This morning, we begin a new message series on the subject of worship. Sometime ago, I sat into our worship team meeting and was asked to teach on worship. We noticed that I had taught on preparing for worship, but never on the topics of why we worship, how we worship and the results of worship.
So today and for the next two Sundays, we will look at the revelation for worship, our response in worship and the result of worship. Gordon Dahl said, "Most middle-class Americans tend to worship their work, work at their play, and play at their worship."
H.G. Wells said, "Until a man has found God, he begins at no beginning and works to no end!"
Let me begin by defining what worship is. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word translated into the English word, worship, means "to bow down" or "to prostrate oneself." In the New Testament, the Greek word translated into the English word, worship, means "to kiss the hand toward" or "to prostrate oneself in reverence."
This morning, we will look at what motivates us to bow down and show great reverence toward God. In other words, we will look at what we know about God or what has been revealed about God that weakens our knees and at the same time strengthens our hearts to sing praises to God.
Our text for this morning is Psalm 135. Let me read that for us.
Anyone who has read the Bible will see a great deal of content that arouses our worship of God. In the back cover of our bulletin, we read that worship is God revealing Himself, and we, His creation, responding to what He has revealed of Himself.
God uses three sources to reveal Himself; God uses His creation, His Word, the Bible, and His Son, Jesus Christ. This morning, we will allow the Bible to reveal two characteristics about God that arouses our worship for Him.
First, the Bible reveals that God is good. We see this in verses 3, 4, 8-14.
The psalm writer has recalled to his own heart the undeserved love, protection and care of God for him and his people, the Israelites. God initiated a relationship with Jacob and God continued His relationship with Jacob’s descendant, the Israelites. When the Egyptians enslaved the Israelites, God rescued them and gave them the land of Canaan.
To say that God is good refers to His moral qualities and relational qualities as being admirable and praiseworthy. Let me highlight two aspects of God’s goodness. They are God’s choice and God’s care.
A person’s choices reflect a person’s heart. Anyone can choose to be loving, caring and faithful when life is good or when he or she is being treated well. But when your life is filled with hardships or when great injustice is done to you, your choices in response to the hardship and injustice will reveal your heart.
Consider God’s choice in response to us. The Bible tells us that all of us have sinned, that is, we are not living as God intended for us to live. And as God’s creation, we shame our Creator. Yet God is merciful to us. He does not give up on us.
Let’s say you were the most upright and loving parent imaginable, but your child runs away from home. And when you finally hear news of your child, he is arrested for breaking into a person’s home and for killing the homeowner in a struggle to rob him. Your child has shamed you by not living as you intended.
What will you do? You have choices to make. Would you disown Him? Would you wish you never gave birth to him? Would you visit him in prison? Would you love him still?
God, who is perfect in moral and relational qualities, created us to be like Himself in character, but we have ignored Him and lived lives that shame Him. The gap between God’s perfection and our imperfection is millions of times greater than the gap between the most perfect parent and the most prodigal child.
Yet, the Bible tells us that God chose not to disown us. God chose to show us His kindness by coming in Jesus Christ. More than that, God chose to pay the penalty for our sins. Romans 5:8 tells us, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
That’s God’s goodness revealed in His choice. We have nothing to do with this. We cannot earn a right relationship with God because of our sin, so God earned it for us. Is He worthy of your worship? Yes, His choice to pay the penalty of our sins earns our total allegiance.
God’s goodness is also revealed in His care. Before we can see God’s goodness in His care for us, we need to understand that His care for us is long-term. He cares about our having a right relationship with Him for eternity. He cares about developing our character to be like His.
Our problem is that we care about our looks more than our character. We care about our possessions more than our relationship with God. We care about what others think of us more than what God thinks of us. We care about what brings us pleasure rather than what brings God pleasure. When I say "we," I mean you and me.
We need to realize that the care of God does not to shelter us from all harm or to keep us from every difficulty, sickness or even physical death. God does not busy Himself every moment to remove hardships from our lives and replace them with happy events.
Steve Brown noted, "For every non-Christian who has cancer, a Christian will have cancer, so the world will see the difference. And for every non-Christian who has a business failure, a Christian will have a business failure, so the world can see the difference."
While I’m not aware of that statistics, I do know that God’s care is not reflected in our having perfect health or perfect circumstances. Rather, God cares about perfecting our trust relationship with Him and perfecting our character to be like His.
Psalm 46:1 reads, "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble." God is our help in times of trouble. God does not promise to keep us from troubling times.
John Piper, in his book, Future Grace, reprinted a letter by Carl Lundquist, former president of Bethel College and Seminary. In 1988, the doctors told him he had a rare form of cancer called mycosis fungoides, which invaded the skin over his entire body and ended his life three years later. He wrote this letter the day after he heard the news of his cancer:
That day in the hospital room, I picked up my Bible when the doctor had left. I turned to the joy verses of Philippians, thinking one might stand out. But what leaped from the pages was Paul’s testimony in chapter one, "I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed but will have sufficient courage so that now, as always, Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or death. For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain." And I discovered that a verse I had lived by in good health also was a verse that I could live by in ill health. To live - Christ, to die - gain. But by life or by death, it’s all right either way ... So I simply trust that [God] in His own way will carry out for me His will which I know alone is good and acceptable and perfect. By life or by death. Hallelujah!
Carl Lundquist worshipped God in that hospital room more truly than some of us have worshipped God in church, ever. He trusted God’s goodness and His letter was a response to God’s goodness. That’s worship.
Worshipping God’s goodness is not easy, because we care about temporary things while He cares about eternal things in us. And this difference can keep us from seeing how God’s care reveals His goodness. Is He worthy of worship? Yes, if we can see the long-term benefits of His care.
First, God reveals that He is good. Second, God reveals that He is great. We see this in verses 5-7 and 15-18.
To say God is great refers to his works and abilities that are mind-blowing and majestic. As with God’s goodness, let me highlight two aspects of God’s greatness. They are his creation and His control.
Unfortunately, we live in a time when mankind denies God’s greatness in creation and does not recognize God’s control. A.W. Tozer noted, "The modern scientist has lost God amid the wonders of His world."
Walter L. Bradley, PhD, states, "Each cell in the human body contains more information than in all 30 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica. It’s certainly reasonable to make the inference that [DNA] isn’t the random product of unguided nature, but it’s the unmistakable sign of an Intelligent Designer. Today, it takes a great deal of faith to be an honest scientist who is an atheist."
A majority of the great scientists of the past believed in God, and studied nature in order to know God, not to disprove God. In fact, the foundation belief that the world is created by an orderly God makes the study of nature possible. If everything happens by random chance only, we could not count on consistent findings or natural laws.
Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Evolution 1:1 says, "In the beginning, nothing created the heavens and the earth - they just happened."
Genesis 1:21 says, "So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good."
Evolution 1:21 says, "So nothing created the nonliving matters which eventually evolved into living matters over billions of years."
Genesis 1:27 says, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."
Evolution 1:27 says, "So single-celled organisms over billions of years became the first man and first woman, who happened to evolve at the same time in the same location and settled for one another to start the human race - statistically impossible."
Joel Smith wrote, "There is an old fairy tale that says: Frog + Princess = Handsome Prince. Today there is a new fairy tale going under the guise of science that says: Frog + 10 billion years = Handsome prince."
The next time you look at our awesome and orderly world or consider the amazing creature that you are, you have the choice of worshipping your Creator, God, or accepting that all that you see, even yourself, are the products of nothing plus chance over billions of years.
God’s greatness is not only revealed in His creation, but His greatness is also revealed in His control. By control, I mean his power over life and death.
Job wrote in Job 42:2, "I know that you [God] can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted."
Earlier this week, I had a chance to sit by the hospital bed and listen to my Uncle as he pondered death and eternity. He asked me, if he became a Christian, could he still pay respect to his ancestors?
I explained to him that honoring and respecting our parents and loved ones is encouraged by God. So feel free to visit the graveside of your ancestors. But know that God does not want us to worship our ancestors as gods, because they are not. There is only one true God.
Acts 17:24-31 reads, "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. `For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, `We are his offspring.’
"Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone--an image made by man’s design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him [Jesus Christ] from the dead."
The next time you see an image in print or a statue, miniature or oversized, remember that the existence of this image or statue required human hands. The Creator God, however, is self-existing and has proved His control over life and death by raising Jesus Christ from the dead.
On a particular Sunday morning, a large audience gathered to hear Henry Ward Beecher, but when the substitute pastor stepped into the pulpit, several disappointed listeners began to move toward the exits. The minister then stood up and said loudly, "All who have come here today to worship Henry Ward Beecher may now leave from the church. All who have come to worship God keep your seats!"
If you’ve come to church in response to anything other than God’s goodness and God’s greatness, you’ve come to church. If you’ve come to church in response to God’s goodness and God’s greatness, you’ve come to worship.
