Last Friday Royce forwarded me an excerpt from a book authored by A.W. Tozer. Tozer writes that the Church is afflicted by dry rot. A psychology of low expectation has taken over and spiritual rigidity has set in. People have stopped visualizing anything better for themselves. There is a lack of desire for any real spiritual improvement.
We are all excited about Church growth. We want to build big crowds. We hold contests to build bigger Sunday schools. "But in reality", Tozer says, "Churches are trying to get people to come and share their rut. We want people to help us celebrate the rote and finally join us in the rot. Because the Holy Spirit is not given a chance to work in our services, no one is repenting, no one is seeking God, and no one is spending a day in quiet waiting on God with an open Bible, seeking to mend his or her ways. No one is doing it. We just want more people."
But more people for what? More people to come and repeat our dead services without feeling, without meaning, without wonder, and without surprise? More people to join us in the bondage of the rote? Tozer concludes his article with three words: rut, rot, or revival? A spiritual rut? What if we were to take Tozer's words to heart this morning? How might you characterize your spiritual life right now? Which of those three words would you use? For example, do you consider yourself to be in a rut spiritually? A rut is a worn groove or deep channel that is caused by meaningless repetition.
In a spiritual rut?
Before we moved to Springfield, our neighbors had a Rottweiler. This dog was so large and powerful that they didn't know what do with it. So they put a heavy steel chain around its neck and tied it to a tree. All day long and all through the night their Rottweiler, who was named Grace, would pace in a circle around that tree, lugging her thirty or forty pound chain through the dirt. In fact, their dog had a threefold purpose in life: to stir up dust, to audibly terrorize everyone who strolled by, and to eat leftover hotdogs! Over time, Grace wore a substantial trench around her tree. The owners of the property had a truckload of dirt dumped around the tree just to fill in the rut!
This is a vivid analogy of what it means to be in a spiritual rut. A lot of you have been wearing out the same paths spiritually for years. You are chained to a spiritual routine that has become meaningless and void of life. But you have kept running around in spiritual circles anyway, believing that things will eventually get better. But nothing ever changes! And your rut just keeps getting deeper and deeper!
Just a question. How often do you find yourself just going through the motions, day after day, week after week, never growing, never changing, just stirring up dust, lugging your Bible around, but never reading it? Mouthing platitudes to God, but never really praying? Logging pages, but never really doing daily devotions? Never memorizing any scripture, never fasting, never meditating, rarely serving, never giving sacrificially, never worshiping spontaneously, never sharing your faith, never moving beyond where you have been, or just coasting?
Is your spiritual life characterized by motion or by movement? Is there a lot of activity and busyness with no real spiritual progress? Are you just following the same old script? Are you like a train stuck on the same track? Is there anything fresh and transformational happening in your spiritual life? Is there a growing fire in your heart for loving God and loving people?
Once a week our neighbors would unleash that Rottweiler and free her from her rut. As parents and children fled for their lives, that Rottweiler would pounce and leap and race throughout the neighborhood with boundless energy. One day Lara came home from work and Grace greeted her in our driveway. The dog jumped up and put its paws on Lara's car door and just looked at her through the driver's side window. Lara was terrified! Grace was really a nice dog, just big. She definitely wasn't destined for a rut. She was built to run and play. But she was robbed of life and chained to her rut.
Do you need a spiritual breakthrough this morning? Do you need to be unchained? Do you need to get out of your rut? Are you spiritually rotting? Maybe your spiritual life isn't characterized so much as a rut as it is by dry rot. To rot is to decompose. Spiritual rot is caused by diseases like legalism and rigidity. Such diseases rob us of life and create a foul odor.
With all the rain and moisture, we recently had mold growing in our basement. Mold makes you sick. If left unattended mold can become toxic. One family in Watseka, Illinois had become deathly ill and had to move out of their house because of the molds inside. Their house was condemned by the health department. But something I learned recently is that mold can be destroyed with even the most subtle air movement. A slight breeze will stop mold dead in its tracks.
One reason spiritual ruts are so dangerous is that there is no movement in a rut. The fresh wind of the Holy Spirit isn't allowed to blow wherever it chooses. It is stifled. It is shut out. With time, disease sets into our spiritual ruts and creates the perfect conditions for spiritual rot. When we keep saying the same prayers and reading the same verses and singing the same songs and eating the same food and drinking the same stale water, bacteria form and begin leaching our lives away until we have no life.
In a state of spiritual decay?
Is your spiritual life characterized by decay and rot? Are the fruits of the Holy Spirit spoiling in your refrigerator? Are you hiding in the darkness from God? Are you shutting the Holy Spirit out of your life? Are you secretly feeding your sinful nature? Have you evicted the new man you were becoming in Christ and welcomed back the old man? Have you dug your old laundry out of the hamper and set aside your new clothing in Christ? Are you being transformed into the likeness of Christ or are you becoming deformed?
Spiritual revival!
I pray that your life is not characterized by any of the things I have mentioned. Spiritual revival! Tozer mentions another option that is much more appealing than a rut or rot. What about revival? Would you use the word revival to characterize the spiritual condition of your soul? To be revived is to receive the fresh breath of God's Holy Spirit in your life.
Recently we have been looking at a snapshot of the early Church in Acts 2:42-47. Whenever anyone talks about revival they always turn to that passage and they say, "This is what revival looks like. This is the Christian community at its best. This is what it looks like when Christ takes hold of our hearts." We can certainly understand why this is such an important passage to the Church. This passage reminds us that revival isn't something we catch, much like we might catch the common cold. Rather, revival is something we invite through a series of very simple commitments.
Acts 2:42-47 (NIV) says this of the early Church. "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."
Over the last several weeks we have shown how a serious commitment to reading God's word and growing in the scriptures can set our hearts ablaze with a love for Christ. Last week we talked about how a commitment to the fellowship, to being Christ's body and serving Christ in the face of each other can spark tremendous growth. This morning I want to say a few words about the importance of worship. I want to talk about the nature of the early Church's worship and how this opened a door for God to work wonders in their midst through his Holy Spirit.
There were several characteristics of the early Church's worship.
Their worship was Christ-centered.
The Acts narrative tells us that the early Church devoted themselves to the breaking of bread. Bread was a regular part of their diet and they rarely if ever had a meal without bread. For them, the breaking of bread was a reminder of Christ's broken body on the cross. They didn't have a meal, let alone a time of worship, in which they weren't focusing on Jesus Christ through the breaking of bread. There is a lot that can be said about the Lord's Supper, and I just addressed this subject a few months back. You can read that message from May 12, 2002 on our website.
What is worth noting here is that Jesus Christ is the heart of worship. We don't meet to worship a generic God. We gather to worship Jesus Christ. He is our Lord and savior. He is the meaning and purpose for our existence. He is our life. Our salvation. Our resurrection. Our hope. Everything. The first and most important question of worship is, "Are we glorifying Christ?" Are we calling attention to him or to ourselves? Are we focusing just on our relationships with each other, or also on our relationship with the Lord of the Church?
Their worship was personal and public.
When we read Acts 2 we notice that their worship took place in very public places, like the temple. But it also took place in personal, private places, like their homes. The early Christians didn't compartmentalize their worship. They didn't live their lives during the week with no thought of Jesus Christ and then suddenly turn on the switch and gather on the weekend for heartfelt praise and worship. Instead, they met together every day for worship, whether in the temple or in their homes. They weren't Sunday-only Christians. They were characterized by their consistent fervor for God. Worship was their identity. Every day, in whatever setting, whether public or private, they could be found cultivating theirs hearts for God. And God blessed them!
Their worship was spontaneous and structured.
With thousands of people gathering in the temple courts, there had to be structure. Some people believe that Acts 2:42-47 is a snapshot of the early Church's worship services. They began with scripture and a message from God's word. They proceeded with a time of communion and prayer. Then there was an offering. And last, they concluded with an invitation for anyone who might receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
Perhaps Acts 2:42-47 contains some clues about the early Church's worship services. But it is obvious that the Church moved far beyond such structured services and enjoyed unplanned times of spontaneity when they would just break bread in their homes and praise God and sing and pray off the cuff.
Imagine what this kind of worship would do for this congregation or forany congregation! Sometimes it takes thirty minutes for us to shake off everything that has happened in the last week and get in tune with God. By then, our worship service is half over! Imagine if we came with our hearts already prepared during the week? Imagine if Sunday was just the climax of dozens of impromptu, spontaneous private times of family worship throughout the week? What could God's Holy Spirit do in the lives of people with such big hearts for Christ?
Their worship was evangelistic.
I always hear Christians saying, "Worship shouldn't be used for evangelism. Worship is for God. It is for the Church, not for unbelievers!" We can all agree in part. The primary purpose of worship is not for evangelism. The primary purpose of worship is to glorify the head of the Church, Jesus Christ! But what is the byproduct of glorifying Jesus Christ? Matthew 5:16 (NIV) says, "In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. "When we glorify the name of Jesus Christ, it prompts unbelievers to consider a personal relationship with the God of the universe. They take notice. Their ears perk up. Their curiosity is aroused.
I'm of the opinion that our worship must be intelligible to unbelievers. We should use scripture translations and song lyrics and language that makes sense to someone who is just coming to Christ for the first time in his life. If I wanted, I could run circles around most everyone in this room with "Christianeese". I could throw around words like justification, sanctification, propitiation, premillennialism, amillennialism, post-millennialism, and pneumatology. I could throw around Greek and Hebrew. I could quote scholarly works by the church fathers including Augustine, Luther, and others.
That might make someone feel really spiritual to do that, but it doesn't do much for the person seeking to know Jesus Christ for the first time! We must make every effort to let our worship, preaching, and teaching be intelligible to everyone, without dumbing down the message. Jesus did it. The apostles did it. The early Church did it. And the results were dramatic. As a result of their worship, "..the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."
Their worship was authentic.
When our worship is only done in a public worship service or when it is only done in a structured setting like this, we run the risk of becoming duplicitous. It is easy to slip into a rut when someone else is always planning our worship. Sometimes we can get lost in the routine of sitting, standing, singing, giving, serving, listening, learning, and greeting. We can begin mouthing words to our favorite songs, not thinking about their meaning, and not letting them be genuine expressions of our devotion to Christ. We can get carried away by the energy and excitement of worship by the live instruments, the charismatic worship leader, the sights and sounds. Or in some cases we can lose interest and become bored by the monotony of worship, the same routine, the same instruments, the same order of worship, or the same worn platitudes before communion and offering. Sometimes we get manipulated into worship by our parents or spouses, and just to please them or get them off our backs, we can go through the motions.
The early church worshiped with a pure heart. They owned their own worship. They broke bread because they loved God. They gave because God first gave them his son, Jesus Christ. They had joy because God's Spirit was at work within them. They praised God because they were genuinely grateful. They didn't sing out of a hymnal or chorus book. They wrote their own songs! They didn't worship because they had to. They worshiped because they wanted to and because they couldn't help but worship! They had authenticity. They worshiped with sincere hearts.
Back to the heart of worship.
Back in 1993, Mike Pilavachi founded the Soul Survivor ministry in a working class town on the outskirts of London. The ministry began as an outreach to urban youth and was noted for its inspirational worship and upbeat praise services. The ministry snowballed into a worldwide, interdenominational outreach that has impacted tens of thousands of people, and influenced music groups as far away as Canada, Holland, South Africa, Australia and the United States. Their musical influence can be felt on Christian radio and in Church circles.
But years ago, as people began packing churches, theatres, and musical halls to worship, the leadership of the Soul Survivor ministry felt as if they'd lost their spark. They had state of the art sound and lighting, theatre style seating, professional sound engineers, accomplished praise leaders, orchestras, bands, and the works. But they felt as if they were going through the motions. They sensed that although they were singing great songs, their hearts were far from God. They had turned worship into a performance and their churches were full of spectators.
They took drastic and immediate action. They banned the band from their assembly. They fired their worship leader, Matt Redman! They sat around in circles and said that if no one brought a sacrifice of praise, they would just meet in silence. They totally weaned themselves off of music and began just praying, reading scripture, and singing acapella. But only for a while!
In time, they sensed that their excitement for worship was coming back. People started coming, not to have church or to hear the band, but to meet God. With all the comforts stripped away, they worshiped from the heart. When they felt they had learned their lesson, they brought the band back and invited Matt Redman to sing the song he had written out of this experience. Here are the lyrics of that song, titled, "The Heart of Worship."
"When the music fades, all is stripped away and I simply come. Longing just to bring something that's of worth that will bless your heart.
I'll bring you more than a song, for a song in itself is not what you have required. You search much deeper within, through the way things appear. You're looking into my heart.
I'm coming back to the heart of worship and it's all about you, all about you, Jesus .I'm sorry Lord for the thing I've made it, when it's all about you, all about you Jesus.
King of endless worth, no one could express how much you deserve. Though I'm weak and poor, all I have is yours, every single breath.
I'm coming back to the heart of worship."
Do you worship from the heart?
The early Church owned their worship. It was heartfelt. It was Christ-centered. It was personal and public. It was structured and spontaneous. It was evangelistic. And make no mistake about it, it was authentic. But what about your worship? What is your devotion to Jesus Christ like? How would you characterize your worship? Are you in a spiritual rut? Is your soul rotting because of legalism and spiritual rigidity? Or are you being revived by the fresh wind of God's Holy Spirit?
If revival doesn't describe your worship, you can begin fixing it right now. There isn't anything more to it than asking God to give you a heart for Jesus Christ. Invite God's Holy Spirit to transform your heart and make it soft. Invite God's work in your life and church by making a series of really simple commitments. Devote yourself to the apostles' teaching in scripture. Devote yourself to fellowship and service. Devote yourself to the breaking of bread and worship. Devote yourself to prayer. Whatever you do, don't continue running in circles. Unchain yourself from your rut. Reverse the rot. Just ask, and God will give you the desire of your heart.