Tag: church

The What & Why of Worship

adbLeave a comment

(John 2:13-22)

“We really need to get together.” “Yes, let’s get it on the calendar sometime.”  “Sounds great – see you soon!” How many times in the past several months have you had some form of that exchange with another person? And… how many times has that agreed upon get together actually happened? What determines if it does or doesn’t? If the same person brings it up repeatedly, is it more likely to happen because you can tell they’re really craving your company? Do you make the decision whether or not the exchange was just being polite, with no real intention of following through (although one could argue that leading another on isn’t all that polite). Or, if the person is a priority in your life, do you stop right then and there and get a date on the calendar?

What if you got a text message from God asking if you could get together with him? Would you politely respond with “Yes, let’s get it on the calendar sometime soon!” but then proceed to ghost him or fail to follow up? Or would you drop everything, whatever you were doing at the moment, and immediately schedule it? 

I have good news for you this morning – it’s already been scheduled on the calendar for you every Sunday morning at church. How convenient – you don’t even have to stress out about figuring when to fit it in – it’s already done for you!  

Rethinking Religion gives us the opportunity to evaluate our relationship with God as it is reflected in our worship. Now if you were to skip that evaluation and jump ahead to conclude that the answer is simply to go to church every Sunday, you’d be wrong… sort of.

Sort of? Wouldn’t going to church every Sunday be the ideal? Isn’t that what God is looking for? He’s still waiting for that perfect church with 100% perfect attendance from 100% of the members. Wouldn’t that accomplish the bottom line of what God really wants from each of us?

No. No, it wouldn’t. Remember that friend reaching out to get together? Let’s suppose you were able to make it work. You set up a coffee date and met at your favorite spot. You spent 60 minutes together catching up. The only problem? She had her laptop open and was scrolling on her phone the whole time you visited. Would you feel filled up, satisfied that you finally were able to get together and spend some time together? You know the answer.

Something similar can happen even with the Sunday morning “regulars” in attendance. We can show up without really showing up. For some of us, the habit of going to church every week may have already been instilled in us from childhood (if that’s you, thank your parents – it’s among one of the greatest things they could have done for you!). But as with anything that becomes habitual, church can also become so routine that can we fly through it disengaged as if we’re on autopilot.

Or, worship can become more about fulfilling a responsibility than finding refreshment. Or, we’re there more to keep tabs on everyone else who is or isn’t there than we are for ourselves. Or, we’re there to make sure that everyone behaves properly and things are carried out in an orderly fashion, focusing more on what’s going on externally with others than what’s going on internally in my own heart. So if regular attenders aren’t careful when it comes to worship, it’s very possible to show up without showing up. 

But that in no way leaves the absentees off the hook. It might be easy to bash all those regular attenders for being there for the wrong reasons, feeling as if that somehow justifies one’s absence. But what’s easier to fix – working on the motives of one who is already in the habit of being there regularly, or having to do that and having to break the bad habit of being absent? Those neglecting worship don’t need to point to the distractions of regular worshippers to justify their absence – they already offer more than enough sad excuses for not going to church as it is!

But you know what? We also need to acknowledge that there are understandable reasons one might have for not being in church.

It would be hard to blame someone for not going to church if his only experience anytime he has attended was to be scolded or shamed by the pastor or others for not being there more often! And it would be hard to blame someone for not going to church if rather than feeling warmly welcomed and at home, they received a cold reception and dagger stares for sitting in someone else’s spot. And it would be hard to blame someone for not going to church if the only message was that they never measure up enough for God. And it would be hard to blame someone for not going to church if her only recollection of church was a painful memory or family experience associated with it. And if worship is where God longs to dispense his grace to the guilty, why do we sometimes sprinkle our parting comments to others with more guilt after the service?

All of this is to say, when anyone walks through the doors of a church on a Sunday morning, they may appear to be empty-handed, but don’t ever underestimate the amount of emotional or spiritual baggage they could be carrying with them as they step inside. Be sensitive to that, and take a page out of Jesus’ “Lost” parables in Luke 15. Simply rejoice every time anyone walks through the doors.

Do you notice we haven’t even dug into the words and actions of Jesus yet? Are we ready to? What makes us ready? Are you going to continue reading hoping to find what someone else needs to hear about worship, or are you open to hearing God has to say to you about your worship? If so, let’s look at John.

Jesus had to deal with people being in church for the wrong reason. That was pretty clear from the interaction described in John 2. “When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” (vss. 13-16).

Remember how Jesus as a boy was the Kevin McCallister of his family, only rather than his family leaving him at home, he was left behind at the temple, where he talked theology with the religious experts? How different that encounter at the temple must have been compared to what he experienced on the occasion recorded for us here! Instead of facilitating a conversational deep dive into spiritual truths and reflecting on God’s promises for his people, that sacred space had become a strip mall for small business to be conducted.  

It’s likely the vendors had become so good at deceiving themselves that they were convinced they were genuinely providing a necessary service to foreigners. After all, with so many out of town visitors coming for the Passover, they would need animals for their sacrifices, so they’d conveniently be able to purchase them right there in the temple courts. And if they needed to exchange their foreign currency to purchase those animals, the money changers were there ready to serve. So in their own minds, the sellers’ actions were completely justified.

But Jesus didn’t just see what was in their minds; he also saw their hearts. Jesus saw hearts that were seizing an opportunity to profit, to make a buck. And while there’s nothing sinful about working hard to make money, there was most definitely something wrong with using God’s house to do it. The matter of selling for profit in the same sacred space where God longs to dispense his blessings for free just wouldn’t fly. 

Here we have an example of what God doesn’t want in worship. So what does he want? We see it in the disciples’ application of the next verse, “Zeal for your house will consume me” (v.17). What drove Jesus’ actions that day? He had such a passion for his Father’s house that he couldn’t stand to see such a precious place so misused. His heart longed for God’s house.

That’s what God wants from you and me in worship: a heart that longs for his house. We can get so wrapped up in the details of worship that we overlook God’s real desire: he wants our hearts. When he has our hearts, everything else in our lives follows.

Think of a blossoming relationship between two people that is in its first stages. They can’t stop thinking about spending time with each other and everything revolves around that special someone. God wants us to think of him that way.

Now I realize that perspective may not appeal to some guys all that much, to talk about the heart and love and emotions, but can you question the masculinity of Jesus coming in and flipping tables upside down? And why? Because he was all-in when it came to passion and zeal. And to my fellow male Christians – husbands, fathers, leaders – honestly, we need more of that passion in Christianity. 

That doesn’t mean you need to show up and start tearing up the pews on a Sunday morning. But imagine if rather than a high-paying job, a fast car, or nice threads, a guy’s passion, zeal, and heart for God were his most admirable and attractive qualities. How influential could he be to other Christians witnessing how he puts his Savior first and holds him up as the greatest, most valuable treasure? 

But what if you don’t have that kind of zeal? Jesus has you covered!

That’s what makes Jesus so amazing as our Savior. He lived the holy life, filled with perfect passion, that we never could! That includes a holy zeal and passion for his Father’s house. The Father sees his Son’s zeal in you by faith. You don’t have to fake it. You don’t have to pretend it’s there – it is already there because of Jesus. His zeal was everything God required of us. We call that Jesus’ active obedience. He kept God’s law – event the Third Commandment to “Remember that Sabbath Day by keeping it holy” perfectly in your place. Let Jesus’ zeal fuel yours.

What else did Jesus do for you? Exactly as he promised in verse 19. “Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.’” John explains for us, his readers, that Jesus was not talking about the physical temple, as the Jewish crowd supposed. “But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken” (v.21-22).

Jesus predicted his death and resurrection. But he did more than predict those events; he fulfilled them. He did what none of those animals being sold in the courts could ever do. As the perfect Lamb they all foreshadowed, Jesus alone actually paid for sin with his life. All sin. Hearts absent from worship while bodies are present. Neglecting Word and worship altogether as optional or unimportant. All paid for in full and proven by his resurrection three days later, just as he had said. God accepted his payment for our woeful worship.

That brings us to the why of worship. Jesus is why. Jesus’ heart is not just for his Father’s house, but for you. You are why he was willing to allow his temple to be destroyed on the cross. You are why he was raised again in three days. His heart for you is why he longs to fill you with his presence and his promises in worship. His heart for you is why he invites you each week to come clean with your sins so he can send you off with a clean heart as you depart his house for all that your week holds. He knows the drain of living and surviving in a sin-infested world – remember he lived here, too! And so he longs to fill you with the grace necessary to overcome, to live with confidence and joy and purpose and meaning!

I could close by highlighting the many amazing blessings that come as a result of regular worship, but really there’s just one that matters. The rest all flow from that one: Jesus. Jesus is the reason we worship. Let Jesus be enough for you to take him up on his standing invitation to get together again soon.

Church Is for Everyone

adbLeave a comment

(Matthew 15:21-28)

Church is for everyone. At my church we have a tagline that expresses that: Seeking the Lost, Serving the Found. Whether you’re a non-believer or a believer, you fit into one of those categories – lost or found. Either way, church is for you.

But is that really true? Is the church just towing the company line or is it really a church for everyone? Would literally anyone be welcome on a Sunday? I’m guessing that even as that question is lingering in your mind, you are envisioning a person or two – perhaps even a very specific individual – or maybe just a general type of person, that you’d really struggle to sit right next to in church. Would someone who has that kind of history be welcome? Would someone who voted for that candidate be welcome? Would someone struggling with that right now really be welcome?

Regardless of how much a person might struggle individually with certain people being in church, that doesn’t make it any less true: church is for everyone.

In that regard, Christianity is the most inclusive religion of all. No one needs to measure up or be good enough. There is no application. There are zero requirements. There is no vetting process. There is no referral needed. There is no exclusion on any basis. 

When Jesus did what he did, he did it for every single person. Jesus’ perfect life of obedience was carried out so that every single person could claim the righteousness necessary to be good with God. Jesus’ undeserving death on the cross was offered up so that his sacrifice would pay for every single sin of every single person. Jesus effectively rendered hell and condemnation powerless and death a thing of which to be unafraid. Jesus is for everyone, and because he is, so is his church. Church is for everyone.

But it isn’t really for everyone.

Some of you know what I mean more than others. You’ve probably even explained it that way to someone else before: “Church isn’t really for me. It’s not my thing. I’m not the church-going type.” You have your own reasons. Maybe going to church was forced on you as a child, and that insistence on attending church was never accompanied by any grace or compassion that was supposed to flow from church. Maybe going to church rubs you the wrong way because it’s filled with a bunch of hypocritical pretenders whose lifestyles as far as you’re concerned rarely match up with what they claim to believe. Maybe going to church seems antiquated and unenlightened in this advanced age of science and reason. Maybe… I could go on with reason after reason why church just isn’t for some people. 

And you know what? They’re usually right. It isn’t for them. It may not be for you.

But know the right reason why.

It isn’t because you aren’t welcome. It isn’t because you don’t fit some mold. It isn’t because all of the things Jesus did for all people don’t include you. It isn’t because you wouldn’t stand to be blessed by it – you absolutely would.

It isn’t any of those reasons or a host of others that might be offered. 

No, it isn’t for you because you don’t need it. And until you realize how much you need it, it will never be for you. 

The Canaanite woman hounding Jesus needed him. I mean, really needed him. How much? Well, she wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, and she didn’t think twice about clapping back at Jesus after he seemed to dismiss her!

Jesus plainly told her, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs” (v.26). Jesus wasn’t insulting the woman, but rather laying out God’s game plan for him. He was to reach the Jewish people before the Gentiles (non-Jews).

To understand the point Jesus was making, imagine spending time in the kitchen getting dinner ready for the family. Once it’s all ready, the places are set at the table. Then the food is brought over. Then, as everyone sits down to eat, the first thing the family does is fill the puppy’s dog bowl with the food that was just prepared. Then, after he’s had his fill, the family eats whatever is left over.

That is, of course, not how it happens! The family eats, and the pet gets the leftovers. And the Canaanite woman was bold enough to point that out to Jesus. “‘Yes it is, Lord’ she said ‘Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.‘” (v.27).

What prompted such boldness? She was in need. She “came to [Jesus], crying out, ‘Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly’” (v.22). The need was obvious: her daughter was enduring excruciating suffering as a result of possession. But it wasn’t the need alone; it was also what she was asking of Jesus: mercy. 

Realize what mercy is: undeserved help for the undeserving. She knew she didn’t have any business pestering Jesus. But she also knew Jesus, and she knew what right she had in asking him: none.

That’s what mercy is. It is the undeserving asking for the undeserved from the One who can serve it. It is humbly acknowledging, “I don’t ask this of you because I have it coming or because I am entitled to it; rather, just the opposite. I know that I don’t, but I know who you are, Jesus. Mercy is your middle name.” 

So then, church is not really for anyone who has no need of Jesus or his mercy. If we don’t need his mercy or help, then we don’t need his church where he dispenses these gifts. If we’ve got our life pretty much together and lack nothing, who needs Jesus? We’re good folks, good spouses, good parents, good family members, good workers, good friends, good neighbors. We don’t have struggles, no addictions, no weaknesses, no regrets, no guilt. None of those things. Therefore, we don’t need Jesus or his help or mercy. 

But let’s consider another question: what if Jesus needs you?

I know – rather absurd sounding, isn’t it? If God is truly God, what need could he possibly have that he couldn’t satisfy himself, right? Actually, it isn’t about what God is capable of doing, but how he has chosen to do it. And he chooses to use people like you and me to do his work. 

The way Jesus intends to dispense his help and mercy to those in need of it is through people like you. In the book of Isaiah, the Lord spoke of “foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants” (Isaiah 56:6).

How does one minister to the Lord or be his servant? We often confine such thoughts to religious activities, like going to church and giving offerings. We imagine monks and nuns dedicating their lives in service to the Lord. But serving the Lord is so much bigger than any of that!

We minister to and serve the Lord by ministering to and loving others. Loving and serving my neighbor is my love and service to the Lord. When we carry out that service to the Lord, others come to know about him because they experience his loving qualities and characteristics through his people, his church. 

Paul said it another way in the book of Ephesians (cf. chapter 2). What if Jesus is waiting to build you into his church so that through you he can bless and care for others as you speak of the peace and reconciliation they have through the cross? What if Jesus needs you to love and serve others on his behalf? Could that be possible? 

If you think that is a stretch, let’s go a step further and consider the possibility of having a great faith like that of the Canaanite woman! How so? When you realize that you are even less-deserving of Jesus than she was, and yet still relentlessly plead for his mercy, you have what Jesus said she had: great faith. 

Recall in my previous post how Peter demonstrated a similar faith. Right after his own strength left him sinking in the sea, he looked to Jesus for help and deliverance. That was great faith – faith that refocused on Jesus after self-destructing yet again. 

The Canaanite woman’s great faith had little to do with her and everything to do with Jesus. Great faith doesn’t toot its own horn or talk itself up. Great faith is revealed when Jesus is the focus, front and center. 

That reminds me of what is different about our church’s school, as it begins its 50th Anniversary this school year. It isn’t merely a private school. It’s way more than that. It’s a school that keeps Jesus as the focus, front and center. It’s a school with teachers who know something much more valuable than what any technology or textbook can teach: they know a Savior, a Jesus, whose middle name is mercy. And there is nothing more valuable.

Why? Because there we teach children where to turn when they are in need – and they will be in need for the rest of their lives. And the needs they have are not needs that can be met by even the most loving parents, caring friends, or professional practitioners. Sure, some of those needs can be met by some of those listed, but in other areas, only Jesus can meet their needs. 

Only Jesus will ever love them unconditionally. Only Jesus will forgive them without limit. Only Jesus will value and treasure them as priceless. Only Jesus will listen to, hear, and answer their every request at all times. Only Jesus has opened heaven and eternity to them. In our school, children will come to know Jesus better and better. They’ll come to know that Jesus is for them. 

Our teachers are committed to a ministry that consists of reminding their students on a daily basis that Jesus is for them. As they teach each subject and connect with each student, in so many different ways, they have opportunity after opportunity to instill in their students’ hearts and minds that Jesus is for them. Good grades and excellent test scores will serve to richly bless our students in many ways for this life, but Jesus will both enhance those blessings and add to them blessings that will last for eternal life. In our school, students will know that Jesus is for them.

Jesus is also for you, and for all those who need him. Therefore, his church – our church – is for you, and for everyone who needs him. 

Church Is For Everyone

adbLeave a comment

(based on Romans 11:13-15, 28-32)

You’ve undoubtedly already done it if you’ve seen the image (“Church Is…”). You’ve finished the statement with some word or phrase that expresses your view of what the church is. Church is… what? Just what is the church? Is it a place? An event? Does it invoke positive feelings or negative? And it may very well be that the past 5 months have forced us to revisit previous thoughts we had about church and see if they have changed. Some churches have worshiped exclusively online during that time; many have at least in some way returned to a hybrid form of worship, and still others have closed their doors permanently. What, then, is church, and what role does it have in your life, my life, our lives, today? We will be spending five Sundays exploring the church’s identity and its role in our lives today. 

I personally have at least one specific outcome I will be praying for as a result of our time in the Word these next few weeks: that more eyes and hearts would be opened to see church less like a toothbrush and more like a phone. Sounds like a pretty weirdly specific prayer, huh? What I mean is this. The toothbrush has pretty much one specific purpose. You use it for brushing your teeth. You don’t grab it for anything other than that. People who view church as a Sunday morning gathering are viewing it like a toothbrush – while an important part of what church is, that’s not even close to tapping into the full potential of what church is for! Church is far more similar to a phone, which does much more than just make phone calls. Your phone is your calendar, your personal assistant, your search engine, your weather forecaster, your photo album, your camera,… etc. You get it – it does so many things! So does church, and I hope that becomes clear today and in the coming weeks.

My encouragement to you is this: be willing to challenge your own personal views, no matter how long-held they may be. If church has never even been on your radar in life, at least be open to hearing a clear picture of what you have (or haven’t!) been missing. If church has always been a part of your life for as long as you’ve lived, be open to the possibility that somewhere along the lines the routine and regularity of it may have allowed its role to become somewhat blurry over time – after all you aren’t the same person you were years ago, and chances are, neither is your church in some respects. If you’re somewhere in-between, where church has held varying degrees of importance in your life through different seasons of your life, perhaps the time is ripe for it to play a more consistent role. 

This morning as we seek to fill in the blanks, we want to focus our attention on who the church is for (disregard the grammar, because saying it the right way just sounds goofy these days). You probably have at least some idea of the type of person you think of in connection with church. Maybe your description of those you associate with church is positive, or it may very well be negative. The church might be the last place you’d expect to find hypocrites, but I assure you, there are plenty of us here, and you might even be surprised to find that we’ll quickly admit it. We know as well as anyone that God wants us to live a certain way, and we know as well as anyone that we fail daily. You may think of the church as being made up of a class of people who are pretty decent – so much so that you could never see yourself belonging, as your past record would somehow disqualify you. I totally understand that, and admit that sometimes we Christians are even guilty of making you feel that way, unfortunately. Some may loathe church-going people as small-minded caricatures of everything that is wrong with our society today. Others joke about lightning striking if they ever set foot in a church, and sadly, they’re only half-kidding in their own minds. So who is church for? 

A man named Paul provides us with the answer in the letter he wrote known today as the book of Romans in the Bible. Paul is well-suited to spell out who the church is for, as he experienced two vastly different types of “churches.” One church, the church in which he grew up, was fixated on rules and regulations, last names and lineage. The essence of church to him was based on who you were and how you lived. This church was made up of the Jewish people, who could trace their ancestry all the way back to the family tribes that would eventually make up the part of the world that we call Israel today. Only Jewish people belonged to this church. 

Those outside of this church – everyone who was not Jewish – are referred to as a Gentiles. There was a point in Paul’s life that he was so zealous for the Jewish church that he persecuted and hunted down Gentiles for speaking against it or believing a different message. Paul thought he was doing the right thing, until the Lord made it clear to him that his view of church was all wrong. In these verses from Romans this morning, Paul shares how he better came to understand who the church is for, and he shares his observation of the Lord God’s brilliant plan to ensure that it would be know that the church is for everyone. That’s right – everyone. Including you.

The way Paul explains it in these verses may be somewhat challenging, so permit a bit of a modern day parable to clarify. A man wanting to start his own business needed to hire some employees to work for him. Wanting to do things right, and to show them how much he appreciated them, he went above and beyond in taking care of his employees. They were paid well, they received generous benefits, plenty of time for family and vacation, and had the best working environment possible. On top of that all, the company was growing and enjoying great success. The employees were thrilled… at first. No one else enjoyed the level of compensation they did. But eventually they got used to it. They saw what others received and wondered what it would be like to work there. Either out of indifference or being enamored with others, eventually they left. 

Their departure, of course, meant the owner needed to hire new employees. He had no problem finding new employees, as word of his generosity and appreciation as an employer spread quickly. Others were hired and soon enjoyed the same wonderful compensation that the very first employees had. After some time elsewhere, the original employees realized how good they had had it and saw it in the lives of the current employees. They longed to have their old jobs back and to be welcomed back into the company again. Of course they were delighted to find that the growth and success of the company meant that there was more than enough room to take on more employees, and they were rehired to enjoy the same outstanding benefits once again. 

Of course this analogy limps greatly in this – there is no work or effort whatsoever required for one’s salvation! But the rest of the parable hopefully helps us grasp the point Paul was making in these verses from Romans. “Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I take pride in my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them” (v.13b-14). Paul didn’t hesitate to make a big deal about his ministry to the Gentiles – not shying away from pointing out that God wants them to be saved, too, and that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection were all the proof they needed that God wanted to include them. In generating that kind of excitement about the one-of-a-kind good news found only in the Christian faith, Paul longed for his fellow Jewish people to be stirred up by the seemingly radical idea that everyone could be saved. HIs people then would be drawn back to the true God and find salvation in his Son, Jesus Christ, the very Messiah they had rejected, but who nonetheless died and rose for them, too!

Naturally, the Lord’s determination to take the good news to the Gentiles had the potential to fill them up with pride. Paul addressed that. “Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you” (v.30-31). Paul is reminding his Gentile hearers to remember that they were once the ones on the outside looking in, but that God opened up and extended his loving arms to embrace them with his grace, his underserved love, too. Now, the same is true for the Jewish people. Just as they turned away from the Lord’s mercy through the Messiah and were suddenly on the outside looking in, God’s plan in welcoming in the Gentiles was not to exclude the Jewish people, but to win them over again and see his heart for them, too. 

Paul summarized God’s approach in verse 32: “For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.” This sounds irrational, doesn’t it? Why turn everyone to disobedience and not just to obedience? However, if you are an unbeliever, would you be OK if I forced you into believing? Of course not. So why should anyone turn around and take issue with God’s plan to let us have our own way, especially when his purpose for doing so is 100% purely noble – “so that he may have mercy.” God wants to extend his mercy to all people, and so he leveled the playing field and disregarded all of the different ways we humans have of categorizing and casting people to determine status. God did away with that and put everyone in the same sinking Titanic of unbelief and sin – everyone in the same boat. That way, as everyone comes to realize their grave situation, they would see their need for rescue and deliverance, and see that the Lord is always waiting with his mercy to extend to everyone who realizes their need of it.  

Church is for everyone. Everyone. Yes, that means church is for you. Now that we’ve established that, and that you know our doors, like Jesus’ arms, are open to welcome you, stick around for a few weeks to discover more about what church is.