Radical Repentance
Turn in your Bibles to Psalm 81, that’s on page 329 of the white pew Bible. Psalm 81 is a Psalm attributed to Asaph and it’s right in the middle of Book 3 of the Psalter.
The Psalms, if you’ve never noticed, are divided up into 5 different books within the book — Book 3 includes Psalms 73-89. And it’s been called by some scholars the Dark Book of the Psalms. The psalms found in book 3 are often, though not all, psalms of pain, of repentance, of crying out to God for help in the midst of struggle.
I was pleased that the Lectionary had Psalm 81 as the text for today because…it leads into the miniseries we are beginning next week about the revitalization of the Church.
And I’m using the word revitalize intentionally. Let me tell you something I firmly believe — and praise the Lord for this fact — this church does not need a revival.
This church does not need a revival. But it does need, and if I’m being honest, it critically needs, revitalization.
OK, you might say, that’s some ridiculous semantics right there. But I don’t think so, because there is a great truth of God declared when I say that the church, our church does not need a revival. Revival means to bring what was once dead to life. And praise the Lord, what God has raised to new life in His Son, the members of this church and any church, cannot be destroyed.
We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; we are perplexed but not in despair; we are persecuted but not abandoned; we are struck down but not destroyed.
Yes, we always carry the death of Jesus in our body, but it is so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed in our body. Certainly, we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’s sake, but it is so that Jesus’s life may also be displayed in our mortal flesh.
We have been using the term revival wrong. The church doesn’t need a revival. The world needs revival. The world is dead and needs the regeneration of the Holy Spirit to revive it and bring it to faith in Christ.
The Church needs revitalization. We’re not dead, we are alive in Christ. However...We are alive in Christ but our vitals are weak. Yes, we are alive in Christ but we’re coding in our beds. We’re alive in Christ, but members of our body have been amputated. We are alive in Christ Gore Springs Baptist Church, but our heartbeat is nearly imperceptible.
And Psalm 81 zeroes in on the heartbeat of God’s people. So here’s our big idea from this Psalm:
Big Idea
The heartbeat of a church is her posture of worship, and true worship begins with remembrance and repentance.
The heartbeat of a church is her posture of worship, and true worship begins with remembrance and repentance.
You’ve already heard part of this Psalm read today and we’ve sung it, so let me read it in its entirety, then we’ll pray and look closely at our desperate need for true worship if we are going to be a church with a discernable heartbeat.
Psalm 81 CSB
For the choir director: on the Gittith. Of Asaph.
Sing for joy to God our strength; shout in triumph to the God of Jacob.
Lift up a song—play the tambourine, the melodious lyre, and the harp.
Blow the ram’s horn on the day of our feasts during the new moon and during the full moon.
For this is a statute for Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob.
He set it up as a decree for Joseph when he went throughout the land of Egypt. I heard an unfamiliar language:
“I relieved his shoulder from the burden; his hands were freed from carrying the basket.
You called out in distress, and I rescued you; I answered you from the thundercloud. I tested you at the Waters of Meribah. Selah
Listen, my people, and I will admonish you. Israel, if you would only listen to me!
There must not be a strange god among you; you must not bow down to a foreign god.
I am the Lord your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.
“But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel did not obey me.
So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own plans.
If only my people would listen to me and Israel would follow my ways,
I would quickly subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their foes.”
Those who hate the Lord would cower to him; their doom would last forever.
But he would feed Israel with the best wheat. “I would satisfy you with honey from the rock.”
Almighty God, shine on us by your Word so that we will not be blind nor willfully seek darkness; but rouse us by your words, and stir us up more and more to fear your name and present ourselves as living sacrifices to you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
I love this Psalm, because it’s a miniature worship service in itself. Verses 1-5 serve as a call to worship, then the Lord speaks to His people in the next two verses, reminding them of what He has done for them and then He ends with a call to repentance and a promise of blessing if they will do so. There's not much of a better liturgy than that.
This morning, I want to answer two questions, both of which are suggested in our Big Idea.
Remember our Big Idea this morning: The heartbeat of a church is her posture of worship, and true worship begins with remembrance and repentance.
The two questions I want to answer are these:
What is the proper posture of worship? How should our hearts be positioned as we worship?
How can a church assume that posture? That is, what necessary action or actions must a church take in order to assume the proper heart posture of worship?
The church must be a people who worship. Our Psalm opens with a call to worship God:
Sing for joy
shout in triumph
Lift up a song
play various instruments
Blow the shofar on the feast days
We are a people who are called by God to worship Him. Verse 4:
Psalm 81:4 CSB
For this is a statute for Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob.
The Holy God demands our worship. Yes, it is a privilege and an honor and a blessing to worship the Lord…but it is also our duty. In the Scriptures, God commands all men to worship Him in Spirit and in truth and failure to do so is the essence of sin.
We are called to be a worshipful people.
What is worship, exactly? Worship is praising, adoring, and revering God for who He is.
False Worship
And the Bible is filled with examples of false worship.
Worship in a disobedient manner…remember the story of Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abiihu? Leviticus 10 recounts their story of lighting the sacred altar with “unauthorized fire.” God had prescribed a specific way that he wanted to be worshipped, a specific way the altar was to be lit. And even though the end result was the same: the altar did get lit and the incense did get burned, they did it in a way God had not told them and they were killed for it.
Our worship must be in the manner laid out by God in His Word. We cannot worship in a disobedient way or however we feel like it.
There are many admonitions against insincere worship: of taking the name of God upon your lips but not approaching him with your heart. Look at what God says about his people through the prophet Isaiah:
Isaiah 29:13 CSB
The Lord said: These people approach me with their speeches to honor me with lip-service, yet their hearts are far from me, and human rules direct their worship of me.
Jesus himself calls out those who would worship the Lord without humility and reverence. Look at what he said in Matthew:
Matthew 6:5 CSB
“Whenever you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by people. Truly I tell you, they have their reward.
On the contrast, the Bible tells us that true worship involves our hearts, our souls, and our minds. It involves the whole of our lives, not just formal acts of worship like coming to church. True worship is a whole life endeavor. We are a people created for worship and we are called by God to do so.
Quickly, before we move on, I want to take a second and talk about the various ways that this Psalm says our worship of God ought to come out. I see three in particular in these first verses.
Instrumentation
Verse 2 says lift up a song and play instruments. We’ll talk about singing more in a minute, but folks I think it would be a beautiful and Scriptural thing to have instrumentation up here on Sunday mornings. And more people helping to lead us in our singing. That would be good for us. Consider it. I think both Hamilton and Rachel would consider it a great thing if we had 3 or 4 people up here helping to lead with instruments or voices each Sunday. I know I would. And God would, too, this Psalm says.
Celebrate the feast days
Verse 3 tells us to worship on the feast days and the holy days.
This is one of the reasons that I am slowly trying to introduce the church’s liturgical calendar. I know that some of you are not used to following closely the liturgical calendar of the Church. It might even feel too “high church” for you. But that calendar and those church holy days exist for a reason, to help us remember what God has done and what He is doing and what He will do.
And the beauty of it is that it shows us uniquely Christian holidays. Christmas and Advent can only be truly understood by a heart that has been made new by the Holy Spirit. You cannot understand or celebrate the significance of Pentecost, or Ascension Day, or Trinity Sunday, or Resurrection Day, or Lent, or Epiphany, or any of the others outside of being a follower of Christ.
Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Thanksgiving…anyone can celebrate those and it’s fine to do so.
But when we gather here to worship — to praise and revere and adore our God who has uniquely revealed himself to us in Jesus and who gives us the Holy Spirit in order that we might worship Him truly — where do you think most of our focus ought to be? On the seasons and holidays that are unique to and which build up our faith in Christ.
And again, I understand that those sorts of things may be new to you. You may have never done them before — fasted for Lent or put ashes on for Ash Wednesday or whatever — and this church has never done them before — but here’s the truth: if you haven’t, you are missing out on an opportunity to worship in a very special way with Christians all over the globe and throughout history.
Sing With Joy
And the Psalm starts out with these words: Sing for joy.
A pastor mentor once told me, “I’ll tell you the quickest way to have some indication that God has taken hold of a man’s heart,” we were talking specifically about men at the time, but the concept applies to everyone, he said, “look out to see who is singing versus who is just sitting there. Singing in public is not a natural activity for most people. They’re embarrassed by their voice, or by their expression or whatever. But when they are truly overwhelmed by the majesty of God, all that melts away and you’ll see them sing.”
I think he’s right. Does God have your heart in such a way that it makes you sing? “Sing for joy to God our strength!”
Sing with joy.
Sitting in a huff in your pew because you don’t like new songs is not singing with joy. That is a sinful attitude.
In the same way, complaining about those old boring hymns with the thees and the thous is just as sinful.
It shouldn’t surprise us that a church has no heartbeat of worship when that’s their posture of worship. Let me be clear: singing songs that you don’t like is a small act of sacrifice for the good of your brother or sister. But if the church is unwilling to make that small of a sacrifice, then what expectation might we have that they will sacrifice something valuable, like their time to share the gospel with a neighbor, or their potential reputation to invite someone to church. If there is an unwillingness to sacrifice such a small thing, it shouldn’t surprise us that there is an unwillingness to sacrifice the larger.
And that brings us around to a succinct answer to that first question: What is the posture of worship?
Paul says it best in Romans:
Romans 12:1 CSB
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.
The proper posture of worship is not this:
or this
but this:
Presenting ourselves as a living sacrifice for the good of our brothers and sisters in Christ is a holy and pleasing aroma to the Lord. A proper posture of worship is laying down on the altar every day and asking, “How can I die so that you might flourish?”
What is the proper posture of worship? Leaning under the weight of a cross. It’s dying to ourselves.
Now, how do we get there? If the proper posture of worship is presenting ourselves as a living sacrifice, what does this Psalm tell us to do to get to that position?
Two things:
Remember what God has done, and repent of our false worship.
In verses 6-7 of this Psalm, the Psalmist figuratively hears the voice of God recounting the things He has done for his people: removed the burden from their shoulder, rescued them in their time of distress, refined them at Meribah.
All of these are God reminding His people of His deliverance from Egypt in the Exodus. The first step to a proper posture of worship — and thereby the first step to revitalization — is to remember the good things that God has done in the past.
God has blessed this church in the past and I believe that He may do so in the future. But the first step to that is remembering what He’s done for us individually and as a church. The first step is to remember the Exodus which Jesus lead, delivering you from the bondage of your sin and leading you to the Promised Land of eternal life.
But that’s not the end. God continues in the Psalm. Because, if we dwell too long on the past, we fall into nostalgia, we fall into longing for the good old days and that is a fast track to church death.
Remembrance is the first step. Repentance is the next.
In the last half of the Psalm, God implores his people to turn back from the idols that they had built. For them, many of those idols were physical statues.
Psalm 81:9 CSB
There must not be a strange god among you; you must not bow down to a foreign god.
Our idols are rarely physical icons, but they are as numerous and as insidious as Baal was. We may not worship Asherah, but our idols are comfort, and convenience, and preference, and freedom, and nostalgia, and the American Dream, and vacation, and food, and bank accounts, and Christian Nationalism, and social media, and sports, and online gaming, and the respect of our peers, and being right, and being obeyed, and having power.
All of those are worship killers. And God says that if He is going to bless us, we have to turn away from those things and give our hearts fully to Him.
Psalm 81:13–16 CSB
If only my people would listen to me and Israel would follow my ways,
I would quickly subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their foes.”
Those who hate the Lord would cower to him; their doom would last forever.
But he would feed Israel with the best wheat. “I would satisfy you with honey from the rock.”
Bringing a church back from the edge often feels like banging one’s head against a rock. But God promises that, if we will listen to Him — if we will remember what He’s done and repent of looking to other gods, He will make honey flow from it that rock.
There are reliable indicators of a healthy church. Signs of life, as it were. A body has to have brain function, circulation, respiratory, muscle mass…if it wants to be alive and healthy. The body of Christ must have those, too. Our brain function is a robust theology an excitement to learn the deep things of God. We breathe through prayer. We work our muscles by proclaiming the gospel and caring for the poor and needy. And our heartbeat is worship in spirit and truth.
If we want to be a church with vibrant signs of life, then we must start by remembering what God has done for us, both individually and corporately. Without remembering the sin that God has delivered us from, there will be no sense of His glory. We need to remember what God has done for this church in the past
— it gives us a sense of holy discontent. A realization that barely filling up three rows of pews in the sanctuary is a problem.
Do you remember what it was like when these pews were full? Can you see the faces of people who aren’t here anymore? People who live within 2 miles of here but just stopped coming? Do you remember when your kids had friends they grew up with? Do you remember when you had close relationships with godly people here and you worshipped together and laughed together and cried together? Do you remember what God has done here?
And when we remember what God has done, we must repent and turn away from the idols that we have built. We repent and turn away from the idol of keeping Gore Springs Baptist like it was in 1965 or 1991. We repent and turn away from the idol of being more concerned about political matters than spiritual ones — or even worse, the idol of considering those two things the same thing. We repent and turn away from the idol of singing only the songs that we like. We repent and turn away from the idol of having a perfect pastor and running them off when they don’t pastor in the way we think they ought.
The heartbeat of a church is her posture of worship, and true worship begins with remembrance and repentance.
Do you want to see signs of life here now? Younger parents, do you want to see Gore Springs Baptist be a church where your children have close friends, who grow up together hearing the Word of God taught to them? Seniors, do you want to see Gore Springs Baptist remain a faithful outpost of heaven after you are dead?
GSBC is looking toward its 70th anniversary in a few years. 1954 is when the first members covenanted together. And that’s great, but you know what that means? GSBC has existed for one generation.
So I need us to ask ourselves: Do we want to be a one-generation church? Or do we want to be a generational church? Praise God for the longevity that He has bestowed upon this church, but it’s never seen an entire generation pass away. But we’re in the midst of that now. Do we want GSBC to be around so Cross can grow up and raise his kids here? Do we want GSBC to exists so Cora can grow up and be called to the mission field? For Nora can grow up and serve the Lord? Do we want GSBC to exist so Dougy can grow up and be called to be a pastor? So Oliver can grow up and be a faithful _____ and love his wife and be a deacon?
Then we’ve got to remember what God has done, then repent and turn away from our idols, and start thinking about generations that will be here after we are gone so we can forge a path of true worship. Are you willing to do that?