SPEAKER_01 0:01

A few months ago, um, I came into one of our Sunday morning services just a few days after we had held one of our special nights of worship. And to be totally transparent, I stood here where I always stand on the front row, and I felt a deep sense of grief, maybe even a little guilt. When we host worship nights, they're special. It's a gathering of people who are serious about going after God, they're passionate about expressing their worship to Him. The room is concentrated with people unified around that goal, and the entire room is engaged from front to back, side to side. On those special nights, we do what the psalmist says. We roll out the red carpet for God's presence with our worship, and he quite literally fills the room because he has promised to inhabit the praises of his people. Psalm 22, verse 3, but you are holy. You are enthroned in the holy place where the praises of Israel, your people, are offered. Our corporate gathered worship literally creates the environment that God has chosen to dwell in, to fill, to inhabit. He says, in essence, if if I'm gonna show up in unique ways anywhere on the earth, I'm gonna show up in environments where my people are gathered together in unity in hearts of worship toward me. One mind, one accord. And I guess that's why after being in that kind of environment at a worship night, and then a few days later walking into a Sunday morning service, and I just looked across the room as our worship team was leading us, and I ask myself a very serious question. Why is it so different? Why are people so engaged during a worship night, but the majority of the room feels more disengaged during worship on a Sunday morning? Now I realize worship is a lifestyle, it is not a Sunday morning thing. I preached about that a lot to try to get people to wake up to live beyond their Sunday morning experience. But this moment of burden I was feeling that day in my heart was focused on the dedicated part of the service that we set aside for collective worship. And as I thought about the difference between the passion of worship and our worship nights compared to the worship on Sunday mornings, I could have quickly come up with all the obvious, easy answers for the differences. But the Holy Spirit surfaced that question in my heart, I really believe, to send me into a season of deep soul searching. Because there shouldn't be that significant of a difference between the atmosphere of our worship nights and the atmosphere of worship during our Sunday morning services. But currently, there is. And that's what I feel grief about. And that's why I feel a little guilty. As I process this over the last few months, I think some of the less obvious but more significant reasons for the difference lies in one of two things: apathy or ignorance. Now, I can't really do much about the apathy if that's your issue. I I can preach and I can pray and I can ask the Holy Spirit to convict you and start a spiritual fire in a cold heart. I can pray that God would stir the lukewarm spirit of a believer and lead you back to your first love. I can pray that you would have a new awakening, a life-changing encounter with God's presence, but there's not much else I can do. If apathy is your issue, that's between you and God. But I think the apathy piece is what I was grieving. There's far too many Christians in our church and other churches across this country that are just going through the motions. They've lost their passion and their zeal for Christ, and that loss of passion or living with spiritual apathy is negatively impacting the dynamic of our corporate worship. That's one of the reasons worship nights are so powerful. There's less apathy in the room. It's a gathering of people who really want God to show up and really believe their worship creates an atmosphere for that to happen. We should be approaching every Sunday morning service the exact same way. We should approach every service we gather together the exact same way. But somehow we've forgotten the potential and the promise of what can happen in our gathered worship. If the people of God could come together in unity, collectively participating with hearts fully engaged to bringing God glory, that kind of worship opens the door for the miraculous to happen. God shows up. In 2 Chronicles 20, Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, was facing a hopeless battle against impossible odds lined up against his enemy. But before the battle, as an act of faith, understanding the power of worship, he put the worship leaders out in front of the army, and the singers began to sing, leading the army out. And when they began to praise, God set an ambush against their enemies, and Judah won the victory. The same kind of thing happened in Acts 16. Paul and Silas are imprisoned for their faith and ministry. They have been put in a Philippian jail. And it says, around midnight, as they had prayed and worshiped to God, here's what happened. Suddenly there was a massive earthquake in response to their worship. And the prison was shaken to the foundations. All the doors immediately flew open, and the chains of every prisoner fell off. Notice I could give you example after example of what God does on the other side of people's worship. But in these two situations, both of the circumstances, the victory or the breakthrough did not come until after a time of collective gathered worship. God supernaturally responds to the praise of his people. Our worship together creates the space where heaven touches earth and God does miraculous things. And if we really understood this, I mean, if we really understood what scripture says about this, what the heart of God is for this, the promise and potential of our collective worship, it would change the way we came to church every Sunday. It would change our level of expectancy and anticipation when we walked in the doors. And there would be more participation when we got in here. We would engage more, knowing that our participation isn't just glorifying God. It's helping create the unique environment where our own needs and the needs of other people can be met in the presence of God that we have welcomed into this place. But that doesn't happen when there is more apathy in the room than there is worship. And I think that's what I'm grieving. Because we're settling for less than what we're promised by God when we come together like this as His people to glorify His name. Like I said, all I can do is preach and pray and try to be an example. But the Spirit of God has to stir us from our spiritual slumber. But for some of us, the lack of engagement in worship is not due to apathy, it's simply ignorance. We truly don't know what the Bible says. And that's why I feel guilty. That's my fault. I take the blame for that. That's my responsibility to make sure that you know. And that's why we're having this conversation. I've been faithful to lead you in worship from the front row. That's easy. That comes natural to me. I'm a worshiper, and I see worshiping as a part of my responsibility as a pastor to be the primary worship leader of this church, even if I never step on a platform to sing. And I think I've done that. It comes natural to me. But I haven't coached you or taught you well enough about your responsibility in corporate worship. And I repent to you and the Lord for that. More and more people are coming to faith in Jesus Christ here at North Place Church that have absolutely no church background. This is the first experience they've ever had with church, which means I gotta be more intentional about teaching this stuff. Things that we used to assume we can't assume anymore. Others of you grew up in church environments that were very rigid and formal. And if it wasn't written in the bulletin, you didn't do it. So an expressive and experiential worship environment is new to you. And I've talked to several of you. You enjoy this environment. You tell me there's something different about it. And people over and over again tell me they're new to the church that you cry the good tears through the whole service. And you know, I've even had people say, What's happening to me? That is the Holy Spirit responding to the worship of his people. When divinity touches dirt, something happens. And that's what that's God responding to our worship. But can I pastor you for a minute? If you're one of those people that wasn't raised in an environment like this, it's time to move beyond simply enjoying the environment and starting to contribute to the environment with your own expressions of worship. Every Sunday morning, desperate people and spiritual seekers walk through the doors of this church. They are not seeking me, they are not seeking you, they are not seeking our worship team. Even if they don't have the words to express it, their souls are searching for an encounter with God. And it's just one more reason you've got to stop spectating and start participating in our collective time of worship. As I said a moment ago, our gathered worship creates the environment for God to do the miraculous in people's lives. And there are desperate people coming in here and looking for that. And if we will roll out the red carpet with our worship, he will live in that, and anything can happen. The psalmist said it this way in Psalm 34: Oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together. There are three key words or phrases in that passage. They are magnify with me and together. There are two ways to magnify something. You can magnify something microscopically when you look through a microscope, trying to take something small and make it bigger. And you can magnify something telescopically when you look through a telescope and you try to take something big and far away and pull it close so that it can be studied. That's what our together worship does. It telescopically magnifies the Lord. It reaches toward heaven and pulls heaven to a place on earth so that God can be experienced and encountered by desperate people in need of him. The psalmist knew this, which is why he said, I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord. He knew what could happen in the collective praise of God's people, and he couldn't wait to get there to see. That's why he said, Oh, magnify the Lord with me. Because he understood the power of and potential of together, gathered, collective, corporate worship. Let us worship him together and pull him closer so we and other people can experience the goodness and the fullness of his presence. One of the biggest challenges in teaching people to engage in corporate worship is the presence of performance and I could say celebrity culture. The church has gotten so good at the product on the platform that people forget they're here to worship. They come to be entertained as if they're attending a concert or a show. That wasn't an issue for me in most of my life because the small churches I grew up around and the ones I started preaching in didn't usually have excellence as a core value. If this is your only church experience, I wish I could get you in a time machine with me and we could go back to some of the places I originally went to growing up, or I started out preaching in, just so you could see how awful the singing was most of the time. There was some really good stuff, but there was some really, really bad stuff. Some person's mama told them they could sing, and the only place that would let them do it was the church. And you knew it was bad when the little sisters in the church sat in the back, and all you could hear during the song was, bless him, Lord. Bless him, Lord. Trying to be nice, bless him, Lord. And the rest of us just had to endure it. The singing was off key, most likely the piano was out of tune. Rarely was there a sound system. If there was, the speakers were usually blown and rattled and it was distorted. But here's the point: it was so bad that if you came to church, you must have been there to genuinely worship. Because you definitely didn't come for the performance. And in an environment that sounded pretty rough to my ears, it was often the best those people had to offer. And the genuine hearts of those people worshiping touched the heart of God. And over and over again, in those humble little places, the presence of God would show up as people poured their hearts out to Him. Listen, I'm not saying we need to go backwards, but I'm saying we need to check our hearts. God has so blessed us here with an incredibly talented team of worship leaders and musicians and technical and media staff. If we're not careful, we will let it become a show. We start spectating instead of participating. And when we do, we rob ourselves, we rob everybody else in our together, but ultimately we rob God of the worship he deserves when his people come together on his day to bless his name. I can promise you this. The platform and production team at any of our North Place's campuses have no desire to perform for you. I know their hearts. I see them outside of Sundays. They don't want that pressure or that expectation. Their heart is to lead you into the presence of God. They want to do it well and they want to represent the Lord to the best of their ability, but the end of the day, it's not for you. It's for Him. And as they offer Him their worship, they're just trying to take you into the holy place with them. And for what it's worth, our musicians aren't paid, which is rare in churches our size, especially in this area, having so many services and so much demand. Our musicians are volunteers, they're just servant leaders who simply have a heart to worship and use their gifts to take you into the presence of God with them. The heart of our team is worship, not performance. But because it's good, we're gonna be tempted to sit back and soak up the show. Fight against the performance trap and let the quality of it help you into God's presence, not help you into a culture of celebrity and performance issues. Let me just add a little pastoral warning. When worship is taking place, you will either worship or you will become critical of those who are. Worship. There's a scene that unfolds in the life of David that should be a warning to all of us. In 2 Samuel 6, King David dances in the streets in praise to his God because the Ark of the Covenant has finally returned home. It wasn't a show, it was genuine worship. Michael, his wife, was not participating in the celebration, but she was spectating from her window, and she looks down in embarrassment as her husband, a king, that she doesn't believe a man of his stature should be acting that way, so undignified in public. And it says in 2 Samuel 6, verse 16, but as the ark of the Lord entered the city of David, Michael, the daughter of Saul, which was David's wife, looked down from her window. When she saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she was filled with contempt for him. That's what happens when you people watch during worship instead of joining the celebration and praise to God. And if you read all the way to the end of the chapter, you find out that Michael became barren because of her criticism of David's worship. And here's the principle: be careful when you find yourself judging the validity of somebody else's worship. It's dangerous. We're gonna have to mature to the place that we appreciate the reality that everybody is not wired like us, everybody's not been saved from the same stuff that we've been saved from. Nobody can tell the story I can tell about what God has done for me. And there's something unique in my worship because of that. If you're louder or more demonstrative, you're gonna be tempted to criticize people that are more reserved. And if you're more reserved, you're gonna be tempted to criticize the people that are more expressive. And that's what we're gonna talk about next week. If this kind of whole-hearted, spirit-filled worship environment is what God is after from his people, then we have to ask a harder question. What happens when this kind of worship happens in a room full of people who don't all express it the same way you do? And what happens when your freedom and the person's freedom next to you have to live in the same space at the same time? Next week is gonna be fun and funny and informative, but it has the potential to mature us as a spiritual family and help us value the moments of gathered worship all the more. Today, let me just want to leave you one more truth, and then I want to give you another chance to participate in worship. Think back to the psalm we started with, Psalm 22. But you are holy, you are enthroned in the holy place where the praises of your people are offered. The praise of his people is not what makes him holy, he's already holy. It's our recognition of his holiness when we come together to worship him that is what draws him close. Our collective worship, the psalmist says, becomes his throne room, it becomes his holy place. And if God is enthroned on our worship, you could say that our collective praise becomes the seat of his glory. Now think about that phrase for a minute, because that phrase, the seat of his glory, makes me think of an old testament image. The image they're gonna put up for you is an image of the Ark of the Covenant. In the Old Testament, it was synonymous with the presence of God. This is what came back into the city when David started dancing, because it was synonymous with the presence of God. The presence of God has come back home. Originally, God's people didn't have a king. The government wasn't a democracy or a kingship, it was a theocracy. God governed the people, he was their king. And this was the throne room of God. This was the seat of his glory. Remember what the psalmist said You, O Lord, are enthroned on the praises of your people. His throne was in the middle of those praises, in the middle of this seat. Pay close attention to the angels on the top of that ark. Why are they facing each other? Because that's the place where God has chosen to dwell. He dwells in and between the collective worship of his people as they glorify his name. What did Jesus say in Matthew 18? For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them. The angels on the top of the Ark of the Covenant signify the place where God has chosen dwell in the past. It also symbolizes the place that God will always choose to dwell in the future. In and between the worship of his people. Do you remember that famous passage in Isaiah 6 where the prophet Isaiah has a vision of heaven and he sees into the holiest of holies, and he said he saw the throne of God and the train of God's robe filled the temple. As Isaiah describes the scene, he sees a multitude of angels around the throne of God. And I want you to see what they're doing in Isaiah's vision around the throne of God. Pay close attention. Verse 3 of Isaiah 6. They were calling out to each other holy, holy, holy is the Lord of heaven's armies. The whole earth is filled with his glory. They were worshiping around the throne. Holy, holy, holy. This has to be what the angels or the cherubim on top of the Ark of the Covenant are doing. They're there symbolizing that right there, that mercy seat, the throne of God on each side, they're crying out, holy, holy, holy, worthy, worthy, worthy. And God is chosen to dwell in between and among that collective praise. He is enthroned in it. He inhabits that place. The same is true today. If some of us with sincere and surrendered hearts would declare holy, holy, holy, and others of us would declare worthy, worthy, worthy. If we would simply offer our hearts to him in meaningful worship, he has promised to come, he has promised to dwell in that. The scripture says he's seeking out those kind of dwelling places. He's hunting for people and places to be the seed of his glory because he knows when mortal man truly experiences his presence, it is impossible for that man or that woman to remain the same. Here's the question. Will we prepare our hearts and lives to be the place where he dwells? Will we, the people of this church, value these moments enough to offer him our whole hearts and create an environment for his presence to dwell? He is looking, he is searching for lives and churches to be that place. Our culture has been so individualized and so self-focused that we grossly undervalue each other's worship in moments like this. And when we do, we miss the possibilities of what God has promised to do when we come together and there's more worship in the room that sets the environment instead of letting apathy, which is plaguing the American church, just set the environment. I thought today it would be a mistake to end this service and force us to wait all the way till next Sunday to act on this word. I hope it changes the way you show up for church next week. And I want to give you one more opportunity today for us, while we're gathered here this week, to offer him our hearts in worship. I referenced Isaiah 6 a moment ago. The words of the song we're about to sing come straight from the vision of Isaiah in Isaiah 6, where he sees the throne room of God. My prayer is that his words help us capture the worthiness and the holiness of God, and it elicits our worship as his people. Would you stand with me in this room today across our campus family? And we're gonna do this live at every campus. Father, I pray. This is a pastoral sermon I've had in my heart for weeks. I pray it moves the needle. I don't expect overnight results, but I pray it moves the needle. Will you mature us? Will you grow us? And will you make our church, our campuses, the place where your glory chooses to dwell because we choose to gather together and worship and magnify the Lord with me? Come on, let's praise him.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

So he was gonna be able to do that. Come on, cursing your holy life with one voice we sing woest me, it was me for my eyes, and we don't know.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

Listen, I want to keep this environment worshipable. Come on, we can praise him. That's good. Praise him. I'm gonna ask the worship uh the uh prayer team if they would together. I just feel like we need to create that God is moving, there is uh uh an obvious sense of his presence in the room. I'm gonna speak the blessing over you. We're not gonna rush out of here if you need to go great. We're just gonna keep the environment worshipful for you. Um, if you just want to sit and soak in the presence of God, you can do that today. Let him meet you here. I'm gonna ask the team to keep leading us in the presence of the Lord here, Father. I pray over this room today. And I just ask you, Father, to help us pick up here when we come back together again. Whether it's tonight when our students gather and they meet here all week, whether it's next weekend when we gather for worship, I pray, Lord, that you would help us create the environment where your spirit dwells and you you you meet with hungry people and thirsty people and you remove the scales from the stone of the eyes of those who've been blinded and you soften hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. I pray today, Lord, that as we come before you with needs, that you would meet us here, Lord. Would you bless and keep your people? Would you make your face shine down upon them? Would you be gracious to them? Would you turn your countenance their direction today? Would you grant them peace? We ask in Jesus' name. Amen and amen. These altars are open. We're gonna keep this environment worshipful. God bless you.