During the last two months we looked at worship, specifically; how we as Christians can worship with our hearts, our heads and our hands. This month we will explore the idea of worshipping with our hands.

It should go without saying that worshipping our Lord is a primary act of obedience. Worship should be a loving response to our God who has by His wonderful grace, provided everything for us. Understanding grace, at least from a human standpoint, should evoke an immediate response of first- humility, secondly – awe, and thirdly a question of the incomprehensible love of God. The third is a question that is not easily answered, as we cannot fully understand God’s love, only He Himself can grasp the width and depth of it.

However, knowing that God loves us enough to allow grace to overflow in our lives sparks an overwhelming desire to worship Him. Again, we can worship many ways, we saw last month that we can worship with our hearts and heads… methods would include trust, thanksgiving, unselfishness, persistent uncompromising behavior, and a deep desire to obey.

A basic method of worship is prayer. Prayer doesn’t really involve our hands, unless folding them is part of your prayer ritual, but prayer can certainly be linked to how we serve God. First of all, prayer can open our hearts and allow God to point us in a direction where we can serve Him with our hands. Where is this service? Any multiple places, it may be right next door, it can be a friendly handshake or a hug given to a person in distress, assisting with a flat tire or painting a fence. This list is endless, but there is a list.

This service cannot be confused with penance. Serving God must have the underlying willingness on our part to do so with obedience, and this obedience comes from a full realization and deep love for our God and His mercy to us- an undeserving sinner. Our service comes out of our love of God, and the knowledge and assurance of God’s love for us.

Penance is self-punishment. It is done with an expectation that God will look down on us and give us a “get out of jail” card. One cannot earn God’s favor. Crawling on our hands and knees, until they are bloodied and raw is not an act of worship, no matter how well intended. It is impossible to earn God’s favor. Ask the question, ‘How much is good enough”, how much work must one do to earn God’s favor? The price has already been paid, through the atoning death of Jesus! Service is not penance.

Serving God can be serving God’s people. Serving God can be serving non-believers. Serving God can be serving his creatures. Serving God can also be manifest in denying oneself. We see a wonderful example of this in John the Baptist. He served our Lord, but not with royal hands, nor with any social gracefulness, nor with any formal education. He had accomplished no community achievements, nor did he hold any office. However, he was not common. John preached the coming of the Lord, Jesus and he did so with great vigor and with little, if any, luxury or personal comfort. John the Baptist lived and preached in the wilderness. John announced the arrival of the Messiah, and the need for repentance and acceptance of the upcoming Messiah as our Lord and Savior.

I submit that we can also worship our Lord and Savior as John the Baptist did – with vigor and an uncompromising spirit.

John lived in the wilderness and that very existence demanded that he labor with his hands. He carved out a niche of maintaining a minimal mode of survival. However, this minimum was in fact, a great maximum, as John suffered in humility, suffered in the every day grind of wilderness survival and by his personal character, which marked his greatness. I am not advocating we should live in the wild and be a survivalist. However, the spirit of John’s humility can be an example to us all.

There are many examples of God’s servants accomplishing tasks with their labor; Noah and his ark, Nehemiah and the wall, Solomon and the temple, Bezalel and Oholiab were the craftsmen that built the Tabernacle under Moses.

These men built a physical thing with their hands. I am sure that they labored hard, and they labored with a purpose, but they labored with an end result in mind. John the Baptist had no physical template to work from or had a tangible product to create. Rather his hands were used to exist and proclaim Jesus. The theme of this month’s message is just that; lets use our hands to labor for and to proclaim Jesus. The Holy Spirit tells us through Paul that we should “do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out to word of life – in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing” (NIV) Philippians 2; 14-16  

Let us not labor for nothing. Look to John the Baptist as our excellent example of one who labored not to produce a tangible thing, but rather an intangible eternal prize.

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. The “NIV” and “New International Version” trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires permission of the International Bible Society.