Ij

How to Worship God, Part 2 "Thy Kingdom Come in Worship"

by The Rev. Clancy Nixon

April 30, 2006

Church of the Holy Spirit

Ashburn, Virginia

www.holyspiritanglican.org

We want our worship of God here on earth to resemble as much as possible the

worship of God in Heaven. That's why we pray, "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done

on earth as it is in heaven." That is why in Psalm 98, verse 4, God commands those on

earth to shout for joy and make music, because that is what is happening in heaven. The

Bible is clear that there is a fully functioning Church in heaven which has been

continuously worshiping our King in spirit and in truth for 2,000 years. When we

worship in spirit and truth, we join not only with the true Church all over the earth and

throughout history, we also join right now with the worship going on in Heaven. This is

one way we participate in bringing the Kingdom of Heaven here to earth. When you

usher in the King in worship, you also usher in his Kingdom. The skies rip open and we

experience the Victory of Heaven. Heaven comes down to us, the Kingdom comes

among us and we borrow from the end times victory of God over every problem. When

we worship the King of Heaven by proclaiming his rule and reign, then that rule and

reign explodes in our midst. In Heaven there is no sorrow or sickness! We become a

community that expects miracles.

This week, Ginger and I attended a conference in Harrisburg, and God met us in a

powerful way there. Randy Clark, Bill Johnson and Mahesh Chavda taught at the

Healing Fusion Conference. God overwhelmed me with a series of personal encounters

with Him and gave me several visions of Heaven. When you are deep in worship to God,

if you seek God and ask him, he just might show you things. God often communicates

things to me in moving pictures, what I understand to be visions. He uses my

imagination, my mind's eye, to impress on me truths about him, and to increase my faith.

I saw a picture of Heaven with God on this throne that I'll try to describe to you. It was

unimaginably huge, but the closest analogue to describe it is a crowd at the Lincoln

Memorial with no roof and about one thousand times bigger. I was given a view of the

scene from the top, very close to God. Billions of people are before the throne of God, in

a landscape that stretches off impossibly far, all covered with people worshiping God,

adoring him on the throne. The landscape is like the kind I see in renaissance paintings,

where the perspective is shortened and you can see way too far away. Angels fly about

the crowd, as they sing and make a joyful noise to the Lord. Friends, because I saw this

vision, Heaven is in my heart in a new and very real way. This is possible only through

an encounter with God. When we worship down here, we join the hosts of heaven up

there.

On Friday evening, in a room of about one thousand people, half of us laid hands

on and prayed for each other for physical healing, and over 25%, about 140 of the 500

prayed for, reported demonstrable, complete miraculous healing in response to about two

minutes of prayer. One woman with cerebral palsy was able to jump up and down for the

first time in her life! We experienced the victory of Heaven, where the impossible

became normal. Friends, God is moving on this 100th anniversary of the Azusa street

revival in Los Angeles.

The psalmist who wrote Psalm 98 experienced similar breakthrough. Open your

Bibles with me to Psalm 98, found on pages 592 and 593 of your blue pew Bibles. The

Book of Psalms was the songbook of Temple worship for the people of God. If you want

to know how to worship God, the Psalms are a great place to start. We don't know who

wrote this Psalm, nor do we know the precise occasion for its writing. We do know that

this is a song of joy following a victory in battle. Let's look at it closely.

The first thing we notice is that we are to Celebrate God's deliverance with

singing! Say that with me: "Celebrate God's deliverance with singing!" In verse 1, we

are commanded to sing new songs to the Lord. Singing new songs is not something we

do here at CHS because we get tired of the old songs we love the old hymns here! We

don't sing new songs with reluctance because we are commanded to do so. We sing new

songs is because it is a joy to sing new songs. We think of the old hymns as quite

traditional, but in their day hymns were very controversial and cutting edge. Before the

first Great Awakening in the 1700's, the sung worship of the church in England was

limited to the Psalter. The conservative position at the time was that singing "the words

of men" rather than the words of God was sacrilege. They did not pay attention to Psalm

98, verse 1! Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley did; they were the first great hymn writers

in the English language.

Why do we sing in worship to God? "For he has done marvelous things. His right

hand and holy arm have worked salvation." This is a reference to various battles of the

Israelite armies in holy war to possess the land promised to their tribes by God through

Abraham. We sing because our God is a warrior, and he is mighty in battle. Notice that

the psalmist says that it is God who has won salvation with his hand, not the armies of

David. Notice what motivates God: verse 3 his love and faithfulness to his people. Yet

it is clear that these saving events are not for Israel alone but are to be a witness to the

nations, to the ends of the earth.

Do you see the parallel to our worship, you Easter people? We sing to God out of

thankfulness because he has purchased this great salvation for us through his defeat of the

devil, through his overcoming of sin and death on the Cross. God did this, and not we

ourselves, since we cannot earn our salvation. God did it out of his love and faithfulness,

not for us only, but that every knee should bow, and every tongue confess, that Jesus is

Lord.

Our new song includes shouts of joy, verse 4. This is a command. We don't just

do this whenever we feel like it, but there are times to shout to the Lord, there must be, or

we miss the exuberant worship of heaven! When I go to my son's basketball game, and

my boy scores a basket after making a steal, I find it the most natural thing in the world to

shout with glee wouldn't you? When you go to your children's soccer games, and you

are told to be quiet, isn't that difficult? What is it about kid's soccer here, that it is like

golf or tennis, you have to be quiet? I've noticed that the popular sports in America are

the ones you can yell at football, basketball, baseball. In England, they sing songs for

their soccer teams. I'm not saying that when you come to church you need to give each

other high fives, but worship ought to be a time of anticipation and expectation. All week

long, God has been kicking amazing goals in our lives, busting the nets, making steals

from the enemy on our behalf. Worship is a time to celebrate what God has done for

us. Are we as excited with what our God has done for us as we are with spectator

sports? If we worship God with all our heart, there will be times when we can shout with

joy! Amen?

I have some good news for you. I got a call from Buddy Tolleson yesterday, and

he says that it looks like his client the Silver Company is going to purchase and develop

that big piece at Rt. 7 and Battlefield in east Leesburg, and give us for free a piece big

enough to build a church building on. Now this is not yet a done deal, so please keep

praying. But friends, God is at work on our behalf to give us a permanent home in his

way. For our On This Rock campaign, so far we have received pledges for $454,000 over

a three year period, and we already received over $60,000 cash on Firstfruits Sunday. I

believe that there is much more to come as our location and plan becomes more solid. I

believe that these breakthroughs in the natural are a result of earlier breakthroughs in the

spiritual: our new spiritual covering, and your sacrificial faith. When I heard the latest

news about the land, I was in the parking lot of a church in Harrisburg yesterday, and I

shouted for joy! You can go ahead and do that now!

Joy must be a high value in heaven, since Jesus endured the cross for it. The

Letter to the Hebrews says, "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 This is a verse about

worship! When we see God face to face, our fervent hope is that he will say to us, "Well

done, good and faithful servant, enter into [what? -hand to ear] the joy of your master."

Matthew 25:23 Heaven will be a joyous place. If we enter into heavenly worship here,

our worship will be joyful, too.

You may say, Clancy, how can I be joyful in worship when I'm facing some

desperate circumstance? Listen: Here is how. Remember, worship is not about you.

Finally, it's not for you, either. It's for God. We are commanded to give thanks, to enter

into the joy of our Lord. That is one of the things it means to be a King's Kid. When we

sin and mess up our lives, or when the devil takes away our health, the good news is that

God does not go off and leave us he enters into our trouble and saves us. That is what

resulted in the writing of Psalm 98. Augustine of Hippo wrote that "a Christian should be

an alleluia from head to foot." That is because of who God is and who we are in him.

The healthy response to that reality is to praise and thank God. That does not mean that

we have to feel like worshiping in order to praise Him sincerely. Often, we don't feel like

doing things that, as the old Prayer Book said, are "meet and right so to do." That does

not make us less authentic or less honest; that makes us more faithful. Worship is an act

we do for God, not a feeling we have for ourselves. Faithful intimacy with anyone, God

included, comes from regular proximity more than it does from occasional goose bumps.

Set your problems aside as you praise God. There will be time to ask him for help with

the problems. The minister of music Terry Law found that praise was the only thing that

brought him out of the deep depression he experienced when his beloved wife died

young. As your praise reminds you how good God is, how powerful He is, your faith will

rise that God will deliver you as he delivered the Israelites. And you will receive joy.

(Some ideas in this paragraph come from Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the

Same Direction)

In verse 4-6, we are to make music, to burst into jubilant song, and to use all kinds

of instruments to do it. Say "burst into jubilant song." One great thing about music is that

you can lose yourself in it. God becomes all in all as you focus on him, on the words in

the song you sing. Notice that it says you are to actually sing! That means that there is a

volume discernable to others when you do that. On Sundays, we do this thing called

"congregational singing." One thing that means is that you make the volume of your

voice match the volume of others who are also singing no more, no less. That way,

your voice blends in. For most of you, especially you men, that means you are called to

sing louder than you do now. If you are alone at home, you can just turn on some praise

music, a little David Crowder or Thomas Tallis or whatever style works for you, and soak

in God's presence. When you soak Monday through Saturday, or however you have your

quiet time, if you do it faithfully, it is much easier to encounter God in Sunday worship.

You can encounter God all on your own, but it more typically happens when the

congregation gathers.

Notice the crescendo of Psalm 98 the whole creation joins in worship of God

the rivers clap their hands say "the rivers clap their hands" and the mountains sing for

joy. This anticipates the end times, verse 9 and 10, when Jesus comes again to judge the

earth, once more, bringing Heaven to earth. It reminds me of Romans 8, where there is an

awful lot of groaning going on. Look at Romans 8:22 and following, on page 1119. Who

is groaning? In verse 22, the whole creation has been groaning, waiting for the sons of

God to be redeemed; in verse 23, we ourselves groan, waiting for the same thing; and in

verse 26, the Spirit groans, and intercedes for us in our weakness. The conclusion, verses

37-39, is that we are more than conquerors through him who loved us, and nothing will

be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ when He is our Lord.

The Kingdom of Heaven is open to us. Every week in worship, heaven comes a

little closer as we gather. Have you noticed it? Bill Johnson said, "The measure of the

breakthrough around you is the measure of breakthrough in you." I would add, the

measure of the breakthrough around us is the measure of breakthrough in us. Heaven is

here! Let's pray before we move into worship in song.

Father in Heaven, bring heavenly worship here to earth. Open the floodgates of

Heaven, and let it rain on us. Bring us to a place of divine encounter with you. Loose

your joy among us, O God.