22 October 2006: UNHOLY THINGS & RENT HEARTS – God’s Perspective on Worship!

TOPIC: Worship; Atonement, Holiness, Humility, Iniquity
TITLE: UNHOLY THINGS & RENT HEARTS – God’s Perspective on Worship! [Adaptation of Spurgeon’s Morning & Evening, both “Morning” (December 18) and “Morning” (January 8)]
TEXT: Exodus 28:38 and Joel 2:13

“Aaron shall take away the iniquity of the holy things.”
“Rend your heart, and not your garments.”

FOUNDATIONAL INQUIRY: What is God’s perspective on Worship?

CONCISE OUTLINE:

I. GOD'S PERSPECTIVE OF WORSHIP IS A DESIRE FOR HOLINESS!
II. GOD'S PERSPECTIVE OF WORSHIP IS A DESIRE FOR BROKENNESS!

TRUTH/CONTEXT: Glory to God for saints like the sister who wrote the following. [Lynn Clayton; first published Feb. 2, 1995, Louisiana Baptist Message and reprinted with permission in the December 2002 issue of the California Southern Baptist] I consider it so well done I use it whenever able.

[READING] [Dietrich] Bonhoeffer, a brilliant German theologian and preacher, [author of the Christian classic “The Cost of Discipleship”] said modern people are so removed from God that their focus is almost completely upon themselves.

Before he was hanged by the Nazis in the last days of the war, Bonhoeffer reasoned the only way people would be able to understand sermons would be through their own self-centeredness. He predicted that preaching would, therefore, center more and more upon people and their needs. [His prediction was only sixty years ago.]

People-centered worship is planning the time of worship, thinking more about the needs and wants of people than about glorifying and praising God. It is thinking more in terms of people being [an] audience, rather than God being the audience. [I am often guilty of this] It is participating in worship more for a good feeling than a focus upon sacrificial living for God. It is evaluating the worship by asking, "What did I get from that?" rather than asking, "What will I do in service of God because I [am] here?” [Young people are the greatest victims here! If we don’t cater to them they are bored!]

But worship, as presented in the Bible, is focused not upon people but upon God. Certainly, worship meets one of [man’s] basic needs, but meeting that need is secondary to the act of worshiping God simply because He [alone] is worthy of worship.

In God-centered worship, worship planners [stage] worship with God in mind; everything is done as an offering to God. Every congregational song is offered to God as praise. Every prayer is an offering of worship [from] participants to God. The giving of money is an offering to God … symbolic of giving all one has to God. The sermon, while it may focus upon practical matters of Christian living, is offered to God [focusing the worshiper’s mind] upon God.

If worship fails to be God-centered, it misses the point of our relationship with God and is something less than worship.

Churches would be foolish to go about their work oblivious to their cultures. Churches are wise to reach out to people in their area of awareness, attitude and needs, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer suggested. But to reach people simply to leave them where they are and give them only a small dose of people-centered religiosity does no favor.

If we forsake the one distinct thing the church has — a gospel of surrender to the God of grace and glory — we have nothing unique to give them once we reach them. [Edited for use in this message]

If you were looking for a synopsis of my recent ministry years, this is about as good as it gets.

[TUNED] A sheep rancher in the remote mountains of Idaho found that his fiddle was out of tune and, try as he would, he was unable to make the instrument sound the way it should. A frequent listener to a radio station in California, he wrote the station concerning his problem, asking these good people at a certain hour and minute on a certain day to strike the right note for him.

Though the author of this intended it to be illustrative of worship, it is NOT like this! We may be out of tune but the worship of our God is not about us! Yet we can be assured if we worship Him as He wants to be worshipped we will leave in tune!

FOUNDATIONAL INQUIRY: What is God’s perspective on Worship?
EXPANDED OUTLINE:

I. GOD'S PERSPECTIVE OF WORSHIP IS A DESIRE FOR HOLINESS!

“Aaron shall take away the iniquity of the holy things.”

Exodus 28:38

A. TRUTH CLAIM: On God’s glorious Day of Atonement, the High Priest in Israel cleansed himself and the tabernacle/temple before he entered into the Holy Place and then the Holy of Holies;

1. Inside he performed a ritual and took “away the sins of the holy things” … O God, Thou art great indeed to do this!
2. Before taking away the sins of the people … thank you Jesus!
3. I could demonstrate that we are holy things but you should know from this ...

But you are A CHOSEN RACE, A royal PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION, A PEOPLE FOR God's OWN POSSESSION, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light

1 Peter 2:9

B. NOTICE: the things called “holy” have “iniquities” = sins, God has a provision to take these sins away; for what purpose? To make atonement for the people of Israel that which God truly wants to be “holy things”. Hallelujah!

[SPURGEON] “A friend (a Dr. Payson) wrote to his brother concerning his complicity in this sin:

“My parish, as well as my heart, very much resembles the garden of the sluggard; and what is worse, I find that very many of my desires for the melioration of both, proceed ei-ther from pride or vanity or indolence. (a) I look at the weeds that overspread my garden, and breathe out an earnest wish that they were eradicated. But why? What prompts the wish? It may be that I may walk out and say to myself, 'In what fine order is my garden kept!’ This is pride. (b) Or, it may be that my neighbors may look over the wall and say, 'How finely your garden flourishes!’ This is vanity. (c) Or I may wish for the destruction of the weeds, because I am weary of pulling them up. This is indolence.”

C. He says “DESIRING holiness, even a sincere saint (aka: without sin), can be polluted by wrong motive; more worms reside beneath green turf than brown; we needn’t dig too deep to discover them.”

F. It is CONVICTING/ENCOURAGING “to remember that when the High Priest bore the iniquity of the holy things the words, 'HOLINESS TO THE LORD' were emblazed upon his mitre.”

Consider that as Jesus bore our sin, removed the veil, and entered the eternal Holy of Holies, He did not present our holiness before his Father's face, but his own.

II. GOD'S PERSPECTIVE OF WORSHIP IS A DESIRE FOR BROKENNESS!

“Rend your heart, and not your garments.”

Joel 2:13

A. TRUTH CLAIM: The teaching here is self-evident; God only covets outward expressions of our faith in Him which are supported by an inward reality of heart, soul, and spirit.

B. We should know GARMENT-RENDING and outward signs of religious emotion are easily manifested and are frequently motivated by guile ...

1. “THE FLESH: Men will attend to the most multiplied and minute ceremonial regulations and observable rituals - for such things are pleasing to the flesh – [for authentic worship] is …

a) too humbling,
b) too heart-searching,
c) too thorough for the tastes of carnal men.”

Our [reason] prefers something better reasonable, showy, and acceptable.

2. “FOR SHOW: Outward observance is temporarily comforting: eyes and ears pleased; self-conceit fed, and self-righteousness puffed up. But they are ultimately delusive, for in death, and at the Day of Judgment, the soul needs something more sub-stantial than ceremony and ritual to lean upon.

Apart from vital godliness, all religion is utterly vain; offered without a sincer[ity] of heart, every form of worship is a sham and a mockery of the majesty of God and heaven.”

C. We are shown that HEART-RENDING worship is a divine work and solemnly felt ...

1. “It is a secret grief that is personally experienced, not in form only, but as a deep, soul-moving work of the Holy Spirit ….
2. “It is … a matter to be … keenly and sensitively felt in every … child of the living God.
3. “It is powerfully humiliating and … purifying. [“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God!”]
4. “[Likewise,] it prepares [us] for the grace and peace [our] proud, unbroken spirits cannot receive.
5. “And it is distinctly discriminating, for it belongs to the elect of God and to them alone.”

D. The brokenness of David in Psalm 51:16-17.

APPLICATION/CHALLENGE: If we were to exegete these verses we would probably see little relationship between them apart from much work in the flesh.

but when God explains Exodus 28:38 (“Aaron shall take away the iniquity of the holy things.”) and Joel 2:13 (“Rend your heart, and not your garments.”) to us in our spirits, we more clearly see their blessed relationship. For we now see with unveiled eyes – unless the iniquities of us all are taken away we cannot “worship in spirit.”

Nor can we “in truth” for we remain in our sins and rend the outer man in ritual and in the traditions of man.

“Those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."

John 4:24

For how are we to worship in truth if there is “no truth in us” [1 John 1:8]? And if we rend only our outer garment (flesh) and not our hearts, how will we enter into His rest?

[WIND?] A small boy asked an aged sailor, "What is the wind?" The old man replied, "I don't know, son; I can't tell you what the wind is, but I can tell you how to hoist a sail." It is not really necessary to know all about the wind if we know how to set our sails.

I cannot tell you with precision how to please God except that it is by faith in spirit and in truth but I can tell you how to fill your sails with the Spirit of God.

O God let us go to Calvary and present our hearts and all that they house.

Our dying Savior’s voice broke the rocks of Calvary 2000 years ago; that voice is as powerful now as it was then. Let’s bring our hearts again to that place of sacrifice and hear Jesus’ voice crying out to the Father for us now, that our hearts might be torn even as men of old tore their garments in the day of lamentation.

RELATED LINKS: The SHEEP'S CRIB - Sermons

SPECIFIC TAGS: Atonement, Brokenness, Exodus, Holiness,
Humility, Joel, Iniquity, Inner Man, Worship

GENERAL TAGS: Homoletics, Preaching, Sermons