Thrilling God’s Heart
Text: 2 Samuel 7:18-29, 6:16-18, 24:18-25
INTRO: I want you to imagine that this worship service has just ended,
and people are lingering, hugging, milling around, filing out,
smiling, laughing, talking to each other:
“Wasn’t worship wonderful today?” someone might say.
“Don’t you love singing like that?” adds another.
“I really liked the sermon today.”
“Me, too, especially that one story he told. . .”
Or you might hear,
“I really like worshiping at this church
because the music is so good,” or
“I like the preaching,” or
“I feel like the emphasis on Scripture
really meets my needs,” or
“I think the enthusiasm of the students adds so much to the worship experience,” and
“I like worshiping at a church that has
something for everyone.”
Those are typical comments—
maybe more positive than others you might hear, but fairly common, nonetheless.
And totally beside the point.
I’m not saying none of those things are important;
I’m saying they’re not talking about worship.
You see, we’ve gotten to the point in the church today where we look for fulfillment in worship:
Does it meet my needs?
Fit my “style?”
Lift my soul?
But I’m here to tell you this morning that answering those questions won’t help you find fulfillment in worship....because that’s not what worship is about.
For the last several weeks here at OBF, we’ve been preaching through a sermon series on "Spiritual Maturity." We’ve identified eight characteristics of a spiritually mature person:
One of those, which Pastor Dave Smetana preached on at Presser Hall was “The Dependent Life,” a life of prayerful dependence on God;
Next, Win preached sermons on “The Generous Life,” a life of stewardship, and “The Extended Life,” a life that reaches out to others.
Which leads us to this morning’s topic: “The
Worshipful Life,” and our conviction that the spiritually mature person will exhibit a life that is marked by intentional, fervent, "deepwater" worship.
And the key to that kind of worship is not
meeting your needs,
fitting your style
or lifting your soul,
BUT something else entirely....
something David—the man after God’s own heart— knew,
something he had,
something he experienced and exemplified.
So, if you would, please turn in your Bibles to the Old Testament, to 2 Samuel chapter 7,
and we will look there to see a model of “The Worshipful Life.”
But first let’s pause to pray together:
“O Sovereign LORD,
How great you are!
There is no-one like you, and there is no God but you,
as we have heard with our own ears.
For the sake of your glory, Lord, I pray that you will
illumine your word and accomplish your will,
in these moments we spend together this morning. Amen.”
I want to talk about the worshipful life this morning by pointing out to you four characteristics of the kind of worship that thrills God’s heart.
You know, the Bible records that God himself referred to David as “a man after my own heart”
(1 Samuel 13:14, Acts 13:22), and I believe that description has a lot to do with the way David worshiped.
And I suggest to you,
if you aspire to be spiritually mature,
you can’t do much better than to do like David,
and worship in such a way that thrills God’s heart.
So, if you’ll look at 2 Samuel 7, verse 18, I want to show you, first, that:
I Worship that thrills God’s heart is humble worship
Now, these verses occur in the context of David’s ascension to the throne after the death of King Saul, and his desire to build a glorious temple to God. But God informed David that his son and successor would accomplish that task, not David.
With that in mind, look at verses 18-21:
Then King David went in and sat before the LORD, and he said: "Who am I, O Sovereign LORD, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far?
19 And as if this were not enough in your sight, O Sovereign LORD, you have also spoken about the future
of the house of your servant. Is this your usual way of dealing with man, O Sovereign LORD?
20 "What more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Sovereign LORD.
21 For the sake of your word and according to your will, you have done this great thing and made it known to your servant.”
Do you hear the humility in David’s words?
"Who am I, O Sovereign LORD, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far?”
That’s the kind of worship that thrills God’s heart: humble worship.
In fact, the truth be told, there IS no other kind! There is no such thing as prideful worship,
self-absorbed worship,
or even self-satisfied worship.
Those terms are self-contradictory!
The ONLY true worship is humble worship.
Which is why some of us have a hard time feeling like we’re “getting through” to God in worship,
we feel like our prayers are going nowhere,
because we’re trying to worship without humbling ourselves, which simply cannot be done.
“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,” Psalm 51:17
says, “a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Ps. 51:17).
That is one of the reasons CONFESSION is such a crucial ingredient of mature worship, because it is the mark of a humble and broken spirit and a contrite heart.
So, if you would thrill God’s heart,
and aspire to spiritual maturity,
worship him in brokenness and humility. Second,
II Worship that thrills God’s heart focuses on what God gets out of it, not me
Look once more to our text, this time to 2 Sam. 7:22. David says,
22 "How great you are, O Sovereign LORD! There is no-one like you, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears.
23 And who is like your people Israel—the one nation on earth that God went out to redeem as a people for himself, and to make a name for himself, and to perform great and awesome wonders by driving out nations and their gods from before your people, whom you redeemed from Egypt?
24 You have established your people Israel as your very own for ever, and you, O LORD, have become their God.
25 "And now, LORD God, keep for ever the promise you have made concerning your servant and his house. Do as
you promised,
26 so that your name will be great for ever. Then men will say, `The LORD Almighty is God over Israel!’ And the house of your servant David will be established before you.
27 "O LORD Almighty, God of Israel, you have revealed this to your servant, saying, `I will build a house for you.’ So your servant has found courage to offer you this prayer.
28 O Sovereign LORD, you are God! Your words are trustworthy, and you have promised these good things to your servant.
29 Now be pleased to bless the house of your servant, that it may continue for ever in your sight; for you, O Sovereign LORD, have spoken, and with your blessing the house of your servant will be blessed for ever."
True worship is worship that focuses on God.
Yet we tend, as I suggested a few moments ago, to approach worship as consumers, in which the focus is on my experience, as if we’re saying to the worship leaders, the preacher, and the other participants,
“Okay, move me! THRILL ME! Bless me!”
You might call it the “Spice Girls” approach to worship (you’re listening now, aren’t you?). Yeah, that’s right, the “Spice Girls” approach to worship:
“Give me what I want,
what I really, really want. . .”
John Ortberg and Pam Howell, writing in Leadership Journal, hit the nail on the head when they say,
Can you imagine the Israelites, freshly delivered from slavery, before a mountain that trembles violently with the presence of God (Exod. 19), muttering: “We’re leaving because we’re not singing the songs we like. Like that tambourine song, how come they don’t do that tambourine song anymore?”
“I don’t like it when Moses leads worship—Aaron’s better.”
“This is too formal—all that smoke and mystery. I like casual worship.”
“It was okay, except for Miriam’s dance—too wild, not enough reverence. And I don’t like the tambourine.”
Scripture doesn’t read like that, does it?
Why not? Because,
“What am I getting out of worship?”
is the wrong question;
“What is God getting out of my worship?”
That’s what we ought to be asking.
As the Westminster Confession puts it,
“The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever” . . .
Not the other way around.
One of my favorite authors, Marva Dawn, in her wonderful book, Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down, remarks “how difficult it is to keep God as
the subject of worship in [our] present narcissistic and subjectivized culture.”
Yet the paradox is this:
the only personally fulfilling worship
is worship that doesn’t seek personal fulfillment!
It works that way because, as John Piper says,
Worship is the adoration and praise of that which delights us. We praise what we enjoy, because praise completes the enjoyment.
Thus, when we take our focus off God and onto
the style of the service,
or our own preferences,
or even the great skill of the worship team,
our worship will become less fulfilling, not more so.
You see, the spiritually mature person can worship to the tune of a guitar . . .or a pipe organ.
The spiritually mature person can turn the words of the most ancient creed and the simplest chorus into an act of worship.
The spiritually mature person can worship through liturgy . . . or through a children’s sermon.
This doesn’t mean the spiritually mature among us don’t have preferences,
nor does it mean that the quality and content of a
worship service don’t matter;
but I do mean to say that true worship doesn’t require a certain style or a favorite song. . .
Because true worship focuses on God
rather than on ourselves and our own desires.
So, worship that thrills God’s heart is humble,
and focuses on God. Third,
III Worship that thrills God’s heart engages the heart AND the head
Ortberg and Howell, in that Leadership article I just quoted, say this:
Some churches specialize in generating emotion. The platform people are expert at moving worshipers to laughter or tears. Attenders gradually learn to evaluate the service in terms of the emotion they feel. . . .
Such worship is often shallow, sometimes artificial, and rarely reflective. Little attention is given to worshiping with the mind. It produces people who have little depth or rootedness. They may develop a “zeal for God, but not according to knowledge” (Rom. 10:2). They become worship junkies, searching for whichever church can supply the best rush.
This is Scarecrow worship: it would be
better if it only had a brain.
On the other hand, some churches focus keenly on cognitive correctness. They recite great creeds, distribute reams of exegetical information, craft careful prayers ahead of time. And yet the heart and spirit are not seized with the wonder and passion that characterize those in Scripture who must fall on their faces when they encounter the living God. No one is ever so moved that she actually moves. . . .
Those who attend such services may be competent to spot theological error, but the unspoken truth is they’re also a little bored. Their worship is dry—it does not connect with their deepest hurts and desires. Rarely does it generate awe or healing, and never raucous joy.
This is Tin Man worship: if it only had a heart.
But I want you to notice something about David’s worship. Second Samuel 6, just one chapter back in your Bibles, describes the return of the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem. . . Look what happens in verse 14 and 15:
David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the LORD with all his might, while he and the entire house of Israel brought up the ark of the LORD with shouts and the sound of trumpets.
David leaped and danced before the Lord—what HEART!
But don’t miss what follows, in verses 17 and 18:
he “sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings before the Lord” (v. 17), and “blessed the people in the name of the Lord Almighty” (v. 18).
His heart was fully engaged, but it never disengaged his mind, and his careful awareness of and obedience to the Word of the Lord.
This may be—at least in part—what Jesus meant when he said:
God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth (Jn. 4:24).
God is looking for people who worship from the heart—for
Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart (1 Sam. 16:7)—
but whose worship also delights in and derives from the truth, the substance of God’s Word and commands.
To quote Marva Dawn again,
We must avoid the dangers of both intellectualism and of emotionalism. To focus on the mind alone won’t engage people’s will and heart so that they act on what they know. To focus exclusively on training the emotions encourages faith without substance. Genuine worship corrects both extremes, for in it, as Welton Gaddy affirms, “God is to be loved and honored by all of one’s being.”
I know that time is slipping away from us, so I want to move on quickly to my final point, which is that:
IV Worship that thrills God’s heart is costly worship
Turn with me please to 2 Samuel chapter 24, where we’re going to take a quick look at verses 18-25:
18 ¶ On that day Gad went to David and said to him, "Go up and build an altar to the LORD on the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite." 19 So David went up, as the LORD had commanded through Gad. 20 When Araunah looked and saw the king and his men coming towards him, he went out and bowed down before the king with his face to the ground.
21 Araunah said, "Why has my lord the king come to his servant?"
"To buy your threshing-floor," David answered, "so that I can build an altar to the LORD, that the plague on the people may be stopped."
22 Araunah said to David, "Let my lord the king take whatever pleases him and offer it up. Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and here are threshing-sledges and ox yokes for the wood. 23 O king, Araunah gives all this to the king." Araunah also said to him, "May the LORD your God accept you."
24 But the king replied to Araunah, "No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing."
So David bought the threshing-floor and the oxen and paid fifty shekels of silver for them. 25 David built an altar to the LORD there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. Then the LORD answered prayer on behalf of the land, and the plague on Israel was stopped.
Did you catch the words of David? He said, “I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”
Those are the words of a man after God’s heart!
Because true worship is COSTLY worship.
It will demand something of you.
It will change you.
It will move you.
It might even scare you.
Why? Because, as Annie Dillard has written, every Sunday morning when we gather to worship, we are like
children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.
In fact, she adds,
It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.
I believe there’s a woman who has discovered what it’s like to truly worship! Because true worship is costly —and dangerous . . . because it is an encounter with an awesome, infinite, almighty God
who fills us with wonder,
and trembling,
and hope,
and fear.
Since true worship is always costly, the offering is not a “break” in your worship; it is worship! It is a part of the worshipful life that says, “I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God that which costs me nothing.”
And I’m not talking only about the offering, either;
I agree again with Marva Dawn who says,
Everything we do in worship should kill us [—our sin, our self-centeredness, our self-absorption, our self-sufficiency, our self-satisfaction—] but especially [she says] the parts of the service in which we hear the Word — the Scripture lessons and the sermon.
Absolutely! Worship that thrills God’s heart will kill us! It will crucify us, and challenge us, and convict us, and change us.
I would even go so far as to say,
if your worship isn’t changing you,
if it’s not costing you,
if it doesn’t stretch you,
if it doesn’t scare you at least a little bit,
prompting you to respond fearfully yet gratefully,
willingly and joyfully
to God’s worthiness, goodness & glory,
then my brother or sister . . . you’re not worshiping.
But if, on the other hand, you encounter God in worship to the extent that
it changes how you live Monday through Saturday,
how you relate to others,
how you serve your church & community,
how you treat your children or parents,
how you give,
how you think,
how you work . . .
Then it’s very likely that you are becoming “mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13).
What Richard Caemmerer describes in his book, Preaching for the Church, depicts exactly how true worship ought to work.
“Pastor, that was a wonderful sermon,” said the parishioner at the door after the service.
“That remains to be seen,” said the preacher.
Let’s pray:
Father,
you are infinitely worthy to receive
glory and honor and power and praise.
Lord,
I pray that in the closing moments of this service,
you will transform our hearts and minds,
convicting of sin,
cleansing all unrighteousness,
changing our hearts
and turning us, every one, from unworthy sinners
to worshiping saints
who seek your glory and your satisfaction,
and not our own,
in Jesus’ name, Amen.
As the worship team leads us in a final time of worship, this area at the front is open should anyone want to respond visibly to God’s working in your heart and mind . . . .
Perhaps he’s convicting you, prompting repentance;
or touching you, bringing healing;
or calling you to salvation or to a new level of
sacrifice or service,
or maybe he’s saying something else entirely.
In any case, you’re more than welcome to come forward to the front here, and stand or kneel in prayer, should the Spirit of God so move you,
as we all join in seeking to thrill God’s heart with our worshipful lives.
In fact, that’s one of the many reasons corporate worship is necessary, in addition to private worship, because it can stretch us, with new experiences,
different perspectives,
and greater accountability in worship.
