Envisioning GracePoint:
Passionate Worship
2 Chronicles 5:7-14; John 4:19-24


Introduction to Sermon Series:    "Envisioning GracePoint"

Today we begin communicating the new vision our Lord has given us.  One avenue for doing so will be that I will be preaching a six-week series on our vision called “Envisioning GracePoint.”  Each week we will explore one of the seven Biblical purposes of the Church.  We have restructured our elder positions around these seven Biblical purposes.  Let’s review these seven Biblical purposes as stated in the summary paragraph of our new vision statement.

GracePoint will be a fellowship of people in brokenness embraced by God’s extravagant grace, and sent into mission to reclaim the captive, restore the wounded, and redeploy the equipped.  As we live and share the gospel of grace, seekers and believers of all ages will become devoted Christ-followers who engage in proclaiming and embodying God’s Word, persevering Prayer, passionate Worship, life-changing Fellowship, life-long Equipping, life-encompassing Stewardship, and life-giving Missional Outreach.

All last month, we addressed “Persevering Prayer.  This morning, we will explore “Passionate Worship.”

This afternoon, millions of people will display all manner of extreme passion in screaming, cheering, jumping up and down, expressing intense joy and profound disappointment as the watch the Super Bowl.  Many seem to have no hindrance in expressing such intense passion for sports.

Perhaps you don’t get all excited about sports or celebrities.  But I suspect there is something in your life that raises your excitement level, provokes eager anticipation.  Perhaps it is a hobby, grandkids, or travel.  Everyone is passionate about at least one thing.  We cannot help but to be so, as God is a passionate God and we are made in God’s image.  The critical question is what or who are we most passionate about?

As the redeemed, as those rescued out of the devil’s clutches, as adopted children of an awesome God who continually displays His extravagant love, inexhaustible grace, and lavish blessings upon us, what should flow out of us without ceasing is passionate worship of God the Father, Son, & Spirit!  

To give us a framework for exploring what it means to engage in passionate worship, we are going to examine four characteristics of the kind of worship that pleases our triune God.


Living into Passionate Worship

Our first characteristic of passionate worship is:
  Passionate Worship engages delight, not duty

Here is how our Vision Statement expresses this characteristic:
We value glorifying our triune God by…
Loving God  (Matt 22:37)
Through…   
Passionate Worship, ushering people into God’s glorious presence. (Jn 4:23)

“God delights in us and desires us to delight in Him.  In worship, we come to God with all our sin, sorrow, and struggle and encounter God’s forgiving, comforting, and empowering presence.  We believe worship is primarily for believers to connect with God.” 

Now of course God commands us to worship Him.  What is the first commandment?
Deut 5:6-10: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.  You shall have no other gods before me.  You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.  You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.” 

Cleary our God takes this worshipping of Him alone stuff very seriously!  To not worship God alone with all our heart, mind, soul, strength, time, talents, and treasure is to live in disobedience and displeasure of God.

But our triune God has never been pleased with worship that was done out of duty alone.  God has always desired that we worship out of love and because we delight in the Lord our God.  In Deuteronomy 12, and in many other places, God admonishes the people not to worship Him the way the pagans worshipped their gods either in sinful indulgences, or out of fear, or in trying manipulate divine blessing. 

Rather, God tells the people to “gather in His presence and rejoice in the Lord your God who so lavishly blesses you.”  The Psalms are filled with invitations to “worship the Lord with gladness and song.” 

Listen to the broken heart of Father God as he describes the passionless worship of Israel:
Isa 29:13: “The Lord says: "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.  Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.”

Christ quoted this same passage when He was expressing His dissatisfaction with the way the people were worshiping God during His time on earth.  This same admonishment still rings out from God’s broken heart all through the ages of Christianity, and to us here this morning. 

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit take no delight in worship that is done out of duty and driven by legalistic formal structure of “rules taught by men!”  Worship that pleases our God is passionate worship that flows out of a grateful, love-filled heart.  John Piper puts it this way, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”

Passionate worship is driven by delight not duty.


Our second characteristic of passionate worship is that:
Passionate Worship engages spirit and truth

When Christ walked planet Earth, he came across a woman at a well one day and they entered into a theological debate over true worship.  We read about this conversation in

John 4:19-24:  "Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet.  Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."

Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.  You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.  Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.  God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." 

Christ came to establish a radical new way to love, serve, and worship God called the “New Covenant.”  This new way of serving God was scandalous to the establishment religion of his day. 

One disruptive, even called blasphemous teaching of Jesus, was that worship was no longer going to be centered in the temple, nor done through the formal regulations of priests and sacrifice, and that God’s shekina glory was no longer going to be limited to the Holy of Holies in the temple accessible by only one person each year.  Worship was now going to involve every child of God having direct access to God because now every adopted child of God would become a holy temple of God’s presence through the indwelling Holy Spirit! 

To worship in spirit involves
•    Worshiping God through the enablement of the Holy Spirit instead of through external forms and structures. 
•    It means worshipping out of New Covenant realities not Old Covenant legalism. 
•    It means through the Holy Spirit, when we worship we can enter into the very presence of God in an intimate manner. 

God desires “worshipers who worship in spirit and in truth.”  To worship in truth involves two categories of truth. 
•    It means we come to God being real about our stuff.  
•    As our Vision Statement expresses it, “In worship, we come to God with all our sin, sorrow, and struggle and encounter God’s forgiving, comforting, and empowering presence.”

In the Psalms we discover worshippers who sometimes are arguing with God, sometimes crying before God, sometimes questioning God’s goodness and plans, but always coming back to trust, delight, and worship!  Passionate worship is worshipping God out of our sin, sorrow, and struggle not as a means of denying or escaping such!

Many come to worship and try to pretend everything is ok.  They try to hide their sin, sorrow, and struggle for God, themselves, and others.  Many try to use worship as an escape from the hard things of life.  Yet, the kind of worship that pleases God is worship in truth.  Passionate Worship happens when we come to God fully open and honest about our sin, sorrow, and struggle.    

Two other aspects about worshipping God in truth is that:
•    worship must include the proclamation and embodying of God’s Word
•    worship practices must be grounded in Biblical truth

Which leads to our next characteristic of Passionate Worship.


Our third characteristic of passionate worship is that:
Passionate Worship engages head and heart

Under the Old Covenant as we read about in the Old Testament, God had given the people of Israel very specific instructions on how God desired to be worshipped.  This system of worship at its best, when the people were worshiping out of delight and not just duty, was truly rich, exciting, and passionate.  

Listen to a description of Israel’s worship at is best from
2 Chronicles 5:7-14:  The priests then brought the ark of the Lord's covenant to its place in the inner sanctuary of the temple, the Most Holy Place, and put it beneath the wings of the cherubim.  The cherubim spread their wings over the place of the ark and covered the ark and its carrying poles.  These poles were so long that their ends, extending from the ark, could be seen from in front of the inner sanctuary, but not from outside the Holy Place; and they are still there today.  There was nothing in the ark except the two tablets that Moses had placed in it at Horeb, where the Lord made a covenant with the Israelites after they came out of Egypt.

The priests then withdrew from the Holy Place. All the priests who were there had consecrated themselves, regardless of their divisions.  All the Levites who were musicians-Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun and their sons and relatives-stood on the east side of the altar, dressed in fine linen and playing cymbals, harps and lyres. They were accompanied by 120 priests sounding trumpets.  The trumpeters and singers joined in unison, as with one voice, to give praise and thanks to the Lord.   Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments, they raised their voices in praise to the Lord and sang:
"He is good; his love endures forever."

Then the temple of the Lord was filled with a cloud, and the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the temple of God.

WOW!  Now that’s the kind of worship I would like to see happening here at GracePoint, minus the sacrifice of animals of course!  You had trumpets, lyres, and cymbals; you had dancing, singing, and shouting; you had multi-sensory aspects that you could see, taste, touch, and smell!

Israel’s worship at its peak would put our best “Emergent” worship gatherings or charismatic services to shame as to being spontaneous, loud, musical, creative, engaging, participatory, and multi-sensory! 

When one follows the history of Christian worship, we first discover the early church engaging in worship that was primarily in homes with no set order of worship, and more a shared leadership.  In Acts, we see that early worship consisted of the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, teaching of the Word, fellowship, and miracle-working prayer.  

It wasn’t until a few hundred years that the Christian church began coming up with more structured worship and began building churches that worship became a formalized, structured affair. 

With the Reformation under Luther and Calvin, there was the birth of Protestant worship that we are most familiar with.  The order of worship and liturgical forms that we still use are not much different from the ones Calvin designed in the 16th century.  (And you wonder why our worship doesn’t connect with a 21st century culture!)  Worship in this stream is primarily focused in the head.

Then came the charismatic renewal around 1914 and the Holy Spirit blew a fresh wind across the global Church.  This movement has helped all the streams of Christianity, even the “frozen chosen” of the mainline denominations, to reclaim some degree of passion in worship.  Worship in this stream is primarily focused on the heart.

These two main influences, Reformed and Charismatic, are what account for much of the tension we feel in this congregation, and in many so called “blended worship” congregations. 

You have some who embrace more the idea that worship is primarily to understand God and the Christian faith in deeper and more applicable ways.  This crowd tends to prefer the formal hymns and structured liturgy. 

Others come to worship expecting to experience an encounter with God’s presence that can be emotionally and spiritually felt.  This crowd tends to prefer the more passionate worship songs and a freer form of worship.

In this congregation, we manage to blend these two streams fairly well.  We believe worship can engage both the head and the heart.  But let us always be sure to extend much grace and forbearance to those who prefer to worship differently than we do. 

Another question is, “Is worship for believers or for seekers?”  We are not going to embrace the seeker sensitive model here at GracePoint.  We say in our Vision Statement, that we believe that “worship is primarily for believers to connect with God.”

The current movement in worship is called “Emergent Worship,” which we will be adopting elements from, not going full blown emergent.  The reason this model is so powerful and appealing is that it transcends all categories of “contemporary” versus “traditional,” or “seeker” versus “believer. 

Emergent worship engages both head and heart, both spirit and truth, both the old and the new.  Emergent worship begins with the goal of glorifying God, and then designing worship gatherings that connect participants to God in authentic, deeply meaningful, relational, life-changing, and mission-motivating ways. 

You see authentic, Biblical, passionate, God-pleasing worship has nothing to do with the external form.  Singing hymns is not more Biblical than contemporary praise.  Formal orders of worship are not more pleasing to God than charismatic fervor.  Raising your hands is not more passionate than sitting still. 

Worship is what flows out of a grateful heart that is madly, deeply, passionately in love with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  And someone who loves God like that can worship God through any external form. Perhaps, although this is highly questionable, even with country music! 

Pulling all this together, here is God’s vision for GracePoint in worship:

“Our vision for believers and unbelievers is that when they join us in worship they will experience 1Co 14:24-25—through the presence of God’s glory, they will “fall on their face and declare, surely God is in your midst!” 

“We will expand our blended worship model to embrace more “emergent worship” elements that are missional, relevant to our particular culture, inclusive of the old and the new, participatory, multi-sensory, and life-changing while still honoring our Reformed heritage.”


Our fourth characteristic of passionate worship is that:
Passionate Worship engages liturgy and lifestyle

Now we’ve been talking about worship in terms of what happens when God’s people gather together in worship services.  Worship as “liturgy.”  But clearly, we are called and empowered to worship God with all our life, at all times, in all we are and all we do.  

Listen to this call to a lifestyle of worship in
Rom 12:1-2:  “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, 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.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is-his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

Worship is a posture of the heart toward God of awe, reverence, gratitude, dependence, and delight. 

Living in such a heart posture always, enables us to do everything in life as an act of worship for God’s pleasure and glory. 

Anything that provokes our wonder and appreciation of God can be an avenue for worship. 

The beauty of creation, a child’s smile, a walk with a loved one, the arts, movies, music, an athlete performing at his or her best, recreation, exercise, hobbies, yes even work and doing chores, all life can be windows of worship.