Series:         This Year I Will Commit...

                    Text:            Psalm 100:1-5

I have attended many worship services as many of you have.  I love them all, but there is one that sticks in the back of my mind and I can’t explain to you how it happened.  It was at the first church I had pastured, and it was a Sunday that was kind of dark and rainy, and if I recall correctly, not to many people showed up.  The sanctuary had just a tinge of cold air in it, the lighting wasn’t great within the church so the church was dimly lit.  The order of service was the same as it had been for years, not much ever changed in that church…but this particular Sunday something happened. 

It’s hard to describe unless you had been there.  That Sunday as we worshipped, there was just this overwhelming presence of God amongst us.  Now there wasn’t no gigantic altar call where folks fell down crying, there wasn’t no loud expressions or anything like that.  If fact, we were mostly silent.  We sat there, we sang a bit quieter than normal, there was no shuffling in the pews, the best way I can explain it was that there was this overwhelming calmness and peace about the place.  At that point, nothing us really mattered. It was just so peaceful.  I remember looking out in the congregation, and in particular, I remember seeing Ms. Diane Glidewell, an elderly lady who was one of the saints of the church, sitting in the pew next to her husband who had cancer at that time.  When she came into that church she had so much weighing on her, you could see the stress and anguish on her face.  But I watched her in that pew, she had her eyes closed and she was singing but the singing was less like singing and more like praying…and her face was different.  You didn’t see the stress and anguish like you saw when she came in that morning, instead there was more of a glow to it.  It was hard to take my eyes off of her that morning, and I didn’t want to service to end that day. 

That Sunday, something happened in that church.  God was in His house.  Now, He had always been there, but on that day we were made aware of it.  The next Sunday… it was church as normal, but on that particular Sunday, we knew we were in the presence of God.    

More than anything else, you and I are called to be worshippers.  Before we can do anything else for God, we must first be able to Worship.  Last week, we put forth a challenge for everyone to do at least one thing for God this year, to do something either in this church or outside this church where you will serve the Lord.  This morning we are going to ask you to commit to worshipping God faithfully. 

Now, this is not a sermon where I am going to beg you to be here every Sunday.  As a believer in Christ, I shouldn’t have to do that to you.  My wife does not have to beg and plead with me to come home each night and spend time with her.  As her husband, I want to spend time with her because I love her and treasure her. It’s not a burden, it’s a pleasure and a privilege. In the same way, I am here to worship because I love my Lord.  And it is a pleasure and a privilege to have this opportunity to worship Him.

This message is instead about what worship is and how we worship God faithfully.  So how do we define worship? If someone asked you what is worship how would you respond to them?  In the English language, Worship is defined as ascribing the highest worth to.  So when we worship we are saying , “God you’re number one in my life.  You come before anything and anyone else.”  That  is what is meant when we say, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart mind soul and strength.  Nothing is more important to you than God.

Now, the Hebrew word for worship means to bow down, to acknowledge God’s superiority over us. Worship is a humbling experience when we come saying, “God I understand You are greater than me.. You have the answers for my life, I bow down to Your authority.”

In the new testament, the Greek word for worship is two words which literally means to kiss towards. It is a picture of a small child kissing their parent or of even a dog licking his master’s hand. It brings with it an act of homage, a respect which is based on gratitude.   So from these we get the idea that worship is ascribing to God the highest worth in our life, bowing ourselves before Him surrendering to Him, and with a grateful heart giving thanks for what He has done.  So we worship God for who He is and for what He has done for us.

Now let’s start with that first phrase.  We worship God for who He is.  Psalm 100:3 in the Holman translation says, “Acknowledge that the Lord is God.”  The NIV translates it as saying, “Know that the LORD is God.”  In order to worship God faithfully we must know who He is and where He stands in importance.  So for that reason, faithful worship must be intelligent worship.  Worship is not simply about an emotional experience, worship starts with the mind knowing who God is.  If you don’t know who God is then it will be hard to worship Him.  Have you ever been asked to give a introduction or a toast for someone that you didn’t know. 

Now when I say you have to know God I by no means mean that you have to know all there is to know about God.  Part of what makes God God is that He is so far beyond our comprehension.  He is greater than our minds can grasp and we can’t know all there is to know about God.  That is why there is always the wonder involved in worship.  But we need to have an understanding that He is God.  And the more you know about God, the greater your worship becomes.  For example, I love my mom.  Always have.  When I was a kid, she was mom, and I loved her because she was my mom.  But as I have grown, I have come to know more about my mom, and the sacrifices she made for us kids, stuff about her that I had never realized, and my love for her now is greater than it was when I was a kid.  When we begin to grow in our faith, the bigger God becomes to us. 

And the higher your view of God, the more faithful will your worship be.  A.W. Tozer is one of my favorite authors, in his book Knowledge of the Holy, writes, “No religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.”

So who is God?  We can’t describe completely but we can only use certain attributes that He has revealed to us.  The Bible tells us that God is love, that God is mercy, that God is good, and many more but there is one that stands out.  When the prophet Isaiah had a vision of the Lord, the Cherubim and Seraphim were surrounding the throne and do you remember what their cry was.  It was holy, holy, holy.  Now when the bible says something more than once it means it is important, but when it is repeated three times it means that it is really important. 

God is holy.  There is no one like Him.  When the prophet Isaiah had his vision and he saw the Lord high and lifted up, do you remember what his response was?  It wasn’t to go and high five God and say, “way to go Buddy!”  It wasn’t to critique the singing of the angles, saying, “they tend to be a little off key.” No, it was to fall on his face and say woe is me, I am a man of unclean lips and to worship. 

The same thing takes place in the book of Revelation.  When John, the same disciple who Jesus loved, the one who leaned on Jesus at the Last Supper, when John saw Jesus in His exalted form, His response wasn’t to say, “Jesus,  What’s sup!”  No, he fell on his face as if he was dead.  You see, our God is an awesome God, and when you come in contact with the Holy, it is not a casual thing. 

Now that is not to say that we negate the fact that we have an intimate relationship with God, He is our heavenly Father who is filled with grace and truth, and loves us with an infinite love, but it means that we stand in awe of Who He is; He is God!  And so when we come to worship, we must acknowledge that. 

Also, when we worship we not only acknowledge who God is but we also acknowledge where He should be in our life.   Every week there are plenty of “gods” that try to take center stage in our lives.  They pull us one way or another getting us to think that that one thing is the most important thing in my life, whether it be work, school, or even ourselves.  But in worship, we are reminded… “He is God, He made us, and we are His.” 

One of the benefits of worship is that it helps to refocus our life.  It helps remind us that we are made for God and that we are His and He is what is most important.  You are not your bosses, you are not your teachers, you are not your schedules, you are not your hobbies, you are not even your problems, you are God’s.  And worship reminds us of that and helps us to focus our life on what is really important.

Another benefit of worship is that it helps to put life into perspective.  When you worship and you acknowledge that God is supreme over all things, that He is holy, powerful, just, full of mercy and grace, then everything in life starts to fall into place.  One of my favorite Psalms is psalm 73.  I won’t read the entire psalm to you, but the author is like many of us.  He is looking around and he sees that the bad people are going about life enjoying the easy life, with no problems, and then here he is and he is being faithful and yet his life is hard, and he was about to give up…but then in vs. 16 of Psalm 73, look what happens… “When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny.” 

He goes on to explain that he was starting to get jealous of them, but he had what was most important.  Psalms 73:25 says, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Remember singing the song, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus.”  It goes, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the thing of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.” 

So faithful worship has an understanding of who God is, but faithful worship also expresses a gratitude for what God has done.  Psalms 100:2 says to, “Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.”   And in Vs 4 it says, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.”  God has done so much for us.  He has created us, He has redeemed us, He has made us His own.  And not only this, but God continues to care for us.  It says in Vs 3 that “we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.”  Jesus referred to Himself as the Good Shepherd.  Psalm 23 tells us that the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.  Like a Good Shepherd, God cares for us because of His goodness, and His love, and because of His faithfulness to us. 

Max Lucado defined worship this way: “Worship is a voluntary act of gratitude offered by the saved to the Savior, by the healed to the Healer, and by the delivered to the Deliverer. And if you and I can go days without feeling an urge to say “thank you” to the One who saved, healed, and delivered us, then we’d do well to remember what He did.”  And when we look back at the cross, and see the Son of God dying for our sins we stand in awe of the love he has for each and every one of us.

God has done so much for us.  I love the song by Fanny Crosby “To God Be the Glory”.  It goes, “To God be the Glory, great things he hath done, so loved He the world that he gave us his Son.”  And then she says, “Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord.”

So how can we become more faithful worshippers?  First, prepare yourself for worship.  You prepare for many other things.  Football players go through a long game day routine to get ready for the big game.  You prepare yourself to go on a date, you get fixed up, put on make up and shave.  Hopefully girls put on the make up and guys shave, not vice versa.  But the point is you get prepared because something big is about to happen.  Shouldn’t we treat worship the same way?  We are coming to worship the Almighty God. 

Let me give you some practical ways to get ready.  First, get things ready for church the night before so on Sunday morning you are running around worried about what you are going to wear and such.  Second, pray for the worship service before you get here.  Perhaps listen to a Christian song, or maybe read the bible before you get here.  Start your worship before you arrive.  Also, when you arrive at church, notice in the bulletin what the songs are and what the scripture is.  Take a few minutes before the service and find them and look them over. 

Second, Participate in the service.  Remember, you are not the audience; you are the participants in worship. God is the audience.  When we sing, sing out loud because you are singing to God.  When the scriptures are read, follow along.  When we pray, pray.  And pay attention to the sermon.  One thing that helps me when I go to another church or if we have a guest speaker, is to take notes.  Now this is not because what that person says needs to be immortalized, but it helps me to keep my mind focused, and it gives me a chance to go back and do further study on what was spoken.

Finally, we need to make worship a way of life.  The most important part of worship is what you do when you leave this place. Romans 12:1 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.”  Often times you will hear us say up here that our worship does not end with the benediction, because our entire life is an act of worship.  Our worship of God on Sunday is continued throughout the entire week as we continue to acknowledge God in our lives, and not merely with lip service, but with our hearts, our minds, and our entire life.

So faithful worship is not about whether the service is traditional or contemporary, its not about whether the singing was off key or not, it’s about acknowledging the Greatness of God and reaching out to touch Him and to be touched by Him.  John Gough once told of being in a church service and hearing a hoarse discordant voice behind him singing, Just as I am.”  He cringed, he said because the man was the worst singer he had ever heard.  There was no melody, no tune, nothing.  After three stanzas, the organist mercifully played an interlude.  As it was being played, Gough said that he felt a hand on his shoulder and the man with the terrible voice asked him, :Could you tell me the first phrase of the next stanza?  I think I could get it if I had the first few words.”  John Gough said he looked around into the face of the terrible singer, and he saw that the man was blind.  He passed onto him the words to the next stanza of Just as I am which went, “Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind; Sight, riches, healing of mind, yea all I need in Thee I find, O lamb of God, I come! I come!”

     John Gough said when the next stanza began, he didn’t hear the discordant notes anymore, he heard a man speaking to God, and God speaking back.