Joel Snider's Sermons from FBC Rome

November 4, 2007

Loving God in Worship

1 Chronicles 29:10-20

Anyone who can read a calendar knows that Jesus’ earthly ministry, Jesus walking on the earth in flesh, took place about 2,000 years ago. This is the year 2007. We mark time from the time of his birth, so roughly 2,000 years. If you do a little more exploration, you will find that David, about whom we read in the passage of scripture just a moment ago, lived about 1,000 years before Jesus. That means from the time of the scripture, the time when David is praying in the presence of all the people before this place where they are going to build the temple and this place where they have brought all their offerings, from then until now is about 3,000 years.

Some things stay the same. Over 3,000 years, not much change. The Ten Commandments are still the same. Stealing, lying, murdering, not good. Still the same. Even though we don’t use the word covet much anymore, not many people I run into in the streets say, “Pastor, I am having a problem with coveting.” But it’s still the same principle, if you will just substitute the word envy. Envy is a viper that will reach up and bit you with green venom and make you sick unto death. Thou shalt not envy. The Ten Commandments, 3,000 years ago to past the time of Jesus to today, not much change.

But there are some things that are a little different. There are some things that need a little bit of adaptation to understand. I have mentioned this before, but I will mention it again because I think it is important, gender roles and particularly how they relate to things like marriage and divorce in the Bible. There is a little understanding that we need to have. If you have Couple A Husband and Wife and Couple B Husband and Wife, and Husband A has an affair with Wife B, in the Bible that man did not commit adultery against his wife. No. A man could not commit adultery against his wife. The wife had no standing. He committed adultery against Husband B, not against his own wife.

Women could not initiate divorce, so when you read in the New Testament about Jesus’ prohibitions against divorce and what it means for adultery, if you don’t understand some of those factors, and if you don’t make some adjustment for how different it was then, you are going to miss the point of some of what Jesus teaches. It doesn’t mean, “Oh good, adultery is fine.” No, it means that we have a broader, and I think, clearer understanding that yes indeed, Husband A would commit adultery against his wife but it just wasn’t so in Bible times.

Another thing you read in the Bible that sounds exactly what we are talking about today is the word worship. What went on when early Israel worshiped and what we do today is a little different. Now I like what we do, but if you were to place us in a time machine and take us back to the worship of early Israel, we would be a bit surprised and probably come back saying, “I didn’t get much out of that.” That’s one of our standard criticisms of worship we don’t like. If you were to put them in a time machine and bring them forward, they would wonder, “What in the name of God are they doing?” because the basic worship in ancient Israel was a rough altar where people brought their gifts. Someone perhaps who made wine, we don’t have to talk about that here in the Baptist church, they would bring a drink offering. What did they do with it? They poured it out on the stones. They poured it out until it was dry and they were simply offering it on that altar as if God’s presence is there and it is for him.

Let’s say they had some wheat. They would take a sheaf of wheat, they would bring it and set it on the altar, and they would burn it up. They would burn it up until there wasn’t anything left from it.

Under certain circumstances, they might bring a dove or a lamb or some other animal. They would slay it, they would bring it, and they would burn it up. They would burn it up until there wasn’t anything left. That doesn’t seem much like a wonderful choir, beautiful solo, chapel choir doing great, congregation singing beautifully, prayers, I mean it just doesn’t sound much like our worship.

When we worship, we don’t bring anything and burn it up. As a matter of fact, I actually thought about bringing a dollar and burning it, and I was reminded that that is illegal. That’s against the law. Don’t try that at home. If we were to bring our offerings—I know most people bring a check and think, “This really wouldn’t matter,” but let’s just say everybody brought cash. You brought cash, got all the plates together, dumped them into something fire safe, and burned up all the money. What would you think? You would think: (1) we’ve lost our minds, (2) you would be offended, and you would be mortified that we had wasted all that money that way. When we pray for the offering, we always pray what we hope God will do with the offering or make us responsible. “Oh Lord, bless this offering for the furthering of your kingdom. Lord, take this offering and bless it as it feeds the poor and as it ministers to the homeless.” Just imagine if we took what I bring, what you bring, and what everybody brings and put it down here and just burned it up because we said we were making an offering to God. I’m not sure how many people would come back next week.

What I am advocating this morning is not the practice, but what I am advocating is the heart behind it. What they did then as worship and what we do now as worship, not only is different in the actual action, but it is also a little bit different in the heart. When the people in David’s time, Abraham’s time, and Moses’ time brought offerings like this, when they brought it to the altar, and when they burned it up, part of that was recognizing that everything is God’s. The prayer of David expresses this so eloquently. He says, “We can’t bring anything in that’s not already yours. We don’t bring anything that you didn’t already give to us.” I think we forget that. It is a little more obvious if you have a herd of sheep and you come and take one of your sheep out, bring it, slay it, and place it on the altar. It is a little bit easier to recognize that all we have is God’s. “Which of God’s sheep am I going to sacrifice today?” It’s a little bit harder when everything is electronic, money is paper, and certificates are paper. It is a little harder to understand that all of that is God’s. But the true attitude behind giving and burning it up on the altar is this: This is all God’s, and if I take this portion of what is God’s, and if I burn it on the altar so that nobody uses it, so what? It is an indication that it was all God’s in the beginning and this one has been reserved for God. It is a reminder that all of this, all of this, is God’s. Simply as the smoke rises to heaven, it is a pleasing offering aroma to our Maker.

The second thing that is a part of this heart that does this is that there is thanksgiving. If you listened as we were reading the scripture earlier to what David said how much thanksgiving there is in this. That an offering was given not out of duty, not out of obligation, not out of the hope of a tax deduction, but because it’s simply a thankful heart responding to God.

And one other, it is the best way to turn your heart from yourself towards God when you give, when you give so that there is no benefit, nothing to give back, nothing other than just to give. If you have read the meditation text today, it says that worship is essential to faith and sacrifice is essential to worship because we come to worship, and in our culture today, we are so prone to come to worship like everything else and think about what’s in here for me. “Well, I didn’t get anything out of it” or “We’re going to clap for everybody” or whatever. The reason we don’t clap in our church much is because when the choir sings, when the soloist sings, when something else happens, it’s not for us. It is an offering given to God. The choir is giving up a musical offering and we have the great pleasure, we have the great wonder, of being able to stand in their presence while they do it for God. If it’s for God and it’s not in a performance, then it’s not something that we clap for. When we come and simply burn something on the altar, we are reminded that we are turning away from ourselves, that it’s not about us, that whatever it is that I bring that is part of what God has entrusted to me and I put it on the altar and I leave it there, it is an expression of turning away from self and focusing on God which is what worship is supposed to be about.

I’m not ignorant of this. On one side over here, you have this issue of church and money. As a church, we don’t have a shingle on the roof, we don’t have a brick on the wall, and we don’t have a piece of carpet on the floor that someone didn’t give to us. We all know that churches need contributions to function.

But on this other side over here, there is this thing about my heart, your heart, and God. What does it mean for me to give something to God? Is it important in my relationship with God for me to give to God? I have the conviction that if we focus on this, this over here takes care of itself. So how long has it been since we had a sermon on giving bricks and whatever else we do? A long time. A long time. We give because we love God.

A Pentecostal preacher told a wonderful story about when he was a young teenager. His mother sent him across town to the florist to get a bouquet of flowers because she was having dinner for some guests and she wanted live flowers on the table. So at 12, 13, or so, he goes across town, gets the flowers, and is humiliated to have to carry a bouquet of flowers back home. So he decides which side of the street he is going to walk on so that people will see him less. He holds the flowers in certain positions as he passes certain houses or streets thinking, “That’s a bad angle. Maybe they won’t be able to see the flowers.” He is afraid that his friends will see him carrying flowers, call him names, and think he is a sissy for all that. He is only doing it out of duty to his mother.

Then a couple of years later, he falls in love and he remembers where the florist is. He goes to the florist and he buys a big bouquet of flowers. He takes it home, and in preparation for his date, he is carrying it where everybody can see it. What’s the difference? One was duty for his mother, and the other was his love and he didn’t care who asked him. He hoped people would ask him because he wanted people to see how much he loved her.

See, when we give out of duty, that always falls flat, but when we give out of love and recognize what God has done for us, and recognize that if we are ever truly going to worship, it is going to have to involve giving something of who we are to God simply in an act that has nothing to do with what we get back. When we do that, we can say that we have indeed, truly, worshiped.

Whether we are talking about worship today or worship back then, the focus should always be God. The acts that we do might be slightly different but I believe we have put a little bit too much of ourselves in this. It’s a little bit too much about what I want and what I think everybody else ought to do and not quite enough. What is it that we are all doing together in each other’s presence that we offer to God because of what God has already done for us in Jesus Christ and because whatever it is that I call my own it is truly God’s, every ounce, every penny. Before I gave it, it was God’s and all I do is return it back. Out of this abiding affection, that when we think of Calvary and recognize that when God so loved the world, what? He gave his only son.

The only response to love is to give. Our invitation to you in this season over the next three weeks is to consider whether or not or how much or how you would like to show that you love God. That’s worth pondering.

Copyright 2007. P. Joel Snider. All rights reserved.

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