The Gospel and Worship

Here are the notes and discussion questions from LightHouse last night;

Worship is not an activity in our lives, but the activity of our lives.

Worship flows from grasping God’s compassionate grace
Worship is the natural response to God’s mercy(1). But what are God’s mercies? Paul has spent 11 chapters explaining what they are, here’s a quick summary. In Romans there are two definitions of sin, one is breaking the law the other is worshipping anything other than God as God. The consequences of both are judgement, condemnation and death, for (3:22)everyone. But from ch3 onwards Paul explains and applies the mercy of God; that though we deserve judgement, condemnation and death God mercifully sends Jesus who gives us righteousness by faith so that “all are justified freely by his grace…” and frees us from slavery to sonship in the service of God.

The rest of Romans unpacks how we ought to live in the light of God’s salvation, not to contribute to it but as a response to it. God’s mercy and grace are all encompassing, they make the believer what we are. They take us from death to life, from alienation to justification, as Jesus gives everything to save us, and that grace flows out and over from our hearts to our actions and to others.

In the previous verses Paul has been praising God for who God is, and now he concludes that the only right response to God’s character and his actions is worship, and a worship which gives everything. A right response to God doesn’t just demand gifts and sacrifices but the giver too. “in view of God’s mercy, offer your bodies as living sacrifices,”. Paul has in view God’s compassion, if God in his loving compassion gives everything for us how can we not give everything back to him. We are to be a people shaped by compassionate grace!

Worshipping God is the natural response to realising who God is and receiving his grace. It is an awareness of God’s compassion, mercy and grace in saving us that fuels our worship.

We don’t worship because we know we should, that isn’t worship, we worship out of an understanding and awe at what God has done for us. Now that means that if we are struggling to love God and worship him the problem is hugely significant, because it means we are forgetting or discounting God’s mercies. But it also means the remedy to listless, lifeless worship is to look again at the gospel and be amazed at what God has done for us.

Worship is physical, relational and everyday
One of the greatest problems we face as Christians is the tendency to divide life up into compartments. We have our work compartment, friends compartment (or even compartments), church compartment, leisure compartment. Think of it like a house, each compartment is like a different room in your house with a different purpose and a different mode of behaviour in each. For example you don’t chop carrots and cook in the bedroom, likewise you don’t sleep in the kitchen.

There is a danger that following Jesus functions a bit like adding a conservatory to a house, it is an extra room, it involves some minor cosmetic tweaks but no major changes, you go into it go out of it but essentially the rest of the house is unchanged. But Paul is saying following Jesus, understanding the compassion of God changes everything, it’s not the conservatory, it’s taking the house down to its foundations, laying new ones and starting again so that the gospel runs through and changes everything.

That is what Paul is saying here “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God...” Everything changes.

But that is liberating because it means worship isn’t an extra activity to be crowded into our already busy schedules. True worship isn’t mystical or disembodied it is real, earthy and physical, it isn’t an extra slot to put in the diary but a new way of thinking about the diary and how we do everything in it. It is costly because it means offering all of my life to please God, but it is also liberating because I can offer all of my life to God. Our work, relationships, friendships, family time, leisure time are all to be offered to God as worship that is liberating.

Leon Morris says this “The believers body is to be employed as the living, breathing expression of the grateful response of a life lived under the recognition of the expansive mercies of God. It is appropriate to do so with ones body, in any and every sphere of life, that which will honour God and bring glory to his holy name.”

My life, all of it, is to be offered as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – that is right worship, not because it saves me or contributes in anyway but because we are aware of what God has done and is doing for us and want to respond to his love and mercy. But what will that look like?

Worship isn’t something we do as an individual but as a community shaped by grace. As Paul fleshes this living out in 3f he shows us that it means loving and serving each other(3-8), using the gifts that God has given us to serve others, for their good not our glory. So worshipping God may look like encouraging someone by sending them a text to say you are praying for them, or popping in to visit someone, or by singing God’s praise when we gather together. It may look like serving others practically by serving tea or coffee or transporting people to church, or setting up chairs. You may worship God as you give generously, or lead with excellence, or teach the children or the adults thoughtfully leading them to Jesus.

Worship is living out of the love we have found in God, living with God’s contagious compassion(9-13), and (14-21)it is evidenced in a love for those who oppose us. It is intensely practical and physical, it is intensely relational, and it is all fuelled by an awareness and joy in the love we have experienced in God. It is not something we whip up or add to a ‘to-do list’ but is an out-flowing and overflowing of how much we are loved.

Worship is a War(2)
But we need to have a gospel world view so that we don’t find ourselves disillusioned by a hopeless idealism which falls flat on its face when we live in the world. Living out our identity in Christ, keeping worship as the activity of our lives will be a battle, it will involve change and effort, putting to death, and putting on.

Part of living as God’s people worshipping him as the activity of our lives is negative and part is positive. What is the negative(2)?

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world...” The word ‘world’ means age, do not conform to the pattern of this age. Live differently – that’s what it means to be holy. But I want to take a minute to think about how the world wants us to live, what pattern it calls us to conform to.

Self worship – our age prizes individualism, self fulfilment, rights, self esteem. You matter, you have the right to have what you want when you want it. We are constantly called to adopt this as our outlook.

Sacred/Secular divide – our ages pattern is that there must be a sacred secular divide, practice your religion in private but not in your professional sphere. That is increasingly the tune our workplaces, councils, bosses and government are singing – fine be a Christian, worship however you want on your time but don’t bring that to work.

There is no truth – so don’t contend that there is. Accept that every religion or no religion are all the same, don’t be a fundamentalist, or a bigot.

Be like everyone else – fit in, don’t rock the boat, go along with the consensus, be like everyone else.

All those and others are forces that are powerfully at work around us, one or all of them will have exerted their influence on you at times this week, they will have affected your thinking and or your actions. Just think back over this past week where have you felt that pressure at work, at home, when with friends? Where have you seen those messages in the media? How have they sought to make us conform?

Our age exerts powerful pressures on us to conform, it wants to shape our thinking because our thinking – our desires, emotions, our hearts – control our actions. Worshipping God as the activity of our lives is a battle.

We must replace that worldly pattern with another “but be transformed in the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.” The grace of God is transformative; we are given a new identity, a new heart and a new way of thinking. God’s grace becomes the driving force of our lives, grace fuels the humility which leads us to serve others not insist on our rights, love for others becomes the natural mode of expression for our new hearts. God fills us with his Spirit to that end, but he doesn’t override our thinking, he calls us by grace to cooperate with him so that we understand more of who he is.

The gospel transforms us so that worship becomes not an activity in our lives but the activity of our lives.

1. Where particularly are you feeling the pressure to conform to the pattern of this age?

2. How would you encourage and help someone struggling with that?

3. Worship is physical, it is everyday and it is relational. How does that liberate us to worship God?