Why We Worship

Turn to Psalm 24.

Unless the Lord reveals to me in a great way that we don’t need to, today we are wrapping up these series of messages about what makes us a healthy church. Next week, we will have a special service to ordain our two new deacons. Because we are adopting a week for Love Life with some other churches in September, on the 15th, we will have Jonathan Devore from Love Life come and share. And then we will be picking up in the book of Mark where we left off a couple of months ago.

Psalm 24 ESV

A Psalm of David. 1 The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein, 2 for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers. 3 Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? 4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. 5 He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. 6 Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Selah 7 Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. 8 Who is this King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle! 9 Lift up your heads, O gates! And lift them up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. 10 Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory! Selah

Prayer

I like this passage not because it gives us explicit examples of worship, but because it paints a picture for us of the glory of God. Our worship and God’s glory will always be tied together. Everything that we do should be for worship. That is the end goal, worship. When we come together, our goal is worship. When we go to work, our goal should be worship. When we are with our families at home, our goal should be worship.

Worship informs all aspects of our lives. We participate in discipleship because our goal is the worship of God. We share the gospel with others because the goal of evangelism is not for them to just hear the gospel, but to surrender to and to worship God. Our whole lives should be dedicated to worship.

I think it is beneficial before we get into the why of worship, that we address the how of worship.

How many of you attended church regularly during the 80’s, 90’s, and even the 2000’s? If you did, maybe you remember the term Worship Wars. This was when the rise of the contemporary style of worship music met resistance from the traditional style. Churches split, friendships were torn apart, and even families fought because of it. I don’t want to spend much time talking about this, but if anyone is willing to tear a church apart because of the style of music(anyone pushing change or anyone resisting change), then they do not have a true understanding or a true heart of worship.

Worship is not a genre of music. It is not a style. Music can influence our worship, but music is not our worship. Worship is not determine by instruments playing or by lyrics that are sung. Worship is determined by a posture of our heart.

Romans 12:1–2 ESV

1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Our entire lives should be given to worship. Not just 30 minutes on a Sunday morning. The problem is that we do not see that our whole life is to be worship and we view worship as the time that we come together corporately to sing songs and open the bible on Sunday mornings. So what we need is a mind shift. Our minds, as Paul writes in Romans, need to be renewed. How we do that is through the word of God. Today, we are going to dive into our passage and our goal is not to try to find tips on how to worship better or to try to find a new style of music to worship to. But our goal is to look to God and let our view of God determine our worship.

The Nature of God Demands our Worship

Our passage today will point us to the nature of God. This is why we worship. We don’t worship because of music playing, we don’t worship because of anything that we have experienced, we don’t worship because of any decisions that we have made. We worship God because of who he is.

We Worship God Because He is Creator

Our women came together last Sunday evening to spend some time doing crafts. They made these cool signs to hang up at their house. They took a piece of wood and painted it. They took a bow and glued it on it. Now when you look at them, you would think, “wow, they created something really nice”. But the reality is, they did not create anything. They took pieces of things that God created and they compiled them together. See, we are not creators. We cannot bring things to life out of our own power. We cannot take something out of nothing and make it real. We cannot speak things into existence. God is the creator.

Psalm 24:1–2 ESV

1 The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein, 2 for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers.

The earth is the Lord’s. This implies ownership. Why would we consider God the owner? He is the one who created it. We know this because back in Genesis 1, this is explained to us. Genesis 1:1 “1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Last week we talked about how scripture is authoritative and is completely true. So we know that Genesis is telling us what happened at creation when it tells us that God created everything.

God being creator is one of the greatest displays of his own glory that we could imagine. God has always existed. There was no such thing as time until God created it. He is outside of time. But, he chose to create things. He did not have to do so. But he chose to. Why? The reason that God created was for his own glory. This is not something that God did out of selfishness or arrogance. We should look at God creating things as something God did out of his goodness.

And God is the only one who is worthy to be glorified. We can look back throughout history and at figures in the bible. There were some really great people. Paul, Peter, David, Noah, Moses. All of these men were good Godly men at some point in their life. But, were they worthy of being glorified the way that God is? Paul persecuted Christians, Peter denied knowing Jesus, David committed adultery, Noah got drunk, and Moses ran from his problems for years. These men are not worthy of the glory that we are to give to God. Only God is worthy. God created everything and God owns everything.

In our culture, we have this ownership mentality over everything. We work hard, the boss man pays us, WE are the ones who earned our money. This car that I paid my hard earned money for is mine. This house that I paid my hard earned money for is mine. I want to be honest that this is a very slippery slope to go down. I don’t discredit anyone working hard for their money. I encourage you to go and work hard to get paid and provide for your family. What I discourage is this mentality that the money you earn is YOURS and not God’s. The only reason that you made money is because God provided you with it. Money is nothing but a creation of God. The career that you have would not exist if God in his goodness did not create it.

Mens retreat in Georgia about him not owning but being the caretaker

So what about God being creator makes him worthy of worship? First, we must recognize that God created us. Mom and dad may have been part of the process but God is our creator.

Psalm 139:13–16 ESV

13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

God knows you better than your mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, husband, wife, and even yourself. Why? Because he is our great creator. Not only did he created you and I, God created a way for us to be redeemed. (gospel presentation)

Because of everything that God has created, we should worship him.

We Worship God Because He Blesses

Anything that we have received, not only has God created it, God is the one who has given it to us. We call this a blessing. Children are a blessing. We have children because God has provided us with them. And praise God for a church that has the sounds ringing out in it of the sounds of children. God blesses us with many different things. He has blessed us with a roof over our head on this hot morning with a controlled temperature in our building. He blessed you with a way of transportation to get here. He truly blessed us with the coffee that we drank before we came to church. God blesses us.

Psalm 24:3 ESV

3 Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place?

David, the one who is writing this asks the question of who has the ability to be in the presence of God? David was not a perfect man, but he was a man who sought after God. If you ever feel like you are falling short and need some encouragement of someone who feel short but did not give up and continued to seek God, you need to go to the OT and read all about David. David was a big screw up in a lot of ways but continued to seek God.

This question is one that each and every one of us should ask. Who is able to do this? David then answers his own question.

Psalm 24:4 ESV

4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully.

Who can be in the presence of God? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart. The one who does not worship things that are false and lies. We must have holy actions and a holy attitude to be in the presence of God.

Holy actions - David tells us that we must have clean hands and we must not appeal to things that are false.

Holy attitude - Our hearts must be pure and we must not be deceitful.

This all determines who is able to be in the presence of the Lord. While we are talking about this verse, the ultimate goal of worship is being in the presence of God. This is what David is alluding to. He is telling us that if we want to be in the presence of God, if we want to experience unbridled worship, then we need to have holy actions and holy attitudes. This is a point of application of our text today. Examine ourselves through the lens of scripture and see if we are really having holy actions and holy attitudes. And then, when we do have these things, what happens for us?

Psalm 24:5-6

Psalm 24:5–6 ESV

5 He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. 6 Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Selah

We receive blessing. God blesses us. In our area here, there is a large population that believe in what we can generally call the prosperity gospel. This false gospel teaches that God will always bless believers with great health and great wealth. This means that if we are fully obedient to God the way he wants us to be, then we will never experience sickness and we will never be needy financially. And in return, if you have financial issues and health issues, it is because you are unfaithful. I spoke with a woman just this week who told me that he son is having back issues because he is not following God the way that God wants him too. This is false teaching and if you ever hear someone say these things, you must be very weary of them.

So what is the blessing that David says that God will bless us with. He says it is righteousness. Righteousness from the God of his salvation. The God that saves us is the same God that blesses us with righteousness. I will take righteousness over any kind of physical healing. I will take righteousness over financial blessing.

If God is the one who blesses us with righteousness, that means that righteousness is not something that we can earn. Just like salvation, righteousness is a gift from God. Now, in this verse we see some things that are very important about righteousness. First off, David tells us that salvation is from God. You have heard the gospel. Salvation comes from belief in the gospel. You cannot believe in the gospel without first God drawing you into him through the work of the Holy Spirit.

So God is the one who gives us salvation. If God is the one who gives us salvation, and righteousness comes from the God of our salvation, then you cannot be blessed with righteousness if you are not saved. I think that is simple enough for us to understand. Let me take it a step further. If you do not have salvation, then you cannot have clean hands and a pure heart. And if you don’t have these things, then you will not be able to stand in the presence of God for all of eternity in worship.

There are too many people, people out there in this world AND people sitting in pews in the church on Sundays, who want to stand in the presence of God but refuse to have a holy attitude and holy actions. The only solution to this is surrender. Surrender yourself to God. Let him bless you with salvation and righteousness by surrendering yourself to him this morning. We worship God because he blesses.

We Worship God Because He is our Glorious King

I don’t know if you know this or not, but we are in an election season. We, here in America, have a tough time identifying with the idea of a monarchy. But we sure do have an easy time identifying with a democracy. The difference in a president and a king is that we elect a president from whoever decides that they want to be tortured and put their name in the hat to be the leader of the USA. A king, on the other hand, is appointed ruler and is usually king until they die. The wonderful thing about God being king is that he will never die and will always rule perfectly without any character flaws. No scandals, no bad debates, no voting needs to be done to determine that he is our glorious King.

Psalm 24:7 ESV

7 Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.

The King of Glory. God is the king of glory. He is the only one who is worthy of glory. And he is ready to come in. This picture that David is painting us here is one of a sanctuary. Think of a massive place of worship that is being protected. It has gates that must be opened to get to the outside of it. Then you have doors that you have to pass through. Now, if you were in charge of this sanctuary, and the king was coming, how would he feel if he met resistance? He comes to the gates and the gates and shut and locked. He has to wait for someone to open them. Then he gets to the doors of the sanctuary. But, just like the gates, they are shut and locked. So, again, someone has to come and open them. David is giving instructions that the King is waiting. We need to open our gates and open the doors to give the King access.

Who is this King that is so important that he must not wait to enter when he comes?

Psalm 24:8 ESV

8 Who is this King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle!

The Lord is the king of glory. He is strong and he is mighty. And then, David gives us the end of this Psalm in verse 10.

Psalm 24:10 ESV

10 Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory! Selah

The strong and mighty lord of hosts is our glorious king. There is no president that we have ever had in our country that you can give this title. There is no earthly ruler or king that deserves this title of glorious king. There is only one and that is God. He is our glorious king.

This nature of God that we read about here in Psalm 24, that God is our creator, that he blesses us, that he is the mighty, warrior, glorious king, these things should cause us to worship him.

Conclusion

Our worship should be shaped by God’s word. We should constantly be preparing our hearts for worship. Because all of life is about worship. So we can prepare our hearts for worship by dwelling on who God is. That he has created everything. But more especially, he has created you.

Worship is all about surrender.

First, if you are here this morning and you have never surrendered your life to Christ, I want to give you the opportunity. (gospel presentation)

Maybe you are here through and you have surrendered and you just struggle with worship. Be encouraged by the life of David. It is normal to feel like you are slipping backwards. But what we don’t want to happen is that we stay there. Be like David, remind yourself of who God is. Let this Psalm here be your meditation.

This week, be intentional about taking moments throughout your day to praise God. Have this Psalm on your phone so that you can take it out and read it anytime. Say the things that God is(creator, blesser, glorious king), and use this as your worship.