Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

We’ve been in a series going through the book of Nehemiah and we’ve been looking at how Nehemiah’s burden for something drove him to do something.

We’ve paralleled this series with our life.

We’ve talked about how to accomplish the change in our life we want to accomplish.

How we can rebuild, restore, and renew different areas of our life.

Today we’re in chapter 12 and I’m not going to read the whole thing, because there’s a bunch of hard names, and I’m from Kentucky.

I had a hard time with my name until the 3rd grade so I won’t do very well with a bunch of Hebrew names.

While I was studying this over the last week, I literally called one of the guys Shamu and I’m like 80% sure that’s not right.

So I’m not going to embarrass myself in front of all you lovely people and try to read em all.

What I want to do is focus in on one verse that stood out to me.

Have you ever wondered why we worship?

Have you ever wondered if worship really has any benefit to life or is it just singing some catchy tunes that you may or may not like lead by a really good looking worship pastor?

Is there anything worship does other than pleasing God? Yeah, I get it, I’m supposed to worship because God’s worthy and because it pleases Him to hear us worship Him, but is that all there is to it?

I’m just going to be honest with you…I have.

But what I’ve found is, if that’s all there is to worship, it makes our worship circumstantial.

If worship does nothing for us, the level of our worship would be based on what our current situation or circumstance calls for.

If things are going well, I’m all in!

Let’s do it!

(oh yeah, happy day! love this song)

But if things aren’t really going well, if you’re in the middle of one of life’s challenges…It’s a different story.

“Man, I don’t wanna sing happy day ‘cause I ain’t happy.

Sand gnats are out, my dog peed in the floor today, I’m crazy hungry, and I’ve got to go to stinkin’ wal-mart after this.

There’s nothing happy about wal-mart.

I ain’t singing ‘Happy Day’.”

Every one of those are actual reasons I’ve given for not wanting to worship before.

Look at the reason why they started worshipping.

Look at what verse 24 says.

“They gave praise and thanks...as David the man of God had prescribed.”

That tells us that worship has to have personal benefit to it.

The reason you take a prescription the doctor give you is to help you get rid of sickness or maintain health.

It’s an essential part of health.

Often times it’s the only thing that helps.

I believe, what this verse is telling us is that worship is absolutely essential when it comes to joy in our life and victory over our challenges.

I believe this verse is telling us that:

If we don’t let our circumstances impact our worship, our worship will impact our circumstances.

What I’m not going to do today is be the doctor that just tells you to take a prescription and not tell you why or how it’s going to help.

Have you ever had a doctor do that?

What happens?

You leave there hearing that it may help but not really believing you need to take it, so you don’t.

I want to be the pharmacist who tells you what the prescription is, how it’s helping.

Here’s what it’s doing for you and here’s what you’ll see happen when you do.

Because I truly believe, as prescribed by David, worship is not only pleasing to God, but can dramatically impact whatever season of life or circumstance you find yourself in now and is absolutely crucial when it comes to maintaining joy, peace, and freedom in our life.

What is worship?

Have you ever been misunderstood?

I enjoy speaking other languages.

I’m not good at it.

Some of you remember me telling you about in France I tried asking for the check in French.

Only to start the sentence in perfect French and end it in perfect Spanish.

As I was learning to speak Spanish, I think we had just back from Miami or something and I was trying to impress my wife so I wanted to tell her I wanted to go to Five Guys and get a bacon cheeseburger, all in Spanish with no pause between words and a perfect accent.

That was way to many words for that to happen so I figured I could just tell her I wanted Five Guys.

So I told her, “Quiero cinco hombres.”

Then she just kinda looked at me and said, what’d you just say?

So I told her again thinking she didn’t hear, “quiero cinco hombres”.

So she just stared at me for a minute so I said it one more time, with a lot less confidence and a little slower.

She told me, “I don’t think you’re saying what your trying to say.”

So I asked, “Well, what am I saying?”

She told me, “You just told me that you wanted five men.” “Yeah, no.

That’s not what I meant.

I just want a cheeseburger from Five Guys.

How do you say that?” “…Five Guys.”

Cinco hombres does not translate to Five Guys.

Five Guys does not translate to Spanish very well.

I believe the same kind of thing has happened with the word worship.

Look at what Jesus says in .

John 4:

The word Jesus used for worship here, proskyneo, has not translated very well.

When we think about worship, we think the songs that we sing, or maybe you’ve heard before that worship isn’t a song, it’s a lifestyle.

But, do you know what that word means?

It literally translates, to prostrate oneself.

That’s to lay down before.

That’s the most common usage of the word worship in the New Testament.

As a matter of fact, during my study this week, I found that the word rarely has anything to do with any type of vocal exercise.

The use of the word worship in the Old Testament and New Testament typically means to: kneel before, bow down, to serve, to kneel down.

To kneel before a king in the Old Testament was a symbol of surrender and trust because you would be exposing your neck to the king.

If the king wasn’t happy with you, they could say “off with your head.”

So kneeling before a king is literally saying, I surrender and trust you with my future.

I trust that what you have in store for me is good and not to bring me harm.

So this word proskyneo, is not a song that we sing, it’s referring to the posture of our heart.

The worship that God wants is a heart that is surrendered to Him and a spirit that trusts Him with it’s future.

Jesus is telling us here that true worship in the posture of your heart.

A heart of surrender and trust.

I love that Jesus says, “true worship”.

The songs that we sing on Sunday mean and do nothing more than provide an emotional experience if we haven’t surrendered our heart to God.

How can we sing and declare things like “oh my God, He will not delay.

My refuge and strength always.

I will not fear, His promise is true.

My God will come through always.”

How can we sing that on Sunday and it have impact if we don’t live that Monday through Saturday.

It doesn’t mean we don’t make mistakes.

What this means is that we truly trust God with our future and our hearts are surrendered to Him and His will because of who He is.

This doesn’t mean we do everything perfectly.

But if we can passionately pursue getting this right in our lives, it’s a game changer for every circumstance and challenge we face in our lives.

Think about it.

If God is bigger than all of our problems and if God’s will is perfect and if we believe that God is leading us to a place of victory, why would we let our circumstances impact our surrender to His plan.

We are literally letting our circumstances lead us away from the only thing that is more powerful than our circumstances.

Surrendering to God’s plan and will, worship, is giving me the next step I need to take to transform my current difficult situation.

If you’re anything like me, you have a tendency to need God’s help but not listen to His direction.

We want God to fix the situation but not do what He’s telling us to do to bring change to the situation.

True worship, according to Jesus, has a posture of surrender and trust and that radically transforms what we’re facing.

Praise