God of Worship

We are in the middle of a series of sermons entitled “God is With Us.” We have spent the last two weeks on how God also has expressed emotions and had transitions. We will spend the next two weeks focusing on how we should respond to our “God who is With Us.”

This week we look at “worshiping God.” Our scripture comes from 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12-18.

6 David again brought together all the able young men of Israel—thirty thousand. 2 He and all his men went to Baalah in Judah to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the Name, b the name of the Lord Almighty, who is enthroned between the cherubim on the ark. 3 They set the ark of God on a new cart and brought it from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab, were guiding the new cart 4 with the ark of God on it, and Ahio was walking in front of it. 5 David and all Israel were celebrating with all their might before the Lord, with castanets, harps, lyres, timbrels, sistrums and cymbals.

12 Now King David was told, “The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-Edom and everything he has, because of the ark of God.” So David went to bring up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the City of David with rejoicing. 13 When those who were carrying the ark of the Lord had taken six steps, he sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf. 14 Wearing a linen ephod, David was dancing before the Lordwith all his might, 15 while he and all Israel were bringing up the ark of the Lord with shouts and the sound of trumpets.

16 As the ark of the Lord was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she despised him in her heart.

17 They brought the ark of the Lord and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it, and David sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings before the Lord. 18 After he had finished sacrificing the burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Almighty.

Please pray with me…

Our scripture for today, as we have had over the last few weeks, leaves us with many questions unanswered. But the one answer we do receive today is that when God is involved, we should make the decision to worship. It is why he is considered the king of kings and Lord of Lords.

The subject of worship can lead us down a path of thoughts and ideas that in the end do not offer us any information or understanding that can help us focus on why we should worship and what is worship.

It is for this reason that I have started writing this sermon three times. I get started and have gotten bogged down into the mundain instead of focusing on what should matter to us as followers of Jesus.

The book“Worship on Earth as It is In Heaven” by Rory Noland focuses on having worship become a way of life. He lists five reasons that scripture shows us why we should worship. They are that we are created, commanded, called, compelled, and destined to worship.

We have been created to worship. He quotes 1 Peter 2:9 which states that we have been chosen by God and are his own possession so that we may “declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” We are to worship God because he created us. He made us into people that desire to be thankful and to praise their creator.

We have been commanded within scripture to worship. The book of Psalms ends with Psalm 150 which tells us that “6 Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord.” The rest of the Psalm makes it clear that there is no time and no circumstances in which we should not praise the Lord.

We are called to worship God. Just through viewing Jesus as our Lord reflects the expectation to worship him. The first four of the ten commandments point out to us that God is to be first in our lives.

You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make idols. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

These four commandments show that God is to be greater than any earthly presence. He is to be considered greater and worshipped above all that he has created.

Noland next states we should be compelled to worship. This is stating that when we look at all God has done in scripture and in our lives, we should desire to worship God. This should be a natural response. Our God is amazing, and this should lead us to want to worship him.

There have been many times whereas life is taking place I have recognized God at work, and this has led me to praising him. You may want to think back in your life and how God has touched you and this should compel you to worship God.

The last example he offers is that we are destined to worship God. This is looking at the past, the present, and the future. The end of Psalm 111 tells us that to the Lord “belongs eternal praise. Just as God’s love is everlasting, our worship of God also should be everlasting.

These five examples give us shows us that scripture tells us to worship and points out to us that we have a God that is worth worshiping. We have a God that deserves and has earned the right to be worshiped

(Transition)

Our scripture has king David being in the process of bringing the “ark of the Lord” into the holy city of Jerusalem. The arc was believed to be where God resided. It was holy and within the arc were remnants of times God stood up for the Jewish people.

The arc had previously remained where Saul reigned but now that Jerusalem has been conquered it was to be moved to what is the holy city of Judaism. You can sense the excitement of the arc being moved and getting closer to reaching its final destination.

We discover through this text different ways to worship the Lord as we have David and the people with him choosing to worship God during their journey.

(Transition)

We find first that the Jewish people are praising God in song. We find them celebrating with harps, and lyres, and various other types of instruments. They were praising God with song. Thanking God for what was taking place.

This is what many people believe to be worshiping God. The focus many times is on the music. It is why there are often discussions and complaints about the way churches choose to express their worship through music.

We had a time in the history of the overall church when the discussion reached a point that it was said that the church was in the middle of a “worship war.” A heated argument many times ensued about the type of music a church would use to worship God. We had people taking sides between a more traditional worship and what is often called contemporary worship.

Do you see the irony of this discussion. We have Christians arguing about how they are going to worship God instead of choosing to worship God. The focus became more on personal preference than it did on the God they were supposed to be worshipping.

My point is that our focus should always be on worshipping God instead of focusing on the type of music a church is playing to worship God. We are blessed to have Paul as our musician (point toward piano). He started out this morning with what would be considered a praise or more contemporary song, and we will end our time together with a hymn. Both legitimate ways to worship God in song.

(Transition)

We next have David making a sacrifice to the Lord. We have him giving up what was given to him. In this case it was “a bull and a fattened calf to thank God for what he had received. For us this will often mean our financial gifts. What we call our offering. This should point out to us that our financial giving is a form of worship to God.

God hasgiven everything we have to us; therefore, we should be willing to give some back to him. This is why I struggle with a focus on a tithe as the way for us to express our love for God. The apostle Paul I believe makes this point in 2 Corinthians 9:7 when he says that …

“7 Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”

That wasthe problem that God ended up having with the sacrifices that the Jewish people made to him. 1 Samuel chapter 15 tells us this. It says “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice.”

It is not the giving that God appreciates as much as it is why you are giving. That being said, I do believe we are called to give to the church, but we should give cheerfully. You should give with a focus on worshipping or thanking God, and if that is ten percent or even more that is great. Give cheerfully to the Lord.

(Transition)

Our first reading points out to us that through our words and actions we become an acceptable sacrifice to God. We worship God by the way we act, react and share his love with those around us.

One way we express this form of worship is through us being “transformed by God instead of conformed to the world.” This is often expressed through the saying of living in the world but not of the world.

Our transformation by God should lead us to choose to follow his ways instead of the ways of the world. We should possibly ask ourselves the question “would God be pleased with what I am doing?” If the answer is no, then we should probably make the choice not to do it.

We are also worshiping God through being humble in what we accomplish in life. It is through being humble that we acknowledge that we are the creation that is being helped along in life by the creator.

We can view this understanding of God being our king or Jesus being our Lord. There was a time that the Jewish people worshipped and viewed God this way. They had no human king. We talked about this the first week, the priests, judges, and prophets they were the human voices of God to the people.

We should choose to allow God to rule over our lives. We should view ourselves as humble servants willing to follow God and do what God desires for us to do. In order to do this, we have to humble ourselves before our God.

The third way our first reading speaks of worshiping God is through being a part of the church. The scripture says it this way.

“Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body.”

We are to worship and follow the will of God in community. We are doing that today by being here. It is why we have World Communion Sunday. It is to remind us that we are a community of believers amongst a larger community.

We are not to be followers of God through Jesus in isolation. We are to find a group of people where we can worship and serve God together. Those that are here have chosen to do this by being a part of “The Church of the Good Shepherd.” We are the representatives of Jesus to our neighbors, friends, and co-workers.

(Transition)

The last way we find David worshipping is with “shouting, and leaping, and dancing.” I was going to show you what they might look like, but Amy said that she would walk out if I did. The point this makes is that we should be uninhibited in our worship of God.

We should not allow what someone else thinks to decide how we are going to act or react while we are worshipping. I want to say “amen” to a point in the sermon but no one else is. I want to raise my hand during a song when no one else is. We should worship God as we feel led instead of focusing on what someone else will think.

David says it best in response to his wife. It wasn’t a part of our reading but in verses 21 and 22 of chapter 6 we have David’s wife Michal say to him “How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, going around half-naked in full view of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!”

David respondsto her statement by saying “I will celebrate before the Lord. 22 I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes.” Different people worship different ways. There is no wrong way to worship God.

Everything we do is worshiping God. We worship God through showing up here on Sundays. We worship God through reading scripture during the week. We worshipGod through serving those within our communities.

We are to live our lives for God. We are to decide that we are not going to conform to the world, but we are going to show the world that we have been transformed by God. And when the opportunity presents itself, we also have to let those God places before us know about Jesus.

Our God loves all people and desires to have all people make the decision to follow him. We are to play the role of the early disciples. There is a good possibility that most people you run into during a normal day do not have a relationship with Jesus.

Let us ask God to allow us to be his voice and tell them about the one who we have decided is worth worshiping. Let us help Heaven rejoice by helping our friends, neighbors, and coworkers know about the one who died on the cross for them.

Let us pray…