***Have hanging curtain in the room***
I want to quickly recap what we talked about last week and then are going to dive right in. (I know you guys probably want to know what this hanging sheet is for but you’ll have to wait and we’ll get to it in a few minutes.) Alright, so last week, we started a series about worship and talked about how sometimes the biggest obstacle to real worship is ourselves and our selfish nature. Specifically we looked at three me-monsters: 1) Worship is not about coming to get and be filled up but instead it is about coming to give ourselves to God and to others. 2) Worship is not about all the things we use to worship (music, prayers, liturgy, PowerPoint, etc.) but instead is about our attitudes. 3) Worship is not about a single person but instead is about a whole group of people, who are all different, coming together and, again, giving to God and each other.
With that recap in our minds I want to dive into Deuteronomy 12:4-14. As you turn there, today we are going affirm what real worship is and why it is so necessary. Let’s read that passage together and take a look at what worship was way back at the beginning of the Bible.
***Read Deuteronomy 12:4-14***
“Do not worship the Lord your God in the way these pagan peoples worship their gods.” To me, that sounds pretty similar to the passage we looked at last week. “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.” Worship to God, way back in the day of Moses, all the way to the early church in Rome and then coming forward to the present day, is supposed to be different from what and how the world worships.
It is fact that every person worships, it’s just a matter of what and how. What and how do people in our culture typically worship? [Self, money, power, the opposite gender, etc. – more often than not it is about ourselves or about things]. This just confirms and puts more weight to what we talked about last week and what worship is not. So, but what was worship for the Israelite people in the times of Moses?
First, it was about coming to God. In verses 5, 11 and 13-14 it makes it very clear that worship is about coming to God, wherever He is. He didn’t want the people of Israel getting all mixed up with the cultures around them and going to their temples. He wanted them to make sure they were worshipping no other gods but only Him. That is why he wanted to allocate a specific place to do so.
Second, worship was about bringing offerings to God, or maybe I should say it was about giving (as we talked about last week). Verses 6, 11, and 14 reinforce this principle. The people would not be going to the Temple to get anything for themselves but instead they would go with the mindset of giving to God and in fact, those offerings at the time would be used to take care of the Temple, the priests and the poor.
Third, worship was about celebrating and rejoicing who God is and what He was done in their lives. Verses 7 and 12 speak to this idea and in fact verse 7 says that all the families are to come together, bring their offerings and have a feast to celebrate. That sounds a lot like that church potluck dinner that we talked about last week. Everyone came to God, gave what they had, and thanked God for everything He was doing. When this happened, no doubt everyone left being filled up, encouraged, and full of joy.
Fourth, it was about joining together in that joy and celebration. So, again, as we talked about last week, it wasn’t about just one person but the entire community joining together in worship of God.
What is interesting to note with all of this is the direct translation of the word worship in the Hebrew text. Generally, the word that is used means to “bow down” or to be “prostrate,” which signifies respect, awe, and the power of another person. Another word that is used means to “fall down,” again with a similar connotation. The third main word, and this is kind of interesting in my opinion, the word means to “serve, work or labor;” in other words putting other people before ourselves.
When it comes to the Greek translation of worship, the words have similar meaning. The word most used in the New Testament means to “kiss (the hand or the ground) toward.” The second most used word means to “respect or honor somebody.” And then after that, other words that are used are literally translated “to serve” or to give “glory.”
Roughly, about 500 years after God spoke these words about worship to the people, was when the specific place was completed with the building of the Temple. All of the people were to go to the Temple in order to worship God; bringing their offerings and sacrifices there. Worship was a very serious thing for their culture and in fact it was pretty dangerous because in order to come into God’s presence, the people had to be clean and innocent of sin. (Romans 6:23 – The wages of sin is death!).
The Temple itself was broken up into sections for different people to worship God. In the center towards the back was a place called the Holy of Holies and it was separated from everything else by, anyone want to take a guess, by a hanging curtain. It was behind this curtain that the Ark was placed which was a sacred box where God hung out. It was in the Holy of Holies that God’s presence dwelt. It was only the High Priest who was allowed to go into this place once a year and when he did, he would actually have a rope tied around his ankle just incase he wasn’t spiritually clean and died.
Walking out of the Holy of Holies brought you to the Sanctuary where the High Priest and other higher end priests could go regularly. Not in God’s presence, but pretty close. From there, you’d walk out of the Sanctuary to the Court of Priests, which is pretty self explanatory (where all the priests could worship); again, slightly farther away from God’s presence. Then we move farther away into the Israelites court which is where all the Jew’s could come. And actually, not all the Jews, but just the men. The woman, had their own separate area, cleverly called the Women’s Court, that was just a bit farther away from God’s presence than where the men could go. And then finally, there was one more section that was the Temple Precincts which was where any Gentiles, or non-Jews, could go.
So all in all, worship in the Old Testament was very hierarchical in that God’s presence was reserved to this one place and depending on who you were dictated how close you could get to God. So what does this have to do with us? Well, understanding the way worship was in the Old Testament will help us understand something very important about worship for us now. Let’s fast forward from the time the Temple was built 1,000 years to the time of Christ.
Jesus came to earth to restore our relationships with God, to forgive us our sin and disobedience to God, invite everyone to come into the presence of God, no matter who you were. In Matthew 27, as Jesus was on the cross, he shouts out “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani,” which meant, “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” He knew first hand what it was like to be removed from God’s presence and that it was not good. So, in verse 50, Jesus shouts that again and then gives up his spirit and dies. Then verse 51 tells us something that might seem strange to us reading today but was so important. The verse tells us that, “At that moment [the moment Jesus breathed his last breathe for all of mankind] the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple [separating the Holy of Holies and God’s presence from everyone] was torn in two, from top to bottom.” ***Tear curtain in half***
What was this signifying and communicating about our worship? Really we can look at it in two different ways. Let’s turn in our Bibles to Hebrews 10:19-25 to help us with the first way.
***Read Hebrews 10:19-25***
The first way to look at it is that worship and God’s presence are not reserved for the best of the best but now is available to everyone. The Holy of Holies was opened up so that everyone can boldly come into the presence of God because of Christ’s death on the cross. No matter who you are, what you’ve done, or where you’ve been, we can all come to Jesus just the way we are, bring whatever it is we have to offer Him, and praise Him for the things He has done in our lives. Real worship should remind us of the hope that we have through Christ’s death and again, this should be done with others. I love the way the writers of Hebrews uses plural language throughout this whole section and then ends saying that we cannot “neglect meeting together.”
The second way to look at it is that worship and God’s presence are not reserved for just the Temple anymore. The curtain tearing represents that God is not just in the Holy of Holies anymore but that His presence was available everywhere and that he is all around us! From this perspective, worship really becomes a lifestyle and not just something that happens at church or youth group or anywhere else. Worship should be happening at school, on the sports field, at home, at church, at youth group, at Young Life, at work…everywhere!
When you really break it down, worship is coming to God, no matter who you are and no matter where you are, giving yourself – your talents, intellect, resources, time, etc. to God and to others and then celebrating and rejoicing what God has done for you and will do for you.
***End with Flyleaf video from All Around Me***
