"The Heart of Worship"
Sermon Transcript for July 10, 2005
By Rev. Mike Beck
We try to build in to our worship times of quiet because the world around us is so noisy. We’re going to begin the message this morning with this beautiful song, “I Call You To Praise”. As you listen, reflect on the words there on the screen.
SONG: “I Call You to Praise”
One of the ways God has given us to praise Him are in the many wonderful Psalm’s of praise. One of the greatest is Psalm 100. Let’s stand and read it responsively.
Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.
Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing
Know that the Lord who made us is God
We are the Lord; we are the people of God, the sheep of God’s pasture
Enter God’s gates with thanksgiving and God’s courts with praise
Give thanks; bless God’s name
For God is good
God’s love endures forever; God’s faithfulness to all the generations
There is a chorus (Roger played it for the Offertory) I love, but which as a leader of worship when I hear it I must confess it often places me under conviction. These are a couple of lines from that chorus.
I’m coming back to the heart of worship
And it’s all about You, Lord
It’s all about You.
Another line, it’s not up on the screen, which often is my prayer of confession:
Forgive me Lord for the thing I’ve made it.
For it’s all about You, Lord.
It’s all about You.
You’ve heard me use this analogy often. If you think about a wheel, for God’s people worship is the hub of that wheel. It is what holds everything else together. It’s the center. All of our other ministries, which are vitally important to the work of God, those are the spokes that will have to be anchored securely to our worship of God. But we often miss the “heart of worship”. Instead, our attention gets focused on a dozen and one other things instead of the central hour each week in the life of Christ’s church. And because of that, we believe that we can honestly say, “We’ve been to church”. But at the same time we can miss the awesomeness of God, we can miss the love of God made known in Jesus Christ, we can miss the transforming power of God’s Holy Spirit that He wants to set loose in our lives as we truly worship God as Jesus said “in spirit and in truth”.
Today and continuing next weekend, I want us to reflect on this critically important issue of what is to be taking place as we come to “worship” our Jesus. I’m going to touch on six things:
- It’s about God, not us.
- Anticipation and attitude
- Music and singing
- Attention to the words we say, sing, and pray
- Preaching
- Our “response” to worship
Worship is about God, not us: During the time that I was on my renewal leave, Reverend Dan and the worship planning team did a subtle change in our order of worship that was extremely significant. When you look at our order of worship now, you’ll see a “Time of Gathering” where we get the announcements out of the way and then we begin the worship. Nothing kills the spirit of worship more than you’ve got kind of a flow of God’s spirit in our midst, then you talk about the upcoming golf outing. So that subtle change was significant. We gather, hear what God’s people are doing, those are all important. Then we focus on the Prelude and one of our hymns that’s been selected that day to prepare our hearts for worship.
Let me illustrate that by going back to the words of the song we played to begin the sermon.
I call you to praise, come and worship; (Notice the bold print, the object is not the
The King in His Splendor and power. preacher or the choir)
I call you to enter His presence
Come linger in glory this hour.
(Now, all of life is worship. We were taught that in the 40-Days of Purpose. But this hour, this is special.)
I call you to praise, now awaken; -- (Now, we preachers can laugh about that one—the last two words, because we get to look this way. One of the greatest Christian man I knew, he was the lay leader at the church in Greensburg. But you could set your watch that three minutes after the sermon started, Morgan was going to be sound asleep. If you could keep him awake for seven minutes, you’d had one of the best sermons you’d ever preached.)
I call you to praise, (and maybe for some of us), now awaken;
And set your affections above. (Not on where you are going to eat, not on what you are going to do in the afternoon. Set your affections above.)
Forsake all that keeps you from praising Him; (and worship is to be fun)
Delight in His mercy and love.
Let us praise Him, all that is within us; (See that’s why worship involves a body. We are to stand. Sometimes we raise our hand. Let us praise Him, all that is within us;)
Praise Him, and (that’s why the cross is central) worship our Lord Jesus.
All who come before Him stand amazed.
And, friends, promoting the Chicken-Noodle Dinner, letting your mind be in an analytical or critical mode, being a “worship clock-watcher”, won’t cause you to depart amazed at the awesome grace and love of God that true worship is all about.
Those of you who are new to Grace Church may not realize that this stone altar and the wooden reardoss behind it I think is a little over 80 years old, goes back to the old church downtown. In fact, when the people of Grace moved out here and worshiped in Price Hall for 18 years, you look at pictures, that reardoss was up on the stage. But back in 2000 in fear and trembling I will never forget, the Administrative Council approved some redesign of the Chancel. And I remember that January morning I was sitting right here on the stage. Weberdeen’s Woodcarving Shop came in and began to disassemble that reardoss. And I was thinking, “Oh, my gosh, what have I done? I’m probably toast in about six months and on my way to potato run.” But those of you who have been a part of Grace for a long time know that before it came back beautifully refinished, these three symbols in gold leaf, you couldn’t even see them. They had been darkened so badly over 80 years of use. And you may notice sometimes when I pray the offering to the altar and you are singing the Doxology, where you praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, see that’s what those symbols are—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So worship gets focused not here, but there. And here’s the paradox, when we worship God in spirit and truth and our focus is on Him, it is like when our focus comes here to God, it then bounces back to let our lives be blessed and we have focus on God.
Now, friends, in terms of worship, do we do it perfectly? Heavens, no! Sometimes we mess it up royally. But the prayers of all of our hearts ought to be on:
I’m coming back to the heart of worship;
And it’s all about You, Lord; it’s all about You.
Forgive me Lord for the thing I’ve made it;
For it’s all about You, Lord; it’s all about You!
The Importance of Anticipation and Attitude: Worship that honors God, that touches our heart, that changes our lives begins with a spirit of anticipation. That when I walk through those doors, and when you do that if your heart is in the right place, do you realize you have brought God in? God says He delights in the praises of His people. But when you walk through those doors there needs to be a sense of anticipation.
I want to illustrate anticipation and attitude with just two simple illustrations. You’ll have to forgive my golf illustrations, but that’s a passion in my life. I had the privilege last summer following our Wesley tour, my lovely wife, instead of taking the five-day bus trip in Scotland, granted me permission as long as I didn’t drive, to visit St. Andrews, Scotland. We arrived on Tuesday. I was to get to play the Old Course on Thursday. They’ll play the British Open for the 25th time there on those links this coming weekend. They’ve been playing golf on that piece of land for 500 years. I couldn’t wait. Tuesday evening and most of the day Wednesday, I walked down and just sat behind the first tee and realized that Bobby Jones and Sam Sneed had both teed off right there. And I walked over behind the 18th green. That hole is named for old Tom Morris. In fact, his golf shop is right there on the street beside it. I watched them hit their balls into the 18th green. Oh, I watched a lot of them roll back into what they called the “valley of sin”. And then I walked down the street and looked out on the Bridge and remembered seeing Arnold Palmer walk on the bridge a few years ago, then walk back on it and tip his cap one final time to the greatest golf course in the world. And then I walked down to the famous road hole and saw that bunker where many a dream has been dashed to smithereens. I began to realize that if you hit your ball on the road, there was no relief; you hit it back off the road. So that when Thursday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. came, and the starter said, “Mr. Beck, you are now on the tee at St. Andrews,” I was ready. I could have shot 140 and it would still have been a grand experience. But you see, I had done some things to anticipate that it was going to be special. And that’s what all of us needs to do as we come to worship.
And on this issue of attitude, I may step on some toes here, but sometimes preachers need to step on toes. When you pick up your bulletin and you look through the order of service and you say, “Oh my gosh, it’s another guest preacher today”, “How dare they not sing the Doxology.” “Oops, we’re not doing the Lord’s prayer today”, friends, its time for an attitude adjustment! We haven’t come for the preacher, we haven’t come for the ritual, we’ve come to worship God.
One of the most dangerous things for a pastor is to invite in a guest speaker. Because of our relationship with The Humble Place, when Robert Sajjabi said he would like to come to Grace, I felt we had to have him come. Now, in retrospect, knowing his accent (hind sight) I would probably have said, “Robert, ten minutes to share.” Now, being from Africa, I’d have told him three times ten minutes but he would have taken thirty. I would have anticipated that in advance. But you know, I caught some real flack from people because he preached. He preached a little differently. But you know, I went over to lead my prayer group at the United Methodist Community on Monday afternoon, and friends, those ladies got it. Here’s what they said to me. They said, “Mike, we couldn’t understand 70% of what he said, but we knew, we could see the spirit of God dwelled profoundly in that man. And we worshiped.” What’s the difference? Attitude! Anticipation—Attitude—They are at the heart of worship!
Music and Singing: We can certainly worship God without any music at all. There are denominations that do that. Yet music is a wonderful gift of God. It’s designed to touch our hearts with the Spirit of God. Psalm 100 that we said responsively, the Psalmist said, “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord. Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into God’s presence with singing.” Now here is where it gets really tough for a preacher. As I look out at this congregation, there are only 45 different styles of music that you like. And therefore, like Abe Lincoln said, “You can’t please all the people, all the time.” So you vary it. And if this piece of music is not your style, hang in there. It’s coming around the wheel.
But I’d like you to take your hymnal, go to the very beginning and just turn about, I think it’s four pages to where you find little Roman numeral vii. We Methodists, we have directions for everything. John Wesley gave directions to his Methodist societies for singing. Go down to number three, and I want you to read it with me. “Sing all. See that you join with the congregation as frequently as you can. Let not a slight degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it is a cross to you, take it up and you will find it a blessing.” And now I want you to just read number four. “Sing lustily and with good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead or half asleep, but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now nor more ashamed of it being heard then when you sung the song of Satan.”
There’s only one thing I’d have done differently when we remodeled the sanctuary. If I had it to do over again from my perspective, underneath your pews would have been tile, not carpet because when we put fabric on the back of those pews, you look at all the fabric in this room, it drowns out the singing. It just absorbs the noise. If there were tile underneath where you were sitting right now, that first hymn would have come across twice as loud because it would have been a sounding board instead of an absorption device.
But Jack Embersol, several months ago, had given me a videotape of one of the worship services at the Crystal Cathedral. He wanted me to see this one particular part. And I kept it because I said there will be a time this is appropriate. What you’ll see and hear from the Director of Music at the Crystal Cathedral has something to say to us about singing. So as part of my sermon, roll the tape.
(Director of Music at the Crystal Cathedral): I’ve talked to you every once in a while but it’s always before we begin an anthem. This time it’s going to be right in the middle of a hymn. Schuler and I were talking about a week ago about congregational singing. I’m going to come after you this morning. Talking about the fact that throughout the country, the whole United States, congregational singing over the last 15-20 years has sort of dwindled a bit from a time when everybody sang and everybody sang enthusiastically. You had hymnbooks and the basses sang bass, and the tenors sang tenor, and the altos sang alto and there was a real sing fest. It isn’t sort of that way anymore. And she said, “Well, Don, couldn’t you get the congregation really singing?” I said, “I don’t know?” I think the first think I want to do is give you an example. This is going to take two or three minutes. Just stay up; it will go all right. I’d like to have the choir show you what just the average group of people singing sort of sound like on this hymn. Ready? (Choir sings unenthusiastically). Doesn’t that really thrill you? Now this is what we work on the hymns, not just the anthems. But we work on the hymns as though they are an anthem like this. (Choir sings with feeling). Now that’s a difference, isn’t it?
The hour of power is not just the minister’s and the orchestra and the organ and the choir. The hour of power is this church. Remember we were told recently on a Sunday morning, this isn’t a church; this is a cathedral and a building. We are the church; you are the church and you minister. You are the church and so when do you minister? You minister on the hymns. The opening hymn and the closing hymn because cameras are not on the choir during the hymns. Once in a while maybe a little bit, but they are 98% on you all the way. And they are panning all over. You are on international television every one of you during the hymns. And people are sitting in their living rooms or in hospital beds needing to be ministered to when you sing a hymn.
How do you really, really sing? How do you do that? Well, you’ve had a great example for decades in Robert Schuler’s preaching. You can imagine him preaching a sermon on standing on the promises of God. Knock and it will be open to you. Seek and you will find. Pray and it will be answered. These are promises. Those who endure to the end shall be saved. The promises of God! And I can hear him saying, “The rock solid promises of God and you can count on it.” Right? Now how at 78 years old can he get his voice to sound like he’s 38? Very simple, your voice will do anything the brain tells it to. Absolutely anything. And he’s telling his voice to do that at that time and it comes out in that rich, warm, baritone sound. You can do the same thing. Let’s try something. I want you to repeat back to me what I say to you in the manner that I say it. Standing on the promises of God. Now do an impression of this—Standing on the promises of God! Now sing it as I’m going to sing it to you like Daniel Rodriguez did, the number one tenor in the country, the way he sang last week. Standing on the promises of God!!! Come on – twice that big—Standing on the promises of God!!! Okay, now, see you can do that and you have to do that because you are the minister during the hymns. John, we’ll start this hymn over again and we want to hear you doing that. Go, Johnny, go!
I only disagree with one thing he said. Your pastor, no matter how hard he would try in his mind to make his voice sound like Robert Schuler, physiologically he can’t get there. Oh, I have to pray often; I could covet that man’s voice. And, we aren’t 5000 people. Roger, come up here, because you are going to lead these last two verses. But we can do it better. And some of you say, “Reverend Mike, I can’t sing a tune, can’t sing a lick.” Bellow it out anyway because your neighbor should be singing loud enough they’ll never hear it. Because, friends, the heart of worship is partly those hymns. Let’s stand together and sing lustfully those last two versus.
E-mail Comments to: Reverend Dan Sinkhorn