The Worship God Demands

In 1977, Maria Rubio of Lake Arthur, New Mexico was assembling a burrito when she noticed that the skillet marks on one of her tortillas resembled the face of Jesus. She was so excited she showed it to her husband and neighbors, and they all agreed that there was a face etched on the tortilla and that it truly bore a resemblance to the familiar Catholic images of Jesus.

So she asked her priest to bless the tortilla and testified that the tortilla had changed her life, and her husband agreed she was more peaceful, happy and submissive since the arrival of said tortilla. The priest was not accustomed to blessing tortillas but agreed to do it.

After the priest blessed the tortilla, she took it home, put it in a shadow box-frame and Mr. Rubio built a special altar for it to rest on. They put the whole thing in a wooden utility shack in the backyard and opened a little shrine to visitors. Within a few months, more than 8000 people came to the Shrine of the Jesus of the Tortilla, (do a google search and you will find this is a true story) and all agreed that the faced burned into the tortilla was that of Jesus.

Within 2 years more than 35,000 people visited the shrine. For 28 years people would travel to see this Holy Tortilla. Over time the burn marks faded and the image was hard to make out, but people still wanted to worship at this shrine.

In 2005, Mrs. Rubio’s granddaughter took the tortilla to school for show and tell and someone accidentally dropped it and it shattered. Mrs. Rubio kept the shadow-box now filled with only fragments of the shattered tortilla. No one seemed interested anymore and the Rubio family finally closed the deteriorating shrine.

People have claimed to see images of Jesus from pizza toppings, burnt toast, oil spots on the garage floor, a misshapen Cheeto and far other outrageous places.

Invariably, when that happens people tend to flock to see and worship those objects.

What that should reveal to us is that God placed within every human heart the desire to worship…since the creation of man, humanity has accepted and even created various objects of worship…the nation of Israel formed a calf out of gold and worshipped it, claiming it was the same God who delivered them out of Egypt.

The sad truth is that since sin entered the world, this distorted concept of worship is actually easier to find than authentic worship.

With today being the 1st Sunday of 2024, we want to begin our new year with a series that we hope will help us set the course for our entire year…Worship…Living A Life of Praise.

Focusing on setting our hearts right…making sure we are going the right direction…getting our priorities in the right order.

I think this kind of series is important because many people mistake worship as the segment in a church service where God’s people sing, and by doing so, miss the mark of why God created us in the beginning and then recreates us in salvation.

One of the first questions I am often asked about our church is the style of music we use…is it rocky or stoic or somewhere in between…are we traditional hymns only or contemporary praise...

Sadly, many people select the church they choose to attend based upon the style of music they play…although I think musical selections are a critical aspect of corporate worship and do play a part in reaching our culture, it is not to be the driving force of our Sunday morning gatherings, nor is it to be the sole criteria for joining and/or leaving a church.

There are many in our culture today who look for that emotional highpoint at a particular church that seems to only be obtained if THEIR musical preference is THE PREFERENCE...

if it is not, they often conclude they will have an inability to truly worship there and continue their search for a church based on music preference.

What they have done at that point is made the act of worship the object of worship, much like the Rubio burrito...

What they fail to realize is that genuine worship goes far beyond what we do on Sunday morning corporately.

So I think at this point we would do well to have a good working definition of worship...

Worship = ascribing to God His worth, stating and affirming His supreme value.

There is nothing in that definition that draws upon what we feel at the moment, nor is it about personal preference…

Worship is the center of everything Scripture commands of us.

If you are not engaged in authentic worship, everything else in your life will be spiritually out of balance.

On the other side of the coin, nothing accelerates your spiritual growth and sanctification than having a right understanding of authentic worship.

That’s why we have verses like 1 Cor. 10:31…every aspect of our lives is to be about worship…

1 Corinthians 10:31 (NASB95)

Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

God created us to worship, we can’t help but worship someone or something…if we are not careful to make sure we worship the God of the Bible, we will worship the god of our own making.

You are going to worship something or someone…even the atheist worships…he worships himself…

This morning I invite you to turn/scroll to Psalm 100.

Psalms 93-99 are classified as psalms proclaiming the universal nature of the kingship of God…God’s kingdom is eternal and He is sovereignly in control of all things...when we get to Psalm 100 it is the doxology of that collection of Psalms…

In other words, when people truly acknowledge God as King there is a profound impact on that nation and the people who do so...

The psalmist uses this as a call to corporate worship and thankfulness…so as we read this text, just imagine with me the children of Israel entering the temple and singing these words to help prepare them for worship…it would be perfectly appropriate for us to do the same thing today when we come into God’s house...

When you consider the New Testament teaching that our bodies are referred to as temples of the Holy Spirit, you get a real sense as we read through this psalm that our lives are intended to be walking worship services…

Our love for God and adoration for Him ought to be ignited as we come together corporately, and that ought to spill out into the day to day operations throughout the week, which then reignites our corporate worship...

Main Point: Worship God With Passion and Gratefulness!

This psalm unpacks nicely for us with two simple truths wrapped up in direct commands.

The psalmist then gives reasons for obeying those commands.

So as we walk through this text this morning we need to evaluate our own hearts and daily practices to bring them more in line with this sacred text.

God Demands Worship that is Passionate (1-3)

We must recognize these are commands… these are all acts of worship!

Worship God Passionately with Joyful Exuberance — 1

Psalm 100:1 “Shout joyfully to the LORD, all the earth.”

Shout joyfully= the ESV translates it “make a joyful noise”; NKJV “make a joyful shout”… notice the first thing mentioned here is not music…it is simply verbal expression of all kinds...

It is a word that means “to raise the war cry, to blast a shout, to cheer”…it is the same word used in Joshua 6:20 when the Israelites had marched around Jericho on the seventh day and when the trumpets sounded, the nation shouted…this would be the kind of shouting that takes place when you are standing in the presence of your victorious king…when the Spirit moves you to shout Hallelujah, you shout Hallelujah! Why? Because you recognize you are in the presence of the glorious King!

It is a call that goes out to the whole world…Israel was to proclaim the goodness of God to introduce the Gentiles to the true and living God…the church was commissioned by Jesus to take the gospel into all the world…to introduce the world to the true and living God...

If there is no joy in our worship, why would they want to know Him?

to the LORD = YHWH = Yahweh, this is the name God wanted his people to use for Him, this name continually reminded them that he is the promise making and promise keeping God.

By stating the LORD 4x in these 5 verses, the psalmist makes it perfectly clear in this text who is to be the object of our worship…there is only one object worthy of worship…God!

In his book Letters To The Church Francis Chan says something I think fits admirably with this text...

“By catering our worship to the worshippers and not to the Object of our worship, I fear we have created human-centered churches.” Letters to the Church, pg. 52

So we have to ask here this morning, Who/What is the Object of your worship?...

Before you answer that question, think carefully about what you tend to focus on when we gather corporately, and what you do privately when no one else is looking, think also about the reasoning you use for the ease of neglecting corporate worship...

here’s the implication of what the psalmist is saying...if the God of the Bible is your object of worship then your worship of God will be rightly focused and not be subdued…there will be an exuberant shout of victory because God has delivered you from sin, Satan, death, and made you victorious in Christ.

The psalmist calls us to worship with the kind of energy and power that can bring the walls down, the kind of strength that can bring fear into the eyes of the enemy… the kind of excitement that comes from winning a battle and you see your victorious king standing before you…

I am not saying we need to be jumping seats, rolling in the aisle, whipping ourselves into a frenzy, that’s not worship…however, every one of us could use a little or a lot more passion in our worship of God…in a real sense, there would be nothing wrong for us to walk into this worship center every Sunday and every time we gather Shouting Hallelujah our God Reigns and We Are Victorious in Him and then all of God’s people Blasting Out In Praise!

Another implication of this is that if we are negligent to show exuberant joy in our worship because we fear how others will see us and judge us, then we are guilty of worshipping the praise of men more than God Himself!

If you are one of those “judgey” people…STOP IT!

Worship God Passionately by Serving Him Gladly— v. 2

Psalm 100:2 “Serve the LORD with gladness; Come before Him with joyful singing.”

This is a command to conduct formal times of worship…the corporate gathering of God’s people on a regular basis to magnify His name…we would do well to remember Hebrews 10:24–25 “and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”

Neglecting to worship with God’s people is a direct violation of this command…we would do well to take a solid inventory of the reasoning we use for not being present and participating in worship with His people!

Serve with gladness/Come before Him with joyful singing…I think the psalmist here links these two things together in a wonderful parallel...

Notice God doesn’t put a qualifier on the quality of the voice…

He doesn’t say Come before Him with joyful singing only if you sound like Taylor Swift or Elvis Presley!

It doesn’t matter if you can’t carry a tune in a bucket or if you can but struggle unloading it…the command is to SING and Sing joyfully!

Many would do well to let your heart communicate with your face and the rest of your body… (briefly mention halo data)

The word used here leaves no gap or choice between worship and service…the majority of the time this word is used there is a connection to Israel’s worship...

The psalmist connects our service/work to our worship…the attitudes, efforts and activities we pursue in the day to day operations of our life are to be viewed as acts of worship…

Whether we come into the house of worship corporately or we are taking out the trash at home, in everything we do, we are to be developing the mindset and discipline to see them all as acts of worship.

Romans 12:1 NASB95

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

Colossians 3:23–24 NASB95

Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve.

Remember our definition of worship…it ascribes to God what value we place on him…everything we do is to communicate the value we place on God over all things...

New Testament truth teaches us that we are the temple and that because the Spirit indwells us, He is with us everywhere we go, we are never outside his presence…1 Cor. 3:16-17…

By implication of this truth we must be growing in our recognition of the continual presence of the Holy Spirit in every pursuit of life…there is no place we frequent that the Holy Spirit waits for us outside the door…there is no activity we pursue that the Holy Spirit does not see…there are no words we can say where the Holy Spirit plugs his ears and cannot hear…

I think far too often we lose our joy in life because we forget to focus on the fact the Spirit of God indwells us and wants to produce the fruit of joy in us as we walk faithfully in Him.

Worship God Passionately by Knowing Him Intimately — v. 3

Psalm 100:3 “Know that the Lord Himself is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.”

Know that the LORD Himself is God…

Everyone needs to acknowledge that God has the ultimate authority over all of us…there must be a confession from the heart that Jehovah is the only true God.

The essential meaning of the word “know” is to know by observing and thinking and by experiencing… it is firsthand knowledge…it is knowledge obtained by investigation, proving, considering...

You and I have a distinct privilege in our relationship with God that the Israelites did not have…His continual presence…in the OT the Spirit would come in the Shekinah cloud, rest upon the ark, and leave…the NT believer receives the gift of the Spirit as a permanent blessing…with His continual presence comes the ability to grow deeper in our intimacy with God...

Intimate knowledge of God does not come from any efforts of corporate worship, so we need to stop looking there for it…believers who wait until Sunday to worship are often the ones who complain the most about the worship!

Intimate knowledge of God comes from a personal relationship with the Savior that carries over into our corporate worship

…GOSPEL…

for the believer, gaining that intimate knowledge of God means...

you wake up everyday with a deeper commitment to allow God to rule your life,

you acknowledge your dependence upon Him for everything you need,

you take/make time to hear him speak to you through His word,

you take/make time to speak your heart to him through prayer,

you choose moment by moment to walk in His Spirit by being obedient to the Word…

there is not a single person who can read this text, hear it being taught, and not need to become more intimate with their Savior…the more intimate your relationship with God grows, the more your life will be characterized by joy.

Reasons Why God Deserves Passionate Worship — v. 3b

Psalm 100:3 “Know that the Lord Himself is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.”

He is the One Who Made Us

God made all humanity…we are not autonomous…we are responsible to Him...

not only did God create us, just as He made Israel a nation and called them His own, through Jesus Christ alone, He remakes us into His children, He takes believers from all tribes and tongues and forms them into one body, the church…none of that happens by any effort we can do…we can’t make ourselves God’s children, He has to do it...only God does that and He deserves our passionate worship for it.

He is the One Who Owns Us

the Shepherd died for the sheep, the sheep did not die for the Shepherd…the sheep are Israel, we too are His sheep, only those who have truly believed and accepted Jesus Christ can call Him our shepherd…

Are you passionately worshipping God because you recognize you are not your own? Do you passionately worship God remembering that you were bought with a price, the price of Jesus Christ?

God Demands Worship that Is Grateful — (4-5)

Our Worship Must Be Filled with Thankfulness — v. 4

Psalm 100:4 “Enter His gates with thanksgiving And His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him, bless His name.”

Under the Mosiac Law, we would not be allowed in the temple courts, but here is a call for all the earth to enter…again, these are not optional!

Enter into his gates with Thanksgiving

Enter his courts with Praise

Give thanks to Him

Bless His name

This is a call for a whole-hearted response…authentic worship should be permeated with much thanksgiving offered to God, continually reminding ourselves of God’s goodness to us...

God wants us to worship Him with joy that overflows from a thankful heart!

This is how God wants to be worshipped and we would do well to make sure that we worship God on his terms, not ours.

Does both your private and corporate worship of God reflect an attitude of gratitude?

The gates and courts here are those of the temple…the place of worship…we are commanded to enter those gates together corporately, so we need to seriously consider the reasons we give for not being present with His people.

The gates are His gates that lead to His presence and He welcomes us into His presence…

I think far too often we operate completely opposite of this…we invite God into our presence, somehow thinking He will accept our praise when we are ungrateful…listen to what God says to Israel in Isaiah 1:14

Isaiah 1:14 (NASB95)

“I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, They have become a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them.

The nation of Israel had forsaken the worship of God to worship idols and when they did worship God, God saw right through them into their hearts and he rejected their worship because they weren’t worshipping God the way He wanted to be and deserved to be worshipped…we would do well to learn from that!

When our worship of God becomes secondary to ___________________, we are in danger of God saying we weary Him!

You fill in the blank with whatever you have placed as a higher priority than your relationship with God!

If our hearts are filled with gratefulness, then there will be no room for complaining, idolatry, pride, etc.

Reasons to Be Thankful — v. 5

Psalm 100:5 “For the Lord is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting And His faithfulness to all generations.”

Because God is Good

think of all the ways God is good and all the ways He provides for us both physically and spiritually…when we stop to consider the goodness of God we can’t help but break forth in praise!

Because His Loving Kindness is Everlasting

He never runs out of mercy, there is nothing you or I can do to exhaust his supply of mercy and grace, he is always ready to help us in our time of need and what he supplies is always sufficient, no matter where we are or what we have done, God always stands with open arms ready to receive you...

Because He is Faithful to Every Generation

God is the covenant making and covenant keeping God…God’s promises will never fail, they are true to every generation, God never stops loving, never stops working on our behalf, He promised to bring us safely home and guarantees our eternity is secure

True worship begins with a humble awareness of who God is, recognizes his sovereign rule over us, and complete worthiness of our trust.

Lesson for Life — Worship Is Never to Be About Us and What We Want, It is Always About God and What He Wants!

For that to happen, we must have a humble heart that is focused on our triune God as the only object worthy of our worship!

An appropriate response of authentic worship recognizes God for who He is and in doing so recognizing who we are

…servants of the great King, children of our Creator, Sheep of the Great Shepherd...

When that happens, passion and gratitude will be our natural response and we won’t be able to contain the shouts of joy!

We don’t need to see Jesus in a burnt tortilla…we have the Spirit within us to take us to greater levels of authentic worship...

Let’s ask for God’s help.