Tepid Worship (Part 1)

Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures verse by verse with No Compromise. Why are you here this morning?

Worship Is Vertical, Not Horizontal

Why are you here? For whom are you here? What brings you here this morning? Obligation? Duty? Spouse made you come? Parents made you come? Did you know worship is not horizontal? In no way is worship horizontal except for the saints of God coming together to worship vertically the one risen Savior Jesus Christ.

Turn your Bibles to Psalm 95 and I want to talk about worship today. Here's the way it works at Bethlehem Bible Church. When the pastor gets convicted he repents and is thankful for the cross and then he preaches to the congregation what he's been convicted by and from.

That's what I want to do this morning. I have been worshiping with different cultures and different races for the past couple of weeks but what unifies us all in South Africa you have blacks, whites, coloreds and Indians.

Those are the four racial groups. That's the way they would describe themselves. Yet how do we worship the one Savior? How can different backgrounds, cultures, languages, skin colors, different sexes, male, female, how can we all come together and worship?

And how does God expect us to worship? We're going to look at Psalm 95 this week and next week and it's going to be very convicting although very enlightening. Here's what I love about the Lord. He uses His Word to show us our sins, 2 Timothy chapter 3, and then we own up to our sins and then He corrects us and then He trains us for righteousness through this beautiful Word.

I can put it this way before we get into the text. Do you think you could worship God better? Loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength? Do you think you could pay attention to sermons better?

Do you think you could give more generously? Do you think you could sing more enthusiastically? Do you think you could worship God with your heart, soul, mind and strength as the Spirit of God gives you power to do it?

I think we know the answers to those questions. Now before we look at Psalm 95 let's think about this for a second. This is a psalm, it's a song. And in Hebrew the title of the psalms means songs of praise.

So they're songs, we have the lyrics, we don't have the music. In Greek psalmoi means the plucking of the strings. And so we come to this psalm, Psalm 95, a very famous psalm, and if you look at the very top does it tell us who wrote it?

Sometimes there's a little superscription, a writing above, for instance Psalm 92, a song for the Sabbath. If you look at Psalm 90 above that it says a prayer of Moses. But our psalm doesn't tell us anything.

Now in the Old Testament Greek it does say this is David's psalm. And if you go to Hebrews chapter 4 it gives us a little inkling that it's of David as well. And it's written to draw people to worship the Lord God.

If you look at chapter 95 verse 1 in the psalms, let us sing to the Lord. 96 verse 1, sing to the Lord a new song. 97, the Lord reigns, let the earth rejoice. 98 one, sing to the Lord a new song. 99 one, let the peoples tremble.

And 100 verse 1, make a joyful noise to the Lord. Every one of these, drawing the reader in, it's time to worship the God who is great. And we think maybe David wrote this for the Feast of Tabernacles.

It was a festival, it was the autumn time, it was a good celebration that God had rescued Israel out of Egypt and so let's have a song and let's have a song that invites other people to worship. Tozer said, worship is to feel in your heart and express in some appropriate manner a humbling but delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder and overpowering love in the presence of the most ancient mystery.

That majesty which philosophers call the first cause, but we call our Father which art in heaven. Let's go to Psalm 95 and here's the outline for this morning. We won't get to the whole thing but that's fine.

I'm going to give you some commands to worship, how to worship, reasons to worship and warnings about worship. Commands how to, reasons for, warnings about. Ready? Verse 1, let's give some reasons, or excuse me, some commands to worship.

The Call to Sing Joyfully and Shout to the Rock of Our Salvation

Verse 1 of Psalm 95, O come, let us sing for joy to the Lord, let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. That word there, O come, literally come, is an imperative and it is basically, it's like David saying, why don't you come with me to go worship God?

Reminds me of Jesus in John 4, God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. Come worship and you say, well, you don't understand my situation, I'm now unemployed. You don't understand that I'm tired.

You don't understand that I've lost a loved one. You don't understand my trials, my kids, my issues. Irregardless of financial status in the church, irregardless of social status in the church, God is commanding people to worship.

You say, well, I don't really feel like worship. God is commanding you to worship. This is reminiscent of what's going on in heaven now, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come.

Worthy are you, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power. Now, he wants us to come and worship, but what do we do? Look at verse 1. This is the how-to. He commands us and then he gives us how-to, and I'm going to tell you right now ahead of time, it's loud.

It's enthusiastic. You say, well, the good news is I'm a New Englander and it's the frozen chosen and we just, you know, we don't get too riled up, not charismatic in these parts. This is going to be the language here, poetic language that should result in sweat on your forehead.

Okay, for you young people, make it super simple. Your armpits are going to be sweaty underneath if you worship this way. Okay? At least you're paying attention. And look at the language. Let us sing for joy so other people can hear me.

No, let us sing for joy to the Lord, to Yahweh. That means a ringing cry. Let us sing, bad translation. Let us sing with some enthusiasm is a great translation. Christians are a singing people. I was in South Africa and we had like three channels on the TV.

We had an Afrikaans channel, some other Zulu channel, I'd speak neither of those languages, and we had the rugby channel in English, all rugby all the time. Man, those people who go to rugby matches, they're singers.

They shout, they sing, they've got it going on. You think, you know what? We sing, we worship, but not really too much in church. It's at the Red Sox game. Here is singing unto God. You notice the text again, sing to the Lord.

If I ever have to hear one more time, I know I do and I have to be patient, I'm a pastor after all, but this kind of lame, kind of weak sauce argument where you go, well, I'm not really a good singer.

The command for you is to sing joyfully and loudly because otherwise if you say, I'm not a good singer, I don't understand the nuances, I wasn't trained, I don't know tone, pitch, tenor, staccato, forte, I don't know any of these things.

I have a bad voice to boot. This reminds me of the garden, doesn't it? It's the woman you gave me. God, you gave me a rotten voice, therefore I won't sing. How'd you do the first couple songs? How'd you do the last couple praise songs?

Did you mimic this at all? Let us sing for the Lord. For the Lord. Hey, it's like midnight from where I'm from. I thought the first service wasn't too bad, I thought I'd just have to get through this second one.

Let us sing to the Lord. How'd you do the first couple songs? Heart, soul, mind, and strength? Or was it tepid? Can there be tepid praise? Jack Hayford's wrong when he said we need reformation of worship.

He should have said we need our heart to be reformed so that we can worship. Wesley, above all, sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing Him more than yourself or any other creature.

In order to do this, attend strictly to the sense of what you sing. And see that your heart is not carried away with the sound but offered to God continually. So shall your singing be as the Lord will approve here and reward you when He comes in the clouds of heaven.

Now, I get it when songs are biblically incorrect. But if there's a song that's biblically correct with God-centered lyrics, we ought to be singing it corporately whether you like the tune or whether you do not.

I don't like dry old hymns. I don't like contemporary new songs. Remember what Sinclair Ferguson said? When people go around saying, you'll love the worship at our church. We've got great worship at our church.

You'll love the worship at our church. Sinclair always says, I'll let God be the judge of that. And the judgment from God is, the command from God is, sing with your hearts to God. It's got the feel. It's got the force of Revelation 19.

I heard, as it were, a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven saying, Hallelujah, salvation and glory, power belong to our God. Salvation and glory and power belong to our God. It's got the feeling of sweat in there.

Now, if you can't stand it and you're just learning, we want to be patient, just sit up here with me. Why do I sit in the front row? Many reasons. It's closer to the pulpit. But I sit up there so when I sing, nobody can really hear me except the reverb off the wall of my kids.

They can hear me. When you say, I don't want to sing out loud because what other people will think or hear, you don't get worship because worship is not horizontal. It's vertical alone. Now, if you notice in verse 1, let us sing.

Verse 2, let us come. Verse 2, let us make a joyful noise. Of course, there's a corporate community worshiping God, but worship is not horizontal. It's vertical. You worship the triune God alone with other people.

By the way, doesn't this blow it out of the water when people say, I worship God on Sundays in the golf cart. I worship God down by the lake by myself. No, this is corporate. To use the language of Hebrews, God extends to you the scepter and says, everything I've done for you, forgiveness of sins, you get together with other Christians and sing my praises on Sunday.

By the way, we have a little thing in our family. Kids are older now, but they knew when they were young. Abendroths sing. That's what they do. You come to church and you sing. I didn't ask you if you could sing.

You sing. I didn't ask you if you could carry a tune. You sing. And by the way, it all starts with the dad. Because if the dad's not singing, all the kids are like, especially the young boys, my dad doesn't sing, so I don't have to sing.

I learned a word in Africa. They have pretty much the same things they'll say in English, but they use a different word. So, to use a little South Africa language, when you were little in the Abendroth family and you didn't sing, you were going to get a hiding.

And that's not H-I-D. Hiding place. You've got tunnel vision. You've got blinders on. You're thinking, I'm going to sing to the Lord for all that He's done. Look, it just keeps getting more sweaty, as it were.

More joyful. More enthusiastic. Look at verse 1. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. This word is used for battle of the war. Seventh time the priest blew the trumpet. Joshua said to the people, shout.

Shout. That's the word right here. And he came to the circle of the camp while the army was going out in battle array, shouting the war cry. Ever been in a war? That's the language. You raise your voice.

It's also used, this word here, to make a joyful noise, to shout in triumph when you win the war. Yeah, we won. Score. Scoreboard. I mean, we won. That's the language. It's used for alarm. Blow a trumpet in Zion.

Sound an alarm on my holy mountain. For the day of the Lord is coming. Surely it is near. Now, our alarms are either loud or they're louder. That's all. If you have an alarm in your house, like security, what do you do?

You say, give me that stuff that's just like a low frequency. Nobody can hear it except my dog. This is to shout animated praise, enthusiasm. I'll ask you again. How was your singing this morning? Was it like this?

If this was good for Israel, how much more for the New Testament? When we look in here, we see from creation to consummation and what the Lord God has done for us. And we zoom into verse 1 and 2 of Psalm 95.

It's all about God. Enthusiastic, wholeheartedly. Eugene Ormandy, learned after the first service. Carol Dame met him when he was in Worcester a few times. He dislocated his shoulder while conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra.

He was so into conducting. That's the language here. Maurice Board said he might have been conducting Brahms because in one of the symphonies, Brahms wrote, as loud as possible. A few bars later though, in the margin of the symphony, it said louder still.

And then, the writer asks, I do not know what they were playing, but Ormandy was giving all of himself to it. And I ask myself sadly, did I ever dislocate anything, even a necktie? True or false? Moderation in all things is a good slogan for worship.

False. Just think about Jesus for a minute. Zeal for my Father's house consumes me. Say, Mike, I know what's going on here. You go to a conference in South Africa. They're all charismatic. There you come back, you're not charismatic.

Pentecostal. Well, the good news is, I was a speaker. But this has been eating at me when I say to myself, just how do I worship? I'm too concerned about what people think. I'm not focused in again on who the Lord is when I come to worship.

You look at verse 2. He says it again with this parallelism with poetry to make a point. Let us come before His face, our presence, with thanksgiving. Come into His presence with thanksgiving. When you get an audience with the King, what do you do?

It doesn't take you very long to look back in the Old Testament where you show up before the King without a smile on your face. He's going to think something's kind of wrong and you're going to be in trouble.

So you're going to sing to the Lord with thanksgiving. Say, well, you don't know what I'm going through. The command is sing with thanksgiving. Here's the easy paradigm if you are a complainer. Struggle with complaining.

Half a full cup. What do I deserve and what do I get? I deserve death and hell, judgment, and God gives me forgiveness of sins. And you come and you worship and you go, I'm thankful. And it keeps going, verse 2, let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms.

It means to raise a shout, raise your voice. How many of you raised your voice when you sang today? Now here's how pastors manipulate people. Say, well, we usually have the giving, we have the offering before the sermon.

But giving's been down so we'll have a sermon on giving and we'll have the offering after the sermon. So is that what Mike's going to do? He's going to whack us? Didn't sing well, now we get to sing at the end?

No, not necessarily, but it helps. Have a song at the end. Why do we think Psalm 95 was given so often to the churches in the East and the churches in the West? And how many times do Eric Johanson and Tom Bertrand give us for a call to worship Psalm 95?

Because we need the reminders. Now before you think I've gone off the deep end, I'm going to be wildly Pentecostal or something, look at the other command to worship found in verse 6. If you overdo 6 and underdo 1, you're in trouble.

Bowing Down, Kneeling, and Reverent Worship Before the Maker

But the word in verse 6, okum, it's a different word in Hebrew than okum in verse 1. You can't tell that with your English text. They both say okum. Well the first one has some sweat to it, some enthusiasm, some joyful shouting, raising your voice.

This word, kum, means you're going to a solemn house of worship and it's got the feeling of quiet, respectful, on your face, solemnity, reverence, spurgeon. This word is to be accompanied with lowliest reverence.

We are to worship in such a style that the bowing down shall indicate we count ourselves to be as nothing in the presence of the all-glorious Lord. There's a tone that's changed here. We've gone from, yes Lord, you're the greatest, to, yeah, you're so great I better be on my face.

Getting low. And look at how the psalmist writes with this parallelism, again, all driving the point. There's a reverence and a humility and an homage. Verse 6, let us worship. That means you meet a king and you lay down.

You get on your face in front of the king. Now that's kind of hard to do during a worship service here, corporately, I know. But I wonder if you've ever done that at home where you just lay down on your face and say, God, you're just the greatest king.

I'm thankful that you'd love a sinner like me. He says in verse 6, let us bow down. See how similar that is to the worship? Worship means to bow down and now he says it explicitly. Bow down. Every knee shall bow kind of language.

Augustine said they were misled into seeking him by throwing out their chests rather than beating upon their breasts. Second Chronicles, and all the sons of Israel seen the fire come down and the glory of the Lord upon the house bowed down on the pavement with their faces to the ground and they worshiped and gave praise to the Lord.

Truly he is good. Truly his loving kindness is everlasting. And the writer goes on, verse 6, let us worship. Get on your face. Let us bow down. Let's get low. Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker. Kneel down.

Luke and I stopped off in London for a few days on our way to South Africa. We didn't go to the British Parliament but it reminded me of the story. Neil Martin, a member of Parliament, was giving a guided tour and he saw along with his group Lord Halsham, the Lord Chancellor, and he had all his stuff decked out.

He was wearing it all, all the regalia. And Halsham recognizes Martin and said,. And they all went down to their knees. Friends, you're a worshiper. And you will worship something with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength.

And if it's not going to be the Lord God, the triune God, then vacuums must be filled and it will turn into worshiping your spouse, your kids, your job, your career, the Boston Red Sox, or something else.

As I also think of these verses here where God commands us to worship Him with an enthusiastic reverence, doesn't this destroy our idea of worship where we say, Do you know, I didn't really like that song we sang today.

I think the pastor preached too long. I prefer, I wish they would have. See how man-centered that is? See how anti -Psalm 95 that is? That means worship is for you. That's consumerism.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 8 .30 and 11 a .m. and Sunday evenings at 6 p .m. We're located on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.