If you look in any dictionary the general definition of worship is the expression of reverence and adoration toward God. Some say that worship is exaltation and magnification. There are others who propose that worship is exploration that is peppered with enjoyment. Some others would probably concur that worship is obligatory, monotonous, religion, insight along with many other strands and streams of contemporary thought. To be sure, worship is exaltation! We exalt our Lord through the Person of Jesus Christ for the express purpose of lifting the name of Christ above and beyond human conjectures and mortal speculations. John 12:32 clearly shows us that when Jesus Christ is lifted up He will draw all men unto Himself. The church for centuries on end have endeavored to use evangelism as the antithesis for lifting Christ up. While evangelism is important, if personal worship is not right from within and without, the absence of true worship in the lives and hearts of God’s people becomes an eraser on the sheets of what we call evangelism. Why do I make this claim? Very simply, evangelism may get a person to come to our churches, but it is not proven that it will keep them there. Worship becomes the barometer by which the presence of God and the response of the people are gauged. He must be exalted. Quite naturally, magnification is also worship. In a nutshell, magnification is simply the idea of enlarging, broadening or widening. Most of us would agree that God is big! There are many professed atheists who deny and refute the existence of God. But even the atheist would agree that ‘if’ there was a God, much like the One whom Christians preach, he would be big! That is an arresting and amazing truth. Because it helps us to peer into the attributes of God on a broadening scale. What many fail to miss is that the larger the triune God is made real to us, the smaller we become. That is where a service, worship, giving, gratitude and appreciation becomes reasonable. Because in our attempts to enlarge our view of God, it calls self to realize the he or she is not worthy. Romans 12:1 says, “I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” The passage in Romans chapter 12 reveals to you and me that when we look at God for Who He is; and we look at ourselves for who and what we are not, we are ignited with a holy fire from within, to magnify Him for all that He is and what He is about.
One of my favorite passages is Joshua 24 where Joshua gathers all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and called for the elders of Israel and their head and for their judges and leaders and officers; and there they presented themselves before God. It is there that Joshua begins to give an excerpt of all that God had saved them from, delivered them through, redeemed them from and brought them TO. And yet they, time and time again, stray away from the purposes of Yahweh and Joshua says them from the Lord, “I have given you a land from which you did not labor, you dwell in cities that you did not build, you eat food and fruit from vineyards that you did not plant. Now therefore serve the Lord with sincerity and in truth and put away the gods of your fathers. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom you will serve.” And it is in the same verse where Joshua says, “But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!”
Same God…Same Struggles…Same Bondage…Same Tears…Same Pain…Same Loss…Same Red Sea…Same Pharoah being drowned…Same Giants in the Land…Same ushering into a Land flowing with milk and honey…same Pressures…same deliverance. Different Choice!!!
I Kings 18:21 “How long shall ye halt between two opinions?”
James 1:8 “A double-minded mind is unstable in all his ways”
Whether you are going to enjoy your own splendor and resplendence on the sidelines of pretensious worship as wimps or whether you are going to break the huddle, call the play and roll with the big boys with real worship.
Warren Wiersbe says that real worship is not a playground, showground but a battleground. But moreover it is Holy Ground!
Daniel 5:25 “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin…you are weighed in the balance”.
• Here is God….and here is you – picture the pendulum (it makes no sense that you have made yourself equal with God on the scale of your own self-aggrandisement and honest scrutiny.
• Let’s weigh in – You vs. God
- You are limited/God’s unlimited
- You are finite/God is infinite
- You can’t see/God is omniscient
- You are weak/God omnipotent
- You can only be in one place at a time/God is ubiquitous (everywhere-present) Omnipresent
You don’t know what tomorrow holds/Jeremiah 29:11
You can’t take a bullet and can’t get the Devil off your trail/Isaiah 54:17 “No weapon formed against my child shall prosper”
You kept running and running and now you’re tire/Isaiah 40:31 “I shall renew your strength”
The president don’t know you (neither does Farakhan)…you a Christian but the credit folk won’t give you credit/Philippians 2 “At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow..”
Your life stops at the grave at best and there is enough mess you have put yourself through on this side/John 10:10 “I have come that you may have life and have it more abundantly”
You’ve got to depend on your connections/Ephesians 3:20 “Able to do exceedingly, abundantly above all that we may ask or think”
Hell hounds are on your trail and you don’t know how to fight them off/Isaiah 59:19 “When the enemy comes in life a flood, that Lord will life up a standard against him”.
You keep falling down and getting back up(stumbling and doing dirt)…keep throwing bricks and hiding your hand/Jude 24 “Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory….”
• Illustration – I have some good excuses (pastoring a church with her own set of needs, studying and preparing, trying to continue my education, have a 3-year old child at home)…I’ve got some reasons!!! Now to you, those may not seem like good enough excuses especially when you look at yours and the reasons why you can’t do this and can’t do that!!! But while my excuses may seem little guess what? So are yours.
• All the hell I have been through this past year, God is STILL worthy of all my praise and my worship! And you can take that to the bank jack!
• I can lose my job today (for the record, I ain’t trying to)…He is worthy. He gives one he can take it away. (I have never seen a day when He failed me – I just don’t believe he’s gone start now.)
A script I once read--
What Cancer Cannot Do
Cancer is so limited...
It cannot cripple love
It cannot shatter hope
It cannot corrode faith
It cannot destroy peace
It cannot kill friendship
It cannot suppress memories
It cannot silence courage
It cannot invade the soul
It cannot steal eternal life
It cannot conquer the spirit.
What is true of that, is true of worship!!!
Jesus, in John 4 said that God is seeking those who will worship Him in Spirit and in Truth. God is seeking worshippers!!!
According to Kenneth Ulmer, what He’s finding are pseudo-spiritual minstrels fanning imaginary glory above their heads and working themselves into an emotional, ego-induced fever. He’s seeking worshippers.
While we are worried about the economy…He’s seeking worshippers.
While we are worried about bill collectors…He’s seeking worshippers.
While we are worried about mortgage…He’s seeking worshippers.
While we are looking at numbers…He’s seeking worshippers.
While we are trying make ends meet/trying sit in our favorite pew/assume business as usual/keep up tradition….He’s seeking worshippers!
What He’s finding are singers and shouters, sure enough.
What He’s finding is finding is pretty good sermons on Sunday mornings and political pundits who tote their bible under their arms, sure enough.
What He’s finding are pretty churches and padded pews and stain-glassed windows, sure enough.
But while those may be signs…are any of those things the true essence, essentia, epitome and authenticity of the validity of what we call worship?
God is seeking people who want to find Him, and many are still too concerned about how holy their holy dance looks. Worship is deeper than that because worship is deeper than US. We should see worship, yes, but we need to know WHY people worship and learn how to worship. If we stop at the surface and façade of worship, we’ve missed the point!
WHY? Worship is a matter of the HEART!!!
Disclaimor: Worship is a hard thing if it is not a HEART thing.
* True worship is communion with God in which believers, by grace, center their minds, attention and heart’s affection upon the Lord…humbly to God in response to His greatness and His word.
- We worship God because He creates
- We worship God because He redeems (John 3:16)
- We worship God because He restores (Isaiah 40:31)
- We worship God because He’s constant (I the Lord do not change)
- We worship God because He’s faithful (Lamentations)
- We worship God because He loves us
- We worship God because He came after me (He pursues us/chose us)
i.e. – I wouldn’t give my son for the world.
Scripture says you should love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul…Matthew 22.
Defining Worship
1. Worship is Mystery
Example: Kids who say, “That’s awesome”…but only God is awesome!!!
I can only be awestruck by the mystery of God.
2. Worship is celebration – celebration of the acts of God in human history.
Worship is so much more than celebration but it is celebration. Worship, however, is not an ‘hour of celebration’.
a. We celebrate His acts
b. We celebrate His providence
c. We celebrate His acts of Redemption
(there is nothing in the Koran that talks about a Savior who redeems of us)
d. We celebrate the redemptive revelation through Jesus Christ in the incarnation, cross and the resurrection.
Hymn: At the Cross, At the Cross where I first saw the light
e. We celebrate the manifestation of God’s power through the coming of the Holy Spirit.
3. Worship is LIFE
Example: When you ate a sandwich today…did you say “Wow…this is an amazing sandwich I have eaten al day”. But there is a lesson in taking the ordinary and seeing the extraordinary dimension of God and His creation.
4. Worship is Dialogue: Both revelation and response.
a. God is always revealing Himself through His creative order.
b. God is always revealing Himself through His only begotten Son.
c. God is always revealing Himself through His Word.
Our Call? Respond.
5. Worship is Offering
The purpose of worship is not just to receive blessing from God, but to make offerings to Him.
We come not to get, but also to give.
Example: Only using your wife to GET…not give?
The act of what we give monetarily is an act of what we do out of obedience.
6. Worship is Eschatological Fulfillment
It is the working out of salvation in history which ends to total adoration to our God. When I get to the end of my life, it will only be the beginning of God’s glory. (Revelation 4:8-11)
