9 Things Everyone Should Know about Worship

What comes to your mind when you hear the question, “What’s your church’s worship like?” A lot of Christians today immediately think about a church’s music. For example, your church might have a worship team that consists of multiple musicians, including a guitarist, someone on the keys, a drummer, etc. With this style of worship, the song lyrics are usually projected onto a screen for the church to sing along. Or maybe your worship isn’t “contemporary” and has a more traditional vibe: piano, hymnals, a choir. When many of us think of the word worship, our minds go straight to the musical element of the church service. Worship is music!

On the other end of the spectrum, there are some Christians who have grown tired of the Sunday worship gig. Shouldn’t all of life be worship? Do we really need to go to a building with other Christians in order to worship? After all, don’t some people connect with God better in the open air, perhaps at the beach, or in the mountains, experiencing God’s presence through nature rather than simply singing about it? Worship is all of life!

How do we navigate between these two very different definitions of worship? Is a church’s worship their music, or is worship something we’re always doing, on the freeway, in the office, at the beach? We’re going to consider the Bible’s teaching on worship. As we pull back the layers of biblical data, we will discover that the world of worship in Scripture is more magnificent than Christians often imagine. During worship, a dangerous battle is taking place between the forces of good and evil.

The true God of heaven—who alone is to be worshipped—gathers us up to himself and transforms us through biblical worship. The desire to worship is so ingrained in us as God’s creation that we cannot escape it, and God uses very ordinary methods to facilitate the meeting between heaven and earth in Christian worship. This is a study about worship.

But perhaps before we begin, it will be helpful to define that word as it appears in the Old and New Testaments. There are several words used in the Bible to describe the act of praising and worshipping, but I have selected a couple to help capture the core idea behind what it means to worship. The Hebrew word hvh refers to bowing down. Picture someone humbly offering all of their allegiance to God, a bodily demonstration of submission.

In the New Testament, this is picked up by the Greek word proskuneo, a word which can be defined as “to express in attitude or gesture one’s complete dependence on or submission to a high authority figure, “(fall down and) worship, do obeisance to, prostrate oneself before, do reverence to, welcome respectfully.” At least from these two words for worship, what emerges is a picture that includes the whole person. God isn’t interested in just our lips, or our hands, or our hearts, but in the whole package. Simply put, in worship God wants all of you.

Maybe now we are better equipped to understand Paul’s words to present to God our bodies as living sacrifices. God wants all of you on the altar, and if you know what happened to the animals on the altar in the Old Testament, then you know that you don’t just stay on the altar, you’re consumed by the fire of God. As smoke, you ascend into God’s presence as a pleasing aroma. But alas, we’re getting ahead of ourselves!

Footnotes

• Arndt, W., Danker, F. W., Bauer, W., & Gingrich, F. W., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 3rd. ed., 2000), 882.

Prior to journeying into the biblical teaching on worship, it may be helpful to establish some groundwork regarding the nature of humanity. Mankind is made for worship, and this is a truth which is established by Scripture and human experience. So innate is the desire for us to worship something that even the staunchest atheist has objects of adoration. The creation’s inherent longing for God leads us to “deify” the most common objects: money, home, sex, other people. Everyone has the tendency to make something ultimate in their lives (the thing that gives them a sense of meaning), and in doing so they elevate it to a place God has reserved for himself. This desire was keenly observed by the agnostic novelist, David Foster Wallace, who said in a speech delivered to the graduating class of Kenyon College,

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things—if they are where you tap real meaning in life—then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already—it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power—you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart—you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.

Wallace may not have been a devout Christian, but he recognized something about the world which God created. We are unconscious worshippers, and the danger in worshipping finite things is that they will always leave us disappointed.

The problem we face then is not that we don’t worship, but that our worship is misdirected. According to Paul, “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” (Rom. 1:21-23)

Throughout Scripture, this kind of worship is called idolatry. God prohibited this in the very first commandment (Ex. 20:3), calling his people to worship him as the highest and ultimate good. When we direct our adoration to the true God, revealed in Scripture, we experience his transforming grace. Contrarily, as Wallace noted, worshipping the wrong thing will eat you alive. The question each of us must ask is, “Is my worship idolatry, or is it the life-giving adoration described by Scripture? Is it transforming me for better, or for worse?”

One of the most wonderful truths of Scripture is that God wants to be near to us. He isn’t a distant deity, unconcerned with the world’s affairs. God has actually chosen to step down from the heavenly heights and plant his feet here, in our midst. Here are three places the Bible says God’s feet touched the ground.

God’s Presence in the Temple.

David described the temple he wanted to build for God as “a house of rest for the ark of the covenant of the Lord and for the footstool of our God” (1 Chron. 28:2). In the Psalms, this language of “footstool” is also picked up. “Let us go to his dwelling place; let us worship at his footstool!” (Ps. 132:7 cf. 99:5) The imagery here is striking. God sits on his royal throne, and he rests his feet in Jerusalem.

His feet touch the ground in the temple, where he promised to be near to his covenant people. When God described the glory of the temple to the prophet Ezekiel, he said, “Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the people of Israel forever” (Eze. 43:7). The soles of God’s feet touched down in the temple, and there God’s people could worship at his footstool.

God’s Presence in the Incarnation.

Jesus identified himself as the true temple of God because he is the ultimate meeting place between God and humanity (Jn. 2:19). When you went to the temple in Jerusalem, you were going to God’s footstool. If you looked at Jesus, you actually saw God: head, hands, and feet! In the Incarnation, the second Person of the Trinity—the Word—took humanity from the womb of the virgin Mary. Therefore, wherever Jesus walked, there were divine footsteps. This is why on numerous occasions the people around Jesus could not help but worship him (Mt. 2:11; 28:17; Jn. 9:38).

God’s Presence in the Church.

Although Jesus ascended into heaven, Scripture makes it clear that his presence is still among us. The church today is described as God’s worldwide temple (1 Cor. 3:16-17; 2 Cor. 6:16; 1 Pet. 2:5). Faithful churches are like God’s footstools on earth, places where his presence resides through the ministry of sound biblical teaching. Jesus described himself as the one who “walks among the seven golden lampstands” (Rev. 2:1), a reference to the seven churches in Asia Minor. Where Christ’s Word is proclaimed, and where baptisms and the Lord’s Supper are being administered, Jesus’ feet are treading!

God’s presence in the Jerusalem Temple in the Old Testament, in the Incarnation in the New Testament, and through the church today all highlight that God desires to be near to us in worship. Since the church is God’s temple on earth today, local congregations are embassies of his grace, and worship isn’t centralized in one city (like Jerusalem, note Jesus’ teaching in John 4:21-24). Instead, his priestly people spread the fragrance of his presence throughout the whole earth (2 Cor. 2:15-17).

You become like what you worship, for better or for worse. This reality highlights the principle in Scripture that worship is transformative. Perhaps the clearest verse to point to in order to illustrate this is Psalm 115:3-8:

Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.

Idolatry (the worship of anything besides the true God) leads to spiritual blindness, deafness, and muteness. It degenerates humanity by cutting us off from the source of life. Idols aren’t just statues or little figurines that we attach a superstitious worth to; they consist of anything we place ultimate value on. The Protestant Reformer Martin Luther defined an idol in this way: “Whatever your heart clings to and relies upon, that is your God; trust and faith of the heart alone make both God and idol.” (Luther’s Large Catechism) Retired Pastor Timothy Keller asked the pointed question, “What is an idol? It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.”

When we place ultimate value in the created world around us, we become spiritually unfeeling. We are transformed—or better, deformed—into something which God never intended. When, however, we set our gaze upon the true God of heaven, and direct our worship toward him, we are renewed in such a way that we begin to develop godly characteristics. We become Christ-like through Christian worship.

The apostle Paul said in Romans 12:1-2, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Note here that true worship, spiritual worship is parallel to transformation and renewal in the Christian life. As we set our gaze upon Jesus through his Word, we are changed. Hence Paul could also say, “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (2 Cor. 3:8)

The principle that we become like what we worship is both sobering and encouraging. It’s sobering because it warns us not to set our hearts on the passing pleasures of sin, or the finite creation. If our gaze is upon this world, and we’re trusting it to give us ultimate meaning in life, we’ll be lost. But this principle should also encourage us, because when you set the eyes of your heart upon Christ and his gospel, you will not remain unchanged. In worship, God directs your attention to Jesus, and that vision—by faith—will transform you.

Footnotes

• This is the thesis of G.K. Beale’s book on Idolatry, We Become What We Worship, which traces this theme throughout the Old and New Testaments.

• Keller, Timothy, Counterfeit Gods, xix.

In order to understand the type of worship God wants, we’re going to have to start in the Old Testament. Although we don’t follow the ceremonial laws of God’s people in ages past (the laws related to the priestly service of the Jews in the temple), we can learn a lot about the nature of worship, and how God relates to his people, through the prescriptions he gave the Israelites for worship.

God instituted a form of worship for his people under the Old Covenant that was carried out in the tabernacle (and later in the Jerusalem temple). The specific regulations for worship are described throughout the book of Leviticus, which outlined how to approach God in worship. It becomes clear from the outset that worship is a drawing near to God through sacrifice.

Fundamentally, this shows us that sinful humanity doesn’t just waltz into the presence of a holy God. We come humbly, with our sins atoned for. The Old Testament sacrifices and worship pointed forward to the ultimate sacrifice by which people today can enter into God’s presence. The author to the Hebrews said, “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.” (Heb. 10:19-22) The sin offerings of the Old Testament have been replaced by the once-for-all offering up of Jesus Christ for us. The only way we can draw near to God in worship is through Jesus.

Although the Old Testament sacrifices have been replaced by Christ’s singular offering, as God’s priestly people we still come to him bringing spiritual sacrifices through Christ (1 Pet. 2:5). These spiritual sacrifices look like:

• The sacrifice of giving generously and sharing (Heb. 13:16; Phil. 4:18)
• The sacrifices of praise, thanksgiving, and confession of faith (Heb. 13:15)
• The living sacrifice of our own bodies (Heb. 12:1)

These types of sacrifices are often reflected in Christian worship services today. We give generously to God and the work of the gospel through monetary gifts (sometimes referred to as tithes, or offerings); we sing songs and pray prayers of thanksgiving; we confess the truths that we believe as a church; and we offer our wholes selves to God (Rom 12:1) in worship: heart and hands! Even the Lord’s Supper is a kind of sacrifice of thanksgiving, which is why it has historically been referred to by the church as the Eucharist, a word which comes from the Greek word for thanksgiving.

As we consider these great truths, it becomes obvious that the worship of God’s people today isn’t an attempt to try to get God to do something for us. Instead, it’s a response to what he has already accomplished for us in Christ. Jesus offered himself to atone for our sins, and we offer ourselves in response as an act of praise and thanksgiving! The ultimate sacrifice of Jesus should lead us to offer ourselves to God in worship, and to our neighbors in service.

Have you ever been to a Christian church that felt more like a concert with some self-help mixed in rather than an encounter with the living God? Especially over the last few decades, churches have turned to Silicon Valley for innovative techniques to attract those disinterested in religion. This movement has slowly taken us away from Mt. Zion so that it isn’t uncommon to have an experience of “worship” that is completely foreign to what the Bible describes. Rather than take a poll of our neighbors asking, “What do you want in a worship service?”, we should take a look at how the Bible describes Christian worship.

What is it then that makes a worship service a worship service? In Scripture, there seem to be certain integral elements that constitute the gathered assembly for worship. These elements are:

• Prayer to God (Phil. 4:6; 1 Tim. 2:1; Col. 4:2)
• Reading of Scripture (1 Tim. 4:13)
• The preaching of Scripture (2 Tim. 4:2)
• Singing songs of praise (Col. 3:16; Eph 5:19)
• Baptism and Communion (Matt. 28:19; 1 Cor. 11:23-29; Ac. 20:7)
• Collection of offerings (1 Cor. 16:2)

These elements are confirmed by the early description of the Christian assembly given by Luke, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” (Ac. 2:42) The elements are also described by an early Christian writer called Justin Martyr,

And on the day called Sunday there is a meeting in one place of those who live in cities or the country, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits. When the reader has finished, the president in a discourse urges and invites us to the imitation of these noble things. Then we all stand up together and offer prayers. When we have finished the prayer, bread is brought, and wine and water, and the president similarly sends up prayers and thanksgivings… and the congregation assents, saying the Amen.

Worship isn’t all about us, but about God. When worship is focused on God, we benefit most, because only an encounter with God through his Word can genuinely transform us. This focus on God doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be sensitive to those who are seeking to know him, though. We must order the circumstances of our worship service in such a way that we’re communicating the God-given elements helpfully.

The circumstances of worship should be thought through by Christian leaders seeking to engage the world with the truth of Scripture. Circumstances of worship consist of (but are not limited to) questions like: What time should our service start? Should we use a hymnal or a projector? Do we sit in pews or chairs? What type of lighting should we use? Etc.

God calls us to uphold the elements of worship, communicating them in ways that are clear and accessible, while exercising wisdom as we think through the particular circumstances of our services. Christians may differ on the circumstances of worship depending on the context of where they are ministering, but we should hold fast to the elements of worship as the means through which God is building us up in the worship service.

Footnotes

• Martyr, Justin, First Apology, 67.

If you grew up going to a beach with waves, you may be familiar with the lifeguard sign: “Warning: Strong Rip Current.” When those signs are up, you’re supposed to steer clear of the water (especially when accompanied by small children). A rip current is a strong current that can pull you away from the shore, further into the ocean. Those who get caught in these currents can exhaust themselves trying to swim against the current back to shore, and subsequently drown. The ocean is beautiful, but being immersed in the waves can be dangerous if you aren’t careful.

Worship should be an immersion into God’s presence through the elements he has handed down to us. This is a glorious experience, but there are rip currents. If we’re not prepared for worship, the presence of God becomes a consuming fire rather than a sanctifying Spirit. No one knew this better than the priests, Nadab and Abihu.

Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the LORD has said: ‘Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.’” (Lev. 10:1-3)

God didn’t just judge irreverent worship in the Old Testament. In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, Paul rebuked the Corinthians for eating the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner (1 Cor. 11:27). This resulted in the discipline of New Testament worshippers who failed to turn from their sins and came to the table of the Lord flippantly, a judgment which could even result in death (1 Cor. 11:30).

Tragically, Nadab and Abihu drew near to God irreverently. We must not follow their example. As believers in Jesus Christ, we are called to approach God recognizing his holiness. “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.” (Heb. 12:28) The same God who judged Nadab and Abihu is the God we come to in worship through Jesus Christ. Were it not for the perfect life of Jesus and our union with him by faith, the presence of God for us would be deadly. Washed in the blood of Jesus, and filled with a sense of reverence and awe, we come to God as humble and joyous servants.

Does the danger associated with God’s presence mean we should stay out of the ocean if we have sin in our lives, so to speak? The answer is: not necessarily. God invites sinners to come and worship, and promises to wash them in the waves of his grace. It’s only when we cling to our sin in the presence of God, unwilling to be cleansed by his love, that those waves of grace become crushing. In worship, the holy God calls broken people into his presence so that they might be cleansed. He commands us to lay aside our sins through confession and repentance. When we do, the consuming fire of God removes our stains and renews us to worship.

Second Chronicles 20 tells the story of a fearful king Jehosaphat. He was surrounded and outnumbered by hostile nations, and, seeing the potential devastation that lay ahead, the king gathered all the people to pray and fast for God’s mercy. In the middle of the prayer meeting, a prophet Jahaziel spoke by the Spirit of the Lord to the whole assembly, “Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s…. You will not need to fight in this battle. Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the LORD on your behalf.” (2 Chron. 20:15-17)

The news could not have been any better. God was going to fight on behalf of his people! This word from the Lord turned the prayer meeting into a praise meeting (vv. 18-19), and King Jehoshaphat did something that no doubt would have been a shock to the invading armies. He took counsel with his people and “he appointed those who were to sing to the LORD and praise him in holy attire, as they went before the army, and say, ‘Give thanks to the LORD, for his steadfast love endures forever.’” (vv. 20-21) At the front line, Jehoshaphat didn’t place the spearmen or sword-wielders; he positioned the singers. As these front-line worshippers sang God’s praises, the LORD set ambushes against the hostile armies and delivered his people.

The apostle Paul said, “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.” (2 Cor. 10:4) Like Jehoshaphat, Christians today are engaged in a spiritual war. The good news is that God has won the battle through Jesus Christ, and every week we storm the gates of hell proclaiming, “Give thanks to the LORD, for his steadfast love endures forever!” Right before Paul outlined the equipment needed by the Christian soldier (Eph. 6), he exhorted the church to be filled with the Spirit, “addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father.” (Eph. 5:19-20) Worship is the proper response to Christ’s victory over sin, death, and Satan!

Worship is not only our response, however. It’s also a way we’re trained for the fight at hand. As we address each other with psalms and hymns, we are inundated with the Word of Christ (Col. 3:16). As we hear God’s Word proclaimed faithfully by pastors and teachers, we are made wise for the salvation that is in Jesus Christ (2 Tim. 3:15). When we witness a baptism, we are seeing the King claim another captive rebel for himself (Col. 1:13), and when we partake of communion, we eat at the victors’ banquet table even though we still struggle with sin.

When Christians gather together to praise God, they are in battle formation. This is why it’s so important that what we sing, and the message we hear preached is true according to Scripture. It’s the Word and Spirit of God that grant the victory! As Martin Luther put it in his famous hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is our God”: “And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us: The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo! his doom is sure, one little word shall fell him.”

So, how does this all look: Storming the gates of hell, offering our sacrifices of thanksgiving in the presence of God – the All-Consuming Fire – who transforms us through our praises? The truth is, it looks rather ordinary. God calls regular people like you and me into his presence, and then he accomplishes an extra-ordinary salvation through very basic signs and symbols of his grace. Think about it for a second: A little piece of bread and sip of wine? Tap water for baptisms? Off-tune singing and perhaps a sermon that was eight minutes too long (never at my church!)? It may not seem very fantastic at all, but that’s just fine.

So many Christians today are searching for an experience in worship. The problem with this is that experience, and feelings, change. What was new and exciting becomes rote and boring in no time at all. If we aren’t careful, our pursuit of a feeling in worship will lead us from church to church, always trying to grasp what we’ve lost. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t experiences to be had in worship. There are! But they aren’t shallow and reproducible by the entertainment industry. They’re the experiences of grace that fill our heart when we get a glimpse of the depth of our sins, and height of God’s love. Experience in worship comes from understanding God’s Word and apprehending his gifts by faith.

Behind the veil of ordinariness that we grasp with our senses, the sovereign King is at work in our midst. The bread and the wine we receive are a gift from heaven (Heb. 6:4), and the powers of the age to come are poking holes through the curtain of this world and shining God’s light upon us. We are surrounded by an unseen realm, “innumerable angels in festal gathering, the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, God, the judge of all, and the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and Jesus the mediator of the new covenant.” (Heb. 12:22-24) In our very ordinary worship, heaven and earth collide.

Let us, therefore, go to the LORD, the true God of heaven and earth who calls us to worship him. Let us offer our whole selves to him in humble adoration, living sacrifices consumed by the fire of his love, transformed into a pleasing people who ascend into his presence by the Holy Spirit.

Oh come, let us sing to the Lord;     let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;     let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! For the Lord is a great God,     and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth;     the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it,     and his hands formed the dry land. Oh come, let us worship and bow down;     let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! For he is our God,     and we are the people of his pasture,     and the sheep of his hand. — (Ps. 95:1-7)