Sermon: The Heart of Worship

2006

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Sermon: "The Heart of Worship"

Second in the "Come, Let Us Worship" series.
Delivered January 15, 2006 by Rev. John Schmidt.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 2 / 3 / 4

Theme: No matter how important all of the external things are in our worship, the biggest obstacle in worship is what God has to deal with in us. The biggest problem in worship is our heart.

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Sermon Text: Matthew 15:1-20

Lord, we admit right now that worship is all about you. There are so many ways that we have made it in to something else because of our sin, because of our failures and so now as we think about this issue of worship as we look in to your word, we pray that all of this might honor you, all of this might be part of our worship and all of this might draw us closer to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And so Lord may the reading of this word, may the meditation that we do on it together be pleasing in your sight because you are our God, our creator, our rock our redeemer. Amen.

I would like to read to you some words of Jesus; a conversation that he had with some of the religious leaders of his day. It comes in the Book of Matthew, Chapter 15 and I am going to read the 1st through the 20th verse. So if you could open up your bibles and take a look at that. Matthew Chapter 15. I am going to begin on the 1st verse.

Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, "Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don't wash their hands before they eat!" Jesus replied, "And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, 'Honor your father and your mother and anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.' But if you say that if a man says to his father or mother, whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God, he is not to honor his father with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition."

"You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men."

Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen and understand. What goes into a man's mouth does not make him unclean, but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him unclean." Then the disciples came to him and asked, "Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?" He replied, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit."

Peter said, "Explain the parable to us." "Are you still so dull?" Jesus asked them. "Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man unclean. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, and slander. These are what make a man unclean; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him unclean."

Well I've got a question to begin our thought together. You are getting ready to go out with your boyfriend or husband or girlfriend or wife and more than that you are getting together with some other friends. You have made reservations at a really nice restaurant across town. Now, in our minds what we would like to happen is for us to glide into that situation with great composure and joy and just have a wonderful evening, you know.

But what really happens as we prepare to go to something like this? And this is a real question I would like you to answer. You are getting ready to do something really special, other friends are coming, great restaurant across town, what's going to really happen as you get ready to go? The baby-sitter cancels, okay, crash and burn. Yes. What else? You're late, okay. You are starting to get ready and you fall farther and farther behind and so you start to feel tense and hurry up. What else? You have an argument. Well, I am sorry to hear that. I am sure that is not true for most of us. Okay, you have this argument. You are getting ready to have this wonderful time out and instead you are arguing together. One more? Traffic. You get out, you're late, you've argued, the baby-sitter situation has been solved and then you find yourself in traffic and you know once you get there you find out that the other people are still even later than you are.

It seems that the more important something is, the more things can get in the way of having it work out well and so it shouldn't surprise us that worship is full of obstacles. Is it any wonder that all kinds of things get in the way of our experience of worship. I would like a few people in our congregation to share about this with us.

"The biggest obstacle is the little dramas that go on or the little relational dramas."
"Sleeping in"
"I have a pretty scheduled life during the week. I am committed to being 5-10 minutes late. I find it harder to stick to a schedule on the weekends."
"As a Deacon, Sunday becomes a workday."
"To worship with having four kids, you know it's a challenge each week."
"Sometimes we're very easily distracted. If we are sitting there doing a song sometimes I feel like wow its really nice outside and I am like what do I have to do today and then there is like, oh I've got this paper I got to do."
"Part of the worship service isn't like I like it."
"I think the main obstacle to worship is me."
"Often times my biggest obstacle is myself and sometimes worrying that they are not sitting still or whatever."
"I failed in stuff over the past week or I failed in stuff, you know had an argument with my wife on the way to church that day."
"Sometimes you just don't feel like going in."
"I think learning more and more to just let them be who they are before God and not have it just be sort of a role or a duty."
"Focus too much on the sentimentality on the fun things and we don't deal with the hard realities of coming into Gods presence."
"There is a little voice that says you know you don't belong here. You can't worship God."

There are definitely times in life when things may not be going quite so well and we feel like telling God why, why us? What are you doing rather than how great you are." All of these are obstacles. It's not even the whole list. If we have kids you know the fidgety nature of the kids gets in the way. We are worried about what everyone else is thinking. Maybe the sanctuary is too light, too bright that day or too dark, too hot, too cold, the organ is too loud, the pastor's mic is not loud enough. The selection of music could be a problem. It could be that the starting time of the Raven's game is kind of on our minds you know and we are trying to figure out how it all works out. All of these are real issues. We do struggle with them; we all struggle with it.

All of these things make it easier or harder for us to worship and can be real obstacles, but I think as we think about this issue of worship, one of the things that we have to be reminded of right up front is that none of these obstacles that we talked about are the fundamental barriers that can enter this issue of worship. What is of fundamental importance is not what gets in the way of our feelings. No matter what we do, no matter what we feel, the most fundamental question in worship is whether God accepts it. That is the fundamental question.

It doesn't matter what we do. If God is not going to accept it, then we are not worshipping. I think sometimes we carry this idea around that God is really desperate for worship. You know, that God is sitting around there and that anything we do that is religious is fine. You know I think this idea is out in our culture that anything we do that acknowledges that there is a higher power; that this higher power is absolutely overjoyed because God was afraid he was going to be alone today. "Oh, I am so glad you came." We carry this idea around that we are really offering something to God. That's not the biblical picture. The biblical picture is that we are frighteningly close to never being ever able to offer God something of value and that apart from forgiveness and grace there is nothing we can do to please God. There is nothing we can do to reconnect. And so it's in grace that God reaches out and gathers us into Jesus Christ and into a community to allow us to offer something acceptable to him.

I want to read to you just a few passages that talk about how close, how perilously close we are to not being able to please God. Malachi, the start of the Book of Malachi, 1st Chapter, the 10th verse. "Oh that one of you would shut up the temple doors so that you would not light useless fires on my altar. I am not pleased with you, says the Lord Almighty, and I will accept no offering from your hands." The Book of Isaiah, Chapter 59, 1st verse: "Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear to dull to hear, but your iniquities have separated you from God. Your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear." Psalms 66, verse 18:

"If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened."

God has a choice in this whole worship thing. And so it's absolutely important as we think about worship that we take a look at the most important thing, which is what makes worship acceptable to God?

Jesus comes at this idea of worship the same way as the rest of scripture and we see it played out in this passage, in this conversation he has with the religious leaders. The religious leaders are getting concerned about what Jesus is teaching and doing and they are coming all the way from Jerusalem to question him. And in this conversation that he has with them, one of the most fundamental disagreements about religion ever to be had, rises up. This is one of the fundamental clashes between Jesus and the people of his day; two different ideas of worship, two different views of what it means to please God. We can basically summarize it as external or internal. The issue that brings this up is that the disciples are not washing their hands. It says that in the second verse. They don't wash their hands before they eat.

Now this is not a matter of hygiene, but it's also not a matter of something that was commanded in the Old Testament. The uncleanness that the religious leaders are concerned about has to do with a religious observance that they developed over years. In the Old Testament it says that the priest has to wash before the priest offers a sacrifice and they had added to that and said that all good observing Jews should wash their hands. And so they had a ritual. You had to have about an egg and a half full of water you know, that amount of about and you had to put it on your hands and you had to make sure it dripped down this way so that the dirty water on your fingertips would drip off your wrist and not go back and pollute your hands. And once you did it that way, then you washed your hands the other way and let it drip down the other way and then you used your fist to clean the inside of your hand. And all of this was religious in meaning and not hygiene.

They had hundreds of laws; it wasn't just this tradition, there were hundreds of laws, thousands of interpretations that they had summarized as being the tradition of the elders. So they say, "Why don't you disciples do this?" And Jesus answers but he doesn't answer by focusing in on that. He points to a bigger issue. The first issue that he points to that's bigger is that the Pharisees had all kinds of traditions that actually got in the way of obeying Gods commands. And so that is the first thing that he deals with here.

They had, for example, one tradition where someone could take their property and their belongings and say okay I am going to continue to handle this property. I am going to continue to earn from it, but I am also going to consider it as being offered to God. Kind of like a trust I guess nowadays. So you still own it, you still use it, but it's committed to God. Well, some people were using that commitment to God to go back to their parents and say I know that I should have money to help you in your old age, but I don't have that money because all my belongings now are committed to God. And Jesus says whether you intended that rule for that or not, the result is your rule, which is not in scripture, is causing people to dishonor their parents, which is commanded in scriptures that they should honor them. So that is the first thing that Jesus points out, is that all of their traditions had actually gotten in the way of their obedience.

But then he moves on to a bigger issue than even that and that comes up around verse 10; "Jesus called the crowd to him and said listen and understand. What goes in to a man's mouth doesn't make him unclean but what comes out of his mouth makes him unclean." The uncleanness here is an issue of being acceptable to God and so what makes us acceptable to God or not acceptable to God is not what comes into us, but what comes out of us. It's not a matter of the food we eat or drink. It's not a matter of what religious observances we do and when, it's what comes out of us from the inside. It's a matter of the heart. Jesus makes this very clear in the 16th to 20th verse. I will just read verse 19. "For out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony and slander. These are what make a man unclean, but eating with unwashed hands does not make him unclean." This was radically different than the thinking of the Pharisees. The Pharisees were focusing in on all of the externals; on all of the things that we were obligated to do, all the duties of religious life and Jesus comes in and says it's not a matter of all the externals and the duties; it is a matter of the heart, the relationship, the motivation, the character.

Now think about all the teaching of Jesus. In all of the teaching of Jesus that we have assembled, there is very little commentary on Jesus' part about how the priests offer their sacrifices. There is very little commentary about the details of what happens inside the temple in worship. Jesus doesn't talk about that. He could have. Some teachers spent major parts of their lives teaching on those issues. Instead, when you look at the body of Jesus' teaching he is always focusing in on the heart, on our relationship with God, our unwillingness to listen to God, to trust God, to obey God, to love God, to love other people as we should. Everything in Jesus' life and death deals with this core issue of relationship, this core issue of what's inside of us, the heart. So when we look at this issue of worship no matter how important all of the external things are, like the traffic, the snow days, and things like that; no matter important those things are we have to see that the biggest obstacle in worship is what God has to deal with in us. The biggest problem in worship is our heart. I want to make that point. I want you to get that one clear. The biggest problem in worship is our heart.

My father gave my mother beautiful anniversary cards. I can remember seeing them over the years and particularly as I grew older noticing the incredible cards he would send. They were passionate cards and said wonderful things about my mother. There were even floral cards. They were much nicer cards than I have gotten Debbie across the last 30 years. There was nothing wrong with those pretty anniversary cards. The problem was my father had an adulterous relationship for 20 years of his marriage. And so as I saw these cards come in as I got older, and as I look back on some of those cards that have been saved, I thought about the reality of their marriage over against these cards and I wondered just what was going on in his head when he gave these cards and what was going on in the head of my mother when she accepted these cards, particularly after she knew what was going on.

Something so fundamental was wrong in their marriage that no cards, no presents could ever cover it up. The issue in their marriage was the relationship itself. Hearts needed to change. Actions needed to change or their marriage was just a sham and after 31 years of marriage my parents divorced. No amount of action in a worship service, no amount of the externals, no amount of religious stuff that we can pack into our lives, no matter how well planned, how beautiful, how much we like it, how good it makes us feel, no amount of that can ever make up for a heart problem in our relationship with God. If there is something fundamentally wrong with the relationship, then nothing we can do externally will actually make up for that.

Now believe me corporate worship does wonderful things. But if we nurse our anger all week and refuse to forgive, if we seek pornography on the Internet on and off all week, if we lie to our families and employers about all kinds of things, if we selfishly go about the whole week with little thought of God, then how can we think that something we do on a Sunday morning for just an hour or so is going to make up for that? Now believe me, our worship does have a role. I spend half of my working life working on worship, so I believe it's important. It gives us a good time to refocus our priorities. It gives us time to reflect on things. It gives us time to think about God, to confess things, to reorient. All of these things are vital for our Christian life. Gathering together for worship is vital, but it will never replace what has to happen in our personal life with God. That's what Neil pointed out right at the start of this worship service. We are a congregation that focuses in on a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That is what is fundamental and keeping that relationship right. So Jesus says this in verse 8, "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." That is the issue we have to deal with. When something is coming out of our lips that is not coming out of our lives. So we need to seek a heart level solution.

When I came to Central Presbyterian Church and began to preach every week, my prayer life changed. As an associate pastor I was always praying about one set of things. When I came here and started preaching every week, more and more part of my prayer time was focusing in on our worship together, about the music, about the sermon, about you know all of the details and I still pray about those things. But more and more as time has gone on, I have been led to pray about the worshippers that come. Who are we as we assemble in the name and authority of Jesus Christ Who are we when we do that? When God looks into the hearts of each of us here, is he seeing something that brings joy to his heart or is he seeing the very kind of hypocrisy that Jesus was always preaching against?

And so I pray more and more about the reality, about the integrity, about the character of who we are as we come to worship God, because again as Neil pointed out in front, God is the audience. God is the one looking and he looks inside, as well as outside. He is not just hearing what we say; he's hearing what's on our heart. So we have to seek a heart solution. Jesus said this when he had a conversation at another time with a woman who was concerned about what kind of worship was happening in Jerusalem and when. He gave this answer, "A time is coming and has now come when true worshippers will worship the father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers that the Father seeks. More important than the place, time and details of our worship is the condition of the hearts of those who come to worship." So that means that we need a spiritual EKG, a spiritual heart test and so I would like to give us a few questions to think about across the next few weeks about our relationship with God.

The first is, what is the elephant in the middle of the room with God? What is it that's the biggest, most obvious barrier in your relationship to God? Is it lust, greed, pride, substance abuse, anger, fear, laziness, unwillingness to forgive, judgmentalness, overworked and the list goes on? What is it that is the big issue? That's the first question.

The second question, why is this such a big deal for you? We are complicated people and sometimes what we are struggling with has roots that go down deep and sometimes we need to struggle and think hard and reflect with other people to get down to why these gigantic things in our lives are so big. But be brutally honest with yourself because God already sees.

The next question, well not question, but the next direction. Admit all of this to God. That is what confession is all about and pray for change. Look for opportunities to act differently. Be on the alert about specifically those big problems. But I think underlying it all, the final thing that makes this Christian and not just self-help is that believe that you can change because what Jesus says is that he has come, that we might live life abundantly. He has come so that we might become a new creation. The old has passed away. All has become new. He has come so that the sinful nature might be crucified and that we might have a new life. Romans 6, 7 and 8 talk about this. Believe that we can change. Count on it. Trust God for it. That is where faith comes into all of this.

Work on the heart problem, because that is the most fundamental issue. Now, here I am in a worship service assigning homework, but that's just the point. On a human level everything that happens here while we are together is to encourage us and instruct us for the big issues in our life with God and the big issue is what we think, believe and do everyday outside where we live, work and play. That is the big issue. The most important things in worship may not happen here. This is base camp. This is where you get provisions. This is where we check our gear and make sure it's working right. But the climb, the challenge is outside. There will always be problems in our worship, there will always be hassles in anything important like that. Traffic, snow, music, weak batteries in the microphones, all of that is going to be there and all of that affects us, but it doesn't affect God. Let's be sure to deal with the barrier that stands in God's way; a heart that isn't submitted to him.

Let's pray. God, as we go now into a continued time of worship, we pray that we might have open eyes and honest hearts as we continue to move toward you and express our life in Jesus Christ. For it's in His name that we pray. Amen.