MACP: Evening General Session

October 20, 2011 – 7:52 pm

This year’s MACP Conference is focused on Church Planting and Renewal. The Conference started today, and goes through tomorrow afternoon.

I’ll be providing a somewhat fleshed out outline of some the sessions to try to give an idea of what was said.

Tonight’s message was brought by DBTS grad Bryan Brock. He is the pastor of Life Point Baptist Church in Apple Valley, CA, which he helped to start in April of 2005.

Title of the Message: God’s Heart for Worship

Text: 1 Samuel 15

Topic: Worship

Introduction:

• Worship is a hot topic today. It’s very personal and emotional for many people. Much of what we see today in worship is equivalent to what happened in Judges: Everyone does what is right in their own eyes.
• Why would you see worship as the topic of this passage? Isn’t it about obedience?
  • Worship in the Scripture is tied to sacrifice.
    • Bowing before the Lord (OT concept) is sacrificing your independence.
    • All three Greek words for worship include the idea of sacrifice

• Minister/service is the idea of two words (e.g., Rom 12:1: sacrifice is worship)
• Bowing down (sacrificing yourself) is the other word
  • 1 Sam 15:22 shows that the passage is centering around sacrifice and offering
  • 15:23 ties disobedience to false or pagan worship
  • 15:25, 30, 31 reiterates that the focus of the issue is on worship. Saul understood that he had violated worship

Two timeless principles for our worship

Worship is for God’s pleasure

• 15:22-Samuel asks if God has as much delight in what Saul did as in what He asked Saul to do.
• “It’s not worship if it doesn’t please God.”
• 15:11: God regrets making Saul king. It’s not that God made a mistake nor was He surprised by what happened (cf. 15:29). The word points to the fact that God was touched in His being by Saul’s disobedience. His disposition toward Saul changed so that Saul was going to be removed as king. This was a result of Saul’s wrong act of worship that grieved God.
• How do we know if our worship pleases God? It must be God-centered
  • 15:15, 21, 24. Saul’s primary excuse was that he was giving the people what they wanted. This is how they wanted to worship/sacrifice to the Lord. This worship is not God-centered and, therefore, is not true worship.
  • Many of the worship songs today do not glory in the truth of the cross but in the benefit it brings to us. It enables those who are far from God to feel close to Him (even though they are not).
  • Music is not the only aspect of worship. Preaching, another element of worship (along with giving, praying,), is another area where we are tempted to give people what they want.
  • Worship should not be spectator-based or entertainment oriented. That is worship that is designed for you, not God.
  • True worship should be good for our heart, but it must ultimately be for God’s pleasure.

Worship is from God’s Word

• 15:22, 23. Saul had rejected God’s Word and failed to obey it.
• Jn 4:4-worshippers must worship in truth (cf. Jn 17:17). The regulative principle is biblical-our worship must be based on the Bible.
• Before starting LifePoint, we visited different churches to get a sense for what was there, and some churches were doing strange things:
  • People rolling on the floor, running around with flags, worshipping through interpretive dance, painting an impression of the service at the front of the church
  • One church advertises a service where they will bless pets.
• Recently, I did a series on worship. In preparation, I tried to think through questions that I’ve heard and passages that address it. I was amazed at how much the Bible has to say about worship. We need to know what the Bible says on worship.
• Too often today, the discussion on worship is controlled by musicians. This is not a problem if they know the Word of God, but too often it becomes focused on musicology. We wouldn’t simply bring a banker in to instruct us about giving, unless he knows the Word of God.
• Our worship is corrupted when we forsake the Word of God. When we leave the Word of God, all we are left with is our own ideas.
• We need to not only know the Word, but to obey it.
  • 15:13. Saul rejoiced at his obedience, even though he had not truly obeyed. Perhaps he was self-deceived, or perhaps he was simply trying to put on a good front.
  • Today, we can easily deceive ourselves into thinking we have worshipped by obeying God’s Word when we have not (2 Cor 11:12-15).
  • Satan is interested in people thinking they have brought to delight to God in their worship when they have not. When we are deceived, we don’t know it. Therefore we need to examine our worship by God’s Word.
  • Many of these churches design their music to appeal to unbelievers with the goal of sharing the gospel. However, they often fail to actually preach the gospel to them. There is a mega-church in our area that was recently voted as having the best worship band in America. I recently had a chance to share the gospel with a lady who had attended this church for three years, but had never heard the gospel before. She made a profession of faith in Christ and attended our church once. She was shocked, since she’d never seen a church worship like this, and never returned. She’d developed an appetite for their kind of worship for three years, even though she never heard the gospel at that church.
• Samuel tells Saul that disobedient worship is like idolatry. We would never set up an idol in our church, but we might allow unbiblical worship.
• God not only rejects unbiblical worship, but also unbiblical worshippers.

Do you have God’s heart for worship? Do you want to know what He desires and follow what He desires? Are we willing to discipline our desires to create an appetite for true worship? Worship is for God’s pleasure, and is from God’s Word.