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Worship—It’s Not About Me Psalm 96
Every year my appreciation and respect for our denomination increases. One of the great things about being in our denomination is the amazing amount of training, support and encouragement they give to churches when things are going well. But equally important is their response to churches when they are having problems. Recently I have been serving on a team organized by the Forest Lakes District, which is the Wisconsin portion of our denomination, that is helping a church struggling with some issues. It quickly became apparent that the key issue was worship. For ten hours I listened to groups of people share their thoughts and feelings, mostly about worship. Not surprisingly, we found a wide range of opinions on the subject of worship. Here are two extreme examples I heard. One person was upset because the pulpit was occasionally moved. The pulpit was referred to as a “sacred desk” and therefore should not be moved. Another person wanted the church to grow more quickly and said that the church should do “whatever it takes” to bring people into the worship services. The first example borders on idolatry—almost worshiping the pulpit instead of God. The second borders on philosophical pragmatism—it is a slippery slope where you could end up doing unbiblical things to draw the masses to your church.
I don’t need to tell you that these are NOT good examples of Biblical worship. The problem is that everyone has opinions about worship, but not every opinion has been thought through carefully. This experience has reminded me that every person has a right to express their opinion, but that does not mean that every opinion is equally valid. As Rick warren says in the very first line of his book—“It’s not about you.” Worship is not about you and I—it’s not about our opinions and personal tastes. Worship is about God. Rather than draw our understanding of worship from our experience or opinions, we should always begin with the word of God. The topic of worship is so vast that you could almost go anywhere in Scripture to find a good text, but this morning we will be mining truths from Psalm 96
1 Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. 2 Sing to the Lord, praise his name; proclaim his salvation day after day. 3 Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples. 4 For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; he is to be feared above all gods. 5 For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. 6 Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and glory are in his sanctuary. 7 Ascribe to the Lord, O families of nations, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. 8 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; bring an offering and come into his courts. 9 Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness; tremble before him, all the earth. 10 Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns.” The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity. 11 Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it; 12 let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy; 13 they will sing before the Lord, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his truth. This psalm gives both the reason for our worship and the proper response of our worship. The first reason we worship is because God is big. God is a big God. He is the greatest of all possible beings and only the greatest and most perfect of beings deserve our worship. What makes this God so big and deserving of our worship? God is at least partly defined by his attributes or characteristics and this psalm has a long list of attributes. I encourage you to either underline them in your Bible or else write them on your outline. Verse two: He is a God of salvation. This is why the doctrine of sin is so important. One of my seminary professors said that the doctrine of sin might be the most important doctrine in all of Christianity, because if we are not sinners then we don’t need a God who saves. We might want a god who gives us nice things, but we don’t need a god who saves. A second attribute comes in verse five: God is Creator—“the Lord made the heavens.” This all-powerful creator God is compared to other gods who are nothing more than worthless idols. There are many pretenders to the throne, there is a universe of false gods, but only one true Creator. This truth presents a third attribute: exclusivity. God is to be feared above all gods. There are hordes of evil spirits, but these are not gods. God is to be worshiped exclusively. In verse six we add two more attributes—strength and beauty. We probably talk about God’s power and strength enough, but how often do you hear a sermon on God’s beauty? If God is all-powerful, then he is also all-beautiful. Next week I will sit on an ordination council listening to candidates defend their theological beliefs. Every paper I have ever read all contain the “omni” statements. You know what I mean, like omni-potent, omni-present and omniscience. A candidate would get in trouble if he left those out. But I have never seen anyone add omni-beautiful. He possesses all of his attributes in an absolute sense. For example, God is not just good, he is perfectly and infinitely good. You and I can have degrees of goodness, but with God there are no degrees. Many more characteristics are in this psalm. Verse nine reminds us he is holy. There is no hint of sin or wrongdoing in God. We should be very careful with this one. How many times have we said, “Why would God allow such a thing to happen?”—some evil act in the world or in our lives. When we say such a thing, there are two possible meanings. If we mean that we don’t understand the reason behind a particular event, that is fine—we are merely acknowledging our imperfect knowledge. But very often the hidden question is “What’s wrong with God? Is there some flaw in God that caused him to make a mistake?” God is holy—he cannot make a mistake or be guilty of any wrongdoing. Even in the midst of trials and personal suffering, we must not accuse God of doing wrong. Verse ten proclaims that God is a mighty king. “The Lord reigns” means that the universe is his kingdom. All authority, seen and unseen, is under his rule. As the mighty king he deserves our full and complete allegiance. What is it called when a citizen is in rebellion against his king or country? This is no less than treason. Finally he is also called a fair judge—“he will judge the peoples with equity.” Every single day around the world, courts pronounce binding judgments in favor or against competing parties. But are all of these judgments truly just and fair? Of course not. Judges, attorneys and juries are all subject to bias, corruption and error. Only a perfect person could make perfect judgments—such is our perfect God. God’s perfect justice is of tremendous comfort to us. It is the answer to the question-“what about the heathen in foreign lands who have never heard the gospel—will God send them to hell?” Or closer to home--”What about my unsaved father, mother, sister or brother?” God is the perfect judge and he will do what is fair and just. I’m just glad I’m not in charge. All of the attributes—and other we have not mentioned—speak loud and clear that God is big. The corresponding thought to that is that I am not. God is big, I am not. This is why worship is all about him and not about me. Understanding this is crucial to daily living. If you have a big God, then next to him all of our problems are small by comparison. But if our God is small, then our problems appear big. Big God—small problems; small god—BIG problems. Please understand that God cannot get any bigger or more perfect than he already is. It is our understanding of his “Bigness”, his perfection that grows. Everything in life hinges on our understanding of God. Let me read two quotes from commentators talking about the Passion movie. One man said, "I don't know the purpose of the extent of violence," Hikind said (A N.Y. State Assemblyman). It really is a blood libel against Jews. Mel Gibson has done a tremendous disservice to the real message of Jesus, which is about love." (Reuters, 2/24/04) Another man said this: "It will incite contempt for Jews. It is a blasphemous insult to the memory of Jesus Christ. It is an icon of religious violence." (James Carroll, Boston Globe, 2/24/04). These two men are greatly confused. They think that God is soft and weak and that Jesus embodies this weakness. Why do we worship? Because God is big and I am not. It’s not about me. If God’s perfection is the reason we worship, then how do we respond to God in worship? Should we fight over the placement of the pulpit? By the way, I told that man that we don’t even have a pulpit in our church! There are several Hebrew and Greek words for worship, but I believe all of them can be summarized into three basic categories. The first term means to approach God with reverence and awe. This is why we say God is awesome. This type of worship response, like all worship, is based in knowledge, but reverence is expressed primarily with emotion. You can’t merely read about something awesome—you have to experience and feel its awesomeness. For example, everyone who has ever seen the Grand Canyon agrees that it is awesome. But would you have the same experience if I just told you about the Grand Canyon. What if I explained to you that it is 277 miles long, has an average width of ten miles, is over 1 mile deep, the park covers 1.2 million acres and has almost 4 million visitors each year? Would that be enough information to know that it was awesome? We can study the facts, we can memorize the statistics, we can even look at satellite pictures of the Grand Canyon, but until you visit for the first time and peer over thee edge, you won’t really know that it is awesome. But how do you and I worship God as awesome? It’s not just about working yourself up into an emotional catharsis in a worship service. As I said before, we need to learn about his attributes. We need to constantly learn about God and realize that the more we know about him, the more there is to know. We need to immerse ourselves in the knowledge of him. This is often referred to as meditation. By meditation I don’t mean the type where you sit with your legs crossed and make strange noises. I mean meditation on Scripture—taking a verse or two or an attribute about God and prayerfully surrounding your heart and mind with its truth. Having a Bible study is like going to a swimming pool—we can all participate at the same time and benefit from one another. But if Bible study is like a swimming pool, the meditation is like taking a long, hot bath. You lay back and let the awesome truth and power of God surround your soul. Meditation is so easy to do you can do it anywhere. Two weeks ago I was sitting in Culvers meditating on a truth, a bit overwhelmed with the wonder of God, and I thought, “Hey, this is worship!” Why don’t you plan to meditate this week? Take one of the attributes of God we listed earlier, or one you find on your own, and then try to wrap your mind and heart around it. Take for example comfort. What does it mean that God is a God of comfort? Remember, God possesses all attributes in an absolute sense. God is not just comfort, he is omni-comforting, he is all-comforting. Think of all the times he has brought you comfort in the past. Think about other Scriptures that describe his comfort. Think how you have received ultimate comfort in the cross? This is one way of really feeling the awesomeness of God. Worship is not always an emotional high, but when you see God for who he is, you cannot help but get lost in awe and reverence. By the way, on your outline, when God is revered, I realize I am small. Its not about me. The second Biblical term for worship, which is by far the most common, means to bow down or kiss. If God is the greatest of all possible beings, if he is the King of the universe, then I must bow down to him, submit my will to him, offer him my full allegiance. The first term, to revere, means I am small. To bow down to God means I submit to him. We primarily do this through daily, moment by moment obedience. Too often I think obedience is presented as something I must do. Do you teach your children that obedience is like taking cough medicine—you may not like it, but it is still good for you? That takes the notion of obedience and distorts it into something evil. Listen to this: obedience is ALWAYS good for you. Obedience and submission to Christ is a joyful experience. Sometimes in the short term obedience will bring pain or even death. Obedience is not always easy, but it can always be joyful and it certainly is always for our benefit. This is rooted in the concept of God’s perfect goodness. God would never ask us to do something if it was not ultimately the best thing for us. The two forms of worship so far are: I am small—I submit. The third Biblical term for worship is our service rendered to God. Worship is not merely thinking big thoughts about God—though it is that. Worship is not simply submitting our wills to His will—though it definitely is that as well. But worship is our every action done to the glory of God. The Bible says that loving one another is the exact same thing as loving God. Therefore loving others is a form of worship. Think of it this way: our actions either bring glory to God or else they dishonor his name. We invited three couples to our Purpose Driven Life study who gave us a “no” answer. I would like to read a portion of an email one man sent to me—this is after reading several chapters of the book. “If I could look around and see enlightened, purposeful people, especially Christians, I would be more likely to seek the same path. But we are all in the same boat, and the people I know who have the most peace and sense of purpose are the ones who use the "dubious" methods of alternative spirituality.” This man is saying, “I don’t like the Christians I know very well—why should I want to become one myself?” Now he may be using hypocrisy as an excuse to reject God, but in talking with him in the past, I know he has been handed a ready-made excuse. If we serve God and honor him with our actions—God’s name will be glorified—this is worship. So instead of asking, “how is your Sunday morning worship?”, we should be asking “how is your Monday morning worship at the office?” “How is your worship at the dinner table with your kids?” “How is your worship in the daily grind of life?” If someone asks you, “when is your worship service?” tell them it is Sunday through Saturday, 24/7. I hope you see how these three aspects of worship go together. Look at all three again: reverence, submission and actions. The practical question is: “Is my reverence for God and my submission to God clearly evident in my actions?” If I think God is awesome—do others know that I think God is awesome? Do they see it in my obedience to God—in my respect for others—in my patience and longsuffering for difficult people in my life? This is worship. This psalm also tells us the direction of our worship. Verse one tells us to “sing a new song to the Lord”. Worship is fundamentally Godward—we sing to the Lord—we pray to the Lord—all things are done to the Lord because he is the one who deserves the recognition and praise. But worship is also manward. Verse three says “Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all peoples.” If we feel that God is worthy of our full devotion and worship, then we will want as many people as possible to worship him. What is your motivation for evangelism? Do you do witness to others primarily for their benefit—so that they will go to heaven instead of the other place? That is fine, but I would like to challenge you with the thought that our primary motivation for evangelism should be for the sake of worship. God is so awesome, so deserving of worship that we should tell the whole world about him. With the presidential election coming this year, imagine if you were walking through downtown Viroqua when someone ran past you and announced that President Bush was standing in front of Rockweilers giving an open air campaign speech. What would you do? You would run up the hill as fast as you could to get a glimpse of the most powerful man on the planet—and as you ran you would tell others what you know. This is a good picture of worship—running to God and bringing others with us as we go. Finally we must mention the content of our worship. Worship is knowledge-based and truth-centered, therefore the content of our worship must come from Scripture. In worship we must strive to represent ALL of God’s attributes. This is why we encourage you to read through the whole Bible. Every page of Scripture literally drips with his glory and power. You say, “How can God’s glory be displayed in the long list of names in the Old Testament—it seems so boring!” Just because you and I can’t see his glory displayed in certain portions of Scripture does not mean it is not there. The Bible is a purpose-driven book. Not a single word is wasted. If we commit ourselves to seeing the glory of God on every page, through the Holy Spirit we will begin to see more and more. And the more of God’s glory we see, the more we will want to worship him with our whole lives. The content of worship is the whole Bible and I have added on the outline that it especially includes the knowledge about and worship of Jesus Christ. I chose an OT passage to study worship, but worship is fundamentally Christ-centered. I told this story before, but I heard a pastor once say that he would never again preach another sermon that would not get him kicked out of a mosque or synagogue. I may not always succeed at this goal, but it is my commitment as well. If you miss Jesus, you have completely missed worship. Because God is so big and awesome—my response in worship is that I am small, I submit and I serve. It’s not about me—it’s about him. But when you talk about worship, the inevitable question arises, but what about worship style? Why do churches fight about the placement of the pulpit, the number of hymns and length of the service? Let me answer that question in three parts. First, it is the wrong question to ask because it assumes worship has only to do with what we do in 60-90 minutes on Sunday morning. A worship service is a corporate expression of the worship in our daily lives. For that reason what we do in corporate worship is very important, but it is not the totality of our worship. Sunday morning is the mountain peak of our worship, not the foundation. Second, if we really understood all of these aspects of worship, do you think we would still have worship wars? The answer to worship wars is teaching about worship and about our awesome God. So when we are tempted to start a worship war, our guiding question should be: “is this about me or is it about God?” If it is about you and I, then we should drop it like a hot potato. Now here is where we must be careful, because we can deceive ourselves into thinking our concerns are about God. Do you think the man who never wanted the pulpit to be moved thinks he is concerned about himself? No, he is absolutely convinced that he is passionate for God’s honor. If he were to ask the question, “what would Jesus do?”—the answer would be obvious to him—Jesus would never move the pulpit. Now he may very well be passionate for God’s honor, but in fighting about the pulpit he has chosen a poor way of expressing it. Now what would you do if you found yourself engaged in a battle about pulpits and you asked the guiding question: is this about God? You would ask that man, “Why is the pulpit so important to you?” Do you know what he would probably tell you? He would explain how the pulpit represents the very Word of God. With conviction in his eyes he would tell you story after story of pastors he has loved and how they preached from that pulpit and encouraged him when he felt like giving up. Hundreds of times he was convicted of sin from that pulpit—his sons and daughters found Jesus Christ through that pulpit. For him the pulpit represents the very Word of God. But that is precisely the problem, isn’t it? The pulpit has taken on too much significance for him—it has nearly become an idol to him. He has confused the message with the medium—the principle with the process. Unfortunately it is far too easy for anyone to confuse the message with the medium. This is why we should not say or think things like this: “Oh, he’s just an old codger stuck on his hymnbook.” “Oh, he’s just a young whipper-snapper stuck on drums and guitars.” We must learn from one another and challenge one another. We must learn to respect tradition as well as change. We must learn to separate the message from the medium and the principle from the process. Principles and mediums will change—but the message and the principles must never change. I want to say one more thing about style. There is a great story concerning the history of the song written by Matt Redman called The Heart of Worship. Matt was the worship leader in a church in London. The worship at this church had become a little stale and devoid of life, so the pastor challenged the church to go without any music for about two months. Imagine that—no music in a worship service for two months! Here is one man’s explanation of the process. “In our hearts, we were giving the worship team grades on a scale from one to ten: 'Not that song again,' 'I can't hear the bass,' 'I like the way she sings better.' We had made the band the performers of worship and ourselves the audience. We had forgotten that we are ALL the performers of worship and that God is the audience. We had forgotten that sacrifice is central to biblical worship. We are called to offer our bodies as living sacrifices - this is OUR spiritual act of worship (Romans 12:1). We are called to offer our sacrifice of praise (Heb. 13:15). We were challenged to ask ourselves individually, 'When I come through the door of the church, what am I bringing as my contribution to worship?' The truth came to us: worship is not a spectator sport, it is not a product molded by the taste of the consumers. It is not about what we can get out of it; it is all about God. Then we sat around in circles and said that if no one brought a sacrifice of praise, we would spend the meeting in silence. At the beginning we virtually did! It was a very painful process. We were learning again not to rely on the music. After a while, we began to have some very sweet times of worship. We all began to bring our prayers, our readings, our prophecies, our thanksgiving, our praises and our songs. Someone would start a song a cappella and we would all join in. Then someone else would take it on to another song. The excitement came back. We were not having Church; we were once again meeting with God. With all the comforts stripped away, we worshiped from the heart.” (http://www.worshipleaderworkshop.com/mag-when.htm) It was during this process Matt wrote this song. When the music fades, Worship--it’s not about me—It’s all about God. Rich Maurer March 29, 2004 |