Let's take our Bibles and Alan turn to Psalm 100 for a few minutes. I figure if I'm operating at about half speed, you'll probably get about a half of a sermon. How does that sound today? Psalm 100. The Psalms are right in the middle of the Bible, easy to find. There are Bibles underneath a chair around you someplace. You can pull that out and turn to Psalm 100 as we think together about worship, the subject of worship. And the reason that we're doing this today is I started thinking this past week or actually many weeks ago when I knew this day was coming. I started asking myself, how do you say goodbye to Jonathan? One of my nicknames for Jonathan in his six years that he's been here has been chief musician. If you read through the Old Testament, you notice that in the temple worship that they had, they had a number of musicians, lots and lots of them. In fact, music was very important to Old Testament worship. And one of the people that King David and his successors appointed to lead the people in worship was known as the chief musician. For example, there was a fellow by the name of ASAF who was known as one of the chief musicians during the time of David and he wrote a couple of the Psalms. Well, I call Jonathan our chief musician. So how do you say goodbye to a chief musician? I think what you do is you talk about one of his favorite subjects, which is worship. So we're going to look at worship, talk about some of the things that are important to us, some of the things we've learned over the past six years, under his tutelage and what we want to continue to preserve here at UPC. Psalm 100, listen carefully to God's holy word, shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, worship the Lord with gladness, come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is He who made us and we are His. We are His people, the sheep of His pasture. So enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and praise His name for the Lord is good and His love endures forever. His faithfulness continues through all generations. Let's answer three brief simple questions about worship today. What is it? How do you do it? And why? What? How and why? Pretty simple little plan. First, what is worship? What if we learn from Jonathan about worship? I don't want to steal his words from him. He has said it so often though I think we could probably recite it pretty well. Worship is the act of joining in something that is already taking place. He has said that many, many times. Worship is the act of joining in the universal, never ending chorus of praise to the one who is worthy of that, namely God. It's our act of joining in this universal, never ending chorus of praise called worship, called the lifting up of our hearts, one who is worthy of our praise, of our love, of our thanks. It's been going on since time began and it will continue to go on into eternity and never ever end. I said first that it's universal. Notice what it says in verse 1, shout for joy to the Lord all the earth. The entire earth, the created order, all human beings, all of nature exists to praise and worship God. And I said that it's never ending. Look at verse 5, the very last phrase of this Psalm says that his faithfulness continues through all generations. So obviously one of the things that we believe here at UPC is that all of life can be worshiped. When you go off to work in school tomorrow morning, that is actually you a way of you worshiping God. When you are cleaning your home, when you're rearing your children, when you're taking vacation, when you're reading a book, going to a movie, when you're studying for exams, when you're writing a letter or an email, anything you do can be and is an act of worship when done to the glory of God and for the good of his people. But when we talk about worship that's corporate and we'll have more to say about that in a moment, when we talk about worship that happens here on Sunday morning, we're talking about a unique part of what that big worship subject is. This part when we come together as God's people, there's nothing like it. When we're here for an hour for 90 minutes or whatever it is, we are together experiencing something that the angels in heaven are right now experiencing. And we're joining the chorus of that universal never ending worship service of praise to the one who alone is worthy of it. Second question, how is it to be done? That's what this Psalm really addresses. There are nine things that this Psalm, at least nine, that this Psalm tells us about how you and I ought to worship God when we come together on Sunday morning. Let me just scan through this Psalm with you one verse after another and look at these nine different things that this Psalm teaches us about how worship should be done. The first thing I notice about it is that worship should be done loudly, loudly. Notice verse one says shout for joy to the Lord. Now I know that there are times when we might say wow, that was loud. It is hurting my ears or something like that. Well, I want to sympathize with you in one way, but on another hand, I want to say that worship in heaven is loud and we better get used to it. There's a chorus of thousands upon thousands of angels singing to God in worship right now. You and I are not privy to that, but it must be so loud that we probably ought to practice. Now maybe we're going to lose a little bit of our hearing here on this planet, but when we get our glorified body, get our hearing back. So just be aware right now that we're to be shouting for joy to the Lord. Now I don't think that just means that worship ought to be a million decibels. I think what he is getting at is that there ought to be a real earnestness and an intensity about worship. That's what I mean when I say that it ought to be loud. There ought to be an earnestness and an intensity about worship. It's got to be something that we want to do and that we do to the very best of our ability with our whole heart. So first, the worship of God is done loudly. Second, we ought to worship joyfully. Worship joyfully, verse one and two says shout for joy to the Lord all the earth. Worship the Lord with the ladeness. Come before him with notice joyful songs. What does this mean? It means that worship ought to be done with the emotions. There should be true feeling in worship. It's not just something we go through the motions doing. There should be sadness and lament as well as happiness and gladness. The whole range of human emotion enters into the act of worship. Worship done without emotion. Worship done without feeling is as John Piper put it giving a handful of roses to your wife at the end of the day. Hopefully, what wife wants due to full flowers, right? What God would want due to full worship? It's unthinkable. Worship ought to be done with feeling. Were you feeling the songs that we sang earlier today? Were you allowing the emotion of that music to sort of sweep you up in it so that you could feel love toward God so that you could feel gladness toward the Lord? That's the kind of worship that the Lord finds and honors him. Not the dutiful, not the rote simply go through the motions kind of worship. So we need to work on that. We're Presbyterians. We need to work on that. Third, not only loudly and joyfully, but we are to worship musically. Says in verse two, come before him with joyful songs. I know that you feel as I do that this is one of the things I appreciate most about Jonathan Noel. Guys, I know you know this, but I just want to say it. We have been blessed with an immensely talented worship director. But not only is he just musically talented, but I think what that has revealed to us is the beauty of music as an important part of worship. And we want to continue to build on that foundation. I love the story of Martin Luther. Martin Luther was such a lover of music. And he was of course one of our main reformers back in the 1500s. All of the things that Martin Luther did to reform music were designed. Don't know if you knew this, but they were designed to make the mass more accessible to common people. And people who weren't musically trained to people who weren't the highly educated class of Germany. He insisted that hymns be sung in every worship service. He said that it was the robust singing of simple hymns that would open the hearts and open up the soul word of God during the preaching. Martin Luther's lifetime, he composed more than 35 hymns, and he published a total of nine hymns. Of course, one of his most famous hymns being a mighty fortress is our God, which we sang last week. Now, if you know much about Luther, you know he was pretty blunt, and he put things fairly straightforwardly. If you're one who doesn't like to sing, who would just as soon come in here and sit down and listen to a sermon and go home, you know there are some Christians like that who just don't get singing. If that describes you, listen to something Martin Luther once said, he said the precious gift of music has been given to man so that he might thereby remind himself that God has created man for the express purpose of praising and extolling God. A person who does not regard music as a marvelous creation of God must be a clawed hopper indeed and does not deserve to be called a human being. He should be permitted to hear nothing but the brain of asses and the grunting of hogs. I'm just the messenger. That wasn't me. What are we to learn from Martin Luther in that? I think what he means is music is really important. And if you read through the book of Psalms, you can't miss it over and over where commanded to sing, where commanded to lift our voices to the Lord. Now, some of you don't have a great singing voice, and you know what? That's okay. You can still try. You can still open the mouth and let it out. And maybe the people around you won't exactly appreciate it very much, but God does. And one day you're going to be given a glorified voice. So in the meantime, lift voice to the best of the ability that God has given you and enjoy worship musically. Fourth, not only loudly, joyfully and musically, but weird, a worship intelligently. Worship is something that ought to be done intelligently. Look at verse three. Know that the Lord is God. So you underline that word know. Worship involves a knowing. It involves an act of mental exercise. What did Jesus say is the first and greatest commandment? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind. So when we gather together on Sunday morning, we are to love God. We are to worship God with our mind. Think about what we're doing. Again, I go back to the songs that we sang earlier today. Were you thinking about the words? Do you think about the scriptures as you listen to them? Are you thinking right now? Are you taking notes? Some of you do. Or are you switching off? Just sort of waiting for everything to get over with. That's not loving God with your mind. It takes work. It takes concentration and focus sometimes to follow what is on, but that's part of knowing that the Lord is God. This is, again, one of the things I've experienced and appreciated by Jonathan. Jonathan has said many times, particularly recently, that in the typical worship service, there is a progression that you must identify, that you must think through with him. That's called liturgy. And the progression that we're talking about is from creation to fall, to redemption, to consummation. And if you'll think about it, as you follow us in worship each Sunday, you'll notice those four grand themes of Bible creation. When we come in and sit down, we begin first by acknowledging who God is, that He's our creator, that He's the one who has brought us back again this morning, that He gives us life and gives us breath. Fall. We also acknowledge that we are imperfectors, that we are fallen and flawed, that we have sinned. And so we acknowledge our faults and our sins before the Lord. Redemption. We realize that Jesus Christ has come to die and pay the price for those sins. And so we praise Jesus. We think about His death and His resurrection, His return. On summation, we end the service on a note of hope and of service, entry into this world in which God has put us to represent God to those who don't know Him yet. So as you through worship, you're using your mind and you're using your brain to love God intelligently.
Fifth, we are to worship corporately, corporately. Notice verse three says, it is He who made us. Interesting. It doesn't just say it is He who made me. So often in modern evangelicalism, there is a me and Jesus mentality that forgets that we're part of a body. And so here at UPC, what we are trying to do is build a culture of corporate worship. See, we're not just a group of individuals worshiping God. We're doing it together. All of us, young and old together, men and women, boys and girls together, married and singles together. Black and white and every shade in between together. Why is that important? Why is it important that we not segregate ourselves into little demographic units? It's important because worship is to be a foretaste of the corporate gathering of the people of God on the new earth. When people of every nation, tribe, language and people group under heaven will be together forever worshipping our God. We have the opportunity now to gather together as one body made up of many, many different individuals worshiping corporately. Sixth, the sixth thing we see in Psalm 100 is that we are to worship confidently. Confidently, again, verse 3 says, it is He who made us and we are His. We are His people. Wow. You can think forever on that phrase. We are His. This is what makes worship gospel centered. We are His. He owns us. He bought us. He redeemed us. He died and paid the price for us. He wooed us. He captured us. He won us. He ransomed us. He died to save us. He secured us. And He's one day coming for us. We are His. So what does that mean? It means that we can come into this room confidently knowing that we're His kids, we're His bride, brothers of Jesus, children of the King. You might come in here one day, one Sunday morning feeling thoroughly ashamed of yourself. It's been a bad week. Maybe a bad morning. You haven't lived very well this week. You fought in the car all the way to church or whatever. But when you walk in that room, you are what you were already a child of the father, dearly loved, adopted, saved by His grace. And so lift your head high, look into the face of your Savior who's smiling and worshiped confidently. Number seven, we should worship humbly. Worship humbly. Why? Because as it says in verse three, we are the sheep of His pasture. I think you probably are aware that sheep are pretty dumb. Sheep are helpless creatures. They need guidance. They need care. Sheep are prone to wander. So what does that indicate? It means that we need God's grace always. It means that we are what we are by His grace alone. And so when we come in here together to worship, we should worship humbly. We should spend a little time every Sunday morning together acknowledging our sinfulness, acknowledging our failings and receiving His grace. Number eight, let's worship thankfully. Worship thankfully. It says in verse four, to enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to God and praise His name. Have you given thanks this morning as you have worshiped the Lord? I have, as I was sitting, my chair was looking up here and noticing for one thing, the age diversity of our worship ministry. And this was just a piece of it. When we have our youth up here, it's even more obvious. That is something very rare to have young and old leading us in worship like they do each Sunday morning. I'm thankful for the new arrangements of old hymns that Jonathan has taught us. I'm thankful for the people that Jonathan has mentored and prepared for leadership. People like Rob Rogers, who is going to be our interim worship leader, Danny Faragala, Jack Baray, Spencer Flanagan, Ryan Delk, and many others. And I'm thankful that worship at UPC is not a show. You can go to many churches where worship feels like a performance for your entertainment. That's not what it's about. God is our audience. The band and the people alike are the performers. We're worshiping for God's honor and God's glory. So those are just a few blessings that I'm thankful for, thanks to Jonathan. And then the final thing I would say today from Psalm 100 is to worship intentionally, to worship intentionally. As you read through Psalm 100, you notice all kinds of verbs. And they're all active verbs. The verbs that indicate that a choice is being made, that something is being done intentionally, shout, worship, come before him. No, enter, give thanks, praise. All of those verbs are things that the worshipper does intentionally chooses to do because he or she knows that it's life for the soul. So as you think about those nine things, think about, especially that last one, when you come to worship on Sunday morning, come intending to give worship your best, your best shot. Come intending to meet with God and with your brothers and sisters. Come intending to give God the glory, do his holy name. And I said that there were three questions I wanted to answer from that song. The first one was what it is. Second one is how you do it. The third one is why? Why worship God? Actually, it's not why worship, but why worship God? Everybody worships. We always are worshiping. The question is why worship God? The reason is that only God satisfies the heart. Everybody worships something, even atheists, even agnostics worship something. If you don't believe it all men and women worship something, a week from now, turn on your TV at about seven o'clock in the evening, and you'll see America worshiping the Super Bowl. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm going to be walking watching it too. But that's an example of how all human beings worship something. Why worship God? Because he and he alone fills the heart. He and he alone satisfies the ache that every single one of us want to satisfy the need for the transcendent, the need for glory, the need for something that lasts, the need for forgiveness, for redemption, for eternity. God is the one who comes and fulfills the heart. God forbid that we should substitute for God anything that is less than him. That's what the Bible calls. Why worship God? Verse five. Because the Lord is good, that's why. And his love endures forever. We have seen the past six years just a little piece of God's goodness has shown to us through the Noel family. Let's give thanks to God for that, for that blessing. Let's send them off with our love tonight, and let's look forward to seeing how God will continue to be the one who builds a culture of God-centered gospel-driven worship at UPC. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the tremendous gift you've given to us in worship. Thank you that you include us in your congregation. Father, will you please continue to deepen us in worship? Will you please help us to worship you loudly, joyfully, and musically, and intelligently, and corporately, and confidently, humbly, and thankfully, and intentionally? We ask, oh Lord, that the worship of God would only grow more loud, more musical, more joyful, more corporate, more confident, more intelligent. Lord, help us, we pray. Send your spirit each and every Sunday that worship here at UPC will satisfy your heart, as well as ours, and we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.