Joy is Celebrated in Worship | Rediscovering Joy - 2 Chronicles 35:1-6 | Matty Finlay

ABOUT SILVERDALE BAPTIST CHURCH

Silverdale exists to lead people into an authentic relationship with Christ so they will worship God, grow in their faith, and serve the Lord in our community and world.

Silverdale's Lead Pastor is Tony Walliser.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Well, hey, good morning, and once again, welcome to Silverdale. My name is Matty. If you've never met before, I have the privilege of serving as a part of the team here on our Barney Oaks campus. And whatever venue you are joining us from, whatever campus you are at, if you're joining us online, we are grateful and thankful that you've chosen to worship with us. Silverdale is one church that meets in many locations, and at various points throughout the year, all of our campuses come together for certain events. And this weekend is one of those events called Vive Camp, where all of our campuses come together, and it's our student ministry camp. It's fifth through 12th grade, and we've had an incredible weekend so far this weekend. Here's what I love one of the things I love observing about Vive Camp. I love watching our teenagers worship. And here's something fascinating that happens over the course of a weekend. Our teenagers show up on Friday morning, and about 10, 10:30 or so, they come into this room for their first worship session, and it's typically a whole lot of apprehension. Like everyone's kind of looking around, trying to figure out what are the older kids doing, what are the older students doing, what's my friend doing, and should I do that? Should I not do that? And they're kind of watching and trying to figure out what it is that they should do. And then something remarkable happens over the weekend. Through their sermons that are taught, through their time together in small groups and discussions they have there, through the conversations they have on bus rides, through serving Jesus at their mission projects, Jesus begins to move and work in the lives of these teenagers. And then here's what they do: very quickly they realize that worship, their participation in worship isn't about a song that they may know or like, but that their worship is birthed from a place of gratitude and in celebration of what God is doing. And as they watch Jesus move and work in each other's lives, as they experience God moving and working in their life, they begin to worship Him freely. That for followers of Jesus, even for us in the rooms this morning at our campuses, the joy we experience as God moves and works in our lives is celebrated in worship. And we spent several weeks learning from King Josiah and how he led the nation of Judah through this revival. That's into this place where they rediscover joy. And we've talked about the reality for many of us, maybe even in the room this morning, that we aren't experiencing the joy that God says we should as we walk with him. That our lives don't look like God says they should. And we saw how rediscovering that joy begins with a personal relationship with God. And then we talked about how we experience joy as we rediscover God's word, as we turn back to the truth of God's word, to the word of God and make it a part of our lives. And then last week we saw how that continues to grow as we remove idols from our lives, as we remove the sin in our lives. And today we're gonna try and put a bow on all of that as we see that the joy that we will experience through God is celebrated in worship. So if you're taking notes this morning at the top of your outline, I want you to jot this down for me. That worship is a response to grace. Our worship is a response to the grace that God has given us. We've just seen King Josiah lead the nation of Judah through a time of repentance where he removed the idols, where he destroyed them, then he rallies the people of Judah to this place of worship. So if you've got your Bible, I want you to stand to 2 Chronicles chapter 35 for me. 2 Chronicles 35. It'll be on the screens behind me if you don't have a Bible with you. But I want to show you what Josiah does next. I want to show you where he leads the nation of Judah to. 2 Chronicles 35, verses 1 through 6 say this. Josiah kept the Passover to the Lord in Jerusalem, and they slaughtered the Passover lamb on the 14th day of the first month. Then he appointed the priests to their officers, and he encouraged them, encouraged them in the service of the house of the Lord. And he said to all the Levites, who taught all Israel and were holy to the Lord, put the holy ark in the house that Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, built. You need not carry it on your shoulders. Now serve the Lord your God and his people. Prepare yourselves according to your fathers' houses by your divisions, as prescribed in the writing of David, King of Israel, and the document of Solomon his son. Then he goes on. He says, And stand in the holy place according to the groupings of the fathers' houses of your brothers, the lay people, and according to the division of the Levites by Father's household. And slaughter the Passover lamb, consecrate yourselves, prepare for your brothers to do according to the word of the Lord by Moses. Josiah didn't just stop at removing the idols, right? We talked about that last week. He went into the temple, he destroyed the idols that were there, he took him out, he burned them, he crushed them. But he didn't just stop at removing objects of idolatry. Instead, he led the people of Judah into a place of worship. And here's what's fascinating to me about that passage. At the end of verse 6, it says this. I want to read it to you. It says, slaughter the Passover lamb, consecrate yourselves, and prepare for your brothers to do according to the word of the Lord by Moses. Here's what that means for us. Josiah didn't just create his own way of worship. That's still idolatry. Don't miss that. Josiah could have gotten all the idols out of the temple and then said, Alright, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna do this my way. That's still idolatry. Choosing to live our lives our way, choosing to worship God our way is still idolatry. So he doesn't do that. What he says is, we're gonna do according to the word of the Lord by Moses. He didn't create something new, he returned back to the word of God and restored God's original blueprint for worship. In essence, he led the people of Judah to say this: We've gone away from God, we've sinned, we've worshipped idols, now we've torn all of that down, we've destroyed that, and now we'll return to what God's original intent was, which was for us to worship Him. And the fact that He kept a Passover was significant because the Passover was a reminder of God's grace. Worship begins as a response to the grace that we've been given. Can you imagine? Picture the scene with me. You've got this little Israelite boy standing next to his dad, and his dad begins to prepare the Passover lamb. And maybe this little boy looks up at his dad and says, Daddy, why are we doing that? Daddy, why does the lamb have to die? Why do we have to why do we do this year after year? And his dad kneels beside his son and looks him in the eye and says, Son, today was a night when death came to every house in Egypt. But God, in his grace and mercy to us, made a way for that judgment to pass over to us. Year after year they would retell that story. Year after year, another lamb would be sacrificed. And what we now know is that every one of those lambs that were sacrificed was pointing to something great. It was pointing to someone greater. The ultimate lamb who would die for the sacrifice of the world. Listen, what we need to know this morning is this that people who have been captivated by the grace of God cannot be spiritually indifferent. If we, church, if you, follower of Jesus, have been captivated by the grace of God, you cannot remain spiritually indifferent. But here is our challenge. We live in a culture where worship is often about our preferences. We live in a culture where worship has become routine. So here's a question that I want you to ask yourself this morning. I want you to jot it down on top of your island. I want you to ask yourself this. When I gather with God's people, am I prepared to worship or do I just show up? When we come together here in this room or campuses just like this, when we gather together to worship, are you prepared to worship or do you just show up? Are you prayed up? Are you attentive? Are you expecting God to move? Are you ready to respond when God speaks? As we sing songs, are you reading those lyrics and thinking about what they mean to you personally? Or are you thinking about what's for lunch? And how quickly we can get out of here. And man, I sure hope Manny's not long-winded this morning. When it comes to worship, grace should move us from being a spectator to a participant. Hebrews 12 28 says this. Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship. And what is acceptable worship? It is worship that's birthed as a response to God's grace to us. About 15 years or so ago, I was spent the summer serving at FCA camps kind of all over the Southeast. And at a lot of those camps, there was a guy named Jake Gulledge that was leaders in worship. And Jake had a profound impact on my life for many years as he taught us about what worship looks like. And one of the challenges he would always ask us, one of the things that has stuck with me is a question I want you to jot down on the top of your outline. It's this is the posture of our body a reflection of the posture of our heart? Jake was teaching about these different postures of worship. And he would leave us asking that question Does our physical posture reflect the spiritual posture of our heart? And he would talk about that in two different ways. One was challenging people not just to follow the crowd, right? Not just to do what everybody else is doing because that's what they're doing and it looks cool, because that's not a reflection of what God is doing in our heart. The other was this that if our heart has been changed by Jesus, if our heart has been transformed by him, then that should be reflected in our physical posture during worship. If you are a Christ follower in the room, if you would say Jesus has changed your life, when we move into a time of worship, this physical posture doesn't reflect the spiritual posture of our heart. If we're saying the grace of God has captivated our hearts and changed our lives, this number here, it's not reflecting the spiritual posture of our heart. But the other question you have to ask is if that is our posture in worship, is that a reflection of your heart? Do we say I'm a Christ followed? But when we gather together to worship, all we can think about is the next commission we're gonna wish for worship. All we're gonna think about is the game that we're gonna watch that afternoon. Or the one that happened on Saturday afternoon. Here's the next thing I want you to write down is this that corporate worship matters. This is what we call courtship word, course corporate worship and it matters. Second Chronicles 35, 7 through 9, 17 through 19 says this. And the people of Israel who were present kept the Passover at that time and the feast of unleavened bread for seven days. No Passover like it had been kept in Israel since the days of Samuel the prophet. None of the kings of Israel had kept such a Passover as was kept by Josiah and the priests and the Levites and all Judah and Israel who were present and the inhabitants of Israel. And the 18th year of the reign of Josiah, the Passover was kept. If we were to read back through chapter 35, what we would see is that Josiah gathered everybody together. He said, We're gonna worship corporately. Verse 2 tells us that he organizes the priests. Verse 3 through 6 tell us that he encouraged the Levites and how they should be part of worship. Verses 17 through 19, the ones we've just read, tell us that he gathered all of the people together and he provided everything that they needed for worship. In chapter 35, Josiah paints for us a picture of worship that is shared and communal. It's God's people coming together to worship together. That's what corporate worship is. This worship, it wasn't private, it wasn't detached, the people were in isolated, they gathered together to worship. Corporate worship matters because our faith was never meant to be lived in isolation. We see through scripture, faith grows, our relationship with God grows in quiet, intimate, and private places. Right? Jesus models that for us. Mark 1.35 says this. He rose early, he went to a desolate place, and he prayed. Luke 5.16, Luke 16, 12, and Matthew 14, 23 all tell us something very similar. Matthew 6, 6, Jesus says this. When you pray, go into your room, shut the door, and pray to your father who is in secret. Our relationship with Jesus often grows in private places. But what Jesus teaches us in those places is to be posed to live out corporately. What Jesus teaches us in the quiet of the closet is supposed to be lived out in the culprit of worship. But here's the question that we have to wrestle with. If worship really is a response to grace, if what Jesus teaches us in private is supposed to be lived out publicly publicly, why do so many Christ followers teach gathering together as worship? Why has church become the first thing to go at when life gets busy? Hebrews 10 24 through 25 says this. Then Colossians 3.16 says this let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And then Ephesians 5.19 would say this to address one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart. Church, God is doing a work in us so that He can do a work through us. Our faith was never intended to be lived out in isolation. There is this subculture of Christianity that says this: I have Jesus, but I don't need the church. It's this idea that me and Jesus were good and I don't need anything else. I don't need the church, I don't need community, I don't need other believers. I got this, I'm good to go. And for many of us, it makes the hairs on the back of our necks stand up because we know how egregious of a statement that is. But there is also this growing subculture of Christianity that says this. I have Jesus, I have the church, but not if I had a busy week. I have Jesus and I need the church, but not if I've already been twice that month. I'm good to go. I have Jesus and I need the church, but not if my kids have sports on Sunday. I have Jesus and I need the church, but only when it's convenient for me and my family. There's this growing subculture of church that believes that us gathering together is to serve your purpose and to meet your needs. So when it's not convenient, it's no longer important. But corporate worship matters because it's not about you. It's not about you. Can you imagine the scene? Like, let's picture this together. When Josiah gathers Judah to celebrate the Passover together, all the people come, right? And don't forget, this has been a place where idol worship has reigned supreme. People would have gathered and danced and sung songs and child sacrifices were offered. Heinous acts would have been performed out in public places in worship of some God. You've got prostitution, people cutting themselves, burning things, all kinds of smells. And then Josiah leads the nation of Judah to the Word of God. They repent and then he leads them into worship, and those same people would have shown up to worship at the Passover with repentant hearts. Moved by grace to worship the one true God. Those same people who days, weeks, months earlier would have been part of these despicable acts. Those same people showed up to worship the King of Kings. Can you imagine how moving of an experience that would be? A couple who maybe months earlier had offered their child, had killed their child as a sacrifice to a false God, now show up holding hands to worship the one true God. Can you imagine how the people of Judah would have been moved? Can you imagine a male prostitute showing up to worship God dressed and in his right mind? And instead of offering his body to somebody else, he offers his worship to the King of Kings. Can you imagine the scene? Can you imagine yourself there watching that play out? For years, every morning at 9.30, I had a similar experience right here on our Barney Oaks campus. There was a guy that would sit off to my right, he'd sit right in this section over there, and he attends another campus now. But I met this guy when he was at his lowest. Right before I had met him, he had been sat in his truck at Enterprise South with a pistol in his hand, ready to end his life. He'd been caught in the midst of an affair, his wife had kicked him out, his kids are at home, and he feels like he's lost everything and there's nowhere else to turn. And on that night, Jesus saved his life. Both spiritually and literally and physically. I don't know where to go. And for years he'd sit right there, and every Sunday morning I would watch him worship. Every Sunday morning I would watch him raise his hands and worship to the King of Kings. And it was this constant reminder to me of what God is able to do. It was this constant reminder to me that there's nobody too lost, there's nobody too broken, there's nobody too far gone, that God cannot restore and receive them. Every Sunday morning, it was a shot in the arm of my faith because every Sunday I wasn't watching a man sing, I was watching evidence of the gospel. I was watching evidence of what Jesus is able to do. Every time he raised his hands, it was a reminder to me that God is able. Worship is all about Jesus. The Passover that Josiah led the nation of Judah into, look back to God's rescue of the Israelite people out of Egypt, but it also points us forward. The lamb, the blood, the meal, it all points us forward to the ultimate savior, the ultimate redemption that is found in Jesus and Jesus alone. Every lamb that was sacrificed was whispering the name of Jesus. Every drop of blood that was spilled was preparing the way for the blood of Jesus. Church, listen to me. Jesus wasn't plan B, Jesus was always the plan. Jesus has always been the point. That's why celebration and worship matters so much. That's why corporate worship matters so much because it's never been about us. Biblical worship is never about our preferences, it's never about our convenience or our feelings. Biblical worship is centered on God's saving work in our lives. Lives. When we worship, we are responding to a Savior who stood in our place. When we worship, we're responding to Jesus, who is the better Passover Lamb. Who is innocent yet slain? Who was sinless yet bore our judgment? Who shed his blood so that the wrath of God would pass over us. Jesus was not rescued from death. He went into death, defeated it, and rose again in victory. That changes worship. We don't sing because life is easy. We don't worship because our week went well. We don't praise God because it all makes sense. We worship because Jesus has redeemed us. We worship because the blood still saves people. We worship because our greatest problem, sin, has been answered at the cross. And if your worship feels cold, the answer is not to try to manufacture some emotion. The answer is not to sing louder or raise hands higher. The answer is to look again at Jesus, to look at the cross and remember that He took our shame, He took our guilt, He bore our punishment, He gave us mercy instead of judgment, He gave us sonship instead of slavery. He gave us hope instead of condemnation. So again, we have to ask ourselves this morning: have I grown too familiar with the gospel? Have I lost the wonder of the cross and what God did in my life, what Jesus did on the cross for my sin? Have I grown too familiar with the life-changing work that Jesus did in me? Have I forgotten who I once was? Because the call today is not merely to sing louder or to raise your hands higher, it's to see Jesus more clearly. It's to remember that worship is more than a song. And if the cross has become small in our eyes, then worship will be small in our lives. When you come to corporate worship, are you prepared to worship? Does your physical posture reflect your spiritual posture? So here's how we're gonna close this morning. We're gonna have an opportunity to put this into practice. And here's what I'm gonna ask you to do at all of our campuses. I'm gonna ask you not to leave. I know that some of us have got small groups we're trying to get to, or volunteer roles we gotta get to, or kids that we feel like we gotta go pick up. But instead of just singing one song, we're gonna sing two, we're gonna have an extended time of worship. And what I'm asking you this morning is will you see Jesus for who he is? And will you worship him this morning because he's worthy of your worship? Not because you like the song. I'm asking you not to not worship him because you don't like the song. I'm asking, will you see Jesus for who he is? You remember, if you are a follower of Jesus, will you remember who you once were? What you were saved from and called to. And will you worship Jesus this morning because he's worthy of our worship? Let me pray for us. Father, thank you so much for the truth of your word. God, thank you for what you have saved us from and are calling us into. God, I pray for our people this morning, for myself included, for my hard heart, that you would remind us of who we once were. That if we have become familiar with the gospel, if we have become cold in our worship, that you would take us back to that moment where you became real to us for the very first time, where we grasp the reality that I'm lost and now I'm found. I was dead and now I'm alive. God, and would we worship you fully this morning? Would we set the phone down, take the watch off? Would we let time pass as we just worship you together this morning? It's in Jesus' name that we pray. And everybody said.