Week 3

Quick Review-
Week 1
Worship is doing in response to God.
Week 2
ALL humans worship.
Week 3
There are potentially many god(s) of man (us).

We briefly discussed the trappings of our worship nature. Two things rose out of our conversation.
1. We choose and determine who or what we ultimately worship.
2. We will tend to elevate or allow things, people or ? to worship status.

We then discussed what are, or could be or have been god(s) in our lives. Here is the list submitted by our classmates:

Money (and how we spend it)
Nature
Charisma
"Toys"
Job
Calendar (our scheduled 'obligations')
Appearance (how good we look before others)
Extra Sleep (someone pointed out 'therefore missing this class')
Personal Perfection (ouch...this one boinks me)
Education
NASCAR

The statement that put the nail in all this was posited by one of you:

"Whatever rules my spirit". Thank You Lord!

One of our classmates came up to me after class speaking of portion control, relating diet and eating to our spiritual lives. Together we confirmed that the key to keeping our temple healthy is to control the portions we consume, not letting food, or any of the things or kinds of things listed above rule my spirit and life! Which then raises the interesting question...Do we also apply this to Christ? Meaning, do we only give God a portion of our lives in fear that He will make us out of balance, make us give up some things we love or require too much from us?

You see, how many of us are afraid to fully give Jesus our lives because we think He will expect us to give up the things we love? When, while He may ask us to give up some, what He wants is to let Him be Lord, balancing our portions, placing the things we love in submission to His leading. There is nothing wrong with anything on our list of "gods". The problem is when we let them become gods in our lives.

God will use the money He blesses us with, our charisma, appearance, personal striving for perfection, education, calendar, job, even NASCAR and sleep when fully submitted to His leading.

We looked at scripture and discovered:

Ge 35:4 So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods they had and the rings in their ears, and Jacob buried them under the oak at Shechem.

That while God told Jacob to destroy all the foreign gods, the people gave the to Jacob and he buried them. They were removed, but destroyed? Even so, when they removed the foreign gods, terror fell upon all around them and no one pursued them to destroy the people of Israel.

Then in Exodus 12:12 “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn —both men and animals—and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD.

God demonstrates His jealousy here. Anything taking the place of Him will receive His judgment, and there is no God except God himself.

Finally we finished by discussing complacency:

Definition of complacency
a feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger, defect, or the like; self-satisfaction or smug satisfaction with an existing situation, condition, etc.

Using 2 Corinthians 10:1-5 we discover that one key to battle complacency is to "take every thought and make it obedient to Christ"..

One way to accomplish this is stated in 2 Corinthians 11:1.

11:1 I hope you will put up with a little of my foolishness; but you are already doing that. 2 I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. 3 But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4 For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. 5 But I do not think I am in the least inferior to those “super-apostles.” 6 I may not be a trained speaker, but I do have knowledge. We have made this perfectly clear to you in every way. (NIV)

We must be diligent, not letting ourselves be deceived, led astray or 'put up with' teachings of a false Jesus (a god appearing to look like Christ, close, but not Him).

We must battle complacency with diligent, Holy Spirit directed induction into the Bible! If we are not reading, how can we know God, and elevate Him to be God of our lives?

It is my prayer, and even more so, the prayer of Jesus Himself (have you been paying attention to the weekly sermons?), that He wants us to place Him as Lord of our lives, fulfilling our sacrifice of worship to God. He wants us to live together in unity of His spirit as the sweetness of His presence in and through us on earth.

In the next class we will discuss this act of personal worship. Will you search the scriptures to find acts of personal worship so we can together build a small list of things God's servants have done between they and God alone as personal acts of worship?

Thanks for the many of you, who come to class prepared, and especially to the Holy Spirit, who has clearly spoken in class, our time together has been rich and sweet. Isn't it wonderful to share together at the feet of God? I am trusting Him to see even more of His gracious and power unleashed as we spend some quality time together with Christ!

May He bless your week as you walk in worship, diligent and not complacent.

Week 2 Class Notes

Welcome back!

Last week our focus was trying to sort out what acts and more importantly motives of the heart, define worship. To key on offering, I introduced Cain and Abel, but this week pointed out 1 Samuel 15:1-26 as an additional point to lead us into this week's lesson.

This week our focus is on human nature and design. Every person has been designed by God to worship something or someone. We can see it in every person we know, including ourselves (who we know best). Scripture supports this as well and is filled with lessons about this.

We looked at Exodus 23:23-33 where it points out that all the Amorites, Hittites, Jebusites etc. all who did not recognize God, did worship other gods...and what is most exciting was to hear that people in the group 'got it' when it came to this passage. The points are two:

1. God told them to destroy them probably because He knew their hearts would never turn from what they (the 'ites') were entrenched in worship toward.

A member of our class pointed out (and I hope you understand it is important to me that others, led by the Holy Spirit, contribute to the learning) Romans 1:21-25 as possible support for God's action here, and while 'new testament' if we understand that God has never changed and opportunities to find Him have always been present, this does seem to stand as support.

2. As he knew his chosen people (another group of ites...the Israelites) , He also knew that if they invited these people (the other 'ites') into their homes and families with tolerance, they would become snared by what the 'ites' chose to worship, and it wasn't God himself.

Another classmate shared Deuteronomy 4:15-19 to support this statement and it is right on!

The key issue here is NOT the destruction of others, but rather the dangers of inviting other gods into our lives, or being enticed into worship of things or people who are not God.

The conclusion?

We need to be careful as to whom or what we invite into our lives, knowingly or 'unknowingly' placing it or them in a place of worship. We are to worship none other than God alone.

So the questions for this week are:

1. What are the trappings of our worship nature?

Let's think about this for a moment. If ALL humanity is designed to worship, and if ALL of us will worship something or someone, how can this nature 'trap us' into incorrect worship?

As we examine our life:

2. What draws you?
To what or whom do you draw near?
Hold in high esteem? (not always bad unless it moves into legitimate worship of them or it)

3. Does your time, priorities and expenditures reflect your response to worship of God alone?

4. What actions should be taken by us to reflect whose we are?

So now it is up to you and I to explore this, wrestle with it and most importantly seek scriptural answers and direction from God himself, prompted by the Holy Spirit.

I look forward to seeing you next week as we talk about the many gods of man and the most dangerous aspect of living that supports why God tells us (like the Israelites) to be careful what or whom you invite into your life.

Please try to be early and prepared for class. I hope you find the material engaging and thought provoking, but most importantly that God is directing your thoughts and heart as we all continue to walk down the road of faith together. May our Lord bless you as you set Him and He alone as the one whom you worship and whose you are.

By the way, did you like how the Holy Spirit 'dove tailed' the class with the sermon today? Did you also like how He led the class? I sit back amazed and grateful to be included in the 'seeing' of His power and direction unleashed as we sit together before Him. It is these kinds of things that, I believe, caused the early church to explode! (in a good way of course).

Week 1 Class Notes

In our first meeting we discussed several things...

1. How many times the word 'worship' appears in the old and new testament (153 times in the NIV) and that doing a word study doesn't tell us very well what worship is, only that it is to be done.

2. The word translated as worship in the Bible has many roots in Hebrew and Greek, some of which are, serve, and to draw near.

3. We also discussed how presenting an offering is worship to God and how Cain's offering (in Genesis 4) could have been the right thing, done with the wrong heart (demonstrated by Cain's response to God at His Lord's lack of acceptance of Cain's gift).

We determined that what makes an offering or presentation of a gift worship to God is that it is accepted by God.

Then we came up with other words that could be related to 'worship'. I was delightfully surprised that no one said singing to Him! While singing to our Lord is definitely worship, it is not limited to this singular act.

The words were:

Offering
Service
Obedience
Attitude
Sacrifice
Receptive/Reflective Response
Witness/Testimony
Available
Sowing 'seeds'

Then we discussed where in scripture God gives light to our understanding.

For service, Romans 12:1 and Ecclesiastes 5:1. Nice job class!!! But part of your job this week is to find support for the other words and possibly find more words that describe worship.

What does 1 Samuel 15:22 have to do with worship and a few of the words we related to worship? How are the other words linked to a scriptural foundation of worship?

What other words did we leave out of our list of 'similar terms' for worship?

Did Jesus worship the Father? How does the following scripture support and demonstrate this? What other scriptures explain obedience and sacrifice as worship?

[5:1] Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. [2] And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
(Ephesians 5:1-2 ESV)

Come prepared to quickly share your discoveries in the first few minutes as we get started this next Sunday! Feel free to leave your comments here for all to see! I need to 'approve them' before they post, so be a bit patient.

Also be thinking about next Sunday's lesson. Do all people worship? Why do you or do you not think so, and where is your understanding of it found in scripture? Thanks for visiting the blog! Hope to see you and others in class next week!