The
heavens proclaim the glory of God. The
skies display his craftsmanship. Day
after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. They speak without a sound or word; their
voice is never heard. Yet their message
has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world. God has made a home in the heavens for the
sun. It bursts forth like a radiant
bridegroom after his wedding. It
rejoices like a great athlete eager to run the race. The sun rises at one end of the heavens and
follows its course to the other end. Nothing
can hide from its heat. The instructions
of the Lord are perfect, reviving the soul. The decrees of the Lord are
trustworthy, making wise the simple. The
commandments of the Lord are right, bringing joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are clear,
giving insight for living. Reverence for
the Lord is pure, lasting forever.
The laws of the Lord are true; each one is fair. They are more desirable than gold, even the
finest gold. They are sweeter than
honey, even honey dripping from the comb.
They are a warning to your servant, a great reward for those who obey
them. How can I know all the sins
lurking in my heart? Cleanse me from
these hidden faults. Keep your servant
from deliberate sins! Don’t let them
control me. Then I will be free of guilt
and innocent of great sin. May the words
of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my
rock and my redeemer. Psalm 19:1-14(NLT)
It was nearly time for the
Jewish Passover celebration, so Jesus went to Jerusalem. In the Temple area he saw merchants selling
cattle, sheep, and doves for sacrifices; he also saw dealers at tables
exchanging foreign money. Jesus made a
whip from some ropes and chased them all out of the Temple. He drove out the sheep and cattle, scattered
the money changers’ coins over the floor, and turned over their tables. Then, going over to the people who sold
doves, he told them, “Get these things out of here. Stop turning my
Father’s house into a marketplace!” Then
his disciples remembered this prophecy from the Scriptures: “Passion for God’s
house will consume me.” But the Jewish
leaders demanded, “What are you doing? If
God gave you authority to do this, show us a miraculous sign to prove it.” “All right,” Jesus replied. “Destroy
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” “What!” they exclaimed. “It has taken forty-six years to build this
Temple, and you can rebuild it in three days?” But when Jesus said “this
temple,” he meant his own body. After he
was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered he had said this, and they
believed both the Scriptures and what Jesus had said. John 2:13-22(NLT)
We are tracking through this season
of Lent, knowing that, just like with Jesus, trials and troubles will show up in
life. The overwhelming themes in Lent
help us build strength to meet the trials in life.
·
In week #1 we saw that BAPTISM,
our initiation into the church, continually calls us back to the beginning of
our faith – a strength you find as you remember who you are in Christ…loved and
accepted.
·
In week #2 we considered our COVENANT
the promises we make with God, and which God makes with us. These are precious promises that strengthen
the purpose of our walk as servants in God’s Kingdom.
This morning we want to continue our
series and see how WORSHIP builds strength for the trials of life. The fact is, if you get away from worship you
will have faith in the wrong stuff (materialism, personal integrity,
intelligence, college diplomas, good looks or clothes, praise of your peers
rather than your Creator).
The texts
open up to us the character of God. We
get three front row seats to see God in action as Creator,
Teacher, and Lover. When you begin to understand the nature of
God it is easier to worship Him. He has
spoken to us, as the writer of Hebrews proclaims…many
times and in many ways….Hebrews 1:1b(NLT)
Psalm 19 is all about the great and
wonderful gifts of God; many of us take them for granted. Israel’s poet, King David pulls out the
shopping list of these gifts and holds them up as a prayer of praise and
adoration to Yahweh; it’s a Psalm of worship.
John 2 is about the Savior who came to say the definitive word about who
God is; Jesus came as the living Word of God!
Three statements about how worship
builds strength for our trials:
As Creator God Spoke to Us Without words
God’s universe is awesome. The cosmos, as much as we can see, and the
vast creation we still haven’t discovered, are a sermon without words. If asked, there wouldn’t be many of us who
couldn’t tell of some time when raw nature gave us a powerful and lasting
memory. I am always moved by mountain
scenes. I’ve stood at the edge of Niagara
Falls, the Grand Canyon, and Victoria Falls in Africa. This magnificent world is, in the words of
Eugene Peterson, God’s glory…on tour in the skies, God-craft on exhibit across the
horizon.[3]
This world, this cosmos is a sermon
of God’s majesty, and it plainly tells us – without a single word – God exists;
only fools say in their heart there is no God:
For
ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through
everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal
power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. Romans 1:20(NLT)
Helen Keller, blind and deaf, even
without those senses to “see” the creation wrote: I always knew there was someone like that, I
just didn’t know His name.
Without speaking a word that we can
hear, God broadcasts to every living thing, that every living thing outside of
God is not God! We do
well to remember frequently that only God is God!
We humans tend to congratulate
ourselves for our phenomenal wisdom and sophistication every time a new version
of Windows™ or a more powerful Macintosh™
tablet hits the market. But we’re
confused at best, because it’s God who is the Creator; we are the
creatures. We mess around with, and
rearrange HIS creation – often badly – but it is God who established everything
we see. King David also wrote these
words – from everlasting to everlasting THOU art God! Our prayer of thanksgiving in worshiping God
begins with the cosmos – God’s universe, a sermon without words. And then we also give thanks because:
As Teacher His Words Speak Life to Us
Often people want to debate that
God’s Word is just a bunch of rules that oppress certain
groups. But that is the blind side of
human beings. By nature we all have a
rebellious side; nobody enjoys having to follow rules.
To be sure, even a lot of Christian
believers want to know just how little they can believe and behave, yet still
qualify for the train to heaven.
But, if you view God’s Word rightly,
you can see that it is really a lamp for your pathway through God’s world – a
light that shows us how to find real joy.
His commands are words that lead to life!
One author discovered how the writer
of Psalm 19 shows us there are:
·
Six
titles for God’s special verbal revelation
are given: law of the Lord…, testimony of the Lord, statutes
of the Lord, commandment of the Lord, fear
of the Lord, and judgments of the Lord.
·
These six titles are given six different qualities:
perfect,
sure, right, pure, clean, and true.
·
These six qualities have six different effects on man:
converting
the soul, making wise the simple, rejoicing
the heart, enlightening the eyes, enduring
forever, and righteous altogether.
Jesus said that his words were truth,
life and the way to the Father; anyone who would come near to Jesus and trust
him as the guide through this life, would not only find heaven, but know deep
down inside that they really belong with God.
·
So Psalm 19 tells us we come to worship
giving thanks for God’s cosmos – a sermon without words.
·
The Psalmist also says we come to
worship, giving thanks for God’s commands – words that lead to life,
·
And then, finally…we discover in John’s
Gospel that:
As Savior God Spoke Most Clearly of all – in Love
It hardly seems like “love” that
Jesus took a whip and chased people out of church! But then, even with the power to destroy the
entire universe, sometime later Jesus would allow those same people to wrongly
convict him of blasphemy, and get him executed on the cross. The raw fact is: both are evidence of Jesus’ love.
1.
The Whip Kind of Love
As a pastor I’ve often been asked how
this could be a loving representation of God, whipping the moneychangers…why
not just give them a little space, endure their greed and love them
unconditionally? Why not give them a
little sensitivity training and model good behavior so they will change their
ways? At least one author has stated it
this way: Spineless love is hardly love.[7] God
himself explains why He acted this way in the Jerusalem temple:
Discipline
your children while there is hope. Otherwise
you will ruin their lives. Proverbs
19:18(NLT)
The reason Jesus chased the people
and animals from the temple was to teach the people what is right. In the same way a child must be taught what
is right, God knows how to teach His children.
And, we must never forget that Jesus was God in flesh!
A side issue here would be a word to
parents. If chastening with
the rod is good enough for the heavenly Father – don’t be mistaken
– chastening your own children appropriately is an important part of
disciplining! To tolerate turning God’s
house into a trading market with cheating as an acceptable practice…what kind
of God would issue a commandment against stealing, and then wink while the
moneychangers picked poor people’s pockets?
Pure fact – some people need
a whuppin’! If you don’t think God follows through on His
commandments and accomplishes His purposes with finality, you need to re-read
the Old Testament. But, as much as God’s
whip
kind of love is an unquestionable reality, and demands our
attention as well as worship, there is also:
2.
The Cross Kind of Love
Now, the cross is not like some
automated scrubbing bubbles that cleans your heart like a
porcelain bathtub. We don’t kneel at the
cross and feel it effervescing inside as the sins melt away. Rather it is like the mortar that binds us to
Christ in faith. And Christ is the brick
mason; he is the only one who can do this job.
When you come to faith in what Christ has done for you on the cross,
Jesus takes your life and cements your relationship with the Father.
The prophet Isaiah wrote that all of
our righteousness – all our attempts at taking over this business of cleansing
our sins – is like claiming you’re wearing a new outfit, when, in fact, you’re
wearing torn and filthy rags.[8]
King David’s life fell apart. He was the most powerful man in the world and
was loved by both God and humans. But he
had this secret; he’d gone against God’s design for his life and his sin was
really bad – first degree! He tried to
cover it up by plotting an innocent man’s death; he even had other people carry
it out. The thing was somewhat hidden
from humans, but God saw it like an HD movie on a 75-inch plasma screen
TV.
David had it together on the
outside. But covering the outside was
like makeup on dark circles, or a Band-Aid on cancer; on the inside David was
coming unglued. And he knew it – just
like you and I know it when we’ve sinned against God.
What did David do? He ran to God with confession on his
lips.
Listen to how David recorded it in
his diary. He wrote it down, and later
we labeled it Psalm 51. Hear how it
sounds in today’s language when a king repents; listen to David getting honest
with God:
Generous
in love—God, give grace! Huge in
mercy—wipe out my bad record. Scrub away
my guilt, soak out my sins in your laundry.
I know how bad I’ve been; my sins are staring me down. You’re the One I’ve violated, and you’ve seen
it all, seen the full extent of my evil.
You have all the facts before you; whatever you decide about me is fair. I’ve been out of step with you for a long
time, in the wrong since before I was born.
What you’re after is truth from the inside out. Enter me, then; conceive a new, true life. Soak me in your laundry and I’ll come out
clean, scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life. Tune me in to foot-tapping songs, set these
once-broken bones to dancing. Don’t look
too close for blemishes, give me a clean bill of health. God, make a fresh start in me, shape a
Genesis week from the chaos of my life. Don’t
throw me out with the trash, or fail to breathe holiness in me. Bring me back from gray exile, put a fresh
wind in my sails![9] Psalm 51:1-12(TMSG)
When David got honest with God, God
came – and then, there was cleansing.
That’s what God is like – and you don’t have to be a king.
You don’t have to speak a special
language
You do have to pour
out your heart to Him!
So do that; and let God do what God
does; he’ll cement your life and His together.
You won’t wonder or worry about your worship, if it’s done right, done
enough, or even if you ought to bother sometimes…worship will pour out of you!
You can come to this altar and ask
God to make a worthy worshipper of you. That’s
what altars are for, and that’s what He is waiting for!
Let the church say Amen in
the Name of the Father, Because of the Son, Cooperating with the Spirit…Amen!
