Acts 17:22-31
Worship Without Understanding
Don W. Miller
Friendly Hope Baptist Church, Jonesboro, AR
June 10, 2001 am
Question: Can we really worship what we don’t know or understand? Don’t answer too hastily. Think about it.
- According to Jesus: The Samaritans were doing so, John 4:22.
- According to Paul: The Athenians were doing so too.
Worshipping the UNKNOWN.
Worshipping in IGNORANCE.
Worshipping without UNDERSTANDING.
But GENUINE WORSHIP is an expression of our LOVE for God.
A.W. Tozer – “Worship is to feel in your heart and express in some appropriate manner a humbling but delightful sense of admiring and awe and astonished wonder and overpowering love in the presence of that most ancient Mystery, that Majesty which philosophers call the First Cause, but which we call Our Father Who Is in Heaven.”
I. MIS-DIRECTED WORSHIP
For many, the aim of worship is, “What’s in it for ME?” Notice the focus and the direction of this form of worship. It is not God centered, but ME centered.
The gods that the people of Athens made were modeled after themselves. Whenever man rejects the true God and goes off into ignorance, he begins to make his god or gods in his own image. When genuine worship occurs and God is worshiped in Spirit and in Truth, THEN man is re-made into the image of God. This is part of the reason that real worship is somewhat threatening. It brings about a change in us. Not just a surface change, but a change at the core of who we are.
The ATHENIANS erected an altar to “the Unknown god.” They feared that they had overlooked or neglected some “god” and that they might offend him and incur and suffer his anger and wrath for this offence.
What was the motive of this worship? Love? NO! FEAR!
It was FEAR and the desire to avoid retaliation from some petty minded deity.
Today, many hold this attitude toward God. It is not LOVE and devotion and adoration that cause them to acknowledge and do some service to God, but FEAR. Fear that God will prove vindictive and punitive if they withhold at least a token service to Him. They try to give God as little of themselves and their resources as they can and, if not get His blessings, at least avoid His wrath & judgment. They apply this to both here & now and for eternity.
The SAMARITANS were half Jews. When the Babylonians conquered Israel, the Northern Kingdom, they deported most of the population and resettled foreign people in their place. The native Hebrews and the new inhabitance soon intermarried and synchronized their religious practices. The worship of the northern kingdom had its roots in orthodoxy. It started off real and based on truth, but it became corrupted, compromised and degenerated into ritual and superstition. By the time of Jesus, He would say about their worship habits, “You worship what you do not know.” Going through the motions, without the reality behind them.”
ILL. John MacArthor tells of the “Cargo Cults” of South Pacific, a continuing legacy of WWII. When Allied troops swept across isolated South Pacific islands and established airstrip and refueling bases to press the war with Japan. The primitive native people where suddenly invaded by a modern civilization with no time to adjust and learn what it was about. When the war ended and these island bases were abandoned these natives felt forsaken. These primitive people saw something real, but misinterpreted it, and launched into dark ignorance. They constructed scale models of the thing they had seen and desired, hoping to lure the “cargo gods” back. They started worshipping the men and products of a civilization that they did not understand but desired.
II. RE-DIRECTED WORSHIP
So much of what we call prayer and worship is actually Mis-directed. It focuses on us and our needs and on God’s gifts, But not on God Himself. We need to RE-DIRECT our prayer. Aim a little higher than we have. Let GOD, not His gifts, become the focal point and heart of our worship. We need to please Him and not us.
Ill. If you were to say to your spouse, “I love you.” And they were to respond, “Why do you love me?” How would you answer? If you countered, “I don’t know, I just do.” You could receive a rather cool response. Before the service is finished, some of you probably need to come up with a list of “whys.” I don’t want to see any husbands and wives sitting on opposite side of the auditorium tonight because someone answered, “I don’t know, just because I do.”
If God were to ask you, “Why do you love me and why do you worship me?” How would you answer?
Genuine worship is NOT about what we GET from it, but about celebrating WHO GOD is.
As I visit in various homes I hear people make comments like, “I don’t get anything from church. I don’t FEEL God’s presence. I don’t … And I realize that they don’t know what worship is and that their focus is misdirected.
Real genuine worship is when we recognize WHO God is and celebrate & rejoice in Him.
Genuine Worship does not start with our FEELINGS, but with our UNDERSTANDING and APPRECIATION of God. The Feelings will often follow the ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Do I like to “feel” good after a worship experience? Yes, of course I do. God created our feelings and emotions. It is not wrong to be moved during times of worship. But if we make the feelings our priority, then WHO has become the object of our so-called worship? This is a subtle deception that Satan will use to keep us from genuinely entering into the presence of God and experiencing Him.
When we worship, consider an attribute, a characteristic of God and meditate and celebrate God because of WHO He is. Meditate & rejoice and give thanks for God’s:
HOLINESS LOVE
THE CROSS WISDOM
PRESENCE POWER (He is the Almighty) ACCESSABILITY FORGIVENESS
MAJESTY PROMISES
COMPASSION & CARE UNIQUE & WORTHY
ACTIVITY IN YOUR LIFE DESIRE TO USE YOU
Take an attribute, a characteristic of God, think about it and thank Him that He is that kind of God.
NOTES: We modified our regular order of service for this time of worship. We had four brief worship related hymns/choruses prior to the message and then followed the message with seven or eight hymn/choruses that focused on some of the attributes of God. It was a very moving service.
