College Study #79: "the Stars are Fire"

‘Behold, the Lamb of God’

ide o amnos tou theou

College Study

79^th teaching

6.30.2014

 

“The Stars are Fire”

 

          Review:

                    The title of our study last week came from a line out of the Nicene Creed, do you remember what that title was? What does the phrase “very God of very God” mean? In Hebrews chapter 1, Jesus is described as the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of God’s person; what do these descriptions mean? Though Jesus never strung together the exact words “I am God”, He did make several claims to be God; anyone remember any of His claims? (ex: Son of Man, I AM, Father and I are one)   What is the tetragrammaton? What are some specific examples of Jesus displaying the attributes of God? Finally, having considered the deity of Christ what do we do about the deity of Self, what are some practical ways to combat self-worship?

          End of Review

 

          One of the great pleasures of public speaking is talking about what you like to talk about. I hope you’ll allow me to make a slightly self-indulgent illustration.

          2001: A Space Odyssey is both considered to be one of the most boring films ever made while simultaneously being considered as the greatest science-fiction film ever made. Critics have called it “somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring”. If you know me, you’ll know that this is one of my favorite movies. Indeed, it is a work of cinema unlike any other for its scope, its mystery, its themes, and its methods.

          However, when 2001 premiered in 1968, reportedly 241 people walked out of the theater before the movie was finished. Actor Rock Hudson walked out, reportedly pleading “Will someone tell me what the [heck] this is about?” Really this film’s greatest asset and its greatest downfall is its vastness. I mean, this movie is huge. It includes a jump between scenes of several million years, for crying out loud, and it addresses concepts and ideas it cannot attempt to explain or reveal in entirety. I think it is the vastness, among other things, which puts people off, since there seems to linger about it the undying question: “What is this about? What does this mean?”

          Now let me connect the dots. In a similar way, we’ve come to a particularly vast subject, one with more profundity, more mystery, and greater scope than any film could imagine, for we’ve come to the Deity of Christ, the concept of divinity, God-hood, in a particular Man. But what do we do with this idea, this truth that Jesus of Nazareth was and is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the flesh?

          Doesn’t it seem like blasphemy merely to brush it aside like any other topic of study and simply move on to the next, simply to say “well, I know that… what else is there”?

          I think it is appropriate to spend a study asking this question: What do we do with such a huge truth? What does it mean for our lives? How does such a massive idea come down from the heavens, as it were, and have practical impact upon our day to day comings and goings? How does the idea of God-in-man become incarnated in practicality?

          We might suffer a kind of frustration with these high ideas of theology, like the Deity of Christ, for much the same reason as those who left that theater in 1968 were baffled and vexed by a film with too-lofty ideas. So how do we apply this truth of Christ’s divinity? How can we appreciate this truth and let it affect our lives? What does it mean?

          Read John 4:1-26.

          The simplest answer, as well as the most profound, to this question of what do we do with the truth of Christ’s divinity is worship. The key passage there in John 4 is where we read that God is seeking worshipers… not soldiers, not politicians, not philosophers, not students or teachers, not even priests, but worshipers, and not just any worshipers, but true worshipers.

          Tonight’s study is entitled: “The Stars Are Fire”. I hope the meaning of those words will become clearer throughout our session.

          Worship is our application of the Deity of Christ, this great and grand idea, THE idea of all theology and the center of all history: God became flesh. But it says that those who worship Him must do so in spirit and in truth.

          I suggest to you that this is not a suggestion. It doesn’t say that we should worship Him in spirit and in truth, or that we ought to, or even that it would be nice to. It says that worship must be in spirit and in truth. But what does that mean?

          It means that worship is spiritual and truthful. God is Spirit, as it says, and worshiping involves our spirit and the unseen elements of our beings, such as our souls, our minds and thoughts and our heart and feelings. There’s nothing mystical or superstitious about spiritual worship, no more than there is anything mystical about thinking about something or feeling with your heart and emotions. Though spiritual, worship is not mystical. The mother of Jesus said “My soul magnifies the Lord…” The psalmist wrote: “My soul thirsts for God…” Worship is an immaterial, spiritual activity.

          I think that flies in the face of our common conception of what worship is. For do we not immediately think of worship as taking place in a physical building, of involving physical instruments producing music that can be heard with our physical ears, joined with our physical voices. We might be tempted, when we think of worship, to think of lights and smoke and bands and all the exterior excitement with which modern Christianity addresses worship. Or we can often think of the “positions” of worship, the placement of our physical bodies as standing or kneeling, folding the hands, lifting the hands, bowing the head. But worship, while it involves the physical, is not fundamentally physical. It is spiritual. It is immaterial

          And worship is also to be “in truth”, genuine, honest, sincere. The terrible indictment that God had against His own people, His own children called to worship Him, there in Isaiah 29:13 “…these people draw near with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but have removed their hearts far from Me…” This insincerity of ceremonial and ritualistic, traditionalized worship is what Jesus would later condemn as hypocrisy. In Matthew 15:7-9, “Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying: ‘These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men’.”

          Now let me speak to that for a moment. I think that many of us, rightly afraid to become hypocrites have made our worship visually unimpressive instead of making our worship sincere. And obviously, we do not aim to impress anyone. But I know that we can limit our expression of worship, make our worship less expressive, because we don’t want to be labeled as hypocrites by others. We can become afraid of being judged, having our worship evaluated by those around us in the culture of the church.

          But we can’t sacrifice sincere worship by sacrificing expressiveness. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that you have to sing louder, raise your hands and have this huge expression of bliss or anguish on your face during a worship service. If such things were required, worship would easily become a kind of dictated ceremony. Worship is nothing of the sort. But we can’t give up on sincere worship and the expressions of worship are to come from sincere worship.

          In other words, it is the sincerity of worship that raises the hands, not the raising of hands which makes for sincerity. So focus on sincere worship. Genuinely think about what you’re saying, what you’re singing. Realize that you’re singing the words to God, not just into thin air. All the expressions and positions of worship are secondary and stem from the heart of genuine worship.

          You want to experience exciting worship? You want to be “on fire” for God? You want to worship the Lord, truly? Then remember the tiny phrase “in spirit and in truth”. That is the motto of worship. That is the lifeblood of what turns worship from dull and boring, from “I’m tired of this song!” or from insincere showmanship to a personal response from the outpouring of ourselves.

          This is how God says we must worship Him. Almost everything else is peripheral so long as this requirement is met. God is seeking worshipers out who worship spiritually and genuinely. “In spirit and in truth” is what makes worship as full of wonder and awe as a child experiences when gazing up at the stars at night.

          *So tonight, we’re going to take pause between our theology and study more about worship, this spiritual activity that reminds us of what all these high-ideas mean for us.

          Let me tell you that I’ve had times of struggling with worship. I think worship can be either the simplest thing or the hardest thing in the world if it is to be absolutely real and genuine. It’s not something, realize, that was ever intended to be faked or set into such a rhythm of ceremony that it dies.

          Tonight, then, we’ll try to get down into the details of worship. How it all works. What it’s all about and what makes it real rather than frustrating. We’re going to do that with the aid of several points:

1.   Christ at the Center

2.   Prepping for worship

3.   What Worship Is Not

4.   What Worship Is

 

1.   Christ at the Center

          One of the first things we want to realize about worship is that Christ is at its center. This is what ties us back to what we’ve been studying about the Deity of Christ. See, the Bible makes it ultimately clear that worship is to be for God alone.

          Laid in stone in the Ten Commandments, God said “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3).

          When God prepared the nation of Israel to be His own people set apart to Him, He gave them many prescriptions on how He was to be worshiped. Worship, thus, was to be a huge part of ancient Israelite life. The book of Leviticus, with all its commandments for the priests and the tabernacle and the sacrifices is essentially an ancient book on how to worship God, with the priests as the attendants of worship, the tabernacle as the place of worship, and the sacrifices as the means of worship.

          In Isaiah 42:8, God says “I am the LORD, that is My name; and My glory I will not give to another, nor My praise to carved images.”

          God is a righteously jealous God, and properly so. It is right and good for God to be jealous for the things which rightfully belong to Him, as a man is right to be jealous for his own wife, for her presence, affection and attention. And God is jealous for the glory that belongs to Him. He deserves it. As the greatest possible Being in existence, the Lord is indeed worthy to be praised.

          No one else can receive worship since worship belongs to God.

          In Acts 14, a bit of confusion occurred when Paul and Barnabas were ministering to people in Lystra. Paul healed a cripple and word got around. 14:11-15 says “Now when the people saw what Paul had done, they raised their voices, saying in the Lycaonian language, ‘The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!’ And Barnabas they called Zeus and Paul, Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. Then the priest of Zeus, whose temple was in front of their city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates, intending to sacrifice with the multitudes.” These people got so carried away and so misinterpreted Paul’s actions that they were about to offer sacrifices to him and Barnabas and worship them. “But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard this, they tore their clothes and ran in among the multitude, crying out and saying, ‘Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men with the same nature as you, and preach to you that you should turn from these useless things to the living God…”

          The apostles, mere men, could not possibly accept worship since worship belongs to God. Men can be admired but not worshiped, whether they happen to be saints or not.

          Similarly, we read in Revelation 22:8-9, “Now I, John, saw and heard these things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel who showed me these things. Then he said to me, ‘See that you do not do that. For I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren the prophets, and of those who keep the words of this book. Worship God’.”

          Oops. John was so overwhelmed by the things he saw that, overcome, he almost made the frightful mistake of worshiping this angel. But the angel refused, knowing that worship is for God alone.

          Now that being said, there’s an indirect proof of the Deity of Christ here. Because while we see the men of God refusing worship and the angels of God refusing worship, we never see Jesus refusing to be worshiped. In fact, He accepted worship, which belongs to God alone, on several occasions. He accepted worship from lepers, from the blind, from rulers, from Gentiles and Jews, from the disciples.

          When Jesus encountered the man possessed with the Legion of demons in the country of the Gadarenes in Mark 5, the demon-possessed man ran to Jesus and worshipped Him, while still possessed, mind you, and Jesus did not speak a word of rebuke.

          When Jesus appeared to His disciples after His resurrection and Thomas saw the wounds in His hands and in His side and that disciple cried out “My Lord and my God!”, you’ll find no rebuke from Jesus there in John 20. Jesus didn’t tear His clothes like the apostles did when they found themselves at the center of worship, nor did Jesus correct anyone when they fell before Him like John did before being corrected by the angel in Revelation 22.

          The act of Jesus receiving worship shows that He is accepting worship as God. It’s an indirect claim of His deity. And it shows us His rightful place in the activity of worship, as the center, the subject, the object that worship is to be directed toward.

          Worship that does not glorify Jesus, that does not magnify Jesus, that does not exalt Jesus is not worship. Love songs, friends, are not worship. Sentimental words are not worship. What makes worship worship is when it is built around the glorification of the Son of God.

2.   Prepping for Worship

          Quickly, before we ask how we prepare for worship, let’s take a moment to ask what worship really is. Put aside all pre-conceived notions and all previous ideas you might have about worship, and let’s get a basic understanding of the word.

          The dictionary defines worship as “the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity”. But that’s no where deep enough. Feeling something isn’t worship. More on that later. But neither is simple expression worship either, as we talked about. Real worship expresses itself, whereas mere expression can be faked where worship is non-existent.

          So I’m sorry, Mr. Dictionary, but there’s got to be something more to worship than just feeling and expression.

          In the Greek language, the word for worship is proskuneo which meant “to kiss toward”. It could also mean “to kiss the hand” as when a man greets a lovely lady, or when a servant pays honor to their master or king. It’s a word that also carries a meaning of “bowing down”. But I think most fascinatingly, it could also mean “to kiss like a dog licking its master’s hand”.

          That’s a pretty tremendous image for this concept of worship, like a low animal licking its master’s hand. But you’ll notice that each of these definitions involve the physical. Yet we’ve already discovered that worship is spiritual, not physical. Worship can involve literally bowing down or kneeling, but kissing? Are we to kiss toward emblems of the cross or statues or images of Christ such as occurs in some places in the world? I think not.

          Rather, these physical definitions of worship are to be for Christians metaphors for the act of spiritual worship. Bowing down, kneeling, even kissing are descriptive of the kind of worship and really the kind of attitude we should have during worship. Do we approach worship as prideful “saints” or like humble dogs?

          That question brings us neatly to the topic of our second point: Prepping for worship. How does one prepare oneself for worship?

          Well firstly, attitude. Your attitude is one of the most important things about you. Your attitude will determine whether you have a good day or a bad day, whether you treat people right or wrong, how you perceive any given circumstance, whether life is a glass half empty or a glass half full. And attitude plays an integral part in worship. You walk into the worship service proud, self-concerned, self-absorbed or upset and it may take you the whole service to get around to actually worshiping God from your soul.

          Also, secondly, worship requires focus. There are not a lot of things anymore that require much focus. Entertainment has pretty much become mindless and the internet gives us an infinite realm of video after passively entertaining video. We modern Americans don’t usually use much focus, but when it comes to worship, focus is definitely required.

          Wayne Grudem in his Systematic Theology writes: “It is appropriate to ask whether there is much genuine, deep, heartfelt worship in our churches. In many evangelical churches people do not truly worship God in their hearts until the last hymn, after the sermon has focused their attention on who God is so that they begin to rejoice in God with a heart full of praise. But then, just when heartfelt worship has begun, the service abruptly ends. It should be just beginning! If genuine worship is lacking in our churches, we should ask how we can bring ourselves to experience much more of the depth and richness of worship, which is the natural response of the believing heart to a clear awareness of God’s presence and character.”

          Sometimes it can take the whole church service to either remove our bad attitudes or to get our focus right, but then church and worship is over. What can we do? How about come to church, come to bible study, with a better attitude? How about come with your focus already on God?

          That brings us to the third thing: prayer. How do we prepare for worship? We prepare with prayer.

          If I don’t pray as I prepare for each study, then I’ve already failed before I’ve said a word to you. If I don’t pray with my leaders before each study, then I can really feel the distinct lack of God’s moving among us. I’ve got to invite God to speak any time that we come to hear from Him, unless we expect silence.

          I would challenge you guys to pray on your way here, as you’re driving or riding in the car, before you step into this house, determine that you’ll step into the house of God with your attitude checked and your focus ready. If you’re not coming here to hear from God and to seek Him, then why are you coming here? To hear a man speak? There are thousands of more eloquent poets and writers and orators elsewhere. To hang out with friends? There are other places more appropriate for hanging out with friends. To be entertained? Well, I hope not. There’s little entertainment to be found in the disciplined study of the Word of God and in the enrichment of your soul. To hear from God and to worship Him? Ah! Now that’s the correct answer and I hope that’s the reason why you come to this bible study. We can’t play at Christianity. We don’t dabble in these things. God is not mocked. He sees the heart either genuine or false.

          And fourthly, finally, how can we prepare for worship? Answer: with holiness. If we are to truly draw near to God in worship, then we must strive for holiness in ourselves. Hebrews 12:14 says “Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord…”

          Check out Matthew 5:21-24, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’ But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without of cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ [call someone worthless] shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”

          I can tell you, this is humiliating when it comes to this. But when you’re upset with someone, or someone is upset with you, and it starts to get in the way of worshiping God, then you have to put it to rest. You have to go and make peace with that person. Every time I’ve done this I’ve hated it. It’s the worst thing in the world saying “sorry”. But the reward is genuine worship and freedom.

          Our sin will keep us out of fellowship, away from the church, away from the Bible… it’s been said that this Book will keep you from sin but that sin will also keep you from this Book. But sin will also keep us from holiness and by extension, from worshiping God in spirit and in truth.

          We cannot tolerate a lifestyle that does not allow us to worship God. Remember when Jesus went in to the temple with a whip and freaked out, flipped over the tables, chased people out crying that they had made His Father’s house a den of thieves. God’s house was to be purer than that, a place of worship and a place of prayer.

          Does Jesus need to come into His own temple in you with a  whip and go to town? Does Jesus need to flip over some tables again, but in you, the temple of God? All you have to do is let Him, allow Him to provide you with an atmosphere of worship in your soul. We can’t expect to worship God during any service unless we’re already prepared as worshipful people.

          *Next, let’s examine two things: What worship is and what worship isn’t. First, let me tell you what worship is not.

3.   What Worship is Not

          Four things worship is not. Worship is not for us. Worship is not only music. Worship is not becoming emotional. Worship is not a means to an end.

          Okay so first off, worship is not for us.

          Now that seems pretty obvious. After all, we’ve already discussed how Jesus, God, is at the center of worship. And quite clearly, we do not come into a worship service expecting the lights, the drama, the emotion, the desire all to circle and center around us. At least not directly.

          But did you know that worship remains worship regardless of whether you like the song being played or not? Worship remains worship whether you like the way the band is playing or whether you like the singer’s voice or not? It is a huge cop out to say you can’t worship because you don’t like this song or the way this sounds or the way this person plays that instrument or whatever. We might call that a distraction when really we only need to focus on God, not necessarily on the specific song or on the voice or the instrument or the band. That’s why some worship songs can be met with quietness and reflection. Did you know you don’t have to belt out every lyric? You don’t. Worship remains worship so long as it is in spirit and in truth, in quiet reflection despite somebody’s grating voice or somebody’s lame lyrics.

          Worship isn’t about what we want. It’s about what God wants. And I think there’d be less Christian rock stars and more worship leaders, less performances and more guiding into the presence of God if Christianity realized that worship isn’t about what appeals to us. It’s about what appeals to God.

          Now obviously, there’s many other things to be said. Styles of music reflect different age groups and time periods. Appreciation for different types of music, complexity of the music, different moods set by the worshipers and the leaders, instruments being played skillfully, all of that comes into play. But remember that fundamentally, you aren’t giving worship to yourself. You’re giving worship to God. Worship isn’t for us.

          Secondly, worship isn’t only music.

          That immediately does away with all the peripheral junk of what instruments to use, how many minor or major chords to play, what kind of mood to set, what songs to choose and by whom, and how big the band is, and how well so and so can sing or play the guitar. All these things are immediately cast aside when we realize that worship isn’t only music.

          Now I add the word only because the statement “worship isn’t music” is false. The Bible, in both the Old and the New Testaments, places some emphasis on music. Music was around before the Flood. Music sounded after they crossed the Red Sea. Music rang through the tabernacle and the Temple. Music is an integral part of the psalms. And in the New Testament, we’re to speak to each other in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, the early church wrote their songs to the Savior and Jesus Himself sang on His way to the cross.

          But clearly, worship includes music but also goes beyond music. Everything in the Christian life should be worship, should be an act or deed that glorifies God. Is that not essentially what worship is: glorifying God? And we glorify God with more than just music.

          I’ll never forget a story my brother told me about attending some class in college where the teacher, discovering the he was a Christian, challenged his faith by saying something like “If you’re a Christian, aren’t you supposed to be glorifying God? How can you call yourself a Christian, if you’re not going to poor countries and helping people?” Basically, they were equating glorifying God with humanitarian work. My brother responded with something like “That’s not the only way to glorify God”.

          The point is, we glorify God with our lives, with the way we speak to our family members, with the encouragement we give to our friends, with the families we eventually come to raise, with the fairness we display at work, with the way we talk, with the way we interact, with the way we manage our finances. All of it either glorifies God or not, and this, broadly, is worship. Worship is also the service of God. And that can have little to nothing to do with singing any songs at all.

          And that’s great, for this reason. There’s a large majority of the church which may not be interested in music at all, or people who might not be able to sing along with a worship song, or people who can’t play an instrument or sing and therefore can’t be a part of the “worship ministry” as it is so labeled. Hey there might even be a large portion of the church who don’t particularly care for the modern “sound” of worship songs, whether they’re shut down by synths or turned off by watered-down rock and snazzy rhythms, or people who don’t particularly care for formulaic lyrics with predictable stanzas. For people like that, thank God worship is more than just music. They might feel alienated from the v-neck shirt wearing, plaid-touting, skinny-jeans, flashy worship scene. But in reality, that’s all secondary. Worshiping God isn’t about just music, it involves all of life.

          Thirdly, worship is not becoming emotional.

          Again, we cannot say that worship doesn’t involve any emotion at all. Worship shouldn’t be dead and boring and dry. Worship should be alive. But what I’m saying is that we cannot make emotion the gauge of how “good” worship is or isn’t. For just as someone might repent of their sins and come to the Lord without hardly any display of emotion and another someone might do the same with streams of tears, so too we cannot judge one person as not worshiping because they don’t seem to be overcome with emotion like another person beside them might be.

          If we’re not careful, emotion and excitement can become the focus of worship rather than God being the focus of it. It’s easy for bands to whip a congregation into an emotional frenzy with moving music and stirring lyrics and passionate voices with ever bigger bands and brighter lights, but all of that misses the point. You might have a whole congregation of people moaning and weeping and dancing for excitement and not one single worshiper, if they’re focus is the excitement itself and not the God of universe at the center of their excitement.

          You’ve got to consciously focus on God and put aside your other thoughts during the playing of a worship song. It’s so easy for other things to crowd in, even the excitement of worship itself, but that excitement isn’t God. And worshiping for the sake of emotion, to get a feeling out of worship, is really only worshiping ourselves. Remember, worship isn’t for us. It’s not there for us to get a feeling out of it, though in God’s presence is fullness of joy and we may find delight in worshiping God, that’s not the goal, the excitement itself.

          That leads us to the fourth thing worship is not. Worship is not a means to an end.

          Worship is not there to prepare us for the sermon. If that’s all that it is, then don’t call it worship. Rather, it is just a bunch of songs to set a mood, but it’s not worshiping God, it’s worshiping an atmosphere, or the music, or the teacher, or the sermon. Worship is not a means to an end, it’s not something we must do in order to get to something else. Realize that worship is the end. Worshiping God is the goal.

          I think God would be insulted to think that we were making worship out to be something we must do in order to get something else. How insulted would you be if your own children made you a card that said “I love you, Mom” or “I love you, Dad”, only to then ask for $20? How insulted would you be if you realize that someone was just buttering you up so they could get something out of you? It’s not as if we have to suck up to God in order to get His blessings. That’s not the way it works and its regrettable if the structure of the modern Christian church service has somehow made us believe that.

          “What is the chief end of man? Answer: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever” —Westminster Shorter Catechism, 1648.

          The Scripture agrees. Ephesians 1:11-12, “In Him also we have obtained an inheritance… that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.”

          I Peter 4:10-11, “As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. If anyone ministers, let him do it as with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ…”

          I Corinthians 10:31, “…whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”

          This is our purpose for being here, for being made. Revelation 4:11 (KJV), “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.” We were made for God’s pleasure, made to bring Him pleasure, made to glorify and to worship Him.

          Henry Theissen wrote in his Systematic Theology, “So fundamental is this duty [worship] that if faithfully performed there will also be the carrying out of the other purposes of the Church.”

          So worship is not a means to an end. Worship is the end in itself. Worship is not a road to get to someplace else. Worship is the end of the road itself. Worship is not sucking up to God to get to heaven. Worship here on earth is practice for the eternal worship we shall give to God in heaven. Worship is not preparation for the sermon. Worship is what the sermon should stir us to perform.

4.   What Worship is

          So tonight we’ve seen how to prepare for worship. Four things: attitude, focus, prayer and holiness. We’ve also seen what worship is not. Four things: it is not for us, not only music, not becoming emotional and it is not a means to an end.

          In our fourth and final point tonight let me tell you simply and plainly what worship in fact is. It is four things:

          Firstly, worship is respectful.

          Just remember who it is you’re to think about when you sing the songs or go about your day. Just recall to mind all that God has done for you. Just remember what God is like and who He is. He is the Friend of Sinners, but He is also the Lord of All, not to be treated like a plaything, or disrespected with vain words or an empty heart. God is not a teddy bear. God is a consuming fire.

          And just as you respect and fear fire for its destructive ability, God Himself ought to be feared and respected and reverenced for having the ability to destroy a man’s soul in hell for eternity. God is not the butt of any joke. God is not someone to be treated lightly, flippantly, with a dismissive attitude. God is a person with real feelings, who can experience real grief and real gladness.

          When we come to worship, we come to perform a solemn duty and joyful privilege such as the Church has performed for centuries. Don’t waste another worship service with a lack of respect for God. It isn’t about anything else than submitting ourselves before Him and adoring and exalted Him, and we can’t disrespect Him any more with absorption in thoughts of ourselves and what we like or don’t like.

          Secondly, worship is a response.

          One of the first things that makes for dead worship is when it fails to be a personal response. Worship has to come not because we recognize it is time to sit down or stand up and sing a few songs. Worship doesn’t begin or end with the playing of a guitar or even an opening or closing prayer. Worship has to come out of recognition for what God has done personally in you and personally for you.

          Remember the ten lepers that Jesus healed but only one of the ten came back to thank Him? Of the ten, only that one who came back in thanksgiving was the real worshiper. He recognized what had been done for him and he came to his Savior in genuine worship.

          If your worship is not a response to what God has done for you, then it’s just words somebody else wrote. Somebody else had an experience of the goodness of God and you’re merely echoing their joy and their excitement. But it’s not your own. Real worship is when it becomes your own personal response.

          As Scripture says “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

          Thirdly, worship is decisive.

          Now I’ve found this incredibly helpful to remember. We all know that sometimes, maybe admittedly a majority of the time, we don’t feel like worshiping. Sometimes I just don’t feel like worshiping at all. I don’t feel like singing any sentimental songs. I’m just not getting into the music. I can’t dig the lyrics, ect, ect. But again, worship isn’t all about getting emotion conjured up.

          The psalms contain passages that indicate that worship is decisive. Sometimes you’ve simply got to decide to worship God, decide to get your focus off of yourself or those around you or your job or school or your problems. Psalm 42:5, “Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him…”

          The psalmist, I think much like us sometimes, found himself in a place of depression. His soul was downcast. What was his solution? To decisively praise God. He decided that this is what he was going to do, whether his soul liked it or not.

          Get your soul into the game. If you don’t feel like worshiping, too bad. Worship anyways. The desire to worship will come along. You’ll get into it eventually. Sometimes it just takes that first decision to worship before the worship can actually, truly begin.

          Fourthly and finally, in conclusion, worship is wonderful. Literally, worship is full of wonder.

          If we can’t be amazed at the most unique Being in existence, at a Mind so vast and ancient and everlasting, at a Love so deep and so pure and unrelenting, at a Power so immense and consuming and irresistible, then how could we possibly be amazed at anything else? It is a tremendous shame that as we grow older, our excitement and wonder about the world fades.

          You ever see a child excited just to look up at the stars? There’s no tv. There’s no accompanying music. There’s nothing but the stillness of the universe and the majesty of the stars. And then you tell that child that the stars are fire and all the mystery and the wonder and the awe deepens.

          I remember as a child I used to ask my parents if we could all go outside after dinner and look at the stars. I’m not excited to do so anymore. And that’s sad.

          But I know I can’t lose my excitement for drawing near to the One who made the stars, who lived before the stars first shone. If we want to shine and burn for God, if we want to glorify and worship Him, then don’t lose sight of His reality, who and what He really is. The real God will always hold us in wonder, and worship should involve a lot of wonder itself. Don’t lose that sense of wonder about Him.