Worship and the Glory of God

1. What others have said

a. C.S. Lewis wrote about the intensity of the desire, even appetite for God which one finds expressed in the Psalms. David and the other Psalmists spoke of thirsting for God, hungering for Him, yearning for Him; they said things like "A day in Your courts is better than a thousand outside?" (Psalm 84:10), and "Whom have I in heaven but You?" (Psalm 73:25)

We need to cultivate, or ask God to give us, that kind of appetite for God.

It is not a given. Chuck Swindoll wrote a little book recently entitled Intimacy with the Almighty. In the introduction to the book he describes how in his own ministry he realized that he allowed busyness for God to supplant an intimate walk with God. Then he goes on in the book to relate some of the ways in which he was able to develop that kind of walk.

2. What Paul said

The NT teaching is that all of life is to be a response of worship to God. Paul wrote in Romans 12:1:

"Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God [harking back to all of the tremendous truths about salvation which Paul has dealt with in chapters 1-11], to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual [or "fitting"] service of worship."

Our appropriate response to becoming a recipient of the "mercies of God" and of the "riches of His grace" (Ephes. 1:7) is to regularly offer ourselves to Him as an act of love and worship. The soul which has tasted and seen that the Lord is good, and has learned to cherish His glory, will be ready to present himself in this way.

3. Stone Soup

Perhaps you are familiar with the children’s story entitled Stone Soup.

In this story, three soldiers are returning home from the war. They approach a village, but the villagers, seeing them coming, scurry to hide all of their food, because there is a shortage and they do not want to have to share with outsiders. They tell the soldiers that they have no food to give them.

The soldiers, being rather shrewd fellows, tell the villagers that they will make some stone soup, and ask simply for a large kettle filled with water. They choose several large, round stones and add them to the kettle, with the curious villagers looking on. Then the soldiers remark, "This soup should be excellent; but if we only had a couple of potatoes, it would be even better. One of the villagers says, "I think I might have a few to spare," and goes off to retrieve some potatoes from her stash. The soldiers add these to the pot, taste the soup, and say: "Wonderful! Now if we just had a few carrots..." and someone runs off and gets some. The same happens with onions, and cabbage, and so forth, until a hearty soup has been prepared. The soldiers invite the villagers to join with them in their feast, and the villagers are amazed that such a marvelous soup could be made with just stones!

In our corporate worship, our rituals, hymns, anthems, even our sermons are like those stones-- they are nothing that particularly impresses God: they’re just a framework, a skeleton.

What makes it special and makes it worship is when our members come and add to the pot from what’s been stored up in their hearts during a week of worshiping and walking with God, a week of loving God and cherishing and savoring His glory-- then we are ready to worship God together. When our corporate adoration is the overflow of many hearts rejoicing in the goodness and greatness of God, which the Spirit can then energize and transform into something far more than the sum of the parts-- then our congregational worship will truly be a nourishing and invigorating feast for the people of God, and-- more importantly-- a fragrant aroma to the God of glory, who delights in the worship of His people.

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