Worship

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Worship

Explore the essence of genuine worship as Steve Gregg delves into the heart of the matter. He emphasizes that true worship goes beyond external gestures and requires a transformed spirit and a desire to honor and glorify God. Drawing from biblical examples, Gregg highlights the importance of offering spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God, such as a righteous lifestyle and the sharing of one's possessions. Discover the profound depth of worship and its significance in our relationship with God in this enlightening discussion.

Transcript

I don't know how to give you some objective test, except, obviously, if you're singing or praying and your mind is a thousand miles away, and you're not really into it, it's just something that's happening outwardly, and you're just going through the motions, but you're really not, your heart is not adoring God. Then that would, I say, I presume, is not spiritual. I mean, it is outward only.

It falls in the category of ritual. You may be doing things that are charismatic rituals, and charismatic ritual worship is not any better than Jewish ritual worship. It's just another ritual.

What God's looking for is spiritual worship, which is heartfelt, genuine, something that reflects the work of the Spirit of the life. And how do you know what reflects it? Well, the work of the Spirit of the life is seen in a new nature, and in new desires, and new cravings, and a new adoration and reverence for God. If you have that, you can count on it.

That's the Spirit. Because Paul said, in me, that is in my flesh, there dwells no good thing. If you see a good thing, in terms of a change of your attitude from what it used to be, you revere God, now you fear God, you love God.

That's something that you didn't produce. That's something God produced. And the point is that your worship should spring from that kind of a work of God that has taken place in your heart, rather than just a desire to conform to outward norms of worship that are culturally conditioned.

I mean, you might feel a little uncomfortable in some places if you don't raise your hands during the singing, because everybody's doing it. In other places, you'd feel uncomfortable raising your hands because nobody's doing it. Likewise with clapping, or dancing, or shouting, or whatever.

There's certain cultural settings where there's a certain norm, and people often conform to it, and they do it, just because that's what's expected of them. And that's not genuine worship, if that's why they're doing it. Genuine worship is that which is offered up for one reason only, and that is not out of a fear of man, but out of a desire to please God, and from a heart that wants to give God the honor and the glory that is due His name, and offer up a sacrifice pleasing to Him.

And the sacrifice of God are a broken spirit, and a broken and contrite heart, and a humbleness before Him, and basically spirituality within. Now, expressions of worship. Maybe we should have something to say about that.

I don't know how this fits in general into, I don't know what the best place to stick this in is, but I've always been kind of pleased with A. W. Tozer's definition of worship. It's not a lexicon or dictionary definition of worship, it's more of a description, sort of a summary or a digest of what the Bible teaches on the subject of worship, and he digests it in the following way. A. W. Tozer said, appropriate worship is, that's rather long, if you want I'll say it more than once, if you want to write it down, he says, it's the appropriate expression of heartfelt humility before God, mixed with a delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder.

Now actually, I think that's a good summary, and I can pick that apart and show that each part of that is biblical, but I'll give it to you again in case you wish to write it down. It's probably the most succinct summary that includes almost every element of true worship. He says, it's the appropriate expression of heartfelt humility before God, mixed with a delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder.

I'll go over that one more time a little more quickly, just in case you've got some words missing and you wanted to have it down. True worship, according to Tozer, and I'm more summarizing the teaching of the Bible than giving a lexicon definition, true worship is the appropriate expression of heartfelt humility before God, mixed with a delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder. Now, one reason I like that is that that definition seems to include all the things that pertain to worship, because it talks about the heartfeltness of it.

It's not something that you put on outwardly. It's not a false humility. It's a true sense of brokenness and humility before God.

A heartfelt humility before God is an essential part of the sacrifices that you bring to God. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, David said, a contrite spirit. That's humility before God, but it's mixed with, because brokenness almost sounds like a negative experience, a negative emotion, yet that's mixed with a delightful sense.

David, in his psalms, obviously expresses a real delight in the presence of God. He loves to come before God. He loves to spend all his days in the tabernacle of the Lord.

When he comes in, there's a delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder. That is the rightful, you know, worshipful attitude toward God when you think of God. That's, in a sense, the fear of God right there, admiring awe and astonished wonder.

But the definition begins with these words, the appropriate expression. You see, there's, all the other parts of the definition have to do with what's inside, one's attitude that one brings to the encounter with God. I'm coming before God.

I'm coming to worship Him. I'm coming before Him in His temple, as it were, in the spiritual sense. I'm coming into the Holy of Holies.

As I approach to God, I bring, and I can only come if I bring, this appropriate, heartfelt humility. But, it's not just, it doesn't start and end inside. Worship isn't just what's in there.

There are appropriate expressions of it. And, I like the fact that he didn't just say, the expression. He said, the appropriate expression, because there are inappropriate expressions.

The other day we were talking about Nadad and Abihu, the two sons of Aaron. They were priests. Their job was to conduct the worship of God in the tabernacle.

Part of that worship was offering sacrifices. Another part was offering incense in the temple before God. That was an expression of worship.

It was a ritual of Jewish worship. And so, they were supposed to go and burn this incense before the Lord. They did.

But they didn't do it appropriately. According to Leviticus 10, they burned incense with strange fire. Which simply means that God had said, here's the fire that you shall use.

And they used a different fire. Now, there was a reason for God saying, use this fire, not that fire, or not any other fire than this fire. The reason was, this fire on the altar that they were supposed to take the coals from to burn the incense, was a fire that was supernaturally ignited.

If you read the verses just previous to the beginning of the chapter, the last verses of Leviticus 9, speaks of the fact that when Moses consecrated the altar to God, fire came out of the presence of the Lord and ignited the altar, and burned up the sacrifices there. It was a supernatural fire from God that lit that altar. And it's interesting, because there's something symbolic about that.

And in principle, something we need to remember about worship. It speaks of God being the one who makes it possible for the sacrifices even to be offered. Only the fire that he himself provides is acceptable fire.

Only the worship that his spirit births in us is acceptable. Any carnality, any self-willed, any worship of human origin alone is tainted with the sinfulness of human nature and is not acceptable. The only worship that is appropriate is that worship which God himself has produced in a changed heart, that his spirit has inspired by producing love for God and a desire to worship God.

In other words, man cannot independently of God meet all the conditions for pleasing God and bringing acceptable worship. God has to birth it. God has to ignite it.

God has to set the thing on fire. Then sacrifices can be offered acceptably. And the only fire that God allowed the Jews to offer sacrifices on ignited the fire.

And it was from that same fire that Nadab and Abihu and the other priests were supposed to take the coals and burn the incense. Again, incense was only to be offered to the Lord using the fire that God himself had provided and had created. And so also, I mean, the lesson behind this is that God only wants worship that he himself has produced in the heart and not that which is carnally motivated or of human origin or fleshly origin.

Now, Nadab and Abihu expressed worship, as it were, by burning incense, but they didn't do it appropriately. They offered strange fire. They didn't do it by the book.

God had told them the way to do it. They did it a different way. And I think that worship that places God has got to be, in a sense, by the book.

If God says, do it this way, then we don't innovate and do it some other way. Now, I'm not saying that everything that God accepts is written down. I mean, he may, by his spirit, inspire some forms of worship that have not yet been discussed in the scripture or something.

But I frankly feel more comfortable when I can give scriptural justifications for the forms my worship takes. If I worship God with dancing or clapping or raising of hands or shouting, some people might get a little upset with that. But if I can go to chapter and verse, and the Bible authorizes us, in fact, commands us to praise the Lord in the dance, to make a joyful noise to the Lord, to clap unto the Lord and so forth.

I mean, if I can show that the book itself says, this is what you do, then I can be sure that my expression of worship is appropriate. Because an inappropriate expression of worship is not right. I mean, God required appropriate expressions.

It's clear when you read the first eight chapters of Leviticus. The main aspect of Jewish worship was the offering of sacrifices. There were five different kinds of offerings.

There were the sin offering, the trespass offering, the peace offering, the meal offering, and there was another that I'm... What is it? Peace, I sinned. Burnt offering. Right.

Whole burnt offering. Yeah, wave offering was part of the great offering thing. And also a part of some of the other offerings.

The waving before the Lord was an element within several of these ones. But the whole burnt offering, right. And, you know, it's not like a person could just say, well, I guess I'll offer a sacrifice to God and go do it any old way.

These chapters of Leviticus spell out in grueling detail. You do it this way, then you do that, then you do that. You bring it to the priest, he puts his hand on it, now you slit the throat, now he's got to take out the guts, and now he's got to give the skin to the priest to be taken out of the source of the bird.

Take the dung out now, cut off the head, you know, put it here, do that, take the birds, twist their heads off. I mean, everything was by the book. That's literally what those eight chapters of Leviticus are.

The first eight chapters are all... it's like the manual, the priest's manual. Here's how you worship God with sacrifices. You do it this way, then you do that, then you do that.

It's almost choreographed. But I believe there's a lot more freedom in a sense, or a lot more variety in worship today than in that, because that was a system that was a rigid ritual, and I don't believe that the ritual is quite so important. As I said, Jesus said God's looking for people not so much who are keeping the rituals, but who are doing it in spirit.

It's not so much whether it's okay to dance or not, or whether raising the hands is the right thing to do or not. I believe that if... I mean, those things are scripturally authorized, but even those are not right if it's not in the spirit. I mean, there may be a time when God will hit you and you'll dance.

Other times when you want to dance, and if you just learn the ropes, if you just learn the rituals, you may not still be offering an appropriate expression. I mean, a man may praise God in tongues, and at one time that's just the right thing to do. At another time, it's totally inappropriate, in the middle of the sermon or something, you know.

A person gets up and starts interrupting the preaching of the Word to give an utterance in tongues. That, I believe, is not appropriate. Not because tongues is inappropriate, but because that is not what the Spirit is telling him to do at that time.

It's going through the Pentecostal ritual, and that's what tongues can be. It can be nothing more than a ritual for people, but it's only when it's the appropriate thing guided by the Spirit. I'm not much of a dancer myself.

I never liked dancing when I was a more carnal Christian. Dancing was not something I liked. It was not part of my entertainment in my life.

I mean, I did other things that were not very spiritual, but dancing was not one of my things. And when it comes to worship, I don't dance very frequently. But there have been a few times, I can think of, where just the way the Spirit was moving, I just couldn't keep from dancing.

Now, I don't want to make it sound like the Spirit forces you to dance, but it just seemed so appropriate. And, you know, it was just the kind of worship, the kind of Spirit, the kind of thing God was doing, and other people were dancing. And I just felt like I had to dance.

But that doesn't happen very often. And there are some times when I know it would be absolutely out of place to dance, when the worship of God is taken on a totally different mode. I mean, have you ever been in a meeting where you could almost sense the Spirit was taking the congregation in a certain direction, and they went from the more celebrant kind of worship that's mellowed out into more of a worshipful kind of awe of God? And in the midst of that, someone wants to break out into singing a raucous chorus with hand clapping and dancing and shouting.

I mean, it just quenched the Spirit. I don't know if you have or not. I have.

And what I'm saying is, the appropriate expression of worship is not simply the right ritual, not simply going through the right motions. There are motions which can be right at one time and wrong at another time. And they can certainly not be right if they're not inspired from a heart of love, where they're ritual only and not in spirit.

Because God desires that we worship Him in spirit and in truth. Let me say something about spiritual sacrifices. What are spiritual sacrifices? When we talk about the offering of sacrifices, we need to understand that in the biblical context, sacrifices are always a form of worship.

They are not to be viewed as paying off God, you know, protection money or something to keep God from smashing you. They are an act of offering, of a willing offering to the Lord, something that is intended to honor Him. And there are spiritual sacrifices.

Of course, we don't offer blood, put an end, when He shed it, put an end to the need for any other blood sacrifices. But the Bible states in a number of places that we are to offer up spiritual sacrifices. One of those places is 1 Peter 2, 5. It says, you also as living stones are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices.

Now, there's two, spiritual worship. To offer up spiritual sacrifices is to worship in spirit. And we are to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Now, the through Jesus Christ part should not be minimized at all. But also, we have to be offering the right thing, the right sacrifice. It would be inappropriate to come before the Lord with the wrong sacrifice on that occasion.

Now, what is a spiritual sacrifice? Let me very quickly run through three things that the Bible points out as parts of our spiritual life. Earlier I mentioned Romans 12, 1. I would just turn to that verse one more time to look at what He said there about spiritual worship, spiritual service of worship. Romans 12, 1 says, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service or your spiritual service.

It can be translated either way. Your spiritual worship is the way that it is translated sometimes. What is your spiritual worship? Do you want to worship in spirit? In other words, do you need to have spiritual worship? What is that? Well, first of all, you present your body as a living sacrifice.

It interestingly says, acceptable to God. That's the same expression that Peter used in the verse we just looked at. We are to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God, by Christ Jesus.

Well, one of those spiritual sacrifices is actually a physical thing, our bodies. But how do you offer your body as a sacrifice? Now, if God told me to offer a lamb as a sacrifice, I would understand that somewhere there's an altar, and I'm supposed to take that lamb to the altar and burn it on that altar. If I don't know where the altar is, I'm in big trouble because I can't offer that lamb.

Well, here's what might look like a similar problem. I'm supposed to offer my body as a sacrifice. Where's the altar? Where do I put it? Where do I stab it? Where do I burn it? How do I offer my body as a sacrifice without knowing where the altar is? Well, here we're not talking about the same kind of offering.

It is a physical thing we're talking about, but it's not a physical altar. It's not a physical killing. Because, he says, it's as a living sacrifice.

Not a dead sacrifice. The animals that were sacrificed had to be killed. This is not talking about killing.

The offering of yourself as a sacrifice is fundamentally different than any of the sacrifices in the Old Testament because you are sacrificed but still living. And, you know, someone has said that the big problem with living sacrifices is they have the tendency to crawl off the altar. And, you know, sometimes I think it would be easier to die for the Lord and lay down my life as a martyr, as a dead sacrifice, than to live for the Lord.

At least, dying for the Lord would only make... I only have to decide once about that and then before long it's over. But to live for the Lord requires me making decisions for God every day, many times a day, for maybe years and years and years. It takes far more commitment to offer myself as a living sacrifice than even to die as a martyr, it seems to me.

But what does it mean to present my body as a living sacrifice? Well, over in Romans chapter 6, the same word in the Greek, present, is used with reference to the parts of your body. Romans 6, 13, Paul said, do not present, the same Greek word, in Romans 12, when he said, present your bodies to God. Here he says, do not present your... but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead and your members, the parts of your body, as instruments of righteousness to God.

How do I present my body to God? Well, just this. Here's my body. It's made up of this member and that member and righteousness.

In other words, I use them as implements or instruments to carry out righteous purposes. My hands now have to be offered to the service of God to promote righteousness. My mind, my eyes, my ears, my mouth, my legs, all the parts of my body are now surrendered for God's service to promote righteousness.

This is a spiritual sacrifice. This is part of worship. And if I'm not doing this, then no matter how much ritual worship I'm doing every Sunday morning or whatever, I'm not worshipping acceptably.

This is not offering a spiritual sacrifice. I have to also have consistency in my life of living righteousness. My hands have to be clean.

My feet have to be running. I'm supposed to be speaking things that promote righteousness, not things that have some other result. In other words, my behavior in general, the way I use my body, has got to be surrendered to God and used for His purposes.

That is what Paul means when he says, present your body to God as a living sacrifice. I'm living. I have to live for God in practical senses, in what I accomplish and do and say and so forth.

So one of the spiritual sacrifices is the offering up of my body and its individual members to God for His service. Another, if you look quickly at Philippians chapter 4, another spiritual sacrifice that Paul speaks about in the Christian life, is in Philippians chapter 4 and verse 18. Paul is writing this letter to thank the Philippians for sending him a cash gift.

He's in prison. He has needs. And the church took up a collection for him and sent the gift by the hands of the Philippians.

Paul's writing this as a thank you letter. He says, Indeed I have all and abound. I am full.

Having received from Epaphroditus the things which you sent to me. The gift, the money, the resources they sent. Now notice how he speaks of their gift.

A sweet smelling aroma, an acceptable sacrifice well pleasing to God. Again, a sacrifice acceptable to God. What is this sacrifice? These people have offered a sacrifice to God.

In what form? Sending support to God's messenger. In other words, here's a needy Christian. Not only a needy Christian, a needy apostle.

A needy preacher. A needy missionary. And by making a physical sacrifice of their own finances to promote the kingdom of God or the needs of the saint, they are in a sense offering it to God.

Remember Jesus said, in as much as you do it. How do I give my money to God? What if I want to sacrifice all on the altar? The altar is in the pocket of the missionary. Or the crisis pregnancy center.

Or the carnal thing. It's a spiritual service. It's acceptable to God.

Well pleasing to God. It is part of my priestly ministry to offer up this sacrifice. Not only my body, but my resources.

Have to be laid on the altar. And that altar is particularly, that offer of sacrifice, it's a spiritual worship. Might not seem spiritual, but it's very spiritual.

It's a sacrifice that Christian spiritual priests offer. One other passage, another spiritual sacrifice that the Bible speaks of that we offer, and this one gets to more an area that we usually think of as a spiritual sacrifice, I think, is Hebrews chapter 13. It's much more easy to see how this is spiritual than the other two.

The other two have to do with your body and your money. Neither of those things sound like spiritual things. But you're not spiritual and you're not worshipping God spiritually, if you only have religiosity and you don't have a righteous life and a surrendered possessions to God.

But Hebrews 13 verse 15 says, Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name. But do not forget to do good and to share, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. Now we see all three of these sacrifices in one place.

To do good is what? To yield your members as instruments of righteousness. That's a sacrifice you talk about in Romans. Presenting your body as a living sacrifice is what doing good means.

What about sharing? That's the sacrifice we read about in Philippians. Sharing what you have. Laying your finances, your assets, your resources on the altar.

Sharing. And he says with these sacrifices, God is well pleased. But now he introduces a third that we haven't encountered yet, and that is praise to God.

Praise is a sacrifice offered up to. And you know, I don't know that it's more important than the others, but there is something unique about it. What do you give to the man who has everything? You know, I mean, what do you give to God that he doesn't already possess? You give him money, he owns the catalog of a thousand hills already, you know, gold, he's up in heaven, on the new earth.

You know, it's that he couldn't even take, he could take your life. He could take your money. He could take everything you have away from you.

But what can't he take? What does, what will he only receive if you willingly want to give it to him? Your worship, your praise. This aspect of worship. See, the other parts are part of worship too.

Offering your body as a living sacrifice is worship. Living a righteous life. Worship isn't just what comes out of your mouth.

Worship is your whole life. How you, how you for God. How you manage your life and your gifts and your physical talents and resources for God.

Spiritual sacrifice. But there's also the verbal praise to God, and that perhaps is the one thing that is unlike any other thing, because praise, at least heartfelt praise, he can't twist your arm and make you love him and appreciate him that way. He can force you against your will to praise him, but that's not what praise is.

Praise, as we know, is where you express your admiration and your love and your thankfulness and your appreciation for who God is. And that is a spiritual sacrifice. Now, I would point out that this is what worship amounts to.

Offering of sacrifices. It's true pagan worship. It's true Jewish worship.

It's true Christian worship. The difference is in Christian worship, it's spiritual sacrifice, because we're worshipping in the spirit. And in truth, it is a spiritual service of worship, and it involves spiritual sacrifices, which amounts to just a metaphor for the way Christians are supposed to live.

They're supposed to live holy, promoting righteousness with their actions. They're supposed to have their possessions available to God for his kingdom's service, and be praising God. Obviously, we could spend a lot more time on the issue of praise, but that has come up a little bit before already, and without wanting to take more time than I'm entitled to, I think we should probably close about there.

But I would point out shouting, clapping, dancing, singing, certainly. All of these things. Lifting the hands.

These are things that the Bible talks about both in the Old and the New Testament as appropriate expressions and accompaniments to praise. But they're only one part. When we say, you know, I need to go to church to worship God, there is an aspect of worship, offering up a praise and all the singing and so forth that takes place in church.

To worship God in spirit and in truth means that you're offering the spiritual sacrifices every day of your life. You're rendering your body and your goods to the purposes of God, and yielding those things up to him as a spiritual and acceptable sacrifice, as well as the praise and worship, as we usually call it, that is offered when we... Of course, worship is a bigger subject than this, and what we've been hoping to do all this week since this is the concluding lecture of the week is just kind of familiarize you with the different factors that factor into knowing God. And we... all of these subjects really are much bigger than our treatment of them in these short lectures, but hopefully by looking at the scriptures we have looked at in thinking about these things.

Anyway, that's got to be where we end today.