Discovering the Handprint of God, Part 2: Greeted
Pastor Bill Wolfe, 8/3/03
(Genesis 1:1; Psalm 19; 66; 139:7-16; 150; Romans 5:8; Revelation 4-5)
First words are important. First words carry extra weight. Parents go bonkers when their baby says her first word. Families get excited when a loved one awakens from a coma and says his first words. First words grab our attention.
The first words in the Bible are, “In the beginning, God created…” It signals something to us right away. God not only creates, He initiates! He initiates creation. He initiates establishing a relationship with you. He initiates His plan of salvation for you and me. He initiated your life. Psalm 139 tells us, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Ps. 139:13-14)
You would not be here if God did not initiate your creation. You would not have a relationship with God, both here and now and for eternity, if God did not initiate it. The first words of the Bible are simply a hint of that. Romans 5:8 tells us, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
God’s acts of initiation--creation and salvation--are signs of His extended hand of greeting.
Psalm 19 is an interesting Psalm. It begins with these familiar words:
“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the earth.” (Ps. 19:1-4)
God’s creative hand is the sign of His hand of greeting. Scripture is pretty clear about that. The question is what is our response to His hand of greeting. Let me break it down for you a little bit.
- God created this day. He created the color scheme. He created the very breath that we’re breathing. He created our senses that allow us to experience some of His creation. So how did each of us respond to him this morning?
- God initiated a relationship with you by having His son Jesus die on the cross. How have you responded to Him about that?
- God is god! He is under no obligation to reach down and extend His hand to you. But He did and He does. How do we respond back to Him?
God extends His hand of greeting to us, and how we respond to that extended hand is with worship. When Jesus rose from the dead and changed everything, He met His disciples on a mountaintop. Matthew 28:17 says, “When they saw him, they worshipped him.” When we experience the touch of God upon our life, the miraculous gift of God’s grace, the personalness of Jesus’ death and resurrection, it’s as if we are seeing the extended hand of God, and extending our hand towards His in an act of worship. Now that might sound a little simplistic, but you see, the greeting of God to each one of us has several possible ways that it can be responded to.
If I walked up to someone and extended my hand in greeting, it would require some kind of response. Let’s try this out.
- Ignore- One response then is just to ignore God. That’s kind of what Jonah did. God extended his hand to him by saying, “Be my messenger to the city of
When someone comes up to us and greets us, and we respond by ignoring him, it’s one of the rudest and coldest things you can do. But you know something, some Sundays when we gather for worship I sense that God is the most ignored one of any us. I mean, fellowship is very important to the body of Christ. That’s why we had the Water World trip yesterday, and the Sky Sox game last Tuesday, and the Corn Roast last Sunday, and the ice cream social next Sunday, and the Summit church retreat September 6-7, but sometimes fellowship gets carried over into worship, and in fact, takes away from worship to the point that God is the uninvited guest to His own worship experience. Now here’s the danger of that. When fellowship becomes more important than worship we’ve re-prioritized our mission to be a social club instead of a church.
- Apathy- Another response is apathy. Have you ever met someone and felt like they couldn’t have cared less that you were there? Apathy communicates an indifference about the fact that you can make a difference. Apathy communicates that there are other things that are a much higher priority than you.
Let me give you an example. Have you ever gone into a restaurant and felt like your server wasn’t really interested in serving you? You know, their attitude and their work ethic just communicates they don’t really care. It’s like pulling teeth to get a glass of water. When the food comes, it’s half-cold. You leave there wondering why you even bothered to go out for dinner. Since I was a waiter back in college and seminary, that kind of attitude bugs me to no end. I’m a pretty good tipper, but when I get a server who is apathetic I think real hard before blessing them with a tip.
Now I’m apathetic about a lot of things. Like the Broncos, Folger’s coffee, Oprah, dentist’s appointments, and shopping at Wal-Mart. There’s a lot of things I couldn’t care less about. But responding to God’s initial touch upon my life is not something I’m apathetic about.
Apathetic is how the Jewish people got in their worship of God. The Lord spoke through Isaiah and said, “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” (Isaiah 29:13) They were going through the motions, but their heart wasn’t in it.
It would be interesting to live in a time when we say with our mouths what our hearts are truly saying. And so on Sunday morning, when someone asks us what we’re doing we respond by saying, “I’m going to church to ignore God.” Or “I’m heading down to
But you see, God knows our hearts. He knows how we are responding to His extended hand of greeting. We can’t fake it. In fact, that’s another way we respond.
- Fake Warmth- Here’s another greeting. We could call it “fake warmth” or “a put-on”. A couple of weeks ago the NFL fined Matt Millen, the General Manager of the Detroit Lions, for not interviewing any minority candidates for their head coach position. Matt Millen only interviewed one candidate because he said upfront “That’s who I want!” So the NFL fined him. Now the interesting thing is several coaches who are African-American were asked “Would you want to be interviewed if you knew you weren’t really going to be considered?” and everyone of them said, “No”. The reason is no one wants to interview for a position where they know the employer is just pretending to be interested.
But you see, our response to God’s extended hand of greeting can be exactly that. In Acts 5, right after the early church is described as being praise-filled, sharing and caring, praying, and experiencing miracles, Ananias and Sapphira give an offering to God and try to fake their sincerity. The result was deadly. Faking worship is equally deadly. You may not be struck dead on the spot, but there is a death that slowly kills your soul.
- Worship- Finally, there’s a greeting that responds to the God’s initial greeting. That’s exactly what worship is. Worship is our response to the extended hand of God towards us. Worship is giving value to God. Like someone who shakes your hand, and you give your full attention to him as you’re greeting one another.
One of the startling statistics that Monica [Admin. Asst.] discovered this week is that half of the people who are regular attenders of church haven’t felt the presence of God in the last year. If that average holds true for our congregation, it makes you wonder what we’re about.
The hand of God is already extended towards us. Worship is reaching for it. It’s the painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel of man touching God.
Last October, Dean and Krista Hutchinson took Carol and I out for dinner as their gift to us for Pastor’s Appreciation Month. We went to a nice restaurant, had a nice dinner, and good conversation. We felt special that they would do that for us. But what if we would have gone out to eat and the first thing Dean did was say, “I want to sit there!” And we ordered an appetizer of potato skins and it arrives to the table with 6 on the plate, so after everybody had one, Dean and Krista said, “We want the other two!” And then the bill came and Dean hands it to me saying, “I don’t want to pay tonight!” So much for the appreciation! Instead of being appreciated, Carol and I would come away with two conclusions: Never go out to dinner with them again; and it’s all about Dean and Krista!
That’s a picture of worship gone wrong, because you see, worship is showing appreciation to God. It’s all about Him! It’s not about you! That’s hard for us to hear, because a lot of us think it’s always about us! Just check out how many people start looking at their watches when we get close to an hour in. You can see how many people have checked out when the buzzer hits 60 minutes. Worship is letting God be the invited dinner guest. When you invite someone over for dinner you don’t put a time clock on it, do you?
Here’s the thing. I could greet someone in different ways, all expressing interest. For instance…
- “Hey! What’s happening?”
- “Good to see you today!”
- “My man!”
All of those are greetings expressing interest in seeing the other. Worship comes in many forms and flavors as well. The biggest difference is in music. Praise music, hymns, rap, rock, swing…The list is long and diverse.
But also, worship is done in different ways by different cultures, generations, and churches. For instance, a growing trend in Gen X churches is a sanctuary filled with round tables with eight chairs at a table. For the boomers, visual and technology is important in doing worship. With today’s teens and younger, multi-tasking is a common part of their culture, so worship may evolve to where there are several things going on at once. Whatever it is, worship is reaching our hand towards God’s extended hand of greeting. Worship is the beginning of Psalm 66.
Ps. 66:1-4
Worship is Ps. 150.
God extends His hand of greeting to us each and every day. Let’s worship Him!
