Worship – What’s it all about?
Psalm 95
Video – The gift of worship – (from floodgate productions through Worship House Media)
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Worship, it is easy for us to get caught up in the ways we like to express worship and sometimes forget about
Who we worship and
why we worship and
how our worship can be pleasing to Him instead of just pleasing to us.
Our service last week got me thinking about worship.
If you weren’t here last week, about an hour before our morning service, a tree or some large branches fell on some of the power lines out here and snapped them. It was quite a light show at one point, but it knocked out our power here.
Not only that, but down the street at Palmer Park Baptist Church, their parking lot was flooded and they had to cancel their service. Their pastor and a few of their people joined us for our worship in the dark service.
So without sound boards, without video software, without amped instruments, without microphones and without lights, we joined with some brothers and sisters from another church and worshipped together.
That service was a good reminder that worship is not about our experience or how technically well everything went.
There are some people and churches that are all about the worship experience.
Now, even at Hickory Creek, we desire to provide an atmosphere that is helpful for people to worship the Lord.
But we always need to be careful
that it isn’t the experience we are worshipping,
but that it is the Lord we are worshipping.
Worship is not about us. It is all about God.
So, this week as I was thinking of these things, I began to think about what is involved in worship that is pleasing and acceptable to the Lord and if we can see in His word how we might worship and some things we might worship Him for.
I thought what better place to start, but in the Psalms which are often about worship.
So today, we are going to talk about Worship and what it is all about, and what it looks like according to God’s word.
Turn with me to Psalm 95
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(p. 426)
Now as you are turning there, we need to understand that worship should only be directed to the Lord.
Jesus tells us when He is being tempted by Satan to,
’Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’ (Matthew 4:10)
We need to worship the Lord and Him only.
We know this in our heads at least, that worship needs to be all about the Lord God.
Since we already know that, today, I want to ask what it is about in terms of
what we should worship Him for and
how we should worship him
for those things so He is pleased with our worship.
Let’s see if Psalm 95 can give us some guidance with this.
Psalm 95
Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD;
let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
2 Let us come before him with thanksgiving
and extol him with music and song.
3 For the LORD is the great God,
the great King above all gods.
4 In his hand are the depths of the earth,
and the mountain peaks belong to him.
5 The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.
6 Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the LORD our Maker;
7 for he is our God
and we are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care.
Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert,
9 where your fathers tested and tried me,
though they had seen what I did.
10 For forty years I was angry with that generation;
I said, "They are a people whose hearts go astray,
and they have not known my ways."
11 So I declared on oath in my anger,
"They shall never enter my rest."
In this Psalm, I see 3 things that the psalmist says are worship to the Lord.
I don’t believe this is necessarily an exhaustive list of ways to worship or of things to worship Him for, but I believe it will help us to understand better how to worship Him in ways that please Him.
First we see that
Worship is about Rejoicing
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Psalm 95:1
Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
In our worship, there should be rejoicing in the Lord.
Rejoicing in the Lord is one aspect of how we are to worship the Lord.
He loves it when we rejoice in Him.
The Hebrew word translated “sing for joy”, means to “cry out” or “rejoice”
The second part, where it says to “shout aloud,” is similar in that it means to “sound the alarm” or “make a joyful noise.”
They both talk about giving praise audibly and verbally to the Lord.
What does rejoicing look like?
Now this passage goes on to talk about what we should be rejoicing over, but before I get into that, I want to say a few words about rejoicing in the Lord as worship.
Often, we think of worship as staid and proper only. Now there is a place for that which we will talk about in a few minutes, but I think we do not truly give the Lord the worship he is due when that is all we do.
The Joy a child brings to you when they rejoice in your gift
Imagine for a moment, that your child had been wanting a puppy (or some other gift) for years.
For his birthday, you give him a puppy, and he comes up and says, “Thank you very much father for the gift of this new puppy” (all proper in his communication).
Or
He gets his new puppy and he is rejoicing and excited and is shouting and giving praise for the blessing you have given him.
Which one of those responses would please you more?
Now before you think that this would be dishonoring to God to act like this, let me read to you an account of how David, a man after God’s own heart, worshipped the Lord when they were bringing the ark of the covenant back to Jerusalem.
2 Samuel 6:14-16, 20-22
14 David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the LORD with all his might, 15 while he and the entire house of Israel brought up the ark of the LORD with shouts (same root as used in Psalm 95 – shout for joy) and the sound of trumpets.
16 As the ark of the LORD was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD, she despised him in her heart.
20 When David returned home to bless his household, Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said, "How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, disrobing in the sight of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!"
21 David said to Michal, "It was before the LORD, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the LORD’s people Israel-I will celebrate before the LORD. 22 I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor."
Here is a good comment that one pastor that I was reading said this in regards to Worship.
“Some Christians seem to think that worship cannot and should not be exuberant or noisy. They are often critical of others whose worship is too animated and enthusiastic. While there are extremes, few in our circles come close to being too enthusiastic. Our tendency is to react against such worship, even as Michal disdained David’s enthusiasm before the ark of God, an attitude for which she was divinely disciplined.”
Bob Deffinbaugh – “A warning about worship.” Accessed 9/18/2008 at http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=524
Worshiping the Lord by rejoicing in Him is pleasing to Him.
Rejoicing may mean that there is some movement to your body as you worship.
Rejoicing may mean that you have a smile on your face.
Rejoicing may mean that your arms have left your sides and they are raised up to the Lord.
We see a number of Scriptures that even direct us to do some of this.
Psalm 63:4 - I will praise you as long as I live,and in your name I will lift up my hands.
Psalm 134:2 - Lift up your hands in the sanctuary and praise the LORD.
Paul even writes to Timothy saying in
1 Timothy 2:8 - I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing.
Sometimes people lift their hands as a sign of worthiness.
Sometimes people lift their hands as a sign of dependence and love and surrender.
So at times that you worship the Lord by rejoicing, rejoice with all of who you are, with your mind, your voice, your body, your hands, everything.
It pleases the Lord.
The psalmist goes on to give a couple of reasons that we should worship by rejoicing in the Lord.
First we should
We should Rejoice in the Lord as Savior
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Psalm 95:1
Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
We should rejoice in the fact that the Lord has brought salvation for us.
We should worship by rejoicing in that fact.
This is not only “good news,” this is great news that we should rejoice in.
Those who trust Jesus as their Savior, repenting of their sin and believing in Jesus as God in the flesh who died and rose again will not experience hell, but be with the Lord forever in heaven.
Rejoice for the Lord is good and he has provided salvation for those who trust him.
Not only should we rejoice in the Lord as Savior, but
We should rejoice in the Lord as Creator
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Psalm 95:4-5
4 In his hand are the depths of the earth,
and the mountain peaks belong to him.
5 The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.
God has created all of this for His glory and our enjoyment.
1 Timothy 6:17b - put your “hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.”
We should rejoice with shouts and song in how good the Lord is to us in providing salvation and creating these things for us.
Worship the Lord by rejoicing in Him as Savior and Creator.
But worship is not just one faceted as the psalmist informs us.
Worship is not just about rejoicing.
Worship is about revering
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Psalms 95:6
6 Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker;
This may be an aspect of worship that we are more comfortable with.
We are to revere the Lord.
We bow down and humble ourselves because we are awed by Him and what He has done.
Now the psalmist here also gives a couple of things that we should revere the Lord for.
Psalm 95:6
6 Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the LORD our Maker;
We should revere the Lord as our Maker
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While
we rejoice in the Lord as Creator of the things of this universe, all that He has made for us,
we should fall prostrate and revere him in worship as our maker.
He created you and me. This is personal.
He has designed us and created us in His own image.
It is like when someone has done something so personal and special for you that you are touched and moved beyond words.
Psalm 139:13-14a – “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made”
The Lord is our maker. He has personally knit us together. We are not just some assembly line production. He made you.
Worship Him by Revering Him.
The psalmist goes on and says that
We should revere the Lord as Our Shepherd
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Psalm 95:7
7 for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.
God not only made us, he cares for us as a shepherd cares for his sheep.
As I think about this sometimes, it is humbling.
I am one who is more like, “well, if you are going to do stupid stuff, then you are going to suffer the consequence of your actions.”
But the Lord cares for us and protects us as a Shepherd does for his sheep.
When a dumb sheep wanders off and exposes himself to attack by wolves, the shepherd goes to care for him and save him from that.
Now, if the sheep does this over and over again, the shepherd may break the leg of the sheep so he won’t be able to put himself in harms way.
It may be painful for the sheep, but it is actually an act of caring on the part of the shepherd.
John 10:14-15
14 "I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me- 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father-and I lay down my life for the sheep.
In our lives, during trials we face, when we are wondering how the Lord could let us experience the pain we are in, realize that the Lord cares for us as a Shepherd and know that He is can use that pain, that trial, for our ultimate good and that He will care for us even in the midst of that pain even to the point of sacrificing Himself for you.
And know also that when the Shepherd breaks the leg of a sheep for his ultimate protection, the Shepherd will then carry that sheep everywhere.
When we are suffering pain, the Lord will care for you and carry you during those times.
We can worship him even in those moments by revering Him and honoring Him as our Good Shepherd.
Come before Him reverently and worship him as our Maker and Shepherd.
There is one more aspect of Worship that the psalmist talks about. He says that
Worship is about Responding
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Psalm 95:7b - Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert,
The psalmist is encouraging his hearers to respond to the Lord in a way that is worship.
Responding to the Lord’s work and leading with a hard heart is not worship.
If our response to the Lord’s work in our life and leading is going to be worship, then
We should Respond to the Lord in Faith
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When we are hardening our hearts, we are not responding in faith.
If we are going to worship by our response, it must be in faith.
Hebrews 11:6 – “without faith it is impossible to please God”
And Paul tells us to “live by faith, not by sight.” - 2 Corinthians 5:7
So if we are going to worship the Lord by our response to Him, it must be in faith.
But responding in faith also means
We should Respond to the Lord in Obedience
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The Israelites in the desert did not respond in obedience. They disobeyed.
The author of Hebrews quotes this passage of Psalm 95.
Listen to what he says in
Hebrews 3:15-19
15 As has just been said:
"Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion."
(He quotes psalm 95)
16 Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? 17 And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? 18 And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? 19 So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.
Faith and obedience go hand in hand.
If we are going to worship the Lord by the ways we respond to Him, then it must be by a faith that is obedient to Him.
There really is no other kind of faith.
Faith that is not obedient is no faith at all.
This is just what James talks about in faith without works being dead.
Conclusion
These are some of the things that worship should be about.
It is not about us feeling good.
It is not about the emotions we experience.
It is not about us feeling good about ourselves.
Worship is not about us at all.
It is all about God.
It is about rejoicing in Him as Savior and Creator.
It is about revering Him as our Maker and our Shepherd.
It is about responding to Him in faith and obedience.
This morning we are going to end in a song and a prayer.
The worship team is going to lead us in the “Heart of Worship”
Rejoice in Him
For some of you perhaps you need to worship the Lord by rejoicing in Him and what He has done.
Rejoice, Lift your hands up to Him and worship Him.
Revere Him
For some, you may need to revere Him this morning, recognizing His personal care of you, even as you have wondered where He is in the midst of your pain, worship Him as the One who is carrying you. Be reverent before Him.
Respond to Him
For some, maybe the Lord has been leading you in a direction and you need to respond to Him. Maybe for some, you are not yet sure how He is leading, but you need to respond Him that you are willing to follow wherever He leads.
In your heart, worship him by responding in faith and a willingness to be obedient to Him.
If you feel a need to kneel down before Him, feel free to do that by coming up or even in the aisle or in the back.
Whatever way that the Lord is leading you to worship Him, do that as we sing this song.
Song - “Heart of Worship”
Pray after song.
