Soiled Saints

-Here are some notes from Sunday:

What if I had never been to church before, were stranded in the ocean…turn up on an island, and there’s the Bible. ESV no less. And I read it. All of it. Cover to cover. And then somehow I come back to the states and attend this church I’ve heard about. Would it match up?

- How would someone who’d never gone to church but has read what the church is supposed to be describe our worship? Picture this building through the mind of a newcomer or someone completely unfamiliar with church.

-Would they see:

-People who talk in a different language than the rest of the known world?-christianese: flesh, washed in the blood, etc.

-People claim to be excited about God, yet the bulletin is more engaging.

-”For many, worship has become more of a commodity for keeping us as consumers happy than a consuming calling by which we are made holy.” Scotty Smith

MAIN IDEA OF TODAy: TRUE WORSHIP IS A LIFESTYLE NOT A LYRIC.

1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:1-2: esv
- appeal: urges, or beseeches” them. That word, parakaleo, has the force of a command, with the personal element of an appeal.

-Mercies of God: mercy: not getting what you deserve. literally “great mercy,”

-living sacrifice: Oxymoron….In the OT, the sacrifices were dead…a one and done mentality. But we are still living, an ever-present reminder of the mercy of God.

TRAGEDY: We have reduced the category of “worship” to the musical dimension of worship, thus giving the distinct impression that everything else in the worship service is not worship.

-Our lives are the worship service. The phrase worship service should have been and must become synonymous with “the Christian life.”

-When we gather here, we engage in a service of worship to our God. No longer can we think of this as a service to us….a serving of songs, (guitar on the side) scriptures, and sermon (go large this morning….5.95, please pull around).

-If we look at our worship gatherings as the only time we worship, then its no wonder why we are up in arms if a song wasn’t sung…or if one was sung. But we are the church worshiping the 164 hours we aren’t either in this building or en route to this building. We are the church when:
-we fight with our family/we drive /we eat/ We are doing homework/ We are fixing the car/ We are doing everything..

Verse one talks about making a fairly deliberate commitment to look at our lives as the worship service.
-2: how we maintain that happening.

-testing: greek dokimazo: find out worth by putting it to use

Incarnational Impact: living and breathing examples of Jesus Christ in day-by-day ways.

“Follow the trail of time, money affection and allegiance to determine what/who you worship primarily. The trail NEVER LIES.” Louie Giglio