[Re]levant Worship
Nehemiah 12:27-47
The city of Berlin, Germany will be forever known for its Wall. When the wall was still in existence, you could walk up and down in front of it and see shrines dedicated to those who were killed trying to escape from the oppression of the East to the freedom of the West. The Berlin wall gained fame as a wall that divided, but Jerusalem’s wall was one which united the people of Israel. Our Scripture today tells the story of the dedication of the wall around Jerusalem and how all of the people in Jerusalem and the surrounding villages were united in one voice and one spirit under one God. It describes a wonderful worship service which celebrated that the city had been rebuilt and repopulated.
Our Scripture today teaches much about worship. Worship is extremely important in life. What most people don’t understand is that everybody worships something. Worship is that which you hold most closely in the deepest recesses of your heart. And whatever you worship, you become. When you worship something it impacts every area of your life. That’s why worship is so important. Today, we’re going to be talking about five deliberate actions of worship.
First, worship is giving thanks. This is why whenever we gather for worship, the very first thing we do is give thanks and praise to God. The people of Israel had much to give thanks for because God had done so much for them. He had provided a Persian king who allowed them to return from captivity. He gave them safe journey to Israel. He provided the strength and fortitude to complete the wall. He protected them from the opposition which arose against the rebuilding of the wall. And finally, God rebuilt Jerusalem and re-inhabited it and the Temple. The people of Israel come to remember all that God has done in their lives and all he is continuing to do. The same is true for us as well. Worship is about giving thanks.
Max Lucado tells about living as an American in Brazil. One day, as he was walking along the street on his way to the University to teach a class, he felt a tug on his pants leg. Turning around, he saw a little boy about 5 or 6 years old with dark beady eyes and a dirty little face. The little boy looked up at him and said, "Bread, Sir." He was a little beggar boy and Lucado said, "There are always little beggar boys in the streets of Brazil. Usually I turn away from them because there are so many and you can’t feed them all. But there was something so compelling about this little boy that I couldn’t turn away. So, taking his hand, I said, `Come with me’ and I took him into a coffee shop." Max told the owner, "I’ll have a cup of coffee and give the boy a piece of pastry…whatever he wants." Since the coffee counter was at the other end of the store, Max walked on and got a cup of coffee, thinking the boy would get the bread and then run back out into the street and disappear, as most did. But this one didn’t. After he got his pastry, he went over to him and just stood there until Lucado felt his staring eyes. Lucado said, "I turned and looked at him. Standing up, his eyes just about hit my belt buckle. Then slowly his eyes came up until they met mine. The little boy, holding his pastry in one hand, said, ‘Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.’” Lucado said, "I was so touched by the boy’s thanks that I would have bought him the store. I sat there for another 30 minutes, late for my class, just thinking about a little beggar boy who came back and said, `Thank you.’" And that is why we come to worship. We come back to God to give thanks for all he has given us.
The second definitive act of worship is to dedicate. To dedicate is to set apart. Every city in the ancient world was dedicated to some God whether it be Apollo or Venus or some other. Whenever you approached a city, there greeting you was a monument or stature of that god thus proclaiming who owns this city. If you were Jewish, you were forbidden to make a statue of God so you would dedicate a city to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob which means everything within these walls is dedicated to God. That means every home in the city is dedicated to God and is God’s homes. Every family is God’s family. Every business within these walls is God’s business. And all of the people associated with that city are God’s people and dedicated to God. It also means that every area of our life and every part of our day is dedicated to God. A dedicated life leads to a holy lifestyle. If my life is dedicated to the Lord then my marriage is dedicated to God. If my life is dedicated to the Lord then my work belongs to God. If my life is dedicated to the Lord then my health is dedicated to God. If my life is dedicated to the Lord then my finances are dedicated to God. That can make all the difference in the world.
For years Gordon MacDonald rode the same bus daily from his home to his church in New York City. One day the bus driver complained to MacDonald: “You’ve got it a lot better than me. You have an interesting job and travel different places. I just drive this bus up and down the same streets every day.” MacDonald told the bus driver his job could be a Christian ministry too. “Every day, when you first get on this bus, before anyone else gets on, dedicate this bus to God for that day. Declare it to be a sanctuary for God. Consecrate it to God’s glory, and then act like it is a place where God dwells.” Several weeks later MacDonald returned from a trip and saw the bus driver. “You’ve transformed my life,” the man said. “I’ve been doing what you said every day, and it has made me see my job in an entirely new perspective.”
Too often we have limited worship to just that, one hour of worship. We compartmentalize the different areas of our life. As a result, we keep several areas outside our worship of God. That’s why this act of dedication is so difficult because it means we are not giving a part of ourselves but all of ourselves to God. But when we dedicate every area of our life, it makes all the difference. Worship through dedication involves every area of my life. And yet there are temptations to do otherwise each day. All of us face temptations to worship other things in this world. Jesus was tempted as well. Remember the third temptation of Jesus where Satan showed Jesus all of the luxury of the world and he said, All these things I will give you if you bow down and worship me. What tempted you this week to find life and meaning in other things? We deal with that constantly both privately and publicly. When Jesus was tempted, he said, Away from me Satan. And he told his disciples to “worship the Lord your God and serve him only.” Now here’s the key: if we don’t practice the act of dedication each day, then we worship and commit to the other gods of the world.
The third act of worship is to celebrate. Look at verse 27. “At the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem, the Levites were sought out from where they lived and were brought to Jerusalem to celebrate joyfully the dedication with songs of thanksgiving and with the music of cymbals, harps and lyres.” And yet too often in the church, our worship is anything but a celebration. Rod Cooper used to be the chaplain for the Houston Astros and the Oilers when he pastored in Texas. After he’d do chapel, they’d give him tickets to the game. One time in the Astrodome he watched Earl Campbell run over everybody, including his own men, to get to the goal line. When he put the ball down. The place went erupted and went crazy. They were giving high fives and jumping around. The scoreboard went off. The roar just rang throughout the entire Dome, because Earl had scored a touchdown. It was almost deafening And then he writes, “I’m not saying when you come to church you need to give each other high fives….but worship is a time of anticipation and expectation. We come to celebrate together because all week God has been knocking homeruns and scoring touchdowns. Worship is a time to celebrate what God has done for us.”
But we also come to celebrate God himself. When we celebrate God, we speak with our whole being that “the joy of the Lord is my strength.” Nehemiah 8:10 We celebrate not because of what’s happening in our lives but in spite of our circumstances. As Christians it is not the circumstance in which we find joy but the person of God who is our joy and our strength. We find our source of joy in the presence and promises of Jesus and working out the purpose of Jesus not in the absence of crisis. That means when we come together in community, we choose to speak blessings rather than curses, not because of what is going on in life but rather because of how good God is. You know the power of words but listen to what James has to say, “The tongue sets the whole course of life on fire.” And so when I chose to bless or curse, I will either set in motion the fires of Pentecost or the consuming fires of hell. In reality, there are some days you would rather curse than bless.
Tammy Faye Messner has dramatically changed in her life. At one point, she was a source of derision and humor in the church. Her makeup, eyeliner and tattoed-on eyebrows were fodder for many. Her first husband put her and her kids through one of the most public downfalls in the history of Christendom. She died last year but ten hours before her death she had been on the Larry King Show. Tammy Faye had fought cancer 18 years. When she appeared on Larry King, she weighed 65 pounds and had not eaten solid food for 3 months. She struggled to speak because of her breathing. And every word which came out of her mouth was one of love, grace and blessing. Jesus lifted her up long enough to give a praise blessing to the millions of people who watched her. When asked about the PT scandal and everything she had been trough, she said, How can I be angry at God for all the good things he has done.” With all that she had been through, she still knew God’s joy and peace. And Larry King who claims to be an agnostic did nothing but praise her life and attitude. When we choose to bless rather than curse, when we realize the Lord is the joy of my strength and not the absence of crisis, it not only impacts us but others around us too.
The fourth deliberate act of worship is to purify. “When the priests and Levites had purified themselves ceremonially, they purified the people, the gates and the wall.” Sometimes when you get closer you to Jesus, the more aware you are of broken areas in your own life. If I’m aware of it, you know God is aware of it, the filth of brokenness.
Last month we began building a pogoda over our deck. The carpenter did his work and I did all the painting. The paint he wanted to use was an oil-based, enamel. No matter how careful I was, I got paint on my hands, my elbows, my arms and even my legs. Mattie came out to help me one day and painted a little. When she tired of that, she went inside and tried to wash it off with soap and water but she couldn’t get it off. She came back out to me and I told her she was using the wrong stuff. Instead of water, she needed to use mineral spirits. And so she got a towel and put some spirits on it and began to scrub off the paint. And here’s what happened: that towel got paint and thinner all over it. You see, for something or someone to get clean, something else has to get dirty. The same is true for us and Jesus is the one who gets dirty to make us clean. Every day I have to remind myself, I can’t make myself clean. No matter how hard I try or no matter what I do, I can’t make myself clean. Jesus is the one who gets dirty by taking on my sins to make me clean. When we come before God and ask for forgiveness, when we come to the communion rail and receive the elements, we are made clean. It’s here at the table where Jesus gets dirty for us that we might be clean. “Let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.”
The fifth action of worship is sacrifice. Ghandi said, “One deadly sin is worship without sacrifice.” Verse 43 says, “And on that day they offered great sacrifices, rejoicing because God had given them great joy.” Notice that sacrifice precedes joy. Joy doesn’t come before sacrifice. In your marriage, sacrifice precedes joy. When it comes to parenting, sacrifice precedes great joy. But the sacrifice does not stop there. Your work: sacrifice precedes joy.
The Word worship in both Hebrew and Greek means the work of God’s servants. Worship is not about what we come to church to receive, it’s about the work of the servants of God in giving. Romans 12 says, “Therefore, 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.” There is no sacrifice in attendance, the sacrifice comes in what you do and give in worship of God. There are two dimensions to our sacrifice. The first is our money. If I am not giving to God the first 10%, then that is an area of my life I own and have not dedicated to God. The second area of sacrifice is your time. In our day and age, time has become the new currency. Time is in shorter supply than it ever has been. We were talking in our Wednesday Bible study a couple of weeks ago about the Sabbath. God has given you 168 hours a week. But isn’t it amazing how we have difficulty giving just two hours on Sunday morning each week back to God. That’s just over 1% of your time. And what God really asks for is the Sabbath, your entire Sunday. A lot of our people are attenders, they come for just one hour and do nothing more. But God calls for much more: sacrifice. He calls for an offering of your body “as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.”
Many years ago a woman was walking home in a cold snowstorm. The storm became so intense that the woman decided to lay down in the hollow of a rock. There she covered her tiny baby boy with every ounce of clothing she had on. When the rescuers found the mother she had died from exposure to the cold. However, when the men uncovered the garments, the tiny baby boy was still alive! The mother, realizing that she would die, gave everything she had to see that the warmth of her body and her clothing would save her son. Joy filled the hearts of the rescuers to see the little boy shivering, but alive. Years later, that child, David Lloyd George, grew to become the Prime Minister of Great Britain, one of the greatest statesmen of all time. What are you willing to sacrifice for those God had told you to love? Paul wrote, "As a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children, I was well pleased to impart to you not the gospel only, but also my own life for you were very dear to me." (I Thessalonians 2:7,8) What are you willing to sacrifice for God.
