Let’s pray. Father, we lift our voices to you. We want to make you holy in our lives. We want to dedicate ourselves to you as a worthy sacrifice. We want to shout for joy because you made us, and you caused us to become your people.
Open our hearts today and defend us. Keep loneliness from filling us and allow our burdens become bearable. Do a work that only you can do and accomplish. Show us your ways Lord. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.
We’re in Acts 2:42-47 one more time. Before we go there, I want to review what we learned from this passage over the course of this series because our commitment to the things we learned will define us as a faith family and transform the community around us. The ways by which the early church manifested their commitment to Jesus, was by:
- Committing to apostle’s preaching and prayer
- committing to a life in community – we call them groups
- committing to generosity and service – offering and serving
- and committing themselves to gathered worship
That is how an imperfect people became a picture perfect family. Let’s read Acts 2:42-47.
42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42-47 ESV)
Here’s the big idea today:
Commit to a life of gathered worship.
The reason we want you to commit to a life of gathered worship is because God moves mightily when we make gathered worship a priority in the busy-ness of our lives. Did you catch the cause and effect that Luke throws in there in verses 46 and 47?
Look at the cause in verse 46 starts: “And day by day, attending the temple together…” I’m going to give you the JKwon translation of that, because the wording is a little awkward in the ESV. I want you to hear what Luke is saying in between the words: They [the early church] committed to the daily discipline of worshipping in the temple… They devoted themselves to the act of worshipping God in his temple every single day. They weren’t just going, they were worshipping at church every single day.
This was a sacrifice. This was intentional. They had to make space for it in their daily lives because it disrupted their flow. They were committed to it. Just imagine what you would have to do in your life if you were committed as these folks were in worshipping at church every single day!
Now, see the effect of their devotion to gathering together for worship: “And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”
How many people in this room believe in miracles? Raise your hand. All of you should believe in miracles. The greatest miracle is that you and I were saved from our sin through the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s son on a cross and that he was resurrected. It’s our belief in that makes us children of God. We gained something we didn’t have to pay for or earn. That’s a miracle. That’s all to say God still does miracles. But my point here is that commitment to gathered worship leads to God bringing people into his family.
What is worship?
If that’s the cause and effect, then I want to make sure we’re all clear about what it means to worship. Worship means to show honor and show reverence for something, usually a deity or in our day an age, a celebrity. The word itself comes from the conjunction of the words “worth” and the suffix “-ship”, as in the quality, condition, or office (think leadership, ambassadorship, chairmanship, etc). When you put them together in worship, we are saying that there is something or someone worthy of our honor and reverence.
Let me give you some real life examples. You’re at an Ariana Grande concert, and you start jumping up and down, yelling and screaming when she gets on stage and you sing “I want it, she got it.” That’s worship.
Or you’re at the Wolverines game, and you’re psyched, and you cheer these 18 year olds on from the stands because they put the smack down on MSU and now you’re telling your family not to disturb you because you need to watch their game on TV. That’s worship.
If we’re giving these celebrities or these teams this level of adoration and acting so boldly for people who will never know who you are or contribute an iota to your life, then doesn’t God deserve something more from us? After all, we are here because of him. He adopted us into his family, didn’t he?
The reason worship looks like cheering, yelling, and dedication for a football team or a celebrity or even your child is because worship takes on the unique form of being an attitude and an action. I want you all to understand this:
Worship is an attitude and an action.
Attitude of Worship
First, the attitude of worship. To understand this better we have to go to John 4. Jesus stops by a well in a Samarian town called Sychar where he encounters a woman who had been divorced five times and is living with a dude now that wasn’t even her husband. It’s an incredible story that I encourage you to read on your own because it illustrates how easy it actually is to talk about the gospel in our everyday conversations.
When we get to verse 23 and 24 where Jesus says this: 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:23-24 ESV)
Did you catch that? “True worshippers” perform the act of worship in an attitude of “spirit” and “truth.” When Jesus says “spirit” here, he is talking about the rational spirit, or the power by which people feel, think, wills, and decides, it’s the soul of our inner beings. The expression our feeling, thinking, and willing, is an attitude. Keep that in mind.
And that word “truth” is an attitude because it’s a noun and it denotes an mindset of faithfulness or frankness. In this case, we understand what Jesus means to be a faithfulness or frankness toward who Jesus is as the living water to the “true worshipper.”
It was really hard writing this sermon because God was teaching me that my attitude of worship was inadequate. Do we just honor God with our mouth but have a heart and attitude toward God that is far from him (Matt 15:8-9)? What is your attitude toward God? Is that maybe why you don’t come to worship him regularly as a faith family?
I know my attitude toward who he is in my life doesn’t always reflect what I know about my God. Church, I’m laying this before all of you so we can examine ourselves together and move forward together in correcting our hearts, minds, and souls.
Let me change gears now. If I’m going to have an attitude about God that rationalizes and feels like he is my living water; then how can I respond in an action that reflects that attitude?
Action of Worship
The action of worship is love expressed toward the living water. Here’s what I mean: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37 ESV). Loving my God with all my heart, soul and mind (that is the functions that give us an attitude toward something).
To be clear, the action of worship is not singing the slow song that we sing right before announcements or after the sermon. The action of worship is showing God our love for him with a mindset, feeling, and frankness toward him because that’s all we can offer, but all that he wants from us.
Do we realize that the act of worship is the only thing we can give to God? He doesn’t need anything from you or me. But when we give him love—because that is what worship is. We are giving him the only thing we can give him as his children. It’s the only thing he wants from his children, to be loved by him. Here’s the best part, he’ll take it however you express it, in your love language.
This is what the early church was doing in Acts 2. The early Christian family made it a priority to devote themselves to the practice of loving God every day. As they practiced that love, God grew the family.
When we gather together to worship on the weekends, we are willfully rationalizing and feeling that gathering as a family to focus on our loving God is a priority. We must realize that our commitment to Christ is demonstrated by our commitment to this time, this space, this rhythm, this devotion, of worshipping God together! Does your life reflect the attitude and action of worship? Where does your commitment to worshiping God with your church family land in your life?
I just read an article recently with the headline: Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace. It’s an article written by the Pew Research Center and can be summarized like this: there are 30 million less Christian adults in our country than there was 10 years ago. Just FYI, there are also 30 million more adults than ten years ago. One would assume the percentage claiming Christianity would remain the same if no new person got saved, but to decline, that’s pretty horrible.
So what happened to those 30 million Christians? Well, my hypothesis is that 22 million adults decided they were not affiliated with any religion and have chosen to become what is known in economics and social anthropology as the “nones”, as in no identification in a religion. That’s a different category than agnostics or atheists. See at least an agnostic or an atheist believes in something, a none doesn’t believe in anything. I believe the other 8 million other formerly Christian adults became atheists and agnostics.
Why do I share these statistics and hypotheses? It’s because over the same 10 year period worship attendance declined where ½ of the people who identify as Christians began trending toward only attending worship gatherings ½ the time in any given month.
That means 10 years ago, the people sitting in the seats next to you were consistently sitting there, worshipping God in spirit and truth with you two or three or four weeks out of any given month. Now one of the two people sitting next to you won’t be sitting next to you the next time you’re in church.
Now I have a hypothesis on the correlation between the decline of Christianity in this country and the attendance of Sunday worship gatherings and it goes back to the effect of worship in verse 47. When we stop committing to gathering regularly for worship as a family, God stops adding to our number those who are being saved.
Here’s my second point and where I want to challenge all of us.
Worship invites God to act in us and through us.
What if we decide, not some of us, but all of us, decide to be committed enough to worshiping regularly with our faith family, what would happen? Would God very powerfully move and shake in our lives? Absolutely he would. I believe when those of us with relationships with Jesus make a commitment to prioritize worshipping God together regularly, not only when it is convenient, God will act in and through us.
We have this baptism pool set up because people committed to a life of gathered worship and the result of that the people being baptized have heard the good news of Jesus Christ as a result and they commit themselves to him. God did the greatest miracle in their lives by saving them from bondage to sin. That’s amazing and we get to witness it every month.
Can we throw up some statistics on the screens?
Take this in because it’s a lot. [pause] I’m showing this to you because I have a challenge for all of us. This is how these charts relate to our church family:
We’re going to start with the bottom chart. Our campus here at royal oak comprises of 53% millennials, 23% gen x, 22% as baby boomers, and 2% in that silent generation. Based that on that, we can guestimate who will be at church any given week, except during the summer when all of you disappear to go North, where it’s colder.
So hello for the first time to many of you who have attended this church for years and have never seen or heard from me because you haven’t been here since St Patrick’s Day. I am not Jon Morales, and if you wanted to hear him teach, he’ll be here for all three services next week. But all jokes aside, does your commitment to worship as a faith family reflect your attitude toward the God who adopts you into his family?
Now, look at that top chart, pay special attention to the dark grey portion that says “unaffiliated.” Those numbers represent the percentage of adults in those generations that do not claim any faith, whether it’s to Jesus Christ or to atheism. I posit that if we make a concerted effort to make sure we get ourselves and our families to church every week, not only when it is convenient, then you would see God work so powerfully that a generation can change, just like in the passage we read in Acts.
What I’m saying is that if you’re 38 years old or young (millennial), that means 2 of every 5 people you know are unaffiliated with any religion. I know most of you believe that becoming a following of Jesus Christ is the best thing that can happen in a person’s life, if that’s true, then do you care about 2 out of every 5 people you know to commit to gathering together every week to worship the God who changes lives?
If you’re between 54 and 39 years old (gen x), that means 1 out of every 4 people in your peer group, the people you spend your time with, are without any religion. What if you committed to gathering regularly for worshipping as a church family and you share that you worshipped your God this last weekend, it may be the only time they would have a chance to feign curiosity about a religion. Then you can invite them.
The same challenge goes to all of you boomers out there. I haven’t even addressed the atheists, agnostics, and people in other religions, we would just capture the religion-less. Imagine if our devotion was so hot that we could ask God to change even his worst opponents.
The reason I was saved was because a guy who I knew decided he was going to commit to a life of worship and invited me to join him at a worship service around my high school. What did he know about theology or God other than the fact that Jesus Christ saved him from his sins because God loved him. He didn’t even know where it was in the Bible. That’s the power of God when we commit ourselves to worshipping him. God saved a wretch like me because a friend of mine cared enough for me to commit himself to worshipping the God who saved him.
Worship does more bring more people into his kingdom. Worship transforms our inwardly selfish hearts to be outwardly about God. Let me share with you what the Apostle Paul says to the Romans about the manifestation of worship in our daily lives. This is from Romans 12:1-2 and I’m using the Message translation. Here’s what Paul says about worship:
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (Romans 12:1-2 MSG)
Worshipping on the weekends at church will permeate into your everyday life and transform you.
If you never made worshipping God as a corporate body a priority in your life, I’m going to challenge you to do it this season, make the commitment, and see what God does in you and through you and then around you. Let’s give God the love that he is worthy of. He loved us when we were worth nothing by sending his one and only son, Jesus, as ransom for our lives. Let’s remember that when we offer our love to him. Let’s pray. Heavenly father, we worship you. We are so unworthy of your love. We are so wretched, but you love us. We thank you for loving us first and for sending us your son, Jesus to rescue us. We give our love and our devotion to you, because it’s the only thing we can offer you. Accept our love because it is from our heart, allow us to love you. We pray that as we commit ourselves to worshipping you with all our hearts, mind, and souls, that you will act in and through us to manifest your love in our lives. I ask Father that you would continue to do the miraculous work of saving those of us who are perishing and that we could be witnesses to your amazing grace in our communities. We love you. In Jesus name. Amen.
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