Jo Vitale [00:00:35] So welcome to the podcast where we invite you to Ask Away. As we start out this morning, I want you to picture this scene with me. You walk into a venue filled with a large crowd of people, unsure what to expect, and so you nervously take a seat in one of the rows, and there's this kind of buzz of excitement in the air. Music starts blasting out of loudspeakers, and all of a sudden the crowd gets to their feet. They raise their hands in the air in a synchronized motion, and they all burst into infused song. And from that point on, you just have no idea what is going on. All eyes are fixed on this team that are up at the front, and the audience keep getting up and down and bursting into song and getting strangely emotional about what is happening while confusing information is flashing across these big screens behind you, and then random people start walking up and down the aisles, handing out oddly shaped pieces of bread and mysterious drinks in plastic cups. Now, if that sounds familiar to any of you this morning, then yes, you guessed right. I'm talking about baseball. 

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[00:01:47] My husband, Vince, he's from New Jersey. He is a huge New York Yankees fan, and he's tried so hard-- sorry if that offends anyone, he has tried so to indoctrinate me into the great American game. But as a British person, I just can't get past why everybody is getting so riled up about grown men running around in circles wearing pajamas. Perhaps this morning there are some of you here who feel about church the way that I do about baseball. Maybe it's your first time visiting a church today and you haven't got a clue what is going on and why people are singing loudly at you and you're just sitting there wondering how long is it going to take for somebody to come by and pass the pretzels? Sorry, not happening anytime soon. Others of you, maybe you've grown up around church, but you still have a lot of questions about aspects of Christian faith and practice that just seem really weird to you. Well, wherever you're coming from today, my prayer for our next few weeks together is not only that we could clear up some of the confusion, but that God would help us to see both the beauty behind the beliefs and the purpose in the practices that have been handed down to us from the very first century church. 

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[00:03:09] Worship is a good place for us to start this series because many of us are accustomed to singing in church every week. And so it's never really even occurred to us to wonder, well, hold on a second, I give up free time every weekend to sing into the back of somebody else's head. Why am I doing this? And isn't that something even more deeply wrong here? Something inherently feudalistic and kind of demeaning about bowing down before the throne of some invisible god. I mean, why would any modern, educated person willingly submit to that when they could just live free? Why would anybody want to worship at all? Well, here's the thing. Nobody gets out of life without worshiping something. It is hardwired into us to desire meaning, significance, satisfaction. And so we spend our days searching for that one elusive thing that will finally satisfy those deep desires that we have in us. And when we think that we finally found that thing, well, we put it right at the center of our lives as the source of ultimate meaning. And then we begin to revolve our lives around it. And when we're doing that, then we are worshiping. 

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[00:04:29] This cycle usually starts out with a good thing, like a career or fitness or our children. But then what happens? Well, we place more and more pressure on that thing, hoping that it might be able to bear the weight of our identity and our meaning and our satisfaction, those deepest and heaviest of our longings. But then time and again, whatever we've asked to carry, this burden of worship winds up breaking under the weight of it. The job role that we worship comes to an end, and it feels like we died with it. Our bodies that we worshiped start aging on us, and we experience this crisis of self-worth. Our children that we've worshiped leave home and start pouring themselves into other relationships, and we feel bereft and betrayed. In the words of the American novelist, David Foster Wallace, himself an agnostic in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such things as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual type thing to worship is that pretty much anything else that you worship will eat you alive. 

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[00:05:47] It's not weird that we worship. That comes naturally to us. You might even say that to live is to worship. What's weird is that we're forever worshiping things that don't satisfy. The 20th century Oxford professor and prolific author C.S. Lewis put it this way, "If I find in myself desires that nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical conclusion is that I was made for another world." Or could it be that you have desires within you that cannot be met by created things because they were put there by a creator who made you for himself? What if there is one who can actually bear the full weight of being worshiped because that's who he is by nature? And worship is simply our rightful response to him. On account of both who he is and what he has done, God has shown himself to be the only object in the universe who is actually worthy of our praise. And that's what the word means. Worship comes from the old English worths-hip. A God who's worthy of that role of being right at the center of our lives and carrying the full burden of life. And not merely because he has the power to zap us if we don't get in line. Now, I've met many people who've struggled to differentiate worshiping God from fearing God. 

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[00:07:18] And indeed, Proverbs 9:10, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Or Psalm 147:11, the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him. If that is your definition of worship, no wonder you flinch from it. But these scriptures are a primary example of why translation and context really matter when it comes to reading the Bible. Because when the biblical authors write about fearing the Lord, this is how they frame it. The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him, in those hope in His steadfast love. But with you, God, there is forgiveness that you may be feared. Now just think about that for a second. Steadfast love and forgiveness don't typically leave us trembling with dread on the floor. And that is because in Hebrew, this command to fear God has a much fuller meaning than just to be afraid. Instead, it's usually intended to convey awe, reverence, wonder, respect, amazement. To fear God is not a command to be terrified because God might do something bad to you. Rather, it's to be awed by the fact that he has already been so, so good to you. 

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[00:08:38] Three years ago, Vince and I took a trip to Yosemite National Park with our kids and another couple. And right at the end of the day, Vince suggested that he and his friend go for a hike up to the bottom of the El Capitan cliff face. Once they got there, Vince was walking across a large granite boulder when his foot slipped and he went sliding over the edge. And then he flew over the head of our friend who was standing beneath him and said it looked like he just Supermanned over him. And then when Vince hit the ground, he actually didn't stop, but he started bouncing down this steep cliff face like a boulder in a children's cartoon picking up speed as he went. He was going so fast that he actually didn't know which way was up or down. He said he couldn't even reach out to grab hold of anything. He was just waiting for his bones to break or to black out on a sharp piece of rock. And worst of all, he was sliding down towards this cliff edge that was about 50 feet beneath him. And once he went over it, it was just a sheer drop down. 

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[00:09:35] But it just so happened that there was one humble little tree growing out of the edge of the cliff. And right before Vince sailed over the precipice, by some miracle, he rolled straight into it. It caught him perfectly. He said it cupped him like a baseball glove, whatever that means, as he landed with his back up against it. And at which point he immediately began yelling out, "Thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus!" And our friends scrambled down after him, following this trail of blood and honestly afraid he was going to find him dead at the bottom, only to arrive at a bruised and bleeding, but thankfully unbroken, Vince. Our friend wasn't a Christian, but in that moment Vince said to him, "Man, I know it's not your normal practice, but I just need to pray." To which our shell-shocked friend immediately responded, "Absolutely, let's pray." And while they waited for search and rescue to arrive, our friend then shared that he'd been planning on asking Vince when they got to the top, if he felt closer to God in places like this, to which Vince answered, "Well, I think God already knew your question and he answered it before you even had a chance to ask it.". 

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[00:10:41] But you see, here's the thing; when Vince landed on that tree, he didn't have to grit his teeth to force out a thank you. Quite the opposite, praise just flew out of him. There was no stopping it. Not because anyone told him to, but because that is the right natural and instinctive response when somebody has saved your life. Even our friend who wasn't a believer experienced that same impulse, so much so that later that afternoon, he turned to his wife and said, "Now I know that God exists, because otherwise there is no way Vince should have survived that fall." What Vince experienced that day wasn't unique to him. The central claim of Christianity is that this is the state of every one of us, that the ground that we thought was solid has crumbled beneath us. It wasn't strong enough to bear the weight of our life. And so we wake up each day feeling like we're spinning out of control. We're just tumbling down the hill, waiting for the next hit, and painfully aware there is just nothing I can do to break my fall. But then right as we are heading towards the edge we suddenly find ourselves caught, this time not by a tree, but by a humble figure on a tree. 

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[00:11:55] Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only one capable of bearing the burden of life because he himself was humble enough to live a human life. The only God worthy of bringing us to our knees because he, himself, fell on his knees when he was carrying that tree on his back. The only one for whom our arms should be outstretched in praise because he stretched out his arms to us on that cross. And if you're here this morning because you're trying to figure out who or what to worship with your life, let me just say this, when you put your hope in the steadfast love of God, He will not let you down. With Him, there is forgiveness. To live is to worship, but to worship God is to really live. And if you're a Christian here today, then that already is your testimony. This is the story of every single one of us who's been saved by Jesus Christ. My question for you this morning is this, does your worship reflect that rescue? Do we worship like people still afraid of falling off a cliff or like people overjoyed to find ourselves already caught and held? And is that overflow of thanksgiving just as unstoppable in our midweek meeting as it is in our Sunday morning worship? 

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[00:13:19] I find it so heartening that right at the beginning of the Bible in Genesis chapter two, when human beings have been given their purpose, the same word in Hebrew that is used to describe our work, avodah, also translates as worship. What that tells us is that the Bible knows nothing of a sacred and secular divide of compartmentalizing your work self from your worshipful self. And I find that such a dignifying and redemptive vision for life, because it means that when we become a Christian, it's not just that parts of our life get changed, but that everything we do, from the breakfast you made for your kids to the project you just completed for your company, they all become profoundly meaningful and potent with possibility when they are carried out with an attitude of worship and this openness to how God might be at work in your life today. But it does beg the question, if our worship of God extends so much further than the songs that we sing, if worship is a way of life, then why do we need to sing songs at all? Is this an opt-in, opt-out thing? 

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[00:14:28] Well, before we dismiss singing in church entirely, let's just take a look at an extract from a letter in the New Testament, which the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus. This is Ephesians chapter five. Verses 19 to 20, "Encourage each other with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your hearts to the Lord. Always give thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." When it comes to music, it would seem that our Creator has intentionally wired us to experience this phenomenon in a uniquely powerful way. Now, unlike other kinds of stimuli, hearing music lights up nearly every part of your brain, including the regions that govern memory, emotion, pleasure and motor function. It's why music therapy can be such a powerful tool for treating stroke survivors or those with dementia, because music unlocks memory and emotion in a way that little else can. So the fact that our Creator would give us such a powerful catalyst for expressing those deepest parts of ourselves, I think that reveals something significant about what matters to God. 

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[00:15:45] It was not enough that we just intellectually believe in Him and keep messy emotion out of it. Rather, Jesus teaches that God's greatest commandment is for us to love Him with everything within us, heart, soul, mind, and strength. And music is one of the blessings that He's given us to help us do just that. Well, Scripture provides plenty of reasons to sing to God. I want to home in on three this morning. Number one, worshiping through song builds us up. In Ephesians 5 verse 20, the Apostle Paul instructs us to always give thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Personally, I found that one of the best ways to cultivate a life of thanksgiving to God, who He is, what He's done and what He is doing now, is by intentionally creating opportunities to sing praises to Him throughout the day. My four-year-old son cheekily reminded me of this point a few months ago when he was resisting falling asleep one night. And so I asked him to be quiet only for him to sing straight back at me, "I won't be quiet. My God is alive. How could I keep it inside?" Like, oh, come on. Seriously, how do you argue with that? 

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[00:17:04] Yeah, you're right. Yeah, God's alive. That is exciting. Yeah, as you can imagine, it was a long night. But when we build up these habits of singing praise to God starting very young, we are investing in an inner treasure trove of worship, which the Holy Spirit can then draw upon to comfort or convict us in times of need. I don't think I realized how significant this deposit of worship would turn out to be until about five years ago when I miscarried a child. And in the months that followed that, grief would just strike at the most inconvenient times usually when I was driving our car to work, and I just had to do it through this blur of tears. I didn't realize it at first, but after a few times of it happening, I suddenly realized that every time I was crying in the car, I instinctively found myself with a song of praise on my lips. I hadn't consciously chosen it. You'd only notice halfway through the song. It was just pouring out of me. And even though it was one of the saddest times of my life, those drives to work also became one of the tenderest seasons I've experienced in my relationship with God, because somehow through the tears and the song, the Spirit of God met me right in my place of need, in that car, and I just knew that even in the heartache, He was with me. 

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[00:18:32] Secondly, worshiping through song blesses the whole church. Back when I was in college, I was convicted during a church service that I needed to give up wearing makeup for an extended period of time. And back then I was incredibly reliant upon cosmetics to mask some deep insecurities about the way that I looked, so much so that when this conviction came upon me, I burst into tears in the middle of the church service. I said to God, "Please, I'll do anything, just not that. Don't ask me that." Looking back, it's insane, right? People are giving up their lives for the gospel and I can't even lay down a mascara brush. But in that moment, I sensed God pressing me to explain why not. And I was really shocked by what came out of me. I said, "Because I don't want people to see me." At which point I had the impression that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, was gently rebuking me. But Jo, if they can't see you, how will they ever see me? Obviously, God won that argument. But what surprised me most about that season that followed was that of all the places that I visited without wearing makeup, I found church to be the hardest one of all. 

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[00:19:47] I can remember walking in the door one Sunday only for a friend to comment, "Are you okay? You look really ill." I said, "Thanks, actually it's just my natural face." I shared that this morning because I think that some of us face a similar struggle with letting our guard down when it comes to worshiping God in a communal setting like this. And no wonder, right? Worshiping god in song is one of the most intimate, vulnerable things that we can do because it requires coming as we are, not as we like to pretend to be, and that leaves us feeling strangely exposed. Because what if somebody sees me? What a loss it is, though, when we allow fear of being seen by others to keep us from fulfilling these instructions for the church in Ephesians 5 verse 19, to encourage each other with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. We sometimes think it's no big deal whether we engage in some worship or not. What we fail to realize is that by withholding ourselves, we're actually withholding a blessing from other people. We're denying them something. And that's not just because they need to hear the truths that we're proclaiming, although that is true, it's that they need see those words being brought to life in the very lives of people surrounding them. 

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[00:21:11] More and more these days we tend towards individualistic expressions of worship. But that was never the totality of what God intended for worship to be. Clearly, just look at the end of the Bible and the vision that the apostle John has of where we are all headed. That is one packed out throne room of worship in Revelation, chapter four. It makes sense, right? Because like any loving father, there is nothing that delights God more than when all of his children are not only gathered together, but when they've come with a heart to bless and encourage one another. And the best way to do that is not by performing or just singing louder, but by coming in a spirit of truth. When you allow people to see what worship looks like in every season of your life, in joy or in sorrow, in smiles or in tears, in exuberant praise or in quiet reverence, you show them so much more than just yourself. You actually show them God at work in you, Christ in you the hope of glory. And when they see how you love Him, that is such a powerful reminder to them that He is worthy. I think there's honestly no greater encouragement that we could give to our church family on a Sunday than that. 

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[00:22:30] Thirdly, and most significantly of all, worshiping in song is for God. Yes, there are many secondary benefits, I've just named two, but at the end of the day, it is all for Him. And if we forget that, and if we make it about anything else, then it is no longer worship at all. That's when it becomes karaoke. Ss I was preparing for this series, there was one sentence of scripture that just stopped me in my tracks. Ephesians 5.19, "Sing and make music in your hearts to the Lord." Elsewhere in scripture, we're told to make a joyful noise or to make music to the lord, but this time the emphasis has shifted. It's as if God is saying to us, don't just make music, mean it! It's not your songs I'm after; it is your heart. If you're going to sing me a song, make it a love song. Now I wonder, when was the last time anybody asked you to sing them a love song? I can't actually even think of a time, although now I've said it and Vince is sitting down there. I know when I get home, I will be asked later this evening. 

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[00:23:36] There are people in my life to whom I say, I love you, but I don't sing it to them. And yet, as is often the case with God, He's not asking anything of us that He hasn't already done for us. Did you know that long before God ever asked you to sing to Him, He was already singing over you? As the prophet Zephaniah told the people of God all the way back in the seventh century BC, God Himself will rejoice over you. With gladness, He will quiet you with His love. He will exalt over you with loud singing. When it comes to worshiping God, some of us have been blinded by fear. Maybe you spend your life running around frantically serving and burning out. And then you come on a Sunday and you cower before him, just terrified that you still haven't done enough. But this morning, I just want to invite you to look again at his heart. To look at this creator God who hums you to sleep like a mother soothes her child and cheers you on like an embarrassingly loud dad on the sidelines of a sports pitch. The God who sings love songs to you and over you and who says to you this morning, I'm not here to see you grovel. I'm here for your heart. I don't want you to fall back in fear, I just want you to sing me a love song. 

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[00:25:06] Now, how different would life be if you truly believe that, wow, what God really wants from me is a love song? And how different would church be if on a Sunday, instead of walking in and wondering about what we're going to experience that morning, we walked in the door completely consumed by the thought, what kind of experience am I going to give God this morning? What if we came before Him with these kind of prayers in our hearts? God, I am here for you. I want to bring you joy today. Please show me what would delight your heart. I just want you to know how much I love you. I want to move you. I want to make you smile. Now, part of what makes prayers like that so precious to God is because they're a gift that only we have the ability to give Him. All creation worships. Your far from being weird, worship is the most natural thing in the world. I learned just the other day that gravitational waves actually create a background hum to the universe. And I thought, wow, there really is this symphony of worship going on all around us all the time. The heavens declare the glory of God. The trees clap their hands. The rocks cry out. The angels proclaim before God's throne, holy, holy, holy. 

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[00:26:25] Everything else in all creation is all about worshiping God and declaring his glory. We are the weird ones, because uniquely amongst all creation, we are the only ones to whom God has given the choice of whether to worship Him or not. Which means that we alone have the ability to move His heart in a way that no one else and nothing else can. To worship him not because we have to, but because we get to, because we long to, because he alone is worthy. Either we can grieve him with rejection or we can bless him with our love songs. And the choice is ours this morning. In just a minute, we're going to worship God together, again in song. But when the musicians start playing, I actually don't want you to rush to join in. Rather, I want you take a minute to just pause and pray. And I know that some of you here are still figuring out what you believe. And that's great. There is no pressure to sing words that you're unsure of. But I would invite you to listen to those words that are sung. And as you do so, to pray, "God, if you're there, I would really like to know about it. Please show me your heart so that I can respond to you rightly." And for those of you who are Christians, you too have an intentional choice, to make a choice about whether to just go through the motions or to bring God something real, something that will bless His heart. 

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