Sermon Tone Analysis

Recap

#1 Worship always involves revelation and response (our faithful response to God’s gracious revelation)

#2 Worship is something we do individually & in community

#3 Habitual life of worship is more important than our acts of worship in a religious setting ()

#4 Habitual life of worship & intentional congregational worship informs and strengthens one another (maturity of faith, individually and collectively is an ongoing life giving activity)

Let’s Pray

Introduce story from fishing

-showed up early to the tide.

had alarm set, watching people (nothing in it for me, so I went back to sleep)

-got up around 630ish, cooked food, got gear ready, and waded out into shore, in hunt for possible fish (many of us were gathered, many looking for fish, as far as we know only one fish was caught) but what else was gained, when we stepped onto the shore and began participating in the endeavor of fishing?

beauty, birds, rushing water, teaching the boys the principles/technique/etiquette of fishing, crashing waves, catching sea hair, climbing on rocks, just being out & not at home

never enjoyed not getting fish as much as I did yesterday.

Principle #5

Worship Requires Participation

it’s not a spectator sport.

moving from how we worship as individuals, into how we worship in community.

Current climate of the general collective

-watch worship

take their seat and wait for the show; professional performance, drama, video, basket is passed and off they go.

no more than watching, saying a few lines, singing along, bowing heads, and being quiet for the entire time.

also creates an environment where people then critique or judge the experiences, like we are going to go on rotten tomatoes and give a user review.

service of worship

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Worship in the Old Testament

OT Participatory Worship

Psalms

Leader and response

very participatory

loud and raucous b/c of the people gathering, not b/c of the amplification.

the function of a worshipping community, not of a worshipping few.

Assisted the community into the activity of worship

Theology of amplification

NT Participatory Worship

NT Participatory Worship

1

Romans

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-brought together for the sake of the body, not just the individuals

A) brought together for the sake of the body, not just the individuals

“So, when we come together, we should not come to be spectators, to observe, to watch, to appreciate, to enjoy.

No, we should come to give, to bring our own worship gifts to the Lord and for the building up of the community.”

—Gary Parrett

B) Worshipers are active

Worshipers are active

bowing down, active, serving, contributing,

bring our gifts to the Lord and to the community; bowing down, serving, contributing (these are all active ideas)

C) Consideration of Interaction

-Amen (affirming the words that are brought to the body)

“Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say “Amen” to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying?”

-Interaction with the preaching

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-Reading of scripture (this is the word of God for the people of God -Nehemiah 8:6

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The Use of ‘Amen’

1 Corinthians

A) speaks to each other in psalms & hymns & spiritual songs

B) singing and making melody to the lord in your heart

C) giving thanks

D) submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ

This expresses ways that we speak to one another and treat one another, in our gatherings of worship

these are ways that worship become participatory

Principle #6

Worship involves participation of our entire being

i.e.—cognitive affair -worship centered around the sermon;

emotional- mind is disengaged

activists-busy doing things

individual and in community, we tend to be cognitive, a heart person, an activist—we tend to herd in our likenesses.

I think we ought to discover how to incorporate every aspect of our being into our worship gatherings

Deut

Our Spirits

whole being

We could think of worship as worship in spirit.

It is hard to say exactly what the Bible means when it speaks about our spirit.

But that deep, innermost part of my being, that passed from death into life when I put my faith in Jesus, worships God as deep calls unto deep.

He calls me from the depths of His heart and my spirit responds.

There are responses to God that are too deep for human expression, but we must also worship God with our minds and our emotions and our bodies.

Our Spirits

Our Minds

We need to participate actively on the intellectual level, think about the songs that we are singing, think about the prayers that we are praying, think about the word that is being preached, wrestle at an intellectual level with the truth of God that is being presented to us.

That is basic to worship.

Any vision of worship that has disengaged minds is unbiblical, inappropriate, and dishonoring God.

Our Emotions

But we must also engage our emotions in the worship of God.

The perfect expression of a human life of worship is Jesus of Nazareth.

In the life that Jesus lived during His earthly sojourn we find that He was free to express His emotions before God and others.

His emotions and His passion were plainly part of how he loved the Lord God.

So, He loved the Lord not only with His mind and His actions, but He loved His Father also with His emotions.

We find His emotions on display in a number of passages in the New Testament — rejoicing when the seventy come back and report how fruitful their ministry had been, angry at the temple when the money changers had defiled the House of Prayer, weeping at the tomb of Lazarus, in anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane.

All of our emotions too, can be rightly brought before God and submitted to Him.

So, we bow our minds before God, but we bow our emotions before God as well.

They, too, can honor God.

There is time for deep sorrow in our worship; there is time for deep rejoicing; there is time for fear and trembling before God in worship.

By what possible means, by what possible justification, could we withhold our emotions from God in worship when He has commanded us to love Him with all that we are.

Our Bodies

Finally, of course, we must worship God with our bodies.

We can think of this again, both in terms of our corporate and intentional gatherings and in our individual lifestyles of worship.

In our corporate gatherings we may think of postures of worship — bowing down, lifting hands, shouting, being still, singing.

All of these are engaging our body in physical acts of intentional worship.

But, of course, the more basic idea is that we worship God by offering our whole beings, our bodies as living sacrifices to God.

So, I use my hands for righteousness and my whole being for justice.

It is interesting that the root meaning behind many of the Bible words for worship are, in fact, physical terms.

Shachah again, literally, means “to bow down.”

The Hebrew word for “bless” comes from a root that literally means “to kneel.”

The word for “give thanks” comes from a word that means “extend the hands.”

So even in the terminology of worship there is physical action that is in view.