Imagine a worship service. The worship team comes to the platform. The leader opens with prayer, asking God to make his presence known. Then, with his eyes closed he begins to sing with the band. He lifts in hands in worship and really gets into it. He begins to sway and it seems like he is really connected with God. But then, he begins to step on the feet of the people around him, without stopping, no apology, oblivious to everything else around him. He is so caught up in the moment. He worships without any care for his neighbor. This is a true story.
We get so caught up in our passion about God that we think worship is just about God and me. We don’t see any connection between God and our neighbor. We don’t see the connection between worship and how we live in our world. Worship means we find God but we also find our neighbor.
Much of the debates about worship in the church that have happened over the past few decades really are focused on ourselves and not God. We debate about how we should serve up worship each week to fit our needs and wants and tastes. Our worship has become consumerism and not an offering. Worship has become what we want out of it and not a reflection of God’s glory.
We fall prey to the same issues the ancient Corinthians Christians did. It’s all about me.
At the beginning of the Bible, Adam and Eve worshiped God without the hindrance of sin. They were in perfect relationship with God.
- They walked with God.
- They lived in harmony with one another in unity (2:25).
- They lived in harmony with creation as caretakers (2:19-20).
Everything was as God designed it, and it begin with worship of God.
God provided Adam and Eve the freedom to love him back. Love cannot be forced. Love is a response of the will. And so, God put in the Garden of Eden a tree called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil so that Adam and Eve could respond freely in love to him by avoiding that tree. If they loved God, they would stay away from the tree. They needed to choose in worship to respond to God as their Creator.
But their love was compromised when they did eat some fruit off this tree. What happened to Adam and Eve was ultimately that they worshiped something other than God. They worshiped themselves and their own desires.
Sin is simply a lack of worship of God. We replace the worship of God with the worship of something else. The consequences are broken relationships. After they sinned, they wanted to keep away from God as he walked in the cool of the evening (3:8). After Adam and Eve ate this fruit, they suffered brokenness between them and God, between each other, and between creation.
Sin is saying that God is not important enough to obey. A lack of worship leads to sin and sin causes a lack of worship.
Sin destroyed human ability to worship God unhindered. Since Adam and Eve, we each have a bent to self. Our problem is the same as the ancient Corinthians who cared too much about their own desires and not enough about what the Holy Spirit wanted to teach them.
Sin causes us to worship inappropriately by attaching worth to something or someone other than God. A.W. Tozer wrote, “The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.”
Worship demands my whole person. It begins with acknowledging the supremacy of God in my life.
What is Praise?
- It necessitates recognizing who God is.
- It involves recognizing that we exist for God.
- It requires that we acknowledge God’s sovereignty and kingdom upon earth and in heaven.
- It means that we aim all of our life towards God.
- Giving God my whole self.
- Getting rid of that which hinders my love towards God.
- A sacrifice (Hebrews 13:11-15) and demands I put away my selfishness.
- Praise is offering the whole self to God, who we are and what we do.
Thus worship requires my whole being, all that I am and all that I hope to be.
- My mind
- My ears
- My eyes
- My voice
- My life.
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