Articles
Putting Your All Into Worship--Transcript
worship the Lord this morning and I'm incredibly grateful and honored to have the opportunity to share God's Word with you once again today.
Thank you so much for having me out.
I want to share with you as I shared with the folks that were here this morning, I know we have some teachers in that weren't able to be in the first lesson and so on and maybe some folks that just got here for the primary worship service.
I wasn't raised in the Lord's Church.
I was raised basically with no religious background.
My parents of course stressed the importance of being a good person and they you know encouraged us if we wanted to go to church we could go, but there was not a lot of direction religiously from my family and so I got into a world of trouble because I was a very curious young man, but through the grace of God he gave me some what you might call prodigal son moments in my life where I hit rock bottom and so I turned to the Lord in desperation and I started seeking him out and amazingly through his blessings and through his answer to prayers he helped guide me to people that steered me in the right direction, one of course being my beloved wife Shawn, and I love how he works.
Now that's not to say that I did not have some religious experiences growing up.
I think most kids do.
A friend at school invites them to their service or things like that.
My grandma was Catholic.
My mom had some Methodist background in her upbringing and so I experienced and was curious and explored a lot of religious groups.
My best friend was Lutheran.
His mother was the organist in the Lutheran Church in town and they would often invite me to come and sing solos there so I had some experiences, but one thing I loved about the Lord's Church when I came to be a part of it was how serious they take worship, how special it is to them, and I want to talk to you today about putting our all in to worship.
Our brother in Christ read this passage a few moments ago at the beginning of the service.
That's why it's of course important for us all to talk with each other before, but nonetheless it never hurts to hear it again.
It is a powerful scripture I think that lays a beautiful foundation of our mentality when we come into a house of worship and David does this so beautifully and I would strongly encourage you if you're wanting the right flavor of what it means to worship God, read the book of Psalms.
It is filled with David's awe of God and being inspired by him and longing to want to worship him and lift up his name.
David talks about how much he loves, you know, God's lessons, God's teachings, and how he wants to practice them every day.
He loves the Lord and he's such an excellent example for us in how we ought to put our all into worship and it makes sense because God said that he was a man after his own heart.
And so as we read this passage here in Psalm 101 through 5, I want you to listen to the spirit of David as this is read.
Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands.
Serve the Lord with gladness.
Come before his presence with singing.
Know that the Lord, he is God.
It is he who has made us, not we ourselves.
We are his people and we are the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise.
Be thankful to him and bless his name for the Lord is God.
His mercy is everlasting and his truth endures to all generations.
For those of you that like to write hymns, this is a wonderful passage of Scripture to set to music.
I've heard some gorgeous choral works before, SATB acapella harmony pieces that have been written by brethren and other folks and I'm just telling you it's a great passage to set to music if you're looking for a new Scripture to put to music.
But I love David's attitude there.
You know, there's joy, there's thanksgiving, there's a reverent tone for that we worship him, that he is to be the one, he is to be the focus of our worship.
He just has the right attitude in every way, shape and form.
Now I know that most people here, most of you understand or have a very strong concept of what it means to worship, but just so that we start off on the right page, let's talk about what that word means.
Let's go all the way back to the Hebrew first and kind of work our way through what you would say are the biblical languages, if you will.
And then of course take a look at our language English to which we speak.
What does worshipping God mean? Well, if we're going to put our all into worship, it's important that we go back and look at it in its most basic format.
So if you take the Hebrew, and forgive me if I mispronounce my Hebrew, those of you that might be Hebrew scholars, we might have a few in here, but the word for worship in Hebrew is shakra or shakha, excuse me, and it means to bow down.
It even means to prostrate yourself on the ground.
Have you ever prayed like that before? A lot of people don't pray like that.
Now in foreign countries you might see that happen sometimes, but to prostrate yourself on the ground is to literally flat on your belly with your face to the ground.
People in Old Testament times used to see this as like an utter sign of humility, that you deemed God so high, you revered Him, you had that reverent sense of fear and awe of the great God Almighty, that to pray to Him was an honor.
But I love that passage of Scripture in the New Testament where you had the one that came and praised himself before God, and then of course you had the sinner, the publican, who said, I'm not even worthy to speak to you basically.
That's kind of the attitude of the one that prostrates themselves on the ground.
I'm not even worthy to talk to you, but I'm going to attempt to do it, but I'm going to do it in the most humble position I possibly can.
I'm going to lay flat on the ground with my face in the dirt, because I don't even deserve to talk to you, God.
But it's a beautiful picture of someone that is humble before the Lord.
I've only prayed that way a few times, and it was in very desperate times in my life.
I'm telling you, it was powerful, it was meaningful to me.
I think God sees when you're serious in your prayer, and sometimes even your physical demeanor in private can say something to God.
So it's a picture that I think sometimes we need to see, prostrating oneself flat on the ground in absolute humility.
In Aramaic, which is the language that Jesus spoke, it basically means the same thing.
It denotes to bow down before the Lord.
Again, a picture of humility before our Creator.
And in Latin, which many of the early Bibles were written in, there are several words for worship, including cultus, which is where we sadly get our word cult from, but one of its meanings is to honor God.
And then there's the word adoratio, which you can probably figure out what that one means, adoration for God, and that means to have a deep love and respect for God.
And another Latin word that's used, another Latin word that's used is reverencia, which again sounds just like reverence, and that's what it is.
That means to fear the Lord, to be in a state of awe before God.
Is that how we are in worship? When we're here? Is that our demeanor? I will say this.
When I was younger, and I went to all these different churches because I was curious, there were some churches that created a sense that when you walked in the room, this was serious business.
It was not jovial.
There's nothing wrong with laughter.
There's not even anything wrong with laughter in a sermon or thing.
I know sometimes people don't feel comfortable with that.
There's nothing wrong with being comical on occasion.
But there is a seriousness when you approach God.
I remember as a youth going into certain Catholic churches, and they were kind of dark and archaic, and there was a seriousness about their behavior and their demeanor.
There are things that we learned from different religious groups that can have meaning to us and can leave an impression.
That was just something I found interesting about that group.
And I think sometimes maybe we don't take God as seriously as we should.
And so I would implore you that you do, because it is part of the concept of worship.
Treating God with reverence, being in a state of awe before Him.
When we give God our deepest affection and highest praise to God, that's a definition in English.
Another English definition, the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for God.
There's that word again.
And I like it says the feeling or expression.
How do we express ourselves in a means that is worshipful? And lastly, to honor God with religious rights.
I know sometimes we don't like that word R-I-T-E-S.
It of course comes from the word ritual.
And when we think of ritual, we might think of certain religious practices that start to lose their meaning.
They just become a physical gesture.
Well, they can indeed become that.
We've heard people say the exact same prayer a million times.
And to us at least, it sometimes sounds like it's void of something deeper, more heartfelt.
I get it.
We see that.
We can go through the motions.
Have you ever sang through a hymn and you got all the way to the end and you're like, what song did I just sing? You ever done that before? We can do that.
We can go through the motions.
But that's not what God would want us to do.
And so when it comes to these religious rights, that can be anything.
It can be talking about prayer.
It can be talking about baptism, things of that nature.
They need to be filled with something within.
There needs to be a spirit within them that is important.
When we pray, when we sing, when we're baptized, doing it all for the right reasons with the right inspiration.
Which brings up the question, is there a right way and is there a wrong way to worship God? Is there a right way and is there a wrong way to worship God? Well, in John and chapter four, and many of you will remember the biblical story, Jesus is at a well with a Samaritan woman and he's been talking to her about this precious water that wells up to eternal life.
But they go into a conversation about her husband's situation and that she's had multiple men and she's obviously it seems a little uncomfortable about this discussion and she seems to steer the discussion in a different direction and she takes Jesus to an argument that's been going on between the Jews and the Samaritans about where is the appropriate place to worship.
But Jesus isn't going to get into a silly argument about that.
He just right away says, well it really is supposed to be in Jerusalem and that's the salvation is from the Jews, he says, but basically I'm not here to focus on that.
He says, I'm here to talk to you about what true worship is now, where it's going, what it is becoming.
And so in John four and verses 23 and 24, it says, but a time is coming, Jesus speaking here to the woman at the well, and even now has arrived when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.
For such people the Father seeks to be his worshipers.
God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.
Well what does that mean? What does that mean to worship God in spirit and in truth? We have two things here, spirit and truth.
Well basically it means to put our all into worship.
But let's talk about that for a few minutes.
Let's talk about these two different parts of our true worship to God.
What does it mean to worship God in spirit? That is perhaps the more challenging of the two to discern because we are both physical and spiritual beings, but we have a tendency to cater more to the physical until we have truly engaged our walk in the Lord and really given God our utmost attention and priority in life.
But we have a tendency to lean towards the physical.
That's why this spirited side sometimes seems like a struggle for us to understand and practice.
What does it mean to worship God in spirit? Think back to our first lesson this morning, those of you that were with us at nine o'clock.
What did Moses say to the Israelites in how they were to love God? In Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verse 5, this is what he said.
He said, You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart.
You shall love the Lord your God with all of your soul.
And you shall love the Lord your God with all of your might.
That's everything.
That's a totality approach.
Jesus even in a sense takes it just a step further.
You could even say trying to truly authentically combine the mind and the heart because he adds in Mark 12 and verse 30, as you can see in the right side of the screen, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all of your mind, and with all of your strength.
This greatest commandment signifies an utter totality of how we are to love, how we are to engage our God, our Creator, our Father in all things, including our worship of him.
Think about it this way.
When athletes or musicians or scholars, say in mathematics or science, when they want to achieve greatness in their given field, they go after it with every ounce of their being.
It becomes their number one.
It becomes their idol.
They don't want to talk about anything else.
They don't want to do anything else.
Sometimes you kind of get tired of people like that.
You're like, Dude, can we talk about something else? You ever been with someone like that? It's just all they talk about.
People, that's how we're supposed to be as Christians with God.
He's at the center.
He's at the core of everything we think about, everything we want to say.
He's tempering our tongue.
He's tempering our actions.
He's who we love and adore.
He's who we want to share with other people because we want to help as many people get to heaven as we possibly can.
Stop worrying about offending people.
Stop worrying about offending people.
Love people.
People will truly know that you love them.
When you're willing to speak to them about important things like this, they will.
They will.
God needs such people as that.
It needs to be our everything.
Like athletes look at their given discipline, their given sport.
They love their sport per se.
It is their everything.
It is their idol.
It is, in a sense, likened unto their God.
And they don't want to talk about anything else.
That, folks, is what our love and devotion to God is supposed to be like.
It should just ooze from our being.
It should flow freely from every ounce of who we are when we worship Him here and now, when we talk about Him with other people.
We must engage the whole heart when we worship God.
And, folks, there's plenty of inspiration for this.
You know what I'm saying? I mean, if you go back to the Old Testament and you read about the flood, I mean, that ought to scare you half to death.
But it also ought to just put you in an absolute state of awe about what God can do, about what He can accomplish.
When you take a look at the Red Sea and how He literally took an ocean and parted it in half so that His people could safely travel across it to the other side.
And then just as they make it to the other side and they start praising God and singing songs of joy, and then, of course, the Egyptians start making their way into the dry land.
Of course, that water comes crashing down upon them and God destroys the greatest enemy.
He destroys the world's superpower because He's God.
He's worthy of our worship.
We ought to stand in awe of Him every time we think about Him.
When I think of Jesus and what He went through on the cross for you and I, man, that ought to make us turn right around and say, what should we do, Lord? Just like they did in Acts in chapter 2.
What should we do? How should we respond? And, of course, Peter told them what to do to make their life right with the Lord by being, by repenting and being baptized.
But what Jesus did for us, living His entire life, not just the death, yes, that's huge.
That's huge.
And He wasn't just killed quickly.
He was tortured for hours upon that cross and He was tortured before even God on the cross by being basically flailed alive.
So much so that could have killed Him in and of itself.
But every waking moment in His servanthood to you and I in the time that He ministered, it was absolute selflessness.
He was there for you.
He was there for me.
He was there for all of mankind.
He did everything for you and me.
He did nothing for Himself.
And so that ought to inspire, that ought to just drive you to your knees wanting to pray to Him, wanting to worship Him, wanting to praise Him in song.
And, of course, if you're like me, and maybe even if you're not like me, I sometimes make the mistake of impressing upon people, you know, that it's harder for someone to come from the world.
Now, I've known several people that have been raised in the church and have still really struggled with sin.
Maybe it's a little easier for some, but we all struggle with sin.
Just being human, we struggle with sin.
Even Jesus was tempted.
So I'm just telling you when I think about how God changes lives, it is so powerful.
It is so amazing when you start reading your Bible and seeing how it transforms you from being such a selfish, focused person on self, on pleasing, on gratifying yourself, to wanting to do what you were designed to do, Ephesians 2 and 10.
You were designed to do good works.
And, man, I'm telling you, when you do good things, it makes you feel so good.
When you take food to someone that's hungry, when you care for somebody that's sick, when you go visit somebody that nobody else wants to visit, when you go visit someone in prison who other people are uncomfortable visiting, God loves that.
God adores that.
That's what we're supposed to be doing.
That's what it really means to honor God.
That's what worshipfulness is truly all about.
Yes, there's worship here, but there's a worshipful spirit about the way we walk and about the way we act, about the way we live.
Those are the kind of people that we're supposed to be.
And the Bible can transform you into that kind of person to the point that you really start to understand what's truly of value in life.
So there's plenty of inspiration to be full on in the Spirit when you come to give God your praise.
Think about all these things.
Take time to do it.
Invest time before you even venture into the acts of worship.
Think back and look at the bigger picture, and it will give your spirit something to truly feed on when you worship.
It's a little more challenging to understand the concept of worshiping God in spirit.
And you'll have to forgive me, but I have known Brethren, and I know maybe you've seen it or heard it too, where in churches of Christ, one thing I love about churches of Christ is, man, they know their Bibles, don't they? Members of the Lord's Church, they know their Bibles really well.
More so than probably any other type of church you're gonna go to.
They know their Bibles, and I love that.
They use logic, you know, and they read it for what it is.
It says what it says.
It means what it means.
What I've heard some Brethren say some of the silliest things, that emotional stuff, that feel-good stuff, they almost act like there's something wrong with it.
There's nothing wrong with that.
There's nothing wrong with being emotional.
There's nothing wrong with getting into a song.
There's nothing wrong with dynamics and feeling it to the deepest part of your core.
There's nothing wrong with people seeing that in your facial expressions, in your body language.
Don't be afraid to do that.
It inspires other people to let loose in worship and feel spirited in what they do.
We need both.
God expects both, not just one.
Great that you have your whole Bible memorized.
I heard a preacher one time, his entire series of sermons in a week-long lectureship were all scriptures back-to-back, and he spoke it as if it was coming from himself.
It was amazing, and I loved it.
Know your Bibles.
Know what God tells you to do, but act upon it with great spirit and desire and passion.
Go after it with all your might like those athletes we talked about.
Be spirited when you worship the Lord.
Now let's talk a little bit about truth.
I actually think that that one's a little easier to talk about than the Spirit.
Definitely a little easier to talk about than the Spirit.
When it comes to worshiping God in truth, well, that's a little more simplistic because, again, it's more cut and dry.
You might say in some sense it's more physical in structure.
It's more like math.
It says this, and so we do this, whereby the concept of Spirit is a little bit more ethereal in nature.
But God makes clear to us in the Bible how He desires us to worship Him.
God makes clear to us specifics about how He wants us to worship Him, how He desires us to worship Him.
And we would be very wise to do what He says because He knows what's best, just like a godly mother and father knows what's best for their child.
Although at times, say, their teenager may not agree with what mom and dad say, but God knows what we need more so than we do ourselves.
And so when we take a good, honest, humble, and selfless, and studious approach to God's Word, we can decipher through locating direct commands.
The Bible says, do this.
It's very specific.
Peter says it.
Paul says it.
The Holy Spirit guides us and teaches this in the Bible.
Direct commands, very obvious things they're telling us to do.
And then, of course, we also notice that there are sometimes, there's not a command to do a certain act of worship, if you will, but we notice that that's what the apostles practiced when they'd come together.
You know, each Lord's Day when you come together to break bread and so on, there are specific examples.
And of course, we know the apostles were being guided by the Holy Spirit, and therefore that's why we do what they did.
And so that is one way we can see truth of how we are to worship.
And of course, there is what people often refer to as occasionally a necessary inference, something that has a logical aftermath, spiritually speaking.
So that is the right way to take a look at the Bible and to discern what God would have us to be doing as we worship Him.
But there is also a wrong way.
And what I find fascinating about the wrong way is if you're like me and you have ventured out into the world and striven to experience different religions, different groups of Christianity, you want to see what they do, how they do it, it is often interesting that if you go to a given denomination, their worship service is almost identical to ours.
They teach good lessons, a lot of them.
Now they might be dressed a little different than us.
Sometimes they have on a funny headdress or a certain type of robe of sorts, things like that.
They obviously might have instrumentation in their musical worship, but so much of what they do seems very similar to us.
People are very friendly, very loving.
But what God commands or what examples we see, many times they're just a little bit different.
They're just a little bit different than what we read in the Bible.
Does God care about what's just a little bit different? Man, I'm telling you, I've questioned this time and again, and I'm sure you have too.
Because you see people from other religious groups that are such super good people and you want to...how could God say that what they're doing is wrong? So much of what they do is right.
Does God care about the little things? Yes.
Yes, He does.
If you take a look at Cain and Abel, you go all the way back to the very beginning.
I don't know what was said to them before they offered up their sacrifices.
You know, Abel offered up animal sacrifices.
Cain offered up the the fruits of the field and so forth.
Again, I don't know what was taught beforehand, but when it was all done, God was not happy with Cain's.
He was happy with Abel's.
But God was very loving towards Abel.
He basically said, you know, you can do what's right this next time.
I'm paraphrasing really bad.
But He basically saying, you know, you're not really in trouble here.
Just do what's right next time.
But He got so angry and so upset and so jealous of His brother, He killed him, which is terrible.
But that showed that there was a right way and a wrong way.
And then take, for instance, Nadab and Abihu.
I cannot tell you how many preachers I've talked to before and I've asked them what exactly was strange about their fire.
We don't know.
We don't exactly know what it was.
I mean, there was incense used and so on, so that was a part of the practice.
But something about what they were doing was off.
Just a little bit.
Wham! God took them just like that, killed them immediately.
He would be seen, He would be revered, especially people serving Him at the top.
He was going to be respected before all the people and nobody would serve Him incorrectly.
There was a right way and there was a wrong way.
Micah, Micah, thought he'd do it his own way.
And this might be more akin to maybe what we see in our world a lot today.
You know, he made up his own idols as kind of a source to worship God through or worship them and in a sense acknowledge God.
Hired his own kind of like private priest concept, you know, in Judges 17 and 18.
Again, it looks kind of similar to what we do, but it's slightly off.
Some people say it's a whole lot off, but it's not so much off from what some religious groups do to this day.
But again, it was not right before God's eyes.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, there is a right way, there is a wrong way, and we must worship God His way.
We must take the truthful approach.
We must be properly informed from the Scriptures in what pleases Him and in what He knows is best for us.
So worshiping God in both the Spirit and in truth is essential when it comes to putting our all in to worship.
You can't just do one or the other.
A well-known 18th century preacher and theologian once put it this way, this gentleman by the name of Jonathan Edwards.
He once wrote, I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections, to raise the emotions of my hearers as high as possibly I can.
In other words, I'm going to get up behind that pulpit and I'm going to preach the Word of God with fervor and zeal.
I'm going to get these points across because I want these people to love the Lord with all their heart, mind, body, and soul.
But then listen what he says, as possibly I can provided that they are affected with nothing but the truth.
I love that.
You've got to have truth.
You've got to have Spirit-filled worship.
You've got to have both.
They only benefit one another and true worship is among those who do both.
For as the Scripture's saying, as I think God focuses on this one because this is the one we're going to struggle with, God is Spirit and so those who worship him must worship in Spirit and in truth.
You want to worship with all of your being.
You want to give God your all.
Get into it.
Treat it like you're number one.
Treat it like an athlete training for the Olympics.
Go after him with all of your might.
Do everything he says to the utmost and you will be so happy that you did because your time here will be so incredibly uplifting and of course that will venture out into everything you do outside of here.
Give God your all.
Make him your number one and you will be a blessing in worship and in every part of your life.
Thank you for being here this morning.
As I always say, said this morning as I always say following every lesson, I hope there's something that's been said this morning whether a scripture we read or a thought that has moved you to a closer walk with the Lord that has made you think a little more deeply about something.
Something you can take home with you and put into practice with you, with your children, with those that you love around you.
We never like to leave a time of worship without offering an opportunity for one to make their life right with the Lord.
Maybe there's someone here that has not yet obeyed the gospel of Jesus Christ and been immersed into the watery grave of baptism.
This body of believers would love to assist you in that effort and we understand from scripture that angels in heaven will rejoice over such an occasion as that, as would we.
There may also be some among this body of believers that are faithful Christians but you've been struggling and having a rough week spiritually and if this body of, if this family can pray for you, won't you also come forward as we stand and sing our song of invitation.
