Worship: A Commitment . . . Not a War, Part Two, Part 1

Today on Insight for living secular methods are now used market, the church will process this turned from sound Orthodox theology to a feel-good philosophy for the great goal is certainly no one offstreet or after all way you lose interest and never come back.

They convene to worship the King of the universe. It's a wonderful privilege and a heavy responsibility but the expression of worship differs all around the world. So what are the essential elements of corporate worship that should unite us all today on Insight for living Chuck Swindoll will establish biblical precedents so our expression of worship springs from our theological convictions rather than slick marketing trends with a message originally presented on Father's Day. Chuck Swindoll titled his message, worship, commitment, not a war about his close arise. Meaningful worship is such a rarity in our day want to take advantage of every opportunity we have just sit before the Lord and acknowledge not only his presence, but his right to rule over us to have first place in everything is will is not just some casual off-the-cuff thought that it is a plan that is best for us, including the very things you're going through right now. The very tests your enduring all part of his plan. His word is not simply black print on white pages. It's what guides us into all truth is, the spirit ignites these words bring them home to our heart. Listen to the reading of Romans 1133 through 12 to listen, O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable his ways for who has known the mind of the Lord who became his counselor who is first given to him that it might be paid back to him again for from him and through him and to him are all things to him be the glory forever. I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what the will of God is that which is good and acceptable and perfect fathers. Would you please stand for continued time in prayer we would be the first to confess our father that that there isn't a super man among us.

We don't even have any supernatural power in ourselves. We have a lot of passion but we have no innate power to pull it off left to ourselves, our role as a father would be somewhere between miserable and a total failure lies would be marked by brutality and absence of compassion, selfishness, conceit a drive to get our own way. Manipulation unfaithfulness. Our thoughts would be continually wayward in our ways would never bring glory to your name. That's who we are, but we stand together today together acknowledging that without you. We are nothing. Therefore, your presence is absolutely essential thank you for it somehow stand today. Look upon their homes with disappointment and regret. Life is often like that we have such understanding by looking back over that we had known then what we know now, but we didn't and the result breaks our hearts so helpless father find relief and release from the guilt remind us that it's never too late to start doing what is right. I remember also some fathers who are in the process of rearing small children the demands of their lives are many, and often they are pulled between what must be in what might be in the tyranny of the urgent wins the day. More often than not, I pray that you would calm them today with a reminder that you're able in every situation to help them may they lean on you and may they learn from you and may they be for you. A spokesperson to their family. Some restraints from their wives, the mother of their children. I pray that you would bring what only you can bring and that is a renewed hope, I pray that you would cause there to be healing, forgiveness, recovery, some today rejoice.

The children are healthy and alive and well. Wives love them and they know a joy in their home, like they never knew in their original home and we rejoice with those who rejoice, for all of us. I pray our father that we might be the man you would have us be. Today we recommit ourselves to that they would be the kind of fathers we long for in our lives in the kind of grandfathers that so many of us had maybe before our families living reminders of Christ in the flesh. That's a tall order and without you.

We couldn't do that. But with you. All things are possible to do that work in our hearts. Father I pray we lift our praise to you as we have already we declare all hail the power of Jesus name. All hail the name of Jesus as we give our gifts. All hail the name of Jesus. As we live our lives. May your name be exalted in this time of offering in the name of Jesus pray never once and now, let's continue Chuck Swindoll's message titled worship a commitment not a war part two.

War is raging and it's taking a terrible toll. It's not a war fought with the bombs and bullets send and laser guided missiles. It's much more subtle than that is not a war confined to any one area where opposing forces are in battle over a large landmass or body of water.

It's a war that began sometime back in the 1980s it intensified as the 1990s arrived seem to reach its zenith around the turn-of-the-century and whoever wasn't aware of it was out of touch with the church wasn't bloodshed. You understand, but there were casualties. No one was being killed, not literally, but there were many wounded more confused and some simply went missing in action, disillusioned, disrupted, displaced those who went missing in action decided that maybe churches and all that it was cracked up to be. If that's what it amounts to today so they drifted off.

Some of them to this day haven't returned the war was too severe for them, the more I'm referring to is a war over worship.

Isn't that amazing isn't it strange that the oxymoronic words would be placed together.

Worship wars never meant to be the aggressors to promote the war, have no sympathy for our patience with those who resisted some of you have been caught in the crossfire, and after getting weary of the fight in the place for you for years had once enjoyed worship you found yourself no longer able to understand that place of ministry, you determined you would find a church that wasn't divided by the war. The place that upholds worship as a commitment not is something to fight about, was back in 1998 God led me in a vision that he gave him a number of different weeks even months of time to meet with a body of people who didn't want to fight. Though some were veterans of it is still licking their wounds after written. They long for a place where there could be meaningful worship still relevant.

Interesting teaching important instruction all from the Bible but not yielding to the trend of our times, and you found your place at Stone Breyer Community Church going to speak plainly here and I'm not going to concern myself with anyone else's opinion at this point it's been my observation as I study the war that much of it is fueled by man centered schemes and flesh driven promotion secular methods are now use to market the church of all things, and the emphasis it has turned from sound Orthodox theology to a feel-good philosophy for the great goal is to offend no one, certainly no one off the street or after all. They may lose interest and never come back so we must adapt and adjust our whole frame of thinking too appealing to them, for they are after all seekers to stand firmly in favor of the war kick historical tradition in the teeth and they label long-standing principles that can be found in the Scriptures as woefully irrelevant, out of date, and if you still embrace them. You are known to them as a dinosaur. Everything seems to be determined in those churches as an appeal to the felt needs of casual observer, so that whatever you do. Keep up the entertainment.

I had a friend tell me following one of our boarding worship services that in the church he once attended. He finally decided he couldn't continue because for several Sundays. The pastor repelled from the ceiling down the wall of the church and showed up almost as a sideshow tech and I realized he said it's a game of one upmanship were depth is not of concern only the superficial in-depth instruction, solid biblical exposition from the Scriptures. There's no place for it. Now there are little 6 to 8 minute sermon that's which in my opinion are for Christian nets. As a result, you grow about that deeply about 2 inches deep and about 12 miles wide.

I remember talking with pastors who are enamored of that and by the way summer seeing the light. One of the better known of the churches that promoted this have rather recently that people those people. He recently said we were wrong we were wrong we thought what we were doing in Woodinville people into worshipers and we realized it was not happening and we need to return to the teaching of the Scripture. So praise God for that. I thought of this at 9 o'clock last night as I was redoing my entire introduction that happens to preachers on occasion.

I thought if it were possible for the great preachers and the gifted composers and the strong teachers of theology of the 18th and 19th and early part of the 20th century to return to the earth today had to visit most churches they would find themselves somewhere between personally embarrassed and absolutely sure they would say to themselves if they stayed through the whole service that was worship. Please do not get the false impression that we are the only ones left like Elijah felt when he was sitting under the juniper tree that's not true, but our rights are thinner, our numbers are smaller you in a very unique house of worship, you know that don't you.

You deliberately drive by some of you dozens of others to come to this little place where you have found freedom from the war in the presence of serious biblical exposition because you want your children taught you want your teenagers instructed encouraged and deepened.

Now I'm not saying that our goal is to is to bore people with hours and hours of nothing but dry theological information. As I've said for most of my ministry if I'm boring you please leave and I mean that the worst sin I can commit in public is to bore people with the gospel, but I have said to these men who believed in these eight minute sermon that's I said you know Stone Breyer people will sit for 40 minutes sometime 45 minutes something or thinking 50 minutes sometime. I'm not saying you're awake but I'm saying they're there and they seem to be listening so how can you do that today. I said why would you not do that today and then I sat and watched an interview on television recently just as many of you did. I was quiet as I listen to this very sincere young preacher telling the interviewer's philosophy of ministry.

If you could call it that, where thousands are coming. Thousands are coming and I had three words when it was all over that is heresy. He doesn't mean it to be heresy course not but it is no need to carry a Bible is all on the screen.

How you know it's all on the screen and you don't need him because that's dinosaur talk and you certainly don't need a pipe organ that went out with both.

What an ignorant statement to make. Don't ever make that statement in public.

I often ask these fellows. Why don't you wanted to look like a church. Well, people turned off of the church is of course they are wrong, church. But does it have to become a theater, you have to get rid of the pulpit and sell the instruments and and wind up with nothing but a few ditties that worship I'm not making this up, folks take a trip with our interns virtually every year and on one of those journeys. We visited churches all of which were pastored by Dallas seminary graduates on my dad, all of which are engaged in worship wars. Some of them the told has been taken and their seats are filled with just the young.

So I ask if you just sort of straight questions and I didn't do it to be ugly but sure what would your demographics here. Well, we don't have many old people. I said what's old is it well I guess would say 40 and over summary of so I said what in it and you would've thought he had never been this question, it moments where will they live where were under no somebody was a pastor is that the church is in it for the body you want to church all old folks, but you want church of the noble folks. I want my life absent from old folks.

I want my life absent from younger folks do you you could talk. He put his arm around me as we were leaving and he said to thank you for asking some hard questions us and you know but called his name, trying to be ugly or cantankerous. I got a few years on you man, don't keep going here you can regret and your people are going to grow. Can you find any place in the Scriptures to justify what you're doing.

He said no and why on earth are you doing my desire in addressing the subject of worship certainly included messages like this in my plan.

I think it's time that we announce openly and without reluctance that some Breyer community church is a church for our times, but it is not a church caught up in the trends nor by the grace of God. Will we ever be.

It is a church. I hope it will be marked by balance always been our goal from the start. I even attempt to balance Old Testament and New Testament in my instruction. I hope to balance doctrine with practical application in my messages, but it will always be from the Bible and it will never be to show off, or to call attention to me or for any musician to call attention to herself or himself. We do not play and sing a pre-for any man's glory. It is all for the glory of our God. It's a part of our philosophy of worship and worship has to do with the magnification of our great God, which means I'm not important in the process. I'm not significant in the act. I bow before him who is supreme and I acknowledge in the bowing that I am not, nor is my way, important, nor are my words more valuable than anyone else's words, my words take on significance only when they are filtered through the inerrant text of the holy Scripture. Worship is a declaration of his supreme Majesty worship is losing ourselves in wonder and love and praise. As Wesley once puts it once put it is been so preoccupied with our God that nothing on this earth contains a significant place in our thinking, our trials become reduce the discoveries of life become exciting and the changes that God brings without explaining his reasons only hold us to him closer and we discover there is a dimension of life that is supernatural and unseen, and the invisibility of it adds to the invincibility of and we sit in his magnificent presence from one week to the next and from one class to the next thanking him for his precious word that lives and abides forever and will never be irrelevant and doesn't need a preacher to make it relevant.

The job of the preacher is to show you how relevant is much more that Chuck Swindoll wants to say about today's topic.

Please stay with us for the remainder of the week. You're listening to Insight for living and this is message number five in Schuck's nine part series called the church awakening to learn more about Chuck Swindoll in this ministry. Visit us online@insideworld.org in addition to hearing these programs. Remember that every single sermon in this series is paired with an interactive study tool that Chuck calls searching the Scriptures. It's interactive because you can jot down your personal notes online or print out the PDF for safekeeping is designed to help you truly engage with the Bible and its application. Take a look and discover how to learn more about the church awakening by going to Insight.org/studies in recent days, most of us have heard the desperate cries that are prevalent in Ukraine and surrounding regions will be encouraged to hear that our regional offices in Poland and Romania have worked tirelessly to care for the needs of the refugees that are pouring into their cities, our office in the United States, along with our other international offices are allocating funds as able to our Polish and Romanian on this is to help ease what physical suffering we can and to help offer spiritual comfort in the love and power of Christ in these ministries are made possible when you give a much appreciated donation to Insight for living it's all under the umbrella of vision 195. Our mission to make disciples in all 195 countries of the world to give a gift today. Call us if you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888 or get online@insight.org/I bill my inviting you to join us again tomorrow when Chuck Swindoll describes how to de-escalate the worship wars on insight for living. The preceding message worship, a commitment not a war part two was copyrighted in 2008 2010 and 2022 and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2022 by Charles R.

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