Why Worship
Notes
Transcript
Does anybody in here run for fun?
Half-Marathon, Marathon, 5k, 10k? Anybody do those? You’re crazy.
I don’t run, I hate running.
I played team sports my whole life where running is a punishment. You feel me?
When you drop a pass, when you forget a play, when you commit a penalty, coach makes you run.
Or at the end of practice you condition. You run sprints until the coach says stop basically.
When I was playing college football, my least favorite conditioning drill of all time was running stadiums. We would run on the stairs of the bleachers all the way to the top and then jog back down and do it over and over and over again.
It was painful, it was hard, but the worst part of it was not knowing when we would be done. My coach would never say, okay guys, we’re going to run 20 stadiums! It was always, start running and I’ll tell you when to stop.
But sometimes he would start saying things like, imagine beating North Central. Imagine winning the Bell. The sprints and the stadiums you run now make that possible. The work you put in now in the off-season will have a direct effect once we get on the field.
Something came into view, in this case knowing when we would be done, that
This image of standing on the field with my teammates, beating our biggest rival, holding the trophy, that would motivate me to keep pushing, to keep running.
When something comes into view that is so amazing, it gives what you are doing now meaning.
Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.
The question I want to answer is this: Why do we worship?
I’m gonna give you the answer right up front: something is in our view that is so amazing, that the only possible logical response is worship.
Define worship: Worship is valuing or treasuring something above everything else. So whatever you are placing value on in your life. Whatever is worth the most to you. That is what you worship.
Worship involves your attention. The thing that you value and treasure above everything else usually captures your attention.
Worship involves your trust. The thing that you value and treasure above all else is the thing that you’re trusting in.
Based on that definition we all worship something. There is something capturing your attention, there is something that you trust, and you value that thing above everything else.
So if you reduce your worship of Jesus to 10 minutes of singing on a Wednesday night, you’ll never see it as important.
And I would agree with you! That doesn’t sound important. If that is all worship is then the 10 minutes we spend singing each week doesn’t even come close to the amount of time we spend doing other things in our week.
I spend 28 minutes brushing my teeth each week.
I spend an hour driving in my car just between my house and church every week.
Just one episode of The Office is like 22 minutes.
If worship to me is only 10 minutes, then by time spent alone it is so much less important than all these other things I do during my week.
In order to see worship differently, in order to understand why we worship, we have to have something in view that is so amazing that it gives our worship purpose.
In order to see worship differently, in order to understand why we worship, we have to have something in view that is so amazing that it gives our worship purpose.
Worship is so important. But the only way for us to see it as important is to have a correct understanding of it. If we have the wrong understanding of worship then we will never get to a place where we see it as truly important.If, in your mind, worship is the 10 minutes we spend singing on a Wednesday night in NXT Junior High … if that is all that worship is in your mind, then you will never see it as important.
So what is the thing that is in our view? What do we see?
Verse 1 says it.
In View of God’s Mercies
or another way to say it is, because of everything that God has done for you.
Worship will be pointless to you until you realize how much God has done for you.
So here’s a refresher on what God has done for you:
God created you. He made you on purpose and with a purpose.
If you’re sitting here thinking that God made a mistake in making you, or God messed up when he made you, or you life has no purpose...
Those are lies.
God loves you with an everlasting love ()
He created you to do good works ()
He knows the plan he has for your life ()
But even though God created us, and loves us, we constantly think that we can be God better than God can be God.
We rebel against him, we break the rules that he has set up to keep us safe, and the bible calls this rebellion against God, sin.
Each and every one of us here sins daily.
We sin in the way we think and act towards other people God created.
We sin in the ways we think and act towards ourselves.
We sin when we disobey God.
Over and over and over again. Day after day after day. We sin.
And God takes our sin so seriously. He is perfect. He cannot stand to be around sin.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
tells us that the thing we deserve for our sins is death. That’s how serious our crimes against God are. They deserve the death penalty.
And there’s no way that we can talk our way out if it.
We can’t think of a solution to the problem.
We can’t buy our way out with all the money in the world.
But God. says that he doesn’t treat as as our sins deserve.
Somebody has to pay the penalty but that someone is not us. Jesus took on the full penalty for all the sins you, me, this whole world has ever committed or ever will commit. The sins you committed even today. Jesus took the penalty for those on the cross.
He died in my place, He died in your place.
But he didn’t stay dead. After three days of being dead he rose to new life, conquering sin and death forever. He made a way for you to be with God even right now. Because life with Jesus starts right now and lasts forever.
That is what we have in view. Picture all of that in your mind. Everything that Jesus did for you. That is the mercy of God that Paul is talking about!
When we have that in view, the only response, the only logical thing we could do in this moment is worship.
Then in verse 2, Paul starts to tell us that while worship is for God in light of what he did for us, it also does something to you.
Don’t be conformed to this age, this culture, but be transformed.
Let your worship of God literally transform you.
Worship is about 3 things:
Value
Value
Value
Worship is about Value.
Human beings are experts at assigning value to things. We do it all the time.
Attention
Think about Gold. Or Diamonds. Literally just minerals that the earth produced. Essentially just rocks. But we have decided that they are valuable. Why?
Trust
Because Gold looks nice. Diamonds are sparkly. And there isn’t as much gold as other minerals. It’s rare. There are fewer diamonds than other rocks. they are rare. So we say that Gold and diamonds have a high value.
What about people? All people should be equal but in society it doesn’t play out that way. Certain people get treated better and valued higher because of how much money they have or how attractive they look or because of the job that they have, where they got their education, what family they were born into...
Worship will transform the way that you think.
Read
Paul lists a bunch of things in that should give him value in the eyes of humans. He’s from the right people group, he got the best education, he followed the law of God so closely that he actually persecuted people who he saw as a threat to God...He once thought all of that was valuable, but now?Everything that should have given him value in the eyes of people - he counts all of it as worthless, it’s like garbage, it’s nothing, compared with knowing Jesus.In Paul’s eyes - Jesus is the most valuable thing - more valuable than the right job, the right education, the right people group. More valuable than money
What do you see as valuable? Where are you spending money? Where are you spending time? The way you answer that question has direct implications towards what you are worshipping!
So why worship Jesus? Because what he did for us is more valuable than anything we could ever hope to buy.
Worship will transform the way you see yourself.
Attention
Attention
Worship will transform the way you see other people.
Paying attention to something is one of the hardest things to do and it’s getting harder every day I feel like.
Worship will transform the things that matter to you.
Don’t conform. Don’t think the way people who don’t know Jesus think. Don’t care about the things that people who don’t know Jesus care about. Have such an amazing picture in your mind of all the mercy that Jesus has for you that it changes everything.
Worship is valuing or treasuring something above everything else.
Some of you have been worshipping yourself. What you see in the mirror or wish you saw in the mirror is the thing you value above all else.
Some of you worship other people. What that person at school’s opinion of you is, whether or not you will be liked by that person that is what you value above all else.
Some of you worship money. You never have enough of it, you always want more of it, that is what you value above all else.
Some of you worship entertainment. Having fun, being funny, those are the things you value above all else.
But I think that it’s time we shift our focus. Let’s bring everything that God did for us in Jesus into full view. And let’s worship.