True Worship

Sunday Sermon 2007-05-06

Alex Tseng

          It feels good to be home. I have two homes on this earth. When I’m in Vancouver, I think of Taiwan and I miss the people there. When I’m in Taiwan, I long to come back, because this is the place where I’ve lived most of my life. My friends are here. My church is here. My home is here. The longing for a home is universal. All human beings need a home. The Jews lost their home at the Siege of Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70 A.D., and for almost two thousand years, they had been wandering the earth trying to reclaim their home. On May 14, 1948, the modern State of Israel was finally proclaimed, and the Jews finally have a home again. They returned to the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses; the land flowing with mild and honey as seen by Joshua and Caleb. After almost two thousand years of exile, the Israelites went home. It’s a joyful feeling. They don’t mind the terror and violence in the Gaza Strip; as long as they have a home. It’s human nature to long to be home.

          But the Bible tells us that even the land flowing with milk and honey was only a temporary home for God’s people. Even the earthly City of Jerusalem is going to pass away. The home that God promised to Abraham is not of this earth. Canaan is but an image, a reflection of what God has really promised. Hebrews 11 tells us, “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as him inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” Well, Abraham was to give birth to a nation generations later, and this nation was to inherit this land according to God’s promise. But in the time of Abraham, there was no nation of Israel, and Abraham went into the promise land as a stranger. The author of Hebrews says that this promise city is one with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. But Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah—none of these people received in their lifetime what was promised to them. Hebrews 11 goes on to say, “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were long for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”

          Isn’t that beautiful? God is not ashamed to be called their God, because He has prepared a heavenly city for us to be our home. And what’s this city called? It’s called the New Jerusalem. And what do we do there? We worship God all day long. Old Apostle John describes to us his marvellous vision in Revelation 21, where he says, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.” Now, the symbol of the sea is to be understood figuratively here, it refers to evil and chaos. There was no longer any evil or chaos. John goes on to say, “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the tabernacle of God is with men and he will live with them. They will be with his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.””

          What’s a tabernacle? A tabernacle is a tent built for the worship of God. It served the function of God’s temple. Before Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem, the Israelites worshipped God in the tabernacle. God is the Creator of heaven and earth; He doesn’t live in these earthly buildings. But when He commanded the Israelites to build the tabernacle and the temple, these buildings were His was of telling them that He had made His dwelling place among them. The tabernacle symbolizes God’s presence among His people, and where God is present, men shall worship Him, so the tabernacle is a place of worship. To say that God will be with His people is to say that His people shall worship Him. They shall be His people, and He shall be their God. Worship—that’s what I want to talk about today. What is true worship, why do we worship God, and how do we worship God.

          First, let me make a statement, and I want you to listen, because if you are to understand anything from this sermon, this is the one thing that I want you to understand. Worship is the essence of the Christian life. I’ve said it, and I’ll say it again. Worship is the very essence of the Christian life. The whole of Christian living is an act of worship. I’m not talking about our singspiration or Sunday worship here. That’s a formal type of worship; that’s important; that’s necessary. But I’m talking about worship as in offering yourself up to God as a living sacrifice. That’s the kind of worship that I’m talking about.

          J. I. Packer, who is my teacher at Regent College, famously coined the saying, “The purpose of theology is doxology.” What’s doxology? It comes from the Greek word doxos, which means worship. Doxology is the worship of our Triune God. Theology is the study of God in relation to everything that is not God. True theology is loving knowledge of God as our Creator, Saviour, and Wonderful Counsellor. This knowledge leads us to the worship of God. A theology that does not lead to doxology is false theology. It’s not about God, you see. A 19^th-century German philosopher named Ludwig Feuerbach coined the term “the anthropological essence of theology,” by which he means to say that although these theologians claim to be talking about God, they are really talking about themselves, because the gods that they talked about are ones that they’ve made in their own image. So false theology leads to idolatry and self-worship.

          Now, there’s something that you might not know, and that is, every person is a theologian. Everyone holds to certain ideas about God. Some people believe that God doesn’t exist, so their theology is atheistic. See, even atheists cannot escape talking about God. When they say that God doesn’t exist, they are already talking about God. You can be agnostic, which means you think that God cannot be known. But the fact that you think God cannot be known means that you think you know something about God. You think you know that God cannot be known. So even if you are an agnostic, you still have your theology. You can have all sorts of theology, but the bottom line is, there is not a single conscious human being who doesn’t have a theology. But all theology lead to idolatry and self-worship except one, and that is Christian theology. It’s the theology of the Bible. It gives us the right knowledge of God in relation to us and everything else that’s not God. Only this theology is truly about God, because it’s the only theology that speaks truly about the true God. And therefore, only this theology leads to doxology.

          So we see on the one hand that the purpose of theology is doxology. We learn to know God in order that we may worship Him, and if our knowledge of God does not lead to worship, then there’s something wrong with our theology. True theology must lead to true worship. The purpose of theology is doxology. Now, we can also say it the other way. The purpose of theology is doxology, and conversely, theology is the foundation of doxology. Without the true knowledge of God, we cannot worship God. Without theology, there is no doxology. Theology must be doxological, and doxology must be theological. The two are inseparable.

          Now, if you read the Ten Commandments carefully, you’ll understand that they are ultimately about worship. The first four commandments are directly about the worship of God. The First Commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Second Commandment, “You shall not make for yourself an idol.” Third, “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord.” Four, “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” These are commandments about the true worship of God. We shall worship Him as the One and Only, the great I am; we shall have no other gods before him. We shall not worship idols; we shall not worship anything that is not God, as if these things were God, or as if God could be confined in these things. We shall not misuse His name, because it’s a holy name. Part of worshipping God is to keep ourselves from saying things that are contrary to worship, things that are blasphemous. If you swear with your tongue, you insult God. You shall keep the Sabbath holy, because God has created this day to be the day that we find rest in His presence, the day that we lose ourselves and forget about ourselves in the worship of God’s glory. These commandments are about worship. Many Christians know the Ten Commandments very well, but very few Christians actually notice the preface to the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments begin from verse 3 in Exodus 20, and there’s a little preface in verses 1 and 2. This is what it reads: “And God spoke all these words: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.””

          If you are sharp, you’ll have noticed that this is a theological statement. “I am the LORD your God, the One who is that He is, the One and Only, the great I am.” God manifests in this first statement who He is in himself, His “ontological being,” if you will. And in the next statement, God reveals who He is in relation to His people—He is their Saviour who brought them out of slavery. Who God is in himself, who God is in relation to us, including what He has done for us—this is theology, and this is the preface to the Ten Commandments. The theology is the basis for the doxology. If you don’t have a loving knowledge of God, then you cannot worship Him in love. Theology is for doxology, and doxology depends on theology.

          Secondly, worship is what it means to be a Christian. To be a Christian means that you are a worshipper. My e-mail address is singerofpraise@hotmail.com. Why? Because the praise of God is to me the most essential thing in the Christian life. I’ve heard many people say that to be a Christian means to be saved. Well, that is true, but it didn’t hit the bull’s eye, because our salvation from the slavery of sin is not the ultimate purpose in God’s plan. Salvation itself has a cause, and the cause is worship. The purpose of salvation is worship. We were saved in order to worship. That’s the ultimate purpose.

          Our salvation from the slavery of sin is typified in the salvation of Israel from Egypt. Our salvation is a spiritual exodus. It follows the pattern of the physical exodus, with Jesus as the Passover Lamb that leads us out of not physical bondage but the bondage of sin. Now, if we look at the physical exodus, we’ll see that its ultimate purpose is not just salvation out of slavery. When Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh to speak on behalf of God, they didn’t just say “Let my people go.” What they said was, “Let my people go, so that they may worship me.” “Let my people go; free my people from slavery, so that they may worship me.” Moses said this not once, not twice, not thrice. He said it seven times. Seven is the perfect number in the Bible. Moses said it seven times as God’s representative, “Let my people go, so that they may worship me.” And so what comes after Exodus is Leviticus. It’s a directory of worship. After Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, they built the tabernacle, and there they began to worship God. The purpose of salvation is worship.

          And so the Revelation 7 talks about a great multitude of people that no one could count, from every nation, every tribe, every people and language, standing before the throne and in front the Lamb. These people were all wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. They were worshipping God along with all the angels and the heavenly creatures. And then one of the elders came to John and asked him, “Who are these people in white robes? Where did they come from?”

          John answered, “Sir you know.”

          And the elder said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore, they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will spread his tabernacle over them.”

          You get the message here? These people are we who have been covered over by white robes washed in the blood of Christ. The blood of the Lamb has saved us from all our sins and guilt, and so we have become white as snow. But that’s not the end of the story. What do we do when we are saved? We worship God. The ultimate purpose of salvation is the worship of God in the New Jerusalem. There we shall worship Him day and night.

          And that leads to the third point that I want to make. The first point is that the purpose of theology is doxology, and the basis of doxology is theology. The second point is that true worship is what it means to be a Christian. The purpose of salvation is worship. Now, the third point is that our worship on earth is a pilgrimage.

          In ancient Israel, people had to go to Jerusalem and go up to Mount Zion once a year to worship God. The destination was where they burnt their offerings, but the whole journey was an integral part of the worship. They were travelling from all over Israel to Mount Zion to be in God’s presence. Those journeys were long and tiring. They had to travel through mountains and waters, and there may be dangers on the road. But they knew where they were going, and they knew the glory that awaits them, so they kept on travelling with joy. These travelling worshippers are what the word “pilgrim” means. Their journey to Zion was a pilgrimage. It was not just at Zion that they worshipped God, though that’s the ultimate place where they finally lay down themselves to rest in God’s presence. The whole pilgrimage was an act of worship.

          This is what the Christian life is all about. Our whole life on earth is a journey, a pilgrimage. We are travelling towards the heavenly Jerusalem. We don’t end up there immediately. We’re on a journey, and it’s a journey to the promise land; it’s a journey home. When we get there, we’ll see a multitude that no one could count, coming from all nations, wearing robes that are white as snow, and you’ll find yourself wearing one of those as well. There will be no hunger, no thirst, not pain, no suffering; God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. And it’s there that we shall see God face to face. Now what we see is but a faint mirror image, but then we shall see God face to face. And this earthly life is not futile, because it’s a journey to the better home. That’s why the author of Hebrews says that we are aliens and strangers on earth. We are passing through. We are travellers. This is not our home. Taiwan is not my home. Vancouver is not my home. I have a home better than all of these.

          And this leads to my last point. What does it mean to worship God in this life? The first thing is to have a sense of belonging. Know what you belong to. Know where your home is. Do you see this world as your home, or do you see heaven as your home? If you see yourself at home in the earthly life, then you are not a pilgrim. You cannot possibly be one. You have to know that you belong to heaven. This sense of belonging is the essence of faith and hope. Hebrews 11 says that faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. If you have this faith and this hope, then your life will be different. The decisions you make will be heavenly-oriented, and your life will be a life of worship.

          This heaven-consciousness is what distinguishes Christians of all ages from other people. We talk about the Puritans very often. These were 17^th-century and early 18^th-century Christians who dedicated themselves to pure Christian faith. The Puritans liked to use the image of a pilgrim to describe themselves. A Puritan author by the name of John Bunyan wrote a novel titled A Pilgrim’s Progress to describe the Christian life. These Puritans had a sharp consciousness of their where final destination is, and so in everything that they did and every decision that they made, it was associated with a heavenly purpose. They had such a strong sense of where they were going, that people came to describe them as “men who swallowed gyroscopes.” Now what’s a gyroscope? A gyroscope is an equipment that provides directions for people travelling on the seas. It’s like a compass. It provides directions. The Puritans were described as men who swallowed gyroscopes, because they had such a strong sense of direction. They knew where they were going, and they went with determination. They were heavenly-minded.

          Not just the Puritans were like that. There’s an early document from the 2^nd or 3^rd Century A.D. written by a Christian to explain what Christians believe and why they act the way they do. Let me read it to you: “For the Christians are distinguished from other people neither by land, nor language, nor customs; for they do not inhabit cities of their own, nor use a particular language, nor lead a life that is unusual… But inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according to each person’s lot… they display to us their wonderful and admittedly paradoxical way of life. They inhabit their homelands, but as strangers… Every foreign land is their homeland, and every homeland is a foreign land.” Isn’t that beautiful?

          My grandparents are from mainland China. I was born in Taiwan, and I grew up in Canada. I don’t have identity issues. I’m happy to be Taiwanese. I’m glad to be Chinese. I’m proud to be Canadian. Now there’s the issue of Taiwanese independence. Some Taiwanese people think of Taiwan as a sovereign nation, whereas other people think of Taiwan as a part of China. You know, frankly, I don’t care if Taiwan declares independence, or if it is unified with China. What I care about is the salvation of Chinese people and Taiwanese people. I don’t understand why there are Chinese Christians who hate Taiwanese separatists, just as I don’t understand why there are Taiwanese Christians who want to be separatists. We shouldn’t be so politically-minded. We should be politically-engaged, but heavenly minded. You see what I’m talking about?

          In the last Presidential Election in Taiwan, I saw on the TV broadcast a Christian woman kneeling down there at the rally praying to God that her candidate will win the election. The media interviewed her, and she said, “God has spoken to me. He is righteous, so we will win.” Well, I agree with her that her party was much less corrupt than the other party at that time, but there’s a problem here, you see. Christians today are so earthly minded. As if the presidential candidates were their saviour! We are investing too much hope in our political parties, our economy, our sports teams, our academic achievements and other earthly things. Our values are all wrong! To worship God in this life, to be a pilgrim, means that you must have the right set of values. You must have a Christian worldview. I heard of a Christian who still hates someone for an offence that took place two years ago, even though that person has already apologized. Well, that’s the counterexample of being a worshipper. When you forgive your offender and love your enemy, you are worshipping God. When you love your parents, you are worshipping God. When you stay loyal to your marriage, you are worshipping God.

          So finally, what does it mean to worship God? I want you to go home this week and read Romans 12-16. The book of Romans begins with theology in the first eleven chapters, from the doctrine of sin, the doctrine of revelation, God’s justice and faithfulness, to justification by faith, the doctrine of redemption, predestination, and end in Chapter 11 with the salvation of Israel. And then in Chapter 12 to 16, Paul starts talking about Christian living on the principle of love. And how Paul begins this section is very interesting. He uses a metaphor of worship to describe Christian living. He writes in the beginning of Romans 12, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.” What does that mean? That means the way we are to worship God is with our whole life, with every aspect of our life. Paul explains, “Do not conform any longer to the patter of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” That is the essence of worship, the essence of pilgrimage. The sacrifice of earthly values and the transformation of our minds. If you just want people to accept you the way you are, if you don’t want to change and make sacrifices and be transformed, then you are not a worshipper. Do you want to be a worshipper in life? I know you do. Let me pray for you.