The term worship is sometimes applied to all of a Christian’s life, and it is rightly said that everything in our life should be an act of worship, and everything the church does should be considered worship, for everything we do should glorify God. However, this week I am not using the word in that broad sense. Rather, I am using worship in a more specific sense to refer to the music and words that Christians direct to God in praise, together with the heart attitudes that accompany that praise, especially when Christians assemble together.
Worship is the activity of glorifying God in his presence with our voices and hearts.
In this definition, worship is an act of glorifying God. Yet all aspects of our lives are supposed to glorify God, so this definition specifies that worship is something we do especially when we come into God’s presence, when we are conscious of adoration of him in our hearts, and when we praise him with our voices and speak about him so others may hear. Paul encourages the Christians in Colossae, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Colossians 3:16).
Worship is a direct expression of our ultimate purpose for living, “to glorify God and fully to enjoy him forever.” God speaks of his “sons” and “daughters” as “everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made” (Isaiah 43:6 – 7). And Paul uses similar language when he says that “we who first hoped in Christ have been destined and appointed to live for the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:12). Scripture is clear here and in many other passages that God created us to glorify him.
When we reflect on the purpose of worship it also reminds us that God is worthy of worship and we are not. Even the apostle John had to be told that he should not worship any creature, not even a powerful angel in heaven. When he “fell down to worship” at the feet of the angel who showed him marvelous visions in heaven, the angel said to him, “You must not do that! . . . Worship God” (Revelation 22:8-9).
This is because God is jealous for his own honor and he rightly seeks his own honor. He says, “I the LORD your God am a jealous God” (Exodus 20:5) and “My glory I will not give to another” (Isaiah 48:11). Something within us should tremble and rejoice at this fact. We should tremble with fear lest we rob God’s glory from him. And we should rejoice that it is right that God seek his own honor and be jealous for his own honor, for he, infinitely more than anything he has made, is worthy of honor. The twenty-four elders in heaven feel this reverence and joy, for they fall down before God’s throne and cast their crowns before him singing, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created” (Revelation 4:11). When we feel the absolute rightness of this deep within ourselves we then have the appropriate heart attitude for genuine worship.
Because God is worthy of worship and seeks to be worshiped, everything in our worship services should be designed and carried out not to call attention to ourselves or bring glory to ourselves, but to call attention to God and to cause people to think about him. It would be appropriate for us frequently to re-evaluate the various elements in our Sunday services; the preaching, public prayer, leading of worship, special music, celebration of the Lord’s Supper, and even the announcements and the offering. Are they really bringing glory to God in the way they are done? Peter says that spiritual gifts are to be used in such a way that “in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 4:11).
When we worship God in the sense described above, truly giving him glory in our hearts and with our voices, several things happen as a result:
- We Delight in God. God created us not only to glorify him but also to enjoy him and delight in his excellence. We probably experience delight in God more fully in worship than in any other activity in this life. David confesses that the “one thing” that he will seek for above all else is “that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in his temple” (Psalm 27:4). He also says, “In your presence there is fulness of joy, in your right hand are pleasures for evermore” (Psalm 16:11).
The early church knew such joy in worship, for “day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people” (Acts 2:46). In fact, immediately after Jesus’ ascension into heaven, the disciples “returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God” (Luke 24:52 – 53).
Of course, such activity of continual praise cannot last forever in this age, for living in a fallen world requires that we give time to many other responsibilities as well. But extended praise does give us a foretaste of the atmosphere of heaven, where the four living creatures “never cease to sing, ‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!'” (Revelation 4:8), and the other heavenly creatures and the redeemed who have died join in that heavenly worship and extol “the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 5:12).
- God Delights in Us. What does God do when we worship him? The amazing truth of Scripture is that as the creation glorifies God, he also takes delight in it. When God first made the universe, he looked on all of it with delight, and saw that “it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). God takes special delight in human beings whom he has created and redeemed. Isaiah reminded the people of the Lord,
You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD …
you shall be called My delight is in her. . .
for the LORD delights in you . . .
as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you. (Isaiah 62:3 – 5)
Zephaniah echoes the same theme when he says,
The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory;
he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing. (Zephaniah 3:17)
This truth should bring great encouragement to us, for as we love God and praise him we realize that we are bringing joy and delight to his heart. And the deepest joy of love is the joy of bringing delight to the heart of the one you love.
- We Draw Near to God: The Amazing Unseen Reality of New Covenant Worship. In the old covenant believers could only draw near to God in a limited way through the temple ceremonies; indeed, most of the people of Israel could not enter into the temple itself, but had to remain in the courtyard. Even the priests could only go into the outer court of the temple, the “Holy Place,” when it was their appointed duty. But into the inner room of the temple, the “Holy of Holies,” no one could go except the high priest, and he only once a year (Hebrews 9:1 – 7).
Now, under the new covenant, believers have the amazing privilege of being able to enter directly into the holy of holies in heaven when they worship. “We have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus” (Hebrews 10:19). Since we have that confidence to enter into the very presence of God, the author of Hebrews encourages us, “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith” (Hebrews 10:22). Worship in the New Testament church is not simply practice for some later heavenly experience of genuine worship, nor is it simply pretending, or going through some outward activities. It is genuine worship in the presence of God himself, and when we worship we enter before his throne.
This reality is expressed more fully by the author of Hebrews in chapter 12, when he tells Christians that they have not come to a place like the earthly Mount Sinai where the people of Israel received the Ten Commandments from God, but they have come to something far better, the heavenly Jerusalem:
For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers entreat that no further messages be spoken to them . . . But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel. (Hebrews 12:18-24)
This is the reality of new covenant worship: it actually is worship in the presence of God, though we do not now see him with our physical eyes, nor do we see the angels gathered around his throne or the spirits of believers who have gone before and are now worshiping in God’s presence. But it is all there, and it is all real, more real and more permanent than the physical creation that we see around us, which will someday be destroyed in the final judgment. And if we believe Scripture to be true, then we must also believe it to be actually true that we ourselves come to that place and join our voices with those already worshiping in heaven whenever we come to God in worship. Our only appropriate response is this: “Let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:28-29).
- God Draws Near to Us. James tells us, “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you” (James 4:8). This has been the pattern of God’s dealings with his people throughout the Bible, and we should be confident that it will be true also today. In the Old Testament, when God’s people began to praise him at the dedication of the temple, he descended and made himself known in their midst:
when the song was raised, with trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments, in praise to the LORD, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever,” the house, the house of the LORD, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the LORD filled the house of God. (2 Chronicles 5:13 – 14)
Though this only speaks of one specific incident, it does not seem wrong to suppose that God will also make his presence known at other times among his people, whenever he is pleased with the praise they offer (even if he does not come in the form of a visible cloud). David says, “Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel” (Psalm 22:3).
- God Ministers to Us. Although the primary purpose of worship is to glorify God, the Scriptures teach that in worship something also happens to us: we ourselves are built up or edified. To some extent this happens, of course, when we learn from the Bible teachings that are given or the words of encouragement that others speak to us; Paul says, “Let all things be done for edification” (1 Corinthians 14:26), and he says that we are to “teach and admonish one another in all wisdom” (Colossians 3:16), and to be “addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Ephesians 5:19).
But in addition to the edification that comes from growth in understanding the Bible and hearing words of encouragement from others, there is another kind of edification that occurs in worship: when we worship God he meets with us and directly ministers to us, strengthening our faith, intensifying our awareness of his presence, and granting refreshment to our spirits. Peter says that as Christians are continually coming to Christ (ln worship and prayer and faith), they are then “being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5). When we come to worship we come into God’s presence in a special way, and we may expect that he will meet us there and minister to us: as we “draw near to the throne of grace” we will “receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). During genuine worship, we will often experience an intensification of the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, who is at work continually changing us into the likeness of Christ “from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18).
- The Lord’s Enemies Flee. When the people of Israel began to worship, God at times would fight for them against their enemies. For example, when the Moabites, Edomites, and Syrians came against Judah, King Jehoshaphat sent out the choir praising God in front of the army:
He appointed those who were to sing to the LORD and praise him in holy array, as they went before the army. . . . And when they began to sing and praise, the LORD set an ambush against the men of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah, so that they were routed. (2 Chronicles 20:21 – 22)
Similarly, when God’s people offer him worship today, we may expect that the Lord will battle against demonic forces that oppose the gospel and cause them to flee.
- Unbelievers Know They Are in God’s Presence. Though Scripture does not emphasize evangelism as a primary purpose when the church meets for worship, Paul does tell the Corinthians to take thought for unbelievers and outsiders who come to their services, to be sure that the Christians speak in understandable ways (see 1 Corinthians 14:23). He also tells them that if the gift of prophecy is functioning properly, unbelievers will from time to time have the secrets of their heart disclosed, and they will fall on their face and “worship God and declare that God is really among you” (1 Corinthians 14:25). But evangelism is not seen as a primary purpose when the church assembles for worship, and it would therefore not be right to have the only weekly gathering of believers designed primarily with an evangelistic purpose. Paul’s concern is rather that visitors understand what is going on (and not think that Christians are “mad,” 1 Corinthians 14:23), and that they recognize that “God is really among you” (1 Corinthians 14:25).
How can we enter into genuine worship?
Worship is a spiritual activity and it must be empowered by the Holy Spirit working within us. This means that we must pray that the Holy Spirit will enable us to worship rightly.
The fact that genuine worship is to be carried on in the unseen, spiritual realm is evident in Jesus’ words:
The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. (John 4:23-24)
To worship “in spirit and truth” is best understood to mean not “in the Holy Spirit,” but rather “in the spiritual realm, in the realm of spiritual activity?” This means that true worship involves not only our physical bodies but also our spirits, the immaterial aspect of our existence that primarily acts in the unseen realm. Mary knew she was worshiping in that way, for she exclaimed, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:46 – 47).
We should realize also that God continually “seeks” (John 4:23) those who will worship him in the spiritual realm and therefore those whose spirit as well as body and mind is worshiping God. Such worship is not optional because those who worship God “must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24). Unless our spirits are worshiping God we are not truly worshiping him.
An attitude of worship comes upon us when we begin to see God as he is and then respond to his presence. Even in heaven the seraphim who behold God’s glory cry out, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3). When the disciples saw Jesus walking on the water, and then saw the wind cease when he got into the boat, “those in the boat worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God”‘ (Matthew 14:33). The author of Hebrews knows that when we come into the presence of God (Hebrews 12:18-24), the proper response is to “offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:28-29). Therefore, genuine worship is not something that is self-generated or that can be worked up within ourselves. It must rather be the outpouring of our hearts in response to a realization of who God is.
It is appropriate to ask whether there is much genuine, deep, heartfelt worship in our churches. In many evangelical churches people do not truly worship God in their hearts until the last hymn, after the sermon has focused their attention on who God is so that they begin to rejoice in God with a heart full of praise. But then, just when heartfelt worship has begun, the service abruptly ends. It should be just beginning!