The Importance of Worship — Danny Bond

Father, we love You so much. You are so worthy of our worship, our praise, our adoration. We are so often so self-centered and preoccupied with ourselves that we fail to give You the glory and the honor that You deserve.

Lord, we pray that through our time together, looking into Your Word today, that You would retune our thinking, Father, that You would once again place within the center of our minds and hearts the ultimate priority that You have for us, which is to give our lives to You and to worship You.

Father, bless this time. Bless us with a good, alert attention span to You, Holy Spirit. Work the truth we're going to look at deep down within us that we might go on to grow in our worship and exaltation of God the Father.

And we ask these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. We are going to talk about worship now, which is the ultimate priority in the Christian life. We have been called actually as God's people to an everlasting preoccupation with the Lord.

Worship as the Ultimate Priority

And I want you to see in the Bible today that worship, worshiping God is the ultimate priority for us as God's people. If you could turn in your Bible actually to John, the Gospel of John 4 -20. I'd like to read down to verse 24 and use that as a starting point, a launching point.

Here Jesus Christ is standing at the well in Samaria with a Samaritan woman. The Samaritans were half-breeds, part Jewish, part other nationalities, and they were a half-breed in their worship as well.

You could say that their worship was a hybrid of Judaism and pagan worship and they worshiped down there in that area of the country rather than Jerusalem. So Jesus enters into this discussion with this woman about worship.

And He very masterfully shows the priority that worship has with God the Father. And in verse 20, the woman is saying to Him, our fathers, the Samaritan fathers, worshiped on this mountain and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.

Jesus said to her, woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews, but the hour is coming and now is.

When true worshipers... See, in Jesus' mind, there's such a thing as a true worshiper and a false worshiper. He says the hour is coming when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.

For the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Now, as we go on from here, and we'll refer to this section again and again throughout the message, I want you to know this is not meant to be a final word on worship, but rather a word to raise in our thinking a few main important thoughts about worshiping God.

And I want to give you a three-fold outline for where we're going. First of all, we're going to talk about the perversion that we are dealing with today in terms of God-centered worship in the church.

Secondly then, we will talk about the priority in the Bible of God-centered worship. And then we will talk about just briefly the practice of God-centered worship. And at that time, we'll talk about worship here in the church, coming to church, and what that is to be all about in the Christian life.

So let's begin with the first main point in our outline which is the perversion of God-centered worship. The perversion around us today is basically that worship is for me. That is the perversion today.

There is a very prevalent mindset today that we come to church to worship for what we can get out of it. Worship is for me. It is a, if you will, me-istic mindset. There is much in the church that has contributed to this.

I think one main contributing factor is of course the Word-Faith movement with Kenneth Hagen, Kenneth Copeland, Charles Capps, Marilyn Hickey, Fred Price, people like this. And they have spread around the church such a selfish, me-istic mindset that I'm into Christianity for what I can get out of it.

And that's what they talk about. All the prosperity, all the stuff that God wants to give you if you have the magic formulas that you can only get from them. These people are of course mainline heretics.

They're false teachers. They are wolves in sheep's clothing. They need to be avoided at all costs. And certainly the attitude that they propagate should be avoided. I would recommend to you Hank Hennigraaff, President of Christian Research Institute, has a brand new book.

It's called Christianity in Crisis. And he really rips the mask off that whole movement and exposes it for what it's really all about. And I would recommend that you get that book. We have it in our bookstore.

It is a very, very important book for our time. But these people have certainly contributed to this me-centered kind of Christianity and then me-centered worship. Another thing that has contributed today to that is the pragmatic mindset that is very prevalent today in the church.

And that is the whole thing of all these programs and these pastors obsessed with having big churches. Pastors obsessed with being seen among their peers as being successful men in the ministry. And thus, one program, one formula, one technique after the next has been spawned to get people into church, get bodies into buildings.

It's pragmatism. The whole thing then becomes, will it work for me? If I try this, will it work for me? And that has fostered a pragmatic mindset in God's people. Will it work for me? What's in it for me?

Will it make me feel good? Will I like it? And we have come to a very pragmatic time in the church. And just think, for example, there are in America over 350 ,000 churches. Collectively, these churches own $800 billion worth of real estate.

Never has the church been so programmed collectively. Never has it been so informed, so well-planned, so, quote, influential or busy or aggressive or clever or all these other things. Motivated, you can go on and on.

But never has the church been so carnal. Never has the church been so self-centered as it is today. And never has true God-centered worship been so lacking in the church in America. A distinguished explorer spent a couple of years among savages in the upper Amazon.

He attempted to force a truck through the jungle at an extraordinary speed driving the native carriers to the limit physically. Everything went along okay for about two days and on the third morning, all the natives just sat down and wouldn't go any farther.

Finally, he went over to the chief and he said, what in the world are they doing? Why won't they march on? And he said, because they're waiting for their souls to catch up with their bodies. Well, so is the church.

The church, God's people in America have been driven and driven and driven with one program after the next, one pragmatic formula after the next to get people into the church to make it bigger. And in the meantime, their souls are lagging way behind.

They're suffering and people are not understanding and being taught how to worship God. They're being taught how to build an empire for some man's massive ego. It's a tragedy and it's perverting the worship of God in the church.

John MacArthur, by the way, is coming out next month in just a couple of weeks with a brand new book called Ashamed of the Gospel. And it deals with this whole business of pragmatism in the church and how the gospel's been thrown out for programs for building big empires.

Okay, there's another thing. Not only has pragmatism contributed to this, but the love affair with psychology and the church has fostered this selfish mindset. You get into psychology enough and it will make you selfish, self-centered.

Psychology, there's so much we could say about it, but know this, it came from the fallen minds of fallen men sealed in the darkness without the light of God. When men tried to figure out their problems that can only be solved by the Spirit of God and the light of His Word and the truth of His Word, you have the blind leading the blind.

And there is so much psychology in the church today that everybody's running around wondering how they feel. Wondering how they feel about what happened to them way back when. And becoming irresponsible and selfish and wanting to blame their problems on somebody else and want to live in the past 25 years ago and be mad about it every day until they get some kind of a magical inner healing.

Listen, the church needs to worship God. When they worship God and make Him central, they will find God. In finding God, they will find the solution to their problems. We could go on and on as to the contributions to this perversion and worship, but I think that those are enough things to get you understanding why we have the problem we have today.

The perversion again is that worship is primarily for me. In contrast to all of that, let's talk about what worship is really to be all about. Worship is to be for who? God. That's right. In John 4 .23, Jesus said it, the hour is coming.

Now is when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. You find throughout these verses the word worship again and again and again and again and again.

You find it throughout the New Testament. In the Greek, the main word you find again and again is the word proskuneo. It means basically to bow down, to kiss toward, to prostrate oneself. It is a word that describes what you would often see in the biblical society where a man would come before his king, his sovereign, and he would bow down until his forehead actually touched the ground, kneeling with his forehead on the ground as a sign of his profound reverence for his sovereign and his king.

Well, you take that word, you put it into the Bible, you use it in reference to God and it's exalted to its highest dimension and it speaks of what we are to do with our God. The modern English word that we use, worship, that we see in our English translation actually comes from an old English word, worth-ship, worth-ship.

And that old English word denoted a worthiness of the individual in receiving special honor. So when we talk about worship being for God, we're talking about the fact that worship then is essentially giving rather than receiving.

That is not to say that when we are worshiping God, we don't receive wonderful blessings from Him because we do, but know this, we don't come to God to get the blessing, we come to God to worship Him and we get blessed in the process.

And there's a big difference. Do you understand that? As subtle as it may seem to you, it is a major difference. It is the difference that makes all the difference. Essentially then, worship is giving to God.

You could say worship is a blessed act of blessing God. Now, we're going to move through the Bible and look at a number of different things. You find, for example, in the book of Exodus, that God takes Moses aside and He talks to him about how to make the incense that they burnt in the tabernacle and later in the temple before the Lord perpetually.

And the incense would rise up to God as a sweet fragrance, as a picture of their worship offered up to God. You come to the New Testament if you turn to John. If you're in John 4, just turn to the right to John 12.

Mary’s Fragrant Offering to Jesus

And you see a wonderful picture of worship. The fragrance rising up to God. The worshiper at the feet of God. John 12. Here in John 12, beginning with verse 1, Jesus has come to have dinner at the house of Lazarus who had been raised from the dead.

And He is there with Martha and Mary, His sisters. It says, "...then six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany where Lazarus was who had been dead, whom He had raised from the dead. There they made Him a supper, and Martha served, but Lazarus was one of those who sat at the table with Him.

Then Mary took a pound of very costly oil of spikenard.". Remember who it was that sat at the feet of Jesus when her sister was busy with many things? Who was it? Mary. Here is Mary again. She is obviously a worshiper, a true worshiper to use Jesus' terminology.

Mary comes, and here's the picture. She bows down at His feet. She would have to get on her knees to do this because she ends up wiping His feet with His hair. It says, "...then Mary took a pound of very costly oil of spikenard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.".

Just a beautiful picture of what worship is all about. Giving to Jesus. Worshiping Jesus and the beautiful fragrance filling the entire house. Well, that is how our worship is to be. And so worship is to rise then up to God from His people.

We come and we give our worship to Him. In the New Testament in Romans 12, after 11 solid chapters of doctrine, Paul the Apostle brings the first practical word to the Romans and he says, I beseech you by the mercies of God in light of all the grace that you have learned that you now present your bodies as a living sacrifice which is your reasonable, what?

Service. The English says, the Greek is Latruo. It is a word for worship. A worshipful service. And so he says, in light of everything you've learned about God, the most reasonable thing you can do is worship God.

Give your life to Him and serve Him. That's what he's saying. We are to worship God. We are to give our very lives to Him. So let's be very specific then. In reference to the church meeting, when we come to church to give our worship to God, it should be just that.

You should be in your car on the way to church with a gift for God. It should be a gift in your heart that you can't wait to give the Lord. And that is the gift of your worship. You see, when you look at the term proskuneo in the Greek or latruo in the Greek, you do not find a word that says, where you get the definition of proskuneo, it means to gas up.

To fill up. To receive. No, it doesn't mean that. It means to bow down and give out. That's what it means, you see. We need to understand that. So when we come to church, put it this way, if you come to church primarily just to see what you can get, if that's your primary thing, then know this, you don't truly worship God.

If you come to church just to get the blessing, then you don't truly worship God. You see, one of the things I think is wrong with the extremes that you find in the charismatic movement in the area of worship is that there's such an emphasis on the experience.

Such an emphasis on getting the quote anointing, on feeling the feeling, on catching the lightning bolt, getting the zap that's going to change your life. As a result, it cultivates this me-centered zap syndrome where all you think about in going to church is that you can get your zap for the day.

And you grade the service on a scale of one to ten by whether you got the zap or not. And so much then goes on in the service to whip up and guarantee a zap for the day. Then you get about ten minutes of the Bible, right?

Which is watered down because the pastor's so into getting the zap he didn't have time to study that week. Or then you have the pastor say, oh, oh, oh, we're so into worshiping now, let's just go on. That is just to say, I was too lazy to study this week and get you a message, so let's just let the band do the rest.

You see? Might as well call it for what it is. Anyway, all of that cultivates the wrong attitude. We come to God to give our worship to Him. And that is not to say our worship shouldn't be lively. And I think certainly many of the circles in the charismatic camp bring to us an enthusiasm for God that's genuine and real.

And we should be encouraged by that. But there are extremes that take you all the way out into something that is not even real worship. And we need to be aware of that. There's a balance. We come to church to give our worship to God.

Psalm 45. Verse 1, the psalmist says, My heart is overflowing with a good theme. The word overflowing literally means to bubble up and to spill over and to boil. He was saying, God, as I contemplate You, my heart begins to burn within me.

It begins to bubble up. It begins to boil within me with adoration and praise for You. Thus, Lord, I'm going to come and give You all the honor that is due to Your name. It is a thing of giving. How long has it been since you knew that kind of worship?

How long has it been since you came to church along the way saying, Oh, God, I long to come and give to You. I can't wait until I have an opportunity to express my giving to You in the time of singing.

How long has it been since you've known that kind of God-centered worship? And so we see the perversion of God-centered worship and we see what worship is to be all about. Let's move on then to the second main thought in our outline today, the priority of God-centered worship.

Worship as the Purpose of Redemption

And I want to give you a couple of thoughts here, a few main thoughts, basically three in this section. First of all, I want you to see that worship, when you talk about salvation, when you talk about salvation, if it is rightly presented, you must understand that worship is the ultimate purpose of redemption or salvation.

When God saves a man, the ultimate purpose is to turn that man or that woman into a worshiper. I mean, this is exactly what Jesus was saying to the woman at the well. You see, men on their own do not worship God.

In fact, when man fell in the garden, what was effectively lost was the God-centered worship. Man became the center of the whole thing. Turn in your Bible, could you, to Romans 1 -20, where we see this in some detail.

Paul is kind of giving a summary of fallen man and his state in the greatest sin of the whole thing. Is that man has ceased to be a worshiper of God and has become a worshiper of himself. Romans 1 -20.

Here we read, for since the creation of the world, speaking of God, man and his invisible attributes are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made even as eternal power and Godhead so that they are without excuse.

Because although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God. Neither were thankful but became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God.

Watch this massive step down. Into an image made like unto who? Corruptible man. And then he goes down even further and birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. And so here Paul says that man fell from his worship of God and instead began to worship himself.

Changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and then further got even worse and more perverted and then began to worship images of beasts and four-footed things, creeping things.

He could have actually said creepy things but he said creeping things. At any rate, it is important to see that man's big problem is he doesn't worship God, he worships himself. That's the problem with the world today.

Jesus came in response to all of that and He said, I came to seek and to save that which was what? Lost. And what was lost? True God-centered worship. And so He says in John 4 .23,. But the hour is coming and now is when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.

That is the only place in all the Bible that says God is actually seeking something from us. Then you find in terms of the fact that God redeems men to make them true worshipers in Revelation. Why don't you turn to Revelation 14 .6.

Here we come down to the end of the Bible. Revelation 14 .6. You find in the beginning of the Bible, man falls. And the big temptation he gives into is to become a God so he can basically be worshipped instead of worshipping God.

So the beginning of the Bible, worship is lost. God calls for God-centered worship as the ultimate priority all through the Bible. You come down to the very end of the Bible and you see that God is still wanting to redeem men for the purpose of becoming worshipers.

Revelation 14 .6. Then I saw, John says, another angel flying in the midst of heaven and having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth to every nation, tribe, tongue and people.

This is at the end of the human history. Jesus Christ is about to come back at any time and this is God still calling for men to come and worship Him. Verse 7. Here's His message. Saying with a loud voice, Fear God and give glory to Him for the hour of His judgment has come.

And what? Worship Him. Come to God and worship Him. So I say again, worship is the ultimate purpose of redemption. If God saves you and gives you forgiveness in eternal life, it's to turn you into a worshipper of Him.

Worship as the Bible’s Central Theme

Let me take you to another thought. Worship is the ultimate focus of the Bible. You take your Bible, read through it cover to cover and you'll find out that the ultimate focus here is worship. This is a book about worshiping God.

We can follow this theme all the way through really. Just go back to the beginning. Adam and Eve were created by God to worship God. They fell into sin when they refused to do so and wanted to be worshipped themselves and become God.

Cain and Abel. You look at that. Cain killed Abel, didn't he? Over the matter of what? Worship. You go on and you look at the patriarchs as we have been on Sunday night in Genesis and you find that when they properly worshipped God they were blessed.

When they didn't God punished them. You continue to move through the Bible and you find that Israel was doomed in the desert because of failure to properly worship God. You find that Moses could not enter the promised land because he failed to properly worship God obediently at the incident with the rock and the water.

You find that when God gave them the law to govern them as a people the first thing He did was give them a call to worship. Turn in your Bible to the book of Exodus. Let me show you this in chapter 20 beginning at verse 1.

Exodus 20 verse 1. And God spoke all these words saying I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of bondage here it is you shall have no other gods before me.

I am to be the one you worship. I am to be the very center of your adoration and your praise. See, anything that occupies your thinking and your energy and your time and your effort continually will become a God to you and an idol to you.

It will draw off your worship. God is saying you shall have no other gods before me. Then just turn to the right in Exodus to chapter 34 verse 14 He makes it very clear and He sums it up God has made it very clear you shall worship no other God.

Jesus summed all of that up in Matthew 22 when He said you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul with all your mind this is the first and great commandment this is what God has been after from the beginning it is the ultimate focus of the Bible.

As you continue along in the Bible in Exodus if you read it carefully you will discover that about 25 chapters are devoted in the book of Exodus to the building of the tabernacle. And there is a reason for that.

The tabernacle had one function and that was worship. Even the geographical location of the tabernacle is crucial. Because if you have studied your Bible you know that when they built the tabernacle the tent that they you find it all covered in the 25 chapters when they finally put it out there geographically it was right in the center of the people.

They lived around the tabernacle everything in their life revolved around the worship that went on in the tabernacle. You had the tabernacle and the priests living here and the Levites living here and out a little farther came the rest of the 12 tribes of Israel they lived literally around the tabernacle.

There was a purpose for that. The purpose was this they were to know every day of their life when they came out the door of their tent to start their day the very first thing they saw was what? The tabernacle.

The glory of God was there often manifesting above the tabernacle all the worship went on there so every day of their life they were given the message the center of your life is to be worship that your life revolves around what goes on in this tabernacle right here and so even the geographic location of the tabernacle sent out the message that worship is the priority of your life to be the center of your life your life is literally to revolve around the worship that takes place there in the tabernacle you continue on in the Bible and you find that God takes worship seriously so that when you have the violation of principles of worship God acts swiftly and seriously.

Take for example when they came out of Egypt and Moses was on the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments remember what they were doing at the bottom of the mountain. What did they do. They built a golden calf.

Didn't they. They were down there and somebody says let's make a calf and we'll put it together. We've got all this jewelry we brought out of Egypt. Let's throw it in the fire melt it down and we'll build golden calves.

We'll bow down we'll say these are the gods that brought us out of Egypt. Moses comes down from receiving the Ten Commandments hearing God talk to him personally watching God write personally on a rock with his finger the laws for his people.

He comes down the mountain and they're down there dancing around having a pagan worship orgy type situation and worshiping these golden calves. How did God respond to that. He slew thousands of them. He took it very seriously when they violated the principles of worship.

Leviticus 10. You find the sons of Aaron they come in to be ordained on their ordination day. The Bible says they offered strange fire before the Lord. We don't know what that was. All we know is they didn't come the way God said they should come.

God took it seriously. He would not tolerate their impudence and their flippancy and he killed them. Nadab and Abihu slain by God. 1st Samuel 13. You find Saul the king and he's waiting for Samuel to come down to the battle and give an offering and lead them in worship so they can have victory in the battle.

Samuel delays. He doesn't show up. Saul takes matters into his own hands. He says anybody can worship God. Anybody can give an offering. He goes and he gives the offering. Samuel shows up right after he's done it.

He gets Saul and he says you know what. Saul. You have a big problem. You're disobedient to God. You presumed to take the office of the priest. God will not tolerate that Saul. I have to tell you that because of all your rebellion all your disobedience and now this ultimate act of self-styled worship you are removed from being king of Israel as of now and you will be replaced by a man after what God's own heart who will worship God the way he is to be worshiped.

The Lord took it very seriously. And then you have of course the account later in 2 Samuel 6 of Uzzah the Ark of the Covenant had been captured by the enemies of Israel and they were so glad to get it back.

And they built a new cart and they put the Ark on there. And they got Uzzah who was a Kohathite one of the men who was trained by God to handle the Ark of the Covenant. And they're riding down the road and David is singing in the road.

It's a great celebration. Hundreds of thousands of people singing and dancing and shouting and rejoicing that the Ark is coming back to the nation. All of a sudden the cart hits a bump in the road and it kind of flies up a little bit.

The Ark wobbles a little bit. Uzzah reaches out to steady the Ark. Boom. He falls over dead on the street. David stops. Instant silence. The rejoicing turns to mourning. Everybody says what is going on.

David goes back and for months he seeks God and he figures out from the Word of God that Uzzah as a Kohathite was never to touch the Ark. There were rings on the side of the Ark that you slid poles through and the Kohathites would then lift the Ark by the poles without touching it and move it in that way all as a part of a great reverence in worshiping God.

His way. Uzzah in a very flippant manner reaches out stable. I'll just steady this cart. First of all it shouldn't have been on a cart should have been on the poles on the shoulders of the Kohathites.

Secondly he should have never touched it and that's why God killed him. So when there were violations of the principles of worship in the Bible God takes it seriously. Then you come down to the time of Jesus Christ.

We could go on and on seeing how this is the focus of the Bible. But Jesus says that the hour is coming and now is when worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. And he goes on to say the same message.

Worship as the Destiny of Believers

Then you find out that not only is worship the ultimate purpose of redemption not only is worship the ultimate focus of the Bible but worship is the ultimate destiny of believers. This is what we're going to do forever.

We should learn to do it now. Get in the flow with what God's going to do with us forever. In Revelation for example chapter 4 you have the 24 elders who are falling down before him who sits on the throne and they worship him who lives forever casting their crown symbolizing all that they are and have received and worship before God on his throne.

We are told in Revelation 15 4 that all nations will come and worship the Lord. And then this turn to chapter 22 to verse 8 we find out that even the angels who live in the presence of God understand worship very clearly.

They understand that God centered worship is the priority. Nothing else is to be tolerated. And here is John receiving the revelations from the Lord the angels ministering to him. And we read this in Revelation 22 8.

Now I John saw and heard these things. And when I heard and saw I fell down to worship before the feet of who the angel who showed me these things. Now just imagine this angel was around when satan wanted to take over heaven and receive all the worship.

And this angel saw satan and one third of the angels thrown out of heaven to take their place eventually in an eternal burning hell. Right. This angel knows about that. This angel was around when the golden calf incident took place and God slew thousands.

This angel was around when Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire and God killed them. This angel was around when the worship was perverted when Uzzah touched the ark of the covenant and died. This angel has seen people pervert worship and offer it in the wrong direction and die or be punished and judged.

John falls at his feet. Can't you see the angel panic. Get up get up get up quickly. And so he says in verse 9 he said to me don't do that. Get up. I am your fellow servant. He's looking around thinking God is going to do something to me if I don't if I look like I like this he says for I am your fellow servant of your brethren the prophets and those who keep the words of this book.

Then what does he say worship. God. Worship is the ultimate destiny of believers. It is the ultimate priority for all of us that know God. So we've seen the perversion. We've seen the priority of worship.

Truth and Spirit in Christian Worship

Finally let's come to the practice of God-centered worship. Just want to take a couple of minutes to deal with this. Let's talk about the basic elements of Christian worship. What should it involve. Two things truth and spirit.

Jesus said you must worship the Father in truth. How can I do that. There is only one way by learning what is in the book of truth. Right. By learning what God has revealed about himself. That is why I am committed to verse by verse expository preaching.

That is why the pulpit can never be a place for ongoing constant hammering of social issues and trying to get you into this cause and that cause and everything else. The pulpit must be a place of the word of God where you learn the truth so that you can worship in truth.

You see you learn the truth about God and then you worship in spirit. That means from your spirit you are to worship in truth from the very depths of your being. Now that you know about God you can intelligently worship him from your very center of your being in spirit and in truth.

And so that is how we are to worship. Psalm 47 7 says sing ye praises with understanding bringing it all together. So these are the basic elements of Christian worship. And then second thought I want to give you here as we wind down is the basic elements of a corporate worship.