In my Christian life so far, I have been fortunate, or depending on your viewpoint, unfortunate enough to be present in Churches where there have been considerable discussions about worship. Some of these have involved changes in hymnbooks – do we keep our old book or move to Mission Praise. Some have involved changes in what happens during morning worship – is it best for the children to be in at the start or the end of the service, someone seriously suggested that they shouldn’t be in at all. At another Church there was a discussion on should we get rid of the choir, at the same church we had an extremely heated discussion over whether we should get rid of the pews? Again, one comment was that we have worshipped in pews for all our lives; we won’t be able to worship without them.
Strangely, in all of these discussions about worship, nobody referred to this morning’s passage from Romans: “I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. In other words, worship has nothing to do with the words we use, the order we do things in, the time we do it, what we sit on when we do it or anything else. Worship is simply to do with God and us nothing else is needed.
When Paul wrote his letter to the Church in Rome, it was a Church that had never known the teaching of an apostle. All of the other churches that he wrote to, Corinth, Ephesus, Thessalonica, and Philippi and the rest had received a personal visit by at least one person who had met Jesus in the flesh; often that one person was Paul himself. Rome hadn’t, so Paul in the first eleven chapters of the letter gives all of the teaching on theology that they would have received if they had had such a visit. He covers subjects like God’s wrath and love, sin, the law, salvation and faith. From chapter 12, Paul moves on to show how all of this theology should be put into practice. The gifts that God gives, how to show God’s love, obeying the government, and so on. But the first practical matter that he writes about, and from this, we can assume that for Paul it was the most important thing is worship.
Is worship as important as this to us today? In the last few weeks and in the next couple of months we have heard and will hear about a lot of things that should be happening in our Church, things like growing, evangelism, priorities, serving and more. But as we hear these things we need to remember these words from Paul’s letter to the Roman Church. We need to remember that for Paul, the most important thing that Christians, and the Church should be doing is worshipping God.
It was the little boy’s first trip to Church, and his mother had hurriedly put him through the correct “Sunday best” procedure of thorough washing, dressing in smart clothes, and the inventing of a parting in his hair – previously unknown to his startled scalp. Having been warned to ‘behave’, which generally meant ‘shut up and don’t fidget’; they proceeded to the local Church under the incessant clanging of its bell. On entering the Church, the boy was instantly curious, fascinated by this strange new world. The hushed voices, the high arches, the slightly musty smell and the rows of empty wooden pews. Or were they empty? No, here and there a hat, the back of a head, a pair of hunched shoulders, would bob up or down, appear or disappear. His mother led him in whispers to one of those dark tunnel like rows, where she immediately knelt and bowed her head; he copied instinctively. The silence only lasted for a few more seconds, as the question that had been growing more and more urgent in his lively young mind suddenly burst out, ringing loud and clear through the ancient arches: ‘Mummy, who are we all hiding from?’
Aren’t you glad that we don’t have theses problems with worship at Longfleet; we don’t have clanging bells, high arches and wooden pews? But what would that boy say if he walked into this Church on a Sunday morning. Maybe, he would say something like “Mummy, why have they all come here to meet each other.” Sometimes, this seems to be the main reason for our being here, as a relative newcomer to the Church, I have noticed several occasions when the people leading the first part of the service have stood at the front for a time before everybody notices that the service is about to start. Is this a sign of how important we think worship is?
Paul, in Romans 12:1 gives two things that are necessary before we can worship God. The first is “offer your bodies as living sacrifices”. Any Jewish Christian of the time who heard these words would immediately think ‘what is he talking about?’ A sacrifice is dead, and apart from that weren’t we told that the old system of sacrifice was no more, that Jesus was our sacrifice.’
So how can something that is dead, be living. We can find one way that this can be so when we think why we are here today. For many of us, we come to Church on a Sunday because this is where we can get our batteries recharged for all that we will be doing in the coming week. We see our Sunday worship as the place where we can restore the spiritual and moral balance in our lives. Some of you will be here because you are hoping that God will speak a special word to you during the service, a word that will help you sort a problem out that you are facing. Sadly, there may even be some here because it is the place they have always gone on a Sunday, where else should they go? Now think about Paul’s sacrifice, it is not there because it wants something or needs something, it is there to give the only thing it can give, itself. If our main reason for being here is to receive something, then we make it very difficult for us to worship God. Worship involves sacrifice, which means giving. Every so often, Thomas runs up to me and asks me, can we play Zombie, what happens in this game is that I pretend I am one of the walking dead, arms outstretched, and Thomas gets to give me instructions, play this, get me a drink, stand on one foot whilst scratching my head etc. This is how we should be approaching our worship, instead of coming here to receive, we should be coming to give Him everything and willing to do anything He commands us to do. The only difference between me playing Zombie with Thomas and me coming to worship God is that instead of my arms being stretched out like this, they should be like this stretched out in worship of Him.
We have just sung the words ‘When all things that surround become shadows in the light of you.’ That means forgetting about our needs, forgetting about our problems, and just being here because there is no better place to be than in God’s presence, and if we can come into that presence, nothing else matters. A sacrifice has no needs, it has no desires or wishes, the only thing it can do is give itself.
For a good example of worship take a look at Abraham and Isaac. This is the first time that the word ‘worship’ is used in the Bible, and Abraham has been commanded by God to go and sacrifice his son Isaac. So he and Isaac go on a three-day trip to Mount Moriah the place, which will eventually become God’s Holy Temple. When they get to the foot of the mountain, they leave the servants behind. Abraham tells them “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. “We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Abraham is just going off to sacrifice his son, and if you read in Leviticus what happened to sacrifices, you will see that it would have been pretty horrific. And what does he say he is doing “We are just going to worship God!” If this had happened today, he would probably have told his servants “we will be back by 12.30, so have lunch ready by then.”
For Abraham, worship involved giving. He wasn’t going to worship and expecting to receive anything from God. By this stage, he had already given Isaac up for dead. Abraham was going to respond to God’s love, and he was responding in the way God had commanded him to. This is worship.
The second thing that Paul says is necessary for worship is holiness. If Christians used swear words, I am fairly sure that for some at least, this word holiness would be considered one. I was at the Preachers Training day here on the Monday after the Church Anniversary and one of the people at the meeting made a disparaging comment on those in the Holiness Movement, it seems that many others there agreed with this comment for they did not disagree, either that or like me, they did not have the courage to disagree. The Bible is very clear that it is impossible to come into the presence of God without being holy. God hates sin, and if we want to worship Him, we must deal with the sin in our lives before we come to worship Him. Fortunately, God has given us the means to enable us to do this. The meal that we celebrate today is the proof of that; this meal reminds us that we have a God who died to pay the cost of our sin. Who spilt his blood so that we can be cleansed and made holy.
Rev. Judson Cornwall, in his book, ‘Let us worship’ states that holiness is the cost of worship. Did you realise that worship has a cost? I saw a sign once outside a Church that was next to a Supermarket. The supermarket had the usual adverts such as Cornflakes, buy one get one free, the Church’s advert or sign said ‘Morning Worship – 10.30 a.m. and it’s free!’
It was good advertising, and I am sure it must have attracted some people, but it was definitely bad theology for worship is not and never has been free. In the second book of Samuel Chapter 24, we are told that King David had sinned, as he often did – just as we often do. God had told him not to count the number of men in Israel, so what does he do? Sends his men out to count them, despite them pleading with him not to do so. God then gave David a choice of his punishment: three years of famine in the land or three months of his enemies chasing him or three days of plague in the land. David chose the plague because then at least, his punishment was straight from God, whom he knew was a God of mercy, rather than his punishment being at the hands of men. We are told that 70,000 people died, and that God stopped the Angel who brought the plague when he was at the threshing floor of Araunah, the Jebusite. David confesses his sin and God tells him: “Go up and build an altar on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” The altar at this time was the place of worship for God’s people; the temple wasn’t built until David’s son, Solomon, became King. David then tells Araunah that he wants to buy the threshing floor. But Araunah doesn’t want the king to do this. “Let me give them to you,” he says, “and oxen and wood as well.”
Wouldn’t you like someone to say this to you; you are down at the supermarket next to that Church and you have a £100 worth of shopping in your trolley that you know may last just over a week with the amount the family eats. You wait the hour it takes for every single item to be scanned through, and then the manager comes along. “Hey, you don’t need to pay for all of that this visit, let us just give it to you, it won’t cost you a thing.” This is often what we do on a Sunday; we come along here expecting the worship leader to have paid the price in time and effort and prayer that will allow us to worship God. What did David say when he got this wonderful offer?
“No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.” Because of David’s insistence on paying the cost of his worship the plague on Israel was stopped. But more than that, the threshing floor that David purchased became the center of worship for God’s people for centuries afterwards. It was on this site that Solomon built the first temple. David was willing to pay the cost for his worship, and that willingness brought freedom from the plague for the people of his day. That cost also benefited Israelites of every generation after him, for it gave them a place where they knew they could worship God.
The meaning of the word worship demonstrates why this cost of holiness is necessary. Those of you who were here a few weeks ago when I lead worship may remember that I mentioned how it means ‘to kiss towards’ and it refers to kissing the hands or feet, or for a certain maiden in Song of Solomon, the lips of the one you love. To do this, we have to come within touching distance of God and this cannot happen if there is any sin at all in our lives. God and sin cannot occupy the same space. When Jesus took the sin of the world on his shoulders on the cross, he cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”, that was because God and sin cannot come close to each other. Through what happened to Jesus on calvary, God has paid a large part of the cost our worship but we have our part to pay as well, God has made it possible for us to be holy, to have a relationship with Him. But we have to live in the holiness he has provided for us. That is the cost of worship for us.
When Janet and I swapped preaching dates, I found that the subject for this morning was called ‘In Good Working Order’. I can now say that I have preached on this subject this morning, because in the Greek language, one of the words that mean work is exactly the same as the word meaning worship. If a Church is to be in good working order, it must first be in good worshipping order. Everything that we do as a Church and as Christians must first begin with worship. Just look through our reading again, after making the statement about worship, Paul goes on to talk of being transformed rather than conforming, that is what happens when we spend time worshipping God. It is impossible to spend time in God’s presence without being transformed. “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought” Paul went on to write. C.S Lewis, in his book ‘Mere Christianity’ wrote that: ‘self forgetfulness is the goal of all Christian Worship’. The greatest test of being in the presence of God is that you either regard yourself as a small dirty object, or you forget about yourself altogether. And of the two, it is better to forget about yourself altogether.’ When we come into God’s presence to worship Him, it is natural to first feel as though you are worthless, if you don’t then there is something wrong; either God is not present, or we are not worshipping Him. But having come into His presence, and gone through that stage of ‘regarding yourself as a small dirty object’ as Lewis said, the only other thing you can do is forget about yourself altogether.
Then Paul talks about unity in the body, “so in Christ, we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. Where can this be seen most clearly? It can be seen as we come before the one God and worship Him knowing His presence in our midst. Paul goes on to mention the gifts that God gives and how we are to use them. Once again, these are all to be used in worship; Paul made it very clear from his statement about worship that this is not just a once a week thing that we do, everything that happens during the week should be offered as worship to God. Serving, teaching, encouraging, showing mercy, all of these gifts and everything else that we do in the week is to be an offering of worship.
What happens when we worship God as He desires us too? Look in 2 Chronicles 6:40
What happens is that we come into the presence of a Holy and Awesome God. And when we are in that presence, there is nothing else we can do but stand or kneel or lie down and carry on worshipping Him. Today, we have a God who invites us to come into His presence and worship Him. The bread and wine that we will be sharing soon are symbols of all that He has done to make it possible for us to come. But they are more than that, when Jesus split the loaf of bread, and gave the disciples the wine to drink, he said to them ‘Do this in remembrance of me’. That remembrance is not meant to be a looking backwards; he wasn’t saying ‘remember me when you do this’. He was saying do this, and I will be with you as you do it. Communion is not just a celebration of what God has done. It is a statement that God is here today as we break the bread and drink the wine, and because of this, we can worship Him. As you share in this bread and wine, forget your needs, your problems, your desires and concentrate just on God, offering to Him our bodies and everything else as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is our spiritual act of worship.
