19 Know this, my
dear brothers and sisters: everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak,
and slow to grow angry.20 This is because an angry person
doesn’t produce God’s righteousness. 21 Therefore, with
humility, set aside all moral filth and the growth of wickedness, and welcome
the word planted deep inside you—the very word that is able to save you.
22 You must be
doers of the word and not only hearers who mislead themselves. 23 Those
who hear but don’t do the word are like those who look at their faces in a
mirror. 24 They look at themselves, walk away, and
immediately forget what they were like. 25 But there are
those who study the perfect law, the law of freedom, and continue to do it.
They don’t listen and then forget, but they put it into practice in their
lives. They will be blessed in whatever they do.
Something I do that drives
my wife crazy is letting my gas gauge get very far down before I stop to fill
up. I don’t think the fuel light in her
car has ever lit up because she’s never let her tank get that low. I, on the other hand, don’t even think about
filling up until the light goes on – I mean, the light is letting you know that
you have a whole gallon left – that’s at least 25 miles, in my car! Still, she says that it stresses her out
knowing that I’m always running on empty.
At least some of the time,
many of us feel like we’re running on empty.
Have you ever felt like you are running on empty – physically,
emotionally, mentally, spiritually?
Running on empty is common to all of us – I don’t know anyone who hasn’t
felt that way at least some in their lives.
Today we are beginning a
new series of messages called Running on
Empty, because God wants something better for us than a life of feeling
empty. Jesus said he came that we might
have life, and have it to the full (John 10:10), and over the next several
weeks, we’ll be looking at just how we can move from empty to full by availing
ourselves of God’s grace any time we can.
Like gifts waiting to be unwrapped, God has given us several ways that
we can fill up on grace, and each week we will better understand and experience
one of these different means of grace.
So, if things feel empty
in your life, what you learn and apply in this series will help you experience
a fuller life as God intends. If things
are going well in your life right now, these messages will serve as encouragement
to keep it up. Over the next six weeks,
we will experience God’s grace in new ways and find our lives fuller as a
result. May we pray.
If we’re going to move
from an empty life to a full life, the first thing we need to do is take a look
at what type of fuel we’re using. Fuel
is the source of our energy and even our identity – it’s what drives the whole
process – and for our purposes, our “fuel” is worship.
My wife’s car takes
premium fuel, which is probably something we should have researched before we
bought it, but we didn’t. It presents us
with a quandary when we take a road trip – whose car are we going to take? Hers uses more gas and the gas it takes is
more expensive – but her car is the nicer, smoother, more powerful to drive and
more comfortable to ride, so even though it costs us more, guess which one we
usually take? And I don’t mind telling
you – the extra is totally worth it – it pays off in terms of the quality of
the ride. It’s not always true, but often,
you get what you pay for.
What’s It
Worth To You?
That’s true in worship,
too – what you “get out” of worship is in direct proportion to what you put
into it. The term “worship” comes from
the Old English “worth-ship,” and it literally means “to ascribe value (or
worth) to something or someone.”
We may think of worship in
terms of our prayers and songs and sermons that glorify God, but the definition
of worship is actually a little different.
Did you know that everybody worships?
Everybody assigns value or worth to someone or something – even people
who do not profess faith of any sort still worship. If you want to know what you worship, take a
look at your bank statement and your calendar.
In our society, time and money are our two most valuable commodities, so
whatever has got the most of your time or your treasure, that’s what you
worship, simple as that.
For the Hebrew people of
the Old Testament, worship involved the sacrifice of an animal – in other
words, giving something of value – to God.
These sacrifices were pure, spotless, healthy, unblemished – the first
and the best as a way of saying, “God, you are worth the very best I have to
offer.”
It is part of the reason
we receive a monetary offering as part of our worship. Let me bust a popular myth about the offering
– we don’t receive it to support the church – yes, the church has bills to pay,
it costs money to pay salaries and utilities and fund the ministries that
happen through this church, and it’s true that the offering received does go to
support all that, but that’s not the primary reason we receive an
offering. Do I have your attention now?
We receive an offering not
because the church needs your money, but so
you can express what God is worth to you.
In other words, we need an opportunity to be generous! As people created in the image of God who is
generous to us, our offering to God is to reflect the same generosity back
toward God. The offering is the place in
our worship where we show God what God is worth to us. What we give is not a financial issue, it’s a spiritual
issue. Spiritually mature people tend to
be generous people. Giving generously
ascribes worth and value – worship – to God.
Again – we all
worship. God knit us together with the
overwhelming need and desire to worship him; we find ourselves running on empty
when we use the wrong fuel; we find ourselves running on empty when we worship
something other than God.
The Real
Thing
Worshiping something other
than God leaves us empty because deep down, our spirit just won’t accept an
imposter. Our spirits crave authentic
and life-changing worship of God, and worshiping something else just won’t give
us what we need. I remember in high
school buying those “Designer Imposter” fragrances – cologne that doesn’t have
the fancy label, but smells so much like the real thing, who can tell the
difference?
Well, as it turns out,
everyone can tell the difference, except, perhaps, the teenage boy who is
bathed in the stuff. Again, you often
get what you pay for! Despite what we
tell ourselves, there is a huge difference between the genuine article and a
fake, between fuel that feeds our soul and so-called fuel that leaves us
stranded at the side of the road. In
terms of our worship, there’s a huge difference between the authentic worship
of God that satisfies our soul, and the false worship of the things of the
world that leaves us empty inside.
Coca-Cola was right – you can’t beat the real thing.
In today’s Scripture from
the letter of James, we are given guidelines about sorting false worship from
the real thing, from worship that serves only to deceive ourselves, and worship
that truly brings glory and honor to God, fills us up with God’s presence, and
equips us for service
The Service
Reverend Jenkins came
across a young boy who was intently studying a large plaque in a hallway at the
church. “Reverend Jenkins,” he said,
“What’s this?” “This plaque lists the
names of all the people from this church who died in the service.” “Oh, I see,” said the boy. The two stood there quietly for a moment,
when the boy, with all sincerity, said, “Which one – 9 or 10:55?”
“Service” is one of the
most mis-used words in the church. At
the end of each worship gathering I say, “Our service of worship has ended, now
our worship through service begins.” The
letter of James makes a clear case when it tells us, “You must be doers of the
word and not only hearers who mislead themselves” (James 1:22). Worship sends us into the world to put our
faith into action; authentic worship is less a matter of what happens in this room during
one hour on Sunday and more a matter of what takes place during the other 167
hours in a week.
Our “service” is not what
we do on Sunday morning. We serve God
not by going to church, but by being the church; God doesn’t want
us to simply go to church, God calls us to be the church – the leaving,
breathing, body of Christ who makes God’s love real beyond ourselves. This hour of worship equips and empowers us to
move beyond this hour of worship, beyond these walls, for we are called to be doers
of the word and not only hearers.
Sunday morning is the time
to celebrate God at work, to be changed by God through the very words we sing,
the prayers we pray, and yes, even the offering we give. Sunday morning, we give our full attention to
God, hearing the word and then going to do the word, so that we do not, as
verse 25 says, “listen and forget, but put it into practice in our lives, and
we will be blessed in whatever we do.”
Great
Expectations
Some of it is having some
level of expectation when you come. I
need to be very clear here: I expect to experience God’s presence in
worship. I expect to be filled with the
Holy Spirit. I count on worship leaving
a mark on me, changing me, filling me with grace so amazing I’m not the same person
when I walk out as I was when I walked in – and I not only expect that for me,
I am counting on it for each and every single one of you.
Not every sermon or
worship service is a home run – even I have weeks I know I bombed one and I
just want to say, “I am so sorry, please come back next week and I promise it
will be better,” and on those Sundays, you are free to say, “I didn’t get
anything out of church today.” But can I
let you in on how this works? For the
most part, what you get out of church will be in direct proportion to what you
put into it. If you come looking for
things to criticize, you’ll find no shortage.
If you are primarily concerned with the movement of the clock, don’t be
surprised if you miss the movement of the Spirit.
For my part, I’m gonna
listen to God through the week and hopefully have something worth coming to
hear, but friends, you gotta do your part, too!
The more you come to worship with an open heart and mind, and a sense of
expectation that you’re going to encounter God here, I promise you’ll
experience God’s grace filling you up in ways you have never experienced before
or even known were possible. Worshiping God changes us. Authentic worship makes us doers of the word,
and not just hearers; it doesn’t make us better than anyone else, but it does
make us better than ourselves.
To those who feel like
they’re running on empty, the first thing I’d say is to use the right
fuel. Your spirit is designed to run on
premium, and sure, you can put other stuff in it, but it just won’t run
right. St. Augustine said, “Because,
thou, O God, has created us for thyself, our hearts are restless ‘til they rest
in thee.” Maybe you’ve heard this
described that God has created us with a God-shaped hole in our hearts, and
though we may try to fill it with all sorts of things, only God will truly fill
it.
We are created with an
overwhelming need and desire to worship God.
You are hard-wired to worship, so just make sure that the altar you’re
bowing before belongs to God and not something else. The human spirit knows the difference, and it
won’t accept any substitutes, and authentic worship of the life-giving Lord
fills us up in a way that nothing else can.
Friends, you and I were
made to worship. But what
we worship will determine whether we find ourselves empty or full. The first step toward a full life is to give
glory and worth to God and God alone; that’s what you and I were created to do.
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