"Engaged With God" - A Biblical Look at Worship

WARNING: Before reading this blog entry, read Psalm 96. This is an adaptation of a sermon I preached a while back.


As is true with many terms among Christians, the word “worship” can become a cliché without any significant content if we don’t stop to consider its true meaning.
- Jerry Solomon, pastor

I take that quote seriously, because I think that there is a lot of confusion in the Body of Christ regarding what worship really is. Each of us defines it differently and has differing expectations, but we don’t often ask ourselves how God defines worship and what He expects from us.

And I know this is going to sound a little weird, but in order to get into that, I’d like to tell you about I proposed to my wife Cherith. Guys, when you proposed to your wives, how many of you got down on one knee?

I didn’t get down on one knee. I thought that it was sort of old-fashioned. But here’s what I did: I cooked dinner for her, I had a fire blazing in the fireplace, I had roses for her, and then I took her to the top of Mt. Washington in Pittsburgh. We just sat down on a park bench there, and I took out the ring and proposed. By the way, it was late November and about 20 degrees outside, so when I said, “Will you marry me?” her response was “y-e-e-s-s-s.”

Cherith told me that I did everything perfect that night. But in retrospect, I wish I had gotten down on one knee.

Since then I learned what that symbol really means. It’s from the days when warriors were knighted. They would get down on one knee before the rulers of the land, and it was basically a sign of unconditional faithfulness, a sign of their willingness to fight and even to die for their beloved country. And when this symbol was transferred to marriage proposals, it was the man saying the same thing to his beloved: I pledge my unconditional faithfulness to you, and I am willing to fight and even die for you.

Now, the reason I’m starting out with this is because I see a parallel with the Bible. In my opinion, the entire Old Testament is kind of like God’s courtship with His chosen beloved, His people. It’s God and Israel coming into a deeper and fuller understanding of each other, Israel coming to a greater awareness of what God’s heart is all about. And then in an incredibly dramatic act, God kind of got down on one knee. Like a medieval knight...or like a man in love...He humbled Himself and showed the depth of His commitment to us His beloved by affirming that He is willing to fight for us and to die for us — in fact, that He did die for us. In spite of our sin and rebellion, He is committed and wants to be united with us for all eternity.

Some people say that the Bible is God’s love letter to humanity. I would challenge that by saying that Scripture is God’s proposal of marriage to His Church. We are the “Bride-to-be” - that’s one of the major biblical images of the church. We are engaged to God. The wedding date is set some time in the future. And in the meantime, how we respond to God’s proposal is worship.

I told you how I proposed. Now I’m going to tell you 4 things that Cherith did in response to my proposal — and I think these 4 things are common to most young ladies in love. And I want to suggest that these 4 things can help us to interpret what Scripture says about worship.

The first thing Cherith did after accepting my proposal was she got emotional and she told me how much she loved me. And in the months of our engagement, she very creatively expressed how much I meant to her. She made me some home-made greeting cards for every holiday known to man, as well as a few holidays that she made up just for an excuse to give me a card. She wrote me an “old fashioned love letter” on three pages of notebook paper. Nowadays you can just whip out your cell phone and text "I luv u,” but she took the time to do it right. She expressed genuine and heartfelt gratitude to me just for being who I am. You might think it gave me a big head...maybe it did alittle, but on the whole it was quite humbling. As a man who had been a bachelor until age 32, I can’t tell you how much it meant to hear who I am in the eyes of the person I love.

And if that’s any indication of how God wants us to respond to His proposal, then a huge part of worship is simply expressing to God who He is in our eyes...what He means to us. This is the sense of the first words of Psalm 96: “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord, praise His name.” I think the first aspect of a biblical idea of worship is PRAISE.

Our culture has, in many ways, reduced worship to having music that I feel comfortable with, getting a sermon that addresses my felt needs, and that holds my attention for an hour or so. But if you look at Scripture, worship has very little to do with me...with us. We shouldn’t come to worship expecting to get anything for us; we should come to worship prepared to rejoice in God for all that He has already blessed us with. That is the biblical concept of worship.

But I’m afraid that America has become a place where it is easier to complain about what we don’t have or to act like a victim, rather than to take an honest look at the magnitude of what God has given to us. In preparing to write this, I did a little exercise. I sat at my computer desk with a blank page of Microsoft Word in front of me, and I challenged myself to take 20 minutes and list as many personal blessings from God to me. The result was an 8-page list with 30 blessings per page.

And that’s just what I was able to come up with in 20 minutes!

To praise someone is to recognize something that they are or something that they have done. That’s what we should be doing with God. Yet today, we look at everything we have and we see it as a deserved entitlement rather than as a gracious gift. We even see heaven itself as the rightful destination of everybody after they die, rather than a costly gift given only through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. When we fail to see magnitude of what God has done on our behalf, what He has given to us, our worship will be inadequate regardless of the musical style, the technology, or anything else.

As a challenge to anybody who feels like taking it up: Next Sunday morning, before you come to church, take just 10 minutes, and make a list like I did, of all the blessings that you recognize in your life. And after church, see if your experience of worship was any different.

You see, to praise God requires that we adjust our attitude before we come to worship, rather than coming to worship hoping that God will adjust our attitude. As one of my seminary profs used to say, “We praise God not in the hope of receiving something from Him, but in the acknowledgment of what we have already received.”

But praise is only the first aspect of a biblical view of worship. And now I’ll go back to my illustration of Cherith’s response to my proposal.

After we returned home as an engaged couple, the first thing Cherith did was go to the phone and start calling people, telling them the good news: “He finally asked me!” She couldn’t wait to call her parents, my parents, her siblings, my siblings, and all of her girlfriends. And she didn’t just say, “Yeah I’m engaged.” She rehashed every single detail about it. And why? Because for Cherith, every time she told somebody about it, it was like she was reliving that moment for herself.

And I think that’s true not just of getting engaged, but of any meaningful experience in our lives...Marriages, family vacations, mission trips, births… When you talk about them with others, it adds a level of depth to your experience and somehow makes it more meaningful than it already was.

We look at the second part of Psalm 96, we see a similar theme: “Proclaim his salvation day after day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples.”

If I can summarize this in one word, I would say PROCLAMATION.

Apparently worship isn’t just praising God and telling God how great He is, but it’s also telling other people how great He is too. It’s bearing witness to what you believe in the presence of others. Throughout the New Testament, one of the Greek words used for “worship” is aineo, and a real translation of that word is “to announce and to celebrate.”

We Americans have a “gentleman’s agreement” to kind of keep our religious commitments under wraps...mostly I think because we’re afraid of offending anyone or of looking like some “religious nuts.” But the truth of the matter is, if my relationship with God is just between Him and me...if I’m not testifying about that relationship to others...I’d say that relationship isn’t really all that important to me.

That would be like an engaged woman saying to her future husband, “Yes, we’re engaged, but I don’t want anyone else to know about it, and I don’t want to invite anyone to our wedding.” Does that sound like love? True worship isn’t just praising the beloved: it’s also proclaiming to others what the beloved means to us.

Some of the most moving worship services that I’ve attended included a time of personal testimony...when a someone, almost moved to tears, shares with the congregation the real experiences of God that they’ve had.

So worship includes both praise and proclamation.

But there’s a third element of our engagement with God, so let’s go back to my engagement to Cherith. After I proposed Cherith did what most engaged women do: she put on the ring that I gave her. And that was a sign to any other guy out there that might have been interested, that she put one above all the rest: that only one has the right to her total allegiance. So all those other guys would have to back off. I'm the man!!!!

Again, if we look at our Psalm for today, we see these words: “For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; He is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before Him; strength and glory are in His sanctuary.”

These are great words, but they say something that’s very challenging to us. They say that to worship is to put God above anything else in our lives that might claim to be a “god” to us. Anything else that demands our unquestioning allegiance must be put second. A biblical understanding of worship means that we show a PREFERENCE for God above anything else in creation.

And let’s be frank, folks. In America today there are many “false gods” that we worship without question. We worship the god of money; we let our money control us instead of us controlling it…and we think that if we just spend more and have more we’ll be happy.

We worship the god of sex. I recently heard a statistic that 35% of all Internet usage is pornographic in nature. That’s a sad statistic. And that’s just one statistic that proves that we as a culture are obsessed with sex and it controls us.

And those are just two of many false gods: I could mention the government, which people think is the solution to all of their problems. I could mention sports and technology. And this might shock some of you, but even religion is a false god for many people who spend more time worrying about the trappings of “church” than about nurturing a vibrant relationship with our Creator.

And what does Psalm 96 say? That all these other “gods” are idols (wimps, nothings) and that God himself is to be put above them in our lives. And so it is an act of worship when we say, “Yes, money is good, but because God is more important to me than money, I will order my finances in a way that is pleasing to Him.” It’s an act of worship when we say, “Even though our culture worships not just sex but deviant sex, I will practice it only according to God’s standard in Scripture.” In short, it is worship when we show a preference for God’s Lordship in our lives, and we say that all these other “false gods” are secondary and must be submitted to His authority. If we are engaged to the one true God, then we must put Him above everything else.

And now we come to the final point. After I proposed to Cherith, the 4th thing she did was to start planning for the wedding. She got a subscription to those Bridal magazines, she put together a huge binder with all her plans and details. You ladies know what I’m talking about. She had a vision of exactly what she wanted: the invitations, the flowers, the dresses, the photographers, the reception, the wedding cake. She was motivated by the desire to have everything beautiful and perfect on that day.

Let’s look at the last few verses of Psalm 96: “Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it. Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy. Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth.” The Psalmist is artistically imagining the beauty and the glory of that day when God returns to earth; he’s anticipating it and it’s moving him to worship, and to invite all creation to worship with him.

I’ve been saying all along that we, the Church on earth, are engaged with God. But the whole point of engagement is that it’s only a temporary state. Engagement is only a time of
PREPARATION.

I think the real reason there are so many "worship wars" in churches isn't because of the style of music, or because of the pastor's preaching abilities, or because of the technology utilized. It's because we as a culture have become so focused on the the here-and-now, that we are no longer able to envision the reality of the future in which we will stand before Jesus Christ as His bride, and enjoy intimate fellowship with God Himself.

This life, that we sometimes take entirely too seriously, is nothing but a preparation for the great wedding feast between God’s people and God Himself. So let’s just take a moment and envision that day.

Think about the greatest piece of music that you have ever heard, a piece moves you to tears. And then multiply that by ten million.

Think about the greatest sight that you’ve ever seen: maybe it’s a sunset or a landscape or a newborn baby or a work of art. And then multiply that by ten million.

Think about the most enjoyable and intimate moment you’ve shared with another human being. And then multiply that by ten million.

Think about one loved one who has already gone to be with God, who you would give anything just to have one more hug or one more laugh with.

You see, the real reason I worship is that I firmly believe the greatest joys that we can experience on this earth are infinitesimal compared to what is in store for us in eternity with God.

When God down on one knee, on that cross of Calvary, he was communicating to us very clearly that He wants to be with us for all eternity, and that everything that He is and everything that He has, He is going to share with us.

And that’s a promise beyond anything that we can ask or deserve. But when we keep our minds focused on that, and put all of this earthly stuff in its proper perspective, then we are preparing ourselves to truly receive everything that God wants to give us.

And that is the ultimate reason to worship!