Sermon Illustrations: Worship

Anecdotes

A farmer had to go to the big city, and while he was there, he attended a large church. When he got back, his wife asked him how church was. He said, “It was really good, but they don’t sing hymns. They sing worship choruses.” She said, “What’s the difference?” He said, “The best way for me to explain is like this: if I said to you, ‘Mabel, the cows are in the corn,’ that would be a hymn. But if I said to you, ‘Mabel, Mabel, Mabel, O beautiful Mabel, sweet, sweet Mabel, the cows, the cows, the black cows, the brown cows, the black and white cows, the cows are in the corn. The cows, the cows, the cows are in the corn, in the corn, in the corn,’ then that would be a worship chorus.”

One Sunday, Henry Ward Beecher, noted American preacher of the nineteenth century, needed to be absent from his church. So he asked Thomas Beecher, his brother, to fill in. When people realised that the famous Henry would not be preaching that Sunday, they started leaving. Unperturbed, Thomas announced, "Would those who came to worship Henry Ward Beecher please leave, but those who have come to worship God please be seated?"

Quotes

To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God. William Temple

The secret place is the key to the treasury of God.