TRANSCRIPTION | Wednesday, February 24, 2021 | What Does It Mean To Worship?

 

 

Emily Lindsey

Good evening church. We're so excited that you joined us tonight. For church online, our Wednesday night Bible study, I get the joy and privilege of sharing with you this evening on the subject of worship, which, as you may know, is very dear to my heart. My husband and I, we get the opportunity to be the worship coordinators at 3trees Columbia, and we just love what God is doing through 3trees church and throughout South Central Kentucky. We're going to go ahead and dive right in. Worship is a bowed knee and a lifted hand, it’s a bowed heart and lifted eyes. Worship is a posture of the heart. Worship is our response to God. It's the overflow of a thankful heart. Worship invites the King into the room, and where he is, everything changes. Worship, we were made for it. 

 

Emily Lindsey

A W. Tozer once wrote, “We must never rest until everything inside of us worships God.” Our minds and our hearts are filled with the most natural and sacred space when we worship the Lord. We were designed to bring glory to God and to dwell in his presence. And when we do, we find healing, we find freedom, we find joy, we find love, and we experience the glory and the beauty of his presence. Worship, however, is not just limited to a song. It's not limited to a melody or a location. Giving glory to God is worship. The Gospel makes way for us to present our whole lives our entire beings, to God, day in and day out. The thoughts we think, the work we do, and the relationships we have, every part of our lives should worship the Lord.

 

Emily Lindsey

Romans 12:1 states, “I appeal to you, therefore brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” This reminds me of the story in the gospels, when the woman who poured perfume at the feet of Jesus and she worshiped him. Scripture states that the perfume was worth a year's worth of wages, perhaps symbolic of her time and of her work. She brought all that she had to the Lord and she worshiped Him. Jesus was so blessed by it, that he said the act of her worship will be told wherever the Gospel is told for years to come. I share this with you because sometimes we can think that worship is only a song or only a melody. But as we read in Romans 12 worship happens when we present ourselves to God, when we turn our hearts and our attention to him. 

 

Emily Lindsey

Let's dive in closer and look at worship. Would you pray with me? God, we come before you this evening, Lord, we invite your Holy Spirit here during this time. And God, we just ask that you would give us eyes to see what you have for us, God, ears to hear your voice, and that you would teach us and you would speak to us guide through the power of your Word. In Jesus’ name, amen. 

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Emily Lindsey

In 2017, 2018, I took a break from Facebook, just got off Facebook for a little while. And during that time, I began to notice something. There were these events happening, and I wouldn't get an invitation. Family would get together, or friends would get together, and I completely missed it, and I didn't even hear anything about it. At first, I was wondering if I was just being excluded, but that wasn't the case. They would say, hey, Emily, why aren't you here, we invited you to this? And I would tell my family or my friends, I didn't get an invitation. And they would say yes, yes you did, we tried to send you one on Facebook. Oh, I wasn’t on there, I didn't receive the invitation. Thankfully, after that they started texting me so I was able to go. But one of my favorite things that we see in Scripture is that worship invites us. The invitation to worship the Lord is an open invitation, and it's for everyone. It doesn't matter your age, your nationality, how long you've been saved, if your mama went to church, or any other variable. Scripture invites each and every person, each and every one of us, you and me to participate in bringing Glory to the one true God. Psalm 150:6 says, “Let everything that has breath Praise the Lord.” If you have breath in your lungs tonight, you are invited to worship and praise God. Psalm 95:1, “Come, let us sing to the Lord, let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation.” That doesn't just mean the Worship Team, or maybe some of the church staff, or maybe someone that you think, oh, well, they can worship. It said, come, let us sing to the Lord. It's all inclusive, everybody. 

 

Emily Lindsey

Psalm 117:1 says, “Praise the Lord, all you nations, praise Him, all you people of the earth.” We are a part of the global church. And what a joy it is that across the world, our brothers, and our sisters in Christ, are worshipping with us, worshiping the Lord. And I hope this encourages you tonight, that when you worship God, you are a part of a song being sung all across the world, and it includes everyone. The invitation is open. I love the fact that no one gets excluded from the invitation to worship God. If you thought you didn't have the right words to say, maybe you thought you didn't know how to worship, you're still invited. If you thought you can't sing, or you can't play an instrument, you're still invited to worship. If you're feeling down, you’re invited to worship. If you feel unworthy to offer worship to the Lord, you are invited to worship. Scripture says we are invited to come boldly before the throne of grace. And when Jesus died, the veil was torn, the veil that separated us from the presence of God. And when the veil was torn, we all now have access to God's presence. We now all get to worship Him and come boldly before His throne. And with reverence, we can bow our hearts before God and worship as an offering to him. 

 

Emily Lindsey

There's such power when we come together corporately and when we gather together in worship gatherings. When we meet together, something happens in the atmosphere. It's one of my favorite things. When we all gather together and offer worship to God, the atmosphere shifts, chains are broken off of people, God moves. And there's just such power in the unity that happens when we all come together and proclaim that he is God. We're not all only just invited to worship, but worship invites us into God's presence. In Psalm 100, we find, “Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth. serve the Lord with gladness, come into His presence with singing. know that the Lord, He is God. It is he who made us and we are His. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise.” We have a great honor and a great privilege to be invited to come into the Lord's presence through worship. The invitation is open. When we worship the Lord, we enter into His presence, and when the Lord is present, as many of you know, anything can happen. The Broken can be mended the sick are healed, the discouraged are encouraged, families are mended, and lives are set free. If you want to experience God today, you are invited to worship. 

 

Emily Lindsey

God's character is not conditional to us. It's not conditional to our feelings or our circumstances. We worship God based on truth, based on the truth of who he is, and all he has done, because after all, he is worthy. God is worthy of our thanksgiving, every breath we could breathe, the songs we sing, all the work we do, he's worthy of all of it. All of it is worship unto God. Worship reminds us, worship reminds us when we worship, we're not only glorifying the Lord, but we are also reminding our souls that he is still God, and he is on the throne, amen. We are reminded that He is worthy. Psalm 140:5, “Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise. His greatness, no one can fathom. One generation comes into your works to another, they tell of your mighty acts. They speak of your glorious splendor of your Majesty, and our meditate on your works.” When we worship, we are reminded that God is good. Psalm 100:5, “For the Lord is good, and His love endures forever. His faithfulness continues through all generations.” When we worship, we are reminded that God is love. In 1John 4:8-9, it says, “God is love. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we may live through him.” If you’ve forgotten who God is, if you're struggling with depression, or anxiety, if you're discouraged, I'm here to encourage you, begin to worship the Lord. 

 

Emily Lindsey

I think about what David wrote in Psalm 42:5 when he commanded himself to worship. He said, “Why are you downcast oh, my soul? And why are you turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again, praise him, my salvation.” When we worship, we are reminded that we do not have to worry, and we do not have to fear. We are declaring the truth of who our God is. And I don't know of a greater encouragement than that, dwelling and meditating on who God is and declaring it and proclaiming it through worship. As you can tell by the scriptures that we've looked at so far this evening, The Book of Psalm is full of songs, songs of praise and worship to God. And David is perhaps one of the most famous worshipers throughout the Bible. And if you look closely, though, David not only sang songs of worship to the Lord, and about the Lord, but he also sang to the Lord about who God had made him to be. Let's look at Psalm 139, together. Psalm 139, beginning in verse one, “Oh, Lord, you have searched me, and you know me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is all my tongue, behold, oh Lord, you know it all together. You hem me in, behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me, such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high, I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from your spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to the Heaven, you are there. If I make my bed and Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there, your hand shall lead me, and your hand shall hold me.” 

 

When we look at Psalm 139, here's what we see, the Lord knows us. The Lord is behind us, and he's before us. There is nowhere that we can go, that the Lord cannot be. The Lord leads us, and the Lord fearfully and wonderfully made us. And the Lord chose us. Worship reminds us of who the Lord is and who we are in him. This is sometimes called declarative worship. It is when we declare the truth, and we worship God for it. I think of the song that we sing, Who You Say I Am, and the bridge says, “I am chosen, I'm not forsaken, I am who you say I am.” And when we dwell on who God is and who is paid us to be, our faith arises, worship reminds us. 

 

Emily Lindsey

Growing up, we lived out on a farm, and I loved it there. We were there from the time I was born until about roughly 17. And some of my favorite memories were my mom and dad, my brother and I, we would go outside and my dad would bring us acoustic guitars. And my mom and dad would sit on the edge of the back of my dad's truck, and my dad would play all the songs he's written throughout the years. And I would dance and sing, and my brother would be shooting basketball. We would just kind of have this time of music together as a family, often during summer evenings. But I love that time, it's so special because those songs my dad would play kind of became the soundtrack of my childhood, and they're ingrained in my memories. Even today, my dad could come over to our house and start playing a song that he wrote, and I could start singing the melody for him before it had even gotten that far. They're just ingrained in me. Well, when I met my husband, Jared, I was getting to know him. It was one of our first few times together, and he had a guitar and he started playing a melody. And I stopped for a second, because it sounded just like what my dad would play for me growing up. And it took me back to that place. And I said, hold on just a second, what did you just play? And he said, oh, it's just a little song I wrote. I said, are you sure that sounds exactly like what my dad played growing up. And I just had this nostalgic moment, it was just very surreal, it sounded just like it. And what he was playing reminded me of home. Worship is amazing. Because worship sounds like home. Worship is the sound of heaven. It started before you, and it started before me, it started before we were born. And when we worship here on earth, we enter into the worship that's already going on in heaven. 

 

Emily Lindsey

One of the best statements I've ever heard about worship and about worship gatherings, is when we are a part of a worship gathering. We shouldn't walk away asking, what did I get out of that? We should walk away asking, did I enter into the worship of heaven. Revelation 4, gives us a picture of heaven. John describes the four living beings surrounding the throne. And beginning of verse eight, it reads, “Day after day, and night after night, they keep on saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, the one who was, and who is, and who is still to come. Whenever the living beings give glory and honor and thanks to the ones sitting on the throne, the 24 elders fall down and worship the ones sitting on the throne. And they lay their crowns before the throne and say, worthy are you Lord our God, to receive glory, and honor and power. For you created all things, and they exist because you created what you pleased.” I want to join in with heaven as much as I can, while here on earth. I want my life to worship God, the things I do day in and day out. I want my voice to worship God. I want my relationships to worship God. I want my life to sing a song of worship to the Lord, and to give him glory and declare his goodness. After all, worship sounds just like our home, heaven. 

 

Emily Lindsey

So let's review what we've talked about. Worship invites us to enter in. We are all, no one excluded, instructed and invited to worship the Lord, and worship invites us into the King's presence. Worship reminds us that God is on the throne, that he is good, and that he is worthy. It encourages our soul, it gives us hope. Worship reminds us of who we are in our position in God. And lastly, worship sounds like home. When we worship, we enter into the soundtrack of heaven. It's a bowed knee and it's a lifted hand. It's a bowed heart and it's lifted eyes. Worship is our posture of the heart. Worship is our response to God. It's the overflow of a thankful heart. Worship invites the King into the room and where he is, everything changes. We were made for worship. And as one of my favorite songs says, turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full into his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, and a light His glory and grace.

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Emily Lindsey

Would you pray with me? God, we thank you, Lord, that your word is powerful and your Word is true. God, thank you for the wonderful invitation that we have to worship you, God, and through worship to dwell in your presence, not just when we enter into eternity, but here on earth, day in and day out. We get to worship wherever we are, and we can worship you together as a body of believers. Lord, thank you for the power of your presence. God, thank you that you are for us and you're with us. And God, I pray for anyone listening to this message that needs to be encouraged to rise up in worship, Lord, thank you that they find hope in you. I pray that they would this evening. Thank you for what you're doing in our lives. Lord, we love you and we praise you. In Jesus’ name, and the church said, amen. We're so glad that you're here this evening that you joined us. And if the Lord’s moving in your life, and you want to take a next step, we want to be connected with you, visit at 3rees.com. And also we would love to see you one of our weekend services or church online. You can find the times and the locations also by visiting 3trees.com. Go with God, and he will go with you, and Church, greater things are yet to come.