A Study of the Book of Acts
Sermon # 34
“Words on Worship”
Acts 20:7-12
As you travel this summer on vacation and to visit friends and relatives I hope that where ever you are on Sunday that you make it a habit to attend church. Take a vacation from your job. Take a vacation from your worries. But don’t take a vacation from God. Vacations and family trip afford us a wonderful opportunity to experience difference kinds of worship styles.
You will find that most worship services can be divided into; traditional, contemporary or blended. The traditional service is usually fairly rigid, the choir has robes, the congregation sings from hymnals (and only hymnals) and there is a piano and an organ. The older folks generally like it and the young people don’t.
In contrast a contemporary worship can be more informal. The music is more upbeat, praise choruses are used rather than hymns and there may be other instruments such as a guitar and drums. The young people like it and the older people often hate it.
The blended service attempts to blend some of the best of the traditional and the contemporary. Sometimes only to make no one truly happy. That is why perhaps the most difficult job in the church is worship leader. Why is it that sometimes no one is happy? Why does this happen? It happens because some say, “I do not like choruses and I will not be happy until we only sing hymns,” while others on the other side say, “Hymns do not minister to me so I will only be happy when we sing choruses.” What needs to happen is that each of us develops a spirit of love in diversity. It may be that certain aspects of any given service do not minister to you, but you have to ask yourself is, is it ministering to someone else? We must get to the point that we realize that we are not the only one present to worship.
Let me share a story that I think will illustrate what I mean. A few years ago on one of our family vacations we attended a small church in Florida. When we drove into the parking lot of this small church we noticed that it was posted on the church sign, “traditional services.” We went into the church and sat down a few minutes before the worship service was scheduled to begin. There were a half a dozen people sitting in the pews, who turned and looked at us but no one spoke to us or shook our hands. The choir came, in all six of them, in robes. That struck me as a little peculiar. When the preacher got up to start the service, it became clear that he was the interim pastor and this was only his second Sunday. He noticed the four of us sitting in the service, and asked someone in the congregation if they had any visitor’s cards. The response was, “NO!” I wanted to crawl under something for the poor preacher. I guess they were not expecting any visitors. We later discovered that this church had split over whether to have traditional or contemporary services. Now that is sad!
The passage before has a great deal to teach us about worship. This does not mean that we have to go to absurd extremes, meeting only in private homes, on the third floor, lighting the proceedings with oil lambs and listening to inordinately long sermons. But we can see some principles of worship here.
First of all notice that worship is to be a celebration.
Notice that in the first part of verse seven it says, “Now on the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread,”
Notice that it says that on the first day of the week the church came together. It seems that almost automatically the Christians had moved from the Old Testament Sabbath worship to worship on the first day of the week in commemoration of the resurrection of Christ. The Christians did not worship on the old day but on the new “Lord’s Day,” as they called it. Our worship services are a celebration of the resurrection, the promise and seal of our own eternal life.
Do you remember when you were saved? Do you remember the excitement you felt? Now coming to services week after week, somehow the just the repetitive nature of it, you have lost your excitement, your joy in worship. The truth is that sometimes the worship service feels more like a funeral than it does a worship service.
I want to share with you some of what the Bible reveals about worship being a celebration. Although the Old Testament saint did not have near as much to celebrate as we New Testament saints do, listen to what the psalms say about worship as a celebration.
Psalm 47:1 says, “Oh, clap your hands, all you peoples! Shout to God with the voice of triumph!”
Psalm 63:4 declares, “Thus I will bless You while I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name.”
Psalm 95:6 states “Oh come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker.”
Finally just listen as I read Psalm 150:1-6, “Praise the LORD! Praise God in His sanctuary; Praise Him in His mighty firmament! (2) praise Him for His mighty acts; Praise Him according to His excellent greatness! (3) Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet; Praise Him with the lute and harp! (4) Praise Him with the timbrel and dance; Praise Him with stringed instruments and flutes! (5) Praise Him with loud cymbals; Praise Him with clashing cymbals! (6) Let everything that has breath praise the LORD. Praise the LORD!” It may well be that even the thought of raising your hands in worship makes you uncomfortable. It may even be that to do so would distract you from worship. It is my feeling that God is not near as concerned about the position of your hands as he is the attitude of your heart.
The second element of the worship service is a reasoned explanation of the word of God. The church meets not only for celebration but also for edification. The text says in the second part of verse seven, “…Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight.”
The service probably began at the end of the workday perhaps 7 or 8 p.m. in the evening. Paul began to speak and apparently spoke and answered questions for 4 or 5 hours. Paul spoke at length because he knew that he would be leaving the following day and he suspected that he would never see these people again. I think that Paul can be forgiven for going on so long under the conditions.
Every worship service can and should contain an explanation of the word of God. It is the word of God that leads us to the understanding of our need to be saved. It is the word of God that is to be used in the equipping of the saints. The whole purpose of preaching is wrapped up in Nehemiah 8:8, where it says that Ezra and the other scribes, “… read distinctly from the book, in the Law of God; and they gave the sense, and helped them to understand the reading.” That in a nutshell is what preaching is about. You can be entertained, and you even can be mesmerized, by the one behind the pulpit but it he does not take the word of God and explain and apply he has failed.
The story about this meeting in Troas, continues in verse eight were it says, “There were many lamps in the upper room where they were gathered together. (9) And in a window sat a certain young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep. He was overcome by sleep; and as Paul continued speaking, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead.”
The tenses of the Greek verbs portray poor Eutychus as being gradually overcome by sleep in spite his best efforts to stay awake. The word translated “sleep” is (hupno) is the word that we derive the English word “hypnosis” from. Poor Eutychus (who’s name means fortunate by the way) was finally overcome the stifling heat, and his own exhaust falling three floors to the pavement below.
The consummate storyteller Charles Swindoll says “ If the same thing happened to sleepers today, every church would have to build a morgue in the basement. There isn’t an experienced preacher who hasn’t faced the most incredible (sometimes hilarious ) slumbering saints in the pew. I’ve seen them bump their heads on the back of the pew in front of them…snore out loud…stay seated when everyone else stood…drool on their Bible… and even drop their hymn book, then jump when it hits the floor.
I’ve watched couples nod in magnificent rhythm, perfect timing…. And then there was the lady who had the strangest wheeze while snoring – a shrill, stutter-like sound that reminded you of a chattering chimpanzee. She kinda looked like one when she slept, come to think of it.” [Charles Swindoll. Come Before Winter And Share My Hope. (Portland: Multnomah Press, 1985) p. 185.]
Another pastor, R Kent Hughes records, “ As a pastor I have again and again been reminded that on any given Sunday there are believers who are in danger of falling asleep in church….I have been sitting on the platform when one of my associates dozed off and dropped his hymnal! I have heard people awaken with a snort. In one congregation a certain young man sat at the front row and slept every Sunday, As soon as I was through the introduction, his eyes closed and his head tilted. The most memorable, however, was the Sunday that he and his wife fell asleep with their head propped against one another. I have heard a preacher tell of an elder who fell asleep and when his wife nudged him during the service, he stood to his feet and pronounced the benediction.” [R. Kent Hughes. Acts: The Church Afire. (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1996.) p. 271.]
I really feel sorry for poor Eutychus for several reasons. First, he not only went to sleep in church but he went to sleep with the Apostle Paul preaching, that has got to be embarrassing! Secondly, I feel sorry for him because it had such a tragic result, the poor guy fell out of the window and killed himself. Third, because Luke was present the whole ordeal was recorded for everyone down through the centuries to know about.
Fortunately the tragic results did not last. Verse ten tells us, “But Paul went down, fell on him, and embracing him said, “Do not trouble yourselves, for his life is in him.” (11) Now when he had come up, had broken bread and eaten, and talked a long while, even till daybreak, he departed. (12) And they brought the young man in alive, and they were not a little comforted.”
Charles Spurgeon’s warning to the modern Christian is, “Remember if we go to sleep during the sermon and die there are no apostles to restore us!” [as quoted by Warren Wiersbe. Be Daring. (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1986). p. 85]
Let me conclude with couple of suggestions to help us in our worship.
1. Come with an open attitude in which every aspect of the service does not have to aimed at you. Learn to be tolerate of different expressions of worship.
2. Learn that if we are going to get anything out of the service we cannot come to the service exhausted.
3. If we are to receive anything from the service we need to come prepared, with all our know sins taken care of and prayerfully ready.
