Last week, as we began this series looking at worship, I looked at what is the inner essence of worship. And we defined worship as treasuring and valuing God in your heart so that it consumes your entire being – heart, soul, and mind. Building on that, as we look at worship, I want to look at what kind of heart a person has to have if he is going to treasure and value God in this way.
But instead of spending most of the time this morning building up to constructing this definition (as we did last week), I want to simply state my thesis, which tells what a person’s heart must be like and then spend most of the time saying why I think this must be the case. Here is my thesis:
If we are to be true worshipers of God, then we must be people who have a heart that exults in God exalting himself above all things by whatever means he chooses.
But why do I pick this as the quality that must exist in a person’s heart? I could have chosen a number of different things to focus on here, but I want to show you the three reasons why I have this as my thesis.
God’s greatest delight is in displaying his own glory. He is not an idolater. That is to say, if idolatry is worshiping something above (or even beside) God, God does not do this. His passion is to display his own glory. He is passionate about it. Listen to his motivation and drive for his actions in our text for this morning.
“For my name’s sake I defer my anger, for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off. Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another” (Is. 48:9-11).
And the result of God being the center of his own affections is that he demands that we have him as the center of ours as well. Therefore, the demand of worship stems out of God’s desire to exalt himself above all things. He is the center of all things; he must be the center of all things.
Therefore, all true worshipers of God will have a God-centered worldview. They must say that God is the center and end of all things and find delight in saying that. But many of us don’t, or at least struggle to do so.
Many times we want to believe that God exists for us, that he owes at least an opportunity for salvation to everyone, that we should get a say in our lives, and that God cannot act without our judging of him. We judge God far too easily, thinking we can tell him what he can or cannot do.
But in a biblical God-centered worldview, we say that God’s ultimate desire is to exalt himself and we delight in that. We must delight in that, for if we do not delight in God, we sin, forgetting the first and great commandment. And if we delight in a God who is not like that, then we are committing idolatry, for we are delighting in a God other that the one that the Bible reveals to us.
Therefore, the Bible tells us that God is passionate about his own glory, and this is the greatest basis for my thesis this morning: that one who worships must have a heart that exults in God exalting himself by whatever means he desires.
Now, we are probably tempted once again to say, “Of course,” and tune out, but this is a difficult issue, for it is easy to drift into valuing things and mistake them as valuing God. For it is easy to say, “Of course I value God above all else,” when life, and health, and family are good, but what if all those things were gone, would you be able to say, “I still have the thing that I value above all else – God.”
Here’s where I want to focus in on the portion of the thesis that says, “By whatever means he desires.” Because listen to verses 10-11 again. God says, “Behold, I have refined you, not as silver, I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.”
In order to assure that his glory is not profaned, God sends affliction in people’s lives at times. And when this happens, if we are going to worship, we must have a heart that exults in God exalting himself by whatever means he desires.
Take Job for example. In one day Job loses his servants, his sheep, his oxen, his camels, his donkeys, and his children. He loses everything that you could imagine losing with the exception of his house. And yet his response is told to us in Job 1:20-21, saying, “Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.’” Then the text tells us in 1:22 “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.” Isn’t that incredible? And later when Job loses his health, he responds to his wife in 2:10, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?”
God had the right to use Job’s life to exalt how great and satisfying and worthy he is, and Job went through much affliction. And yet he worshiped. The only way that you are going to respond like Job did in worshiping God in your affliction is if you create a weak God who couldn’t do anything about what happened, which is sin, or if you exult in God exalting himself even in your affliction.
Your heart must be as that in Habakkuk 3:17-18, “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no heard in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.” You must find that your foundation for and content of worship is God himself, and not people or things, otherwise you will not be found worshiping when God says, “For my name’s sake, I will try you in the furnace of affliction.”
There is one final reason I want to mention in support of my thesis.
Now this may seem out of place with the other reasons I have given, but it is important when thinking through worship. Let me lay it out in three steps of logic that build on each other.
1. Worship is something that is to occur in our lives in all things at all times.
2. God is the only thing that is consistently the same and continually worthy of worship.
3. To worship at all times in all things, we must know who God is and what he has done and respond to that by valuing him and treasuring him.
Worship is always a response to who God is and what he has done.
Therefore, when we read a text like we do this morning, we stop and allow the reality of God being able to glorify himself because he is all-powerful, and we treasure and value God. You do the same when you read the glorious statement in verse 13. And we think of what he has done in order to magnify himself, for one of the greatest things he has done to magnify his name is seen in the cross. The cross was for God’s glory. Thus, Jesus says as he goes toward the cross, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him” (John 13:31).
In the same way, in our text this morning, God sends his people through affliction because he wants to be glorified in them. And the reason their lives are so important in showing his glory is because they are the ones that he has called out to be his people. He tells them in verse 12, “Listen to me, O Jacob, and Israel, whom I called! I am he; I am the first, and I am the last.” The one who is the first and the last called Israel to himself as he has called everyone of us to us who know him as our Lord. And in order to call us, he justified us by sending his Son to the cross.
Worship occurs as we live in light of God’s character and his actions. Therefore, as we have hearts that exult in God exalting himself, we will think of what kind of God he is, think of what he has done to fulfill this purpose and delight as a response to that, treasuring and valuing our God in worship. It is a response.
For this reason, much of our labor on Sunday morning needs to be to sing songs that remind you of who God is and what he has done that we might respond in praise, it is to pray the same way, and preach the same way. Probably the best thing we could do on Sunday mornings is have a progression take place in our hearts as we are reminded of our low state, of God’s glorious character and actions, and then praise him as the outflow of our internal treasuring of him.
Therefore, as we close this morning we are going to pause, repent if our hearts are not such, pray that God would give us hearts that hold him as the center of all things and delight in that, and we are going to sing as a declaration that our hearts truly treasure and value God as he exalts himself in this world. May he fill the earth with his glory. Amen.