The JOY of Worship – What You Get from your worship –
Gladstone Baptist Church – 6/3/05 pm
What is the fastest growing religion in this world?
No religion seems to be spreading faster today than the religion of selfishness. It goes by many names, but most of them make little effort to hide the underlying philosophy of self-worship. Call if self-actualisation, self-awareness, self-sufficiency, self-esteem, assertiveness training, or whatever... the basic message is that living your life for others is too much like hard work. It’s more fun and less stress to be selfish.
Here are some advertisements which show what I mean …
- There are adds that focus on what gives you value … “When Diamonds are no longer enough” – there are gummy bears.
- There are adds that focus on your feelings – “Get this feeling” with a Europcar hire car.
- There are adds that focus on your desire to be human - Work Hard, Be Successful – Go somewhere where none of that matters … “There are places in this world where you are not a CEO, a mogul, a player or even a hotshot. Places where you are a human being. The question you must ask yourself is “How do I get there?”
- There are adds that focus on your desires and satisfaction … “Remain Calm, I think there is a McDonalds on the way home”
- There are adds that tempt you to spoil yourself … “Should I, Shouldn’t I … For the love of Dove, treat yourself”
- There are energy bars that help you out perform the competition
- There are energy bars that help you live out your dreams in life
- Then there is the motorcycle that holds the meaning of your life. The caption reads … “You could eat up a lifetime pondering what to do with your days on earth. Or you could take one look at a machine like the Wide Glide. And let gut instinct take it from there”
Our whole life is centered around the me’s of this world. I am taught from an early age that I am the only one in the world that is important. I need to find things that satisfy me, that help me to gain an edge in this life. People tell us that no one will look after me if I don’t, so we spend all our life looking after No. 1. We look for what we can get out of every situation – how we can gain from friendships – why something will benefit us.
Often we do this in our Christian lives too. We say – what am I going to get out of it. If the answer is nothing – we’re not interested. Think about some of our purposes for living
Take ministry or Service as an example – The first question we ask is “what’s in it for me?” You young people know what I mean. Before we agree to help, we want to know whether we will get something out of it. Will it give me exposure on the stage? Will I get enjoyment from it or will it be hard work? Will others be impressed by what I do? Will I learn something about the sound system? We will only get involved if we can find some benefit for us – we are self centred.
Think about discipleship – I only want to be like Jesus in those areas of my life that won’t affect how I live my life. What a ridiculous thing to say. We say “I don’t want it to affect my friendships, or my hobbies or my desire for independence”, but becoming like Jesus Christ will affect these things. The reason why we don’t want to become like Jesus is because we are selfish.
Take evangelism – The reason we are not prepared to tell others about the good news is because we are selfish. We are more concerned about what people might think of me, than the fact that people will go to hell for eternity when they die. Talk about selfishness.
Selfishness pervades all aspects of our life – even Worship.
When we think about worship – one of the first questions we ask is “What will I get out of it?”
I want you all here tonight to begin to see the error of this statement. Worship is not about us. It’s about Jesus.
Definition of Worship
Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been looking at what is Worship. We’ve said that worship is a life that is SURRENDERED to God. It is when we bow down or fall down before someone more worthy. That is what makes God pleased.
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.”
Worship is a conscious decision we make to please God and we do that with all of our lives. We are not a piece of meat, but are living, breathing human beings. We offer ourselves as LIVING SACRIFICES it is placing our lives in His hands for His purpose and will. A living sacrifice makes the ultimate sacrifice – their life, day after day after day.
Remember also that a couple of weeks ago we were talking about the fact that worship is not singing. It is so much more than SINGING. It is LIVING THE LIFE – the life of surrender. It is walking with God through life and living in obedience to Him.
How do we do that – we do that building up others in the church – remember. We serve them, we fellowship with them. We also do that bringing in others from outside the church – we attract them, challenge them and lead them to Christ. This involves a lot more of our time than just 45minutes on a Sunday when we gather here in this building. It involves our whole lives offered as a sacrifice to God.
Worship is not about us
We sing the song …
I’m coming back to the heart of worship
And it’s all about You,
It’s all about You, Jesus
I’m sorry, Lord, for the thing I’ve made it
When it’s all about You,
It’s all about You, Jesus
This song reminds us that worship is not about us, it’s about Jesus. Singing is one aspect of worship, but not the only one or even the most important one. The most important part of worship is our focus on Jesus irrespective of the activity.
Let me ask you some questions young people?
What are you DOING when we are singing? Are you mucking around with the person next to you – laughing and joking, pushing them, digging them in the ribs. If you are – you are not worshipping, in fact you are distracting those around you from worshipping. .
What are you THINKING ABOUT when we are singing? What do you focus on when you are singing these songs? Are you focusing on the words and what they are saying about Jesus? Are you using them as a tool to pray to God, as prompts to tell Him what a great and awesome God he is? Or are you thinking that you have to look spiritual to impress those sitting next to you or your youth group leaders, or someone else. Are you putting on an act? God knows if you are.
Are you thinking about the words or the music – You say “This hymn is so boring. Why do we have to have hymns. Why do we have to sing Thee’s and Thou’s.” Worship is something we give, not something we get. If you are hoping to get some cheap thrills out of worship, think again. Worship is not for you, it is for God’s benefit and because of that face - the style of music is irrelevant. If you were really worshipping, you would love hymns as much as the latest songs from planetshakers because what is important is not the music, but the thoughts it contains. Too often, the modern songs that are produced are so shallow in their thinking about God. They express one thought and say it over and over and over and over – I don’t know about you, but I get bored with that. On the other hand, many of the old hymns are great, because they are so rich in their descriptions about God – they contain so much truth and are so easy to worship God to. I wish there were more modern songs that had half as much good stuff as some of the old hymns. My challenge to some of you musical young people is this - write some good modern songs that have some depth to them. Modern songs with a good rhythm and tune that start to tap the mystery of who God is. I don’t want to sing meaningless words in worship, but meaningful words about Jesus.
Another question for you young people, are you thinking about God or the instrumentalists? – “Wow, wasn’t that Guitar rift so good. Man that drummer is good.” As soon as you are thinking about things like that, you’ve taken your eyes of Jesus and onto people. That is why we don’t encourage our musicians and music teams have great sections of just music with improvisation and fancy runs and the like. Not because they are not capable – they are, but when they do that, they attract attention to how good they are and it distracts us from God. We focus on the sounds they are producing rather than the God that created music. Is this what you are focusing on when we are singing?
Young people, we need to become people who worship Jesus not ourselves. We need to put Him first in our lives – that is what worship is all about. It is the opposite of selfishness.
Okay, so I’ve told you what Worship is not all about – It is not about us. Are we all clear on that one. We should never be consumed by the question “What do I get out of Worship?” While the focus should never be on what we get, I want to spend the rest of tonight, telling you that there are some benefits to you as you worship.
Benefits of Worship
There are several ways we benefit when we commit our lives to worshipping God.
1) We become BEST FRIENDS with God
God made you to have a relationship with you. He wants to be your best friend.
Acts 17:24-28 - 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. 25 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. 26 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. 27 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. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
One of the great things about worship is – the more I worship God, the better I get to know him. When we seek God, we find Him. It’s like any friendship – the more time you spend with a person – talking, sharing, doing things with them, the closer you grow. It is no different with Jesus.
When we spend time talking to him in prayer, finding out about Him by reading the Bible, or meditating on Him - we get to know him better and better. You get to know who He is and come to appreciate Him more.
How good would a marriage be if you only saw your spouse for 1 hour every week in a crowded room with 200 other people? There would be little opportunity to get to know your spouse. There would be no intimacy or growth in the relationship. There would be no real opportunity to get to know your spouse and how he/she reacts to different circumstances. That is what it is like when Christians try to restrict their contact with God to 1 hour of church every week.
There is no chance of a real relationship with that little contact. If we want to become best friends with Jesus, we need to give him center place in our lives. When we worship, we live every moment in surrender to God – when we do this, we grow in our relationship with God. God is with us always and we develop our relationship with Him as we acknowledge Him moment by moment in our lives – at the desk, behind the mower, in the car, on the sporting field.
So the first benefit for us of worship is that we get to know God as our best friend.
2) We GROW TO BE like Christ.
The second benefit of worship in our lives is that we grow to be like Christ. This is what discipleship, one of our purposes is all about. When we worship, we become disciples of Jesus.
Remember the passage from Rom 12. God wants us to offer ourselves as living sacrifices. Living sacrifices continue to breathe, act, speak and think. God wants us to offer our lives over to his service and breathe, act, speak and think His purposes instead of our own. In short, He desires that we obey His revealed will.
A worshipping person is a person who obeys God.
John 15:9-17 … “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 17 This is my command: Love each other.
A person who is Jesus’ friend and who worships God is someone who obeys God’s commands. The funny thing about this is that Jesus obeyed God’s commands also – perfectly. So if we worship God, we actually become like Christ. And Visa versa, if we want to worship God, we should become Christ’s disciple because that is the way to become like Christ.
3) We live a PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE
We learnt 2 weeks ago, that if we worship, we will naturally live out 3 of the other 4 purposes – fellowship, ministry and evangelism. Now here is the fourth one – discipleship. If you want to live a purpose filled life, start worshipping. If you want to be a person involved with fellowship, ministry, evangelism and discipleship, the easiest way is to be a person who worships. Why? Because a person who worships, is one who submits to God in every area of his life. A person who worships will obey God’s will for his life and what is God’s will for us – it is for us to fellowship, to be a disciple, to minister and to evangelise. Radical isn’t it.
Conclusion
Do you want to be best friends with God? Do you want to grow to be like Jesus? Do you want to live a purpose driven life? Then start worshipping because these are the 3 byproducts of our worship.
Some of you here are wondering how you start to worship. If you were with us last Sunday morning, you would have heard that worship specifically involves giving Glory to God and also generally living a life that is surrendered to God in your day to day, moment by moment life.
Next Sunday morning, I’ll be talking a little bit more about what this means when we wrap up our series on Worship.
But as we close, I want to play for you a segment out of a sermon from the late Dr Dr. Shadrach Meshach Lockridge – What a great name!!! This recording is Dr Lockridge trying to describe who Jesus is. As you listen, I invite you to worship God. Focus on the words. Let the impact of the descriptions sink into your hearts and minds and through it I pray that we would get to know God just a little bit better and be prompted to become like His Son who is above all others. Let’s listen.
