Evangelical Free Church of Embarass

Tonight, in New York City, the Grammy Awards will be announced. Musicians from all over the world will gather to find out what the 2002 Song of the Year was, and who had the Album of the Year. In a few weeks, the Academy Awards --- the Oscars --- will be given out. We’ll learn what last year’s best movie was. Will it be “Lord of the Rings, Two Towers?” Will it be “Gangs of New York?” “The Hours?” Maybe “Chicago?” “The Pianist?” When someone stands on the stage at those two events, opens an envelope, and announces the winners, there will be applause, someone in the audience will stand up all excited, and there will be hugs and kisses. The winners will walk up to the front and receive the award, either the Grammy or the Oscar, and then will begin that all-too-familiar giving of thanks. They will thank everyone who exists, and then for good measure at the end they will, for the first time since the last time they won an award, thank God.

This morning, as we conclude our eight-part series on worship, I want to announce the winners of two awards. The first award is for the Most Reasonable Act of Worship. The second award will be for the Deepest Level of Worship. Before we end the suspense and open the envelopes, let’s pray.

Our Father, we give You praise for the opportunity we have had today to sing the songs of worship and honor to You; the chance we have had to express ourselves in prayer to You, loving You in that way; the chance to give our offerings, as a way of saying we thank You for being our provider. Father, now as we conclude this series of worship, I pray that we would take what we learn today, and add it to what You have already taught us in these weeks. Help us to go from here, being true worshipers. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

The most reasonable act of worship

Here’s the envelope for the first award. This is exciting. The award for the Most Reasonable Act of Worship goes to…….“Presenting Yourself to God as a Living Sacrifice.” Presenting ourselves to God as a living sacrifice is the most reasonable act of worship we can do. We find this truth in Romans Chapter 12, verse 1. Let me remind you that eleven chapters came before Romans 12, and for eleven chapters the Apostle Paul was reminding the Christians in Rome about the good news in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He started the book by reminding them of the “sin problem”, and that all are sinners who fall short of God’s standards. All are under the wrath of God.

He moved on in the book to talk about salvation and how God, through the death of Jesus Christ in our place, provided salvation for us sinners. Salvation only comes through faith in Jesus, who died for us. Paul went on to talk about the security of that salvation. As he comes to the end of Chapter 11, he breaks into worship himself in response to what he has been writing about God’s work in salvation. The Apostle Paul begins to worship as he writes those wonderful words at the end of Chapter 11, words that honor and praise and lift up God for who He is.

Then comes verse 1 of Chapter 12. Paul says, “Because God has done all of this, therefore I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercies, to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.” Notice what he says next: “This is your reasonable act of worship.” He’s talking about an act of worship, and he’s calling it a reasonable act of worship. “Reasonable” comes from the Greek word for “logic.” Paul is saying that this act of worship is logical, it makes sense, and it is reasonable. What is it? Once and for all, present yourself to God --- all of you, as a living sacrifice.

Let’s think through that verse, to understand it better. Paul says that he is speaking to his brothers. That must refer to Christian brothers and sisters, because according to Chapter 1, this letter is written to believers. He’s challenging his Christian brothers and sisters to do something, because of all of the things God has done for them --- providing their salvation, the Spirit’s work in their life, their security in Christ. He says that in view of those great mercies, they must present themselves to God. A good synonym here for “present” is “surrender.” Surrender yourself to God.

But notice that Paul says, “Present your bodies.” Why would he say “bodies?” I think there’s a very simple reason. All that we are, everything about us, is contained in our bodies. We’re made up of more than just a fleshly body, but all the other things that make us who we are cannot be off somewhere else, doing something apart from our bodies. While we are here on this earth, everything that’s true about us is contained in our bodies. So, when Paul says, “Present your bodies to God,” he’s just saying to present your entire self. That’s everything about you, your body and all that your body contains --- your mind, your heart, desires, attitudes, personality, quirks --- everything your body contains. All of you, offered to God.

Paul uses a picture that his readers, whether gentile or Jew, would understand. He says, “Present your bodies, all of you, to God as a living sacrifice.” These people, whether they came from the Jewish religious system or some pagan religious system before they were Christians, would understand the whole “sacrifice” idea, because in Judaism and in many of the pagan religions there would have been the offering of sacrifices, only in those cases, the sacrifices were animals. In those religions, as a part of the worship, people would bring an animal that would be killed and presented to God, or to the gods if they were pagan. In those cases, the sacrifice had to happen many times. You had to keep bringing back more animals, because the animals already sacrificed were dead.

But Paul changes the terminology. He says, “I urge you to present your entire self to God as a living sacrifice.” You’re going to go on living your life, but offer your entire self as a living sacrifice. The word translated “present” or “offer” from the Greek is in the Aorist form, and the Aorist form always points to a “once-and-for-all” action: one time, not a continuous action. So, Paul is saying, “I urge you, because of what God has done for you, to once and for all present your entire self to Him. Make a decisive dedication, once and for all. Let it be a reference point that you can keep going back to, that you offered it all to Him, and were willing to be a living sacrifice.”

That takes surrender. “Surrender” is an unpopular word, because to us it implies losing. You surrender if you have to admit you’re losing. To us, “surrender” means giving up. That’s exactly what Paul was telling us: “Christian brothers and sisters, because of all that God has done for you, stop fighting Him --- He wins, you lose; offer yourself in surrender. Give up trying to control your own life. Give up trying to run things on your own. Give up trying to live by your own agenda. Present yourself to Him. Surrender.”

Two things get in the way when we are confronted with that challenge. One is pride. Let’s face it, we like being in control of our lives. We like to set the agenda. And so, our pride makes it very difficult to do what Paul was saying, to once and for all present ourselves to God as living sacrifices.

The other barrier is fear. If we would be honest, we are afraid of this kind of decisive dedication in our life. What’s going to happen? What might God do in my life? What would He have me do? Where might He lead me if I did this, if I just surrendered everything to Him? There’s a fear of what might happen, a fear of where it might lead, a fear of not being in control.

Someone has said that whenever God is in control of something, that something can never be out of control. You and I might try to control our lives, but the reality is that we are out of control. It’s only when God is in control that we’re in control and our life is under control.

So, we have to break through the fears and we have to break through the pride, in order to practice this one act of worship that is the most reasonable. It is the most reasonable act of worship to once and for all present myself to God --- all of me, everything about me. It’s interesting --- every other act of worship can be practiced multiple times throughout our lives. We can come here every week and sing together as a group as an act of worship; we can do that many, many times over and over again. It’s great. We can come together and pray together like we did today and offer worship to God through our prayers. We can come to do it over and over again. We’re taught to do that. All those acts of worship are to be a continuous thing in our lives. But here you have an act of worship that is one time --- once and for all. As your most reasonable, logical act of worship, Paul says, once and for all present all of yourself to God as a living sacrifice.

Now, if you need to renew it every now and then, that’s fine, but it’s actually a presentation that’s supposed to happen once. It’s a reference point. We can keep going back to it saying, “That was the time I gave it all to God; that was the time I broke through the fear and the pride, because of everything God has done for me. I presented it all to Him.”

Do you have that reference point in your life? Have you experienced that once-and-for-all, most reasonable and logical act of worship? Can you go back to when and where it was? For me, I was a college student. It was in the chapel at our college, after a service. I ended up on my knees before God, doing exactly what Paul said. I had been a Christian for a number of years, but I came to a point where I had to say, “God, here’s all of me, whatever you want. Every bit of me is yours. I want to be a living sacrifice. I don’t want to control, I don’t want to set the agenda. Here I am. I am yours.” That was my decisive dedication, my presentation, my act of worship of offering myself once and for all.

I go back to that reference point many times to remind myself. It helps me to readjust as I live my life. Do you have a reference point? Have you experienced that most reasonable act of worship, presenting your entire self once and for all to God?

The deepest level of worship

Let’s open the other envelope. The winner of the Deepest Level of Worship Award is…….“Worshiping in the Midst of Suffering.” The deepest level of worship, friends, is when you and I will worship in the midst of our suffering. You can’t experience a deeper level of worship before God.

Turn with me to the Old Testament Book of Job. The first chapter presents an amazing story that really happened. At the beginning of the chapter we are introduced to a man named Job, and to his family. We are told in verse 1 that Job was a blameless, upright man who feared God and shunned evil --- a Godly man. He walked with the Lord.

What we are told, beginning in verse 13, is that tragedy struck his life. He loses all his possessions --- his cattle, sheep, goats, all his other possessions --- which means he loses his livelihood in tragic ways. Then on top of that, he loses all his children in a tragic event, and there he is --- a man who has lost everything. Verse 20 says that at this, Job got up, tore his robe, and shaved his head. He did that because in that culture, that was the deepest expression of grief and mourning. This man is deep into grief. He has lost terribly: all his children, all of his possessions, his livelihood. They are gone. Job is grieving, but notice what he does in his grief: he tears his robe and shaves his head, and then he falls to the ground --- in worship.

The writer must be kidding! This man has just lost everything. This man is suffering. This man is hurting. He is in the pits of grief, yet he falls on the ground and worships. This is what he says in verse 21: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised.” That’s worship. Verse 22 says, “In all of this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrong-doing.”

Here is a man who worships God in the midst of his suffering. Right in the middle of it, at the deepest point of grief, he worships God and praises the name of the Lord. Isn’t that amazing? No one else has ever done that, have they?

Do you remember two men named Paul and Silas, who ended up in a Philippian prison? They were in stocks and they had been whipped. They were sitting in the dark of that prison, and at midnight, what do these two men do? The Bible says they sang hymns. They worshiped in the midst of their suffering.

Many years ago, Jeannine and I were with a mother and a father and some friends. The parents had just found out that their 26-year old son had been killed in a car accident. We sat pretty much in silence, except for the weeping that was going on. Next to me on the couch was Doug, the father. I’ll never forget this, because it was so unbelievable, but as we were sitting there in the silence as people were trying to process what just had happened, Doug got off the couch, dropped to his knees, and started praying out loud a prayer of thanks to God, for being in control, for loving him, for loving his son, for knowing why this happened, although he didn’t know why. He broke into a prayer of worship. It was unbelievable to hear.

I suspect that this scene has been repeated over and over again throughout history --- not just by Job, not just by Paul and Silas, not just by Doug. It has been repeated by God’s people throughout history. It is the deepest level of worship.

A part of the story of Job we didn’t look at is how this even came about. Early in the first chapter, we find out that God and Satan are having a conversation about Job and what a Godly man he is. Satan makes an accusation to God about Job. In verses 9 through 11 he says, “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands. Stretch out Your hand and strike everything he has, and then he will surely curse You.”

What’s the accusation? Satan says, “Of course, Job is a Godly man. Of course, he fears You and worships You. You’ve given him everything he wants. You have blessed him; he has many possessions and he has a big happy family. You’ve put this hedge around him; You don’t let bad things happen to him. Of course he’s going to fear you and worship You. But if You take all of that away from Job, he’ll curse You like everybody else.” So, God says, “Okay, let’s find out.” That’s how we come to this tragedy in Job’s life.

Everything is stripped away from Job, yet Satan is proven very wrong. All Job has left is God, but because of that he can still worship. He still honors, praises, and fears God in the midst of his suffering. It’s the deepest level of worship one can experience.

The unfortunate thing is that Satan’s accusation is right about many other people of God, because there are so many Christians who are fair-weather worshipers. When things are going great, when God has been answering our prayers, when we’ve been able to really see Him working, when we are comfortable, experiencing a relatively painless time in our life, we can’t wait to hop into the car and get off to that weekly time of worship with God’s people. We can’t wait to stand there before God and join our voices and sing praises to Him.

But, if things have gone badly and we are in pain, grieving, or suffering; if nothing seems to be working out and we are so uncomfortable we can’t stand it, what do we do? First, we stop worshiping privately, and second, we stay away from public worship. And then Satan’s accusation becomes true. So many of God’s people are fair-weather worshipers. Their worship depends on how things are going. Isn’t that sad?

It’s when we’re suffering that worship is really tested. Our motive for worship becomes tested in suffering. Why do we worship in the first place? We won’t know that personally about ourselves until we’re tested through suffering. When everything is stripped away and all we have is God, the level of our worship and our relationship with Him is tested.

Do you worship when it feels as if God is a million miles away? Do you think to worship God when it feels to you like He’s disappointed you? Does worship ever enter your mind when God has allowed terrible pain and grief to be a part of your life? Maybe this morning you came here, and as we began to worship publicly as a group, your thought was, “I don’t feel like worshiping this morning; I don’t think I will.” There may be people not here this morning because they decided that they didn’t feel like worshiping.

Now, after we’ve spent seven weeks talking about worship, what do you see that’s wrong with that statement? It says that how you feel is the gauge; how you feel determines whether or not you worship. I have a problem with that. The gauge is who God is. Who He is determines whether I worship or not, and He never changes --- my feelings do. Someone might have come this morning and thought, “Yeah, I’ll come, but I won’t worship, because that would be hypocritical. How can I sing or speak those words to God when I don’t feel like it?” I beg to differ with you. It’s not hypocritical. It’s right. God deserves those words of worship coming from your lips, no matter how you feel.

Someone might even think, “Well, you don’t know what kind of week I had. You don’t know what I’ve gone through. You don’t know what it’s like.” Talk to Job about that. Talk to Paul and Silas about that. Talk to Doug Cook about that. They know what it’s like, and they chose to worship in the midst of it. It’s the deepest level of worship.

The year was 1744. Hymn-writer Charles Wesley was holding a prayer meeting in Leeds, England. A crowd of 100 people was in an upstairs room. Suddenly, there was a creak in the floorboards, followed by a massive crash. The entire floor collapsed --- one hundred people crashed right through the ceiling into the room below. The place was in chaos. Some were screaming, some were crying, some just sitting there among the rubble in shock. But as the dust settled, Charles Wesley, scratched and lying in a heap, cried out, “Fear not, the Lord is with us,” and then he broke into a song:

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,

Praise Him, all creatures here below,

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Charles Wesley was willing to practice the deepest level of worship in the midst of suffering. Try it. It will make a difference.

The most reasonable act of worship that a person can express is the once and for all offering of our entire self to God as a living sacrifice, and the deepest level of worship that you and I will ever experience are those times when we are willing, in the midst of suffering, to still worship Him and praise His name. Let’s pray.

Our Father, You are God, and we are not. You are worthy of worship, not us, not our feelings, not our problems, not our suffering. You are the one who is in control, who sets the agenda and wants to use us, not the other way around. So Father, I pray that those here in this place today, who have not yet offered themselves once and for all to You as a reasonable act of worship, would do that; and that today would become a reference point for them. And Father, I pray for the people here who are suffering right now, whatever the suffering they may be experiencing. God, give them the strength and desire, even in the midst of their suffering, to worship You, the one constant, faithful part of our life that we can count on. Help us get to that level of worship in the midst of it all. In Jesus’ name, Amen.