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This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Gary Hashley and Brad Kilthau.

Brad Kilthau (00:31):

The question that we wanted to address today, is a question that goes this way about worship. It says, "is worship of God as big a deal as some Christians seek to make it? Is it that important to God, or are there other things that He is much more concerned about?" Well, it's a good question, but when we think about God and the need for worship, I think you gotta look at what Jesus said in Matthew 22:37. Basically, a man walked up to Him one day and said, "what's the most important thing in the Bible?" What's the most important thing? And remember what Jesus said, He said to the man, "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. And this is the greatest and the first commandment." I think, obviously when we look at that, we find what Jesus was saying. Is that the worship of God is the absolute purpose of our life, is that we are to worship God. That's our purpose for being here. Now, when it comes to worship and the way it's expressed in different ways, through different believers, different churches throughout the valley, how do we have a God-honoring worship? And maybe this is maybe what the listener was thinking about with the question. But I think, when I was looking at this question a little bit, I thought, "well, there has to be a passion." There has to be a passion for the Lord. I know, when we love our jobs, we get up in the morning. If you really love your job, you can't wait to get up and go to work, and have something, you know, happen with the your hands or whatever God's given you, giftedness, to do. You just, it drives you. It drives you to do the best that you can. A lot of people have a passion for sports, and you look at the crazy things that they'll do for that. But when it comes to worship, we've gotta have the same thing. We have to have a passion for the Lord before worship will ever be heartfelt. Before it'll ever be, I believe, God honoring. And so a question that we have to, I think, ask ourselves when it comes to worship is, "do I really have a deep burning passion for God Himself?" And if that passion is there, you're gonna see that the worship is there. If the passion isn't there, you're probably gonna see a bunch of actions, routines, ritualistic type things, worship that's not really honoring to the Lord. And one of the passages of scripture, Gary, that I was thinking about when we look at this question, is found back in Malachi 2, especially in verses one through nine. And it talks about the corrupt priests of Israel, and how these priests were, as they should be, called to lead the people to worship God. But they weren't doing a very good job of that. What was happening was, when people were bringing in sacrifices to be offered up on the altar, they'd bring their old sick cow. They'd bring their old animal that had a lame leg or something like that, and they would bring it in and the priest would just go, "okay." And they'd offer up that sacrifice before God like it was nothing. And so they were letting the people get away with not worshiping the Lord properly. And then God comes down on the priests, as He should, and God gets after these priests because they're the ones who are to lead worship. And one of the unpopular parts of that passage of scripture is, the Lord said, "I will spread refuse on your face and on your feasts." And you think about that, it says dung. That's animal dung is what He's talking about there. And so, what was God saying? That He's gonna smear that across their faces and on their feasts? Well, what God is really saying to them is, "because of your lack of leading the people in worship, I'm taking you outta your position. You're gonna be like filthy refuse that's gonna be taken outside of the city and burned and done away with because you are of no value to me." And I always gotta wonder, what happened with those priests, you know? And how that all went down. But obviously, you can see that the priests had lost their passion to worship God. They had lost their love for God, which led to a lack of worship. And it's just going through the routine, you know, and I guess, what I'm saying is we can do that today as Christians too in the church. We can lose our passion for God. We can just go through the routine pretty soon, and it's like a regular routine of going to church on Sunday and whatnot. And we think that we're worshiping God by sitting there singing some songs and, you know, clapping hands and participating with other believers. But it's not from our heart, it's just another routine. And before God, you gotta wonder if that isn't sickening to Him as He looks at that, because He's looking at the heart. He's looking for people who really wanna worship Him because they're in love with Him. And you know, so you think about, how can we change that? How can we get that back, that fire that we need to worship the Lord? Well, I think one of the things, as we learn here in Malachi, is we need to get ourselves in a place of where we're under the teaching of the word of God that will bring about a love for the Lord. If you're not under the teaching, you're not in love with the Lord, because you're getting disconnected, you're not reading this love letter. I think about Mary and Martha when Jesus walked into the village, and of course, Martha invites Jesus over and she's getting all the house ready, maybe a big meal ready, all of those things. And she's getting frustrated cause she looks over and Mary just continually sits at the feet of Jesus and doesn't move. And so finally she comes over and she's very frustrated. Jesus can read her heart. He can probably read her face. And I love what the Lord Jesus says to her. He says, "Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things, but the one thing that's needed. Mary has chosen that good part." And that really speaks to my heart, because what the Lord is saying is, until you place yourself under me, under my teaching, you're not gonna see true love and true worship." You're gonna be running around being busy, trying to get the right things to look good for Jesus. But he's looking at us to get ourselves into place of where we'll really see who He is and the greatness of Him so that we can worship Him properly. And so, as I was thinking through that, also, I have to bring this up, Gary, before I turn it over to you. As I think about worship in the church, we have to understand the importance of our peers when it comes to worship. Because again, when you come back here to Malachi, because the priests didn't have a passion and weren't doing their job correctly, the people were walking away from their worship of the Lord at the same way. And, you know, as men especially, I wanted to say this, as men we're called to be the spiritual leaders of our home. Spiritual leaders, even for our wife, and we're to be the spiritual leaders in the church, and we should be the ones leading worship. We've got that same calling as that spiritual headship, that spiritual leadership that God has put us into. And I just wonder sometimes that, you know, if you walk through the church, how many men are really singing from their heart in worship? Most of the time it's usually, I don't know, the women when it should be the men. But men for some odd reason, they think that they can stand there like, you know, Mr. Macho, and "I'm not gonna sing this. I'm just gonna stand here and mumble the words or not even open my mouth at all. And it makes me look tough and it makes me look manly." But I got to think that's not manly before God. God's looking for a man that'll lead his family, lead his wife, and lead the church in worships. Let's always keep in mind our peers when it comes to worship also.

Gary Hashley (08:03):

I've been asked over the years, "well, what does it mean to worship?" Our English word, worship, comes from an old English word, worth-ship. It's expressing to God the worth that He has to us, the worth He deserves to have in our minds and in our hearts. I've described it this way: worship is letting God know that I know who He is and what He's like. How amazing He is, how much I love Him, how much I rely upon Him, how much I adore Him. It is an expression. We do find in scripture that God wants exclusive worship. And why would I say that? We find one spot in the Old Testament in particular that says, "the people would go before Sabbath during the week, and they would worship on the high places. They would worship the idols and the gods of the peoples around them. And then they'd show up on the Sabbath to worship God." And God was not happy with that. It wasn't, you know, "I'm glad you've come worship me today. The rest of the week is yours." It was, you know, "I want to be exclusively worshiped by you." So, one of the questions we have to ask is, you know, "is God the one that is the most important in our lives? And are we expressing that to Him now?" We express it in a variety of ways. We can express it in song and some today, you know, anytime we're singing in church, they call it worship. Sometimes it's just simply singing because we aren't really expressing from our heart to God, our love and our adoration and our wonder and our awe. We can worship in song, but every time we sing doesn't mean we're worshiping. We can worship in prayer. As we come to Him in prayer, we're letting Him know we're relying upon Him. He's of utmost important in our lives. It's worship to study the word. We kind of differentiate, you know, worship time from sermon time. But actually coming before God during the sermon time and really, truly, all of us focusing on the scriptures and letting God know that we know how important He is and how much He is the most important in our lives. But we can also do it through serving Him and through evangelism. I mean, Brad talked about the great commandment, "love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength." But he said the second is like it, and that is "love your neighbor as yourself. And I guess the thought that comes to my mind, Brad, is there are things we can do to worship, but simply doing those things doesn't mean we're worshiping. For instance, back in Isaiah 58, the Israelites were, you know, wondering, "how come we fast?" We go without food for a period of time, and it was designed to be a time of worship, but they were doing it and they'd lost the sense of it. In fact, God says, "is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and you're healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call on the Lord and the Lord will answer; and the Lord will say, 'Here I am." He was saying, you know, "You can go without food, but that doesn't mean you're worshiping in a time of fasting." In fact, He said, "I'd rather have you love your neighbor as yourself. I'd rather have you, you know, try and loose the bonds of wickedness in people's lives and help people find freedom in Christ to help break the yolks that bind people and to share your bread with the hungry and help the homeless poor and help the naked poor have something to wear." He's basically saying, you know, "I want you to worship me, but it's not just singing, it's not just praying, it's not just fasting. You can do those things and not worship, but you can serve me in those things. And I will see that as worship." I had a gentleman come to me years ago and he said, "You know pastor, I know I'm not here a lot in church." He said, "but you know, I like to hunt and I like to fish." He says, "I can worship in the woods." And I smiled and said, "do you?" He said, "do I what?" I said, "do you worship in the woods?" You know, we can, that doesn't mean we do. And we can make excuses for it, but what God wants is our hearts to come before Him in wonder, in awe, in adoration. That can be through singing an old hymn, that can be singing a Sunday School chorus, that can be singing a brand new song we call worship songs. And I know we've had worship wars in America, in our churches. What is the right approach to a church service that we could rightly call worship? And I'm not sure God is as worried about the form, or the melody, or the rhythms or the harmonies, or just even the activity. He's more worried about our hearts expressing to Him that He is God, that we love Him, that we adore Him, that we submit to Him. That we take His word seriously and want to know it, because as we know His word we'll know Him better. So yeah, worship is very, very important. It's important to God or we wouldn't be told so much about it in the scriptures. But just remember, it's not just what we do or what we say. It's the thought and the attitude and the heart behind it, because God does want us to worship. Jesus said, "we should worship Him in spirit and in truth." I hope that helps!