The Heart of Worship-Corporate Worship

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

interested in giving?

AGM - Sunday April 3rd.

And potluck! There’s a signup sheet

Grace community church

Missions Sunday!

Dan and Jen Chaloner

ERDO and Emilecia

Missions workers in ukraine

Last announcement - ladies coffee this wednesday. It’s a single meeting to talk about the mugs - and if you haven’t gotten yours in, there’s still time! and if you aren’t bringing a mug at all, come out anyways!

So, we’ve talked about, what STARTS worship, and how can we say that we’ve done worship SUCCESSFULLY?

What are the requirements for good corporate worship?

Now, corporate worship means, ‘worship when we all get together’.

What needs to happen for us to say, ‘we did corporate worship correctly?’

Let’s back this question up. We need to make one thing clear - this question is NOT

How do we handle singing in service?

or

What’s the right style to use in our service?

or

What’s the proper order of service?

These questions miss the mark.

These are good questions to ask, and there’s answers to them - and truthfully, the right answer to every one of these is ‘Whatever God is telling us to do at the time’.

These questions fundamentally assume that structuring this 60 to 90 minute get together once a week is the primary function of the church. And it’s not.

The truth is,

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Corporate worship is a tool of true worship

And true worship is, as a reminder...

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.

So what does it mean to gather as a body, and do this thing called ‘offering ourselves as sacrifices’ together?

And there’s a reason this is so important.

The better the foundation, the better the house

Jesus told a story once, about two guys, one who built a house on a rock, and one on sand. And the sand house -when it faced trouble, it fell apart.

If we make sure to build our concept of worship, and corporate worship, on great foundations, it’ll stand the test of time. If we want to be and be built up into a house of God - we need to start on the right things. And if we want an enduring house, we need a strong foundation.

And here’s the great part. I’ve set out two big values of what corporate worship really needs to do. And if we hold these values true - our worship life will be fantastic.

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Number 1 - Corporate worship needs to lead to more worship and service

Corporate worship is our way of equipping you to continue in worship throughout the week. To continue loving God, serving God. Building His kingdom.

Matthew 16:24 NIV

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

CONTEXT - Jesus had just explained that He was going to die, and peter rebuked him. Jesus called him Satan, said he had ‘merely human concerns’.

Human-concerned worship is focused on benefitting ourselves

Godly worship is focused on denying ourselves and picking up our crosses

And don’t get me wrong - this doesn’t mean that worship focuses on the opposite of what we want. But, there’s something I have noticed.

STORY - Went to large church in Toronto. Picked out all the worship leaders.

Go to any church, anywhere, and I can usually stand in the room and pick out the people who are really engaged in serving and sacrifice. Who really value that they’re here to serve God. They are the ones REALLY worshipping. Really engaging.

And not just in the service - before and after as well.

But these people, they all come in with this assumption - that this isn’t about me getting, it’s about me pouring out - and in pouring out, we receive.

Luke 6:38 NIV

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

So if you want to improve your experience in corporate worship more? Ask yourself,

How can I serve and sacrifice more?

And this doesn’t sound like it’s connected. Because it has nothing to do with the output of the people putting on a sunday service. But it’s true.

Because taking this perspective engages another element in worship that we often neglect - ourselves. We come, we ask God to fill us, we pray that God’s spirit would move - but we stand still.

Jesus basically says,

We tell God how to fill us by how we fill others

If God forgave you based on how much you forgave others, what would you do differently? If he accepted you based on how much you accepted others - what would you change?

The biggest question I ask myself whenever I enter a new church context is, ‘what can I do?’

If you want to see your corporate worship improve, serve, and sacrifice.

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Number 2 - Corporate worship draws us closer together, and expresses who we all are

Corporate worship is about us growing closer together and helping each other out.

Hebrews 10:24–25 NIV

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

In the context of this verse, the author of Hebrews is saying, ‘We have full and complete confidence to be able to enter into the prescence of God. We can have hope and joy that we’ll be accepted. So, let’s spur each other on and encourage one another, refusing to allow ourselves to give up with connecting with each other’.

Why would the author of Hebrews here say, ‘don’t give up meeting together?’ Especially in the context of ‘we’re all welcome?’.

When worship is focused purely on format, then there will be people who are doing it wrong

And true worship doesn’t draw lines between which kind of people have been loved and accepted by God, and which haven’t.

It’s really easy to look at somebody else who likes a different style, a different format, somebody who looks different than us and say, ‘wow, you’re doing this totally wrong’. But true worship occurs when we say, ‘wow, God’s accepted that person. I need to encourage them, build them up’.

STORY - Old church, friend with mohawk

Any of these verses that are talking about ‘meeting together’, they’re all looking back at Acts as a master template of this.

Acts 2:42–47 NIV

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

This section doesn’t say, ‘they saw each other once a week’. It says, ‘they were family’. They took care of each other’s needs. They were glad. They were together.

If we want to draw closer to God,

We have to draw closer to His body

I read a quote once, and it said, ‘It is an absolute tragedy to come to worship and not know one another any better afterwards’.

And the pandemic challenged us on this one. But let me tell you what refusing to give up connecting looked like - people were making phone calls. Video calls. Mailing letters. Checking in on people.

Some say the pandemic made it extremely difficult to connect together as a church, and to some extent that’s true. But I think, the pandemic also showed us how much we valued connection to begin with.

How many of us defined our church experience by who we went with, rather than the building we were in.

See, true worship should also be a celebration of every person in the room.

READ FROM ‘BUT GOD’

1 Corinthians 12:24–26 NIV

while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

In corporate worship,

Every person who suffers is a tragedy, and every person who gets honored is cause to rejoice

and the reason for this is really, really simple. When we read this verse, we need to ask ourselves - what is God doing in this verse, and why is He doing it?

He’s doing two things - putting people together, and giving honor out to people that aren’t getting enough. And he’s doing it so that there isn’t division, and that we should care about each other equally.

How can we possibly expect to reach the heart of God in worship if we won’t do what He’s doing right now in the room?

If you want to have great corporate worship,

Work to honor and connect people together

The bible’s plain here - that’s the kind of work God rewards. It’s the kind of work God is DOING.

But it’s really easy to ignore this truth when you have a room full of people who are a lot like you. It’s easy to do church when it’s full of people who are really easy for you to love, honor, and accept.

Jesus called out people during the sermon on the mount on this one.

Matthew 5:46–47 NIV

If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

Jesus says, even sinful people know how to love their own. And we’re supposed to be better than that!

No, we’re held to an opposite standard:

John 13:35 NIV

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

GOSPEL MESSAGE:

Jesus wants to welcome you, and He has a place for you

That’s what Jesus longs to do with and through His church - to bring people together. To give you a place to belong. But more than that - to give you a purpose.

Every person is here for a reason, and God has something for every person. He’s got a place in His family for you, and He’s got a way to work through you to change people’s lives.

All we have to do is just accept that.

Romans 10:9 NIV

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

This just means, we need to say that Jesus is our king, our boss, our lord. Not just saying, ‘oh, ya, he’s pretty cool’. But that we want to live for him, to follow him. And we KNOW he’ll accept us in.

And we also need to believe in His power - that he can do anything, even raise the dead. That we’re not following a God who tells us things, and then leaves us to our own power. We need to believe that God won’t just abandon us - that He’s got the power to see us through whatever may come.

If that’s you today, I want you to pray with me.

PRAYER

SONG AFTERWARDS.