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Part 3 of 7
ALTARations: A Series on Worship as a Spiritual Discipline
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I want to start with a statement that will shape the way we see relationships and consequently the way we see worship. The Achilles heel for many relationships is the absence of awareness that relationships require more than romance. Relationships require responsibility.
Grand gestures and romantic rendezvous on anniversaries, birthdays, and Valentine's Day will not overcome the adverse impact of being irresponsible on the other days. Irresponsibility is a liability in relationships because relationships require operating with a degree of consciousness and consideration of how your actions—or lack thereof—impact someone other than you.
This is rooted in a crucial revelation: love is not just a feeling. Love is a function. This is what John makes clear in John 3:16 when he says, "For God so loved the world that he what? Gave." Love does more than feel. Love functions. Love is about more than romance; love is about responsibility.
Part of the responsibility required in relationships is to investigate and intentionally execute on what Dr. Gary Chapman calls our partners' love languages. Dr. Chapman argues that love languages are not mere preferences—they are the primary way an individual receives, interprets, and feels genuinely loved. It is an emotional dialect. It's the language of the soul. It's not just what I want; it's what I need the way that I need it.
Chapman identifies five primary love languages:
As I explored these love languages in the context of worship, I discovered something extremely important yet often overlooked: these love languages not only apply to our relationships with people. They also apply to our relationship with God.
What Chapman said people need is what the scriptures say God wants:
Here's something crucial that the enemy doesn't want you to understand: you are an asset. This is not arrogance; this is awareness.
You can't have humility without awareness. Some people call others "Christian humble" when they're actually naive. True humility is being aware of what God's given you while not forgetting that he's the one who gave it to you. Arrogance comes when you forget who gave it to you.
God has put inside everybody three things:
When you hit your sweet spot in life—when there's a convergence of all three of those things, where you're using your natural ability, your acquired skill, and your spiritual gift—that's called a threat to the devil. That's called a spiritual weapon of mass destruction. That's called an asset to the kingdom of God.
God is saying, "I gave you all of those. I'm not asking for all of it. I'm asking for the first right of refusal. You've got natural ability. You've got acquired skill. You've got spiritual gift. Before you start using it on everything else, come to me—because I'm the one that gave it to you. And I need you to ask me why I gave it to you."
But then there's the fifth love language. God wants physical touch. Now, God is a spirit—how can you touch him physically? You can't. When I say physical touch, I mean worship.
Physical touch in part is a reflection or an expression of what you do with your hands. When it comes to worship, God is asking: Where them hands at? That's God's love language.
The text in Mark 3 is an incredible example of what I'm attempting to articulate. Jesus enters the synagogue, and there's a man there with a withered hand. The word "withered" doesn't mean deformed or decaying. It means the hand is no longer functional or as mobile as it used to be. The condition is ongoing—it is withering away.
He's in church, and something is withering away. He's singing songs, and something is withering away. He's hearing teaching from the Torah each week, and something is withering away. Because it is possible to be in a church environment and still have a culture of coping—where church becomes your anointed anesthesiologist. You come to get put to sleep, but then you wake back up to the same pain and predicament. That's coping, not transformation.
But then Jesus comes to the synagogue. When Jesus comes to church, you go from a culture of coping to a culture of change. Jesus doesn't just sit and watch us wither away. Jesus says, "I don't care how long this has been happening. I want to do something about it."
But something interesting happens in the text. The Pharisees—whom I call self-appointed church police—are watching this man. They're not obsessed with helping him; they're obsessed with picking a fight. They're watching a man who has probably been in the synagogue regularly, withering away, and they're arguing about the Sabbath while people are withering in their midst.
In those days, if your hands didn't work, you probably couldn't work. This man's economic viability is probably impacted. We don't know how he's impacted emotionally or spiritually. But the people in the synagogue would rather fight about the Sabbath.
Jesus asked them: "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save a life or to kill?" But they were silent. And Jesus looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart.
Here's the crucial point: Jesus wasn't grieved because they were incorrect. He was grieved because they were uncorrectable. All of us are going to be incorrect at some point. The question is: when Jesus confronts us with truth, will we be correctable?
The kingdom requires something called repentance—metamorphosis, a change of mind that leads to a change of direction. Jesus needs you to be willing to make U-turns once he reveals to you that you're going in the wrong direction. And if you'll make a U-turn, he'll turn your life around.
Jesus was challenging the way they historically understood the principle of the Sabbath. What he had to do for them is what he has to do for so many of us who are reared and shaped in a church environment: show you places where you have confused your historic interpretation of what something means with what it actually means.
For generations, they understood rest on the Sabbath to mean you can do nothing on the Sabbath—even good. That was their historic interpretation. Jesus had to help them see that there's a difference between what the Bible says and what you think it means. What the Bible says is doctrine. What you think it means might be dogma. And they are not the same thing.
Jesus said, "Man was not made for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for man." You're prioritizing the wrong thing. You're putting the Sabbath over people when the reason the Sabbath exists is for people.
Whenever you're interpreting or applying Scripture in a way where you feel you've got to put something over people, remember: God doesn't change his truth for people, but the truth exists to serve God's people.
The Sabbath reveals a pattern—a picture of the way you've been created to work. You've been created with a work-rest rhythm. God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh day—not because he was tired, but because he's a teacher. He's teaching you how to rest not as a response to fatigue, but as a response to accomplishment. To look at what you've done in the six days and say, "It's good. I'm not satisfied, but it's good. I'm grateful for what's been accomplished."
Jesus said to the man with the withered hand, "Come here." He didn't say, "Come here and I'll heal you." He didn't say, "Come here and I'll set you free." He didn't say, "Come here and I'm going to restore your hand." He just said, "Come here."
Because this wasn't a call to a promise—this was a call to proximity. Sometimes God addresses your problems by calling you to closer proximity. You say, "Fix this." He says, "Come here." You say, "Heal that." He says, "Come here." You say, "Turn this around." He says, "Come here."
Some problems are only addressed when you get in closer proximity to him. And he'll use some problems to fix the problem of distance. If he's telling you to come here, you need to get ready, because there's something that's withering that's about to be restored.
Jesus, as a Hebrew, understood all the different instructions they had received regarding what God wanted them to do with their hands—lifting their hands, extending their hands. One that is often overlooked is found in Psalm 47:1, where the writer says, "Clap your hands."
I needed to know what was the Hebrew word and how Hebrews understood it. The Hebrew word for clap meant to strike with purpose. It is the same word used to hammer a nail into a wall or drive a stake into the ground. It is intentional—you're trying to solidify something.
Clapping of the hands is what's called embodied theology. Clapping forces the body to participate in what the spirit is declaring. It says: my whole being agrees with and anticipates your goodness. It's an act of celebration for what God has done, appreciation for what God is doing, and anticipation of what he's getting ready to do.
It's not passive appreciation, but active participation in calling forth God's continued intervention. Each clap is saying, "You did it before. Do it again. You did it before. Do it again."
When we hear clapping, we hear noise. But when heaven hears clapping, heaven hears, 'They want me to do it again.'
Jesus said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
This man had an alteration because he was obedient to what Jesus said to do with his hand. If he wouldn't have stretched out his hand, he could have potentially missed an alteration. There are many of us who are underestimating how God responds when you do what God says do with your hands.
There's somebody here whose story is similar to the prodigal son in Luke 15. You need God to do something again because of what you mismanaged when he did it before.
The prodigal son squandered what the father originally gave him, and he felt hopeless—such despair that he said, "I'm going to just go back and make myself like one of my father's hired servants." He had his whole speech together. But before he could get it out, the father said, "Go get me a robe. Go get me a ring, because I got a robe that fits and a ring that fits and shoes that fit. Because I got enough to do it again."
God can do it again. Some of you have squandered seasons, squandered wealth, squandered opportunity. But you're serving the God who can do it again. And when he does it this time, may your testimony be: "I'm wiser now. I'm stronger now. I'm grounded enough. I'm strong enough. I'm holy enough. I'm focused enough. I'm ready now."
But there's also someone here who needs him to do something for you the first time. You need him to save you. I'm not talking about making you religious. I'm not talking about making you like him. I'm talking about surrendering your life to his leadership, because he can't save a life he doesn't lead. It's Lord and Savior, not Lord or Savior.
If you're here today and you're tired of trying to do this without him, I hope this blessed you. I hope it challenged you. And I hope you will never clap your hands again the same way—grateful for all that God is doing.
