The Worship Thread 2# - Term 4 Nursery

Jesus’ Worship

God looked all over the earth for one human being who would offer him perfect worship because he or she was a perfect worshipper. He couldn’t find one until… Jesus. He who lived a perfect life and died a perfect death, the only one who ever has.

Join the dots

Hebrews 10:12 describes Jesus’ work on the cross as offering ‘For all time one sacrifice for sins’. For Israel sacrifice was worship, so what our modern prayer books call the ‘one perfect sacrifice’ was in fact ‘the one perfect worship’. One perfect act of worship, for one perfect life of worship.

In Jesus God found a perfect worshipper. Jesus’ motivation for living was to please his father. In John 4:34, Jesus said, ‘My food… is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish his work. Jesus didn’t just choose the Creator over tokens of creation; He chose the Creator over life itself. There is a worship song that we sometimes sing it goes: ‘You chose the cross with every breath, the perfect life, the perfect death, you chose the cross…’ The one perfect sacrifice by the one perfect worshipper was the one perfect act of worship. What is our response to this? The song continues, ‘I’m lost in wonder, I’m lost in love, I’m lost in praise for evermore…’

Every second Jesus lived, and every moment of his death was an act of perfect worship to God.

Our Worship

So how do worship now? Do we need to sacrifice? Well, not in order to make up for sin we don’t. Is there still a place for sacrifice in worship? Absolutely.

Romans 12 tells us that in response to God’s love we are to give all we have, all that we are, all that we do to him. Not to earn his love, but in response to His love for us. We often make the mistake of thinking that worship is just about singing songs, but for the people of Israel worship was a way of life, for Jesus worship was ALL of his life!

In our lunchtime groups we want to be helping students and each other to develop a lifestyle of worship. But the same time we don’t want to downgrade what we do on in Church or when we sing. Worship, as well as involving our whole lives is also about specific acts of devotion. If it wasn’t then the Bible would not repeatedly say of Israel at specific occasions, ‘they worshipped’. Here are a few examples:

• In 2 Chronicles chapter 7, when Solomon dedicates the temple, ‘… they worshipped’ (v3.). Sacrifice of 22,000 cattle and 120,000 sheep and goats. But it also involved singing, ‘He is good, His love endures forever.
• Matthew 2:11 – When the Magi came to the stable, ‘they bowed down and worshipped him.’
• Matthew 28:17 – after Jesus rose from the dead, the disciples saw him and ‘worshipped him’.
• Revelation 4 and 5 – the four living creatures, the twenty-four elders, ten thousand times ten thousand angels, and the whole of creation worshiping.

The bottom line is this, worship is about specific acts of devotion but it is also about the whole of our lives, and the two go hand in hand, they have to. These concepts are reflected in two Greek translations for the word ‘worship’, the first is latero (meaning; to serve), the other is proskunio (meaning; to come towards or to kiss), this is the most common. Worship like the kiss in marriage is a sign of our love for God.

The Facts.

• God Made us to worship him but instead we chose creation
• The first commandment God gave Israel was to love him – through sacrifice, showing that God was more important than creation.
• Israel Messed up by worshipping Idols and even when Israel was sacrificing they found it impossible to live a righteous life.
• Perfect worship demanded a perfect worshipper.
• Jesus came. Perfect life, perfect death – the ultimate sacrifice once and for all!
• However God’s command to love Him still stands

What this means for our Lunchtime Groups.

• Just as it was for Israel and Jesus – worship for us is to be a lifestyle.
• But the thread of worship in the bible also confirms that worship is also specific acts of devotion. We want to be building a worship culture in our LG’s in such a way that space is made for students and leaders to engage is specific worship practices.
• Finally, these two aspects of worship cannot be separated.
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