TRUE WORSHIP

What is true worship? Everyone worships, values, loves, something or someone above everything else. But the Bible tells us we should only worship the one true God. Because worship is his due; what human beings are created for. In the Old Testament, God gave Israel detailed laws for his worship, including sacrificial rituals, psalms, prayers, music andincense, offered by an army of priests at the Temple. But the foundation for worship was always to be love for God, in response to his love freely given to them.

Worshipping in vain

In Jesus day some teachers of the law recognized this but in practice most overlooked it. Jesus denounced them for worshipping God ‘in vain’ (Mat.15:7-13). Quoting the prophet Isaiah from seven centuries before, he said their worship was just lip-service, an act, because their hearts and minds were occupied with status and possessions and filled with ‘evil thoughts’ (Mk.7:20-23). They did not love God with all their heart, mind and strength; they did not ‘earnestly seek him’, so their worship was not true worship: It was not acceptable to God and useless for obtaining his blessing (Heb.11:6).

Legalism not love

The root of the problem was that they had replaced true worship with their own home-made legalism.  Despite their reputation for fanatical devotion to God’s law and meticulous religious observance in every detail of their lives, they had ‘let go’ of God’s commands, nullifying them by their own watered-down teachings. Jesus gave examples and warned against them as ‘blind guides’ (Mat.15:10-14. Mat.15:3-6).

Jesus, a new foundation

Jesus’ solution was to offer himself as a new foundation for true worship. In his words to the Samaritan woman he says a time has now arrived 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 spirit and in truth”(Jn.4:23-24). The only way to reclaim love-based worship was for true worshippers to be spiritually reborn, as he had previously told the Jewish leader, Nicodemus (Jn.3:3-8) True worshippers need new hearts to love God. They need to be radically transformed by believing in Jesus.

He is our new temple

So when Jesus tells us to worship God ‘in spirit and in truth’ what he really means is ‘in himself’, rather than in the Temple, which he has replaced (Jn.2:19). Jesus himself is God’s new temple; a spiritual temple served by a new nation, the holy, redeemed priesthood of all who trust in him. As the long-awaited Messiah, ‘God with us’, Jesus is the one who came to testify to the truth, Truth-in-person, the truth which sets us free for true worship.

Why do we worship?

So when we gather for worship, it is not to obtain God’s forgiveness or gain his approval but to praise and thank him for the new life we have through the once-for-all, finished sacrifice of Jesus, our mediator and ‘great high priest’. We approach God in worship through Jesus’ sacrificial blood alone. Our aim is to glorify Jesus, the head of the church, the Word made flesh, the image of the invisible God, as we proclaim and celebrate the victory of his death on the cross and the life-changing power of his resurrection, and eagerly await his return. Through faith in him we receive power to love God and each other, and are able to truly worship.

What does this mean in practice?

The ordinances Jesus gave for church worship are based on everyday acts (bathing, eating and drinking, reading, talking, singing) so that true worship is hard-wired into everyday life as an authentic expression of whole lives lived in obedience to his commands. The only offering God requires when true worshippers gather together is ‘a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart’ (Ps.51:17). He accomplished everything else, once for all, on Christ’s cross (Heb.10:10). True worshippers do not need to be transported to a ‘holy place’, or a performance space. Numbers are unimportant. Honorific titles, robes, glamour and noisy show are irrelevant distractions. True worship is joyful and full of thanksgiving and praise. But Jesus warns against uncritical acceptance of religious leaders who follow popular culture and use sensation and  emotionalism to lead the undiscerning astray (Mat.7:21-23). True worship is controlled, orderly, serious, discerning and reverent. Paul, like Jesus, reminds us that spectacular gifts and public demonstrations of devotion are meaningless without love for God (1 Cor.13:1-3).

The Bible should be the focus

When we gather for worship, the Christ-centred message of the Bible should ‘dwell richly’ among us through Bible reading, preaching and teaching. The sermon should not just be an interlude in ‘the sung worship’: It should be the main event; the declaration of the word of life, the revelation of the truth, the spiritual nourishment which will sustain us through all the trials of life. The Holy Spirit fills us when he applies the holy scriptures to our hearts, calling us to repentance and faith; sanctifying, empoweringand equipping us; enabling us to build up one another in love and to be fruitful in good deeds, as salt and light in the world (Eph5:17-20).

Through Jesus Christ, we are at last able to discover true worship, as we offer him the ‘spiritual sacrifices’ of our words, our bodies, our resources, our praises and our good works serving others (Ro.12:1; Php.4:18; Heb.13:15-16). Jesus enables us to ‘love because he first loved us’. This is true worship.