Recovering the Lost Art of Worship
The thoughtful Christian is compelled to admit that in our time there is very little true worship of the Lord. We have our so called worship services, but often even in such services, little time is given to worship in the traditional Scriptural sense. Ask the average Christian what worship is, and you will get answers that are, at best, incomplete. Some will say worship is prayer. Others will say that worship is sacrifice. For others worship is service or church attendance. All of these are merely partial answers. In its fullest sense, worship is much bigger than any of these, though it may include them all.
With worship, the risen Lord Jesus Christ was welcomed from the tomb (Matt. 28:9). The first act of the apostles following His departure was to worship Him (Luke 24:50-53). In its broadest meaning, according to one modern dictionary, “worship” is “to honor or reverence as a divine being or supernatural power, or to regard with great or extravagant respect, honor, or devotion.” It also means to “take part in an act of worship.”
In this large sense of the word, thousands can claim to worship God, pay Him respect, honor Him in word. A smaller number honor Him in their lives. Millions would claim the God of Scripture as their God and say He is the object of their worship. Many who have never come personally into a relationship with God would say that they acknowledge Him as deity, and they may pay Him a superficial sort of respect. They may even attend church on a more or less regular basis. True worship, however, involves a personal meeting with the Lord of glory, a soul-changing vision of Him and a deep sense of personal unworthiness and sin. More often worship takes place in private rather than in a public service-with the door closed and the Word of God open before us. It may be a time-consuming experience, but one so refreshing that the saint on his knees is unaware of time’s passing; time comes to mean nothing.
Worship is at the same time both soul-stirring and life-changing. It follows upon a fresh vision of the Lord of glory. Having turned away from an empty tomb, the women beheld the risen Christ. Having beheld the ascension of the Savior, the disciples worshipped Him on the mount. On both of these occasions, great joy was felt by those who looked on, and the inspiration of the experience manifested itself in testimony and service to Christ whom they had seen thus glorified. Isaiah, in the temple, beheld the Lord “high and lifted up,” surrounded by His Heavenly attendants in such numbers that they seemed to fill the temple (Isa. 6:1). In all of these Biblical circumstances, the vision came like light after darkness. The women came prepared to embalm a dead body and instead beheld a living Savior. The Lord had bid the disciples farewell on the mountain and left them, but they thrilled to the assurance of His return. Their sorrow at parting with their Savior was assuaged by the promise of His continuing presence and power with them and by the angelic announcement that He would “so come in like manner” as they had seen Him go into heaven (Acts 1:11).
It was in a time of national crisis following the death of King Uzziah that Isaiah, in his vision of the Lord (Isa. 6:1-8), thrilled to the seraphic cry, “Holy, holy, holy,” as it echoed in his soul, and his body trembled as the house of God trembled with the shaking of the posts of the door. He was humbled, realizing his own uncleanness and the deplorable spiritual situation all around him. Confusion was followed with the cleansing of the coal from the altar and with the prophet’s prayer to be used of God in the midst of national declension and his petition, “Send me!”
Worship brings to the heart of the worshipper an acute awareness of the wonder, grace, power and holiness of God, a realization of his own imperfections and failures, a fresh dedication to the task at hand. In a time when holy things are treated as commonplace, the worshipper finds his faith strengthened by the fresh vision of the greatness of the God he worships. His pride will be humbled, his calling magnified and his surrender affirmed.
Worship is not a time of petitioning God for something we feel we need or would like to have. It is a time of surrender, of giving to God, of asking only to be purified for His service and used by Him. Self becomes nothing except a servant, and the will becomes only an extension of the divine will. It is the Lord risen, ascended and exalted who occupies the throne. The position of the worshipper is before that throne on his face before God. We are not speaking merely of physical position. We are talking about the heart’s position-bending, bowed, broken. In old age our knees and back may be too bound by-arthritis to bend, but we are never too old to prostrate our heart before Him. Worship is a time not of asking but of surrendering.
A mere repetition of a passage of Scripture sung over and over again is not worship but smacks of the Hindu’s chanting of a mantra. Only celestial beings standing in God’s presence day and night can praise Him by continually crying, “Holy, holy, holy.” With men this contrived repetition becomes monotonous, empty and thoughtless until the heart disassociates itself from the meaning of the phrase being repeated or sung. Though primarily an act of the heart, worship demands the focus of all of our faculties. Worship of God is an expression of love, and we are commanded to love Him with all our heart, all our soul and all our mind.
Now here is a lack of worship more apparent than in the hymnody of the church. Much Contemporary Christian Music is not written to glorify God but to express a shallow sentimentality of hearts that know very little about God. His attributes of glory, power, grace, righteousness, holiness are not generally its theme; and the music is neither lofty nor spiritual.
Even in conservative Fundamental churches, how seldom do you hear great hymns in which the Lord is beheld as high and lifted up? How seldom do we hear sung Fredrick Faber’s “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy”? How often anymore do we hear Wesley’s great lyrics “O for a heart to praise my God,” sung to Lowell Mason’s music? Perhaps even less often do we hear “Arise, my soul, arise! / Shake off thy guilty fears; / The bleeding Sacrifice /I In my behalf appears.” How many churches still sing “Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness / My beauty are, my glorious dress; / ‘Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed, / With joy shall I lift up my head”?
One does not need eighteenth-century hymnody to praise God. Good devotional hymns may be found elsewhere, but nowhere is there a richer vein to be mined than in the eighteenth century. Is it not significant that the “mega-church,” the super church, speaks contemptuously of “dull eighteenth- century hymns”? Is this not to be expected from a system that would make religion easy, the service contemporary and the sermons short and innocuous, free from the judgmental and the negative?
Religious expression that attempts to adapt itself to current religious conditions has no power to change those conditions. Spiritual worship looks upon God as He is and rejoices in Him who is the same yesterday, today and forever. One cannot properly worship a God whom he does not know and to whom he does not belong.
Is it any wonder today that the pleasure of time spent before God’s throne is so little considered? The very thought that pleasure and joy are associated with humbling is foreign to the mind of the Christian at the end of the twentieth century. We are too busy to worship and so preoccupied with the glitter of the world that we lose sight of the glory of the eternal. Much that we term worship even in Fundamental circles is as empty, unproductive and misdirected as the act of a ritualist who enters a church for a moment to cross himself and repeat a memorized prayer, then hurries back to the world outside the church door.
Genuine worship will leave its mark upon the worshipper. John “fell at his feet as dead” (Rev. 1: 17). Paul was” trembling and astonished” (Acts 9:6). Moses removed his shoes and, later, left the presence of God with a shining countenance. Job laid his hand upon his mouth, abhorred himself and repented in dust and ashes. Isaiah’s cry of “woe is me, for I am undone … for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts” is followed by “Here am I, send me” (Isa. 6:5- 8).
It is most interesting that Abraham, going to sacrifice Isaac on the mountain ahead, said to the servants, “I and the lad will go yonder and worship” (Gen. 22:5). His son was to be sacrificed, yet Abraham did not speak of sacrifice but of worship, for sacrifice is an act of worship when done from love for Christ and in obedience to God’s commands. How sad it is if some of us, like the elders of Israel named in Exodus 24:1, should be allowed to worship only” afar off.” But do we not choose to remain at a distance when our hearts are cold toward Him? What a privilege was Moses’ to go into the smoke and the fire and the darkness that marked God’s presence on the trembling mountain!
Even worse than being allowed to worship afar off was the state of Saul who, when begging the prophet to turn with him to worship the Lord, heard the reply, “I will not return with thee: for thou hast rejected the word of the LORD” (1Sam. 15:26). No one who rejects His Word worships Him “in spirit and in truth” John 4:23, 24). Only those who have trusted His Word and who believe on His Son as revealed in that Word have the privilege to come apart and worship Him in the beauty of His holiness and the sweetness of His presence.
At the time of original publication, the late Dr. Bob Jones, Jr., was the chancellor of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina.
We republish this article from the March/April 1997 edition of FrontLine by special request from a Proclaim & Defend reader.
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How refreshing! Though written a while back, these words are more true now than ever. This is a real challenge to every believer.