Vineyard Church of Knox County
Show God His Value Through Worship
Sermon Audio from Sunday, March 28, 2004 — What do you do when you're in the presence of a person or people who are important to you? I don't mean those people in your closest circle; your immediate family. I'm talking about people you know or know of outside of that close circle who are important to you. Maybe you've had your boss over to your house for dinner; what did you do to prepare for that? Or it doesn't have to be your boss - maybe you've invited some friends to your home for a social gathering; what do you do? If you're like me, you want to make them feel welcome, you want to make them feel comfortable, you want to show them that you value them, so what do you do? You clean the house! You vacuum the floors, put things away, dust the furniture, clean the bathrooms, wipe the windows - and if you really want to do it up, you might prepare some hor d'oeuvres and set them out. People might even remark "Wow, the red carpet treatment!" or "Gee, you really rolled out the red carpet for us!" (My wife and I joke that having people over is the biggest incentive for cleaning our house, and so if the house is really messy, we'd better invite some people over so we have a reason to clean it up!)
So we show people that we value them by "rolling out the red carpet." This happens at an institutional level, too. At Kenyon where I teach, many of you may know that last fall we inaugurated our new president, and the central part of the inauguration weekend was the inaugural ceremony. For that ceremony, Kenyon invited numerous dignitaries and important figures from colleges and universities across the country, and they, along with us on the faculty, got dressed up in our fancy robes and our hoods and our hats and processed to the stage area with much pomp and circumstance, all as a part of rolling out the red carpet (or in Kenyon's case, the purple carpet) for our new president. And when President Bush hosts foreign leaders at the White House, he shows them due respect and honor by rolling out the red carpet, giving lavish welcomes when the limousine arrives, and hosting formal state dinners in their honor. The passage of Scripture that we're going to look at today describes this same type of red carpet treatment for Jesus, and I want to focus in particular on the actions of the people in the crowds surrounding him, because I think their actions demonstrate where their hearts are, and can show us where our hearts should be as we approach Jesus in worship.
