Community Covenant Church - Sunday Celebrations

October 24, 2004

Our Purpose is to Celebrate (Worship God)
Psalm 100; John 4:23-24; Revelation 4:11; 7:9-17

As we come to the end of a fall season reminder of our purpose as the Church;
- to Communicate the Good News of God’s love and salvation in ` Jesus Christ,
- to Incorporate new believers into the Church,
- to Educate believers as to the way of Jesus Christ, and
- to Demonstrate God’s love to one another and the world,

... I find myself grieving that, in my generation, churches are more and more known by their style of worship, that they are by the love they convey. I grieve that words like “contemporary” or “traditional” are more frequently used to describe a family of faith, than are words like “loving”, “compassionate” or “healing”.

... How sad it is that “worship wars”, as many have called them, have divided church families, creating camps who pejoratively viewing others as either “shallow-thinking chorus singers” or ”irrelevant intellectual hymn-singers”.
In short, I grieve that in my generation, “worship” has become more about us than about God.

A couple months ago, Brian McLaren, a pastor and author well tuned into the emerging Church, painted the following word picture in Leadership Journal (August 31, 2004). He posed the question:
“If a Martian visited earth and observed earthlings at public worship in contemporary or nontraditional settings, what would he/she/it report back to the home planet? (A similar exercise could be imagined for more traditional churches, with different results.)
My friend John, a music professor rather than an extraterrestrial, noticed something too few earthlings have noticed (see his full article at www.anewkindofchristian.com). Too many of our worship songs are more about us than God. Yes, we say the words "praise/thank/bless God," but mostly, what for? .....
.... For glorious attributes and wonderful mysteries? For historic deeds and cosmic judgments? For rescuing the widow and orphan? For setting the captive free? For humbling the arrogant and sending the rich away hungry? For spinning galaxies and salting starfields with glorious light? Uh, no. “

McLaren then goes on to shed light on the infiltration of self-centeredness into praise & worship music..... but an infiltration that is not unnoticed by the emerging Church. So he writes on with hope :
“... They've grown tired of songs that worship our beautiful, passionate sincerity, and include God as an accessory to our own material, emotional, and spiritual affluence. .....
... But if there's even a spark of something else at work in the emergent conversation, just a flicker of hope that the real God is to be found outside the dome of a narcissistic consumer religion (in any of its demographic forms), and that God is actually so wonderful that we would actually like to sing and preach about God for a while, more than ourselves, then we should fan that flame.”

Today, I grieve that in my generation, “worship” has become more about us than about God. But today, we confess and confront that trend, as we remind ourselves that a great purpose of the Church is to Worship God, ...to CELEBRATE God and not ourselves.... for it is when we give “worth” to God by surrendering our imperfect nature to God’s loving, holy, righteous, faithful, all sufficient nature, that we discover what true celebration in worship is all about.

I have mentioned before that the actual word “worship” come from an Old English word meaning “worth-ship” . It was a word that described the assessing of something/someone’s worth and then declaring that worth in appropriate ways.
Last Sunday afternoon I had the privilege of officiating at a wedding in the Meeting House of Old Sturbridge Village. For centuries men and women would, on their wedding day, describe their “worship” of one another, expressing the “worth” they accorded and now publicly declare for their beloved. There are still elements of today’s wedding liturgy that vocalize the admiration that brides and grooms have for one another. “Worth-ship”
But today we state that a great purpose of God’s Church is not to “worth-ship” ourselves, but to celebrate God’s worth, ... it is to surrender ourselves, and worship God alone.

One of the great examples of human surrender and the worship of God, is found in Genesis 22:1-13, the story of God’s testing of Abraham. For there we see Abraham’s willingness to surrender all his his hope and future in the person of his son Isaac.
In this story, Abraham tells his servants to wait behind, as he and Isaac went on to a place where they would worship God. Abraham knew that “worship” meant surrender.. it meant a sacrifice.
In the worship of God, Abraham would obediently place his only son upon the alter. But, finding Abraham willing, God’s stopped the sacrifice, and discovered in Abraham one who truly worshiped Him. Abraham became our father of faith, who models for humanity the worship of a merciful & loving God, along with modeling a trust in God and God’s promises that supersede human wisdom, human feelings, human choices and human plans. All this is surrendered, as we worship God.

So if worship is surrender, how do we worship God today?

The Bible tells us that we must
1. Surrender our minds

Romans 12:2
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is —his good, pleasing and perfect will.

One of the best illustrations of the renewal of a person’s mind is found in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John. Here we see Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman. While there is much in this story that speaks to social and spiritual renewal, Jesus and this woman have an interesting dialogue that speaks to the surrendering of our minds... our human “conclusions”, “convictions” and “traditions”.
For years, Jews & Samaritans had argued over worship practices, they were having their own “worship wars”... specifically about where God had centered His worship. We hear this in their dialogue:

John 4:19-26

19 “Sir,” the woman said, ...... 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
:21 Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
26 Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”

At it’s essence, worship is not about buildings or locations, it is not about contemporary or traditional music styles or whether we are Jewish or Samaritan, Swedish or Chinese . It is not about us at all. It is about God, and surrendering ourselves to God’s indwelling spirit and His Word which is truth.
Just as it was for this Samaritan woman, it is for us as well; the Messiah has come and has explained everything to us. Has your mind accept it? Have you surrendered a personal preference mentality of worship, and discovered that true worship of God happens in spirit and in truth? As Rick Warren wrote in The Purpose Driven Life (p. 101):

“Worship must be based on the truth of scripture,
not our opinions about God.”

To worship God we must surrender our minds... our ideas, opinions and practices that are not biblical, and learn to worship God in spirit and truth.

To worship God we must also
2. Surrender our feelings
As we surrender our minds to God, we are not parking our intellect at the door, we are simply allowing God’s Word to define the truth by which we will live. And that Word will teach us that God, and not us, is the center of worship.
But again, I grieve that in my generation, “worship” has become more about us, than about God. And one of the ways we see that clearly is the human pursuit of feelings or emotions. Again, Rick Warren in The Purpose Driven Life (p. 109) hits the nail on the head when he writes:

“The most common mistake Christians make in worship today
is seeking an experience rather than seeking God.”

To worship God, we must surrender our feelings.... we must make our desire to experience God secondary to seeking God. Worship will indeed be joyful celebration when we seek God and find him, but when we seek an experience, more than we seek God, our worship falls short. For it is faith, not feelings that pleases God. He wants us to know Him and trust Him. Unlike an unhealthy marriage relationship that often times is based only on passion, which ends when the honeymoon is over, God call us to surrender a feelings-only approach to worship, so that our relationship with God finds it’s base on an ever-deepening awareness of His Word, His Promises, and His faithfulness.
Now listen carefully.... as one emotive person speaking to many who translate life in a similar way, I am not telling you not to feel God’s presence.... we wants that.... He wants us to experience Him intellectually, relationally and emotionally. But what I am trying to say, is that may people today seek worship that gives them pleasure, that makes them feel good. But worship is not about us finding pleasure... it is about bringing pleasure to God, which happens when His people seek Him more than an experience..
The New Living Translation of Revelation 4:11 reads:

Revelation 4: 11 (NLT)
    "You are worthy, O Lord our God,
        to receive glory and honor and power.
    For you created everything,
        and it is for your pleasure that they exist and were created."

Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright © 1996 by Tyndale Charitable Trust.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers.

When we worship, we surrender ourselves to a loving and completely trustworthy God.
- We surrender our minds so that we can grow in truth.
- We surrender our feelings so that we can grow deeper in faith.

Worship also requires that we
3. Surrender our Bodies
Worshiping God is not a Sunday only thing. In other words, worship is not just a part of our life, it is our life. Our lives were designed to bring glory to God.. to reveal and proclaim God’s worth in very tangible, practical ways:

- When we feed the hungry and cloth the naked we worship a God who cares for the poor and oppressed..
- When we share the Good News of Jesus Christ we worship God who seeks and saves those lost in sin.
- When we struggle to leave our personal demons behind,
we worship a God whose Spirit transforms us and
Worship is not a part of our life, it is our life. The Apostle Paul exhorts us:

Romans 12:1
..... I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God —
this is your spiritual act of worship.

- Isaac was a living sacrifice offered to God, spared by God’s mercy. - Jesus was a living sacrifice, allowed to die on the cross because of God’s mercy for us, but raised from the dead.

In view of that mercy, let us worship God by surrendering our bodies as “living sacrifices” which point others to God.
Remember the Old Testament story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Remember the devotion of these three men to worship God alone. Remember the fiery furnace that did not consume them. Remember their witness to King Nebuchadnezzar, and to others busy worshiping false gods.
How does your daily worship of God set you apart as a light for neighbors and friends? We worship God when we surrender our bodies to Him

Finally, let me suggest to you today that we worship God when we
4. Surrender to God’s work of redemption & wholeness

In surrendering ourselves to God, we do so to One who is not only loving and merciful, but to the very Creator and Redeemer of all.
In this election year, with candidates criticizing opponents as they paint utopian pictures of life if they are elected, remember to surrender your visions of tomorrow to God’s work of redemption and wholeness. For it is a reality into which God invites your participation. For He...

2 Corinthians 5:18-20a
18 .......who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.

To worship God is to surrender to God’s plan of reconciliation, it means laying aside human plans that ignore the realities of sin, confession, repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation.

One of the most beautiful passages of scripture describing the worship of God, also describes where God’s plan of reconciliation will lead. Here we receive the promises of God for our future if we worship Him. We read from the Apostle John’s vision.... his revelation

Revelation 7:9-17

9 After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. 10 And they cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.”

11 All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 saying:

“Amen!

Praise and glory
and wisdom and thanks and honor
and power and strength
be to our God for ever and ever.
Amen!”

13 Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes —who are they, and where did they come from?”

14 I answered, “Sir, you know.”
And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 15 Therefore,

“they are before the throne of God
and serve him day and night in his temple;
and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them.

16 Never again will they hunger;
never again will they thirst.
The sun will not beat upon them,
nor any scorching heat.

17 For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd;
he will lead them to springs of living water.
And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

It is with that vision... a vision where God is at the center of our worship that we discover true worship. For it is when we give “worth” to God by surrendering our imperfect nature to God’s loving, holy, righteous, faithful, all sufficient nature, that we discover what true celebration in worship is all about.
As God’s Church in the world today we are called to Communicate, Incorporate, Educate, Demonstrate and Celebrate God in Worship.
We do so as we keep our eyes upon the Father... and upon the Lamb... Jesus Christ, and upon the Spirit who leads us in truth.

AMEN

Application Questions

When you come to worship on Sunday morning, do you come to surrender to God and declare His worth, or do you come for yourself.... to sing your favorite songs/hymns and enjoy time with friends?

How does God want your mind to be renewed regarding worship, so that we can you can worship Him “in Spirit and in truth”?

Do you view worship as a part of your life, or do you see worship as defining life itself, a weekly orienting event that shapes the rest of your week?

If worship is surrender, how do you surrender to God on Sunday morning?

How does your daily worship of God set you apart as a light for neighbors and friends?