Vitality Week Three: Worship

(ALL PEOPLE THAT ON EARTH)

A five-year-old girl had been attending the children’s worship at her church. Each day before the children were dismissed, the teacher had them sing the Doxology, which the little five-year-old loved to sing...even though it turns out she didn’t have the words exactly right: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him all creatures, here we go!”

Here we go.

An appropriate phrase for us this week.

We are in the third week of a sermon series on church vitality. It’s part of a larger vitality journey we’re taking as a congregation right now asking some very important questions:

What is God up to at Gilfillan Memorial Church?

What kind of church is he calling us to be?

How is God going to grow us as a church, both in terms of our relationships but also in our impact?

As we get ready to listen to today’s Scripture readings to help us on our journey of vitality, here’s a question I’d offer up to start:

What’s the biggest party you’ve ever been to?

What’s the most amazing celebration you’ve ever been a part of?

(OHIO STATE BEATS IOWA—SLIDE)

In just a short while you’re going to hear a reading from the Old Testament that takes place during a huge celebration.

Here’s a little context for you before you hear it:

In the city of Jerusalem there is a huge service of praise and worship taking place as the ark of the covenant is being brought into its new home in the capital city of Jerusalem.

I’m not sure we can fully grasp what that day looked like, what it would have sounded like, what it would have felt like.

Thousands of people cramming the streets of Jerusalem as a great parade of folks brought the ark of the Covenant into the city.

Remember: for the Jewish people, the ark represented God’s presence, wherever the ark was, that was where God made his home.

(SLIDE)

Here’s a picture of what the ark might have looked like. It held relics sacred to the Jewish people, like the broken remnants of the original stone tablets of the Ten Commandments.

And now, after a rather tumultuous time in Israel’s history…during which the ark was actually captured by Israel’s enemies...

Finally after all that...Israel has a new king, a new capital…and now the ark has been reclaimed and is making its way to the city that still, to this day, represents God’s presence and promises to the Jewish people.

That’s what David and the people are celebrating: the return of God’s glorious presence into the heart of his people.

Imagine what that day must have been like.

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As I said earlier, we are in week three of our vitality journey.

Last week we looked at what Jesus called the two greatest commandments, which I suggested can be easily summed up in four words:

(SLIDE)

LOVE GOD

LOVE OTHERS

And I proposed to you that these are the building blocks of growth, the foundations of vitality both for us as individuals and us as a church.

Everything is rooted in these two.

They are linked to the two key words in our vitality journey: our desire to be…

(ADD TO SLIDE)

Healthy…and missional.

Healthy meaning “pursuing Christ,” and missional meaning “pursuing Christ’s priorities in the world.”

So today we begin by asking: How do we live out these two greatest commandments?

What are the priorities and activities that should form the heart of our life as followers of Jesus?

And as I said last week, we start with that vertical dimension of our faith loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Remember: Jesus said this is the GREATEST priority for us as Christians.

Living in relationship to the God who created us, the God who redeems us, the God who sustains us.

What does that look like?

That’s a question we can’t address…without taking a look at the subject of worship.

Of all the different things we do as a church and as individuals: things like evangelism, discipleship, mission…

Worship is the first we’re going to look at, and that’s only appropriate.

Worship sits at the heart of a church’s life, as it should sit at the heart of any follower of Jesus.

We were created to be worshipers.

It’s a theme that echoes throughout all of Scripture: the call for God’s people to offer praise and worship to Him.

Like we heard from 1 Chronicles:

(SLIDE)

“Sing to the Lord, all the earth;

proclaim his salvation day after day.

Declare his glory among the nations,

his marvelous deeds among all peoples.”

As I said earlier...I’m not sure we can fully grasp what the celebration in Jerusalem was like that day.

The joy and celebration and shouting and dancing must have been incredible.

With worship of God at the center of it all:

(SLIDE)

Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name;

make known among the nations what he has done.

Sing to him, sing praise to him;

tell of all his wonderful acts.

Glory in his holy name;

let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice.

Look to the Lord and his strength;

seek his face always.

They worshiped God in response to what he had done for them.

That’s so key for us.

That is so crucial for anyone who desires to understand what worship really is.

(SLIDE)

WORSHIP IS A RESPONSE

Say that with me (REPEAT)

It’s a response to who God is and what God has done.

As one pastor once put it:

(SLIDE)

“In worship we exalt and celebrate God for who he is, what he has done, what he is doing and what he will do.” (REPEAT)

Sounds pretty basic and kind of a no-brainer, right?

And yet I think it is on this point that so many Christians and so many churches stumble in their understanding of worship.

Think for a moment about what this language of response means in terms of flow and movement.

It means that God is the object of our worship.

And it means that worship flows from us…to him.

The movement is vertical (GESTURE) and the movement is up (GESTURE).

We come to God…and we offer to him our gratitude and our praise.

There’s a word in our passage from 1 Chronicles that captures this idea, a word we don’t use a lot in our culture.

It’s the word “ascribe.” (SLIDE)

Ascribe to the Lord, all you families of nations,

ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;

bring an offering and come before him.

If you ascribe something to someone, you are giving it to them.

You are crediting them, you are saying “Here is the source, the cause…here’s the center.”

It’s a word you might here in a news story:

“The leaders of [insert the name of your favourite football team here] ascribed their winning record to a great game plan on the part of their manager.”

When you ascribe…you give.

And the focus is not on the one giving, but on the one who is given.

Let me say that again:

The focus is NOT on the one giving, but on the one who is given.

But that isn’t how we often approach worship in today’s church.

Worship should be about the worthiness of God to receive our praise, it should flow vertically from us…to him.

But so often today, we instead make worship all about us.

Worship has become about us, and about what we receive from it.

We’ve taken that vertical flow we talked about, and reversed it.

And worship becomes something that comes downward:

It starts up here (GESTURE) and flows down to us (GESTURE) filling us and making us feel good.

What we’ve done with worship, like what we’ve done with so much of our church activities….is we’ve adopted a consumer mindset.

The mindset that’s always asking, “What am I getting out of this?”

But the object of worship should never be our need.

The object of worship is God, and his worthy-ness to be worshiped.

In fact, that’s the origin of the word “worship.”

It was originally, in its Anglo-Saxon origins, “worth-ship.”

This idea that God alone is worthy of our praise, he alone is worthy of the glory and honor we bring

(SLIDE).

For great is THE LORD and most worthy of praise;

HE is to be feared above all gods.

For all the gods of the nations are idols,

BUT THE LORD made the heavens.

Splendor and majesty are before HIM;

strength and joy are in HIS dwelling place.

Worship is about God. Who He is. And what He has done.

Yes, worship does have an effect on us.

Real worship fills us with joy, it centers us, it heals us, it transforms us.

But that’s not the goal.

Worship should never be about what we get out of it, it should be about what we’re willing to give to it.

The Bible has a great phrase for this. You’ll find it in a number of places.

It refers to the people of God offering:

(SLIDE)

A sacrifice of praise.

Sacrifice. Of praise.

Think about that word “sacrifice” for a moment.

What does it mean?

What does it look like to offer a “sacrifice of praise?”

It implies, doesn’t it, that what we bring to God in worship is something precious, something important, something…costly?

But again, that flies in the face of a consumer mindset.

Because a consumer mindset not only asks, “What do I get out of this?”

It also asks, “How can I get it for the lowest price possible?”

(WEST MICHIGAN DUTCH)

How many Dutch folks does it take to change a light bulb?

You know what? It’s not that dark.

I love to save money, and I hate to pay too much for something.

That’s a great attitude to have in our economic life, but it’s not so great when it comes to our worship life.

When you and I are gathered for worship, we are being called to give something costly.

Not just an offering in the collection plate…we’re called to give to God everything that we are.

We come before God and place ourselves in his hands, at his feet…and we’re asked to hold nothing back.

Worship is serious business, and it involves high commitment on our part.

Because worship is the hub out of which everything we do as a church…and as Christians…should flow.

I love the way a pastor in the States put it :

(SLIDE)

“The church is first of all a community of working worshipers, not a community of worshiping workers.” (REPEAT)

You see the difference? It’s subtle.

It’s a question of identity: what defines us as Christians?

What defines us as a church?

And what worship reminds us is that we are not defined by what we do.

We are not defined by our programs

We are not defined by our ministries

We are not defined by our building

We are not defined by our budget

We are not defined by any of these earthly measures.

We are defined by our relationship with the God who created us…who redeemed us in Jesus…and who sustains us by his Spirit as we seek to serve him.

If we don’t grasp that…then nothing we do will ever prosper.

If we don’t grasp that…vitality will always be something just out of reach.

In worship we are re-orientated, and we are built up into the people God desires us to be.

And let me say something important:

That can happen no matter what kind of building you meet in, no matter what style of worship music you sing, no matter what Bible translation you read, no matter how you’re dressed or how you look…

…worship is not dependent on all those external circumstances.

Worship is dependent on…it’s rooted in…God and his saving work.

That’s what the Israelites were celebrating: God had saved them.

He had rescued and redeemed them and called them to himself.

That’s why they couldn’t help but dance in the streets and shout at the top of their lungs:

“Sing to the Lord, all the earth;

proclaim his salvation day after day.

Declare his glory among the nations,

his marvelous deeds among all peoples.”

And the very same thing that Israel was celebrating…we celebrate here every Sunday.

That we have been saved, we have been rescued, we have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus and called into fellowship with the living God.

It says in 1 Peter (SLIDE):

“You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”—1 Peter 2:9

That’s what sits at the heart of worship.

We were in darkness…but because of the death and resurrection of Jesus we are called out of that darkness into wonderful light.

Friends, the truth is that apart from Christ…each of us is stumbling in that darkness.

Each of us hungers for something deeper…something more.

And when we come into God’s presence in full recognition of our brokenness…

We hear the story of a loving God who has met us in that brokenness and offered restoration and hope in Jesus Christ.

We come to God as people who are thirsty and hungry.

And I know those who volunteer at the Friday drop-in can testify to this truth:

When you are truly hungry…and you are truly fed…you are truly grateful.

And then out of that gratitude…thankfulness just comes naturally.

And that’s what worship is.

It’s thankfulness.

It’s saying to God, “Thank you for all the ways you have loved and cared for us. Thank you for your provision and your guidance. And most of all…thank you for your Son, who bled and died and rose again so that I might know your forgiveness and mercy.”

In worship we remember and we give thanks.

In just a moment we’re going to pray.

And I know for many preachers…and I’m guilty of this from time to time…for many of us the prayer after sermon is really just the sermon Part Two.

Have you ever noticed that? The minister using the prayer just to preach a little more, only this time with our heads bowed.

I don’t want to do that this morning.

What I’d like to do is pray for God to bring a new sense of celebration and vitality to our worship.

To enlarge our hearts to be more and more thankful for all he’s done and is doing and will do.

To help us stay centered, to help us avoid a consumer mindset, to help us keep that flow that is outward and upward.

And most of all…we pray for God to be glorified in this place.

Because a church where God is truly being lifted up and glorified…is a church that’s heading in the right direction.

Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name;

make known among the nations what he has done.

Sing to him, sing praise to him;

tell of all his wonderful acts.

Glory in his holy name;

let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice.

Look to the Lord and his strength;

seek his face always.

(SILENT PRAYER…LEADING TO PRAYER)