Years ago, when we were meeting in the high school, we were playing like, if you're a
musician in the room, raise your hand.
So if you're a musician, you have some insecurities about different parts of your musical abilities.
You know what I'm saying?
And we were rehearsing, playing through songs before the service, and it was me and Tony
and a guy named Daniel that moved down to normal, and Jen, and Jen is a voice teacher,
and I was just, we were just playing and I said, you know, I sometimes just wish that
I had a better falsetto.
And she was like, listen, everyone has their version of falsetto, you just have to embrace
it.
And in a moment, I just started singing.
That freedom fall in this place.
That's a song that was written in this congregation for what God wants to do in this congregation.
Amen?
And we sing songs that are written by other people, we sing some songs that are written
for us, but there are songs that you hear, and I hear as a songwriter that I go, man,
I wish I wrote that song.
But there's something special about the ones that we've written because they feel so much
speaking to a moment and to a culture that God wants to create here.
That there will be freedom here.
Every chain, every stain, everything that holds us down would be washed away.
That we would feel the sense that His love is all around, and so our knees hit the ground,
but our hearts are in the clouds.
You felt that before about something.
My hope is that you feel it about God.
That you feel that His love is so tangible to you that you can do nothing but just your
body just wants to give out under the weight of the goodness of the glory of God, and yet
somehow your heart has never felt lighter and higher than it has ever felt.
Because His freedom is in His place, so we must not turn away.
Instead we want to see His face.
Today we start a series called Worship With Everything.
That was not in my notes.
But it fits, because worship is such a huge part of what it means to follow God, and I
hope that you see that as we go through this series.
Worship is one of those things that if you've been a Christian for any moment of time, you've
probably been told you're supposed to worship.
Yeah?
You're told you're supposed to read the Bible.
There's all these things you hear, but it's one of those things that doesn't often get
explained.
We example it a lot.
We try to example it.
We try to exemplify it.
We try to model it.
We try to give an example for people to see and then respond to and participate with.
But like a lot of things in Christianity and following God, it's something that gets said
a lot but doesn't always come with a lot of explanation.
And so what often happens is that worship songs end up being the default definition
of worship.
Because they become the only avenue that people see the word worship getting put on all the
time.
So they go, oh, well that must be worship.
That portion of the service was worship.
That is by default what happened.
And I'm not talking about just here.
I'm talking about across the Christendom.
It is the default that happens.
One of the problems with how we think about things like this, it's a problem of semantics.
It's a problem of language.
It's a problem of what happens over time.
Like this building, this building isn't the church.
But people ask me, hey, where's your church?
And I don't say, well, the Britons, Hodges, and Campbells, they live on 10th.
And Jen, she lives on 33rd.
And I live up on 24th.
And I don't go through the list of where the church is.
I know what they mean.
And so I say, oh, we meet at a building down next to the Expo Center, near the Botanical
Center if you know where that is.
And I know that this is kind of a rant.
I just think that it matters, because we're talking about a living thing when we're talking
about the church, but we keep on pointing at inanimate objects.
And when we're talking about worship, we're talking about something that we live in and
through.
It's something that becomes a part of the wholeness of who we are.
And then we point at inanimate objects and say that that is worship.
The songs aren't worship unless they are directed towards God with all of our attention and
all of our affection.
And even then, the songs aren't the worship.
They are the songs of our worship.
The building is a tool.
The songs are just tools.
And tools can be anointed and set apart for holy use.
But because God is looking at the heart, the tools are not the things.
They're the thing.
Yeah?
All right.
Semantic rant complete.
I want to start today with a broad concept of worship so that for the rest of this series,
we can pinpoint different tools that we can use as a part of worshiping God.
So let's open up our Bibles to the book of Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy chapter six, it goes Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
It is the fifth book of what's called the Pentateuch.
And it's at the very beginning of the First Testament or what's called the Old Testament.
And while you look up Deuteronomy chapter six, I'm going to read another passage.
Because during the ministry of Jesus in the book of Mark chapter 12, the Pharisees, the
Chroteans, the Sadducees, the religious leaders, teachers, they are challenging Jesus about
ideas.
And this is what it says there.
One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating, noticing that Jesus had given
them a good answer.
He asked him, of all the commandments, which is the most important?
The most important one answered Jesus is this, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is
one.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with
all your strength.
The main is this, love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no commandment greater than these.
And Jesus, when he said that, he was quoting the First Testament, one of the most famous,
well-known passages.
And that's what we're going to read.
Deuteronomy six, verses four through nine.
We have a tradition of giving the scriptures our full attention.
Whatever makes the most sense in how you do that.
If you'd like to stand with me, you're welcome to do that.
Deuteronomy six, starting verse four.
Here, oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.
Impress them on your children.
Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down
and when you get up.
Tie them as symbols on your hands.
Bind them on your foreheads.
Tuck them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.
Let us pray.
God of every tribe, of every tongue, of every color, every nation, we thank you for the
scriptures, how they have persisted through the millennia.
And I pray that whatever you have for us to learn today, I pray that that would stick.
That would become a part of the framework of our faith, that our faith would become
stronger as we become more like your son.
Amen.
Thanks, so I can have a seat.
Alright, so before I break that down a bit, let me clarify one more thing.
And if you're keeping track, you can label this rant number two.
Worship is not for us.
Worship is not for us, at least not initially.
Worship is first and foremost for God.
It is for God, to God, about God, for who God is, for what God has done.
We have long said, and I've already alluded to it, that worship is the direction of our
hearts towards God, giving Him all of our attention and all of our affection.
The Hebrew words, the Greek word, the primary words that get used for worship mean and agree,
bowing low.
Paying homage and honor to God.
Worship is intentionally choosing to direct all we have toward all of who God is, for
God.
Because a worship that is for us first, it's too small.
Amen.
A worship that is for us first is too small.
That's not to say that there is no personal benefit from a life of worship.
Because there surely is.
But our thinking of worship needs to be ordered correctly with God at the center, the highest,
the first.
Because a form of worship that makes us the point, what I get out of it, what I like,
what style I prefer, what I want, how it makes me feel, that's too small.
That's too small.
When any of us in the process of following God have been a part of a church or been between
being parts of communities, and we've gone somewhere and we have left and said, well,
I didn't really get anything out of the worship.
That's too small.
That's not the right way to think about what it is to worship God.
I grew up in a church environment where all we sang was hymns on Sunday mornings.
Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
From the fount of every blessing.
I learned those songs as a child.
And yet because there was an environment of turning ourselves towards God, it mattered
not what form the songs were in.
Amen?
Because when we look at the form first and get hung up on the form, that is too small.
That's too small of a way to think about what it means to worship God.
Because what can happen is instead of worshiping God, we start worshiping the form of our worship
or the results of our worship.
And that, as the Bible describes it, is a form of idolatry.
To worship the form of God or something that God does to worship it or something we can
do is idolatry.
So it has to be bigger than that.
It has to be bigger than songs, bigger than how we feel, bigger than personal preference.
And that's why we start with Deuteronomy 6.
That's why we start with this prayer.
This prayer in the Jewish faith is called the Shema.
It is the prayer that the Israelites were meant to pray twice a day.
In the morning and in the evening.
It was a reminder that they were to worship a singular God.
They were, as we are now, surrounded by pantheistic concepts that everything is a God.
And in this scripture, God is trying to get them to be singular in their vision towards
a single God.
Towards one God.
So he told them, worship with your whole self.
With your whole heart.
Your whole soul.
With your whole strength.
Don't give little parts of it to these other things that are around you.
The Hebrew word for heart means the inner person.
The seat of your thoughts and emotions, your consciousness.
Your courage, your mind, your understanding.
Your soul is referring to your living being, your desires, your passions.
Your strength is your muchness.
Is how it's defined, your muchness.
When was the last time you heard the word muchness?
Oh no, Dad, I just don't think I had enough muchness to get it done.
Muchness, your abundance.
It's not just talking about your muscles, y'all.
That word in the scriptures, strength, is not talking about how strong you are.
To worship a singular God is to love God with every part.
To pull every part of yourself into a singular, directed worship.
Because we can be very fractured as human beings, yeah?
God is saying, pull all that together into one.
Worship me.
With your inner person, with your living being, with your abundance and muchness, all of you.
In case we were wondering when we are supposed to love God with all of our heart, soul, strength,
the author says when you get up, when you lie down, when you sit at home, when you travel
on the road, in other words, with your whole self everywhere all the time.
Worship isn't just a time and place, amen?
Worship is not an hour on Sunday, amen?
Worship is your life.
Worship goes with you, everywhere you go.
Okay, now the semantic people like me in the room are starting to think, not only did the
author of that passage not use the word worship, Greg, isn't he actually saying to love God
this way?
Love the Lord your God.
I don't hear the word worship there.
Isn't this about keeping commands?
Let the law be on your lips.
So is he saying worship God always or is it saying obey God always?
Yeah.
Yes.
The answer to both questions is yes and this is an important lesson because a primary way
to worship God, if not the primary way, is to follow God closely.
Every minute of the day we have choices to follow God in his way or in another way.
And when we follow God, it is an act of worship because to follow God is to lower ourself
and to choose his way instead of ours.
To follow God we have to turn away from what we would do and toward what he would do.
When I'm in the car and I'm particularly perturbed by the way someone is driving, which is most
days, if I curse to myself and ridicule them in private, even when I'm alone in my car,
even if no one sees me, I am worshiping something or someone other than God.
I have elevated my own opinion, my own self.
Do they not know I am the king of the car kingdom?
How dare they?
They are my vessel.
Even when we're in private, when no one else hears what we've said or done, it's an opportunity
for us to either worship and follow God or to follow and worship ourselves.
If I turn to God in my frustration, if I open my heart toward God in those moments, I will
worship God instead of myself.
So worship is everywhere.
It's all the time.
It is with your whole self.
When we rise and we are at home, when we are on the road, when we lay our head down to
rest is when we worship.
And in that passage in particular it says, teach these things to your children in all
these places.
In other words, your children of anyone sees everything that you do.
My children know this.
Sometimes on Sunday afternoon I'm cranky because I exert a lot of energy on a Sunday morning.
And I've apologized before, guys, listen, I'm sorry.
I do not want you to think that being a part of a church causes someone to be cranky.
I'm sorry.
I just exert a lot of energy.
Forgive me for being cranky.
And then they go, it's okay.
And then sometimes I go, but it's not okay.
Now the next logical conclusion is that our worship after it is everywhere with everything
or everywhere with every, yeah, with, okay, our worship is with everything is the next
point.
Because he says, put these commands on your hands, on your forehead, on your house, on
your gates.
Why?
Because then his words would be visible wherever they looked.
Yeah.
But I think it's also to remind that these hands, that this mind, that this house, that
this property that God gave us, these are all tools of his goodness.
They are the instruments of how we follow.
They become implements of how we worship.
God wants us to grasp that everything we have can be an instrument of worship.
Tony plays the bass.
I play the guitar.
Other people have a voice.
They have implements of worship, but those aren't the only implements I have.
They are not the only tools that we have.
Everything around us can become an implement of this worship.
Things like prayer.
Scott next week can be preaching about worshiping God through praying the scriptures.
Things like writing new songs or singing along, that is important.
Things like our instruments, things like the arts.
The plan right now, and I asked her to do this before she was diagnosed with cancer,
but the plan right now is that for about a month from now for Marissa to preach on worshiping
God through your trials.
She said yes to preaching on that subject before she was diagnosed with cancer.
And if it goes as planned, she will preach on worshiping God through your trials while
she's going through chemotherapy.
Things like community.
Andy is going to be giving us a sermon about preaching, about worshiping God through the
connectedness of our community.
Things like dance.
Robin is going to be giving us a sermon about using our bodies to whatever ability that
we have.
I don't know if you know Kathy Webb.
She runs Lyric sometimes.
She's a professor at Augustana.
Her expertise is disability theology.
And so she and Robin are going to be talking about how Robin can speak about these things
that is an inclusive idea that how do you worship God with your bodies even as some
of our bodies work differently than others.
Things like our finances, things like the things that God has given us.
All of these things become implements and tools of our worship.
And then at the end of this series, I think that there should be a question that we ask
ourselves.
How do we know that we're doing this?
How do we know that we are worshiping God effectively?
The answer is you'll be singing louder.
No, right?
Come on, you know better, right?
Come on.
That's a joke.
The actual answer is you'll be dancing around the room.
No, right?
No, it's not any one thing.
Well, maybe it is one thing.
Maybe it's the one thing that Jesus said in Mark 12 when he said, the greatest commandment
is to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul and with all
of your strength.
And the second commandment is like it is this, to love your neighbor as you love yourself.
See, I said worship isn't for us.
It's not initially, but worship has consistent side effects.
In worshiping God, you will experience the presence of the Holy Spirit.
And you will feel an overwhelming sense of God's love or joy or compassion in everything
we receive in worshiping God is immediately transferable to those around you.
Plainly, if worshiping God does not influence how we love our neighbors, it is a sure sign
that we are not worshiping God.
That's hard.
Or if you want the sharp edges of that rounded off, if worshiping God does not influence
how we love our neighbors, it is a sure sign that we're just beginning to worship God.
There's plenty of room to grow.
There's plenty of room to be shaped.
There's plenty of room for worshiping God with everything to find its way into loving
our neighbors.
As Jesus said, they will know you are my disciples by what?
How you love one another.
So guys, let's worship God.
And I hope that after 20 minutes or 20, whatever, however long I've been talking, I hope that
you can hear when I say, let's worship God, you don't hear me saying, let's sing another
song.
I hope you hear me saying, let's turn our whole selves to God with everything that we
have, everything that he's offered us.
Let's turn that back toward God and follow him closely in a way that in loving him with
everything, all the time, everywhere that ends up resulting in not only how we experience
God, but in how we love the people around us.
Amen?
eno