Devoted to Community Worship

Devotion to Community Worship Acts 2:42-47 ● What were you created for? Why do you exist? Why does Redeeming Grace Church meet here at this particular time and in this particular place? ● The answer is quite simple yet quite profound--worship. ● We are created for worship, we exist to worship, and this church is to be a place of worship and a beacon of worship. ● And what is this idea of worship? ● Succinctly put at the beginning of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, question one--what is the chief end of man? ● Answer---Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever. ● Worship is glorifying God, which we will see in a moment, but it is also enjoying God. ● Not simply religious, rote, practice, but worship is a living, joyful relationship with the God who has revealed Himself to us and who calls us to respond as those in communion with Him. ● And clearly as we see in Scripture, worship was central to the life of the early church--Acts 2:46-47: [46] And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, [47] praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. (ESV) ● I share all this to start our sermon this morning because I want us to remember two important things as we look at the early church’s devotion to community worship that also apply to us here: ● First, worship is all about God. ● It may seem silly for me to say this here at RGC, but I never think we can be reminded enough that God is God and we are not, and this Great God has revealed HImself to us only by His grace, and it is only by His love that we can see Him with eyes of faith and know Him personally through the finished work of Christ. ● Second, we are not only created as individuals to worship, but we are created as a community, the Church, to worship. ● In fact, I would contend this morning that individual worship ultimately makes no sense apart from being connected to a Church that is devoted to worship God in every aspect of life and service. ● Why, because throughout the Bible, worship is in the context of community--whether Old Testament Israel, or the New Testament Church. ● So this morning, I want to stir within us a devotion to community worship, by looking at the aim of worship, the requirement of worship, and the expression of worship, through the lens of the new covenant community--the Church. ● And the main driving take-away is this: how can we be a people, because of God’s great work in the gospel, who values and expresses ultimate worship to Him and Him alone. 1) The Aim of Community Worship ● What is the aim and goal of our worship of God? ● What is it that we are after as a church as we gather on Sunday mornings corporately, and as we live as the church throughout the rest of the week as disciples of Christ? ● And if you’ve been at RGC some time you know the answer already: ● The chief aim in worship for the church, and therefore every believer in Christ, to glorify God. Let me say that again. ● The chief aim in worship for the church, and therefore every believer in Christ, to glorify God. ● I think one text best expresses this point: 1 Corinthians 10:31: ○ So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. ● Simple enough, but what do we mean when we talk about the glory of God? If worship has as its aim to glorify God, what does that exactly look like? ● God’s glory is God’s intrinsic worth and value as God. As John MacArthur says, ○ “The aspect of God’s glory is as essential to Him as light is to the sun, as blue is to the sky, as wet is to water. You don’t have to command the sun to shine. It just does. You don’t have to make water wet. It is. Nor do you need to paint the sky blue. That is its color already. So it is with the glory of God. We cannot give it to Him; we cannot diminish it. He is who He is. He is all of His attributes in perfect harmony—the “God of glory.” ● As John Piper writes: ○ “God’s ultimate commitment is to Himself and not to us. And therein lies our security. God loves His glory above all. . . God loves His glory! He is committed with all His infinite and eternal might to display that glory and to preserve the honor of His name. . . Let us declare boldly and powerfully what God loves most—the glory of God. Let us guard ourselves from the ocean of man-centeredness around us.” ● I think it’s insightful to think about the Hebrew and Greek words translated as “glory” in our Bibles to get a sense of what this word means. ● In Hebrew, glory is the word kabod, which means to be heavy, or to possess weight or be weighty. ● Vine’s Expository Dictionary describes this word kabod as honor, glory, great quantity, multitude, wealth, majesty and splendor. It carries the idea of weight, and importance. ● I remember as a kid watch shows from the 70’s , and when something significant or deep happened, they would say “that’s heavy.” ● God’s very being carries tremendous weight, it’s not to be taken lightly, but He is the most significant being in all the universe, and He displays that significance as His glory. ● Psalm 138 says the glory of God is great, Psalm 104 says it’s eternal, and Psalm 113, highly exalted. ● The weight of God’s being and presence is felt in 2 Chronicles 7:1-3, which says: ○ [1] As soon as Solomon finished his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the LORD filled the temple. [2] And the priests could not enter the house of the LORD, because the glory of the LORD filled the LORD's house. [3] When all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the LORD on the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and gave thanks to the LORD, saying, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.” ● Notice a few things--the glory of God is manifested in fire which consumes the offerings and sacrifices in the temple, it is so intense that even the priests cannot stand in its presence, and when the people see God’s glory, they bow down and worship and give thanks, reciting the very character of God--He is good and His steadfast love (hesed--covenant commitment to His people) endures forever. ● So if we are to be a community of worship who glorifies God, some key elements must be: ○ We understand and feel the gravity and weightiness of the God we worship--meaning, we do not approach Him flippantly, or glib, or as if He were any less than He truly is. ○ We give Him all things [mainly ourselves] and do all things as an offering of gratitude and thanksgiving because of HIs goodness and love toward us. ○ We come to Him with a posture of humility, in light of His greatness, knowing the transcendent nature of God, and yet, know His immanence as He manifests Himself in our midst. ● In the New Testament, the word for glory is doxa, which means to seem or to appear. ● It originally carried the idea of have an opinion of or to estimate the worth of something, thereby praising it, honoring it, or glorifying it. ● In relation to God, it refers to His splendor, brightness, His preeminence, excellence and majesty which belong to Him and to Him alone. It is a reflection of His very being. ● So to glorify God is to display Him as He truly is, by centering everything in our lives upon Him, magnifying His character, His worth, His greatness in and through our lives and our church. ● Or to put it another way--we desire above all else to make much of the Triune God, to make Him look as He truly is--great, so that anyone who crosses our path can experience Him as He truly is. ● So we must ask ourselves this morning: Are we truly living for the glory and fame of God to be displayed? ● Are our lives marked by God-centered thinking and practice, or man-centered thinking and practice? ● How are we contributing to and guarding the glory of God as a church? How can we strive to make it all about Him? ● When people come into this place on Sundays, do they get a sense of the glory of God as supreme? ● The early church made it their aim to make it all about God’s glory as they lived in community worship.  2) The Requirement of Community Worship ● Now is this reality of making the aim of our community worship the glory of God something that we can do in and of ourselves? ● Is this something that we just hunker down to do, is our resolve and devotion to it enough? ● The simple and truthful answer is no--worship to the glory of God is not something we can just do on our own or something of our own invention. And Jesus makes this crystal clear in John 4 and His interaction with the woman at the well. ● The story is familiar--Jesus, by divine appointment, is passing through Samaria. ● John makes it clear that the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans, who were viewed by the Jews with disdain, as they were a mixed race of Jews and Gentiles, had their own version of the Torah, and who worshiped on Mt Gerizim and not Jerusalem. ● What makes this story incredible is that Jesus comes to this region on purpose, and to a woman living in sin against God, to show that He is indeed the Savior of the World, of all people, not just the Jews. ● The conversation begins around physical water, as Jesus asks her for a drink, but soon the conversation shifts to the spiritual, in which Jesus says to her--“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” ● Of course she wants this water, so Jesus tells her to call for her husband, in which Jesus reveals that He knows she has had 5 husbands and the man she is now with is not her husband. ● She recognizes that this is no ordinary man, but a prophet of God, and quickly shifts the conversation away from herself to the issue of worship, noting that her people have worshipped God on this mountain, again Mount Gerizim, but the Jews say that Jerusalem is God sanctioned place of worship. ● And her is where I want to focus our attention this morning, because this woman brings up the most essential point concerning how to approach God in worship--because what is being unfolded before us is that worship is not about a place but about a Person. ● Pick up with me in vs. 21: ○ Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. ● First, Jesus is one sentence is globalizing worship--it’s not about physical temple in a physical location, but God creating a new temple, His Church, which will spread His glory across the earth as the waters cover the sea. ● Implication--worship is to happen in and through God’s people in every place and at all times. ● Listen to Peter in 1 Peter 2:4-5 ○ [4] As you come to him [Christ], a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, [5] you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (ESV) ● Then using the language of Old Testament Israel, Peter continues: ○ [9] But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (ESV) ● We are the temple, we are the priests, we are the sacrifices, we are people of God who belong to God, and our worship is to be a proclamation of God’s excellencies as we have been brought out of darkness of sin into the light of His glory. ● The first requirement of worship is to be a people who proclaim the excellencies of God. ● Jesus goes on, “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. ● Second, worship is only possible by and centers upon the person of Jesus and His finished work through the cross and empty tomb. ● True worship will come only as we have been redeemed by the blood of Christ and regenerated by the Holy Spirit. ● As I said at the beginning of this message, it comes down to relationship. ● But how often do we relegate worship to just what we do--whether on a Sunday morning at church, or to singing a few songs before the sermon, or particular acts of obedience to God or to others. ● Yes, worship should manifest itself in doing, but at the heart of worship is being, and being in right relationship with God. ● Because born into this world, are hearts are corrupt and bent on worshiping ourselves and our evil desires. ● Romans 3:23 says, For all have sinned (speaking of our nature and reality), and what, continually fall short of the glory of God. ● Or put another way, one definition of sin is failing to give God glory by giving glory to someone or something else, which is ultimately oneself. ● So how does God turn sinners into worshipers--by the New Covenant through Jesus--we are given a new heart, we are giving the Spirit of God, we have our sins completely forgiven, our pride broken, and, here is the relationship part, God becomes our God, and we become is people. ● Jesus lived the perfect life of worship that we could never live, and He died willingly upon the cross, spilling His blood to glorify His Father through His love for the Father evidenced through His obedience to the Father, and the rose from the dead on the third day in resurrected power to new life to bring us to God and make us His people. ● Jesus not only restores God’s image in us so we can do what we were created for, but He puts His image in us so we can do it as sons. ● Worship at its essence is the celebration and rehearsal of the gospel, because only through the gospel can we be brought from darkness into light, and proclaim just how great our God is. ● In speaking of leading worship in the church, Bob Kauflin in his book Worship Matters puts this all together for us as he writes, ○ We’re helping people connect with the purpose for which they were created--to glorify the living God we're pointing their hearts toward the Sovereign One who is greater than their trials and kinder than they could ever imagine. We get to display the matchless Savior who died in our place, conquering sin, death, and hell in the process.” ● The second requirement of worship is to be a people who continually celebrate and proclaim the gospel, while living lives that reflect gospel reality through our sacrifice of obedience to Him. ● Third, all this can become a reality as we focus our worship upon the Spirit and the Truth. ○ [23] But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. [24] God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” ● Jesus makes it clear, the Father actively seeks true worshipers. ● What is driving redemptive history, both in the Bible and in our very day? ● God the Father seeking worshipers, and winning them by His love and grace through His Son. ● How do these true worshipers worship? In Spirit and in Truth. ● One perspective of this is by means of the Holy Spirit according to the Truth of God, namely, according to His Word. ● Meaning, worship at its core is essentially spiritual, which manifests itself in the physical realities of our lives. ● There is NO worship, no ability to worship, no acceptable worship apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. ● Which means all that the Spirit produces in our lives will be worship, because Jesus said in John that it is the Spirit’s role to make much of Jesus and glorify Him. ● And Paul in Galatians and Ephesians exhorts believers to both walk by the Spirit and be continually filled with the Spirit. And the result--worship! ● And the Spirit of God is the One who carried men along to write the God-breathed word of God, the Spirit always works in conjunction with the Truth of God, the Bible, which all points to the Word of God, Jesus Christ. ● I hope you see how this is all coming together--worship is a work of the Triune God in His people to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. ● And a second perspective is this--worship involves the head, the heart, and our hands. ● Head--truth, heart--spirit (our spirit working in union with God’s Spirit), and hands as we actively pursue Him in love and as we love others. ● John Piper sums it up well: ○ Worship must be vital and real in the heart, and worship must rest on a true perception of God. There must be spirit and there must be truth. . . . Truth without emotion produces dead orthodoxy and a church full (or half-full) of artificial admirers . . . . On the other hand, emotion without truth produces empty frenzy and cultivates shallow people who refuse the discipline of rigorous thought. But true worship comes from people who are deeply emotional and who love deep and sound doctrine. Strong affections for God rooted in truth are the bone and marrow of biblical worship. ● The third requirement of worship is that it must involve all of us individually and all of us corporately in thought, affections, and action. ● How does all of this reveal both our failures in worship, and at the same time drive us to seek God in devoted worship together as we are drawn to our Great God by His mercy and grace? 3) The Expression of Community Worship ● As we have alluded to this morning, what does community worship aimed at proclaiming God’s glory in Spirit and in Truth look like practically? How is it expressed? ● Ultimately this is where Spirit and truth comes in--we express our worship as we are filled with the Spirit of God, and always insure that it is according to God’s revealed prescription. ● A good place to start is Ephesians 5:18-20: ○ [18] And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, [19] addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, [20] giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, [21] submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. (ESV) ● A few simple places to start--addressing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (corporate worship--doing what we are doing this morning by singing songs that center on the gospel and our response to God, confessing our sin to one another, hearing and responding to the word preached, affirming our relationship with God and His Church through the table), ● Signing and making melody to the Lord with your heart (individual worship in song), giving thanks always and for everything (that’s a big one, a tough one, but a necessary one), and submitting to one another out of fear and reverence for Christ. ● Circling back to the psalms, read the psalms and join with the expressions of the psalmist as they worship God--crying out to the Lord, shouting to the Lord, bowing before the Lord, lifting up our hands to the Lord, serving the Lord with gladness, etc.) ● Add to this the book of Revelation, which is all about worship in the context of human history and God’s sovereign purposes. ● Or Romans 12:1--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. (ESV) ● Worship is expressed best as we give ourselves completely to God, individually and corporately, and see whatever we think, feel, or do to God’s glory as worship, finding our joy and identity in Christ, being led by His Spirit as we seek Him in prayer, and by proclaiming His gospel as we are on mission together. ● This is what the early church was devoted to, and what we are to be devoted to as well. 13