Now, worship means different things to different people. It’s a religious thing. It’s singing songs.  It’s a concert with light show. It’s well, who knows what. But the question we need to ask ourselves, is what exactly does worship mean to God?

We All Worship Something

Well it’s great to be with you again this week and we are starting a new series on the programme that I’ve called, “Worship as a Way of Life”. When we hear the word “worship”, well, what does it mean? And people who don’t have any particular faith in God, it’s something, well, those religious people over there in churches or in temples do. Maybe it’s candles and incense or something that happens over there somewhere not something that I do. And for some Christians, well, that’s what we do on Sunday morning at church before the sermon, we sing songs – that’s our worship time.

I guess both of those would be true in part, but the notion of worship, from where God sits, is so much bigger and broader than that – not some religious ritual, not just some musical event. When we worship someone or something, we put it above all other things – we pay homage to it. In fact, it directs our lives – we’ll sacrifice other things, even though those things are very dear to us, for the sake of the person or the thing that we worship.

We all worship something – I mean, I used to worship money and success and recognition. It was the thing that my whole life was centred on and ordered around. I sacrificed my health, my family, my rest, everything for these things that I worshipped and actually, when you look back on it, I was really worshipping myself.

We can all look at our lives and ask, “what’s at the centre of the life? I mean, what’s right up there at the top? Who or what do I worship?” And we know the answer to that when we look at the sacrifices we make for that thing and ask ourselves, really and truly, who or what am I making these sacrifices for? What’s at the centre of my life – is it career, is it my family? I mean, honestly ask ourselves, “what is at the centre of my life?” Look at the sacrifices and that’s who or what we are actually worshipping.

Now we all have different elements to our lives. Obviously, we need to make some sacrifices sometimes. The whole thing of being a parent is sacrificing for our children. And sure, some times at work we have to make sacrifices. But if we get those out of balance – I mean, you see parents who self-actualise through their children; through their children’s dancing or through their children’s academic achievement and all of a sudden it’s completely out of balance. Some people sacrifice their whole lives to their jobs and lose their families – I know what that’s like.

And so there is a balance and there is a right way of sacrificing to different things but if we take just one thing and get it out of whack, day after day, month after month, we sacrifice and sacrifice and this one thing rises above all of those other things, then chances are that’s what we are worshipping.

The notion of sacrifice is an essential part of worship – it’s not new. The very first time that worship is mentioned in the Bible is in Genesis, chapter 22 and verse 5. Abraham was promised by God a son and ultimately, after many, many years he had that son, Isaac, but Abraham had to go through a lot of trials and a lot of uncertainty over a quarter of a century before finally, in his old age, this son, Isaac, was born to him.

And so not surprisingly, when Isaac finally arrives, Abraham dotes on this kid – I mean, absolutely dotes on him – because here was the fulfilment of God’s promise. He never thought it would happen – he never thought he would have an heir, but God was faithful and God gave him his son, Isaac, with his wife Sarah.

But God saw that Abraham was starting to put Isaac before God, Himself and so He called on Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Can you imagine that – to take him and put him on an altar and put him to death? What an incredibly painful thing to do? And on that morning when they journeyed to where God had called them – out to that place – Abraham said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we’ll come back.”

Can you imagine the tussle that was going on in Abraham’s heart? Is God first in my life or is Isaac first in my life? Do I put Isaac before God? Is it God or my son? See we think we are worshipping God sometimes but when we look at our lives and ask some hard questions like ‘How do I spend all my time? How do I spend my money? How do I spend my energies? How to I spend my passions? Where are my dreams? Like Abraham we can get a real shock.

Let’s read on, the rest of the story – pick it up at Genesis, chapter 22 and verse 6. “Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son, Isaac and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on, Isaac spoke up and said to his father, Abraham, “Father,” “Yes, my son,” Abraham replied, “The fire and the wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham answered, “God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on.

When they reached the place that God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son, Isaac and laid him on the altar on the top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took his knife to slay his son. But an angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham, Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said, “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God because you have not withheld from Me your son; your only son.”

What God was doing here was testing Abraham’s heart. Who do you worship, Abraham? Who do you put first in your life? And at the end of this, both God and Abraham knew the answer to that question. “Now that I see you fear God because you have not withheld from Me your son; your only son.”

Can I ask you quietly, yet deliberately – who or what do you worship? When it comes to the crunch, the one thing on this earth that is most important to you, would you be prepared to lay it down for the Lord your God? All your hopes and dreams and future and life and career – everything – is God exalted above all those other things in our lives?

Worshipping God is about adopting a “God above all” position in every part of our lives. Singing songs of worship is great but do we bow down our lives before God? Do we put God before anything or anyone else in our hearts? Do we worship God?

When you look at the Ten Commandments – look at the very first one in Exodus, chapter 20 verse 2, it says:

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt; out of the land of slavery. You will have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them and worship them for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.

Now, would the first Commandment be about singing songs? No! The first Commandment is about who we put first – it’s about “whom” we worship. The question is do we worship God with our lives?

The Heart of Worship

The heart is an important place. One of the most common things that’s talked about through the Scriptures is the heart – in fact, it is mentioned five hundred and thirty four times. Several times Jesus made the point that who we are on the outside is a reflection of what’s going on in our hearts. In Matthew, chapter 12, He says,

For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.

And then again in Matthew, chapter 15, Jesus says, “But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart and these are the ones that make a man unclean, for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander – these are what make a man unclean.”

See for me, here is the biggest danger in thinking about worship. “Well, I go to church most Sundays, we sing songs, therefore I worship then I go home.” It’s kind of like saying, “well, I live in the same house and sleep in the same bed as my wife or husband. I peck them on the cheek in the morning before I go to work. Once a week I make sure I tell them ‘I love you’, therefore, I love them.” See how crazy that is? I mean, my wife isn’t interested in a ritual. She wants to know, does my husband love me with all his heart and do I see that reflected in the way he lives and acts toward me?

That’s why Jesus, when He was asked, “What’s the most important of all the commandments, answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all you soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” In other words, with what’s going on inside you and with what you do. This is the first and the greatest commandment.

Worship is something that comes from the heart – it’s an overflow of what’s happening inside us – it lives there first and foremost, and then it’s reflected on the outside in our lives. If we just “do” worship once a week, it’s a sham. I mean, I’ve been there, standing in church, singing songs, mind wandering off somewhere else – that’s not worship – that’s not what God is looking for any more that a quick peck on my wife’s cheek is really loving her.

Worship comes from the heart – King David knew that. Listen to what he writes in Psalm 24:

The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it – the world and all who live in it because He founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters. Who may ascend to the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who doesn‘t lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false.

See, David is saying here – God created the heavens and the earth and He owns them all and if I want to ascend to the hill of the Lord, which meant, “go to the temple and worship Him”, I have to have clean hands and a pure heart. A heart and a life that declare, “I put Jesus first.” Look again at Psalm 27, where David writes:

One thing I ask of the Lord and this is what I seek – that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and seek Him in His temple. My heart says of You, ‘Seek His face’; Your face Lord I will seek.

See what’s going on here for David? Something is happening in his heart – there’s a desire; there’s a besottedness; an overwhelming urge just to be with God.

I was away recently, travelling with the ministry for almost two weeks. The ministry that God’s got me involved in is such a blessing and such a delight but each time I have to leave my wife, for me it’s an incredible sacrifice. You see, I love her; I want to be with her. When we go out together, more often than not, we are wandering down the street or through the shopping mall, hand in hand. There’s a closeness and a desire; we want to be together.

That in a sense is what’s going on in David’s heart for God. “God, I just want to be close to You. I want to dwell in Your house all the days of my life and gaze on Your beauty and seek You in Your temple. My heart says, ‘seek His face’, and Your face Lord I will seek.” There it is – there’s the heart of worship – a holy desire after God Himself – not His blessings, just God.

Now sometimes we feel like we have wandered off and we feel dry and we feel like we don’t have that desire. We all go there some days, so stick with me because later on in the programme we are going to pray for the Spirit of God to light that flame in our hearts – the heart of worship.

Choosing What is Better

We are talking today about making worship a way of life – not just some ritual – not just a few songs that we sing on Sunday. So far what we have seen is worship is about sacrifice and there are two parts to that – what happens in our hearts and how that’s reflected in our lives.

We are going to talk a whole bunch more about that next week; connecting our faith with our day to day life realities. But I just want to kind of introduce that today with a story of two women, Mary and Martha. If you’ve got a Bible, grab it and open it up at Luke, chapter 10, verse 38. This is what it says:

As Jesus and His disciples were on their way, He came to a village where there was a woman named Martha, who opened her home to Him. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what He said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations she had made. She came to Him and asked, “Lord, don’t You care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself – tell her to help me?” “Martha, Martha,” said the Lord, “You are worried and upset about many things but only one thing is needed – Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken away from her.”

I don’t know what your life looks like, but mine truly has more things in it than I have time to get through. This ministry, Christianityworks, is not just about writing and recording radio programmes – it’s all sorts of things. It’s seeing radio stations; producing material to go with messages; administration; fund raising; managing people – lots of things. Not to mention home and family and church and friends and rest and relaxation. The danger for me, as with many other people, is you get so busy with the urgent things that we don’t have time for the important things.

And the important things that we tend to squeeze out of our schedule are relationships. Spending time with people; with family; with our wives and husbands (that’s why so many marriages fall apart)and spending time at the feet of Jesus (that’s why so many people end up drifting away from God). We delude ourselves – “well, I’m out there; I’m busy; I’m serving God. That’s what God wants from me – that’s the most important thing. If I don’t do all this the world is going to cave in.”

I’m not suggesting that we become spiritual couch-potatoes and do nothing. But have a listen to what happens here – Jesus comes to the house of Mary and Martha. Now Martha is rushing around cleaning and cooking, because they have a guest after all – the Son of God has come to visit. And her sister, Mary, is just sitting at Jesus’ feet, listening – her heart being moved and changed and strengthened and encouraged. She’s worshipping Him! Martha says, “that’s not fair – she should be helping me.” So what does Jesus answer? “Absolutely! Mary, get off your backside; stop being so lazy; go and help.” No! He says, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about so many things, but only one thing is needed – Mary has chosen what is better and it won’t be taken away from her.”

Just one thing – a relationship with Jesus! Just one thing – listening to the Word of God! Just one thing – worshipping Jesus! Looking and listening and being overcome with the desire just to sit at His feet. That’s the heart of worship – it’s a heart to want to bow down and just be with Jesus.

The first Commandment of the Ten in Exodus, chapter 20 is about worshipping God before all other things or people or idols or anything else in our lives. When Jesus is asked, “what’s the most important thing?”

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind.

Are you dry? Are you saying, “I want to do that but I just can’t – I feel like God’s a million miles away? I hear what you are saying but I don’t have that desire in my heart.” If that’s you right now, we are going to pray. We are going to ask God in the name of Jesus, that He would change that. Come on – let’s pray together.

Father, You know each one of us – You know where we are – You know the things we go through – You know how we get distracted like Martha with all the cooking and the cleaning and the stuff we have to do in life. Father, forgive us for doing that and forgetting what it is just to sit quietly at Your feet, to listen and to look and to desire and to enjoy You. To have this desire like David, Lord, to just spend time in Your house the rest of our days enjoying Your beauty. Father, forgive us for getting so busy that we have forgotten to do that. And Lord You know that we can’t worship You in our own strength. We can’t somehow, conjure this up in our hearts. Father, we believe that worship is a gift from You.We believe, Father God, that when we came and accepted Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, You put Your Spirit inside us, that You Yourself have come to dwell in us. Father, we have wandered in these lowlands; in these murky swamps for far too long. We ask that Your Spirit would spark the desire in our hearts. We ask that Your Spirit would give us a heart for worship. And Lord as you change our hearts by Your Spirit, we pray that that will be reflected in our lives. But first Lord, start with our hearts – change our hearts, O God, that we may truly be people of worship. Father, we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Don’t get me wrong. I love to go to church and to sing songs and to lift up praises and worship to God. It is one of the most wonderful things – to join together with the people of God in worship. But you know, if our hearts aren’t right; if our minds are wandering; if we truly haven’t established an intimate relationship with God through Jesus Christ, before we walk into that, how can we worship God?

This isn’t a guilt trip. I believe God is calling each one of us to come back to Him with a heart of worship and just the smallest bit of faith and just the smallest bit of desire is all that God needs to enliven our hearts and our spirits and our minds and our souls to worship Him. To God be all the glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Sometimes we keep our faith and our day-to-day lives in separate boxes. But it turns out that “worship” is something that brings them back together again. Worship does just happen once a week when we sing a few songs. Worship as things turn out, was always meant to be, a way of life.

Connecting Inside and Out

Well, this is the second message in a series that I’ve called, “Living a Life of Worship”. Something that we love to do and it seems to come naturally to us, is to have a disconnect between our faith in Christ and our lives. I mean, Sunday you may go to church – this kind of sacred zone – and we go there and we sing songs and we worship. “O God, You are so wonderful and I love You so much and I exalt You above all. Lord, I worship You and praise You and all of that stuff”. Brilliant! Great! We are going to talk about that later on today in the programme. But then on Monday morning we go back to work – the same old, same old – back in the groove.

Mum is maybe getting the kids off to school or maybe rushing out the door to work, dad’s on the train or in the car or on the bus doing the commute. Or perhaps you’re unemployed or retired or whatever, sitting at home alone and that thing that we call “worship” that happened back there on Sunday morning, it can seem a million miles away. Somehow it’s not connected to the reality of life. It was great while it lasted but now it’s back down to earth with a thud – it’s Monday morning!

Ever felt like that, that there’s some disconnect between faith and life? Worship is that thing that happens over there but back in the real world it’s hard, you know; it’s tough. It’s the grind; it’s the pressure; it’s the issues to deal with; it’s the compromises people make. Well, you’re not alone because in the West many Christ followers experience that. The fact that faith and worship and all that stuff over here, is somehow in a separate box from life over there.

In the East, in Asia and places like Africa</place />, people’s upbringing in culture means that their spirituality is a lot more connected to their lives – but not in the West. Anyway, wherever or whatever, it’s important that we understand what worship is all about. It’s not just something we put in a box and take out on Sundays. Worship is a way of life – that’s the name of this series, “Worship as a Way of Life”. When we understand what worship is in God’s heart, then all of a sudden life and spirituality become inseparable.

Last week we began to look at the fact that the New Testament talks about two different forms of worship. One verse where they both appear is Luke, chapter 4 and verse 8. Grab your Bible. Jesus had been out in the desert; the Holy Spirit had let Him out in the desert for forty days of fasting, so by the end of it He was weakened; He was starved; He was at a low point. This was part of God’s plan, in fact, next year we will be doing a whole four week series on this wilderness passage in Like chapter 4.

Today I just want to look briefly at the second temptation because at the end of the forty days the devil comes along and tempts Jesus. And this second temptation is a grand delusion. If you have a Bible, open it up at Luke, chapter 4 beginning at verse 5. This is what it says:

The devil led Him up to a high place and showed Him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to Jesus, “I will give You all their authority and splendour for it has been given to me and I can give it to anyone I want, so if You worship me, it will all be yours. Jesus answered, “It is written, worship the Lord, your God and serve Him only.”

Here is a standard temptation of the devil – look at this wonderful world that I have control of. You don’t have to look very far to see what an influence the devil has. I mean, Jesus called him the prince of the air. “What are you doing,” says the devil, “in this wilderness for God? Look, just worship me and all this can be yours.” Yea, right! Listen to what the devil says to Jesus – “so if you worship me, it will all be yours.”

Now the Greek word that’s used here for the word “worship” is “proskuneo” – it’s the word from which we get “prostrate”, so to prostrate ourselves; to lie down; to bow down; to kiss someone’s hand; to fall down on our knees, face down and worship. That’s the sort of worship I guess we do on Sunday morning in church. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 28, talks about worshipping God with awe and reverence – it’s a heart of worship – it’s expressing our allegiance and our gratefulness and our awe and reverence and wonder of God, by singing songs of worship and bowing down to Him.

The devil says to Jesus, “Now bow down to me as You would to God.” But look at Jesus’ reply! Jesus answered, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.”

Jesus here is quoting the Old Testament – Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 13 and there are two verbs in this sentence – worship and serve. Now the word “worship”, the English word, is the same word as the devil used – the Greek “proskuneo” – “to bow down”. But then the second verb – (Verbs are “doing” words) the second verb is and “serve” Him only. Now, this word is “latreuo” – it’s the Greek word from which we get the word “lateral” or “outwards”.

This word is used a number of times in the New Testament and it’s variously translated either as “serving” or “worshipping”. “Latreuo” means to render religious service or homage, to worship, to perform sacred services, to offer gifts, so it’s a “doing” word. It’s about worshipping God through serving Him. For Jesus the answer went beyond simply bowing down to God or in this case, as the devil wanted, to the devil – it included who Jesus served.

It’s not only about what we do in our hearts, it’s about what we do with our hands – inside and outside. Jesus said it again. You can read it in Luke chapter 10, verse 27. He answered:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.

In other words, with the stuff that’s going on inside you and then with your strength, which is what you do inside and outside. You know something, if what we believe on the inside isn’t reflected in how we live on the outside, what we believe on the inside will die. In James, chapter 2, verse 26:

Faith without works is dead.

If we exalt God in our hearts but not in our lives, by the way we think and act and treat other people, it doesn’t work.

One of the Psalms talks about having “clean hands and a pure heart”. In fact this linking of inside worship and outside doing worship – “proskuneo” on the one hand, “latreuo” on the other – “bowing down” worship and “living out” worship – is something that happens over and over and over again in God’s Word – you just can’t separate the two.

Hidden Places

The heart is where everything begins – that hidden place, deep inside. The Bible talks a lot about the heart, in fact it mentions it five hundred and forty one times! – over and over again. Jesus talked a lot about the heart. He said, “From the overflow of the heart the man speaks.” He said, “adultery and murder and all that stuff, begins in the heart” – it starts on the inside and then works its way outside.

So the heart is incredibly important when it comes to worship. It’s that hidden place, deep inside where we live and laugh and cry and think our deepest and most secret thoughts. Let me ask you – in that place do you worship God? This is “proskuneo” worship; this is bowing our lives down. In your heart, have you bowed down your life to God? In your heart, is He exalted above all things?

Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew, chapter 8, verse 5:

Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.

The heart though is a deceptive place. A.W. Tozer in his book, “The Pursuit of God”, writes it this way. “The self is the opaque veil over our hearts that hides the face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experience and never by mere instruction. As well, try to instruct leprosy out of our system. There must be a work of God in destruction before we are free. We must invite the cross to do its deadly work within us. We must bring our “self-sins” to the cross for judgement. We must prepare ourselves for an ordeal of suffering in some measure like that through which our Saviour passed when He suffered under Pilot.”

You see, worship of the heart is bringing ourselves before God, just as we are and allowing Him to discern the thoughts and the attentions of our hearts. And the question for each one of us is this, “who reigns in our hearts, me or Christ – myself or Jesus?” And if Christ, am I prepared in my heart to suffer for His sake? Am I prepared to take up my cross? Am I prepared to let certain things go for Him? Because when we so lay down our lives and our hearts through faith in Christ – when we decide deep on our hearts, to take a “Christ above all position, once and for all” – Christ above my selfish ambitions – Christ above the desires of my flesh – Christ above comfort and future and hopes and dreams and everything else that I want – Christ first, through faith in Him. When we decide that then He makes our hearts pure. And then this point that Tozer is making becomes our experience; the very words of Christ become our reality.

Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.

And we will see God with the eyes of our soul – gaze upon Him – and when we do we can only respond the way the twenty four elders do in the Book of Revelation. “The twenty four elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns down before the throne and say, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power for You created all things and by Your will they were created and have their being.”

We are talking here about complete surrender of our hearts; that secret hidden place; that place that only we and God Himself may inhabit. When we surrender in that place, our lives to Christ, no matter what the cost, that, my friend, is worship. “Proskuneo” – bowing down our all to Him.

So many people try to live out a “me” centred Christianity – get a revelation – there is no such thing! “I am my own little tin-pot god,” just doesn’t cut the mustard, when we have gazed upon Christ with the eyes of our soul. Like the elders, if we want to worship God, we have to take off our crowns and cast them down before Him at His feet and cry from deep within our hearts, “You alone are worthy, my Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power and I worship You.”

How much of our prayer life is worship? How much time do we spend simply resting in His presence and glorifying Him in our hearts? This is the birthplace of worship in our lives. The Spirit in our experience brings the reality of a relationship with God Himself through Christ, to life in our hearts. It is the place of true and complete surrender. It is the place of complete sacrifice of self. It is the place where we take up our cross and utter, “Lord, not my will but let Your will be done”. Painful and glorious, loss and gain, hunger and filling. “It is written, “Worship the Lord your God alone.”

Let me ask you gently, but quite directly, have you come to that place in your life or have you been there and perhaps drifted off? Let me pray with you a prayer that A.W. Tozer wrote in his book, “The Pursuit of God”. “O God, I have tasted Your goodness and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am so painfully conscience of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire, O God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit – I want to want You alone. I long to be filled with longing, I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Your glory, I pray, so that I may know You indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, “rise up My love, My fair one, and come away, then give me the grace to rise and follow You, up from this misty lowland where I have wandered for so long. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.

On the Outside

If on the inside we worship God in our hearts, you know, we say, “Lord, I lay down my life; I bow down; I delight in You,” but then on the outside we don’t live that out. Well, that incongruity; that mismatch; what you see is not what you get, well we have a name for that, it’s called “hypocrisy”.

And it is fabulous that people go to church on Sunday morning or Sunday night or whenever they do, and they worship God. They sing all of those wonderful songs – that is an awesome thing. But if then on Monday, we go to work and tear someone’s head off, that’s adulterous. I mean, that’s professing one thing and doing another. It’s like me marrying my wife and saying, “I’m going to set myself aside for her; she’s my wife”, and then I go and find a mistress on the side.

You know, that’s a stressful way of living and it doesn’t work and it hurts a lot of people. Eventually, we have to resolve that incongruity – you can’t go on living like that because the tension between inside and outside is just too great. Either we have to bring our lives on the outside in line with what’s happening on the inside in our hearts, or we abandon what’s been going on in our hearts in worshipping God and we just go with the desires of our flesh on the outside – it’s as simple as that. It’s one or the other.

I remember before I came to faith in Jesus – I used to try to be someone wonderful and exciting and dynamic on the outside but on the inside, you know something, my heart was rotten? I was selfish; I didn’t care about other people and you know, ultimately, that showed. I’m a tough nut and before I came to Christ I would crawl over people; I would hurt them. I really didn’t care because it was all about “me”.

Ultimately, what’s going on in our hearts shows on the outside – we can’t live two separate lives. We can’t sit there in the morning and read a Bible and pray and pretend to worship God and then go on and live a life that is so far away from God. The two just never connect.

The Apostle Paul knew that! If you’ve got a Bible open it at Romans chapter 12, beginning at verse 1. This is a really pivotal verse for me. This is what Paul writes, he says:

Therefore I urge you brothers and sisters, because of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship.

Let’s unpack that! He begins by saying, “therefore”. I mean, whenever you see a “therefore” in the Scriptures, it’s always pointing back to something else. And in this case, the Apostle Paul is pointing back to all that he said in the first eleven chapters of the Book of Romans. And those eleven chapters are about God’s goodness in coming to rescue us through Jesus Christ. It’s the stuff that causes us to worship Him.

If you are struggling with the fact that Jesus came to die for you; if you are struggling with the fact “am I forgiven, am I not forgiven”, read the first eleven chapters of the Book of Romans and you’ll be in no doubt about God’s goodness. You read those chapters and you just want to worship and praise God for who He is and what He’s done. And so it’s the heart stuff; it’s the stuff that causes us to worship God on the inside. And so Paul says because of what He’s done in your hearts, because of that mercy that you have received deep in your heart, because of that “offer your bodies as living sacrifices.”

See, in this verse Paul is making a connection between the heart and the hand. He is saying that we need to translate the worship in our hearts into action. We need to be living sacrifices. That is a gruesome picture! It’s definitely not good marketing spin. You know, people in those days knew what sacrifices were – animals were sacrificed at temples, both Jewish temples and pagan temples. But Paul says:

I urge you brothers and sisters, because of God’s mercy, because of what you have experienced of God in your hearts, now on the outside, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship.

Now I like this next bit, “This is your spiritual act of worship”. See we are talking about worship but here is the word “latreuo” which is what we talked about before. Some translations us the word “service”, the two concepts combine here in this Greek word “latreuo” and it’s about worshipping God through what we do.

This is where the rubber hits the road. The worship of the heart is the “proskuneo” worship that we talked about before – this is the worship about prostrating ourselves; bowing down, saying, “Lord, I worship You.” It’s about what people do in churches on Sunday when they sing songs of worship and praise. It’s what we do in our quiet times on our own, as we speak to God and say, “Lord, thank You; I praise You; I worship You.” That’s great – this worship, Paul is saying, because of that, now live out your worship – now “do” your worship.

When you and I treat someone kindly and gently – someone that really deserves to have their heads kicked in, that’s spiritual worship. When I deal honestly and fairly with someone, when I could have ripped them off, that’s spiritual worship – bringing the life into line with the heart, dying to all those things that we would rather do that we know aren’t God’s ways.

That’s spiritual worship – it’s being a living sacrifice. It’s hard; it’s tough; the road to follow Jesus always is – it’s a narrow road. Dying to self and living to Christ; this is worship. Worship is not off in some separate Sunday morning sacred zone – we need to worship God with our hearts and with our lives – clean hands, pure hearts.

Paul goes on to explain in the next verse what this means. “Don’t let the world squeeze you into its mould anymore, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you will really know and agree with God’s good and perfect will for your life.”

What begins in our hearts as worshipping God, works its way out into our lives, living life as a life of worship.

It’s easy to worship God in the good times. Sure. But what about the bad times, when life is really tough? What does it mean to worship God in the middle of suffering? Because quite frankly, when we’re suffering, the very last thing we feel like doing, is worshipping God.

Job in the Face of Adversity

Well, this is the third message in a series that I’ve called, “Worship as a Way of Life”. Over the last couple of weeks we have been looking at exactly what this thing is that we call “worship”. I mean we all worship something, whether its money or pleasure or career or recognition, you name it and people sacrifice their lives to worship it.

Worship is ascribing worth to something; it’s bowing down our lives to it and sacrificing other things for it. People will sacrifice their marriages for their careers. Why? Because they ascribe more worth to their career than they do to their husband or their wife. People will sacrifice their family and their home to adultery. Why? Because they ascribe more worth to their pleasure than to the fidelity of marriage.

Last week we talked a little bit about what it means to worship God. Now the New Testament talks about two types of worship – there are two different Greek words used in the New Testament to talk about worship. One of them means “bowing our lives down” – it’s the word “proskuneo” – it’s the word we get “prostrate” – to prostrate ourselves. The second is the word “latrio” and it’s the word that means “serving”. Latreuo is the word that we get the word “lateral” from, so it’s an outward form of worship. Inside worship; bowing down, prostrating ourselves and outside worship; doing things, lateral worship.

It’s about worshipping God, not just with our hearts and our mouths but with our lives – it’s what we do, what we say, how we act and behave and treat others. It’s great to sing songs in church on Sundays, but that’s not the whole of worship. That form of worship is the “proskuneo” type of worship. But living worship out is something that’s lateral; it goes out.

Remember last week, if you were with us, we looked at Romans, chapter 12, beginning at verse 1, where Paul writes:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, because of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship.

Some translations say, “this is your spiritual act of service”. It’s the “latreuo”.

Now this is easier said than done. I mean, when life is going really well; when finances and family are going well; and work and its fun and we’re cruising along, it’s not too hard to be a living sacrifice. You know why? Because when everything is going well, it doesn’t feel like we have to sacrifice much. Man, it’s easy to worship God when it’s all happening like that. ‘I’m honouring God; God’s blessing me – halleluiah!

But what happens when things turn ugly? When all of a sudden they start falling apart – family and wealth and health – some of those things start going wrong – what happens when we are put under pressure? What happens when it hurts? What happens when it aches so bad inside that we can barely life the eyes of our soul Christ-ward? What is worship as a way of life look like then?

I don’t think that we can talk about worship without talking about this. You see, when things go bad, the most common response is to blame God. “God, what are You doing? Why are You letting this happen to me and we let out this guttural cry?” The most common reaction is to blame God.

You know, it’s funny how people who worship fame or success or money or pleasure, when all that comes tumbling down, as it inevitably will, they justify their reactions. They never blame those things that they were worshipping but we, well, when we go through some suffering, the very first thing that so often happens, is that people blame God.

Jesus made a promise to His disciples – you can read it in John, chapter 16, verse 33. He promised them, “In this world you will have tribulation.” You will – that’s one of those promises of God we don’t like standing on. And when we look at worshipping God in the midst of trial and tribulation as we are today, we’ll look at it in perspective of a couple of men – Job and Paul.

Now these guys both went through a lot of suffering. Now I don’t like sermons that say, “Well, you know, Job did it this way and Paul did it that way and you and I should be like Job and Paul.” We’re not – I’m not Job; I’m not Paul, nor are you. We are us! But when we look at how these men reacted under suffering, there is some insights; there’s something there where God is telling us about worship under duress – worship in times of stress.

Let’s have a look at Job first. Now the story of Job – if you’ve got a Bible, open it up – the Book of Job comes just before the Book of Psalms. Job, chapter 1, verse 1, says that Job was blameless and upright, that he feared God and that he turned away from evil. I mean, this guy was mister, “I have my act together”. And the devil approaches God about Job and says, “well, it’s easy for Job, things are going well for him, but let’s see if he sticks with You, God when things are going badly”. So God gives the devil permission, one by one, to take things away from Job.

First he loses his property, then his children, his reputation, his friends, his health, his marriage – one by one, God lets the devil take those things away from Job. And Job – Job ends up loathing his life, wishing he’d never been born. Here’s this wealthy, well balanced, “I’ve got it all together” guy, who, by the way, has been honouring God and that’s why he’s been blessed. And he ends up sick, lost, alone, a laughing stock, his friends tell him he must have sinned – ‘Job it must have all been your fault”.

Do you think that’s tough? I mean, have a listen how he felt – chapter 3 – he said,

Let the day perish in which I was born. Why did I not die at birth? Why did I not come forth from the womb and expire?

Job wished he was dead! Life for Job was tough particularly in light of the fact that he was blameless, upright, he feared God, he turned away from evil – it wasn’t his fault. Why was this happening? It hurt so much – his friends criticised him –”God what are You doing?”

Ever felt like that? Well, next we are going to take look at how Job responded. What happened to worship in Job’s life when it all came tumbling down?

Job was Human Too

We are looking at Job’s response when all God’s blessings were taken away from him, one by one. His health, his family, his friends, his everything was taken away. And the good news is Job was human. He lost everything and it wasn’t his fault. Now if you thought that I was going to give you some “Job had a perfect response” kind of message today, you’re wrong. Job lost possessions, family, marriage, health, reputation, friends, everything basically.

Have a listen to what happened – Job, chapter 2, verse 7.

So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and inflicted Job with painful sores, from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes. His wife said to him, “Are you still holding onto your integrity? Curse God and die!” And he replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God and not trouble? In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.”

Now, that’s a very noble response – when you read what was happening to him; it was really ugly. It’s hard to read and to listen to, but in the very next chapter he curses the day he was born. And Job takes the situation to God and argues with Him. He ends up loathing his life. Have a listen to Job, chapter 10, verse 1:

I loath my very life, therefore I will give free reign to my complaint and speak out in the bitterness of my soul.

Pretty human response! “I will say to God, “Do not condemn me but tell me what charges You have against me. Does it please You to oppress me – to spurn the work of Your hands while You smile on the schemes of the wicked? Do You have eyes of flesh, do You see as mortals see? Are Your days like those of a mortal or Your years like those of a man, that You must search out my faults and probe after my sin, though You know that I am not guilty and that no one can rescue me from Your hand? Your hands shaped me and made me, would You now turn and destroy me?”

It’s a pretty heartfelt response! When this stuff happens to us, we have natural reactions just like Job. It hurts – we want to hang onto God but ultimately, it hurts so much, that like Job, we can end up going to God and saying, “God, I loathe my very life – why are You doing this to me?” We want to know why and sometimes, like Job, our friends end up blaming us. What a great help they were? Job prays for relief and deliverance and God seem to withhold it. He says, “God, how come those wicked people over there are doing just fine and this stuff is happening to me?”

Do you recognise any of this stuff? It’s the stuff of normal human reactions. But there’s something that runs through all of this – when you read the Book of Job, there’s a golden thread in the midst the all the dark and the painful ones. Job will not stop hoping in God. As much as this is tearing him apart in every way, at every level, he won’t stop putting his hope in God. Job, chapter 19, verse 25, he says:

“I know,” (he’s been through a whole bunch of stuff, and yet he says,) “I know that my Redeemer lives and that in the end He will stand upon the earth and after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. I myself will see Him with my own eyes, I and not another. How my heart yearns within me.”

See what this is? This is Job worshipping God in his heart – it’s “proskuneo” type worship – it’s bowing down saying, “you know something, no matter all this stuff that God seems to have thrown my way, I know that my Redeemer lives.” And he decides to worship God with his life too. You pick it up in chapter 27, verse 2.

As surely as God lives, who has denied me justice, the Almighty, who has made me taste bitterness of my soul, as long as I have life within me, the breath of God in my nostrils, my lips will not speak wickedness and my tongue will utter no deceit. I will never admit you are in the right till I die, I will not deny my integrity. I will maintain my righteousness and never let go of it. My conscience will not reproach me as long as I live.

In other words “I am just going to keep on keeping on in doing good. I don’t care what the world throws at me, I will not let go of my God and I will not let go of my integrity.”

You know what that looks like to me? That looks like a man bowing his life down and worshipping God. See Job had all the normal human, emotional responses that you and I have when things go bad. I mean, bad stuff happens to us – it’s not the time to deny our humanity; it’s not the time for a sermon that says Job was perfect and we should be perfect, because Job wasn’t. Job was human; Job struggled with stuff just like you and I do.

When we lose a loved one, we are going to grieve. When our health fails us, it’s going to be scary. And in the middle of all that, God is calling us to keep our eyes on Him; to worship Him on the inside and on the outside – to worship Him in our hearts and never let Him go and to worship Him with our lives and keep on doing good.

I’ve been through some really tough times in my life when it hurt so much that I didn’t even have the strength to lift my eyes and look at God. But He gave me a gift of His Spirit, deep in my heart I wouldn’t let go. The only decision I could make, by the grace of God, I made it. God is my God and my Redeemer lives. I will never blame God for my woes – I’ll be like Job -–I’ll ask Him why, I’ll share my pain with Him but I will never blame Him because He is my God.

You know something, that’s worship – worship in the hardest place of all. And as I look back through those dark times, it’s something that I’ve never, ever regretted. When we worship God through tears and gritted teeth and in the midst of the dark times, we look back and we see His piercing light shinning into that darkness. In the midst of bitterness, we can look back and remember the wondrous taste of the sweetness of the love of Christ.

Paul’s Party

Just going to spend some time briefly, looking at Paul and Silas in prison because there’s something special when we praise God with our lips in our difficult times. It’s a wonderful story – you can pick it up, if you have a Bible, open it up – Acts, chapter 16, beginning at verse 16:

Once when we were going to a place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl, who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune telling. Now this girl followed Paul and the rest of us around, shouting, “These men are the servants of the Most High God who are telling you the way to be saved.” She kept this up for days, finally, Paul became so troubled that he turned around to her and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of her.” At that moment the spirit left her.

When the owners of the slave girl realised that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them in to the market place to face the authorities. They brought them before the magistrates and said, “These men are Jews and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us as Romans, to accept or practice.” The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

About midnight, Paul and Silas, (as you do), were praying and singing hymns to God and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly, there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once, all the prison doors flew open and everybody’s chains came loose. The jailer woke up and he went and saw that the prison doors were open and he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped, but Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself, we are all still here.”

The Jailer called for lights and rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas, he then brought them out and ask, “Sirs, what do I have to do to be saved?” They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved – you and your entire household.” Then they spoke the Word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds and then immediately, he and all his family were baptised. The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them. He was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God; he and his whole family.

Isn’t it a great story? Paul and Silas are going along and they’re doing what they are doing and this woman who is possessed by a demon is driving them nuts, so Paul just turns around and casts the demon out in the name of Jesus Christ. They get hauled before a court – Paul and Silas are severely flogged. Listen to this, verse 23 of chapter 16.

They had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison.

What was their direct response to being severely flogged? Have you ever been flogged? I mean maybe we got a belting as a kid but flogged with whips? They would have been in a lot of pain. They would have needed the odd Panadol. What was their direct response? Look at verse 25:

About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God and the other prisoners were listening to them.

There is something so special about praising God with our lips at those times. And in the middle of all that – see, this wasn‘t fair that they were locked up – it wasn’t their fault. Someone just got them and locked them up and beat them and in the middle of all that God had a plan. Why were they in prison? Why had they been flogged? Why did God put His Spirit of praise in their hearts and on their lips? Because God had a plan – God wanted to save the jailer and his family. But that plan relied on Paul and Silas not running away the moment God loosed their chains and opened the cell doors, but on standing there and ministering to God.

You know what we want to do when we suffer? We want to complain and run away. Instead Paul and Silas praised God and stood firm in His purposes when they had the opportunity to run. There it is again – they did inside worship – “proskuneo” worship and outside “latreuo” worship. They worshipped in their hearts and they worshipped with their lives.

We sometimes behave as though God could never possibly show up in the midst of our suffering, let alone do a miracle. But it’s when we are suffering that we are called to praise God – to worship Him. To say, “God, I don’t know why this is happening to me, but You know something Lord, I’m going to praise You. I’m going to sing songs of worship and praise in my heart to You. I’m going to make music to You in my heart. And then when I have finished doing that, Lord, I don’t know why I am in this place, but I am going to stand here for You – just for You. Lord, I don’t know what You are about to do; I don’t know whether You are going to do a miracle or whether not, I just don’t know, but I’m not going to run – I’m just going to be here for You.”

See the story of Job and Paul and Silas gives us some things to think about. How much use is it to stand in the midst of our pain and blame God? Instead of blaming Him; instead of accusing Him, in the midst of our weakness, we can stand firm. We are going to go through stuff – our emotions are going to go up and down – we are going to feel pain and distress and some days, fear but when we stand in the middle of that and we worship God with our heart, with our lips, with our hands, with our very lives, there is something so incredible special about that.

What about you and me? What prison are we in at the moment? What thing are we going through like Job, at the moment? Are we saying, “God why are You doing this?” Or do we just give up on that and say, “Lord, I don’t know why but I am going to worship You.”

Can I encourage you? Worship is really worship when we are going through trials and tribulations – when other people have turned against us – when it’s not fair – when all these wicked people out there are walking around and God seems to be leaving them alone but something bad is happening in our lives, when we have been trying to be faithful to God and it’s just not fair. The most wonderful response that we can have is to worship God, with everything that we are. That changes us – it changes us for ever and ever and ever.

Let me encourage you, no matter what you are going through today; choose to worship God with your heart and with your life.

So often we try to make changes in our lives, you know, the difficult things, those entrenched behaviours that keep ruining things for us – but try as we might, somehow we always seem to fail. But worship, well, that’s something that changes us – from the inside out.

Worship Sets us Free

Well, welcome to this programme; it’s the last programme in our four part series called, “Worship as a Way of Life”. I guess the guts of it has been getting our hearts and our minds around the fact that worship is more than just going to church and singing songs on Sunday morning – so much more. And over the last three weeks we have seen that there are really two aspects to worship. Two different words used for worship in the New Testament. Worship on the inside – bowing down our lives to God, the thing that happens in our hearts, and then what we go on and do with that – living out that worship through our service, on the outside.

It makes sense – look at a marriage. I love my wife, Jacqui, with all my heart – I adore her but if that’s all I did it wouldn’t be a very great marriage. Once a week, if I just said, “Darling, I love you”, come on, what sort of a marriage would it be? I have to live out that marriage; I have to live out that love. I don’t always do that perfectly, but she has to know that I love her through how I treat her and what I say to her and what I do for her and as I live out that love, it changes me on the inside and I love her even more.

So this “inside”, “outside” thing, well they feed off each other. The question is, is it like that in our relationship with God? Today we are going to conclude this series by asking that question. Ok, so if I worship God, what happens to me? I mean, does it change me, does it transform me, does it change the way I am on the inside and the outside?

We are going to start off today back in the Book of Exodus, so if you have a Bible, go and grab it. We will go to the Book of Exodus and we are looking where Moses went up to Mount Sinai and got the Ten Commandments. Something happened to him up there. Have a look at Exodus, chapter 34, beginning at verse 29.

When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he wasn’t aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken to the Lord. When his brother Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses his face was radiant and they were afraid to come near him but Moses called to them. So Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him and he spoke with them.

Afterwards all the Israelites came near to him and he gave them all the Commandments that the Lord had given him up on the mountain. When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face but whenever he entered the Lord’s presence to speak with Him he removed the veil until he came out again. And when he came out and told the Israelites what had been commanded they saw that his face was radiant again. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the Lord again.

See, when you go into God’s presence, you can’t help it, something happens to you. And with Moses, he went into God’s presence up on Mount Sinai and then in the tabernacle (the tent), which was the tent of the meeting place. When Israel were out there in the desert for forty years in the exodus, they built a tent and in the centre of that tent; in a place called the Holy of Holies, is where the presence of God rested with them. And only Moses would go in and speak with God. And when he did that there was this radiance; something different about him, when he came out from having been in God’s presence. He was transformed in a way that the people, well, they really noticed this.

A few thousand years later the Apostle Paul looks back on all of that and comes up with the conclusion that when we turn to the Lord our God and worship Him, something like that happens, only much better. Let’s again go to God’s Word and have a look at Second Corinthians, chapter 3, beginning at verse 13. This is what Paul writes:

We aren’t like Moses who had to put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. Their minds were made dull for to this day, that same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day, when Moses’ laws are read, a veil covers their hearts but whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

What’s this thing that Paul is talking about here? I mean the Israelites in the first century, were bound up in God’s law and in legalism. You know, it was all about rules – there were six hundred and thirteen commandments and prohibitions in the Torah; in the Hebrew Law that was given through Moses and they got so rule-bound and legalistic and that’s the thing that Jesus came to set us free from.

I mean, Moses, in the Old Testament, was able to go into the presence of God, and when he came out he used to have to hide his transformation – the glory of God shinning out from his face, because people didn’t understand it; they couldn’t take it – the whole bunch of people around in his day who just didn’t get it. A bit like today really.

Whenever we turn to the Lord, to Jesus, the veil is taken away. And then Paul goes on to say in verse 17:

Now, the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

The picture here is of our faces shinning with the glory of God – not a sense of a bunch of rules that we have to keep – not that at all – a sense of freedom.

See, here’s what so often happens – someone accepts Jesus Christ into their lives as Lord and Saviour – right? Fantastic! All great intentions but then little by little we get bound up in rules and regulations and “you have to do this and you can’t do that” – it’s called legalism. And Paul is saying, “No, you get up on the mountain top and you worship God – you don’t have to be like that. He changes you on the inside and you end up shinning on the outside.”

The veil is removed – you don’t have to hide it anymore. Have you ever met someone who is just glowing with the glory of God; with the goodness of God? You know, they walk into the room and there’s a kind of a light and when they leave something lingers – this sense that somehow, God is in this place. When we like Moses, go to that mountain top and worship God, it changes us; it transforms us on the inside and you end up glowing that on the outside. There’s a sense that this person has been up there worshipping in the presence of God.

You know what we try to do? We try to do this in our own strength. We look at God and go, “WOW, God is so amazing”, and the more we look at Him the more we realise our own weaknesses, so then we set about trying to change them. We think, “you know something, I have to stop doing this or I have to start doing that, or I have to do this and don’t do that”, and before you know it we are peddling so hard, we’re exhausted.

And ultimately, we end up failing; it’s too hard, we can’t do it. Paul is saying here that when we worship God on that mountain top, God does something amazing. He fills us on the inside and we can’t help it – it ends up shinning out on the outside. We’ll take a look at that next.

Worship Transforms Us

When we worship God, that bears fruit in our lives – it changes us on the inside and on the outside in ways that we simply couldn’t do on our own. In fact, as we worship Him, we end up looking more and more like Jesus. Have a read here in Second Corinthians, chapter 3, verse 18, what Paul goes on to say.

And we, who with unveiled faces, all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness from glory to glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

See, that veil that Paul was talking about before and here in this passage, is the veil of misunderstanding; it’s the veil of separation; it’s the veil that says, “I can’t come before God because I’m not worthy.”

In the first century the Jews had the temple, in fact, they had had it for quite a long time before then. And in the centre of the temple, on the inside, was the Holy of Holies, the place where the presence of God was. And only the High Priest was allowed to go into the Holy of Holies and then only once a year on the Day of Atonement – to make atonement with God through sacrifice for the sins of Israel.

Anyone else went in there they would die because they couldn’t stand the presence of the Lord – He’s holy and He’s perfect and we’re not! – and we would surely die in His presence. That’s why, when Moses came down from the mountain and his face was glowing with the glory of God, people were afraid. The Holy of Holies was closed off from the rest of us in the temple, by a thick curtain or a veil. So what’s changed? How come we can go into God’s presence and worship Him? How is it that we can come before a holy God just as we are with our faces uncovered and our hearts uncovered open to Him?

Luke explains it in his Gospel as he records the crucifixion of Jesus. You can read this in Luke, chapter 23, verse 44.

It was now about the sixth hour and the darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour for the sun had stopped shining and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit.” When He said this, He breathed His last.

See, the death of Jesus Christ paid for all my sins – He paid for all your sins And that one thing that stopped us from coming into the very presence of God, our sin, was dealt with and so God tore the veil in two – the veil that closed off the Holy of Holies. He opened that up to you and me, the instant that Christ died. That means if we put our faith in Jesus we can go and stand in His presence unveiled; just as we are and just gaze on His beauty with wonder and awe and worship Him. And when we do that then we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness from glory to glory, which comes from God who is the Spirit.

Just as we stand in His presence and know that He is God, He transforms us into His likeness, from glory to glory to glory and it works its way out from the inside to our outside and we’re transformed into His likeness. We end up looking more and more like Jesus.

Let me ask you a question: Why is it that so many Christians are just plain hypocrites? They go to church on Sunday and yet you look at their lives for the rest of the week and they look nothing like Jesus. I’ll tell you why – because they haven’t adopted worship as their way of life.

I struggle so much in my life when I don’t spend time with Jesus. If I’ve been sick or I’ve been travelling or I’m really busy or really tired, in those times I just know that I haven’t got what it takes to do it on my own. And time and time again that’s what brings me back to the foot of the cross. Time and time again I discover and I rediscover I can’t do this on my own. Only when I worship God on the inside and then I live that out on the outside, that’s when I can look like Him.

When we get off that mountain top and wander round in the marshes of day to day life, like Moses, the glory fades. But when we spend time worshipping Jesus on the mountain top, on the inside; we don’t have to go out there in life and wander round on our own any more, in our own strength. Instead the joy of the Lord is our strength. When we worship God, He fills us with His joy, just as having been in His presence.

The joy of just having seen Him and heard Him and experienced Him changes us – He fills us with the joy of the Lord; the fullness of His Spirit. We need to experience Jesus for ourselves – that’s what real worship is – making music unto Him in our hearts – singing, delighting, resting, praying and when we do that, we who with unveiled faces, all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness, with ever increasing glory which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. I love this because we can’t do it in our own strength.

God has this amazing plan to transform you and me into His image from glory to glory. Just as we turn to worship Him and bow down before Him – to set us free, to fill us with the calm delight of His presence. This is where the rubber hits the road – this is so much better than keeping the veil over our hearts and trying to go out there and do it in our own strength. This is … well, it’s so God, isn’t it? It’s so.. Him! Do you get it?

He wants to change you and me from glory to glory. He wants to transform us to, in effect, be Christ to a lost and hurting world; to look like and to walk like and to talk like Jesus – to ache like Jesus for those around us – in His image – that was always the plan.

A Treasure in Jars of Clay

I was accosted recently by a man in a coffee shop in Chicago. It turns out, sad to say, that he was an Australian who heard me talking with my colleague in the coffee shop, and so he picked up my accent. Anyhow, this guy accosts me quite aggressively and starts telling me that if we believe in God, it’s possible for us to be perfect here on earth. Unfortunately, I didn’t think quickly enough – what I should have done is ask him, “So, do you know anyone who’s like that, perfect, I mean?” Because the only perfect person I know is Jesus Christ.

Now I want to deal with this because it’s important. From what we’ve seen so far on the programme you could easily get the impression that I agree with that guy in the coffee shop. Just keep worshipping Jesus and you’ll be exactly like Him – perfecto! My experience is that there are sometimes gaps between the glory – you know when it talks about us being transformed from glory to glory – I make mistakes every day, I fall short every day and my hunch is so do you. And if we think that we can end up being “perfecto”, well, we are going to become very discouraged very quickly.

Paul addresses this in the next few verses – go to Second Corinthians, chapter 4 and verse 6 – let’s have a listen to what he says.

For the God who said, “Let a light shine out of darkness,” made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

That kind of reinforces what we’ve been talking about.

God does something, “He shines His light” as we get to know Jesus; He shines His light into our hearts. The same God who created light out of darkness – it’s the first thing He did – “Let there be light” – that God speaks light into our hearts through Jesus Christ. But look at what He says in the next verse, verse 7.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our bodies.

See, the treasure that Paul is talking about here is the wonder and the glory of God – that light that shines out from our faces and from all that we do when we are people of worship. The jars of clay, well, that’s you and me – that’s who we are! What a great contrast – the light shinning out the glory of God – bright and pure and perfect – but God takes it and He puts it in this rough and imperfect earthenware jar. Maybe it has some chips and cracks and that brilliant light of God’s glory shines out from that imperfect and rough jar.

See, sometimes we go and worship God and we come down from the mountain top and we are full of His glory and we think “everything is going to go well”, but look what Paul says:

We are hard pressed on every side but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus Christ so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.

He was going through some difficult times in ministry – people were trying to kill him, they were locking him up, they were beating him, they were abandoning him. Just because we worship God doesn’t mean that those things aren’t going to happen to us – they do! We are in an earthenware jar. And what a sharp contrast between this beautiful, perfect, glorious light of God and this rough and imperfect and sometimes cracked and broken earthenware jar – they are so different you can tell the difference, you can’t help it. And there’s a reason for that. So that people will know that this light that they see on our faces – this glory of God, this all surpassing power comes from God and not from us.

God is so realistic, isn’t He? He doesn’t expect perfection – He just wants us to come as we are – a bit rough around the edges, a bit perfect, with pressures and tensions in our lives and when we worship Him He pours His glory into us to shine out into the world.

It’s so easy for us to get discouraged! The more we worship God the more we see our own imperfections in His light but that’s the plan – just for us to let Him take our lives as we are and for God to use them for His glory. That’s worship – worship as a way of life.

You go up to the mountain top and you worship Jesus – you do it with all your heart – you bow down and you worship Him in song and in prayer and in just resting in His presence and His glory with thanksgiving and with praise. And then we come down from that mountain top and we are walking around doing all the stuff we do in life and His glory just shines out into the world through the cracks in our earthenware jars. We go up to that mountain top again and He fills us again and again and we come down again and again and we live out that worship – it’s just the way He made us.

My earthenware jar was made for a different purpose to yours – yours is different to the next persons. We are all imperfect – that’s the way it’s meant to be so that nobody can be in any doubt that the glory comes from God.

I love getting together with God’s people and singing songs of worship and praise but you know the greatest times of worship for me are in my study with the door closed, with the Bible open, just praying and delighting and worshipping God and being filled with the sense of His presence; being filled with His Spirit.

And then when I open that door and I go and do all the things I do in life, I‘m a better husband; I’m a better father; I’m a better teacher; I’m a better manager; I’m a better everything because I spent that time worshipping God. Worship on the inside becomes worship on the outside – the things that we do in life.

Worship – worship is a way of life.