The Worship Thread 1# - Term 4 Nursery

Worship music has become a multi-million dollar business, some worship bands sell hundreds of thousands of copies and become the latest Christian Celebrities!

But what is worship all about, and why is it so important? Let’s take a look at what the Bible has to say, and trace the worship thread that runs through scripture as we explore together what worship could look like in our lives, in our schools and in our Lunchtime Groups.

What does ‘worship’ mean to you, what do you think of when you hear this word?

Worship can be defined as the expression and outworking of our love for God. If this is true, then perhaps worship is supposed to be about more than just singing songs?

Last year I got married, and my wife and I sealed our marriage with a kiss! But what would you think if all Hannah and I ever did was kiss all the time? If that was the only way I showed her that I love her? Perhaps you might think our relationship was a bit shallow.

Worship is the expression of our love for God and to have more depth our love must be more than just singing songs (kind of like the spiritual equivalent of kissing). By the way, I’m not saying that kissing is not important, intimacy is an incredibly important part of relationship, but intimacy isn’t all there is to it. Worship should be outworked through the whole of our lives; after all, worship is integral to a mutual loving relationship with God.

What do we worship?

Adam and Eve – The heart of their sin was in turning from the worship of God the creator, to worship of creation itself. Whether you see it as a golden delicious, a pink lady, a granny smith or the knowledge of good and evil… either way it’s a part of God’s creation. Scripture makes it pretty clear, you cannot worship God and created things: it is one or the other.

The Biblical word for choosing to worship created things is ‘idolatry’ – this is one of the most common themes in the Old Testament. It has never been a choice between the worship of God or the worship of nothing; it’s always been God or the idols.

Some people pride themselves on the fact that they don’t worship anything. But, to be a human is to be a worshipper. When we stop worshiping God we don’t worship nothing; the question is not will we worship, but who or what we will worship?

It is easy to read the pages of the Old Testament and feel smugly superior as we see people worshiping things they’ve made. But we have we advanced as far as we think?

Some of us might have swapped our worship of gods called ‘Baal’ for worship of gods called celebrities. Instead of sacrificing to gain the favour of pieces of wood we’re now willing to pay the designer price that will gain us the approval of the people around us. Instead of listening at the shrines for prophesies we listen to Oprah and Dr Phil!

Given that worship can be defined as the expression of our love for God, it is fair to say that as the human race we spend most of our time expressing and outworking our love for (worshipping) money, sex, fame, power, celebrity, each other, ourselves… to name but a few.

Have a think about your lunchtime groups, are there some things that regularly become perhaps too much of a focus, or are given too much attention, are there other things that are being worshiped within your LG?

Israel’s worship

God’s response to humanity’s insistence on worshiping creation was given in Deuteronomy 6:5 – ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. The foundation of Israel’s law was about living life out of love for God. The book of Leviticus is the instruction manual for Israel’s worship and right at the heart of it all God says; offer sacrifices. At every temple meeting sacrifices were made. The Israelites were offering tokens of creation by sacrificing them to God, every time they worshiped they were saying, ‘You the Creator are more important than creation.’ The heart behind this was that every sacrifice would represent the best of creation being given up as a token of love to the creator, reversing idolatry of humanity.

But the people messed it up, even before they entered the Promised Land. Exodus 32 – Moses is up at the mountain having an amazing face-to-face encounter with God Himself and receiving the Ten Commandments, meanwhile down below, Aaron and the people of Israel were busy making a golden calf to worship! God knew that the Golden Calf was not a one off occurrence and so said to Moses before he died:

You are going to rest with your fathers, and these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them. (Deuteronomy 31:16).

Just before Joshua died as the people were settling down in the Promised Land, he said to them:

You are not able to serve the Lord. He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you. (Joshua 24:19-20).

Idolatry doesn’t just break God’s laws it breaks relationship with God, and God is a jealous God. All of the Old Testament prophets told Israel again and again; ‘You’re messing it up, turn back to the God who love’s you!’

The problem was that even when Israel did the right thing and made sacrifices, they never managed to love God with their whole hearts! You see, It wouldn’t matter it I bought Hannah flowers and chocolates everyday if I was unfaithful behind her back. The Problem was not the sacrifices the problem was Israel. God wasn’t looking for perfect sacrifices but perfect worshipers!