More Than Words

Let me ask you a question. When you hear the word worship, what do you think of? For most of us, I bet you it's music or song, maybe what happens on Sunday morning. Maybe it's raising your hands in service. For me, I think the biggest thing I do is kind of the hands in the pocket, the elbow flap. That's worship. Or maybe I can progress one day to carry the TV or carry the big screen TV. Or maybe, "Hey, my fish is this big." Maybe even the dueling light bulbs or wiping the window. Or what about getting all the way to the goal post, and then the very advanced goal post with heartburn, back to goal post. Maybe all the way from the YMCA up to the touchdown. Touchdown. Hey, look, all of that is worship, but what we're going to talk about today is the fact that the Bible defines worship to be so much bigger than that. It's so much more. And this week, we're going to take a bit of a pause in the stories that shape us, and we're going to spend the next three weeks talking about what worship is, that it is much more than words. And we're going to spend these three weeks in Romans chapter 12, and we're going to be building towards something. We have a night of worship on July 19th, and that this night of worship is not just about coming to hear some music, but it's about a night where we can all truly respond to what God has done for us. My name is Don Kwahigashi. I'm the campus pastor at our Grapevine campus, and man, you've joined us on a great weekend, whether you're joining us live and in person or whether you're watching this on vacation on your phone. And this is such a great weekend to be here because America turns 250 years old. And in honor of that, I just wanted to really focus in on something that we're all familiar with, but maybe we haven't stopped to really deeply think about it. Let me set a scene here. It's Philadelphia, the summer of 1776, July 4th to be specific. It's an unusually mild day for midsummer in Pennsylvania. And inside the Pennsylvania State House, 56 men known as the Continental Congress are about to adopt a document that'll change everything. And they know this. As soon as they vote to adopt this document, British law will mark them as traitors, that they'll be committing treason, and the penalty would be death. I'm sure some of these delegates were terrified, but I think they were all very resolute because they know the gravity of this document. And when the vote is finally made, they say yes. They say yes to a document that changes everything and gives birth to our nation. I think you know what it is. It's the Declaration of Independence. And I think we all know kind of the opening words, what's in the preamble of this Declaration of Independence. It says this, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." These are the founding principles of our country. It's a declaration of truth right there, and it becomes the entire engine for the rest of this document because they go on to list these grievances of how this truth has been trampled on. And then it declares this formal break from Britain. And everything flows from this claim that God made us and gave us something that cannot be taken away. And then we get to the final line. I don't think we're that familiar with that. Most of us probably haven't read the whole document, but the final line says based on that, it says this, "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortune, and our sacred honor." Wow. All 56 men would sign this document. And it's just as they signed it, it's like they're sliding all the chips into the middle of the table saying, "We give everything, our lives, fortune, and sacred honor." And at that time, they really had no idea of what the true cost of this would be. They signed it anyways. Why? Because they had a conviction. They believed that truth was worth it. And their pledge really is the only reasonable response to a truth like that. And what they did 250 years ago, pledging everything in response to a fundamental truth, is exactly what worship looks like. There's one key difference, though. The key difference is the object of the response, the object of the worship. They responded to an ideal, to a vision of a nation If you're a follower of Christ, what worship is, is man, you're pledging everything. You're responding not to an idea, but to a person, to Jesus Christ, based on the truth of what He has done for us. Look, I want to make something really clear here. Patriotism is not worship, not as it's defined in the Bible. In fact, you don't have to love America to worship Jesus Christ. The way Paul, the Apostle Paul, as we're going to see in the Book of Romans, describes worship, it does look a lot like what happened on July 4th, 1776, except there's one big difference. Where they were pledging to an ideal, a follower of Christ pledges to a man who's already pledged and given everything to us first. Patriotism says this country is worth my life, and biblical worship says that Jesus is my life. So we're going to take a look at the Book of Romans. And this is a letter written to the church in Rome in about the year 57. And I have to introduce the first 11 chapters. We're going to take a look at Romans 12, but the first 11 chapters are so important to understand for us to really get the most out of chapter 12. And in the first 11 chapter, really what Paul does is he lays out what Paul considers his self-evident truths. If I had to sum up those 11 chapters, I can choose many different verses, but the one that we're going to go with is Romans 5:8, extra bonus verse that's not in your listening guide. Romans 5:8 says this, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." And it's just like the Declaration of Independence, where it says God gave us life and gave us freedom and gave us dignity. What Romans 1 through 11 talks about is that we messed that up, that we started walking away from God. And even while we were walking away, He sends His Son to restore what He had originally given us. And then we get to chapter 12, and it begins with a really important word, therefore. Therefore. It's a huge word. A long time ago, someone very much smarter than me taught me something about that word. Every time you see it in the Bible, you got to ask yourself, "What is it there for?" Because it's a hinge word. It connects together what came before it with what comes after it. It's basically saying, "In light of everything I just said, here's what you need to do." And so what is that? Rest of Romans 12, verses one and two, says this, "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will." Notice what he says, true and proper worship. And yes, that includes singing. That includes raising your hands. That includes what happens on Sunday mornings. But true and proper worship is so much bigger. It's something that infuses our ordinary day-to-day. It infuses every routine task you do. It infuses every decision that you make. What Paul is saying here is worship doesn't start when the first note is played on these stages and end when you walk out the door. It's a continual, 24 hour a day, seven day a week response to God's perfect love for you. Here's a formula for you to consider here. That God's mercy received will result in a life surrendered in worship. We receive the mercy, and our response is to surrender our lives. That's true and proper worship. So that means this, worship begins with a response. Those 56 men in that Philadelphia State House were not pledging their lives and their fortunes and their sacred honor based on just some whim. They were responding to a very deep conviction that God made all men equal, and no government can take that away. That's not responding to a feeling, that's responding to a truth about what God has done. And Paul is using the exact same logic in the Book of Romans here, but the foundational truth is so much deeper. It's not just a response to some ideal. It's a response to something that actually happened to all of us, to you and me. Because Romans one through 11, the whole story behind that is that we were separated from God. We were dead in our sin, and there was no way back. And then God sends his Son, not because we deserved it. He sent his Son just to pay the price to bring us back to life, even while we were still walking away from him. We were dead, and now we're alive. And that's not a doctrinal statement. That's not theology. That is our story. And Paul says, in light of that, the only reasonable response is to push all your chips in. Look, I want to tell you something. If worship, as you defined it, starts feeling like an obligation, like, "Oh, I got to go Sunday morning so I could check off my worship box," you're just going through the motions. I want to tell you something. It's not because of a loss of motivation. What is causing this is forgetting the very thing that we're responding to. And this is where worship starts, where we respond to a fundamental, deep truth, that I was dead, now I'm alive. What does this look like? Worship is actually a daily offering. It's a daily offering. true and proper worship looks like. He says it's a living sacrifice. A living sacrifice. That language, for the original readers of that letter, would've brought to mind what they would do at the temple, where they'd bring an animal to be killed or slaughtered and placed on the altar as a representation of our surrender. And it became just this momentary thing. We did it. We're done. We've checked it off. But for Paul, he says that true and proper worship is not a dead animal laid on the altar. It's you, still alive. And the thing about us living on that altar is we can make a decision to crawl off. The fact that he uses that language means that worship is just not a one-time decision. There's no begin and end to it. It's a daily posture. And we see this. We've associated worship with being something very specific, and that it's that time when things click in a message that we hear. It's that time when the prayer really, really made me feel something, or maybe I prayed and actually meant it this time. And so everything clicks and everything, "Oh, this is worship." And then we walk out, and Tuesday morning happens, and it's no longer worship. Look, I struggle with this more often than I'd like to admit. I start Sunday mornings, for example, praying. Praying at my breakfast table for everything that will happen at our campus, for all those that have come, for all our volunteers. I spend time praying with our volunteers. Man, I experience the community of our church. And then Monday happens, and that text message comes in, or the comment on the connection card about what I did wrong, what I said, or what I didn't mention, or a word that I used. And my fists start balling up, and I got to drag myself back onto the altar and say, "I need to be pleasing to you." Look, Paul tells us that worship's not about a moment. It's about life. It's about this constant putting yourself back on the altar, about offering your bodies, he says. It's a present tense. It's an ongoing, it's an everyday thing. You know what I love about reading, say, these passages that seem hard to understand in something like The Message, which is a paraphrase of the Bible, is that it helps illuminate things for us. In Romans 12:1, in The Message paraphrase, it says this. It doesn't say offerings of living sacrifices. It says, "Take your everyday, ordinary life, your sleeping, eating, going to work, and walking-around life and place it before God as an offering." Wow. That's what a living sacrifice is. Look, let's be real clear here. Worship is not some feeling that we conjure up. It's the actual stuff of your actual life, handed over to God. And most of us, like I said, I still struggle with this, most of us feel that gap between what we believe and how we're actually living. And look, that's not a sign that we're bad Christians It's just a sign that we need to crawl back onto the altar. And here's the thing. When we keep doing that, when we can more and more get ourselves back on that altar, responding to what God has done for us, something remarkable begins to happen. It begins to transform the very way we think. Worship, true and proper worship, will transform how we think. Look, here's a question I get more often than not. How do I know God's will for my life? I have this decision to make. How do I know it's God directing me? Or is it just me? How do I know that? How do I figure that out? And Paul actually gives us an answer, and it's not what most of us would expect. What I think what most of us want is some lightning bolt from heaven or some audible voice to come out of the sky and just tell us, "Here's my will." But it's not that way. And what Paul tells us, it starts with everything we've been just talking about today. It starts with true and proper worship, a response to a God who loves us. Notice how Romans 12:2 starts off here. It says, "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Look, this verse tells us true and proper worship is a living sacrifice, and what that looks like is not conforming to the world. And here's the thing, conforming to the world is easy for us because that's just what we naturally do. Because everything we do, everything we watch, everything we ingest through our ears, through our eyes, everything we scroll through, all of it is really forming something in us. And we got to really be very intentional about responding to God, about worshiping, true and proper worship, and putting out our daily offering, crawling back on the altar. Because when we worship, when our response is real, when the daily offering becomes a regular pattern in our life, something starts to shift. Our mind gets renewed, and we're transformed. Hey, look, we can't think our way to surrender. It's the other way around. We surrender our way into a new way of thinking, to a renewed mind. Look, it's the history of our country, isn't it? For the last 250 years, we've had people like you and me trying to live up to an ideal that was outlined in the original founding documents. I can tell you this much, it hasn't been perfect. But here's what Romans 12:2 actually promises us as followers of Christ. It says this, "Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will." Notice it says then. It doesn't say before. It doesn't say during. You got to be the living sacrifice. You got to start having this renewed mind. After all the daily surrender, the daily offerings, the promise is this, you'll start to be able to see more clearly. Because the more we surrender, the clearer his will will become. We'll stop guessing, and we'll start seeing. And situations that look like obstacles will now look like God arranging something for us. Decisions that seemed impossible will start coming into focus. And it's not because we've gotten smarter. It's because we've gotten more surrendered. It's because of renewal of our mind. And I want to be clear, God is not asking us just to try harder. He's asking us to respond to what he has done. And the promise is we'll be transformed from the inside out. And the payoff is not just a better version of me and you. It's a lot of people that can actually see what God is up to and won't hesitate to walk right into the middle of it. That's worship, true and proper worship. Look, here's one thing I want to address, that, man, we are all wired so differently. My daily offering is going to look completely different from your daily offering. And there's a name for this. There's a book out there by Gary Thomas called "Sacred Pathways". And it outlines nine different pathways that worship God. They're all different. And we see these nine here. And over these next few weeks, we're actually going to highlight a few of them. This week, we're going to talk about contemplatives, intellectuals, and ascetics, but you'll notice there's these different ways to worship God. There's no one answer to this. It's not about singing in service. It's not about elbow flaps or goalposts. It's all good. And so contemplatives, man, it's about adoring God. It's about connecting with God through intimacy and adoration. It might mean journaling. That might be just intensive prayer. Intellectuals, it's probably where I fall, because I love study. Connecting to God with study, reading commentaries, reading scripture and studying scripture, learning the big words of theology. Another way to connect with God is through ascetics. Got to say that right. Which is simplicity and solitude. It might be just sitting in silence, turning off your phone. We all have different ways that we respond to God's perfect love. And over these next few weeks, we're going to cover them. For this week, worship is surrender, and so let's live this out. What is one area of your life that you can make a daily offering to God and surrender it? That is your first step to true and proper worship. Let's go ahead and pray. Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that we can make worship more than just a song. That it's more than just the words we say. That worship becomes our very life. That we never forget what it means to respond to the fact that we were dead and now we're alive. The only reasonable response is to say, "Here's my life, Jesus. It's yours." So Lord, I pray that we will be a people that just don't sing about you, that just don't lift our hands, but put ourselves on the altar, and we look forward to the transformation, the renewing of our mind, where we could see your will clearer than we ever have before. So Lord, we just love you so much. It's in Jesus Christ's name I pray. Amen.