What is
Worship? The What, Why, and How of
Worship
Psalm 95
Sunday,
June 14th, 2015
By Ryan
Perry
Psalm 95:
1 Oh
come, let us sing to the LORD;
let us
make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
2 Let us
come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us
make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
3 For the
LORD is a great God,
and a
great King above all gods.
4 In his
hand are the depths of the earth;
the
heights of the mountains are his also.
5 The sea
is his, for he made it,
and his
hands formed the dry land.
6 Oh
come, let us worship and bow down;
let us
kneel before the LORD, our Maker!
7a For he
is our God,
and we are the people of his
pasture,
and the
sheep of his hand.
b Today,
if you hear his voice,
8 do not
harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the
day at Massah in the wilderness,
9 when
your fathers put me to the test
and put
me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
10 For
forty years I loathed that generation
and said, “They are a people who go
astray in their heart,
and they
have not known my ways.”
11 Therefore
I swore in my wrath,
“They
shall not enter my rest.”
Pray:
Introduction:
What is worship? I can imagine that many of us have asked this
question at one point or another in our Christian lives. I can also imagine that we on some level have
come up with varying definitions and understandings of exactly what worship is.
Maybe
it’s a rockin’ worship band, piano led hymns, serving the poor, an emotional experience
that overwhelms you, or maybe it’s being in nature with God.
Whatever
definition you have for worship, the reality is that we all have our own idea
of what worship is all about.
According
to Yahoo Answers, here are just a few ideas of what other people think worship
is:
1. Doing what God created us to do.
2. Giving yourself fully over to God, and receiving Him in
return.
3. Worship is giving more than you receive.
4. Sprinkling the dust of joy. (my personal favorite)
Now, I am
not going to say that these definitions cannot be a part of what it means to
worship God (although I am not exactly
sure what sprinkling the dust of joy means), but I am going to say that I
do not believe that they give us an accurate picture, or understanding of
worship and what it is all about.
So my
hope over the next three weeks is to begin a series on worship, in which we will
begin today by focusing on the question: What
is worship? The What, Why, and How of Worship.
And my
goal today in addressing this topic is twofold:
1. To give you a working definition of worship.
2. To have you examine your life to see if there is one area
where God is calling you to worship Him through greater obedience. (This will make more sense at the end.)
Once we
have established a definition of worship, next week we will move to the
importance and composition of Corporate Worship (why do we gather and what should we do?), and then we will
conclude with a message specifically geared towards answering the questions:
Why do we sing? And what should we sing?
But
before I jump into the Psalm this morning I at least want to be cognizant of
the fact that some of you might be thinking: “Why should I care about a definition of worship?”
To answer
that I will direct your attention to Revelation 22:8-9 which say this:
I, John,
am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw them, I
fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed them to me, but he
said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your
brothers the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship
God.”
The
command from the angel and from God Himself is that we Worship God! Since this is a
command (one that is found throughout
scripture), we had better figure out what worship means so that we can know
what God is calling us to do.
With that
said let’s look at Psalm 95 and start this morning by seeing what is involved in worship.
What: Psalm 95:1-2; 6
1 Oh
come, let us sing to the LORD;
let us
make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
2 Let us
come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us
make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
6 Oh
come, let us worship and bow down;
let us
kneel before the LORD, our Maker!
As
we look at these three verses one of the common denominators is this idea of “come.”
Verse1 says oh come, verse 2
says let us come, and verse 6
repeats the idea of verse one as it again says, oh come.
This
lets us know that praising and worshipping God is an action. That is why
commentators call these verses a “call
to worship;” we are being called
to do something.
Now
it should be noted that even though we are using this psalm to talk about
worship in a more individualistic sense, that the plural usage of “us” and “we”
point to the reality that for Israel and for us, worship is not just an individual
endeavor but it is also corporate. Also,
the idea of “come,” for Israel,
means coming to the temple of God. Yet,
despite not having a temple, since we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, There
is still significance for us today. It lets us know that worship involves action
on our part. It
is not just something that we sit on our couch, eat chips, and hope will happen,
but we are actively involved in the process of worship.
So what are we called to do?
Verse
1-2 say that we are called to sing, make a joyful noise, and come into His
presence with thanksgiving.
These
are all part of a joyful heartfelt celebration of praise and thanksgiving to
God. It’s not just an insincere thank
you that you give to God, like you give when your grandma gets you an ugly
sweater for Christmas.
No,
this is a whole being, I am coming to God with sincere praise for who He is, and sincere thanksgiving for
what He has done in my life. This type of worship is intentional,
vibrant, and whole hearted.
This
idea is reiterated by Moses in Deuteronomy 6:5 when he says:
You shall
love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all
your might.
Loving and worshipping God is a whole being activity.
So with all of our whole being we are
called to joyfully come to God with praise and thanksgiving.
But there
is more! Verse 6 of Psalm 95 not only
reiterates this call to worship when it says oh come, but it takes this idea of a wholehearted praise and
thanksgiving to its logical conclusion when it says let us worship, bow down, and kneel before the Lord
our Maker.
These
words, worship, bow down, and kneel are all communicating the same idea which
is the idea of submission; which
means that we intentionally take our wills, desires, hopes, and dreams and we
give them fully over to God to do with as he sees fit. Now, I
realize that the word submission may not always be our favorite word, but when
we take this idea of submission and connect it to a heart attitude of praise
and thanksgiving we start to understand that genuine heartfelt praise leads naturally to submission.
We see
this same idea played out in Psalm 96 which Kevin read to open the
service. We are called to sing, declare
his marvelous works ascribe glory to God and to come to Him. These are all types of praise that naturally
lead to verse 9 of Psalm 96 which says:
Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the
earth!
My
question you is this: “if you are having
a hard time submitting your life, will, hopes, and dreams to God, might it be
because you are lacking a joy-filled attitude of praise and thanksgiving toward
God?” (Reiterate)
So we are
called to joyfully praise and thank God and submit our lives to Him.
The next
question is why? Why do we worship God?
Why: Psalm 95:3-5; 7a
3 For the
LORD is a great God,
and a
great King above all gods.
4 In his
hand are the depths of the earth;
the
heights of the mountains are his also.
5 The sea
is his, for he made it,
and his
hands formed the dry land.
7a For he
is our God,
and we
are the people of his pasture,
and the
sheep of his hand.
The
psalmist sums up the why of worship with two basic ideas. One is that we worship God because of who He
is, and two we worship God because He is our God and we are His people.
Because of who He is:
Verses 3
talks of God as a great God and a King above all gods. This means that He is greater than and rules
over anything else that we might call god, or anything else that we might treat
as god.
This is
affirmed in verses 4-5 when the psalmist says that in His hand are the depths
of the earth, the heights of the mountains are His, the sea is His, for He made
it, and he formed the dry land.These
verses are really a poetic way of saying that God has created everything. And because He has created everything,
including us, he is greater than anything we see and He deserves our praise and
worship. In fact Colossians
1:15-17, while giving an apologetic or evidence for the deity of Christ, points
us to the reality that our triune God not only created everything, but He holds
all thing together, and does it for Himself and His glory.
He is the
image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all
things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether
thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through
him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold
together.
It is
only natural then that our response to His greatness would be praise,
thanksgiving, and submission, because it is only by His power that our whole
universe is even held together at this very moment.This is
why one of our core values is: “The
Triune God is supreme and sovereign over all things for His own glory.” It’s
a glorious truth that naturally causes us to worship.
Second,
we worship God:
Because He is our God and we are His people:
Here is where it gets personal. Yes, we worship God
because He is the creator, sustainer, and king of all things, but we also
worship God because, as verse 7a of Psalm 95 says, “He is our God and we are the
people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand.”
Let me
reemphasize this: We belong to God, and
He has chosen to be our God.
As
Ephesians 1:3-4 says: 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, even as he chose us in
him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless
before him.
So God
the Father has blessed us and has chosen us before the foundation of the world
to be His people. It’s not something we
have earned, but it is a free gift given to us.
Why? Because of the finished work of Christ on the cross applied
to each one of us here who are believers.
We are
chosen by God and come to Him in faith, not because we are awesome or are able,
but because Christ paid the penalty for our sin, and because God has chosen us
and drawn us to Himself.
As John
6:44 says:
No one
can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up
on the last day.
So
because of Christ, God chooses us and draws us, and in doing so, He calls us
His people, His sheep.
And if we
are His people and sheep, Ephesians 1:13-14 lets us know that we are sealed
with His Holy Spirit and our eternity with Him is secure.
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, who is the
guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise
of his glory.
So then
for us as believers the question stops being “Why do we worship God” and
becomes “How can we not worship such a great God who has bought us and sealed
us.”
So Praise
and submission should be the longing of our hearts as we remember again and
again the greatness of God and what He has done for us in Christ.
And when
we combine the “what” and the “why” of worship together we come up
with a definition of worship that looks something like this:
Worship is the joy-filled praise of and submission to a sovereign
God in response to who He is, and His work on our behalf, in Christ, to make us
His people, in accordance with His will.
Now, if
you are here this morning and you read this and you for some reason don’t feel
like who God is and what He has done through Christ is enough to evoke worship,
I don’t have anything else to give you. There is
no way that I can dress this up anymore to make it look better because this is
the whole of Christianity. All of our worship is dependent on who God
is and His work on our behalf.
So if
this is you, then my comment to you would probably be that I don’t think you’re
a Christian, and my hope would be that you would examine the claims of Christ
and come to believe in the one who stands ready to call you His people and save
you from the just punishment for your sin which is an eternity in hell.
But if
this definition is enough for you and you are a believer here this morning you
might be asking the question: How do I
do this? How do I joyfully praise God
and submit to Him?
How: Psalm 95: 7b-11
Today, if
you hear his voice,
8 do not
harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the
day at Massah in the wilderness,
9 when
your fathers put me to the test
and put
me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
10 For
forty years I loathed that generation
and said,
“They are a people who go astray in their heart,
and they
have not known my ways.”
11
Therefore I swore in my wrath,
“They
shall not enter my rest.”
The
answer: A Christ-centered and Holy
Spirit empowered obedience to the Word of God.
The
writer of this Psalm is calling us to listen and respond to the Word of God. As I said earlier, coming to God with praise
and in submission requires action and the main action that God requires of us
as Christians is to believe and obey His voice.
For
Israel, they did not obey God’s voice, and in Exodus 17, instead of trusting
God and following Him they disobeyed and grumbled against Him and Moses,
because they wanted water, which eventually leads to God rejecting that
generation, and not allowing them to enter the promise land. This is where this warning comes from Psalm
95 comes from.
And the
writer of Hebrews makes is clear that their disobedience sprung from their
unbelief when he says in Hebrews 3:18-19:
And to
whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient?
So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.
But for
us as believers, who are saved by the grace of God, through the finished work
of Christ, and are sealed and empowered by the Holy Spirit, we have the ability to walk in obedience to
the Word of God.
In fact
the New Testament has 1,050 commands that, because of Christ’s work on our
behalf, God expects us to obey. Will we
do it perfectly, by no means! As 1 John 1:8 says:
If we say
we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
But this
does not diminish that God is doing a work in us that, as believers, should
lead to obedience. This is why the
writer of Hebrews applies Psalm 95 to believers and says in Hebrews 4:11:
Let us
therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort
of disobedience.
Is this man-centered obedience that earns us favor with God?
No! This is Christ bought, Holy Spirit
empowered worship, as we strive to walk in obedience to God’s commands.
(Reiterate).
So again,
our definition of worship is as follows:
Worship is the joy-filled praise of and submission to a sovereign
God in response to who He is, and His work on our behalf, in Christ, to make us
His people, in accordance with His will.
Now that
we have a definition for worship and we know how we are supposed to worship my
question for you is how are you doing in your worship of our triune God?
Do you
joyfully praise God and submit to His will, or does your Christian life feel
like drudgery as you walk in rebellion against His Word?
Wherever
you are on this spectrum, (and I do
believe it is a spectrum with varying degrees from joy to drudgery) I
encourage you this morning to begin the work of asking God to reveal one area
of your life that by God’s grace needs to be brought in submission to Him.
And once
we find that one thing let’s confess our sin, receive His grace and forgiveness,
and by the power of His Holy Spirit respond to His Word with joy-filled praise
and obedience.
Let’s do this for His glory, and our good. “For that is true biblical worship.”
Let’s
pray
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