40 Days of Purpose Week 2 – Worship
Rom 12:1-2
We were told last week that we were created to be loved by God and to be in relationship with him. The topic slated for this week is “worship”. We’re created to worship God. That’s our purpose. But what does that mean?
I have a sermon illustrations programme on my computer and I looked up “worship” this week and was directed to four different stories all of which centred around church music. At many churches, if someone refers to the “worship time” or the “worship leader” they’re referring to the time of singing in the service and the song leader.
Maybe when you think of worship you think of ancient pagan civilisations bowing down to some sort of idol. Maybe you think of chanting your way through certain church rituals, or taking communion.
Let’s read this short passage from Romans 12:
RO 12:1 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. 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.
Firstly, you’ll notice that our worship is always in response to God. “In view of God’s mercy – worship.” Paul has spent the first eleven chapters of Romans explaining how God has rescued us from the guilt, penalty and power of sin. He’s told us that it is only through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross that we can be forgiven. And he’s told us that we don’t deserve God’s love, but that in spite of us, he has been incredibly merciful. And so, in view of this mercy, this amazing grace, we worship our great God.
God always takes the first step. He took the first step in creating us and he takes the first step in saving us through his beloved Son. Our worship – whatever our worship is, we still haven’t worked that out – is a response to the mercy God has shown us. You see God saved us from something – from slavery to sin, from the consequences of our disobedience, from judgment and ultimately from hell – but he also saved us to something. And that something is worship. He saved us to worship him.
But to answer our initial question – what is worship – the answer is both simple yet incredibly complex. It’s everything. Is music worship? Yes. Is taking part in a church service worship? Yes. Is getting up and having breakfast and going to work everyday worship. Yes, or at least it should be. In response to God’s mercy we are to offer ourselves, our bodies as living sacrifices – this is our spiritual act of worship. When you make a sacrifice, you give something up. That’s the very nature of a sacrifice. It’s a serious, costly gift. When we talk about making sacrifices, we mean that something substantial has been given up. Until I was about 8 or 9 my father was a high-powered business executive but he chose to resign and become a lowly teacher (!!) so he could spend more time with his kids. Some people talked about the sacrifice he had made for his children. Now I appreciate that sacrifice incredibly, but the sacrifice that God wants from us is much broader and greater.
Paul deliberately uses language in Romans 12 that will remind us again of the gift of God. The Father offered the body of Jesus as our sacrifice, and in view of that we too are to offer our bodies. We give ourselves up, we surrender ourselves utterly and completely and say to God “I’m going to give the control of my life and the purpose of my life back to it’s rightful owner – to you.” That’s what Jesus means when he says that unless we take up our cross and follow him, we cannot be his disciples. Unless we give ourselves totally, we’re not truly people of God.
The problem is, we often try to compartmentalize our lives. I go to church once a week, maybe a bible study, maybe I spend fifteen minutes every day reading God’s Word and praying, and that’s my worship. And then over here I have my career and over here I have my family time and over here I have my social life. No. God wants everything. He wants to be invited into every part of your life. He wants your worship to extend to every compartment.
There was a kid who used to come to JJs and who I teach at Peakhurst High who would give a lot of the right answers during Bible study, who would pray with us, and say he was committed to Jesus, but literally the next breath would tell us about how he was going to beat up this other kids because he had looked at him the wrong way. The compartmentalizing was so abrupt and so stark that they hypocrisy of it just stood out so clearly. His worship finished as soon as we had said amen. Our hypocrisy might not be so in your face, but it’s probably still there. Do we walk out of church and stop being Christians until we walk back in the next week? Remember, God wants our whole lives.
And you don’t have to be in a certain job. You can bake bread for the Lord, you can butcher cattle for the Lord, you can change nappies for the Lord, you can be retired for the Lord. Have a look at this verse from Colossians: 23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men
You might go back to work tomorrow, doing the same thing you’ve been doing for five or ten or twenty years, but this time you’re doing it for God. Having an attitude like that can turn mundane, trivial things that don’t seem to mean a lot into worship. God, I’m going to take out the garbage for you. I’m going to teach that ratty class of year nine’s for you, I’m going to wash those dishes for you.
That’s the attitude of worship that we need. And if we have that attitude, it’s going to transform the way we go about our daily business. If we’re doing everything as working for the Lord, aren’t we going to be doing them God’s way? Aren’t we going to be looking for opportunities to serve and witness to those we work with or socialize with? Aren’t we going to make sure we’re completely scrupulous and honest and disciplined? Aren’t we going to avoid the gossip and slander that we know dishonours God?
Look back with me to Romans 12:2. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed. In order to worship, we need to be transformed. We need to leave behind the self-worship that’s the pattern of this world and be God-worshippers, surrendering our whole selves, loving God with all our soul, mind and strength.
We’re made for worship – that’s our purpose. Our brains are hardwired to be singularly devoted to something. But the problem is, we don’t always worship God. We follow the pattern of this world and devote our bodies to other things.
What are you worshipping? It’s whatever you’re giving you’re primary attention to, whatever you’d sacrifice the most for. Now, in that case, some of you worship your career. You worship your career, and you’re living for that job. Some of you are worshipping making money and you’re worshipping retirement. Some of you are worshipping pleasure, some of you are worshipping sex. Some of you are worshipping another person who so dominates your life -- your total attention, affection and ability goes to that person. Some of you are worshipping your family. Now, let me tell you something, the greatest temptation of your life and the worst sin you could possibly commit is the temptation to worship something other than God. You say, “That’s not my problem.” It is. It’s my problem, too. It’s the number one problem in life, because it is the root behind every other sin. The Bible calls it idolatry. When we worship something that’s created, rather than worshipping the creator – that’s idolatory. In Romans 1, Paul gives a startling description of the world - RO 1:21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen.
That’s the thinking of the world from which we need to be transformed. They worship the created things. And remember, worship isn’t just bowing down to statues, it’s what we live for.
Ultimately, living for anything other than God is futile, it’s a lie as we’ve just read from Romans 1. We’re made to worship. We’re made to worship God. We can try and replace God with all manner of things, but ultimately they don’t provide us with the purpose and meaning and fulfillment which we all so desperately desire. I’m sure you know people who have tried to find purpose in earning money or raising their family or whatever, but have seen it all come crashing down. You might know people who seem to be so successful but they end up depressed because they just can’t find the meaning they’re looking for.
Augustine said this: “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless til they find their rest in you, O God.”
In the end, you can’t find meaning in anything or anyone else other than the Lord. You can worship in the cult of self all you want, but it won’t bring you fulfilment or purpose, because it’s not what you were created for. You were created to worship the creator.
So we’ve seen that genuine worship is a lifestyle, it’s offering our bodies as living sacrifices and having our minds transformed. It’s everything.
But we’ve gotta know what we’re worshipping. We live in a culture where people feel free to create their own God to suit their own opinions and temptations. Look at John 4 with me:
19 "Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."
21Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet 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. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
Don read the whole section to us a little earlier on. The Samaritans and the Jews hated each other, they didn’t associate with each, and yet Jesus goes and strikes up a conversation with a lone Samaritan women who, it turns out, is living in an adulterous relationship. The Samaritans said that you must worship on Mount Gerizim in Samaria, but Jews said it had to be in Jerusalem, at the temple. The Samaritans even worshipped what they did not know, because they had rejected most of the Old Testament and only read the first five books. But Jesus comes along and shatters all these misconceptions, and in doing so says some very significant things about worship.
Firstly, worship isn’t about going to a particular place. I think we’ve already covered this when we said that worship is a lifestyle, but it’s amazing how many people think you have to go inside a church building to worship God. Jesus says to the woman – you don’t have to be on Mt Gerizim and nor do you have to be on Mt Zion. God isn’t restricted by geography. Instead, a time is coming and has now come when true worshippers will worship in spirit and in truth. Spirit and truth.
We worship God with our whole heart and in the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s no longer about rituals or sacrifices – in fact it never was. Sorry to burst any bubbles, but God is not automatically impressed when we recite the creed, or when we take communion. What’s he’s impressed by is genuine love for him, a heart that is devoted to him.
But it is not some blind, mindless devotion. We must worship in truth. It’s my birthday this week, and all the other teachers in my staff room know I love ice cream. One of them has this whiz-bang ice cream maker at home. So she decided to do something nice and make some ice cream for me on my birthday. She presented it to me and I asked what flavour it was. It’s tiramisu, she said. I’ve made it before and everyone loved it. She was trying to do something nice, but she didn’t know that I absolutely hate coffee and anything remotely coffee flavoured. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything, so I sat there and ate it, almost gagging at every mouthful. She thought she was doing something that would please me but because she didn’t know the truth, it was offensive. You’ll be pleased to know that I eventually told her of my dislike for coffee and at the staff Christmas party she had brought some strawberry ice cream which is my favourite. But if we try to worship God in ways other than the ways he has told us, or if we try to make God out to be something he’s not, or if we live in a way that God hates but try to convince ourselves and others that’s it’s alright – if we do that, then God will spit us out like I wanted to do with that tiramisu ice cream. He won’t be pleased.
You might know the sort of person I’m talking about. You could be one of them. They genuinely think they are worshipping God. But they’re not worshipping the God of the Bible. They’re not worshipping the God who has revealed himself through the Lord Jesus Christ. They might think they’re worshipping God with all their heart, but they’re worshipping a lie, a sort of choose-your-own-adventure God that they’ve concocted all for themselves because “they like to think of God as….” I was speaking to a year ten student at school who had asked me about sex outside of marriage because she was sleeping with her boyfriend. I told her what the Bible had to say as gently as I could and she responded by saying “Well, I don’t think of God that way. I think of God as someone who would bless people because they love each other.” And I thought you fool! It doesn’t matter what you think about God, it matters what God thinks about himself and what he thinks about you! We don’t decide what the truth is, God does. And in order to offer up ourselves as sacrifices that truly please God we need to worship him with our whole heart, with our whole lives and we need to worship in truth. We need to worship the real God and follow his real commands. And that goes for the girl at school, it goes for the Muslim, it goes for the Buddhist, it goes for the Jew, it goes for the Christian who just wants to change that little command or that little truth about God because it doesn’t quite fit into my image of what he should be like. We need to worship in spirit and in truth.
Well, I mentioned earlier about the kid who came to JJ’s and who had so compartmentalized his life that he thought he could switch on and off being a Christian whenever he wanted to. He came up to me about a week ago in the playground. He can be a bit of ratbag, really. His brother’s a Christian and he was all excited because he was going to be going down to Wollongong where his brother lives twice a week for the next six weeks. “Why?”, I asked him. I’m reading this book and going to this small group and going to church. And he pulled out The Purpose Driven Life with day 8 carefully bookmarked. I think they started about a week before us. “Is usually give up on books after about 20 mins, but I’ve read seven chapters of this so far, he. And he began telling me all about it, and asking questions and he actually listened to my answers for a few seconds.
I pray that God will reveal his purposes to him over the next few weeks. Like all of us, he needs to realize that God demands our whole life. We’re made to worship him, our creator, and that means surrendering our whole live. Worship isn’t some an emotional response to music, it isn’t performing rituals, it isn’t genuflecting before a crucifx. It’s giving our bodies as living sacrifices to the one who has saved us. So, the challenge for us all this week is to do everything for the Lord. Worship in spirit and in truth. Because it’s in worshipping the real God in the real way with real obedience that we can truly find the purpose and meaning for our lives. As Paul said to the Colossians in 3:17 And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
