Worship

Worship

Sunbury GMC 1-12-22

Sunbury GMC 11/12/2023

Text: Ps 99:5

I. Defining Worship

II. The necessity of worship

III. The effects of worship

IV. The object of our worship

As you read through the Psalms you will find a recurring theme. It is shown in Psalm 99:5 which says “Exalt ye the Lord our God, And worship at his footstool; For he is holy.” This is not an isolated theme at all in Scripture or the Psalms. I want to zoom in this morning on one word in this verse. Worship.

Once there were two church attenders. On Sunday morning both of them arrived at church ready for service. One of them stood and testified. He sang his heart out. He amened the preacher and really participated in the service. The other sat, rather resembling a fungi of some sort on a fallen log. At the conclusion of the service both went home. Sunday night was much the same. Once again the first man testified and really put himself into the song service. He even ran the aisles. The other maintained his pew in his fungal manner. They both went home and went to bed.

Monday morning the first man woke up quite irritated that another week of work had come. At work he cursed and swore and raged at everyone and everything.

The other man also woke and went to work. At work he worked hard and picked up the slack for others. He calmly and quietly went about his business, careful to live in love to his fellow man.

Which of these two worshiped God?

Jesus told a somewhat similar story in Matthew 21:28-31

Matthew 21:28–30 (KJV 1900)

Matthew 21:28–30 KJV 1900

But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to day in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went. And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not.

Which of these two did the will of his father?

Now if you understood the story to mean that we should be quiet in church, that we are opposed to shouting, and testimonies, and praising the Lord in outburst of worship you missed the point. In fact the opposite is quite true. Christians should have trouble keeping quiet about what God has done for them, but outward shows of adoration do not define worship, just like saying we will obey is not the same thing at all as obeying. In Jesus story, the son was wrong to reject his father, but he repented of that wrong and went and did the will of his father. It is wrong to never give God outward praise and adoration, but living in love to God is worship, not expressing emotion in church.

I. Defining Worship

Worship can mean many different things. We call the part of our service that we sing in worship, but we also call the whole service worship. And I have just illustrated worship as obedience. All of these are true examples of worship. Lifting our voices together in praise to God when our heart is also aligned is worship. Attending church together with other believers and focusing for a bit on God is worship. Quietly going about our lifes in obedience is worship. Another verse in the Psalms says to worship the Lord in the beauty of Holiness. Worship the Lord through moral purity. On the one hand worship is to show devotion to a deity or image but I think when God tells us to worship Him alone He has more in mind that just what we do on Sunday. We know also that God looks on the heart. Worship must be deeper and more far reaching that a set of rituals, routines or rules. Quite often the prophets of the Old Testament decried the worship of the people as an abomination to God because their hearts were opposed to their ceremony. Bob Kauflin defines worship this way. “Worship is exalting something above myself with the thought that it will satisfy me.” With this definition we are worshiping whatever we exalt, we are placing the greatest worship on what we place the highest value, and the highest hope. We worship that which we look to for fulfillment. Worship used to always be focused toward some sort of god or another. In all times until very recently the religious debate and conversion was directly focused on proving your deity to be the correct one. For example the contest between God and baal, between Elijah and the 450 prophets of baal. The God who answered with fire was agreed to be God. When the Lord Jehovah answered with fire the congregation of the people instantly rejected baal and accepted the God of their fathers. Since the Age of Enlightenment people have begun to reject the idea of God and most certainly the idea of an active God who cares about what goes on in this world. People have sought science to explain all there is and have trusted human ingenuity to solve all their problems and to fulfill all their needs. While ancient people certainly became slaves to wealth and power, this newfound disbelief in God and belief in the ingenuity of mankind leaves almost anything open to be the object of worship. It could be self, it could be goals, dreams, money, athletes, trophies, recognition, science, a politician, really whatever our highest focus is on in life, our life goals could be the object of worship. Whatever we look to to find ultimate satisfaction is what we worship.

II. The Necessity of Worship

Some would say they simply do not worship anything. This is perhaps the modern scientific viewpoint. However that is not correct. To worship nothing is not a choice that we do not have. God created us to worship. We must worship something. Everyone worships Blaise Pascal famously said “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every [person] which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.” We each have a longing, a searching. We are looking for something to fill, to satisfy, to worship. We do not choose to worship, that is not a choice God gave to us. Even many modern secular psychologists admit that worship is a necessary part of being alive. One such secular writer David Foster Wallace in a somewhat recent speech said “Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” In our lives we will worship whatever we find to be the most worthy of our worship. People hold to their political affiliations like a religion. For many the fandom they hold to their favorite sports team is greater than their allegiance to God. I am sadly afraid that if we were to survey many modern “Christians” they would be able to name more players on their favorite team than they are able to name authors of scripture or books of the Bible. They watch more games from their team than they read chapters of the Bible and their day of worship is probably spent watching games rather than attending church. But this worship of things extends far beyond athletes and teams. Do you get more offended when people make fun of our country than when they make fun of Christ and true Christianity? Are we more irritated by those who make light of what this country has done than by those who use the name of the Lord in vain? Some of these may seem like silly examples of worship, and yet do not people so often hold these things in high regard? Do they not glorify these things, share the good news of them to others? Do they not look for fulfillment from these objects or goals that they have glorified? Do not misunderstand me. I am not saying having preferences, even strong preferences and desires is the same as worship. I am not saying setting goals and working for them is worship; but these things become worship when we look to these things to fill the emptiness we are born with.

III. The effects of Worship?

Worship has great impact on our lives. What are the effects of worship? David Foster Wallace’s quote goes on to say “And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god to worship is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough . . . Worship your own body and beauty . . . and you will always feel ugly. . . worship power, and you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is …. They are default settings.” Two years after this speech Wallace took his life. He did not worship God and found whatever the object of his worship empty and pointless.

Some from early childhood have a dream and they reach that dream. They generally have almost the same thing to say when they get there.

A basketball player for his whole life wished to win an NBA championship. He worked hard and made it to the NBA but he was not satisfied because he wanted to win. He was very good and on one of the best teams in the league and he was friends with his teammates. They came close to a championship but fell short. This basketball player sacrificed that team, his fans, and his friends to win a championship and he joined the team that beat them. It worked, he won. You would think he would be happy. He reached his lifelong goal! But no, in an interview he said “There is a hole that I thought winning a championship would fill. It didn’t.” His lifelong dream, his passion, his greatest desire was fulfilled, and he found it empty and pointless!

A football player had a similar dream and when he won he said, “I reached my goal, my dream, my life. . . it’s gotta be more than this. I mean, this can’t be what it’s all cracked up to be. I mean, I’ve done it. I’m 27. And what else is there for me?” He recognized that being the pinnacle of success in the worlds eyes, and accomplishing all he dreamed of still did not fulfill.

What we worship decides the direction of our life! Where we search for fulfilment dictates the decisions of our life. If we worship at pleasure, we will invariable find addiction to be our master. If we worship at the alter of wealth, we will find it to be never enough, empty, meaningless and fleeting. If we worship power we will always find something or someone more powerful that us and we will find that no matter how much we control some things will always be out of our control. Whatever we worship aside from God will leave us feeling helpless and hopeless.

IV. The Object of Worship

So what is the object of our worship? Is it things of this world or is it God?

While I believe that I am preaching to a crowd of people who worships God perhaps some of you have resonated with the emptiness of worshiping anything other than God. Perhaps you feel like you’ve heard this before and this is the part of the message where I ask you what you are worshiping and tell you to worship God. To stop looking at the world and its pleasures. To quit your idolatry and serve God. You are right. I am telling you that, but don’t stop listening just because you have already tried and failed. It may be that you have lived your life fighting to worship God. You strive to cease your idolatry. You already have tried as hard as you can to break your addictions and change your desires. You wake up with the desire to live live Holy before your God each day, and you pillow your head at night knowing you failed. You’ve heard it before. You play this game of willpower against desire every day and all I have said has driven that depression and sense of failure back to the forefront of your mind as you fight to forget it. You are right telling yourself to stop being addicted, to stop desiring, to change is useless.

It does not work with willpower. How can we change our dreams, our desires? How can we change the object of our worship? You get a taste of something greater!

How do we convince a toddler to try a new food that they don’t want to try instead of just sticking with the baby food they have grown used to? To them that baby food is all they know and all they want. Whatever you are offering is unfamiliar and so probably not worth trying in their mind. How do we change their mind? We give them a taste! How many of us would like to go back to subsisting on milk and baby food? While that once satisfied, we have gotten a taste of something better.

It could be like coffee. You get a taste for it and really want a good cup of coffee. For many our search for a good cup of coffee begins and ends in your own kitchen with a good old coffee pot and some Folgers or Maxwell house coffee or maybe even the convenience of Keurig. One day that changes, someone introduces you to Dunkin’ Donuts and suddenly you aren’t satisfied with your own coffee anymore. Dunkin’ satisfies your coffee craving until you get a taste of overpriced Starbucks excellence. Suddenly that coffee from Dunkin’ tastes a little less good. Starbucks is the pinnacle of your coffee desire and satisfaction until you find that hole in the wall place that makes it just right. Suddenly you aren’t happy with Starbucks anymore and when you want a good cup of coffee you find that little shop! For the true coffee snobs, it comes full circle. Once again are you making coffee at home but now its pour over and French press coffee’s that you seek. Now for me it doesn’t work quite this way. While all coffee is certainly not equal, it is nearly all good!

You see, getting a taste of something greater cures you of the desire for the cheap. It changes your perceptions of what satisfies.

How then do we change what we worship? How do we change our desires? Just like getting a taste of real food cures your desire for baby food, getting a taste of the real cures all desires for the substitute. You get just a tiny taste of the fulfilment that God brings, and other desires will begin to fade. Nothing here on earth will satisfy, only worship of God will fill the void inside. Everything except worship of God is self-destructive worship. Worship of God fills the longing in your soul! This sounds trite and foolish. I promise you it is not. You might say that you have tasted of God’s glory and yet during this message you realized you live like you worship something else. What you worship demands your time, your attention, your devotion, and your love. Are you spending time with God? In His word, in prayer? In silence? In music? Are you really spending time with God? Are you going through a useless form? Do you let God speak to you? Do you listen? Your life may not change overnight. Your heart might not instantly realize the truth of how fleeting the pleasure and satisfaction you gain from whatever it is you worship is, but it will eventually. As you worship God, the songwriter says that things of this world grow strangely dim. God’s glory is so vast, immense, and inconceivable that consistent contact with and worship of God will leave you completely unsatisfied and even disgusted by the best the world can offer.

As we worship God in each service, and as we worship God throughout each day truly seek to worship Him. Seek communion with Him. Watch as the things you thought would fulfill your desires feel emptier and emptier the closer you get to them and watch as God seems sweeter and fuller the more of Him you experience. That hole in your being, that emptiness can be filled. “O taste and see that the LORD is good:”