A Fundamental Misconception about Worship...

As hard as it is to believe, summer is almost over. And over the next few weeks, we will leave summer in the rearview mirror of our lives as we lean into a new season in our lives. We will lean into a new season involving the return to school, the return of football season, and hopefully, the return of cooler weather. In addition, the end of summer can also involve a return to the regular routine that normally drives our lives. The regular routine of the day that includes bedtimes, work times, and school times.

And for many, the end of the summer involves a return to the regular routine of attending church. For many of us, summer vacations and summer schedules can result in us taking a break from church. I often hear this reality expressed by people who make statements like “I really have to get back to church.” Or “I really miss going to church to worship.” However, here is a question to consider: do we really stop worshipping because we took a break from church? Is worship something that happens only when we are in church?

You see, for many of us, we suffer from a fundamental misconception when it comes to the concept of worship. And our fundamental misconception about worship reveals itself in many of the statements that we tend to make when we talk about the concept of worship. For example, maybe you are here this morning and you have heard the following conversation take place: “How was church this morning? Oh, the sermon was okay, but the worship was amazing.”

Or, maybe you have heard this type of conversation: “I used to go to church X, but I didn’t like the worship there, so I decided to go to church Y because of their worship.” Now when you hear those conversations, how is worship being defined? Worship is being defined as music, isn’t it? And how often, if we are brutally honest, do we define worship in a similar fashion?

But is that what defines worship? Is worship something that occurs at a location on a Sunday morning that is fueled by how well a group of people play musical instruments? Is worship about a genre of music and whether or not we connect or like that genre of music? In church world, there have been huge battles over the issue of music in church. And what were those battles called? They were called the worship wars, weren’t they?

So is that what worship is? What is worship? And who actually worships, anyways? Does worship really matter? Why are we supposed to worship? What happens when we worship? And how are we supposed to worship?   To answer these questions, at the church where I serve, we are going to spend the next six weeks together in a sermon series entitled “Wired for worship”.

During this series we are going to answer the question “What is worship”. During this series, we are going to discover that all humanity has been wired for worship. And during this series our hope and prayer is that God would move in our heads, hearts, and hands in a way that results in us understanding and embracing the life of worship that we were created for in a way that results in us worshipping Jesus with our lives.

Now this week, I would like for us to answer the first two questions that I just posed. And those two questions are “What is worship?” and “Who actually worships?” In our current church culture we have a tendency to view and define worship as music. We have a tendency to view and define worship as singing. However, that is far too narrow a view of worship. Worship is not simply singing, reading your Bible and prayer, although it can involve singing, reading your Bible and prayer.

When we talk about and see worship in the letters that make up the Bible, we discover that worship is a response that is focused on who God is, what God has done, and what God has promised to do. Worship is a lifestyle; worship is a life that is lived in a way that is focused on and that responds to God’s character and activity in the world.

However, it is important to understand that regardless of whether or not you buy the whole Jesus, Bible church thing, everyone still worships something. Everyone worships something because, when we talk about worship, we are talking about a life that is leveraged in response to someone or something.

Now right about now, a natural question or objection could be running through your mind. And if you could have a conversation with me to express your question or objection, the conversation would sound something like this: “Well Dave I totally disagree with you. How can you say that everyone worships something? I don’t worship like you Christians worship. And I know a lot of people who do not worship anything. So how can you say that everyone worships something?” If those questions and objections are running through your mind, I just want to let you know that those are great questions to be asking.

And my response to those questions would be this: If you do not think that everyone worships something, just turn on your television on a Saturday afternoon and watch as thousands of people cram into a stadium with their bodies painted with their favorite team colors so that they can raise their hands in the air in adoration as their team scores a touchdown.

If you do not think that everyone worships something, just go see Justin Beiber or Taylor Swift or Rhianna or Drake in concert and watch as people raise their hands and scream at their top of their lungs about how much they love them as they sing their songs. And for those of you who are too old to like that genre of music, just watch as older people act the same way as they try to fit into the clothes that they wore thirty or forty years ago to go see the Rolling Stones or Def Leppard.

You see, worship, simply put, is a response to what we value most. Worship is a life that is lived in response to what we value most. If you want to know what you truly worship, simply look at where you leverage your time, your affection, your energy, and your loyalty, because that is what you worship. And regardless of what we say, our worship is more about what we do than what we say. Often what we say we worship is betrayed by what we actually worship with our time, talent, and treasure.

But I don’t want you to take my word that everyone worships something. Instead, the fact that everyone worships something is not a new thing. The fact that everyone worships something is a human nature thing. We see this reality revealed for us in an event from history that is recorded for us in a section of a letter in the New Testament of the Bible called the book of Acts.

Tomorrow, we will begin to look at this event from history together…