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Created to Worship Together
October 21, 2007 Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson
Did you know that there is actually a command that we ought to take a day off, that God has commanded that we take a day off. Now most of you know where I’m going with this; in fact, this command is part of the big ten, the Ten Commandments. It’s number four on the list; right there with don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t murder, don’t worship other gods. Take a day off. This is called, of course, the Sabbath. It says, “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.” Now why would God do that? Of all the commandments, why would God say do that? Well it has to do with the fact that we have been made to need rest, to sleep, to have time to ourselves; but also, we have been made to worship. This morning I am concluding a series of sermons that I began a few weeks ago called “Better Together.” The whole idea being that we study better together, we learn God’s word, we fellowship better together and we also worship better together. This morning I want to read to you three scriptures. First from the Ten Commandments, Exodus chapter 20, right there in the middle, God says:
Exodus 20:8-10 Observe the Sabbath and keep it holy. You have six days in which to do your work, but the seventh day is a day of rest dedicated to me. On that day no one is to work.
Second scripture is from Psalm 100. It almost perfectly describes the nature of worship. Listen and you might be surprised, if you listen very carefully, what it says worship should be.
Psalm 100 Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Therefore, enter his gates with thanksgiving and enter his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.
And a passage from Revelation, chapter 4. Now Revelation is kind of hard because it is full of symbolism and some of the things are hard to figure out what they are; but as a little help, in the first paragraph we find described four living creatures, and they might be some other things, but think of them as representations of all creation together praising God. Then we find twenty-four elders and they are none other than the twelve tribes of Israel, their patriarchs, and the twelve apostles representing the whole people of God. And in a sense the vision is billions of people standing before God throwing down their thrones and falling before God in joy.
Revelation 4:6-11 In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back. The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle. Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings. Day and night they never stop saying:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.”
Whenever the living creatures give glory honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say:
“You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God!
Would you pray with me?
We thank you Father that you have created us to need rest and to need worship. We pray as we hear the word preached today that you would be with him who preaches. May we all hear something today that we need to hear, that would convict us and lift us up, that would bring us closer to you, and that would give us a path to walk and a place to run. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen
Pastor and author, Gordon MacDonald, told a story about when he was young, about his father. His father had the habit of driving the car when the gas needle was on E, all the time. Now the whole family of course would notice this and they would say, “It’s on E, we’ve got to stop.” And Gordon’s father didn’t seem to care. He said, “Oh, when it’s on E it always has a couple more gallons;” but this did not make the family feel very good as they were going through long tunnels, like the Holland tunnel, or out in the wilderness someplace or caught in traffic. They were worried that they were running on empty. I had a similar experience, sort of. My dad didn’t like to stop either. Being sort of a typical male, he just wanted to drive on. My problem wasn’t being afraid of running out of gas. It was more that instead of being empty, I was full; but that didn’t bother my dad any…… but that’s a different story. I think a lot of people are running on empty in our society and our culture. We are just plain tired. We see the evidence all around us. We see millions of dollars spent on how to prevent stress related diseases, like heart attacks and stroke and you name it. A lot of diseases are being traced to stress. We are just tired. The funny part about it is we live in the most leisure-oriented culture, maybe in the history of mankind. Again billions of dollars spent on hundreds of thousands of sports stadiums. Millions and billions spent on computer games. Most everybody owns a T.V., at least one. We are always playing games. We are always going on vacations or always going to our cabins. We are always going on cruise ships. Think of the incredible amount that is spent on cruise ships and airplanes and resorts and gambling and you name it. We are leisure dominated and oriented. In fact, we can all argue that we basically work to have fun. It’s what it’s about for us and yet we are so tired. Why is that so?
I think that we have lost the meaning of genuine rest. You know we spend so much on trying to figure out how to find rest. We know we need it and everything that we do doesn’t seem to do any good. We buy, again, all kinds of different mattresses to sleep well, or we find all kinds of things we can take to help us sleep, or whatever it is; and yet, we’re tired. We forget that we are built by God to rest. Yes, to sleep. You know I actually think there is a biblical basis for the Sunday afternoon nap, at least I hope so because I have been taking one for a long time. Somehow the NFL doesn’t keep me awake and I know golf doesn’t; matter of fact, I love golf but it puts me to sleep. It’s more than just physical rest. God knows we need that, absolutely. We need a good night’s sleep and we need to take time off and we don’t do that very well. But, it’s more than that.
I was looking online at one of those PedMed things, you know, where you can buy things for your pet. One of the things they were selling were cute little signs that you could put up in your house. One of them said, “A dogs life – eat, sleep, play.” That indeed is a dog’s life; but what makes us different than a dog? Well that I am going to argue with you that not much, except if you add one thing: work, eat, sleep, play. But otherwise, we’re no different than our dogs. We have forgotten what genuine rest is. We have forgotten that we are more than just physical animals. God has made us physical and spiritual, as well, and the spiritual gets forgotten because it is easy to forget. Again Gordon MacDonald has written a lot on this and he says this, “One of our worlds is our outer world. This is the world of eating and drinking and sleeping. This is the world of our work, our play, our possessions. It is all the people we know and love and hate. The other is our inner world. It is the world which separates us from the animals. It is the world of thinking. It is the world where values and choices are determined. It is the place of reflection and solitude. It is the place of worship and confession, where God meets us. But here is the problem with us human beings, the outer world that I spoke of is the most demanding world and therefore the one we tend to take care of most. In fact, we judge our well-being in terms of the outer world. We judge our success by how much money, how many friends, how many possessions we own. Indeed, we spend most of our time learning how to take care of this world. We learn how to eat and drink and take a bath. We learn how to enter into relationships with others and earn money; and when anything in this world, the outer world, goes wrong we work hard to fix it. In the area of rest, when we need rest, it is this outer world which draws our attention. Our rest focuses in on this outward part of ourselves, more sleep, a time to get away from it all, leisure, amusement. But you have heard of the phrase, ‘out of sight, out of mind’ and it is the spiritual world that remains out of sight and often out of mind and neglected.” Cyndi and I used to have a refrigerator in the basement of one of our houses that we had – we keep it in the garage now, at least we can see it more – but often we would put things in that refrigerator and guess what? We would forget it and you can know the rest of the story by yourself. We’d find it much later in a different form than maybe it had been before. That’s exactly how our inner souls are sometimes. “Much less demanding and often ignored, but we do so to our peril. For this inner soul place,” writes MacDonald “forms the very foundation of our lives. God commanded that an opportunity be given for this time of rest for He made us with an inside world as well as an outside world; and it is on the inside that counts.”
We need to worship, my friends. In order to be better than our dogs, we need to worship. Well I take that back, at least our dogs worship us. But we worship ourselves, for we have made worship about us when we do it. We have made our lives about us. It is about our leisure, our amusement, our time. We do with it as we wish. At least our dogs know to worship somebody else but often we don’t. We need to learn how to worship and as part of the rest that God has commanded, so we need to rest and worship and we need to refocus.
Steve Brown tells a story about a young man who was going to college and he asked him several questions in a row. He said, “What do you plan to do after you get out of college?” He said, “Well I’m going to go to law school and I’m going to make a lot of money.” “What are you going to do after that?” “I’m going to get married and have lots of children and I’m going to enjoy them.” “Well, what are you going to do after that?” “Well, I’m going to enjoy my grandchildren.” “Well, what are you going to do after that?” God has made us to need to answer that question, to refocus, to reset every seven days. You see we live in a world which surrounds us and makes us like it. Like fish swimming in the sea, it is so common to us that we hardly notice it, but the world’s values are not God’s values. We need to reset and refocus – remembering the phrase in the bible that says: “What good is it if you gain the whole world but lose your soul?” Every seven days we need to ask that question. “What good is it if we gain the whole world but lose our soul?” We need to ask that question.
We not only need to reset, we need to rejoice. You know in the early service I actually said we need to celebrate. You may have noticed in my sermon I have been going through ‘R’s here, rest and reset; and I came to celebrate and said, “Maybe you guys can help me. I need a word that starts with an R. At least ten people walked out and said “rejoice”. I said, “Yeah, that’s right!” You know worship is about celebration and rejoicing. Oh yes, worship is also about confession. It is about being solemn at times. There is a time and a place for all of those things, but what’s worship, at heart? Again the values of this world take away joy. We are too busy seeking happiness, which isn’t the same thing. I told this story in the last service, and I was wearing a robe. But when I was younger, when I first started out in the ministry, I would not wear a robe, because the first guy I worked with didn’t do that and I followed his lead. But after a while I changed my mind and started wearing a robe but I did so in protest. I did so in a way that protested; because I wear a blue robe, not a black one, because I felt like a black robe was like going to a funeral. So many churches are like funeral services. So many worship services are like funeral services. I remember hearing about a church that was meeting in a mortuary because they needed space. I remembered that particular church, I won’t say which one it was, but I remember thinking, “Boy, that’s appropriate for them.” That’s terrible, isn’t it? But at heart it is about celebration. Did you hear what the Psalm said? “Enter his courts with thanksgiving and praise.” Did you see what the book of Revelation said? Can you image a solemn worship in heaven?
We need to come here and have joy; and we need to have it together, because the last R is to relate to one another. Worship is not just about ourselves. Back in the 50’s, Robert Schuller began his ministry and he noticed several things about the culture he was in. He noticed one is that the southern California culture, as indeed the whole nation I think, even now, didn’t believe in the bible. He knew he needed to do something different to attract them. He also noticed that people were very individualistic at how they looked at worship. So he started out in an outdoor movie theater, preaching on the roof of the building, to people in their cars who had their speakers hooked under their window. Now he built a church and brought them in; but there you were, individuals worshipping. And we are the same. I describe Christianity today as Wal-Mart Christianity because so often it is about going to a place to get your needs met for yourself and then leaving with no interaction with anybody else. So much of the world’s values today look at it exactly like that. Even those of us who belong to a church are like that, often.
Why do you come to church? It is good to ask yourselves that question. Some of us come for the music, some of us come to hear a good sermon, some of us come for the doughnuts, and nothing is wrong with that. But if it is only that, it is all about you. God says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and love your neighbor as yourself.” Church is really about coming in relationship with others. Worship is coming together. I want to say I encourage you to go and worship alone. You should spend some time everyday worshipping your God by yourself in a quiet place; but if that’s all you do, it is all about you. Every picture we have of worship is the people coming together in the scriptures, celebrating God together; because we find strength together. In all its fallen-ness and all its warts, the church comes together and it is what pleases God, because we grow and we love and we learn and we worship best together.
Let’s pray. God in heaven, thank you for loving us so much that you have called us together to worship you, the God of the universe, who has redeemed us and loved us and saved us, who has made us your people. Forgive us Lord when we appropriate the values of the world and think that they are good. Help us to be different, to be joyful, to be a light in this place, this dark world. Help us to love one another and love you. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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