Don't Blame God // Worship as a Way of Life, Part 3

It's easy to worship God in the good times. Sure. But what about the bad times, when life is really tough? What does it mean to worship God in the middle of suffering? Because, quite frankly, when we're suffering, the very last thing we feel like doing is worshipping God. Job in the Face of Adversity Well, this is the third message in a series that I've called, "Worship as a Way of Life". Over the last couple of weeks we have been looking at exactly what this thing is that we call "worship". I mean we all worship something, whether its money or pleasure or career or recognition, you name it and people sacrifice their lives to worship it. Worship is ascribing worth to something; it's bowing down our lives to it and sacrificing other things for it. People will sacrifice their marriages for their careers. Why? Because they ascribe more worth to their career than they do to their husband or their wife. People will sacrifice their family and their home to adultery. Why? Because they ascribe more worth to their pleasure than to the fidelity of marriage. Last week we talked a little bit about what it means to worship God. Now the New Testament talks about two types of worship - there are two different Greek words used in the New Testament to talk about worship. One of them means "bowing our lives down" – it's the word "proskuneo" – it's the word we get "prostrate" – to prostrate ourselves. The second is the word "latrio" and it's the word that means "serving". Latreuo is the word that we get the word "lateral" from, so it's an outward form of worship. Inside worship; bowing down, prostrating ourselves and outside worship; doing things, lateral worship. It's about worshipping God, not just with our hearts and our mouths but with our lives – it's what we do, what we say, how we act and behave and treat others. It's great to sing songs in church on Sundays, but that's not the whole of worship. That form of worship is the "proskuneo" type of worship. But living worship out is something that's lateral; it goes out. Remember last week, if you were with us, we looked at Romans, chapter 12, beginning at verse 1, where Paul writes: Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, because of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. Some translations say, "this is your spiritual act of service". It's the "latreuo". Now this is easier said than done. I mean, when life is going really well; when finances and family are going well; and work and its fun and we're cruising along, it's not too hard to be a living sacrifice. You know why? Because when everything is going well, it doesn't feel like we have to sacrifice much. Man, it's easy to worship God when it's all happening like that. 'I'm honouring God; God's blessing me – halleluiah! But what happens when things turn ugly? When all of a sudden they start falling apart – family and wealth and health – some of those things start going wrong – what happens when we are put under pressure? What happens when it hurts? What happens when it aches so bad inside that we can barely life the eyes of our soul Christ-ward? What is worship as a way of life look like then? I don't think that we can talk about worship without talking about this. You see, when things go bad, the most common response is to blame God. "God, what are You doing? Why are You letting this happen to me and we let out this guttural cry?" The most common reaction is to blame God. You know, it's funny how people who worship fame or success or money or pleasure, when all that comes tumbling down, as it inevitably will, they justify their reactions. They never blame those things that they were worshipping but we, well, when we go through some suffering, the very first thing that so often happens, is that people blame God. Jesus made a promise to His disciples - you can read it in John, chapter 16, verse 33. He promised them, "In this world you will have tribulation." You will – that's one of those promises of God we don't like standing on. And when we look at worshipping God in the midst of trial and tribulation as we are today, we'll look at it in perspective of a couple of men – Job and Paul. Now these guys both went through a lot of suffering. Now I don't like sermons that say, "Well, you know, Job did it this way and Paul did it that way and you and I should be like Job and Paul." We're not – I'm not Job; I'm not Paul, nor are you. We are us! But when we look at how these men reacted under suffering, there is some insights; there's something there where God is telling us about worship under duress – worship in times of stress. Let's have a look at Job first. Now the story of Job – if you've got a Bible, open it up - the Book of Job comes just before the Book of Psalms. Job, chapter 1, verse 1, says that Job was blameless and upright, that he feared God and that he turned away from evil. I mean, this guy was ...