Tilling The Soil of The Soul July 9, 2006
The Spiritual Discipline of Worship
Isaiah 6:1-8
As we’ve been looking at the classic spiritual disciplines over the last year, I’ve talked about how the disciplines help us “till the soil of our soul” so that the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control – Gal 5:22-23) can grow and so that the weeds are pulled much more easily.
This is what Richard Foster says about how the disciplines deal with the sin in our life:
“Our ordinary method of dealing with ingrained sin is to launch a frontal attack. We rely on our willpower and determination. Whatever the issue for us may be—anger, bitterness, gluttony, pride, sexual lust, alcohol, fear—we determine never to do it again; we pray against it, fight against it set our will against it But it is all in vain and we find ourselves once again morally bankrupt or, worse yet, so proud of our external righteousness that “whitened sepulchers” is a mild description of our condition. Heini Arnold in his excellent little book entitled “Freedom from Sinful Thoughts” writes, “We… want to make it quite clear that we cannot free and purify our own heart by exerting our own ‘will.’ “
In Colossians Paul listed some of the outward forms people use to control sin: “touch not, taste not, handle not.” He then added that these things “have indeed a show of wisdom in will worship” (Col. 2:20—23, KJV). “Will worship”—what a telling phrase, and how descriptive of so much of our lives! The moment we feel we can succeed and attain victory over our sin by the strength of our will alone is the moment we are worshiping the will. Isn’t it ironic that Paul looked at our most strenuous efforts in the spiritual walk and called it idolatry: “will worship”?
…When we despair of gaining inner transformation through human powers of will and determination, we are open to a wonderful new realization: inner righteousness is a gift from God to be graciously received. The needed change within us is God’s work, not ours. The demand is for an inside job, and only God can work from the inside. We cannot
attain or earn this righteousness of the kingdom of God; it is a grace that is given.
…The apostle Paul said, “he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption; but he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life” (Gal. 6:8). A farmer is helpless to grow grain; all he can do is to provide the right conditions for the growing of grain. He puts the seed in the ground where the natural forces take over and up comes the grain. That is the way with the Spiritual Disciplines – they are a way of sowing to the Spirit. The Disciplines are God’s way of getting us into the ground; they put us where He can work within us and transform us. By themselves the Spiritual Disciplines can do nothing; they can only get us to the place where something can be done. They are God’s means of grace. The inner righteousness we seek is not something that is poured on our heads. God has ordained the Disciplines of the spiritual life as the means by which we are placed where He can bless us.”
Foster p 4, 5 & 6
There are many ways that I could talk about the whole topic of worship today, but because we are in this series, I want to talk about the effect that worship has on us, or how worship “tills the soil of the soul.”
How worship tills the soil of the soul
Isaiah 6:1-8
In worship we catch a vision of God
When we join with other Christian to lift our voice in praise, stand in silence before God, kneel, dance, lie prostrate, hear the word, pray, Jesus promises that he will be present to us in a special way that he is not present with us alone. If we are aware, we can experience that presence. The old King James Version of the Bible says that God inhabits the praises of his people.
In worship we do not just join our fellow Christians, but as we can see from this passage, all of heaven sings the praises of God. We join with the Angels who are around the throne, their voices like thunder praising God.
In worship we come to know God in ways that we can’t just reading about him in the Bible or in other books that describe him. It is the difference between seeing a photo of a friend and seeing the friend themselves.
I have often said that good theology should lead to good practice, and the opposite is true – bad theology leads to bad practice. In worship, we add experience to our head knowledge of God and our theology, our understanding of God, is filled out. The angels theology in worship is pretty simple: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, the whole earth is filled with his Glory!
When we enter the presence of God in worship, we cannot leave unchanged. It is like we are placing our lives as a garden in the hands of the gardener. In these types of ecstatic experiences of worship that Isaiah accounts, we can have the experience of God’s gardening touch through fire, wind and water, the fire burning up the weeds such that, in the amazing experience of God, we can’t even understand why we would ever want the sins that we might cling to outside of his presence. But He also blows on the good fruit in our life, watering it to bring it to life! The gardener sets the garden that is our lives back in the order that he created it to be.
In worship we catch a vision of ourselves
Isaiah sees this whole scene of heavenly worship and he is undone. He cries out, “I’m as good as dead, even my prophetic lips are unclean! And my peoples lips are unclean.”
When we truly enter God’s presence it cannot be anything but a humbling experience. We recognize that he is God and we are not. We are humbled in worship, but I would also say that it the only way that we can truly enter worship – in humility. Jesus tells this story in Luke 18:9-14
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ’God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
"But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ’God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
"I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
In worship we catch a vision of God’s grace
We can see Jesus words played out in Isaiah’s experience: he humbles himself, and he is lifted up, the angel comes with a coal from the fire and purifies Isaiah’s lips. I worship we don’t just catch a glimpse of our own inadequacy in the face of God, God deals with that in adequacy, forgives us, purifies us and calls us deeper into his presence. If we are like the tax collector, standing at a distance, beating ourselves up for our sin, God does not leave us there, he forgives us, purifies us and calls us to stop standing at a distance and come close to experience all he has for us.
There are some people who are the perpetual tax collector, always at a distance, never feeling worthy of coming into God’s holy presence. You need to hear God’s voice, “Come in, you are clean, come in my child.”
In worship we catch a vision of our call
It is in this experience of worship that Isaiah receives his life call. God says
"Whom shall I send?
Who will go for us?"
I spoke up,
"I’ll go.
Send me!"
If you are wondering what God’s call on your life is – beyond the basics of his call on all of our lives, one of the ways to hear that call is to spend much time in worship.
Paul connects worship and understanding God’s will in Romans 12:1-2 when he says:
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
The Practice of Worship
How do we practice the discipline of Worship?
Come
Hebrews 10:25 says “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
It amazes me that Christians not coming to church and trying to live in the Kingdom of God without the Community of God surrounding them is not a new phenomena! The writer to the Hebrews had to encourage the first generation of Christians to come together to worship!
There is something in corporate worship that you will not find anywhere else – God’s special presence. If your favorite sports or movie star called you up to hang out with him/her once a week, you’d be there in a flash – the God of all creation is calling you to come!
Participate
We don’t come to be a spectator to a performance of worship, we come to worship God! He is the only spectator, and even he is involved!
So do not sit in the back watching, sing, dance, move, pray… be involved.
Bring something to the table:
1 Corinthians 14:26 “When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.”
Find God
Jesus says that whenever we gather in his name he will be there in our midst – he doesn’t say that he will be hear only if we sing my favorite songs, or pray or preach with passion. Jesus doesn’t say that he’ll bless a certain style of worship with more of his presence, so this morning, his presence can be felt in all the churches that are gathered in his nasme – liturgical, evangelical, Pentecostal, charismatic, Quaker… If we gather in his name, he is here!
Granted, I find that he is easier to find in certain style – but that is my experience, not God’s presence.
Once back in university I took a bunch of Christians from the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship to a concert. The headline band was a U2 cover band called Pride, but I was more interested in the opening band – they were a punk-rock group called Maggot Fodder! I thought it would be a cultural experience for the I.V.ers! It was. While the band was playing, a few of us got up to dance. One young woman from IV came up to me on the dance floor and shouted in my ear, “How can you dance to this?” I shouted back, “Stop, Listen, Find the beat, and then dance to it!”
There may be times when you enter a church service and it all sounds like noise to you. You could sit there and criticize the whole gathering, or you could trust in Jesus’ promise and Stop, Listen, Find God, and worship him.
A Life of Worship
Some of you know that I race my mountain bike once a week on Tuesday evenings. It’s a great time – I’ve made some friends at the race. We try to beat each other and then we talk and laugh about the race afterward. If I only showed up for the race, and my bike stayed in the shed for the rest of the week, my races would be much less enjoyable and much more painful. It is the same with corporate worship, it is feed by a life of individual worship. If your experience of corporate worship doesn’t live up to all the promises I’ve spoken about, don’t give up on it, feed it with a discipline of individuals worship during the week.
Make sure that you quiet time has an aspect of Worship to it
Sing, read psalms to God, speak out your felt praise, use your gift of tongues to praise him. Use worship CDs to enter into worship throughout the week…
Practice the presence of God in your daily life – he is present, stop, listen & find him whereever you are, whatever you are doing!
Let you discipline of worship flow into your everyday life – learn to worship God by whatever you are doing.
1 Corinthians 10:31So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.
Colossians 3:23
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord,
The Monks used to say “worship and work must be one” It is a good saying.
Preparation for corporate worship
At the race, we usually get their early, sign up, get out number plate on. If there is enough time, we go out and pre-ride the course, to see what it will be like that night, and to warm up (or wake up!) our muscles. If there is not enough time, we’ll just ride around the field a bit to get warmed up, some guys will do some stretches… If you don’t do that, that first hill is going to hurt a lot!
It is the same with coming to weekly worship, we need time to prepare ourselves to step into the presence of God together. Get up early and have an extended personal worship time. Come for the pre-service prayer, or get into the pew and prepare your heart. This church is very active around the beginning of the service, we like to greet each other and catch up – this is good, it is part of the corporate unity that God desires, but don’t let that stop you from preparing your heart for worship. We have come to meet the King. We need time to prepare before we step into his presence.
There are many reasons to worship – the most important being that God deserves it and we are created for it! But we also worship, because in worship, like the other spiritual disciplines, we are changed to become more like the one we worship.
One of professors taught me that the meaning of “glorify” is to reflect. As we glorify God with our mouths, we will come to reflect him more and more in our lives.
Psalm 95:6-7 NLT
Come, let us worship and bow down.
Let us kneel before the LORD our maker,
for he is our God.
We are the people he watches over,
the sheep under his care.
Oh, that you would listen to his voice today!
