Jul. 17, 2022

What If I Worship Wrongly?

July 16 & 17, 2022

Primary Text:  John 4:21-24    

Previous Teaching:  What if it Hurts?

1)  Suffer Many Things

Matthew 16:21, 24:  From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life….  Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." 

DQ 1) What is the ‘ultimate good’ in post-modern, secular

            society?  How is it in opposition to what is best in the 

            kingdom of God?  

DQ 2) How is meaning in life found through self-denial and self-

            sacrifice?

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2)  Overwhelmed with Sorrow 

Matthew 26:36-39:  Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, "Sit here while I go over there and pray."  He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled.  Then he said to them, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.  Stay here and keep watch with me."  Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.  Yet not as I will, but as you will." 

DQ 3) Can doing the perfect will of God involve sorrow, 

            anguish, and strife?  Why?  

DQ 4) How does surrendering your will produce what is best in

            the kingdom of God?

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This Week’s Teaching

1)  Created Things

Romans 1:21-25:  For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.  Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.  They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised.  Amen. 

DQ 1) Define “worship.”

DQ 2) Does everyone worship something?

DQ 3) Is it possible to worship wrongfully?  How? Why?

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2)  Spirit and Truth

John 4:21-24:  Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.  You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.  Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.  God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." 

DQ 4) What does it mean to worship in spirit? 

DQ 5) What does it mean to worship in truth?

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3)  Personal Worship 

Romans 12:1-2:  Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will. 

DQ 6) How can each one of us be a living sacrifice?

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4)  Kneel Before Him

Psalm 95:6-11:  Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.  Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me, though they had seen what I did.  For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, "They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways."  So I declared on oath in my anger, "They shall never enter my rest." 

DQ 7) Fundamentally, why should we worship the One True God?

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