BROKEN FOR US: Worship in Brokenness
Pastor Steven Osborne
Transcribed by PulpitAI (with edits)
This morning I want to talk to you a little bit about the idea of worship, as well as worship in brokenness. Before I do that, and we look at our passages, I found this little funny article on different professions and how each different profession has a special hymn that kind of defines them. So the weatherman’s hymn, “There Shall Be Showers of Blessings.” The contractor hymn, “The Church’s One Foundation.” The politician’s hymn, “Standing on the Promises.” The optometrist’s hymn, “Open My Eyes That I May See.” I like this one—the IRS agent, “I Surrender All.” The electrician, “I Saw the Light.” The shopper’s hymn, “Sweet By and By.” And the realtor’s hymn, “I Got a Mansion Just Over the Hilltop.” And the doctor’s hymn, “The Great Physician.”
What Is Worship?
So it was just funny as we think about this idea of worship, and boy is this a big topic in our culture. And, honestly, worship has always been an important topic and part of every believer’s life, right? It defines us. So worship is an act that we live out in our response for our great love for our Savior and for what God has done, right? And there’s something beautiful on a Sunday morning when we gather and we break bread and we celebrate Communion together. That’s worship. When we give our offerings, when we fellowship and when we sing, when we study God’s Word, and when we pray—those are all acts of worship. And unfortunately, over the years, worship—we have started to define worship as kind of that couple of minutes, that what we do on a Sunday morning, when we just sing.
And unfortunately, I think that the enemy has really kind of got an open door to bring a lot of division in the church and in God’s people around this topic. And I think part of it is because we kind of lost track of what worship really is. What is godly definition for worship? And again, you can just go online and you still see—I mean, I just think back in the day, and growing up in the Dutch Reformed Church, and I grew up with the organ, right? And that was beautiful, that was all I knew. And then the reverend, the minister, said, “Okay, on Sunday nights, we’re gonna have kind of a youth gathering,” and boy, it’s gonna be revival—he’s gonna bring his guitar, and he’s gonna come in his jeans, right? It’s like, oh no! And it’s like, man, the uproar. It’s like, is this allowed in the church, you know, a pastor in his jeans and with a guitar, right? And then we kind of moved through some of that and then you had the whole movement with contemporary music and just that tension.
And in all honesty, when we think about just in a church morning gathering it is such a small part of our time together—the music piece—and yet it takes so much attention, right? And all the battles over the years, specifically in this area, and there’s many reasons for it. I believe that there is just amazing power, and I believe that there is just something beautiful happen in the spiritual realm when we worship, and I can see why the enemy is really attacking that area.
But I want to give you a definition, or kind of a passage that really speaks of worship, and not just in context of singing. And so this is Romans chapter 12, verse 1 and 2. It says,
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good and pleasing and perfect will.
Now, just in the natural, it will be much easier for me to say, “I don’t like this. I’m just going to say worship is what we do on a Sunday morning when Christo is up here, and we’re all singing together.” That’s fun, right? And that’s good, and it is worship. But boy, this takes it to a whole ‘nother level. There’s a whole ‘nother responsibility to say, “What do I do between Sunday and Sunday?” When I leave here, is it now suddenly I don’t worship God anymore, right? And because I don’t have a worship leader and an amazing band that is following me? Of course not, right? It is this definition, or this passage, Romans 12, where Paul is telling us like, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship.” We can sing all of the songs we want on a Sunday morning or different conferences, right? But if we don’t live it out, it absolutely means nothing. And so somehow we need to line all of this up, that our lives line up with even what we do on a Sunday morning when we’re singing and when we’re worshiping. We got to live this out. Everything that we do should be worship. And all reality is, we worship constantly; it’s just a matter of what we are worshiping.
Worship God Alone
Maeylin, my incredible, talented artist, did this for me this morning, and so you can thank her later because you would not have been able to read my handwriting. And so, even just where we’re called to worship, I said we’re constantly worshiping, and our ultimate goal is to worship God. He longs for our worship. He doesn’t need our worship, but he longs for our worship, right? And as believers, as we worship him, we know that there’s all kinds of things that comes into our worship, that hinders our worship, that takes the place of our worship for God. And sometimes this might mean our careers, right? And it might mean our passions. I know, for me, the way that I’m wired, I can get excited about different things, right? Maybe it’s technology, and it’s like, ugh, suddenly I’m spending all my time and money and energy, and guess what? Now I’m not worshiping God anymore, but I’m worshiping technology. Maybe for some of us it is sports.
And this morning it’s about just rethinking worship and say, “How do I refocus? How do I make sure that I’m still truly worshiping God and not other things in my life?” And I’ll be honest with you, after reading some of these passages that we’ll be reading and kind of just wrestling through it this week—and last night I just couldn’t sleep, I felt so convicted again, and I just again realized how far away I am sometimes, my heart, from God’s heart, in this area of worship. And I was just rolling around between my dog not giving me a lot of space on the bed, and just different things, and so I’m just, I’m praying, it’s like—and I’m upset with my own heart. It’s like, “Lord, I want more, I want more, I want more of you. I want to really just enter into your presence. I don’t want this to just be a religious act, but I want more of you. Lord, come and remove—show me some of these areas that is coming in between us. Areas where I’m worshiping other things and not you.” And this is a constant battle for all of us.
Just a definition as we think about worship:
Worship is when we give our deepest affection and highest praise to something. True worship of God is when we love him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. It’s when we prize God above everything else and put him first in our hearts.
Now this is so frustrating because, again, there’s just all these things so easily that grabs our attention. And you know, if we don’t pay attention, sometimes it can even be family, sometimes it can be our marriages, sometimes it can be our kids and different things. And it’s like, hey, all of those things are good when it’s in the right proportion and the right priority, but the most important thing that you and I can do is to worship God. Seek ye first his kingdom; seek him first with everything in you, and then everything else will fall into place. But boy, it is just not always that easy for us, and I think it’s even harder for men. It’s just not easy to be on that place of just brokenness and complete surrender, and especially if you’re wired in a sense like me. I like to fix things, I like to be in control, right? And then it’s like, “Oh, I’m gonna—I’ll play God here in this moment. I don’t need to worship him, I’ll just fix it, I don’t need to seek him in this moment.”
There’s this great—the Shema prayer in Deuteronomy, chapter six, is one of my favorite passages. It says,
Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your strength.
Boy, do I have a desire to arrive at this place. And I can be honest with you this morning, I’m not always there. There’s so many things that hinders that—so many things that I allow to fill that space and for my heart to be drawn away from God’s presence and the worship that he deserves. And let’s be honest, nothing else deserves our praise but God. I mean, when we think about just this Easter and what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross, I mean what a beautiful picture, and it should break us, and it should drive us to our knees, on our faces, as we realize again from where he rescued us from, that we were sinners, that we were lost, right? And for Jesus to come in—perfect man, perfect God—comes to earth in human form, and to go through all of those, go through the temptation, goes through all the suffering, to die on the cross—that’s amazing. It’s powerful. And then, for that reason, our lives needs to worship him. Like, nothing else, at the end of the day, deserves our worship but Jesus.
Mary’s Acts of Worship
I want to show you two passages. John, chapter 12, if you have your Bible with you, it is a beautiful passage. This is several days before the Passover. This is now the end of Jesus’ public ministry, and he’s on his way to the cross. So let’s read John, chapter 12, and we’ll start on verse 1.
Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray Him, objected, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.”
One comment I saw, they were talking about in today’s value it might have been like $60,000.
He did not say this because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.
“Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”
Meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and believing in Him.
What a beautiful scene. You have Jesus, he is in fellowship with Lazarus and with Mary, Martha—and Martha again is kind of just doing her thing. She is just serving, right? And that in itself is also beautiful, when you think about just the gift of hospitality, and just, “Hey, let me make sure that Jesus is okay.” You know, I don’t know that really anybody had an idea of what was waiting on the other side here for Jesus, but they’re still celebrating this win. Lazarus was dead, now he’s alive. The crowd is kind of getting excited that they’re hearing that Jesus is in this town, and they’ve heard about Lazarus. I don’t know about you, but if your brother or uncle or dad suddenly passed away—he was dead for four days and suddenly there’s a miracle, Jesus called him out and now he’s alive, it’s like, that will stir up some things, right? A lot of excitement, a lot of people that will be coming, it’s like, “Man, let’s see this Jesus. We want to see this miracle and the things that he did.” And on the mind of Jesus, he knows that in the next several days, it’s his last days on this earth and the cross that is waiting for him. And here’s a crowd and they’re all excited. They don’t know really exactly what they’re all excited for, but they’re excited, right? And it’s like, “We just know this is Jesus, and he’s maybe the new king, he’s gonna save us,” and he does all these miracles, and it’s a beautiful scene, and you can imagine that they were excited. And Jesus takes time and he visits with his friends, and the next moment you see this beautiful heart of Mary once again, of just ringing out this perfume.
Now we can try and read a lot of things in there. There’s a lot of things that we don’t know in this passage. It talks about that it’s Simon the Leper’s house, and so we don’t know if he’s there. So some questions, right? But we shouldn’t miss the main point of this passage. As they’re reclining, as they’re eating, there is this moment where Mary pours out her worship, out to Jesus in adoration. I don’t know what caused all of that. There was just, maybe the excitement of Lazarus being alive, the excitement and just maybe the awareness that this is Jesus, the Messiah, and we’re so blessed that he’s in our presence. I don’t know how do you respond when you’re in the presence of Jesus, when Jesus is actually showing up at your house and having dinner with you. What does that look like? Right? Most of us are probably like, “No, let me just grab the Shark vacuum cleaner quickly before Jesus comes. Kids, please don’t tell Jesus mom and I just had a fight. Mom just burned the food,” right, type of deal. And it’s like, “Let’s just make sure everything is in place, everything looks perfect before we allow Jesus to come and have dinner with us.”
But somehow it is just this incredible, beautiful picture of this deep fellowship. I don’t even know how Jesus is able to connect here and to be on a place where he can actually eat, knowing that the cross is in front of him, and yet he spends time with his friends, and Mary comes and she pours out this oil on him and worships him, and it’s just beautiful.
It says that the perfume, the fragrance—can you imagine that? Just the fragrance in that whole room. Yesterday we were in a store, Venessa and I, we were on our little date in the afternoon, and we went into a store, and the lady, as we were leaving we were smelling candles, and she had a little wood stick thing that she was burning that’s from the Amazon, and she’s like, “If you smell this, and if you get this, it will bring you great joy, peace and love.” It’s like, well, I probably need to buy twenty of those then, right? I wish it was that easy. “Here, smell this. Love, joy, peace.” I almost, like man, I should have brought my Bible and said, “Here’s my Bible. Guess what? This brings you great joy, love and peace.” But it’s just a quick fragrance and so, even in this moment, this expensive perfume, the fragrance that that releases.
And then immediately Judas is responding, and he’s reacting, and he’s like, “Well, we could have used that for the poor,” right? And in all reality, this is not really the motive behind his heart, because he’s used to stealing money from this ministry. And then Jesus responds, and he says, “You’re always going to have the poor with you. You’re always going to have them.” Now it is important that we look at this passage very carefully because sometimes in Conservative circles, people will use this and to say that we shouldn’t care about the poor, so like they’re always going to be around. Yes, they are always going to be around us, but in this passage, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t care for the poor. That’s why we responded to Haiti and trying to help Haiti, and we helped the local ministries. I believe it comes out of a place as we worship and as we adore God and as we draw nearer to him, there’s a motivation that will come out of us to take care of God’s people. But Jesus is saying, “Don’t miss this point. I don’t want you to make social justice or biblical justice the priority in this moment when you can actually worship me.” It is about recognizing the importance of worship, of worshiping Jesus Christ. He is after our worship at the end of the day.
And again, there’s so many different things. Two weeks ago, Venessa and I were at a marriage conference in the cities, and there was a Q&A, and they were talking about different things that will sometimes divide couples. And she was sharing one there, like—so Q&A and people were asking them questions around this topic, and they’re like, “Well, what if your political views are not the same?” And then they had a comment about, “What if your theological differences are not the same?” I was like, wow, those are great questions. Praise the Lord, Venessa and I, at least at this point, we’re on the same page, so that’s not kind of a thing that I always think about. But she made this quote—and I can’t remember the quote who she mentioned—but she said this: “Be careful not to worship your theology.” I was like, “Ouch,” because sometimes we can so worship even theology. Maybe it’s your End Time views, right, or whatever it might be. And we don’t want to worship that; we want to worship Jesus. We don’t want to worship our politics; we want to worship Jesus. We don’t want to worship our president; we want to worship Jesus. He’s all that matters. I was like, “Lord, there’s so many things that I worship so many times instead of you. Forgive me. I repent. I repent.”
You know, there’s always gonna be people that’s gonna have comments when we’re totally surrendered to Jesus, when we’re fully committed, and when people don’t understand it. And here’s Judas, and he’s walking with Jesus, and yet his heart is in a bad place. He’s stealing the money, and he’s making this comment of this sweet moment, and yet Jesus is calling him out, right? And he makes this promise like, “Hey, we’re gonna talk about her till the end of time.” I mean even that moment, that we are reading of that moment, that sweet moment, thousands of years later. What a gift, a moment of worship.
Another Act of Worship
Luke 7, we kind of read a very similar story. Luke 7, verse 36:
When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.
When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”
Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”
“Tell me, teacher,” he said.
[It says,] “Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of these will love him more?”
Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had a bigger debt forgiven.”
“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.
Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give any water to my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been given little loves little.”
And I wonder if we’re not struggling to worship because we think that we have it all figured out, that we’re not broken, that we have lost sight of where we have come from and what Jesus have forgiven us from.
There’s this warning in Matthew 15. It says, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.” God is after our hearts, church. He’s after our hearts. It’s more than just worship here on a Sunday morning, lifting up our hands and singing. It is beautiful, but if there’s no heart behind it, then if there’s no brokenness behind it, and adoration, and we just act like sinners and the world from Monday to Saturday, it means nothing.
The State of Brokenness
Brokenness is not merely a state of being physically or emotionally shattered; it is a recognition of our deep need for God. It is the acknowledgement that we are flawed, imperfect beings in need of a divine intervention. Brokenness strips away our pride, our self-sufficiency, and our illusion of control. It humbles us before the throne of grace and opens our hearts to receive God’s mercy and healing.
Psalm 34:18, as we think about just worship and worship him and our brokenness—a lot of times we so hold on to all of this control, and it’s just, “I can’t be vulnerable, I can’t show my brokenness, that I’m actually a sinner, that I’m in desperate need of Jesus when I worship.” And then how can God heal you if you’re trying to hide and act like you have it all together?
And then the great promise this morning for those of you that are sitting here this morning and you realize, like, “Man, I am a sinner. There’s so many things going on in my heart,” right? And your past and where you’ve come from, it’s like—and whatever you’re dealing with this morning.
Psalm 34:18, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
Psalm 51, this is David’s cry after his son. It says, “The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.” There is something beautiful when we can come Sunday mornings, and we can come broken and vulnerable and honest, and say “Jesus, I need you. I need you. I worship you.”
Charles Spurgeon, “There are many sorts of broken hearts, and Christ is good at healing them all.” What great news.
Benefits of Worship
Some benefits of just worshiping in our brokenness:
Worship and brokenness fosters authenticity and our relationship with God.
Brokenness humbles us before God, reminding us of our dependence on him.
Worship in brokenness opens the door to healing.
Come broken to Jesus. And boy, we’re so excited as we are drawing near to Holy Week and Good Friday, I want to encourage, you don’t miss Friday night. That’s going to be powerful for our Good Friday service. So that’s two weeks. Really gonna be a powerful evening again as we just ponder and reflect on the brokenness of Jesus Christ. But I just want you to know this morning that it’s really about worshiping Christ.
What if we take these next two weeks and we have honest conversation with God and we take a closer look at our heart and to say, “What are the things that is coming in between me and God in my worship? What are things that I’m actually worshiping? Am I really truly worshiping Jesus Christ?” And if you are not, man just cry out, make it right. He’s there; his Holy Spirit will guide you and help you. But this morning is our morning. Take these next two weeks as we lead up to Easter, and deal with your heart, and let’s worship. Let’s let our lives worship him in the workplace, in the school, Sunday to Sunday. May we live this out with integrity.
