Two score and sixteen years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new church, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created to worship the Lord.
Now we are engaged in a great spiritual war, testing whether that church or any church so conceived and so dedicated, can long understand the meaning of worship and so endure. We are met on a great moment of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of this service in music, as a remembrance of Christ and his sacrifice on the cross that we might have life. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow – music as the only tool of the larger idea of worship. God and his son Jesus have set forth our instructions for worship, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never dismiss what God has done for us. It is for us the church, rather, to be dedicated here to the call of worship which our fathers who planted this church have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these men before us we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their life’s full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these men shall not have tried in vain -- that this church, under God, shall have a new birth of understanding of worship -- and that governing of God, by God, for God, shall not perish from our hearts.
What is at the Heart of Worship? You may have noticed when you walked in today that something was far from the norm. There are no instruments onstage. Not a song has been sung. The only music you may have heard came from the countdown video that preceded the service and yet, and yet…we are still in the midst of worship.
Worship is defined as reverent love and devotion offered to God, or a ceremony, prayer or other religious forms by which this love is expressed. I have heard it said that music is the tool by which we communicate our worship to the Lord. I look back at the definition I have just given you and nowhere do I see the word, “music.” I see other religious forms which can include the use of music, but in no way, shape, or form is music the only avenue by which we may express our love and devotion to our Savior.
Worship is the purpose for why we gather. It is the central common theme that resonates within us. Each of us has the desire to worship and the need to express that desire. David understood this well.
David was a man of God who spent time in the fields as a shepherd and on the throne of Israel as King. David lived worshipping God. You may ask yourselves, what, does that mean he sang all the time, or played his harp? Yes, he did that, but not all the time. David is responsible for most of the book of Psalms in the Old Testament. One of the ways David worshipped the Lord was writing poetry that praised God. Another way David worshipped God was by praying on the floor facedown before the Lord. Look at this example of worship in David’s life.
The people carrying the chest walked six steps, then David sacrificed an ox and a choice cow. He was dancing for the LORD with all his might, but he wore only a linen cloth. He and everyone else were celebrating by shouting and blowing horns while the chest was being carried along. (2nd Samuel 6:13-15, CEV) David danced before the Lord in nothing but his underwear, in worship.
Obviously, worship is not what we thought. Obviously, God had something else in mind. Obviously, there must be a greater idea of worship that needs to be understood before we can approach the Lord, and that is what we are going to focus on this morning. We’re going to focus on getting to the Heart of Worship.
Greta Bach read our central text for this morning prior to this message segment and I want to draw your attention back to the book of 1st Chronicles this morning as we try to understand worship better. In 1st Chronicles 16:29, David writes this: “Give to the Lord the glory he deserves! Bring your offering and come into his presence. Worship the Lord in all his holy splendor. (NLT)
As we progress through our four message segments this morning, we are going to tackle each of the four keys that David suggests are behind the Heart of Worship. Since David was a man after God’s own heart, he understood worship very well and so we would be wise to take our cues from him in how to worship.
The first section of 1st Chronicles 16 focuses on “giving to the Lord the glory he deserves.” When I was in 8th grade Spanish class, we were broken into threes by our teacher and assigned the project of creating a piñata. For those of you who don’t know what a piñata is, it’s a toy that children string up at birthday parties that is filled with candy and the idea is to blindfold one child and them arm them with a baseball bat and turn them lose on the candy filled object while the other screaming children fight each other for the falling candy and dodge the flailing baseball bat in the blind child’s hands.
Our task was simple, work together to create a masterpiece. My two friends, whom I had never known before and just met, decided that we were going to split the project up into threes. I was selected to accomplish the task of blowing up a balloon and covering it with the flour-water mixed newspaper that was serve as the shell of the piñata.
Time went by and the day before the project was due, the other two students grew impatient and asked if I had accomplished my portion of the project. After explaining to them that I had forgotten, they made plans to accomplish the task and brought the finished project with them the following day, when it was due. I received an “A” on a project that I had forgotten and had nothing to do with and as a result, I was forced to explain to the teacher that I had nothing to do with the project. I deserved nothing. My fellow classmates deserved the grades they received, but I deserved nothing. God has done everything and deserves our worship. As a matter of fact, worship is the only thing that God doesn’t have.
God created the world. Everything in it belongs to him, so what can you give to someone who has everything? The answer, the one thing he doesn’t have, and the one thing he desires most of all, which is our worship. If worship is love and devotion to God, that is what we should give him. Not a song, or a prayer, but a lifestyle of love and devotion to serving him.
Think of it this way, anything done to please God is worship, but anything done to gratify our selfish desires is sin. That sets some things in a whole new light doesn’t it? You mean I can mow my lawn and it’s an act of worship to God? Absolutely, if you do it with the right attitude. You mean I can play with my kids and that’s an act of worship to God? Definitely, because God has called us to be mothers and fathers.
Sometimes the most beautiful acts of worship involve complete humility. Take baptism for example. Baptism is the rendering of control of your life over to God. You give your life to Him completely.
Baptism symbolizes death and resurrection as we give our lives to Christ, being buried with him in death and rising again to walk in a new life with our Lord and Savior. It is a humble act of worship because we have to lay down our pride and come to the cross and say, “Jesus I am not perfect, but I want you to make me that way.”
Another avenue of worship can be outreach. We recently underwent a forty-day campaign entitled “Just Walk Across the Room” in which we learned how to reach out to our neighbors, friends, co-workers, etc. Do you realize that you can worship God by reaching out to these people? As his final command on earth, Jesus said, “Go to the people of all nations and make them my disciples. Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to do everything I have told you.” (Matthew 28:19-20, CEV)
There are other avenues of worship which we will explore later on this morning, such as offerings, prayer, and corporate fellowship, but the main idea this morning is that worship is more than 20 minutes of music on a Sunday morning. Worship is living a lifestyle of pleasing God with everything that you do and sacrificing your selfish desires so that you may humbly come before God and give him what he desires most. It’s not about what you desire, and it’s not about what I desire. It’s about giving God the worship he deserves and desires.
Remember the words of David. “Give to the Lord the glory He deserves. We deserve nothing. God deserves everything. That is the idea behind worship.
Message Segment 2
I love that last line from David in that passage. David came to this guy named Araunah because he wanted to buy Araunah’s threshing floor. David needed it so he could build an altar to worship the Lord.
Araunah had a great respect, and probably a healthy dose of fear, for King David. So Araunah said, “Just take it. It’s yours. For free.” He thought this would get him in good with the king.
But David wouldn’t accept the gift. Instead, he told Araunah, “I can't just take something from you and then offer the LORD a sacrifice that cost me nothing.” (1 Chronicles 21:24, CEV)
David simply refused to offer a sacrifice to God that didn’t cost him anything. That’s because he understood a foundational principle of worship. Worship must cost you something. If it doesn’t cost you anything, then it isn’t worship. I don’t know what it is, but I know what it’s not. What it’s not is worship.
Let’s go back and read our focus verse for this morning from 1 Chronicles 16. “Give the LORD the glory he deserves! Bring your offering and come into his presence. Worship the LORD in all his holy splendor.” (1 Chronicles 16:29, NLT)
When we come to worship God, we are commanded to bring an offering. We can’t come empty-handed. When you approach God in worship, you have to bring something to the table. You have to give something to God. Worship must cost you something.
But in the American church, we often send the opposite message. We tend to communicate that worship is more about us than it is about God. Think about it.
We come into this climate-controlled room filled with nice, comfy seats. Is that for our benefit or God’s benefit? Ours, obviously.
But it goes deeper than that. It’s more than just this room. Think about how we view the worship service. We judge whether a particular service was good or bad based on what we “got out of it.” That’s not a Biblical concept.
Worship is for God’s enjoyment, not ours. If you enjoy worship, then that’s a bonus. But really, worship isn’t about us. It’s not about our pleasure or our desires. It’s all about giving God what he wants from us.
“Giving” is the key word. What you give God in worship determines whether or not he will accept it. Worship that costs you nothing is not worship that God will accept.
So how do you think God feels when we come here to “worship,” and yet we put forth no effort? You come to worship God, but you bring no offering to God.
Instead of singing, you read your bulletin. Instead of silently reflecting on Jesus’ death for you during communion, you talk to the people around you. Instead of listening to the preaching of God’s Word and opening yourself up for God to change you, you sit in judgment because I don’t look or sound the way you want me to.
The thing that we seem to often miss is that worship is not about you. It’s not about me. It’s all about God. And God deserves better than that.
When we gather for corporate worship here at church, we need to understand that we’re all onstage. Everyone in this room, right here, right now is onstage before an audience of One. We are all performing before God. How will he judge your performance today? Have you given something of yourself in worship today? Or have you just focused on you? Trying to get what you want out of today’s service?
Some of you are loving the fact that we’re not using music today. Others of you are hating it. Here’s the question…can you worship God, even when you don’t particularly care for the style of the service?
That’s really a great question to think about. For example, every Sunday in our church, there are things in the service that I don’t like. Every Sunday, without fail. But just because I don’t like them doesn’t mean they are bad. It simply means that I don’t personally like them. But I can still worship God in that service because it’s about glorifying him, not satisfying me.
This is the fundamental question: how do you view worship? Who is it for?
The answer is that it’s all for God, and God deserves the very best sacrifice you can bring.
There’s a great scene in Matthew 26 that really drives this home. Starting in verse 6: “While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.
When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. "Why this waste?" they asked. "This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor."
Aware of this, Jesus said to them, "Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me.” (Matthew 26:6-10, NIV)
That’s a pretty amazing scene. This woman pours some extremely expensive perfume on Jesus. We know from Mark’s gospel that the perfume was worth more than a year’s wages. It was an incredibly extravagant gift given to Jesus. It cost this woman a great deal.
An important thing to note about the gift is that Jesus accepted it while his followers rejected it. His disciples were very critical because it wasn’t the type of worship that they were used to. They weren’t comfortable with it. But what they missed is that it wasn’t about them. It was about Jesus. This woman’s worship cost her dearly…and Jesus honored the sacrifice.
Where are you in that scene? Are you among the disciples, standing in critical judgment over someone’s worship that may look different from yours? Or are you the woman? So focused on bringing a sacrificial gift of worship to Jesus that you don’t have time worry about what other people think?
For worship to be true, authentic, God-honoring worship, it has to cost you something. Bring your offering. Give your best. Break your jar and pour out the extravagant gift of worship. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. God will honor your sacrifice.
Message Segment 3
“The Lord rejected his altar and disowned his holy place. He handed the walls of Zion's palaces over to its enemies. The enemies made noise in the Lord's temple as though it were a festival day.” (Lamentations 2:7, GWT) The very temple which God had blessed – He had given instructions for building it, His very presence had been there at one time – now He says, “The day came that I abhorred that temple.”
We who worship God need to investigate our own lives. Does God delight in our going to church? Or is that sometimes what actually hurts his cause? Is your frame of mind right when you come to church, or are you just being critical? Can the Spirit of God use you? Just because you get up on a Sunday and come to church does not mean that you are pleasing God. I think we are getting specific instructions from God through the prophet Jeremiah that if we are not careful about our attitudes when we come to worship, he will despise our worship.
The key here is not about where we choose to worship God, it is all about how we choose to worship God. It is not about the place of worship, it is about the pattern of worship the we employ. God does not want us to worship Him if we are not in the correct frame of mind. So, how do we get to that frame of mind? David in 1st Chronicles gives us our third key behind the Heart of Worship.
“Give to the Lord the glory He deserves. Bring your offering and come into His presence.” (1st Chronicles 16:29a, NLT) Come into His presence. What does that mean?
Really quickly, let’s take a look at this whiteboard. On it you will see a diagram of the Tabernacle that God had Moses and the Israelites build as a place of worship. In this tabernacle, all of the sacrifices and offerings that took away the sins of the people would take place.
Here you have the outer court which was where the people would bring their sacrifices and have the priests burn them on the brazen altar. Moving inside was the Holy place where only the priests were allowed to go. Here we find the table of showbread, a golden candlestick and the golden altar of incense. Past these was hung a large curtain which was made out of fine linen, woven with blue, purple, and red wool and embroidered with figures of winged creatures. This was the entrance to the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant sat and the very presence of God resided. The High Priest was the only one allowed to enter this room and he could only do so on certain days. When the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies, the other priests would tie a rope around his ankle to drag him out in the event that he died in the room because they knew if they went into the Holy of Holies, they would also die.
Are you starting to get the picture about worship? It’s dangerous! When we enter into worship, we have to prepare ourselves to encounter a very real God who loves us, but at the same time, demands our respect and our whole heart.
Let me ask you this. When you pray, do you say one of those prayers like: “rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub, Yay God?” Or, do you find yourself saying the same prayer every time you pray? Friends, when we come into the presence of God, we enter into the Holy of Holies. Mike preached a sermon on Easter called “Ripped” in which we explored the fact that God ripped the temple curtain in two from top to bottom when Jesus died on the cross. It was a symbolic move by our Lord because God was allowing everyone to come into his presence through the cross of Jesus Christ.
We are going to now enter the Holy of Holies as we spend some time in prayer this morning in a corporate setting. Prayer is an act of worship and allows us to come into contact with our very real and loving God. My challenge to you this morning is this: While we are praying, remember to give God your respect and your whole heart. That is what He desires most of all. Let’s encounter our dangerous God in worship through prayer right now.
Message Segment 4
Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Jesus said that is the greatest commandment. If you were to sum it up in one word, Jesus said that the greatest commandment is worship. To love God with everything that is in you. That’s worship. That’s the heart of worship.
Let’s go to our focus text one more time. “Give the LORD the glory he deserves! Bring your offering and come into his presence. Worship the LORD in all his holy splendor.” (1 Chronicles 16:29, NLT)
This is the heart of worship. To see God as he is: holy. That means that God is perfect. Sinless. Set apart. Different. Far above us. Worship recognizes God as God and gives him the glory, honor, love, adoration, and obedience that he deserves.
The problem is that God is holy, but we are not. Far from it. We are sinful, messed up people. If you’re not a sinful, messed up person, then you probably should find another church. You won’t want to hang around the rest of us sinners here.
God is holy. We are not. Yet he has called us to come into his presence, as Brian taught us. He commands us to bring an offering, a sacrifice. To give of ourselves in worship. But how do very unholy people approach a completely holy God?
The answer is found in the cross of Jesus Christ. Hebrews 10 says, “For God’s will was for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all time.” (Hebrews 10:10, NLT)
The sacrifice Jesus made for you and for me on the cross changes the equation. We are no longer unholy people trying to approach a holy God. We are holy people approaching a holy God.
If you have accepted Jesus’ sacrifice for your sins through repentance, confession, and baptism, you are holy! There is nothing keeping you from bringing your offering of worship directly into the presence of God. That’s the power of the cross. Jesus takes our sin and we receive his holy perfection. It’s the most unfair trade in history.
But God was willing to make that trade. Not because he needed us. God is complete. God is not lacking anything. Jesus didn’t die on the cross because he needs us. He died because he wants us. He desires us. He craves our worship. He hungers for our love. He yearns for us to be with him.
God doesn’t need you. He wants you. And he proved it by giving up his life for yours. Every week, we take the Lord’s Supper to remember that sacrifice. To come into the presence of the crucified Christ. To worship him because of his incredible love.
He gave his life for you because he wants you. Let’s give him the worship he desperately desires during this silent time of communion.
