Listen
Listen to the following episodes of “I Can’t Believe It’s Worship” Podcast
Worship Redefined: What It Is – and What It Isn’t
Worship That God Seeks: Worshipping in Truth
From Ritual to Relationship: Worshipping in Spirit
Listen to the following sermon by Tim Keller entitled Worship (Psalm 95)
Defining Worship
Over the years, I have found it difficult to define the term “worship” with pinpoint precision. We think we know it because we “do” it; have “seen” it; or have “responded” in it. In our case, we even “minister” in it. Yet, we struggle to truly articulate what the “it” is.
Is worship a state of being? Is it an action (like Robert Webber famously said, “worship is a verb”)?
Here are some definitions.
Evelyn Underhill:
Worship is the total adoring response of man to the one Eternal God, self-revealed in time.
William Temple:
Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of His will to His purpose—and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.
Warren Wiersbe:
Worship is the believer’s response of all that they are—mind, emotions, will and body—to what God is and says and does. This response has its mystical side in subjective experience and its practical side in objective obedience to God’s revealed will. Worship is a loving response that’s balanced by the fear of the Lord, and it is a deepening response as the believer comes to know God better.
Judson Cornwall:
Worship is an attitude of heart, a reaching towards God, a pouring out of our total self in thanksgiving, praise, adoration and love to the God who created us and to whom we owe everything we have and are. Worship is the interaction of man’s spirit with God in a loving response
David Peterson:
Worship of the living and true God is essentially an engagement with him on the terms that he proposes and in the way that he alone makes possible.
Louie Giglio
Worship is our response, both personal and corporate, to God for who He is, and what He has done; expressed in and by the things we say and the way we live.
Harold Best:
Worship is the continuous outpouring of all that I am, all that I have, and all that I can ever become to a chosen – or choosing – god.
Tim Keller
Worship is ascribing ultimate value to something in a way that engages the whole being.
NARROW WORSHIP
In John 4:23, 24, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman:
Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.
The word here for worship is proskuneo, meaning to “kiss the hand”.
WIDE WORSHIP
In Romans 12:1, Paul says:
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.
The word for worship here is latreuo, which means “service”.
Worship therefore is therefore an act or event and a state of being which encompasses all of life. A good analogy is marriage, which is in one sense an event which occurs on a day (with its attendant ritual and customs highlighting its importance and seriousness), but also a lifelong, all pervasive state of being which in turn informs our actions, decision-making and priorities.
So we might say “worship is a lifestyle”, i.e. worship in the wide sense, and worship is an act, i.e. worship in the narrow sense.
This is certainly the dichotomy we see in the progression of the Gospel narrative: life with God in Genesis begins as unbroken fellowship and relationship. By the time we are in Exodus, worship enters into the age of the temple (ritual and cultic worship).
In his conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 4, Jesus is prefiguring a new age which supersedes the temple age: worship in Spirit and truth. The author of Hebrews in fact expounds on cultic worship being replaced by faith, hope and love in Jesus because He offered a better mediator (Moses), a better sacrifice, a better priesthood and a better tabernacle.
Why Should We Worship?
It is in the human condition to be worshipping something. In other words, nobody does not worship. Whether we realise it or not, we are already ascribing ultimate value to something. We are either giving ourselves to things which will distort our lives, or we will give ourselves to the only One who is the only proper object of worship.
The very essence of worship therefore requires us to recognise where our worship is already directed, and to then transfer our ultimate value to God.
Rebecca Pippert says in Out of the Saltshaker and Into the World:
Whatever controls us is our lord. The person who seeks power is controlled by power. The person who seeks acceptance is controlled by acceptance. We do not control ourselves. We are controlled by the lord of our lives
This is why worship of God is life-transforming! 2 Cor 3:18 says that when we “with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, [we] are being transformed into his image with ever increasing glory.” In other words, we become like what (or Who) we behold.
How can we worship?
“In Truth”
Truth means submitting ourselves to God’s revelation of Himself.
The temptation we face is to design our own religion; design our own god. By doing so, we deny our ability to have a real spiritual experience with God.
I like what Jeremy Riddle says about “truth”, that God insists on being worshipped for who is actually is, because no one is honoured by ignorance or falseness; no one appreciates being honoured for who they are not.
We study God; we learn more about Him so that we can worship Him truly!
But in John 4:23, the word “truth” – alethia in the Greek – means “ultimate or underlying reality” or “sincerity”. This means that we worship as we are. Firstly, we do not need to pretend to have it all together; to check out our burdens at the door; to leave our pain behind in order to worship. Instead, we worship God through our burden and our pain.
But second, and beyond this, we recognise also our true reality of being in Christ – our identity as blood-bought, redeemed children of God. And so, we approach God with an understanding of the reality of His character, and the reality of who we truly are (which we must also necessarily grasp by faith!) in order to worship Him in truth.
“In Spirit”
Ultimately, Christian worship culminates in a Person.
In John 1, John prefigures the fulfilment of temple worship in Christ by saying that Jesus came and “tabernacled” amongst humankind. Later on, Paul says Christ lives in us through the Holy Spirit. This is why worship is now in the Spirit.
“Spirit” means “breath” or “essence”. The essence of God is His Spirit.
Person and presence are deeply connected. The presence is where the person is! Without person, there is no presence.
We can both come to the presence of God with confidence (Hebrews 10:19) (something which ancient Israel could only hope for) and the presence of God is with us always (something Jesus assured his disciples in John 14 and which as fulfilled in Acts 2).
So even now, we talk about God’s omnipresence and his manifested presence. Pastor Benny illustrated this point like this: water in the air is invisible, but when the conditions are right, it will manifest itself as mist or rain.
Jeremy Riddle says that the difference between a song leader and a worship leader is the Holy Spirit because true worship is a Spirit-empowered activity. And Riddle states emphatically:
The “Presence” is a Person.
This may seem very basic and elementary, but if we don’t keep the “presence” connected to the Person of the Holy Spirit, we miss the invitation to know Him and to move with Him. He is not a mist, a cloud, a vibe, or an atmosphere – He is a person. When we say “The presence came so strong!” it means the Person of the Holy Spirit “came so strong.” Just like my “presence” is never disconnected from my person, neither is His.
We need the Holy Spirit to inspire our worship. By the same token, we recognise it is deep within our regenerated spirit that cries out to God in worship.
In the coming weeks, and in the context of choir, we will look at some of the expressions in corporate worship; their biblical and spiritual significance; and how we can model together these expressions to inspire the congregation towards worshipping in spirit and in truth.
The Worship Revolution 