Theological Ramblings

I’m taking a brief detour from my Calvinism discussion for one post because I’m preaching in church tomorrow night, so I posted the gyst of what I’m going to say below. Give me feedback, people :). (PS yes… I know it’s topical. Sue me)

Tonight I’m going to ask four important questions about worship and hopefully give some answers. The answers I give will be my answers to the questions, and they should line up with the church’s answers. However, the point of this sermon is not so much the answers as it is the questions. It’s very important that you ask these questions of yourself on your own, or in your family. The answers to these questions will have a drastic impact on your life. I think you’ll see that.

As I said there are four questions. They are fairly simple, and the answers may seem straightforwardly Biblical, but at least take some time to ponder this. To begin, however, I think I should define worship. This is a cursory definition, as I intend to get into some of the nuance of it as I answer one of my questions. Keep in mind this is my definition for worship at which I have arrived through my pondering of the subject, so if this differs with what you find on Dictionary.com or Wikipedia, keep in mind I’m not necessarily talking about that here. The act of worship is a natural response to the object of worship in which the worshiper expresses praise and thanksgiving to the object so that the fame or the glory of the object would increase.

I say it broadly like that because we worship many things. This is not to say that we violate the First Commandment, because our worship of these things is not on the same level of the worship we give God. For example. To a certain degree, I worship the Ohio State Football Team. When I see them win, I react with joy, and I jump and scream and wear Scarlet and Grey for the next four days, and go around telling people how great Ohio State is. I think this is in some ways the same reaction God wants from us toward Him in our worship of Him. That’s why I described it that way. If we inform our worship of God by our worship of things, then we understand the attitude. But I’m getting way ahead of myself.

I think I’ve dug myself a hole in terms of confusing you, so I have to dig my way out now, and so I turn to my questions. I said I had four, so here’s goes. They are as follows. 1) Who Do We Worship. 2) Why Do We Worship? 3) How Do We Worship? 4) When Do We Worship? And as I answer these questions, I think my earlier statements will begin to make sense.

Question 1: Who Do We Worship?

Short Answer: God! I worship God, the Father Almighty: Maker of Heaven and Earth. Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. He exists eternally in a Holy triune relationship as three distinct persons who are one single entity: The Father, the Son who is the Lamb who died on Calvary, was buried and rose again on the third day as the Firstborn from among the Dead, and the Holy Spirit who is our teacher and our guide; the seal of our inheritance.

So open your Bibles to Joshua chapter 24, verse 15.

And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

I’m using this passage to add an extra flavor to my question. Like I said what’s more important tonight are the questions, and that you go home and think about them. So I’m giving you something to chew on. Brief context: Joshua took over after Moses as leader of the Israelites and led them through the conquest of the Promised Land. In this chapter, the conquest is almost over, and is pretty much as finished as it would ever get, and Joshua is about to die, so he delivers a farewell address.

In this address, Joshua reminds the people of all the things God had done for them, and warned them of the dangers of forgetting God once they were in the land. He basically said to them that they need to choose who they were going to serve: God or something else. So I ask you, Uijongbu Baptist Church. Who do you serve? Who do you worship? You have as much reason to worship Jehovah, the God of the Covenant, as the Israelites. Who do you worship?

Now, this is not just some passing question, because the people’s response was pretty much the same as what you’re making in your head right now. “Oh, I serve the Lord.” But think about it: do you really? I’m not saying this because I think you are all reprobate and I’m trying to reprimand you, but I think that each of us, myself included, should constantly ask this question of ourselves, because it’s so easy to get sucked into worshiping other things instead of God. I said earlier that in some sense I worship Ohio State Football. Well if my love and passion for the Buckeyes hampers my worship for God, it has become an idol and I have stopped worshiping God.

And before you think yourselves better than the Israelites, think about this. How easy would it have been to resist Baal worship? I don’t say that haughtily as though I would have done any better. I’m simply pointing out how black and white that issue would have been. That over there is Baal. Over here is God. I should stay as far over here to avoid going over there as possible. But they couldn’t do it. And if it was that hard for them then, how much harder is it for us today, when so many of the idols out there are seemingly good things, just done with a twist or without moderation. And when I see people doing these things - pursuing money, pleasure, or whatever else, and slapping the name of Jesus on it as though God would accept that as worship; and then to realize that they don’t even realize that they’re worship is misplaced. And then I look at myself and see myself doing the exact same thing, it gives me pause so say, “We ought constantly to be asking ourselves this question. Who do I worship?”

Question 2: Why Do We Worship?

Short Answer: In my definition, worship is the outpouring of praise and thankfulness for what the object has done for us. I used Ohio State as my example. I “worship” Ohio State when they win, not when they lose.

Now, I think I may have stretched the analogy a little far because we don’t just simply worship God when He does stuff for us and then we don’t when He doesn’t do stuff for us. Perfect worship is faithful and does not abandon. However, we worship God because He is worthy of that worship. He is worthy of the worship because of who He is, which is shown by what He does. He has Created us - that alone is enough, but beyond that He has sustained us. He has redeemed us. He has given us His promises. In short, God is good and worthy of our worship. I don’t say this to say that God does a bunch of good things, so we deem Him to be good and therefore we judge Him to be worthy of our worship. No, God is goodness - He is the definition of good, and therefore all things He does are good, and we do not judge Him to be worthy, He is worthy and therefore commands our worship, and we obey.

I’m reminded of Job, and this is sort of a counter example, but stick with me. Job went through his harrowing ordeal and toward the end, he was questioning God about why it happened, and God turned on Him to list all the great and wonderful things He had done, and if you want to see them for yourself they are there in Job 39 and following. It’s lengthy so I’ll let you look at it later, but God lists all He had done, and immediately Job’s negativity was gone, because He saw how good and worthy God is.

I say this because I think some people worship God as a way to get something in return. They think that if they go to church, God will bless them as though it were some give and take relationship. This is not what God wants from us. He wants our worship to be a natural outpouring of our love and gratitude for who He is and what He has done.

Question 3: How Do We Worship?

Short Answer: With ourselves.

I have two passages I want to draw upon - two sub points so to speak. Here’s the first: John 4:19-24

The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth

Now, here’s what I think He meant at least in part. Worshiping in Spirit means that our worship is more than just our physical acts. God wants our attitudes to be ones of worship. If all our worship is is that we “go through the motions” so to speak, we end up with dead and empty worship. This is a very easy trap to fall into. God wants us to be engaged in worshiping Him, on the physical and the spiritual level.

In Truth means that God wants to be worshiped for who He is, not for something He is not. God wants us to Know Him, on His terms, through the Bible. He does not want us to make up some image of a God we want to worship and then worship that. I think this is a very easy American trap. Very many times arguments over theology involve a comment to the effect of “My God doesn’t do that.” or “My God isn’t like that.” or “I can’t believe in a God that _____”. You have to be careful with that because if what you’re denouncing is something that is revealed in the Bible as something that is True about God, then you are saying that your God is not the God of the Bible. Be careful. God wants us to worship who He is, not who we want Him to be.

Also note that Jesus is saying that worship is not something that is tied to a place. For the Jews the Temple was the place of worship, but Jesus says that the true worshipers worship in Spirit in Truth - as a response to her question about location? I use Scripture to interpret Scripture for this and juxtapose Paul’s letter to the Corinthians when he speaks of our bodies being the temple of the Holy Spirit. I think in some degree we can take this to mean that we; believers, are the place of worship. In our midsts. So we can worship God on our own, or in a community, and it is best done in a community of believers where we can sharpen each other and teach each other, but worship is not something that is tied to a place. We don’t have to worship in this room. We don’t have to worship in Jerusalem. We can worship God wherever we are because His Spirit lives inside us.

The second passage is Romans 12:1

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

Up until this point I’ve spoken to the motivation and the terms of our worship, but not much to the action of our worship, so I want to address that now. The reason I do this is because I think the motivation and the terms are way more important than the action. I think so not because I think it doesn’t matter what we do. I think so because if our motivation and our terms are correct, our actions will be so also.

But what actions constitute worship? We often think that worship is what we do right before the preacher gets up and puts us to sleep, but I don’t think that’s the whole picture. Worship is so much more. Paul tells us we are to be living sacrifices. I think this means a couple things.

First, I think it means that we ought to give ourselves over to God’s work. Wherever He wants to use us, we should be willing to go. We are tied to the altar of sacrifice, and we give ourselves over to His service. In a sense we become slaves to Him for His name sake. Notice that this passage flows right out of the first 11 chapters of Romans which contain the most in-depth exposition of the Gospel in history and it’s set up as the natural response. When we see what God has done for us redemptively, we offer ourselves to Him out of gratitude and thanksgiving - remember that’s why we worship.

Second, I think it’s a throw back to the OT sacrificial system. Briefly, the sacrifices under the Mosaic Covenant were a picture of the cross. The Israelites were instructed to do the sacrifices as though they were covering their sins. This practice began in Genesis 3 when God slew the first animal to make clothes for Adam and Eve. However, the Israelites were supposed to realize that the lambs, bulls and goats they were offering were insufficient to truly cover their sins. The reason of course is that only a human life can be traded for another human life, and only a sinless one can fully atone. Thus the sacrifices were a picture of the coming Christ who - though they did not know Him by name or details - they trusted to be the ultimate atonement for their sins.

I think in a similar way, Paul is saying that we - though we do not provide our own atonement or justification - ought to tie ourselves to the altar figuratively so that we can point people back to the Cross. He calls this our “reasonable service”, or if I may be so bold as to use a modern translation, our “reasonable act of worship”. Our act of worship is our purposely and consciously directing people to God.

Anything we do that proclaims God to the world - be it singing, or preaching, or listening to preaching, or living holy lives, or showing love, or anything that exalts God in the eyes of men and women is worship. Understand the implication of what this is saying here. Worship isn’t just one single thing we do. Worship is a lifestyle, where we claim everything we do and do it to the praise and glory of God. Herein lies the essence of Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “Whether therefore ye eat or drink or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God!” Even our eating and drinking are worship - if we do them in order to worship.

See it comes down simply to our attitude and motivation. The only thing that really doesn’t fit in this category is sin. Anytime we sin we are making false statements about God. That is not worship. So aside from that, it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it to the Lord.

Question 4: When Do We Worship?

Answer: This one has almost answered itself in number 3. If our lifestyle is truly one of worship, then the answer to his question is “ALWAYS!”. You can start right now. You can do it tonight, this week, your whole life. Worship isn’t just something we do on Sunday morning. It’s done whenever our motivation is to glorify Christ in our lives and we live accordingly. The reason we ask ourselves this is because it’s easy to put on our Sunday life and then go about our week as though Sunday never happened. Worship does not end on Sunday. Yes, Sunday is a special day where we do certain specific activities as worship, and we do it corporately. But Sunday is not THE day for Worship. Today - Everyday is the day for worship.

So I ask you. Who do you Worship? Is it God? Why do you Worship Him? Are you trying to get something in return? How do you worship Him? Do you do everything for the purpose of worshiping Him, or just some things? When do you worship Him? Always, or just on Sundays.

These are questions that I need to constantly ask myself, because in asking them, pondering “correct answer” and the answer that matches my life, I get a sense of things I need to change. This, guided by study of the Word of God, is a good check to help us along the road of sanctification. May God bless you in your journey.