Yesterday's sermon is available for download here: True Worship. Right click the link, then select "save link as" to download it to your computer. Or, left click the link and listen to sermon in the player that will pop-up on your screen!
In Colossians 2:6-23, Paul teaches against the tradition and human rules that creep into churches and cause people to become disconnected from Christ. That disconnection can happen slowly. We slowly absorb the tradition until that tradition, and the maintenance of it, become the "gospel" for us.
In this sermon, I exhorted us to examine our own practice of worship: does our emphasis on the HOW and the WHAT of worship undermine our connection to Christ? If we hold up the "requirements" of worship as being something that actually saves us, you bet it does.
In Romans 12:1-2, Paul teaches us that the true worship God desires is for us to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice. If this idea sounds familiar, it's because it is--Paul challenges us to be just like Jesus, who offered his body as a sacrifice for us. To do the same, to live sacrificially just like Jesus, is to please God through true worship.
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