Out-Of-The-Box-Worship

Opening illustration: Some of us may feel pressured to be perfect when we go to church so that people will think well of us. Metaphorically speaking, we work hard to make sure we have every hair in place. But a healthy church is a place where we can let down our hair and not hide our flaws behind a façade of perfection. In church, we should be able to reveal our weaknesses to find strength rather than conceal our faults to appear strong.

Worship can be an intensely personal and yet very corporate experience. We can worship alone, with a small group of friends, and with our local body of believers. Some of us dance, others raise their hands, some close their eyes and bow heads in reverence. There are many ways in which we can praise and worship God.

Worship doesn’t involve behaving as if nothing is wrong; it’s making sure everything is right—right with God and with one another. When our greatest fear is letting down our hair, perhaps our greatest sin is keeping it up.

Introduction: Shortly before Jesus was crucified, a woman named Mary poured a bottle of expensive perfume on His feet. Then, in what may have been an even more daring act, she wiped His feet with her hair (John 12:3). Not only did Mary sacrifice what may have been her life’s savings, she also sacrificed her reputation. In first-century Middle Eastern culture, respectable women never let down their hair in public. But true worship is not concerned about what others think of us (2 Samuel 6:21–22). To worship Jesus, Mary was willing to be thought of as immodest, and in another text, perhaps even immoral.

Mary offered her financial stability—pouring a very expensive perfume over Jesus, her physical being—using her own hair to wipe His feet, and her reputation—letting hair down was not something a “respectable” woman did in ancient cultures. Mary worshiped Jesus with everything she had. She knew who Jesus was and what He had done for her (He had just raised her brother from the dead; see John 11). Her worship was a response.

That’s what worship is—responding to who Jesus is and what He has done. How do you worship? How can you share your worship with another?

How can we worship God out-of-the-box?

1. Sacrificial worship

A key principle of worship is that it costs you something. It is impossible to worship Jesus and leave the same way you came. You may say, "Well, I come here all the time and I don't always leave changed." You can come to a worship service and leave the same way you came, but you cannot come and worship Jesus and leave unchanged. There was an old song: “I don't know what you came to do, but I came to praise the Lord.”

It will cost you to worship Jesus, and that cost is change. Sometimes, Jesus calls us to change how or where we spend our money. Sometimes it is a monetary change in our lives. The disciples here are worried about the monetary value of the perfume Mary pours on the feet of Jesus. They see it as wasteful, while she and Jesus view it as the cost of worship.

Sometimes it will cost you your pride as Jesus calls you to humble yourself and follow Him more closely. This was Mary's house. She was not to take the role of a servant and wash her guest's feet. However, she was willing to sacrifice her pride to worship Jesus.

Sometimes it will cost you time as Jesus calls you to serve Him. Maybe it will cost you something of yourself as it did with Mary. She used her tears as water. It cost Mary her glory, as she took her hair, what the Bible says was a woman's glory, and used it as a towel to dry the feel of Jesus.

The disciples are upset about the cost of the perfume but do not miss that Mary is paying a high price for following Jesus, and that price is more than just money.

You and I come to worship God this morning. What will it cost you to worship Him? In other parts of the world this morning, gathering to worship Jesus may cost them their lives, but those dear saints are willing to pay the price. It could cost some of them their business and financial support as they would be boycotted and abandoned in their villages and towns.

So often we reduce the price we pay to worship Jesus as the amount we put in the offering plate when it comes by. Certainly, the offering you give is an act of worship and sacrifice, but there is so much more to it than that. It costs us personally, in pride, humility, service, and so many other ways.