That meant that the country road was lined with people standing and clapping and shouting and holding up signs and yelling encouragement to every cyclist who pedaled past. With my windows down as I drove past the cyclists, I could hear the cyclists encouraging one another, and I could hear the excited shouts and cheers and applause of the crowds. Our normally quiet roadway with minimal traffic was an uncharacteristic frenzy of emotion and noise and action!

Some of these screaming, exuberant people are probably some who get upset when worship at their church becomes too “expressive” or “noisy!”

Quiet praise; dignified worship; God is blessed by this. Yet, Scripture speaks of more demonstrative worship. Are you ready and willing to learn to worship in new ways?

I’ve written other blogs about praise and worship; I’ve covered some of the ingredients we see in the Old Testament: kneeling, clapping, raising hands, bowing, falling prostrate on our faces before the Lord, dancing, etc. I’ve written about the evidences of spirit-filled worship in the New Testament, speaking in tongues, prophesying, singing in the Spirit. This blog is not going to be about the types or styles or actions of worship. I’m not going to get into the Hebrew roots or Greek explanations. I simply want to remind you that when our lives are in tune with our Lord, and the Holy Spirit is blowing through us and through our Church, then we will see a sudden and wondrous bestowment of a spirit of worship.

We need to be free with our demonstrations of praise and worship – we need to hunger and thirst after the Lord – and then spiritual renewal and exciting worship will come from the Lord Himself. We praise in obedience – He will bless us as a result. That’s the bottom line.

Turn to Leviticus, chapter 23. Read through the entire chapter – as lengthy as it is. Discover who instituted practices of worship, and what some of these suitable forms of worship of God were.

The passage ends: “So Moses announced to the Israelites the appointed feasts of the Lord.” (Leviticus 23:44)

And yet. . . 700 years later, when Isaiah was prophet of Israel, God told him to teach this:

The Lord says:

“These people come near to me with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship of me
is made up only of rules taught by men.” (Isaiah 29:13)

Rules taught by men. . . our own designs and specific ingredients that we’ve added to worship. Yet, to the Lord we’re coming near the Lord with our mouths and honoring Him with our lips. We’re coming with the most fleeting, superficial, non-committal way to worship – with what we say. It’s where we get sayings like “he only paid lip service” or “she’s talking out of both sides of her mouth” or “that person is mealy-mouthed.” What we say is nothing compared to what we do – and what we sometimes do is jumping through a bunch of hoops we have put in place. . . rules taught by men!

Now, let me try to make sense of Leviticus 23 with you. God instituted gatherings – He instituted feasts – He instituted specific offerings to be brought to Him – He instituted certain activities. When I go back and look at the feasts and festivals God appointed and instituted as sacred assemblies, I find this:

• 62 days of rest required
• 7 days of living in a tent
• 14 days of eating bread with no leavening
• 5 major feasting days – most of which required a trip to Jerusalem
• 1 week of fasting
• 15 days of making offerings PLUS. . .
• 1 day where 2 lambs given as living offerings along with the standard drink offering, the grain offering and the bread offering which are given to the priests for their families, as well as 7 lambs, 2 rams, 1 goat, and 1 bull that are sacrificed as burnt offerings.

Then 700 years later, God is irritated with the Israelites because they are just giving Him lip service, and have started worshipping according to rules and regulations thought up and taught by men.

Empty words – and empty actions; God is not blessed or worshipped or praised by either one; they are an irritation to Him.

Our worship must give clear evidence of what’s going on in our hearts. Our actions speak volumes to God. If we simply go through the motions – then God is not blessed. If we simply say words in a rote formula – God is not blessed. If we follow rules for worship prescribed by men – God is not blessed. God wants worship that shows the state of your heart.

Turn to 2 Samuel 6:12-15. This is what we read:

Now King David was told, “The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-Edom and everything he has, because of the ark of God.” So David went down and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the City of David with rejoicing. When those who were carrying the ark of the Lord had taken six steps, he sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf. David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the Lord with all his might, while he and the entire house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouts and the sound of trumpets. (2 Samuel 6:12-15)

Obed-Edom is about 10 miles from Jerusalem. A mile is 5,280 feet – so they traveled about 52,800 feet. If you consider a single step to be about 3 feet in length, then that means 6 steps is about 17 feet. That means that King David sacrificed around 3,105 bulls and 3,105 fattened calves during that journey from Obed-Edom with the Ark of the Covenant! 10 miles is a long journey by foot, and stopping every 6 steps to sacrifice means the journey took quite a long time – at least one full day if not more!

6,000+ animals were sacrificed – and Scripture says David danced before the Lord with all his might – and he and the entire house of Israel brought the Ark of the Lord with shouting and sounds of the trumpets!

This is what we can learn:
• Praise and Worship was noisy
• it took lots of time–
• it required an enormous outpouring of personal and community financial resources
• it was dirty, smelly, hard work
• it consisted of – we might say it required – rejoicing and revelry and dancing
• it had David out of his kingly robes and in the simple garb of a run-of-the-mill priest where he broke a sweat as he worked hard at dancing and sacrificing
• and it required everyone taking part.

Look at some of us in our churches today. We get irritated with worship. We’re bothered by it.

• It’s noisy.
• It takes too much time.
• It’s too expensive or requires too much of us, personally.
• It’s hard work sometimes.
• Rejoicing and making-merry is embarrassing, and we won’t do it.
• If we’re going to break a sweat or wrinkle our clothes – we won’t do it.
• When we’re all expected to take part – we feel put upon or pressured.

Too often we want to come and be quiet. We want to meditate. We want to simply say “Thank You, God” – but are reluctant to go further. We won’t show our praise because of embarrassment or uncertainty.

Dr. George D. Watson, a great Bible teacher and author from the late 1900s, suggests that we have two kinds of love for God – “gratitude love” and “excellence love.” The first one – “gratitude love” is what we might call “Santa Claus Christianity.” We tend to think of God as some kind of benevolent sprite who gives us wonderful things – so we say “thank you!” for what He’s given.

You can see how that’s an elementary or childish kind of love when you look at our own families. Do we love each other in our family only out of gratitude? Do we only love our spouse or our children or our fathers and mothers solely because of what they give us? No! Our families finally graduate into a love that is beyond what we give each other for Christmas or birthdays. . . we love one another for who we are!

That’s the kind of love we need to learn to have for God – a love for how excellent He is – how excellent His character is! We need to learn to move from loving and praising and worshipping by merely saying “thank You” to worshipping and praising and loving just for who He is! The best way to do that is to worship with all our being.

Turn to John 4:23-24 to read what Jesus says about that: “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.’"

Worshipping in spirit and in truth may be a hard concept – but it promotes quite the opposite of what God was irritated with when He spoke through the Prophet Isaiah:

“These people come near to me with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship of me
is made up only of rules taught by men.” (Isaiah 29:13)

Worshipping in spirit and in truth is worshipping – not with empty words and empty actions – but with true words of love and adoration as well as actions that tell the Lord of the condition of our heart!

There’s a TV show on County Music Television called “My Big Redneck Wedding.” Ya’ll ever seen it? Not long ago, two people got married in a tree stand in full camouflage. The groom gave the bride a new hunting bow, and after the wedding they went on what the groom called their “huntingmoon.”

As it turns out, the bride was not in favor of any of this. She wanted a more “normal” wedding – white gown, church, a regular cake, and a real honeymoon! Her husband thought it would be fun, and assumed she’d like it all, too. These two may have some rough target-shootin’ ahead!

Here’s the question for us: are we offering in worship a gift we enjoy and figuring God will like it? A real gift, real worship, means knowing what’s important to The Receiver – and making sure we get Him what He desires.

Turn to Romans 12:1-2 to read Paul’s instructions to the Romans – and by extension, to us: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – His good, pleasing and perfect will.”

Living sacrifices. All we are. Not empty words and empty actions – but letting our worship be evidence of our hearts – and letting our actions speak volumes of love and adoration and worship to God.

Yes – we can dance and raise our hands and clap and laugh and sing and play instruments and kneel. . . but we can do so much more!

Church leaders - elders, deacons, council members – every day – you need to pray for our church! Revival results in a bestowment of the spirit – not because of engineering or manipulation, but because we’re praying for revival.

Teachers, small-group leaders, staff – every day – you need to pray for the people to whom you minister and seek to bring out in them a hunger and thirst for the things of God. Revival is the Spirit moving in our midst – not because of programs or how well we play together – but because we’re hungry and thirsty for more of the Lord!

Worship leaders, singers, instrumentalists – every day you practice on your own and every time you come together to rehearse – and every Sunday morning you gather to lead all of us to the Throne of God, and help usher us into His Presence, and when there lead us in our personal and corporate worship of Him – you need to pray for God’s Spirit to fall on you, to flow through you, and to fill His house and His people. You need to rekindle your personal hunger and thirst for more of God, and more demonstrative worship when you’re alone with Him!

Each and every one of us needs to change our view of God. He’s not Santa Claus – He’s the God of the Universe! Our view of Him needs to be high and lifted up! We must stop reducing Him, modifying Him, amending and abridging Him into some small hand-held mascot, and get back to seeing Him as the high and holy, transcendent and omnipotent, God and King! Our confidence and admiration and exaltation of Him must become boundless and never-ending.

Quiet praise and dignified worship can bless God, yet Scripture speaks of a more demonstrative worship. Worshipping in Spirit and in Truth; offering our bodies as living sacrifices; going beyond honoring Him with our lips to bringing Him our whole heart. . . this is the kind of worship we must learn to embrace.

The ancient wisdom we see in Scripture tells us to let our worship be evidence of our hearts; our actions speak volumes to God.