There is a lot of mixed-up thinking in the church today over what worship is or isn’t. Many people listen to ‘Praise and Worship’ music, and even use the word worship to distinguish one style of music from another. Some seem to think of worship as a particular activity – something you can turn on and turn off. They think that we go to church, ‘do worship’, then stop worshipping and go home. This all reveals the great misconceptions surrounding worship in the church today.
Our English word worship really reveals the heart of what it is. It comes from the old English word ‘worthship.’ In other words, worship is about worth, value, price. Worship is my declaration of how much I think God is worth. Worship is the price I put upon God. My worship of God, simply put, is how much I value God.
As you can tell, this is not something we can turn on and turn off. I can not switch on and off my appreciation for my wife. I cannot ‘do’ a sense of value on cherished objects at a particular time of day, and then stop valuing them later on. No – my treasuring of someone or something is really an attitude, a fixed mental perception – it’s not a particular activity.
My appreciation of something or someone may grow or diminish, but at any point in time, I have a determined sense of how much I value things in my life – and that determines how I react to them. My outward acts and attitude are just the forms that my inward sense takes.
Likewise, worship is not captured in any particular activity. Singing is not the essence of worship. Singing certainly is a medium for worship, because in singing you get to express how much you value God. But that is not worship in itself. It’s an expression of your worship. Giving thanks, testifying, serving in your local church, giving – these can all be acts of worship.
Nor is worship restricted to the church. Every thing you do – whether you eat or drink, or work, or play, whether in school, or at work or at home – is an act of worship. That doesn’t mean it is necessarily pleasing to God – it means all that you do is a reflection of what you think God is worth.
We always behave our beliefs. What we think on the inside always comes out one way or another – and how much you think God is worth will be unmistakably seen in your life. And here is the crunch: if you think God is worth very little, then it will be seen in your every word, thought and deed – and that is your worship.
It is not that you are not worshipping. You are doing that – you are still displaying what you think God is worth. So what does the Bible say about worship that pleases God? How does God want to be worshipped? How do I get to a place of valuing Him in that way?
What is worship?
Perhaps the definitive passage on worship is found in the Gospel of John as Jesus speaks with the Samaritan woman at the well. He is trying to evangelise her. She has tried to divert Jesus from His convicting statement about her immoral life by bringing up the topic of who is right about the correct place of worship – the Samaritans or the Jews.
The Samaritans had corrupted some of the true worship of God and had set up places of worship in competition to the Temple in Jerusalem. So she raises this issue. Verses 21-25 record His reply, in which we find some gold nuggets of truth about worship:
Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
John 4:21-24
The distinctions of worship
Jesus firstly says that the hour is coming when true worshippers will worship in spirit and in truth. Jesus is making a distinction, a contrast. He is saying that there is true worship, and consequently, there is also false worship. The Samaritans were an example of false worship – they had some of the names right, but they had perverted the Biblical law, even deleting parts of Scripture. They had outward forms – but it was false.
What is false worship? It is the opposite of true worship. If true worship is defined as being in spirit and in truth, then the opposite of those two ideas would be false worship. The opposite of the spirit, biblically, is the flesh, and the opposite of the truth is lies. So false worship worships in the flesh and in self-deceit.
The flesh in the Bible refers to that part of man which resists God’s Spirit. It is intensely sensual – desiring the gratification of the body only: to feed the body, clothe the body, pamper the body, entertain the body, adorn the body to impress other bodies, gratify the body’s lusts, comfort the body, give the body more things.
These are all based on the here and now; on what we can see, hear, taste, touch, smell and feel. It is not that the body is evil, but the flesh seeks to live this earthly way in rebellion to God. It seeks to live this way without faith in God, without dependence, thankfulness and fear of Him. It wants to enjoy the gifts apart from the Giver, the creation without reference to the Creator. It is intensely selfish.
Now, believe it or not, many people worship this way. They speak of worshipping God, but it is all sensual. It is about trying to give the body a thrill, to entertain themself, to gain great excitement from the experience. They want ecstasy from the worship – like any of their other entertainment experiences. This largely explains a lot of the weird things in Christianity today – people seeking fleshly thrills, and calling it worship. Many are being physical with the worship of a Spirit.
This is not new. When Moses came down from the Mount, what had Israel begun to do? They had begun to worship a golden calf. The Bible says they ate and drank and rose up to play, and the Hebrew suggests it was a drunken orgy. Completely sensual and wicked. But do you know what Aaron pronounced on that? “Tomorrow is a feast day unto the Lord” – they called it worship!
There can be things done in the name of worship that have no connection with worship. Isaiah 1 records God declaring His hatred for all Israel’s rituals. There was an outward worship, but the heart was wrong – it was false worship. Jesus called the Pharisees whited sepulchers: clean on the outside, but full of dead men’s bones within. They had a form, but lacked the power.
Nadab and Abihu, Aaron’s sons, are also recorded as having gone to offer fire to the Lord. But God struck them down because they offered strange fire. They were conducting a ritual of worship – but it was false.
Ananias and Sapphira appeared to be worshiping God by giving a large sum of money to the church. But they were actually doing it to get praise, pretending to have given it all to gain the image of being wholeheartedly sacrificial, while secretly keeping a large sum for themselves. False worship.
False worship was not something restricted to Biblical days. A lot of people think that you can force worship from the outside in. So they try to get louder music, more enthusiastic song leaders, and try to cheerlead people into worship. There certainly is a place for enthusiasm and encouraging people. But if it’s dead inside, you are not going to be able to get those corpses moving.
So many people see the deadness in people’s hearts, and instead of dealing with the heart of the problem – worship, they try to change the forms of worship – the songs, the order of service, the way things are done. That will never help. All that will do is encourage fleshly people to continue to wear a mask to church. Church face, smile, praise-the-Lord syndrome for two hours, and then go back to being real.
But before we look down on those on the extreme fringe of fleshly worship, what about us? Fleshliness is any time we do anything in our own strength, for our own glory. So what about when we come in to church and try to sing the songs without asking God for help? What about when we sing to impress others? What about when we are too worried about what others will think about us if we do this or don’t do that?
And what about when we pretend we are enjoying it when we aren’t? What about when we sing and praise and so on without even thinking about God? Fleshly worship. And that’s just in the house of God. What about our lives? Whatever we do without reference to God is of the flesh – so it’s fleshly worship. All of life is worship. All we do in the flesh becomes part of fleshly worship – or false worship.
So there is a distinction in worship – true and false. There is also the desire.
The desire of worship
Notice Jesus says, “the Father desires such to worship Him.” Now here is the desire of worship. God desires worship. We must ask, why? I remember a teacher in school saying to me, ‘I refuse to worship a God who demands my worship.’ So why does God want worship?
Is it because, as it seemed to CS Lewis before his conversion to Christianity, He is like a vain woman demanding compliments? Is God demanding my worship because He thirsts for praise? Well, if so, we have a problem. It then means that God is not complete in Himself. It means that God has a need. He needs worship, and made us to complete His need. He feels frustrated and incomplete without humans praising Him. But that is not Scriptural.
I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High.
Psalm 50:9-14
God says, I do not get angry if you do or do not bring those animal sacrifices. I own them all anyway. If I were asking you to bring me these things to meet a need in me, then I wouldn’t ask you to do it, since I own it. If it were possible for me to feel a need, I certainly wouldn’t need you to meet it.
God is saying – I don’t have needs. Worshipping me is not meeting my needs – it’s meeting yours. I made you to glorify me. You do not glorify me by treating me like I have needs. You glorify me by realising I have no needs, you have many needs, and I am the answer to all your needs.
God desires worship from us not because He needs it. He desires worship from us because when we value and treasure God as He is, we are the happiest and most satisfied people in the world. And just as healthy sheep glorify their shepherd as skillful and wise, happy, worshipping Christians glorify their Saviour as being excellent, as being superior to all the things that the world goes after.
So the goal of worship is to show that the Creator is more excellent than all His creation.
We see then that God did not make man to meet a need in Himself. He made man from the overflow of His joy in Himself, and the pure and holy desire to give joy to creatures by allowing them to share in the joy He has in Himself.
God is overflowingly happy and gloriously satisfied. Worship is God’s gracious gift of allowing His creatures to share the joy of God. So God desires true worship. He desires it because true worship glorifies Him, and it fulfills us. God’s goal of glorifying himself, and man’s goal of being fulfilled, are found in the same place: worship.
The dynamics of worship
But this all raises the main question – how? How do we worship God as true worshippers? How do get the worship of God right on the inside, so that it will be right on the outside? Let’s remind ourselves of our definition, and then look at Jesus’ words. We said worship is what you think God is worth. Now let’s read John 4:24: “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”
Jesus is saying, God is not like you and me. He is not like anything created. He is a Spirit. You cannot see, or smell or taste touch or feel a spirit. It’s very obvious that if I am going grow in my valuing of a Spirit, if am going to grow my sense of worth of a Spirit – it cannot come through my five senses.
I can appreciate a piece of music by listening to it more. I can learn to love some scenery by visiting it again, or taking photos and looking at them. But my worship – my worthship of God – has got to grow in a different way. And Jesus says how: “in Spirit and in truth.” These are not two different stages or two separate ideas. They are two sides of the same coin.
It means this: you will grow in your valuing of God when the Holy Spirit unveils the truth about God to you. Paul says this in 1 Corinthians:
But as it is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so, the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
1 Corinthians 2:9-11
Paul’s logic is exactly what we are seeing. Physical eyes, physical ears, even physical brains cannot understand and experience God. Peter was told that his confession of Christ was not due to flesh and blood, but the Father who revealed it to him.
Paul then says, how do you know a man, but by the spirit of man? So likewise, how do you know God, but by the Spirit of God? He explains that believers have the Spirit of God in them to know the things of God. But the unsaved man cannot know them because He lacks the Spirit of God.
Here is the bottom line: you need a supernatural Person to reveal a supernatural Person. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes the blinds off our spiritual eyes, and shows us Christ. He does not do so in a vacuum or by mysterious voices. The Spirit reveals Christ to us using the truth. John 17:17 – “Thy word is truth.”
It is then as we see, spiritually speaking, the glory of Christ, that we grow in admiration, in delight, in reverence, in awe, in sheer wonder. We value Him more. We treasure Him more. His worth to us grows. And thus, the outward forms will follow.
It is as the Spirit reveals how glorious Jesus is – and we treasure Him more than money, more than men’s praise, more than worldly pursuits, more than fame or prestige or all the other things we pursue – that our lives change. We obey Him, we sing, we evangelise, we give thanks, we serve, we separate from sin, we live life to honour Him, because we hold Him in high honour.
See, now we are working from the inside out. We are not trying to force people to feel joy over something they do not delight in, or to express happy emotions when they don’t have any. That’s just emotionalism. We are saying, see the treasure of Jesus as He is, and your emotions will indeed become involved and stirred up beyond anything this life has to offer.
No one who saw God spiritually remained the same. Isaiah fell down and cried, “I am undone!” Peter, James and John fell down flat on their faces on the mount of transfiguration. John fell at His feet as dead when Jesus gave Him the revelation. When Moses saw just the back of God’s glory, His face shone for some time after that. He was changed.
These were not phony, forced reactions – they were automatic reactions to a genuine, truthful apprehension of the glory of the Lord.
In 2 Corinthians 3 Paul uses the illustration of a veil over our hearts, keeping us back from seeing the glory of the Lord. When the Spirit removes that veil, we are like someone beholding in a mirror God’s glory. The more we behold, the more we are changed – from one glory to another. The Spirit shows us the glory of God, our estimation of His worth grows, and we change.
This process is called illumination. The Spirit of God taking the Word of God, and showing you the glory of God, as seen in the Son of God. It is all about getting the spiritual cataracts out of our eyes, to behold, to hear, to taste, to touch and to feel: spiritually speaking.
So what must I do? I want to worship God in Spirit and in truth. I see what it is. I see how the Spirit will do it – by revealing Jesus to me in all His glory in the Word of God – but what must I do? Millions of Christians have their Bibles open, but do not see the glory of Jesus. What are the cataracts that stop us from seeing and saying, “Worthy is the Lamb”?
In one word – pride. Pride says, “I will.” I will live for my glory. I do not truly need God to show me God. I can find God by my own wisdom, wit or skill. Or maybe I do not really need to see Him. Or maybe, I can get along without Him. Or maybe, I don’t want to enjoy His glory, I want to enjoy my own glory, because pride is synonymous with the flesh.
For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.
Galatians 5:17
So the answer is humility. Let me give you a rather different definition of humility. Humility is creating a vacuum for God. How do you create a vacuum normally? By removing the liquid or air out of something. We create a vacuum for God by removing all the pride in our hearts.
Pride says, I am a god, not a creature. I am a master, not a servant. Humility says – no, I am a creature, I depend on my Creator. No, I am a servant, I obey my Master, I submit to Him, I put Him first, I own nothing and am a steward of His things. As you do this, you empty your heart of the proud lies that take up space. This creates a vacuum. And a vacuum will always be filled.
Once you create a hunger, a thirst, within your heart, the key is then to fill it with the right things. If you don’t, you will find yourself binging on your former sins, and you will go back to your pride in an even stronger way. So take that soul-hunger, and go to the Word of God. Not to just read a chapter a day, but hungering to see the glory of Christ.
If you have a hunger, you will be seeking and searching for God in the Word. You will cry out to Him to teach you. You will listen and learn – you will take it to heart. You will go out and keep His commandments, and you will rejoice in them, and return to the Word for more. God says in Isaiah 66:2: “…to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.”
Let me put it the way A.W. Tozer did: God tells the man who cares. The humble man is hungry, not indifferent. He seeks till he finds, he keeps knocking till the door opens, he keeps asking till he receives. It’s funny that we think of humility as being passive, demure and withdrawn. No, humility is actually passionate, hungry and desirous. It’s just hungry about God.
I think there is a place for Bible-study methods, but Bible study methods without humility is like giving people courses on how to eat their food when they don’t have an appetite. I figure if people get an appetite for the Bible, they’ll soon learn to chew, but if people never hunger for God, we’re trying to teach them that they can find out God by their mental ability alone.
And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord…
Ephesians 5:18-20
Notice: did the outward form of singing cause us to be filled with the Spirit, or did being filled with the Spirit cause us to do the outward singing? We work from the inside out.
As I am emptied of pride, I will hunger for God. This hunger is humility, and it causes me to submit to the Spirit of God through the Word of God. That is being filled with the Spirit. The Spirit fills empty, humble hearts. I sincerely desire the milk of the Word, and God the Spirit teaches me – he shows me Christ. My esteem of Christ grows, and I want even more to know Him and to be like Him. This is worship: the Spirit of God showing me the worth of Jesus.
God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Only by the Spirit will you see God who is a Spirit, and say He is worthy. Only by humility will you be filled with the Spirit. May we apply our heart to being empty of ourselves, and filled with Him, so that we may see His worthiness.