The JOY of Worship – What God Gets from your worship
Gladstone Baptist Church – 13/3/05 am
Well, we’ve come to the end of our series on the JOY of Worship.
We’ve seen so far that Worship is living a life that is surrendered to Jesus. It involves the SPECIFIC act of singing praises or giving glory to God, but it also involves the GENERAL act of living a life of surrender in every area of our lives. It is handing over our will to God in our work life, our family life, our social life, our recreational life, our financial life and even our emotional life.
So far we’ve investigated what Others Get out of our worship and what You get out of your worship.
- When we worship, the church is BUILT UP. Worship involves us doing, not just singing. It involves us caring for others, and ministering to their needs. If we truly worship God, we will be involved in the activities of fellowship and of ministry and in so doing, we will build up the body of believers we call Gladstone Baptist Church. Is your worship building up the body?
- When we worship, others outside of the church will be BROUGHT IN. Worship is meant to be a witness to those around us of God’s goodness, His might, His power. When we live a life that is surrendered to God, it is meant to be so obvious to those around us, that they will be attracted, challenged and led into a relationship with God. When we worship, we will evangelise this world. Is your worship bringing in the unbelievers?
- When we worship, we BECOME best friends with God and we BECOME LIKE Christ. Worship is surrender to God. Worship is living a life that is in accordance with His will, with His standards, with his plan for our life. Christ lived such a life - He submitted to God’s will, He lived a perfect life in line with God’s standards, He followed God’s plan for His life and death. When we live a life surrendered to God, we become like Jesus, our perfect example of a surrendered life and we learn about who God is in all his glory. This is dischipleship. When we worship, we will get to Know God and we become like Christ
Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve covered the O – Others and the Y – Yourself in the last 3 weeks. This morning we are going to consider the J – What does God or Jesus get out of our worship.
We’ve come to learn, that worship is not about us. It is not centred on us, but on GOD. Though worship may have some benefits for us, it is not about us. Our worship should never be based on whether we FEEL like it, or whether the music is to our liking, or whether we are please with the situation we find ourselves in. I know we don’t have servants any more, but imagine you lived a couple of hundred years ago and you had maids and servants. Could you imagine a servant saying to their master, “I don’t feel like bringing you your coffee this morning – I had a fight with my wife this morning”, or “I don’t want to clean the house today – I don’t like the music you’ve got on your CD”, or “I’m happy to serve you, but only between 9:30 and 11:00 on Sunday morning.” If this was the attitude of your servant, you would get rid of them fairly quickly wouldn’t you. They wouldn’t be worth having around at all, because you couldn’t depend on them.
When we live a life of surrender to God, it should not depend on how we are feeling or where we are. God desires we live a life of full surrender to him. It is a 24hr, 7 day a week thing. It is something we do through our whole life because our surrender involves living as a sacrifice to God. It is a commitment we make to Him because of what He has done for us.
So what does God get from our worship?
1) Our worship gives God PATERNAL PLEASURE.
First and foremost, God is pleased when we worship Him. We were CREATED for God’s pleasure. – We know that. Ps 147:11 “The Lord is pleased only with those who worship Him and trust his love.” Our worship gives God pleasure … so God wants us to worship Him.
Some people can’t accept that a good God would create us to worship Him. They say such a God would have to be an EGOCENTRIC MANIAC who gets off on people worshipping Him. Some would say that God is incredibly vain to want people to say how great He is. There are several responses to this dilemma …
a) It is not vanity to expect praise for PRAISEWORTHY acts. We all desire praise when we have done something of merit. Vanity is excessive pride, not appropriate pride. God as the creator of this world, as sustainer of everything that is living, or the one who has rescued us from our own sinful way of life, has done so many praiseworthy things, that it is not wrong to praise Him or to expect praise.
b) Praise is actually OBLIGATORY for certain acts. Imagine there was a flooded river and somehow a few guys got swept away by the river. They somehow managed to cling to a tree and find safety in its branches, but they were stuck and in real danger due to the cold. A rescue team is dispatched the only way to reach you is for one person to go upstream, and try to swim out to you before they are swept downstream further. Though teathered to the bank, this person is at real risk of drowning also or getting caught in debris also. The rescuer and the act of rescue would not just deserve praise, but require praise. What if immediately you were rescued, you turned and walked away without any thanks or praise. You would be branded selfish, ungrateful, even immoral. Some acts don’t just deserve praise, it is morally right to give praise. God has rescued you by giving up his life for you. This is an act which morally requires our praise.
c) To not praise God is act of SELFISHNESS AND VANITY. I’ll tell you what I mean by this. We all seek praise of others, for things we do or who we are don’t we. But who really deserves praise. Us? Where did we get the skills from? You say, I read a book. Where did we get the intelligence and the ability to learn the skills? Where did you get your good looks from? If you are honest, you will trace everything good about yourself back to another person or to some intrinsic characteristic you were born with. Who created you and gave you those intrinsic characteristics? God did. Who is worthy of praise when you get a promotion or when you win a competition or when you succeed at something? Well ultimately God does, because he is the one who created you and gave you the ability to succeed. A person who says, that God does not deserve any worship or praise or honour is a person who says – I am who I am because of what I’ve done. I am a self made man. That person wants to take all the credit himself for what God has done. How would you describe such a person – Arrogant, self centered, vain? You see to think that God is vain in expecting praise is to be completely vain yourself.
God is not vainly seeking your approval. He didn’t invent worship to somehow get you to stroke his heavenly ego. Let’s face it, God doesn’t need anything to make him complete.
- He already knows everything so worship doesn’t surprise Him.
- He already owns everything, so worship doesn’t enrich Him.
- He already is perfect, so worship doesn’t improve Him.
- He already is complete, so worship doesn’t fulfil Him.
A Hasidic story tells of a tailor who approaches his rabbi and says, "I have a problem with my prayers. I am a tailor, and from time to time people compliment me on my skills. It is very satisfying to hear their praise. One kind word can keep me going for a week. But if people came to me all day every day saying, "Mendel, you are a wonderful tailor", "Mendel, you are a wonderful tailor", "Mendel, you are a wonderful tailor" it would drive me crazy. It would get to the point I wouldn’t want to hear another compliment every again! I would tell everyone to go away and leave me to work in peace. And this is what bothers me about prayer. If just once a week we told God how wonderful he is, and just a couple of us did this each week, that is all God would need. Is God really so insecure that he needs us all to praise him morning, noon and night? Hundreds, thousands, millions of people praying, all praising him. Surely this would drive God crazy?!"
The rabbi smiled and said, "Mendel, you are absolutely right. You have no idea how difficult it is for God to listen to all our praises, day in, day out, 24 hours a day. But God knows how important it is for us to offer our praise, and so, because of God’s great love God tolerates all of our prayers."
Interesting thought isn’t it. We gain from our worship and God tolerates it because it has great benefits for us.
But is there no benefit to God? Not in the way that he if he lacks worship he is any less of a supreme God. But He does benefit. We’ve already said that our Worship gives God pleasure …
Why? Because worship is all about relationships … When we worship God, we surrender our lives to Him. When we worship God, we honour him with our lives. In short, we get to know God through our worship. Jesus made it quite clear In John 15:9-15 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
When we worship God in our lives – when we surrender our lives to him and obey Him, we remain in his love, we are his friends. When we rebel against God and go our own way, our relationship is strained. When we worship God, our relationship is close. God desires a relationship with us – that is why he created us. So God’s desire is that we worship Him in order to keep our relationship healthy and strong.
It’s like a parent – you enjoy having a good relationship with your child. You enjoy when they obey you and do what you want, because there is peace and joy in the relationship. If they disobeyed you, you would still love them, wouldn’t you, but you wouldn’t get pleasure from their actions. But when they obey you and honour you, it gives you pleasure. The same is true with God. The act of obeying and honouring is what we call worship.
When we worship God, we give God Paternal Pleasure through the relationship we enjoy.
2) A second thing that God gets when we worship Him is that Our worship makes us WORTHY WARRIORS in God’s army. God is in a battle – a spiritual battle. Now God is all powerful, I know that and he has already conquered Satan on the cross. Rev 12:11 says “For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.”
Satan has already been defeated. God has already shown his power in this defeat, but the strange thing is that although Satan is defeated, he has not yet been defeated. It is a fact now that God has defeated Him, but the defeat has not yet been ultimately executed. Satan is still on the loose and has a freedom given by God to operate in this world. Every day we see the effects of his work in destroying people. This after all is Satan’s goal.
Did you know that God and Satan have one thing in common? They both desire your worship. Though Satan is defeated, He is still seeking your WORSHIP. God wants our worship because He deserves it and he knows that that is what we were created for. If we worship Him, we will find our purpose in life – fellowship, discipleship, ministry and evangelism.
But Satan wants our worship, because if we worship Him, he can destroy us.
There is a battle royal being raged in every corner of this world for people’s affections and allegience. Satan is fighting tooth and nail to take as many people down with him as possible. But do you know what? – there is some body in this world that stands in opposition to Satan’s work and can prevent his destructive work. That Some body is the CHURCH BODY. The Church is God’s body here on earth now who war against Satan – physically and spiritually.
God has always been at war against evil and we are his army in this world today. When Jesus commissioned Peter as the leader of the early church, He said this Matt 16:18-19 “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be e bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be f loosed in heaven.”
The church is in a battle, but the victory has been won. The gates of Hades or death can not overcome the church. His attacks are powerless against us if are wearing the armour God has provided.
But an army is only as good as its individual soldiers. Soldiers must be well disciplined. They must be obedient to their commander’s orders. They must be willing to give their lives if called to do so. They must be sold out or have their wills surrendered to the cause they are fighting for. Soldiers in God’s Army must be the same – they must lead surrendered lives. They must be WORSHIPPERS.
Unless we are worshipping Christians, we are not effective soldiers in God’s army because
- Unless we are worshipping Christians, we can not stand against the destruction that Satan continues to wreck on this world.
- Unless we are worshipping Christians, the church body will not be built up, it will remain a paralysed and pathetic blob in a nice church building. People won’t find fellowship. People won’t be ministered to. People will focus on their needs and forget about others.
- Unless we are worshipping Christians, those who are lost in this world will remain lost. They will not see that there is a better way – they will not be attracted, challenged and led to Christ. Instead they will die in sin and Satan will give a cheer for another small victory.
- Unless we are worshipping Christians, we will never grow to be like Christ and learn to wield his power in battle.
We are in a battle and Worship will make us warriors worthy of our calling in the army of Christ.
Michael Green has written … “I hope I am wrong, but I do not see the modern church, in the West at any rate, as a body which is alive to spiritual warfare. It seems pretty preoccupied with its own survival, its petty concerns, its tradition, its canons and its revised worship books.”
Are you a worthy warrior in God’s Army. That’s what he desires of us. People who will stand up and fight for Him in this world. People who will advance into Satan’s strongholds and take back people for Christ – people who are lost without Him. That is what God gets when we worship – Worthy Warriors.
Are you a worthy warrior today? Or do you need to start to worship and begin to wield the Power that is available to each of us through Jesus Christ.
Conclustion
Worship is giving God glory, but is so much more than singing. It encompasses our whole lives because God demands our whole lives. It is giving Glory and living a surrendered life. Worship is an amazing experience that touches God, Others and yourself. There are tremendous benefits for all concerned when we worship – there can be no doubt.
But this is where the baton must change hands. We’ve been sitting here for 3 weeks, talking about worship and what it is and what it isn’t. How you worship in Spirit and Truth and How you work it out in ministry, evangelism, fellowship and discipleship. But the baton is being transferring into your hands now and you must decide whether you will grasp onto it and run toward the finish line or whether you drop it on the track and walk out of the arena.
What are you going to do with this knowledge. I pray that you are going to put it into practice now. I pray that you are going to get up every morning and surrender yourself to God afresh – to live each day as a sacrifice that is living – walking, talking, working, playing. But it is up to you – To Worship or Not to Worship – that is the question.
For some of you, a light has gone on in your minds as we’ve talked about these things and you have begun for the first time to see that your life can’t be segmented into little bits. You need to get serious about God and serious about worshipping Him. I’m going to give you an opportunity soon to take a stand and in front of others, to commit to being worshipping God with your whole life.
For others, you have been trying to do this, but you are struggling. Jesus knows your desire to worship Him. It is hard – no one said it would be easy. But the hardest things to do are usually the most satisfying things, so don’t give up. Press on. The writer to the Hebrew 12 wrote … Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
Are you committed to running the race. Are you committed to worshipping God in spirit and in truth. Are you committed to help each other along – keeping each other accountable.
As we sing this last song, I’m going to be down the front and if you’ve realised that you haven’t been surrendering your whole life to God and you want to, I’d invite you to come and join me at the front as a statement of your intention to worship God with all your being. You may be doing this already, but you want to make a recommitment to that task – if that’s you, come and join me too. We at Gladstone Baptist Church need to be a worshipping church who run the race together. We as individual members of Christ’s body need to worshipping people – For God’s sake, for Other’s sake and for our own sakes. Are you ready to live the life of worship?
