Review
Last time we took a brief look at v.2, where David spoke of his experience in the sanctuary. We found the focus was not on what he offered God, but what he received from God.
2 Therefore I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. 3 Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. 4 Therefore I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. 5 My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods
The solution to all the lazy, do-nothing, pew-sitting sluggards is not to convince them to come to give instead of to get. The solution is to get them to come and feast upon the grace of God, because God’s grace is not without effect. The love of Christ, when we have a profound enough experience of it, will compel us just as it did Paul in 2 Cor.5:14. If you want to get people serving in the church, get them to have foremost in their mind, “I’m coming to church to receive grace from God – the kind of grace that has an overflow effect that drives me and compels me to give and to serve.” We should come to church seeking that kind of grace specifically, because that is the only kind of grace there is. Grace that has no overflow is not grace. David does not say, “God, I felt I owed You a favor for all You have done for me, so I went into the sanctuary and polished the gold in there and did some repairs on the altar.” He went there and got to see God’s power and glory, and experience God’s love which is better than life at its best, and he got all the longings and cravings of his inner man completely satisfied. And so now he wants to go back and get all that again. That is what going to the dwelling place of God is all about. That is how you glorify and magnify God in the way you come to church.
God has made the claim that He is like a spring that produces a never-ending flow of satisfaction - just simply being in His presence will satisfy all the needs and desires and longings of the soul. And you magnify and glorify and please Him when You believe that – when you come to church convinced that His claim is true - fully expecting satisfaction in your soul. When you come to church saying, “I don’t feel like going, I don’t expect that my soul will be refreshed and ravished and satisfied by God; but I will go anyway because I need to do this for God” – that belittles and insults and dishonors God.
If the 2-year-old is not going to enjoy giving the gift to mom, then it is pointless for mom to take him to the store and help him get her a gift. We are the 2-year-old. If we are not going to enjoy serving God, it is pointless; because the only thing we were offering God by serving Him was our glad, joyful, willing love. So if that is not there we are giving Him nothing.
That is why when Peter speaks to pastors he emphasizes eagerness and willingness more than anything else.
1 Pe.5:2-3 Be shepherds of God's flock that is under your care, serving as overseers-- not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not greedy for money, but eager to serve
That phrase “as God wants you to be” is one of those wonderful snapshots right into the heart of God. “I want you to enjoy opening the presents. I do not need your help. I just want your joy.”
Do you see why God will not allow Himself to be found by us unless our seeking is earnest and wholehearted? When we are not earnest in our seeking we are saying something about the value of what we are seeking. You show the value of the object to you by the way you seek. You do not search your house for a lost quarter the same way you search for a lost million dollar winning lottery ticket. If your little child has been lost in the mountains for 12 hours and it is getting dark, and you search for him in a lazy, half-hearted way worrying about whether you are going to miss your favorite show tonight if you search too long; you are saying something about how much you value your child. God is an infinite treasure, and He will not be mocked and belittled by children who seek Him in the same way they seek lesser things.
So everything you ever do to seek God – when you do it, just ask yourself, “What’s earnest about this? Is there any conceivable way what I’m doing right now could be called seeking God with all my heart and all my soul?”
One woman’s description of how her earnestness faded over time:
I came to see that my relationship to my Lord Jesus Christ, with the passing years had eroded away, something like a marriage gone humdrum. What did I do when I found a little pocket of spare time…? I couldn’t wait to get together with other people – people I liked … Or I read a stimulating book. Or I went out to enjoy nature. I even plunged further into my work, doing things that I normally didn’t have time for. But to go to Jesus – to give Him first claim on my spare time, that I did not do.
Do you ever get a few free minutes, and as you are trying to decide what to do with that time the prevailing thought is, “Oh good, I have a chance to just spend a few extra minutes with the Lord”- not so much because you have disciplined yourself to do that, but because it is really what you want to do at that moment? If you do it just out of discipline that is better than not doing it at all, but it shows that you are probably in a marriage with God that has gone humdrum.
Longing came from past seeing
From the NIV translation it looks as though there is no real connection between verses 1 and 2, but the first word of v.2 in the Hebrew is a conjunction that joins the two verses together logically. Verse 2 shows us what it was David was hungering and thirsting and longing for – he was longing for that experience that he had in the sanctuary, when he saw God’s glory and power.
David longed to go to the Sanctuary. Usually the word “sanctuary” refers specifically to the Holy Place, where only the priests could go. But in some contexts, like this one, it can refer to the entire tabernacle. The tabernacle was the tent-version of the Temple before the first Temple was built.
Take David’s words about the Sanctuary and apply them to some other place. What would you think if you met someone who went on a vacation, and talked this way about where he went? “How did you like the place you went on vacation?”
“It was incredible. I want to go back there so bad. My entire being is gripped with longing to go back there… My soul thirsts for that place like a person dehydrating in the desert. My body longs for that place. I’m going to put all my energy and all my effort into nothing else but getting back there.”
I have never heard anyone talk about any place like that – no matter how much they enjoyed it. I want you to realize how extreme this language is. We do not talk this way about the most beautiful paradise in Hawaii, not the most spectacular destination in Alaska – nowhere.
Now imagine for a moment that you are a foreigner who is not familiar with Israel at all, and you bump into David out in the desert. You are excited to meet him, because you have heard of his incredible exploits and amazing adventures, which were more extreme than Indiana Jones (and David’s were actually real!). So you are excited to meet him.
And as you talk to him, he keeps going on and on about this place where he wants to go. It is all he can talk about. His soul is thirsty for it, his body is hungry for it, his entire being longs for it. And you think, “Wow, that must be some place! More spectacular than any place I have ever been.” So you make it the goal of your life to visit there someday. And finally the day comes when you get to see it. You can’t wait.
When you arrive you are shocked – “A tent? you’ve got to be kidding me. A bunch of animal skins sewn together and set up as a tent?” You go inside and it has dirt floors, it is poorly lit, and you do not really see anything very exciting at all. There are some interesting things – all very beautiful - but it is certainly not the most spectacular scene you have ever experienced.
In fact, after looking around for 2 or 3 minutes you are bored with the place. There is really nothing to do there except pray and worship. Your ride does not arrive to pick you up for another two hours, so you have to spend two hours sitting in this place. By the time you finally leave you are thinking it is one of the most boring places you have ever been.
And as you are driving away you get to thinking about David. He was a man of adventure! He had fought hand to hand in hundreds of battles. He had killed lions and bears with his bare hands. He defeated the giant, Goliath. David was famous. The women danced in the streets and sang songs about him. He was the king. He was rich. Anything he wanted he could buy. Anywhere he wanted to go he could go. And of all the amazing experiences he had had, and all the exciting things he had done, the most powerful, overwhelming desire of his heart was to go into that tent? What did David experience in there?
Seeing God
Verse 2 says he saw God.
2 I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.
The problem with that is God is invisible.
Jn.1:18 No one has ever seen God.
1 Jn.4:12 No one has ever seen God.
In 1 Tim.1:17 Paul said that God is invisible. So how did David manage to see the invisible? The same way Moses did.
Heb.11:27 By faith Moses … persevered because he saw him who is invisible.
Moses saw Him who is invisible by faith. Obviously this is figurative language, since the definition of invisible is that it is unable to be seen. No one has ever seen God in the literal sense. But figuratively speaking, it is possible to see Him. A figure of speech is designed to reveal what one thing is like by comparing it with something else. The experience David had with the invisible God in the Sanctuary is compared to seeing.
One reason for using this particular figure is, presumably, for David to let the reader know that he is referring to an experience.
Seeing means experiencing
Ps.16:10 you will not…let your Holy One see decay. (He will not experience decay.)
Jn.3:36 whoever rejects the Son will not see life. (He will not live.)
So to see something is to experience it. Suppose are stargazing, and suddenly the people you are with become excited – “WOW! Did you see that! That is the most incredible shooting star I have ever seen! Unbelievable!” But you didn’t see it.
So they describe it to you, so now you know all about it. Is that good enough? No. If you do not see it, you missed it - even if someone describes it to you. So to experience and enjoy something you have to see it. You have to have an experience with it that goes beyond mere knowledge.
David uses the word “see” because he wants us to know this is more than just knowledge. He did not just learn some things about God and think about them. There was more to it than that. There has to be more to it than that, because David is out in the desert longing for that experience again. He still knows all the information about God that he knew before. But he wants more than that – he wants to see God – to experience Him.
Think of how much time and money we spend just to see things. People will travel thousands of miles to go see the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls. Think of the millions of photos people take every day. Seeing is one of the great pleasures of life. And David wants us to know it was an experience that is like seeing.
Think about what it means to see a person. Seeing someone implies more than just looking at him. If I say “Tracy is going to MN to see her parents” does that mean she is just going to go stare at them? No, it means she is going to go be with them interact with them and enjoy them. That is what happened with David in the Sanctuary. He got to experience the theological information he knew about God in a personal way.
Experiencing God is experiencing His attributes
First David says he saw God, and then he clarifies what he means. He says “I saw You. Specifically, I saw Your power and glory.” The only knowledge of God that it is possible to have is knowledge of His attributes. The only way to see God is to see His attributes. The only way to experience God is to experience His attributes. Nothing else can be known or experienced about God besides His attributes. We know that by definition – because His attributes are all those things He has revealed about Himself. If there is something He has not revealed, there is no possible way anyone can know or experience that thing.
So the experience David had was an experience of God’s attributes – His glory and His power.
Power
What power did David vividly experience in the sanctuary? Think for a minute about David’s experiences of God’s power. God empowered David in some remarkable ways. It is fascinating to me that when David gets to longing for an amazing experience of God’s power from his past he does not bring up the incident with the lion, bear, Goliath, or some other battlefield deliverance. David routinely experienced demonstrations of God’s power that were beyond anything most of us have ever experienced in the physical realm. But of all the awesome things David had seen God do, the most awesome took place in that tent. When David longed for an experience of God’s power, his mind went back to the last time he was in the Sanctuary.
I believe that is because the power of God’s work on the soul is far beyond any other demonstration of His power. The Sanctuary was a place where sacrifices were made and sins were dealt with, and where God revealed His presence. It requires more power to sanctify my corrupt, rebellious, sinful soul than it did to create the Universe. Eph.1 talks about the power that is at work in us in our salvation.
Eph.1:19-21 That power is like the working of his mighty strength, 20 which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21 far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.
I believe David had seen miracles (not even really tough children can normally kill lions and bears with their bare hands). But when his soul got to thirsting and craving and longing for an experience of divine power, he didn’t want a miracle. He wanted to experience the power of God inside his soul. The kind of power it takes to transform the heart. The kind of power it takes to deliver you from some sin that has you completely enslaved. The kind of power it takes to make you excited about the Word of God when it has become boring and dry. The kind of power it takes to enable you to concentrate on prayer long enough to get out a complete sentence when you are distracted and God seems distant. The kind of power it takes to grasp the love of God.
Eph.3:17-19 I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge-- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Knowing the love that surpasses knowledge means having an experiential and relational knowledge (the way Adam knew his wife Eve and she conceived) of that which is beyond intellectual comprehension. And that requires massive power. That is the kind of power David experienced and wanted to experience again.
David was in the desert – he could look around and see amazing displays of God’s power in the creation. He could see the awesome display of stars that is visible out in the desert. He could see the sun, the moon, the clouds – he could feel the power of the storms. But David’s soul was thirsty for a much more awesome display of power than that. (By the way – aren’t you glad there is a more awesome display than that? We love to see God’s power in the creation, but that alone is not enough to satisfy that massive appetite God has built into us to see power. Sometimes you look at the sky or the mountains and you are intrigued, but still not satisfied. God made us so we will not be satisfied with just being intrigued. We need to be awed. When God opens up our eyes to experience a glimpse of His glory in the creation, then we are awed. And that happens once in a while. But if He does not do that, and all you see is the creation and not God’s glory – it is neat, it is intriguing, it is fascinating; but it is not enough to satisfy the longing in the soul to be awed.
David longed for the Sanctuary because he knew from experience that God is more amazing than what God has done. Just like meeting an African lion face to face is a more profound experience than just seeing one of his paw prints in the dirt.
What is it like to see an attribute of God?
What would it be like if this were to happen tomorrow at church? What, exactly, would happen? You walk into church with a whole bunch of things that you know about God, but you are not moved or awed or excited about in any special way. You know it is an amazing reality, but for some reason you are not especially amazed. If someone asks you if it is a wonderful thing that God is holy or eternal, you would say, “yes,” but it is not really filling you with much wonder at the moment.
The reason for that is this – unless God does a special, specific work of opening the eyes of your heart at a certain moment, you can know truth about him but you can’t appreciate what is wonderful about it. You can’t be moved and stirred in your soul by it. You can know all about His majesty, but you can’t be awed by it. You can know all about His love, but your heart can’t be warmed by it. You can know all about His holiness, but it does not generate godly fear in your heart. You can know all about His grace, but you can’t be filled with joy by it. You can know all about heaven, but you can’t be moved with exuberant hope by it.
In order to be moved to tears or moved to joy or moved to hope or moved to awe, God has to do a special work to open up your eyes to be able to really appreciate what is wonderful about a particular attribute. Just because you are a Christian does not mean the eyes of your heart are all the way open. You are not completely blind like a non-Christian, but all of us need our eyes opened more. Paul was speaking to believers when he said,
Eph.1:17-18 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. 18 the eyes of your heart having been enlightened
I start every day asking God to open my eyes to see His glory that day. No one I know of (besides Jesus) ever had more ability to see what is so wonderful about Scripture than the writer of Ps.119. When he looked at Scripture he was moved in such powerful ways. And yet even he said:
Ps.119:18 Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.
Suppose someone was looking over his shoulder when he wrote that and said, “Just use a concordance. Look under W for ‘wonderful – you’ll find some verses’.” Do you think he would have said, “Oh – good idea. I didn’t think of that”? No. More likely he would have said, “I know where the wonderful things are in Scripture, what I need right now is the ability to see and appreciate and experience and enjoy what it is that is so wonderful about those wonderful passages.”
Think of all the times when there is some passage that all your life just seemed like no big deal. If someone said “That is my favorite verse” you would secretly wonder why. And then one day your eyes are opened and the truth of that verse comes into focus in a powerful way that thrills your heart and has powerful application for your life. When that happens it is hard to explain it to other people.
“Hey, I had the greatest time in the Word this morning! I was reading Ps.139 and it just really hit me – God is with me all the time! His presence is right here with me!!!!”
“Didn’t you already know that?”
“Yes, I knew it before, but today it just hit me – Do you realize how incredible that is? He’s right here with me!”
And the person walks away scratching his head and thinking, “What is he seeing that I’m not seeing?”
Every passage of Scripture is like that; and every attribute of God is like that. If your eyes were opened to really see it, it would have a powerful effect on you and give you great joy. Every morning I focus on a new attribute of God, and I start by begging God: “Lord, right now this just isn’t doing anything in my heart. Open my eyes so I can see what is so great about this attribute that I might love You more.”
That is the hard work of devotions – doing the mental and emotional heavy lifting of thinking about what is so great about an attribute of God. And the great thing about church is that a lot of that heavy lifting is done for you. My goal as a pastor is, as often as possible, to highlight an attribute of God in the sermon in a way that makes it easier to see what is wonderful about that attribute.
Glory
The other aspect of God that David experienced was His glory. God’s glory is what is wonderful about God as seen from our point of view. God is wonderful and good and holy and perfect – and when what He is is revealed to us, what we see is called “glory.”
And again, you see a lot of that in the creation. David Himself was the one who wrote Ps.19 – the heavens declare the glory of God. David knew that the heavens declared the glory of God, yet here he is, sitting right out under the heavens in the desert, longing for an experience of the glory of God. And if someone walked up to him and said, “David, haven’t you ever read Ps.19? Just look up at the sky!” David would have said, “I know the sky declares His glory. But I want a greater experience of it than that. I long to experience it like it is experienced in the Sanctuary.”
In order to really be moved and awed and changed and transformed by God’s glory, the eyes of the heart have to be opened. His glory is on display all the time in the creation, but unless God does a special work to open the eyes of your heart to experience that glory, it will not have that transforming effect on you. If you really see God’s glory, you will be enraptured by it. It will affect your heart and your will and your emotions and your attitudes and your affections and your desires and your inclinations. You will be amazed by it and delighted by it and it will fill you with joy.
So any time when you are not delighted and enraptured with the glory of God, your eyes need some more opening. I doubt there is any prayer I pray more times in a day than, “Please, dear God, for the sake of Your name – open my eyes to see Your glory.”
Why did David have to go the Sanctuary?
Why didn’t he just do what I do – ask God to open the eyes of his heart out there in the desert? Why does he have to go to that tent? The reason he had to go to the Sanctuary is because the Sanctuary is where God chose to reveal His glory in the most profound way. Could David experience the presence of God in other places? Yes, to some degree (Ps.139:1-4), but nowhere near as much as in the Sanctuary. The Sanctuary in the Tabernacle (and later in the Temple) was the place where God chose to be the headquarters of His presence to bless – the place where He chose to reveal His glory in the most explicit way. That is what “the dwelling place of God” means. God is everywhere present, but His presence to bless is revealed only in certain places and certain contexts. God’s presence to bless is when God reveals His presence to you in a favorable way. Most of the time when the Bible talks about God’s presence, that is what it is talking about.
So what about for us? Where do we go to experience the presence of God? Is it possible for you to experience His presence by yourself in the privacy of your own prayer closet? Yes – even more so than for David. We can have a much greater private experience with God than the Old Testament saints could because of the indwelling of the Spirit.
Jn.14:17 you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.
We have a much closer, more intimate fellowship with God as individuals now because we have been adopted as His own children. And the indwelling Spirit reminds you of your status as children.
Ro.8:15-16 For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.
So we can have profound communion with the Lord in seclusion all by ourselves. But again, it is nowhere near the level of communion we can experience in the Church – the gathered community of believes. That is the primary setting in which God reveals His presence.
Eph.2:21-22 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
1 Cor.3:16-17 Do not you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? 17 If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple.
That is not talking about you as an individual. The topic in context is divisions in the church. If you destroy the church by creating divisions, God will destroy you; because the Church is the sacred Temple of God.
1 Pe.2:5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood,
2 Cor.6:14-16 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For …16 What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people."
The greatest experience of the presence of God is supposed to be in the Church. And so if you have not found that to be true – if you have more profound communion with the Lord in your prayer closet than in church, that means there is either something wrong with your church or something wrong with the way you are going to church (your expectations, attitude, awareness, etc.) That is one reason I am excited about Agape Bible Church. We are going to be all about functioning as the dwelling place of God, where people can come and experience God’s presence.
The effect: transformation
When this happens to you, it has a transforming effect. ¬¬¬¬
2 Cor.3:18 And we, who with unveiled faces all behold as in a mirror the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory
You become like what you behold. Whatever it is that the gaze of the soul is fixed upon, that is what you will become like. The gaze of your soul is fixed on television and the trivia and garbage of this world for 20 hours for every one hour it is fixed on the glory of God, you will be conformed to this world. Transformation comes from seeing. Just seeing His glory makes you more like him. In fact, when you go to heaven and your first day in heaven God makes you perfect, here’s how He will do it:
1 Jn.3:2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
When the time comes for God to make you completely sinless, the way He will do that is He will just let you see His full glory, and that sight will instantly transform you and make you perfect. You can not see him that clearly now but you can see enough of His glory by faith, as in a mirror, that it can change you in great ways. If you have sin you want to get rid of or if you want to be transformed in any way, this is the way to do it.
Nothing will be more satisfying to your soul.
Ps 17:15 And I-- in righteousness I will see your face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness.
If you experience it, you will be like David, who said,
Ps 27:4 One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.
Here is how it works (or at least this is one way that it works): The means of transformation in the Christian life is always faith. We are saved by grace through faith and we are sanctified by grace through faith. You become more godly and more Christ-like and you sin less and have more victory over the flesh when you believe God’s promises more. When you are facing some specific temptation and your flesh is enticed, and you try to say to your soul, “Do not give in – prefer fellowship with God over this sin. The joy of fellowship is better than the pleasure of this sin. You will enjoy unbroken fellowship more than you’ll enjoy this” - if your soul is like mine, a lot of times your soul will respond, “Yeah right. Wake up to reality – last time you were in church you were bored to tears. You hardly enjoy your prayer times if at all – it takes all the discipline you have just to make yourself do it. But I know for a fact this sin will bring pleasure.”
You have to be able to give your soul a plausible argument. You have to be able to say, “Hey, remember that last time of communion with the Lord? You know that was more desirable and pleasurable even than this sin. Do not you want that again?” You have to have faith – you have to believe that God’s great and precious promises are really true. And you will believe them when you can do what David did and think back to a specific incident that really was wonderful.
That is what will enable you to prefer fellowship with God over a sin. If you read the faith chapter (Hebrews 11) and read about all the great men and women of faith, you will find that all their amazing exploits of faith were really just great acts of preferring.
Heb.11:25-26 He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. 26 He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.
He was able to resist the pleasures of sin because he was able to prefer what God had promised.
Three kinds of worship
I think most would agree that the ideal for worship is v.2. Is not that what you want when you go to worship – to see God? To come away having had an experience of God’s power and glory that is so profound that your soul longs for that more than anything else in life? No question, v.2 is the best kind of worship there is.
But it is not the only acceptable kind of worship, which is great news for us, because let’s face it – not all our worship experiences are like that. Another acceptable kind of worship is the kind you see in v.1. In times when you are not having a profound experience of God’s presence – you are sitting in church and you are singing about God’s holiness or the preacher is preaching about His foreknowledge, and you are trying to see what is so wonderful about that attribute, but it is just not having any effect on you - your eyes just are not opened to see it in a way that makes you marvel and rejoice and that satisfies the longings of your soul - when that happens you can still worship God. But instead of worshipping in the way of v.2, where you take great delight in seeing God, you worship in the way of v.1, where you hunger and thirst and long to see God.
You cry out to Him and say, “God, my heart is dull toward You. My eyes are blind to what is so wonderful about this. I do not feel Your presence. I am not experiencing the joy and peace and strengthening, etc. that come from Your presence. But I want that – Oh, Lord, how I want that!” That wanting is hunger and thirst for God, and hunger and thirst for God glorifies Him, and so it is acceptable worship!
But what do you do if you do not even really want it? You do not feel that compelling drive to be in His presence. You do not feel that deep craving to be near Him. All you feel is that you are looking forward to church being over so you can get some lunch. All you feel is that you would rather be sitting in your favorite chair watching TV. You know it is not right for you to feel this way, but you can’t help it. This is how your affections are inclined right now.
When that is the case, there is still an acceptable way for you to worship God. Repentance. You confess the indifference of your affections as a terrible sin, and you say, “God, I am willing to give this sin up. I will do whatever it takes. Please, change my heart and make me as I should be.” And you spend the worship service in repentance before God. Even the godliest people and the strongest Christians are often reduced to this third kind of worship. It even happened to the psalmists.
Ps.73:21-22 When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, 22 I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you.
When that happens, your repentance is acceptable worship and will draw you into God’s presence.
Isa.57:15 For this is what the high and lofty One says-- he who lives forever, whose name is holy: "I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.
1) So the ideal in worship is joy – to see God and delight in what you see.
2) If you can’t do that, you can still worship through longing – deeply wanting to experience the joy of seeing God.
3) And if you do not even have that you can still worship – through sorrow; repenting over your lack of desire.
If you feel nothing in your worship – no joy, no longing and no sorrow; then you are not worshipping – period. Even if you are singing your lungs out, and thinking about God, and bowing down on the floor; if the heart is unmoved, there is no worship.
John Stott:
We evangelicals do not know much about worship. Evangelism is our specialty, not worship. We have little sense of the greatness of Almighty God. We tend to be cocky, flippant, and proud. And our worship services are often ill-prepared, slovenly, mechanical, perfunctory and dull. … Much of our public worship is ritual without reality, form without power, religion without God.
John Piper:
I dream about a gathering of people who love the conversation of Christian friendship, but who, for the sake of the depth of that very conversation, give it up for one hour and during the organ prelude bow in unashamed earnestness of prayer that the Spirit of God might descend upon our worship and shake this place with his power. I dream of a gathered family of believers on Sunday morning as genuinely happy in God as families are on the first day of vacation, or around a big turkey at Thanksgiving, or beside the Christmas tree when the gifts are given out. Unfettered hearts of joy, free to say, "Amen!" when the choir has carried us to God, or when the organ praise has enthroned the King of kings, or when the preacher speaks some incomparable gospel truth. I dream of an hour together where grudges melt and old festering wounds are healed in the warmth of the joy of the Lord. An hour with God where battered saints absorb the strength and power of the Lord to re-enter their work revived and strong on Monday. I dream of a people gathered, hungry to hear the Word of God, and to make a joyful noise to the God of their salvation with song and organ and piano and trumpets, and flutes and strings and cymbals and shouts. I dream of one hour a week with you where we encounter God together in such a real and unmistakable way that strangers will enter and say, "God is surely in this place!"
Conclusion
Let me close by going back to our imaginary conversation between David and the foreigner. After visiting the Sanctuary and finding it so boring, you just have to know why David longed so much to go there. And so you go to him and ask him. And he answers you with what he wrote in Ps.63:2. He says, “When I was in that tent I saw God. I actually experienced the glory and power of Almighty God in that tent. And that was an experience that tops everything else I have ever done in my life all added together.” David tasted God’s presence, and it made him hunger and thirst for more. And after talking to him you now want to taste that, and so you go back to the sanctuary, and on the way you are begging God, “Lord, please, when I get there show Yourself to me. Let me see Your power and glory too, so that I will long for more of that more than I long for anything.” The reason you’re begging is because you know there are two possibilities. You could get there and have the same experience as last time. Or you could have the experience like David had. And so you beg God to make it like what David experienced and not what you experienced last time. That is the attitude you should have on your way to church each week. And it is the attitude you should have in your daily prayer time.
