Worship

Altars not Anthems

Good morning! Today is a day we gather together with other believers to do a few differnt things. We fellowship with other believers, we hear the Word of the Lord, we by faith give generously. We also sing songs together. You may be saying Pastor Zach most churches call that worship. You are right most call it worship but I want to give you a new definiton of worship today. One that is not singing. Worship over the years has become about the song, the stage, the lights, the smoke, and the show. Worship was never meant to be a song, a stage, lights, smoke, or a show. So do we worship on Sunday mornings? I will leave that answer up to the Holy Spirit. So if thats the question what is the answer? There is a form of study called the law of first mention. It is simple, you trace where a word was first used and you begin to study what is happening. If you do this properly you may find that what you think something is is not what it was originally intended to be. Worship for me was one of those things. I have always known that worship was more than a song, worship was more than a motion. So lets take a look at worship from the first mention of it. Genesis 22:4-5

Genesis 22:4–5 NLT

On the third day of their journey, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. “Stay here with the donkey,” Abraham told the servants. “The boy and I will travel a little farther. We will worship there, and then we will come right back.”

So what does worship mean? I can promise you that the first worship service was not filled to capacity, there was not comy chairs, no songs, no keyboard, guitar, drums, or even a orchestra….It was a 100 plus year old man and a teenager. 2 people going to worship? The word worship here means to bow down so the first mention of worship the first time the word is used in scripture is to bow down. It was not a song it was an act of obedience. It was an act of saying that God was more worthy than just a song, He was and is worthy of it all. Abraham was not looking for a stage, but a place where he could honor God. You may be saying PZ we honor God in our music, you are right we do honor him with our music but if you really dive into worship and the bowing down before the Lord its an act of submission. Submission is a dirty word in todays culture. Submission requries us to say we are not in control. The first worship sessions was relinquishing the promise God had given Abraham. This was clearly a step into submission.

Genesis 22:1–2 NLT

Some time later, God tested Abraham’s faith. “Abraham!” God called. “Yes,” he replied. “Here I am.” “Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.”

God tested Abrahams faith. So we see that preceeding the worship God tested the faith of the Father of of God’s people. Faith Abraham was known for. He out of faith stepped away from what he knew to travel to a land he didn’t know. By faith he heard God tell Him he would be the father of nations without having any offspring. By faith he, prayed and spoke to God about his nephew lot. By faith Abraham recieved God’s promise. Faith was not a question to Abraham. He had faith. So why was God testing His faith. Have you ever arrived at the place you were trying to go.   It feels as if you have finally come to the place you were destined for. Then something happens that keeps you from actually getting there, or you feel like there is something missing? Abraham had recieved the promise of God. Lets be really honest Abraham was years in between the promise and the fulfillment of that promise. in between the time he tried to make the promise happen and the truth is that was his biggest mistake. So He has been given the promsie. It is in his arms under his roof and he is caring for the promise. Yet God called him. He told him to take his son his only son Issac and offer Him as a sacrifice. Now I want to pause here for a moment and say that God never intended Issac to actually be sacrificed. He was not asking Abraham to make a human sacrifice. He was seeing if He was willing to hold onto the promise with loose hands. God had given him the promise but would he be willing to give it up if God asked? Worship in verse 5 is simply an act of obedience. Abraham is offering Issac to God in an act of obedience and a sacrifice. Loose hands. There is an element of faith in worship. Faith to believe that the God who gave you the promise would take care of it. Look at the end of V5 We will come right back. Faith that God would not take the promise, but even if he did Abraham would be ok. There is a picture that sums up obedience and its this picture

Its about giving up what we have worked for. I think this is the best sum of obedience but the truth is we must learn God owes no man anything. Even if God gives it he can take it away and not give anything back. That will wreck your theology and the prosperity gospel. Even if God never gives it back or gives us something better We know that we will be ok because God is sovereign. Worship is the act of obedience. Worship throughout the years from Abraham the nomad worshipping wherever he met with God, to David and the Kingdom of Israel, then you bring in Solomon and the temple. Worship added things but the message was still the same. It was an act of obedience and submission to God. David said it in

Psalm 95:6 NLT

Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our maker,

David was saying to the people of God come let us worship submit and bow down before the Lord.

I have a feeling that Abraham, David, Solomon, and any of the patriarchs of the faith would have easily sacrificed a mistake. They would have given up the thing they didn’t enjoy. Yet it was not the thing they messed up that God asked for. Faith loose hands and our willingness to be obedient is our act of worship. The biggest key I believe in our worship is giving God what you have not what you don’t want. Lets look at a funny story from an old preacher in the 70’s He had become the pastor of a church and God had blessed him and the church with a new building they paid way less than appraised and were able to turn the old bank into a beautiful church. A lady phoned the church one day and asked to speak to the pastor. He answered and the older saint on the other end of the phone said pastor my husband and i have just gotten a a new piano for our home, and our old piano is worn out of tune and needs help but i want to bless the church with my old piano. Listen as pastors we are trained in PR, we understand that when someone wants to bless us we should let them. However the truth is God asks us to be obedient and give him what we have not what we are wanting to get rid of. Sometimes our worshsip consists of outrage, and frustration because we are offering the wrong thing in worship. The pastor answered. I am sorry ma’am we dont want your old worn piano but if you want to give us the new one we will take it. She hung up in utter disbelief. The truth is being real with God and being obedient to what He is asking will wreck your western theology of God give us good things and we can give old things to the church because well they need it. The truth is God can use the rough things but God isn’t asking for us to give what we don’t want He is asking if we are willing to give him the thing we want the most. It was a while later as the pastor looked out of his window a moving truck showed up with a brand new piano in tow. In disbelief he called the lady as she picked up in tears he asked if she was ok. She said since our call i have not been able to sleep or function. I knew what I had to do. So here pastor is our brand new piano for the church. Can i tell you that God owes you nothing but requries us to be obedient. Worship is obedience, worship is bowing down in submission. Worship in a form is also singing to the Lord but its not just signing its an act of obedience. Our problem comes in when we begin to turn worship into things its not supposed to be. I’ll be honest I love music, music does a lot of good, its sets the tone, or atmosphere, it brings up memories, it can create emotion or feeling. Music has the ability to be great bad or indefferrnt. I can honestly say that music has never been what stirs my heart. What stirs my heart is submission to God. What stirs my heart is the almighty presence of God that comes and surrounds me as I sing about Him. We have made worship artist people we idolize, we try and immulate thier sound and their actions. But that is not worship.

I have heard many people say they want to have faith like Abraham or dance like David or be wise like Solomon. The question we must answer is are we willing to be Obedient? Worship is obedience, worship is sacrfice and worship is submission? So the question becomes are we willing to have loose hands and give up what God asks for or do we try and give God what we don’t want. If you want to know what its like to be God in regards to us being willing to worship go try arguing with a toddler who thinks they know better. or a 9 year old going on 18….you will see quickly that there is not point to it. The truth is we are all guilty of giving God what we want. So how can we live in a way that worship is our lifestyle, and be willing to live with loose hands.

We must honor God

Proverbs 1:7 NLT

Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.

Deuteronomy 6:13 NLT

You must fear the Lord your God and serve him. When you take an oath, you must use only his name.

Honor and fear of the Lord are paramount to a life of worship and loose hands. If we are going to understand worship we must honor God. It has to be a foundation of our life that we worship, “sacrifice, obedience, submit.” If we are going to worship God we must honor him. I must warn you, You can honor God out of words, and not heart.

Isaiah 29:13–16 NLT

And so the Lord says, “These people say they are mine. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. And their worship of me is nothing but man-made rules learned by rote. Because of this, I will once again astound these hypocrites with amazing wonders. The wisdom of the wise will pass away, and the intelligence of the intelligent will disappear.” What sorrow awaits those who try to hide their plans from the Lord, who do their evil deeds in the dark! “The Lord can’t see us,” they say. “He doesn’t know what’s going on!” How foolish can you be? He is the Potter, and he is certainly greater than you, the clay! Should the created thing say of the one who made it, “He didn’t make me”? Does a jar ever say, “The potter who made me is stupid”?

We tend to think we can make honor the lord about showing up and saying and doing but I must warn you there is a level that the Lord destest and that is the honor lips and not heart. So how do we worship we honor God with all that we are.

We are obedient.

1 Samuel 15:22 NLT

But Samuel replied, “What is more pleasing to the Lord: your burnt offerings and sacrifices or your obedience to his voice? Listen! Obedience is better than sacrifice, and submission is better than offering the fat of rams.

God is looking for people who will be obedient and willing to submit to him not people who look like it. Any person can sing a song, but worship is the heart posture behind it. You see its evident when you are actually engaging in worship and not just singing a song. God is not looking for us to bring him a quick answer or a hope to make something out of nothing but He is looking at our heart. The heart is the key to understand what worship is.

Proverbs 27:19 NLT

As a face is reflected in water, so the heart reflects the real person.

The heart of the person is what God is looking at. There is a level of worship that goes beyond the song, it goes beyond the words, it gets down to the heart of the person. The heart is what God sees.

God sees our hearts, he wants our worship not just our words. We must honor Him, be obedient, and be willing to be sacrificial in what He asks.

Luke 7:37–38 NLT

When a certain immoral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them.

The sacrifice she was making was not just monetarily but was an act of submission to Christ as King. It was a laying down of pride, and shame to honor Jesus as King. So honor obedience sacrifice.

So how do we honor we turn our hearts to God. We give him permssion to come and invade every area of our life. We allow him access to areas we think we can handle or access to places that we have previously kept off limits. You want to honor God you learn to fear God a reverent awe of Him.

The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God you fear everything else. “Blessed is every one that feareth the Lord.”

Oswald Chambers (Lecturer and Missionary)

To fear the Lord means to reverence Him and seek to please Him by obeying His Word.

Warren W. Wiersbe

We fear God first and foremost. We are obedient in our relationship to God.

The best measure of a spiritual life is not its ecstasies but its obedience.

Oswald Chambers (Lecturer and Missionary)

The Christian life begins with obedience, depends on obedience, and results in obedience.

Charles Colson

Fear of the Lord, Obedience to Him and Sacrifice of what we hold dear.

All along the Christian course, there must be set up altars to God on which you sacrifice yourself, or you will never advance a step.

Alexander Maclaren (Preacher and Expositor)

Nothing less than a living sacrifice is demanded. Not a loan, but a gift; not a compromise, but a sacrifice; not our poorest, but our best; not a dead but a living offering. Each drop of our blood, each ounce of our energy, each throb of our heart, we must offer to God.

Joseph Pearce

Lets us begin to focus then not on what we hold dear but what we hold loosely.

"Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts when God pries your fingers open," Corrie Ten Boom

So today I believe that God is going to answer our question Is what we do worship? Here are the spiritual requirements for worship…

1.) Do we fear the Lord?

If yes then great so far we are on the right path

If no then we must examine our hearts. Fear the of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

2.) Are we obedient?

If yes then we must hold loosely to the things we have been given.

If no then we must allow God access to our hearts to help us be obedient.

3.) Are we sacrificial?

If yes then we must be ok with truly giving God what we have not just what we want to give up

If no then we must allow God to access our hearts and remove the pride and selfishness.

4.) Worship is at all times honor to God, obedience to His word, and sacrificing what he asks us to. Don’t mistake a song, a movement, or a position for true worship.

John 4:24 “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”” comes after he explains that worship will not jsut be here or in the temple but that we must worhsip him in spirit and truth. The evidence should be clear, either you are truly worshipping God in spirit and truth or your worship is a facade to make you feel better. If you are here today and your heart is turning your spirit is convicted then id say God is asking you to be real and honest with him. If today you are saying that is my worship I am willing I am willing I am willing I must caution you willing doesnt mean obedience. WIlling is the first step laying it down is the second. and worship becomes who we are and what we do.

So the altar today is a 2 step process.

1.) You are not woshipping the Lord like we have seen today and you need to prepare you heart by asking God to forgive, and restore you

2.) You are willing but today you are ready to take the next step so you come and worship bring your sacrifice and bow down before the Lord.