Let Us Worship And Bow Down - Jon Haley

While I am still mapping out where to go and how I want to approach this, it is important that we begin at the very foundation of what worship is supposed to be for the life of a Christian.

To help us define worship I plan on starting this series with a few sermons that will touch on what worship is and why we worship.

Worship Reality Check

Before we dive in, I want us all to take a moment and do a reality check of our own worship in our walk with God.

It is important to be honest with ourselves in this because we really need to be intentional in worship.

Reality checks are important because they help us to stay focused.

I will give an example.

Recently, Nate Lewis beat me in a weight loss competition.

While I am a gracious loser, we immediately decided that we had to have another competition so I can get a second chance at beating him.

So now I have a routine to help me stay better on track.

Every morning I get on the scale and read those numbers that don’t lie. That moment is my reality check.

My morning weigh-in lets me know if I did the right thing the day before and it spurs me on to make better choices the rest of the day.

And so lets do a worship reality check - So get a piece of paper and a pen or use your phone and get ready to write or type this out.

I want you to think for a minute about how you worship God in your life.

The two questions that I want you to answer are as follows.

How do you worship God in your own life?

How much time do you devote to this?

(I pray and read my Bible nearly every day for about 20 minutes to an hour. I sing in church and sometimes I sing at home when I have time or think to do so. )

Now don’t worry, we are not going to share this or start a contest except for maybe Nate and myself.

There is no right or wrong answer here. This is just being honest with ourselves.

So we are all going to do this for just a moment.

(wait a couple minutes)

Okay - now that you have done that, I want you to tuck that away safely.

The point of this exercise is not to make you feel guilty.

You will never hit a final mark when it comes to worshiping God because God’s glory and worth is beyond measure. There is no end.

This is why we are going to have an eternity to make up for lost time.

The point of this exercise is to make sure that we are really being intentional in our worship life, because as we learn about worship we are going to see why this is really the most important thing that we do.

It is our highest calling.

So save that note because I want you to go back and revisit it and continue to be honest with yourself.

Do a reality check every few days. Keep it on the forefront of your mind.

What is worship?

So what is worship? Let me first give a brief definition of worship.

Worship is our awed response and expressed reverence and adoration to God.

There are many Bible dictionaries with slightly different ways of defining it, but they all basically define worship in these terms.

Worship is our awed response and expressed reverence and adoration to God.

But that definition is not complete. I like how the Evangelical Bible Dictionary puts it:

Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology Worship > W

One may always consult Webster’s Dictionary for the precise meaning of worship (adore, idolize, esteem worthy, reverence, homage, etc.). Yet truly defining worship proves more difficult because it is both an attitude and an act.

And so to really define worship we are dealing with the attitude and posture of our heart in addition to our acts of singing, raising our hands, or dancing.

It is something that we do that expresses inner emotions and thought.

I chose today’s text because I think it so perfectly embodies what worship is really about.

Psalm 95:6–7 (ESV)

Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.

I want to look deeper at this passage and use 3 statements as our guide.

We worship because we are invited to worship.

We worship because the LORD is our God.

We worship because we are His people.

We Worship Because We Are Invited

The psalmist says “Oh Come, let us worship and bow down”.

This call to come is not merely saying, come here.

It is much stronger that that.

One Commentator I read wrote this:

Psalms, Volume 3 Psalm 95

The word here rendered “come” is not the same which is used in ver. 1. Its literal meaning is come, and it is an earnest exhortation to come and worship. It is not a particle merely calling attention to a subject, but it is an exhortation to approach—to enter—to engage in a thing.

We are invited to come and engage in and enter into worship and bowing down.

Now for a moment, think back to your answer on how you worship God.

Did any of you write bow down?

If you did that is great! But I did not.

I put down things like pray, sing, and spend time in God’s word.

When I first thought about this and was honest with myself, my definition of worship was a list of what to do and the physical act, but the spirit of worship or my posture was void in my definition.

And I believe that we, to our detriment, often view worship as just an act.

We come to the church and we sing songs or listen to a sermon.

We go to prayer meetings and pray.

And when we view worship as just an action we lose sight of the state or our heart and the reason for our awed response and adoration.

We often treat worship in church and our own life as a minor thing because we often forget we can only worship by the power and invitation of God.

When we begin to understand that we are allowed and made able to worship God, we will see that our hearts begin to become humbled.

We will approach our worship to God with more reverence and sincerity the more we grow in the realization we can worship only because we are called and invited by God.

The deeper and more real our realization of this is, the more we will have a hearts that bow.

Now something interesting to note here in the Psalm.

We are called to worship and bow down, and to kneel before the Lord our maker.

These three actions - all point to the same thing.

When we look to the very definition of the word worship, used in the Bible we are pointed toward not just an action but a state of the heart.

The definition of the word for worship in the Hebrew is as follows.

Lexham Theological Wordbook חָוָה

חָוָה (ḥāwâ). vb. to bow down, worship. Refers to bowing down in an act of worship, reverence, or respect.

And if you look to the Greek in the NT it is the same.

Lexham Theological Wordbook προσκυνέω

προσκυνέω (proskyneō). vb. to bow down, worship. To bow down before a human as a sign of respect or before a divine figure as an act of worship.

This is so significant and important for us to remember because in the Bible you can’t separate worship from bowing.

At the very core of the definition of worship and all actions of worship is to bow down.

But of course, you can’t kneel down and dance at the same time.

And so when you see the word worship in the Bible it is more about the state of someone’s heart rather than the act of their expression of worship.

Their hearts are bowed. They are prostrate before God.

When you do a search in the Bible for the word worship you will be surprised at how often it is so closely related to bowing.

Genesis 24:26 ESV

26 The man bowed his head and worshiped the Lord

Exodus 34:8 ESV

8 And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped.

And we know this is idea of bowing is so important because it is exactly what Satan wanted Jesus to do when he was tempting Him in the desert.

Matthew 4:9 ESV

9 And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”

To which Jesus replies

Matthew 4:10 ESV

10 Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “ ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’ ”

And we know that the end result of all mankind is to bow down in worship to God.

Isaiah 45:23 ESV

23 By myself I have sworn; from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return: ‘To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance.’

And so when we walk through those doors and sing together as a corporate body, the most important aspect of our worship begins in the heart.

We are not coming to just a worship service. It is a bowing service. It is a fall-prostrate-and-adore God service.

We are to approach God humbly and be bowing down in our hearts because we are first invited to do so.

In addition we are to do so because we are worshiping the one true God.

We Worship Because He Is Our God

Psalm 95:6–7 (ESV)

Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.

This brings us to our second statement. We worship and bow low because he is our God.

It almost goes without saying that we worship the LORD because He is the LORD.

He is our Maker - He is our God!

Because He is God and our maker and the creator of all things, He is due worship.

Psalm 65:1 ESV

1 Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion, and to you shall vows be performed.

Psalm 29:2 ESV

2 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.

A great passage that ties God as the creator together with worship is in Nehemiah.

Nehemiah 9:6 ESV

6 “You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you.

I believe that our worship life struggles because we have a tendency to not think about God’s Lordship and our humanness enough.

The Lord is due praise, because He is God. He is the creator of all things.

Without Him we would not exist, period.

Without Him, you would not have your children and spouses and food or air to breathe.

God is in control of all things and we worship Him because He alone is Holy and worthy of our worship.

This is so key and central in our life that the Lord made it very clear in the first two commandments.

Exodus 20:2–5 (ESV)

2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God.....”

Any worship that we direct elsewhere other than to God is considered idol worship.

And you noticed in verse 5 that the LORD makes a point of saying, you shall not bow down to idols.

Only God deserves our bowing down because only he is the living God.

Humans make idols out of wood and clay and stone and even ideologies, and wealth.

Humans seek other things to worship because of the Fall.

Since the fall of Adam and Eve humans have been trying to replace God with other gods.

This is the twisted default of a human heart.

We humans make idols and worship something because our hearts are wired to worship and we can only worship God when he takes our hearts of stone and pride and turns the into a heart of flesh that is humble.

When the Lord invites us into his presence and opens our eyes we begin to focus on the LORD and see Him as God and creator.

We begin to see His glory and holy worth.

Our hearts will not bow down if we do not think about Him in this way as we should.

I dare say that, in our culture, we tend to think of God as our buddy or our equal.

We hear songs that say we are a child of God and that we are his friends but they do not often convey His Lordship and His Glory.

When anyone in the Bible encountered the power of God they fell down and worshipped!

While he is our friend and our Father, He is God first and foremost.

We bow in worship because He is God.

We Worship Because We Are His People

But not only is He God which is reason enough for us to worship Him but He is our God and we are His people.

Psalm 95:6–7 (ESV)

6 Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! 7 For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.

If our awed and reverential worship to God is the result of seeing Him as God then we will surely worship with joy and thanksgiving at the fact that we are the people of His Pasture and the Sheep of His hand.

The Bible often uses this imagery of God being our shepherd and us as His sheep.

Believe me, this is not really meant to be a compliment to us.

It is meant to show us that we are helpless and completely dependent upon God.

To help paint the picture here are a couple quotes from an article I read online about sheep.

“without other sheep as company, they will often walk in circles, going nowhere and not eating, until they die.”

https://www.christiantoday.com.au/news/sheep-are-pretty-dumb.html

"The next day, I found a big lamb, almost ready for sale, dead under a log in the paddock. It had pushed into a stack of timber to reach some morsel of food, found it was stuck but instead of backing out, it kept pushing forward and died there”

https://www.christiantoday.com.au/news/sheep-are-pretty-dumb.html

Here is a another quote from a news story I read in another article online:

“Hundreds of sheep followed their leader off a cliff in eastern Turkey, plunging to their deaths this week while shepherds looked on in dismay. Four hundred sheep fell 15 metres to their deaths in a ravine in Van province near Iran but broke the fall of another 1,100 animals who survived. Shepherds from a nearby village neglected the flock while eating breakfast, leaving the sheep to roam free.”

https://www.challies.com/christian-living/dumb-directionless-defenseless/

Sheep have no defenses, they are prone to wonder, and if they are threatened they basically try to huddle together and run in circles just hoping that the bear or wolf eats someone else.

Even if left in the most ideal circumstances with a green pasture and water, sheep will wander off.

So being portrayed as sheep is not really a stroke to our ego is it?

This paints a whole new picture of us and our need for God does it not?

We are not called sheep because we are cute and cuddly but because we stupid, dumb, and defenseless if we are left to our own selves.

But God is our shepherd who protects us and leads us to the most ideal pastures of His presence.

This puts the famous Psalm 23 into a more meaningful light does it not?

This imagery of shepherd and sheep is not meant to only portray God as some sort of guide through this life that helps us get by.

It is also meant to show ownership and belonging.

We are His sheep not because we need, him but because He loves us and chose us.

Despite our prone-to-wander stupidity and self-inflicting mistakes, He is always there leading the way and protecting us.

Jesus gives us one of the most precious promises in John

John 10:27–30 ESV

27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”

We are sheep who belong to the greatest most powerful, and most loving shepherd who gives us eternal life.

Our God gives life and himself to us even though we are stupid, dumb, wandering, and helpless animals.

He does this because He loves us.

For God so loved the world that he gave us a shepherd who laid his life down for us.

We worship God not only because He is God but also because He has made us His own people.

He has adopted us as Sons and Daughters.

He has saved us.

How can we not help but worship? How could we do anything other than bow down?

Conclusion

I challenge us all to go home today and take the little note that you made about your worship life and ponder it.

Think about God in the light of our text today.

Ponder the invitation to worship.

Ponder the Lordship of God

Ponder how he has made you yours.

It can only cause our hearts to bow in worship.

The first line from A.W. Tozer’ famous book “The Knowledge of the Holy” goes like this.

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”

Why do you think that is?

A couple pages later in the same chapter of this book Tozer says this....

“A right conception of God is basic not only to systematic theology but to practical Christian living as well. It is to worship what the foundation is to the temple; where it is inadequate or out of plumb the whole structure must sooner or later collapse. ”

What we think about God is the most important thing about us because those thought direct our worship and worship is the most important thing we do in our life.

But our worship life collapses when we don’t rightly think about who God really is and our relationship to Him.

Our worship must be guided by right and accurate thoughts of God because if we view God wrongly we are not really worshiping Him.

We are worshiping some idea that we have conjured up.

He alone is holy is worthy to be praised and to be lifted up as we bow down in worship.

May we never try to bring God down to our level and picture him as our equal.

He is God and we are the sheep of His pasture and that is the greatest and highest honor that we as humans can ever hope to have.