Genesis 22:3-10
What is True Worship?
True worship is a valuing or a treasuring of God our creator above all things.
Our Lord Jesus provided a great insight into worship and explained what worship is not…
Our text reveals the first time worship was mentioned in the Bible, it was on the occasion when Abraham was tested to offer Isaac the son he waited many years for. He spoke to his servant and said – Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.
Abraham saw the occasion of obeying God and sacrificing his son as a worship before God. Not many people understand that true worship will lay everything before God especially the things that are dearest to our heart.
Your heart is the center of your being. God wants your heart to enjoy peace, serenity and life.
This is only possible with a close relationship with Him. Without Him, what we see is falsehood.
False worship
Matthew 15:8–9 (ESV)
8‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;9 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” and in his discussion with the Samaritan woman Jesus explained what is expected as worship in heaven.
John 4:23-24
23 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. 24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Worship is an act of faith and can only done when we know the truth that guides it. So..
How did we get here?
Adam and Eve
Genesis 2: 8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
In the beginning, God created Adam and Eve, placing them in the beautiful garden east of Eden.
We have only a little glimpse into the beauty of that mysterious and wondrous world.
All we know is that God created it and afterwards said, ‘It is good.’
Job 38: 4-7
4 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.
5 Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?
6 Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;
7 When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
This meant that all creation was in absolute harmony with God, and fulfilling its ordained purpose.
But today many people in their frantic pursuit of life have forgotten the purpose of their creation from God’s point of view.
Why are you here?
Revelation 4:11
11 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.
To entertain the idea that God would do anything capriciously or without purpose is to misunderstand the nature of God completely.
After God had created everything else, he said with a smile on his face, ‘I’ll make me a man.’ Stooping down, he took up the clay from the bed of the river, shaped it and worked on it like a nanny bending over her baby.
He shaped and formed human beings and blew into their nostrils the breath of life, and they became living souls. God stood the first man on his feet and said, ‘Look around, this is all yours, and look at me, I am yours, and I’ll look at you and I’ll see in your face the reflection of my own glory.
That is your end, that is why you were created, that you might worship me and enjoy me and glorify me and have me as yours forever.’
God then put Adam in a deep sleep and out of his ribs formed woman, whom Adam called Eve. Together they were created with one purpose.
Unlike everything else in this mystic and marvelous world of God’s creation, Adam and Eve could worship God and God anticipated that worship.
In the cool of the day, God came down and walked with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden where they joyously offered their reverence and adoration.
It was their unique purpose, shared by nothing else in all of God’s creation.
Adam and Eve’s unique purpose in the garden was to bring pleasure, joy and fellowship to God, which is the foundation of all genuine worship.
Everything in the garden was in perfect harmony and symmetry. Then God withdrew for a moment, and while he was gone, that old evil one, the dragon who is called Satan, came and sowed poisonous seed in the minds of Adam and Eve.
Consequently, they rebelled against God and his purpose for them.
When Adam and Eve crossed the line, immediately God knew the fellowship was broken, for God knows all things.
The arrival of false religion
Thus was born religion; Fig-Leaf Religion.
Religion always focuses on the externals and Adam and Eve were consumed with their outward condition.
They had lost the focus of their inward beauty and purpose and no longer satisfied the criteria of fellowship with their Creator.
When God next visited them
They had learned to blame somebody else for the condition of their souls. This blaming of someone else for all our iniquities is one of the great evidences of sin and the forerunner of religion.
Adam and Eve, in that perfect environment and with their one supreme purpose of worshiping God, rebelled against their purpose, which resulted in what theologians call the fall of man, or depravity.
What is the result of this depravity?
Some say the fall is the source of all the problems plaguing humanity down through the years.
Some point to the proliferation of disease as a direct outcome.
Others blame point to all the hatred infecting humanity throughout the centuries: nation rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom, and holocausts that have happened periodically throughout history.
No generation has escaped such hatred and anger. However, these are short-term effects and simply consequences, not representing the real tragedy of the fall.
The real tragedy in the garden of Eden was that Adam and Eve lost their purpose.
They forgot who they were; they did not know where they were; they did not understand where they came from or what they were there for.
They forgot the purpose of their existence. Though they tried their best to shake off this moral fog, they could not, for no matter what they did it would not shake off.
Therefore, hand in hand, they made their way out into the world, not knowing where they were going.
Humanity still wanders in this moral and spiritual wilderness.
Ask…
What is the big overriding purpose of your life?’
‘I want to get married, I’d like to make money and I’d like to travel.’
You will do them and then you will get old and die. What is the big overriding purpose of your life?’
Religion addresses only humanity’s external condition, not our internal confusion.
In spite of this confusion, we try to get around somehow. We travel, play golf, drive cars, eat, sleep and look at beautiful things, but they are all short-sighted aspects of our life.
The enemy of human souls has successfully sabotaged this search for moral and spiritual identity. He does everything within his extensive power to prevent us from discovering who and what we are.
Defiantly, knowing our purpose, he stands between us and dares us to cross his line.
He offers everything and anything to keep us from finding the right solution. Unfortunately, he has many takers.
However…
God never does anything without a good purpose behind it. God is intelligent because intellect is an attribute of deity. This intellect is seen in every aspect of creation. Nothing in creation is without meaning even if we do not see or understand the meaning at the time.
And I could go farther into the Psalms: ‘Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lo r d our Maker’ (Psalm 95:6).
As mentioned earlier, the word ‘Worship’ is first found in Genesis 22:3-10 in the story of Abraham and Isaac.
You will notice perhaps that there is no mention of keyboards, or guitars, or drums….no choirs, no line up of attractive singers backing a lead singer.
Instead, in the fore ground of this picture, there is an altar, and the treasure of someone’s heart, about to be laid on it.
What do we learn from this?
Many things…..but as far as worship is concerned…. we learn that worship is not so much what we do with our lips….
Worship has its focus on what we do with our lives.
Romans 12 tells us to offer our lives as a sacrifice. 1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Reminding ourselves of these things helps us move away from the easy tendency to see worship as something that happens in a half hour slot….at the beginning of a service….
It also takes our focus from musical performance and back towards God.
When the Holy Spirit came on the Day of Pentecost, why did the believers break out into ecstatic language?
Simply, it was because they were rightly worshiping God for the first time. Intensive worship unexpectedly leaped out of their hearts. It was nothing planned or perpetrated by some ‘worship leader.’ God was in their midst.
Whenever there is a move of the Holy Spirit, it is always a call for God’s people to be worshipers of the most High God above everything else.
Whatever else revival does, it must restore the purpose and meaning of being a worshiper.
God made humankind in his own image and blew into them the breath of life to live in his presence and worship him.
God then sent humankind out into the world to increase, multiply, and fill the earth with men and women who would worship God in the beauty of holiness.
That is our supreme purpose.
Man’s supreme purpose is to be above the beasts of the earth and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, and even above the angels in the heavens.
Ultimately, this man is to enter God’s presence and unashamedly worship God, looking upon his face while the ages roll. That is why man was created; that is man’s chief end.
We are the reflection of the glory of God, which was the purpose and intention of God originally.
ALL MEN HAVE SINNED AND COME SHORT OF THE GLORY OF GOD.
All the holy prophets and apostles teach that humans fell from their first estate and destroyed the glory of God, and the mirror was broken.
God could no longer look at sinful people and see his glory reflected.
We failed to fulfill the created purpose of worship of our Creator in the beauty of holiness.
We forgot this, forfeited it by sin and are now busy finding other things to fill that emptiness. It is terrible what people will look to if they lose God.
If there is no God in their eyes then they get something else in their eyes, and if they do not enjoy worshiping the great God Almighty who made them, they find something else to worship.
If a person does not have God, they have to have something else. maybe it is boats, or maybe money, amounting to idolatry, or going to parties or just simply raising the devil.
They have lost God and they do not know what to do, so they find something to do, which is why all the pleasures in life have been invented.
Human beings made more like God than any creature have become less like God than any creature.
Redemption is to restore us back to God again, to restring that harp, to purge it, cleanse it and refurbish it by the grace of God and the blood of the Lamb.
B. WHAT JESUS SAID ABOUT WORSHIP: JOHN 4:23-24
“But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:23-24).
I have wonderful news for you. God who made us like that did not give up on us. He did not say to the angels, ‘Write them off and block them from my memory.’ Rather, he said, ‘I still want that mirror to shine in which I can look and see my glory. I still want to be admired in my people; I still want a people to enjoy me and to love me forever.’
Out of this insatiable passion, God sent his only-begotten Son and he became incarnate in the form of a man and, when he walked the earth, he was the reflected glory of God. God, finally, had his man.
Worship is humanity’s full reason for existence. Worship is why we are born and why we are born again.
May you find your purpose today in Jesus name – Worship.