St. John's Lutheran Church - Sermon: True worship is a relationship based on God's Word

Here is a silly question for you! Have you learned yet how to tie your shoes? Even if you prefer loafers or slip-ons, or velcro closures, or high heels, somewhere along the line you’ve got runners or boots or skates or shoes that need to be tied. Almost everyone in this country is going to have laces one way or another, some time or another, because when a shoe or a boot or a skate needs to be firmly and dependably attached to your feet, nothing beats a shoelace.

That leads me to another question. How many different kinds of knots do you use to tie your laces? Would I be right if I guessed one? Would it be the one that Mom or Dad or the grade one teacher taught you? Yes, the common knot that leaves a pretty little bow on your shoe or boot has its failings. If you are not careful and the loop slips through, you end up with a stubborn knot. If you don’t pull tightly enough, it easily comes undone. Still with all its failings, I’m sure most people wouldn’t think it worth the effort to learn a whole new knot for tying their shoes.

The same thing is true of worship. Like shoelaces that still work best despite all sorts of new inventions, the part of the worship service that really makes worship the real thing is thousands of years old. We can actually see it described in our Old Testament lesson for this morning. Whatever we may choose to do to make a worship service meaningful, this is the part that needs to be there if we are going to be blessed in our worship! Thank God that He moves us to focus on His Word, for when we gather around His Word, that is truly worship.

The most basic part of the worship service is the opportunity to hear God’s Word. Of course, you can hear God’s Word on TV or the radio or on some internet podcast or something, but that is not really hearing God’s Word in the way that the Bible lays this out. In the biblical sense, hearing God’s Word is intended to be a personal and direct experience. Hearing God’s Word depends on a real-time connection between the speaker and the hearer. You’ve simply got to be there for something like that to happen.

We didn’t read verse 4 in the selected verses of our Old Testament lesson this morning, but that verse has something to say about this point. There we learn that “Ezra the scribe stood on a high wooden platform built for the occasion.” Why was that important? The answer comes in verse 5, “All the people could see him because he was standing above them.”

This seems to obvious that you might even wonder why it comes up, but the truth is that there is a reason why we have a pulpit or a platform in church If you can see the face of the person who is talking to you, it is easier to connect with what is being said. It takes more than the tone of a person’s voice to catch the full meaning of what that person is saying. Facial expressions and physical gestures are very important. So is eye contact. So also is the ability to hear as many words as possible out of what the person is speaking. Even if the speaker is otherwise a stranger to you, the truth is that an important part of any message is the relationship that is established between the speaker and the hearers. No matter how important the words or well-spoken they may be, if you can’t see who is talking to you, it is very difficult to feel that you are part of what is going on.

It is just as important for a speaker to see the people who are being spoken to. Without eye contact, the bond between the speaker and the hearers is that much weaker. With eye contact, a sermon becomes more than just a message proclaimed by the Pastor. With eye contact, the sermon becomes an actual conversation. The body language of the people in the pew speaks to the speaker and can really make a difference in the direction a sermon may go, or at least in the manner in which the sermon is preached.

Of course, having a speaker who is up high enough to look over the entire congregation does not make a worship service a worship service. There is much more to that. What is actually being spoken and what is being heard makes all the difference.

Verse 8 of our text this morning tells us, “They read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people could understand what was being read.” Have you ever read out loud something that you don’t actually understand yourself? Singers sometimes sing songs in different languages even though they don’t understand that language at all. If you don’t understand that language yourself, it doesn’t make much of a difference. You just hear sounds and the singer’s voice simply becomes another musical instrument. If you do understand the language, you will find it very hard to concentrate on what that person is singing. The words won’t be clear because the singer doesn’t understand enough to make those words clear.

You can tell when a person truly understands what they are reading out loud. You can tell by how that person emphasises words or groups phrases. You can tell by the pauses and by the times when there are no pauses. It is much easier to understand what you are hearing when the reader understands what he or she is reading because the reader interprets for you and makes the passage clear.

In our Old Testament lesson, we learn from verse 7 that it was the Levites who instructed the people in the Law. It was the Levites who read from the Book of the Law of God. These Levites were people who had been set aside to receive a special religious education. They learned not just how to read and to write, which was not a common skill in those days, but they also learned the bigger picture of how things fit together in the Bible. They knew the Bible well enough that they had an idea how the passage they were reading fit into God’s entire plan for salvation. They had a comprehension that was deeper than what you get from reading the passage alone.

Have you ever attended a worship service in a congregation that has no formally trained pastor? In some groups, like the Seventh Day Adventists and the Church of God and a variety of non-denominational community churches, any member of the congregation may come forward to speak. If you have experienced this, chances are pretty good that the message came across as not much more than a personal testimonial. Unless the person speaking had exceptional knowledge of the Bible, you would have been left with the impression that you learned more about the person speaking than about the Word of God.

The central point of a Christian worship service is to do what the Levites did in our Old Testament lesson. They made the Book of the Law of God clear and gave it meaning so that the people could understand what was being read. In the Hebrew, that sentence literally says, “They explained the Book of the Law and shared its wisdom and caused them to understand the reading.” In other words, they spoke in such a way that the people were drawn into the Word of God in such a way that they heard God Himself teaching them!

Genuine Christian worship depends then, on biblical preaching. It isn’t an “In my humble opinion” thing, but a “This is what God tells us” kind of thing. You can have a speaker in front of you who looks right at you and speaks from the heart and makes you feel that he or she is speaking to you personally even if you are surrounded by a hundred other people. You can have a speaker who speaks so skilfully that you hang on every single word. If that speaker is not speaking the Word of God, though, it is not preaching. It is not preaching because only the Word of God has the power to move you and to motivate you beyond the experience of hearing something in church. Only the Word of God can truly call you to repentance and only the Word of God can genuinely assure you of the forgiveness of your sins.

The Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit works through the Word of God, but that doesn’t mean that just using random quotations from the Bible will do. The Word of God must be taught in such a way that people actually understand what God’s Word is saying. That means that God’s Word must be applied in such a way that it actually speaks to where people are living their lives. If a pastor uses words and ideas that fly right over top of everybody’s head, then he is not doing the job of sharing the wisdom of God’s Word, even if everything he is saying is perfectly faithful to the teachings of the Bible. If a pastor does not use stories and examples from daily life to explain a Biblical point and if he does not help people to apply the point to their lives, then he isn’t doing anything to help people understand God’s Word.

Godly knowledge and real life experience together are necessary. A sincere method of speaking with a great effort to know the subject and to know the people are necessary. An honest and faithful attempt to actually communicate God’s Word and God’s Will and not just talk about the words are essential. Above all, it must be clear to the hearers that the Pastor truly believes the Word of God and genuinely trusts in the mercy of God that is ours through the Holy Spirit Himself working in God’s Word.

All those are needed, just like they were in the days of Nehemiah, the prophet, and the time of Ezra, the priest. They are needed, not just so that there can be true preaching happening. They are needed because without that preaching, there is no real worship. There is no true worship because worship is not just about hearing God’s Word, but it is about understanding it and responding to it.

That brings us to another point. Our reading starts out with the words, “All the people assembled as one man in the square... They told Ezra, the scribe, to bring out the Book of the Law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded for Israel.” (Nehemiah 8:1) Do you see in these words how important your own role is in worship?

It was the people, moved by the Holy Spirit, who called Ezra to lead their worship. They understood that “the Lord commanded this” The people approached their worship with an open and willing and faithful heart. They approached it as believers who understood that this would please God. They understood that they were not doing God a favour by coming to worship, but they were showing their gratitude to God by responding to God’s own command to gather in this way.

If you don’t come to church with the willingness to understand that God Himself wants you there and God Himself brought you there, then chances are pretty good that you are not going to get much out of it. If you do come with an attitude that says, “This is the house of God, and this is precisely where I want to be right now, then you will get a great deal out of a worship service. Nehemiah tells us in verse 3, “All the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law.” Those people were making an effort. They were living their faith. They really cared about what it was they were hearing. They cared so much that they kept on listening from daybreak until noon. How’s that for being committed to worshiping our Lord!

I have to say, that the greatest joy I experience in ministry is to see the look of hope and peace and joy in the faces of people who are responding with open hearts and who have been clearly touched by the Gospel. I also have to admit that nothing challenges me more and is harder for me to see than when people respond to God’s Word with defiance and anger, or are so consumed in the Law that they can’t hear a Word of Gospel no matter how clearly the Gospel is preached.

This brings us to our Gospel lesson for this morning. There was no preacher like Jesus. Jesus was a Rabbi. He was schooled in the Word of God. As Rabbi, He was welcome to preach in any synagogue. One Sabbath in Nazareth, He went to the worship service as He always did, but this time He preached about the true meaning of the words of the prophet, Isaiah. He did what any good preacher is called to do: He made it clear and gave it meaning so that the people could understand what was being read.

Jesus, of course, as God’s Son, could do what no preacher has been able to do before or since: He could read the very hearts of the people. He didn’t just make an educated guess, like the rest of us pastors do as to what the congregation most needs to hear from the Bible lessons of a particular day. He spoke directly to the needs of the people. Luke tells us that “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from His lips.” (Luke 4:22) They responded well to the Gospel.

Yes, Jesus was an amazing preacher, but He was also a very effective preacher. He actually made it possible for the people to completely understand what the Bible was saying. At this particular time in Nazareth the people also needed to hear something that they did not want to hear. His words to them made it very clear that they did not have the relationship with God that they claimed to have. He hit them in the softest spot you could hit a Jew of Jesus’ day. He reminded them that other people who were not even Jewish at all had greater faith than they had. He spoke the Law to them boldly and clearly, and with that, the people were so stuck on the law that they could not even hear the Gospel anymore. They could not even begin to hear that Jesus had come to “preach good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind.” (Luke 4:18)

The people were simply not ready for genuine worship. They were not committed to hearing the full word of God. They only wanted to hear what would make them feel good about themselves. Because they were not ready to hear the full Word of God, they were only able to hear God’s judgement upon them. That made them furious when they heard this. It made them so angry that they attacked Jesus and drove Him right out of town. Indeed, it made them so furious that they were ready to kill Jesus right then and there.

Our Gospel lesson is an example of how powerful the Word of God truly is. It is an example of how it truly reaches into the hearts of people when the speaker is able to apply the Word to their lives and speak to their hearts. It is an example of what happens when there is a connection established between the speaker and the hearer and the Holy Spirit uses that connection to do the work of God’s Word. The connection isn’t always that obvious as in our readings for today, but it is there as surely as the Holy Spirit is there when God’s Word is faithfully proclaimed. It isn’t always an easy thing to see or experience, and it can sometimes be more than what we are prepared to deal with, but it is definitely there.

What is the point of that connection? In our Old Testament lesson this morning, the people started crying when God’s Word touched their hearts. They had just gone through a long period in exile and the Word of God had been banned from them. In the meantime, the Persians, under Darius, had conquered Babylon and freed the exiles, allowing them to hear the whole Word of God for the first time in years. They had been confronted with their sin and with their weakness for a long time, and now they also heard about God’s forgiveness and grace. They rediscovered that God’s Word brings joy to the heart of a forgiven sinner. They understood that such a joy comes from the Lord Himself. They heard once again that the joy of the Lord Himself is their strength!

This gives some insight to an interesting passage from the book of Hebrews, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the Cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2) Here we learn about the motive behind the preaching and the teaching and the patience and the suffering and the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. The motive is the joy that He knew He would see. It is the joy of knowing that His work and His sacrifice would lead to great joy for those who would believe in Him. It is the joy He knew He would see in the faces of people whom the Holy Spirit had prepared to recognize their Saviour in Jesus Christ. It is the joy Jesus would see and the joy Jesus would share as God’s people celebrated their forgiveness under God’s grace. It was the joy of prisoners to sin suddenly set free after the horrors of the Cross. It was the joy of people who had blinded themselves to the Gospel suddenly seeing that Jesus really did come to save them, and that they were truly members of the family of God.

Jesus rejoices in your own joy when you yourself finally get it. He rejoices in your own understanding as the Spirit makes the Word of God alive and meaningful within you. He rejoices, and His own joy is the very basis of what it means to worship.

Worship is a time of honesty. It is a time of confession. It is a time for taking responsibility. It is a time for decisions to commit to living more sincerely according to the gifts the Holy Spirit gave you through your baptism and in hearing God’s Word and receiving Him in the Lord’s Supper. It is a time for thanking God and for asking God and for praising God.

Above all, it is a time for receiving God’s gifts as the Holy Spirit works upon you through God’s Word. It is a time for God to serve you by equipping you and encouraging you and uplifting you through the Good News that Jesus is indeed your Lord and Saviour. This day is sacred to the Lord, for in this day we learn time and again that the joy of the Lord is our strength.

In our Old Testament lesson this morning, the people understood how truly blessed they were to have the right to worship God restored to them. They no longer took for granted what was so frequently taken for granted. They were so happy to hear the Bible again that they broke out into tears. They were so grateful to finally be able to hear God’s Word preached to them again that they were filled with joy. They got the point. They appreciated that worship is not some dreary chore, but a special blessing to them. It was no wonder, then, that when Ezra praised the Lord, the great God, all the people lifted their hands and responded, “Amen, Amen!”, bowed down and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground.

May the Lord move you to cherish the connection God makes with you during worship as we are blessed to hear the Word of God together. May He move you to participate with an open heart. May He move you to be filled with a joy so lasting and so deep that you gladly then step out into the world equipped to serve God in all that you do for Jesus’ sake. Amen.