Sermon Tone Analysis

Balancing Worship...

If you have a Bible, and I hope you do, I want to invite you to open with me to the Old Testament, the book of Nehemiah 12.

We will be talking for the next few weeks about corporate worship.

Worship is a good thing.

The only thing we have to make sure of is that sometimes we are tempted to get a skewed view of worship.

Culture and contemporary fads can cause us to miss out on what Scripture teaches about worship.

We are going to revisit what the Word teaches us about worship to make sure that we are truly worshipping God.

That is going to be the foundation of who we are as God’s people.

What I want to do from the very beginning before we even dive into Nehemiah 12 is lay out some foundations, set the stage for this series.

We will revisit some of these foundations later on.

I want us to think about these foundations in terms of balancing worship.

There are different sides, so to speak, of the biblical picture of worship and we need to keep in balance in order to maintain any kind of healthy perspective of biblical worship.

I want us to lay out these foundations and then we will dive into Nehemiah 12.

Worship is an honor but also a command

We need to remember this morning as we begin talking about worship that it is only because of the grace and mercy of God that we have the privilege of calling ourselves worshipers of His name.

It is only by the Cross of Jesus Christ that we are even at the point where we are in our lives.

That is the only way we can be worshipers.

As a result worship is an intense and incredible privilege and an honor.

At the same time, all throughout Scripture we see imperatives, commands in the Old Testament and New Testament for God’s people to worship His name.

It is something we are commanded to do.

It is not an optional thing, a take it or leave it kind of deal.

This is something we are commanded to do in Scripture.

This is important.

It's an honor, but it's also a command.

Worship is biblically prescribed but also culturally flexible

What I mean by that is the first half—worship is Biblically prescribed—if God commands us to worship then it would make sense that He tells us how to do that through His word.

That is the whole basis for this series.

We are going to dive into God’s word to see what He says about worship because what He says is very important.

Just like in the Old Testament there were times when they would get away from the whole point of worship in God’s word.

God would come down and basically say to them, you can have a worship service that looks really good in your eyes but it can be utterly detestable in mine.

So we’ve got to be careful to make sure that we are worshipping in a way that lines up with God’s Word.

The determinant of how we worship is not cultural style or contemporary trend.

The determinant of how we worship is God’s Word.

God is much more concerned with our faithfulness to His Word than He is with our creativity and ways we can think of to do worship.

It is Biblically prescribed, but then second, it is culturally flexible.

Now here is what I mean by that.

When you get to the New Testament, I am convinced that the picture of worship is not quite as explicit or specific.

You see the church gathering together but they don’t even call those times necessarily in Scripture worship services like we might even call them today.

So it looks a lot different in different places.

I think there is more flexibility in any kind of prescription for corporate worship in the New Testament is because the church was advancing in new places and new cultures and new people.

As a result there was a lot of flexibility for how that corporate worship looked.

Instead of the New Testament being a book of prescriptive forms that every culture must follow, it is much more flexible.

It is a missions book.

As the gospel goes to different cultures corporate worship may look different in different places and different ways.

It is biblically prescribed; yet there are some non-negotiables at the center.

That is going to be the highlight in this series.

But it is also culturally flexible.

You do realize that most of what we picture when we think of worship today is more on the cultural side than the biblical side.

When we think of worship, the first image that probably comes into our mind is this room and these seats and these screens and these speakers and this particular setup for worship.

You realize that all of those things that I just listed are not Biblically necessary for worship.

If they were that would be bad news for our brothers and sisters in underground churches in China or the deep jungles of Sudan, or persecuted areas of Saudi Arabia.

So what we need to make sure we do is focus on what is biblically necessary.

That doesn’t mean all of these other things are wrong.

But if we focus on those things when we think of worship and we ignore what God says is most important in worship we will miss the whole point of what He desires in our worship.

It is biblically prescribed but culturally flexible.

Worship is the fuel but also the goal of our mission

I want you to see from the very start of this series how it is intricately linked with everything we have done this year: walking through disciple-making in the life of Christ.

Worship is not over here and disciple-making over here.

Worship is the fuel for why we make disciples of all nations.

Why do we go out and sacrifice our lives and sacrifice this church to making disciples of all nations?

We do that because we are fueled by the glory of God.

We are so captivated by His wonder and His greatness that we are compelled to go and make disciples of all nations.

It fuels us.

But it is also the goal.

There is going to be a day in the future where we won’t be making disciples any more.

On that day we will just be worshipping.

The whole goal of us giving ourselves to making disciples of all nations is looking forward to the day where people from everywhere and every tribe and every people in every language in every nation will bow around the throne and enjoy His worship forever.

That is the goal.

That is what we are living for.

Worship is the fuel and the goal of this mission.

Worship involves those inside the church but also affects those outside the church

What we are going to see over the next five weeks is that worship in Scripture primarily involves the church, believers, those who have trusted in Christ.

Now that doesn’t mean unbelievers are out of this thing.

Worship involves those inside the church but affects those outside the church.

What that means is that the primary purpose of us gathering together in this room is to encourage the body.

First Corinthians 14 makes that very clear, so that the rest of this week we would be compelled to go out through this community and proclaim the greatness of God.

We see how worship affects those outside the church but involves those inside the church.

And there is also biblical precedent, 1 Corinthians 14, a passage we will look at later in this series, where Paul talks about how unbelievers sometimes come into our worship services, people who may not have faith in God.

They observe the worship of God, Christ being exalted and that in and of itself may bring people to faith in Christ.

Worship involves those inside the church but affects those outside the church.

Worship is personal but also corporate

There is definitely a picture in Scripture of how worship involves everything we do, our thoughts, our actions, our words as day by day we are living in constant worship personally.

At the same time there is also an emphasis in the Old Testament and the New Testament on the church, people of God gathering together for worship.

That is going to be the focus of this series.

Not to exclude personal worship as unimportant but the goal in this series is for us to look at what happens when we gather together for worship.

It is that question that is going to drive us in to the first nonnegotiable of corporate worship which is community.

We are going to see that unfold in Nehemiah 12.

We’re going to start in verse 27.

I want you to get a context before we even start reading this passage.

We are going to read from verse 27 all the way to the end.

I want you to see a picture.

The context is God’s people in Jerusalem.

At one point, 597 to 586 B.C. Jerusalem had been attacked by the Babylonians.

The Babylonians had destroyed the temple of Jerusalem and the walls around the city.

They had taken the people of God into exile.

It is a very dark time in their history.

Then years later they were brought back together.

As soon as they get back together there in Jerusalem, the first thing they do is to rebuild the temple.

That is the book of Ezra.

Then you get to the book of Nehemiah and they are rebuilding the walls.