What is Worship?

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Transcript:

Well, something I read this week said that human beings are created to worship. And what’s in question is not whether or not we will worship. We will worship.

We will worship something. What’s in question is what we will worship. You see, we can worship God.

We can worship self. We can worship other people. We can worship celebrities.

We can worship money. We can worship relationships, worship job, worship status, worship alcohol. There are any number of things that people in our society worship.

They don’t realize it, but even secular people, even the atheist and the agnostic, worship something. That’s why we see so much hero worship in our society. They even call it worship.

That’s why we see everybody running after the celebrities and trying to be like them. The little kids wanting their albums. Do they call them albums anymore? CDs?

wanting their CDs. I don’t know why I called it album. They’ve been calling them CDs most of my life.

But they want to own all their music and have their posters and be just like them. As I said, even the atheist and the agnostic worship, something I read again this week about people who, even Christians, who sometimes put the idea of what scholars say above what the Word of God says, and the writer called it scholar-olatry. I liked that.

They worship scholarship and learning and academia. Everybody, ladies and gentlemen, hear me on this, everybody worships something. We can’t help it.

We were created to worship. And so we’re going to worship something. People out there are going to worship something.

Today, I’m most concerned with what we worship. If you’ll remember back to November, and I don’t expect you to remember everything I’ve ever preached on. I don’t remember everything I’ve ever preached on, except for the fact that I mentioned this in several sermons.

Starting back in November, I talked about the need for our church to find some direction and some purpose in the things that we do as a congregation. The things that we do in our church life and our outreach and all these things. We needed to find some direction and purpose, but not necessarily new direction, not some brilliant idea that I came up with, but the eminently scriptural goals of Christ-centered worship, Christ-centered preaching, and Christ-centered discipleship.

Ladies and gentlemen, I still believe that that’s what our church should be about. And I told you that starting sometime after the new year, I’d come back and do some teaching on those things. Because if I want to emphasize those things, if I believe that’s the direction we need to head, it’s a good idea for all of us to be on the same page about what that means.

And so we’re going to go to God’s Word and see what those things mean, worship and preaching and discipleship, and especially being Christ-centered about those things. Because it doesn’t matter what we preach if we don’t preach Christ. You know, we could have a very feel-good, entertaining message, but if we’re not preaching Christ, it doesn’t matter. We as a church are going to worship, but if we’re not worshiping Christ, it doesn’t matter.

It’s futile. It’s worthless what we’re doing. We need to have Christ-centered worship, Christ-centered preaching, and Christ-centered discipleship.

And we’re going to spend some time getting into the Scriptures and discussing what those things mean. And since it’s the one I mentioned first, we’re going to start with worship. But I had to start by asking myself, what is worship?

We use words all the time that, you know, we have a fairly good grasp of the concept of what it means or so we think, but try to give a definition of it and we find ourselves drawing a blank. I remember the time as a teenager, I was at a Bible study, and we were asked to give a definition of blessing. What does it mean to bless?

We’re like, oh, when God gives us good things, and well, what about when the Bible says blessed are they, and lists some things that don’t sound good. Broken-hearted, poor in spirit, the meek, those don’t sound like the things that make us happy, that make us feel blessed. And the Bible says, bless God.

And we had, okay, that challenged our ideas. What exactly does blessing mean? We use words like glory that I have an idea.

I mean, I can see pictures and paintings of Christ sitting enthroned with the halo, but that doesn’t completely capture the word glory. We use words and concepts all the time that we don’t necessarily have a clear definition of in our minds. Talking a few weeks ago about the fiscal cliff with my mother.

We were talking and finally she looked at me and said, what exactly is the fiscal cliff? And I said, I know it’s bad. I know it has to do with the debt and being upside down.

But, you know, everybody’s talking about it. Nobody’s explaining what the fiscal cliff is. We talk about worship without ever explaining really what worship is.

And that’s what I hope to do today. And I told some of you at Thursday Night Disciple Way, it might have sounded like I was complaining, I wasn’t, but it might have sounded that way, that I had spent six or seven hours working on this message. I don’t normally spend that long in one day on one message, but I spent six or seven hours Thursday trying to dig into this and understand what is worship, because I’d been reading what other preachers and theologians had written about worship, and it didn’t sound like they knew any more than I did.

I thought, if we’re going to answer this, I’m going to come to a definition. I looked in the dictionary, and it said to give worth to something comes from the old English words for worth-ship, giving worth to something. I thought, it’s got to be more to it than that.

That doesn’t explain fully, I think, what the Bible is talking about with worship. So I dug into the Scriptures, and I found every instance where the Bible uses the word worship or some form of it. Over 150 references in the Old and New Testaments to worship in some form.

And that’s just the places where it actually uses the word. Of these, the words came down to three different categories of things. And I was right.

It was more than just giving worth. We’re going to talk today about distilling down all these 150 plus references to worship and what these words behind it mean, the Greek and Hebrew words that fall into these three categories. Don’t worry, I’m not going to give you all the Greek and Hebrew words.

I’ve got them scribbled down in a notebook downstairs if you want to look at them. but don’t feel like you’re going to have to feverishly write down 150 references and all these words. We won’t go into all that today.

They fall into three different categories. That’s what we’re going to look at today. The three aspects of what worship is.

That if we’re going to do worship, if we’re going to worship, this is what it involves. I also had the question of, okay, now that I’ve seen what all these words are for worship, what’s the difference between praise and worship? Because we use those words almost interchangeably.

And praise, I did the same thing. listed all the words, and praise is a part of worship. We need to come to some kind of, we’ll talk about that more in a minute, but we need to come to some kind of biblical definition of worship.

Otherwise, we’re going to continue to believe the things that we’ve always been taught, that worship is just what takes place here. And we say that we come together to worship, and that’s true. We should come together in this place to worship together.

But when we think of worship, it should not just be this time together from 1050 to 12 on Sunday mornings. There’s much more to worship than that. Worship is not just the singing of songs.

As a matter of fact, I believe from my study that that’s more in line with praise. Worship is not just the singing of songs. Worship is not just the preaching of sermons.

Worship is not just what takes place at church, but as we’ll see, worship is what’s supposed to take place through our whole lives. Starting in Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 3, Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it, that it may be well with thee that ye may increase mightily as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee in the land that floweth with milk and honey. Moses at this point has called the Israelites together.

This is after they have been in the wilderness for a little while, after they had escaped Egypt and they are wandering around in the wilderness. God has given them the law and Moses has shared the law with them and is now teaching them to observe these things. And he is giving speeches and teaching to the people of Israel and tells them, Hear, Israel, observe to do these things.

The things that God has spoken, hear them and do them. In verse 4, he says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. That’s one of the most famous prayers that they recite even today.

They call this Shema. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. And I had it memorized in Hebrew at one point, but I won’t go into that with you because I’m sure I don’t pronounce it anywhere near correctly.

But hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. to remind them that there are no gods other than him, no true gods. There are idols, there are things that the world would look at and make gods with a small g out of them, but there’s only one true God.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, And when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up, and thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.

And thou shalt write them upon the post of thy house, and on thy gates. Okay, up to this point, he’s told them, he’s reminded them, there is one true God, and he’s the one you’re to serve, and by the way, you’re to love him with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And Jesus refers to this, and tells us in the New Testament, the same thing, we’re to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, our mind, our soul, and with our strength.

And then Moses goes on to tell them, as you’ve loved God with all your heart, you’re to take his words and his commandments, because if you love God, you’ll love his word, and tells them you’re to take these things, and you’re to write them, and you’re to bind them on your hands, and you’re to wear them as frontlets before your eyes, to keep the word of God close to your eyes and close to your heart at all times. You’re to write them on the posts of your house.

Imagine not being able to walk into your house without seeing scripture written on the, that might affect the resale value, but every time you walk into your house, every time you pull up in your driveway, ladies and gentlemen, imagine that you’ve written verses of scripture in spray paint or something smaller, paint pen, all across your garage door to where every time you pull up at your house, you’re reminded of what God’s word says. Be pretty radical, wouldn’t it? Not many people would do that.

They were expected in this day to write God’s Word all over their houses. They were expected to write God’s Word on their hands. I told you before, I did that.

I used to do that when I was in high school and worked at the grocery store, and I would, every day I would write, I couldn’t write the whole verse. I actually had to write it on my left hand. I would write the scripture reference on the back of my hand, and it would be a reminder to me as I’d go through the day, you know, of whatever that verse was and what God’s Word said.

And I did that for quite a while until some of the older ladies would get on to me when they’d come through my line at the grocery store thinking I had tattoos. So I quit doing that. But the principle was still there that God’s word should be in front of our attention at all times.

God should be at the forefront of our attention at all times, was the principle that he was giving to the people of Israel. And it shall be when the Lord thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities which thou buildest not. See, God could say with authority to the people of Israel that they didn’t build that.

He did. And houses full of all good things which thou fillest not, and wells digged which thou diggest not, vineyards and olive trees which thou plantedst not, when thou shalt have eaten and be full, then beware lest thou forget the Lord which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage. He tells them, eventually I am going to fulfill the promise that I made to your fathers.

I’m going to bring you into the promised land, this land flowing with milk and honey, You’re going to live in houses that you didn’t have to build. You’re going to eat from vineyards you didn’t have to plant. In other words, God was going to provide for their every need, and he tells them, in that day that I have fulfilled my promises, and I am taking care of you, take heed, beware that you don’t forget who I am.

Take heed that you don’t forget me. It’s easy for us, when times are going well, to forget about God, to forget about having him at the forefront of our attention, to forget about making him the center of everything we do. But ladies and gentlemen, as this passage points out and the other things that we’re going to look at today point out, God being at the center of our lives is a part of worship that we cannot do away with.

If God is not at the center of our lives, we are not worshiping. And he tells them, it’s going to be even harder for you when you get into the promised land to remember me. And that was true.

Book of Judges, they kept falling away from God time after time after time. When they were wandering in the wilderness and they were dependent on God for the food that they ate and the water that they drank, and they knew they were dependent on him because it came in seemingly miraculous ways, of course they were going to remember God. But when times were good, it was easy to forget.

We have to look no further than our own country. What is it now, 12 years ago? When September 11th happened, the churches across this country were full.

Now, I can’t say what happened here because I wasn’t here. But at that time, it was before we wound up at Southgate, and we’d been visiting for several months at First Southern Baptist Church of Del City, Oklahoma, one of the biggest churches in the state. I mean, they had probably 20,000 seating auditorium.

And the place was pretty full on a regular Sunday, but you get to the Sunday after September 11th, and it was standing room only, there were thousands and thousands of people. And the next week, there were thousands and thousands of people. A little less, but thousands and thousands still.

And you’d go on week after week, and there’d be fewer and fewer people, and within a couple months, you were back down to normal attendance. Because, see, when our nation was attacked, when things were troublesome, when we didn’t know what was going on or what was going to happen in the future. I remember the day of September 11th.

I was at school. We were watching it on television. We didn’t know who had attacked us or why or from what direction.

I only knew that we sat five miles from one of the biggest Air Force bases in the country where they had the headquarters. And we thought, what if they come for us in Oklahoma? What if they come attack us?

And folks, we didn’t know from moment to moment what was going on in our country. And in those first few weeks, we didn’t know if they were going to come for us again. and we felt, as a country, we felt like our survival was dependent on God’s hand of blessing.

If you think it’s not true, people who have spent their entire political careers dishonoring God stood on the steps of the U. S. Capitol and saying, God bless America.

We recognize that our nation was dependent on God and everybody talked about Him. Everybody thought about Him. Everybody sought His blessing, but as easier times returned, People drifted away.

It’s easier in the hard times to keep God at the forefront. And when things are good, as one preacher says, we fall asleep in the sunlight. So he reminded them, when you get to the promised land, beware, so you don’t forget about me.

Then beware, lest thou forget the Lord, verse 12, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage. Then, then shalt thou fear him, then shalt thou fear the Lord thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name. So he tells them, when you get to the promised land, remember the God who brought you out of the land of bondage in Egypt, and then fear him.

Fear God, serve him, and swear by his name. Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people which are round about you. He told them, remember God.

And what he said at the beginning, the hero Israel, the Lord our God, is one Lord. You don’t need to go running after the other gods of the countries around you. And they had some doozies.

They had gods that demanded child sacrifice, and they had gods that demanded ritual prostitution. They had all kinds of wicked gods, small g, false gods, that you could imagine. Any god that they wanted to serve, they could have had.

And he said, you know, you’ve got this pantheon. Like the Greeks and the Romans, they all had different gods for different things. The Canaanites had gods for different things.

The weather, the sun, the moon god, they had all these things. And God says, you don’t need all of those, you just need me. Because what all those other gods combined couldn’t do, God could do.

For the Lord thy God, verse 15, is a jealous God among you. Lest the anger of the Lord thy God be kindled against thee and destroy thee from off the face of the earth. Ye shall not tempt the Lord your God as ye tempted him at Massah.

Ye shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his testimonies and his statutes which he hath commanded thee. And thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest go into the land and possess the good land, I’m sorry, that thou mayest go in and possess the good land which the Lord swear unto thy fathers to cast out all thine enemies from before thee as the Lord hath spoken. Okay, we’re going to stop there.

You may be wondering, what in the world does this have to do with worship? Well, this passage sums up the three different areas of words that the Bible uses for worship. All the words fall into, And as I said, there were over 150 different places.

I can’t remember the exact number. Over 150 different places where the word worship was used, or worshippers, or worships, or worshiping, or to worship. Some form of the word worship.

That’s to say nothing of the other times where the Bible talks about worship and doesn’t use the word. But when the Bible uses the word worship, there were three different groups of Greek and Hebrew words behind that. The first one was the overwhelming majority.

I told you before that the definitions, they all seem to point toward giving worth to God, giving honor to God, but there’s something before that even. There’s something that’s a component of worship that we often forget about. A hundred times out of the hundred and fifty used words that indicated submission, submission to God.

That’s the first blank in your bulletin this morning, that worship is a pattern of submission. Worship is a pattern of submission to God. Now, these hundred words, or these hundred instances, used words that meant to bow.

And of those, a good portion of those words meant to prostrate oneself. If you don’t know what to prostrate means, it means to lay on your face. Hands, feet, face on the ground.

I can’t think of any way to humble yourself more. I can’t imagine any better way to show submission, I mean from a physical standpoint, than for them to use this imagery of getting on your face before God. You see, we can bow our head and we acknowledge Him that way as being over us, but to get on our faces before God is an entirely different level of submission.

It’s saying, I’m nothing. I’m the ground here that we tread on. It’s a way of lowering ourselves and of submitting ourselves.

I don’t say this to mean we humiliate ourselves, but we humble ourselves. There’s a difference between humility and humiliation. We humble ourselves.

There’s humility involved in worship, and we submit to God. It’s not by accident that the majority of the times in the Bible where it says the word worship or some form of it, it’s talking about people getting on their face before God. I haven’t done it very often, but some of the best prayer times I’ve ever had have been when I’ve gotten on my face before God.

And I’m not saying that the only time we can worship is when we lay down on the ground. I’m not saying that at all. But to worship God, we must first humble ourselves.

We must first submit to Him. Whatever we worship, we will submit to. We know that’s true.

Because whatever people worship, they submit their needs and their desires to. When somebody decides that they are going to. .

. Well, I don’t know that they decide in these words and say, Oh, I’m going to worship alcohol. But when somebody worships alcohol, that becomes all they think about.

All the other needs and desires that they have become second to the alcohol. When somebody worships money, the other needs and desires that they have come in second place or even further down behind that money. How many people do we know who in the quest for money have sacrificed family, have sacrificed health, have sacrificed happiness, have sacrificed spiritual well-being?

They have given up everything they have and humbled themselves bowing before that God of money. What we worship, we submit to, first of all. And if we are to worship God, we must live lives in submission to God.

That doesn’t mean we’re going to be perfect and sinless, but it means the pattern of our lives is one of submission to God. They were told, these people here, when Moses spoke to them, he told them that every aspect of their lives needed to be in submission to God. At the very beginning of this passage, he tells them, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and here’s where it is, And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

With everything they had, they were to love God. With everything they had, they were to submit to God. Everything in their life, if you love something or someone with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might, everything else comes second to it, doesn’t it?

If I love something with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my might, then even I come second to it. If we’re to love God with all of our heart, with all of our soul, and with all of our might, then we cannot possibly love self with all of our heart and soul and might. And so we take a second place to God.

We have to take a second place to God. Now let me ask you the question. Is this room between the hours of 11 and 12 on Sunday, is this the only place that our lives are in submission to God?

You don’t have to answer that. Because sometimes it might be. Sometimes we may be living differently outside of this building than we are in here.

But the question that I do want you to answer is, is this room between 11 and 12 on Sunday mornings supposed to be the only place where our lives are in submission to God? Okay, thank you. No, worship does not only take place in this building, in this room, during our services, because an essential part of worship is to submit ourselves to God.

And this is not the only place, only time, only venue where our lives are supposed to be in submission to Him. When I leave here, I should be in submission to God. Is that always the case?

No. But that’s the goal. That’s what we’ve got to strive for. When I leave here, my thoughts should not be about my pride, should not be how much money can I make, what can I do that pleases myself.

And I’m not saying, again, that it’s wrong to have money or be happy or any of those things. But our overwhelming desire cannot be those things. Our overwhelming desire can only be God and His pleasure, His happiness, His will.

And the way you can know whether you’re doing this or not, the way you can know whether you’re in submission or not, is think about the way you make decisions. When something comes up, when you’re tested, when you’re asked a question and you have to make a decision, does the decision come down to what does God’s Word say or does it come down to what makes me happy? Or what’s going to get me the most money?

Or what’s going to, folks, fill in the blank. The thing that determines, the thing that determines the direction of your life, the thing that determines the way you make decisions, the thing that runs everything else is what you’re in submission to, and that’s what you worship. By the way, I’m not picking on you because that goes for me too.

The thing that drives my decision making and drives the course of my life is what I’m in submission to, and that’s what I worship. Ladies and gentlemen, that has got to be God, but we are not worshiping God. Worship is a pattern of submission.

We come to God humbly. We don’t come to God as our equal. Folks, God is not our equal. God is much better than we are. And we come to Him humbly.

Now the Bible does say that we’re able to approach the throne of grace boldly. But we’re only able to do that because of the righteousness of Christ. We’re able to do that because Christ died for us and we’re His. That’s not because we’re as good as God and so we can approach Him as equals.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are not His equals. And we need to come to Him humbly and in submission to Him. We need to live our lives in submission to Him.

The practical thing that we can do throughout this week is when we make decisions, ask ourselves what’s driving the decision. Is it God’s Word and God’s will, or is it something else? And that’ll tell us very quickly what it is we’re worshiping.

We need to reorient ourselves, redirection ourselves to submit to God first and foremost, and to worship Him. Second of all this morning, worship is a pattern of reverence. That’s the part that most of the definitions talk about.

Talk about lifting up God. Talk about revering and honoring God. And that’s absolutely a part of worship as well.

But we can’t revere God while at the same time thinking we’re his equal. That’s why we start with submission. But one of the other categories that these words fell into was to revere God, to revere him, to honor him. Worship is a pattern of honoring God.

That we go beyond just submitting to him. I can submit to somebody or something and not think very much of it. Every spring I submit to the IRS and I don’t think a whole lot about them.

No offense if there’s anybody in here that works for the IRS. It’s not you, it’s the organization I dislike. But I submit to the IRS and I don’t think very much of them.

To worship God, we have to go beyond submission to reverence. We realize that we are not God’s equal and we come to Him humbly, understanding how low we are in comparison to Him, and we lift Him up. We honor Him.

Now, I mentioned earlier, what’s the difference between praise and worship? Praise is one of the ways that we show reverence to God. What we do in here on Sunday mornings, I believe, is praise.

Praise is a part of worship, the part of worship where we show reverence to God. Most of the words that mean praise indicate celebration. We’re celebrating who God is and what He’s done, and that’s absolutely a part of worship.

When we celebrate God, when we celebrate His goodness and His greatness, we are praising Him. We are showing reverence and showing honor to Him, and that’s a part of worship. Submission is what takes place in our hearts when we come to Him humbly, and reverence is what takes place when in our hearts, and ladies and gentlemen, outwardly, we proclaim how good God is.

I told you I wanted to come to some sort of definition that I could remember, So I wrote this down about praise and worship, that worship is a consistent pattern of living in submission toward God as our Lord and Master. Praise is just a single aspect of worship, wherein we proclaim and celebrate His greatness and His goodness. Anyone can praise God, but only His children can truly worship Him.

Now, I don’t know that that’s the most eloquent thing that’s ever been said, but that’s the definition I arrived at. Praise is part of worship. That when we lift up God, when we celebrate His goodness and His greatness, we tell the world and tell Him how great He is and how good He is.

Greatness meaning His strength, His power, His authority. Goodness meaning His holiness, His justice. When we sing the attributes of God, when we tell other people, this is what God did for me, when we in various ways show God the honor and glory He deserves, that is a pattern of reverence toward God, and it’s a necessary component of worship.

We cannot have worship of God without submission. If we have reverence without submission, it’s not worship. But if we have submission without reverence, it’s not worship.

We come to Him humbly, but then we lift Him up and tell Him and tell the world how great He is. We celebrate Him. What we do here together, that’s praise.

We praise Him as we go about our day. We should praise Him as we go about our day, and that’s part of worship. If you want to know whether you’re worshiping God, The first test I gave you was to look at what makes you make the decisions you make.

That’s a lot of times saying the word make in one sentence. What causes you to decide things the way you do? That’s less confusing.

What drives your decision making? And that’ll tell you what you submit to. Another way to know whether you worship God or not is do you do things to bring Him honor and glory?

In your heart, when you pray, do you ever tell Him how great He is? Do you ever thank Him for His goodness? Do you ever find yourself singing praises to Him?

And yes, what we do