BULLETIN STUDY QUESTIONS/QUOTES:
“Every man is bound somewhere, somehow, to a throne, to a government, to an authority, to something that is supreme, to something to which he offers sacrifice, and burns incense, and bends the knee.”—renowned Scottish pastor, G. Campbell Morgan
“Let others wrangle, I will wonder.” –Augustine, early church leader
“Wonder is the basis of worship.” –Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle
“When wonder is dead, the soul becomes a dry bone” –Bishop William Quayle
“The world will never starve for want of wonders [amazing things], but for want of [our reaction of] wonder.” [We think we’ve seen it all, got all the answers.]—GK Chesterton
“Here is the paradox of the Christian worship: we seek to see the invisible, know the unknowable, comprehend the incomprehensible, and experience the eternal.”—Warren Wiersbe
1. We all worship something or someone (Rom 6:16)? Do you agree with this statement? How can you use that as a great starting point for witnessing conversations?. Who/what do you worship? (Answer like no one will see this)
2. We become like what we worship “We make our gods in our image, then they turn return the favor” (Ps 115:5-9). Do you agree? Can you give illustrations of this?
3. Name an area you’re trying to “unscrew the inscrutable” (Rom 11:30; Isa 55:9). How’s that working for you? Will you try to ponder the perplexities and paradox (questions), AND still give praise to the Person of Christ?
4. You can’t behold His majesty unless you can embrace His mystery. “No one can know the love of God who has not first known the fear [wonder] of God.”—Tozer. Do you agree? Why or why not? What do these mean to you?
5. But, GOOD NEWS, we can EXPERIENCE things that we can’t EXPLAIN. Is this happening in your life? How?
I. (use Morgan QUO and tell how it can be used as a witnessing tool. Other segues into witnessing conversations: testimony, Eph 3:20 happenings, who is Jesus, *how’s it between you and Him->one thing to make it better, are you interested in spiritual things?
What do you think Morgan is saying? We all worship/serve someone/something (Rom 6:16). “You gotta serve someone,” went a song from the 70s. Who ya gonna serve/worship (writes Morgan)?
II. Try this one on: We become like what we worship (Psa 115:5-9; Rom 1:21-23, glorifying = worshipping). These vs. seem to support this thesis. Notice who and what they started worshipping instead of God. Man.
A. Eminent sociologist, Charles Cooley, did a classic study of idolatrous peoples. He found that their totem poles contained carvings of animals that symbolized valiant qualities: lions and tigers and bears (Oh my!). These were qualities they wanted in themselves. He concluded, what these peoples were actually doing was worshipping themselves by projecting their qualities onto the totems, then bowing before them.
B. “Then the serpent said to Eve, ‘you can be like God’” (Gen 3). You can be your own God…you can know ALL good and evil…just like God.
C. Man has always worshipped man…himself. We become like what we worship. If we worship these qualities of courage, valor, strength, cunning, then those qualities will become our god, instead of God being our God. We’ll worship PEOPLE who have those qualities.
D. The corollary is we become like other things we worship. If we worship money we’ll worship people who have a lot of it (ills. athletes, movie stars). If we worship things we become materialistic, loving things and using people, instead of the opposite way God designed us. If we worship power we will become controlling & manipulative. If we worship sensual pleasures we will become slaves to our bodies, bellies and baser instincts. We become like what we worship. “We make our gods in our image, then they return the favor.”—anon.
E. So we can worship the One true God or something/someone else-often ourselves (man). What/who will it be?
F. We become like what we worship (2 Cor 3:18; I Jn 3:2-3). So what’ll it be? Money, sex, power, or the good? Or will it be God?
III. Part of worship is awe, wonder and mystery. This is a much tougher concept to grasp.
A. Yet, wonder is a component of worship. Unitarian poet, R W Emerson, said: “wonder is the seed of science,” because he worshipped science. The mathematician-philosopher, A N Whitehead, who worshipped philosophy, said: “Philosophy begins in wonder.”
B. When’s the last time you were awed by God? We must restore the awe, wonder and mystery to God and to worship.
C. Instead, I’m afraid we too often try to do what Chuck Swindoll warned: “We try to unscrew the inscrutable (RSV)” (Isa 55:9; Rom 11:33; Is 40:28; I Cor 2:16, TCR #2488; “mysteries” of NT, Col 1:27). I’m always amused when I or another preacher tries to make you understand the peace & love of God that transcends understanding (Phil 4:7). Would you want to serve a God you could completely figure out?
D. “Here is the paradox of the Christian worship: we seek to see the invisible, know the unknowable, comprehend the incomprehensible, and experience the eternal. Like David, we thirst after God and we are both satisfied and dissatisfied. Like Moses, we cry out for His glory, all the while knowing that our mortal eyes could never behold God’s glory in its fullness. Like Peter, we wrestle with a tension within: we want to follow Him, and yet we bow & cry out, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man!’” (p. 45). Moses just gazed at & was dazed at the burning bush. Many fell on their faces when God showed up. Some because they wanted to. Others because they had to (Jn 18:6; Ph 2:10). But there was wonder and awe.
IV. So what do we do about this need for more awe in worship? May I suggest we become more comfortable with tough questions, including our own, and the pain of unanswered prayer. We aren’t real good at that in our world where technology and science has answered everything, AND NOTHING.
A. We’ve eradicated so many diseases, yet 25K children die world wide each day because of diseases that could be prevented with a few cents or bucks; a five dollar mosquito net, a $10 vaccine, a 50 cent drug, a gallon of pure water, a cup of rice. The cure for cancer eludes us, and so do real answers to struggles like divorce and addiction.
B. So we should be better and dealing with unanswered questions, because in spite of science’s and technologies claims, we’re still stuck with many.
C. Unfortunately religion is one of those areas people are excused if they stay mad at God because He won’t answer all their questions or solve all their problems.
D. So pondering the perplexities while praising the Lord is a way to restore the wonder and mystery of God. “It’s nearly impossible to behold His majesty if we can’t embrace His mystery. A god we can figure out is way too small.”
V. The other side of praising Him in the midst of questions and prayers that are unanswered is to thank Him for the MANY things we know (Rom 8:22, 28, 38; I Jn 1:9; 2:3, 5b-6; 5:13-15, “know” 30+ X just in I Jn).
A. But can we ponder the questions, but still praise our God? Can we be manage the questions and still be amazed at the Master? How can we gaze at a starlit sky and not be awed like (Psa 8)
B. Preachers will often explain the mysteries and reduce the Christian life to 4 slides or 4 spiritual laws. Can God be reduced to 5 points or 20? I [alone?] laughed at my sermon a few weeks ago with nearly 10 points. I was tempted to tell you to make up for that today’s would be pointless.
C. Where is the awe today? It’s pretty hard to fall on your face over the awesome majesty of God while sipping on a latte. It’s tough to think of God as awesome if every other adjective out of your mouth is “awesome.” How can God, your new ride, and your taco all be described the same? Am I making too big a deal here? Tozer said “No one can know the love of God who has not first known the fear of God.”
D. Tragically wonder may be one of the first things to go as we age. I marvel at how toddlers can stare at a bug crawling across the floor for five mintues…before they eat it. They are all caught up in the wonder of Christmas… packages…not the gift, the wrappings, boxes and bows. Older kids move on the nanosecond they buzz through the box.
E. A classic study on creativity, closely related to wonder, shows that children’s creativity diminishes by as much as 90% between five and seven years old. No surprise Jesus was always holding up children as examples for us to learn from; much due to their wonder.
F. How they marveled at Him when He rode into Jerusalem when those older tried to squelch their wonder and praise.
. The great physicist, point man of the Manhattan Project, Robt Oppenheimer wrote: “There are children playing in the street, who could solve some of my top problems of physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago” (p. 44).
VI. Do you need more awe of God? Try pondering the perplexities while praising the Lord. Praise Him for what you KNOW (vs. unknown), what you have vs. what you’ve lost, what lies clearly at hand vs. dimly in the distance.
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