Us: Die

Welcome! Today we come to the final message in our relatively short series on worship. I’m not sure what the people in the cars driving by the church all week thought about the message title – “Worship:  Die”. I want to get to the meaning of our title today, the subject of our message, in a roundabout way. I want to start by reading excerpts from one of my favorite stories, “The Golden Key” by George MacDonald. My great challenge is to not give up on the message altogether and just read you this story, to only tell the little parts that directly relate to this message. 

For those of you that haven’t heard of George MacDonald, he was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister who lived from 1824 to 1905. He is probably best known for his fantasy literature and for the fact that C.S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll both credit him as one of their most important influences. Indeed, if you read the Narnia books of Lewis and also read enough of MacDonald’s fantasies, you will see how Lewis was definitely inspired by MacDonald and even “borrowed” some of his imagery for his own works. Similarly, you can see MacDonald when you go down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass with Carroll.

Us: Bow

“Sing and Tremble.” I am very excited about this series on worship, so I’m sorry to have missed so many of the messages. Worship is such an important concept for us to understand and apply in our lives. Worship is actually fundamental to living as a Christian, because its purpose and practice go to the very heart of our relationship with God. We were created to worship – and that is what we as believers will be doing for eternity in heaven. One of the quotes that Carl put in his introduction to the series is from Don McMinn: “Our entire being is fashioned as an instrument of praise.” So worship is something that is built into us as human beings. Everyone worships something. Some of the most intense worship experiences I have seen since moving to Clemson have been at football games. It might sound a little crass, but many people here worship football.

Worship is usually defined in terms of a ritual or response associated with reverence and adoration – of something. There must be an object of worship. But worship is more than just expressing our love for something. It is more than just cheering at the football game or singing songs in church. Worship is defined by priority. The true worshipers of football are the ones who are out there cheering on the team, regardless of the weather, paying whatever it takes, going wherever they need to. To make something a priority means giving up other things. Therefore, worship implies sacrifice. You have to give up something to be a true worshiper. You choose to make the object of your worship more important than other things in your life.

Us: Gather

Ephesians 3:10-11 says, “His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We, as Christians, are supposed to gather for worship.  For some things in our Christian walk it helps to understand the “why” before we do the “ought to”.  What I mean is that we “ought to” meet together to worship God.  But it’s good to know the “why” so that we can be motivated to meet together.

Us: Love

Good Morning!  We’re at the midpoint of our series on worship, and we’re about to turn a corner.  In our first four messages, we focused on God and His attributes, His character, and some of the ways He reveals Himself to us.  We looked at God as our Creator, our Savior, our Shepherd, and our Father.

In today’s message and for the remainder of this series, we’re going to look into different ways that we respond to God in worship.  Today, we will talk about responding to God in love.  In the coming week’s we will look at gathering in worship, bowing in worship, and laying down our lives in worship. 

In the series introduction and flyer, we talked about how we desired to explore worship not only intellectually but also emotionally, with our hearts.  Today’s topic as much as any of the themes is going to connect with our emotions, our hearts.  We are going to reflect on how we worship God in love.

God: Father

Welcome! Today we continue our series “Sing and Tremble” on worship. For the past several weeks we have focused on the object of our worship, on God. The reason we worship God is because He is worthy of worship. Over the past several weeks we have looked at God as Creator, as Savior, and as Shepherd; this week we will explore the role and nature of God as Father. In the coming weeks we will shift our focus to some of the different ways we can worship God – but I just want to say that, obviously, we are only scratching the surface when it comes to exploring who God is and why He is worthy of worship. We could spend a lifetime talking about this – and I expect that, in Heaven, we will – God’s accomplishments, and even more, His character, His vary nature, is beyond our ability to grasp. We understand less about God than a two-year old knows about quantum physics. And it is in part because of this that our series isn’t just entitled “Sing,” but “Sing and Tremble.” The goodness and greatness of God, in the little glimpse of understanding that we have, should overwhelm us with a sense of awe.

God: Shepherd

Welcome to week four in our nine-part series on worship.  The title of the series is Sing and Tremble.  Carl shared with us during the introduction these verses from I Chronicles which form the basis for our series:

Sing to the Lord, all the earth; proclaim His salvation day after day. Declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous deeds among all peoples. For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; He is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before Him; strength and joy are in His dwelling place. Ascribe to the Lord, all you families of nations, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name; bring an offering and come before Him. Worship the Lord in the splendor of His holiness. Tremble before Him, all the earth! The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved. Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let them say among the nations, “The Lord reigns!” –I Chronicles 16:23-31

The goal of this series is to explore worship together.  We not only want to increase our head-knowledge about worship, but also open wide our hearts in worship, experiencing depth and richness in our relationship to God.

God: Savior

Here in the South, a lot of people have grown up with some kind of connection with God, the Bible or the church.  You would think that means that most people here would be how we would describe as “saved” or a “Christian,” but there’s one question that stumps so many people.  It even stumps the most religious of people.  If you would have asked me that question before my sophomore year of college I wouldn’t have known how to answer it.  

I want to show what the Bible says about God being a Savior.  Then I will share the question that stumped me for a long time.  After that we will read some passages to discover what He saves us from.  Finally, I will share a story that demonstrates different ways people respond to the Savior.  

God: Creator

Welcome! Today is our second message on our series on worship entitled “Sing and Tremble.” Our focus today is on worshiping God as creator – the creator of the universe, creator of life, creator of you and me. Last week we talked about our title by focusing on God’s holiness, and how one proper response to God’s perfect holiness is in fact, to tremble: to remember that apart from Christ and what He has done for us on the cross, we would have no hope for reconciliation with God, that apart from Him we would stand condemned with no hope for forgiveness.

I am reminded of the account of the first sin, Adam’s fall, in Genesis 3. After Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, we have this passage:

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” – Gen. 3:7-10

Worship: God & Us

Welcome! Today I am excited to begin with you a new series on worship. What exactly is worship? Is there a good definition? I am going to read one I have found and like. Unfortunately, it is quite long. This comes from D. A. Carson:

"Worship is the proper response of all moral, sentient beings to God, ascribing all honor and worth to their Creator-God precisely because He is worthy, delightfully so. This side of the Fall, human worship of God properly responds to the redemptive provisions that God has graciously made. While all true worship is God-centered, Christian worship is no less Christ-centered. Empowered by the Spirit and in line with the stipulations of the new covenant, it manifests itself in all our living, finding its impulse in the gospel, which restores our relationship with our Redeemer-God and therefore also with our fellow image-bearers, our co-worshipers. Such worship therefore manifests itself both in adoration and in action, both in the individual believer and in corporate worship, which is worship offered up in the context of the body of believers, who strive to align all the forms of their devout ascription of all worth to God with the panoply of new covenant mandates and examples that bring to fulfillment the glories of antecedent revelation and anticipate the consummation."