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Jan 21, 2024

My Understanding Of Worship

My Understanding Of Worship

Passage: 2 Samuel 6:1-10

Speaker: Matt Petty

Series: Rethink Your Life

Category: Sunday Sermons

Keywords: church, worship, faith, jesus, god, praise, sermon, christian, bible, christ, gospel, hope, preaching, sermons, holy spirit, inspiration, spiritual, jesus christ, christianity, holy, worthy, bible study, the gospel, holy god, praise and worship, what is worship, worthiness, study the bible, worshipping god, bible teaching, spiritual awakening, 2023, burnt hickory worship, burnt hickory baptist church live stream, what is worship sermon, how to worship god

As Christians, we see that worship is the only logical response of a life that realizes what Jesus has done, is doing, and will do in eternity. Worship is so much more than just a song that we sing, it’s putting God’s worthiness on display, and we live this out in so many ways throughout our lives. We learn from scripture that there is danger in flippantly approaching and worshipping the Holy God, and yet His intention was and still is to bless us with His presence. We will never worship God with all our heart if our concern for what others think is stronger than our concern for what God thinks. What are you worshipping through your life? What does your worship tell others about the value you place on God? Are you aware of what Jesus has done and is doing in your life? If you’ve got questions, we’d love to connect with you, take time to answer and pray with you – so reach out today. As always, you can take the next step in your faith journey by visiting burnthickory.com/next.

I just wanted to call it to our attention today that today across all of our nation is what we just call Sanctity of Life Day. It's a day where churches all across our nation gather together to pray and to lift up and to really and truly show that we are behind and that we support life from the womb to the tomb. We support those that are making really, really hard decisions in their world. And we today want to, as a church, just come together and pray that God would just miraculously give people a peace about the fact that there is a life inside of their womb. So would you do me a favor today and would you just join me in praying today for so many just really hard situations? Lord Jesus, Today we lift up moms and we lift up families all across our nation that are even right now Lord Jesus trying to make a decision of what to do with a pregnancy. Lord, we come to you and we recognize in thankfulness that we have life that you gave us life. That you created us, that we are fearfully and wonderfully known from our mother's womb. And Lord Jesus today we pray that God so many people are in a situation right now, would have a peace about knowing that there is a life inside of them and God, would you give them the courage to stand, the courage to continue this pregnancy on and God, even the courage if need be, to allow someone else to raise that sweet baby. Lord, we love you today. We stand with you today, Lord Jesus with life. And we lift up all of these situations in your name. Amen. Amen.

It's such an honor to know that this is a church that supports life from womb to the tomb and anywhere in between. Well, hey, welcome back to a series that we named three weeks ago, the beginning of this new year that we just named it Rethink My Life. Rethink My Life. And what we're doing in the series is we're going through this idea that so goes our thoughts, so goes our lives. And we know this to be true. Why? Because our thoughts drive our attention. Our attention drives our direction and our direction drives the habits and the purposes in our lives. And what you said from the beginning of this whole series is it is the things that we put our minds to that make the most difference in us. And we said that for a couple of weeks, starting off this year, we're going to take some big chunks of some major key areas of our lives and we're going to look at those specifically. We started week one with the idea of asking ourselves to rethink our relationship with Jesus. And we said from that whole first week out of Ephesians chapter two, the question was, Do I know Jesus? Do I have a relationship with him? Has he forgiven me? Has he given me love, forgiven me of my sins and set me on a track to be with him in eternity? And we said that we're not looking at this series through some deconstructionist mindset, but we're just asking ourselves, quite honestly, do I know that I know that I have a relationship with Jesus? That was week one. Last week we moved on to another topic and last week I asked you to rethink your relationship with the Word of God with the Bible, and we answered the question last week, How do I know that the Bible is true? How do I know that it's true? It's not true because my mom told me it is. It's not true because some church tells me it is. It's not true because I tried it and it worked. We looked last week at the Book of Second Peter, chapter one, and the Apostle Peter told us that there is proof in the truthfulness of Scripture. And that Scripture is true because it was written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of eyewitnesses. It was a reliable collection of historical documents that proved historically what it says. It is written by God and not man. It explains specific prophecies and fulfills them. And if all of that is not enough, Jesus said, it is. This whole week I've been praying for you guys and just really asking the Lord to solidify your relationship with the Word. Why? Because other than your salvation, your relationship with the Word of God is the single most thing that can shape you. It's the single most important thing. So I hope this week you have spent some time on that.

This week we're going to move to another one of the really, really big things in our lives. And this week I'm just going to ask you to rethink your understanding of worship, your understanding of worship. Now, now, let me just say this, because I know that as soon as I say the word worship, there's like a huge elephant in the room. Why? Because I already know some of you are flustered. For some reason. Throughout the years, the idea of public worship has been one of the most hotly debated issues ever. This is probably one of the biggest emails that I get from time to time. Why? Because everybody has an opinion about worship and everybody loves to share it. All right? It's just kind of how it goes. It's kind of like college football and worship. They go right there together. Right. I know that some of you, you came to this church because of the worship, some of you know people who are no longer at this church because of worship and this guy right here. But I get that right. I know that that's where it is. Okay. I know that worship is huge, so much so that it shapes a lot of what a church does. So let me say this before we jump into the text. Burnt Hickory, We absolutely value worship. We are committed to leading people in worship, so much so that we have two very distinct styles of worship that happen simultaneously every single week. And do you know what a pain that really is to be able to do that? It is a big deal, but we know that a lot of people's heart language of worship is different and we're okay with that. We realize that we know that everybody's expressiveness is different. Everybody's style of music is different. I mean, if we went to the parking lot right now and turned everybody's radio on right now and heard your playlist, none of us would agree, right? Absolutely. And we know that's how it is in worship as well.

So we're so committed, we want people to wherever your heart language is, to be able to worship fully, to be able to worship with everything you have. And we want this to be a place that anybody can come, no matter if you're four or no matter if you're 98, you can come and lift up King Jesus in a meaningful way that not only connects with your heart, but also resonates with what the Apostle Paul said in first Corinthians when he said that our worship services should be so on point that when an unbeliever comes into the service, even they would be able to experience the power and the presence and the love and the majesty of God because of what is being shown by the believers that are in the room. And when they look at those believers and say, surely God is present. So listen, we're talking about public worship today, All right? Now I get that there is a part of private worship that you should be having every day in the world in your time when you're praying and lifting up the king. But we're going to talk about our public worship today, and we're going to do it through the second. Samuel, Chapter six, one of, if not possibly the greatest and the most awkward worship moments of all times of all time today. So if you got a copy of Scripture, I want you to join me in the book of Second Samuel. Today is towards the front of your Bible. Second Samuel comes right after, you guessed it, First Samuel. It's right after First Samuel That's what we're going to launch out of today. And here's what we're going to do. Just like almost every week, I'm just going to walk through the text, teach through the moment in Scripture, and then along the way, I'm going to pause at a couple of places and I'm just going to point out seven kind of worship walk away principles that I'm just going to ask you to rethink this week. I'm just going to ask you to ask God, where do I stand this week? All right. Second Samuel chapter six, starting in verse one. Here we go. We've got some work to do today. It says this. Now that's King David. We're talking about David again, bringing together all the abled young men of Israel, 30,000. Now, you think about this event. This is not for God sneaking off in the darkness. This is 30,000 able bodied young men, right? He and all his men went to Baalah in Judah to bring up from there the ark of God. Okay, so what is happening here? David King. David. He goes after the ark. He goes to find the Ark. Now. And this. And this is not Noah's Ark. If you're new to Christianity, those are two different things, right? That's two big, different things. Yes, it would take 30,000 people to move that, but that is not what we're talking about. We are talking about the Ark of the Covenant.

The Ark in the Old Testament represented the presence of God. It represented the power of God. It was God's central presence on this earth prior to Jesus walking on the Earth. It was a gold box, if you remember right, from Raiders of the Lost Ark, Right? It was a gold box. It looks a lot like that, actually. For those of you that remember the movie, it was a gold box and it had on top of it this cherubim that represented the throne of God. And inside of it it had three things. It had the jar of manna that represented the provision of God. It had the stone tablets, the Ten Commandments that Moses had that represented the Law of God, and it had Aaron staff that budded one day out of nowhere that showed the power of God. So you've got this gold box that is the representation of God. It is the glory of God on this earth. It had a flat top on top of it. And on the top of this flat top would be called the mercy seat. And once a year, that is where the high priests would go into the temple to sacrifice for the sins of all mankind. So when you see the box, when you're seeing the Ark of God, it is God's presence. It's the reality of that is where sins were forgiven. That is what was pointing to who Jesus is. And the next thing you got to think about when reading this is if that was such a big deal and David is going down to retrieve this thing called the Ark, where is it? And if it's such a big deal, why did they lose it? Right. You got to ask questions about scripture. I mean, it is the presence of God and you lose it. That's a deal. All right. Now, that's a whole other sermon for a whole nother day, because I think sometimes we can kind of fall into that. But how in the world did they lose it? Well, I'm glad you asked, because I wanted to tell you this. All right. This is the reason I'm going to tell you this.

This is a great story. If you go back to First Samuel in chapter five or six, you have to go there. You can read it later. You will see that Israel lost the ark in a battle against these people called the Philistines. Now, Israel, at the time when they lost the ark, they were not walking with God. They didn't care anything about God. They were not worshiping God. They were not singing that they were not doing anything about God, but they knew they had this big battle that was coming up. And so instead of them just trying to go out to fight, they thought, Hey, let's get everything lucky that we ever know and let's take it out into this fight and hopefully one of them will matter. In other words, they looked at God as just some lucky rabbit's foot. Have you ever done that before? Where no part of your life is really representative. But when you need Him, you just kind of call Him at that moment. Well, that's what they did. Well, good news, bad news is that it didn't work. Israel not only lost the battle that day. Why? Because you can't manipulate God. You can't force God into things. He's God, right? They not only lost the battle that day, but they lost the ark that day. They lost the ark to the Philistines and the Philistines took the Ark of God from them in the battle. Well, the Philistines. What do you do with the Ark? You take it back to your own little pagan God temple. Why? Because that's where you put all of the little godly things if you're a pagan into the temple. So what did they do? They took the Golden Ark back to the temple of this guy named Dagon. Dagon, I'm telling you, it's in the Bible. It sounds like Lord of the Rings, but it's in the Bible, right? They took it back to their pagan temple, the little god Dagon And they brought the ark into their temple that night. They thought, victory speech, here we go. We won. Good news. We captured all of their stuff. Well, they went to bed that night, and all of a sudden deer in the night, the whole city gets overrun by rats. Gets overrun by rats. They woke up the next morning and everybody had these tumors all over their body. They woke up that next morning and they went to the temple of Dagon and the statue of Dagon, their little god, I might add, had fallen on its face, face down in the temple. Well, they thought. Well, that's a strange coincidence, right? What do we need to do?

Well, I know what you do. You stand that statue back up and we'll go about our business and maybe find something to cure the tumors. Right The next night, guess what happens? Oddly enough, the statue falls over again. The second night, the statue falls over though, his head pops off and his hands pop off. That's God saying, okay, you mess with me. Watch this. Well this got them thinking, Hey, we don't want this thing. We don't want this ark thing. Because not only is it getting rats everywhere, giving everybody these cancerous tumors on them, now our statues are all broken and how can we worship? So what did they do? They send it to another Philistine city. Because that's what you do when you really don't like your neighbors, right? They send it over to their city. Their city does the same thing. They take the ark, they put it into their temple. And guess what, strangely enough, happens in their city? The same thing. This happens in multiple cities where the Philistines are passing this ark back and forth between the cities until finally they decide, We don't want this thing any longer. Get this thing back to the Israelites, get this thing back to God's people, It's killing us. So what do they do? They come up with a plan. They build this cart, they come up with a couple of big oxen, right? These are a couple of animals. And they put the ark on the new cart. They also just for kicks and to try to kind of get God off their back. They send out these statues, these golden statues of rats that they had made and tumors that they had made. You got to love the Bible right, to hopefully get rid of this curse that was on them. Well, they get the cart started and the and the and the oxen that were pulling the cart automatically start walking back towards Israel. Towards Israel.

They walk so far, they cross over into Israel and all of a sudden, this guy named shemesh, this Hebrew guy sees the ark of God being pulled on a cart. And he thinks what everybody thinks when you see something that nobody's around, finders keepers, right? Finders keepers. What does he do? He goes out, he gets the art of God. I'm not making any of this up. You can fact check me later. He goes out, he gets the ark off of the cart. He puts it into his house. He has a party at his house one night. Evidently things got a little bit out of control and his family decided they wanted to look inside the ark. And guess what happens to them? Ever seen Raiders of the Lost Ark? Their faces melt off. I'm just kidding, that didn't happen. All right, That didn't happen. That didn't happen. But what did happen is they all died. They all died because of their irreverent act. They died right there. So shemesh decides man, these things not staying in my house. Get it out here. He calls some priest from the town next to them to come get this thing out of my house. So the priests come and they take it to a man named Abinadab's house and Abinadad puts it into a spare room in the back of his house. And I'm not really sure this is just me reading into it, but I think he put a sign on the door that says, Don't touch, right. Don't touch. Leave it alone. Probably didn't do that. But you know what I'm saying?

So for 20 years, God's presence is shoved in the back corner of a house of a man named Abinadab. Man, this is not in your notes. It has nothing to do with the sermon today. But let me ask you something. Does that represent a large portion of your life? Where God's presence, you know, it was around, but you've shoved it and shoved, shoved it and shoved it to where now it's just forgotten. It stays there for 20 years. All that was First Samuel five and First Samuel six, and you read it later. So now, Second Samuel chapter six. David says, Hey, we got to bring God's presence back to God's people. Look at verse three. It took a long time to get verse three. Amen. Here it is. It says, they set the ark of God on a new cart. This is David. He's going to get it from Abinadab's house, right? And brought it from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill, Uzzah and Ahio the sons of Abinadab were guiding the new cart with the ark of God on it and Ahio was walking in front of it. And David and all Israel were celebrating with all their might before the Lord with castanets and harps, and lyres and timbrels and sistrums and cymbals and fog and lights and smoke and guitars and all of that stuff was going on. Right. What were they doing? They were getting into the moment. They were worshiping. They were praising God because the presence of God was coming back to where it belonged. Verse six When they came in to the threshing floor of Narcon, Ussah reached out and took hold of the Ark of God because the oxen stumbled. Why? Why do you do it? He didn't want it to fall right? Look at verse seven The Lord's anger burned against Uzzah because of this irreverent act. The Hebrew here just points towards him having just a casual view. Hey, just hold that thing up, or just going to do what I want to do. Watch this, the Lord's anger burns against Uzzah because of this irreverent act. Therefore, God struck him down and he died there before or beside the ark.

Now watch the next verse. Then David was angry because the Lord's wrath had broken out against Uzzah. Now I said this last week, but I love how honest the Bible is. It tells us that David was offended here by God. David was like, Wait a minute, God, he was doing you a solid. I mean, what gives right here? That's crazy. Now he's dead. Come on. This hit me probably stronger last week than it ever has hit me. Probably because of teaching the Bible last week a little bit. But you do realize that we're not the first generation that has ever been offended by the Bible, right? We're not the first generation that has risen to this level of knowledge to where we feel like we're ahead of the Bible. Even the writers of the Bible were sometimes offended by the Bible. Why? Because we are sinful men. We are a finite man. Our limited 90 ish years at best on this earth, has nowhere to even be held close to who God is and how holy God is and how big God is, and how He wants to love us. No, the writers of Scripture even got offended sometimes and how to just go, Hey God, I don't really understand this. I don't really know all of this, but God, all I can do is put my yes on the table and one day it'll be clear. Look at the next verse, what happens?

Verse nine says, David was afraid he's now gone from angry to afraid if he noticed of the Lord that day. And he said, How can the Ark of the Lord ever come to me? He was not willing to take the Ark of the Lord to be with Him in the city of David. Instead, he took it to the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite. Now I know that means nothing to us, but here's what that really means. That means that David got so scared. He got so kind of out of wonk in his theology that he sent the presence of God to a pagan man who wasn't even Jewish. He wasn't a Hebrew, he was a philistine, and he sent it over to his house. Now, I know that seems like a really weird place to stop the story, but I want to point out that old Uzzah's life has just shown us right here that I think it's important for us. In fact, right this principle down, there's a danger in flippantly approaching and worshiping a holy God. There's a danger in flippantly approaching and worshiping a holy God. We saw it, first of all, with Israel losing the ark even to begin with. And then we see it right here with Uzzah on the cart. I mean, let's talk about old Uzzah just for a minute. What was he supposed to do? Was he just supposed to let the ark fall in the ground? I mean, it looks like he was doing the right thing. Right? But God punished him. Well, it looks like that from the outside looking in. But if you know your Old Testament history, and if you know your ark history, you know that God had set this thing apart, as sacred. Had set it apart as his presence and you did not touch it. God had specific instructions of how to be in his presence, how to be in the ark's presence. In fact, if you go back to Exodus 25, it even shows that sit on the outside of this gold box, there were these rings that they would have put these long wooden poles through, that the Levites specifically would have taken these poles and put them on their shoulders and walked with the ark without touching the ark and had a cover that was to be put over it just in case you were to touch it.

All of this was described in Exodus 25, but the Israelites went down to get the Ark and they just ignored all of the biblical commands, and they moved the Ark in the way that the Pagan Philistines had taught them how to do it. That is, it was just easier. It's just a shorter view. It's just way not. I mean, why not just do that? It's way easier to do it. Here's the point. We don't get to decide how we come into God's presence. God decides that. We don't get to decide that we don't get to decide how to worship God. God does it. Why? Because he is holy and we're not. He is all knowing and we're not. He is God and we're not. And our role is to follow him, to hold high his presence, and to invite his presence into our life through the lens that our sin has been covered by King Jesus. That is our role, not to flippantly approach him like he's a lucky rabbit's foot or when we want to, or only when we need him, or here in there, or we have nothing better to do. That's what Uzzah has just taught us. So this kind of freaks David out a little bit. And what does he do? He sends the ark away, right? He thinks the ark is a big problem until God finally shows David the Listen, God's presence is a blessing in your life. In fact, look at verse 11. Watch what it says. It says, The Ark of the Lord remained at the house of Oben-Edom the Gittite for three months and watch this. The Lord blesses him and his entire household. Now, King David was told the Lord has blessed the household of Oben-Edom and everything he has because of the Ark of God.

It was like God was sending him a message and God is showing us right here this principle, write this down. Here's the principle. God's intention was, and God's intention is to bless us with His presence. Do you realize that? That a holy God has blessed us with the ability to even call his name, to even know his name, to even be able to lift him up. That's what it's showing us right here. So we're not coming in flippantly. We're coming in here because God has already even just blessed us in being able to connect with Him, a holy God. And David finally gets this and what happens in David's life? His faith is renewed. In fact, look at verse 12, watch what happens. So David went to bring the Ark of God. Bring up the Ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom, to the City of David with, look at this next word, with rejoicing, with rejoicing. Write this next principle down. I know they're coming quickly, but watch this. Here's what it's teaching us. When we truly understand the motives and intentions of a good God, pure rejoicing is always a byproduct.

Here’s what that means. In other words, you shouldn't have to try to worship when you really understand who God is. You shouldn't have to try to conjure up some fake emotion when you really understand who God is. That's why I started the whole message off by saying Salvation is number one. The Word of God is number two. Because when you link those two things together, the byproduct of realizing more and more and more and more and more of who God is and what God has done is always rejoicing. Some of us don't have a worship problem. We have a God problem. Some of us don't have a worship problem. We have a reality that we don't understand how good God is and what God wants to do in our lives. Look closely what you just said right here. Look at verse 13. It says, When those who are carrying the Ark of the Lord had taken six steps, He sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf. Look closely what it just said. Right? When those who were carrying the ark. Now what is just swapped right here? Notice it's no longer on a cart like the Philistines did it. It's no longer just being pulled by animals, right? No, they're doing it the right way. They're doing it the Exodus 25 way. They are carrying it with full honor and full respect and full honor and reverence. When they took six steps, notice what happened. They made a sacrifice. Why is it six? Well six is the number for an imperfect man. Seven is the number for perfect God, right? They took these six steps and they sacrificed a bull on to the ark. Why? Because it represented that the blood was being shed for their sins to remind them of who God is, to remind them of what God wanted to do in their lives. It was to cover their sins. It was to show what God wants to do and to continually, every six steps of their life, remind them of what God wants to do.

Listen Church, that's the Gospel. The gospel in our life is not that we're setting up the blood of a bull onto the altar of God, but the gospel of our life is that Jesus one day made this sacrifice for us so that we could walk in the presence of God, so that we can know that we're in the presence of God, so that we can forever walk into His promise. Jesus has covered us with His love, and He's no longer going to bring us the death of Uzzah. He's not going to bring us the tumors of the Philistines. Why? Because Jesus has made a way. But He's given us life. He's given us the way. And there should only be one thing that we do because of that, and that's to worship him. That's to worship Him. Here's the principal. Watch this. Write it down, worship is the only logical response of a life that realizes what Jesus has done, what he is doing, and what he's going to do. It's the only response. Once again, I don't think we have a worship problem. I think we have a Jesus problem. I don't think we have a worship problem. I think it's a response problem of us not really realizing what Jesus is doing, has done, and will do for us. Look at the text right here. Watch what happens when you understand this, because where there's no worship, there's no understanding of salvation.

But watch David closely. A lot of text here. Verse 14 says, when he says wearing a linen ephod, David was dancing before the Lord with all his might. Must not have been a Baptist Church. But you see what I mean? Right there it is. I mean, what else do you do when you realize that you are before a God that has saved you? Now, I know this whole linen ephod thing doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to us. But think of it like this. David is a king. He wore the kingly robe, the kingly dress. He is distinctively the king because of how he looked, because of how he walked, because of how he dressed. But at this point, it says that David is wearing only his ephod. What is an ephod, you ask? Glad you said that it is adult underwear. That is all it is. In fact, I got mine right now. I'm just kidding. That is all it is. All it is. He stripped down to nothing. He took off his kingliness and he wanted to be before the king of kings with nothing but who God had made him. That's what he's doing right here. He wanted his heart to be before the Lord. It's an expression of his humanity. But watch what happens in verse 15 when you worship sometimes.

While he and all Israel were bringing up the Ark of the Lord with shouts and sounds of trumpets, as the Ark of the Lord was entering the city of David, Michal the daughter of Saul. This is his wife, I might add. Watched from a window. When she saw King David leaping and dancing around before the Lord. She despised him in her heart. They brought the Ark of the Lord and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it. And David sacrificed burn offerings and fellowship offerings before the Lord. After he had finished sacrificing the burnt offerings in the fellowship offerings, He blessed the people in the name of the Lord, and He gave them a loaf of bread, a cake of dates, a cake of raisins to each person in the whole crowd of the Israelites, both men and women and all the people went to their homes. Keep going. Verse 20 It says, When David returned home to bless his household, Michal, the daughter of Saul, notice it always says the daughter of Saul, right? She's the antagonist, you can see that. Came out to meet him and said how the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, going around half naked in view of the slave girls, of his servants as any vulgar fellow would. In other words, Michal looked at David and said, You fool, that is not how a king acts. But listen to what David said. Somebody that understood what God had done for him. David said to Michal, It was before the Lord who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his household when he appointed me ruler of the Lord's people, Israel. And I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become, catch this, even more undignified than this. I'm not really sure how you do that, but I will become even more undignified than this and I will humiliate, be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor.

Now, I know that's a lot. So let me give you the Cliff notes or the spark notes for young people. Right, of what David just said. Right. David just looked at his wife, Michal and said, listen, my dear God chose me. God made me who I am. God saved me. And now I don't really care what anyone else thinks. What I care about is that the maker of the universe, his glory, is being put on display. And it's only because of God and what He has done that I have life. And David says, And I don't care who knows it or what they know, because the maker of the universe has set us apart. That's worship, that's worship. And it's especially meaningful when you know who Michal is right here. She was the daughter of Saul. And if you know anything about King Saul his one fault in life was that he cared way more about what people thought of him than what he cared about what God thought of him. In fact, write this principle down because this is what Michal's teaching us here. She's saying this, we will never worship God with all of our heart if our concern with what others think is stronger than our concern with what God thinks. Students listen to me really closely. When you're concerned with what other people think is higher than your concern with what God thinks, you will never walk in his presence. You won't. And who cares what the other boneheads around you think anyways? It's the maker of the universe, what David just said, is the one that matters. David says, Look, what did he say? I don't care what people think about me. In fact, I don't really want them to think about me at all. I want them to think about God. This is why he took off the kingliness. This is why he took off the robe. It was so that it was just him and God, as pure as possible. I'm by no means saying that's how the end of the service needs to happen. But what I am saying is that we need to understand that part of us needs to take off the shell that we have on around us and stand before a holy God that has given us life and say, Thank you, Jesus. Then David said, By the way, honey, verse 22, Remember the slave girls? I don't really care what they see, because my prayer is that they don't see me. But they see a God that can heal them. They can know them, they can love them. And if they see that he can set me free, he can set them free as well.

You see, here's the deal. Worship is a vertical relationship with God. Us looking to God, but it also carries a horizontal relationship, a missional element. In fact, write this principle down. We just saw it, when other people see our public worship response to a holy God, they too will be drawn to his goodness, his power and his love. That's why public worship is so meaningful. It's not meaningful because we want to shame you to be here. It's meaningful because when other people see the believers in Jesus recognizing who God is, recognizing what God does, recognizing how God has delivered, it gives them the encouragement to know that God can do that for them as well, and God can lift them as well. And that's really hard to do when we're flippant about our worship and we're coming in as Uzzah did. We're coming in as Michal did from the window. But it's not when we begin to strip off ourselves and say, Yes, King Jesus moves in me. Move in me. In fact, let me just tell you this.

This is the last principle. Listen to this. Worship is simply us putting God's worthiness on display. That's it. That's the most simple definition of worship I've ever been able to find. It's me and it's you, those of us that have been delivered by Jesus saying, Yes, you're worth it God. That's all worship is. Worship is two words worth and ship. It is me saying and declaring God He is worth it and declaring to others that he is worth it. So here's the question I got for you. What does your worship tell others about the value you place on God? What does your worship say? Do they see the joy you have in Him? Do they see the honor you put in them? Do they see the value you have for him? Look, I'm not trying to be judgy, I promise. But when you cruise in here 20 minutes late with five cups of coffee, looking at your cell phone every two and a half minutes and not caring what's going on anywhere but with the person beside you, what is that saying to God about his glory? What is that saying to the people around us about His glory, other than the fact that I could care less? And I don't care if you drink your coffee, drink your coffee, but praise Him while you're doing it, lift him up while you're doing it. Do you see where I'm going with this? We are showing others how we respond to God, how they should respond to God and what God has done in us.

Now I get it. I get it. I know you're going. Matt, I'm just not an overly expressive person, Right? I'm not in worship either. You say Matt, come on look at you, I really, I'm not. I'm really not. But I am just going to say this. We're expressive in other things, and probably your expressiveness in other things should match your expressiveness in worship. And there probably shouldn't be a weight somewhere this out of walk, right? I mean, think about it like this. Is your level of excitement of what God does in your life, the same as it is at your kids ball games? T-ball game? Amen. Right. You've been one of those lately? Is it the same as your kids' sports event? Is it the same when you're watching your sports team at whatever arena you're at? I've been to some of those places. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it the same as when you go to that concert you just paid for? Yeah. Been there with you. Or is it the same as if somebody just walked up to you and handed you $1,000,000? Listen, if somebody walked up to you, handed you $1,000,000 and you're like, Yeah, praise Jesus. Then you worship like that, right? You get my full permission. But if it ain't, then we're missing it.

I love the story in Luke 7:47, where this lady falls at Jesus's feet and anoints his feet and Jesus teaches the disciples around him this idea because they like him. That lady's a little freaky. What is he doing right? You know, that lady is Jesus. Jesus looks at him, it says, Hey, those who have forgiven much, love much. Church, possibly our struggle with worship is just the fact that we just don't get that. We don't get the idea that we no longer take six steps and worship over the ark, that we have a savior that has done it for us. Possibly we don't get the fact that his blood was shed for us. Possibly we don't get the fact that Jesus gave his love for us. And why would we not want to tell people what is done for us? How could we not publicly worship him and tell him what he's done with us? Why would we not let our worship show our hearts? I get it. I'm going to say it again. We're not all equally emotional in our worship. I get it. We're not all like these people up here that know all the motions and stuff to do and the leg kicks in the back. I know we don't know all that, right? We don't know it. But what I am saying is this. Worship is us telling God who he is and us telling others who he is. And if we're not doing it, we're not lifting it up. I mean, scripture is really clear over 20 times it says, hey, lift your hands to the king of kings because he's delivered you. Have you ever seen your three-year-old? That's exactly what he does to get to mama.

It's really clear when there's commands for us to shout, there's commands for us to clap. I was just up in the classic service about 30 minutes ago, man, those people were throwing it down up here. I walk out of here, go like, Yeah, get to it, get the guy up there to yell so we can get out of the parking lot, right? No. The king has saved us. But Matt, I just don't feel like worshiping. Yeesh. Man. Let me ask you this then. Since when do we let our feelings determine if we will obey God? That's the point, right? This whole series is about how our thoughts shape our lives. What if God is waiting on you to say yes, Father. To begin to just pour the Spirit into you. The question is not do we not feel like it? The question is, is he worthy? The question is not, man I just don't feel like it, you know, I got some stuff going on. The question is, is he worthy enough to deliver you the stuff you have going on? I love this passage. You know why? Because half the time, I kind of feel like the wife Michal. I kind of feel like I'm just peering from the window a little bit, going, Man, I wonder what's going on over there. Some of the times I feel like Uzzah. Where just out of my irreverence for God, I think I can just bust into his presence however I want to. I'm going to tell you, man, I just want my heart to be like Davids. To where when I walk into a moment that I can lift up my king, that nothing else matters. To say yes Jesus. You're worth it.

Lord Jesus, today, as we close the service in worship today, Jesus God, my prayer today God is not that we would be phony, but God, that our hearts would show who you are. And our lives would display your goodness, your love, your mercy and God that we can worship the king.

You know, with your heads bowed and your eyes closed. Today, I'm just going to ask you, maybe your worship problem is because you've never had a moment in your life where you have given Jesus your heart and it's hard to worship something that you don't get. Let me just say this, during the invitation today, if today is the day you need to surrender your heart to Jesus, I'm going to be standing up front to your right. And I'd love to talk to you about what it looks like to have a relationship with Jesus. But maybe today you are a believer and you've got some serious stuff going on and you just really feel like it's hindering your worship, and you need somebody to come beside you and walk with you for a few minutes in prayer. And I got some people with me that would love to pray with you in just a minute. But for the rest of you today, that know Jesus, love Jesus, I want to give you just a couple of minutes today to express his worthiness.

Lord, walk with us in these next minutes. Show us who you are and show others what you've done in us and how worthy you really are.

Amen. Amen.

Let's stand and sing together.

Follow Along with the Message

My Understanding of Worship

January 21, 2024

2 Samuel 6:1–2
1 David again brought together all the able young men of Israel — thirty thousand. 2 He and all his men went to Baalah in Judah to bring up from there the ark of God…
2 Samuel 6:3–5
3 They set the ark of God on a new cart and brought it from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab, were guiding the new cart 4 with the ark of God on it, and Ahio was walking in front of it. 5 David and all Israel were celebrating with all their might before the Lord, with castanets, harps, lyres, timbrels, sistrums and cymbals.
2 Samuel 6:6–7
6 When they came to the threshing floor of Nakon, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God, because the oxen stumbled. 7 The Lord’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act therefore God struck him down, and he died there beside the ark of God.
2 Samuel 6:8
Then David was angry because the Lord’s wrath had broken out against Uzzah…
2 Samuel 6:9–10
9 David was afraid of the Lord that day and said, “How can the ark of the Lord ever come to me?” 10 He was not willing to take the ark of the Lord to be with him in the City of David. Instead, he took it to the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite.

PRINCIPLE: There is in flippantly approaching and worshipping the holy God.

2 Samuel 6:11–12
11 The ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite for three months, and the Lord blessed him and his entire household. 12 Now King David was told, “The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-Edom and everything he has, because of the ark of God.”

PRINCIPLE: God’s intention was and still is to us with His presence.

2 Samuel 6:12
…So David went to bring up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the City of David with rejoicing.

PRINCIPLE: When we truly understand the motives and intentions of a God, pure rejoicing is always a byproduct.

2 Samuel 6:13
When those who were carrying the ark of the Lord had taken six steps, he sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf.

PRINCIPLE: Worship is the logical response of a life that realizes what Jesus has done, is doing, and will do in eternity.

2 Samuel 6:14
Wearing a linen ephod, David was dancing before the Lord with all his might.
2 Samuel 6:15–19
15 While he and all Israel were bringing up the ark of the Lord with shouts and the sound of trumpets. 16 As the ark of the Lord was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she despised him in her heart. 17 They brought the ark of the Lord and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it, and David sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings before the Lord. 18 After he had finished sacrificing the burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord Almighty. 19 Then he gave a loaf of bread, a cake of dates and a cake of raisins to each person in the whole crowd of Israelites, both men and women. And all the people went to their homes.
2 Samuel 6:20
When David returned home to bless his household, Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said, “How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, going around half-naked in full view of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!”
2 Samuel 6:21–22
21 David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the Lord’s people Israel — I will celebrate before the Lord. 22 I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor.”

PRINCIPLE: We will worship God with all our heart if our concern for what others think is stronger than our concern for what God thinks.

PRINCIPLE: When see our public worship response to a holy God, they too will be drawn to His goodness, power, and love.

PRINCIPLE: Worship is simply us putting God’s on display.

QUESTION: What does your worship tell others about the value you place on God?

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