Christian teaching

Last week we saw how the most basic understanding of worship is that of bringing God a gift in order to honor God. As the Lord said in Exodus 34:20 – “no one shall appear before me empty-handed.”

We saw that instead of going through insincere rituals God really wants gifts that we give from our hearts. We talked about four gifts to bring to God:

1. praise and thanks
2. gifts of resources; offerings
3. obedience; our bodies as instruments of obedience
4. humble repentance

Today we are talking about authentic worship, or worship that is genuine, real, true. This really has to do with how we offer these four gifts so that God will be pleased with them and receive our gifts. It’s necessary to talk about this because even as we offer these gifts there are ways in which our gifts can be fake, insincere or false.

1. Our worship must be focused on God

Let’s use the example of giving to the needy as an act of worship. Jesus said, “when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” – Matthew 6:2-4.

So here is a perfectly good gift of worship to God – giving to the needy. But we can make it false by using it to focus on ourselves instead of God. Sounding trumpets has to do with displays that draw attention to yourself. We are supposed to focus on God, but instead we make ourselves the focus.

Jesus calls this hypocrisy. He means that you look like you are doing one thing, but you are actually doing something else, so you are inauthentic or fake.

• It looks like you are praising God
• But you are really looking for praise for yourself

And we can do this with any kind of act of worship.

Authentic worship lifts up God, not ourselves. The Hebrew word for worship means to lower yourself. We lower ourselves before God and then raise God up, we enthrone him in praise. As Psalm 22:3 says, “You are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.”

Authentic worship proclaims who God is to others, not who we are. 1 Peter 2:9 says, “But you are a chosen race . . . that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

When you sing praises to God do you simply want others to hear how good you sing? Or do you sing out because you want to proclaim God is praise? We have to keep it focused on God, not us.

2. Our worship must truly be from the heart

Jesus said in Mark 7:6-7 – “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me . . ..’” The problem here is that our lips are going, but our heart isn’t there. God wants our heart to be involved.

Worship can involve lots of different kinds of outward activities:

• Psalm 150:4-5 – “Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals!”
• Psalm 95:6 – “Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!”
• Psalm 47:1 – “Clap your hands, all peoples! Shout to God with loud songs of joy!”
• Psalm 88:9 – “Every day I call upon you, O Lord; I spread out my hands to you.”

All of these and more . . .. But what is important is that this all come from our heart; that there not be a disconnect between the inner and the outer so that we go through the motions outwardly while our heart is not involved.

God doesn’t receive heartless worship. The Lord said, “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.” – Amos 5:21-23

We need to really mean it, when we offer our gifts to God.

The phrase in Mark 7:6 is “their heart is far from me.” There can be a lot reasons why this is so:

• maybe we are physically present but not mentally tuned in, singing a song without even thinking about the words.
• maybe our heart is far from God because we are not walking in obedience with God.
• maybe we are in worship, but only because we have to be there.

Whatever the reason -we are just going through the motions of worship. As Jesus said, “in vain do they worship me” (Mark 7:7). Our worship is futile or useless. God does not receive it.

An example of authentic worship

This comes from David in 2 Samuel 6. He certainly knew how to worship as we see from the Psalms. Here a specific example from when the ark of the covenant was brought to Jerusalem.

First of all he worshiped from the heart. “And David danced before the Lord with all his might. And David was wearing a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting and with the sound of the horn.” – vs. 14-15.

Second, he focused on God. “Michal the daughter of Saul looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, and she despised him in her heart.” v. 16. She thought he was showing off before the female servants and that he made a fool of himself. But “David said to Michal, ‘It was before the Lord . . . and I will make merry before the Lord.’” – v. 21.

Let me end by saying God is looking for true, authentic worshipers. Jesus said, “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” – John 4:23-24.

Let us offer up our gifts to God in spirit and in truth, focused on God and from our hearts.

William Higgins