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Part III—Caribbean 121 Please receive this prophetic word today. Let me tell you that the worst thing Satan has done to you can be the last thing he ever does to you. The power of God, working in you, can restore what Satan has stolen from you. What Satan has stolen from you is nothing compared with what God wants to restore to you. And I saw the woman, who once was sad, as she began to dance. And as she danced I thought I heard her say, I thought the time had come and gone for me to feel this way. But, you Jesus, have brought to me a new song for this day. I promise from this very hour, I will not be sad again, I’ll live for you and by your power “each day the victory gain.” And just about here, death got mad. 15 The essence of true worship: A Sermon Preached at the Dedication of a new Church Sanctuary (Exodus 32:17-26) Karl Henlin Gregory Park Baptist Church St. Catherine, Jamaica BIOGRAPHY Karl Edmund Henlin currently serves at Gregory Park Baptist Church in St. Catherine, Jamaica. Henlin has pastored this church since 1987. He has studied at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica (B.A., M.Phil.), and has also received a diploma in ministry from the United Theological College of the West Indies. Henlin has served as the president of the Jamaica Baptist Union (2006–2008) and the vice president of the Caribbean Baptist Fellowship (2001–2006). He currently serves as a member of the BWA Commission on Ministry and the BWAID Commission. Henlin has led Gregory Park Baptist in offering health care, counseling services, business financing, and back-to-school assistance at no cost to residents of its community . He is married to Lisa Rose-Marie Henlin, and they have two sons, David and Philip. 122 Baptist Preaching SERMON COMMENTARY Henlin presents a prophetic sermon on the nature of authentic worship for the specific occasion of the opening and dedication of a new sanctuary. The image employed is the worship of the golden calf in the Exodus account. Henlin uses the activities and images around that event as a sounding board for his proclamation about genuine worship. From the beginning of the sermon he moves from then to now, making it clear that the story of the Hebrews in the wilderness is also our story, particularly at the point of worship and its use or abuse. He carefully sets his focal passage within the larger narrative of the Exodus experience. The golden calf becomes the symbol that dominates the sermon and his analysis of pure worship . In the clear deductive fashion of the Spurgeonic tradition, he tells us exactly where the sermon is going, move by move, by carefully announcing the divisions of the sermon at its beginning. In the first major move he immediately and forcefully places the message in its context by indicting some worship both in Jamaica and “across the Caribbean today” for becoming “self-indulgent.” He accuses the mass media of presenting a pseudo-worship in persons’ homes that they then demand in church. All of this is immediately related to the symbolism of worshipping the golden calf. He becomes point-by-point specific in his diagnosis of the criticism leveled at churches by those drawn to self-centered worship styles. Using contemporary images from the commercial world, he likens the experience of self-indulgent worship to supermarkets and shopping malls. He evokes several of the mantras from the ubiquitous “name it and claim it” theology that some other sermons in this series often address. As noted in the analysis of several sermons in this volume, the pervasive presence of media religion emphasizing the prosperity gospel has evoked quite a response from Baptist preachers. Henlin’s next move makes an even more subtle distinction between religion as experience and religion as encounter. He again skillfully diagnoses the symptoms of religion as a mere self-centered, narcissistic, emotional experience versus genuine religion as an encounter with the living God. God acts as the center and circumference of biblical worship; it is from above and transcendent. Self-seeking, egoistic worship is worship from below and always only impure in its motives and concerns. Unadulterated worship is countercultural. He next gives a pointed word of warning concerning the Baptist soteriological formula, “Jesus as our personal Savior.” This does not mean the same thing as when we...

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