The "Let Us" Series From The Book Of Hebrews
#12
"LET US OFFER UP SACRIFICES OF
PRAISE!"
TEXT: Heb.
13:15-16;
INTRO: Mention the
word "Worship" to someone and see how they respond! To most people the idea of "Worship" is
something that happens on a Sunday morning in a building somewhere called a
church. For some, the conditions
have to be just perfect in order for them to worship - too often people don't
enjoy worship unless things are just right, thus we are good at finding all
kinds of reasons to avoid church!
Imagine the world acting like
this!
ILLUS: The reasons why I'm giving up sports: football in the fall, baseball in the
summer, basketball in the winter.
I've had it all. I quit
attending sports once and for all, and here are my 11 excuses:
1.
Every time I went, they asked for money.
2.
The people I sat next to didn't seem friendly.
3.
The seats were too hard and not comfortable at
all.
4. I
went to many games but the coach never came to call on
me.
5.
The referees made decisions that I couldn't agree
with.
6.
The game went into overtime and I was late getting
home.
7.
The band played numbers I'd never heard before and it wasn't my style of
music.
8. It
seems the games are always scheduled when I want to do other
things.
9. I
suspect that I was sitting next to some hypocrites. They came to see their friends and they
talked during the whole game.
10. I was taken
to too many games by my parents when I was growing
up.
11. I hate to
wait in the traffic jam in the parking lot after the
game.
Worship and praise is not something that comes just
from the right conditions around us, it comes from the heart and from our life,
we are always worshipping, it is not just what happens on Sunday
morning!
PROP. SENT: The Bible will
teach us that both our LIPS and our LIFE should be offering up praise to God
continuously.
A.
A New Communication Heb.
13:15
1. Notice in the text the link that
makes this new communication possible: "Through
Jesus..."
a. Praise and worship cannot happen
without coming through Christ!
b. Praise is not just something we do,
it is what we are and who we are connected to, and being connected to Christ is
what makes praise even possible!
2. Notice here also the sense of
praise being "continual!"
a. It is not just at church where
praise from our lips is supposed to
happen!
b. The reason it is called a "sacrifice of
praise" is because it won't always be convenient or when we simply
feel like it!
c. There is a real sense here that how
we communicate all the time is a part of worship, every word from our lips
should be "praise" in some form or fashion to God
reflecting Christ in our lives.
3. Our lips should confess praise and
gratitude at all times reflecting Christ's reality in our lives!
ILLUS: Alexander Whyte, the Scottish preacher,
always began his prayers with an expression of gratitude. One cold, miserable day his people
wondered what he would say. He
prayed, "We thank Thee, O Lord, that it
is not always like this."
4. It is our language at home, work,
and church that is in view in the passage, that our lips are offering up to God
“CONTINUALLY”
a sacrifice of praise!
a. How should this impact the way we
talk about others?
b. How should this impact the jokes we
tell co-workers on the job?
c. How should this impact our speech
around home and family?
d. As well as how we enter into the
service at church!
5. Too often it is far easier to express
praise in a worship service than it is in day to day routines, yet the sense of
"continuously"
and "sacrifice" here indicate the daily routine as
well as the church service.
B.
A New Communion
1. It is clear that what we say comes
from how we think, hence how this passage fits well with the "fruit of
lips" issue in Heb.
13:15!
a. We speak how we think! (see Luke
6:45 "out of the heart the mouth
speaks")
b. If we are to offer up a sacrifice
of praise as the "fruit of our lips" on a ongoing basis, it will
have to spring from the way we think in our hearts and minds!
2. Paul writes here to express the
importance of "conformity" - but to be cautious not to conform
any longer to the thinking of this
world!
a. The world has little concern for
worship and praise of God and if we allow the world's influence to infiltrate
our entire thinking processes we will find our sense of worship distorted as
well!
b. The world puts little value on
verbal expressions to God, it is a low priority if one at
all!
c. We must be careful that the
emphasis of the world does not become ours! (See Philip.
4:8-9 We are to think on the right things, not part of the natural
man.)
ILLUS: Most middle-class Americans tend to worship
their work, to work at their play and to play at their worship. As a result, their meanings and values
are distorted. Their relationships
disintegrate faster than they can keep them in repair, and their lifestyles
resemble a cast of characters in search of a plot.
3. The problem for many Christians
today is that we have too compartmentalized our lives into chunks, we think of
worship as only this "chunk" of time
spent in a church building on Sunday a.m. and don't see how worship is a part of
the rest of our week or our
activities!
a. We should develop a "worship" mentality in
everything!
b. We would be completely different as
people if we really had a "
4. In the strictest sense everything
we do is a part of worshipping God, and all our daily mundane things in life are
a part of that expression!
ILLUS: A budget is a theological document. It
indicates who or what we worship. -- James S.
Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc, 1988),
p. 375.
a. Think about how the emphasis in our
lives would be changed if we really thought this
way?
b. Everything we say and everything we
do tests and approves the will of God - hopefully our lips and our actions will
show "His
good, pleasing and perfect will!"
5. The idea here is to have our minds
transformed by God's Word so that we are no longer conformed to this world and
its way of thinking!
a. The Greek word translated here "transform" is "metamorpho" from which we get our English
word "metamorphosis" from. The idea is that we change from the way
the world thinks to the way God thinks, a process of becoming something new and
different!
b. This is no doubt a process -
worship always is!
c. The renewing of our minds will
enable us to think very different from this world, and by thinking different we
will speak different!
d. This will enable us to have the
fruit of our lips worship God
continuously!
II. PRAISE FROM OUR LIVES! Heb. 13:16;
A.
A New Compassion Heb.
13:16
1. As soon as the writer of Hebrews
talks about the "fruit of lips" as a sacrifice of praise he
moves to his next thought tying this together with "do not forget to
do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is
pleased."
a. The "fruit of
lips" results in the "fruit of living" & vice
versa!
b. What we SPEAK we tend to
SHOW! (Remember in school "SHOW & TELL")
and what we SHOW we tend to
SPEAK!
2. What we do as good to others is
also a part of our worship of God, it will bear fruit at some point in our lives
as well as theirs!
ILLUS:
Many years ago
two young men were working their way through
Years
passed. Paderewski became premier
of
3. The
world does not just look at what we "say"
but also what we "do" in
determining what kind of "worshipper"
we are!
a. The world will rarely criticize our
worship style if they know our life style is also
godly!
b. We show people what a "sacrifice of
praise" is not just by the way we verbally worship on Sunday
mornings, but how we live Monday thru
Saturday!
4. God is pleased with our "sacrifices of
praise" when they come from both our LIPS and our LIVES!
a. The idea from God's standpoint is
that our LIPS match our LIVES!
b. Since this "sacrifice of
praise" is suppose to be
"continuous" it is suppose to be a constant flow
from both our lips in a "worship" service, and from our lives in "willful"
service!
B.
A New Commitment
1. Here Paul picks up this very
theme...
a. To worship means to give up more
than a couple of hours on Sunday a.m. to offer worship as LIP
SERVICE, it means to offer up our own bodies as a LIVING
SACRIFICE!
b. To offer up our bodies as a "living
sacrifice" is "pleasing" to God!
c. The only problem with a "living
sacrifice" is that it has a tendency to "crawl off the
altar when the fire gets hot under it!"
2. This really means that God should
get the best of us!
a. For too many Christians,
Christianity is like a weekend thing you do, and so it is treated like "going to the movies" or going somewhere
else, it doesn't have the commitment of the best from us all the
time.
b. Only western Christianity has this
concept of compartmentalizing our relationship to God! Many other religions see their
commitment to their gods as all embracing; their gods always get their best, not
their leftover time and resources!
ILLUS:
A missionary
tells of a woman in
c. Can we say that God gets our very
best, or just whatever we have leftover in time, resources, and
priorities?
3. It is always too easy to see a
sacrifice as something we give, or even something we do, but we need to see the
sacrifice as OURSELVES! – a living
one!
4. Paul says that such a living
sacrifice in view of God's mercy is a "SPIRITUAL ACT OF
WORSHIP!"
a. The word "spiritual" here in Greek is "LOGIKOS"
from where we get our word
"LOGICAL"
from!
b. In view of God's mercy it is only
LOGICAL that we offer up our bodies as a living sacrifice for God to
use!
c. This is both "reasonable" (KJV) and "logical!"
d. Why would God want just the worship
of our lips without the worship from our
lives?
5. If we are to offer up "sacrifices of
praise" we must be willing to offer up our lives as living
sacrifices, this will then include what comes from our
lips!
a. When done out of love, this
sacrifice will not be viewed as a LOSS, but as
GAIN!
ILLUS:
It is told that
in the First World War there was a young French soldier who was seriously
wounded. His arm was so badly
smashed that it had to be amputated.
He was a magnificent specimen of young manhood, and the surgeon was
grieved that he must go through life maimed. So he waited beside his bedside to tell
him the bad news when he recovered consciousness. When the lad's eyes opened, the surgeon
said to him: "I am sorry to tell you that you have lost your arm." "Sir," said
the lad, "I did not lose it; I gave it – for
Jesus was not
helplessly caught up in a mesh of circumstances from which he could not break
free. Apart from any divine power
he might have called in, it is quite clear that to the end he could have turned
back and saved his life. He did not
lose his life; he gave it. The
Cross was not thrust upon him; he willingly accepted it -- for us. -- William Barclay, Gospel of
John
b. Too often we think of "sacrifice" as a painful loss, but
in reality it is a joyous thing - "holy and pleasing to
God"
c. To God, the content of our worship is wrapped up in the character of the
worshipper!
6. The real life of "worship"
then is both what comes from our "LIPS" and from our "LIVES"
!
a. So did you come this morning "to
worship" or as "a worshipper?"
b. Are you "continuously
offering up to God a sacrifice of praise" or just when you are in the
"service?"
c. Are both
your LIPS and your LIFE engaged in praising God?
7. "LET US OFFER UP
SACRIFICES OF PRAISE!"
CONCLUSION:
The concept of
"praising
God" is far more reaching than just what happens on a Sunday morning
worship service! It is also far
more reaching than a song of praise or two! The crowds on Palm Sunday were quick to
praise Christ with their lips, but not with their lives! Praise is a lifestyle of glorifying
Christ and not just lips that gush "Glory to God in the highest!" Did you come TO worship, or
did you come AS a worshipper? Let us offer up sacrifices of praise through our lips and
our
lives!