Month: February 2024

So what does worship in the church look like? I don’t mean what you are used to experiencing weekly, I mean from your understanding of scripture, what would church look like? We are used to the modern Evangelical church where there will be several songs, someone will pray as a transition for the pastor to come to the platform, there may be some announcements toward the beginning or the end and there is likely an invitation. If you are part of a more formal liturgical church your experience may be a little more structured and contain a few more elements, but the Christian church of the west has a fairly typical program. However, Francis Chan in his book Letters to the Church says, “Imagine you find yourself stranded on a deserted island and you have nothing but a copy of the Bible. You have no experience with Christianity whatsoever, and all you know about the Church will come from your reading of the Bible. How would you imagine a church to function? Seriously, close your eyes for two minutes and try to picture “Church” as you would know it. Now think about your current experience. Is it even close? Can you live with that?”

We call our church services “worship” services. That is an important distinction. So let’s set aside our template that we are used to. Let’s set aside tradition and let’s look at what it would truly mean for our services to be “worship services.” I am already pumped just beginning to think about it. Just imagine the anticipation of walking into a room with like-minded believers coming with the intentionality and anticipation of entering the presence and encountering the infinite God of the universe who knows no limits of power and knowledge and wisdom. He knows no boundaries of time or space. There is not the slightest hint of deceit or false intentions but only perfect goodness, absolute truth, holiness and justice. And despite such infinite transcendence, He knows your name and loves you not like His child but as His child! And you get to enter His presence. WOW!

But worship is not about you. You know you are not worthy of such an encounter so you come in utter humility in your unworthiness but in the confidence of a child. There is nothing you can bring to offer Him that will impress Him, you can only offer yourself which is all He wants. You offer yourself in submission, uncertain of what He may ask of you but completely confident not only in His love for you but also in His character that He is only and utterly good. You offer your praise to Him for His attributes, for His goodness and His greatness. You offer your thanks to Him for all He has done for you and for those around you. But it is when you truly worship, when you offer your adoration, you offer your reverence for Him and your deference to Him that you sense His pleasure. As you empty yourself of adoration for Him, He fills you with the never-ending rushing river of His love and His grace. But it’s not about you at all, it is all about Him. It’s just that this is what you were created to do and you are now doing the most fulfilling thing you could possibly do and the most important thing you could possibly do. You may worship in a song that expresses your adoration and love. You may worship in prayer or in just speaking your love and devotion to Him. At some point in the service you may worship in presenting your material offering as an expression of His supreme value and as an expression of your absolute trust.

When we think of worship, we must think of emptying ourself of everything and offering it to God. We must think of acting in absolute humility and deference to the God of the universe. Scripture often gives us the picture of people who encountered God. They often fell on their faces in humility and worship. We see this in Revelation 1, in Daniel, in Numbers 20 in 1 Chronicles 29, in Nehemiah 8, in 1 Kings 18. Even the idol Dagon, when faced with the Ark of the Covenant, God caused the idol to fall face down in His presence. Falling prostrate is an act of reverence, of submission, of deference and of humility. Of course that is not the only posture for worship. We could argue that as David brought the Ark of the Lord back to Jerusalem that he was worshiping also. After every 6 steps David made an offering. Scripture says that David danced before the Lord with everything in him. His wife was ticked off at him because he behaved in an undignified way but David remarked that he was not dancing for an audience of people but he was dancing before the Lord. In these actions, completely the opposite of falling prostrate David was worshiping and we know this because underlying the posture and the outward manifestation, David was offering everything he had, dignity and all, for the glory of God. The core of worship remained while the manifestation changed. The act of worship is an act of emptying ourselves before God and recognizing His ultimate supremacy.

When we think of the songs we sing during our church services and songs we hear on the radio, often times they are songs of celebration of what God has done for us. Or they may be songs of encouragement of what God may do for us. These are not worship songs. They are about us and often they are about what we get from God, not what we give to Him. That doesn’t mean they are wrong or bad. Certainly there are many songs with bad theology but leaving that aside, we can still offer songs of praise and thanksgiving but we should be careful to know the difference between these and actual worship. Just because a song is about God does not make it a worship song. A worship song is a song expressing our adoration, our devotion, our reverence, ourselves to God. Just because I am thankful for my car does not mean I worship it. And just because I am thankful to God for something does not mean I am worshiping Him but worship Him we must. Let’s just be careful to identify what we are truly doing lest we think we are worshiping while we are completely missing the mark.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, “What is the chief end of man?” Then it answers, “To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” This is what we are doing when we worship. When we glorify God, we exalt Him. We lift Him up. We make Him the object of our attention, of our favor and we make much of Him. He is centerstage. He is center focus. Everything else is peripheral. One writer described it as everything around become shadows in the light of Him. When we do that we necessarily are humbled because He gets the full spotlight. The second part of that answer is equally important. We enjoy Him forever. When we enjoy something, our affections are turned toward that thing. We find satisfaction and contentment there. We stop searching for something better, but instead, we bask in the goodness of that thing. Again that thing takes center stage. John Piper says it well when he says, “God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him.” For someone to truly enjoy something or someone, he or she gives attention, deference and affection to that thing or person.

The worship of God is not only the one thing you were created to do, it is not only the greatest thing you could possibly do with your life, it is also expected and required by God. The opposite of worship is unthinkable when it comes to God. In Exodus 20 God says He is a jealous God. In fact in Exodus 34, He says His name is “Jealous.” In a world that tries to tell us that everything is a shade of gray, this is really black and white. We have two options, either God is everything we need or He is not enough. Imaging telling your spouse, “I love you but you are just not enough for me.” That does not end well. And we know as humans that a spouse actually cannot fulfill all our needs, we have need for friendships and more importantly we have a spiritual need of God. God does not share the limitations of our human spouses. To tell God, “You are everything to me” is an act of worship. To tell God by words or action, “You are not enough for me.” is an act of rebellion and defiance.

So what would a true worship service look like? It may take various forms but what would be non-negotiable would be that it would be making much about God and leaving ourselves to be only an offering for Him. It would express our joy, our satisfaction, the focus of our affection on who God is, not on His creation or His works or what He has done for us. It would be offering our affection, our devotion, our deference and our reverence to Him. Of course we may want to praise Him for His creation and we may thank Him for His works as a part of and as an act of our worship but we must be careful to truly pursue authentic worship. Are we thanking and praising Him merely for the benefits we received or have we set ourselves aside and we are thanking and praising Him based on His character and His greatness. Thanksgiving and praise because of benefits we have received from Him are wholly appropriate and good. Let’s just be careful to distinguish between sincere thanksgiving or praise and authentic worship. The focus and object of authentic worship must by definition be God or else we move into a realm of idolatry.

Prologue
Relevant?
Defining Church
The Purpose of the Church
The Radiant Bride
Worship
Worship in the Church
Holy Huddle

A. W. Tozer called worship the missing Jewel. John MacArthur called worship “The Ultimate Priority.” I won’t even begin to try to do better than these two but I will put an exclamation point on their characterizations. I was once talking with a pastor who, in our conversation, said that the problem within a certain denomination was that they focused on evangelism instead of worship. That was nearly 30 years ago and I am fully convinced that the evangelical church is declining for that very reason. If we consider a previous post where we tried to prioritize either evangelism or discipleship (or both) and we look deeply, we can see that in doing so we would try to prioritize the effect and leave the cause without attention. The effect of our worship should be evangelism. If we start with evangelism we completely leave the why out of our efforts and just land on “because we are commanded to.” Which of course should be enough for our actions but it leaves us with little depth in our conversations with people.

Evangelism and discipleship are the effects of worship. John Piper stated this so well at the beginning of his book, Let the Nations be Glad! In a book about missions he said, “Missions (evangelism) is not the ultimate goal of the Church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever.” Evangelism and discipleship can never effectively take precedence over worship. To put them at the top of the priority list is a misplacement of priorities in the church. What Piper explains in the book is that evangelism is an act of worship. The reason and motivation for evangelism is to create more worshipers of God. God is not receiving the glory HE deserves unless all creation is worshiping Him. Evangelism is not ultimately about people, it is about the glory of God and it is done on our part for His glory as an act of worship.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We have to look at worship more closely first. But even before that we have to clear up one thing. Worship has unfortunately often been equated with the songs we sing before or after a sermon. Maybe even songs from our Christian radio station. In our churches we often say, “let’s stand and worship” referring to singing but it is rare that we refer to other elements of the service or other elements of our lives for that matter as worship. While there is good reason that worship is associated with music, to equate worship to music is a tragic misapplication of the word. Let’s look at what worship really is.

At its core, worship is assigning great worth to something or identifying the worth of something but it goes beyond that. I identify worth to a lot of things but don’t worship them. I ascribe value to my vehicles but I don’t worship them. The same is true of my house. Unfortunately one may argue that my phone may be straddling the fence on this issue. But we can ascribe value without worshiping something. Worship takes that identification of worth to another level. If I worship an object I will sacrifice for that thing. It may cost a lot but I will sacrifice for it. I will act in deference to that thing. I will defer other pleasure, other comfort, other safety for that thing. I don’t just ascribe or identify worth to that thing, I ascribe or identify supreme worth to that thing. In a sense we can say that we bow down to that thing – maybe not literally but we hold it in such high value that essentially we become less and it becomes more. Very often we can think of sports teams in this realm but we can also think of wealth, position and relationships in this way. Consider the lengths many will go for their sports teams or for their wealth or position or even for a relationship. They will sacrifice money, time, relationships, their health or comfort, even their family for that thing of great worth. Their personal values diminish in the face of that thing. Then consider the personal emotional connection there is when there is a win or loss in that area, a game, a stock portfolio or a relationship.

The same is true with our worship of God but we need to add another dimension to our worship of God. In our worship of an object or a sports team, even though we sacrifice and act in deference to that thing, we still benefit. We do what we do for our own pleasure or enjoyment. We still recognize that we ultimately are equal to or greater than that thing and we hold the cards. In essence, if we step away from our worship of that thing, it loses value at least to us. If everyone stops liking a certain team, the value of that team declines dramatically. Much of its value is defined by our ascribing value to it. Old muscle cars are valuable because we define their value. Intrinsically they have no exceptional value. They are just old cars. Maybe “they don’t make them like that anymore” but the reality is there are are currently cars that can meet or beat their specifications. Old cars are subject to the laws of nature just like everything else. They wear out and the deteriorate. So the value of that machine directly matches the value I (and others like me) ascribe to it.

Because of who God is, that is not possible in our worship of Him. Because God is the creator of everything including us we must not only recognize that He is far greater than we are and simply because of who He is, He is deserving of far more than we could possibly offer in our lifetimes. For that reason alone He is the only one truly deserving of our worship. When we worship God we must come in absolute humility recognizing our unworthiness and ascribing ultimate worthiness to Him forgetting ourselves. Seriously, let me say that again. When we worship God we must come in absolute humility recognizing our unworthiness and ascribing ultimate worthiness to Him forgetting ourselves. It is the heart of worship. We come in humility and deference to Him ascribing to Him honor and glory. To be sure, we come with gratitude for His grace, with thanksgiving for His forgiveness and we come boldly as His adopted child but these elements surround our worship, they are not the essence of our worship. The essence of worship is based on the character and nature of God. And regardless of our worship, God’s worthiness can never be diminished or devalued. He remains the ultimate.

Many things we do can be an act of worship including singing but they are not intrinsically acts of worship. We can sing our adoration of God and ascribe honor and glory to Him in a song as worship. However, we can just as much sing about a dog in the back of a pick up or even sing blasphemies against God. The activity does not make it worship, the attitude and posture of our heart and the declarations of our mouth determines whether it is worship or not and / or who or what that worship is directed toward. Music is a powerful form of worship because in John 4 Jesus said that true worshipers will worship in spirit and truth. Music uniquely ties both of those elements in the lyrics of truth it proclaims and the emotion it generates or expresses. However, we can worship God in our work. We can worship Him in our studies. We can worship Him by giving and we can worship Him simply by acknowledging His power and majesty in the world around us. Again, the activity does not determine our worship, our heart, our attitude and our intent determines whether we are worshiping in these things. We may be doing certain activities yet not worshiping. IN that activity we may even acting in defiance of God if our heart is not right and purposeful.

There is another element of worship that is critical. Typically in the evangelical church, God is the subject of our worship. Listen to many of the songs we sing and you will hear it. Listen to our sermons. Often God is the subject of our song but we are the object. I never liked diagramming sentences in Jr. High School. And I certainly never thought it would ever be useful in life. But in this case I find it extremely important. If we take the sentence “Jeff threw the ball to Chris.” There is an action that is happening – throwing the ball. Jeff is our subject and really he’s not that important. What we want to know is who ends up with the ball? Who is on the receiving end of the action? In this case Chris gets the ball. He is the receiver. Worship is also an action. It is something we offer. Our worship needs to end up in the hands and at the feet of God. God must be the receiver of our worship not simply someone we are talking about. The object of our worship is the one receiving worship. If God is not receiving our worship we are at best neglecting our duty to worship or possibly worse, something or someone else is the object of our worship. We must be careful not to be part of unintentional idolatry.

So how is this relevant to the conversation we have been having about the church? It is not only relevant but it is critical. If the church were to focus on worship many things would fall into place. They would take their proper place in the church. Please hear me clearly. I am not talking about bands, music, lights, smoke etc. but true worship of God. First of all our focus would be a vertical, God focus rather than a horizontal human focus. We are intended to be the bride singularly focused on the bridegroom. Full stop. Our focus priority must be in place. When Paul instructs the church to be pure and spotless, we are far more likely to be be prepared when our focus is on God – in the right place. Secondly, as we keep our eyes on our Lord and Creator, our discipleship will grow exponentially because we are constantly getting to know Him and love Him more. But as unbelievers see our unrestrained devotion to Him, they will be attracted as well. More importantly though, the church will naturally talk all throughout the week about what God is doing in their lives. Evangelism will come from the overflow of the heart of God’s people. Imagine people as excited about God as they are about their favorite sports team, their favorite designer or their favorite ice cream. On top of that imagine hearing the life changes God is doing in His church. Why would people not be drawn to that?

Imagine employees going to their jobs and doing their work as an act of worship as if they were working for God. Imagine generous Christians giving in the name of Jesus as an act of worship to meet the needs around them. Imagine the sound of joyful Christians singing in worship in contrast to the songs of hopelessness from the world. Imagine artists and architects creating to the glory of God and medical professionals not only administering life giving medicine to patients but coming alongside them to the glory of God through the most difficult times in that person’s life. Then imagine all those worshipers gathering on Sunday morning in celebration of God’s glory but in utter humility recognizing the absolute supremacy of the God they serve. Against this, the gates of hell could not possibly prevail!

Worship brings God to the core of the church. God radiates in every direction when true worship is at the core of the church.

Prologue
Relevant?
Defining Church
The Purpose of the Church
The Radiant Bride
Worship
Worship in the Church
Holy Huddle