Worship

What is worship?

Key Text: Romans 12:1-2 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

What it is not

Entertainment

Talent show

Emotionalism

Class Room

Experience

Worship is the response of true believers to who God is and what He has done.

Worship is a response

Much of our lives is us choosing how to respond to what happens around us and what happens to us. Every time someone speaks to you there is a choice of how to respond.

When God speaks to you through His Word how do you respond? Do you respond with worship?

I don’t know what that means or looks like.

When God speaks to us through His word the worshipful response is to apply it in real and tangible ways. This is why Romans says being a living sacrifice is worship.

The preaching and receiving of God’s Word is worship.

To who God is...

Paul beseeches the Roman church “by the mercies of God”

In other words, because of who God is Paul exhorted them to worship God with every aspect of their lives. Because of His love, grace, mercy, power, knowledge, control, care, blessings, and so much more...

With your physical body

With your life choices

With your interactions in the world

With your mind

With your desire to do the will of God

and what He has done.

The character of God does not exist in a vacuum.

All those attributes which we so love to name move God to action. He is not a God who set the world in motion and then walked away. Whether you daily realize it or not He is an active participant in your life.

So as we consider what God has done especially in Christ the desire to worship should literally overflow.

Does God care how we worship?

Old Testament Examples

Cain and Able

Genesis 4:1-10

Have you ever noticed that the text doesn’t actually say why God rejected Cain’s sacrifice?

This is prior to the mosaic law

The 1st and 2nd Commandments

Exodus 20:2-6 ““I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before Me. “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. “You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”

God cares that He is the exclusive recipient of our worship.

God cares that we worship Him in the ways that He has approved or finds acceptable as Romans puts it.

Israel was commanded to not make any competing false gods but also they were forbidden from attempting to make any image as a representation of Yaweh.

The more I study the golden calf incident the more I believe that what Aaron was trying to do was pacify both God and the mob by creating an idol that represented Yaweh.

Nadab and Abihu

God’s rejection of Saul’s sacrifice

Old Testament Law

Sometimes our immediate reaction is, yes but that is the Old Testament that doesn’t apply to me. There is much in the Old Testament that does apply.

New Testament Examples

Jesus rejected the artificial worship of the pharisees

Jesus taught the disciples that they must worship in spirit and in truth

Jesus taught the woman at the well that because of what He would accomplish on the cross we can and should worship anywhere and anytime.

Paul rebuked the Corinthians for allowing their worship services to get out of control.

The answer

Yes God cares how we worship

His chief concerns seems to be that our worship is genuine and from the heart.

He is also concerned that the mode or vehicle of our worship accurately reflects His character.

Worship should be doctrinally rich and biblically based.

Personal and Corporate Worship

Every day should be an act of worship

There is something special when God’s people follow God’s command to worship Him in spirit and in truth.