The Heart of Worship (2)

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Last week, we talked about some questions regading worship. What did we need to ask ourselves?

Question 1: What is the start of true worship?

And we highlighted this main verse:

Romans 12:1 NIV

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.

And we talked about how

True worship starts with us making an offering

In this case, ourselves. And we are going to unpack that more today.

So, here’s our second question:

Question 2: What does true worship look like?

STORY - David bringing in the ark into Jerusalem. It’s been sitting in this one town for a while, David wanted to bring it back into the heart of Israel.

David appoints this guy Asaph, and appoints him to praise God. He gives them this thing to use, i’ll take snippets.

1 Chronicles 16:8–9 NIV

Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done. Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts.

1 Chronicles 16:23–29 NIV

Sing to the Lord, all the earth; proclaim his salvation day after day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples. For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; he is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and joy are in his dwelling place. Ascribe to the Lord, all you families of nations, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; bring an offering and come before him. Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.

Here’s a simple definition.

True worship is an outflow - us bringing praise to God

Now, i’m twisting this definition a bit, for a reason.

I have heard a lot of people say that the goal of worship services is to fill up. And for sure - we should be experiencing God in worship, and being filled by the experience.

But what really starts that process? Us pouring out. Offering ourselves to God.

So where should filling ourselves in worship come from?

Now, before we talk about what that looks like, I want to talk about what it DOESN’T look like. I’ll take a few negatives, and show the greater realities that God has designed.

FIRST

True worship doesn’t depend on how we feel or what we get out of it

This is a hard one.

It grieves my heart to see people who refuse to worship the living and eternal God because the worship experience they are in isn’t what they like.

The book of Habakkuk sort of talks about this. Habakkuk is a great book about the prophet dialoging with God, talking about suffering and justice and where God was in difficult and empty times.

And he drops this gem near the end of the book.

Habakkuk 3:17–19 NIV

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights. For the director of music. On my stringed instruments.

Imagine that level of worship. Having nothing else but God. Habakkuk had been through a lot. He’d seen a lot of violence, and terrible times.

And here’s something we can learn from him -

True worship fills itself on what God has, not on what we don’t

I said last week, that nobody ever comes out of a worship experience having encountered the living God and says ‘meh’. God is enough.

Habakkuk here says, though everything else isn’t working - I have strength. I have joy. I can rejoice. I can praise.

In fact, our own weaknesses, our own failures, all the ways that we don’t measure up - they aren’t meant to stop us from worship. They’re meant to remind us who we worship.

2 Corinthians 4:7–9 NIV

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.

When we’re willing to just put ourselves out of the way, and say, ‘no matter what God, I’m going to worship you with absolutely everything that I am’ - then we experience a GREATER filling of the Spirit.

SECOND:

True worship isn’t confined to a specific expression at a specific time

I’m convinced that so many people have a poor worship experience because they approach it from this perspective: I come here on sunday to have an experience that fills me up, energizes me, so that I can go through the rest of the week.

And I don’t want to minimize that - but my goal here again is a GREATER experience in worship.

The bible points out how much we should be offering this ‘sacrifice of praise’.

Hebrews 13:15 NIV

Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name.

The key word here is continually.

And believe me, i’ve experienced the kind of worship that just energizes you. The kind that you weep, that you raise your hands in the air and cry out to God.

And I’ve been in those times where it seems just so much less than that.

But I learned a constant truth that has greatly improved my experience at all times in worship:

God will reward you for seeking Him out, no matter what the circumstances

Hebrews 11:6 NIV

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

If we want to have a worship experience that pleases God, we can’t do it unless our baseline, fundamental assumption is that he WANTS to reward those people who are earnestly seeking Him.

And if we tie these two together - that we are here to fill ourselves with God, and to do it every single day,

Here’s my last point:

True worship isn’t about lifting ourselves up

And this one’s obvious. So obvious. And yet… how many times have we defined a worship service by OUR experience of it? What we got out of it? How it made us feel?

How many times did we answer the question ‘who is worship supposed to please?’ by pointing at ourselves?

Psalm 115:1 NIV

Not to us, Lord, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness.

My prayer in worship constantly is,

God, help me to not make this about me. Help me to make it about you.

Jesus taught that following Him wasn’t about indulging ourselves - what made us happy, what made us feel this way or that way. It was about denying ourselves.

And here’s the amazing, amazing thing about God.

When we stand on these principles - that God is enough, that any time and anywhere is enough, and that this is about pleasing God alone - the Spirit moves. And He moves in big ways.

Jeremiah 29:12–13 NIV

Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

This is the God who we serve. The God who has promised that we WILL find Him if we seek him.

The God who has promised that He WILL reward us if we seek Him.

Now, last week, I gave a saying about true worship, and it was this:

The quality of your worship experience is determined by how much YOU bring to the altar

This week, the saying I want you to remember is this. Worship isn’t successful based on your experience coming in:

Worship is successful based on your expression coming out

When talking about whether YOU will be filled with the Spirit, God doesn’t look at other people. He doesn’t look at how good the singers are doing, or if the sound is balanced correctly, or if the stage is set up properly. He doesn’t check to see if other people created the right atmosphere in the room.

It’s not like, in any given situation, God will say, ‘Ok, so, the right experience wasn’t created there, so I’m not going to listen to anyone seeking me’.

When the Spirit moves, He looks for people who are worshipping Him with all their hearts. And he’s looking for people who genuinely, truly believe that God will answer them. No matter the outside circumstances.

Remember Jesus’ promise:

Matthew 7:8 NIV

For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

And remember, we’re looking to be the kind of worshippers that the father seeks out. The kind of worshippers the father approves. So this is the level of worship God calls us to today.