Moving Forward - Pt. 3
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–408.
Worship - as the reverential response to the all-encompassing magnificence of God.
We spent time looking at the Who and the Why of our worship.
Biblically, the forms of worship are diverse. Worship can take place in the context of confession, lament, praise, thanksgiving, and adoration.
Confession is a form of worship recognizing that people are sinners who stand in need of God’s grace (Psa 51:1–19).
Lament is a type of worship that recognizes the distance between the world as experienced, and as it should be, given God’s goodness, power, and love (Psa 44:1–26). It is a request for God to complete his project of making all things new.
Praise of God can be in response to his character or his saving acts (Exod 15:1–21).
Thanksgiving functions as a means of showing gratitude for what God has done (Psa 138:1–8).
Adoration involves contemplating and praising God for who he is (Psa 8:1–4).
And here is the key of worship it takes thought and response.
So whether it is confession, lament, praise, thanksgiving, or adoration - whether it is all alone or with a host of other people, true worship is grounded in our thoughts of God then our response to who we know Him to be.
So in your singing and silence, your dancing and your stillness, in your workplace and your hobby spot, in your busyness and your rest, in your struggle to do right and in your bold obedience - may we be a thinking people who respond reverently to the all-encompassing magnificence of God!
We concluded last week after our study in Psalm 8 that:
Worship is grounded in what I know to be true about God.
He created me. He redeemed me. He alone deserves my total affection and adoration.
Now, corporately, we desire to glorify God by making spiritually and relationally healthy disciples. We desire that those who are in our faith family would mature in their love for God and their love for people.
And we emphasize 5 manifestations of or responses to the Gospel in this process:
This week and last we are emphasizing Gospel-centered Worship
Gospel-centered Worship
The heart cannot love what the mind does not know, which is why our worship of God is grounded in treasuring His Word. As we diligently study the Bible to know Him greater, our knowledge of God overflows into praise to Him for who He is and what He has done. Worship involves every affection, attitude, and action because they ascribe worth to what we value. When we gather together, and when we don't, God alone is the focus of our worship.
JC Cunningham rightly said, “Worship is at the center of our existence and the reason for our being.”
We exist to glorify God.
You will remember from our first lesson in this series that:
God reveals His glory through Creation, through redemption, and through the redeemed.
He is constantly at work being gracious to the undeserving.
Yet He calls His creation to join Him in this process of revelation. God is glory - and we are called to partner with him in by proclaiming that glory.
This is what we mean when we say we “Exist to glorify God.”
If Glory denotes the nature, being, and presence of God among us, then to glorify Him is defined as:
to make glorious, or cause so to appear.
Now, we don’t make God glorious, He is glorious. Glory is an intrinsic reality of God.
However, we are called to come alongside His intrinsic nature and cause it to appear as it is - to cause Him to appear as He is.
Because we are created, It is wired into our nature to be worshippers. but the issue is that we also are broken by sin.
And our sin nature takes what is given by the goodness of God and bends it.
John Calvin - “Man’s nature is a perpetual factory of idols.”
In a little while we are going to study in John 4, but turn with me if you would to Exodus 32.
God has been good to the people of Israel
Brought them out of bondage
Met their needs
Now has a special plan for their futures through revealing more of HImself to them
How do they respond?
1 Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”
2 And Aaron said to them, “Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.”
3 So all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron.
4 And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molded calf. Then they said, “This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!”
5 So when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow is a feast to the Lord.”
6 Then they rose early on the next day, offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.
7 And the Lord said to Moses, “Go, get down! For your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves.
8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!’ ”
9 And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people!
10 Now therefore, let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them. And I will make of you a great nation.”
11 Then Moses pleaded with the Lord his God, and said: “Lord, why does Your wrath burn hot against Your people whom You have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?
12 Why should the Egyptians speak, and say, ‘He brought them out to harm them, to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from Your fierce wrath, and relent from this harm to Your people.
13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven; and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ ”
14 So the Lord relented from the harm which He said He would do to His people.
So moses goes down the mountain, picks up Joshua on the way...
19 So it was, as soon as he came near the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing. So Moses’ anger became hot, and he cast the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain.
20 Then he took the calf which they had made, burned it in the fire, and ground it to powder; and he scattered it on the water and made the children of Israel drink it.
21 And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?”
22 So Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my lord become hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil.
23 For they said to me, ‘Make us gods that shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’
24 And I said to them, ‘Whoever has any gold, let them break it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I cast it into the fire, and this calf came out.”
John Calvin - “Man’s nature is a perpetual factory of idols.”
In Exodus, we have God giving His people the 10 commandments.
Two Tables explaining Our obligation to God and Man
First table - first four commandments - Our relationship with God
Second Table - last six - our relationship with People
1 st table - 2nd commandment - the manner of worship
4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth;
5 you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,
The number 1 sin throughout the OT is the sin of idolatry. Sin has warped the good gift of God of worship and turned us inward - worshipping creation rather than the Creator.
So, it is important to remember the bent of our flesh. We naturally take what is good and make it to fit what we want it to be.
Natureally, we are idolaters, so we need to go to God and ask Him how He would like to be worshipped.
And we find what he wants all throughout scripture, but today we will find it in a conversation between Jesus and the woman at the well.
John 4 - turn with me.
1 Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John
2 (though Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples),
3 He left Judea and departed again to Galilee.
4 But He needed to go through Samaria.
5 So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.
6 Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7 A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.”
8 For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
9 Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.
10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”
11 The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water?
12 Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again,
14 but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”
15 The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”
17 The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’
18 for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.”
19 The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.
20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.”
21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father.
22 You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.
23 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.
24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
On this encounter at the well, we learn a lesson on worship. and it’s this:
We can’t come to God on our own terms.
We don’t get to define what worship is. plainly, Jesus says:
23 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.
24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Those who worship must worship in spirit and truth.
But what does that mean?
Now, there are two schools of thought:
Normative Principle - If the Bible does not forbid it, then we may do it.
Regulative Principle - May only do what is commanded by scripture
The scriptures are sufficient to give us everything we need.
The regulative principle is helpful if a difference is made between elements and circumstances. Let me explain:
Elements of worship should be regulative. Elements are the acts that are done.
Circumstances, however are normative. Circumstances are the NECESSARY things to have worship.
Elements involve - reading/preaching/teaching of the word, prayer, singing, observance of sacraments
Circumstances involve - buildings, chairs, instruments, microphones, hymnals, communion cups
Scripture mandates the elements of worship. But it does not mandate the ciricumstances of worship.
And this is helpful for us to prioritize what is essential and non-essential.
In corporate worship - the church centers on Gospel truth known by the Word of God. We read, study, teach, preach, pray, partake, sing for the glory of God.
But friend, the church has become mixed up on what is essential and non-essential.
Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations 7582 God Is Critic
“Most people think of the church as a drama,” Dr. James Kennedy said, “with the minister as the chief actor, God as the prompter, and the laity as the critic. What is actually the case is that the congregation is the chief actor, the minister is the prompter, and God is the critic.”
Both the contemporary church and the traditional church has approached corporate worship as the Business model - the customer is always right
Give the people what they want.
Get young people - give them contemporary music
Keep the old people - give them traditional music
In the business model of the customer is always right - the people are the customer.
But in a biblical model
The customer and consumer of worship is not man - it’s God!
And Jesus teaches the woman at the well and us a crucial lesson.
The OT temple is no longer needed because God is in us.
And now, those who worship God must do it in Spirit and truth.
And that involves two things:
The Inner Man - Your Heart
The Truths of God - defined by the Word of God
Our worship, together and apart, is to be:
based on truth, not our feelings
focused on Jesus, not ourselves
from the heart, that has been transformed by the Gospel
16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
Church, I want you to answer something for me, in your own heart and mind.
Who/What are you worshipping? Who or what are you glorifying as transcendent?
Yourself?
Tradition?
Is it God?
Your heart only has one throne - may God be there as a result of the truth we know from His word!