PRIORITY
Quote from Forum Archives on June 15, 2009, 11:20 amPosted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>
PRIORITY
June 14, 2009
TEXT: Mark 12:28-34
As I was reading through a book entitled Experiencing God in Worship, I realized that I got the cart before the horse between my sermon topic last week and this week. Last week, I shared from Galatians 6 and other Scripture how God wants us to reflect and compare our speech and actions with His instructions. As I was led to share last Sunday, our allegiance is to our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ. Our obedience is to him. Our instructions for life come from him, not from others. We compare our behavior to his standards, not those of anyone else.
Where I got ahead of myself, though, is that even though it is important for us to reflect on our speech and behavior and to do good to all people as we are told in Galatians 6:10, these do not do us much good if we do not have our priority straight. Notice I am using priority, not priorities. There is only one priority that we need to keep straight in this matter, and Jesus lays it out for us exactly as it needs to be laid out.
Of all the commandments, which is the most important? (Mark 12:28) Now this is an issue that would be very important to a teacher of the law, who asked Jesus this question. Throughout his three years of public ministry, Jesus was acknowledged by many experts of the Jewish religion as an extremely wise, capable teacher. Whether through story, Scriptural teaching, or any other method, Jesus demonstrated an amazing ability to get to the heart of any religious or spiritual issue. We recognize, of course, that this is as it should be since Jesus was God with us. But those who encountered Jesus at that time did not know that; they only knew him then as an amazingly wise teacher. This encounter recorded in Mark 12, then, is significant because Jesus answer tells us what our priority is to be. The most important one is this: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:29-31)
So here is where I got the cart before the horse. Failure to recognize the priority of these most important commandments results in a failure to be able to do good to all people. It is the most important of all the commandments that differentiates the Church from all other organizations. If the Church is no more than a bunch of people getting together to have a good time, even for the most noble purpose of humanitarian assistance, then it is no different than any other service or social club. Indeed, I dare say that many such social organizations can do a better job on a human scale of giving aid and organizing social gatherings than can many churches. But even the church that can do a better job organizing social gatherings and humanitarian assistance is still going to fail simply because it has neglected its priority.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. (Mark 12:30) Jesus tells us that before we can do anything else effectively for Gods Kingdom, we must make this command our priority. Any church that calls itself a Christian church must gather to worship God. It must gather for the vital purpose of loving the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Worship is to honor. It is to adore and pay tribute to a person or other object. The specific object of Christian worship is, of course, God. The living God is our creator. He is the giver of our very next breath. He is our savior. For these and other Biblical reasons, then, we gather to worship God. The fellowship that fails to do this fails to be a Christian church. The worship of God must be our priority.
From the book I mentioned earlier, Experience God in Worship, Bruce Leafblad writes about evangelical worship, and I share what he relates as the three basic qualities that all evangelical congregations share. First, an evangelical church celebrates and enacts the gospel of Jesus Christ in its worship. Worship centers in Christ. The various elements of any worship service prayers, hymns, readings, sermons, everything celebrate the good news of redemption in Christ.
Second, an evangelical church affirms and teaches that those who are won by the gospel are to live by the gospel. The goal of the gospel of Jesus Christ is not merely to provide a door of entry to heaven, but a path to maturity in Christ. Those who follow Christ will exhibit changed lives. The norm is that our character, our attitudes, our values, our relationships, and our way of living all become more like those of the Master. This follows when we recognize and apply our priority.
Third, an evangelical church is committed to sharing and proclaiming the gospel of Christ within its own community and throughout the whole world. Flowing naturally from our commitment to our first priority, Christians take what we commonly call the Great Commission seriously and seek to be the proclaiming witness God calls us to be.
All three of these realities form the basis of what we are to seek and practice in every worship service. Primarily, we are to gather to seek to enter into the presence of God in the context of a gathered community. While it is important for us to live our every moment as if we are in the presence of God, it is not sufficient to only worship alone. If this were the case, there would have been no need for those early Christians to expose themselves to so much personal danger by meeting together. They could have all barred their doors, meditated, and prayed and been safely done with it. But that has never been the Biblical model for worship. We are called to be a gathered assembly meeting to proclaim our love for the living God.
I have recently been hearing from various sources that there is a feeling of incoherence and lack of overall purpose among the congregation. One class or ministry group is doing one thing, another is doing something else, and another is doing something altogether different. Even though these different ministries and activities are good and even vital in some instances, there are those who feel like they are not part of a whole. I have been thinking about these observations and comments and have been reluctant to address them because I see this as somewhat normal. I know that it is unlikely that someone is going to be involved in every ministry or activity, so it follows that most serving the Lord in this church are going to be involved in a few things and not know much about some of the others. Still, as has been noted, a sense of coherence and belonging can be lacking when we focus on a few areas.
It struck me this week that a large part of this concern should be solved when we worship. The very fact that we are here on Sunday mornings to express our love for God through our act of worship provides us the cohesion and purpose that we sense we need. This is where we unite in our common purpose to express our priority, which 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. Regardless of which Sunday school class we came out of, we are here now to worship. Regardless of which fellowship circle you may be involved in this week, we are here now to worship. Regardless of what your favorite music has been this morning, we are now here to worship. This is our priority.
The challenge for us all, then, is to actually be prepared to worship. No worship leader or pastor can make people adore or praise God. Ideally, every believer has to come prepared to meet the living God and to worship Him. At the very least, every believer must come with a willing attitude to be led into the presence of the living God and to worship Him. That is our common purpose. That is our priority.
Even though it is now late in the service, ask yourself why you are here this morning. And then remember to ask yourself this earlier in next Sundays worship service. Why am I here in this place right now? What do I expect? What do I expect to happen? Did I come to see some good friends? Thats nice. Nothing wrong with that, but is that my priority? Did I come to take care of a bit of church business? Sometimes this is the only time we run across that other person we need to consult with or get some info from, but is that my priority?
As you can probably guess, I must tell you this morning that if you are here for any other reason than to love the living God through worship, or at least attempt to, then you are wasting your time. As said earlier this morning and last Sunday, too, our allegiance is to our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ. Our obedience is to him. Our devotion is to him because he first loved us. Therefore, this is why we gather. This is why we take the time to leave our homes and travel to this place. We are here to obey willfully, expectantly, and joyfully the greatest commandment of the living God. The most important one is this: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. This is our priority.
Rev. Charles A. Layne
First Baptist Church
PO Box 515
179 W. Broadway
Bunker Hill, IN 46914
765-689-7987
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Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>
PRIORITY
June 14, 2009
TEXT: Mark 12:28-34
As I was reading through a book entitled Experiencing God in Worship, I realized that I got the cart before the horse between my sermon topic last week and this week. Last week, I shared from Galatians 6 and other Scripture how God wants us to reflect and compare our speech and actions with His instructions. As I was led to share last Sunday, our allegiance is to our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ. Our obedience is to him. Our instructions for life come from him, not from others. We compare our behavior to his standards, not those of anyone else.
Where I got ahead of myself, though, is that even though it is important for us to reflect on our speech and behavior and to do good to all people as we are told in Galatians 6:10, these do not do us much good if we do not have our priority straight. Notice I am using priority, not priorities. There is only one priority that we need to keep straight in this matter, and Jesus lays it out for us exactly as it needs to be laid out.
Of all the commandments, which is the most important? (Mark 12:28) Now this is an issue that would be very important to a teacher of the law, who asked Jesus this question. Throughout his three years of public ministry, Jesus was acknowledged by many experts of the Jewish religion as an extremely wise, capable teacher. Whether through story, Scriptural teaching, or any other method, Jesus demonstrated an amazing ability to get to the heart of any religious or spiritual issue. We recognize, of course, that this is as it should be since Jesus was God with us. But those who encountered Jesus at that time did not know that; they only knew him then as an amazingly wise teacher. This encounter recorded in Mark 12, then, is significant because Jesus answer tells us what our priority is to be. The most important one is this: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:29-31)
So here is where I got the cart before the horse. Failure to recognize the priority of these most important commandments results in a failure to be able to do good to all people. It is the most important of all the commandments that differentiates the Church from all other organizations. If the Church is no more than a bunch of people getting together to have a good time, even for the most noble purpose of humanitarian assistance, then it is no different than any other service or social club. Indeed, I dare say that many such social organizations can do a better job on a human scale of giving aid and organizing social gatherings than can many churches. But even the church that can do a better job organizing social gatherings and humanitarian assistance is still going to fail simply because it has neglected its priority.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. (Mark 12:30) Jesus tells us that before we can do anything else effectively for Gods Kingdom, we must make this command our priority. Any church that calls itself a Christian church must gather to worship God. It must gather for the vital purpose of loving the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Worship is to honor. It is to adore and pay tribute to a person or other object. The specific object of Christian worship is, of course, God. The living God is our creator. He is the giver of our very next breath. He is our savior. For these and other Biblical reasons, then, we gather to worship God. The fellowship that fails to do this fails to be a Christian church. The worship of God must be our priority.
From the book I mentioned earlier, Experience God in Worship, Bruce Leafblad writes about evangelical worship, and I share what he relates as the three basic qualities that all evangelical congregations share. First, an evangelical church celebrates and enacts the gospel of Jesus Christ in its worship. Worship centers in Christ. The various elements of any worship service prayers, hymns, readings, sermons, everything celebrate the good news of redemption in Christ.
Second, an evangelical church affirms and teaches that those who are won by the gospel are to live by the gospel. The goal of the gospel of Jesus Christ is not merely to provide a door of entry to heaven, but a path to maturity in Christ. Those who follow Christ will exhibit changed lives. The norm is that our character, our attitudes, our values, our relationships, and our way of living all become more like those of the Master. This follows when we recognize and apply our priority.
Third, an evangelical church is committed to sharing and proclaiming the gospel of Christ within its own community and throughout the whole world. Flowing naturally from our commitment to our first priority, Christians take what we commonly call the Great Commission seriously and seek to be the proclaiming witness God calls us to be.
All three of these realities form the basis of what we are to seek and practice in every worship service. Primarily, we are to gather to seek to enter into the presence of God in the context of a gathered community. While it is important for us to live our every moment as if we are in the presence of God, it is not sufficient to only worship alone. If this were the case, there would have been no need for those early Christians to expose themselves to so much personal danger by meeting together. They could have all barred their doors, meditated, and prayed and been safely done with it. But that has never been the Biblical model for worship. We are called to be a gathered assembly meeting to proclaim our love for the living God.
I have recently been hearing from various sources that there is a feeling of incoherence and lack of overall purpose among the congregation. One class or ministry group is doing one thing, another is doing something else, and another is doing something altogether different. Even though these different ministries and activities are good and even vital in some instances, there are those who feel like they are not part of a whole. I have been thinking about these observations and comments and have been reluctant to address them because I see this as somewhat normal. I know that it is unlikely that someone is going to be involved in every ministry or activity, so it follows that most serving the Lord in this church are going to be involved in a few things and not know much about some of the others. Still, as has been noted, a sense of coherence and belonging can be lacking when we focus on a few areas.
It struck me this week that a large part of this concern should be solved when we worship. The very fact that we are here on Sunday mornings to express our love for God through our act of worship provides us the cohesion and purpose that we sense we need. This is where we unite in our common purpose to express our priority, which 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. Regardless of which Sunday school class we came out of, we are here now to worship. Regardless of which fellowship circle you may be involved in this week, we are here now to worship. Regardless of what your favorite music has been this morning, we are now here to worship. This is our priority.
The challenge for us all, then, is to actually be prepared to worship. No worship leader or pastor can make people adore or praise God. Ideally, every believer has to come prepared to meet the living God and to worship Him. At the very least, every believer must come with a willing attitude to be led into the presence of the living God and to worship Him. That is our common purpose. That is our priority.
Even though it is now late in the service, ask yourself why you are here this morning. And then remember to ask yourself this earlier in next Sundays worship service. Why am I here in this place right now? What do I expect? What do I expect to happen? Did I come to see some good friends? Thats nice. Nothing wrong with that, but is that my priority? Did I come to take care of a bit of church business? Sometimes this is the only time we run across that other person we need to consult with or get some info from, but is that my priority?
As you can probably guess, I must tell you this morning that if you are here for any other reason than to love the living God through worship, or at least attempt to, then you are wasting your time. As said earlier this morning and last Sunday, too, our allegiance is to our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ. Our obedience is to him. Our devotion is to him because he first loved us. Therefore, this is why we gather. This is why we take the time to leave our homes and travel to this place. We are here to obey willfully, expectantly, and joyfully the greatest commandment of the living God. The most important one is this: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. This is our priority.
Rev. Charles A. Layne
First Baptist Church
PO Box 515
179 W. Broadway
Bunker Hill, IN 46914
765-689-7987
-- To unsubscribe, send ANY message to: abesermons-unsubscribe@welovegod.org