More Than A Song, Part 2
Series: More Than A Song
Sermon: An Invitation To Worship
🗣️ Speaker: Pastor Tom Van Kempen
In this week's message, Pastor Tom dives into the true meaning of worship beyond just singing. He emphasizes that worship involves a range of expressions, symbolized by seven Hebrew words for praise, each with different meanings. Using a toolbox analogy, he shows that just as a toolbox requires various tools to build something, our worship needs different forms, like singing, playing instruments, or even raising hands. Pastor Tom reminds us that these expressions come from the heart and help us connect deeper with God. He concludes by encouraging us to embrace every form of worship as a celebration of God's greatness.
Additional Info
The info below was generated by an AI from the audio recording of the sermon.
Introduction to Worship
Worship encompasses much more than mere songs or melodies. It involves a range of expressions and actions that resonate with the heart of God. The biblical concept of worship is often tied to the act of praise, which can be understood more deeply through various Hebrew words that describe different ways to worship.
Understanding Praise in the Old Testament
In the Old Testament, the word "praise" appears frequently, but it is not limited to one meaning. There are actually seven distinct Hebrew words for praise, each carrying its own unique meaning and connotation. For instance, "tehila" refers to a song or psalm that should be sung, while "halal," the root of "hallelujah," implies a loud, boisterous praise that can sometimes seem foolish. Understanding these varying expressions can enrich our worship experience.
The Toolbox of Worship
To illustrate the concept of praise, consider two toolboxes. One is filled only with hammers, while the other contains a variety of tools. If we only use one type of tool, like the hammer, we limit ourselves and our effectiveness just as we would in worship if we restricted ourselves to a singular form of praise. Each word for praise can be seen as a different tool in our spiritual toolbox.
Different Expressions of Worship
The Bible provides numerous forms of worship expressions involving our hands and physical actions.
Humble Hands
This involves confessing our sins and surrendering ourselves to God. Raising your hands can symbolize submission and openness to God's guidance and forgiveness.Honoring Hands
These hands are extended towards God in reverence and respect. Just as one would show deference to a royal figure, our worship towards God should be reflective of His majesty and greatness.Heavy Hands
The weight of our worship can be daunting, particularly when it feels sacrificial. However, engaging in worship during difficult times can lead to significant breakthroughs and blessings.Happy Hands
Joy in worship is essential! Raising hands in celebration acknowledges God’s greatness and goodness in our lives.
Biblical Foundations of Handraising in Worship
Scripture repeatedly encourages the posture of raising hands in worship. Psalm 63:3-4 speaks of lifting hands as a natural response to God's goodness. Similarly, Psalm 47:1 calls for clapping as a sign of joy and celebration. Each gesture during worship can serve as a heartfelt expression of gratitude and reverence towards God.
Implementing Praise into Life
As we move forward, consider how to integrate these expressions of worship into daily life. Whether in church or while alone, the act of raising hands or encouraging gestures can enhance worship experiences.
Holding hands with loved ones or friends can symbolize unity and support.
Clapping as an acknowledgment of God's work can be done during any moment of joy, recognizing His presence in our lives.
Engaging in acts of service, charity, or kindness can also be considered an extension of worship, showing love for others as a reflection of God’s love.
Conclusion: More Than a Song
Worship is much more than just singing songs; it involves our entire being—mind, body, and spirit. Each motion, each gesture with our hands can tell a story of our relationship with God and our community. As followers of Christ, embracing various forms of worship deepens our connection to Him and enhances our spiritual journey.
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Tehilah
Meaning: A song or psalm; something that needs to be sung.Halal
Meaning: The root word for "hallelujah"; to shine, to brighten, to boast in God, even to the point of appearing foolish.Shabbak
Meaning: To shout; a vocal expression of praise.Zamar
Meaning: To play a musical instrument; worship through music.Barak
Meaning: To kneel; a physical act of reverence in worship.Todah
Meaning: The sacrifice of praise or Thanksgiving; a way of expressing gratitude to God.Yada
Meaning: To extend hands in worship; signifies surrender and opening oneself to God.
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Use the questions listed below as a launching point to discuss the sermon points together as a family. These are great for dinner table discussions and small groups.
Opening Reflection: What are some ways you have expressed worship to God in the past?
Seven Words for Praise (See dropdown): Pastor Tom talked about different Hebrew words for praise. Which one resonates most with you and why?
Toolbox Analogy: How does the idea of a toolbox full of different tools change your perspective on expressing worship?
Personal Worship: How might you incorporate different forms of worship into your daily life beyond Sunday services?
Barriers to Worship: What are some obstacles that keep you from fully engaging in worship? How can this group support you in overcoming them?
Community Worship: Discuss how we can encourage each other to explore different expressions of worship as a community.
Prayer Time: Spend time praying together, inviting God to help each person grow in their worship experience.
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this sermon, Pastor Tom referred to various Hebrew words for praise, drawing from the Old Testament. Let’s explore these words in their historical context.
Tehila: Commonly found in the Psalms, 'Tehila' refers to praise in the form of song. The Psalms themselves were a significant part of Hebrew worship and liturgy, often sung during temple services.
Halal: The root of the word 'Hallelujah', 'Halal' signifies exuberant praise, akin to celebrating God's greatness. This form of worship reflects the joy and reverence shown during Jewish festivals like Passover and Sukkot.
Zamar: Referring to making music, often with instruments, 'Zamar' aligns with practices of the Levites in the temple. They were responsible for musical worship, using a variety of instruments as described in multiple Psalms.
Shabbak and Other Terms: 'Shabbak' meaning to shout and 'Yada' meaning to use hands were expressions found in personal and communal worship settings, highlighting the physical and vibrant nature of ancient Hebrew worship.
During the times these scriptures were written, worship was integrally tied to societal customs. Large gatherings around the Temple in Jerusalem often included these varied expressions of worship, reinforcing community belonging and devotion to God. Worship was meant to be a holistic experience engaging the mind, body, and spirit.
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Introduction
Hey kids! Today, we're going to learn about how we can worship God not just with our voices, but also with our hands. Worshiping means showing our love and respect for God, and there are many ways to do that! We will explore how different actions with our hands can express our praise to God.
Scripture
Let's read Psalm 63:4:
"I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands."
This verse reminds us that when we lift our hands to God, we are praising Him and showing Him how much we love Him.Craft
Handprint Praise Art
Materials Needed:
Large sheets of paper
Washable paints (various colors)
Paintbrushes or sponges
Markers
Aprons or old shirts to protect clothes
Instructions:
Put on your aprons and gather around the painting table.
Choose a color of paint and use a paintbrush or sponge to cover the palm of your hand with paint.
Press your painted hand onto the paper to create a handprint.
Repeat this with different colors of paint on the same paper to fill it with colorful handprints.
After drying, use markers to decorate around your handprints. You can write things like "I love God!" or “Praise the Lord!”
Display your beautiful art in a place where your family can see it and remember how to worship God with your hands!
Game
Hand Heart Relay
Instructions:
Divide the kids into two teams.
Place a small heart cutout or a piece of paper with the word "Praise" written on it at the other end of the play area.
One at a time, each child from a team runs to the heart, touches it using only their hands, and runs back to tag the next teammate.
The first team to have all members complete the relay wins!
After the game, take a moment to discuss how we can use our hands to show love and praise!
Discussion Questions
What are some ways we can use our hands to worship?
How does it feel to raise your hands in praise to God?
Why is it important to show our love to God not just with our voices, but also with our actions?
Can you think of a time when you felt really happy about something God has done? How did you express that feeling?
Wrap Up with Prayer
Let's all gather together and bow our heads for prayer.
Dear God,
Thank you for giving us hands to worship You. Help us remember that worship is not just about singing, but also about using our hands to show love and respect for You. May we lift our hands in praise and celebrate all the wonderful things You do for us. We love You! In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.Thank you all for being here today! Let’s go out and worship God with our hands and hearts!
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Could I get everyone just to raise their hands for a second?
Did you know that's an act of worship right there, according to the scriptures? You can put your hands down. We are in week number two of a series that we've entitled More Than a Song. And last week we opened this series by trying to wrap our arms around this idea of worship. And what does it really mean?
And there is a word that is repeated over and over and over again, especially in the Old Testament. And. And it's the word praise. And one of the interesting things about the word praise is it's not exactly what we expect it to be. And so I was trying to figure out, how am I going to communicate this to the congregation this week?
And I came up with this idea of toolboxes. And you see two very well used toolboxes up here. And this one in here has a bunch of tools. And the one over to my right, your left, also has a bunch of tools. So I'm gonna open this up and I'm gonna start pulling things out.
So who can tell me what this is? That's a hammer. Yeah, that's right. How about this one right here?
It's a hammer. How about this one?
It's a hammer. Yeah, yeah. And one more. As a matter of fact, every single tool in this toolbox appears to be a hammer. So I'm going to go to this one over here and see what we've got in here.
And I'm going to open this one up. And who can tell me, what is this?
A flathead screwdriver. Yeah. And how about this right here?
Pipe wrench. Yeah. And this is a Phillips screwdriver for those of you in the back row. And let's see, what is that? A clamp?
Yeah. So in this toolbox, I have a number of different tools, you might say. Now let me ask you the question. Which toolbox will be more effective in building something? The second one.
This one here. Because everything is not a nail. If everything was a nail, all you would need were hammers in life. But we've got a lot of different situations. So when we're trying to build the worship house of The Lord.
We need various tools. But if you look in the Old Testament and you see the word praise over and over and over again, you might think that it implies just one thing. But did you know there are seven different Hebrew words for praise? This one here is the hammer, this one's the screwdriver, this one's the wrench. But if you don't know that in advance, you, you think that every one of these verses is saying exactly the same thing.
And they're not. Every unique word for praise has a little different connotation, which we all need to know and we need to understand. For example, this first one here, tehila, this is the word for song, this is the word for psalm. And so when it says at the beginning of a psalm, it says a psalm of David and it's a tehila of David. This is something that needs to be sung.
However, when you get to halal, halal is the root word for hallelujah, which means praise the Lord. This is probably the most dramatic of all the Hebrew words for praise. It means to shine, it means to brighten up, it means to even boast in God to such a degree that you appear foolish. How many of us are willing to look foolish on behalf of God? Remember the story of David when he went to go and get the ark and when he came back, his own wife mocked him because she thought he looked too foolish.
And David said, if I'm going to be foolish, I'm going to be foolish before God. Who can say amen? Then we've got the word Shabbak. This word means to shout. Zamar has the connotation of playing a musical instrument of some kind.
That means every time that someone is up on this platform, if their heart is right and they're playing the keys, they're playing a guitar, they're playing the drums, they're playing a trumpet. If their heart is in the right place, they are actually worshiping God on that musical instrument. In the Old Testament, there are examples of people actually prophesying on musical instruments. We hardly ever talk about that nowadays. Barak here means to kneel.
Todah means the sacrifice of praise or a thanksgiving of praise. And yada means extending your hands in worship. Y A D Yad is the Hebrew word for hand. So yada and totah both refer to this idea of worshiping God with your hands. Now listen, how many of you did not grow up in a church?
That was a hand raising church. Let me see.
And yet you're raising your hands right now, isn't it Interesting how our traditions oftentimes dictate how we worship God, but the Bible should dictate how we worship God. Who can say amen? Because the Bible says we're supposed to worship God in spirit and in truth. And the truth that we're referring to is the Bible. So the Bible tells us that there are a number of different ways that we can express this, that we call worship to God.
Now, the very first example of a word called praise in the Bible is all the way back in Genesis, chapter 29. And it's the word yada. This is the first word used, and it's used when Leah has her child and she names him Judah. Who can tell me what Judah means? Praise.
Exactly. It means praise. And so she says she's gonna yada God. And in honor of God, she's gonna name him Judah, which literally means praise. So Leah is the first one who has this idea of raising your hands in praise in the Bible.
This word's found 114 times in the Bible. It's found in the Psalms over 70 times. And one of my favorite verses is right here. On the surface, it appears simple. It just says, may the peoples praise you, God.
May all the peoples praise you. But let me show you something. This word yada is actually found four different times. It's the first word in the verse. It says, yada, people, yada go.
And then it says yada, all the people, yada. So here you have one scripture that uses this hand raising form of praise four different times. So today I want to help you with four different ideas, at least on how you can use your hands. Not necessarily even in church, just how can you use your hands in worshiping God? Number one, we worship God with humble hands.
Say humble, humble hands. Yada. One of the connotations is to confess sins. And confession always begins with, with humility. Yada, you might say, involves surrendering your life to God in some way, shape or form.
I think of the old westerns of when I was a kid, and I'm talking about a long time ago. Anybody remember Bonanza? How about the Ponderosa? That was before it was called Bonanza. It was the black and white versions.
And you remember Hoss, Little Joe and the entire Cartwright family. Well, I remember specific episodes where what would happen is some renegade would come through the city and he would either rob, you know, Hoss or Little Joe, or he'd rob the local bank. And then he'd take off and the sheriff would gather together a posse. Remember this? And they would chase after the Criminal.
They'd usually get them cornered in some boxes, canyon of some kind. And there'd be a shack at the end of the canyon that the criminal and maybe some of his gang would be holed up in, and they'd be shooting each other, and the posse would be shooting back, and there's all this shooting going on. And then all of a sudden, there'd be this lull, and the sheriff would yell out, we've got you surrounded. Come out with your.
Yeah, come out with your hands up. It's the universal signal of surrender. God wants you to surrender your sin to him who can say amen? This involves your shortcomings, your selfishness, your guilt. He wants you to surrender your entire life to him.
God lays claim to your life by virtue of creating you, making you. He's your owner. He wants you to surrender your family, your future, your career, your hopes, your dreams. He wants you to surrender all of it to him. But it takes us surrendering our pride in order to get this accomplished.
Number of. You raised your hands earlier and said that you're not from the tradition of raising hands. And I've actually had people tell me, pastor, I don't want to appear, you know, like those crazy charismatics. I don't want to appear real weird, you know. But I guarantee you something.
If a big spider was crawling along the ceiling and he fell into your lap, you'd automatically become a Pentecostal. In that moment, you would jump so fast, those hands would be flailing back and forth. You wouldn't care what anybody thought, because you'd want to get that spider off of your lap. Okay, we're serving the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. He deserves our praise.
Who can say Amen? And look at what God is offering. One of my favorite verses, Psalm 63, 3, 4. This is what it says, because your loving kindness is better than life. God's not just offering you this ambiguous eternal life that someday you get to experience.
He's offering you his mercy, his grace, his forgiveness. It's described as loving kindness right here. And he says it's actually better than life itself. Once you get a hold of this, you will never be hungry again. You'll never be thirsty again.
And the more you realize what it is, it's an awesome thing. And this is the response, I will lift up my hands in your name. It's just natural. Once you realize what it is that God is giving us, we're going to lift our hands in surrender. We're gonna lift our hands in submission.
There's a verse here that really grabbed my attention as I was studying this week. Psalm 119, 48. Listen to what it says. I will raise my hands to your commands. If you're not Familiar with Psalm 119, it's the longest chapter in all of the Bible, 176 verses.
It's actually an acrostic, which means that the first eight verses all begin with the A. The next eight verses all begin with a B. I mean, it is a beautiful, beautiful poem. And in the middle of it, he says that, I'm going to raise my hands in submission to your commandments. One of the best forms of worship is simply obedience.
Who can say, amen, just doing what it is that God asks us to do. Psalm 134, 2. You know what he asks you to do? Lift up your hands in the sanctuary and bless the Lord. When we overcome our insecurities and what we're going to look like and our embarrassment and say, I don't care any longer.
I'm just gonna raise a hand to you today. God that blesses his name, that gives him glory, that gives him honor. Now people will say, well, is it palms out or is it palms in? I don't think it matters. Okay, but in your mind you can think, well, if my palms are out, then I'm just reaching for God.
I want to find him. I want to discover him. I want to know him. I want to climb up to him. If it's palms this way, maybe you're just saying, lord, pour out your spirit upon me.
I'm willing to receive what it is you have for me today in this moment, I want everything that I can get from you, including your wisdom. I mean, it's a fool who doesn't submit to God's wisdom who can say, amen? I remember there used to be a day where when you were in class, if you wanted to get some information from the teacher, you would raise your hand. And sometimes that's why I'm raising my hand in church. I come to church some Sunday mornings with a bunch of chaos and confusion in my mind.
And I raise my hands in the hopes that God will guide me, in the hopes that he will lead me, in the hopes that he will direct my paths. And the scripture says he'll do it every single time. The second thing I want you to consider is we raise our hands when we're. We worship God when we have honoring hands. Yada means this is another connotation to revere or worship with an extended hand.
Yada is about showing proper respect to God. Psalm chapter 96, verse 4. For the Lord is great and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all gods. I'm reminded of my oldest son.
Twenty years ago, maybe a year or two longer than that, he joined the marines. And he was greatly affected by 9, 11 and wanted to make a difference and wanted to serve his country. So he went into the marines. And my son was not disciplined, let's just put it that way. He did not get good grades in school and he got passing grades.
But I always thought that he could do better. And I was really interested in discovering what would happen once he went into the marines because their boot camp was 13 weeks long. Some of the others were a little bit shorter than that. Seven, eight, nine weeks. His was 13 weeks.
So we never got to see him for the entire 13 weeks. It was like, what? We got a letter here and there, like two or three letters, but we never saw him. All of a sudden we got an invitation for his graduation and they did this kind of a parade, I guess, where they would march and they did different things and they'd play different instruments. But I was amazed at the discipline that my son had.
And during the course of the day before, he'd be walking down the sidewalk, he was saluting everybody. I mean, all of a sudden we have this, you know, this undisciplined, somewhat disrespectful 18 year old teenager. And now all of a sudden someone walks by and he's at attention and he's saluting. We take 20 more steps, he's at attention and he's saluting again. During the parade, he's saluting all of these different people.
And I'm looking at his mom like, how come he never saluted me like that? But you know what's funny? Funny is he got some leave time after that. He was so respectful to me. After he had been in the Marines for 13 weeks, I was like, man, I'm sending all my kids into the marines.
But he respected the rank of those above him. The scripture says that God is above all, that he's at the top of the, of the food chain there. We should respect his rank. We should respect his nobility and his royalty. Psalm 95:3 says, for the Lord is the great God and the great King above all gods.
This intrigued me because I'm not a big royal fan. And you know, my wife has always gotten into all of the pomp and the circumstance over there in green Great Britain. And she's always enjoyed like the Royal weddings and the different coronations and all of those different ceremonies that take place. And I'm just kind of like, ah. You know, it kind of bores me.
You know, I want one vote, one voice, you know, all of that kind of stuff. But it's interesting. I typed into AI this week. I typed in, what is the expected conduct in the royal court? And it gave me a couple of interesting things.
It said, first of all, the two key words are courtesy and respect. What I didn't know is courtesy actually comes from the idea of how you're supposed to act in a royal court. That's where the word comes from. So courtesy and respect are the attitudes that govern how you're supposed to act in front of royalty. And here.
Here are some things that it said. Real commonsensical things. Number one, don't be late.
Oops. You guys realize that when you come to church, you're coming to be with the king of the universe, right?
If we really understood that, would we ever be late? No, we'd be on time. We'd be early. Okay. We wouldn't have enough room in the lobby to keep, you know, because we'd be early.
It says upon meeting the royal, you have to bow. Scripture says the same thing. No talking unless talked to. I remember one time I'm preaching in Las Vegas. Robin can attest to this.
And a person sitting right about here in the front row and their phone goes off. That happens. You know, people sometimes accidentally leave their phones on, but they answer it and they're having a conversation. Now, I'm no king and I'm no royal, but I'm here to tell you that you should have more respect for a speaker than that. How much more respect should we have for God?
I mean, sometimes, you know, during praise and worship, we're thinking about everything except for him during the service. This should be time that we're focused on Him. We shouldn't turn our backs on him to answer the phone. Or the AI actually said, you should always bring a gift. Wow.
No needless movement. I think one of the mistakes that we make is we think that when we come to church that there's a show going on up here, but for our benefit. Do you understand that? The singers, the piano player, the guitar players, the drummers, the audience is an audience of one, and his name is Yahweh. You are not the audience in any way, shape or form.
You're actually a part of the choir. And we need to be careful with our attitudes during praise and worship because we're Supposed to be worshiping, worshiping him, not something that's going on up here on the platform. Just be careful, church, because Yona is about serving God with your entire life. Romans chapter 12, verse 1 says this. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice wholly acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
What's funny is another translation will say, good worship or reasonable worship. I went through about 30 different translations. Half of them said worship, half of them said service. So which is it? Is that talking about service or is it talking about worship?
And then it dawned on me. In the Jewish faith and in the early Christian faith, you could not separate what you did with your hands and your worship to God. They were equal, they were identical. They were one in the same service. If you were gonna worship God, you had to serve God.
If you're gonna serve God, that's worship to God. That's what it's trying to communicate. So I started thinking, how are some ways that we use our hands here in worship to God? One way is just to encourage people with a pat on the back or a thumbs up signal. I was sitting over here watching the baby dedication, and Thomas daughter was having fun.
Did you guys see that? But all I could do was smile. And I don't know if Thomas even looked at me. I was trying to give him the thumbs up that everything's okay, don't worry about it. You know that God's got this.
And I was trying to encourage, encouraged just with a simple gesture of a thumb up. Giving is serving with your hands when you give in the offering plate, when you give your tithes. Earlier this month, we had a first Wednesday event where we were focusing on praying. We were focusing on worshiping God in song. And then we had a giving focus.
At the end of that service, we raised over $6,000 for kids to go to camp. Who can say amen? I mean, that was a wonderful thing. We only had, I think we had less than 100 people here. I mean, we might have only had like 70 people here.
And we still raised over $6,000 to send kids to camp. Kids got saved, baptized in the Holy Spirit. Their lives were changed. Who can say amen? I mean, and so giving, you are a part of that.
The DIY guys, do it yourself guys come here every Wednesday morning and they worship God by building things, by fixing things. Every time one of you greeters shake someone's hand, every time you just shake that hand and hold it just for a moment, you're serving and worshiping God. When you pull out your Bibles and point to life giving scriptures and lead someone to Jesus Christ, you're worshiping God. We when you go into the community and serve or pick up kids for a walk, you're worshiping God. Who can say amen.
These are all great opportunities. Which leads me to number three. We worship God with heavy hands. Yada also means to shoot an arrow or to throw down. So the idea is fighting here.
The idea is spiritual warfare. You understand that when we praise God, we're summoning God. Amen. Psalm 22:3 says that God dwells in our worship. He inhabits our worship.
He makes his home in our worship. We summons God every time that we lift up a hand with a sincere heart. We summons God when we're praying for first Timothy 2:8 says, I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer. Lifting hands is the posture of prayer. It's the posture of worship.
It's the posture of peace because it says you lift up these hands without anger or disputing or fighting. I find it really hard to worship God and be mad at another human being. Have you ever found that it's really difficult when you sincerely worship God to be mad at anybody? And if you are, God will bring it up into your remembrances and you'll have to go and make it right. And that is a good, good thing.
Yada reminds us that worship is oftentimes sacrificial. So it's heavy hands, because boxers with heavy hands get the knockout punch, okay? But it's also heavy hands because sometimes worship feels heavy. Hebrews talks about the sacrifice of worship. The Psalms talks about the sacrifice of worship.
Worship oftentimes costs us something. Sometimes it's difficult, sometimes we don't feel like doing it. And my best times of reward and worship is when I worship, worship when I don't feel like it, when I don't even want to be here. Those are the Sundays I typically get the greatest blessing when I'm struggling in my own personal life and I persevere. Get to church, raise my hand, sing the songs.
Those are the times that I often get the greatest prayer. Psalm 141. The greatest blessing. I'm sorry. Psalm 141.
2. Accept my prayer. Prayer as incense offered to you and my upraised hands as an evening offering.
This is so interesting, but we gloss over this because we don't understand what's going on here. So in the Old Testament, there was a tabernacle. Remember the tabernacle that was made. And when it was finished, it says that God's glory filled that tent, that tabernacle. Then the temple was built.
And when Solomon completed the temple, he raised his hands, he prayed over the temple, and the glory fell again and it filled that place. You and I are described both corporately and individually as the Temple of God in the New Testament, which means that the glory, the anointing, can fall on us on a regular basis. Who can say, amen, this is a good thing. This is a good thing. But there's an interesting scripture in the New Testament that says that God is going to rebuild David's tent.
And when you look in the Old Testament, what you discover is that temporarily between the tabernacle and the temple, David erected just a temporary tent in Jerusalem. And, and the ark was there. And what's so fascinating about this is the glory of God rested on it, not behind a curtain, but behind human prayers and worshipers. Literally. The tent was surrounded 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with people who were praising and worshipping, worshiping God.
And they had the, the normal time. They had the eight to four group, then they had the, the four to midnight group, and then they had the midnight to 8am group. To me, that was a sacrifice of praise. That's where this scripture is written. Accept my prayer as incense offered to you and my upraised hands as an evening offering.
These were the evening worshipers. They were tired. They might have been out doing stuff all day long. And now here they are, burning the midnight oil on behalf of God. Here's some things that I recognize as we wrap up point number three.
First, worship magnifies God and minimizes our problems. Does that make sense? Worship, when you're looking at him, he gets bigger and bigger and the problems get smaller and smaller. I think specifically of Exodus, chapter 14. In communion, we already talked about them leaving Egypt.
Remember that they're leaving Egypt. But Pharaoh didn't let them go permanently. He made a decision. You know what? I made a mistake.
I'm going to chase those Israelites down. And so he got 6, 600 chariots, the scripture says, and his army together. And they start chasing the Israelites down. Now, on the surface, it looks like the Israelites are pinned between a rock and a hard place. It looks like the Red Sea, which is too deep for them to cross, and the army coming, there's nowhere for them to go.
And so they start complaining. They start saying, you know what this is? This is too hard. Moses, why'd you bring us out Here. We're all gonna die in the desert.
It would have been better for us to stay in Egypt. So Moses goes to God, and I'm fascinated by this. And the Lord says to Moses, why do you cry to me? What? Tell the children of Israel to go forward through the Red Sea.
Listen to what he says, but lift up your rod and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it. In other words, God had already spoken. He had already declared, I'm gonna deliver you out of Egypt and take you to the promised land. You don't need to be whining. You don't need to be crying.
I'm gonna solve every issue you confront. In Jesus name, who can say amen. And that's exactly what he did. In worship. We have an opportunity of becoming warriors on behalf of God, on behalf of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Nothing is impossible when we are men and women of worship. We need to raise our hands, often in confidence. The second thing is praise, literally is the knockout punch of prayer. Again, we're familiar with the story. It's the Amalekites just throwing three chapters later.
And three chapters later, Moses sends Joshua to go fight the Amalekites. And as he's praying with extended hands, they're winning. As he tires and lowers his hands, they begin to lose. He raises his hands and they start winning again. He lowers his hands and they begin to lose.
So he gets Aaron and Hur to join him and they push up his hands on until the victory is secured. Listen to me. Praise is the knockout punch of prayer. Who can say amen? We gotta trust, we gotta know, and we've gotta worship God finally with happy hands.
Yada means to give thanks. It means to praise. It means to celebrate. That's the final connotation here. Yada must be exceeding, expressed physically.
I said this in first service. Sometimes we get this idea that being spiritual means that we're, you know, somber faced and quiet and reserved. And there's a time for that, okay? But there's a time for shouting, there's a time for celebration. There's a time for fist pumping and victory and all of this kind of stuff.
And we need to understand when we go back to these words. Look at these words one more time. I think I got it right here.
There is a physical gesture associated with each of these. I mean, singing, shouting, dancing. Halal has dancing in it. Instruments, kneeling, sacrificing hands. If you look at the Hebrew words for rejoicing or joy or glee or any of those things, the same thing happens some of them are connected with these words.
But there are even other, more radicals like spinning for joy and dancing for joy in all of those things. What I'm trying to communicate is, is these things right here at the end of your arms, they're always saying something. Hands talk. In Hawaii, stories are told with the hands. In our deaf ministries, communication is with the hands.
But even hearing people use their hands to communicate. Most studies say that less than 10% of the message comes from through the vocal cords. Most of it is hand gestures, body language, all of these different things. Listen, listen. When someone's angry, they oftentimes clench their fists.
When they're worried, they wring their hands. Guilty people hide their hands. Desperate people throw up their hands. Hands speak volumes in praise and. And in worship.
So let me give you a couple of closing ideas on how you can use your hands during the worship service or even in the privacy of your own home. Number one is the wave offering.
This isn't used very often in churches nowadays. Okay, but listen to what it says in Psalm chapter 63, verses 2 through 4. This is in the message paraphrase. So here I am in the place of worship, eyes open, drinking in your strength and glory. In your generous love.
I'm really living at last. My lips brim, praises like fountains. I bless you every time I take a breath, and my arms wave like banners to praise you. You know what came to my mind? You drive by a car dealership, and they've got those things, things that do this, that.
That's what went through my mind as I'm reading this. And I'm like, wow, that would look so silly. Yet I'm not saying God wants you to be silly for silly sake. What I'm saying is we should care less what anybody thinks except for God. He's it.
And if the Holy Spirit is motivating us to, to shoot up a hand, to raise a hand, to lift a hand, we should be willing to do that in honor of him. I love how Pastor Jeff sometimes begins a church service and say, let's just give the Lord a clap offering. And, you know, that's so appropriate. When we have a special guest speaker, we always clap for them, right? We're like, yeah, we're so glad that you're here.
When you clap for God, you're. You're doing a couple of things. You're, you're saying you're glad that he's here, but you're also acknowledging his greatness. I mean, I'm a big sports fan. Okay?
I love, I'VE been watching baseball. I, you know, I kind of gotten away from baseball a little bit, but I've been watching it a lot lately because my favorite team's the Detroit Tigers, and they're actually doing well for the first time in, like, 20 years. And. And so it's been kind of fun watching them. And.
And I've watched a couple of games where, you know, the third baseman is over there at third base, and it's a hard shot down the third base line, and he dives, stretches, catches it, gets up, throws that ball all the way to first and gets them. What does everyone do? They clap because of the awesomeness. My wife is a San Francisco 4 49er fan, and she rubs it in my face all the time, how many Super Bowls they've won. And that my.
My Detroit Lions have never even made it to the Super Bowl. And so how did they get started? Well, they really made their run when Dwight Clark made the catch. Anybody remember that? He made the catch.
And the fans went crazy. Whenever an action athlete does something spectacular, people clap. They hoot. They holler. God's always doing something spectacular, every single day.
He allowed you to get up this morning. There was a beautiful sunrise. There's going to be a beautiful sunset later on today. I mean, do you know how green it is? I mean, you Floridians, you don't know how nice you have it.
I lived in Las Vegas for 25 years, okay? It's different shades of brown. That's it. I mean, over the last month, the fields have gotten so green. The flowers are in full bloom.
Those trees, some of them have pink blossoms and purple blossoms and white blossoms. And I'm just like, I'm in awe of. Of his beauty and his creativity. I want to give him a round of applause just for what he does in nature every single day. Psalm 47:1 says, Everyone clap your hands.
Yeah, we should. On a regular basis, holding hands. My wife's so sneaky. She's a big hand holder. We're walking to the restaurant the other day, and all of a sudden, this.
This little hand just snuck in the back of mine. I was like, oh, hi. You know, she loves holding hands. Why? Because it shows that two people care about each other, that they love each other, even after all these years.
And sometimes the intimacy that gets involved in praise and worship is something that we all need. Sometimes when you're willing to raise your hands, you can experience that very thing. And finally, just. Just raising your hands and in celebration, raising your hands in. In victory.
Hands are raised as a sign of a touchdown. Hands are raised as a sign of a three point goal. Hands are raised sometimes with us when we're communicating. We just scored in Jesus name. We just won a great battle in Jesus name.
And this is why we're trying to communicate during this series that worship is more than a song. Worship is in your hands. It's in your life, it's in your surrender, it's in your glance and it's in your heart. Would you stand with me as we close this service with a song? And I just want you to consider raising your hands as we wrap up this service.
