Sid: Kerry Kirkwood we’re talking about worship and I’m reminded I believe it’s in Romans 9 and it says we owe a debt of gratitude to the Jewish people because in most Bible translations it says because of them is the service, but that word service means the worship.
Kerry: Yes.
Sid: And out of curiosity take us back what was original worship like of the first people that understood to worship God what was that like?
Kerry: Well, they weren’t worshipping to get something they were worshipping because they had revelation of Him.
Sid: The whole thing has been reversed, He’s the give me God.
Kerry: Exactly in other words if I worship God then He’s going to give something. Just like with the tithes and the offerings, people teach so much oh, if you give this then God will give that but yet with 2nd Corinthian’s 9 it is God who gives seed to the sower. And if we see that worship is like seed, then worship comes from the Father and He gives it to us so that we can sow it back into the heavenliest and then out of that relationship there are a lot of good things to come. But if we worship with the idea of getting something it’s like our minds and heart is upon what we’re getting and not setting our affections on things above instead we’re setting it on things on the earth. And so it’s no longer a thing to where we have to coax people to worship, it’s be the Spirit of the Lord leading us into worship.
Sid: Now this was before we had all these Levitical choirs and musical instruments and temple worship, it was just “God You’re so magnificent I can’t help but worship You!”
Kerry: Yes, yes. Well they sang what was called the song of the Lord, Psalms 98 says “Sing unto a new song and it was the Hallel, which means to give a spontaneous song that had never been written. So it would be a song of the Lord that people, there was no music, there was none written on lead sheets, there was no notes, it was simply as the song of the Lord came up out of their heart and they were singing a love song to the Lord. And so worship was not something that people sat in a church and just watched somebody else sing for them and it was not done for them as an observer, but it was an engagement between the bridegroom and the bride of singing back and forth and dialoging, loving one another.
Sid: You told me before we went on the air, that literally God marks worshippers, explain that.
Kerry: Yes He does. I can give you the parable there in Matthew the 22nd chapter when Jesus is giving the parable of the wedding feast. He’s talking about those that rejected Him and so on like that, then he went out and gathered everybody up. There’s one comes in after the King comes down and he’s overlooking the wedding guest and sees a man without a wedding garment and he sees him and he says, “Friend how come you came in here without a wedding garment?” Well, from our perspective, a non-Jewish perspective, is that we see that sometimes how ungrateful you invited him and then you don’t like the way he’s dressed. But the culture then, every Jew would understand that was that when a king gave a wedding reception that the attendance at the door would give them a wedding garment and they would put the wedding garment over the clothes that they had wore so that everyone in there had this same identity. And usually on that wedding garment there was like we would say today like a coat of arms or there was an identity that spoke of who the king was and how great he was and how his conquering quests and all of that. So everyone in there that was to attend to the feast that had this wedding garment on was there to honor for his son. But this one guy says “I want to come in, I want the feast that you have, I want all the things that you provide for me, I want the protection that every king would provide for people living under his domain. But I do not want your identity; I do not want to wear your garment.” And yet we see in Isaiah 61 where one of the things of the Messianic prophecy is when “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me and He has anointed me,” and you go down to where He says, “to bind up the broken hearted and proclaim the year of jubilee.” Then He says, ”to give a garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.” And so that garment of praise as I believe is that wedding garment that identifies us as a worshipper. So when we are worshippers there’s an identifying mark upon us that says that “I belong to him; I identify with His kingdom; I identify with everything that He does and His authority and by me worshipping that means that I’m bowing and giving my authority to Him.” And bowing is an issue that is huge because when Jesus there in Matthew the 4th chapter was led up into the high place and there He confronted satan himself. And with the last test of that was that satan said to Jesus “I’ll give you all of this that you see if you’ll not just worship me but if You will bow down.” Because bowing means to relinquish ones authority and it’s a high level of submission.
Sid: But we don’t see that today anywhere, we don’t see Christians bowing down, if anything we see the opposite.
Kerry: Oh yeah, arms folded, hands in pocket.
Sid: Right.
Kerry: Which means I’m here just to observe, I’m here just to see.
Sid: How does what you’re teaching about having a sign as a worshipper fit in the parable of the five wise virgins and the five foolish; the wise had oil.
Kerry: Yes and when it came time because they were all waiting for the celebration or the shout that the bridegroom comes.
Sid: Is shout part of worship?
Kerry: Yes, it is “Shout unto the Lord with a voice of triumph.” The Bible says “The shout of a King is in your midst.” And so when we shout to the Lord it is a sound of victory that the Holy Spirit will move upon us. See if we’re in churches and places to where it says we have to be reverential and quiet because this is what the Lord wants. No, it isn’t! Read the Bible the Bible is a worship book, it’s all about worshipping the Lamb of God, worshipping the Son of God.
Sid: Okay, go back to the five wise virgins, how did they get their oil, they went out and they bought it, but what does that mean to you?
Kerry: Well, it means the fact that there was some effort put into it, remember that the foolish after they’d all used up their oil the only difference between those ten were that the wise carried oil in another vessel. So it wasn’t about I’m just going to when this is used up and that’s it; but they carried enough. Worshippers are having a replenishing of that, so it says “You have to go and buy oil for yourself.” There are some things that we can’t get from anybody else but we have to go get it ourselves.
Sid: So we can’t have someone else like our paid worship leader do the worshipping for us.
Kerry: Exactly, that’s my point totally. If you only watch someone worship then that doesn’t make you a worshipper and the old silly joke is that “No more than setting in a garage makes you a car.” Attending a church doesn’t make you a worshipper, it’s the revelation that you have about Him, and that invokes that Spirit of Worship which means dancing, shouting, you know clapping of the hands.
Sid: Tell me about joy because you say that’s one of the benefits of worship, why is joy so important?
Kerry: Well, joy is not an emotion or feeling like most people think, that’s happiness. Happiness is based upon what’s happening around me. People are happy they got a raise and then their sad when they lose it, but joy is a constant because it comes from the Lord. It’s the joy of the Lord, not the joy for the Lord, in other words the very nature of God is joy, “The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink but righteousness, peace and joy,” that’s what it says in Roman’s 14. So part of the kingdom of God is joy and joy means to rejoin yourself, have revelation with God, join Him and I see what He sees and then I have joy, it comes out of our Spirit not of our mind which is happiness and emotion. So I can be going through great trials and testings and still have joy because as a worshipper God gives us that sense of joy no matter what’s happening at the moment.
Sid: You know you do teaching on the 91st Psalm about not knowing terror, explain that.
Kerry: Well when He says that the shadow, the overshadowing of the Almighty that’s that presence of God that a worshipper walks in. Now just when we’re in a church service but we walk in a regular basis because we’re now like the Ark of the Covenant, we are the Ark of the Covenant because now He dwells in us not in just in boxes that are covered by gold. And so by that we carry worship, we’re carriers and couriers of worship. So that means as we continually refresh that oil that we talked about continually honor and bless Him on a daily basis there is a covering over our lives that the enemy can’t find us there.
Sid: You know there’s a Hebrew word that’s kavod, it’s a heavy presence of God that when that happens to me I don’t bow down before because it’s my desire to worship, I’m almost pushed down by the heaviness of God.
Kerry: Exactly, in other words that’s the presence of God the Glory of God is that word which is so overwhelming that it’s the physical part of us that we can’t even stand. That’s what happened when they were dedicating the temple at the presence of God that the kavod of God came upon them where the Bible says that the priests couldn’t even stand up to minister they’re physical abilities couldn’t resist what was happening in the presence of God.
Sid: You say that worship creates a habitation for God, what do you mean by that?
Kerry: Well, I think a habitation meaning an environment, a place we live in.
Sid: Whoa, how would you like the environment of the Garden of Eden in your house, in your car, wherever you go; you can take worship wherever you go but you need to learn why and how.
Tags: It's Supernatural, Sid Roth
Tags: It's Supernatural, Sid Roth