Basic Training: The Weapon of Praise

INTRODUCTION

· Training to be good soldiers… Our theme verse once again is , which gives us the standard that we are to live by if we want to be good soldiers. “3 You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. 4 No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.” We are training to be good soldiers of Jesus Christ so we can guard ourselves from being entangled in the affairs of this life and so we can please God as we face please our Commander as we face the temptations and hardships that our adversary brings

· Usually, when I open the lessons in this series, I talk about how the topic of our lesson has a parallel with armies or with basic training in the armed forces… Today I cannot do that because there is not a parallel… Because as we discuss our topic today, the topic of praise and worship, there is ONLY ONE who is worthy of worship. Only one who we are to stand in awe of and adore… That is our commander; our God.

· We are in desperate need of worship as the army of God… We are in constant need of reminders about who we are before Him, what He has done for us, to praise Him, and to be challenged by His word… And to show Him that He is worthy of our praise and His people are worth our time…

· As we will see in this lesson, this is the main idea of all that we will talk about today, so please listen closely… The reason why we are here today IS NOT because of us… It is not because of what we can get out of it… Worship is all about Him. He is the emphasis. We are here so we can remember His mighty works and glorify Him, and so we can be equipped to glorify Him when we leave… This is what worship must be all about. If it is about us, it is not the worship of God we are here for

THE PURPOSES OF WORSHIP

· I would like to focus on two passages of scripture today during our lesson. The first one being . We will get our first two points for our lesson today from this passage. Let’s go ahead and read this psalm, which is a call to God’s people to praise and worship him…

· "Oh come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For forty years I loathed that generation and said, "They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways." Therefore I swore in my wrath, "They shall not enter my rest."" ()

WE ARE HERE IN RESPONSE TO WHAT GOD HAS DONE

· We need to come before the God of heaven. The One who is greater than all… He is worthy of worship just because of who He is. Even if he did nothing for us to give us the hope of eternal life, He would be worthy of worship just because of the fact that all that we see belongs to Him and He created it all… He is the One who gives to all of us life, breath, and all things…

· And if that is not enough, He is also the God of our salvation… the only One who gives forgiveness and eternal life. The one who sacrificed so much to give us that hope…

· This is the emphasis of the first 6.5 verses of this psalm… Come let us sing to the Lord… Come let us worship and bow down before Him… because He is our maker, the One over all – the One who has given us salvation…

· We need to remember that, first and foremost, our worship by definition is a response to God’s greatness. We come together because we have experienced first hand the work of God and we stand in awe of who He is and what He has done… We have experienced His love, and want to show our love for Him. We want to thank Him for what he has done…

· This is the main reason we are here. To thank praise Him and to remember His glorious works… This is what we do when we come here, and this is what we will do for all eternity!

WE ARE HERE TO BE CHALLENGED BY OUR COMMANDER

· This will be our shortest point because we have already talked about this so much in this series… But we come here to be challenged by our commander… From the end of verse 7 to the end of psalm 95, we see this emphasis on hearing His voice and obeying TODAY and not hardening our hearts as those in times past have… We should desire to come here, with hearts that are tender and open to the voice of our commander as we hear His commandments being preached and taught, willing to obey His will. We come before the God who knows better than we do about how this life is best lived before Him… He is the only one able to give us the knowledge and wisdom we need to be pleasing to Him… His word challenges us… We need His word to examine our hearts and challenge our thinking so we can better serve God and please Him as soldiers when we go out into the world...

WE ARE HERE TO BE STIRRED UP TO LOVE & GOOD WORKS BY ONE ANOTHER

· For our third point regarding why we come to worship, let’s turn to would like us to read … I would like us to read the whole context of verses 23-25 before we talk about them...

· [22] let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. [23] Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. [24] And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, [25] not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. [26] For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, [27] but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. (ESV)

· This is one of those passages that we often, as Jesus put it with the Pharisees, “strain out the gnat and swallow the camel.” What I mean by this is we focus on the measurable in the passage and miss the main emphasis. We look at the passage and say, “the Hebrews writer is saying “do not forsake the assembly, so this means it is a sin to miss worship services.” But when we do this, we are doing two things wrong

o First, we are misreading the verse… The Hebrews writer does NOT say, “do not forsake the assembly,” he says, “not forsaking the assembling or gathering of yourselves together…” we often misquote the verse and because of this limit it wrongly only to worship assemblies,

o And second, we tend to focus more on the idea of gathering instead of the reason why Christians are told to gather together here… You can make EVERY SINGLE Sunday service and midweek Bible class and still not obey this passage… You can come and still miss the reason why we need to come together… The Hebrews writer says that we gather together in order to stir one another up to love and good works… We are to help each other be on fire/passionate for doing good so we can all better glorify and honor God… We are to help one another and encourage one another, especially in overcoming sin in our lives, which is what verse 26 shows us… We need to encourage each other because if we continue to go on sinning willfully, we are going to be judged for it… Are we doing this when we come here? Or do we focus more on just getting something out of the service for myself, and spend no time before or after services trying to encourage or stir up your brothers and sisters to love and good works.

o I tell you the truth, I am JUST as concerned about those who get here last minute or late and leave immediately after the closing prayer than I am those who don’t come at all… Those who are not gathering together with God’s people and those who are not actively looking for ways to encourage God’s people when they gather together are both violating this passage and are being self-focused…

WHAT EXCUSES SHOW ABOUT US

· Before we close, I do want to say something about making excuses not to be at worship… whether that be because you cannot sit here for three hours, or you have to work, or whatever the excuse may be… I have a few questions for you to ask yourself about coming to worship… …

o If we do not want to be here every time the doors of this building are open for God’s people to gather together, here may we be showing that we don’t believe God is worthy enough of worship unless it is convenient for us?

o If we are making reasons NOT to attend worship, may that show that we are too focused on ourselves?

o If we do not worship or desire to be at all of the services, may this show that what God has done has NOT impacted our lives like it should?

There is a good reason why our shepherds talk about the importance of coming to services… Oftentimes, missing worship services does show that we have a heart issue… A heart that does not want to worship God and be around His people to encourage and help them, or even a heart that may be luke-warm and stuck in sin…

I wholeheartedly believe that hearts that are really standing in awe of what God has done, whether that be in His creation or in showing His mercy to them will want to worship, and will want to do it as often as they can, EVEN outside of the worship services… Being challenged by God’s word and singing to God and to one another will be the natural outflow of filling our hearts with God’s word...

The psalmist, who didn’t even understand the blessings that we currently have in Christ, said, “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the LORD!’” Based on what he knew about God, the idea of worshipping where God’s people were at the temple was exciting for him… Can we say that we share the same kind of excitement about worship? Do you look forward to anticipation in gathering together with God’s people to worship the God whom you adore and stand in awe of?