"Planned for God's Pleasure"
Sermon Transcript for October 19, 2003By Rev. Dan Sinkhorn
Well, we are in the first full week now of the “40 Days of Purpose”. And today we are going to look at our first and most significant purpose. God has created us for five purposes. Today we look at number one. Let’s begin by looking at the Book of Revelation. We are going to look at Chapter 4, Verse 12. And I ask that you read this one with me please. “You, God, created everything. And it is for your pleasure that they exist and were created.” You see, the Bible says that we were created for God’s enjoyment. God made you just to enjoy you. And the only reason that you are alive today is because God made you for His enjoyment because God gets enjoyment out of watching you. Now, I know there are many parents out in the congregation today. And parents, I would ask you, “Do you enjoy watching your children at least most of the time?” It gives us enjoyment to watch our children doesn’t it? We just get pleasure out of watching them, you know. This weekend I watched my sons play football on Friday night and Saturday morning and it gave me enjoyment. And I believe that that is the way it is with God. God just enjoys watching His children. God enjoys watching you. God rejoiced when you were born! He was there the day that you came in to the world and He smiled from ear to ear because He created you. He knew exactly how you were made. And God knows what your purpose is because your purpose is His purpose. God asks one think of you. He has given you so much and He simply wants you to give back to Him. God, as we learned last week, created you so that He could love you. And so this week we want to talk about how we love God back.
Now there was a time when Jesus was walking down the street and a fellow came up to Him and he said, “Lord, what is the most important command in all the Bible?” And Jesus said, “Okay, I’m going to tell you. Now this is the most important thing. If you don’t get anything else get this. It is the most important thing. Let’s read it together. It’s found in Matthew, Chapter 22. Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God. This is the first and greatest commandment.” God says if you don’t get anything else, here’s what you are supposed to do with your life. You are to love the Lord your God. God wants you to love Him back. Now, there is a word for this. It’s a word that we use a lot of times in the wrong context or we just don’t use it because we are not clear on what it means. The word for this is “worship”. Worship is knowing and loving God back.
Now, what do you think of when you think of worship? Do you think of prayer or singing in church? Do you think of rituals like communion? Do you think of worship as something that only happens in church? Well, we are going to take a look at what worship is and you may want to write some of these things down because our first purpose in life is to worship God. It is our primary objective. It is our highest priority. Now the question that pops into your mind, I’m sure, is what does worship look like? And you know, some of us are troubled because worship in our minds looks like what we see on the TV news or in a magazine or newspaper article. You’ve seen the picture because they always show the same one. People when they worship usually look like this. (Hands and face lifted to heaven). Right? That’s the way they always portray worship. Well, it’s no wonder that we are not sure what worship is. But probably the best verse in the entire Bible describing worship is found in Romans, Chapter 12. It’s verse one. Hear these words. “Because of God’s great mercy to us, offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God dedicated to His service and pleasing to Him.” Now, hear the pleasure part? “This is the true worship that you should offer.” Now, look at the words “because” and “offer”. Again, you might want to write this down because the first part of worship is my response to God—it’s the “because”. See, God has loved you first. God has taken the initiative. He’s done all of these things for you in advance. He’s already acted out in love and grace for you. And so your worship is a natural response or reaction to what God has done. God created us. God saved us. God forgave us. God blesses us. God protects us. And He did all of that first. And those are pretty good reasons to worship God. And then we “offer” because the second thing we do is giving back. Worship is giving back to God. Whenever you offer anything to God, this is called “worship”. Now, you might be asking, “What do you offer God?” I mean, you think there are people on your Christmas list that are hard to shop for, what do you offer God? Well, you give God your love. In fact, God is very specific about how you do that. Look at Mark, Chapter 12. It says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all of your strength.” Now, by the way, that’s your memory verse for this week. If you’ll look in your bulletin, it’s there in a little blue box. Keep that in a prominent place in your home and commit it to memory. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all of your strength.” There’s the formula for worshiping God, for giving back to God.
God wants you to love Him in three ways. First, He wants you to love Him thoughtfully. It says, “Love Him with your mind.” Thoughtfully. In other words, God wants you to think this thing through. God wants you to not just go through the motions but rather to engage Him thoughtfully. Second, God wants you to love Him passionately. This is to love God with your heart and soul. God wants you to love Him passionately because God loves you passionately. And third, God says that He wants you to love Him practically. God says love me with your strength, that means with your abilities. You see, the truth is that even though God has created all the universe, and you and me, there are a few things that God doesn’t have unless we give them to Him. God doesn’t have your attention unless you give it to Him. That is loving God with your mind. God doesn’t have your affection unless you give it to Him. That is loving God with your heart and soul. God doesn’t have your ability unless you give it to Him. And that is loving God with your strength. Now, God gave you all of those capabilities and all those parts of your personality, but those are things that only you can give back to God.
So, then let’s look at this. Worship is focusing your attention on God. It’s giving God all of your attention. Now in a lot of religions, the whole idea of worship is to sort of lose yourself in the universe and become sort of distant and mindless. But the truth is our God, the God who created us and created our intellect, wants us to worship Him thoughtfully, to engage our minds and participate in a thoughtful, intelligent process with Him. And that takes a lot of energy, which is probably why many of us don’t do it. Have you ever caught yourself praying on autopilot? You know, when I was a kid we used to say a prayer. The youngest child in the family always had the opportunity to say the prayer before we ate dinner. And we said the same prayer every time. We learned it from the older brothers and sisters. It went like this. “Bless us, oh Lord, and use they gifts which we are about to receive for our bodies. In Christ, Lord. Amen.” You know, I was ten years old before I knew the words to that prayer, but I could say it! Sometimes we pray like that. We pray, “Blah, blah, blah, blah, Amen.” And we don’t really know what we said. Have you ever caught yourselves zoning out in church on Sunday? I’m sure it never happens when I am preaching! But do you find yourself just sort of leaving the room for a moment, your body’s in the pew, but your mind is elsewhere? You know, it takes a lot of energy to participate thoughtfully with God.
But do you know why God wants your focus? Because God is focused on you! Look at Psalm 139. “You have looked deep into my heart, Lord, and you know all about me. You know when I am resting and when I am working.” Read this last part with me, would you? “Even before I speak, you already know what I will say. You are all around me on every side; you protect me with your power. Your knowledge of me is too deep; it is beyond my understanding.” God knows everything you do and everywhere you go because God has focused His attention on you! You know, there is nothing more loving that you can do than to give someone your attention. You know, many times in ministry I’ve encountered husbands and wives and children and friends who have complained because their loved one doesn’t seem to care very much about them. And, of course, the response is always the same, “Well, I don’t understand what their problem is. I give them everything they need. I work for them; I care for their needs. I don’t understand what the problem is.” And the problem is very simple. They don’t give enough attention. There is nothing more loving that you can do than to give someone your undivided attention. And God gives you His undivided attention and asks that you give that back.
Do you remember the first time you fell in love? I know for some of us that was a long time ago but do you remember what it was like? You couldn’t get your mind off of that person. You thought about them when you woke up in the morning. You thought about them throughout the day. You thought about them when you shouldn’t have been and you thought about them when you probably ought to have been doing other things. Well, for most of us that was infatuation and it wore off. But with God it doesn’t wear off. You are on God’s mind all of the time. And God asks that you would have Him on your mind all of the time. Well, there are a couple of reasons why we struggle with that. First is because we are self-centered by nature. That’s not an easy thing to accept, but it is true. And the second is that we live in a self-centered culture, don’t we? Everything in our culture is about me and mine and I. But if you look at Romans, Chapter 8, Verse 7 it says that focusing on yourself is the opposite of focusing on God. “And anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God and ends up thinking more about self than God.” So you have to decide to focus on God. Look at Romans, Chapter 12, Verse 2. Paul says, “Don’t become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit in to it without ever thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God.” You see, we have to choose to stop thinking about some things and start thinking intently about God.
Now how do you do that? I know that’s hard; I have trouble doing it myself. Well, the first thing you’ve got to do is to get in the habit of talking with God and reading God’s Word. The Bible talks about this in Matthew, Chapter 6 where it says this, “Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role play before God and just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God and you will begin to sense His grace.” Look at some of these words. Look at the word “place”. You have to find a place. Now in the Old Testament days the only place that you could worship God or to be with God was in the Temple. And for some people that might have been a once in a lifetime journey. But for us it is not necessary to go to a temple to worship God. The truth is that thanks to Jesus we can worship God anywhere we want to. It could be a quiet place in your back yard. It could be in your car. It could be somewhere in your home. But you need to find a place, Scripture says, to worship God. Look at the word “simply”. You just “be” with God. You don’t have to plan anything elaborate; you just “be”. Look at the word “honestly”. When you go before God just be yourself. You know, a lot of people try to work themselves up to religious exercise. They go before God with some sort of image of themselves as something other than who they are. And it is very important that you understand that you are going before the God who created you. The God who knows you better than you know yourself. And so the truth is you don’t have to look any certain way or act any certain way, you just need to be yourself. You need to find a place to go simply and honestly to be with God.
Now there is a second thing that you can do to focus on God. And that is to maintain a constant conversation with God. Psalm 105 says, “Worship Him continually.” You see, you’ve just got to think about God all of the time. Remember a few minutes ago we were talking about how when you love someone you are infatuated with them; you’ve just got them on your mind all of the time? Well, that’s the constant conversation with God that we want to try to maintain. You know, you can do this in a variety of ways. I know a guy who has one of those watches with an alarm on it and he has it set to go off every 30 minutes. And every time his watch beeps he makes a point of thinking about God or maybe praying for the person he is with. Some people pray or talk to God every time they get in their car. You can do this any way you want. The important thing is that you find a way to remind yourself constantly throughout the day to focus on God and to have this constant conversation with God to realize God’s constant presence throughout the day. The Bible tells us in Isaiah, Chapter 6, “God will keep in perfect peace all who trust in Him, whose thoughts are fixed on Him.” Do you want to have peace of mind? Do you want to be at ease in your life and relax a little bit and enjoy life and not worry about all of those things that creep in? You know the problem is that when you focus on yourself, it’s just a matter of time before those feelings of worry and insecurity, anxiety, and discouragement, and guilt begins to flood back in. But if you focus your mind on God in this constant conversation you begin to feel a great confidence and peace.
Now, as I said earlier, worship is not only focusing your attention on God but it is also expressing your affection to God. Now, I know for many of us that’s a hard thing to do. Maybe because we grew up in homes where affection was not something that was easily expressed. Or perhaps you are one of those strong, silent types and you just don’t say things like “I love you”. Well, God wants you to love Him back. God wants you to say, “I love you, God”. And no matter how hard I study and no matter how hard I look, I cannot find any other answer accept, “Get over it.” You simply must be willing to say to God, “I love you God because you love me.” And you just have to learn to do that without feeling weird and without feeling threatened. Look at I John, Chapter 4, Verse 19, “We love Him because He first loved us.” You know, in many religions God is this angry, distant person who is to be appeased or feared. But our God is not like that. God is desirous that you would have a personal relationship with Him and that you would love Him. And so God wants you to simply, in your daily conversation with Him to say, “I love you God.”
God is speaking to you through the next verse that I want to share. It’s from Hosea, Chapter 6. God says, “I don’t want your sacrifices. I want your love. I do not want your offerings. I want you to know me.” You see, God wants you to know Him and love Him more every day. In fact, if at the end of the day every thing else has gone wrong and nothing about your day has turned out the way you hoped, if at the end of the day you can say, “God, I feel that I know you better and love you more today than I did yesterday”, then your day has been a success because this is your number one purpose in life--to know God and to love God. Read this next verse with me please. “He is a God who is passionate about His relationship with you.” God is passionately in love with you. You can just about hear God saying, “Come on I made you to know me and to love me, now why are you ignoring me?” God is passionate about His love for you.
Romans 6:13 says, “Give yourself completely to God since you have been given new life.” Remember, it’s a response. God gave you life. God gave you new life through Jesus and he simply wants you to give yourself completely back to Him. And so the question is, “What’s holding you back? Why haven’t you given yourself completely to God?” Well, there is really one word for it and it is fear. And what’s interesting is I imagine that most of us who are holding back are doing it simply because of fear of perception. Because thanks to the world and the culture we live in, Christians who have given themselves completely to the Lord are portrayed as being a little bit nutty. They don’t say, “Jesus”; they say, “Jeee-sus!” They don’t say “ouch!” when they stub their toe; they say, “Praise the Lord!” You know what I am talking about. There is something about Christians like that that you are afraid God might be asking you to become. And so it causes you to hold back. Well, I’ve got good news for you. The God who created you, the God who grinned from ear to ear the day you were born, knows you, knows exactly what you are like. And that is the person that God wants you to be! God wants you to be everything that God created you to be. And so God doesn’t ask you to give yourself completely to Him so that He can turn you in to something you are ashamed to be. The truth of the matter is the more you know God and love God the more normal you become. And it could be that the world you are looking at around you is full of abnormal people who need to know and love God and become normal like you.
Finally, worship is focusing your attention on God. It’s expressing your affection to God. And then it is giving your abilities to God. I’ve been married a long time and I’m crazy about my wife. I’m so happy in my marriage. And I can tell you that my wife loves it when I tell her I love her and I tell her often. She loves it when I touch her and show her affection. But you know there are times when she needs for me to express my love in very practical ways. There are times when she needs me to say I love you by helping when she’s weary, when the task requires a team effort, when she needs a break, when things are broken and she needs them fixed. And that is an expression of love that is very practical. You know, God wants the same thing from you. There are times when God needs for you to show your love for Him through your gifts and abilities. And you can express them here in church; you can express them at home. There are many ways you can do it. But you show God your love by giving your ability to God through practical expressions of your love.
Look at Colossians, Chapter 2, Verse 23, “Whatever you do, work at it with all of your heart as though you were working for the Lord and not for people.” Now if you get this verse, it will revolutionize your entire life. Look at it again, “Whatever you do,” That means anything, “work at it with all of your heart as though you were working for the Lord and not for people.” Now you know, there will be people who finish this “40 Days of Purpose” and they will say, “I need to spend more time with the Lord so I am going to pray for five hours a day. Wrong! There will be people who will say, “I need to give God my abilities and my affections so I’m going to try to be at church every day of the week.” Wrong! We like seeing you, but it’s not the answer. The truth is that this scripture tells us that it is just a matter of changing who you work for. Now, I’ve seen that illustrated really well. I heard a very funny story this morning, too because I mentioned this in our service last night. But there is a gentleman who waits on tables at the Bob Evan’s Restaurant here in town who has impressed me so much because he has demonstrated this to me. You just know that he is working for the Lord and not for Bob Evans. You can just feel it. Somebody got a free piece of pie last night because they told him that. My pie! But that’s all right. That’s okay. I don’t need it. You change who you are working for. You know, the problem so many of us have is that we compartmentalize everything, don’t we? And let’s face it, men, we are worse at that than anybody. We go to work and we do that. We go to church and we do that. We watch the football game or we take care of our cleaning or our work around the home. We divide everything up in to segments. And so our worship is that hour that we spend at church or maybe that hour that we spend in a small group. Maybe it’s that half an hour or so that we spend reading God’s Word in the morning or the afternoon or the evening. But we mustn’t compartmentalize. God says that this is something we should do constantly. That our whole personality and everything we are should be expressed as an act of worship.
Look at this paraphrase from The Message of Romans, Chapter 12, and hear these words, “Take your every day ordinary life--your sleeping, your eating, your going to work, your walking around life—and place it before God as” what? “an offering”. There’s that word again, “offer”. God has offered you eternal life and all of His love and what He wants you to give back is an offering as yourself every moment of every hour of every day so that everything you do is an act of worship. That means, believe it or not, that taking out the garbage can be an act of worship. It means that cleaning the garage can be an act of worship and some of you need to worship this afternoon. It means that everything you do can be an act of worship, should be an act of worship so that it doesn’t just happen here at church on Sunday mornings and Saturday nights. It doesn’t just happen on Wednesday’s in your small groups; it happens all the time. Whatever you do work at it with all of your heart for your new boss, God, as an act of worship.
We have looked at worship today and broadened our concept of worship so that we now realize that it isn’t just something we do on Sunday morning but rather it is something that we do with all of our heart, and soul, and mind and with our gifts and abilities to our strengths. So we are going to close the worship today, not with a hymn but with a prayer. I invite you now to please bow your heads and pray with me, “Father, what we’ve talked about today is no minor issue. It is the most important thing in life, which is to get to know You and to love You. Now Lord, we realize that among us are people at all different stages in their spiritual journey. And there are some who are here for the very first time today. But Lord, help each one of us to make the next step that we need to make, as you understand it. And now I ask that you pray with me these words in your own thoughts and your own translation. In your mind just say something like this, ‘Dear God, I wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for You. Forgive me for all of the times that I think and act like you don’t matter. Today I realize that You made me to love me and that the first purpose of my life is to know and to love You back. Oh, God, I’m amazed that You long for a relationship with me. And I’m amazed that you are interested in the details of my life. But most of all I am amazed that You would come to earth to die for me. I don’t understand it all, but I have to say “Wow”. Please forgive me Lord for not worshiping You. I want to learn to worship. I want to learn to love You and to get to know you better in the way that you deserve—thoughtfully with my mind, and passionately with my heart and soul, and practically with my abilities. So that when I go back to work on Monday I’m going to be working for you and doing my job as if you were the boss.’ And if there is anyone here who has never opened their life to Jesus, then I would encourage you to say something like this in your prayer, ‘Jesus, thank You for giving Your life for me. As much as I know how, I want to give my life back to You.’ In your name I pray, Amen.”
I hope that God has spoken with you this morning and changed your life with His Word. And now I want to send you forth to love and serve and most importantly to worship God with all of your heart, mind, soul and strength. Amen.
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