"The 'Why' of Worship"
Notes
Transcript
Intro: My time in the hospital this last week was a learning experience.
I've been thinking about a set of questions over the last few weeks. I've kind of been in a reflective place in my mind, and I'll tell you why in a minute.
I think life is full of us trying to answer sometimes small questions, things like, "Will I ever be able to retire? What am I going to do for a living? What's my job going to be?"
Maybe it's more significant questions like, "Who will I marry? Will I be able to have a healthy marriage? Will I ever get married?"
Or may our questions are more like, "Will I get out of this season of intense suffering? Is there ever going to be a light at the end of the tunnel?"
Perhaps some of you have been in long seasons of suffering, and you're trying to figure out how to answer that question.
There are other questions like, "Am I going to be healthy? Am I going to have the onset of some kind of illness or sickness or disease? Will my kids be healthy? Will my spouse be healthy?"
Some of us might be entering a season of asking the question, "How much longer will my parents be healthy? When will I start taking on responsibility to care for them?"
There are all these questions that life is littered with that we ultimately are trying to figure out how to give an answer to or an account for, but I want to convince you of this this morning.
I think there's one question that's more important than any of these other questions, one question that kind of governs all of life's questions.
The most important question you're ever going to answer is the question of…What do you love?
Look, the truth is there are a lot of things I love. I love my family, my friends, and this church.
These are all good things to love for sure. If you asked me why I love them, I could give you many reasons.
But in the end, there is only one love that I have that brings me to a place of worship. That is my love for God.
The Bible says that God, and God alone, is our highest good, that our affections and our desires are placed solely on him.
A.W. Tozer says it something like this: "The most important thought that you ever think is what you think about when you think about God.
Because what you think about when you think about God determines every other part of your existence."
One of the main questions that we should be considering this morning is why we love and worship God.
When we think about Him and we worship Him, does it match up with who He is? Is the product of our love and worship matching who He has revealed Himself to be?
Our affection, worship, and love for God should be seen by people as what we really think of Him.
The same way you show those things to your spouse, child, or whomever you have love for. We tell people how much we value someone, based upon our love for them.
Why we worship God matters. How matters as well. We are communicating what we believe about God. My hope today is for you to have a better understanding of why it is we worship God.
I think Paul spells it out through this trinity ladened message, the Trinity being God, Jesus, and the HS are worthy of our praise.
So, this morning we are going to read our passage and then take the rest of our time to answer the question of why we worship. Read Passage: Ephesians 1:3-14
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love
5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,
6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,
8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight
9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ
10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will,
12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.
13 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,
14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
The first reason of why we worship is centered around God ...
1. God chose us, so we worship Him (3-6)
1. God chose us, so we worship Him (3-6)
God the father is the first part of the trinity that we will look at today to answer the question of why we worship. He initiates all action that is divine including our salvation.
Look at the language that Paul is using. What does the father do? He blesses us in Christ. He chooses us in Christ. He predestines us in Christ to be sons and daughters.
The Bible does not say, "We were holy and blameless, so the Father chose us." Rather, it says, "He chose us before the foundation of the world so that we could be holy and blameless."
It does not say that he loved you because you are a son or a daughter. Rather, it says you were a slave, and God loved you and purchased you out of slavery to make you a son and daughter.
You see God initiated the Salvation and there is a part on our end to receive. He steps forward and engages in a relationship with you.
When you weren't looking for him, he stepped in and invaded your life. We are only who we are because of Christ, and we will dive into that more in a moment.
So, when Paul is talking about election here, he is hitting on God's grace and salvation. Notice that Paul doesn’t say that God chose us to be in Christ.
Rather, he says, God chose us in Christ to be holy and blameless. What God chose from the foundation of the world was that whoever is in Christ will be holy and blameless.
He didn’t predestine certain individuals to be in Christ, as opposed to other unfortunate individuals for hell. This is left up to our choice. You either accept or reject.
Now that you’ve chosen to be in Christ, what was predestined for the group becomes predestined for you because, as verse 5 tells us, you have been adopted to Him.
You, with Paul, can say “In Christ WE (who have chosen to believe) were predestined to be holy and blameless…”
It is impossible for us to fully understand the relationship between God’s sovereignty and man’s free will and responsibility. Scripture is clear that God determines who will be saved.
The Bible also says that we are responsible for receiving Christ as Savior. If we believe in Jesus Christ, we will be saved.
So we can spend our time arguing how these facts work together or we can spend our time doing what we know we are to do.
Our responsibility is to take the gospel to the world and share it and to praise God Who created us. This passage is so important because we were made for praise.
And we must have the right object of worship. Look around and you will find expressions of praise. In Ephesus the people had numerous objects of worship, from Diana to the emperor.
The question then (and today) is not, Do I worship? The question is, whom do I worship? Whom do we worship? We should praise the triune God.
We should praise Him for who He is and what He has done. Why did God choose to bless us with this great salvation? That He may be glorified. God saves people for His glory.
So, we see that If God the Father initiates your salvation, and then we see that God the Son accomplishes your salvation. The second reason we worship is because ...
2. God redeemed us through Jesus, so we worship Him (7-10)
2. God redeemed us through Jesus, so we worship Him (7-10)
Next, we should praise God for the work of the Son who redeemed us.
Building on what has already been said about the blessings we have in Christ, Paul now overflows with praise to God for His great redemption accomplished through Christ.
This point seems somewhat self-explanatory. In Jesus you have been redeemed, brought back. You were in slavery. You're now a son or daughter.
Not only that, but He is also lavishing his grace upon you. You have obtained an inheritance in Jesus Christ. You are now, in God's eyes, a son or a daughter, seated with Christ in the heavenly places.
Where in your life right now do you not believe that? Where in your life are you at war, thinking that you can somehow accomplish or add to the salvation that God has so richly given to you?
I want to beg and plead with you this morning to lay that down. The beauty of the gospel is that God the Son has accomplished salvation on your behalf. He has done it.
What does he say on the cross? "It is finished." Brothers or sisters, there is nothing God is looking for you to accomplish. Illus: Dating and the goal behind it is to win affections.
God simply has set His affections on you and called you a son or a daughter, and he wants to be and exist in a relationship with you.
He says to you "Follow me. Ask me for grace." To receive this lavish grace that Jesus dispensed on the cross, we must see and understand it involves forgiveness and to live outwardly this saving grace.
In Colossians 1:13-14 Paul Says, Read: Colossians 1:13-14
13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,
14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
If we have confessed our sins and He has forgiven our sins, then we should pour out our hearts in adoration to Him.
So now we have looked at God the Father as the first part of the trinity, Jesus the Son as the second part of the trinity, and now we see the third reason we worship and that is ...
3. God blessed us with His Spirit, so we worship Him (11-14)
3. God blessed us with His Spirit, so we worship Him (11-14)
We have these incredible blessings already that bring us to a place that we should find ourselves wanting to worship our great God, and now Paul references what we have inherited.
God not only has given us an inheritance, but the HS is the guarantee of that inheritance. Look back at the text with me at verse 13.
"In him [in the Son, in Christ] you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory."
Here's what the Spirit does. He is the one who applies salvation.
If God the Father initiates salvation, and God the Son accomplishes salvation, then God the Spirit is the person of the trinity who applies Christ's work to you, gives it to you fully and freely in his grace.
The HS is the guarantee of our final inheritance. The Spirit is the first installment, or the down payment, provided for the glory that is to come.
God did not just leave the HS to just tell us about the future, but more is bringing the future into our present to give us a taste of what our future inheritance is like.
So, what we should see is that there is nothing left to do but praise God. Unfortunately, this passage has generated a lot of debate because it mentions the concepts of election and predestination.
While this discussion in itself is not a bad thing, I think we can miss the spirit of this text. The spirit is one of worship.
We are not deserving of these blessings’ friends, but freely they are given to us. These verses highlight the eternal scope of our salvation. From eternity to eternity is the picture that is painted.
In almost every verse Paul speaks of “us” or “we” to refer to the people of God. They are for you if you are in Christ! This passage, then, all of it written from prison, is about praising the 3 in 1 God.
Paul’s body was in prison, but his heart was in heaven. Paul wrote this from a heart of praise. Regardless of your circumstances, God is worthy of praise.