Your Need For Worship

Your worship is a big deal to you personally. Worship is a big deal down throughout history. Think about the importance of worship down through the ages: Cain killed his brother, Abel, over worship in Genesis 4. Moses asked Pharaoh for some time to away in the wilderness so the children of Israel could worship (Exodus 8:27). Ancient Jewish families would bring animals to Jerusalem to sacrifice them for the purpose of worship. Jesus spoke to the Woman at the Well about where and how to worship (John 4:21-24). And Jesus turned over the tables in the Temple because the moneychangers were ruining worship (Matthew 21:12-17). Worship is a big deal.

I want to release the power of worship in your life. I want you to experience the transformative power of worship personally. For so many of you, too much of your time in worship is a “yawnfest.” How can Someone so great be worshipped with so little? We need a worship transformation.

Keep your Bibles open to Psalm 95 – page 590 in you pew Bibles. If worship is eternal, then it’s important enough for you and I to spend some of brain matter on for the next few weeks.

Some of you have spent years inside churches while you’re bored to death during a worship service. Worship can personally transformative. If your worship is be transformative, there needs to be three layers to your worship. Genuine, transformational worship involved your emotions, your thoughts, and your actions. If your worship is going to be transformative, then it must include your heart, your mind, and your WILL.

Today’s Scripture

Oh come, let us sing to the Lord;

let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!

2 Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;

let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!

3 For the Lord is a great God,

and a great King above all gods.

4 In his hand are the depths of the earth;

the heights of the mountains are his also.

5 The sea is his, for he made it,

and his hands formed the dry land.

6 Oh come, let us worship and bow down;

let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!

7 For he is our God,

and we are the people of his pasture,

and the sheep of his hand.

Today, if you hear his voice,

8 do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,

as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,

9 when your fathers put me to the test

and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.

10 For forty years I loathed that generation

and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart,

and they have not known my ways.”

11 Therefore I swore in my wrath,

“They shall not enter my rest” (Psalm 95:1-11).

1. Enter into God’s Presence with Your Emotions

1.1 Our Emotions

We are called to worship the Lord with our emotions. Worship is to be emotional: “Oh come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation” (Psalm 95:1)!

Our English translation, “O come let us sing to the Lord” is too tame. The Bible is calling on us to shout and sing aloud. Every so often there should be an exclamation point to our worship. Again, the Bible calls on us to worship the Lord with our emotions: “Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise” (Psalm 95:2)! These two verses call for us to be noisy. Worship should engage your emotions. Worship should actually engages your imagination. Do you ever have an exclamation point in your worship?

1.2 The Greatness of God

We’re celebrating something that is weighty and substantial: “For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods” (Psalm 95:3).

Notice the word “For” at the beginning of verse 3. The word “For” signals you to the reasons why you should become so emotional. All of our emotion is triggered by the greatness of God: “Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! 3 For…” (Psalm 95:2-3a).

This isn’t to be a forced emotion. Not at all for we can begin to see the greatness of God when we consider His creation. You see the link between the greatness of creation and the greatness of the Creator in verses 4-5: “In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. 5 The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land” (Psalm 95:4-5).

I wonder what poem would be written if the psalmist could see the three mile wide comet, Neowise that is circling about us right now?