In this sermon, Scott Brown emphasizes the importance of worship as the primary reason for human existence. He points out that worship is about recognizing the Creator-creature distinction and approaching God with humility. Brown discusses the negative impact of today's entertainment culture on worship, which has led to man-centeredness rather than focusing on God. He highlights the elements of biblical worship, including doctrine, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer, and stresses the importance of preaching the Word of God in worship. The sermon also touches on the Puritans' love for worship and their focus on sermons as the central part of worship. To shift from man-centered worship to God-centered worship, Brown urges believers to have a heart fixed upon God, acknowledging and praising Him for who He is.

I think the worship of God is the most important, the holiest, loftiest thing that a human being can do. Ultimately, we are dealing with the very reason for our existence. Worship is bowing down in the presence of God with humility and exalting Him and extolling His worth as Heavenly Father, as Redeeming Son, and as sanctifying Spirit. Worship is to recognize who God is and to fall prostrate before Him in response. Worship is first and foremost about me recognizing the Creator-creature distinction.

He is the Creator and the Omnipotent One. And I am the Created One who approaches Him with humility as He has required me to approach Him. To approach him. Well, hello, and welcome to our video series, The Family That Worships Together. In this series, you'll find some really wonderful men coming to inspire, to help you adore, and to worship Almighty God.

And we're doing this in anticipation of our upcoming conference this fall at the end of October called The Worship of God in Asheville, North Carolina. And We put together some of the voices that will be at our conference just to bring some helpful instruction. But this truly is the most important subject that we ever consider. It is the reason we were created to worship God. And in this first session, Understanding Worship will cover some of the key issues surrounding the subject of the worship of God.

A happy family who can find, well they do exist, but they're families that lift up genuine adoration toward God. They're thankful families. That's what makes a happy family. What's the greatest need of a family? To see God lifted up in the midst of all the trials and joys?

What's the greatest hope for a family? To know God. What's the greatest comfort to a family? It's to long for God. What's the greatest source of joy to a family?

Well, it's really what David said in Psalm 36 verse 7. How precious is your loving kindness, O God. Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of your wings. They are abundantly satisfied with the fullness of your house, and You give them drink from the river of your pleasures. For with you is the fountain of life.

In your light, we see light. That's how a family gets happy, is knowing that. Well, families should ask, what is it that ties our family together? What makes our family what it is? What is our identity?

What activity makes us who we really are? Is it that you are worshippers of God? Well, that's the subject that we want to speak about in this session. Ultimately, we are dealing with the very reason for our existence. When God made the world, it was not because He needed it.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, perfectly happy, perfectly blessed in perfect fellowship. However, in making this vast, vast universe with all our powerful digital telescopes, we're still just scratching the surface of it. God was revealing something of who he is, so that he would be appreciated by his own creation. And in the midst of putting together that this great creation, he then has placed us as human beings, made in his image, with the capacity not only to know him, but also to appreciate who he is. Now it's when we begin getting at that level that we're beginning to get to where worship truly is.

Worshipers are given the impression that worship is primarily about them rather than it being about God. And so they go to church, for instance, thinking primarily about having a nice time, enjoying themselves, when really Worship ought to be about describing something of the worth of God. It's to do with bringing out something of who God is. And consequently, Although it's true that as godly men and women engage in that act, they find out of fulfillment and blessing, but it's really not primarily about them, it's primarily about God. It seems to me that's been the major error of worship in evangelicalism today, And there's a great need to reverse that trend.

Otherwise we're ending up with people having the mentality of going to, say, a football stadium in order to go and have fun, when really that's not the issue. You are going to a place where you are primarily thinking in terms of God and describing something of his worth. Worship is bowing down in the presence of God with humility and exalting him and extolling his worth as Heavenly Father, as Redeeming Son, and as sanctifying spirit. Worship is Trinitarian. And in worship we should experience what the old Scottish Divine Samuel Rutherford said, I know not which divine person I love the most, but this I know I love each of them and I need them all.

So in worship, our goal is to please God by extolling him, by setting him enthroned upon his people's praise, and corporately together with the people of God, relishing His grace to us in Jesus Christ for poor, hell-worthy sinners such as we are. I think the worship of God is the most important, the holiest, the loftiest thing that a human being can do. I think the church, by and large, in the 20th century lost worship. Forgot what it meant to worship God. It became more entertainment.

It became more a time in which you release your emotions or when you're counseled with all your problems, it became man-centered, like everything else the church does rather than focusing on the triune God. What is worship? We see, of course, in Romans chapter 12, one and two, that it's it's offering ourselves as a living sacrifice. So first of all, there's a there's an intentionality. There is.

A person has come to grips with who God is, why they were created, and they sincerely and truly, in practical ways, they offer themselves to God as a living sacrifice. You know, so worship must flow out of a life that has been committed to Christ. When we talk about worship, there are so many things to say about it. I would say first of all that it is declaring who God is. It is ascribing unto God his great attributes and his great works.

When I look in the book of Psalms, that's what I see when I read the great hymns of the of Christian history that have withstood the test of time. That's the thing they have in common. They ascribe the attributes of God. They ascribe the greatness of God. They ascribe the works of God.

They speak of these things. They proclaim them. I would say the state of the union of the American church is largely one of ignorance. That ignorance is born out of a lethargy and slothfulness of seeking to understand God as He is, as He's proclaimed himself to be in the Scriptures, and consequently man thinks much more of himself than he ought. Its ambassadors, its preachers, the elders who are to be the proclaimers of the Word of God are less faithful to preach boldly and clearly, and they're more driven by a sensitivity to the audience and a hope for reception than an urgency of proclamation of the One of whom they speak.

First and foremost, their desire does not seem to be an exaltation of God and His Word, but rather a deep and abiding concern for their people, not in the greatest sense of the health of their soul, but rather will they enjoy the message they hear. God's people often do not think about worship as a taste of heaven. They often do not think that they are really entering into the presence of a Holy, holy, holy God. Far too many of our churches have become simply preaching stations, or even worse, entertainment stations and theaters. One of the reasons why people don't have very good worship services, and it tends to be man-centered, is because the rest of the week is man-centered.

The rest of the week, nobody's worshiped God. If you haven't worshiped God with your family for six days, if you haven't worshiped God in the warp and the woof of your life, in the times of rejoicing, in the times of feasting, in the times of enjoyment of fellowship and close communion with your wife, you're not going to understand the worship of God on Sunday morning. Worship today has been influenced more than any other thing by our culture of entertainment. I'll give you an example. I have been in recent the last two years with a group of young people.

You could not find a more dedicated group of young people, more desirous of studying Christ, knowing the gospel. They're sincere, they're converted and they love the Lord. But they come out of contemporary evangelicalism. And even though they love the Lord, they'll fast, they'll pray. When we're in our worship service, you see that they really don't sing with great zeal.

They don't put forth a joyful noise. They don't shout unto the Lord in song. And I've tried to figure out that, you know, why is that going on? And it's not because they don't love the Lord. It's because they've been raised in a Christianity where it has a music director, a music band, a worship team that does almost everything.

Combined with that and the culture of entertainment, they've been taught to come into church and watch other people do their worship for them. Worship is man-centered today. Man is the focus of all of life. Man is the end. Man is the focal point.

Man is the source of his own truth, his own ethics, his own reality. Man directs his own reality. Man saves himself. Man is the hinge point in his own salvation. Man is the reason for life, man is the reason for worship, man is the reason why people go to church, why they choose their own church, why they decide whether they attend this church or that church.

The chief end of man is to glorify man and to enjoy man forever. This is the religion of America. This is what we're up against. There are God-centered churches with God-centered worship and there are man-centered churches with man-centered worship, the worship of God must bring God back into center. It has to happen primarily by the preaching of the word of God.

We have to be careful about bringing singing and entertainment and man-centered activities and man-centered desires and man-centered priorities into full center as we worship God in our churches. This is happening all over the place. When people walk out of a church and they say I wasn't fed. The church isn't for me. The church isn't for my family.

They're not making the decision based upon God's word. They're not making the decision based upon whether or not the worship was God-centered. They're not asking the right questions. What they're saying is, was this worship good for me? They're not asking the question, was this worship good for God?

And that's key. Worship is unto God. And that's why we see in the Book of Acts, they were ministering unto God. Anna, in the gospel of Luke, she's ministering unto God. I think that we have forgotten today we minister to each other.

We do things in the name of God. But how many people individually set alone in the night watches at two and three in the morning just to sing to God? Or how many congregations would set aside a day just to ascribe greatness unto him? We've lost this idea of ministering to him yet, yet thousands and millions of angels every hour, that's all they do is minister to him, praising him, declaring his greatness. We could learn from that.

Worship is to recognize who God is and to fall prostrate before him in response. We see this happening throughout scripture several times, where somebody realizes that they have been visited by Almighty God in salvation, in an answer of prayer, in the preaching of the Word of God, in coming face to face with the reality of God, and they are overwhelmed by the awesome, marvelous magnificence of the true and living God and His grace and love and interest in them and they fall on their face in trembling worship before Almighty God. That's worship. We will grow in worship as we grow in our knowledge of the person and works of God and what He has done for us in the greatest manifestation of His person and works through Jesus Christ. It is so important that the people of God learn who God is.

They can't worship a God they don't know. They need to come to a point where they can worship Him for omniscience, worship Him for omnipotence, worship Him for sovereignty and holiness and righteousness. That actually their worship flows out of the reality of these attributes. And then, of course, Christ being all lovely, being the fullest expression of the Godhead given to us to know more of Him. The more preachers preach on God, the more preachers preach on what God has done for us in Christ, the greater and more enhanced and more biblical our worship will be.

Every time I get up in front of everybody, I want to present a vision of the true and living God. I want to show them his nature, his works, in as much living color as I possibly can, that they might respond in worship, that they might respond in trembling, in praise and glory before almighty God. I want them to see the Red Sea parting. I want them to see Calvary. I want them to see the earthquake and see the darkness and then the tomb opening and Christ rising from the dead and ascending into heaven and sitting on the right hand of the Father and ruling as King of kings and Lord of Lords as he brings His enemies in history under his purview and as they kiss the Sun I want them to fall before the Living Christ And know that he is real and know that this has happened and respond in that worship and praise.

But now another part of worship that is very important and often overlooked is that worship is didactic. It is didactic. In Ephesians and Colossians we see that. You know, we're to admonish, you know, with hymns and psalms. We admonish, we even teach.

And Luther, I think it was, said that he believed, he ascribed the reformation and the growth of it more to the hymns that were being sung to actually the sermons, because people would remember the hymns. They would sing them as they were working as a shoe cobbler or farmer or blacksmith. It needs to be a community of tremblers, people who know how to tremble before God. This is not something Americans are used to. They don't want to tremble because they would spell a cappuccino in worship.

That's because the worship's man-centered. No, they need to come to church expecting to have a face-to-face encounter with a true and living God through His word, through the preaching of His word and by the work of His Spirit, and then respond in that trembling. In joy, yes, but fear first. First fear, then faith, understanding that God is for them and who can be against them. And then love for God, just a blossoming love that eventually explodes in joy.

That's a service, that's a worship service. We should experience some level of fear, some understanding that there is a God who is just, there's a God who sends people to hell forever and ever. And that's where it begins. After that, we begin to experience His love for us at the cross. There are two kinds of people.

There are those that are outside of the ark and those that are within the ark. Within the ark, You have two emotions that are preeminent within yourself. You're looking outside the ark and seeing hundreds of thousands of dead, bloated bodies floating around and you've got to fear the true and living God that did that. But secondly, you have a warm feeling that God has established a relationship with you and that God has enveloped you in the arms of his love and he has set you in that ark and you have a sense of security and faith and love and joy within the ark, but it's a mixed feeling. So you can't you can't have that unless you understand what God is doing in the judgments of bringing that judgment of that flood or that eternal fire of judgment upon those who are not elect, those who have not received His grace.

When the Reformers came on the scene, there was need for them to answer the question, what should we keep in terms of worship and what should we not allow in the place of worship. So that they needed a principle to use because the Bible is not an encyclopedia. You don't find just a list of things. The Bible was written in the midst of life. It was relating to real situations.

But the Reformers recognized that they were in a dead age when there were no inspired prophets. So they had to go back to the Bible and seek some principle. It boiled down to two things. One was, do we allow everything that the Bible forbids, or do we only allow what the Bible says we should allow. And so the reformers basically divided into two camps.

And those to whom the vast majority of Protestantism aligned itself went for what is called the Regulative Principle, which was basically saying that you only allow the elements of worship that God himself has prescribed, because it's about worshiping him. So surely he should tell us how he wants us to worship him. What I see in biblical worship is what we see in Acts 2 42. They continue steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer. And I think that is, that's the order of service.

That's the bulletin. That's, That is what Scripture speaks on. Sadly, but I think a lot of times we see churches today try to do anything that is the opposite of that. We're guaranteeing that the preaching will only be 20 minutes. We're guaranteeing that you'll have a lot of fun and you don't see that in the scriptures.

So we've gotten away from what we read about in the early church in Acts 2 42 and the mainstream church today seems to be fearful of doctrine and fellowship has been substituted with with fun and communion is once or twice a year, maybe. So, depending on the church or once a quarter. Prayer is seen as something that is non-essential, in many cases. Unless someone's really sick, then we'll pray. That doesn't mean all churches, but we really, I believe, have gotten away from just the basics of what we see in the first century church.

The doctrine, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer. We've tried to make worship appealing to man. And for whatever reason, to fill our pews, to increase our offerings, whatever we can do to get man in here, still call it worship. And Worship is God-centered. It is not man-centered.

We see a lot of man-centered worship where people walk away feeling good about what they just experienced, but unfortunately God does not leave the service accepting what they offered Him. I think the primary thing is the demise of preaching. That the preaching of the Word of God is the power of God and a salvation to everyone that believes. When you read the Bible in a worship service, when the Bible is faithfully preached, the congregation is confessing its faith in the lordship of God and is focusing on God and God's Word and who God is. And the Bible reveals who God is and what God's will is for our lives.

That's the most important thing in life. So I would say the first thing is the failure of preaching. Instead of substantial sermons that expound the Word of God and apply it to the lives of the people. Sermons have become treaties, dialogues, they've been replaced with plays or some kind of musical presentation. The sermons have gotten shorter and shorter and shorter because people cannot tolerate being lectured to by somebody standing in a pulpit because they are taught in schools and everywhere else that lecturing is the worst form of education.

That discussion and various kinds of forums, multimedia presentations are by far the best way of communicating truth. Well nobody told God that because from the very beginning that's been God's primary way of transmitting the truth to His people, and that is through the preaching of the Word of God, not only in homes, but focusing in a worship service. When it comes to worship, there is no group of people in church history that enjoyed worship more than the Puritans. They loved to worship God. And they loved sermons.

They felt that the sermon was a central part of worship and they trained great preachers to preach great sermons by the grace of the Holy Spirit. So they were jealous to protect preaching time in a worship service. They did not want preaching time reduced to 20-25 minute sermon because they said the pastor can't unfold practical cases of conscience, spiritual emphases in this short period of time. He needs time to develop and unfold this. And they actually saw the sermon as what they called the market day of the soul.

Once a week you came to church, you heard this sermon, and you went home and you lived out of that spiritual food for a whole week. And so they had so much focus on the sermon actually that sometimes they said to each other, did you go to sermon rather than did you go to worship? Because the sermon was the center of worship. So the Puritans jealously guarded preaching time and praying time. They believed that public prayer was extremely important as it is in the New Testament and so their focus was enjoying God and glorifying God in worship, primarily through the preaching of the word of God and praying to the God of worship.

Worship is not about what makes me happy. What about what makes me excited? What encourages me or what I feel good about doing? Worship is first and foremost about me recognizing the creator creature distinction. He is the Creator and the omnipotent one, and I am the created one who approaches Him with humility as He has required me to approach Him.

In this session on understanding worship, We were introduced to our greatest need, and that is to worship God. We talked about our man-centeredness and the futility of it. We talked about the secret of happiness in a family and the identity of a family. In their making God alone the center of their thinking, which means the center of their worship. Now this is exactly what David was doing in Psalm 26.

He said it like this, So I will go about your altar, O Lord, that I may proclaim with the voice of thanksgiving and tell of all your wondrous works. And then he says, Lord, I have loved the habitation of your house and the place where your glory dwells. That is the secret of worship. A heart fixed upon God, not man. You