Biblical Worship

Hello, and welcome to the Salt Church Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this week's message. Join us as we explore God's Word providing practical teaching for day-to-day living. The message you are about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning worship experience. If you would like to learn more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.

org. We hope that you are encouraged by today's message. And the idea of this series is we all worship something. We all worship something. In week one, we talked about that.

It's not just about a song or a Sunday morning gathering. It's not even whether somebody attends church or not. It doesn't have anything to do with that. Everybody worships something. And worship is the simple definition for worship.

Worship is a response to what we value the most. So, if you value something, you worship that thing. And God's given us things in our lives, special things, and we can call those little gods. And God doesn't mind us having those things, but when we don't prioritize Him is when it's a problem. It's an issue.

And even those who, as I mentioned in the weeks past, those who may be even proclaimed atheists, they worship something, right? They worship science. They worship the idea that there is no God. They worship matter. They worship their study.

Richard Dawkins, he worships his study of trying to disprove that there is the existence of God. So, we can't get away from worship. Why? Because we were made for worship. And so, last week, we talked a little bit about that, right?

We talked about Satan. We talked about what happened in the beginning. We looked back in Scripture to the prophetic books. We looked at Ezekiel. We looked at Isaiah.

And what we brought from that is that although Isaiah and Ezekiel were talking to somebody, the king of Tyre in that day and the king of Babylon, there was something more real, more sinister going on in the background. There was a reality. There was a veil pulled back into heaven and seeing what was happening behind the scenes. That there actually was this person that we call, in some manuscripts, called Lucifer, Satan. And he and a lot of theologians believe that he was the chief worshiper in heaven.

Regardless of what we think about Lucifer, we know that he was glorious. And he reflected the glory of God. He was beautiful. He was called the morning star, right? But what his main issue was is that he wanted worship.

He was merchandising worship. He was pulling worship away from God. And his greatest desires, what we talked about last week, his greatest desire, number one, was to have worship. And his desire was that you stop worshiping. And the third thing is, he wants to keep you from becoming who he once was.

A worshiper, built and made to worship. And we are the replacement of that worship, right? We have percussion. We have strings. We have...

That's who we are. He made us to worship. So we are the replacement of Satan. And Satan does not like that. He wants to worship.

He wants to take that commission off of you. He wants to take that name off of you and bring it away. And he's doing everything he can to keep you from worshiping. So what do we do when we don't feel like worshiping? When we're distracted from worshiping, we lean in and worship more.

Amen? Because we are the chief worshipers. We were made to worship. We talked about that last week. Well, this week, we're going to look at the biblical definition of worship.

Well, how does God see worship? What does God see when he sees worship? And it's going to mess up your traditions a little bit, maybe, if you're from more of a reserved background or if you're more of a charismatic background, whatever you are. We just want to play with your traditions a little bit. And it's always because my traditions were messed up a little bit when I studied worship.

But it's important for us to go to Scripture and learn about what worship really is. What does God say about it? What do the words in Scripture say about worship? And if we look at Luke 19 in the Gospels, we see a lot of us are familiar with Palm Sunday, right? It happens a week before Easter.

And in this particular occasion, in this particular story, Gospel message, we see Jesus coming into Jerusalem. And what are the people doing? They call it Palm Sunday because people were waving branches and rejoicing that the Savior has come, the one that they expected, the Messiah. He is here and he has come. And they're looking and the crowds and all of his followers were rejoicing and cheerfully rejoicing for him.

And so follow with me in this Scripture real quick here. It says, When he came near the place where the roads go down to the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples, disciples simply means followers of Christ, and began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they have seen. They were rejoicing because they knew this miracle worker. They knew this Messiah. He had come and he had demonstrated so many things.

They said, Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. So they were yelling this out. They were charismatic. And they said, Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. So they were singing these praises.

They were shouting these praises. They were excited and they were rejoicing because the king was entering into this town. And then some of the Pharisees, and these are the religious people. You get my drift here? These were the church people.

We're looking at the people rejoicing and praising. And they began to rebuke them. He says, Teacher, rebuke your disciples. You know? Stop them from yelling and screaming and doing all these.

They're praising you and doing all these things. They need to stop what they're doing. Teach them to be reserved. Teach them to be quiet. And obviously there's times where we need to be quiet.

But this particular occasion was not one of those times. And this is how Jesus replies. He replied, If they keep quiet, the stones will cry out. The stones will cry out. Meaning that if the very people that God made for worship are quiet and don't worship, who's going to worship?

Nature. Nature is worshiping God as we speak. The beauty of nature. Everything. They will cry out.

They will literally cry out if we do not worship Him. So, so what! Children! So, why? What is God's style of worship is the question.

Well, I think if we really want to get traditional about it, let's go to the actual traditional book here that tells us the grassroots of what worship really is. Amen? We need to know that. That's where we go. So we're going to look at the Psalms.

The Psalms is probably one of the greatest worship books written. Most of it was written by David. And we know David as a very charismatic worshiper. And he loved the worship. He wrote songs.

He played instruments for the Lord. He was a musician. And so what does it look like when we look at the Psalms? Well, the Psalms is one of the largest books in the Bible. It has many, many thoughts about it.

It has 150 chapters. And there's lots of expressions of worship that don't necessarily look like Sunday morning for a lot of us. In fact, it kind of looks like Saturday night. You know, when you're at the ballgame or you're at the concert, this is what we see in Scripture. Like, Psalms is just about being at a ballgame, you know?

It's like being in a concert. It's like being, you know, charismatic and excited about something that's greater than yourself. It says, look at the, so we're going to look at the Hebrew words for worship. We're going to look at the Psalms and we're going to dig some, some different meanings of what worship is. And in the Hebrew, it shares a lot with us.

And what you have to understand about the Hebrew language is that when it's translated into English, we use, there's so many specific Hebrew words that are used to be able to describe a particular word that the English language just doesn't have the vocabulary to handle it. So when the English translators translate a word from the Hebrew, they use, you know, a word that probably could be like worship, for instance, or praise. And we're going to look at praise. So there's a lot, praise is used a lot through the Psalms, but there's different meanings depending on the context and the sentence structure to help interpret what the worship he was talking about. And I want us to look at all these different types of, of, of praise.

And so, so let's, let's look at that. And the first one I want to, to mention is Hallel. Hallel. Hallel means to rave, boast, or celebrate. To rave, boast, or celebrate.

It literally means to be clamorously foolish. To be clamorously foolish. Now, that doesn't make a lot of sense in church because we've been raised, you know, to be reverent in church, right? But when we look at scripture, it says Hallel. That's where we get hallelujah from.

When we sing and pray hallelujah, Hallel comes from that. To be clamorously foolish, to go foolish over something. Psalm 35, 18 says it like this in a New Living Translation. I will thank you in front of the great assembly. I will praise you.

I will go, go foolish over you. I will be clamorously foolish for you before all the people. I think of King David. And as he was, as he was coming into the city and the Ark of the Covenant was entering in the presence of Israel. He was dancing foolishly before the people.

And Michael, the son of Saul, saw him dancing. And there was a disdain in her heart for what he was doing. There was this hatred almost for David. How dare you act like such a fool? You're undignified.

What are you doing, you know? And David's response to Michael was, this is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. And if anybody deserves my praise, my hallelujah, my Hallel praise, it is God. And if I am going to praise him, I can get much more undignified than this. And we need to be undignified before God sometimes.

We're trained to be so dignified. Sometimes we just need to be undignified. We need to sing hallelujah. We need to praise his name because God likes this. God is looking for such people that are glamorously, or excuse me, clamorously foolish before the Lord.

And as a response to what Michael had said, God made her barren that day. God was serious about this. Praise me. Don't criticize the people who are foolish about God. That are crazy about God.

The next one is yada. And that is to acknowledge in public. To acknowledge in public. To present yourself, or submit yourself, or literally, excuse me, I'm jumping ahead here. Literally means to extend hands.

It says we extend our hands. And some of you ask, well, why do we extend our hands? Why do we do that? I mean, what's the purpose of that? And there's another word for that that I'll get to in a minute.

But you know what? God just said, do it. God just showed us that that's what he wants us to do. He wants us to raise it. It's because God tells us to.

In fact, Psalm 138 says this, I will praise you. I will yada you, O Lord, with all my heart. I will lift my heart. I will lift my heart to you. That's what that symbolizes.

And then the third one is Barak. And yes, that's where the name Barak comes from, our former president. That's actually a Hebrew word, Barak. To bless by kneeling or bowing. To present yourselves and submit in reverence to someone.

It's to surrender, to say, I'm in. I belong to you. I surrender to you. I'm bowing before you. And in our culture, it's hard for us to really grasp bowing down to someone because we live in a democracy where everything's about us.

But those who tend to come from kingdoms and politically, you know, there's a kingdom mindset. Let's just take England, for instance. I mean, yes, they have a democracy of some type, but they have this, they still set up this kingship. And I have a uncle, Uncle Paul, he pastors in Wilmington, North Carolina, and a British guy. And when I hear him talk about the queen, when he, and they're not even set up in any kind of political system or they don't even have any authority over the government there.

But there's something about the queen. There's something sacred about the royal family. There's something sacred About that bloodline and there is an awe and there is a reverence when he sees the Queen of England. There is something there, there's something special because they understand what it means to have a kingship or a queenship and to bow and be reverent towards those people that are set up in high places. For us, it's hard for us to see that, but we need to get in that mentality that it is about bowing before a king in a kingdom.

We are a kingdom, we're expanding kingdom, bowing before him, being reverent to him, extending our... It's saying, I surrender to you, I'm yours king, every bit of me, every piece of me, I bow before you. I surrender my heart to you. Psalm 103.1 says, Praise, Barak the Lord, O my soul.

That means my emotions, all my soul, all my inmost being. I bow down to his holy name. And he provides his benefits to all those who submit to him in worship. And then we have this term, I love this, it's zamar, zamar. It's making music to God with strings.

Making music to God with strings. And it literally means, and this is really cool, it literally means that you pluck passionately those strings. So you know what that tells me? You need to do some like rock and roll guitar when you play for God, right? I mean, you know, rock and roll, Jesus would probably, or God would probably be excited about rock and roll worship.

Because he's talking about passionately playing before the Lord. Like passionately and putting forth every piece of everything we are into what we're playing and what we're singing. And we are, as we talked about last week, we are an instrument. We are an instrument of God's glory and God's worship. And passionately we can sing.

Even if we don't have much of a voice, we can sing passionately. You have passion. You have passion for other things, right? And we have passion. We can have passion for the Lord.

And we sing and rejoice with our voices and with our percussion instruments and with our wind instruments. And it says this in Psalm 92, 1. It is good to praise the Lord and make music to you, to your name, O Most High. Oh, man. And I love how it says in Psalm 153 and 5, and I don't believe I have this up on the screen because I put this in the last minute.

It says this, I will praise him with the sounding of a trumpet. I will praise him with the harp and lyre. I will praise him with the tambourine and dancing. And I will praise him with string pipes. I will praise him with clashes of cymbals and him with resounding cymbals.

And so when God sees praise, he sees cymbals, he sees flutes, he sees crashing, he sees drums, he sees hand clapping, he sees raising our hands, he sees just pursuing him passionately with everything we are. That's what God sees when he sees worship. And then in Psalm 63, we see this word is called Shabbach. Yeah, that's how it's pronounced, Shabbach. Can you say that with me?

Shabbach. Shabbach. Shabbach, if it's too hard for you, that's okay to pronounce it that way. It's to address in a loud tone or to shout. So God likes shouting.

He likes loud tones. He likes addressing in loud tones. God likes it when you shout. Thank you. Thank you.

Somebody's getting it in here. Hallelujah. Amen. Y'all are a hard crowd today, I know. But come on.

Thank you, Keisha. Get it going. Gan's like, oh man, you know. He's gotten used to it. Amen.

Amen. But it really is about shouting. And I remember Robert Morris, Pastor Robert Morris shared one time in a message. He said a man came up to him in service one day or after service and says, you know, you talk about all this, you know, raising your hands and worshiping and doing things like that. But it's just not my personality, you know.

I just don't do that. And then he said, I went to a Dallas Cowboy game with him. And something magical happened. Something like crazy happened. This man was waving his hands.

He was cheering. He was going crazy. He was getting mad. He was painting his face. You know, we do all that for the things we worship, right?

But when we want to worship the Creator, do we do that? Do we celebrate? Do we raise our hands? Do we lift our voices? Do we shout?

Because we are rejoicing. See, church shouldn't be a deadpan place where, you know, you don't get it. It should be a place where there's celebration. There's excitement in the worship service. And we're here to lift him up.

And to enjoy each other and to enjoy God together as we go into our next week. And to be equipped so that we can handle the things in life. We need to worship him. We need to lift him up. We need to shabbat.

Psalm 63 says it like this. Because your love is better than golf, surfing, kids, football, shopping, whatever that might be. Life. My lips will glorify you. And I will praise you as long as I live.

And in your name I will lift up my hands. Your love is better than life. Your love is better than anything. We need to be people who are reaching for his love. And then we have the word here in scripture called todah.

Todah. It means to lift hands in adoration. And this is the second time the whole lifting thing is kind of mentioned. But it's different than yada, what I talked about earlier. Because it means, it means, like yada means I acknowledge you and I'm here.

And it's like a surrender. But this is like a holy, like, almost like a guns to your head. I submit completely, you know. If a guns to your head and says, bow down, what are you going to do? You're going to bow down.

Well, before a holy God that is full of love and full of power and full of everything that we could ever need, we bow down, we're surrendering, we're submitting to our God. And we stop hanging on to, you know, we're hanging on it with our dear lives, realizing that God knows better for our lives because we're letting go of our lives and we're giving it to Him and giving Him control. of everything. We're letting go. I submit.

I todah. I worship you. Psalm 50, 23 says, He who offers praise glorifies me, and to him that orders his conversation aright, will I show the salvation of the Lord. Amen. And then I like this last one.

It's pronounced tehillah. Yes, it does sound like tequila, but it's not tequila, although it literally means exuberant singing. And some of you know, when people get a hold of tequila, they might start exuberantly singing. But this is a lot, this is a better form of tequila, what you exuberantly sing, and that's praises to the Lord. And then look how Psalm 34, 1 says, that I will exalt the Lord at all times, and his tehillah will always be on my lips.

That's kind of funny, right? This tehillah will always be on my lips. So we praise God, we exalt God, we're exuberantly singing. And so I want to pull this together, just kind of give you an idea how these things are used in Psalm 108, 1 and 3. They kind of use different forms of praise.

It says, Oh God, my heart is fixed, meaning you've made up my mind. You don't care what other people think. You don't care what other people are doing. You've made up your mind. You are going to fix your mind on God.

And I will sing and give praise, Zomar, even with my glory. I will praise Yada, thee, O Lord, among the people. And I will sing tequila unto thee among the nations. So you see how all of these different forms of worship are used. And the interesting thing about this is there's no reverent, necessarily a reverent outside of maybe bowing.

All of these are expressive pieces of worship. They're very expressive. Meaning God loves expressive worship. That's who he is. That's his personality.

That's what he loves. Worship is love expressed. When you truly love someone, you express that love to them, right? It's like if I love Miranda, I'm going to tell her I love her. I appreciate her.

I'm not going to ignore her. And that's not how love works. Or just kind of walk by her and never say any. You know, if I love her, I'm going to express that love to her. And that's what God wants.

We express our love to her. If any relationship that's going to last, there has to be some type of love expressed to each other. And that's how God sees worship, is love expressed. And it's God's love language. You know, you got the seven love languages, you know, the popular marriage book where you look at different love languages and how all that works, you know.

Some people have different emotional needs. And we kind of piece those, learn how to be compatible. Some people have, they like appreciation or works or whatever kind of does it for them. And others like affection and all these things. Well, God's love language is expressing openly love to him.

That's God's love language. And he responds to that. He listens to that. He's excited when we do that. And his heart is to see a church.

A church, not just our church, but a church in general that expresses his love in the world, over the masses, to see people lifting their hearts and lifting their voices to God, praising God, rejoicing in God. I mean, that warms him, that he sees a world, he sees a people, the very people he created, the worship leaders that he placed in that position, praising God, covering the earth with his glory through praise. That's what God desires. So what does Jesus have to say about this? What does Jesus have to say about this?

Well, there was, there was a debate going on between Jesus and the Pharisees and Mark, in the book of Mark and in the Gospels. And there were these religious guys, you know, the Pharisees, the people who went to church. They were kind of going back and forth about things. And there was this one guy who asked, you know, Jesus, what's the most important commandment? Because there were over 440 commandments in the Old Testament.

There's a lot of commandments to to follow. And, and there's a truth we can kind of learn from this. It's really hard when you try to honor all those commandments. It makes Christianity very hard. It becomes religious.

So this man was trying to figure that out. He wanted, it was almost as if he wanted some type of freedom in this. Like, like Jesus, just tell me what the greatest commandment is. And I'll follow that one because I can't even figure out these 440 commandments. And which is the most important?

And then Jesus starts sharing this with them. In Mark 12, 28, 29, it says this, one of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating and noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer. He asked him, because Jesus was like, went into debate. He was just answering questions. These guys would come and he would knock it.

So this guy was like, hey, he can answer my question because I'm really trying to figure this thing out. And a lot of you are trying to figure this thing out, right? You're like, man, these are a lot of commandments to follow. Man, this is hard work. Man, Christianity is really, really, really hard.

It's really not. It's not hard. And Jesus gives us the answer here. And he says, the greatest commandment is this. And the guy said, of all the commandments, which is the most important?

And the most important one, answered Jesus, is this. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And then all your mind and all your strength. The love of the Lord, that's what he wants, is you to love him with all your heart and soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. So let's take an assessment.

Are you loving the Lord with all your heart and soul, with all your mind, and with all all your strength? So let me just break this up here in closing. I'm going to give you three things here. First of all, all your heart and soul is expressing my affection to God. It's about how much do I love God?

Letting him know how much you love him and expressing your love to him. So it's about falling in love with God, your heart and your soul. Am I truly invested in my heart and soul invested in God? So, so you need to. Ask yourself this question, number one, what do I love the most?

What do I love the most in life? Do I have anything in my life that would keep me from loving God the way I need to love God? Or do I have something, or do I have a replacement God there? Do I have a priority? What do I love the most?

So truthfully, you've got to fall in love with God. I know that's a weird thing for some of you, especially you guys who think that's ushy-wushy-gushy or whatever, but you need to fall in love with God. He needs to be your best friend. He needs to be the person you go to before you go to the closest person that you would go to in your life to kind of find out an answer to a situation. It's God first, because God does have all the answers, amen?

And He may not give them to you right away, but you need to learn to love Him. You need to learn to pursue Him. You need to learn to passionately go after Him. You need to love Him. So what do you love the most in your life?

What do you love the most? Secondly, all your mind. All your mind. This is our thoughts. Where do we place our attention?

Do we give it to God, or do we give it to other things? Do we focus on, are our thoughts consistently focused on God, or is our thoughts consistently focused on something or someone else? Where do we place, the question is, what do I think about the most? Do I think about God, or do I think about something else? And honestly, I believe this is what prayer without ceasing is.

Like, if I'm driving down the road, or I'm stopping, and I'm focusing my attention on God for a minute. You know, it's just like, you know, a friend, or your spouse, or what have you. Just calling them up and letting them know you're there, you know? Hey, how are you doing today? I just wanted to tell you I was thinking about you.

Miranda, I love you. I just wanted to tell you I was thinking about you today. How does that make you feel, Miranda? It makes you feel wonderful. And I didn't call you for anything else.

I just called you to tell you I love you, and I'm thinking about you today. You know, God wants that. Sometimes in our busy schedules, we just need to stop for a minute before we go into a meeting, before we go into what we're doing, whatever obligation, and say, God, I just wanted to tell you I love you today, and I'm thinking about you. When we wake up in the morning, maybe we just should stop for a minute before we start opening up our emails and trying to get our kids out of bed and everything. It says, God, I just want to say good morning.

I want you to walk with me today. I want you to be with me today. And I just, I don't want to forget about you. And I, you know, good morning, God. Let's spend a little time together, just a second, if that's all it takes.

Just, just spinning out. So what do you think about the most? What do you love the most? What do you think about the most? And then thirdly, what do you do the most?

Assess yourself. What do you do the most? Because perhaps what you're thinking about the most, and what you're loving the most, you're probably doing the most, and what you're doing the most is probably what you're worshiping. That's probably where your worship is. So if I'm talking about something, if I'm thinking about something all the time, if I'm doing things that relate to that thing all the time, and I'm forgetting about the one who created the very thing that has given you joy in life, that might be something to assess.

What, what, what, what, what is my strength? What, what, and, and all my strength. What do I do the most? What, my abilities. What has God given me, and He's gifted me to be able to do?

Some of you guys have got amazing gifts, and you haven't even began to tap into the potential of those gifts because you've smothered them with other gods. You've put things in a path, and obstacles on the course of where God is carrying you, and you're, you're missing out on so much. You're missing out on your purpose. You're, you're, you're, you're a world changer. Did you know that?

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. You're a world changer. And get a bunch of world changers together, and watch what happens. Just imagine.

Imagine a church that's, that's following this one commandment. They're, they're, they're in love with God. They're thinking about God. They're of one mind. Their thoughts and intention is on God.

And with all their strength, all these abilities, and all these giftings placed together in one body to accomplish something that we couldn't even think or imagine. He says, Him who is able to do abundantly above what we can ask or think according to the power that is at work within His body. Amen? And we can do amazing, powerful things through Jesus Christ, but we cannot do it alone. We cannot allow other things to, to distract us.

What did I say last week? Satan is pulling us, those, putting those things in our life, those obstacles in our life to keep us from doing what God has called us to do. And, and, and, and the gifting and the abilities that you have, they're there for God to use, and He's going to use them for His glory, and He's not going to steal one bit of joy away from you as you're on the path that God has for you. So many people are afraid, it's just, it's just going to be a killjoy if I do, do this for the Lord. Lord, I want to do my thing, you know?

But God, God, it's really hard to convince people otherwise. But even if you start getting a glimpse or a piece of what God has in store for you, if you could just understand what He has for you, just a little bit of, of, of eternity, if He could just give you a little taste of eternity, if, if you would just get a little bite of that, He won't stop. You'll keep, I mean, it'll give you so much momentum, and you'll experience joy in the process. See, God knows what's best for you. That's why He asks you to worship Him.

Make Him God. Make Him ruler. He is above all. Imagine a church fully in worship. You will never know how good He is unless you seek Him with your whole heart.

Jeremiah says, you seek me and find me when you seek me with your whole heart. Your whole heart. We need to seek Him with our whole heart. he is above all. I haveEN