Call & Invocation

Thank you for reading this sermon from Christ Fellowship. I hope and pray that this sermon will be a blessing of grace and truth to you. With that said, let me encourage you not to use this sermon as a replacement for your local church. Christ Jesus did not establish his Church simply for us to consume content. Instead, He calls us to be part of a real, covenant family.

When I first became a Christian, it took me a long time to understand why Christians worship the way we do. And it took me a longer time for my heart to get on board with it. I saw people really engaged in worship and I wondered what was wrong with me, because I didn’t feel anything. It didn’t feel authentic.

If you grew up in church, then Christian worship of some kind seems normal. But what if you moved here from another culture? What if you walked into a church for the first time as an adult from somewhere in the world that is unreached with the Gospel? This would all seem very strange to you.

And depending on the church, you’re going to find a lot of different expressions or styles of worship. What kind of instruments do they use? Are the lights up or down? Is the preaching long or short? Do people move, clap, or shout when they sing? Are hands being raised? Are people dancing in the aisles, or standing perfectly still? Are there snakes being held?

Over the next several weeks, we’re going to talk about worship. What it is… why we do it… and how we do it… and we’re going to do our best to find those answers in Scripture.

Let’s start this off with the greatest commandment in the Bible:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. (Deuteronomy 6:5)

Corporate worship is the most important way that Christians obey that command together.

In other words, our worship is FOR GOD. It is not for us. We certainly benefit from it, but the primary goal is to serve, trust, and praise the God we love. It’s for him.

And because worship is for God, we want to worship Him the way He wants to be worshipped. Inventing our own ways of worshipping God does not communicate to Him that we love Him.

We understand this from our own relationships. We communicate love to each other by learning what the other person appreciates and enjoys. I shouldn’t keep buying my wife roses if she prefers some other kind of flower, right?

God has been very clear in the Bible how He wants to be loved. He threatened to destroy the Israelites when they tried to worship Him using a golden calf. He actually killed two priests because they changed the recipe for incense.

In fact, there are lots of stories in the Old Testament where the people tried worshipping God in creative ways and it never ended well. Because if God is the object of our worship, we should be most concerned about what He wants from us.

Our ideas or imaginations about worship can cause problems. And so, it is my conviction and the conviction of our elders that we should try to worship God in the ways that are described in the Bible.

The call to worship that happens at the beginning of every worship service at Christ Fellowship is based on that principle. It sets the stage for us.

Worship isn’t my idea. It’s God’s idea. I’m here because God initiated this relationship and He calls me to worship Him.

Look at how the Psalms communicate this, starting with the one we used this morning as our call to worship.

Oh come, let us sing to the Lord;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!

Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! (Psalm 95:1-2)

Look also at Psalm 100:

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!

Serve the Lord with gladness!
Come into his presence with singing! (Psalm 100:1-2)

It’s easy to focus on the singing, which we will talk about next week, and miss the commands here. Come. Make. Serve. Come. Make. Serve.

There are dozens of these Psalms. And in every case, the direct object is God. To the Lord… to the rock… to him… to the Lord…

Who is our worship for? It’s for God. It’s not for us. And we start every worship gathering at Christ Fellowship with that declaration. We read Scripture like this to remind us that God calls us to worship Him. This wasn’t our idea.

But it has become common in our culture to think of worship as consumers. We come asking all the wrong questions in our heart. Am I being blessed by this experience? Am I getting what I need from this? Is this worth my time? Do I feel like going to church?

And when we come with that mentality, we start thinking of worship as entertainment or personal enrichment. We get bored and stop coming, or we find a church with a better worship experience.

But that’s never been the point. It’s not about you and it’s not about me.
And this struggle we have is not new. The prophet Malachi talks about this.

You say, ‘What a weariness this is,’ and you snort at it, says the Lord of hosts. You bring what has been taken by violence or is lame or sick, and this you bring as your offering! Shall I accept that from your hand? says the Lord. (Malachi 1:13)

“What a weariness this is…” the people were getting bored with worship! They were bringing their worst animals instead of their best. Why? Because they cared more about themselves than the God they claimed to worship!

Amos and Isaiah both talk about God rejecting the worship of His people because they kept bringing sacrifices when their hearts were far from Him.

If this is your struggle, and it has been mine at times, then consider re-orienting the way you think about worship in the first place. Worship is for God. It’s not for us.

But what about the Invocation? After every call to worship, we say a short prayer called the Invocation.

This prayer is sometimes misunderstood as our invitation to God, that we are somehow inviting God to join us. But that’s incorrect. God invited us here and He was already here.

Instead, the Invocation is a way for us to communicate to God that we need His help. It’s an acknowledgement that we need His blessing… that without the work of His Spirit, everything we do will be pointless.

Listen to Psalm 27:

7 Hear, O LORD, when I cry aloud;
be gracious to me and answer me!

8 You have said, “Seek my face.”
My heart says to you,
“Your face, LORD, do I seek.”

Notice the dialogue. God says seek my face. My heart responds, your face do I seek.

That’s exactly how the call to worship and the invocation are meant to function together. It’s a dialogue between God and us. He invites. We respond.

As we move through the elements of worship, you’re going to notice this dialogue continues. God speaks. We respond. God speaks. We respond.

God says, “I love you.” We respond, “I love you.”
God says, “You need me.” We respond, “I need you.”

Why is it this way? Why did God design it this way? There’s a simple answer… because it brings Him the most glory. Everything we do in worship magnifies the glory of God.

Glory is kind of a churchy word, but it is a Bible word. Glory is used over 200 times in the Old Testament, but it’s not a word we use outside of church, so it needs some explanation.

When we hear the word “glory” we think of shiny or bright, but the Hebrew word is “kavod” – and it basically means heavy or weighty.

In ancient times, kings and other important people wore big heavy outfits to show everyone that they were more important. God borrows this idea to explain His value.

So, when the Bible commands us to ascribe glory to God, it’s telling us to recognize Him as “the biggest, the largest, the most magnificent” Being in the universe.

Why is that true? Why does God need so much glory? When I first heard the idea that God does everything for His own glory, it sounded strange. Is God so attention-hungry, that He needs everyone and everything in the universe to sing His praises?

But that’s a very distorted, human way of thinking about it. God doesn’t need anyone or anything. He is entirely self-sufficient. He needs nothing.

Instead, what God is trying to communicate to us by showing His glory is that He is infinitely worthy. He’s trying to bring us back to reality.

Think of the sun. The sun rises every day and provides the light by which everything else is seen. It’s going to keep doing that whether we recognize it or not. Some civilizations even worshipped the sun because it was so beautiful and important to our lives.

God’s glory is like that—he is not made glorious by our praise; our praise is our proper response to the glory he already has. Our worship is the proper response of finite creatures to their infinite Creator.

The innate human desire to worship someone or something is incredibly obvious. Until the late 20th century, almost 100 percent of humans throughout history worshipped some kind of deity. Atheism is a relatively new thing, and I don’t think our world is any better for it. And those people are still worshiping something.

Worship is also at the heart of our greatest problem, because our deepest problem is that we misdirect our worship—giving the glory, trust, and love that belong to God to created things instead.

Instead of loving the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and might, we love other gods with all our heart and soul and might. We pour ourselves out for success, comfort, reputation, pleasure, and control.

We come into a worship service and sometimes feel nothing, not because worship is unimportant, but because our hearts have already been captured and exhausted at other altars all week long.

We gave everything to our jobs, our hobbies, our favorite sports teams…

That is why the good news is not simply that God tells us how to worship; the good news is that God has come to rescue worshipers who have gone astray.

Jesus is the One who kept the greatest commandment for us—He loved the Lord His God with all His heart and soul and might, every second of His life.

On the cross, He bore the guilt of all our false worship, all our divided hearts, all the times we have stood in God’s presence unmoved. He rose again to give us new hearts, hearts that really can begin to love God and delight in Him.

So, when we gather for worship, we do not come as people who finally figured out how to love God the right way. We come as people who have been loved first. We come trusting that the blood of Jesus covers our idolatry, and that the Spirit of Jesus is present now to reshape our desires.

And as we look to Christ together—hearing His Word, singing His praises, coming to His Table—God is not asking us to manufacture a feeling. He is inviting us to rest in what His Son has done, and to respond with the love that He Himself is pouring into our hearts.

It’s at the cross that we see God’s glory on full display and that’s why everything we do is somehow connected to the Gospel.

If you’re struggling in your heart to connect with corporate worship, understand that is normal. It takes time for your heart to move from rebellion to love. God is slowly reorienting our lives to put everything back in its place. Let’s pray and ask for His help.