The JOY of Worship – What Is Worship
Gladstone Baptist Church – 27/2/05 am
Last Sunday Night we started a series of 4 messages that is going to continue over both services next week. We have called the series “The JOY of Worship.” This is the first of 5 series we will be undertaking during the year to unpack our mission statement.
Who knows our Mission Statement?
“Through our WORSHIP, WITNESS and WORKS OF SERVICE, we aim to reach people with the good news of Jesus and lead them to MATURITY in the FAMILY of God”
The five purposes are contained in this mission statement and every couple of months, we will be taking 4 services to unpack one of these purposes a bit more and try to figure out how it works itself out in the life of our church
The first purpose we see in our mission statement is WORSHIP and so this is the topic for us over the next 3 weeks.
We’ve entitled this series “The JOY of Worship” for a specific reason. The word JOY is often used in Christian circles as an Acronym for Jesus, Others & Yourself. I want you to know straight off the bat that Jesus or God benefit from your worship. Other people benefit from your worship and You benefit from your Worship. JOY – Jesus, Others, Yourself.
So This is what we are going to be looking at over the next 3 weeks …
Last Sunday night we started by looking at : The JOY of Worship – What Others get from your worship.
We learnt that our worship benefits those in the church and those outside the church. Those inside the church are BUILT UP when we worship. It encourages them and edifies them. We actually found that when we worship, we actually enter into fellowship and ministry. When we worship God, we fulfil 2 of the other purposes for our lives. In actual fact, through this series we will see that when we worship God, we fulfil all the other purposes for which we were created. We fellowship and minister to those inside the church. We grow to be like Christ ourselves and we witness to those outside the church. We learnt last Sunday night that those outside the church should be BROUGHT IN by our worship. They should be attracted, challenged and led into a relationship with Jesus Christ – That is what witness is all about. Built up and Brought In – That’s how others benefit from your worship.
This morning : The JOY of Worship – What is Worship?
Next Sunday am : The JOY of Worship – What Jesus & God get from your worship.
Next Sunday pm : The JOY of Worship – What You get from your worship.
I hope that you’ll make a huge effort to try to make it to the remaining 3 messages because we really begin to grasp the importance of worship and what it means to worship JOY-fully. The first message is available on video or CD – see the sound desk operators after the service.
Pray:
What is Worship?
Last Sunday night we briefly looked at the question of what is worship. But I want to consider that question in more depth this morning as a bit of a foundation to the rest of the messages you will hear.
Upon questioning the congregation last Sunday night, I got the feeling that some of the people there were beginning to understand what worship really is, but others were still caught up in the “traditional” church understanding.
2 Aspects of Biblical Worship
In the bible there are two aspects to our worship. There is a general usage of the word that characterises all we do in our whole life. Then there is a specific usage which focuses down on the act of giving Glory to God. Let’s briefly have a look at these two uses.
1) A Specific Activity of Giving Glory
Many times in scripture, Worship is linked to the act of giving glory.
Ps 29:1-2 Ascribe to the LORD, O mighty ones, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; worship the LORD in the splendor of his a holiness.
Ps 100:1-2 Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth. Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.
When we give glory to God, we RECOGNISE who He is. We recognise his awesome power and majesty. His strength, his beauty, his love, his compassion, his holiness. Giving Glory is a CONSCIOUS CHOICE we make. If we don’t recognise these things, all we are doing is parroting some meaningless words to a piece of music.
I get frustrated when people complain about the types of music that accompanies worship. That song is too old. That song is too fast. The music is too loud. The drums are out of time. I can’t worship to hymns. I don’t like that song. I can’t worship when a lady is leading the worship. Do you know what this tells me? It tells me that for you, worship is centred on you and not God. You are more concerned about what you like than what God likes. Worship should not be dependant on music style, speed or individuals involved. God likes all music if it gives him glory. Music styles is not the issue here. What is important is your ATTITUDE to God when the music is being played. Can you see past the off-key musician to recognise the aspects of God’s glory that the song expresses? Can you put aside your music preferences to appreciate the words of honour and glory being sung? God is not interested in the quality of the sound so much as the attitude of those making the sound. You may not be able to sing a note, but is your sing it to God out of a right heart, He’ll think you are an opera star.
Your attitude during the singing of our praises shows whether you understand worship or not. I believe there should be just as many hands raised during the singing of the oldest hymn as there is in the newest praise song because it is not the music that is important, but the glory that we express to God. You should be touched just as much by hymns as choruses, because the words in hymns also express the greatness of God. Something to think about …
Giving Glory to God through Praise is very familiar to us. We come here every Sunday expecting to sing a few songs and for many of us, we have called that worship. We call the team of musicians the worship team. We call the time of singing a worship time. We call our services – worship services. And they are. We do worship at church, through singing and music. But in labelling these things “worship” we have come to restrict the activity to certain activities, times and places. But this loses sight of the second usage of the word worship in Scripture …
2) An Overall Way of Life
Jonah when he was running from God testified to the other sailors on the ship “I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.” Jon 1:9. Here he was referring to his whole life which was lived out in service of YHWH.
Last Sunday night, we defined worship as a life that is Surrendered to God. The meaning of the Hebrew word for worship is to BOW DOWN or fall down before someone more worthy. When you go to the New Testament, there are several words which are translated as Worship. One of them - Proskeneo (προςκυνέω) means literally “to kiss towards” It means to REVERE, to pay homage to. But another word used frequently is Latreuo (λατρεύω) which means to SERVE. The idea of serving carries with it the concept of using our body, our time and energy in a far broader way than to just sing a couple of songs.
It is clear in the New Testament and Old Testament that worship involves your ATTITUDES (awe, reverence, respect) and ACTIONS (bowing, praising, serving). It is a subjective experience that only you can comprehend in your own life and an objective activity which can be seen by all those around you.
It includes the mind, the emotions, your will, your physical body.
Paul wrote in Rom 12:1&2 “Therefore, 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. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
Paul paints the picture of a sacrifice being offered to God. It is not just a piece of dead meat though. It is living. Therefore it has a mind, it has emotions, it has a will. If Paul had said – offer your body as a sacrifice, you could possibly argue that all Paul was asking was that you serve God with your body. But Paul specifically calls it a LIVING SACRIFICE and in so doing, He includes the aspects of our intellect, our emotions and will. Everything that we own or possess as living, breathing human beings is to be offered to God. Every activity we are involved with as living, breathing human beings is to be an expression of our worship. Every piece of our lives, whether public or private is on display to God and is a testimony to him of our reverence and honour.
We made a video of when people feel close to God during the 40 Days of Purpose campaign last year. I showed this last Sunday night, but I want to show it again, because I think it helps to show the many ways in which we can worship God.
40 Days of Purpose video.
See Worship is not just singing. To try to worship God only by singing and praising God without also seeking to worship Him in our whole lives is hypocrisy. Worship involves how we live our lives in dedication to God. I said last Sunday night that you “don’t come to church to worship, but you need to bring your worship to Church.” I recognise that this can easily be misunderstood, so let me unpack it a bit.
If you think that worship happens in this building at 9:30 and 6:30 each Sundays for approximately ¾ of an hour before the sermon. You are correct. Worship does take place here because People are giving glory to God and living surrendered lives here each week. If however, you come to church at these times because you believe that you need to get satisfy the criteria of being a Christian by squeezing some worship into your week – then you are not really worshipping. Don’t come to church expecting all the conditions to be right so that you can get all your worship done in that ¾ of an hour because if you are not worshipping 24/7 in your day to day life, you are not worshipping when you turn up at Church.
Hos 6:6 says “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.” God wants us to worship him with our whole life not just our songs or our religious practices. Mark 12:30 “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”
Worship is a whole of life commitment. It encompasses everything we do – the way we spend our time, the things we spend our money on, our attitudes and our actions. Unfortunately not everything we do, are, think or say is worship. So with time left today, I want to try to answer the question …
What Constitutes Real Worship?
There are 4 things I want to mentions. Real worship is …
1) Worship in Spirit & Truth
Firstly, Real worship is done in Spirit and Truth. When Jesus was speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well, He said …
John 4:23-24 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
Notice that the word spirit in your Bibles is not in Capitals here and so doesn’t refer to the Holy Spirit. In this context, this word refers to the unseen or invisible part of man. If refers to his attitudes, his intellect, his will, his emotions. God must be worshipped in all of these areas of our lives. And he knows exactly what our attitudes are, what we are thinking and what our will is saying. He is not fooled by our outward show on Sundays. We need to worship Him from our heart. A Puritan, Stephen Charnock wrote “Without the heart, it is no worship; it is a stage play, an acting a part… We may be truly said to worship God, though we [lack] perfection; but we cannot be said to worship Him if we [lack] sincerity.”
The second part of this “in truth” This refers to the objective part of our worship. Our worship must be honest and real. It must line up to what he has revealed about himself through His Word and the standards it contains. God can see into our spirit and others can see how we live our lives day to day and whether we actually live in complete surrender to God. Worship is not a 45min exercise on Sunday, but a 24hr a day, 7 day a week activity.
2) Worship by His Blood
The second essential in our worship is that it must always come to God through Christ’s shed blood. In the Old Testament, worship (all aspects of life) centred around the temple and the sacrifices offered there. You could not approach God to worship Him if you were not covered by the blood of sheep and goats.
We also have to approach God with the covering of blood. Not of sheep and goats though, but of Jesus Christ. Eph 3:12 “In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.”
Heb 10:19-22 “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.”
Heb 13:15-16 “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.”
All worship is offered to God through Jesus and his shed blood. Never think you are worthy on your own to approach God.
3) Worship with a clean heart
Because of the last point, we need to approach God with clean hearts. It is our sin that creates a barrier to approaching God and so when we worship God, we need to do so with a clean heart.
David said in Ps 66:18 “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened” We need to confess our sins in order to worship God in spirit and truth.
A. W. Tozer has written “No worship is wholly pleasing to God until there is nothing in me displeasing to God”
If you have been wronged by someone, forgive them. If you have been hurt by someone, forgive them. If you harbour a grudge against someone, forgive them. You can not worship God truly unless you have a clean heart yourself.
Let me emphasize that there’s a difference between struggling with sin and cherishing it. You may genuinely desire to forgive another person. In your mind you have said many times, I forgive them, yet your own corrupt heart keeps bringing it up. You cry out to God to change you, but for some reason He allows you to keep struggling. That is not cherishing sin; that is warring against it. What you need to do in that case is to claim the power of the blood of Christ to cleanse your conscience so you may worship freely (Heb. 9:14 ).
4) Worship with A Willing Heart
Lastly, true worship is something that is done willingly. It is not forced or done out of compulsion or guilt. Worshipping because you know it is right is not worship at all. Service out of guilt or duty is not worship at all. Our worship needs to spring from an overwhelming gratitude of what God has done for us. How does this come about? Get to know God intimately and I believe that you will desire to worship.
Are you a worshipper of God? Ask yourself these questions as we close here today …
1. Have I presented myself and all I have to God as a living sacrifice, so that my way of life is a life of worship?
2. Do I take time daily to worship God privately and to thank Him for all His blessings to me?
3. Is there some cherished sin, some practice I’m unwilling to give up, that hinders my worship?
4. Do I seek to enter wholeheartedly and “in spirit and in truth” into worship? Or do I simply go through the motions without really worshiping?
Are you a worshipper. We desire here at GBC to be a group of people who worship God. That is what we were created for and in it there is real purpose and benefits for God, others and yourself. I pray that over the next couple of weeks we would discover the JOY of worship and come to understand the call on us individually and corporately to be a worshipping people.
