Lead Pastor
Sermons by Wade Allen (Page 36)
This time of year often becomes a bit of a rat race. We survived the Black Friday sales, the Cyber Monday blitz, and all the ‘three-weeks-‘til-Christmas’ shopping traffic yesterday. Last week, Pastor Ron challenged us to prepare our hearts for Christmas—with childlike faith, generosity in our giving and our thoughts focused on Christ! These are things that all of us should strive for, but too often the ‘hustle and bustle’ of the Christmas season gets in the way. So how do we keep our focus on the CHRIST of Christmas this year? What should we do to prepare our hearts for Christmas?
In this sermon, I want us to focus on God’s blessings and goodness to us, and how we should respond in return. In Psalm 107, the psalmist gives us several pictures of how God sees His children and the struggles that they are facing. We will take time to examine each of these word pictures and observe how we too are struggling in much the same way today. Within each of these word pictures, we will see what God promises to do for us and how He hopes we will respond.
When we think about all that goes into planning a worship service, where is our focus? Do we focus on what our people want? Do we focus on what the world sees as attractive? Or do we focus upon God and what pleases Him? In our text today, we will spend some time considering the effect that true worship has upon the life of a seeker, but in order to do that, we will also be looking at the impact of a false, frenzied worship as well.
Lecture 4 – In Judges 2, we find the second introduction for this book. We have returned to the time (just before Joshua’s death) when all of Israel has gathered together after being summoned by Joshua. Joshua instructed the Israelites to complete the work of driving out the inhabitants of the land of Canaan. What we discover in this text is how well the Israelites obey Joshua’s instructions. In verses 10-19, we are given a description of the repeating cycle of sin, repentance, deliverance and peace that serves as a template for the rest of the book.
What thoughts and worries consume our moments and our days? Is God permeating those moments? If worship is a way of life, then every moment of that life should be designed to bring glory to God—even our finances. In his letter to the Corinthian church, Paul focuses on our motivation for giving, which is the grace of God. He then reveals a number of evidences that appear when our giving is motivated by grace—when our giving becomes a spiritual act of worship.
In this sermon, we will spend some time examining Paul’s instructions to Titus concerning how to live in such a way to bring glory to God in our lives. Paul gave similar instructions in chapter five of his letter to the Roman church. The Bible teaches us that God saved us as a result of his loving-kindness, and experiential knowledge of this salvation is a requirement to be able to truly worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.
Lecture 3 – As we reach the middle of Judges 1, we discover that the tribe of Judah was not able to drive out the inhabitants of the hill country because they had iron chariots (19)—even though the verse explains that God was with them. This causes us to ask the question, “Was it really that they ‘could not’ drive them out, or because they ‘would not’ drive them out?” In our lives today, we must realize that God wants all of us, not pieces. He wants to be the Lord over every aspect of our lives, not just some. “Ultimately, either all of our life is given to God in grateful, loving obedience; or none is.” Partial obedience is disobedience!
Last week, we considered God’s general revelation. We looked at some aspects of creation and determined that creation demands a Creator. So as we look once again at Psalm 19 this morning, I want us to focus specifically on the role of God’s special revelation in our worship. And as we study this psalm, I want us to notice that worship is not just a physical activity but also a spiritual attitude and cleansing.
Lecture 2 – As we begin to study the text of the Book of Judges, we noticed that the author has written what is best described as two introductions to this book—each with its own purpose. The first introduction sets forth the military context of the book, while the second focuses more on the theological context of that day. In studying the military journal of the conquests and failures of the Israelites in chapter 1, we discover that the Israelites have a half-hearted commitment to obedience and dependence upon the Lord—the people were depending more upon their own common sense than God.
General Revelation refers to the knowledge that we have as the result of God creating the cosmos and the moral conscience within each human being. In response to God’s general revelation, our first priority as believers when it comes to worship is to repent of our sins—asking God to ‘first clean the inside’ of my life. Our second priority is to discover who God is because it is easy to worship creation rather than the Creator. And finally, we need to realize today that it does not matter who we are or where we live on planet earth, we have no excuse to NOT worship God.