Our Need for Worship
Why do we worship God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? I want you to take a moment to think about this, why do you worship? (Pause) I am sure if we took a survey there would be many answers. I know for many of you, even if you can’t name it, you come here on a Sunday, you worship with this community, because you know it is good for you. We are filled up through our worship of God. Isn’t that a funny idea? We worship God and yet we are filled. This is really important because worship is as much for us as it is for God.
God’s gifts are manifold and when we worship him, we are approaching him in the truth of who he is and in calling on him to come to us too. Our first reading from Romans starts with a doxology. “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” (Repeat). Paul is recognizing an amazing fact: the depth of God’s glory, bounty, and wisdom is so great and wonderful. This is of course an act of worship, but at the same moment Paul is recognizing, and he is seeing the wonderfulness of God. This kind of worship, when it lives in us will help us to experience God’s wonders. So Paul speaks God glory, and he begins to see it, which then leads to him experiencing God’s glory in his life - and as he grows in worship he will see God all the more. The same is true for us. True and heartfelt worship will lead to us seeing God, experiencing him, and knowing Him even more.
I think all of us want to experience God more and even if we can’t say that we definitely want to experience His riches, His wisdom, His beauty, His joy, His peace, and all the things that are part of His very character. Why worship is so important to these things is because they don’t come to us without God. Real lasting joy and peace are indissolubly tied to God’s character and love. We experience these things as we draw close to Him. The joy and peace we experience in this world are just fickle, temporary, lesser versions of what we experience in God - because they are not God, even if they have their source in God. These things in our lives are more like signposts, images, or tastes of the fullness God is offering.
As great as anything is in this world it does not compare to the all surpassing depth of God’s riches. So, let's take something like joy. We have all experienced some measure of joy in our lives and I would imagine we all want more. You might be able to think of a few moments, each of which showed their own aspects of what joy can be. Yet, have you ever experienced the joy of God? Have you ever experienced that joy that makes you want to yell out, or to just burst into song, or that makes you want to just sit down and bask in it? This joy is incomparable. Even the very best moments in my life, like when Matteo falls asleep in my arms, or when I work on a really big project and it all comes together, or when love is reciprocated - each of these moments might be great, but they are little compared to the depth of God’s riches.
Even while I write this, even though I have experienced the great grandeur of God’s joy, I don’t know if I always believe that it is better than what is in this world. How easily I turn to other things before turning to prayer or to praise. How easily I can turn every good thing into an idol that takes my worship, my time, and my energy. C.S. Lewis was right when he said, “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us”. I think part of the reason we do this is because the lesser joy is easier to understand, it is finite, and it is something we can grasp. Our minds can’t yet grasp the grandeur of the joy we are experiencing when it comes from God. It takes purposeful work to grow in this and approach it, and sometimes worship can feel like work, but that doesn’t last, because as we work, as we open our minds to worship to God’s joy, He fills us, He fills us with His joy, He gives us a greater capacity to experience the grandness of His joy.
Worship changes everything in our daily lives. You remember those fickle joys that we get from things and relationships. Well, through our worship, through our drawing closer to God, He draws close to us and he doesn’t just fills us, He fills these things too. When our relationship with anything or anyone becomes grounded in the reality of who God is, or worship, then His goodness is in that relationship and what’s more nothing good from that relationship will ever disappear because God is with us. Something I often say in funeral sermons is that if we believe the person who dies rests in God, then if we have a relationship with God, we never really lose that person and in fact, everything good in that person is more because it lives in and through God. We don’t always experience this or know it, because we don’t always have that close relationship with God - that endless worship that sees the truth of how great and wonderful he is. Everything is better through him.
An important question follows: when do we worship? How much of your prayer life is full of worship? How much of your relaxation is worship? How much of your entertainment? How much of your work? Or your friendships? If worship, a true recognition of God’s goodness in our midst, makes everything better, then it should be incorporated into everything we do. Why? Just as we said, worship will help us to see God as he moves at that moment, which then leads to us experiencing the grandeur of His joy and peace in that moment too.
You might be struggling with what that looks like and in any moment it might look different. It might be simply taking a moment of silence to name something glorious about God. It might be taking some time to tell someone when you have seen God. It might be remembering a story or a Scripture passage about God’s wonderful acts or character. It might be looking at something and asking, “Where do I see God’s glory and wonderfulness in this moment, thing, or person or where do I see the need for God’s goodness?” It might be a song or a question, or naming a characteristic of God, or acting out that worship, or expressing that joy, or so much more. Worship can and should take many shapes - fitting to the moment and reality of how God is showing Himself and making Himself present.
If worship is recognizing the truth about God and the truth about God in the moment, then it is something we are meant for. We are meant for worship. We are meant for something greater than what we usually fill our lives with. It shouldn’t be surprising then that we often try to make something more than it is. We might not be bowing down to idols, but we can often worship other things with our devotion, our voices, our time, our energy, and our bodies. We are trying to make them more because we know we are meant for more. Yet, they cannot be what they were not created to be and so we find less and we too become less through serving and worshipping these lesser masters.
When we don’t have the fullness of God we are meant for we experience a lot of longing in our lives. And every time we do experience this longing it should be a simple reminder that we still need to grow in our understanding of God, in our worship, and in that relationship. Our Psalmist writes: “O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek You; my soul thirsts for You, my flesh faints for You, as in a barren and dry land where there is no water”. Similar to the way that our body thirsts for water when we are in a land that has none, our souls long for, thirst for God. We are parched without him, our souls tremble and are crying out for the only one that can fill our longing, because He is the one we were created for. I truly believe that most love poetry or songs is actually about God - because their longing for love and beauty has its ultimate source in God Himself. So, we can say, as the psalmist says, God, “your loving kindness is better than life itself” and with you God “my soul is content”.
Remember how I talked about how worship can sometimes feel like work, well Paul says that it can be even more. He tells us that we should present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice and that this is our worship. This is an important idea because we are meant to give our lives to God, not in a way that is one and done, but by giving ourselves consistently as we live. As I mentioned though, this is not really a sacrifice because we are filled full to the overflow with the infinite and lasting things of God. Though we may experience it as a sacrifice in the way that it will naturally take us away from the lesser things in this world or change our relationship with them. But notice what Paul tells us this will do to us. It will transform and renew our minds to discern the will of God so that we might see and know what is good and perfect. We are given far better things through this worship than anything we might give up or share with Him.
Today, we are called to imagine and enter into that great worship as Jesus enters Jerusalem. That great moment when people are remembering everything that Jesus has done and is doing for them. That great moment when people are recognizing that God is drawing close to them. They are recognizing the saving power of God. This is not just a moment for today though this is the kind of worship that can and should fill our lives, because it is the kind of worship that is recognizing the truth of this and every moment. Jesus has worked, he has come, is here, and with Him comes all the wonderful, life-changing, deep riches that is His very presence and character. AMEN.
