Worship — What is it?

Section 1

This evening our sermon is split into two sections, each of which will be around ten minutes long. Hopefully that won’t be too long to ask the children to pay attention, or failing that not too long for them to be interested by the colouring and other activities at the back.

This evening our sermon is split into two sections, each of which will be around ten minutes long. Hopefully that won’t be too long to ask the children to pay attention, or failing that not too long for them to be interested by the colouring and other activities at the back.

This evening we’re starting a new series. This will be an intermittent series, probably around one sermon per month, exploring different aspects of worship. Over the course of the next few months, a year, however long, we’ll cover different aspects like the whole of life as worship, musical worship in the congregation, family worship at home, and so on. Many of these will hopefully be very obviously and directly practical, though at other points we’ll take more of a step back into the theology of worship, though hopefully still with clear relevance for our day to day, of course.

This evening we’re starting a new series. This will be an intermittent series, probably around one sermon per month, exploring different aspects of worship. Over the course of the next few months, a year, however long, we’ll cover different aspects like the whole of life as worship, musical worship in the congregation, family worship at home, and so on. Many of these will hopefully be very obviously and directly practical, though at other points we’ll take more of a step back into the theology of worship, though hopefully still with clear relevance for our day to day, of course.

So we begin the series this evening with a fundamental question, what is worship? So we come to examine the nature of true worship.

The nature of worship in the life of the believer, and especially in the lives of churches, can be a difficult one. The evangelical church around the world, especially in the US and here in the UK has struggled to establish patterns of worship with a broad appeal. Congregations and even denominations can respond to these issues in a few different ways.

For the Glory of God Chapter 1: Toward a Holistic, Biblical Understanding of Worship

Increasingly we see congregations respond to these tensions in one of three ways: (1) they split into two or more churches, so each is free to pursue its preferences; (2) they establish multiple worship services, each gratifying one of these musical tastes; or (3) they adopt the philosophy of the contemporary music and worship industry, simply marginalizing those with traditional hymnic preferences and forcing them to leave or retreat into passive, resigned modes.

For the Glory of God Chapter 1: Toward a Holistic, Biblical Understanding of Worship

Instead of worship uniting God’s people, conflicts over worship have divided them.

have divided congregations, and divided denominations. This ought not to be. We should seek a better way forwards. Hopefully, stopping to examine the true nature of worship will help us to find that better way.

We’ll touch on a few different passages as we go along, but it would be helpful if we can begin by reading together from Deuteronomy chapter 10.

Deuteronomy 10:12–22 NIV

And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the Lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good? To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations—as it is today. Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. Fear the Lord your God and serve him. Hold fast to him and take your oaths in his name. He is the one you praise; he is your God, who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes. Your ancestors who went down into Egypt were seventy in all, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky.

I suggest that there are three key elements which characterise true worship as the Bible presents it. We’ll look at the first couple now, then after a few more songs we’ll add in the third and try to pull it all together.

Attitude

So, first element, we see here in Deuteronomy that it’s a question of attitude. When Israel is asked what God requires of them, the first part of the answer is, they are to fear God. Remembering that this is fear more in the sense of honour than in the sense of terror. And hence it sits neatly alongside the requirement later in the verse to love God. If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, it is hardly surprising that it is fundamental to worship.

We know, don’t we, that God looks at our hearts, not judging merely by that which is visible as we do. . That’s true when God’s choosing a king, and it’s true when God sees us worship. We can see, perhaps, whether the people around us are engaged and paying attention, we can hear whether they’re singing enthusiastically or half-heartedly. We can make some level of judgement. But God sees much beyond that. God sees into our very hearts. God knows whether we’re singing loudly just because we know the song well and we can sing it on autopilot without actually paying any attention, or whether we’re truly engaged and focussed on him.

For God, outward appearances have never been enough, have they. It was true in the Old Testament, and it remains so in the New.

Thus

Isaiah 29:13 NIV

The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.

And Jesus quotes that in as he accuses the Pharisees of hypocrisy in their supposed worship. Similarly,

Matthew 5:8 NIV

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

The whole of the book of the prophet Malachi is dominated by abuses related to worship, from contempt for the sacrifices through to ingratitude and arrogance. And Malachi’s solution, in fact Yahweh’s solution revealed through his prophet is not a different approach to worship, not a different style, but rather to call them back to God’s law, to how God had revealed himself. His solution is for their hearts to be recaptured as they come to behold their God.

The attitude of the heart is fundamental to true worship.

Service

The second element which comes in is that of service. This is the primary metaphor, the key language for the work of the priests of the Old Testament, and indeed for what all the people will do. Thus there in that passage from Deuteronomy we read.

Deuteronomy 10:12 NIV

And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,

God’s people are to serve him. Similarly, when Moses goes to ask Pharaoh to set the people free, the stated intent is to go on a three-day journey into the dessert to ‘serve’ Yahweh. In fact the idea of service is so bound up with worship that often in the Exodus narrative it’s translated as ‘worship’, they’re going to go and offer sacrifices, it will be a festival, or a feast for Yahweh, ; it is worship; but the Hebrew verb behind it is ‘serve’.

I

This idea of service in worship also starts to shade over into service of God in all of life, into living the way he directs. That’s why that same verse in Deuteronomy talks about walking in obedience, and observing the Lord’s commands and decrees.

We’ll pick this up again moving in to the NT in a few minutes.

Section 2

Service

Returning briefly to the idea of service, we see the same ideas coming up again in the New Testament. Will you please turn to

Romans 12:1–2 NIV

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 pattern 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, pleasing and perfect will.

Here we see very clearly that this idea of service to God encompasses the whole of life, and is an act of worship, indeed is our ‘true and proper’ worship. If we are to offer our bodies, our selves, as living sacrifices, there is really nothing which is not involved in this. The wholeheartedness to which Moses called the people, to which the prophets urged the Israelites to return and which Jesus extends into the new testament results in committed service.

Romans 2:1–2 NIV

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth.

Interestingly, whilst the Old Testament uses this language of service for the corporate worship of the people and for the priests as they lead in that, the New Testament never uses this language to speak of corporate worship, of gathering together as the people of God, in terms of service, but rather reserves that language for this kind of idea here, of the whole of life committed to God’s worship and praise, to his glory alone.

Physical gesture

The third element of worship is possibly the one we’re least likely to consider as important, least likely to notice as an element of what true worship is, but this one is fundamental to some of the key Hebrew and Greek words which are often translated as ‘worship’ or used alongside other worship-oriented words.

This third element is that of physical gesture, and particularly of bowing down, indeed of prostration. The Hebrew hishtachava, and the Greek προσκυνέω both have at their root the idea of prostration, of bowing down to the ground. Now, we should be careful of arguing for the meaning of a word based entirely on its etymology, its origins, since language does change significantly over time and sometimes terms are used today to mean something significantly different to their original derivations. This is true in English, for instance the word ‘nice’ has in its background the Latin nescius, which means ignorant. If I say someone is nice today do I secretly ‘really’ mean they’re ignorant? I certainly hope not!

The same danger is there when we look at foreign languages. However, hishtachava certainly seems to have retained that sense. We sang earlier. Verse 6.

הִשְׁתַּחֲוָה and the Greek

Psalm 95:6–7 NIV

Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care. Today, if only you would hear his voice,

The word translated ‘worship’ there in the first line, that’s hishtachava, that’s prostrate yourself. You can see there from the way it’s being paralleled poetically by ‘bow down’ and ‘kneel’ that the Psalmist still sees it in that sense. The word is also used elsewhere in the Bible not in the sense of worshiping God but rather showing deference to another person. That comes up, for instance, in when Ruth bows to the ground before Boaz. So, it has still has that sense, and the same is true of the Greek, προσκυνέω.

This gesture of submission and respect was not only part of the worship practice of Israel, but the Psalmists and prophets also ascribe this behaviour to angels and heavenly beings, see for instance .

Nehemiah 9:6 NIV

You alone are the Lord. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you.

Worship you, that is, prostrate themselves before you.

Not only does Israel do it in their worship, not only do the angels worship in this way, but they look too to the day when the nations will regard Yahweh in this way. Again, this comes up in both the Psalms and the prophets. Have a look, if you will please, at

Isaiah 49:22–23 NIV

This is what the Sovereign Lord says: “See, I will beckon to the nations, I will lift up my banner to the peoples; they will bring your sons in their arms and carry your daughters on their hips. Kings will be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. They will bow down before you with their faces to the ground; they will lick the dust at your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord; those who hope in me will not be disappointed.”

The kings and queens of the nations will bow down with their faces to the ground.

So, there is this physical dimension to worship.

Now, perhaps you are thinking to yourself, surely this does not apply in the New Testament! Didn’t Jesus say that we are to worship in Spirit and in Truth? Surely that supercedes this kind of primitive bowing and scraping!

Well, if we’re thinking that way, I think firstly we’ve misunderstood the nature of Old Testament worship. If we over-emphasise a distinction between the externals of worship in the tabernacle and the temple as against Christian worship, are we not forgetting that passage where we began, in Deuteronomy?

Deuteronomy 10:12–13 NIV

And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the Lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?

We began by thinking about fearing God, and loving the Lord your God. In fact, the book of Deuteronomy has a lot to say about worship, and most of it has a lot to do with ‘spirit and truth’. We cannot so quickly dismiss the Old Testament as a bygone age in that sense.

Where am I going with this? Well, two points. Firstly, the physical gesture of prostration is intended to indicate an attitude of submission. Whether we adopt the gesture or not, shouldn’t we take from this that part of our worship ought to involve an attitude of submission to God as king, as our authority.

Secondly, worship can, does, should, involve physical activity. Whether that’s standing, sitting, bowing, falling flat or your face, kneeling, leaping around, dancing in the aisles, perhaps those are details for another time. But we are not brains on sticks. God made us with bodies. God has placed us in cultures where our physical acts imply meaning, demonstrate our attitudes. I think if we’re only ever standing straight as a rod, eyes forward, no movement apart from our lips, perhaps something has gone awry. As I say, we’ll come back to this another time.

Synthesis

Let’s try and draw some of this together, shall we? One book which has been very helpful to me in my preparations for today is by a guy called Daniel Block, it’s called for the glory of God. He raises this caution for us:

For the Glory of God Synthesis: A Working Explanation of Worship for Our Time

Pagan worship focuses on corporate and individual cultic efforts seeking to mollify the gods and secure their blessing. Today many Christians’ understanding of worship differs little from that of pagans, except perhaps that God is singular and the forms of worship come from traditions more or less rooted in the Scriptures. Largely divorced from life, such worship represents a pattern of religious activities driven by a deep-seated sense of obligation to God and a concern to win his favor. But this understanding is unbiblical; it separates worship from daily life and compartmentalizes human existence into the sacred and the secular.

He proposes the following definition of worship:

For the Glory of God Synthesis: A Working Explanation of Worship for Our Time

True worship involves reverential human acts of submission and homage before the divine Sovereign in response to his gracious revelation of himself and in accord with his will.

Now there’s a lot packed in there, and we’ll explore some different elements over the coming months, but I think it raises some really helpful points.

The issue is of true worship. We are fundamentally worshipping beings, we all worship. The question is whether we’re worshiping the right person, in the right way.

Secondly, reverence. This results from our thinking about heart attitudes, and indeed from the idea of gestures of submission. Reverence, yes even fear, is a right element in our worship. There is a danger that in a desire to be accessible, to be comfortable, we might lose this aspect all too easily.

Thirdly, human acts. Our concern is not primarily with how angels worship, but with how we do. And whilst God sees the heart, our worship is expressed in what we do.

Fourthly, acts of submission and homage.

Fifthly, it is a response to God’s revelation. We worship a God who is not silent, but who has spoken. Who has acted in history. He has shown us what he is like, that he is worthy of our worship, and he has told us how he is to be worshipped as well.

And so, finally, our worship is to be in accord with his will. We are not free to dream up whatever we like as worship of God, but rather bound by what he has said.

For the Glory of God Synthesis: A Working Explanation of Worship for Our Time

True worship involves reverential human acts of submission and homage before the divine Sovereign in response to his gracious revelation of himself and in accord with his will.

So, I hope some of that is helpful to you, as I say we’ll be exploring more of these themes over the coming months as we seek to worship the true and living God.