Worship: You Were Planned for God's Pleasure

Sunday, October 3, 2004

PASTOR BURCHAM'S SERMON

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Mike Rocco, a writer for the Chicago Tribune, told the true story about Bill Mallory. Bill Mallory was in search of his purpose in life. In fact, he took his search all the way over to India . He traveled around India trying to discern what was his purpose. He came back a defeated man. He couldn't find out what his purpose was over there. So upon landing at the airport and driving home, he passed by a Chevron gas station. At that point, Chevron had this thing going on that said, “While you're traveling, ask us.” And he thought, “Okay, why not?” So he pulled in, got some gas, went up to the countertop, and he asked the guy, “I see your sign there. I'm traveling, and I have a question. What is my purpose?” In fact, he proceeded to do that at every Chevron gas station that he stopped by. He'd ask them the same question. “I see you have a sign up there. I'm traveling. I have a question. What is my purpose?” Some of the actual responses he got back were, “Uh, I'm new here.” Another guy said, “That's not in the employee manual.” Another one he really didn't understand and he didn't really want to understand was one guy just sort of stared at him for a moment and then gave him a wink. He didn't want to know what that one meant. Most of them got the “deer in the headlights” look, and they had no way of answering him.

Somehow, he must have done this long enough that the corporate office heard about it. So Chevron's Public Relations Department called him up one day and said, “I understand you've been asking a question at our stations and have not been getting an adequate answer. I suggest to you, Sir, that you write down your question, put it in an envelope, send it to Corporate Office, and put in a stamped, self-addressed envelope so we can respond back to you.” So Bill thought, “Well, why not?” So he put down, “What is my purpose?” He put it in the envelope and shipped it off. Two weeks later, he got his self-addressed, stamped envelope back to him. He opened it up, and do you know what he found inside? A credit card application for Chevron gas.

If you're looking for your purpose in life, you're not going to find it at the gas station. You're not going to find it by traveling over to India . You're not going to find it by going to the self-help section of the bookstore. You're not going to find it by sitting in a corner and trying to think of it all on your own. If you want to know what your purpose is, you have to go back to the one who created you. You have to go back to God. Last week, we learned that God creates each and every person, every living being, that God intimately knows you. In fact, He knows you even better than you know yourself. If you want to know what your purpose is, then you have to go back to God and ask God, “Why did you create me?”

This week we're going to discover the most important reason in which God created us. God says you are created for His pleasure. That is, you are created to offer Him worship. Let's take a look at that Revelation passage we read but, this time, instead of looking at it in the New International Version, I'm going to look at it in the New Living Translation. It's translated the same way in the King James Version and also in the RSV. It says this, “For you created everything, and it is for your pleasure that they exist and were created.” God creates things with a purpose, and God creates things for His pleasure. Now when you think about that, it's not really that stretch of a thought for us. You think about a painter, an artist. An artist does a magnificent painting and when he looks at that, he finds enjoyment in that. He finds pleasure and satisfaction. If you're a woodworker and you build something or a remodeler and you get done with a project, when you walk in afterwards, don't you gain some pleasure from looking at your work, some accomplishment that's been done there?

Or think of it this way. All of you who are parents, don't you enjoy watching your kids? Most of the time. I have not met a parent yet that doesn't tell the story about when they brought their child home from the hospital, they would lay him or her in the crib and they would be fast asleep. They'd walk away and, 10 minutes later, they'd be standing in the doorway just smiling from ear to ear staring at that little life lying in the crib. We love to watch our kids. We love to watch them play sports. We love to watch them in the band or in the choir. That's why we go to all those activities. We love to watch our children, especially when we're doing the things we want them to do.

It's no different with God. God says He loves us and He wants us to be part of His family. Therefore, we are God's children. And God takes delight and enjoyment in watching us and seeing us do the things He has created us for. In essence, what that means is that God created us and loved us and now He enables us to love Him in return. And the way in which we love Him in return, scripture describes it this way, “That's what worship is all about, in showing our love back to God.” The word scripture uses to describe that is worship. Now for us, that's a little bit different. Normally we think of worship as being here, tied down to a specific time, a location, and certain activities we do. But scripture is not limited by that. Scripture says when we show love and honor and respect back to God, that's worship and that's one of the reasons in which God created us.

In fact, when Jesus was asked, in the gospel lesson for today, what's the most important commandment? What's the one thing God wants us to do besides anything else? Jesus responded this way, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” Now this week in your study of worship, you're going to unpack a lot of things about worship. Worship isn't tied down to a style or a song or a preference of time or a day of the week. But for this morning, I'd like to pull three key aspects out of Jesus' words for worship. Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God. Worship Him with your heart and soul, and worship Him with everything you have with all of your strength.”

The most important thing we need to know about worship is worship is a response. It's a response to God. It's a response to the love God has for us. If worship is us showing love and honor and respect to God, there is no way we can love God all on our own. We cannot come to God on our own. We cannot come to faith on our own. We are all subject to God coming to us. In fact, 1 John 4:19 says, “We love because He first loved us.” You see, it is God coming to us showing us that He created us. It's God coming to us and showing us that He loved us, and that's the only way we can love Him back. In fact, that's the only way we can worship Him.

What I'm saying by that is you could walk through those doors back there. You could plunk down in the front pew. You could sing all of the hymns. You could bow your head during prayer. You could listen intently to the message. But if you don't know and believe that God loves you and know and believe you want to show that love back to God, you have not been worshipping God. You may go through all of the actions, you may look like everyone else here, but if you don't know God's love and want to show that love back to Him, then that's not worship because worship is about showing love and honor and respect back to God. And the only way we do that is by experiencing His love ourself.

If we go a little bit earlier in Chapter 4 of 1 John, we discover a little bit more about what that love is all about. “This is love, not that we love God but He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” You see, if we're going to know God's love, we have to know what that love means. And that love means God had such a love for you that He was willing to sacrifice His Son for you, that He was willing to come and die for you and to remove the barrier between you and God. That's how true worship happens. That's how we're enabled to show love to God. Because if you don't know that God loves you, if you don't know that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior, if all you see is God is someone who comes down and gives us all kinds of rules and regulations and puts unjust expectations on us, if God's vision for you is someone who makes you feel guilty and you're filled with shame of all the things you did that you regret, you're not going to worship God. And you're not going to love God. You're going to be afraid of God. You're going to want to avoid God, but you're not going to love God. You have to know that God came into this world not so you could fear him but so you could love Him. And He did everything possible so you could love Him. He removed the sin that stops you from loving God. He removes the guilt from your conscience, and He takes away the shame by saying all of your past sins have been forgiven. You start out with a clean slate each and every time. Then, when you experience that love, you want to show back love to God.

Think of it this way. Do you remember last week you got a little disk, a little metal disk? I didn't tell you what it was for. I'm not going to, because each week you're going to get something else and pretty soon, you're going to put it together and you're going to understand what the purpose of that disk was. This week when you leave, you're going to receive just one AA battery. So that's the next thing you can ponder. What are a little round disk and an AA battery have to do? But in the weeks to come, you'll find out. Let's think about the battery for a moment, right? Now I could have this package of batteries here, and it looks like every other package of batteries. It has all the packaging around it. The individual batteries inside all look the same. They all say Energizer. I have visions of little bunnies pounding their little drum walking around. All of that from this package, but I'll tell you what. If these batteries are dead, they're not going to power up anything. I could put them in my Walkman. I could put them in a flashlight. They're not going to do a thing. Until they receive a charge, they can't give off a charge. Until they are charged up with electricity, they can't power anything else. That's how it is with our experience with God. Until we have been charged up with His love, we can't show that love back to God nor can we show that love to anyone else. Now those batteries are not rechargeable, but God gave us rechargeable batteries. In other words, He keeps infusing us with His love and His grace so we can continue to be empowered to love others.

Think of your cell phone. What happens if you don't plug in your cell phone at night? I know what happens to me if I don't plug in my cell phone at night. About 2:00 in the afternoon, I receive a phone call and somebody says, “Now if you don't remember anything else, remember. . .” Beep. “Oh, man.” It goes dead. We have to continuously get recharged with God's love. That's something that corporate worship does for us. It isn't limited to corporate worship, but think about our worship service. It's about God coming to us and us coming to God. We start out every worship service doing what? Confessing our sins. Removing that barrier between God and us. We start every worship service hearing about God's love and forgiveness in His Son Jesus. Then we can respond back with praise. Some worship services, we have the sacrament, so Jesus comes to us with His very body and blood and He assures us once again of our forgiveness and our eternal salvation. God coming to us demonstrating His love in a real and tangible way so we then can show that love back to God and to others.

The number one thing you need to understand about worship: Worship is a response. It's a response to God's love and then us showing that love to Him and to others.

The second thing about worship: Worship comes from the heart. It comes from the soul. Worship isn't just a set of activities we go through. It isn't just something we do. It's not some obligatory action we take. It's not some duty we perform. And I'm afraid that for a lot of people that's exactly how they view corporate worship. For them, corporate worship is something they must do. It's something that was engrained in them from being the smallest of children so, on Sunday morning, you drag your butt out of bed and you say, “Oh, I guess we better go to church.” And you come in and you plop yourself down. You open up and sing the hymn kind of halfheartedly. You listen to the sermon or make out your grocery list, whichever one you prefer. You listen to the Benediction, and you go home and you feel, “I have now fulfilled my duty.” Well, God must just be abundantly pleased with that.

Think of it this way. What if I decided to give my wife flowers? So I go up to my wife and I have the flowers in my hand and I say, “Honey, I'm going to give you these flowers. I have three strategic reasons of why I'm giving you these flowers: 1) I am your husband; 2) It's our anniversary; 3) Husbands are supposed to give their wives flowers on their anniversary. Here.” She is going to shower me with affection, isn't she? She's just going to be loving all over me. What a heartfelt thing for me to do. No. And if we come in here and we sit before God and we think we're just fulfilling an obligation, we're going to occupy a pew for an hour, do you think God gets any enjoyment out of that if all we can do is check our watch to see how long the service is going, pick apart what hymn they chose or the fact that they're putting songs in the worship service and they're changing things? Worship comes from the heart. It's not just a set of activities, a ritual we go through. Worship encompasses everything we are, our very being, our heart, our soul. It's given up in praise for God. The Psalms are full of them. Psalm 100 says, “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and praise His name.” You can hear the excitement in the voice of the writer. Give thanks to Him. Psalm 122, “I rejoice with those who said to me ‘Let us go to the House of the Lord.'” Can you imagine that? You go into your kids' room and say, “It's time to go to church,” and they bound out of bed, “I rejoice at the fact we get to go to church today, Mom and Dad.” All right, maybe that's pushing it a bit. But that's heart and soul in worship, or Jesus said this about worship, “Yet a time is coming and has now come when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.” A time is coming when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, not in rituals and activities but spirit and truth with their very being. They will offer up to God their worship, their praise, and give Him glory and honor. What did the man say to Jesus? He said to Jesus, “Yes, love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul. This is greater than all of the sacrifices and all of the rituals of the temple.” Because God isn't interested in the rituals. God is interested in our hearts. That's what He wants. God loves us, and He wants us to love Him in return. And we worship God with all that we are. When it comes down to our very being, that's worshiping God in spirit and truth. And we worship God with our whole life.

We have been trained to think that worship is confined to a specific time, location, and activity. But if worship is showing love and honor to God, do you do that just for one hour a week? That's our whole life. Everything we do can be done in worship, glory, and honor to God. It's not just limited to singing or praying. You see, some of you, maybe when you saw that our first purpose was to worship God, thought, “Oh, my goodness, I have to be in church even longer than I was before.” No. Worship is far greater than just being in church. Corporate worship is important. It's a time for us to come together, but worshiping God encompasses anything and everything we do.

Colossians 3 says this, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as if you were working for the Lord.” Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as if you were working for the Lord. You see, when we go off on a quest to find our purpose, we usually ask the wrong questions. We ask, “What is it I'm supposed to do? What's my purpose?” In other words, “What career track should I take? What college should I go to? What activities should I be involved in?” And that's not the point. The point is not what you do but whom do you do it for? If you walk away from here with nothing else, it doesn't matter so much what you do, but it matters whom you do it for. Who are you working for? You're not working for your boss at work. You're not working for the grade. You're not working to get ahead. You're working for God. Everything you do, whether it's going to work tomorrow morning or whether it's doing dishes tonight after supper, whether it's digging a ditch or whether it's going off to corporate America, whether you're off in sales or whether you're in retail or whether you're going to go to school and you're going to study hard, whether you're involved in softball or football, it doesn't matter what you're doing. Every activity can be done in worship of God, because you're going to go after it as if you were working for God Himself. So tonight when your wife says, “Would you do the dishes?” you're standing at the sink thinking, “You know what? This is just like being in heaven's kitchen and I'm doing God's dishes. I'm working for God.” You go in tomorrow morning and you start work, you look at your boss and I wouldn't recommend this, I wouldn't say, “I'm not working for you.” But in the back of your mind, you say, “I'm going to do the best possible job, not for the raise, not for the promotion, because I'm working for God. And I'm going to use everything God has given to me so in every breath I take, every word I speak, every action I do could bring glory and honor to Him.” That's when God looks down and, when He sees us with that attitude and that heart, that brings Him joy. That puts a smile on His face.

It's no different than when we watch our kids and we catch them doing something really good. God watching us. He created us. He loves us. And one of the reasons He created us was so we could love Him back, so we could bring Him pleasure, so we could live a life of worship. Amen.

Copyright 2004 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church