We had a great Sunday at Living Word. A great Sunday. We’re in the midst of slightly redesigning the worship service, which is exciting, but in the meantime, this is how yesterday looked:

• Blessed be Your Name (Redman)
• Hosanna (Baloche/Brown)
• Hosanna, Loud Hosanna (Traditional Hymn arranged in a modern style)
• All Glory Laud and Honor (Traditional Hymn)
• Offering (Baloche)
• Closed with Sovereign Grace’s arrangement of Come Christians Join to Sing.

Some highlights of the music were when the children walked through the congregation with palm branches during “Hosanna, Loud Hosanna” and had a wonderful moment of teaching from one of our awesome Sunday school volunteers. Another highlight was that my mother-in-law was playing from chord sheets from the first time after years and years of being a classical piano player (nice work!!). The only glitch was that the words for “Come Christians Join to Sing” weren’t the right words, so we had to look off the screen. But it still worked great.

The best part of the day, for me though, was Pastor Wade’s teaching on worship. Wow. What a great sermon. You really should take a listen. And I’ll give you a hint, it had little to do with music.

We also had the privilege of hanging out at Pizza Ranch and watching the movie “Amazing Grace.” Great food, great movie, great fellowship. Great time.

The verse that this blog and ultimately my own life is based on is Romans 12:1-2. These verses are a great summary of how we are to offer our lives as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. Luther sums it up this way:

Where the true obedience of faith toward God is to be found, there everything one’s calling requires to be done is a holy and God-pleasing act of worship.”

Whatever your calling requires you to do, do it with your whole heart, as though working for Jesus and not man, and this is a holy and God-pleasing act of worship. What a way to live life!

This one’s a tough one to read, although it stands today as much as it did when Luther first made the statement:

He who falls from the grace of God upon the Law and imagines that he will be saved through works has as rough a landing as he who falls from grace into idolatry. For outside Christ there is nothing but idolatry and merely a false, imagined notion about God. If you want to be justified before God and saved by that sort of worship, it makes no difference whether you call its basis the Koran of the Turk, the decretal and command of the pope, or even the law of Moses.”

These are some strong words but words that we need to take to heart. So many religions require you to be “good enough” in order to ensure salvation. But how good is “good enough?” How will you ever know?

Even the law of Moses was commanded to be kept perfectly. But, “…whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” We can try and try and try to perfectly keep God’s commandments, but trying and trying becomes idolatry, an idol of work, according to Luther. We must rely on God’s grace in Jesus Christ, for Jesus was the only one that has kept the law absolutely perfectly, fulfilling the “good enough” that we could never become.

Praise God for His grace!

As we looked at Monday, the Word of God must be central in all times of worship. So, also, Jesus Christ must be the focus of all worship. This makes sense of course, because Jesus is the very Word of God Himself. (John 1) Let’s look at these great words from Luther:

“Knowing Christ and knowing the Father are tied together and are one and the same knowledge. This is why I have often said that the Father is known only in Christ and neither will nor can be reached and found, worshiped and invoked, apart form this Mediator.”

What a great promise and warning! Because of Jesus’ sacrifice, we can know the one true and holy and unreachable God of the universe. He has now become reachable to us through Jesus Christ. (1 Timothy 2:5). But what a great warning that we would never lose sight of the fact that Jesus is the only way to know God and the only way to be able to worship God. Without Jesus, it is impossible for us to draw near to God

Very often we think that worship is only a time when we come together with a greater body of people on a certain day of the week. Or we think that worship is the time that we sing songs during a service. Luther (correctly) thought differently:

“The worship of God is the praise of God. This should be free at the table, in private rooms, downstairs, upstairs, at home, abroad, in all places, by all people, at all times.”

We are free and called to praise God everywhere and at all times. What joy there is in knowing that God is worshipped from the modern church buildings of the United States, to the dirt floors of churches in Honduras, to the crowded rooms of house churches in China. What joy in knowing that God is worshipped by all races! What joy there is in knowing that God can be worshiped at all times! He is always near to us, there for us in an instant if we would just call upon Him.