Jesus said that is the most important commandment, if you
can only do one, this is it.  This is the
one that you don’t want to miss.  And you must love the LORD your God with all
your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ So we
were created to be loved by God and the main purpose in our lives is to love
him back.  He should be the most
important thing in our life.  If we had
to pick the one item that we couldn’t or wouldn’t do without it should be
God.  

And that’s the question that you need to answer: what is
the most important thing in your life? 
But it wouldn’t be fair to ask you here in church, would it?

I’m sure we’d all answer “God”.  Kind of like the little boy in Sunday School
Class, the teacher asked “What’s grey, lives in a tree has a bushy tail and
gathers nuts?”  The boy thought for a
minute and said “It sure sounds like a squirrel but I’m betting the answer is
Jesus.”  So you are thinking “I know what
the most important thing in my life is but I’m betting the answer is God.”

If we go all the way back to the beginning of the story you
realize that Adam and Eve, the first couple, were created to be in fellowship
with God.  There was a direct connection
and they deliberately rebelled and walked away from the relationship.  And after they were banished from the Garden
of Eden we have no idea what type of relationship they had with their
creator. 

Does it mean that they started having church and part of
that was the “Worship” service?  Did they
have drums and guitars and keyboards and sang songs by David Crowder and Matt
Redman, or did they have an organ and piano and sing hymns?  Was it contemporary worship or more
traditional worship? 

The problem is that we limit worship either to what we do
in church or narrow it down even further to half of what we do in church and
then we make it the least significant part. 
And so we have the “worship”, that is the singing part of the service
and it is the prelude to the important part which is the preaching. 

Sometimes you will hear people say, “I really enjoyed the
worship this morning.” And what they mean is that the music spoke to them.  And that’s not bad, but it is personal and
while it may be a small part of what worship is it certainly isn’t all of what
worship is.  When we limit worship to
music then it becomes very personal and anything that is personal we become
defensive of.

And that’s why musical styles in churches can sometimes result
in conflict, because it is so personal. 
When we say that we don’t like a particular type of music then those who
like that type of music take it personally. 
In other words if I don’t like singing traditional hymns in church then
in some people’s minds I’m saying singing traditional hymns in church is wrong
and so by implication that means that I’m saying that those who prefer singing
traditional hymns in church are wrong as well.

No, all that means is I personally don’t enjoy that style
of music.  I don’t like classical music,
I don’t like reading poetry, or putting anchovies on my pizza. And if you do
like classical music, reading poetry and eating anchovies on your pizza you
probably aren’t offended because I don’t. 
But worship is more personal than just our preferences, because worship
is how we connect with God, and if you do it different than you are questioning
not just my taste but the relationship I have with God.

So when we narrowly define worship as one style or type of
anything it boxes in God.

Worship can’t be defined by style because style is too
individualistic.  And so worship music is
really a mis-definition because it’s only worship music for some and for others
it just plain annoying. 

Neat story, years ago there was an elderly pastor on this
district by the name of Walter Fernley and he and his wife were an awesome
couple, who have both moved onto to Glory, which is a euphemism for: They
died. 

Walter’s wife’s name was Mabel but everyone called her
Mabs.  One day Walter asked Mabs to say
grace at dinner, which she did, very quietly. 
To which Walter commented, “I couldn’t hear you.”  To which Mabs replied “I wasn’t talking to
you.”

So when someone says I didn’t like the worship this
morning, the proper response is “We weren’t singing to you.”   I don’t think God has a preference for any
one style of worship music.  I think that
we offer our worship to Him and if we do it with the right motives and a pure
heart then He goes, “Thank you that was so cool.”  Because as good as it might be on any given
Sunday he has heard much better.

Think about it twelve hours ago He heard the worship team
from Hillsong Church in Sydney Australia sing, and two hundred and fifty years
ago He heard Beethoven play his Fifth Symphony. 
And heaven is filled with music, country music actually, it will sound a
lot like Willie.  

But we are God’s children presenting our gift of worship to
Him.  When your child gives you a gift
that they made themselves do you say, “Well it’s nice but it’s not very good
compared to other art I’ve seen.”  No you
say “Thank you, that is so cool.”

So if worship isn’t what we do in church, and it isn’t just
music, what is it?

1) Worship is
Something You Give We are told to offer or give our
bodies and when you offer something it is voluntary.  From day one God created mankind with this
incredible gift of free will.  He didn’t
create us to blindly serve him without thought or choice. 

In 1942 Isaac Asimov wrote a short story called Runaround and in it he introduced us to the 3 laws
of Robotics and there are some of you who know these by heart, and that is
scary.  But for the rest of the 3 laws of
Robotics state:  

1. A robot may not harm a human
being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given
to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First
Law.

3. A robot must protect its own
existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or
Second Law.

Those laws were fiction of course but God could have put
very similar restrictions on humanity.  But
then we would have been robots and not people and God wants us to choose to
worship him and so he allows us to choose whether or not we will obey him and
whether or not we won’t worship him.  He
wants it to be a conscious decision where we in effect say, “I offer this to
you” 

Francis De Sales summed it up when he said “There are no
galley-slaves in the royal vessel of divine love — every man works his oar
voluntarily!”

Of course free will is a double edged sword, author P.J. O’Rourke commented “One
of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual
responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on.
And when you do find somebody, it’s remarkable how often his picture turns up
on your driver’s license.”

Nobody else can worship for you and if you don’t take that
step there is nobody else you can blame for it not happening.  God won’t force you to worship him.

Sometimes we make decisions that are hard if not impossible
to undo.  And you’ll hear someone say,
“If only”.  And many times we can’t go
back and unring the bell, sometimes we only get one chance to make a
decision. 

But regardless of what or who you chose to worship
yesterday today you can choose to worship God.

2) Worship Involves
Who You Are So, next we are told to offer our
bodies, and that simply means that you are to offer “You”.  While we are here we are here in our bodies,
if we are going to do anything it will be done with our bodies. 

Every once in a while someone will tell me, “I can’t be
here next Sunday Denn, but I will be here in Spirit.”  Do you know what that means?  “Nothing, zip, nada.”  If your bodies are not here then your
spirit’s not here, they are interconnected and they go together.  In this life you can’t have one without the
other.

And so by asking for our bodies God is in effect asking for
all of us.  So understand you will be
worshipping something and that will be indicated by what you are doing with
your body and where your body is.  It
defines our priorities. 

If you tell me “Denn I really want to be at church next
Sunday but I have to be at . . .” What you are saying is “I really want to be
at church but I want to be at . . . more.” 

Late in the last century, when I was in college I was up
until two one morning at a hockey game and didn’t make it to an eight o’clock
class I had.  That afternoon I ran into
my Prof and said “I’m Sorry I didn’t make it to class Dr. K, I really wanted to
be there.”  To which Dr. Kanzlemar uttered these words of wisdom “If you had of wanted to be there you would have been
there” and then he added this gem “You do
what you want to do.”

So when we offer our bodies we are offering ourselves in a
practical way to God, it’s not just something that happens here in our mind,
kind of like a card I sent to my best friend one year for his birthday, on the
cover it said “When it comes to gifts it’s the
thought that counts.”  And inside
it said “And I thought about getting you a
gift.”   And it’s not just what
happens here in our heart, where it is a good intention.  When I was growing up my favorite Aunt would
often remind me that “The road to hell is paved
with good intentions.”  And Margaret Thatcher said “No
one would remember the Good Samaritan if he only had good intentions. He had
money as well.” 

So it’s not enough to think about worshipping God or even
wanting to worship God if we don’t actually worship God.   

3) Worship Demands Something.  In the passage
from Romans we are told to present out bodies as a living sacrifice.  A sacrifice is a sacrifice because it cost
something.  Sacrifice would be a lot
easier if it involved giving up something we weren’t really fond of to start
with.  If that was the case my go to
would be Brussel sprouts. 

Because he knew that it wouldn’t be easy, he knew that it
would cost something, he knew that it would require a sacrifice.  If it doesn’t cost something then it’s not a
sacrifice.  What is it that you are
giving up, how are you making yourself a living sacrifice today?

Remember the greatest commandment?  Mark 12:29-30 Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The LORD our God is
the one and only LORD. And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart,
all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’