Sermon by Dr. Jeffrey Jeremiah
October 9, 2005

"The Heart of Worship"
Psalm 95

On this one-year anniversary of the opening of our Sanctuary, we praise God and thank Him for a beautiful room set aside for worshiping Him. As I noted in my column in the October newsletter, we were able to thoughtfully and prayerfully consider and decide how this room would be designed and built to encourage us to come together and to help us offer our praises and thanks to God. And so there’s a reason why the pulpit is located where it is. "To exalt" the place of preaching of God’s Word "by giving it the central position in the church is a practice that goes back to the earliest centuries of the church." We want to gather ourselves around the Word and the Sacraments, and around each other, so our room is not a rectangular box but fan-shaped.

I want to offer a word about the cross. As I studied, reflected, and prayed about the cross, I realized that anything done to artistically stylize or enhance the cross has the effect of taking away from what the cross really was, a tool of execution. And it takes away from what really happened there: the Son of God, Jesus Christ, died; He was executed on that cross. So it struck me that the best way to represent what is real, honest, and true about Christianity, about Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection, and our salvation, was not to stylize or enhance the cross, but to make it simple. These are some of my thoughts about this room we worship in. As we thank God for this room, we recognize that having this special space does not ensure that worship is really going to happen when we gather here. We know the Holy Spirit must be powerfully present in grace, mercy, and love. We know that we must be here, too, and more than just physically present. We know that worship is what we were created to do. Worship is what we were recreated in Christ Jesus to do. Worship is what we will do forever in heaven. It takes priority over anything else we do in the Christian life! Given the importance that God attaches to our worship, it’s surprising that nowhere in the New Testament do we find a full description of or a divinely ordained style of worship. Instead, what we find are pointed reminders to sing, pray, read, and teach and preach God’s Word, collect offerings, baptize, and celebrate the Lord’s Last Supper. Yet I think you’ll agree with me that it’s possible to do these things and yet know you haven’t worshiped. The pollster George Barna reports that half of all worshipers admit that they haven’t experienced God’s presence in worship at all in the past 12 months. They went to a worship service and basically, nothing happened. One of the acknowledged weaknesses of evangelical and reformed Christianity of which we are a part is that while we do a good job studying the truth about worship, we don’t do so well addressing what God is really looking for in worship. And that leads to the question, what kind of worship does God expect from us? Or, what kind of worship is God looking for when Jesus says, "true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks"? (John 4:23) Based on my study of God’s Word, I believe that what God is looking for in our lives focuses not on our minds, but on our hearts. Now before you conclude that I’m saying that we’ve got to get emotional in our worship, loud and boisterous, let me call your attention to the first point on the outline.

Please understand that the word "heart" typically equals far more in God’s Word than just our emotions. Today, we think about life in very compartmentalized ways. I have my work life, I have my home life, I have my recreational life, and I have my church life, nice neat tidy boxes. We think that way about ourselves as well, there is my heart (feelings), mind (intellect), and will (where decision-making takes place). We do a really nice job of compartmentalizing our life. In the Bible, especially in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, "heart" was used differently. Heart described the totality of your inner nature, your heart was where thinking, feeling, and willing took place. For example, Solomon says in I Kings 8:17, "My father David had it in his heart to build a temple for the Name of the Lord, the God of Israel." David’s commitment to build the temple engaged the whole of his personality, his thoughts, his feelings, his will. Let me call your attention to Psalm 139: "Search me, O God, and know my heart." If heart means just feelings, then the verse would conclude, "test me and know my anxious feelings." But it doesn’t end that way. "Search me, O God, and know my heart, test me and know my anxious thoughts" (Psalm 139:23). God is looking for people whose hearts, whose whole inner being, not just one part, but the whole, intellect, feelings, and will, are pursuing Him in worship. That brings us to our second and third points. God has told us what type of heart He rejects and what type of heart He accepts and blesses in worship.

In verse eight we read, "Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert." This refers to something that happened during the years of Israel’s wandering in the desert, recorded in Exodus 17:1-7. After the people had come out of Egypt, they passed through the Desert of Sin, and arrived at Rephidim, where there was no water. This produced a crisis. While they had just witnessed the incredible miracles God had performed to free them from Egyptian slavery, instead of trusting in God to provide, they quarreled with Moses. They got so angry with Moses that they were ready to stone him. God told Moses to strike a rock with his staff. Out of the rock came water for the people to drink. God was faithful, He provided. But a double name was given to that place, "Massah," which means "testing," because the people tested God with their unbelief and mistrust, and "Meribah," which means "quarreling," because they quarreled with Moses about the lack of water. Because of what they did at Massah and Meribah, none of those hardhearted people entered God’s rest (verse 11); none were allowed to enter the Promised Land. This is how Jesus described the hard-hearted. He quoted Isaiah 29:13 in Matthew 15:8-9: "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." And then this comment: "They worship me in vain." If you bring into worship a heart hardened by sin, be it unbelief, quarreling, pride, self- centeredness, or a heart that is focused on everything else but God, that is, "far from Him," worship as God desires it is not going to happen. It’s vain, a waste of time. This is the heart God rejects.

This is the heart, the inner being of the worshiper God accepts and rejoices in and blesses. Listen to what Psalm 51 says: "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." It’s been rightly noted that in worship, God is looking not for something brilliant from us, He’s looking for something broken, a spirit, a heart conscious of sin, a heart the knows it’s unworthy, a heart that has been overwhelmed by the glory and holiness and power of God, a heart that cries with Isaiah when he encounters the Lord, "Woe is me, I am ruined!" (Isaiah 6:5) The humble heart doesn’t hide behind the false façade of pride, protecting itself from the penetrating power of God’s Son, God’s Spirit, God’s Word. "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." The worship God is looking for comes from a humble heart, and it comes from a hungering, thirsting heart, hungry and thirsty for God. Psalm 42 begins, "As the deer pants." "Pants," what does that mean? It means strong desire, eager yearning. As the deer pants, strongly desires, eagerly yearns for "streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?" (Psalm 42.1-2) Also Psalm 84:2: "My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God." God’s promise to you when you come to Him with that type of heart? "Blessed are you who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for you will be satisfied" (Matthew 5:6).

Who is the God who calls us to worship this way? Verses four and five tell us He’s the great God because He is the Creator of all things: "In His hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to Him. The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry ground." He not only made creation, He made us, too. What is more, He cares for us, if we’re one of His people. He calls us His sheep, "the people of His pasture, the flock under His care" (verse 7). You can’t hear this without thinking of Jesus’ words in John 10: "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. I know my sheep and my sheep know me. Just as my Father knows me and I know my father. I lay down my life for my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice, I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them from my hand" (John 10:11, 14-15, 27-28). We worship God because He is God and He created us. But even more, we give Him worship He expects, He’s looking for because He loves us, and in Jesus Christ, He’s given His very life for us. His love is so great for us that He values us more than He values the mountains, the seas, the galaxies, and the stars! In that love, He’s saved us and called us to faith, and He now keeps and preserves us with a power that nothing in heaven or earth can shake. We are the sheep of Jesus’ hand, and nothing will ever snatch us out of that hand. This is the God Who calls us to worship Him!