Fuente de Amor

The 5: Transforming our Little Corner of the World

Intro

As we live out these disciplines, over and over, and keep growing in each of these areas, God will be shaping us into a church that transforms our community. Regularly practicing these 5 disciplines will propel our church toward establishing the Kingdom of God in our little corner of the world. We're going to take the 5 Sundays in September to look at each of these 5 disciplines.
We start today with the discipline of Worshipping God. We start with this discipline because everything flows out of this. In both the life of our church and in the life of following Christ. The usual front door into the life of our church is our Sunday morning worship gathering. Now, there are exceptions, but we view Sunday morning as the main entrance into the life of our church. It's after feeling at home in the Sunday morning experience that people begin to explore the other ministries in which we live out our disciplines: small groups, ministries, giving and inviting unbelievers to join us. The worship gathering is the entry point into our church.
But the decision to worship is also the point in which a person's walk with Christ begins. The decision to turn from worshipping self and to worship Christ instead.
I talked about this a lot as we walked through Revelation this summer; as human beings we will worship something. If you're wondering, "am I worshipping something?" Just ask yourself this, "am I breathing?" If you know you're breathing, then you can know you're worshipping. God hard-wired into the very fiber of our being the need to worship him. A deep need to connect with him. If we fail to turn that need to worship toward God, then we'll substitute God with something else. God created us with the need to worship something. The need to give ourselves to something.
So what do we do, we throw ourselves into our jobs, into our families, into our hobbies, into acquiring more stuff. And it consumes us and becomes the god (little g) of our lives.
We can try to make it sound okay. "I don't worship my job, I'm trying to provide for my family." That can be used as a cover up for the desire for status or more money.
"I don't worship money, I work hard and deserve these things." Everything we have is a gift from God, we don't deserve anything. And stuff never satisfies.
"I don't worship my kids, I'm trying to be a good parent." Maybe you're just trying to cover up a deep need to be needed by someone else.
False worship.
And there's nothing wrong with any of these priorities. We're to work hard at our jobs, make more money, be the best parents we can be. But when any of these things, or anything else in our life for that matter, crowds out our relationship with God or our commitment to living in a way that honors Christ, then it becomes worship. And to place anything above our commitment to Christ is sin. To substitute the worship of God with anything else is a sin.
So what it means to follow Christ is to decide "everything else is coming in a distant second. I'm turning from a life focused on self, which is a life of sin, and I'm going to follow Jesus Christ as my top priority." That's conversion. Turning from a self-centered life to a Christ-centered life.
Following Christ begins with choosing to worship Christ.
Which is why we read the command all throughout scripture to "worship God." We're expected to worship God. But have you ever wondered whether God's expectation that his creation would worship him is a bit egotistical? Maybe God is insecure; needing constant affirmation to build up a low self-esteem? Why does he need our worship?
Here's the deal, God doesn't need our worship. God got along fine without our worship before he created us. He doesn't need it.
We could choose to worship self rather than God and in no way would that diminish God's power or greatness. But it would diminish us. If we choose not to worship God, we're selling ourselves short.
God's expectation that his creation worship him isn't because he needs it, but his creation needs it. C.S. Lewis said, "In commanding us to glorify him, God is inviting us to enjoy him. It's in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men."
It's in choosing to worship God that we get to know God. Through worship, we experience his love, his mercy, his grace. In worshipping him, we experience all the attributes that make God, God. It's for our sake that God commands us to worship him.
But how do we do it? How do we worship? What does worship look like?
For my own time with God this summer, I was reading through the book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah is in the OT, it's an incredible story. It's dated about 450 BC. The people of Israel are living in exile because about 100 years earlier the Babylonians had conquered Israel and destroyed Jerusalem. But the Babylonians were eventually conquered by the Persians and the King of Persia gave Nehemiah permission to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls of the city.
To sum it up, Nehemiah gets the job done. It wasn't easy, they faced a lot of opposition from both inside and outside their group. But they rebuilt Jerusalem. Nehemiah had an incredible work ethic and focus.
After the job was finished, they worshipped God. They gathered together, thousands of them and they sang, listened to scripture and confessed their sin. And they finished this worship time with a pledge. I'm going to read to you this pledge, from Nehemiah 10:28-39.
I'll admit, most of this pledge sounds pretty strange to us. Grain offerings, temple taxes, staying away from pagans. Their approach to worship seems completely foreign to us.
But there are some principles we can see in this story. Some commitments they're making that can still guide our worship, 2,500 years later.
The first thing you'll notice is that they 1) Gathered Together. This is so obvious that we could easily miss it. But they're all together. There's an expectation in scripture that the people of God make it a habit to regularly gather together and worship God.
You've all heard someone say this, or maybe you've said it yourself, "I don't need to go to church to connect with God." While there's certainly some truth in that, we can read the Bible and pray on our own and God speaks to us in those times. But that's not all there is. But God doesn't intend for us to live the Christian life on our own. Just as God created us to worship, God also created us for relationship. The Christian life is a not a solo sport, it's team sport. Gathering with other believers for worship is a way of saying "we need each other, we can't do this Christian life on our own." We can't do it on our own.
When we try to do it on our own and pull away from the community, our perspective gets all messed up. We'll starting thinking things like, "my life is so terrible, no one else can understand the awful things I'm going through." Or we may think the opposite, "I've got it all figured out, I know all I need to know about God."
Gathering together for worship brings us back into balance. We're able to see that other people are going through difficult times, too and yet they're holding onto their faith in God. And we're inspired by that. Gathering together also helps us learn from each other. We learn from other's faith and experience with God and realize "I don't have it all figured out, I need to learn from you."
As relational beings, we need each other.
2) Prioritize Worship. End of vs. 39.
I get worried as your pastor when people tell me things like "I have to take this job that makes me work on Sunday" or "we've signed up for this activity and we'll be away from church for a long time." I worry for people when they decide to value something else over Sunday morning worship.
I'm not talking about going on vacation or a one-time activity. But I am talking about choosing to get involved in something that pulls you away from worship. And I'm not the only one that has worried for his church in this way. The author of Hebrews had the same concern. It seems that certain individuals were giving a lot of reasons as to why they weren't joining the community for worship. Hebrews 10:25. Don't let anything pull you away from worshipping with the community.
Our choices determine the type of people we become. And if God created us to be worshippers, then let's make choices that allow us to grow as worshippers.
3) Costly Thirdly, we can see that their worship was costly, worship required sacrifice. Vs. 35-37 Their worship of God affected their checkbook. They choose to give to God money they could've spent on themselves. This is the essence of worship. Worship is about taking our attention and focus off of ourselves and placing it on God. We could be at Arrowhead but we choose instead to be in worship. We could use this money to pay a bill, but instead we give it to God.
Sacrifice is choosing to be in worship both mentally as well as physically. Rather than letting my mind be consumed with everything that's going on in my life, I'm choosing to focus upon the goodness of God.
It's a twist of irony. God commands us to worship him because he knows it will benefit us. But true worship is a selfless act. Worship is about taking our focus off self and placing it upon God.
And you know what happens when we do that? We gain God's perspective. Worship helps us see the world the way God sees it. Our problems get a lot smaller when we're looking at the ‘bigness' of our God. Worship gives us a new faith, a new hope for our future. But this happens only when we give of ourselves.
4) Holistic Fourthly, their worship was holistic. They realized that worship isn't just about the time they're gathered together, but worship continues the rest of the week as well. Which meant living for God beyond Sunday (Saturday) morning. Vs. 30. Again, this seems really foreign to us, not taking pagan wives. But here's the principle. We aren't going to let our sons or daughters marry those who don't share our faith because we don't want to put them in a position to their compromise faith. This is what got the people of Israel into trouble centuries ago. Ignoring God's command, King Solomon took take foreign wives. And guess what, these women lead the people of Israel to worship false gods, which screwed everything up. The principle is this; we aren't going to put ourselves in situations where we'll be tempted to walk away from our commitment to God.
There is an ethical component to worship. There are things I refuse to do because I love God too much. I worship God by avoiding sin. I love God too much to do things that would cause him pain. That's the negative side, I will avoid certain things.
But here's the positive side. There are certain things I'll do as an act of worship to God. Vs. 31 I will rest (Sabbath). I will give to the poor. God expected that every seven years, wealthy landowners would cancel the debt of the poor who were working for them.
I worship God not just by being in church on Sunday morning, as important as that is, but in overcoming temptation, serving the less fortunate. Avoiding sin, serving others. My whole life is to be an act of worship to God. Holistic worship.
I want to read you a couple verses that point to this.
1 Corinthians 10:31 Colossians 3:23 Romans 6:13 Romans 12:1-2
Let your whole life be an act of worship.
5) Worship Privately Worship is both private and corporate. We worship God together and by ourselves. Private worship is getting by yourself to read scripture, sit in silence and pray. These types of spiritual disciplines are essential to your walk with Christ. If you're counting on half an hour of singing on Sunday morning to carry you through the week, guess what, you won't make it. If Sunday morning is the only time you connect with God, you'll find yourself drying out spiritually.
If you're counting on my preaching each Sunday (as great as it may be - or not be) to feed you spiritually, you're going to starve. It's not enough. Believe me, the Bible will open on Monday morning or Saturday afternoon. We grow as worshippers when we make connecting with God a priority the rest of the week as well.
repeat
We're living out this discipline of worship, we'll be transforming our little corner of the world. You have a coworker not sure if they're going to be able to make it. If you've been intentional about worshipping God; focusing upon his power and goodness, you can offer encouragement. Because you've been taking your attention off self and placing it upon God. You've been worshipping.
Maybe someone comes to church on Sunday morning, wondering whether it's worth following Christ. But they look over and see the joy in your face as you're singing about Christ. Unknowingly, you've encouraged them to keep going.
The first of our 5 disciplines. Worshipping God is one of the ways we're helping the Kingdom of God become a reality in our little corner of the world.
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