Vibrant Worship
Series looking at part of our mission statement: V, Vibrant in Worship, Pentecostal. Autumn 12, Life Church.
At the beginning of the year we set out what our vision and mission was for this church. This can get a little “lost” in the excitement of all the activities, and so I want to draw us back to it and begin to look an aspect of our mission more fully.
To recap. Our vision is to be:
Vision statement of “Promoting faith, love and hope for all.”
Mission statement of “Serving God in our world.”
· Sacrifice: to live sacrificially before Father, church and world
· Extend: to extend by reaching out with evangelistic initiatives locally and internationally.
· Relationships: first with Father then with each other.
· Vibrant: in praise and worship, Pentecostal.
· Empower: develop disciples and ministers of the Gospel.
Today we’re going to begin to look at Vibrant: in praise and worship, Pentecostal.
A.W. Tozer said, “Worship is the missing jewel of the church.”
Someone else once said, “We have become a generation of people who worship our work, work at our play and play at our worship.”
Certainly the worship of the Almighty God of the universe is worthy of more of an effort than that.
When we come to worship meeting and don’t meet God we will be frustrated by our craving for Him!
“As the deer pants for streams of water…” Psalm 42:1
When Barbie was pregnant with Matt she had a craving for custard slices. Not just any custard slice, but from a particular bakers in town. It was in RSA and she announced her craving two minute’s before the baker’s closed.
So I say: “Look honey, we know this is just hormones, and the craving is in your mind, so just have a yogurt and it will pass.” She looked at me with lightning in her eyes and said, “take me now!”
So we’re in the car racing across town. We arrive as they’re closing. I burst in and say: “Quick, I need a custard slice – my wife’s pregnant and she is craving!”
The baker looks at me with such understanding, I know he has lived through this before, and says: “Sorry, we’re sold out!” At that moment Barbie waddles in behind me and I look at the baker and say: “You tell her!” The blood drains from his face…
You see, when we come to worship – only meeting with God will do! No substitutes.
In Psalm 95 we find seven elements of worship and I have put these into an acrostic spelling out the word W.O.R.S.H.I.P. in order to help make them more memorable. We’ll be looking at these over the next few sermons.
1. W – Worship God - on His terms
I think that it is significant that this Psalm begins not with an invitation to worship, but with a summons to worship: “Come”
It may only be one word, but it is an important word – it is a powerful word. We are being summoned to come into the presence of the Almighty to perform our acts of worship before Him.
This summons is given three times in the Psalm. In verse one we read: “Come, let us sing.” Then in verse two it says: “Let us come before him with thanksgiving”. And finally in verse six we read: “Come, let us bow down in worship”.
From these three phrases we can see that worship involves three elementary aspects:
It’s vocal: “Come, let us sing.”(1).
We are summoned to sing His praises, to vocalise that which we know to be true!
Hebrew words for vocal praise:
- Tehillah (tel-hil-law’) 8416:
This type of praise is singing, but not just any type of singing. It’s the singing that bubbles up from our hearts. It’s a spontaneous type of singing. These songs are unrehearsed and unprepared. They are straight to God
Psalm 22:3: these are the types of “praises” that God enthrones or inhabits, which is interesting because it’s so specific: God literally lives in the spontaneous praises of His people! (see also Psalm 33:1).
- Shabach (Shaw-bakh’) 7623:
Shabach means to address in a loud tone. It’s typically associated with freedom or triumph.
But it’s more than just a loud shout, it’s the idea of putting everything you have into it. An attitude of wholehearted praise.
Psalm 63:3-4: We typically look at this psalm as soft cry of thirst in a dry place, but the words in these verses literally mean to SHOUT praises!
I have always found it a little strange that we ask a non-singing generation to come and to sing when they probably never do.
But song is built into us. When I did my Mth dissertation I looked at the Therapeutic Nature of Praise and Worship in the Local Church Context. This is what I discovered about anthropologists view of music and singing:
· Imitation Theory: To imitate birdsong. Yet birdsong is different to music which depends on tonal relations and there is no archaeological evidence to support this theory.
· Rhythm Theory: music arose from dance movements but there is no viable explanation as to how music and song arose from movement.
· Expression Theory: emotional speech of humanity, that the early gurgles of language, like a baby, became song. Again no evidence exists for this.
· Melodic Speech Theory: that melodic speech occurred simultaneously around the world, pre-dating music.
· Calling Signal Theory: that calling to another was better done through song. But this sees music as merely a communication tool and only between humans.
But some admit they have no idea why we should sign, why we should enjoy music, as it has no evolutionary reason to exist.
Pinker: “As far as biological cause and effect are concerned music is useless. It shows no signs of design for attaining a goal such as long life, grandchildren, or accurate perception and prediction of the world. Compared with language, vision, social reasoning, and physical know how, music could vanish from our species and the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged.”
Well, you won’t find the answer in evolution. You find it in Scripture. God designed us to be vocal in our worship of Him.
It’s emotional: “Let us come before him with thanksgiving” (2)
Worship is, and can very much be, an emotional experience it should not be an emotive one.
What do I mean? We don’t have to stir people up into a frenzy. But we must allow the thanksgiving – the joy in our hearts – to have an avenue to express itself.
Hebrew words for emotional praise:
· Halal (haw-lal’) 1984:
This might be one of the most fun forms of praise because it requires one to step outside of dignity for a moment. It means to be boisterously foolish, to boast, to shine.
This is the kind of praise that David exhibited when he danced for joy at the return of the Ark of The Covenant to Israel. It’s also the form of praise that prompted his wife to ridicule him for his lack of dignity (2 Sam 6; see also Ex 15)..
This is also where we get the word Hallelujah from.
It literally means “Praise the Lord” but even more literally it means to be clamorously foolish unto the Lord!
This includes dancing and laughing and leaping and twirling before the Lord, but it also includes the state of the heart before God.
A heart that is turned towards God and not afraid to BOAST in and of God is a “halal” heart.
Halal is not only demonstrative praise, but can also be the force behind any of these other forms of praise. You can sing or shout or even play an instrument as a halal.
This word appears over 100 times in the Old Testament - 1 Chronicles 16:4; Nehemiah 12:24.
This literally means to pluck the strings, to celebrate in song and music. I’ve included it here because nothing stirs the soul like music. Basically it’s probably the most common form of “praise” we have across the world in our churches. It’s just singing songs put to music.
What’s brilliant about it though, is that it can also refer to just playing, as well. It is usually translated as “sing praises.” (Psalm 150).
You see the Holy Spirit within us is bursting forth to help us give praise to God (John 7:37-38; Rom 8:15-16). If you try and bottle Him up you’ll end up bursting like a shaken up.
It’s Wilful: “Come, let us bow down in worship” (6).
In other words, we come before Him wilfully bowing ourselves, even when we don’t feel like worshipping.
To bow down in worship can be a physical positioning, but it starts with a worshipful heart. To bow down is an act of our will, to acknowledge who God is before us.
Hewbrew words for wilful praise:
- Barak (baw-rak’) 1288:
This flavour of praise is one that we commonly see around altars. It means to kneel down. It means to bow low as a sign of adoration and reverence. It carries with it the idea of humbling yourself to a place that is lower than the recipient of your worship (Psalm 95:6; Psalm 103).
- Yadah (yaw-daw’) 3034:
This means to show reverence or praise with extended hands. The word pictures associated with the root words for this type of praise is shooting an arrow or throwing a rock. It literally means to extend the hands, or to shoot and arrow (Psalm 42:5, The Dedication of The Temple in 2 Chronicles 7).
This word is very similar to yadah, but has a slightly different essence. It means to show agreement with by extending the right hand. In today’s society the closest thing we have is a handshake to seal a deal or pact. The idea is that it is usually associated with sacrifice, specifically things given up to show thankfulness to God (Psalm 50:23).
Similar to the yadah, but instead of surrender the underlying notion is thankfulness and agreement.
Worship is not something that is optional for God’s people. Rather it is something that is specifically required of them.
This summons is significant because it shows that we are not to worship God on our own terms, but on His terms. He does not come to us, but we are to come to him.
No comments:
Post a Comment