A Collapsed Worship Equals a Weary Life

Is it not true that a barrenness of spiritual life brings more barrenness?  When vain repetitions become habit, we repeat all the more? That we look for the novelty in worship and that just tempts us to give way to more novelty?




“Faith Doesn’t Have Any Excuses”

And the Lord said unto Noah: "Where is the ark which I have commanded thee to build?"

And Noah said unto the Lord: "Verily, I have had three carpenters off ill. The gopher-wood supplier hath let me down -- yea, even though the gopher-wood hath been on order for nigh upon 12 months. What can I do, O Lord?"

And God said unto Noah: "I want that ark finished even after seven days and seven nights."

And Noah said: "It will be so."

And it was not so. And the Lord said unto Noah: "What seemeth to be the trouble this time?"

And Noah said unto the lord: "Mine subcontractor hath gone bankrupt. The pitch which Thou commandest me to put on the outside and on the inside of the ark hath not arrived. The plumber hath gone on strike. Shem, my son who helpeth me on the ark side of the business, hath formed a pop group with his brothers Ham and Japheth. Lord, I am undone."

And the Lord grew angry and said, "And what about the animals, the male and female of every sort that I ordered to come unto thee to keep their seed alive upon the face of the earth?"

And Noah said: "They have been delivered unto the wrong address but should arriveth on Friday."

And the Lord said: "How about the unicorns, and the fowls of the air by sevens?"

And Noah wrung his hands and wept, saying: "Lord, unicorns are a discontinued line; thou canst not get them for love nor money. And fowls of the air are sold only in half-dozens. Lord, Lord, Thou knowest how it is."

And the Lord in His wisdom said, "Noah, my son, I knowest. Why else dost thou think I have caused a flood to descend upon the earth?"

 I think that God wanted His people to understand what worship was meant to be and to do. Archbishop William Temple said this -

Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God.

It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness, nourishment of mind by His truth, purifying of imagination by His beauty, opening of the heart to His love, and submission of will to His purpose.

And all this gathered up in adoration is the greatest of human expressions of which we are capable.

Worship binds all of life together and gives it a single focus of:
     –Conscience
     –Mind
     –Imagination
     –Heart
     –Will
•Worship responds to guilt, for with reverence we come to God for forgiveness
•Worship goes beyond pleasure, pleasure has it weariness
•Worship guides our feelings, they need to be bounded and informed by truth
•Worship needs to know who God is, we need to come to Him as Holy Father
•Worship counters the sense of loneliness, for it binds all our passions

Remember Eric Liddell in "Chariots of Fire?"  Before he went as a missionary to China, he ran in the 1924 Olympics and won gold.  When asked why he practices so much, he said, “God has made me for a purpose, for China. But He has also made me fast, and when I run I feel His pleasure.”

Worship is coextensive with life. Here the sacred and the secular meet and our cry meets the cry of God.

The Sixth Element in Worship

"Another thing you do: You flood the LORD’s altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer looks with favour on your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands.

You ask, “Why?” It is because the LORD is the witness between you and the wife of your youth. You have been unfaithful to her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.
Has not the one God made you? You belong to him in body and spirit. And what does the one God seek? Godly offspring. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful to the wife of your youth."


The sixth element in worship is - it is impossible to worship God without obedience.

God asked the people to look at the broken promises between husbands and wives. God brought the tragedy of a nation that had lost its relationship with God right down to the marital vows.

Take a look at the old English usage for when the marriage vow was made: “With my body I thee worship”

So we have broken marriage vows, disobedient lifestyle that destroyed the sanctity of the home and worship became hypocritical. If our word to God is not honoured, what motivation is there to honour our word to our spouses and then that is passed down to our children – trapped in a situation of broken promises. The book of James defines true religion as, “Let your ‘Yes’ be yes, and your ‘No,” no” in other words, honour your word.

God’s purpose boils down to this: redemption, right standinng with God, worship which is the same trend we see in Israel’s history:
•First He redeemed them
•Then He gave them the Law to point them to righteousness
•Finally, He gave them the instructions for worship

The Fifth Element in Worship

“For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, and from his mouth men should seek instruction – because he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty."

It is impossible to worship God without instruction in the truth.

Worship is not for the glory of men and women; it is for the glory of God.

Teaching is the seed sown within the heart and mind from which the fruit is produced in life that can then be brought as a sacrifice to God.

The Fourth Element in Worship

“Oh that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you.’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and I will accept no offering from your hands.’”

The fourth element is - It is impossible to worship God with a wrong motive 

So much had become a show. Everything seems to point to how impressive one’s religious performance and duties appear. But deep inside, our heart is far, far away from God.

Any time we find a blend of power and ceremony with the need for inward purity, there is a great risk that the latter will suffer.

The monotony of repetition and the seduction of power are two extremely potent forces to contend with. That is what makes the whole concept of staying fresh in one’s study and efforts so necessary. Each new day places a new opportunity before us to be refreshed and to learn, to reinforce and to renew.

Figuratively speaking, the heart is the seat of the soul,  by that I mean our inclinations, our passions, our desires, our sincerity are true intimations in matters of the spirit and God is saying that the comings and goings are very obvious, but the heart is far away - therefore worship is not really happening.

The Third Element of Worship

“But you ask, ‘How have we shown contempt for your name?”

 

“By saying that the Lord’s table is contemptible. When you bring blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice crippled or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?’ says the Lord Almighty”

The third element – it is impossible to worship without sacrifice
 
By sacrifice, we mean the best
   –Do we give Him the best of our time?
   –Do we give Him the best of our energies?
   –Do we give Him the best of our thinking?
   –Do we give Him the best of our wealth?
   –Do we give Him the best of our dreams and plans?

http://youtu.be/2t4pAE4dWR8

The Second Element

“A son honours his father, and a slave his master. If I am a father, where is the honour due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?” says the LORD Almighty."

“It is you priests who show contempt for my name.”

Not only have they lost sight of His love, but hey also lost that all-important attitude of reverence.

The second element – we cannot worship Him with out reverence

The First Element

Looking at how has God cried for His people, what elemenst can we glean that will give us meaning worship, for example this conversation found in Malachi - “’I have loved you,’ says the Lord. But you ask, ‘How have you loved us?’” - we see a pattern of dialogue begin to take shape - I say this, but you say, How?  I make specific changes, I make specific changes, and you deny them.

Imagine, after one thousand years of history with God they have the audacity to ask.

Don't you feel sorry in a way for Hosea?  He was used by God to show His love to a people who abused it terribly.

Hosea had three children -
–Jezreel – meaning “judgement” as in a day of reckoning
–Lo-ruhamuh – meaning “no more mercy” – as in God saying that time has run out
–Lo-Ammi – meaning “not my people” – as in ‘I disown you’

Hosea's wife, Gomer, deserted him and had to sell herself into prostitution - God told Hosea to take her back as a real life analogy of His love for His people.

So as Hosea is walking down the street the gossip begins - "How can a holy man like you be married to an adulterous woman like that?”

Hosea gets involved - “I have been waiting for you to ask. And I will be glad to tell you how easy it is to love a woman like that if you will first explain to me how a holy God can love an adulterous nation like us?”

How could a people have missed that kind of love, which loved the unlovely, one that loved the undeserving, indeed, the disgusting?

There is a boy in the neighbourhood… whom I have defended in some of his troubles with the law. He used to stop in often on Saturday mornings to shave and wash up, after having spent the week on the streets. He has been addicted for a long time. His father threw him out three years ago . . . He has contrived so many stories to induce clergy and social workers to give him money to support his habit that he is no longer believed when he asks for help . . . He is dirty, ignorant, arrogant, dishonest, unemployable, broken, unreliable, ugly, rejected, alone. And he knows it. He knows that at last he has nothing to commend himself to another human being. He has nothing to offer. There is nothing about him that permits the love of another person for him. He is unlovable. Yet it is exactly in his own confession that he does not deserve the love of another that he represents all the rest of us. For none of us is different from him in this regard. We are all unlovable. More than that, the action of this boy’s life points beyond itself, it points to the gospel, to God who loves us though we hate Him, who loves us though we do not please Him, who loves us not for our sake but for His own sake, who loves us freely, who accepts us through we have nothing acceptable to offer Him. Hidden in the obnoxious existence of this boy is the scandalous secret of the Word of God.
~William Stringfellow, My People is the Enemy: An Autobiographical Polemic, 97-98

The point worth remembering…
–God’s rejected love, so flagrantly abused, was given the parallel of a woman who left her husband to wallow and revel in a life of prostitution, yet remained love by Him

 

Remember what the prophet Isaiah shared about God's thoughts – “what more could I have done for you that I have not already done?” If God could ask that centuries before the cross, what does that say about our modern world? For the raw expression of love was carried all the way to the cross.

God can use the same word to describe His feelings and do so in a meaningful way while at the same time exceed our context of that word. For example, when I say I love somebody and that person refuses to love me, I hurt – because I lost something. When God says He loves us and we refuse to love Him, He hurts too – because we have lost something We make ourselves less then we were meant to be.

So, the first element of meaningful worship – one cannot worship without love. Not emotional, emotion – not emotionalism, emotions.

Worship is more than Love

Ever think that worship is an antedote for loneliness?

Here are three things about worship that I think counter the ache of loneliness.

1.  Recognize worship as the legitimate sense of mystery and the rightful expression of awe.  If we reflect on our own pursuits, for example, in the area of academia,  because of our desire to know - we can look at ourselves and rather than see God's hand with us, with think we accomplished everything on our own. The heart of worship suggests that even our very own life is a gift.

2. This kind of Appreciative love goes beyond itself and gives to others. If it were not for Appreciative love for God, one could never love his or her enemy or even love for another’s sake. Because of our love for God we endure all things. And from the love with which He enriches us flows a love that is not our own .It comes from a deposit He makes in our hearts from which we draw.

3.Appreciative love binds the worshipping life into a single focus, touching upon every sense of life itself. Worship brings the coalescence of essence. For instance, musicians are "persons" first before they are musicians and a life that seeks fulfillment in its expertise before it finds fulfillment in its being is bound to feel fragmented.

The songwriter beautifully blends these truths, base on the forty-second Psalm -

As the deer panteth for the water,
So my soul longeth after Thee,
You alone are my heart’s desire
And I long to worship Thee.
You alone are my strength and shield
To you alone may my spirit yield;
You alone are my heart’s desire,
and I long to worship Thee

 http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=JE12CFNU