Sermon – GTCOTR – Kenneth
Bent – Weds. 12/2/2014
Title: Who is Worshipping Whom
and How?
Tonight I am going to touch
on 3 broad areas in regard to worship:
1) The Object of Worship
2) The Order of Worship
3) The Outcome of Worship
-
We need to have a
working definition of worship.
o
Ideas?
§ Must be Biblically based
§ Define what you are worshipping
· The God of the Bible?
· Yourself?
§ One concept is simply, “Love” – essentially what you
love
But, it is too simplistic to say that – it
has to be qualified.
· There’s “love” between a bee and flower but that’s not
worship.
· There’s “love” between tiredness and night and your
head and your pillow, but that’s not worship.
·
· Yet, as Bob Kauflin says in his book Worship
Matters, “While it’s simplistic to say that worship is love, it’s a fact
that what we love most will determine what we genuinely worship.”[1]
§ Worship is exalting God.
§ Worship is glorifying God.
§ Worship is based on Biblical guidelines and
truth.
§ Worship can be characterized by attitude
and action – both the physical
demonstrations of worshipful attitudes and the actual service we render unto
the Lord.
Genesis
4:1-8
The
example of Cain and Abel is instructive here…some say that Cain’s sacrifice was
not accepted because it didn’t involve blood.
Yet
grain offerings were also commanded and accepted by God.
The
Hebrew uses the same word for both of their offerings.
It
is true that Cain should have brought the FirstFruits of the grain.
It
is also true that the Lord commented on the quality of Abel’s offering, and not
Cain’s – so something was amiss.
Yet
when God offered forgiveness and the opportunity to change his “worship” or his
“offering”, Cain only got angry – especially at God.
Cain’s root problem was one of attitude.
He
probably thought “Here’s my offering, now accept me.”
He
should have thought- “Here’s my humble, submitted heart, fearful
and respectful of Who You Are – it has guided my choice of offering, but the
actual thing I am offering is first myself, and my offering action
is an expression of my attitude – a humble, worshipful heart.”
Strangely,
Abel, the Second Born, actually offered the Firstborn offering!
In our worship, we need an
attitude adjustment.
There are problems in our
modern acculturation of worship…
John Piper in his book “Don’t
Waste Your Life” says in a prayer to God, “How could I
Lord, have been so blind to think that being loved by You means making much of
me and not Yourself?”[2]
A.W.Tozer, in his book “The
Knowledge of the Holy” warned and lamented the “loss of the concept of majesty
from the popular religious mind….
The church has surrendered
her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so
ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping men.”[3]
This was written ‘way
back’ in 1961.
Every generation in the
church needs a renewal of proper attitudes in worship.
Romans 1 warns that because
we reject our knowledge of the true God, we end up worshipping and serving the
creation (ourselves!) and especially man’s own creations, instead of God.
Tozer continues that this
loss of the Majesty of God in our heart, mind and worship was accompanied with
the “further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the Divine Presence.
We have lost our spirit of
worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence….It
is impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes right
while our idea of God is erroneous or inadequate.”[4]
Pastor Ron mentioned this to
us yesterday…..
Christian Smith, in Soul
Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers
conducted research and summarized his findings. He suggested that the de facto
dominant religion among contemporary teenagers in the United States is what he
called “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”
He states in one article that
“the creed of this religion, as codified from what emerged from our interviews
with U.S. teenagers, sounds something like this:
1) A God exists who created and orders the
world and watches over human life on earth.
2) God wants people to be good, nice, and fair
to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
3) The central goal of life is to be happy and
to feel good about oneself.
4) God does not need to be particularly
involved in one’s life except when he is needed to resolve a problem.
5) Good people go to heaven when they die.
Moralistic Therapeutic Deism
is also about providing therapeutic benefits to its adherents. This is not a
religion of repentance from sin, of keeping the Sabbath, of living as a servant
of a sovereign divine, of steadfastly say one’s prayer, of faithfully observing
high holy days, of building character through suffering, of basking in God’s
love and grace, of spending oneself in gratitude and love for the cause of
social justice, etc. Rather what appears to be the actual dominant religion
among U.S. teenagers is centrally about feeling good, happy, secure, at
peace. It is about attaining subjective
well-being, being able to resolve problems, and getting along amiably with
other people.”[5]
Robert Weber in the book Worship
is a Verb states that “many ‘choruses’ concentrate on personal experience
and self realization. They participate in the narcissism of our culture…Our
religion has followed the curvature of our self centered culture….characterized
by a feeling of over familiarity, an inappropriateness in the approach to
God. The sense of transcendence and
otherness and holiness of God seems to be missing. A kind of secularization
takes place.”[6]
John Jefferson Davis in Worship
and the Reality of God: An Evangelical Theology of Real Presence writes,
“The problem in many contemporary worship services….could be stated this
way: Your God is too “light”; your
vision of church is too low; your view of self is too high, and consequently
your worship is too shallow.”[7]
A number of Christians, in
seeking more of a sense of meaning in their worship, have ended up in Roman
Catholic or Greek Orthodox churches, thinking liturgy or formality, or simply
the claim to being “ancient” was the answer to finding the presence of God in
worship.
But the answer is not there.
Neither is the answer sheer
ecstaticism – emotional highs in some hyperspiritualised moment.
(Illustration comparing the
ecstatic uncontrollable, angry outburst of Job’s friend Elihu in Job 32:16-20,
And shall I wait, because they do not speak, because they stand there, and
answer no more? I also will answer with my share; I also will declare my
opinion. For I am full of words; the spirit within me constrains me. Behold, my
belly is like wine that has no vent; like new wineskins ready to burst. I must
speak, that I may find relief; I must open my lips and answer. (Job 32:16–20
ESV)
versus in the life of Simeon
(his Nunc dimittis) in Luke 2 - the result of a deposit of a lifetime
of meditating on the scriptures and receiving true prophetic revelation of
Christ – quoting from the Servant Song in Isaiah 40-55.
In The Spirit and Christ
in the New Testament and Christian Theology we read about Simeon and his
experience with the boy Jesus, “This old man is ready, though not because he
has fallen into an emotional tizzy or experienced the physical sensation of the
Holy Spirit’s urging. This old man is ripe, ready to reveal the inevitability
of salvation and to lift this peasant son in his arms because the whole of his
being is saturated by the prophetic vision of Isaiah 40-55. Simeon is inspired,
in other words, because his is vigilant, because he has studied the poignant
prophecies of Isaiah 40-55, which he now sees taking shape in a very young
Galilean boy who will be a light to the nations, who will offer salvation to
all the world’s peoples.”[8]
Piper states in Don’t
Waste Your Life, “The really
wonderful moments of joy in this world are not the moments of self
satisfaction, but self forgetfulness.
Standing on the
edge of the Grand Canyon and contemplating your own greatness is PATHOLOGICAL.”[9] (emphasis mine)
We need to remember that the
Apostle Paul’s worship at the midnight hour in prison in Philippi after being
beaten within an inch or two of his life was NOT BORN OUT OF SOME FEEL GOOD
MOMENT.
Yet he writes to the Philippian
Christians from jail that they should rejoice in the Lord always!
And in the midst of his
imprisonment he pens the beautiful Carmen Christi – the hymn of Christ
in Philippians chapter 2.
Another Quote from Worship
Matters:
“Each of us has a battle
raging within us over what we love most – God or something else.”[10]
Whenever we love and serve
anything in place of God, we are engaging in idolatry.
We love our idols because we
think they’ll provide the joy that comes from God alone….Idols enslave us and
put us to shame.
The 10 commandments deal a
lot with idolatry….no other gods before…serve God only….don’t covet –
covetousness is idolatry.
Paul in 1 Timothy 3:15 –
writing through Timothy to the huge group of Christians in Ephesus – most of
which were formally idol worshippers:
I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one
ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God,
a pillar and buttress of the truth. (1 Tim. 3:15, ESV)[11]
Then he goes on to provide a “worship song” that contains basic Christian
doctrine:
Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in
the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the
nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. (1 Tim 3:15–16 ESV)[12]
Last Thoughts
Lessons from the Tabernacle
of Moses in the Wilderness:
Only one way in.
Israel looked like a giant
cross in the wilderness.
You had to go to the brass
altar first.
From then on, everything –
every hint of spiritual activity reflected the fact that you had been to the
altar.
Your clothes were stained in
blood.
Your clothes and body smelled
of the smoke of the sacrificial lamb.
Your mind and heart were
filled with the idea that your ability to minister before God was a result of
the forgiveness given to you by sacrifice.
You couldn’t just race into
the holy of holies.
Tending to the table of bread,
trimming the wicks and replenishing the oil on the lampstand, and ministering
at the altar of incense was not possible without the blood and the sacrifice.
You couldn’t enter the Holy
of Holies without it.
Even the incense at the Altar
of Incense burned because it was lit with coals from the brass altar.
Our worship must be
CHRISTOCENTRIC
AND
CRUCICENTRIC
There can be no other.
Worship needs to be:
· CROSS CENTERED
· CHRIST CENTERED
· DEEPER
· BIBLICALLY BASED
· HUMBLE
· RESPECTFUL and not FRIVOLOUS
· HOLY
[1]
Bob Kauflin, Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of
God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 25.
[2]
John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003), 186.
[3] A
W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God, Their Meaning in
the Christian Life (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978, ©1961), vii.
[4]
Ibid., vii - viii
[5] Christian
Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and
Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2005), 162-63.
[6]
Robert Webber, Worship Is a Verb: Eight Principles Transforming Worship,
2nd ed. (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1996), 16-17.
[7]
John Jefferson Davis, Worship and the Reality of God: An Evangelical
Theology of Real Presence (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2010), 38.
[8] The
Spirit and Christ in the New Testament and Christian Theology: Essays in Honor
of Max Turner (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2012), 28.
[9]
Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life,33-34
[10]
Kauflin, Worship Matters, 21
[11] Esv:
Study Bible, esv text ed. (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Bibles, 2007), 2230.
[12] Esv:
Study Bible, 2231.Sermon – GTCOTR – Kenneth
Bent – Weds. 12/2/2014
Title: Who is Worshipping Whom
and How?
Tonight I am going to touch
on 3 broad areas in regard to worship:
1) The Object of Worship
2) The Order of Worship
3) The Outcome of Worship
-
We need to have a
working definition of worship.
o
Ideas?
§ Must be Biblically based
§ Define what you are worshipping
· The God of the Bible?
· Yourself?
§ One concept is simply, “Love” – essentially what you
love
But, it is too simplistic to say that – it
has to be qualified.
· There’s “love” between a bee and flower but that’s not
worship.
· There’s “love” between tiredness and night and your
head and your pillow, but that’s not worship.
·
· Yet, as Bob Kauflin says in his book Worship
Matters, “While it’s simplistic to say that worship is love, it’s a fact
that what we love most will determine what we genuinely worship.”[1]
§ Worship is exalting God.
§ Worship is glorifying God.
§ Worship is based on Biblical guidelines and
truth.
§ Worship can be characterized by attitude
and action – both the physical
demonstrations of worshipful attitudes and the actual service we render unto
the Lord.
Genesis
4:1-8
The
example of Cain and Abel is instructive here…some say that Cain’s sacrifice was
not accepted because it didn’t involve blood.
Yet
grain offerings were also commanded and accepted by God.
The
Hebrew uses the same word for both of their offerings.
It
is true that Cain should have brought the FirstFruits of the grain.
It
is also true that the Lord commented on the quality of Abel’s offering, and not
Cain’s – so something was amiss.
Yet
when God offered forgiveness and the opportunity to change his “worship” or his
“offering”, Cain only got angry – especially at God.
Cain’s root problem was one of attitude.
He
probably thought “Here’s my offering, now accept me.”
He
should have thought- “Here’s my humble, submitted heart, fearful
and respectful of Who You Are – it has guided my choice of offering, but the
actual thing I am offering is first myself, and my offering action
is an expression of my attitude – a humble, worshipful heart.”
Strangely,
Abel, the Second Born, actually offered the Firstborn offering!
In our worship, we need an
attitude adjustment.
There are problems in our
modern acculturation of worship…
John Piper in his book “Don’t
Waste Your Life” says in a prayer to God, “How could I
Lord, have been so blind to think that being loved by You means making much of
me and not Yourself?”[2]
A.W.Tozer, in his book “The
Knowledge of the Holy” warned and lamented the “loss of the concept of majesty
from the popular religious mind….
The church has surrendered
her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so
ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping men.”[3]
This was written ‘way
back’ in 1961.
Every generation in the
church needs a renewal of proper attitudes in worship.
Romans 1 warns that because
we reject our knowledge of the true God, we end up worshipping and serving the
creation (ourselves!) and especially man’s own creations, instead of God.
Tozer continues that this
loss of the Majesty of God in our heart, mind and worship was accompanied with
the “further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the Divine Presence.
We have lost our spirit of
worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence….It
is impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes right
while our idea of God is erroneous or inadequate.”[4]
Pastor Ron mentioned this to
us yesterday…..
Christian Smith, in Soul
Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers
conducted research and summarized his findings. He suggested that the de facto
dominant religion among contemporary teenagers in the United States is what he
called “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”
He states in one article that
“the creed of this religion, as codified from what emerged from our interviews
with U.S. teenagers, sounds something like this:
1) A God exists who created and orders the
world and watches over human life on earth.
2) God wants people to be good, nice, and fair
to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
3) The central goal of life is to be happy and
to feel good about oneself.
4) God does not need to be particularly
involved in one’s life except when he is needed to resolve a problem.
5) Good people go to heaven when they die.
Moralistic Therapeutic Deism
is also about providing therapeutic benefits to its adherents. This is not a
religion of repentance from sin, of keeping the Sabbath, of living as a servant
of a sovereign divine, of steadfastly say one’s prayer, of faithfully observing
high holy days, of building character through suffering, of basking in God’s
love and grace, of spending oneself in gratitude and love for the cause of
social justice, etc. Rather what appears to be the actual dominant religion
among U.S. teenagers is centrally about feeling good, happy, secure, at
peace. It is about attaining subjective
well-being, being able to resolve problems, and getting along amiably with
other people.”[5]
Robert Weber in the book Worship
is a Verb states that “many ‘choruses’ concentrate on personal experience
and self realization. They participate in the narcissism of our culture…Our
religion has followed the curvature of our self centered culture….characterized
by a feeling of over familiarity, an inappropriateness in the approach to
God. The sense of transcendence and
otherness and holiness of God seems to be missing. A kind of secularization
takes place.”[6]
John Jefferson Davis in Worship
and the Reality of God: An Evangelical Theology of Real Presence writes,
“The problem in many contemporary worship services….could be stated this
way: Your God is too “light”; your
vision of church is too low; your view of self is too high, and consequently
your worship is too shallow.”[7]
A number of Christians, in
seeking more of a sense of meaning in their worship, have ended up in Roman
Catholic or Greek Orthodox churches, thinking liturgy or formality, or simply
the claim to being “ancient” was the answer to finding the presence of God in
worship.
But the answer is not there.
Neither is the answer sheer
ecstaticism – emotional highs in some hyperspiritualised moment.
(Illustration comparing the
ecstatic uncontrollable, angry outburst of Job’s friend Elihu in Job 32:16-20,
And shall I wait, because they do not speak, because they stand there, and
answer no more? I also will answer with my share; I also will declare my
opinion. For I am full of words; the spirit within me constrains me. Behold, my
belly is like wine that has no vent; like new wineskins ready to burst. I must
speak, that I may find relief; I must open my lips and answer. (Job 32:16–20
ESV)
versus in the life of Simeon
(his Nunc dimittis) in Luke 2 - the result of a deposit of a lifetime
of meditating on the scriptures and receiving true prophetic revelation of
Christ – quoting from the Servant Song in Isaiah 40-55.
In The Spirit and Christ
in the New Testament and Christian Theology we read about Simeon and his
experience with the boy Jesus, “This old man is ready, though not because he
has fallen into an emotional tizzy or experienced the physical sensation of the
Holy Spirit’s urging. This old man is ripe, ready to reveal the inevitability
of salvation and to lift this peasant son in his arms because the whole of his
being is saturated by the prophetic vision of Isaiah 40-55. Simeon is inspired,
in other words, because his is vigilant, because he has studied the poignant
prophecies of Isaiah 40-55, which he now sees taking shape in a very young
Galilean boy who will be a light to the nations, who will offer salvation to
all the world’s peoples.”[8]
Piper states in Don’t
Waste Your Life, “The really
wonderful moments of joy in this world are not the moments of self
satisfaction, but self forgetfulness.
Standing on the
edge of the Grand Canyon and contemplating your own greatness is PATHOLOGICAL.”[9] (emphasis mine)
We need to remember that the
Apostle Paul’s worship at the midnight hour in prison in Philippi after being
beaten within an inch or two of his life was NOT BORN OUT OF SOME FEEL GOOD
MOMENT.
Yet he writes to the Philippian
Christians from jail that they should rejoice in the Lord always!
And in the midst of his
imprisonment he pens the beautiful Carmen Christi – the hymn of Christ
in Philippians chapter 2.
Another Quote from Worship
Matters:
“Each of us has a battle
raging within us over what we love most – God or something else.”[10]
Whenever we love and serve
anything in place of God, we are engaging in idolatry.
We love our idols because we
think they’ll provide the joy that comes from God alone….Idols enslave us and
put us to shame.
The 10 commandments deal a
lot with idolatry….no other gods before…serve God only….don’t covet –
covetousness is idolatry.
Paul in 1 Timothy 3:15 –
writing through Timothy to the huge group of Christians in Ephesus – most of
which were formally idol worshippers:
I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one
ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God,
a pillar and buttress of the truth. (1 Tim. 3:15, ESV)[11]
Then he goes on to provide a “worship song” that contains basic Christian
doctrine:
Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in
the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the
nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. (1 Tim 3:15–16 ESV)[12]
Last Thoughts
Lessons from the Tabernacle
of Moses in the Wilderness:
Only one way in.
Israel looked like a giant
cross in the wilderness.
You had to go to the brass
altar first.
From then on, everything –
every hint of spiritual activity reflected the fact that you had been to the
altar.
Your clothes were stained in
blood.
Your clothes and body smelled
of the smoke of the sacrificial lamb.
Your mind and heart were
filled with the idea that your ability to minister before God was a result of
the forgiveness given to you by sacrifice.
You couldn’t just race into
the holy of holies.
Tending to the table of bread,
trimming the wicks and replenishing the oil on the lampstand, and ministering
at the altar of incense was not possible without the blood and the sacrifice.
You couldn’t enter the Holy
of Holies without it.
Even the incense at the Altar
of Incense burned because it was lit with coals from the brass altar.
Our worship must be
CHRISTOCENTRIC
AND
CRUCICENTRIC
There can be no other.
Worship needs to be:
· CROSS CENTERED
· CHRIST CENTERED
· DEEPER
· BIBLICALLY BASED
· HUMBLE
· RESPECTFUL and not FRIVOLOUS
· HOLY
[1]
Bob Kauflin, Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of
God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 25.
[2]
John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003), 186.
[3] A
W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God, Their Meaning in
the Christian Life (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978, ©1961), vii.
[4]
Ibid., vii - viii
[5] Christian
Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and
Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2005), 162-63.
[6]
Robert Webber, Worship Is a Verb: Eight Principles Transforming Worship,
2nd ed. (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1996), 16-17.
[7]
John Jefferson Davis, Worship and the Reality of God: An Evangelical
Theology of Real Presence (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2010), 38.
[8] The
Spirit and Christ in the New Testament and Christian Theology: Essays in Honor
of Max Turner (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2012), 28.
[9]
Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life,33-34
[10]
Kauflin, Worship Matters, 21
[11] Esv:
Study Bible, esv text ed. (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Bibles, 2007), 2230.
[12] Esv:
Study Bible, 2231.
