The Enyarts

What I am not saying that there is anything wrong with preferences and desires—unless those things turn into idols or entitlements where, for example, someone says, I can’t attend a church that sings those kinds of songs because I just can’t worship there. Well, that’s a problem. Or, I can only hear the Scriptures taught if it’s this person, or this person leading or this style of worship. Again, that’s a problem.

I believe that if we’re really going to be a church that seeks the heart of Jesus then one of the things we have to go after is a heart to worship and bring glory to God.

Any conversation about worship has to start with three things—and this is all introduction—but it was new to me as I kind of entered into this whole conversation.

1. Worship isn’t a religious thing, it’s a human thing

Everybody is a worshiper. It doesn’t matter what religion you are, or if you’re not religious, you can be an atheist and you’re still a worshiper. Worship is a human thing. It’s not a religious thing. It’s not even like you become a Christ follower and then all of the sudden you start to worship. We worship from the minute we become aware. In fact, we can’t help but give our lives to something bigger than we are, we just can’t help it. We just can’t help but declare through how we live our lives that something is of value to us. We can’t help but to ascribe worth to something.

And so if you want to see worship services you don’t just have to go to churches, or synagogues, or mosques—go to the mall, go to the Chargers game, go to a concert. Right? I mean we see worship all around us and one of the fundamental things we’ve got to understand right from the beginning is worship isn’t a religious thing. Now the objects of worship may be religious or not, but we are all worshipers, nobody is exempt. It doesn’t matter what kind of a voice you have or whether or not you like music because worship isn’t singing. It’s fundamentally what we give our heart toward. That’s what we worship.

2. Who or what we worship isn’t determined by what we say or sing, but by how we live

In fact worship is not about singing, or about music, or whether you like choruses or hymns. Worship is about your heart and the way that you live your life. The way that we spend our time, and what we value, in what we think about, and what we obsess over—all of that is evidence about what it is we really worship. So, we can take the trail of our money, and the trail of our time and resources and personality and it will lead us to a throne and it will declare what’s on that throne for us. Now, we profess of course that Jesus is on that throne. Right? I mean that’s what we do. That’s why we’re here. And yes, that’s certainly true. But for many of us, and I’m at the top of this list, Jesus has competition for that seat. Doesn’t he? Mainly from us. I like to put myself on that sucker. I like the privileges that come with calling the shots and playing God over my own life.

We need to recognize that worship is more than singing.

It’s living.

It’s human being.

Worship isn’t determined by what you say or sing, but really by how you live.

And there is a war over our worship. Our enemy would love nothing more than for us to give our one and only life on earth to a god who is simply insignificant.

And the third thing, and this one knocked me flat, and it’s so true,

3. You become whatever it is you worship

This is all background that I hope convinces why this conversation is so important. A conversation on worship isn’t designed to teach us how to sing better. It’s designed to show us who God is and what are the ways that he wants us to respond to him. And we need to recognize that whatever it is that’s on that throne we become like.

So, if you worship sex, you become lustful.

If you worship money, you become greedy.

If you worship power, you become controlling.

You worship Christ, you become Christ-like.

And this is all stuff that’s declared in the Scriptures.

We are going to begin the conversation by making one simple point: Worship isn’t something that we conjure up. It’s not a feeling. It’s not I like this song, but not this song. Worship fundamentally is getting the true, holy God in view first and foremost on the throne and in so doing that pulls out of us allegiance, declarations of worth, glory, and so on.

The best place that I know to see what Jesus is like is in the book of Revelation.

In Revelation chapters 4 and 5 we get this glimpse into the throne room of heaven. We are looking at one of the most exalted pictures of Jesus Christ in the entire Scriptures. If you want to know what’s going on in heaven right now, this is about as good as it gets in terms of a view that we’re just going to marinade in.

We’re going to go through this a little bit and try and pull out some of the confusing stuff and then make one big point.

In Revelation chapters 1, 2, and 3 John shares seven messages to seven flesh and blood churches in the Roman province of Asia Minor towards the end of the first century. Jesus speaks to these churches words of warning, words of encouragement.

And then John says I get a different vision.

Read Revelation 4:1-8

In this next vision of John’s, he says he’s taken up and doors are opened. This is a Jewish way of talking about entering into the throne room of God. He talks about a voice sounding like a trumpet. Whenever you see the word trumpet mentioned, to a Jewish mind you would think of the Feast of Trumpets, Rosh Hashanah. It’s the beginning of the Jewish New Year. It would begin with the blowing of trumpets. The blowing of trumpets was to the Jews what God sounded like when he spoke. The Jews thought that the Messiah would come back during that feast and even Paul, in talking about the rapture, will talk about the sounding of the what? A trumpet. So the fact that there is a trumpet mentioned here would just alert the Jewish mind that there is something royal, there is something kingly that is happening. We’ll come back to that a little later.

In Revelation 4:2 when John talks about the throne in heaven, why doesn’t he just say, okay it was God? Why doesn’t he do that? Because John’s a good Jewish guy and Jewish people were taught to never say the name of God for fear of taking it in vain. Even today if you read some messianic Jewish folks, or orthodox Jewish folks they will not spell out the word God, they will just put “G-d” (g dash d) out of reverence for the name. So what John does, is he says there’s the throne and we all know who’s sitting on it—it’s the one true God—but out of reverence I’m not even going to name him because we all know who he is.

This is all background and please stay with me. If you’re going, Awe I hate this stuff, please just stay with me. This will land here in a bit and I recognize it’s thick, but there’s a point to it.

Notice that what John’s trying to describe in Revelation 4:3 can’t be described directly, can it? He keeps going it looks like this, it kind of looks like that. This thing is so crazy, and magnificent, and majestic that all he can do is say it’s like this, and it’s this kind of color, a rainbow like an emerald. It’s hard to describe, and that’s the point. We’ll touch more on this in a minute.

In Revelation 4:4 we hear about the twenty-four elders. There’s a lot of debate about who the elders are. Some people think it’s representative of the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles. This could be.

Another take is this. Whenever you get a glimpse into the throne room of heaven, in Ezekiel or Isaiah or in Revelation, what you are looking at is the inspiration for why God gave all those crazy directions for how to build his temple or his tabernacle. If you read the book of Exodus, in the last half of the book are instructions on thread, and washbasins, and lamps, and this crazy stuff and you’re going, Why does God care? But you realize in the New Testament—in the book of Hebrews and the book of Revelation—that God is patterning the earthly representation of the tabernacle and temple based upon what heaven looks like. So the twenty-four elders I think represent the twenty-four priests that would serve constantly before the throne. There were twenty-four divisions of the priesthood of Aaron that would serve. So again I know you’re thinking, Okay, how does this apply to my dating life? Okay, maybe we’ll get to there in a little bit.

Revelation 4:5 mentions peals of thunder. When God spoke to his people from Mount Sinai, the same thing. He’s not our buddy all the time is he? The verse continues mentioning seven lamps were blazing. This is a menorah. And then seven spirits of God. Seven is the number of perfection. God here is declaring that his spirit is perfect.

Revelation 4:6 mentions a sea of glass, clear as crystal. This is a reference to the washbasin in the temple.

Revelation 4:8 closes out with “…and is to come.” Now whenever you and I say that guess what we’re joining? Day and night this is being declared over and over. Nobody ever worships by themselves. Even if you’re in your car alone you’re joining what is really happening at the center of the universe.

Now in the Hebrew language if you want to emphasis something you don’t underline it. They didn’t have underlining, or italicizing or putting it in all caps or anything. If you wanted to emphasis something you would repeat it. The only attribute of God that gets such repetition isn’t God is good, good, good or love, love, love or mercy, mercy, mercy. What’s the only thing that gets this emphasis? He is holy, holy, holy. And if you are completely lost in this chapter as John is trying to describe things that no human being can describe, that is precisely the point! We should be astounded by this. This is magnificent! This should evoke awe and wonder. He isn’t understandable. He isn’t tame. He doesn’t fit into our nice little boxes. At the center of the universe is a throne and on that throne is the one true God. And there is no way human language, human experience, human concepts can fully describe what it would be like to sit in his presence.

Read Revelation 4:9-5:2

Revelation 4:9 talks of creatures giving glory, which we found was just all the time, continually.

4:10 mentions the elders falling down and worshiping him. The word worship doesn’t mean sing, it means to fall face down with your face planted on the floor before somebody.

Chapter 5:1-2 mention a scroll. There is a lot of debate about the scroll. Some think it’s the Old Testament. Some think it’s the judgments that are about to be revealed.

Let me take a detour here. There was a way that kings were coroneted. There were just certain elements that were a part of the coronation ceremony both for Israelite kings and then you saw this happening for Roman emperors and Caesars too down the road. But in 2 Kings 11:12 this was kind of the pattern. Keep your finger here in Revelation and turn to 2 Kings 11:12.

Now the covenant was called the testimony, but it was also called the scroll. It was a list of the agreement that God had with his people. It was also a list of the king’s genealogy proving his royal bloodline. And it was also a bunch of titles that were applied to the king describing his greatness.

My take is that Revelation 4 and 5 is a description of Jesus Christ being king of all reality and the scroll could represent a lot of things.

Let’s go back to Revelation. Notice what John says, he adds this fascinating little detail in Revelation 5:1.

…a scroll with writing on both sides…

I think what’s in the scroll are all the titles and attributes of Jesus Christ and the reason that John included this little detail about writing on both sides is because there is just so much to say that one side wasn’t enough. It’s my personal take that Jesus Christ is being crowned here for all time king. And the scroll is being held out.

Read Revelation 5:3-14

I’m going to go back and make some comments from this passage.

In 5:4, it is John who wept and wept.

In 5:5 we see two references to Old Testament prophecies (The Lion of the tribe of Judah—Genesis 49 and the Root of David—Isaiah 11) that were fulfilled in Jesus.

In 5:6 John says he saw a Lamb. So we hear about a lion, and now we hear about a lamb. A lamb looking as if it had been slain, the Passover lamb. This is Jesus. And had seven horns—he had perfect power—remember, seven is the number of perfection.

In 5:8 it says they fell down before the Lamb. So prior to this point they had been worshiping the one true God, now Jesus shows up and now they worship him too.

5:8 goes on the mention the prayers of the saints. What happens to your prayers? Isn’t that interesting, they resonate before the throne of God according to John. I just think that’s fascinating.

In 5:10-13 we see this idea of concentric circles worshiping before the throne. The four living creatures and the twenty-four elders is one circle. And then you step back another level and angels numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand, another circle worshiping before the throne. And then in verse 13 every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them. Alright, so does that leave anybody out? I mean when Paul says at the name of Jesus every one of us will bow, understand that no matter what you believe in this life, you will come to believe in him in the next. That doesn’t mean we’re all going to heaven. What that means is that we will all be faced with the recognition of what has been true all along. That he is lord, he is savior, he is messiah, and he’s exalted and risen and majestic.

And every creature sings, To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever.

And the four living creatures said, “Amen,” which means so be it. And the elders fell down and worshiped.

One point for us: What is the response of everything in heaven to the unveiling glory of Jesus?

Worship.

Worship.

Falling face down, taking the victor’s crowns they’d received and laying them at his feet.

Everybody in concentric circles focusing inward.

Do you imagine in heaven in those moments that anyone is walking around with their résumé? Or a list of the accomplishments that we have? I mean it’s like he has this massive scroll with writing on both sides and I have a little itty-bitty piece of scroll that has like writing on not even 1/8th that says I was this, and I had this…

Do you think anybody will be doing that when they see Jesus for who he is?

The point of Revelation 4 and 5 is simply this: there is a center to heaven, there is a center to the universe, there is a center to all reality. And at the center of all of that is a throne. And upon that throne sits not one of us.

How much pain and struggle comes when we sit where only he should be sitting? I mean how many conflicts do we have with each other that are based nothing more on ego? If one of us would be willing to admit that we were sorry the conflict would disappear. But it’s been too long, and I’m too entrenched, and I love that seat! How much of the agony that we experience as fallen creatures comes because we sit where only he belongs?

Worship starts with the recognition of where he sits, that he is the only one worthy.

And in response, what do we do?

Do we argue about whether they are hymns or choruses?

Argue about whether you should wear suits or shorts?

Argue about whether it should be loud or soft?

No. What do we do?

Fall flat before him.

So many of the discussions we have about worship aren’t discussions about him, they’re discussions about us. What we want, our preferences. And again, fine to have preferences but they so easily and quickly turn into idols when we say, I can’t worship unless…

Nobody there is arguing about this stuff. That’s just something we do because fundamentally we come at worship with our convenience in view.

I have to war against evaluating a church service the same way I evaluate a movie. Think about it, when you come into a movie theater, what are you concerned about? Where you sit and who’s going to be noisy around you.

Don’t you open that piece of whatever behind me slowly, just open it quick!

Turn off your cell phone.

Right? I mean I’ve got my turf, I got my seat, and I’m ready. Watching a movie is having something done to you right? I mean you don’t participate in it. Just like church for a lot of folks. We just sit and watch. I just don’t go into the theater and they just show whatever they want. I pick it; they don’t pick it for me. And then, we walk out of the theater asking one simple question: What did you think? And the way that we affirm or critique the movie isn’t based on some objective guidance principle thing, it’s just on whether or not I liked it. My own personal preferences. How many of us, I’m at the top of the list, do the same thing here? It’s human nature, that’s why we need saving.

If you want to know what original sin is, it’s us wanting to be there. That’s all it is. And when we become disciples of Jesus we can still so jazz it up, to over spiritualize, really the fact that we’re still in that seat.

Worship begins with the recognition that he is on the throne.

I know that’s a no-brainer, but imagine if we really lived that way!

Imagine if we didn’t have to change our children or our spouses.

Imagine if I didn’t have to be the one who was always worried about money.

Imagine if I didn’t have to be the one that had to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders.

Just imagine that you actually find rest in knowing that at the center of the universe there is a throne and he is seated on it and that anytime you worship—in your obedience, in your singing, in this (this is worship)—you’re joining what is true about reality, that’s going on all the time.

I believe that worship is a response.

So, my journey changed from thinking that the sermon was the end zone, to recognizing that whoever is preaching is a worship leader.

And that my job—as God, by the power of his spirit draws me into adoration of him—is life change. That he’s just worth it. I don’t want to bow down to anything else.

The goal of our services isn’t to get information. The goal of our services is to bow down in praise and to reorient our life to the fact that he’s there and I’m not. Because we spend the rest of our week clutching on to that thing. And so we need to come in and be reminded, Alright, alright, yes, yes, I remember you’re God and I’m not. Thank you. Yes.

That’s worship. That’s where it starts.

We don’t come up with worship feelings. We don’t conjure up great singing. The goal is to get him in view. And when you really do that, you just can’t help but respond.

So, worship starts with the recognition that there is a center to the universe, there is a center to reality, there is a center to heaven, and at that center is a throne and we are not on it. He is the only one worthy. So we might have been bowing down all week to other stuff but when we come together we declare his praises to realign and reorient and remind ourselves that he sits on the throne.

We don’t have to carry the whole the thing.

We can’t.

It’s allusion to think we can.

I want to take this conversation one step further. We’re going to jump around a little bit and then we’ll land making one big point at the end.

In Exodus 3 we see God talking to Moses telling him that he’s God’s chosen instrument to deliver his people out of slavery. Moses in response has some thoughts, some suggestions, a couple of questions he needs to iron out with the Almighty. And God patently kind of leads him through this. One of the questions Moses has is in verse 13.

Read Exodus 3:13-15

Now as a reminder, Egyptian religion was made up of a lot of itty-bitty tiny vending machine gods. There was the god of fertility. And a god of the crops. And a god of this and of a god of that. And they all had names. So if you wanted a successful childbirth you’d appease the god of fertility. If you wanted a good crop you’d appease this god or that god. Their names were important because their names told you how those gods worked.

Moses was raised in Pharaoh’s court. Naturally he was aware of all these itty-bitty pretender gods and their names and so it was natural for him to say, Well people are going to wonder what this God’s name is, what should I say?

God’s response is, I am who I am, or I am what I am, or I will be what I will be, you can translate it a number of different ways.

This phrase comes from a Hebrew verb that means, “to be.” So here is what God is saying to Moses, in contradiction to all of those little-bitty pretender Egyptian gods, I actually exist. I am, as opposed to those who are just kind of made up. I actually am—and that’s how God refers to himself—I am.

So it’s interesting that when Jesus starts marching around in the book of John and says I am, I am, before Abraham was, I am. All of that is declaration of deity, but that is a different talk.

God gives Moses the name that they’re going to use to describe God.

In Exodus 3:15 when we see “The LORD” —capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D—that is an English approximation of four Hebrew consonants that are called the tetragrammaton. The Hebrew consonants are Y H V H or Y H W H and there weren’t vowels and so we have to kind of guess at how this was pronounced. Our best guess is Yahweh but that’s not right because the Jews quit using this name.

And so God says this is the name that you are to call me.

6,800 times in our Bibles, whenever to see capital L O R D it is the name Yahweh. The name Yahweh is the 3rd person form of “I Am.” When God refers to himself he says, “I Am.” When we refer to God, using the name Yahweh, it’s “He is.”

What I want you to see is God is doing two things at once in giving Moses this name. Would you agree with me that there is a difference between calling somebody by their title and calling somebody by their name? For example, my wife doesn’t walk around calling me teacher, or husband, or fellow taxpayer, or any of the titles I’ve got. What does she call me? Jared. And the people who know me call me by that name.

So when God says to Israel, here is my name, that is a communication of relationship. God is actually deepening the invitation into relationship.

Do you see this point?

What I also want you to see is that at the same time God is inviting them into relationship, the name itself communicates holiness and mystery and otherness. It’s not like you can figure God out by simply saying “He is.” On the one hand God in inviting people into relationship using his name, but on the other hand that very name itself communicates great mystery and majesty about what God is like. Do you see this? Theologians call this the tension between Gods imminence, which means that he is close, and his transcendence, which means that he is not just like us. He’s holy. He’s majestic.

This tension between his closeness and his otherness is what fuels our worship.

On the one hand we know him and can approach his throne confidently. But on the other hand we should never be so arrogant as to think we’ve got him figured out—that he’ll fit on our tiny little boxes. God constantly reminds his people that he’s bigger than they are.

We see another picture of this, this tension between his imminence and his transcendence. In Exodus 19 God brings his people to Mount Sinai and he says for three days I want you to get prepared for what’s coming next.

Read Exodus 19:16-19

In verse 16 we hear about a trumpet blast, again, something royal, something kingly is happening. How comfortable would you be approaching the foot of this mountain? There’s thunder and lightening, a thick cloud over it. In verse 19 it says God answered Moses. We get this picture of God speaking to his people. He is about to reveal his law to the people.

And we think of it as a bunch of rules. That’s not the way we should think about it. The law was God’s revelation of his character and how already redeemed people should live. The Ten Commandments are declarations of freedom. You’re already redeemed; if you want to stay free, live this way.

It really is easier just to worship one god, it really is—and the real God at that.

It really is easier if you don’t murder people.

Stay faithful to your spouse. Life is just better this way.

But all of this is tied to what God is like and so there’s all these things going on. But what I want you to see is that God is inviting his people even deeper into relationship. Now he’s saying I want to show you how to live as my people. I will be your God, you will be my people, and here is what it’s going to look like.

It’s this huge invitation; again it’s a relationship. But at the very same time, God is taking great pains to remind them that he’s not just like them. So the mountain, smoke, fire, thunder, lightening. In fact he’ll say to his people, nobody should touch this mountain or they will die. So on the one hand, God is speaking and revealing and inviting his people into covenant relationship. But he’s doing it in such a way as to remind them; I’m not just like you. I’m holy, I’m majestic, I’m awesome.

Now all of this leads us back to the book of Revelation. You see this same thing there. The book of Revelation ends with God dwelling now among people. And his people now worship, and celebrate, and live with him in a new heavens and a new earth forever and ever and ever. And the picture we get in Revelation 4 and 5 kind of sets us up for this.

In Revelation 4 and 5 we recognize the one who sits on the throne, we recognize the lamb—but at the same time (we touched on this earlier) there’s so much detail and there’s so many things going on here that we can’t help but be reminded that this whole thing is way bigger than we are. And the responses of the people in worship are really descriptive and prescriptive for us.

Read Revelation 4:9-10

The twenty-four elders do what? They fall down before him.

Read Revelation 5:8

The four living creatures and the twenty-four elders do what? Fall down before the Lamb.

Read Revelation 5:14

The elders do what? They fall down and worship.

You can trace this falling down throughout the book of Revelation. The book actually begins with John, a friend of Jesus so intimate with him that he’s called the disciple whom Jesus loved. But he sees the risen Jesus, this guy he’s walked with intimately for years, and he falls down as though dead. That’s how the book opens. And then all through the book—they fall down in worship, they fall down in worship, they fall down in worship.

And in fact throughout the Scriptures you see the same thing.

Just really quickly I want to show you this common reaction.

In Genesis, Abraham fell face down when God revealed his covenant.

In Leviticus, Moses and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance of the tent of meeting and fell face down and the glory of the Lord appeared to them.

Even other gods would fall face down before Yahweh. Remember this story in 1 Samuel 5? The Philistines had captured the ark and took it to a city named Ashdod. They carried the ark into Dagon’s temple, the god of the Philistines, and they set it beside Dagon. The next morning when the people woke up Dagon was fallen on his face before the ark. What do they do? Fixed him up, straighten him out, only to discover the same thing the next morning!

In Ezekiel, when he gets a vision of heaven, he falls face down. In Matthew when Jesus is transfigured, when the disciples heard and saw this they fell face down to the ground terrified.

The Bible takes pains to remind us of two central things. First, that God is close, the kingdom is available, and Jesus will never leave us or forsake us. That is all true and we rejoice in that. But second, at the very same time, the temptation of the people of God has always been to soften him, and to tame him, and to manage him. I mean what do the Israelites do after they receive the Ten Commandments? They make a golden cow and call it Yahweh (Exodus 32) because they didn’t like the whole thunder, lightening, fire, smoke thing.

We want a God who’s manageable.

We want a God who’s safe.

We want a God who’s tame and understandable—we do!

So that’s why in the Old Testament the call for the Old Testament people was to worship with something called the fear of the Lord. You’re not afraid of him, but there’s respect.

The New Testament way of putting that same concept is to worship with reverence and awe.

Let’s look at this concept of reverence. Reverence guards us against thinking that Jesus is just our buddy. It guards us against a flippancy that so characterizes our worship today and the worship in my heart.

Here are synonyms for reverence, for what it means to revere something:
- to honor it and regard it
- to venerate it
- to approach it cautiously
- to stand in amazement and awe of it
- to treat it with deference

When I hear the word reverence I have a tendency to think of stained glass, robes, candles. I think of formality when I think of reverence. But that’s not what I’m getting at.

The opposite of reverent is flippant.

To revere something means that I respect it. We know what reverence is. If the President of the United States calls me tomorrow and says you know I need your take on whatever and I say you know I’m sorry dude but I’ve got an appointment that day I just can’t make it. You’d think I was crazy.

To revere and respect means that I adjust to him.

And what we see in Revelation when we get a picture of a throne and concentric circles all focused inward is that we adjust to him. That’s what it is to revere. That’s why all of these people, when they see God as he really is, they’re falling face down. This isn’t just about bodies and how to involve our bodies in worship. But it really is about an attitude of the heart. Isn’t it?

There are some of us that need to be reminded so desperately that God is close to us. He’s not distant and he’s not far away. He’s intimately involved in our lives and he’s concerned more than we can imagine about us.

And at the same time, there are many of us who just need to be reminded that coming before the creator of the universe isn’t just like going to a family reunion or something. There’s something else involved there.

When God starts declaring what acceptable worship looks like, this theme of reverence—the fear of God, the recognition that he’s other, and he’s holy—and yes we can come boldly, reverence guards us against the temptation to think that because we know him he has to be understandable now, he has to fit in our boxes now, he has to make sense.

Whether we know it or not all of us are bringing in assumptions and preferences and things that have been ingrained in us toward what worship is and even about what we do together at our “worship gatherings.” But our opinion of worship is infinitely secondary to God’s opinion about worship.

How does God want to be worshiped?

I wonder if any of us ever drive home from church going I wonder how God felt about worship today.

I wonder if God thought it was good.

What did God even think was good about it?

I don’t know if we’d even know how to answer that question.

What does God think good worship looks like in our gatherings? When God’s people come before him to bring him worship, what’s the kind of worship he’s looking for?

Earlier this summer I was taking a walk one morning with my son. We were walking through the streets of JonghLi in Taiwan on our way to a newfound park we’d been enjoying over the previous several days. I don’t know why, but I began meditating on the Scripture, They worship me in vain… (Mark 7:7, Matthew 15:9). Wow! It’s possible to worship God in vain! I not attempting to manipulate the biblical context of the passage but the fact is there was a group of very religious people who were admonished by Jesus for worshiping in vain.

In vain.

Can you imagine how devastated, overwhelmed, or stunned we would be if we did certain things in vain?

Invested our entire working lives for retirement in vain.

Financed a huge purchase in vain.

The point for us is do we, would we feel that same weight over the thought of worshiping God in vain?

Genesis 1:1 tells us that in the very beginning God created the heavens and the earth. As the centerpiece of his creation he created the human race. God created the human race for intimacy, for relationship, for worship. And what did we do? We turned from the worship of God to the worship of creation. And that’s been the basic problem of the human race ever since. The Bible calls that idolatry.

God gave specific instructions about how he was to be worshiped. What was at the heart of that worship? At the heart of worship God wanted sacrifice. And so God’s people would bring the lamb, the goat, the grain offering. They would bring tokens of creation to sacrifice before the creator.

I believe that one of the reasons God instituted sacrifice at the heart of their worship was that each time they brought the sacrifice—a piece of creation—they were telling God that you the creator are more important to us that the creation.

Even though they followed this pattern that God had instituted, even though they did it really well, we know that it didn’t really do the trick did it? The problem with it was that perfect worship requires the perfect worshiper. And none of them were perfect worshipers.

The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.

And so God scoured the earth for the one human being who could be the perfect worshiper. And perhaps if he could find one human being who could offer him perfect worship then through that human being maybe others would be sanctified. And God couldn’t find one—until Jesus.

In the New Testament rarely does Jesus say, Hey you guys are doing a really good job, well it’s kind of good, what I want you to do is just try a little better, just try a little harder. The temptation for us today, right now, would be to just change our worship a little bit. I think the call that Jesus would make to us right now is to repent in our worship.

To say:

Sometimes I just go through the motions.

Sometimes I don’t come in prepared.

Sometimes my heart isn’t always here.

Sometimes I’m not full of awe and wonder.

God, again we recognize that you are on the throne, the center of the universe. Would you help us to turn around and to approach you with awe and with wonder and with amazement. God we just confess right now that you are worthy. Bring us close to you and draw us into you in worship. As your people we join in with the chorus

Holy, holy, holy
is the Lord God Almighty,
who was, and is, and is to come.

Holy, holy, holy
is the Lord God Almighty,
who was, and is, and is to come.

Holy, holy, holy
is the Lord God Almighty,
who was, and is, and is to come.

Holy, holy, holy
is the Lord God Almighty,
who was, and is, and is to come.

Amen

my inspiration for this blog came in whole or in part from a sermon series on worship i podcasted from rockharbor.org
the five part series took place from 10.29.06-11.26.06