Worship: Life, Not Service (Part 2)

11/1987

Ok, the original question, which I never did really answer, was, “What arrangements do we have to make, and what do we have to plan in order to make a change in our worship?”

I would say that the main thing, and I guess from the other questions I see in front of me that we’re going to come to this in a couple minutes, but the main thing is just to be real with one another. To get out of the form that drives us.

Even on the day of Pentacost, with three thousand people there and Peter preaching up a storm up there, somebody still had the guts and the honesty to say, “Peter, what must we do?? Hold on, Peter, what must we do?”

With three thousand people there in the middle of a sermon, he felt free to interrupt and to say, “What must we do?” That’s the kind of heart and attitude we’ve got to have with one another is to quit monkeying around.

If we’re singing a song, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with what LIFE is all about then somebody needs to say so. “Hey, y’all, that was a real pretty song, and I’ve loved that song for years, but I don’t see how that’s related to what’s going on right now.” And so we’re just honest with each other.

Can you imagine during one of Mike’s sermons, or one of Dave’s or Gary’s sermons, somebody in the middle of it saying, “Yeah, but Gary, what must we do?” “Mike, what must we do?” It’s hard to imagine that in our minds because our idea of what worship services are, even with three thousand members in attendance, or whatever, all unbelievers in this case (of Pentacost), we can’t imagine somebody interrupting the sermon.

But that’s the nature of Life in Christ. Moses was talking to a burning bush. The Glory of God was just radiating from that burning bush, and God was so approachable that Moses had the freedom to argue with the burning bush.

That boggles my mind. Not that Moses would have the guts to argue with the burning bush, but that God would be so approachable that Moses could say, “But yeah, but…” to the burning bush! That’s what we need to be able to do in a “worship service”—quote, unquote. To “yeah, but” right in the middle, and be able to say, “Ok, enough of this theory, give me the application. What must we do? Alright! I’m convicted already! I’m cut to the heart! So what about it? What am I supposed to do?”

But what we’ve done is, because we’ve created this external form, we’ve got a thing going on where we ask that question at the restaurant afterwards. “Ok, it was an interesting sermon and it was challenging and I’m convicted, but where do we go from here? I don’t get it. I don’t see how next week is gonna be different from this week. It was extremely convicting, but I don’t get it. What must we do?”

We have to ask that question at the restaurant because the “form” is so tight and so unapproachable that we’ve made it to be a “god.” Even GOD is approachable in a burning bush, but not our “form.” I dare not interrupt the sermon.

Now in 1 Corinthians 14, it’s talking about “worship services”—it’s really the best description, it’s really the only description of a worship service in the entire New Testament. And it says that when people are speaking the word of God, the unbeliever will fall down and worship God exclaiming, “God is really among you!” This is a person who is an unbeliever, who doesn’t even know God, but this person knows the presence of God is there. So it must not be theoretical.

It says “What shall we say then? When you come together everyone has a hymn, a word of instruction, a revelation.” Or in other words “Wow, I get it. I understand now what I didn’t understand before.” That’s what a revelation is.

It goes on to say that two or three at the most should speak. Two or three that are speaking the word of God should speak. The others should weigh carefully what’s being said. If a person comes to understand something as we’re talking and says, “Oh I get it!”, if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down the first speaker should stop. “For you should all speak the word of God in turn so that everyone might be instructed and encouraged.”

What that means is, if I’m speaking the word of God, and somebody says, “Oh man! I gotta share this,” then I’m supposed to sit down and shut up, and let the next one say something. But again, now there’s the only description we have in the New Testament of a worship service—“Everyone brings a song, a word of instruction, a revelation” and so on. And if one person is speaking and somebody in the Priesthood of believers, who is no less a Priest than the one who is the official voice of the congregation, supposedly—the hired hand who’s supposed to be a gun-slinger with a Bible.

That just doesn’t exist in the New Testament. I’m real sorry, and I apologize to the world at large that is practicing that and is engaged in it as a profession rather than as their life. But the fact is that if one is speaking the word of God and another one of the Priests of God has an understanding of something he wants to share, then let the first one sit down. That’s what the Bible says.

If we’re not free enough to obey the Bible, the way it says it, then I just wonder what God’s thinking of us up there. What good are we really doing if we’re disobeying God in the practice of trying to please God?

So, anyway, “what arrangements do we have to make to make a change in our worship?” I would say it’s just simply having the guts and really a gracious enough heart to say, “I’d like to say something if I could.” And I think what you’d find is that ninety-nine percent of the people would receive that gladly.

It says the common people heard Him gladly. And the experts in the Law and the Sanhedrin and the important Biblical scholars of Jesus’ day, they sent the guards out to capture Jesus. They came back empty-handed and they said, “Where is he?! Why didn’t you bring Him back?” The response was, “Well nobody ever spoke like this man did.” And the experts in the Bible got angry and said, “Is there a curse on these people? Are you as stupid as they are? Don’t you know that none of the scholars and the pillars in this church thinks there’s anything to what this man is saying? And yet all these people must have a curse on them because they actually hear him gladly!”

Now that same thing is happening today. The people that have something to lose are going to lose their little kingdoms. They’re going to lose their ability to be a big fish in a little pond. They’re going to lose the opportunity to impress people with their Bible knowledge. They’re going to lose their opportunity to be called a man of God even though nobody sees enough of their life to know whether they’re a man of God. It’s just because they know their Bible we say they’re a man of God.

All those things have got to come crumbling down if we’re ever really going be a habitation of God by the spirit. We’ve got to get back to the simplicity of a Priesthood of Believers, not clergy-laity under another name. We say it doesn’t exist, but there it is, plain as day, just as surely as the catholic church that I was part of growing up. It’s just exactly the same today.

Now the Priesthood of Believers says that we have the freedom and the ability just to be honest and to say, “Hey, you know, I have something I need to say.” Or “I’d like to pray, there’s a prayer on my heart. I’d like to pray.” Rather than somebody assigning him a prayer a week earlier, but maybe there’s no prayer on his heart. Maybe he got done yelling at his kids and kicking the dog, and just got done cheating on his income tax the night before till 2 in the morning, and there’s no prayer on his heart. He’s not in fellowship with God and yet we’ve assigned him that place because he knows his Bible and he’s a “faithful christian” because he comes Sunday morning and Sunday night, and Wednesday night. But, see, the whole thing is based on externals.