Harbor Church - Mid City

Spiritually Healthy Lives—Worship

Col. 3: 1-17 Mid-City Jan. 17, 2009

We’re beginning a new series this morning where each week we are going to be talking about what it means to live a spiritually healthy life.  We’re going to look at different components, or ingredients if you will, of putting together a spiritually healthy life.  The first one we’re going to talk about this morning is worship.  And we’re going to consider worship from 3 different angles:  (1) What is worship. (2) Where does worship take place? (3) Why worship?

(1) What is Worship?  Let me give you a definition that comes right out of the text.  Worship is making someone or something your life.  Let me say that again—worship is making someone or something your life.  Now if you are a follower of Jesus, that means that to worship is to make Jesus your life.  This is what v1-4 are saying.  Listen, “Since, then you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”  The command center of your life is your heart.  What you set your heart on you do .  So Paul says, “Set your mind and heart on him.  Make Christ your life.  Seek after him.  Think about him.  Make him your life.  And when you do, then v4 is true of you, “When Christ, who is your life.”  For a follower of Jesus, worship is simply this—to make Christ your life.

Now I know that everyone here this morning is not a follower of Jesus.  You may not be a Christian.  Christ may not be your life.  But you are a worshipper.  Make no mistake about it—everyone worships.  You can’t escape worshipping someone or something.  Why?  B/c, as Dave Matthews and Kenny Chesney recently teamed up to sing, you are alive (maybe not well, but alive) and since you are alive, you must make your life about someone or something.  You can’t escape this if you have breath.  The question is who or what you will make your life about.

For men, the most common thing to make your life about is your career.  Travis Tritt, an ol country boy, sang a song entitled, “I’m gonna be somebody.”  Most men seem to think that the way they can be somebody in the world is through career success.  That translates into money, prestige, influence, and having everyone take notice when you walk in the room.  So you worship success.  Success in your career is your life.  And that is worship.

Or here is something that is more prevalent among women to worship:  beauty.  Southern Cal.  Weather is always sunny and 72.  Could be the easiest city in America to be a weather forecaster.   Drizzle is big news.  And because the weather is so nice, people are always outside jogging, getting fit.  Body image is a big deal here.  While it is accentuated here in Southern California, beauty and body image are huge globally.   In fact, Dove, the maker of soap products, is doing a fascinating awareness campaign on beauty to highlight how the beauty industry gives us a false impression of what beauty truly is so that we all end up lusting after these false myths of beauty.  Watch this DOVE commercial. 

See here is the question—who defines beauty for you.  If Jesus is your life, then he defines beauty.  If beauty is your life, then the beauty industry tells you what beauty is.  And this commercial points out that there is a whole beauty industry that is defining what we think is beautiful.  Women see these photo shopped images of women that don’t exist on magazines and billboards and the internet and they begin to think, ‘I am not beautiful unless I look like that.”  And that woman doesn’t even exist.  Yet, your life becomes centered around becoming beautiful and having the body that you see in these images.  So what happens is that women start sticking their hand down their throats, eating like a rabbits, and working out incessantly.

And the impact of this on men is enormous as well.  Your wife isn’t beautiful because she isn’t what you see portrayed as beauty on magazine covers and billboards.  You see your wife without makeup and without all the computer edits.  Same is true in the gay community.  The pictures of men on billboards, magazines, perfectly tanned.  Abs ribbed.  So what has happened in our culture is that men and women are both lusting after beauty that doesn’t exist, or may exist in .000001% of people, but won’t for long.  Or let me put it another way.  Men and women worship beauty.  A particular image of beauty becomes your life.  I must have it.  See this is worship. Here is the reality.  All of us worship something. We make other things or other people—whether it is a career or beauty or a person—our lives and we worship them.   Paul says this in v5, “Put to death, therefore whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.” See Paul says if you are a follower of Jesus, then you should put to death, lusting after what some false sexual image on a billboard that you will never be or be in relationship with.  And notice what he say at the end—which is idolatry.  See he says, “Your worshipping idols—idols of beauty, prestige, influence.”  Repent. Put it to death.  Turn from it and make Jesus your life.  Worship him—not some false god of beauty or success.

 (2)  Where do we worship?  Now, we have talked about what worship is and to have a healthy spirituality, from God’s perspective, that means to make Jesus your life.  But let’s add another dimension of worship.  Let’s consider where we worship.  The Bible mentions 2 different types of worship:  private worship and public worship. Next week we’re going to look at verses 9-16 that deal with public worship, which is what most of us think of when we think of church.  This week we’re going to talk about private worship—that is, worship that happens privately in your heart when you aren’t at church.  Look at v17, “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” 

Whatever you do is rather comprehensive, is it not.  Whether cutting the grass, shopping for groceries, or swimming in the ocean, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.  Remember how we defined worship.  Worship is making Christ your life.  So this says whatever you are doing, make Christ your life and in doing so that is worship.

CS Lewis helped me understand how Christ becomes your life.  Listen to what he says, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”  Lewis says in a number of different places that Christ is the center of Christianity and that is all rises and falls on his life, death, and resurrection.  So let me say that quote again substituting Christ for Christianity.  I believe in Christ as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”  See that is worship—when you see all of your life as flowing out of Christ. 

This sounds lofty and flowery and maybe not so concrete.  So let me illustrate what I am talking about here about making Christ your life by worshipping him in everything you do and everywhere you are.  As you know, my wife and I gave birth to Virginia Grace about 2 weeks ago.  During the delivery process you spend hours with the nurses and become quite close.  None of us can ever definitely say who is in relationship with Jesus or not (other than yourself), but it didn’t appear that our doctor or nurse had a relationship with Jesus, so Bradford and I were faced with a decision.  Were we going to sanitize Jesus out of the delivery room and birthing of our child or were we going to make Jesus our life and worship him through the delivery. 

Now I am not talking about doing a Jesus version of the Hari Krishna dance and intentionally trying to scare all the nurses into falling on their knees and accepting Jesus.  No.  I simply mean this.  We prayed together.  Lots.  While the nurses did their thing, we did ours.  I sat right by my wife’s head, stroked her hair, and spoke words of Scripture, Jesus’ words, into her heart.  See we were worshipping. Just as Lewis said—He is the Son by which we see all else.  It was His words that my wife wanted to hear in the midst of her redemptive suffering.

In fact, the words that I spoke most to my wife were Jesus words that come from Mk. 5:36 with a little paraphrase.  Strangely enough, the reason they were so fresh on my mind was because they had just come out of my son’s mouth.  On New Year’s Day, the day before our birth, we had a New Years Dinner as a family.  We put out these green wine glasses that we have and we have adult size and then we have these little bitty miniature wine glasses for kids to get involved in the toasts.  So we poured sparkling cider in the kids cups and Ford pipes up and says, “I have a toast. I have a toast.”  Now that is nothing new.  We often make toasts at our dinner table and the kids chime in with the things they value most.  Like, “To popsicles.”  But Ford pipes up with his toast and says, “Do not be afraid, trust in your heart and believe.”  And he looks around and smiles and says, “I am going to be a preacher like daddy.”  Bradford and I didn’t teach him this verse and I had never heard him say it before.  But he learned it at preschool and felt like it was appropriate. 

So, during delivery, I found myself speaking this over and over again to my wife.  “Do not be afraid, trust in your heart and believe.”  Believe that the one who suffered on the cross is with you in your suffering.  Believe and experience his perfect love that drives out fear.  So we made Jesus our life.  We worshipped.  His words became ours, shaping and framing the whole event.

Or let me come at this from another angle.  Let’s talk about making Jesus life that is, worshipping, in an area that very few think would be worship:  sex.  Most people seem to think that sex and worship are polar opposites.  When they think of sex, they think of lust and tight clothes and raunchy images and when they think of worship they think of putting on your Sunday best and looking prim and proper and singing hymns and feeling guilty (particularly if you grew up Catholic or Presbyterian).  Sex and worship are like oil and water in most people’s minds.

Wrong.  Our text says whatever you do, in word or in deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.  So when Bradford and I were engaged we started to talk about what our sex life would look like when we got married and I told her that I wanted sex to be worship.  She laughed and said, “You can worship me all you want.”  No.  We talked about this passage and said, “Yeah, we want all of our lives to be worship, so how can our sex life be worship.  So from the inception we committed to each other that sex would be worship.  That means Jesus is our life and sex with each other flows out of our life in Christ.  All the principles of following Jesus apply here—mutual self-giving, our body is not our own, and Song of Songs—delight in your bride.  Serve her sexually.  I should probably stop there with my in-laws being here today.

You know, Bradford shared our conversation about sex and worship with her bridesmaids and they laughed as you did.  They had a bridesmaids lingerie shower to get the bride ready and they made up this pink and blue, v neck, low cut white t-shirt and on the front it was air-brushed with this tacky pink and blue heart and guess what it said, “Let’s worship.”  Whenever that shirt comes out, I can guarantee you this—we aren’t heading to church.  See all of life, including sex, is worship for us centered in Jesus.  As Lewis said, he is the Son by which we see all else.

Now notice that Paul adds one more thing to our private worship in v17.  Look at the end of v17, “And whatever you do, whether in word or in deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”  Not only do we do everything in the name of Jesus, but a spiritually healthy life is a life of grateful worship.  Gratitude, Thankfulness should characterize your life and your worship.  Let me ask you.  If you went up to the people who know you best and asked them to describe you, would thankfulness be mentioned.  Would they say, “Rick has a spirit of gratitude about him.” 

And don’t, don’t, don’t use the excuse that everyone trots out.  “Well, you haven’t walked a mile in my shoes.  I have been dealt a bad hand.”  Let me tell you a story.  I have told you before about my neighbor across the street named Maria.  She is 90, has Parkinson’s and osteoporosis so bad that she can’t get out of bed.  She has been shuffled back and forth between the hospital recently, nursing homes, feeding tubes, and now she is back at home. She can’t weigh over 85 pounds, frail, shaking horribly.  When we went to see her, as always, we asked, “Maria, how are you.”  And on cue, the first thing out of her mouth was, “Much to be thankful for. Much to be thankful for.”  Then she laughed, “Joy inexpressible.  Jesus gives me joy inexpressible.”  It is hard to imagine more bleak circumstances—it is hard to imagine more grateful worship this side of heaven.

Over what?  What is Maria thankful for?  Well, this is our 3^rd question

(3)  Why do worship? 

Maria worships for the same reason any other follower of Jesus worships—b/c of what Jesus has done for her, is doing for her, and will do one day for her.  See v6-7 take you back to what Jesus has done for you:   “Because of these the wrath of God is coming.  You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived.”  You were on a path to destruction.  You were destroying yourself and others around you.  It wasn’t going well for you or for me because we were worshipping the wrong things.

And on the cross, Jesus took what you deserve.  And as you reflect on this, your heart explodes with gratitude.  Then you think about what Jesus is doing for you presently—providing for you, leading you, loving you, filling you with hope and joy.  And then you think about what Jesus is going to do for you one day.  He is going to make death the very best thing that has ever happened for you.  He is going to give you His kingdom.  See in Christ, grateful worship should be the pervasive chorus of our lives.

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