Sermon by: Robert Austell
download (click, then choose "save to disk" for playback on computer or iPod, or play sermon live in this window below)Today as we begin a new year together, I am beginning an eight week series on what I believe to be the single most important activity of the Christian life – our worship of God. I can think of nothing more central and crucial to life than a solid understanding, grounding, and practice of worship to shape us into the kind of people God wants us to be. In fact, I would be so bold as to say that until we really understand what worship is, we have missed understanding what Christian faith and life are about.
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This is not a new subject for us – in fact, it is one of the subjects dearest to my heart. But it is something that we can never master or exhaust, and the discipline and experience of true worship overflows into all of life. Indeed, one of the first things we will see is that worship is not an hour-long program in a church building; rather, it is all of life expressed through faith and obedience before God. If anything, what we do here reveals, equips, and informs our fuller and broader worship through all of life. Not unlike school, we must prepare to come here, give God our focus, time, and attention, and take what we do here with us when we leave. Like school, the church service is not something Christians do to pass the time, but one central activity intended to engage, transform, and represent all of life.
One of the compelling features of a biblical study of worship is that there are key qualities and features of worship from the beginning of creation through this present age to the fulfillment of eternity. Unlike musical tastes or other cultural accessories, deep principles of worship run consistently through all of Scripture and should inform both our specific Sunday worship and our whole-life worship. There are at least eight of these deep principles that I hope to highlight over the next eight weeks, and I invite you to give God’s Word your full energy and attention as we try to apply these principles to our own worship and life.
Two of these deep principles of worship appear immediately in scripture, at the dawn of creation, as God creates the first human being and sets him in the Garden. There, the task God gives Adam is worship, in two different ways. The first of these is “service” or “work,’ which is what we will look at today.
In the Beginning, Worship (Genesis 2:15-17)
We’ll begin in Genesis, chapter two. Do you know the first thing God did after he made the world and rested? He put Adam to work. What was Adam’s work? It’s there in verse 15:
The Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.
That verse contains the first two worship principles, translated “cultivate” and “keep.” Today we will focus only on the first one. The word translated here as “cultivate” is the Hebrew word ABAD. You won’t be tested on that, but it’s worth knowing that it is one of the most frequently used words in the Bible. It is one of several words regularly translated as “worship.” It means worshiping God through our work of service to God.
In the Garden of Eden, Adam’s primary worship was to cultivate or work the Garden because that’s what God made him to do and told him to do. It wasn’t Adam’s garden; it was God’s garden. Adam was put there to serve the Lord God through his careful work. At this point in the young history of the world, there was no Sunday morning worship service; there was only faithfully obeying and serving the Lord through work. Though other forms of worship will be added to this, it is important to know that this is the first form of worship revealed in the Bible and it is one that continues to be important for us today.
What Adam was doing in the Garden was tending the ground, but in doing so, he was rendering an act of service to God. Serving God is at the heart of worshiping God. Adam’s work in the Garden was really worship in the Garden, because it served God’s will and purpose in the young world. Likewise, our work and our service is to be an act of worship to God, serving his will and purpose in the world. That we might earn a livelihood from our work is a blessing and by-product of work. Indeed, ‘serve’ isn’t the only form of this word ABAD. The noun form, ‘servant’ (ABODAH), is used to describe those who worship and serve God with their lives.
This verse is the heart of biblical stewardship. For though much time has passed and we no longer live in paradise, the earth is the Lord’s and all it contains. Though we built or paid for our homes and the land they are on, are they not the Lord’s? Though we work and produce goods and services, are they not the Lord’s?
Commanded to Worship (Exodus 20:5)
Well, the Garden of Eden was a unique place and Adam was uniquely special. If this were the only time ‘work’ was used in this way, we might be cautious to extend Adam’s work in the Garden to apply to our day-to-day work. But that is not the last time we read of ABAD – worshiping God through our work of service. The same word is used again in the Ten Commandments, in commandment #2. With this and usage in the New Testament, the Bible makes a compelling case that our work is to be seen as an act of service and worship to the Lord!
The second commandment is found in Exodus 20:4-5 and prohibits making or worshiping idols. Verse 5 specifically notes, “You shall not worship them [idols] or serve them…” Moving from the broad word “worship” there is a specific commandment against ABAD, serving false gods or idols. It’s the same word used in Genesis. In other words, the godly work of service Adam rendered to God is precisely what Israel was not to offer to foreign or false gods!
This raises an important question for Christians today. When we work it is important to consider whom we serve. Certainly we have earthly supervisors and bosses. Certainly we have families to feed and bills to pay. But the Bible provides a framework for those matters within the greater framework of serving God. Not only are we to consider how our work serves God, we must consider how our work might please or displease God, and whether our work is ultimately serving God or someone or something else. Those are important and weighty questions!
Those questions bear both on the content of our work – is the whole business and my part in it legal, helpful rather than harmful, and otherwise ethical? And we must consider our own behavior and witness to our faith: Am I patient? Hard-working? God-honoring?
This does not mean that you have to have praise music playing in your cubicle or have Bible tracts stuffed in your briefcase when you travel. It also doesn’t limit our ability to worship to any type of profession or work. You might be a white-collar professional, administrative staff, student, stay-at-home parent, or artist. The point of today’s worship principle is that part of being human is to work and serve and we are to consider how to do it unto God.
What this worship principle does challenge each of us to do is examine our work and try to see how it might be rendered unto God in a way that honors His name and character. That also means that worship is no longer one of 168 hours in a week, but potentially as much as a third or more of what you do each week.
The Work of the Heart and Mind (John 6, 12)
Just after the miraculous feeding of the 5000, recorded in John 6, Jesus teaches those gathered around that work is not just about making a living. He says in John 6:27, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life.” He is calling upon this same concept of “work” or “service” and highlighting that it has more than a simple earthly purpose. We do work for food, for family, for money; but don’t think that’s all we work for. Our work has a much deeper purpose – it offers us the opportunity to serve God with our hands and hearts!
When the crowd then asks, “What shall we do to work the works of God?” Jesus answered, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” (6:29) Later, in John 12:26, Jesus says, “If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there my servant will be also; if anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.” Jesus uses these worship terms, “serve” and “servant” to describe worship as work. The deeper purpose of our work is to believe and follow God’s will, specifically through Jesus.
Another way to say this is that Jesus points out that work is more than an exterior activity. We aren’t just earning a living or producing a product. We engage work with our hearts and minds and those belong to God just as much as our hands. Again we must ask about our attitude and witness, about our interior attitude towards our work, and to whom we ultimately direct our service.
Some Practical Questions
Most of our time is divided among sleeping, eating, working, and playing. Recognizing that “work” includes school, child-rearing, and some hobbies, this first biblical principle of worship easily addresses a third or more of our lives.
I’d like to conclude with two practical questions to help keep this first biblical principle of worship in your mind as you go about that significant portion of life.
Question 1: How can my work today be an act of service, and therefore worship, to God?
Question 2: What differences will believing in and following Jesus have on my work today?
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