Everyday Praise: Raise the Roof

In his book, Exit Interviews, William Hendricks relates one man’s frustration with worship in his church. As a businessman, Vince evaluated his use of time on a cost to benefit analysis. When it came to worship, he felt he was not getting a good return on his investment. When asked, “Why not?” He said, “It was a production. An incredibly well orchestrated production. But I didn’t like the orchestration. Everything was cut right down to the second. You see it on TV all the time, and this church was no different. And the preacher was there as part of the show. He was the main act. He had a 20 or 25 minute stint. I’m slipping out of bed at 8 in the morning to get to church to go through this elaborate production before he gets up there for 20 minutes. I’m worn out by that time, because I’m bored with the people and the presentation. I want out of there! I’d catch about 60, maybe 65% of what he is saying. Is that what I’m going to church for? I got better things to do. You know what I’d rather do? Sleep, read my Sunday paper. I love reading my Sunday paper. I hate anything interrupting that. And I gotta tell you, that church wasn’t giving it to me, not to get me away from my paper on a Sunday morning anyway.”

Robert Webber, one of the foremost authorities on worship once said: The reason so many people find worship boring is this: In our life, we are aware of mystery, community and symbol, but we’ve attempted to make the mystery of God something we can understand. We’ve turned worship into something we watch instead of something we do.” And George Barna adds, “For most of us, worship is about what satisfies or pleases us, worship is not done to honor or please God.”

Are they right? Is worship something that’s become a show? Is worship something we watch or is it something we do? Has worship become just another commodity that we consume? Do we come to worship for what we can get or for what we can give?

Now, if you’ve been tracking with us the past few weeks, then hopefully the answer that forms in your mind on those questions is clear – that we don’t come to worship to GET, but we come to GIVE PRAISE to the One we love. At least that’s what I hope you’d say. But I know we live in a CONSUMER culture, where people actually choose their church by the quality of the worship. So for many, worship, has become just another commodity. But I hope that’s not true here. I hope that when it comes to worship, you want to be the kind of worshiper God wants you to be.   And did you know that God actually tells us the kind of worshiper He’s looking for. That’s what we’re going to look at as we conclude our series on Everyday Praise. So what’s He looking for from us? Well, the qualities God desires are spelled out for us in Psalm 95, our text this morning. So, if you brought your Bible with you today, let me encourage you open them to Psalm 95, so we might see how we measure up. For it is here that we will see the kind of worshipers God desires. What kind of worshiper does God desire?

God wants us to be enthusiastic worshipers: He wants us to be the kind of people who raise the roof in praise of Him! Look now at this invitation to worship in verses 1-5

Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.

Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol Him with music and song.

For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods.

In His hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to Him.
The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. Psalm 95:1-5

God wants exuberant, enthusiastic worshipers; raise the roof worshipers; worshipers who can’t help but shout praise to the Rock of their salvation. And the Psalmist gives us four specific instructions on how we can raise the roof in worship:

First, is to come into God’s presence with songs of joy. God is our deliverer. No longer are we captive to shame or guilt. We are no longer condemned. We’ve been set free. And the One who set us free is called the Rock of our Salvation. We know the rock of our salvation as Jesus. The New Testament spells out our deliverance: “God delivered us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves.” Colossians 1:13

There is nothing like the joy of a heart set free. It’s like being well again. After being sick for a week and stepping out into the warm sun, there’s just a good sense of well-being. Life is as it ought to be. The grass is greener. The sky bluer. Freedom is good. Freedom from guilt and shame is even better. And it opens the heart to sing – to sing praises of the One who set you free. Do you have that joy? If you do, then you’ll want to raise the roof with songs of joy to Jesus.

Second, its to come into God’s presence with a shout to the Lord! Ever done that? Ever shouted praise to Jesus? They did in the Old Testament. We can shout. We shout at ballgames. We shout the names of our kids when they are competing. We shout out when they graduate.  When Courtney graduated from High School, we were all gathered in the Tacoma Dome.  We were asked to hold our applause until they were completed with calling every student’s name.  Now that didn’t deter the black family sitting in front of us.  As soon as their daughter’s name was announced, every one of them got up and shouted her name, “Moesha!  Moesha!  Way to go Moesha! We love to shout. But do we ever give a shout out to Jesus? My guess is, that to do that here might freak out some people. After all, we need to “give God respect” in worship. I don’t know. If anyone is worthy of a shout of praise, wouldn’t it be our God?

Third, its to come into God’s presence with thanksgiving. We do that. We’re going to do that next week. Thanksgiving is great because it expresses that we have received something from God, and we are grateful. What are we thankful for? So much! He gave us Jesus. He gave us forgiveness. He gave us hope. He gave us love. He gave us life. And if we can’t bring thanks to Him for all that? If we’re coming to get more… well, what can we say?

Fourth, its to come into God’s presence with music and song. Thankfully we have many who give of their talents in music and voice to lead us in worship.   What a great way to praise God. Joyful singing and amazing music! The arts all got their start because God’s people wanted to give their best in music and song to God. We need to keep doing that. For God is worthy of our best.

He is the great God and the great King above all gods. THAT’S THE FOCUS OF OUR PRAISE. We sing joyfully, shout loudly, give thanks and make great music for one purpose: to DECLARE God’s greatness! And to REMEMBER that there is no one like our God. You see, If anyone deserves roof raising praise its our God, the Rock of our Salvation, the great God who rules over all the earth.

This is what WE ARE TO BRING to worship, because we have a God who is worthy of our best and of our all in worship. So what kind of worshipers does God desire? Enthusiastic worshipers. Unashamed worshipers. Worshipers with hearts full of joy who want the world to know how great God is! How we doing with that?

Well, lets look at the next quality: What kind of worshipers does God desire?

God wants us to be humble worshipers   He wants people who will raise the roof, but just as quickly bow the knee. Look at the text: Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under his care. Psalm 95:6-7

Bowing the knee in worship symbolizes one thing: surrender. Bowing the knee acknowledges that God is great and in comparison to Him, we are nothing. Whereas enthusiastic worship is all about celebrating God, bowing the knee is an intimate expression of humility that honors God. Our humble surrender symbolized by kneeling communicates our dependence on Him. When we bow in a public display of worship, we acknowledge that we are His created ones and we owe our very existence to Him.   When we kneel before Him, we consciously submit ourselves to Him as our God. And this position of humility says we trust Him as our Shepherd who provides for and cares for us in all of life.

This is so healthy for us to do: to bow before God in worship. I love what John Ortberg says about this. He says, “I need to worship because without it I can forget that I have a big God beside me and live in fear. I need to worship because without it I can forget his calling and begin to live in a spirit of self-preoccupation. I need to worship because without it I lose a sense of wonder and gratitude and plod through life with blinders on. I need worship because my natural tendency is toward self-reliance and stubborn independence.”—John Ortberg

I like that last line. We all have this natural tendency to be self-reliant and independent – to live as if we don’t need God. We do! That’s why God wants us to humble ourselves in worship. He is our Creator, our God and our Shepherd. When we bow the knee to Him, this honors Him in a way our celebrative worship cannot. This is the kind of worshiper God desires: One who trusts Him to be who He says He is.

So God desires that we raise the roof in worship and we bow the knee in worship. But there’s one more quality He desires in us, and that is this: God wants us to be faith-filled worshipers Look now at the remainder of Psalm 95 Today, if only you would hear his voice,  “Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness,  where your ancestors tested me; they tried me, though they had seen what I did.  For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways.’  So I declared on oath in my anger,  ‘They shall never enter my rest.’” Psalm 95:8-11

If you would only hear my voice, “Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness.”   This Psalm was written as a warning to the Israelite people of what angers God. The word is even stronger then that. He is reminding God’s people of the behavior that disgusts God. What disgusts God is when we harden our hearts to Him. The Psalmist points to a time in the desert where Israel didn’t believe God would provide for them. Here’s the story from Exodus 17,

The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.  So they quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.”

Moses replied, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the Lord to the test?” But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?” Then Moses cried out to the Lord, “What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.”

The Lord answered Moses, “Go out in front of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go.  I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”Exodus 17:1-7

God was disgusted with the hardness of heart that caused His people to question and test Him. In blaming Moses, they were blaming God for their predicament. These are the same people who witnessed God’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt. But here they are: ungrateful, skeptical and brazenly rebellious. They came demanding that Moses do something. And in doing so they were demanding that God prove Himself to them.

It’s no wonder God was disgusted with them. After all He had done for them they had no faith. And the reason they had no faith was they hardened their hearts to His voice.

You see faith in God is the one way we honor God the most. When we take Him at His Word and act on it – He is glorified. When we wait for Him to work, we allow Him to work on His time table. But far too often in our skeptical, self-reliant age, we have a hard time waiting. In some ways we become just like those Israelites. We question God. We argue with God. Partly, because we never learned His ways, or don’t particularly like His ways. We like our ways. We want it now. It’s too hard to live by faith.

But do you know what the Bible says about faith? Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. Hebrews 11:6

So this Psalm identifies for us the one thing that can keep us from being a people of praise: our lack of faith, our hardness of heart. So let me ask you: What kind of hardness of heart sits in these chairs on Sunday mornings? Do we have a hardness of heart to the perishing? To those who don’t know Jesus, whose destiny is eternal separation from God? Do we have a hardness of heart to the unlovely? Do we only include others who are like us? And might we have a hardness of heart to His ways? Are you set in your ways? Do we like your ways more than His ways?

Without faith it is impossible to please God! God wants us to be a faith-filled people: People who trust Him with every aspect of our lives. People who trust Him with our marriages, who trust Him with our families, people who trust Him with our finances, people who trust Him with our time, people who trust Him with our habits and hobbies. Because when we trust Him in everything, we honor Him fully. That’s worship! That’s the kind of worshiper God desires. That’s the kind of person who will bring praise God, not just on Sundays… but everyday.

Is that the kind of worship you bring God? Do you listen to His voice? Do you obey His Word? Do you follow His ways – in everything? That’s the kind of worshiper God desires. Let’s pray.