Love God Through a Life of Worship

Well, happy New Year. So glad you're here to begin 2026 with us at Greenwood Christian Church. We believe that the body of Christ is bigger than just this place. Everyone who belongs to Jesus in all places around the world, we are all a part of one body. One of our local partner churches, Elevation Church, their pastor, Tony Smith, is a good friend of mine.

Tony had a massive heart attack about 10 days ago and is in intensive care right now. And while his body has responded in some ways that have been really remarkable, in a way that have prompted medical professionals to use words like unexpected and miraculous, Tony still has a long way to go. And so I just. I shared with Tony's daughter Sam this morning that we as a church are praying for him. Would you join me right now as we begin?

Let's lift up our friend and brother, Tony. Lord God, we come to you this morning because you are a God of limitless power. And while we are so incredibly grateful, Lord, for the marvelous medical technology that you make available to us here. And we're so appreciative of all the things that medicine can do, Father. We recognize that there are physical challenges beyond what medicine is able to fully address.

And we ask, Father, that in your wisdom and in your power, in and in your mercy, we ask your healing, we ask your strengthening. We pray for Tony. We pray for Elevation Church. We pray for Tony's wife and family. And we ask that during this time, God, that they would see you move in powerful ways and that you would give hope and that you would give courage and that the Elevation family would recognize the support and the love and the encouragement that is being sent their way by so many people who know and love you in the same way that they do.

God. We're thankful that we can bring these things to you. And we pray it all in the name of Jesus, our Savior. Amen. Thank you.

Please continue to keep Tony and his wife Kim in your prayers. Now I want to begin 2026 together just by briefly testing our cultural awareness. I'm going to play a little game here. I'm going to share a corporate mission statement with you and I want to see if you can guess the company it belongs to. We're going to start with this one.

Okay. To be Earth's most customer centric company, Earth's best employer, and Earth's safest place to work.

That belongs to Amazon. It's interesting sometimes that these mission statements make very little mention of the actual products that these companies specialize in. How about this one? To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us to have a positive influence on all who come in contact with our company.

That is actually Chick Fil A. No mention of chicken whatsoever. Did you notice that? How about this one? To entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling, reflecting the iconic brands, creative minds and innovative technologies that make ours the world's premier entertainment company.

Anybody? That is Disney. You're right. How about this one? To entertain the world one fan at a time.

This is Netflix. Many of us use that. How about this? And I'll bet you guess this one. To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

That's Google. One more here. We unite people and inspire communities in the joy of the game by delivering the world's most exciting sports and entertainment experience.

Could be. That's the NFL. One more here. Saving people money so they can live better. Walmart that is Walmart.

And got one more here, last one to grow the world's finest belly button lint. That's actually a new startup company called Giebler Enterprises. We'll let you know how it goes. Clarity about mission, about why we exist, is vital to the health of any organization. And churches are no exception.

So whether you are brand new to Greenwood Christian, and if that describes you, we're so grateful that you're here to kick off this new year with us, or whether you've been with us for years, we want all of us to be on the same page about why our church exists. So we're Gonna kick off 2026 simply by clarifying that. Now here at Greenwood Christian, we summarize our mission in three short sentences. And those sentences are to love God through a life of worship, grow together as disciples of Christ and inspire others to follow Jesus. And this morning, I want to zoom in together for a few minutes on that first statement.

To love God through a life of worship. And to flesh that out, I want to highlight for us four different biblical pictures of worship, beginning with one that I'm just going to call a whole life love. A whole life love. Jesus was a wise teacher, which means that people often asked him questions. And on one occasion, after Jesus had just answered one question about whether God's people should pay taxes, followed by another question about marriage in the afterlife, a Jewish religious leader approached him and asked another question.

This is what he asked. Of all the commandments, which is the most important? Now, there are 613 specific commands in the Jewish law, and this guy wanted to know, of those 613, which one got top billing? The most important one, answered Jesus is, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

Jesus said that if the entire Old Testament law were boiled down to one command, it would be to love God with everything we've got, with emotional passion and spiritual depth and intellectual rigor and physical service. There's no part of life where God doesn't deserve to be Lord, and we love him by giving him all of it. But if Jesus had stopped there, he would have left room for the very popular misconception that love for God is a purely individual and private thing that has nothing to do with anyone else. So Jesus didn't stop there. He added this.

He said, the second is, love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than yourself than these. Jesus knew that you and I instinctively take care of ourselves. We feed and we clothe and we protect ourselves without much thought. So he taught that we should show other people that very same kind of regard and consideration.

Now, this wasn't a new idea. Love your neighbor as yourself. At the time when Jesus spoke these words was already centuries old. This goes clear back to the Old Testament book of Leviticus. But what was radical was that when Jesus was asked to name the singular most important commandment, he listed two.

Love God and love others. And he put them both on the same level in a way that makes them inseparable. According to Jesus, we love God by surrendering our whole lives to him and by loving what he loves. People. Now, we're gonna say more about love for others next week when we talk about growing together as disciples of Christ.

But I want you to notice that the man who asked Jesus the question didn't push back at all about his response. He agreed with Jesus. And when Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, Jesus said to him, you are not far from the kingdom of God. Telling us that the kingdom of God is not so much a physical place, it is a surrendered state of mind and heart that invites him in and makes him welcome. Put simply, we love God by devoting our lives to what he values and what Jesus taught about loving and worshiping God.

King David demonstrated with what I'm going to call an intentional humility. And to show you this, we're going to jump back to the Old Testament Book of Second Samuel, Chapter 6. David was one of the Old Testament's most famous people. David was passionate and he was imperfect. When David failed, he failed big.

But when he got it right, David's worship was inspiring. At the beginning of David's reign, he wanted to bring the Ark of the Covenant, that shiny gold box that Indiana Jones went looking for. He wanted to bring the Ark of the Covenant and with it the presence of God back to Jerusalem. So David assembled an army of 30,000 soldiers for the occasion. And as they began to move the ark, David and the whole house of Israel were celebrating with all their might before the Lord with songs.

And then it lists harps and lyres and tambourines and sistrums and cymbals, a bunch of musical instruments, an orchestra or a marching band, if you will. I want you to notice that everyone present, including the king and his army, celebrated in worship. And I think that's noteworthy, because in my observation, we fellas are often the most likely to fold our arms. We're often the ones most likely to stuff our hands in our pockets during moments of worship. Now, I know that we're not all singers.

I know that some of us avoid dancing in public because we lack any sense of rhythm, and we feel like it would be cruel to subject other people to our weak attempts. Right? I know that none of us know what's going on in another person's heart. So it's not our place to judge whether someone else is worshiping or not. But I do want to stress this, worship is a privilege.

We gather as a church at God's invitation to declare our love for Him. And if we opt not to participate in that, we actually suggest that God isn't all that worth celebrating. How many of us watched that IU football game this week? Can you imagine taking your reaction to that game and transplanting that here this morning?

Our worship makes a statement about God's importance and his worthiness of our love. And while Israel worshiped passionately, there was a guy by the name of Uzzah who forgot that God's God had given a warning that the ark was holy and it was not to be touched. So David's men at this point in time, had already ignored God's instructions about carrying the ark on poles, and they had chosen to transport it on a cart instead. And at one point, the oxen pulling that cart stumbled, and Uzzah, with good intentions, reached out and he put his hands on the ark to steady it, and he died instantly. And after that striking reminder of the fierceness of God's holiness, David was suddenly afraid to take the ark back to Jerusalem.

So for three months, David left the ark in the home of a man named Obed Edom. But word got back to David that everything about Obed Edom's household was experiencing God's undeniable blessings. And that news just renewed David's passion for worship, and it renewed his desire to bring the ark home. So David and company went again to get the ark, and this time they carried it just as God had instructed. And as soon as they set out for Jerusalem, David offered a sacrifice to God.

And then verse 14 says, David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the Lord with all his might while he and the entire house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouts and the sound of trumpets. David, the king of Israel, the man in charge, took off his royal robes, and he passionately danced his heart out before God.

Have you ever had a moment, a moment of worship that was just so powerful, that was just so intimate, that in that Moment it was just you and God and everything else just faded into the background. See, David had one of those moments here. And in that moment David didn't care what anybody else thought. He, he celebrated God freely. And I want us as a church to feel that same freedom to worship as God's spirit leads us.

I want us to feel the freedom to sing without regard for whether we're on pitch or not. Freedom to clap, to shout, to lift our hands, to dance, to fall on our knees. Worship is never about impressing the people around us. It is just about celebrating God's goodness with single minded focus. But, but full disclosure, that fear of what others think exists for a reason.

There are people who, if we abandon ourselves to God in worship, will be critical. And even kings don't get a pass. This text in Second Samuel goes on to say this, that as the ark of the Lord was entering the city of David, Michal, daughter of Saul, who happened to be David's wife, watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she despised him in her heart. Michal saw what her husband was doing and she was embarrassed.

Clearly wives rolling their eyes at their husbands is an ancient practice.

But Michal didn't just keep her disapproval to herself. Later, when David returned home to bless his household, Michal, daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said how the King of Israel has distinguished himself today, disrobing in the sight of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would. In other words, way to go, your majesty. You're now right there on the same level as any common peasant. See, McCall believed that as king, David needed to always project this very polished Persona.

And she found the way that he had let loose in worship undignified and embarrassing. And she let him have it. And I love David's reply. David said, I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this and I will be humiliated in my own eyes.

But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor. David said, more or less. Honey, I wasn't dancing for you. I was dancing for God alone. And if you think that was undignified, you just wait.

It won't be the last time. See, I know that when we come together, some of us engage in our worship gatherings very actively, while others, just by nature of our personalities, we're just more passive people. I know that we're not all able to stand. I know that we're not all dancers. I know that we can't all Carry a tune.

I know that some of us are too rhythmically impaired to be able to clap in time with the music. Some of us are here with questions. We're not even sure what we believe about God. So as I said before, there is no judgment here. But I am curious.

Do we ever hang back in worship? Not because we're skeptical, not because we have unanswered questions, not because we lack the ability to worship, but simply because we lack the willingness. Do we ever care more about what others think than we do about what God thinks? Are we ever afraid that if we were to just raise our voices in worship, somebody might think that's uncool? Do we ever worry that if we were to clap our hands, somebody might roll their eyes?

Are we ever concerned that if we were to lift our arms in surrender that somebody would call that weird?

We don't control what those people think. But could we agree together, Church, that we will not be those people?

That we'll make this a place where surrender to God in worship is not mocked, not even just grudgingly tolerated. But this is a place where freedom to worship God as the Spirit leads us is something that we encourage. We were made to worship our Creator. So if we give the best of our attention and the best of our affection to anything less than God, we will miss the key purpose of our lives. Worship is a personal decision.

This is not a performance for a human audience. We worship God himself. God is our audience of one. So worrying about what the people around us are doing or not doing is an incredibly easy way to miss the heart of worship. Remember, we love God by devoting our lives to what he values.

And that's a much bigger thing than just singing. Now, we also see in the life of David that worship involves what I'm going to call a sacrificial spirit. And we're going to fast forward a few chapters to 2 Samuel chapter 24. For a moment. During David's reign, God gave Israel numerous military victories.

But Israel still didn't always obey. When one of David's great failures came in second Samuel 24, this is a difficult chapter to read because in this chapter, David decided to take a military census. David wanted to know how strong his army was without any help from God. And it turned out David had over a million soldiers. But that was not what God wanted David to rely on.

So God punished David's arrogance with a deadly plague. And this whole narrative, it's painful to read. It makes us scratch our heads because I don't think we can Fully grasp how intensely God hates sin and rebellion and arrogance. Well, this plague started, and David saw people suffering and dying, and he pleaded with God to punish him instead. And God instructed David to build an altar and to offer a sacrifice at a threshing floor, which was a place on a hilltop where harvested grain was processed.

And that threshing floor belonged to a farmer named Araunah. So David offered to buy the threshing floor from Araunah. And as a gesture of respect to his king, this farmer generously offered to give him the threshing floor, along with some oxen for the sacrifice and even some firewood for the fire. But David was done watching other people pay the price for him. So this is what he told Arauna.

David said, no, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God. Burnt offerings that cost me nothing. So David paid Arauna for his threshing floor, and he bought his oxen, and then he built an altar and he offered a sacrifice and. And he prayed for himself and his people, and the plague ended.

David's sacrificial spirit demonstrated that meaningful worship costs us something. Meaningful worship costs us something. A sacrificial spirit is the difference between consistently serving in ministry and gathering in worship versus simply showing up when it's convenient or when we feel like it or when we don't have anything else to do. A sacrificial spirit is the difference between giving away a few dollars that we have left over after we've purchased whatever we want versus intentionally giving God our first and our best. A sacrificial spirit is the difference between doing what we like and calling that faith or calling that faithfulness or calling that worship versus shaping our lives around the things that God calls us to be about.

You know, centuries before Jesus birth, the prophet Isaiah rebuked the insincerity of Israel's worship. And Jesus quoted the prophet Isaiah in confronting the religious leaders of his day. This is what Isaiah wrote. These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. So I want to challenge all of us to ask ourselves, what do I sacrifice in worship?

What does my worship cost me? My pride? My preferences? My time, my sense of independence and autonomy to do whatever I want to do with my life, my dollars. See, in genuine worship, we sacrifice something for God's glory.

Remember, we love God by devoting our lives to what he values. And that theme reverberates throughout Scripture. And it's much bigger than songs. It's much bigger than giving alone. The apostle Paul described it in terms of this fourth picture I want to paint for us.

And that is a picture of a sustained surrender from Romans, chapter 12. In the book of Romans, Paul wrote these words. Paul wrote, I urge you brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. Now that's worth breaking down.

I urge you means this is important. And in view of God's mercy reminds us that God loved us first. He graciously put on flesh and he gave his life at the cross for us. He paid the penalty for our sins so that he could show us mercy rather than condemnation. And on that basis he calls us to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.

Now the Old Testament, Joel alluded to this earlier, is full of dead sacrifices, animals that were killed and presented as offerings to God, but none of those sacrifices permanently took away sins. Now Jesus death, on the other hand, was a perfect sacrifice that paid for our sins in full and makes all other sacrifices obsolete. So now God calls us to be living sacrifices, continually surrendering ourselves to his glory and obediently pursuing what pleases him rather than what pleases us. A dead sacrifice can only be offered once, but a living sacrifice is when we offer God over and over and over. This is your true and proper worship.

Paul says. That means that while singing songs of praise can be a good thing and it's a good thing for us to come together and lift our voices, our most genuine worship is a fully surrendered and obedient life. We love God when we welcome and serve people we perceive as different from us. That's a part of loving our neighbor. As we love ourselves, we love God by saying no to some of our own wants so that we can give more generously of our resources.

We love God by leaning into his spirit and trusting him to give us peace rather than looking to food or drugs or or shopping or gambling or alcohol to do that for us. We love God by committing time and energy to serving rather than always seeking primarily to entertain ourselves. We love God by saying no to porn and promiscuity and other distortions of God's gift of sex. We love God by faithfully gathering with his people in his name.

Being a living sacrifice requires a major God assisted shift in our thinking, which is why Paul went on to write this. In Romans 12, verse 2, he said, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but instead be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you'll Be able to test and approve what God's will is. His good, pleasing and perfect will. If we're going to know, if we're going to desire and pursue God's best for us, we need him to transform the way we think.

We need God to show us a better way of life than simply following along with the current of the culture in which we live. Friends, if we watch and we listen to and we read and we say and we buy and we post all the same things as everyone else, we're going to continue to look just like the sinful, broken world that Jesus died to call us out of. All of this points back to that same big idea that we love God by devoting our lives to what he values. We worship God when we love him and love others with everything we've got. We love God when we lay down our pride for his glory.

It could be that our next step as a worshiper of Jesus is to let go of some self consciousness and just decide, this is going to be a year where I not just show up for worship, but I pour myself into it. We worship God when we sacrifice what we want for what matters to Him. I mean, maybe our next step as worshipers of God is to make generosity a right off the top kind of thing rather than an if I have anything left over sort of thing.

We worship God when we live in obedience, surrender to Him. Maybe our next step as worshipers of God is to acknowledge a pattern of behavior in our lives that we know dishonors God and actually hurts us. And we offer Him a living sacrifice of worship by deciding that this will be the year that I cut that out of my life. Friends, we worship knowing that we can never do anything more for God than He has already done for us. It's his love that prompts our love.

It's his generosity that motivates our generosity. His sacrifice inspires our sacrifice.

So I'm gonna lead us in prayer and then after I do, we're gonna invite you to stand and to sing one more song of worship together. And I wanna invite you to use this song as a time to speak directly to God and nobody else. I wanna invite all of us for the next few minutes to not worry about the people on either side of us or in front of us or behind us. Let's make this a time of connection, a time of devotion, a time of surrender to our God. Don't sing for me.

Don't sing for a worship leader. Don't sing for anybody around you. Our worship is for God. Alone. Would you pray with me, Father?

God, you are so good and so worthy of worship.

Father, these lives are your gift. These bodies are your gift. The fact that you woke us up this morning is your gift. Father, this place and this time and these people, these words from scripture, these are all your gifts to us. Father, you give and you give and you give some more.

And we can't begin to out give you. But God, we ask that you would help us to recognize you as the source of everything that we have. Everything we think of as our own. And God, we pray that you would give us the faith and the courage and the humility and the gratitude to give back to you everything that you've given to us. Father, we want every part of our lives, every facet of who we are.

Our hearts and our souls and our mind and our strength. We want all of it, Father, to be poured out in worship to you. We want you to be honored by the lives that you've given us. And so, God, we ask you to use these next few moments to to draw us close to you. To sharpen our focus on you and God to deepen our resolve to live our lives for you.

This is our prayer. In Jesus name. Amen.

Please stand with us as we sing one more song this morning.

How great the chasm that lay between us. How high the mountain I could not climb. In desperation I turned to heaven and spoke your name into the night.

Then through the darkness your loving kindness tore through the shadows of my soul. The work is finished, the end is written. Jesus Christ, my living hope.

Who could imagine so great a mercy? What heart could follow such boundless grace? The God of ages stepped down from glory to em I sin and bear my shame. The cross has broken, I am forgiven. The King of kings calls me his own beautiful savior.

High Yours forever, Jesus Christ, my living Hallelujah. Praise the one who set me free. Hallelujah. Death has lost its grip on me. You have broken every chain.

There's salvation in your name. Jesus Christ, my living hope.

Hallelujah. Praise the one who set me free. Hallelujah. Death has lost its grip on me. You have broken every chain.

There's salvation in your name. Jesus Christ, my living hope.