"come And Worship" Part Two

“Come and Worship”

(Part Two)

Psalm 95:1-7

“Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.

Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;

for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.”

Psalm 96:8-9

“Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; bring an offering and come into his courts. Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness; tremble before him, all the earth.”

Psalm 29:2

“Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.”

John 4:20-24

“Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

Last week we began our study of ‘worship’. We said it was a subject and a term that is quite familiar with most people. Most of us have been doing it all our lives – or think we have. We concluded that just because you go to a church on Sunday or Saturday doesn’t mean you worship. Just because you call yourself a Christian doesn’t mean you are a worshipper. We have just sort of taken this very important act for granted and most of us haven’t even given it a lot of thought. We will remedy that today. Hopefully we will all become better at worshipping our God and Savior.

Last week said, 1. Worship is a Command; 2. Worship is a Choice; 3. Worship is in a Certain Place and Time; 4. Worship Comes from a Pure Heart; and 5. Worship Begins with Gratitude and Gladness. This morning I want to, first, do an 1. Analysis of Worship; discover the 2. Attitude of Worship and thirdly, look at the 3. Act of Worship.

First, let’s do a little analysis of worship. What is worship? How would you define it? This is how Wikipedia defines it,

“Worship is an act of religious devotion usually directed towards a deity. An act of worship may be performed individually, in an informal or formal group, or by a designated leader. Such acts may involve honoring.” - Wikipedia

The modern Webster dictionary defines it, “the act of showing respect and love for a god especially by praying with other people who believe in the same god.”

The 1828 Noah Webster dictionary defines worship like this, “Chiefly and eminently, the act of paying divine honors to the Supreme Being; or the reverence and homage paid to him in religious exercises, consisting in adoration, confession, prayer, thanksgiving and the like. The worship of God is an eminent part of religion. Prayer is a chief part of religious worship.”

I think Noah Webster was speaking from personal experience more than just academia. Worship includes honor, reverence and adoration. There needs to be a sense of awe and perhaps even fear – or a deep, deep respect for our Supreme Being and Creator. We sing the song “Heart of Worship” frequently in our church and certainly the ‘heart’ of worship is respect and love and self-sacrifice. One line of that song says, “Though I'm weak and poor, all I have is Yours, every single breath!”

The song discovers that God does not require a song – but our hearts. In the analysis of worship we need to understand that the acts and attitude needs to be much deeper than a mere song. The biblical definition of worship, in my opinion, is found in Romans 12:1. It says,

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.”

Before anything else – we need to surrender all to God. We need to be entirely sanctified for our acts of worship to have any meaning. Jesus said we need to worship in spirit and in truth. Without it we are just going through the motions. True worship involves the heart; true worship involves the will; true worship involves the spirit. Anything less will not do.