Worship by like Jesus worshiped

Intro

As you know we have been in a worship series Since mid September and I have been trying to trace this theme of worship though the scriptures. And its almost as if the Lord was really guiding and leading for this series because it was on my heart to do and Jeff our worship leader came to me and stepped down…We have announced that before but what I wanted to let you know is that on October 26th that will be jeff’s last Sunday and after service we are just going to have a little going away party for Jeff thanking him for three years of faithful leadership here.

So I want to encourage you to be here to thank him and I also want to ask you to pray for us as we search for a new worship lead. We know that God is faithful and that the Lord is leading in this. So please pray for REC, Pray for Jeff as he transitions off of staff and pray for whoever is next for leading at REC

So worship is the only appropriate response to God’s goodness and majesty…

Many do not know this but the book of Job is actually the oldest book in the Bible in terms of when it was written down. Job was written down before Genesis. So in the oldest book of the bible it records that worship happened before the creation of humans

Worship existed before us and will exist after us…

Check this out.

Job 38:4–7 NIV

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone— while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?

In this section the Lord is recounting creation, asking Job a number of rhetorical questions...Like were you there at creation?

Were you there when the morning stars shouted for joy?

Stars were created on day 4. They were called heavenly hosts in the ancient mind.

Heavenly luminaries in the ancient mind were seen as angels….(The devil fell like a star)

The idea is that God has an angelic group with him in heaven

They are pictured all through the psalms….Praising the Lord!

Their main Job is worship!

Psalm 103:20 NIV

Praise the Lord, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word.

We get glimpses of this through the entire Bible.

So at the creation of the world before there was even humans to worship God the angels were praising the Lord

And guess what it happens again

Let me read you a verse that is so well know it is probably one of the most widely knows scriptures it was in the 1965 Charlie Brown Christmas Special where Linus repeats this at the school Christmas play…It has been on countless cards and TV shows…

Look at Luke 2:13-14 with me:

Luke 2:13–14 NIV

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

Do you get it?

The angels are worshiping God in the creation of the world

God’s great plan for the world is unfolding with the birth of Jesus and the reaction of all of heaven is to recognize God’s goodness and majesty and worship!

It is the chief vocation of angels to give praise to God

Even at the end of the bible we get glimpses into heaven

Revelation 7:11 NIV

All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God,

I put all of this together to show you what we have been talking about at the beginning of this series

That worship in the only activity that will actually endure!

Engaging with God: A Biblical Theology of Worship Introduction

“Worship is the supreme and only indispensable activity of the Christian Church. It alone will endure, like the love for God which it expresses, into heaven, when all other activities of the Church will have passed away.

We have this daily task of being formed as worshipers of God.

Of giving our allegiance to him

Giving our praise to him

Giving our hearts to the Lord

There is so much that competes for your worship. This is part of the reason why we are doing a social media fast right now. There is just a ton out there that competes for your worship

One of the primary ways of worshiping God continually is allegiance and obedience to Jesus

I am worried that what some of you might think in this series is that I am calling you to worship by singing all the time.

Now that is one way of worshiping God but you can’t do that all the time so how do we live a life of continual worship?

Its through Allegiance and Obedience

Allegiance as in your heart is given over to the Lord

Obedience as in your actually live out your faith

Jesus Modeled worshipful allegiance and obedience with his whole life

Well the ministry of Jesus gets started only after Jesus faces a huge test.

The scripture says that Jesus was led into the dessert by the spirit to be tempted by the devil

Ouch

In the same way that Adam and Eve were tempted by the serpent in the garden..(Spoiler alert for if you are in my Genesis class…Don’t listen to this next part if you want to be surprised at my class tomorrow)

Adam and Eve failed the test…To not eat of the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil…Which essentially means defining what is good and what is bad on your own terms.

Adam and eve failed the test…and now Jesus is going into the dessert to meet up with that slippery serpent from the garden to be tested in the same way…

The first temptation of Jesus is his physical Appetite…Hey Jesus you have been fasting for 40 days, I know you can turn this rock into bread…you should do that…Jesus passes the test..>He cites Deuteronomy: Man shall not live on bread alone but the very word of God

And Satan is like: Cool…You know the Bible so do I…Satan then quotes Psalm 91 and says hey if your father really loves you the way he says he does then throw yourself off this roof and he will send his angels

The next test is approval…He temps Jesus to test God…hey Jesus see how much your father loves you…Throw yourself down from this high place and you know what the Bible says….That he will send angels to care for you…

Jesus again quotes scripture…Deuteronomy…Don’t put the Lord God to the test!

And we pick up on the last temptation of this:

Matthew 4:8–11 NIV

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

The last temptation was to Jesus’s ambition

many have pointed out that this was to give Jesus a shortcut to establishing his kingdom

But the shortcut was though worship of satan! Do you see that

So Jesus again quotes Deuteronomy. Worship the Lord your God and serve him only

So Jesus quotes here the fundamental way that we will see him worship through the gospels

What does it mean for Jesus to serve the father?

It means that he is obedient

and what does obedience look like?

Ultimately it looks like Jesus living out the narrative of the suffering servant of Isaiah 53:5

Isaiah 53:5 NIV

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

This is how Jesus served his father in heaven…Obedience to the plan…Not his will but his father’s will

But here is the the other thing that I want you to see out of this verse:

There is an ongoing war for your worship

Remember what we looked at last week

John 4:23 NIV

Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.

God is seeking worshipers!

But! Satan is also seeking worshipers!

he takes Jesus out to the dessert and says worship me!

So Jesus shows us in his life what true obedience and allegiance to God looks like: Jesus shows us what it is like to live a life of continual worship

So if there is a war happening for our worship I guess the main question is how did Jesus worship the father?

How did Jesus worship?

Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed (Luke 5:16)

Luke 5:16 NIV

But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

You might be the kind of person that is like…I love to worship God in large crowds hearing a sermon and singing great songs and that is great, it truly is!

But look at the way that Jesus did this.

He often…In other words… it was his regular pattern

what is your regular pattern in life?

One of the reasons why we are doing a social media fast Because what do we do often…Ends up defining us!

There was a song put out called Dusty Bibles…It goes we’ve got dust on our bibles and brand new iphones and we wonder why we feel this way…We are doing this social media fast as a church because we are primarily worshipers and when we become social media drones then we give ourselves over to the phone more than anything…and we have to break that power

What we “Often” do defines us! and shapes us!

Remember the primary way that we worship is though our allegiance and obedience and when we often go to social media and become obedient to ideologies that are not of God.

We allow the talking heads and the pundits to take over in our life…

Then it says Jesus withdrew! Jesus Got alone!

I am an extrovert…I love being with people, but it truly was not until covid that I learned the joy of often withdrawing to lonely places

I would get so sick of zoom and being indoors that I started running and in the running I found that I was alone like truly alone for the first time

then all of the sudden I was able to pray more specifically and in that prayer time just listen for the voice of Jesus

Often times I would be thinking though sermons and scripture and I would come home and open my computer and just start typing all of the stuff I was prayerfully thinking about on my run

You might not think that worship looks like getting alone, withdrawing and praying looks like worship but

When Jesus withdraw he prayed

We don’t exactly know what Jesus prayed all the time although there are clues…John 17, There is the Lord’s Prayer….

But it was his regular pattern

I wanted to hi-light this App that we have been recommending as a church called Lectico 365. It is basically a call to prayer 3x a day every day. And they use the Acrostic for the word pray…

What do you do when you are alone:

Pause

Rejoice & Reflect

Ask

Yield

I realize that we as people need these little things to help us.

Pause…So you literally quiet your mind and your phone and all of your thoughts and say Lord I am here and ready to listen to you

Rejoice and reflect: Lord we thank you and rejoice in your goodness…maybe you take a few minutes to thank God for all that he has done in your life!

Ask: What do you want to bring before the Lord. nothing is off limits

Yield: Lord not my will but your will

It is through the daily discipline of withdrawing to be with God and speak with him that you will begin to see this as the kind of worship that sustains your…The kind of worship that is just embodied in everything you do in your life!

Jesus did this often …It was about relationship with God

Jesus went to church (Luke 4:44)

Luke 4:44 NIV

And he kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea.

Now I am kind of playing around with you when I say that Jesus went to church, because the text actually says Synagogue

“The Church” was not established until after the death, resurrection and pouring out of the spirit on Jesus’ followers

But Synagogue was probably the closest to church before the church was formed

In that the only physical location of God was in the temple, so the synagogue was seen as a meeting house for God’s people rather than a meeting house for God himself…God was only in the temple!

Synagogue life dramatically impacted the early church, at first there was no difference…

Lets look at Hebrews 10:24-25

Hebrews 10:24–25 NIV

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Sometimes worshipful allegiance and obedience looks like building up the body..

Maybe you serve in the kids ministry and I hear this all the time from people, I hate to miss church…And I always think what you are doing in building children up is an act of worship to the Lord!

Its the same thing with any ministry here

Using your gifts to lay a foundation in others and to help other people come to know God either for the first time or in a deeper way.

Part of meeting together either in church or in Synagogue was encouraging one another to stay faithful to the Lord!

Part of going to Synagogue was observing the sabbath!

Jesus kept the sabbath in fact even when it looked like he was breaking the sabbath he was keeping it and showing the disciples how it was really meant to be.

In going to Synagogue Jesus demonstrated a respect for the Law for the Torah of God!

Jesus showed himself as an obedient Jew

So if you want to worship like Jesus…Withdraw to lonely places to pray

Go to church

and then finally

Jesus worshiped with his life group

Obviously Jesus did life together with his 12 disciples and even more people than that

In one of the ways that he did this was though the passover meal

The Passover was one of three pilgrimage festivals of Israel, meaning it was a requirement to travel to Jerusalem to celebrate one of the three festivals…

Tabernacles

Passover

Pentacost

the passover it is a festival that celebrates God’s rescue of Israel from the slavery and oppression of Egypt.

It was actually the feast that protected them from the even darker power of death

They would sacrifice a lamb, spread the blood over the doorway and the blood of the lamb protected them from death

Then they would eat the meal quickly and flee from Pharaoh and his armies

And Jesus would re-define this meal for them

Matthew 26:17–30 NIV

On the first day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Where do you want us to make preparations for you to eat the Passover?” He replied, “Go into the city to a certain man and tell him, ‘The Teacher says: My appointed time is near. I am going to celebrate the Passover with my disciples at your house.’ ” So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them and prepared the Passover. When evening came, Jesus was reclining at the table with the Twelve. And while they were eating, he said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me.” They were very sad and began to say to him one after the other, “Surely you don’t mean me, Lord?” Jesus replied, “The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me. The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.” Then Judas, the one who would betray him, said, “Surely you don’t mean me, Rabbi?” Jesus answered, “You have said so.” While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

In this new meal, Jesus was celebrating with his small group, his disciples that God rescued all of Israel from Egypt and he is going to do it again!

And the way that he is going to do it all over again is though the person of Jesus

He will be betrayed, and hung on a cross for their sins

And his spilled his blood to make a new blood covenant with his people

This meal would become the center of worship for the new community of the church

The idea for the early church was to feast on Jesus…

And the more that they took this meal then the more they become like Jesus

I love John 6, it is another chapter in the Bible that is just one of these massively important chapters

look at what jesus says here

John 6:35 NIV

Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

John 6:53 NIV

Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

See the point I made at first was that the worship of Jesus is primarily though our allegiance and obedience to Jesus

This is how Jesus was allegiant and obedient to his father

He got alone to pray and spend time alone

He went to church…He was a regular synagogue attender…He kept the sabbath

and lastly he met with his small group…and in that last meeting with his small group, it revealed that he was Jesus allegiance and obedience was to death

So today I what to invite you to eat from Jesus

I want to invite you into worship where we do all of these things…We stop to pause…Reflect…ask and yield to the Lord

Jesus celebrated the festivals with his disciples

This meal became the early church…

I know now you look at church and you think primarly we sing and I preach…and that is what church is.

But the earliest church would get together to eat this meal together

and that was worship

Jesus makes it clear that ‘eating’ and ‘drinking’ of his flesh and blood is only possible because the crucified Son of Man ascends to the Father and pours out his Spirit.

Because of this people are enabled to believe the word about his incarnation and sacrificial death and to receive the eternal life he makes possible

Communion is about consuming the life of Jesus and becoming more like him

The words of Jesus must be consumed so that Christ might live in us

Jesus’ whole life was an example of sacrificial service to God and his people.

Yet obedience to the Father ultimately led him to offer himself in death, as the final and perfect expression of uncompromising worship

So I know we just celebrated communion last week but I want to do it again becuase it is symbolically in consuming the words of Jesus…Consuming the life of Jesus that our lives move into allegiance to Jesus and obedience to Jesus

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