Through the Magnifying Glass

This coming Sunday I'm preaching about magnifying God. Originally, my thought had been to preach on praise using one of the Psalms (96, 98, or 145, though are many like these to choose from). And I was thinking about praise and worship and asking myself, "What is the importance of praising God? What is the importance of singing together as a congregation to God?" We are invited to praise, called to praise, and commanded to praise. But why? One reason is that, of course, God deserves our praise. He is worthy of our praise. But that reason alone doesn't seem to make praise personal enough.

Then I ended up watching these videos (here, here, and here) and that, plus having to focus on God while also having to deal with some personal worries, led me to think of one word: magnify. I found a definition of magnification that reads this way: “Magnification is the process of enlarging something only in appearance, not in physical size; magnification of the image does not change the perspective of the image.” I looked up the definition because I guess I had never really thought about what it really means to magnify God before. But it seems to me that it is the notion of magnification that gets us closer to why we come to God with our praise and worship.

What we magnify doesn’t actually get any larger, but it does to our eyes. It appears larger. Applied to God, this means that in magnifying God we do not, indeed cannot, add to God or enlarge him in any way. But what we do in magnifying God is we enlarge him in our own eyes, in our minds, and in our hearts and lives. Magnifying God is something we do because God deserves to be magnified. He deserves our adoration, our worship, and our praise.

There are many things in our lives that get magnified: personal troubles, financial struggles, health issues, family and relationship conflicts, and possessions. We call this blowing things out of proportion or making mountains out of molehills. We are all prone to doing this. I do this, and I suspect none of us is immune to magnifying lots of things in our lives—we’re all guilty of making various things appear larger than they are in reality.

But when we do this, one thing—someone—often gets reduced in size: God. Sometimes God ends up looking pretty small to us and ends up being small compared to everything else going on around us and in us. Cares and circumstances reduce God to a bit player in our lives, when not only is he supposed to be the major player in our lives but the director of our lives.

Or maybe God gets de-magnified in another way. Over the years sometimes we grow pretty familiar with church routine. We’ve heard all the hymns and praise songs, so we end up singing them by rote. We’ve heard sermons countless times, it seems, and the pastor rarely brings something fresh to the pulpit. The significance of the Bible stories we read lessen in impact because of repetition. And perhaps some of us as a result have reduced God to being no bigger than our experience of church.

God is already infinitely larger and greater than we can ever hope or imagine or understand. But he doesn’t always seem that way to our eyes. By proclaiming his greatness, his wonderful deeds, and his awesome character, by lifting our praises heavenward with expectant hearts, he will be magnified; that is, our perception of him will enlarge to better reflect who he really is. I also found this quotation on magnifying God, which I think is great. There's not much I can really add to it (though on Sunday I'll try!):

“Devout Christians are not exempt from not realizing the greatness of God. They may love the Lord and serve Him faithfully yet be so overwhelmed by their circumstances and fail to see that God is bigger. Magnifying God means seeing his greatness and superiority over every aspect of our lives. It means seeing God as being greater than any obstacle or challenge that comes our way. Magnifying God means proclaiming God's greatness and superiority over every aspect of our lives. God is magnified through praise for it proclaims his greatness and mighty acts (Ps 86:12, 13). Praise magnifies God in our eyes by reminding us of what he has done (Ps 107). It is the magnifying glass through which we see God's greatness. A magnifying glass does not make anything bigger that it really is but only magnified in our eyes (perception). In like manner, God is already great and magnified in the universe but through the magnifying glass of praise, so to speak, he is magnified in our eyes (perception) as well."

And, really, magnifying God is almost synonymous with praising God. In fact, until this week it never really occurred to me to think of magnifying God as anything other than a synonym for praising God. But for me the penny dropped when I realized that having God magnified is the result of our praise and worship and ought to be one of the reasons and motivations for our worship. And so all of the questions I had about praise -- like, why do we do it? -- were essentially answered. For some of you, this insight may not be new, but for me it feels pretty fresh. I just never thought of it this before. All I can say is that I found myself feeling quite grateful for how God helped me see this.

So, let me ask you: in what ways do you find God reduced in your eyes? How do you magnify God in your life? Does your experience of praising God in worship enable you to magnify him? I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts on this.

Preaching Through a Series: Part 3

Here's the sermon I preached today. It's the third in my series on the eight quality characteristics from NCD -- inspiring worship -- though I sort of talk more about the purpose of worship. Hope it feeds you heart and mind.

“The Why of Worship”
1 Chronicles 16:23 – 34; 1 Corinthians 14:26 – 33

Introduction—Why worship?

Ella’s now at the point—that favourite stage for all parents!—where it seems one of her favourite questions is, “Why?” And sometime she’ll ask that question, but I won’t know how to answer! So, like the good daddy that I am, I resort to that ol’ standby, “Because!” Well, that’s not a very good answer. As I found out from Alisha and her Mum, “Because is not the why of something!”

And we all ask that question sometimes—“Why?” But usually we’re more specific. For instance, we’ll be somewhere and ask ourselves, “Why am I here?” Have you ever been in a church service and asked, “Why am I here?” Now if you asked yourself that this morning, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know!

We’re told in Hebrews 10:25 not to give up meeting together for corporate worship. But why do we worship? Why are we here today? No doubt if anyone asks us why we go to church, we’ll say, “To worship.” This just begs the question. And we can’t just say, “Because,” because “because is not the why of something.”

I once heard worship described this way: Worship is our response to what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. But how do we respond to what God has done for us in Jesus? One of the eight quality characteristics of Natural Church Development is an “inspiring worship service.” In using the word “inspiring” to describe the kind of worship service a healthy church has, it’s saying that the worship service is an enjoyable experience for people. But as I was thinking about this, I began to ask myself, what is the purpose of worship? Why do we get together to sing songs, listen to sermons, and pray? So we’re going to talk about “the why of worship” this morning. I have three “why we worship” reasons: to glorify God; to edify one another; and to reach out to others.

To Glorify God

Whenever someone we know does something well or something right one of the things we try and do is praise her or him. That is, we take time to recognize his or her accomplishment or achievement. Sometimes we even applaud—we literally clap!—to show our appreciation for what she or he has done. We’ve done this with Ella. We often do this if someone sings a song in church. And I’m sure that we’ve all done this with our kids, grand-kids or great grand-kids or someone else when they’ve deserved it.

Such praise is healthy and good and expresses our appreciation or enjoyment of what someone else has done. This is like telling a waitress, “My compliments to the chef for the wonderful meal!” We can hardly have fully enjoyed and appreciated who God is and what God has done until we praise him—until we glorify him through our worship. And indeed the first purpose of worship is to glorify God.

In the Westminster Larger Catechism, which was written in the 17th century, the very first question asked is this: “What is the chief end of man?” In other words, what is our first and most important purpose for being here? What ought to be our highest goal and deepest aspiration? The answer the Catechism gives is this: “Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.”

Our passage from 1 Chronicles 16 tells us the same thing: “Sing to the Lord . . . Declare his glory among the nations . . . For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised . . . Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name . . . Worship the Lord in holy splendor.” This is why we sing—to focus our attention on God by praising who he is and what he has done. There are lots of other biblical passages that call us to worship God, to praise him, to glorify him in song. The apostle Paul also tells the Ephesians to “make music from your heart to the Lord.”

Marva Dawn, in her book on worship A Royal “Waste” of Time, says “the entire reason for our worship is that God deserves it.” But he doesn’t need it. When I praise Ella for something she’s done right or well, this will help her grow in confidence; it will make her feel better about herself. That’s not why we praise God. We do so because he deserves it. With all that he’s done for us—and because of who he is—he is worthy of our praise.

Praising him also focuses our attention on him. This gets our minds off ourselves. When we come here on a Sunday morning, we come loaded down with our cares, concerns, distractions, our real and felt needs, our hopes and expectations of the worship service and one another. Focusing on God gets us back on track by helping us realize that God is bigger than all our problems.

Focusing on God by praising and worshipping him also gets our minds off other people in the church for a moment—I’m not here to be distracted why this person or that person irritates me. Have you ever been distracted by someone else during a worship service?

I heard a story about the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. Deeply immersed in meditation during a church service, he failed to kneel at the appropriate moment. Remember, this was a Catholic Mass, which involves more standing and kneeling and sitting than we are used to! Well, when they saw this, his enemies hurried to the bishop and demanded that Dante be punished for his sacrilege. Dante defended himself by saying, “If those who accuse me had had their eyes and minds on God, as I had, they too would have failed to notice events around them, and they most certainly would not have noticed what I was doing.”

Worship, first and foremost, is about having our eyes and minds on God. And so we come to worship God—to praise and glorify him—to remind ourselves that worship—our gathering together on a Sunday morning as a congregation—is not about us; it’s about him. Sometimes, but not always, we think and act more like Dante’s enemies than Dante. Worship helps correct that tendency.

So when I deliberately follow Scripture’s commands to “sing to the Lord,” “ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name,” and “worship the Lord in holy splendor,” I am fulfilling the Lord’s command and the purpose for which he has made me: To glorify him and fully to enjoy him forever; for to glorify God is the first and most important purpose of worship.

To think about this practically, perhaps we can ask ourselves the following question: When coming into a worship service, do you ever feel prepared to worship or are you usually distracted? Distractions can be good or bad—a bad situation at home or a good conversation with a fellow church-goer can both equally distract. Preparing for worship is a part of worship. How can we prepare ourselves to worship? Perhaps a few moments of prayer and quiet. Perhaps listening to Christian music before the service begins. It is important to prepare ourselves if possible because in preparing ourselves we are also reminding ourselves that God comes first and not us.

To Edify One Another

One of the things I love is when we have a church service where a bunch of people are participating—someone is reading Scripture, someone is doing the children’s story, someone sings a special song, someone offers a testimony to what God has been doing in their life. So while I know that there is a certain—but flexible!—time constraint on a Sunday morning service, my general policy is “the more the merrier”!

And biblically speaking “the more the merrier” principle also applies. The very first verse of our passage from 1 Corinthians says this: “What should be done then, my friends? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation.”

Someone told me about a conversation they once had. This person happened to comment to a friend that they thought the pastor should have to preach on Sunday morning and nothing else, that other members of the congregation should jointly cover whatever else a worship service involves. Someone else should pray. Someone else should lead in worship. Someone else should do the children’s story. Their friend disagreed and suggested that the pastor should do everything on a Sunday morning—that is, after all, why he is being paid! The other person, surprised at this, asked their friend, “What do you want from your pastor?” And their friend replied, “I want his blood!”

But this isn’t the biblical picture. Like Paul says, “When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation . . .” Paul’s assumption is that several people participate in a worship service. Paul assumes the “more the merrier principle.”

Why is this important? Paul also says, “Let all things be done for building up.” The idea of building up means to edify—this means to encourage and strengthen others in their faith. This is the second purpose of worship: To edify one another. We all know this from experience that a worship service with more people participating, whatever gifts they bring, is always a more enjoyable experience than a service where only a few are involved. This is how a church is built, not out of wood, concrete, and glass, but out of people worshipping God and edifying one another. And “the more the merrier!”

Maybe there is some way you can encourage someone else in the church today. Maybe you have a talent or a gift that you think would strengthen the faith of those around you. Or perhaps you can think of something we can add to the worship service that would make it more edifying to others, something that would make coming together more enjoyable. If so, let me know! The more the merrier because when we edify one another, we become stronger Christians, a stronger church, and God is glorified.

To Reach Out to Others

When I was going to Acadia Divinity College, I found out that it didn’t always have the greatest reputation with the rest of the campus. It was sometimes perceived as this closed-off, out of the way building at the top of the campus. There was often very little engagement or interaction between students at the college and the students of the university. To some extent, this does make some sense, since there was no overlap in classes and many students at the college also have family and church responsibilities in addition to studies. But the college still ended up getting labelled by some “the holy huddle up the hill.”

The last thing any Christian community should be is a “holy huddle on a hill.” Instead, Jesus calls us to be a lamp on a lamp-stand, a city on a hill, and the light of the world in whatever town, city, village, of local service district we find ourselves in. The very presence of a church ought to make a difference to a community. If it doesn’t, something is wrong. If a church can close and lock its doors without most of the community noticing, much less caring, something has gone wrong. Such a church has become a “holy huddle.”

I said earlier that the Westminster Catechism’s description of our ultimate purpose is “To glorify God and fully to enjoy him forever.” Put simply, we are all created to worship. But not everyone worships God. What do we to do about this? Do we remain in our “holy huddle” edifying one another? If we do this, is it still possible for us and our worship to honour and glorify God?

If the first purpose of worship is to glorify God, and the second is to edify one another, then the third is to reach out to others. I want to suggest this morning that an important fruit of our worship is evangelism. But we often hear the word “evangelism” and are intimidated. I know that I can feel this way. Believe me, not all pastors naturally share their faith in Jesus in casual conversation! But even if none of us here is an evangelist, we are still called, according to 2 Timothy 4:5, to do the work of evangelism, the work of reaching others with the love of Jesus.

But how do we reach out? This is why Natural Church Development talks about need-oriented evangelism—reaching out to our community in ways that serve the people in our neighbourhood. So rather than think of terms like “evangelism” and “witnessing,” think instead of someone who runs a repair shop for bicycles out of the church; think of a church that restores a run-down playground and ballpark for use by all the community; or think of a church that welcomes people who have just moved into the community with a welcome basket or a fresh-baked pie. Such things open the doors of the church to the wider community and opens us up to relationships with people in the community. These are some ways any church can get out of its “holy huddle” and show others the love of God. And these are things that those who of us who are shy about verbally sharing our faith can do.

And of course when we reach out to others, our motivation ought to be to lead others to worship and glorify God. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” Worship should lead to our reaching out to others and reaching out to others hopefully leads to more worship!

Conclusion

I said at the start that I once heard worship described as our response to what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. So if we ever wonder why we worship, I think that gives us a good start. These words from Titus 3:3 – 7 give us a really good head-start too:

“At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.”

You know, Titus is not one of those books we talk about very much, but that passage gives us as good a description of our salvation in Christ as any other. And while nothing in these verses describe or define worship per se, the passage does give us the reason why we worship at all. It reinforces that definition of worship I mentioned: Worship is our response to God has done for us in Jesus Christ.

And our worshipful response happens when we take time to glorify God together through our praise and our thanksgiving, making melody with our hearts; when we edify one another, helping fellow believers grow in faith; and when we reach out to others, move out of our “holy huddle” so that others may be touched by the love of God and join with us in glorifying him; that we might, just as in Revelation all the angels of heaven do, fall down on our faces before the throne and worship God, saying, “Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God forever and ever. Amen!” As our hymn says, “To God be the glory!” Amen?

"I want to want . . ."

Last night when my deacons and I met with our regional minister to discuss our NCD survey results, we talked at one point about the difference between aspirational values and actual values. Aspirational values are the values we say we have. For instance, as believers we say that we want to spend our lives serving Christ and glorifying God, but our actual values -- how we actually live and spend our time -- demonstrate that we'd often (or at least sometimes) rather live ordinary lives enjoying at least modest creature comforts without ever having to journey beyond our comfort zones.

Thinking of this tonight made me think that while I can say, "I want to serve Christ and glorify God, what I really mean is, "I want to want to serve Christ and glorify God." At least it can be that way. Even our noblest aspirations are eroded by self-interest. Realizing that so often even my desires are skewed by sin, I see that I don't always want what I should want. Sometimes this is true when we worship and sing a variety of lyrics that tend toward the aspirational rather than the actual. We express things in words, in song, that we don't altogether mean or feel. We confess in sung prayers that we want more of God in our lives, that we long for a deeper relationship with him when in reality there are times that our behaviour demonstrates the opposite: we really want our own way, our own desires met, and we want as little interference from God as possible.

This isn't to say that our worship or our aspirations are therefore disingenuous. Rather, it's about recognizing that our desires -- what we want -- also need to be transformed. Only through the work of the Spirit can the aspirational be gradually turned into the actual. Only through the messy work of prayer, worship, Bible study, fellowship, and daily discipleship do we become what we ought to be and therefore more fully want what we ought to want: to serve Christ and glorify God. This is what I want, anyway; or at least it's what I want to want.