Good morning. Have you ever wondered why we do what we do on Sundays? For example, why do we spend time in worship each week? Or, why do we take communion each week? How about, why do we take up an offering each week? Or what about this one, why do we have a sermon each week? Why do we offer an invitation each week? Or why do we help support missions? Why do we do all of those things?
Well, if you have ever wondered, “Why?” then make sure that you pay attention, because over the next several weeks we are going to be answering the question, “Why do we do what we do here at Fly Branch Church Of Christ?”
Now, I think that this will be both a good refresher of why we do what we do, while at the same time it will also be a good time of teaching as well. Today, we begin the series with, “Why do we spend time in worship each week?”
Before we take a look at that, let’s begin with a word of prayer. Let’s Pray!
There was a preacher who was trying to sell his horse. A potential buyer came by the church for a test drive. Before you start the preacher said, this horse only responds to church talk. To get the horse to go, you have to say, “Praise The Lord.” And to make him stop, you need to say, “Amen.”
So, the man on the horse says, “Praise The Lord,” and the horse begins to trot. The man again says, “Praise The Lord,” and the horse begins to gallop.
Suddenly there is a cliff right in front of the horse and the man yells, “Amen,” and the horse stops just at the edge of the cliff. At that, the man wipes the sweat from his brow and says, “Praise the Lord!”
You know what, when it comes to worship, it’s more than the words we say, or the things that we do. If we want our worship to mean anything, then it has to come from the heart. In fact, Christians who don’t put their hearts into worship are like roosters who won’t crow at sunrise. They’re simply not doing what God programmed them to do.
Let’s face it, some people let their worship get boring, and boring worship certainly
doesn’t energize a person to be ready to re-enter into the world on Monday. Neither does it attract the un-churched. And most importantly, it doesn’t glorify God, which is the primary purpose of our worship.
So, today, we are going to take a look at a passage that has to do with worship, and more than that, it is heartfelt worship. If you have your Bibles with you, go ahead and turn with me to Exodus chapter 15, and we are going to take a look at verses 1-21.
As you are turning there, the purpose of the sermon today is to answer why we worship, and hopefully it will draw attention to our need for renewed passion in our praise and worship of God. So to start…
1. We should worship as a way of focusing on God.
In the first part of Exodus 15:1 it says, “Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord…”
Golf immortal Arnold Palmer recalls a lesson about overconfidence and a loss of focus. He says, “It was the final hole of the 1961 Masters Tournament, and I had a one stroke lead and had just hit a very satisfying tee shot. I felt I was in pretty good shape. As I approached my ball, I saw an old friend standing at the edge of the gallery. He motioned me over, stuck out his hand and said, “Congratulations.”
I took his hand and shook it, but as soon as I did, I knew I had lost my focus. On my next 2 shots, I hit the ball into a sand trop, and then put it over the edge of the green. I missed a putt and lost the Masters. You don’t forget a mistake like that; you just learn from it and become determined that you will never do that again. I haven’t in the 30 years since.”
You know what, he lost his focus, and lost what it was he was after. Exodus 15:1 says, “Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord…” They focused on God!
When was the last time that you “sang to the LORD” in corporate worship? When did you not worry about the person next to you, or in front of you, or behind you in church? But why do we worry about those other people? Well, we are worried that someone might see us in a true worship experience and think that we are some kind of super spiritual weirdo. A real religious fanatic.
So, if we are thinking about what other people see or think, then what is our focus on? Other people.
Instead, we need to keep our focus on God. Instead of worrying about others around us, we need to understand, that when it comes to our worship, there is nobody around but you and God. When our focus is on God we can experience a heartfelt time in corporate worship. And when it is heartfelt, it is the kind of worship that God desires.
Can you imagine Moses saying to some of the Israelites, “Hey, you people from the tribe of Judah, hold it down over there, you’re getting a little too excited about God’s miraculous intervention.” Or, to his sister Miriam and the other women dancing with tambourines in their hands, “Cut it out. Don’t you know that our denomination doesn’t believe in that!”
God had just done the unbelievable! The Israelites walked across the Red Sea on dry ground! To prove the danger was real and to deliver His people from the Egyptians, God then enclosed the chariots of Pharaoh in the water of that same sea! Were they not supposed to be excited about that? Were they not supposed to express heartfelt worship towards God?
Moses and the Israelites didn’t sing their songs of praise out of thin air. They sang what they knew. They sang what they felt. They sang about what they had experienced.
They didn’t concern themselves all that much with appearances. They focused on God. And their worship was very heartfelt.
So, we worship as a way of focusing on God!
2. We should worship as a way of remembering God’s attributes and His actions.
Follow along with me as I continue to read from Exodus 15:1b-19. In that section of scripture it brings our some of God’s attributes, as well as some of His actions. Exodus 15:1-19 says, “1”
Verses 1 through 19 of Exodus chapter 15 is a great song about WHO God is and the great things that He alone can do!
I believe that Moses burst into a song of praise, singing this song a line at a time with the congregation repeating his words. It was their version of a responsive reading. The worship leader sang a line, and then the congregation repeated that line.
Moses sang, “I will sing to the Lord, for He is highly exalted.”
And the congregation repeated, “I will sing to the Lord, for He is highly exalted.”
Moses sang, “The horse and its rider He has hurled into the sea.”
And the congregation echoed, “The horse and its rider He has hurled into the sea.”
You get the idea. The song continues to extol the greatness of God. And that is what worship should be like. Unashamed, we should lift up our praise to our Heavenly Father. We should remember WHO HE is and WHAT HE has done for us!
A modern song could go something like this, and you repeat after me.
Praise God, for He gives us everything we need? (Congregation: Repeat)
Praise God, He helped me pay my bills last week! (Congregation: Repeat)
Thank you God, the doctor visit gave me good news. (Congregation: Repeat)
Thank be to God, for I am still alive for the day. (Congregation: Repeat)
By God’s help I resisted the devil and he had to flee. (Congregation: Repeat)
Thank you God for the blessings you have provided me with. (Congregation: Repeat)
And finally, our church has the best minister in the world. (Congregation: Repeat)
Hey, wait a minute. I think we might have lost a few of you on that one.
Didn’t Moses give himself some credit in that song? No! Moses didn’t praise himself. His leadership and his faith in God were huge in the progress that the people were making, but His praise was reserved for God! This inspired the congregation to experience heartfelt worship.
An African American minister by the name of Robert Dyson gives us an awesome picture of praise. Listen to what he says, “We praise Him because He has been a doctor when we were sick. We praise Him because He has been a lawyer when we were in trouble, and He has been mother for the motherless and father for the fatherless. We praise Him because He has been shelter from the rain, and medicine for our pain. We praise Him because He has been a rope of hope when we were sinking in the seas of sadness and sorrow. We praise Him because when we had fallen and couldn’t get it, He came where we were and put His loving arms all around us and lifted us from the muck and mire of sin.”
So, when we come together on Sundays, we spend time in worship as a way of focusing our attention on God, and as a we learn here, it is a way of remembering His attributes, and His actions in our lives.
But, as we finish this passage off, we have one more thought.
3. We should worship God, and be creative when we do it.
Wrapping up our text, in Exodus 15:20-21 it says, “Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women followed her, with tambourines and dancing. Miriam sang to them, “Sing to the Lord, for He is highly exalted. The horse and its rider He has hurled into the sea.””
Joyce Brothers in Homemade has said, “The most important way parents can help children be creative is to teach them not to fear failure. To be creative, people need to explore and try new things. Also, children need to learn to tolerate being laughed at. Creative people are willing to risk criticism and aren’t afraid to be different. Children whose parents have emphasized achievement over exploration are more inclined to try only things they know they do well. These activities make them feel secure in their abilities, but they don’t lead to fulfilling success.”
Miriam and the women took tambourines in their hands and danced to the Lord, while they continued to sing God’s praises. Now, you will find some people who don’t approve of worship in the way that we did it this morning. They say that using instruments, especially when we move beyond the piano and organ, is not true worship. But I believe that in a day of technology and in a day when we listen to that kind of music in our everyday life, what better way to bring God to that music to aid us in our worship.
Now, when I say that, I don’t mean that we rely on instruments to give us heartfelt worship. They simply enhance the worship time, they don’t make it. You should be able to have heartfelt worship, and truly be in to the moment weather there is an instrument being used, or you are singing ocupela, with no instruments but your vocal cords.
The thing is, we need to be creative, and embrace that creativity when we worship God.
When we think of creativity, we tend to picture a composer or an artist at work on a masterpiece. But creativity is simply a new approach to anything. Earle Dickson, an employee of Johnson & Johnson, married a young woman who was very accident prone. She was always betting bumps and bruises, and small cuts. Johnson & Johnson sold large surgical dressings in individual packages, but these were not practical for small cuts and burns.
So Earl Dickson put a small wad of sterile cotton and gauze in the center of an adhesive strip to hold it in place. Finally, tired of making up these little bandages every time one was needed, he got the idea of making them in quantity and placing a paper like material over the sticky side of the bandage. When the bandage was needed, the 2 pieces of paper like material could easily be peeled off, producing a small, ready-to-use bandage.
The firm’s president, James Johnson, saw Dickson put one of his homemade bandages on his finger. Impressed by its convenience, he decided to start mass-producing them under the name Band-Aids. Dickson had been looking for a way to handle a small problem, and in the process he invented a useful new product.
When Jean-Claude Killy made the French national ski team in the early 1960s, he was prepared to work harder than anyone else to be the best. At the crack of dawn he would run up the slopes with his skis on, an unbelievably grueling activity. In the evening he would lift weights, run sprints, anything to get an edge.
But the other team members were working as hard and long as he was. He realized instinctively that simply training harder would never be enough. Killy then began challenging the basic theories of racing techniques. Each week he would try something different to see if he could find a better, faster way down the mountain. His experiments resulted in a new style that was almost exactly opposite the accepted technique of the time. It involved skiing with his legs apart, not together, for better balance and sitting back, not forward, on the skis when he came to a turn. He also used ski poles in an unorthodox way, he used them to propel himself as he skied.
The explosive new style helped cut his racing times dramatically. In 1966 and 1967 he captured virtually every major skiing trophy. The next year he won 3 gold medals in the Winter Olympics, a record in ski racing that has never been topped. And how did he do it, by being creative in his approach.
So, to answer the question of, “Why do we spend time in worship each week?” all we have to do is turn to the 15th chapter of Exodus and take a look at verses 1-21. In that, we find that we worship as a way of focusing on God, remembering His attributes and His action in our lives, and when we do it, we can be creative as a way of enhancing our heartfelt worship experience.
In closing, allow me to share this last illustration about heartfelt worship with you.
A man went to church with an angel as his guide. Every seat in the church was filled. But there was something strange about the service. The organist moved her fingers over the keys, but no music came from its pipes. The piano player ran her hands over the key, but there was no sound. The congregation stood and sang. Their lips were moving, but no sound was to be heard. The men playing guitars and drums moved their hands back and forth, but no sound came out of them.
Everything was going on around this man, but he heard nothing. Turning to the angel, the man said, “I don’t understand. What does this mean? I see that a service is being held, but I hear nothing.” The angel replied, “You heard nothing because there is nothing to be heard, at least not by Heaven’s ears. They’re just going through the motions. Nothing they are doing has any meaning for them. Worship without heart is not worship at all.”
Let’s Pray!
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