So last Sunday was Easter Sunday, and we all know how big a deal Easter Sunday is. Easter Sunday is a day that we come together to celebrate the good news of Jesus' resurrection and the fact that Jesus is alive. So on Easter Sunday, we know that our parking lot is going to be a little bit fuller. We know that there's going to be a few more people sitting in the sanctuary with us.
But that was last Sunday. Today, Easter is over. So there's not quite as many cars out in our parking lot this morning, and there aren't quite as many people sitting in our sanctuary today. But you're here.
You still decided to come to church today, even though it's no longer Easter. But there's part of me that can't help but wonder why. Now, don't get me wrong here. We're glad that you're in church today.
I love that you came to worship with us. But let's also be honest here. It's a lot easier to get motivated to get up and going on Sunday morning to help your kids find their shoes to pick out the clothes you want to wear on a day like Easter. That it is those ordinary Sundays throughout the course of the year.
So what motivated you to come to church today? Why are you here? Now, there are a lot of different ways that you could answer that question. You could say that you're in church today just because it's a habit.
When you wake up on Sunday morning, you're just in that habit of putting on your Sunday best and heading off to church without even really thinking about what you're doing. Or some of you could say that you're here at church today because you had to be here. Maybe you had to teach a Sunday school class or you have to help out in the tech booth. But there's some kind of job that you needed to do that brought you to church today.
Some of you might be a little bit more pious in your answer. You might say something like, you're here at church today because you love God and you want it to be with God's people. Or you might be willing to admit that this last week was a tough week for you. That's part of the reason why you're at church today is because you hope that by being here it would lift you back up again.
And some of you may have more practical reasons for being at church today. You might say that you're at church today because you're paid to be here. Or you're at church today because you just wanted a free donut for breakfast. Or maybe your parents drug you to church today.
But are those really the reasons why we come to church? Well, these are kind of questions that we're going to be talking about over the next few weeks as we work our way through this new series called Church Explained. And in this series, we're going to be talking about why we do some of the things that we do in church. And in the next few weeks, we're going to talk about why we sing and we're going to talk about why they're to sermon.
We're even going to talk about why we call a worship service a worship service. But before we get to any of those things, we need to spend some time talking about why it is we worship. So let me just ask you, why do we worship? Why do we worship?
Now, there are a lot of different ways that you could answer that question. For example, St. Augustine has said that we worship because our hearts will always be restless until they find rest in God. Or the German theologian, Frederick Schleiermacher, which is really easy to say, by the way.
St. Augustine says that the essence of worship is realizing our absolute dependence on God. Or the 20th century theologian, Paul Tilick says that we worship God because God is ultimately what is most important. But I have to tell you that I don't think we're ever going to find the best explanation for why we worship from any of these theologians.
I should think we find the best explanation for why we worship in the book of Psalms. So if you've got a Bible close by or Bible app on your phone, I'd encourage you to go ahead and open it to Psalm 42 and 43. We're going to look at both of these Psalms together today because I think that they help us understand why it is that we worship. So let's take a look at Psalm 42 to start with, and we'll start reading in verse 1.
This is what the Psalm is writes. He writes, Now I want to stop right here for just a minute. And I want to stop here for a minute because I think what we just read gives us the perfect picture, the perfect illustration for why it is that we worship. Psalm 42 verse 1 says that we are like deer that are panting for the water that is God.
And that is a great illustration for why it is that we worship. We are like deer that are panting for our God. But as great as that illustration is, I think we sometimes miss everything. The richness that the psalmist is talking about when he uses this example.
And that's because when we read passages like this, we usually read them from a familiar context. When we're reading a passage like this, it talks about deer. We think about deer, how we see them in Kentucky today. So we hear this almost talking about deer.
We're going to think about the deer that we'll see when we're out in the woods maybe, but we're the deer that you sometimes see crossing the highway, hopefully not too close to your car. Or we think about, for me, I think about the deer that I will occasionally see what I'm out running in the parklands. But that's not what this psalmist is talking about here, exactly, because you have to remember. This psalmist wasn't writing the psalm in modern day Kentucky.
Psalm was being written in ancient Israel. And ancient Israel looked a little different than modern Kentucky does. Now when a lot of us think about Israel, what we're going to think about is we're going to think about being a dry desert kind of place. Israel is so much more than that.
Israel has coastal plains, it has hills, it has valleys, it has mountains, it even has forests. And that's where these deer would have lived. They would have lived in these forests. But Israel also had long, hot summers.
And in these long, hot summers, some of the streams and smaller bodies of water that were in the forest, the deer relied on, would run dry. And when those streams, when those smaller bodies of water ran dry, the deer had to go looking for another source of water somewhere. And that wasn't always easy for the deer to find. So when we hear the psalmist talk about us being like deer, panting for the streams of water, that's what we need to keep in mind.
When you hear this, when you think about what the psalmist is saying, that we are like the deer that pans for these streams of water, you need a picture of this deer that is in Israel. In one of the forests, in the middle of summer after the streams, and the smaller bodies of water that it usually drinks from, if run dry, think about this deer. Picking a day or more, searching to find another place where it can drink. That's how much our souls long forgot.
Can you imagine that kind of thirst? Because, be honest with you, I can't. I've never been that thirsty in my entire life. Truth is probably the thirstiest I have ever been in my entire life happened when I was a teenager, when I was about 20 feet up off the ground under an old metal roof in a barn, as I was helping a farmer that I knew in some of his hands, unload and sack some hay.
And I don't know if you've ever had the pleasure of unloading and stacking hay under a hot metal roof in an old barn in the middle of summer, but it's not just hot in that barn. It's hot in that barn. It's the kind of hot where you have sweat that is dripping from the brim of your hat all the way down to the socks on your feet. This sweat that you get, it's not that nice glistening sweat that you get when you go out for a morning jog.
Now, this sweat is the perspiration on your skin that is mixed with all of the dirt and the dust and debris that is on the hay and on the barn. So if you even try to wipe your face off, it looks like you wipe oil straight engine grease across your face. And that's what it's like in that barn. It is hot.
It is sticky. It is sweaty. It is nasty. It is hard to get out of the heat that as soon as the person who's in charge tells you that it's time to take a break, you will jump down off the top of that mountain.
That pile of hay in the barn, even when it's 20 feet up, like there's an animal chasing after you. And even though it's been probably at least 25, 26 years since the last time I helped stack hay because that's when I started to get smart and realized there were better ways to earn a living. Even though it's been that long since I was in there, I still remember one day in particular, where we had been there all day. We started early in the morning.
We were working well into the afternoon because we just had fields and fields of hay that needed to be unloaded and stacked into the spot. And it was hot all day long. It's kind of hot where we could come through everything that the guy in charge had provided us to drink that day. So we brought out a couple of these big coolers and we drank everything that was in them.
We drank the water that was in them. We drank the gatorade he brought out. We even drank the melted ice that was in the cooler because it was that hot that day. But there was still more to be done.
So we went back to work and we worked for a little while longer. That's when the guy in charge remembered that he had a case of Sprite that had been sitting in the cab of his truck all day long. Exactly. I don't know if you ever drank a hot Sprite before, but it's awful.
I mean, it's not the kind of thing that anybody wants to actually drink. But on that day, as soon as the guy in charge remembered there was that case of Sprite out in his car, he told us about it. You better believe I shot down from the top of that hay mountain ready to get something to drink. And all of us practically ran over to his car, popping the tops open on that hot Sprite, shutting it down just to get a little bit of refreshment.
But even as thirsty as I was in that moment, it doesn't begin to compare to what this psalmist is talking about when he talks about the deer panting for streams of water. And that's how much our souls pant for God. Are you starting to get the picture here a little bit? Are you starting to see why it is we worship?
So why do we worship? We worship because our souls thirst for God. That's why we're here. We worship because our souls thirst for God.
But why are souls thirst for God? Well, let's turn back to these psalms and let's see what else the psalmist has to tell us. Once again, we'll pick back up in Psalm 42 verse 1. And I just want you to listen to what the psalmist says.
He writes, Why my soul are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God. My soul is downcast within me, therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Herman, from Mount Mazzar.
Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls. All your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the Lord directs his love, and night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God my rock, why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning oppressed by the enemy? My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, where is your God? Why my soul are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God. And continuing on in the Psalm 43 we read, vindicate me, my God, and plead my cause against an unfaithful nation, rescue me from those who are deceitful and wicked. You are God my stronghold, why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning oppressed by the enemy?
Send me your light and your faithful care, let me, let them leave me, let them bring me to your holy mountain to the place where you dwell. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my joy and my delight and I will praise you with the liar. Oh God my God, why my soul are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God. Now what's you here? What's you here as you listen to these two Psalms are the words of someone who is clearly walking through one of those dark valleys of life. But if you listen you can also hear, then it's by all the bad things that the psalmist is facing, that he still remembers what it's like to not be down in the valleys but up on the mountaintops.
And the truth is that's what life is like for all of us, that's what faith is like for all of us. We are all always either climbing up toward another mountaintop or we are going down into another one of those valleys. That's what we always go through. Life is filled with those ups and life is filled with those downs.
And what the psalmist wants to know is that he's not alone in these moments. So what we hear is we listen to the psalmist speak here as someone who's trying to remind themselves of how God has been with them. Because we've all had those moments. We've all had those moments where we have been filled with so much joy that God has felt so close to us that we can almost reach out and touch God's hands.
But we've also had those moments where God has felt like he has a million miles away. That's part of the reason why we worship is to remember that God is still here with us. Whether we're on that mountaintop or down in that valley, God is still with us. So when we're going through those low moments in our lives and we're walking through one of life's valleys, we worship to remember.
That when we start hearing people asking us what they ask inside of these psalms, where is your God? We can remember where our God is. We can remember that we have been in the house of God and we have come into the house of the Lord shouting with joy and celebration in praise. But we also worship so that when we are on those mountaintops in life, we can look back down into the valleys and see how God brought us out.
And when I think about that image, when I think about the image of God helping bring us up out of all of the deepest and darkest valleys that we face, I can't help but imagine God singing a song that you are probably familiar with. But this song is an a song that we find in our hymnals. This song is a song that we find in Motown. And I'm not going to butcher the song by trying to sing it for you today because some of you would never forgive me.
But I want to share some of the words from the song with you. Like I said, you've heard it before. But when I think about the image of God reaching down into the valleys and helping us out of them, I can't help but hear the words of this song. Ain't no mountain high enough.
Ain't no valley low enough. Ain't no river wide enough to keep me from getting to you. That's part of why we worship. We worship to remember that God is always with us.
Through the good and through the bad. Through the ups and through the downs. Through your joys and through your struggles. Through your success.
Through your failure. God is always with us. But that's only part of the reason why we worship. We also worship to remember that we are not alone on this journey.
We come together to worship to remember that we are not alone on this journey. And we need that reminder sometimes. When you are going down into one of the valleys of life, you need that reminder that you're not the only one who is weeping and struggling as you go down into the valleys. And as you're trying to reach the next summit, you need the reminder that you're not the only one who is climbing up that mountain.
We need these reminders because they show us that God is active. And we need to know that God is active. We need to know that God is active but not just active in my life. But God is active in your life and God is active in our church and God is active in our community and God is active in our world.
So we need to hear about each other's struggles and the way God is helping us through. We need to hear about each other's successes. The way that God does things that are so worthy of praise. We need that reminder that no matter where we are on this journey, that other people are there and that God is meeting them exactly where they are on this path as well.
And when we come together to worship, when we're reminded of these things, when we remember that whether we are at the absolute peak of the highest mountain in life or we are down to the lowest valley we've ever faced or we are somewhere in between, we remember that God is with us. That helps restore us. It helps refresh us. It helps revive us so that we're able to go from our worship services, ready to help the people that we see outside the walls of our church, make it through their deepest valleys and up onto the next summit that they're reaching for too.
I think this is part of the reason why I love the way that a guy named Ronald Byers, who's a retired professor of worship and preaching talks about what worship is. And Dr. Byers writes that in worship, God picks us up. He brushes us off and he replenishes our store of love for God and for the world.
And that's really what worship is all about. I mean, just think about it for a minute. Think about what your life is like in a typical week. In a typical week begins on Sunday and many of us gather together in worship on Sunday morning.
So we start out our week by coming together into this place. And hopefully while we are here, we are revived. We are refreshed and we are replenished. Our stores of love for God and for the world are replenished while we're here.
But no matter how great our worship services may be, eventually we have to go back out through the doors of our church, back out into the world. And a lot of times it feels like it doesn't take long once we go back out into the world before somebody comes along and just kicks our legs out right underneath of us. And we go base down into the dirt. And then there are some weeks when it feels like while we are still down in that dirt, everybody else that we need comes along and they just keep kicking more dust on top of us like there's some angry baseball manager kicking dirt on home plate.
That's what life is like sometimes for us. So what do we need in worship? What we need to meet someone in worship who picks us up and dust us off and replenishes the store of love that we have, not just for God, but for the world that we live in. That's what happens in worship.
The worship we get to encounter that God who picks us up and brushes us off and restores, replenishes our store of love for God and for the world. So why do we worship? We worship because when we worship we encounter God. When we worship we encounter God.
The God that our souls pant for like a deer who is longing for streams of water. The God who picks us up and brushes us off and replenishes our store of love for him and for the world. That's who we encounter when we worship. And every time you come through the doors of the church for a worship service you have the chance to encounter this God.
But sometimes we overlook that fact because we tell ourselves the reason why we're at church today is because it's just a habit. We tell ourselves that we're in church today because we had a job to do. We tell ourselves that we're in church today because we wanted a free donut. But deep down inside and a place that you may not even be aware of or a place where you can't even begin to articulate it.
That's not why you're here. Deep down, you know that you are here because you are either climbing up one of those mountains in life right now or you were walking down into a valley. And you want to know that you're not alone. You want to know that other people are on this journey with you.
You want to know that God is on this journey with you. So my challenge for you is whenever we gather to worship, not just today, not just on Sundays, whenever we come together in this place, don't rush past it. Don't miss what this is all about. Don't overlook what happens in this place because when we come together to worship we are reminded that we are on this journey of life.
But we're not alone. Just look around you. This room is filled with other people that are going up those mountains and coming down into the valleys right now. But even more than that, this place is filled with a God who is with us on this journey.
It's God who picks us up and brushes us off and helps us get ready for whatever the week ahead may hold. It's God that our souls long for just like a deer longing for streams of water. This is why we worship. That's pretty good.
God, as we come to you in this word of prayer, we are so thankful for the fact that you invite us to come and worship you because God, we don't deserve it. You are God, the God who created the heavens and the earth and everything in them. But God, you decided to create each of us. You invite us to come into this place to worship you.
Well, not only that, God, you don't just invite us to come to you. You come and meet us wherever we are in life. Whether we are on the highest mountain down in the darkest valley or somewhere in between you are always with us. And we are so grateful for that.
So God, thank you for the reminder of why it is that we worship because God, sometimes we do take it for granted. Sometimes it just becomes something else that is on our calendar, something that we always do, but we forget why we're here. And God, we are here because in this place we have the chance to meet you. So open our eyes, open our ears, open our hearts so that we can see you, hear you, and encounter you every time we worship.
We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.