions: Can you recogniseGod’s saving deeds in your life? Do you ‘feel’ saved, do you ‘think’ you are saved? Do you have any difficulty worshipping God for what he has done?
Week 4 - Worship Requires Effort
Readings: Mark 12:28-34 and Psalm 100
Notes: The first commandment is to ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ In other words put your best effort into it. This is always a response to God putting his best effort into us first. In Sunday morning worship perhaps this requires self discipline to sing loudly, to listen carefully, to be fully open to the Holy Spirit, to lift our arms. Familiarity can breed contempt and there is a danger of going through the motions. Yet this is one of only two commandments that God gives which Jesus highlights.
Questions: What does it mean to Love God like this? How does that affect our Sunday worship? How can we avoid going through the motions?
Week 5 - Worship only God
Readings: Isaiah 44:6-20 and Acts 17:22-34
Notes: Loving other things with all our heart, soul, mind and strength causes us to worship them. God is a jealous God. He desires our worship partly because only He deserves it and partly because worshipping other things doesn’t do us any good and usually harms us. Many people worship other things because they don’t know about God.
Questions: What are our idols? What causes our worship of them instead of God? Does our worship of God help others to know of Him?
Week 6 - Worship is sacrificial (weekend away)
Readings: Gen 22: 1 – 14 and Mal 3: 6 - 12
Notes: Worshipping God costs us and costs us dearly because it involves sacrifice. You can’t do anything for God that he needs because he is not in any way dependent on us. We show our love for him be showing our dependence on His mercy and grace, by trusting Him with all that we hold dear. This also stops these things becoming idols.
Questions: What things do we sacrifice in worshipping God? Do we see this sacrifice as the correct thing to do and helpful to us or as a Ghastly Moral Obligation? Do we use sacrifice in worship as a way to keep our idols under control?
Week 7 - Harvest Thanksgiving
Readings: TBA
Week 8 - God speaks in Worship
Readings: 2 Chron 7: 1 – 4 and Acts 13: 1 – 3
Notes: Worship is not a one way performance. Worship is two way, a cycle in which God acts and we worship in response and He responds to our worship and round and round. We give up first! God speaks to us in worship if we are prepared to listen. Listening and experiencing takes practice and perception. It’s sometimes dramatic but often the still small voice. God’s voice in worship can change our lives.
Questions: Do you expect God to respond in worship? Have you heard God speak to you? Are you willing to develop your ability to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ what God is doing when you worship?
Week 9 - Worship and Spiritual Gifts
Readings: 1 Cor 12: 1 – 11 and 1 Cor 14: 1 – 5
Notes: When 1 Corinithians was written there were no Pentecostals, no denominations at all. Every Christian was a charismatic. We need to put away pre-conceived ideas of what is possible, challenge our sub-conscious worldview and open our hearts and minds to the truth of scripture and to what God wants to say and do. The gifts of the Spirit are available here and now for the building up of the body just as they always have been. ‘I do not want you to be ignorant’ and ‘Eagerly desire the Spiritual gifts’.
Questions: Do you have any experience of the gifts of the spirit? Do you recognise what your worldview is and where it has come from? Are you prepared to find out more and to eagerly desire?
Week 10 - Worship by living faithfully
Readings: Rom 12: 1 – 8 and Micah 6: 6 – 8
Notes: Worship is about more than attending corporate worship once a week. Sunday worship is important but how we worship God is also about how we live our lives. Not just behaving correctly but making ourselves available day by day to hear God and to act on what he says. Accepting that God has given us gifts and that He wants us to use them in his service is part of our worship.
Questions: How is the way we live our lives a response to God? Do we recognise the gifts that God has given us? How does exercising our gifts in God’s service worship Him?
Week 11 - Remembrance Service
Readings: TBA
Week 12 - Worship in all circumstances
Readings: Psalm 34: 1 – 8 and Matt 28: 16 – 17
Notes: Being thankful to God and recognising his good deeds in our lives is straightforward when things are going well. The bible encourages us to worship God in all circumstances; afraid, troubled, ashamed, beset, doubting. This requires self-discipline but even more the love, support, encouragement and witness of the church community. A priest is one who stands between God and humans, we are the priesthood of all believers. Bearing each other’s burdens, weeping with those who weep, hoping for those who have none etc.
Questions: Do difficult times throw you on to God or drive you away from Him? How do we find the ability to worship God in all circumstances? In what ways can we support those who are struggling to worship God?
Week 13 - Worship in Spirit and in Truth
Readings: John 4: 19 – 26 and Matt 15: 1 – 9
Notes: All forms of worship have been designed by humans even where the inspiration is from God. We need to recognise that this true so that we can separate the human from the divine. We must strive to worship in Spirit and in Truth and not worship the scaffolding we put round it. This is difficult! Jesus was never more scathing and righteously angry than when tackling hypocrisy in manmade worship.
Questions: Do we recognise that there are human hands in our worship? Do we recognise that we can allow the scaffolding to become an idol? How can we help each other to worship in ‘Spirit and in Truth’?
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