St Bart’s Anglican Church

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Week 1 – Call to Worship (Psalm 147) Discussion Questions

1. How is worship much more than simply singing songs?

2. Do you think that there is a danger with worship that we ‘just go through the motions’? How might we avoid this trap?

Read Psalm 147:1-20

3. If a friend who wasn’t yet a Christian asked you what ‘worship’ is, how would you explain it?

4. In Psalm 147 how many calls to worship are there? What is the significance of this phrase and the two components of the word ‘hallelujah’?

5. Why is it important to note that this ‘call’ is actually a command?

6. Why do we worship? How is it fitting to God and to us?

7. If we don’t worship God, do you think we will worship something?

8. When we worship God, we are ascribing ultimate value to him. Do you think it is possible to believe in God, but not worship him (according to that definition)? How is this possible?

9. In practical terms, what does it actually mean to ascribe ultimate value to God? How might that affect various aspects of your life? How might it transform your behaviour?

10. What helps you marvel at the wonder and beauty of God? Could you do that more often as part of your daily or weekly pattern?

11. Discuss the significance of the images in verses 10 and 11. What does God delight in? How does this relate to worship?

12. Why should every Christian make worshipping God a priority? When should we worship?

13. How is worship both corporate and rhythmic?

14. Are there opportunities for you to incorporate worship into your daily life?

15. How can we come better prepared to worship each Sunday?

Talk 1/5 (How and Why We Worship): 12/04/15 “Call to Worship” by the Rev’d Adam Lowe

Bible Passage: Psalm 147:1-20

INTRODUCTION \\ INTRODUCTION TO SERIES

Last year during our series on Acts 2, we explored how worshipping God is one of the absolute fundamental parts of who we are and what we do as a church.

• Every week we gather together, and we move through an order…

• We are called to worship,

• We confess our sins and are assured of God’s forgiveness,

• We listen and respond to God’s word,

• We gather around the Lord’s Table, and

• We are sent into the world.

It’s beautiful, it involves our whole selves - heart, mind, body, and emotion. However, there’s always a danger that we’re just going through the motions.

• …disengaged because something isn’t according to our preference,

• …distracted by everything else going on in our lives, or

• …deaf because we’ve done it all before and we’re simply on auto-pilot. //

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I remember when we were growing up, we lived really close to to a railway line on which freight trains would come about twice a day. And at first, it was so loud that I would have to stop what I was doing - pause whatever conversation I was partaking in - only to continue it after the train had passed. After a while however, the noise of the train became so familiar that I wouldn’t have been able to tell you if a train had even been by in recent days. I simply didn’t take notice of it anymore. I didn’t hear it.

Worship shouldn’t be like that. It can’t become like that for us. Worship should be actively meaningful not just motions. ///

We’re called to worship. Psalm 147 is one of those great calls, and my hope over the coming weeks is that all of us - regardless of where we’re at - might be re-enlivened and dig deeper into the role of worship in our lives.

So simply, four points:

1. What is Worship?

2. Why do we Worship?

3. How do we Worship?

4. When do we Worship?!3

WHAT \\ HALLELUJAH!

So first, what is worship?

If I asked everyone in the room I’m sure I’d get a vast array of answers.

• Some might emphasise the things we do,

• Others might emphasise how we feel or what we experience.

Psalm 147 is one of five Psalms, right at the end of the Psalter (the collection of Psalms), that focus on praise.

• There’s a little clue at the beginning of each of them, which is the phrase: Praise the Lord!

• Each of those Psalms is bookended by that phrase.

• There are three sections in Psalm 147, and each begins with a call to worship. //

• v.1 Praise the Lord…

• v.7 Sing to the Lord with grateful praise…

• v.12 Extol the Lord, Jerusalem; praise your God, Zion.

• v.20b …Praise the Lord. !4

The Hebrew word behind ‘Praise the Lord’ is actually hallelujah.

• And there’s two components to hallelujah.

• The Hebrew verb - hallel - which is an exhortation, a command, to praise.

• And jah - which is the the name of God, our creator.

• And so, when combined, it’s actually far more than a call, it’s a command for the whole congregation to join in praise towards God.

• I love that there is a community dynamic to praise, because I’m forgetful, and sometimes I need a reminder of to whom I need to orientate my life.

• We often use ‘hallelujah’ as a spontaneous expression of joy, often in response to something great that God has done, but actually it’s like a wake-up call to the soul, (we begin with a call to worship…) Tell out my soul - the greatness of the Lord.Bless the Lord oh my soul.

• It’s a great reminder, to ask the question in whom do we boast?

• The word worship comes from the words “worth shape”: to be shaped by something of worth.

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• When we worship, we’re given the opportunity to ground our glory, to take the heart of what you are worshipping,and direct it to the only one who really matters, and be shaped by him.

• When we’re called to worship, be that on a Sunday morning or throughout the week, it’s a command for us to recognise to whom do our souls cling and dream about.

• Is it career, or money, or who you know - or is it the God of the universe who loves you.

It’s so easy to make worship about us, but it’s actually about God.

• Four of the most powerful words I’ve ever read in my life were from the beginning of Rick Warren’s book, the Purpose Driven Life, ‘it’s not about you’.

• There’s actually only one who is worthy of us ascribing our ultimate value: God.

• Worship is responding to God’s call on our lives, and grounding our whole lives, our whole self-worth, to him.

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WHY \\ FITS GOD, FITS US

Second, we do it, because it is fitting to God and to ourselves.

Praise the Lord, How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise him! (v.1)

Praise, responding to that command is good for us, it’s fitting.

• That word, fitting, actually means it’s lovely, it’s beautiful.

• When we worship, we do so in response to all that God has done for us.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

When we praise God, when we worship him, we actually join together with a bigger reality. Revelation chapters 4 and 5 provides a glimpse of that heavenly worship around the throne of God - it’s an amazing orchestration of praise.

• It’s entirely appropriate, because God is God.

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Dawkins has regularly portrayed God as some sort of narcissist…

• After all he commands that we worship him. In fact, the first two commandment (no other gods, and do not make graven images, idols - cf. Exodus 20) focus on the very fact that God desires for us to ascribe our ultimate value and worship to him and him alone.

• Not because he is a megalomanic, but because he is the only one worthy of our praise.

• Any other option is a tragic compromise.

The Psalm before us has an extraordinary number of reasons why it is fitting to worship God,why it’s a beautiful thing to do…

• the Lord builds up Jerusalem, he gathers the exiles, he heals the broken hearted, he determines the number of stars, his understanding has no limit, he sustains the humble, he supplies the rain, and he provides food for the cattle. //

• No one else can compare - and if you’re not worshipping God, you will be worshipping something else that will disappoint.

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• And what we worship, we become. It changes us. It takes what we believe and drives it deep into our hearts. //

David Foster Wallace, the American author recognises this human reality. He says:

“…here’s something else that’s weird by true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship… If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough… Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when the time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.”

• Worshipping money, or our careers, or our bodies is ultimately empty, it’s devoid of any beauty.

• But worshipping God is fitting, it’s beautiful.

• Friends, don’t worship God out of duty, worship him because he is beautiful.

• Worship isn’t just fitting for God, but it’s fitting for us. Experience his beauty.

• We actually need praise as much as we need food and water.

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You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. (Augustine, Confessions).

• It fills us with joy, it moves us from being individualistic to corporate, it moves us away from our shortcomings to God’s dependability, from our failures to God’s triumphs, for our experience of rejection to God’s all-embracing love.

• It changes us.

• Worship is more than something to tick the box.

• It’s fitting, it’s beautiful: for God and for us.

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HOW \\ WITH OUR WHOLE HEART

So how then we do worship.

There’s lots of aspects…

• I could speak of our need to worship together as a regular habit.

• That’s essential: the commands to worship are almost always in the plural form.

• The early church worshipped together.

• The image in Revelation of worship is of many gathered around the throne.

• In we do things alone, we end up with a little distorted view of God.

• I could speak of our need to worship with some order.

• I don’t mean to be regimented, but actually left to our own devices, our worship can become focused on one aspect like confession, but not forgiveness, or listening to God’s word, but not praying. We need to take part in a whole richness of praise.

• But what I really want to focus on is that our worship would focus on truth of who God is, with our entire selves.

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• That is is not a transactional series of events, but the expression of loving relationship. And that requires our whole selves, including our hearts.

If you’re having trouble focusing on God’s character, the Bible is full of inspiration.

• The Psalms are particularly amazing!

• I’m not suggesting you fake it, but it’s incredible how the more you turn to the Bible to focus on the nature of God, or music to help you focus on the nature of God, or the beauty of creation to focus on the nature of God, it’s incredible how despair and frustration, anger and sorry, can turn into praise.

• When you read the Psalms, it becomes evident how how they are thinking, weighing, calculating, treasuring the excellencies of God!

• I love that in Matt Redman’s 10,000 Reasons, we sing “For all your goodness I will keep on singing: 10,000 reasons for my heart to find”.

• True worship is grasping the truth about God and then allowing that truth to strike the very centre of our being.

And that requires our hearts to be involved.

• It’s not real worship, if it doesn’t involve our hearts: that’s just lip-service. //

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His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse, nor his delight in the legs of the warrior; the Lord delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love. (vv.10-11)

In ancient times, there was nothing more thrilling to see your army looking strong.

• The powerful horses, the muscular warriors.

• Surely now others will have to respect us, to bend to us.

• But God delights not in power, but in the hearts of those who fear him - that means depend on him, who rely on his love.

• God delights in those who worship him, who transfer the hope of their heart from their own strength, to his unfailing love!

• Friends, God loves you unconditionally.

• We say that to our children and we mean it, but of course we cannot never actually fulfil it.

• I make mistakes, and actually, I’m not always going to be around.

• But God’s love is both unfailing and unending.

• Hebrews 13:5b: Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.

• How is that possible, because he forsook his own son for us. // !13

• What God wants is not a method, but you - your heart.

• That’s how we are to worship, to give it all to him.

[Jesus said] ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ (Luke 10:27)

J C Ryle puts it like this:

Let us remember, as long as we live, that it is not the quantity of worship, but the quality that God regards. The inward and spiritual character of the congregation is of far more importance in his sight than the number of worshippers, or the outward and visible signs which they exhibit.

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WHEN \\ ALL THE TIME

So finally, when do we worship? In all circumstances.

…give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. (1 Thessalonians 5:18)

• I’m not going to pretend that’s easy, but I do want to say that the more we weave worship into our daily lives, the more it will become the natural instinct even when we feel like we can’t.

• One of my favourite things about the psalms is the raw way in which emotions are so clearly expressed to God.

• And so often, what starts off as lament, by the end of the Psalm, is transformed into praise.

• In Psalm 40, when David’s heart was not full of worshipful feelings, he set a great model.

• He persisted and he waited patiently.

• And then God lifted him up from the pit of destruction, set his feet upon a rock, and a put a song of praise into his mouth.

• Friends, God will do that for us too.

• We’ve just got to ask for help. We’ve just got to set our hearts on God and wait. !15

I remember sometime ago I wanted to intentionally worship God more in my day-to-day. So I did something really simple - and I have to admit I didn’t really expect much to come from it. But I substituted listening to the news in the car, it was only a five minute drive each morning, for a song of praise. I was the only one in the car, so everyone else was completely protected.The affect was amazing. My day, my entire attitude and orientation of the day was transformed. I was more thankful, more able to navigate challenging circumstances, and readied to call on God’s help. Praise is so fitting for us.

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CONCLUSION \\ PRAISE THE LORD!

Friends, I don’t know how you arrived here today, but I want to say, worship matters.

God has called us into relationship, He’s called us to enjoy his beauty and worship him. Why? Because it’s fitting, it beautiful. Because it changes us. It’s the most important thing in our lives.

Worship involves all of us - our mind, will, and emotion. Worship includes what we do on a Sunday, but it’s not limited to that.

He wants you to revel in his unfailing love. But how we respond to his call to worship is up to you. We can let it be lip-service, or we can give it all to God.

Praise the Lord. How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise him!

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