Worship Fully

In a world that primarily values commerce, the invitation to worship fully this advent season is an invitation to embrace a set of values that honor God above the market. Pastor Sean, through the book of Exodus and the story of Moses, invites us to embrace a season and life that worships God more fully.

Live Teaching Podcast Scripture & Quotations

Exodus 5:1-5

Afterward Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Let my people go, so that they may celebrate a festival to me in the wilderness.” 2 But Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should listen to him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go.” 3 Then they said, “The God of the Hebrews has revealed himself to us; let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness to sacrifice to the Lord our God, or he will fall upon us with pestilence or sword.” 4 But the king of Egypt said to them, “Moses and Aaron, why are you taking the people away from their work? Get to your labors!” 5 Pharaoh continued, “Now they are more numerous than the people of the land and yet you want them to stop laboring!”

John 2: 13-16

13 The time was near to celebrate the Passover, the festival commemorating when God rescued His children from slavery in Egypt, so Jesus went to Jerusalem for the celebration. 14 Upon arriving, He entered the temple to worship. But the porches and colonnades were filled with merchants selling sacrificial animals (such as doves, oxen, and sheep) and exchanging money. 15 Jesus fashioned a whip of cords and used it with skill driving out animals; He scattered the money and overturned the tables, emptying profiteers from the house of God. 16 There were dove merchants still standing around, and Jesus reprimanded them.

Jesus: What are you still doing here? Get all your stuff, and haul it out of here! Stop making My Father’s house a place for your own profit!

“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.”

― David Foster Wallace , This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life