Living Water Community Church Living Water Community Church

For some time the subject of worship has been recurring in my life and study. It has been increasingly grabbing my attention and has come up in multiple conversations with different people. It seems like this is a good time to explore this topic and see what the word of God has to say about it. Today I want to try and lay out from scripture what it tells us worship is. Since our main point of gathering as a community of believers is worship it would appear we should understand what this word means. Yet I find myself over and over combating what I believe to be bad ideas about worship. For many worship is so narrowly defined it often ends up being identified with music. Certainly music is powerful and it is a means of worship but it is not the only way we are called to worship by the word of God. Because we are exploring this topic over the coming months on the first Sunday of the month we will certainly look in depth at the role music plays and consider what scripture tells us about it but today I want to take a broader look at what the Bible has to tell us about this topic. First of all it is important to realize the word worship appears in the Bible in the ESV 110 times. It appears in both the old and new testaments. It is translated into the word worship from 19 different greek and Hebrew words. The Bible calls us to engage in worship. 

We are called as Christians to fight for each other. This is where we turn our attention. We are not called to do work on being transformed in isolation but rather in community. We seek to build each other up and turn the focus of one another toward Christ (Who alone brings lasting transformation). 

We learned from Paul how we must have a different walk from the world. Meaning our lives need to look different from the world. But this difference in our lives needs to be rooted in the life of God and not in simply following a set of rules for living. Paul’s main contention is if we have come to know Jesus we have received the light which comes along with knowing Him. This illumination comes along with a heart of flesh which has replaced the hard heart we once had. The light of God and the heart of flesh come together to create in us a new man shaped by the work of God in us. As a new creation in Christ we are called to put off the deceitful desires and corruption which was part of our former manner of life. The idea is to stop doing the things which we used to do and to replace those former things with things which renew the spirit of our minds. Clearly Paul is talking about what we think about and dwell on. The goal should be a focus on God and His true righteousness and holiness. As people who are coming to know God and who have learned Christ we are called to embrace the relationships God has given us.

Chapter 4 began with a call to walk in a manner which is worthy of the calling we have received. Part of this calling is to bear with one another and to seek unity and peace. After giving this call to unity in Christ and rooting it in the unity found in God Himself Paul moves on to talk about how this unity plays out in the church. The church is one body. To begin with each of the members of the body has been uniquely gifted by God. The reason we have been gifted and set apart is firmly rooted in the person and work of Jesus. We explored how when Paul talks about Jesus descending to the lower regions of the earth he is really talking about the role Jesus plays as the new Adam. His descent is linked in the passage to His ascent which should point us to His death and resurrection. These are pivotal to Jesus role as the messiah and the new Adam. It is in this role He fulfills God’s command to Adam to subdue and to rule. He currently rules at God’s right hand and God is bringing everything into subjection to Him. One of the key ways He is doing this is through the church. The church has many members and each of those members has an important role to play in the body. It is as the body the work of ministry is accomplished. We are called to build each other up. To equip each other. All of this is achieved through our unity in faith in Christ. We come to maturity through our knowledge of the Son of God and our conformity to His image. The goal then is for us to each point one another to Christ and help each other to be conformed to His image. The whole idea here is to push beyond head knowledge or passive knowledge to relationally knowing Jesus and becoming more like Him.

Chapter 4 began with a call to walk in a manner which is worthy of the calling we have received. Part of this calling is to bear with one another and to seek unity and peace. After giving this call to unity in Christ and rooting it in the unity found in God Himself Paul moves on to talk about how this unity plays out in the church. The church is one body. To begin with each of the members of the body has been uniquely gifted by God. The reason we have been gifted and set apart is firmly rooted in the person and work of Jesus. We explored how when Paul talks about Jesus descending to the lower regions of the earth he is really talking about the role Jesus plays as the new Adam. His descent is linked in the passage to His ascent which should point us to His death and resurrection. These are pivotal to Jesus role as the messiah and the new Adam. It is in this role He fulfills God’s command to Adam to subdue and to rule. He currently rules at God’s right hand and God is bringing everything into subjection to Him. One of the key ways He is doing this is through the church. The church has many members and each of those members has an important role to play in the body. It is as the body the work of ministry is accomplished. We are called to build each other up. To equip each other. All of this is achieved through our unity in faith in Christ. We come to maturity through our knowledge of the Son of God and our conformity to His image. The goal then is for us to each point one another to Christ and help each other to be conformed to His image. The whole idea here is to push beyond head knowledge or passive knowledge to relationally knowing Jesus and becoming more like Him. 

Today we celebrate explicitly the great work of Jesus in overcoming sin, and death by sin, in completing the work of paying for our sin, and rising from the dead. He lived a perfect life and He who new no sin became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. We call this transfer of our sin to Jesus propitiation. We became righteous because His righteousness was given to us. We call this transfer of His righteousness to us expiation. Today I want to focus on something which has fallen out of popularity in our world but we must not forget. The fact that we were under the curse of sin and Jesus became a curse for us. This may be most explicitly laid out in our main passage today.