Download Sermon: January 26, 2014 – Earthly Mindedness Well, good

Sermon: January 26, 2014 – Earthly Mindedness
Well, good morning! Today, we continue in our Authentic Worship sermon series taking a run at
defining what it means to worship “in spirit”. Last week, we spent some time exploring what it means to
physically worship God and learned that not only does Scripture encourage physicality in our worship of
God, but the entire story of salvation involves so much physicality that it would be strange if our worship did
not. Again, we’ve divided human existence into the physical and the spiritual; however our experience is not
usually divided along this continuum. We come to experience life simultaneously as both physical and
spiritual; our worship then should be experienced in a similar way. When we worship, we do so both
physically and spiritually. That being said, there are some specific concerns that occur when we begin
talking about engaging spiritually in worship and it is these concerns that I would like to explore with you
today.
We live, however, in a world where the spiritual is a befuddled mess. Let me give you two ways this
fleshes out in our world. First, spirituality is generally posited in our culture as a feminine concern; men just
aren’t encouraged to engage spiritually in anything. In fact, the only spirits that most men are ever exposed
to come in a tumbler or a shot glass. Real men are earthy and not spiritual because – and here’s the
second misunderstanding – the spiritual is ethereal and mystical and therefore generally inapplicable in
everyday life. Culturally then, those with a grounded-ness in their personality tend to shy away from spiritual
pursuits, while spirituality is pursued by those with a less grounded personality. I’ve come to understand that
in our culture, the phrase “I’m spiritual” means something like “I’m searching for something and I think it has
to do with chakras, crystals, meditation, and astrology”. But none of these understandings are accurate to
the Scripture portrayal of spirituality. Spirituality is not engendered – it’s equally applicable to men and
women - nor is it ethereally inapplicable; it is vitally important to our existence here and now. Spirituality
does not refer to a hodge-podge of various mystical “realities”, but is centered on an eternal connection with
the Creator God. And folks, there is nothing more real, present and applicable than a relationship with God.
Because we are raised in a culture where the spiritual is so befuddled, the Scriptural
encouragement by Jesus to “worship in spirit” is approached with both caution and confusion, impacting, in
my opinion, the worship we offer to God. The apostle Paul writes to the church in Colossae, expressing his
desire to be with them saying “for though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit”
(Colossians 2:5), however in most churches we find the opposite reality played out – people who are
physically present in service, but spiritually absent. The truth is that there are many reasons why this might
be the case. Sometimes we get caught up in the messiness of life and often our spirits are set on these
concerns rather than on Jesus when we walk through the doors of the church. We all have “stuff” going on
in our lives, but we cannot allow these things to compromise our worship. Later in his letter to the
Colossians, Paul launches into a beautiful description of life in Christ; this morning I would like us to read
this passage as it applies to our worship. If you have your Bibles with you, would you turn to Colossians 3:117 with me and I’ll begin reading in a moment.
“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is,
seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you
died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you
also will appear with him in glory. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly
nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the
wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must
also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from
your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put
on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no
Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and
is in all. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion,
kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of
you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put
on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since
as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell
among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns,
and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether
in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
OK, let’s talk about this passage for a few minutes … the first thing that I think we need to
grasp a hold of when it comes to our understanding of engaging spiritually in worship is that, for those
who have placed their trust in Jesus, God has provided us with all the assistance necessary to engage
in in a spiritually complete way. In one sense, we have no excuse not to be engaging in worship in a
spiritually vital way. This passage helps us to understand that our life – all that we presently are or ever
will be - is hidden with Christ. Scripture repeatedly reveals to us that we are now those who are “in
Christ” and finding ourselves both spiritually and physically “in Him”, there can be no real barriers to
engaging fully in worship. Add to this the Apostle Paul’s assertion that “the Spirit helps us in our
weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through
wordless groans” (Romans 8:26) and you can begin to see that God really has paved the way for us to
be able to offer fully engaged worship to Him. Now, quick informal honesty poll … how many of you
have ever felt spiritually disengaged in worship? OK, so the question then becomes, why do we
sometimes experience a lack of spiritual engagement in our worship? Allow me to suggest two
possibilities … the “cannot” and the “will not” of spiritual engagement in worship.
The “cannot” is one that we can pretty quickly define and deal with and it’s a pretty simple one
to put into words – we must be spiritually alive to engage spiritually in worship and, according to
Scripture, just because we are physically drawing in breath does not mean we are alive spiritually.
Isaiah 64:6-7 sets the stage for us, informing us that “all of us have become like one who is
unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our
sins sweep us away. No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you”. Sin has so affected our
spirits that without God’s intervention, we do not even seek to worship God; in fact, we cannot worship
God, because we are not even aware of His presence. But because we were designed for worship, we
have turned our sights from worshipping God to worshipping created things, earthly things.
As the Apostle Paul puts it in Romans 1, because of sin, we “exchanged the truth about God for a
lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator”. In our passage from Colossians,
Paul calls this setting of our sights on earthly things idolatry, or false worship. And folks, look at the
world around us … culturally, we worship so many earthly things! Money, sex, nature, knowledge, the
mystical and ethereal, we flock to worship such things. This pattern can only be broken when we come
to know Jesus Christ as our Saviour and, by His power, He breaks the shackles of sin in our lives,
renewing us in the image of God. So, the first thing for us to consider is this … is my worship spiritually
bankrupt because I am spiritually bankrupt, attempting to worship without having come into
relationship with God through His Son, Jesus Christ? Do I need to be made spiritually alive, so that my
worship can be enlivened also?
At the same time, let us not sell our enemy short … we know Satan’s greatest desire is to take
for himself the worship that only God is worthy of. One of his trickiest schemes is to confuse our
worship of God, hoping that in our frustration, we will give up on worshipping God. So, on occasion, we
find ourselves under spiritual oppression, which has an obvious effect on our worship. If you find
yourselves battling irrational, baseless, strangely distracting or inexplicable thoughts that persistently
influence your ability to worship, it might be a sign that you are under spiritual oppression. At this time,
it’s important to grasp tightly onto your identity in Christ, to confess areas of unconfessed sin, and then
to pray that God closes any door you may have opened for the enemy to establish a foothold in your
life. If this describes you, my encouragement is that you find someone today to pray with you and walk
with you through these steps, because we are in this together; none of us need to face such struggles
alone. With the sin forgiven and the ground removed by the power of God, you’ll be freed to worship in
a way you were previously unable to. Now, many of us will acknowledge that we have put our faith in
Jesus, experiencing this new life, knowing that we are fully enabled to worship God, and recognizing
that Satan’s influence has been held at bay, yet we still experience a deadness in our worship on
occasion. Why does this happen, you ask? This question moves us into the “will not” of worship.
As much are we are enabled to worship in a spiritually complete way when we come to know
Christ as Saviour, we still have the pesky task of conforming our will to that of God’s. Worship, on one
hand, is an act of the will, it is a choice that we must make. I would suggest then, that at times, the
spiritual deadness we feel in our worship is due to a “will not” approach to our worship. I would suggest
that this manifests itself in a couple of significant ways in our world.
First, spiritual engagement requires effort … as our passage from Colossians indicates it
requires “setting our sights” on the right objects and our lack of spiritual engagement might at times be
due to a laziness in our approach to worship; we “will not” put forth the effort necessary. Worship
requires preparation. Our passage urges us to clothe ourselves with such things as “compassion,
kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” and to rid ourselves of “anger, rage, malice, slander, and
filthy language” and, I don’t know about you, but doing those things requires effort, an act of the will.
I think often times, we simply show up at church with the expectation that someone else – the
worship leader, the praise team, the pastor – will lead us into worship. It then becomes their duty to
inspire worship in me. And, yes, that is partially the case. Those given the responsibility of leading in
worship certainly do bear some onus on inspiring others to worship – and trust me, that’s a weighty
responsibility. At the same time, our worship is “our” responsibility. And as such, we need to come to
church ready to worship. This requires a little pre-game work, a bit of pre-service calisthenics. We
need to ready ourselves for worship. Now, culturally, our preparation for worship has almost solely
centered on our attire. This is not to say that appropriate attire is not a concern for worship; it is not
THE concern however. The apostle Paul does not urge us to clothe ourselves with stylish cotton
blends, suits or ties, or expertly polished footwear, but with “compassion, kindness, humility,
gentleness and patience”. This morning, as you prepared for worship, did you earnestly clothe
yourselves with these things? Beyond this relatively momentary sort of preparation, I believe that the
events of the past week should also prepare us to fully worship. You see, worship extends beyond
11:30 am on Sundays, permeating every moment of our lives – our passage encourages us that
“whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to
God the Father through him”. This brings us to the second “will not” we’ll examine this morning.
Spiritual engagement emerges out of a thankful heart … a thankless heart cannot engage
spiritually in the worship of God. Thanklessness is the second “will not” contributor and becomes an
even more important issue when we consider our general thanklessness and the seeming entitlement
we see in our culture. Our worship is to emerge as a response of thanksgiving to the incredible work of
God in human history. Did you catch that? Worship is a response to God’s activity in the world; it is
neither a chore nor an obligation, but should be something that nearly naturally springs up from the
depths of a Christian’s spirit. Need a refresher in thanksgiving? Open the Bible, pick virtually any
passage and you’ll read of something worthy of giving thanks. Creation, deliverance, protection,
sustenance, salvation, sanctification … the list of options for thanksgiving goes on and on, but I would
suggest that our opportunities to give thanks far exceed just this list. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
encourages us to “rejoice always, pray continually, [and] give thanks in all circumstances”; my
paraphrase: “never stop worshipping”. Every effort we undertake then can be done as an act of
worship, meaning worship can be a 24/7 activity, given the inexhaustible list of things we can be
thankful for. Think about it for a moment: this past week, did you experience a time where you were
thankful to God for something, anything? Did you find yourself in a predicament that was made better
by knowing that you are a child of God? Did you hear of a situation, where you could do nothing more
than say “thank you God for keeping me from that atrocity”? Now, transition to the present: did these
experiences inform your worship this morning? When you set about worshipping this morning, did
these experiences provide a launching point for your worship? When we open ourselves to
acknowledging God’s goodness in our world, thankful worship will emerge from our spirits.
There is one final aspect of worshipping “in spirit” that I would like to close with this morning –
bear with me because this does get a touch ethereal. When we engage in worship “in spirit”, we are
quite literally “transported” into an eternal celebration of God. In essence, we worship alongside all
those who have ever uttered a word of worship to God. Because God exists in a timeless reality, He
receives our worship in an eternal, timeless sort of way. At the same time, God both transcends time
and can insert Himself into time. This means that at any given point, God can experience all the
worship ever given Him in human existence; likewise, He is free to experience any specific time-bound
expression of worship. Here’s my point: when we choose to worship God “in spirit”, we engage in
something eternal and something cosmic. And that’s a pretty cool thought to me. Writer N.T. Wright, in
a great book entitled Simply Christian, puts it this way:
“[Worship] is the glad shout of praise that arises to God the creator and God the rescuer from the
creation that recognizes its maker, the creation that acknowledges the triumph of Jesus the Lamb.
That is the worship that is going on in heaven, in God's dimension, all the time. The question we ought
to be asking is how best we might join in.”
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So, in conclusion this morning, allow me to ask you this closing question: Today, how best might you
join in the eternal and cosmic worship of God? May each one of us choose not to withhold one iota of
our existence from God and may we this morning worship “in spirit”. Would you pray with me.