Thirty Days of Praise
Worshipping with Others
1 Corinthians 14:26
* I read about a family that put together jigsaw puzzles. They started with fairly simple puzzles and moved to the more complicated ones. One night, the father brought home the first thousand-piece puzzle for them to try. The family immediately tried to tackle it. After an hour, however, they were all frustrated. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t even get the puzzle started. The father then discovered that he had accidentally switched the box top with the top from another puzzle. The picture they were looking at wasn’t the puzzle they were working on.
* As I study God’s word about this thing we call worship, I wonder if we have inadvertently replaced the ‘box top’ (as it were) in our model for worship. Let’s begin with a probing question, “where did I get my concept for what constitutes worship?” Truth be told, most of us developed our concepts about worship from some church experience of days past. In fact, if my background is Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, or numerous other denominations, my beliefs are that the more rituals and elements we have the more I worship. If my background is Assembly of God, Pentecostal, Holiness, Vineyard, or the like, my belief is that the more expressive I am the more I worship. If my background is Baptist, then what ever style my favorite church worshipped is what I believe is correct.
* Sadly, few take more than a superficial look at the Bible’s teachings on worship, the Christian life, and Christianity in general. This morning let’s take a Biblical look corporate worship or “worshipping with others” and let’s do so with an open mind and open heart. Let’s begin with one verse of scripture, 1 Cor. 14:26.
* Gordon Dahl: “Most Americans tend to worship their work, to work at their play, and play at their worship.” We are only one generation from Christian extinction.
* North America is the only continent on the globe where Christianity is not expanding.
* Because there is so much riding on our getting this right and because the Bible has so much to say about worshipping God let us give serious consideration to the teaching and understanding of corporate worship.
* Let check out some thought which assist us.
1) The Directions for our Worship. Honestly in the early 1970’s, when I took my first music director’s position I got the feeling that there was an order of service written-out somewhere in the Bible. The reason that I thought this came from the reaction I received one day when we were running a little late and so, I decided to leave out a hymn. Go figure.
a) The truth is that there is not one order of service, not one note of music, not one note of music, not one instruction about the “appropriateness” of prayer, songs, or the like. What is given to us are some elements (or parts) of the worship.
i) Hebrews 12:1 “present your bodies a living sacrifice to God which is our Spiritual Worship. “ We have already visited this text in this series.
ii) Colossians 3:15-16 and let the peace of the Messiah, to which you were also called in one body, control your hearts. Be thankful. 16 Let the message about the Messiah dwell richly among you, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, and singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, with gratitude in your hearts to God.
iii) John 4:24 God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."
b) Candidly, we can read or recite scriptures the rest of the morning and they all will teach us one truth; “Real worship begins in our heart.” It is an overflow of our relationship to the Father or a natural reaction to the presence of God. Additionally, we are repeatedly taught to “gather together and worship together.” Hebrews tells us to not forsake or neglect corporate worship and the reason is that it is so important. But never forget, it begins in our heart or it doesn’t happen.
c) For one set of directions we can go to Psalm 95 (read and give outline of Rejoice, Recognize, Revere, & Respond). Additionally, the Bible teaches us that we join together to worship in many ways. We can kneel, sing, play instruments, dance, lift up our hands, clap our hand, we can shout, we can pray, we can speak, & we can respond. Each and every one of these are vital, legitimate, and Biblical elements of worship which we must recognize, accept and even use. Why is this? Worship is something we do.
d) Listen to the Words of Dr. Eugene Peterson.
e) “Pastors are subjected to two recurrent phrases from the people to whom they give spiritual leadership. Both are reminiscent of Baalism [the pagan worship of the nations surrounding Israel]. The phrases are: “Let’s have a worship experience” and “I don’t get anything out of it.” The phrase “Let’s have a worship experience” is Baalism’s substitute for “let us worship God.”. . . Worship is neither subjective only nor private only. It is not what I feel when I am by myself; it is how I act toward God in responsible relation with God’s people. Worship, in the biblical sources and in liturgical history, is not something a person experiences, it is something we do, regardless of how we feel about it, or whether we feel anything at all. . . . The assumption that validates the phrase [“I don’t get anything out of [worship]] is that worship must be attractive and personally gratifying. But that is simply Baalism [all over again], worship trimmed to the emotional and spiritual specifications of the worshiper. . . . We may be entertained, warmed, diverted, or excited in such worship; we will probably not be changed, and we will not be saved. Our feelings may be sensitized and our pleasures expanded. But our morals will be dulled and our God fantasized.” (Peterson, Eugene. FIVE SMOOTH STONES FOR PASTORAL WORK. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1980. p. 145.)
f) How do these directions compare to your concepts of worship?
2) The Direction of our Worship. In any corporate worship experiences there are two relationships which are in play. There is the horizontal and the vertical, the question is this; what one is most important?
a) 1 Cor. 14:26 concludes that all things must be done for edification.
b) For these past weeks, your pastor has said more than once that worship is about “kissing toward” God while praise is about “bragging or boasting and exalting Him”, does it not stand to reason that the focus, the thrust, the direction of our corporate worship time be on HIM.
c) In Revelation 22, John falls down to worship the divine messenger of God and that messenger says, “Don’t worship me for I am just like you, “WORSHIP GOD.”
d) In today’s worship time, it seems that entirely too much focus is placed on the preacher, the pray-er, the singer, or the leader and not enough is focused on God. Could it be that be have forgotten the direction of our Worship and Praise OR is the problem bigger?
3) The Distractions to our Worship.
a) In my short life I recall corporate worship services where the spirit of God was so real and apparent that even the more skeptical person in the room was touched. That is called the manifest presence of God and it is similar to a Pentecost experience. Here’s the thing; my recall tells me that it “used to” happen a great deal more than we hear of it happening today. Wonder why that is?
b) Could it be that we don’t desire God’s presence anymore? We feel like we’re doing pretty well on our own. We got our life in some semblance of order and really don’t need any complications. Although we might never admit it, to have God take over might mess up things. All of a sudden we can’t schedule our Sundays like we want, because God is in control. We might have to miss a recreational event because God has other ideas. The service may not get over at 11:15am (like it’s supposed to) and we may be late to Habeneros. Could it be that we come desiring to pay our dues, do our time, submit to our “mass” and be done with it.
i) Story told of a passer by to a church building on a Sunday morning saw Satan sitting on the church steps and waiting. The passer by ask the old devil what he was doing to which the quick reply came, “I’m waiting on my people.” “Your people? In there?” Quipped the surprised passer by. “IF there are in there, how are they your people?” “I let them go in there on Sunday and they feel good about themselves, but by tomorrow they’ll be mine once again. I don’t care about their bad habits.”
c) Let me suggest one more reason God doesn’t fill us like we have experienced in days passed; could it be that we come into worship so filled up with other stuff that He is left no room in our lives. Recall Bethlehem on that first Christmas night and just know that God could have had Jesus born in the best motel room in the city, but then like now, He moves into only those places we vacate for Him. Have you ever wondered why God resists the proud? I submit that one reason is that when we are proud then we are so full of ourselves that there is no room left for God. We leave filled up alright, but it’s normally from pleasure that they did my music or displeasure that they didn’t sing my type of music or pleasure from a message you enjoyed or displeasure from a message that was too personal. Or pleasure that my favorite preacher preached or displeasure that my least favorite preacher preached.
i) Henry Ward Beecher knew he was going to be absent from the pulpit of Plymouth Church one Sunday, so he asked his brother to preach for him. When the worship service began, and it became apparent that the great preacher would not be speaking that particular morning, some people got up and started to leave. At that point, Beecher’s brother stepped into pulpit and said, "All of those who came to hear Henry Ward Beecher preach this morning should take this opportunity to leave; all of those who came to worship God may remain." After that no one else left the sanctuary.
4) The Desires from our Worship.
a) When you come each Sunday, do you have any desires? Better stated, do you have any spiritual desires? Some seems to think that we can come to worship and get our hunger for God satisfied. Gene Peterson says, that ““Worship does not satisfy our hunger for God—it whets our appetite. Our need for God is not taken care of by engaging in worship—it deepens. It overflows the hour and permeates the week.”
b) “If worship does not change us, it has not been worship.” Richard Foster. This statement deserves serious thought.
c) Do you expect God to change your life or do you hope He just leaves you alone? It is my belief that He desires to change us, what do we desire? Revelation 3:20 is right on point this morning.
