Worship Is A Verb – Part 2
Scriptures: 1 Samuel 16:7; Matthew 23: 23, 25; John 16: 13-14
Introduction:
In my introductory message on last week, I shared with you that we are moving towards fully understanding what it means to worship God. Worship is a verb, not a noun. To worship God means that we must take some type of action – we must do something. Whether that action comes in the form of us giving God thanks, praising Him with our hands lifted up or just standing still reflecting on His goodness while silently thanking Him, worship requires an action on our parts. Last week I shared with you that true worship starts with a humble heart that recognizes what God has done for you. When we recognize that God is the acting on our behalf and it is not by chance that something happens we can begin to truthfully worship Him. Let me share something with your from our Bible Study class this past Wednesday.
This week in our Bible Study lesson, we had a brief discussion around understanding when God is doing something in our life and giving Him His recognition for those actions. We talked about how some believe what “will happen, will happen” and whatever happens must be the will of God. As we discussed this, I asked the group “Why do we pray?” if we believe that what “will be will be and what will happen will happen.” Often when we pray, we petition God for something. Why do we pray and ask God for anything? We do this because we believe that when we pray things change. So the fact that we pray and things change should tell us immediately that “what will be will not necessarily be” and just because something happens does not necessarily mean that it was God’s will for it to happen. There have been many things that have happened in my life that was my own doing, not God’s. But also remember that we have an enemy in this world that can also make things happen. So my point is, when we take a step back and look at things, we can find a reason to give praise and thanks to God which is the beginning of true worship.
The last point I want to remind you of from last week is that worship is individualized. When I come to Church and begin to worship God, it is just a continuation of the worship that I do when I am not at Church. The same applies to you when you come to Church. Our worship of God does not start at Church, but at home, on our jobs and wherever else we may be. For this reason I shared with you last week that if you are not worshipping God in your own private time, it will be very difficult for you to come into this Church and begin to do so. Worship here is just a continuation of the worship that should be taking place outside of these doors. As we move into my message this morning, I want to share with you some things that will hinder our worship. I came across these in book I referenced last week – “The Dynamics of Corporate Worship” by Vernon Whalley. As I read what he said, I was thinking of some of the worship services I’d been in and had to smile.
I. Hindrances To Truth Worship
The first thing we must understand is that our enemy, Satan, does not want us worshipping God and will do whatever he can to hinder that true, heartfelt worship. We know from Scripture that Satan is very crafty and sneaky and his ways of doing things are so quiet that if we are not careful, we will totally miss it when he is doing his thing. This is how it is with the hindrances to our worship. The things that hinder our worship are some of the very things we believe we need in order to worship God. That is how sneaky and crafty our enemy is, he makes us believe we need those things that are actually hindering us. As we begin to look at the hindrances to our worship, I want you to remember what God said to Samuel in 1 Samuel 16:7. He said “…..the Lord does not look at things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (NIV) When we are in worship service, we look at what is happening around us and think it is true worship, but God looks at the heart of those who are worshipping him and He knows what is happening. As we talk about these hindrances, I am referring to the attitude of the person in most cases versus the person themselves. For example, the first one we will look at deals with intellectualism. There are people out there who are very smart and considers themselves an intellectual, but that does not mean that they approach worship as an intellectual. There are also people out there whose intelligence equals that of a box of cheerios and their approach to worship can be described as one of intellectualism. So keep that in mind as we work our way through these.
• Intellectualism: Intellectualism is the doctrine that knowledge comes from pure reason without any aid from our senses. This doctrine is also known as rationalism. Remember what I talked about earlier from our bible study about why we pray? The person who worships with an attitude of an intellectual can find it difficult to worship God because there is always a rational explanation for why things happen. If there is a rational reason as to why things happen then it would appear that those things would have happened whether someone prayed or not. All of us act out on some level or with some issues this doctrine of intellectualism. This is why we are selective as to what we will take to God and what credit we will give God for the things happening in our lives. The intellectual person takes the intended emotional and spiritual experience of worship and turns it into a mental exercise as they try to determine what is happening and the “whys” behind it. They can often be found shaking their heads at the emotional experience of others because in their minds this is not a rational behavior. For this individual, everything is intellectualized and must have a rational meaning. Everything is broken down, analyzed, evaluated and reconsidered: the music, the sermon, how offering is done, everything. This worshipper evaluates the purpose, process and implications involved in every aspect of worship and those things that are deemed unimportant, inappropriate (by their measurement of appropriateness), and inconsistent with logical thinking are often ignored or explained away. One example the author talks about in the was the person who “often talks of the grandeur of the Almighty without ever practicing the grace, submission, faith, and surrender so much a part of communicating with the Holy One.” (pg. 36)
If you rationalize away the things that God is doing in your life, then you will never have a real reason to enter into true worship. If you intellectualize your faith, built on certain truths and aspects of God’s word that “makes sense” to you, you will always have a reason to believe that although God is “watching over you” the things that are happening in your life are the results of your own actions. To this I say again, why pray? If your prayers are for naught because whatever “will be will be”, then why pray. Remember what Isaiah said? He said “It will also come to pass that before they call, I will answer; and while they are still speaking, I will hear.” (Isaiah 65:24) God, our Father, has promised that because of His love for us, while we are yet speaking the desires out of our mouths, He will hear and listen. But look at this, God said that before we even call on His name, He has already answered our prayer because He knows what we need. We cannot rationalize why and what God is doing in our lives, but we can give Him praise and thanks for doing it. If our worship is dependent upon our intelligence and our ability to rationalize what is happening around us, we will miss the intimacy that God wants to have with us. Let’s move on to the second hindrance.
• Idealism: Now this one will possibly step on some of our toes. You see, idealism hinders true worship because it places the “idea” that true worship can only take place when it includes that which is familiar to our own cultural experience and is only right when it is based on the right formula – based on years of tradition. A person who is committed to idealism bases his or her worship almost completely on the cultural acceptance, their personal experience and the traditions that they are familiar with. I cannot tell you the number of people whom I have encountered that have told me that unless worship takes place a certain way, it is not true worship. You see, there must be some hands lifted up. There must be some shouting, dancing, yelling, crying, bowing, jumping, etc, etc, etc for real worship to take place. If you walked into a Catholic Church, real worship could be described as not having any shouting, dancing, yelling, crying, bowing or jumping. Real worship in those services could be the silence and the way in which they carry out their rituals. What you need to understand is that there are many Christians who believe that unless worship takes place the way it did when they were being taught how to worship, it is not real or true worship. There are many ministers who will tell you that they have the formula for what true worship is and if it is not being done the way their church does it, it is not true worship. While intellectualism allows for little or no expression of experience, this approach to worship to worship is based entirely on experience. You can easily identify someone with this mindset because you will hear them say things like: “We never did that way at my old Church” or “That’s not how it should be done.” When you hear these types of comments, someone is probably operating with an attitude of idealism when it comes to worship. Now here is the problem. The dangers of having a set program and a predetermined flow of “things to do”, is that the Holy Spirit if often programmed right out of the service. Remember, the Holy Spirit does what He wants to do when He is given access and sometimes what He wants to do does not follow our planned program. For this reason we must be sensitive to the move of the Spirit during our services. Idealism is also at work in the hearts of those who see the use of contemporary forms as the true test of real worship. There are a lot of old established Churches who refuse to have any type of contemporary music in their Church as they believe that only hymns can be part of a “real” worship service. Again, true worship is linked to a previously perceived idea of programming and not the working or presence of the Holy Spirit. Idealism can be a double-edged sword with one side being the commitment to tradition for the sake of tradition and the other side being the commitment to being contemporary for the sake of being relevant to what is needed by our “modern” Christians. In both cases, the Holy Spirit is left out in the cold.
This is what Jesus said to the scribes and Pharisees who had this attitude when it came to worship: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others……Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence.” (Matthew 23:23, 25) When you read these verses, you find that Jesus does not criticize the observance of the things of the law, but he does criticize the hypocrisy often involved. The Pharisees were very legalistic in how they kept the Law. They kept the Law externally to gain merit before God while breaking them inwardly. They were following the letter of the Law while ignoring its spirit. This is the same thing that those who are idealistic in their approach to worship. They will only define worship as the outward expression that is done in a certain format following an established program. Any deviation from the established program is met with harsh criticism and condemned. In reality, a person is considered to be truly worshipping God if they follow the program even if their hearts are far from God. This is what frustrated Jesus with the Pharisees. Let’s discuss one more before I close out this message. The last hindrance for today is imperialism.
• Imperialism: Imperialism is often seen side by side with idealism. A person with an imperialistic attitude will attempt to dominate the affairs of worship by controlling the planning and presentation of the service. Can you see how imperialism will line up side by side with idealism? Remember with the idealistic attitude the person would say “We never did it that way at my old Church”? Well, with imperialism, this individual would say, “The way we worshipped in my old Church was really the best way of worship and since I am in charge of this program, we will be doing it the way that I want.” The prevailing attitude of someone practicing imperialism is that worship is not true worship if he or she is not in charge of the program. (Remember, they know how it is supposed to be done.) Let me give you a few examples of imperialism within the Church so that you clearly see how it is operating, both in the Church and within our lives.
o Catholic Church: influenced by imperialism when rejecting the biblical principle of “the priesthood of believers” in preference to exclusive leadership in corporate worship by the clergy.
o Evangelical Fundamentalists: they might demonstrate imperialism by controlling music selection for worship – for the purpose of protecting the congregation from unnecessary form and structure.
o Reformed Theologians: might practice imperialism by making the claim that God deserves only hymns, hymns that have passed the test of time, while rejecting anything created for worship in this century.
o Sanctified Church: might practice imperialism by making the claim that all services must be “Spirit-filled” as evidence by someone shouting and/or speaking in tongues.
o Charismatic Church: might be guilty of imperialism when making the test for successful worship a “new word from God” during each of the weekly services. (A new word from God coming from someone speaking in an unknown tongue.)
o Church of Christ: they might be guilty of imperialism when they mandate that musical instruments should not be a part of any worship service.
Imperialism often compels those in charge to design emotionally satisfying stimuli as a means for people to know and communicate with God. Think about it. How many worship services have you attended when people were emotional and you left there thinking that the “Spirit” really moved during that service? Or how many services have you attended where the speaker “hooped” in order to get the audience into the message and it always comes at a certain point in the message? We are so accustomed to seeing certain things take place in our worship service that we do not even notice or think about the why.
Jesus said in John the 16th chapter tells us that “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.” (Verses 13-14) If this is what the Holy Spirit is supposed to be doing and we actually allow Him to be a part of our worship service, can’t you imagine what will happen when He steps in? Yes I know some of you may be asking "how can you tell the Holy Spirit from someone “trying” to be spiritual?" As we grow in our personal relationship with Christ, we will likewise become more sensitive to the Spirit of God and we will be able to hear Him when He whispers “that which you are seeing is not of Me, do not be swayed, stand still.” We will begin to understand and sense in our spirits when something (or someone) is not quite right. But my point with this is that we should invite the Holy Spirit into our services, not with just our mouths, but primarily with our hearts and not be so focused on the flow of the program but the Spirit behind the program. I will continue this message next week. May God bless and keep you.
(The primary source other than the Bible for this message is the book “They Dynamics of Corporate Worship” by Vernon M. Whaley.)
