In one recent contest, 435 turtles raced in heats of fifteen over a six-foot-long course. The announcer, calls the turtles to their mark, gives them the "Go!" and the crowd goes wild. People stand, jump, and wave their hands in the air, imploring their turtles to be unturtle-like. The excitement grows and finally reaches a boiling point as the preliminary winners all gather for the championship race. Amid unrestrained shouts and cheers, the first turtle crosses the finish line, and the winning "trainer" receives 5 dollars!
Last week we examined the spheres the church operates in and its purposes. At the center is God, and our action toward Him is worship – there has never been nor will there ever be time when God does not desire and expect to receive worship from His people. Worship from the creation through eternity is central to the life of God’s children, and especially worshipping together! Jesus said,
John 4:24 God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.
Spirit refers to our inner spirit – the heart of worship is found in a worshipful attitude! People can cheer and get all worked over sports or a concert or turtle races, but yet we often come to worship as if we hate being here.
Worship reflects our love for Christ back to him, and when we worship we are as close to eternity and heaven as we will get in this life. If we can cheer at a basket or enthusiastically clap at a concert, then we certainly can raise our voices and sing with all our might to the Lord in worship on a Sunday!
This week we want to focus in on the truth component. Last week was the attitude of worship, now we will look at some of the actions God has given us to worship Him.
Worship as Praise
The English word “praise” occurs 167 times in 135 verses in the Psalms alone. The Pslams were the hymn book of Israel AND of the early church!
Praise translates 3 words from Hebrew. Zamar means “ to praise in song.” Tehillah means “song of praise.”
But by far the most common is hallel. In fact there is one word for praising God same in every language. Hallelujah, which is the Hebrew Hallel (praise – literally to boast in) and Yah which means Lord (the first 2 letters of His Name in Hebrew).
Often the praising of God is tied in with giving Him thanks. A good example of this is Psalm 9.
In Psalm 9 notice that David thanks God for things God has done for him (his enemies defeated) and will do for him and others. He gives glory to God by declaring God’s deeds, and by proclaiming things that are true about God!
This is great example of what our praise should entail: thankfulness, glorifying God by proclaiming what He has done for us – in Christ, in our lives, in the world, and recounting things about who God is!
In fact writer of Hebrews encourages us to be constantly be praising God:
Heb 13:15-16 Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name. And do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.
Notice we are to “offer up a sacrifice of praise.” We no longer offer up a sacrifice of bulls and goats, but God’s true followers offer to Him a sacrifice of praise and giving thanks.
The word sacrifice is one that regularly comes up when the Bible discusses the issue of worship:
Worship as sacrifice
In the first 11 chapters of Romans Paul details God plan of salvation and how He worked through Israel all the way to Christ and has redeemed us and sent His Spirit to live in us and freed us from sin and given us new life! He then says: Romans 12:1 Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.
“Therefore…” because of all Paul has just said about all God done we are to offer ourselves as living sacrifices.
Sacrifice is a concept from the Old Testament. God prescribed numerous animal and grain and wine sacrifices in the Tabernacle and Temple worship for Israel. Those sacrifices pointed to the time when the ultimate sacrifice would be made – Jesus on the cross.
We no longer have to make those types of sacrifices because Christ is the once and for all sacrifice for sin made on our behalf:
Hebrews 7:26-27 For it was fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens; 27 who does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the sins of the people, because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.
So we no longer offer blood sacrifices, but we are now to be living sacrifices – our lives our meant to be lived as an act of worship toward God. And sacrifice means I give something to God that is not free!
We tend to not like the whole idea of sacrifice because it sounds like me giving up something, What we really need to see sacrifice as is giving to God! Look back at the Heb 13 passage again: one way we are living sacrifices is by doing good to others and sharing!
When you gave some change in the baby bottles to Alternatives – that was a sacrifice of worship. When you helped your neighbor shovel because you wanted to show love to your neighbor – an act of worship.
In fact, if we saw the stuff we do as being dedicated to God and acts of worship, we might derive a lot more joy and blessing from it! Some of you came and helped work around the building on our work day, but how many of you looked on that as an act of worship. Caring for the place God has blessed us with when you could have been doing something for yourself is a sacrificial act of worship!
The Christian classic The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence (a lay brother in a Carmelite monastery in 1600’s). He saw every act of cleaning, cooking and everything he did as worship and dedicated to God.
The final thing we want to look at is the idea of…
Worship as Remembering
One of the most prominent actions of worship in both testaments is remembering the things the Lord has done. Often the Psalmist will recount the deeds of God on behalf of Israel. For example in Psalm 78 he recounts the entire Exodus journey out of Egypt, through the wilderness and how God guided them to the land of Promise, all the way to the kingship of David! 70 verses of song recounting God working in Israel!
We have lots of great songs of remembrance we sing on Sunday mornings such as Lord I lift Your Name or Old Rugged Cross. But there is one particularly important and special remembrance that is distinctly part of the worship of the church alone:
Central to the worship of the early church was the Lord’s Table. They celebrated it every Sunday, which some churches still do to this day!
1 Corinthians 11:23-26 For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; 24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me." 25 In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.
Twice Jesus words point out that we take the bread and cup as a remembrance. We reenact part of that last fateful night in the upper room to remember that Jesus’ actual body and actual blood were the last and only necessary sacrifice that paid for our sins!
Some people see worship as optional or as something fun but without much value, or as something they can do when they feel like it. We learned last week that God desires us to have the attitude of worship – that our hearts are poured out in worship to Him and our desire is to glorify Him with all we are.
Today we can see there are numerous ways God has given us to worship Him: through praise and thanksgiving in word and song, through living our lives as an offering to God in all we do, and through remembering and recounting all He has done for us, and especially what He has done for us in Christ as we worship through the bread and cup!
God demands to be worshipped. He has created us, redeemed us and called us to serve Him and one type of service we offer is to live as acts of worship; praising, sacrificing, serving and remembering all He has done for us from now and even into eternity!
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