Spiritual Life of the Leader - Lesson 20

Dr. Stephen Martyn
Spiritual Life of a Leader
sf502-20
Biblical Worship
Lesson Transcript

[00:00:01] What I would like for us to do now is to take continue to go deeper into the New Testament understanding of worship. Now, once again, why are we going into the New Testament understanding of worship? Here's why pastors, here's why leaders. Please listen. The word sets the agenda of the word sets. Our work is sets our responsibilities. So let's look at it in Scripture. As leaders. You know, this is this is where we get the inspiration for what we do. We're just talking about this at our break. And the fact is, the world does not need pastors. The world does not need your ideas. The world doesn't need my ideas right now. That's not the purpose of the church. The purpose of the church is to unveil the the redemption of God's salvation history. The purpose of the church is to demonstrate who God is, who we are, where our place is, who we are to serve, and how we are to live in love and worship in Scripture. The term worship means to kneel before another out of respect and honor. It's this wonderful Greek word, Prosecco now. And it's found 59 times, if I count it right. If I got the right resource on that, at least in one form of that verb, it's found 59 times in the New Testament. That's that's fairly major. So you'll see, for instance, when the disciples saw Jesus for the first time after the resurrection, Matthew says, in Matthew 28 nine, they took hold of his feet and they worshiped him. They literally bowed down. I was preaching one time in a congregation I looked at in the congregation and there was a lady on her knees bowing down before me, waving, and I heard Jesus say, Me, we don't know how down before any pastor, you know, it it it was a it took me off guard.

[00:02:49] Now I know what she was doing. She was worshiping in honor, honoring God. But pastors, we need to be really careful here. That's that's that's something we need to make sure is well directed. So this type of worship now we want to understand we've got to be really clear. This type of worship only goes to God. Nothing else. Nothing else. No one else. No person, no thing, no event, none of that. We worship only the living God away with you, Satan, Jesus, once again, for it is written. Worship the Lord your God and serve only Him. Now there's a second New Testament verb. It's called La TRO, and it implies service that we owe to God. You think that's. How does that tie in to worse? Well, we'll just listen. So in the song of Zachariah, as quoted in Luke's Gospel, we read that God has shown mercy upon us so that we been rescued from the hands of our enemies in Luke 174 and 75 might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him. All the days, all our days. So this word serve. It means our religious responsibility to minister to God by worshiping him. Since we belong to God and we've been redeemed by Christ and filled with His Spirit. It's proper to understand our lives in terms of serving God. How do we serve him? We serve him by worshiping him. By loving him. Now, where does this break down in leaders lives? I'll tell you where it breaks down in leaders lives. He breaks down when a leader of God's people. Spend 60, 70, 80, sometimes 90 hours a week. Busy, busy, busy, busy. Then their life starts to come unhinged and all sorts of negative things begin to unfold.

[00:05:19] And then you go in, you talk with them, you sit down with them, you love them, and you ask a simple question How much time are you literally spending in terms of receiving God's love? Remember all those things we've talked about earlier, all the streams of mercy coming into their lives, and inevitably you'll hear these words. Not much. Not much. Not much. Listen, we owe it to God. To sit at his feet with Mary. This is our service as leaders. So it's our true worship. The author of Hebrews gives an excellent understanding of this movement of service by writing this. Since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. Let us give thanks. Let us give thanks by which we offer to God what an acceptable worship. Well, that term for worship there is service with reverence and ah, it's my duty. It's my responsibility to worship the living God. And we see much of the same type of instruction regarding worship in Romans 12 one, where Paul writes, What wrote what you say? I appeal to you, therefore, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as what you know it. You remember a living sacrifice. You'll know the word. I'm very impressed. A living sacrifice wholly and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship list of leaders. How can we stand before the people of God without having having you know, let me put it another one. As leaders, we've got to eat what we sell, get it as as leaders. We've got to literally ingest what we're giving to others In the greatest one of the greatest issues for any leader of God is is to have this stuff at work in your own life. So I appeal to you.

[00:07:38] I appeal to you. So spiritual worship is to place our physical bodies at God's disposal. You know, this is not, you know, dualism is kind of still alive and thriving. Do a little spiritual stuff on Sunday and then go live like hell during the week. No, I'm so sorry. It does not work like that. And so you as a leader have got to bring your people to realize this is a whole in a whole thing. So my body is presenting to God in worse. Of course, all of this is based, you know, an appalling thought on the mercies of God giving to us. So. Living, sacrifice. Living, sacrifice. What a great privilege that all that we are. Everything that we possess. It's. It's the Lord's. It belongs to him. And we offer this type of worship daily. All that I have. All that I have. Lord, it's at your disposal. So there's movements here. Movements. And and, you know, we've been so burned by some parts of the church that we're now afraid to enter into the movements. Movements of bowing hearts. It's all right about bodies and and lives as well before a holy God present, presenting the totality of our lives in worship and service and sacrifice. What are we doing now? Keep in mind we're responding to the majesty and the goodness of God through returning love to Him. He loves us. Rather than taking that love and curving it back on ourselves, we return that love to him. And then as we're going to see, we return that love to others. I love what isn't right. Great New Testament theologian says about this worship into right road is nothing more or less than love on its knees. Don't see like that.

[00:10:01] Love on its knees before the beloved. Love on its knees. Before the beloved. But what do we have today? And here my heart is saddened by what we have today through again, through my interaction with hundreds of congregations. And through speaking with and trying to crack into the actual mindset of contemporary leaders, both in mainline and in various evangelical denominations. Here's what we found. We found a lot of good people with good hearts who are seeking to faithfully serve the Lord, a lot of good people. But at the same time, we're observing alarming numbers of leaders who are following hard after directives that are not necessarily aligned with classical Christianity. Especially when it comes to public worship. There's Tim Killer coming in. In his book Center Church doing Balanced Gospel Synod ministry in your city, Tim Keller commented, There is a great there's a sense that what he wrote that religion exists to provide spiritual goods that meet individual spiritual needs for freedom from guilt in bondage. End quote. Some of you are immediately Sue. What's wrong with that? All right. It's a byproduct. It's a byproduct. We'll understand. Yeah, we. We do get freedom, But if you put that up front, is the primary reason why you're in worse shape. And if your leadership centers around that, then you're short circuiting the whole thing. Now, let me explain it and let me unfold. So stay with me on this. Stay with me. Our purpose is to worship the living God, and he'll produce all sorts of fruit. But if you invert that, in other words, if you put meeting needs first as the primary point of worship, do you see how you've upended it? You've inverted the purpose of God. It's a tough issue.

[00:12:51] It's a very, very tough issue. In other words, are you there as a leader to provide a service? I'm not talking about necessarily worship service, but are you there to provide religious goods and services? Are you there to grow an organization? Are you there to promote a cause not of which may the necessarily be bad in and of themselves, but all of which may miss the great point. We believe firmly believe that is that as a leader in the local congregation that we've got to intently review whether we're leading our people into transforming relationships with a living God, where we're leading them to worship God, or whether we're providing religious goods and services to them. Every congregation is going to need to courageously press into this question of whether worship has become commodified. Where you come to get the good things in life. Rather than to offer your life and bow down in love and to honor our living God. We found at least four major obstacles to leadership in true worship. Let me let me go through the first obstacle. Very, very concerned when you get behind the scenes. Now, this is a behind the scenes work with pastoral leaders especially, but also with ministry leaders in different segments within a congregation. We're finding, number one, that numbers trump worship. In other words, the way we count success is by how many, how many sheep or goats are coming in, not by the quality of love and life and worship that is being produced. This will drive leaders. Why? Because numbers of will projected something good is happening there. Are we against numbers? Efforts now in the society is falling apart. We ask the Lord to bring in the harvest. We ask. We want numbers.

[00:15:32] Numbers represent living people in souls. But when that leads the charge, then there's a deep cancer, a spiritual cancer. Then it starts eating in the organization. Second thing that we're finding as an obstacle to worship. And it's a very dangerous thing for you as a leader. And we pray you've got courage to confront this and allow it to be confronted. And it's this self exaltation is substituted for God, exaltation. This can happen through deeply gifted people. It can happen in worship where the worship leader. Profoundly gifted human being starts drawing people into his or her giftedness, starts taking honor the worship leaders invisible. The worship leader points beyond herself, points beyond himself or the gifted puppeteer the gifted speaker. Where where the speaker starts drawing people into, you know, the gifts that he's got in his life or the she's got in her life. Now, we are to point beyond ourselves, you know, what are what are we who are we exalting here? What what is the point here? All of us, sheep and shepherds alike, are called to worship and adore the LAMB of God and to remember not to us or not to us give glory. Psalm 115 now. Remember, sometimes in leadership, people who have a need to be needed are drawn into pastoral leadership. And so this idea of standing before people becomes paramount for you, that's what defines your life. Know for us as leaders, what defines our life is leading people to worship the living God. Thirdly, we're deeply, deeply alarmed at the lack of participation that we are seeing in contemporary evangelical worship services. Lack of participation literally voids the call to worship with all that we are now. Of course, there are exceptions to this. There are some amazing exceptions to this, but in many, many locations people come to worship with no expectation of significant involvement whatsoever.

[00:18:31] They sit there, they just sit there. There's nothing there. They're not throwing their lives into worship. They're not being led to worship the living God. They're not being led to exalt God to lift his name higher. We'll look at some of the actions that that the word of God calls this to listen. This is this is not a spectator sport. This is full participation in the body of Christ. Then fourthly, we're very concerned about how glorifying God seems to take second place to addressing human need. You say, Well, how mean and cruel. If the Lord God himself, we know that Jesus spent an immense amount of time addressing human need in bringing healing to the people. We're not denying that at all. We're not denying that we should be involved in the healing ministry of Christ. What we're saying is, is that the primacy of worship is ascribing worth and praise to God. And meeting needs is a result will flow from that. So, you know, any time we move into the very presence of God, he's free to address the whole spectrum of human collapse and hurt. But when the major attempt of worship is reduced to making people feel better about themselves. Or to meeting pressing needs in their lives. Then the spirit is literally hindered in bringing about the full redemption that God has for them as God is exalted and thanked and praised and worshiped. Then our lives are linked to Him in such a way that he's able to bring his healing and his flowing love into us. Decades ago, decades ago, a man, a worship expert by the name of Robert Webber. He's in the kingdom, too. But Robert Webber said this We need to let go of our intellectual ideas of worship and realize there's more to worship than a sermon.

[00:21:07] He doesn't. It's not. Don't. Don't get all upset here. He's not denouncing the sermon either in mine. But there's more to worship than a sermon. We have to let go of our evangelistic notion of worship and reckon with the fact that worship is not primarily directed toward the sinners who need to be converted. We must let go of our entertainment expert expectations and remind ourselves that we are not in church to watch a Christian variety show out. What am I saying? It's absence of clarity. Absence of clarity and leadership. That's what we're addressing here. And that's a spiritual issue. That's a major issue in the spiritual life of any leader. What is it? Do it clouds your hearts. Your compass is not set. In fact, the compass may even be set by the values of society or by the values of what? Of contemporary, more populist ideas. Even in Christendom, say this is how you ought to do church. And we get values that are based more out of a fallen culture, even a fallen culture within the church itself rather than out of scripture. And so we get hijacked. Our leadership gets hijacked. Now, at this point, Christianity at this point in in in worldwide Christianity, you know, there's there's an important issue regarding worship, the biblical call to love and adore Father, Son and Holy Spirit is a call to lift in praise the Trinity, not our selves. As such, many of us have got to learn for the first time the very true nature of worship. And we're going to have to repent of how we've neglected this and how we've lost our way. Listen, I've got to be honest here and say I've been guilty of doing everything we've talked about.

[00:23:32] You know, I don't I don't want to be anything other than completely transparent. But I also need to press on the concern here. Our concern is that in large swaths across the church today, we find very clear evidence that we're missing the mark of why the church is there to begin with. I think we need to hear again the call of Scripture. Psalm 95 gives us a very clear call O.carm. Let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker, for He is our God and we are His people, the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hands. And we need to hear the warning from Psalm 95 is Well, oh, that today you would listen to his voice. Do not harden your hearts as that mirrorball. Don't do that. So in worship, our hearts are set on loving God and on exalting him. Jesus taught us through his own personal example to honor both the Father and himself. Because we worship Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You see it in John 519 through 23. And in honoring God, we turn away from false worship that can get us so quickly. Now, let me be clear here. Let me let me be very, very clear here. Again, we're not saying that numbers do not count for the Lord. They do. They absolutely do. Every person is counted as sacred in the eyes of God and worthy of the redemption of Jesus. We believe that the redemption of Jesus is universal for all. Not all. Except not all. Except. But all are invited. Nor are we proposing that anything positive response in worship. No, that's good. We want positive responses in worship. As long as you're not preaching and teaching just for the praise.

[00:25:57] Okay? Just so long as you get that straight. Sometimes you're going to be right over Target when you get some pretty serious missiles coming at you. It's just going to show, you know what, I'm hitting on an area where the Holy Spirit strand of work. Most of all, I am not saying at all that the Word of God should be minimized in worship. No way. If anything, we need to. We need to up the game significantly. Another issue we found is, is the lack of strong expository exegetical preaching and spirit anointed messages that powerfully proclaim his word. We want that. We want that. And most assuredly, I'm not saying we shouldn't address the needs of human beings. They should robustly be addressed. But I love what my buddy in Singapore says. Bishop Robert Solomon says this We come into God's presence to remember who he is and what he has done for us. Psalm 107 22 Bishop Solomon wrote We come to celebrate his presence in our lives, to thank him for all he is and does, and to express our love to him and our love for him from the beginning to the end. Bishop Solomon writes The worship service should be grounded in our relationship with God and therefore should be characterized by the joy that comes from it. Now, let me wrap this section of real quick. In worshiping in the worshiping community as in as well as in our own private adoration of God. There's an important aspect of joyful self forgetfulness that unfolds and that really this self forgetfulness needs to reverberate in the body of Christ. While we thank God for all that is accomplished for us in Christ, in worse, if we do not approach the Trinity with self interest in mind.

[00:28:23] Now hear me, because this is a major issue in the church today. Just fly back now to the previous teaching sessions on functional transcendence, where I'm approaching God for what's in it for me, really in the truest sense of worship. I'm not approaching God with self-interest in mind. God, listen to me, Church. Listen to me. God is not there to give us the best imaginable things that we can dream of, including a plush life that just doesn't fly. Scripturally he's not there to enhance everything about us, though he will bless us in ways we can't even imagine. Like Paul in Philippians three, 13 and 14, we forget what lies behind, and we strain forward to the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus, therefore refusing to use God for selfish interests, in refusing to use the people of God to promote ourselves. We acknowledge with Evelyn Underhill, great dear old English saint died in the early 1940s. Evelyn Underhill wrote Worship is essentially disinterested. It means only God. Only God. Listen, there's a proper place for prayers of petition that seek God for genuine needs. There's a proper place in the worship service. Early church. When they came together, I mean, they spent a huge amount of time praying, and they prayed for needs. But it was a secondary thing. And Christian worship, we're always remember, there's only one object of adoration and praise, and that is God and God alone. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Let us set our hearts on the one God and true worship of Him. A man, a man. Now questions, clarifications. What's turning in your heart and in your mind now? I had a couple of follow ups and I may be anticipating a later talk. So if I am, let me know.

[00:30:49] Sure. Number one is just I remember hearing worship pastors say that worship is for the audience of one. I'm assuming that you love that. Yeah. That's such a good. Love it. Worship is for an audience of one and love that. All right. So. So like that. Yeah. Yeah. EDIT You've covered the theology here for I think it was concerns. Let me ask a real practical question. Why is there such a huge resistance to what I think is the obvious teaching on biblical worship? Why did why do so many churches not do this? Why are so many seeming to be intent on functional transcendence instead of transcendent functionalism? I think probably you have even better insights than I do here. And I don't I don't I want to honor that. Truly honor that. I don't think we're being taught. I mean, that's one one response I have. Who's teaching this now? Another part of it is our models. Listen, as a leader. I hope you leaders are listening to this. It's really, really important who you model, Who's your heroes, You know, where where's the team killers in your life? Who are the solid biblical people that are there, that are grounded? So I want to know, you know, And what are you. What are you chasing after? What? What's what's what's driving all of this? If if it's all about building a bigger audience, it's all about the crowd. Then there's going to be directives leading you. And then finally I say, You know why? Why? Why are we not grounding ourselves in the Word of God? Why? I tell you, I've got other there's there's even bigger issues here. Let's go back at the time of the Reformation. Well, at the time of the Reformation, the word of God had been neglected for centuries.

[00:33:30] And, you know, it was really, really, really important at the time of the Reformation for the sermon to start taking the primary place in the worship service, because this is where you learn. This is where you teach in. And boy, when you read about the daily schedules of some of the preachers, both the great ones we know, and I'm including John Wesley is part of the Reformation. He was he was later on. But I mean, he's he's in this as well. He's definitely trying to reform. When you look at their schedules, they're preaching, you know, throughout their preaching daily. Huge, huge, huge. We needed to exalt the sermon. And the sermon today needs to have its right place, solid, solid, solid biblical teaching. I mean, why do I want to go to some place where I'm hearing what somebody thinks rather than the mind of God or the mind of Christ as Paul would talk. But I think many of us and I have to confess it to my own self when I got out of seminary, and I cannot blame my seminary for this at all. I blame myself. When I got out of seminary, I swallowed the contemporary evangelical thought of the day, and that was my primary job as a leader, was to preach great sermons. If I would do that, people will come, would come from all all over. And and I just didn't have to worry about anything else. Well, do you see that's a partial truce. I didn't really have my composite. Now, again, please don't. Don't be throwing rocks at me here. I am not devaluing the word of God at all. If anything, I want to see the sermon take a stronger place. A much stronger place in evangelical Christianity today.

[00:35:37] So hear me out now. But I'm telling you, the primary purpose of why you're in that worship service is not to meet human needs. It's not even to preach a sermon. Primary purpose is to worship the living God and to hear from the living God through his word. And then as we're going to see, as we go on to receive his goodness through his gifts of love. Anyway, thank you. Other clarifying questions we've got. This may be a larger issue. Sure. Most of them are. What is the. Addressing the last question about some of the reasons why. And you named several obstacles. Yeah. And I think those are it seems like many of those obstacles were from your surveys and observations. Yes. Behind those, the structure of modern churches, the leadership structure. The financial obligations and how to meet those. Can you say a word or two about that? I feel that they're behind that, but I don't wouldn't know what to do in my own situation. Yes, Kim. And of course, the question is actually a whole three hour graduate school class response. But here's the short here's the short word on this. Structure follows. Purpose. And in this makes your question really, really critical for the spiritual life of leaders today. In fact, this question is going to back a whole lot of us up against a wall. What we tend to do is invert it and let contemporary structure determine purpose. Luke, Luther and others were really, really clear. The church is always in need of reformation, always in need of reformation and. Just think about it. Let me give you a living illustration. If you start out. From England. Coming to the United States. And on your campus. So do you know do you know how many points are on the campus all the way around? How many points are on a campus? You're you're asking an engineer to specify and point out that campus bus novices will say 360, 360 points on the campus or degree.

[00:38:55] Sorry, there's 360 degrees from my wording. Three off. There's 360 degrees if you're off one degree, just one degree. I think it's something like 60 for every 100 miles or 60 miles off. Anyway, you're going to miss where you want to land by thousands of miles. Literally the houses. And so there's there's the word. We're we're always bringing this back. We're always resetting. You know, we're always getting getting the compass, getting the airplane or the boat back in alignment with the compass. So it's what what see, what we're failing to do today is we're failing to dig down into the revelation of God and allow the revelation of God to set the compass. And then you get bricks and mortars and you get programmatic approaches to ministry. And all of that takes money and all of that takes time and energy. And before you know it, the program itself sets the agenda now, and it's really easy to talk about that. And indeed, literally, I've got a three hour class on answering the question. So it's a whole week that the part of the responses we are called to transform systems. The real issue is how do you do it without blowing them up along the way and destroying people's lives and destroying yourself? It can be done. And we're going to slide in a little bit of this as we go further into our leadership today, but that's the answer. Purpose function Inform follow of Forum follows purpose. You know, I've got to sit what my form is, and that's the courage that leaders have got to take on today. That's the courage that elder boards and and others have got to take on leadership bodies. They've got to have the courage to say, you know, this isn't about my vision.

[00:41:21] This is about God's vision for his church. What is it? What is this? So thank you.