Deeper: S3, E9 - Worship

The second commandment in the Big Ten is not to make idols and worship them.  There are definitely things we do today which are unhelpful in worshipping the one true God - things that pigeon-hole him, or narrow our focus, or things that start off as helpful but then become THE way we worship.  Here we look first at what those things might be, but then we spend a little time looking at how God actually reveals himself to us and touch the tip of the iceberg around who he really is.  Maybe it'll become clear just why nothing else will ever match up to knowing the actual, real, living God personally!

Transcript

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Hi there, you've got to episode 9 out of 10 as we reverse through the Ten Commandments and open up this promise of Jesus that abundant life is waiting for anyone who believes in him. In this episode called Worship, we're going to look at the second commandment to not create idols and worship them instead of worshiping God. Is that just about anything that replaces God, or is there a deeper thing that God's interested in? And most importantly, when we stop making idols and do worship the real God, what does that look like for us? So, Brace for Impact, this is worship. Father God, as we look at what it means to have this abundant life that you say believers will have, I pray that you'd help us to have the courage to put down things we might already think and feel about how we live and who you are. Help us to lay them at your feet and re-examine our beliefs and practices in the light of what you might be saying. So help us to weigh up what is being said here and to take what's coming from you and leave behind anything that isn't. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Yes, so what is an idol? I mean, for starters, it's not a doll made by the Apple Corporation. Idol. See? See what I did? Idols are human-made concepts or objects which become the way that we worship something or someone. Like the route through which we do that. When Moses was around, uh, in a time and a place that we now call the ancient Near East, idol worship was like a really common thing. So, especially for some reason cows or cosmic signs. I think I can I can understand the cosmic signs thing, because these huge bodies of light in the sky that seem to rule over us and guide us through time and space, practically, I can see how we might attach a godlike status to those. I'm not so clear as to why particular animals take on godlike status, but then I come from a very secular world which would quietly dismiss all everything to do with worship. So maybe I've got a bias going on there. There is a question that is asked repeatedly through the Bible, and the question is this why worship something created when you can worship and know the Creator? So let's hold on to that question as we revisit it later on. Why worship something that humans have created instead of just worshiping the Creator Himself? The problem with making something and then channeling our worship through it is that human-created worship rights or ideas always lead to a narrower or a distorted view and experience of God and what he wants for us in the world. Often it leads to a controlling pattern of behaviour or thought or an ever-narrowing focus of that. One of the things that defines a Christian cult as opposed to a Christian church is that the leaders of a cult will increasingly demand unquestioning submission to what they say, how they say church should be done, or how they say the Bible should be interpreted. You're not allowed to go outside of that to other people or other groups. They become the channel through which worship needs to be focused, like a lens, including life decisions such as who you get involved with, who you can date, who's in, who's out, and more. Our world begins to shrink or decrease rather than increase, as there are people or friends or activities that we need to stop in order to be what they would say is a true worshipper. Now, don't get me wrong, to follow Jesus, I have had to make hard decisions sometimes where I feel the Spirit of God has shown me that I need to make patterns of behavior changes or thought changes, the way those thoughts have held me captive, and there are unholy things that I choose to avoid because I carry the name of God with me. But God is not this aloof, separatist, first class only being. Jesus came to humanity as an ordinary working class guy. He surrounded himself with ordinary men and women. He went to parties for goodness' sake, where there were people like prostitutes and alcoholics and the homeless, and he did it so much that the religious leaders of the time jealously and falsely labelled him a drunk and a glutton. Jesus, who is the pattern that we are supposed to follow, did not spend the whole of his time in worship sessions and Bible studies and church meetings so he could avoid dirty people. He moved among ordinary people of the world, like you and me, as one of us. He drew out of us all of the goodness that he knows he himself had woven into us while we were being formed in our mother's womb, and then he called to anyone who would hear, I am here, seeking and saving those who are lost by their own making. Come and join me. And he still calls this now. There are some truly unhelpful things that churches do, which replaces this one-to-one intimate relationship with God. They're not cult-like, they're simply human nature, and our love for getting things right or looking for comfortable patterns means that this just happens. None of these things are wrong in themselves. So where we rely on leaders and those leaders take the role of discernment off our hands and start to dictate when and where we serve God or what what ministry needs to be done by us, by the approved few, that can prove unhelpful. If we're part of a church group and we go to that particular group because the worship music is a particular style, or the innovative new things they do, or because it's more inspiring than the church down the road, or they've got an incredible choir or organ music, or because we love one particular way of running a service as opposed to another, we think this church does it right and that church doesn't. Those things can become unhelpful. Sometimes it will be the unspoken, or maybe even overtly taught, rules and regulations that govern how spiritual we are. Maybe we're marking ourselves on our attendance. Maybe we're marking ourselves on our Bible knowledge. Maybe we're marking ourselves on moving in the spiritual gifts, especially for some churches, tongues or prophecy, that maybe we're marking our faith on how much we serve or on our depth of allegiance to a denomination or a leader. I know that I can come up with that list because all of those things have been part of my experience, sometimes with me as the leader, sometimes with me as a member of that church. These things often start off with really, really good and godly intentions, but before we know it, they have formed into this funnel, this lens for our worship. So unless we're doing those things or thinking in those ways or keeping up with the pace of all those things, or even running enough services, then we're failing God, or we're not worshiping him properly in some way. But thankfully, the God we read about in the Bible shows himself to us through Jesus and in the person of the Holy Spirit, making his home inside us as a God of grace. We don't win a place at God's table because we followed a leader or followed a plan or met a criteria or we were good enough. We are offered a free place at the table as Jesus' guest of honour, and he's paid for the ticket in full with his life. And we stay at the table the same way, for free, at the cost of Jesus. No hoops to jump through, no attendance to hit, no Bible knowledge to aspire to, just because the same God who formed us, brought us back to life again, uh, one life for one life, his life for mine. So when it when it comes to abundant living, as opposed to following anything that becomes an idol for us, what is God really, really warning us about? He's warning us about reducing his otherness, his presence, his glory, the mystery and the majesty of who he is, reducing that into anything else. Thankfully, the Bible's evidence is that as soon as we start to pigeonhole God, he just wants to break out. Um so what's it like to worship God as he actually is, rather than as we reduce him to? When we find ourselves worshiping God with our spirits connected to him and in the truth of who God really is? Well, firstly, I do it as an individual. When I come to know God through the miracle of Jesus' saving work on the cross, when he claimed to cancel all of my spiritual debt, taking it all on himself on the cross, leaving me debt-free. It opened this way for me to invite God personally to live at the core of my being, that that eternal Sabbath rest. Secondly, I don't just do it as an individual, but I do it as like this cosmic body that spans all of space and time. As I join with the Holy Spirit of God, I also join spiritually with every believer who there ever has been and who there is now around planet Earth. There's this deep, deep spiritual connection between me and every Christian of every denomination and church, and those who just quietly live their lives supposedly independent of any church. But thirdly, we also begin to experience God, not who is able to be put into a system or a set of beliefs or an image or a tradition. The real God who reveals himself to us again and again and again. God is he's wild and yet he comes as a gentle dove. He's strong and yet he is gentle. He is justice, but he acts in grace. God is all powerful, but he allows us to choose things. God fills the universe and holds it all together, yet he walks with us in whispers. God is eternal, and yet he gave himself as a sacrifice for us to his own death. God has a plan that can never be defeated, yet he works in partnership with flawed humanity like you and me. God is fully self-sufficient, but he waits for us to pray. God is the divine, inexplicable, perfect wisdom of the cosmos, but he washes our feet. God's self-descriptions in the Bible are things like I am your shepherd, your light, your pathway, your holy one, I am your friend, your lover, your truth, I am your helper, your servant, protector, your lamb, your rock, your redeemer, your judge, and your everlasting Father. And the list goes on. And the more we ask him to reveal himself to us through scripture, through the teaching voice of the Spirit, through the life of Jesus, through the example of other Christians, through creation all around us, which teaches us about him all the time, through our consciences, the more we begin to realize there is nothing we could ever create that would even come anywhere near close to representing God. No pattern of worship, no set of songs, no church structure, no image, nothing. Nothing. So instead of surrendering our route to God as coming through a leader or a music group or an item or an idea, our route to God comes explicitly through a personal relationship with God Himself, made possible by Jesus, empowered by the Spirit who lives inside us and focused on the indescribable, knowable God of all things. When we do this, Jesus tells us that from within the depths of our being, this water table of God's Holy Spirit will rise up literally from inside us and flow out, overflowing into our words, our actions, our morals, our attitudes, our relationships, and our rest periods. Out of all of those places into the world around us, we become abundant in body and mind and spirit, healed, rested and secure. The way that we live and move and have our being flows out into the world all around us, everywhere that we have influence or can be present, the river of God begins to just flow. This is where those three markers of mission of God in the world, care for creation, meeting human need, and bringing faith within reach of other people, these three things become supercharged by the Spirit of God inside us. His character grows in us, he gives us supernatural gifts designed to be a blessing to other people. We speak words of life, affirmation, challenge, and hope, and deep, deep, deep within us, we live in that seventh-day Sabbath rest of peacefulness. Throw us into the worst situations, pastorally, we know that our God is alive and is living on the inside, roaring like a lion. So, indescribable God, help us draw in our spiritual attention to you. Help us to use forms of worship, leaders, music, and images as tools to know the real living God, and never as the only route to knowing you. Teach us by your word and your spirit, and may the water table of your presence within us rise up and up and up until you flow unstoppably out through our words, thoughts, actions, and attitudes into the streets and the towns around us. May we join you on your mission to care for creation, to address human need, and to bring faith within reach for everyone. And as we freely receive from you, may we also freely give and give and give into the world you love. Amen.