Looking Foolish in Worship
Notes
Transcript
Kneeling - the most natural expression of surrender
Dancing
Not Caring what everybody around you is doing
Opening Illustration: Looking dumb doing something, but not caring
Football fans who dress up - find pictures
Football Fans
Sports Culture is crazy. People care so much about their team.
In Europe, the fans of different soccer teams actually form gangs and have street fights. They’re called hooligans. People get beat up, stabbed, shot - they literally kill and die for their team.
Here in America, some of the craziest sports fans are football fans. People dress up, paint their whole bodies, and go absolutely nuts for their team.
(Show pictures)
This level of devotion is on par with religion. These fans worship their teams and are so devoted to them that they are willing to make complete fools of themselves in order to support their team.
We’re in a series called Holy Roar. It’s a collection of talks centered around the topic of worship.
Last week, I talked about why we worship. I said that we worship because something has come into our view that is so amazing that it changes everything for us. That something is what Jesus did for us on the cross. The Gospel makes it so our only logical response is worship.
Tonight I want to make a connection between those pictures of crazy football fans and our faith.
When you worship the Minnesota Vikings and you paint yourself purple and wear a big helmet with horns - to someone who doesn’t understand that level of commitment, it looks totally foolish and super weird. But to that guy, he doesn’t care. All he cares about is his team. He doesn’t care what people think about him.
Now I’m not making a comment on whether its right or wrong to care that much about a football team, what I’m saying is this:
Worship can make you look foolish to the outside world.
And when we worship Jesus, it makes us look weird to the outside world. But we don’t care because we’re committed to Jesus.
Read
Context:
So David has been made King over Israel. And as King, David is making moves. He’s gone out to battle against the Philistines. He captured the city of Jerusalem and made it the new capitol city. He’s been a busy guy. But one thing he hasn’t done yet is move the Ark of the Covenant into his new capitol city Jerusalem.
The Ark of the Covenant is a symbol of God’s very presence with his people. God commanded Israel to make the Ark when they were at Mount Sinai, and then to put the tablets with the 10 Commandments into the Ark. The people then carried the Ark all the way to the promised land.
The Ark had been living in a place called Shiloh, but David thought it was time to bring it into Jerusalem.
So King David gathered a bunch of his people together, the priest, his body guard, the officials of the court - basically a huge parade to bring the Ark into the city.
When I was in college, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series for the first time in 108 years. After a team wins the championship they have a parade. Chicago is a city that loves a good party, and almost 5 million people showed up for the World Series parade, making it the 7th largest gatherings of people in human history anywhere on earth.
This parade that David leads to bring the Ark into the city is like that. Everyone from all round would have come to Jerusalem to see the Ark, God’s presence enter into Jerusalem.
This moment is crazy and it’s full of joy. David is leading the parade, and it says that he took off his royal kingly robes and was wearing a simple priests garment and he worshiped God.
It says he danced with all of his might. He went all out. He didn’t care who saw him. He was so full of joy and wanted to worship God, and he just couldn’t contain it so he danced!
But one of his wives looks down from the balcony of the palace as the parade moves into the city and she sees David dancing and not wearing his king’s robes, and she just has utter distain for David. She judged him hardcore.
When David finally makes his way back to the palace she comes up to him and confronts him about it.
She’s basically like, “the whole city just saw you make a complete fool of yourself, i can’t believe you did that! You didn’t wear your King’s Robes, you looked like an idiot, how dare you embarrass me like that!”
And I love how David responds to her.
“I was dancing before the Lord! I was worshiping God! And I am willing to look even more foolish than that if it means I get to worship God.”
So here is my challenge for us:
Are you willing to go all out in worship? Or do you care too much about what other people think about you?
One of our biggest struggles as humans is caring what other people think about us.
King David knows all about this, this is why he worships God without caring what people, even his wife think about him for doing it. He used to be the one everyone looked over, everyone laughed at, the one everyone forgot about.
You might remember how he became King. The prophet Samuel visited his house, but David was out in the field with the sheep. David’s 7 older brothers, each should have made a better king than David, but God told Samuel that he doesn’t care about appearances he cares about the heart.
One of my biggest sin issues that I’ve battled in my life is allowing how other people see me to take the top spot over how God sees me.
My Testimony
When I was in 8th grade, I was obsessed with fitting in.
I changed the way I dressed, I changed the way I talked, I burned bridges with some of my oldest friends in order to try and fit in at school.
I only cared about the popularity and influence that came with certain social circles.
When I came to church I thought I had everybody fooled. I put on the mask of the good Christian kid, but my life outside of the four walls of this building looked anything but the life that someone who claimed to follow Jesus should be living.
My small group leader confronted me and told me he saw through the mask he saw the life I lived outside of Church, and he asked me if that kinda double life, a life that lived and died on other people, was really what I wanted.
For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.
I decided that if I really believed that Jesus is who he says he is, and the Bible is true when it says that jesus died and rose again so that I could have a relationship with God - if those things were true, how could I live any other way than 100% all in on Jesus?
But that didn’t mean my life changed overnight.
When I came to church I was still so self conscious and still worried about what people would think about me. I wanted to engage in worship I wanted to know what that really looked and felt like, but I didn’t know how.
So if you’re in the place that I was: if you want to engage in worshiping Jesus, but you just aren’t sure how, let me talk through some things really quick.
First, worship is a heart issue.
“ ‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
Worship isn’t about praying the right words or singing the right lyrics. It’s all about where your heart is at.
Instead of worrying about who is on your left and who is on your right, make sure that your heart is engaged vertically.
Second, I give you permission to embody your worship.
God gave you a physical body for a reason. We’re not just spirits drifting around, we have real physical bodies.
David danced in worship because that was his most natural expression of joy. He couldn’t contain how excited he was to have the Ark, the physical representation of God’s very presence with him at all times in jerusalem.
You have probably seem people raise their hands in worship. I do this all the time. Raising your hands for me is a natural expression of my joy towards God.
Think about it.
If you’re at a sporting event, a football game, and someone makes a great play, what does everybody do? You hands go up. You’re so excited so filled with joy and your body’s natural response is to shoot your hands up.
The same in worship. If you’re so wrapped up in the joy of the Lord, raise your hands! I give you permission to do that.
Or kneeling down. kneeling down is a powerful way to use your body to communicate your worship. Servants kneel before the King. God is our King. So when you kneel down in worship you communicate that you are surrendering to the King. I give you permission to do that in this place.
So as we enter into a time of worship through music tonight,
Raising Hands - why? JOY
Are you ready to stop caring what other people think about you and maybe look a little foolish in your worship tonight?
Kneeling - why? SURRENDER
Are you ready to engage your heart in worship?
Not caring what other people think
Are you ready to embody your worship?