Pastoral Letter 73

Dear Members of St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Friends and Adherents,

Grace and peace to you all.

Sadly, we are still in lockdown. With more infections within the region of Greater Sydney, the NSW Premier has announced the extension for another week with more restrictions, with no hope that this will be over soon. This means that all our weekly activities will remain suspended until further notice.

One exception is the Lower North Shore Uniting Churches Study Series, based on Dr. Kenneth Bailey’s book “The Good Shepherd – A Thousand Year Journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testament”, which will be on Zoom and will commence next Wednesday 14 July at 7:30 pm with Session 1 and will go over the following four Wednesdays: 21 and 28 July, 4 and 11 August. The short one-hour sessions will include a 30-minute video followed by a 30-minute discussion.

Join Zoom Meeting

https://uca-nswact.zoom.us/j/94813548762

Meeting ID: 948 1354 8762

The Market Morning scheduled for Saturday 6 August is in doubt. We will let you know in the next fortnight what we have decided. But in the meantime, please pray and join the rest of the members Sunday morning for worship from home following the Orders of Service, sing along to the hymns chosen and read the Message.

Continue to pray, remembering those who need our care, support and love.

Here are some prayer points for this week:

1. Pray for our Service tomorrow and hope to return to our face-to-face services and weekly activities.

2. Pray for the local and federal governments, as they struggle with the vaccination rollout.

3. Pray for those who need care and support, especially at these difficult times.

4. Pray for Margaret Murden, as she has been in Longueville Hospital in and out in the last several weeks with ill-health and back pain. The last few months have been difficult for Margaret, with Don’s passing away.  

4. Pray for world peace and ask for God’s blessings.

Please let me know if you have or anyone else has prayer points.

Remember, whatever challenge we face, God is with us to keep us safe. Thanks be to God.

Krikor

MESSAGE

Worship the Lord Almighty

Psalm 24

Psalm 24 celebrates the return of the Ark to Jerusalem after 50 years. It is a praise song that David sang on this occasion, David even danced and worshiped God.

We come to church every Sunday morning with great joy, when we are not in lockdown, to worship God and we refer to our services as “Sunday Morning Worship Service“. A time, when we come together in one accord and in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we lift our voices and praise the Triune God, seek the power and the inspiration of the Spirit to communicate with God, open our hearts and pray, we give thanks for all the blessings we have received, confess our sins and ask God for His forgiveness through His grace and mercy and bring our petitions to the Father in the name of the Son. We pray for our needs and the needs of others. And we ask God to equip us with all we need to face the coming week, with its challenges and ask Him to be with us.

That’s why we come in God’s presence in his holy sanctuary. And if we are worshiping at home, we stand before God with the same attitude and spirit, knowing that we are in the presence of the holy One, who is worthy of our praise and worship. But sadly, to most people worship and going to church is the same thing.

Going to church is important and there are many who love to go to church and have fellowship, as we do. We consider congregating with brothers and sisters a blessing from God and we don’t want to miss any chance of being able to do that. Sometimes we miss for health reasons or when we are away. In other words, if we don’t have any reason to skip church, we do our utmost to be at the church on Sunday mornings to worship and fellowship. We have done this for many years and received many blessings.

But we should realise that there is a big difference between “worship” and “going to church”. Going to church does not necessarily mean what we said before in regard to the true spirit of worship.

Some time ago, I heard the NRL commentator Ray Warren talking about an important Sunday Footy game and encouraging people to go early as there will be big crowds. He said if you are going to mow your lawn, do it early, and if you are going to church go early and don’t miss the game. For Ray going to church is something people do, but not necessarily worshiping God. It could be just a practice that they have done for many years, a duty to complete or a box to tick on the list of the things we need to do on weekdays and Sunday as well.

But for us, the Church is a safe place from the outside world where we can put away all our troubles and focus on something more pleasant for a little while and enjoy some good fellowship with people who share a similar belief. There we can laugh, sing, cry, and enjoy each other’s company, as we do during Morning Tea, share our joys and pains and sometimes a fellowship meal. There we can find comfort, encouragement and feel good about ourselves.

But worship is more than going to church. Worship is the act of coming into the presence of God the Lord Almighty for the main reason of exalting Him and praising His name. Sadly, often those who go to church leave the same way as when they entered the church building. Nothing changes. They sit on the pews, unmoved and unemotional because for them attendance and worship are the same thing. For some, as long as they are at the church service, they feel satisfied that they have done what they are supposed to do, because after all it is Sunday.

Real worship happens when people stand in God’s presence to express humility, respect, adoration, gratitude and love for Him.

To worship God, we must:

1. Focus on God

In the first few lines of this Psalm, we see that David’s focus was God and only God. It was very clear for him that everything in the world belongs to God – the earth, everything in it, everyone who lives in it. God made the world, and He preserves and sustains it. Knowing that it all belongs to God should help us to see life from a different perspective. If we focus on praising God as the Creator of everything then our worship will be different. We will have the same excitement that David had. David acted like a little boy trying to please God the Father.

David understood the glorious majesty of Almighty God. He had respect for God, and he loved his God. He loved God for who He is and what He has done. David knew this from the time when Samuel came to Jesse’s house to anoint the second king of the people of Israel. No one, even David the young shepherd boy, didn’t expect to receive God’s blessing and to be anointed to be the greatest king that Israel has ever known in its history. David didn’t even have a clue that one of his descendants will be the incarnate God, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, the expected Messiah, which the prophets had promised many years before the birth of Jesus Christ.

Facing several challenges in his life, before becoming king and during his reign, and in every challenge he faced, he knew that God was with him, the Lord was with him as his shepherd. Even when he committed sin and did wrong things, David was sure that he would, and he should focus on God. That was one of his main goals.

Therefore, for David and us, God must be the focus of our worship.

2. Be prepared

We must be prepared to worship God. To stand before God and worship, we should be spiritually prepared. We should be right with God; our attitudes and actions should be acceptable to God. We should have clean hands and pure hearts as David says. A clean record. That’s the main reason that traditionally we include a confession prayer and assurance of forgiveness in the order of the service. Seeking God’s forgiveness takes a major part in our prayer.

We should be willing to accept His authority, obey His commands, respect Him and respect our fellow man. This is clearly outlined in the words of Jesus, when He said: “Love your God and your neighbour”.

We cannot worship the Lord if we aren’t right with Him; our sins should be confessed and dealt with. We should be pure in heart, body and soul. We must prepare ourselves spiritually every day. We must read and study God’s word daily. We must set aside time daily to be alone with the Lord in prayer.

We cannot worship the Lord if we are not in the right perspective. Any obstacle or hindrance distracts us from concentrating. If we have done something wrong, or have misjudged, or hurt someone with our behaviour or bad attitude, we will not be able to worship him with the right heart and attitude. We should first put everything on track and work on standing before God with a clean heart. As a well-known song says: “Create in Me a Clear Heart” based on David’s prayer, we should work hard to cleanse our hearts and make it pure to be worthy to stand before God, prepared and with the right mindset.

Therefore, we must be prepared spiritually to worship and we must focus on God when we worship.

3. Desire to worship

We should have the desire to worship Him. Without the desire there is no worship. Worshiping God should not be out of duty, but rather we should have the longing and the want to worship. Without this factor we cannot focus on God and cannot be truly prepared. We should open the doors of our hearts. David’s reference to the gates makes this clear. Here we see a reference to the gates of the Temple which were beautifully decorated, sculptured and designed to provide protection. David here suggests that there was a desire to open these gates so that the great and mighty King of Glory could come in. In the letter to Corinthians Paul said: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 6:19)

To worship God, we must have a desire for Christ, the King of Glory, to dwell within us. We must have a desire to open the door to our heart and allow him to enter in and fill us. We must desire to worship the King of Glory. One of the beautifully illustrated pictures of Jesus that I love is Him standing at the door, knocking and waiting for someone to open from inside. He acts as a guest to be welcomed by us. He doesn’t want to force Himself in, but instead He lets us open the door and welcome Him in to have fellowship with us, have a meal and provide all we need to sustain our lives and move forward in the dark and difficult allies of our lives. This metaphor clearly points to the desire that we should have to welcome Him in our home and lives. It is the desire that counts to accept Him to be with us and it is the desire that counts to truly worship our God, the Almighty, All-knowing, Loving, Compassionate and Caring God.

We have plenty of reasons to worship God.

The most important of all of them is that we love Him.

If we love Him, He will be the focus of our worship, we will prepare ourselves spiritually to worship Him and the desire of our hearts will be to worship Him.

We need to understand that worship is not just going to church, but it is experiencing God through a personal relationship with our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Worship is important to God, so much so that out of the 10 commandments, the very first one deals with the subject of worship. Ex. 20:3 “You shall have no other gods before me. In the Old Testament, we see the importance of worship in the lives of the people of God. Abraham worshipped (Gen. 22:5), Jacob worshipped (Heb. 11:21), Moses worshipped (Ex. 34:8), Joshua worshipped (Joshua 5:14), and of course David the king worshipped (2 Samuel 12:20). Worship was an integral part of the lives of God’s people throughout the Old Testament.

We find in the New Testament that worship is still important. Jesus told the woman at the well that God is seeking for worshippers. John 4:23 “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks”. The Greek word used here for seek is desire, or to demand. God is looking for and demanding true, sincere worship. The disciples and the New Testament church worshipped the Lord.

Worship must begin with the right relationship with God.

Worship must include a respectful reverence to God.

Worship must offer a relevant response.

Let us worship the Lord Almighty the King of Glory.

Amen!