training7s
A Time, A Day, A Life of Worship
I Kings 18; Matthew 21
I suspect that if I say the word “worship” that what is likely to come to mind is a time of worship … an hour plus spent in a church service on a weekend, an hour which may or may not be all that exciting. Sometimes, children by way of their honest and humorous perceptions demonstrate that something is missing in our understanding and experience of worship. Like the little boy who had to stay home on Palm Sunday with a sore throat. When the rest of the family returned home carrying palm branches, the boy asked what they were for. His brother responded, “People laid them before Jesus as he walked by them.” “Wouldn’t you know it,” the boy fumed, “The one Sunday I don’t go, he showed up!” Is worship just a time to go through the motions or do we believe that Jesus shows up?
A little girl became restless as the preacher’s sermon dragged on and on. Finally, she leaned over to her mother and whispered, “Mommy, if we give him the money now, will he let us go.” In our day of fast paced entertainment and short attention span, does worship and especially the message become merely something to endure rather than a divine encounter to cherish?
A particular preacher was using a wired mike , and as he preached, he moved around the front of the church briskly, jerking the mike cord as he went. As he moved from side to side, he got a bit wound up in the cord, nearly tripping before jerking it again. After several circles and jerks, a little girl in the third pew leaned toward her mother and whispered, “If he gets loose, will he hurt us?” All of which might lead us who have come from German or Scandinavian Lutheran backgrounds to ask what is an appropriate amount of energy and emotion is in a worship service … particularly since we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Going to worship as a child and young person, I would say that mostly I endured rather than enjoyed the worship services. Fortunately, I did like to sing and more than anything, God used the music to sing his love and truth into my heart. Mostly the problem was my own immaturity. But part of it also was that Lutherans back then didn’t exactly emphasize the presence and power of God among us. If you will, God seemed pretty domesticated … and by that I mean I’m not sure we believed that God might actually show up….. that he might come down in his power and glory on any given Sunday. Such expectations, of course, were for the Pentecostals. We emphasized a God who was “safe and comfortable,” not a God of surprise and significant life change.
Would you open your Bibles to 1 Kings 18:20ff. This is the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal, one which I think helps us to focus on several important worship-related issues. Let me paraphrase the story as you follow along in the text. The context is that people of Israel kept following the same pattern. God did a powerful act to show Israel his love and grace… and for a while Israel would respond to God in obedience … but soon their hearts would drift … they would abandon the true God and start worshiping stuff… like the Golden Calf they crafted at the base of Mount Sinai. After settling into the Promised Land, Israel hearts were often drawn to worship the gods of their neighbor … like Baal the god of fertility. Israel would move away from God until God would get their attention by sending or prophet or having them suffer the oppression of other nations. This pattern happened over and over again … and in Kings it continued with a resurgence of Baal worship.
In response, Elijah staged a contest. He gathered the people of Israel together along with the prophets of Baal. He posed this question in verse 21: "How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him." The all too classic response: “… the people said nothing.” [1 Kings 18:21 (NIV)] You see, they didn’t want to choose … they wanted to have it all … Baal and the God who had revealed himself as Yahweh.
What follows is the contest. Two altars are built … one for Baal and one for Yahweh. The prophets of Baal were to pray to their god and Elijah would pray to the Lord and they would see whose altar would be set on fire … who had the true power. The 450 prophets of Baal did their thing all morning, going so far as to cut themselves as a way of influencing Baal to act. But nothing happened. Elijah taunts them, “Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened." [1 Kings 18:27 (NIV)] Lot of effort to get Baal’s attention ... but nothing.
Then it’s Elijah’s turn … and just to make sure that everyone knows that this has been no trick, he has the altar to the Lord soaked with water. Then he prays: "O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again." And the fire of the Lord falls from heaven and it consumes the wood…. But the fire is so hot that it doesn’t just consume the wood but it scorches the earth. Can you imagine that awesome moment? In the middle of prayer, sacrifice, and worship, God ignites a consuming fire and demonstrates his power.
Corporate Worship
If the God of Elijah is the same God we worship today, how might that influence how we prepare for corporate worship, for our coming together before God? For one thing, we would come with a sense of expectancy that God is going to move in some significant way … if not in my life then perhaps in the life of the person sitting next to me. The sermon may still be a little be a boring … but worship will not be boring because the God who can ignite a pile of wood showed on the Day of Pentecost that he can send fire into people’s lives. Come to worship in prayer and with an awesome expectancy that as God’s Word is shared, people will burn with the love of Christ.
Secondly, come with a desire to turn away from false gods. We’ve all got them: college basketball, shopping at the mall, music, money, Menards … the list goes on. In Elijah’s day there were 450 prophets of Baal leading people into the worship of idols. Ours are perhaps more sophisticated, but there is natural tendency to worship false gods. As an example, one of our members went to an Apple conference out West a few months back. He shared how Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, filled the auditorium to capacity 4 hours before he was scheduled to speak. Jobs was speaking about the reemergence of Apple and he made the comment that a lot of his ideas came from a Zen Buddhist who told him that he should market Apple like a religion. Now maybe you don’t worship Mac’s, but for some technology does become a religion. For others it’s a hobby, or politics, or wealth. So we come to worship with a desire to put aside these false gods that in the end will not satisfy us. Many things can offer value for our lives but they dare not take our primary allegiance. And in meeting God in worship, we both receive his forgiveness for our idolatry and a new ability to keep the First Commandment, to have no other gods before him.
Thirdly, the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal certainly reveals God’s power, but also his reconciling love. Why did God send Elijah? So that Elijah could Israel back to God … to turn their hearts back to the God who claimed them as his people. So when we come to worship, we realize that to whatever degree we have wandered from God in the previous week, to whatever degree our hearts have lusted after other gods, God wants to bring us back home. And his reconciling efforts have come at tremendous price … the suffering and death of His Son. So Christian worship is always a coming home to the cross of Christ … there to receive the wonderful gifts of forgiveness and life that flow from Jesus’ death for us.
Christian worship centers on a message of reconciliation leading to an experience of reconciliation. We come as ambassadors of Christ to proclaim one another and to the entire Chippewa Valley: “… God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them.” Therefore, “Be reconciled to God.” [2 Corinthians 5:18-20 (NIV)] This message is for you today. If you have not yet put your trust in Jesus as your Savior, be reconciled today as you receive the gift of his forgiving love.
Continuous Worship
Worship is corporate as we gather at a particular place and time to honor God and receive from him. But it is misconception to think that it is only in an organized church worship service where God is fully worshipped. Consider these Biblical examples that bookend the life of Jesus. In Luke 2 as the infant Jesus is to be presented before God in the Temple, we read of Anna. “There was also a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying.” [Luke 2:36-37 (NIV)] Now do you think they had formal Temple rituals that ran continuously? Probably not. Yet Anna in her own personal fasting and prayer is said to be worshipping continually. It was her life.
Here is a second example … one which we celebrate on this Palm Sunday. It was a remarkable day of worship. Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a humble donkey, yet receives praises as the coming Messiah: "Hosanna to the Son of David!" "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" "Hosanna in the highest!" [Matthew 21:8-9 (NIV)]
Now I suppose that you can argue that the crowds didn’t really understand Jesus’ mission and in fact were praising him for the wrong thing. Nevertheless, even in their confusion, they were doing the right thing: worshipping Jesus as the one sent from God to deliver them. And obviously, they were not in … Temple or synagogue … not in a church building. Jesus was one worthy of worship whether he was in the Temple, fishing on the Sea of Galilee, or walking the road to Jerusalem on that Palm Sunday. As we journey through life with Jesus, he is worthy of our worship wherever life takes us.
When you realize that worship isn’t limited to a particular time and place, then
you will resist the temptation to separate worship in here and life out there. We may leave this place and leave the musicians behind, but we don’t leave the worship of God behind. Each day can be a day of worship as we honor God through our work and relationships. Each day can be a day of worship as we spend time in the Word and in prayer. Each day we can push aside the idols that would lead us astray and turn to a God who loves us with an everlasting love.
Consistent WorshipI
Imagine if you a will a worship service that is particularly inspiring … one in which the truth regarding God is powerfully communicated and his love joyfully experienced. Now imagine God saying, “I hate your worship. You can keep your offerings and your songs and your sacrifices because you are far from me.”
This was what happened to the ancient people of Israel in their worship of the Lord. They thought they had everything right… they were following the instructions God had given Moses … they had all the right sacrifices… they had a perfect liturgical calendar… the Temple and its rituals inspired awe. Yet this is what God spoke to them through the prophet Amos: “I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them.” [Amos 5:21=22] He was telling Israel that none of their formal worship pleased him because it was all show … their public life was different from their worship life. In their worship, they sang God’s praises and talked of God’s compassion, but when they walked out on the streets they trampled the poor and lived immoral lives.
You see God desires consistent worship … that there is integrity between what we say here in a worship service and how we carry on our lives … which is our ongoing worship. And the most important outcome of our time spent here in worship is in fact that God cleanses and reshapes our lives. So the test of my worship is a changed life…. Let me say that again the test of my worship is a changed life….. So if I walk out of here and lust after other women …. I haven’t gotten worship right…. If I walk out of here and cheat on my taxes or on a test I haven’t gotten worship right…. If walk out of here and put down people of other races then I haven’t gotten worship right….. See if I walk up to the altar and receive Christ’s body and blood but then I don’t forgive others, I haven’t gotten worship right… We want a worship that goes beyond a particular time and place, but is expressed in a life that is devoted to God. Let’s pray: