Part of Something Bigger: Worshiping in Unity
Ephesians 5:14-21; Hebrews 10:19-25
One of my deepest longings as your Sr. Pastor is that at Lake Avenue Church we will regularly worship God together – yes, together! I’m sure you know this is quite different from what many churches in America have talked about over the past 40 years. Back in the 1970s, I remember being told that, if you want a church to grow, you should figure out what people enjoy and then, create services that appeal to their preferences. This marketing approach to church life was so deeply ingrained in our consumerist culture that few seemed to question the idea of, “Give people what they want and they will come.” And you know what happened: local churches created traditional services for older people and contemporary services for younger people. But then we found out that neither all older people nor all younger people liked the same kind of service so we considered adding options: liturgical services, post-modern services, gospel music services… It seemed there might be no end to how we would divide up and not have to worship our Lord together.
Oh yes – we read the book of Revelation that tells us that throughout eternity all of God’s people will worship him unity – but, we seemed to think, “That’s heaven and not here. We don’t want to do that here!” But let me tell you something: The church of Jesus Christ is not a consumer product. The church of Jesus Christ is not a social club in which we gather with people we naturally feel comfortable with. The church is the people of God saved by grace through faith in Jesus. And, I am convinced that the Lord who saved us and called us into his church wants us to gather together and worship him together.
When I say this, my point is not that we should intentionally have services or programs or activities that people hate simply to show the world how different we are. No, my point is that the church is not primarily about us! It’s about Jesus! And, one of the things God Word calls us to do is to gather together regularly for the express purpose of worshiping him.
Let’s be clear about this: We need to have places in a church like ours in which you can gather with people of your same stage in life so that you can talk about issues of special concern to you at this time in your life. But, without question, there also needs to be a regular time in your life in which you worship God together with all those in your church family. When you do, i.e., when you see people among you and worshiping with you who are different from you in almost every possible way coming together for one reason and one reason alone, i.e., to worship God, you will find it life-transforming. And the world will see it and believe that God is among us.
What Do We Mean By “Worshiping in Unity”?
In our LAC Guiding Statement, the Ministry Council and pastors state that there are three essential connections to the life of our church that we want each one of us to be involved in. The first of those, we call “worshiping in unity”. I think I need to explain what we mean by that. The word worship is a word used quite broadly both in the Bible and in church-life today.
The biblical words translated worship usually refer to bowing before and surrendering everything to someone else, someone who is wor-thy of that kind of response. And it is the consistent teaching of Scripture that God alone – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – is worthy of that kind of whole-lived surrender and devotion. But in our LAC Guiding Statement, we are speaking about one particular kind of worship, i.e., worshiping together with your church family. A church family like ours is made up of people of all ages and backgrounds and interests. We’re not drawn to be together by shared human interests. What knits us together is that we’ve given our lives in faith to Jesus.
Your pastors and Ministry Council members are convinced that the God who has called us into this church family wants us to worship him in unity together. In high school or middle school ministries, you can do this with people of your own age and interests. The same is true of our adult classes. But, when we worship together, we give up personal preferences simply to thank the God who has rescued us.
What Do We Do When We Worship Together:
I believe that we should do the things that the Bible calls us to do and that our brothers and sisters around the world have always done when they have come together to worship. When you visit churches around the world, you will certainly find a lot of differences due to culture and language. However, in Bible and Gospel-centered churches, you will discover some things are shared:
- Praise: God’s people sing together, especially songs of praise to God together.
- Prayer: God’s people pray together – taking time to confess sins, to thank God for his grace, and to bring to him the concerns that are on our hearts.
- Ordinances: God’s people celebrate the baptism of believers and then regularly remember the death of Jesus for our sins through communion – just as Jesus told us to do.
- Giving: God’s people bring our offerings as a visible sign that all we have and are has been give to us by our Father.
- Family Life: God’s people take time when they gather together for issues affecting the whole church family. Sometimes we hear the stories of our people and their walks with God.
- Preaching: God’s people take time to hear God’s Word together. Hearing the Word of God together with the whole family is different from hearing it in your age-graded classes or small groups. Hearing the Word together draw us all together closer to our Father. Preaching to the whole church is not easy because a church gathered worship service like ours will have jr. highers as well as Cal Tech professors. It will have new believers as well as Fuller Seminary faculty. But, we listen to the Word together and, in my experience, God speaks to us in fresh ways when we receive his Word together.
- Response – God’s people take some time to respond to the Word and then to be sent to live in the light of that Word. We know God’s Word commands us both to be hearers and doers of it.
It is this kind of worship together that both knits us together as a family and that knits us together to like-minded churches throughout history and around the world. When the world sees this, they will find it almost incomprehensible. They will say, “Did you see all those very, very different people singing joyfully with one another? I know that one man in the band plays at the local jazz club. And that young woman over there loves hip-hop. And several of those people play in the local Symphony Orchestra. How do they do that? How can it be that they are singing together? And, some of them have very short attention spans and yet they sit listening to the pastor together. What’s happening? It has to be God. God must be in that place!”
Why?
So, we want to be a church in which God’s people actually gather regularly to worship in the ways I’ve just mentioned. Why? One reason is that, when we worship in unity, it is a witness to our divided world that God really does bring together what is broken. Our worship in unity is evidence to the world of God’s reconciling power that we speak of in our statement of mission. The world need to see tangible expressions of the unity that God’s brings about -- and one of the most important ways for that to happen is for us to worship God across those divisions of age, ethnicity, educational levels, political affiliation, etc. and income that so fragment our world.
Why else should we worship together? We’re convinced that worshiping in unity is essential to your own growth in Christ. Let’s remember that the main reason for us to worship together is that we need to set our hearts and minds on God, to place him at the center of our lives again after being tugged away from him all week by putting other things at the center of our lives like 1) our own selves or 2) the care and concerns of the world. Last week, Pastor Jeff Liou reminded us powerfully that each of us and all of us in our church are to become complete in Christ. That means that we all are to find freedom from our sin and a new life that is marked by loving God with our whole beings and loving people, as Jesus loves us. How does that happen? One essential part of your growth is that you worship together with your whole family. Heb 10:24-25 makes this so clear: Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
For church people to worship together forces each one of us to give up our preferences to serve others – to come together for a time of worship not because of any self-fulfilling reason but simply because we want to honor God. If we keep looking for a church in which people like what we like, it will only reinforce the kind of self-interest that is at the heart of sin. When we worship together, we give up our own preferences and offer praise to God with “one voice.” This is what the Apostle Paul was getting at as he wrote to a much-divided church in Rome in Rom 15:5-6 -- May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
How?
Let's not be naive about this. It’s not easy for us to get our minds and voices together to worship God. But, I’ve also learned that when young and old, Spoken-Word artist and LA Phil harmonic orchestra devotee, people of lighter hue or darker hue and all in between come together to worship Jesus simply because we’re thankful God has saved us, we grow to find great joy in it! We learn that God is glorified by it.
We’re guided by God’s Word in this. One of many texts that helps us is Eph 5:15-20. As in Romans, Paul was writing in Ephesians to a group of Christians that were finding it hard to do life together.
# 1: Let God’s Spirit give you strength to enjoy singing all kinds of songs to the Lord. Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit (5:19a).”
I smile when I see that Paul said that we need to be filled; which means to be controlled or empowered, by the Spirit in order to do this. That would have also been true in the church in Ephesus to whom Paul was writing. There was quite a division in that church among those who were of Jewish heritage and those who were not; those who had a long experience with the God of the Scriptures and those who were new in their faith. According to Eph 1-3, they apparently didn’t want to worship in one church together. What Paul said God is doing is creating a “new humanity”, i.e., a third kind of family in which Jew and Gentile are still those things but that they are now knit together through God’s Spirit into the family of God.
With that in mind, notice that Paul specifies “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.” I’m quite sure that he mentions these three kinds of songs very intentionally. He’s saying that in this new third kind of humanity made up both of Jew and Gentile, there is also a new kind of worship – a third space made up of all kinds of people giving up personal preferences when they worship together simply to worship God as one family.
So, Paul said, “When God’s Spirit fills you, sing Psalms” – that was the songbook of the Jewish people. I can hear the Jewish believers saying, “Psalms are the true spiritual music. That’s what speaks to our hearts!” Paul says, “Yes, sing Psalms, but…
“Also sing hymns!” I imagine that refers to the kinds of newer songs being written and sung in the NT church – like we find in 5:14. “Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” That was almost certainly a part of what Paul called a hymn. The metropolitan Gentile business person who had come to faith in Jesus would have found the psalms strange – like many younger believers find our church hymns to be strange. “Who likes that kind of music?” they must have said. “But, these new hymns – like the ones sung we sometimes sing – that’s the kind of music that speaks to my heart.” Paul said, “Come together and sing them too -- and we Jews will try to sing along.”
And then there were probably also the younger, more charismatic believers in the family too. As the Spirit of God worked in their hearts, they would break out in a new song to the Lord – maybe unlike anything that had been sing in the church before. “Sing those too!” says Paul.
You see, if we’re still thinking like the world thinks, we say, “I want a church family where I can get the kind of music I like.” But, that’s not the family of God led by the Spirit. Remember? God is the one who calls this family together. When we sing together to our Father, we are strengthened and guided by the Spirit. If we just want to sing “our kind of music,” we only are seeking self-gratification.
#2: Be sure to sing in our hearts to the Lord. Make music from your heart to the Lord (5:19b).
Worship truly isn’t about us about us – it’s “to the Lord!” When you’ve been living your normal life in school or work, you find your daily pressures and responsibilities pull you away from considering God. Then, you come to church, into God’s unexpected family, and you see your brothers and sisters singing to your Father. What happens to me is that I often will enter the worship time with a heavy heart. Life has been hard. Finances are tight. There may have been a lot of failure. But, then God’s Word is opened and you hear it. When you worship, you find yourself singing all kinds of songs to the Lord… and hope is restored. You get out of your self-focus and cast your eyes on the love and power of your risen Lord Jesus Christ. You worship because you know that God loves you – and forgives you – and has given you a church family to worship him with. You worship because the Father you worship is bigger than your problems.
We must remember we are a family of rescued people. So, our worship must be directed toward our Rescuer, our Savior. And, we must remember that we are a part of a family who, by God’s declaration, will live and worship together eternally. The key to us worshiping in unity is that we all know we don’t deserve to be worshiping God at all. We are mercy-needing people now adopted into God’s eternal family solely due to his grace.
#3: Do a heart check and make sure you are grateful for God’s grace -- Always give thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ (5:20).
Here’s a Principle: The people most enthused to worship God with his people are those most aware of his grace in their lives. I’m quite sure Paul is not saying in this verse that we will be grateful for all that happens in our world but… we will know that all things are under God’s control. God is greater than our troubles. He grace is greater than our sin. And we will know that there is nothing inside or outside this world that can separate us from what really matters, i.e., the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. And we will look around us and see others like us. Others who are struggling. Others who have failed. Others who have discovered that the God of the universe loves them and is ready to bless them.
If you don't really feel that you have been saved from much, you will not find much joy in worshiping God. You’ll be bored. You won't really have anything to sing about because you haven't experienced anything. You can't really sing to God with joy unless you have something to sing about.
Many people go to church to celebrate a non‑event in their experience. They're not grateful for what God has done. They're not excited to be a part of God’s family. They're in church only for what they can get out of it ‑‑ not for an opportunity to add their praise and gratitude into the worship of God’s rescued people.
When we know we have sinned but God loves us so much he came to rescue us, we have to worship him. The people most enthused to sing God's praise are always those who are the most aware of his saving work. And one consequence of that is that if you want to improve the quality of your worship experience, you should take time before coming into the services to remember the grace God has shown you.
#4: Look around you, love your family, and submit your preferences so that we may worship in unity. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ (5:21).
We will remember what Jesus went through to bring us and everyone else into this family. He gave his life. We will remember that Christ gave us his Spirit – who dwells within each of us. Out of our heartfelt desire to please our crucified Lord, we will submit to one another.
So… how are we going to do this? How will we, all of whom have distinct tastes in music – distinct styles that we enjoy and others we do not enjoy – get together week after week and worship in unity? Well, it will be a work in process – as walking with God always is. But, I’m so thankful for what our worship leaders are doing as they prayerfully listen to us – and seek God’s guidance to help us get our voices together in praise to God. And, I’m so thankful for the wonderful spirit that is growing in our church. I sense it deeply. I’m sensing a humble spirit in our midst that leads us to be grateful to be in a family as diverse in many, many ways as LAC is becoming. I know, deep down in my heart, that our gracious Heavenly Father is pleased when he sees and hears us worship him in unity.