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To the worshipper...


So I wonder what springs to mind for you when you think of "worship"?

To Worshippers... Allow me to preface this message to you with the comment that what I have prepared for you today is a few thoughts that have come out of my own life's journey of seeking to understand worship and desiring to know God. I am not coming to you as someone who is qualified with all the answers on worship, just someone with a big heart!


I know that for me, straight away I think of our own church home and I can see a crowd of people before me with their hands raised and singing to God- that's my context for church worship- it's loud and it's passionate and it's about people who really love God!

When I think of worship though, I also think of the songs of the Vineyard movement that were so much a part of forming my worship to God when I was first saved. I don't know if you would remember songs like "Refiners Fire" and "Awesome God" and "Purify My Heart"- they were like gold to me! I remember sitting in my room just sensing God's presence so strongly as I listened to these songs on cassette- they taught me about God and managed to somehow draw worship out of me even when it was as though I didn't know what I was doing.

This year, my family and I had an incredible opportunity to visit Papua New Guinea with a team from our church. I grew up in Papua New Guinea- which for those of you who don't know is a country that's positioned at the top of Australia near Malaysia- it's a very hot country with a huge proportion of the population living in tribal situations. The actual worship meetings that we were a part of were incredible- there were up to 100,000 people just dancing and singing before God! I can remember just looking out from the stage and seeing dust just rising everywhere as these people so freely worshipped God even when many of their situations are so poor and needy in so many ways.

On the Sunday that we were in PNG, my wife and I went to a little family church up in the hills- we drove for about an hour on these bumpy roads to get there and finally arrived... dripping with sweat cause there's no air conditioning and it's just so hot! The actual church was just a concrete floor and their were no walls, just a couple of wooden benches to sit on. The worship in this church was lead by some men playing their guitars (it was very raw!) who didn't stand out the front of the church but played on the front row. The church was full of dark skinned beautiful people who sang in harmonies to God with their eyes closed and their hands raised. When I got up to play a song, again just me and my guitar, they kept wanting just "one more song"- hungry for God and longing to worship Him.

Worship is described as: "The activity of glorifying God in His presence with our voices and hearts".

A. W. Tozer said that "we are saved to worship God".

John Stott said "Worship is the highest and most noblest activity of which man, by the grace of God, is capable".

I want us to look today at a couple of things that I believe are fundamental to our worship- I'll begin by saying that at the heart of our worship is God Himself. There is a quote by Martin Luther that captures the essence of what I want to share with you today and it is this: "To know God is to worship Him". For us to truly worship God, two fundamental elements are needed: 1) Revelation- whereby God reveals himself to us and 2) Response- whereby we respond freely and uninhibitedly to God in awe and wonder.



1) Revelation

God makes Himself known to us in a number of ways- our worship will depend on our revelation of God. Our revelation of God is our understanding of who He is and how great God is- it's the knowledge of God or by definition "theology". And when we know God, we know how He wants to be worshipped.

I have a little boy who's name is Jones Berlin- he is 16 months old and my greatest hero! When he was born, I remember feeling so disappointed in the fact that he just couldn't communicate with us- he would cry and cry and we had no idea what the matter was! We would chat with him and make jokes, but he just didn't get it! But now that we have had over a year together and Jones is learning to talk, he manages to communicate so much and he understands so much of what we say to him.

The strange thing I find about my son is that the more time I spend with him, the more need I have to spend time with him and the more time I have for him, the more love I seem to find in my heart for him. I am getting to know him. And whilst I don't worship my son (!!!), my revelation of Jones has come out of my understanding of who he is and how great he is... it's caused me to understand him and what he loves and needs and the person that he is.

So what are the ways that God makes Himself known/ reveals Himself to us?

I. Firstly, through His works in creation.
Psalm 19: 1 "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the works of his hands"

Have you ever looked an overwhelmingly huge mountain or the raging seas or a sunset that leaves you speechless and thought "how could anyone say that there isn't a God in Heaven?" I have heard a story of a guy who was out surfing in the ocean and the sun was going down- he was so amazed by the beauty of what he saw around him that something inside of him said there just has to be more... it was out of this experience that he found himself in church and became a Christian and is serving in church today.

C.S. Lewis said: "The book of nature has three leaves- heaven, earth and the sea- of which heaven is the first and most glorious and by it's aid we are able to see the beauties of the other two. He who begins to read creation by studying the stars begins the book at the right place."

Take time out to look at creation- take a walk, go away for the weekend or find some incredible view that could only cause you to be amazed by God. God reveals Himself to us through His creation.

II. Secondly, God reveals Himself to us through the written Word/ the Bible
Psalm 19:7 "The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple."

God's Word is whole- it is complete and it is perfect. The Bible is more than someone's comment on what God has to say, it is what God has to say! There is no substitute for the Word of God- it brings freedom, joy and liberty.

Statistics say that 30% of the world's population have had virtually no exposure to the gospel message- that's approximately 2 billion people that have not heard the gospel.

The Word of God is precious.

Augustine of Hippo said "The Holy Scriptures are our letters from home".

Emile Caillet said "The Bible is not only a book which I can understand, it is a book which understands me."

Billy Graham said "The Bible easily qualifies as the only book in which is God's revelation."

Let me put out the challenge to us today- what will you do with the Bible- the book in which you'll find God's revelation? Do you even value and prioritize God's word enough that you would spend time reading it?

Of the world's 7,291 languages, just under half (3,572) have either/ all Bible portions... you and not only have heard the gospel but we have the Bible in our own languages- God will reveal Himself to us through His Word when we open it and read it and value and devour it!

III. Thirdly, God reveals Himself to us through Jesus Christ
John 1:18 "No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made Him known."

When Jesus died on the cross, He made a way for you and I to know God. The result of the cross was a revolution in itself from what the people of Old Testament times formerly knew of God- it was a revolution in both religious experience and theological understanding.

John 15 tells us that we can know a relation with Christ that is "intimate and organic" (5)- where Jesus says 'Make your home in me just as I do in you" (4).

The Message Bible puts it like this:

"The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
the one-of-a-kind glory,
like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
true from start to finish. -Jn1:14

IV. Finally, God reveals Himself to us through the Holy Spirit
Jn 16:13 "But when he, the spirit of Truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come."

Dwight L. Moody said "There is not a better evangelist in the world than the Holy Spirit."

"THe Holy Spirit is not a blessing from God, He is God". -Colin Urquhart

The Word used for 'Spirit' in John is described like the wind, being invisible, immaterial, and powerful. In John chapter 16, the personality of the Holy Spirit is emphasized with the Spirit being referred to as 'His'. The Holy Spirit was connected with the birth of Jesus, His life, His baptism, His death, His operations in the world, in the church, His operations in us and in the local church. Jesus is active today in us and through us- it is called the work of the Holy Spirit.

Eugene Peterson writes: "Spirit is the scriptural word for God sharing his life in our lives. It means that God is not an anonymous somebody "out there" or an idea explained in a book, but a living presence whom I experience in the life I live day by day. God gives himself to me. I receive God into myself. Spirit is God's gift of Himself in my experience."

Romans 8:11 in the Message says: "When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from the dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!"


2) Response

The second fundamental aspect of worship after Revelation is Response. Our awe- stricken response to God... Martin Luther insisted that worship is the essential symptom or expression of knowing God.

Like any living relationship, our response to God must be real and true and in keeping with who we are. As children we are taught what an appropriate response is for various situations such as saying "thank you" or referring to an adult as "Mr or Mrs so and so" or not whining when we don't get what we want. In a similar way, the Bible teaches us what are appropriate ways in which to respond to God. If however, when I married my wife (the woman that I am passionate about), I filled our relationship with the "right" responses and nothing that came from my heart/ gut, we would end up with a pretty shallow kind of relationship!

Responding to God- worshipping Him- can only come out of knowing Him and having had Him revealed to us. I love my wife and am able to tell her the reason why I love her when I know her and am in a daily relationship with her. Our response to God is an overflow from our heart that loves Him for who He is and what He has done.

"God is not moved or impressed with our worship until our hearts are moved and impressed by Him" - Kelly Sparks

The Bible tells us that God alone is to be worshipped (Ex 20:1-3). He is to be served with our whole being (Dt 6:5, 10:27)- the very nature of God is overwhelming in all that He is... it demands everything of us of to join in worship to our creator! The two most important words for worship in the New Testament have the combined meaning of service or worship- the implication is that Christian Worship and service are essentially one.

The Bible tells us that David danced before the Lord. The people sang songs of praise to God as see through out the Psalms. In the New Testament, a costly jar of perfume was broken over Jesus feet in worship of the Lord. Paul worshipped Christ with a life well spent.

The overflow of a heart that is in love with Jesus Christ is worship- worship that involves every part of who we are... worship that sings and shouts and dances, worship that serves and gives and loves generously, worship that responds to God with all that it has for all that He is!