In Spirit and In Truth
A Series on Worship
#4: Acts of Worship
We’re going to start off with a game: "Who Wants to be a Worshiper?" The first question reviews something we saw several weeks ago:
Q. How many times does the Bible use one of the words for "worship" to describe a Christian assembly?
A. One
Q. How many times does the New Testament refer to a worship service?
A. None
(The Bible never says that the purpose for Christians coming together is for worship. And it never talks about a worship service.)
Q. How many acts of worship does the Bible say must be performed every Sunday?
A. None
(The operative word is "say." While we can follow the example of the early Christians in doing certain things, the Bible never specifically says that we have to do these things every Sunday)
Q. Which of these is not seen in the New Testament as part of a Christian assembly: fasting, church discipline, eating together, speaking in tongues?
A. This was a trick question. They are all portrayed as a normal part of a Christian assembly in the New Testament. Now I do feel that some of them do not have a place here today, but I want to broaden your minds a little bit. I want you to see that things were done in the assembly in the New Testament that aren’t always done today.
This is the fourth in a series of lessons about worship. Today we are studying "Acts of Worship." Let’s start off looking at the Bible.
In the Old Testament:
God established certain rituals to be used in worship. Unfortunately, the people came to focus on the ritual and not the relationship. They thought, "If I go and sacrifice and tithe and do all the feasts, then I’m right with God."
Look at Jeremiah 7:21-23--
21 “‘This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Go ahead, add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves! 22 For when I brought your forefathers out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, 23 but I gave them this command: Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in all the ways I command you, that it may go well with you.
God is saying, "When I brought you out of Egypt, the first thing I said was not about sacrifices. It was about our relationship, that you would be my people and I would be your God. Sacrifices are a means to an end, not the end itself."
Let’s look at Micah 6:6-8
6 With what shall I come before the LORD and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 8 He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
We have this concept that the Old Testament was all about ritual and that theirs was a physical religion. Yet you read these passages and you see that God wanted their hearts and not just their rituals.
Today
• We run the risk of replacing one ritual-focused worship with another. Shall we perpetuate the errors of God’s people of old? We can’t just focus on rituals. We have to look beyond the externals. We can’t tell people: “Come, do these five acts and you will have done worship.” That can’t be our message to the world.
• We have created something called “the worship service.”
• This “worship service” has a definite beginning and a definite end. When you enter this building, in our religion that we have created, we aren’t worshiping until somebody comes up here in front. Then the "worship" starts. Then we have a closing prayer, and "worship" is over. Can you find that in the Bible? Can you find anything remotely similar to that in the Bible?
• We have arbitrarily chosen acts that have to be done every week in this worship service. This is our invention, not God’s. We did this. If you look in God’s book, it’s not there.
What does the New Testament say about acts of worship?
There is only one New Testament passage that uses the phrase "act of worship":
Romans 12:1--"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God — this is your spiritual act of worship."
This is the spiritual act of worship, that we offer our bodies to God.
A similar thought is found in James 1:27-- "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."
I’ve said this several times in this series, but we’ve got to hear it. We’ve got to understand it. We do our “acts of worship” every day, not just on Sunday.
We have traditionally taught that there are five acts of worship. If you’ve grown up around the Churches of Christ, you’ve probably heard that. If not, you probably haven’t. When I searched for "five acts of worship" on the Internet, I found two kinds of web sites: those from the Church of Christ and those from the Moslems. They are the only other group that talks about five acts of worship.
But traditionally we’ve spoken of these five acts:
Singing
Preaching
Praying
Taking the Lord’s Supper
Giving of our means (That last phrase, looking on the Internet, was on 95% of the lists of five acts, written exactly that way: "giving of our means." I’m curious as to where that phrase comes from. It’s not in the Bible, but we’ve repeated that over the years.) We’ve taught that those five acts have to be there, every Sunday. If it’s going to be worship, you have to do these five things.
One Sunday night, when we were having a singing service, one brother came up to me afterwards and said, "There are five acts of worship. We only did four." My question for him is the question I have for you today, "Are there only five?" Are there only five acts of worship? What about...?
* Fasting -- "No, no, no... we don’t do that in worship." Do you remember at the beginning of the lesson when I said there was only one passage in which the New Testament uses one of the words for worship to describe a Christian assembly? Do you what is the only act of worship mentioned in that passage? Fasting. Acts 13:2, if you want to look it up.
* Public reading of scripture -- That’s not preaching. It’s different when a man gets up and reads from the Word of God and then sits down and lets that Word speak for itself. (I Timothy 4:13) I think that both preaching and reading of Scripture have a place in our worship. They belong in our assembly.
* Confession of sin -- You might say, "That doesn’t always take place in our worship assembly." And that’s true. But I think we have to remember that we created this worship service. Jesus said that "wherever two or more of you are gathered together, I am there." When you confess your sins to your brother, that’s a Christian assembly! It may not be done in this building, but it’s a Christian assembly, and I think it’s worship.
* Sharing a common meal -- We see in the book of Acts that the church did it every day in Acts 2 and that they did it at the same time they took the Lord’s Supper in Acts 20. We see in I Corinthians that they had a common meal when they took the Lord’s Supper, and we see the same thing in the book of Jude. Eating together is an act of worship.
* Baptism... and others. We can go on and on. We need to broaden our minds as to what worship is and as to how we do it together.
Because I don’t think that public worship is just a "to do" list. I don’t think it’s just a coming together to cross things off. I’ve seen that. There are churches where after people take the Lord’s Supper, they’re headed out the door. A third of the congregation leaves. They’ve checked off the list. We can see strongly from the New Testament and from history that one thing they did each week was take the Lord’s Supper together. So some people think that once they’ve done that, they’re through with worship. "I’ve punched my time card, I’m good with God."
Our assemblies can become rigidly structured, tradition-bound exercises. You’ve been places where you knew that it would be three songs, a prayer, a song, communion, another song, the sermon, one more song, a prayer and "let’s go home." And some brothers get upset if it’s not that way. "You had the sermon before the Lord’s Supper? What’s the matter with you?"
Look at the worship described in I Corinthians 14:26 and following. I am convinced that God used tongue speaking and miraculous acts when He was beginning His church, and that they are not part of worship today. But I want to look at this passage:
26 What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church. 27 If anyone speaks in a tongue, two — or at the most three — should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. 28 If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God. 29 Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. 30 And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. 31 For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. 32 The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. 33 For God is not a God of disorder but of peace.
This passage describes the solution for the chaotic worship in Corinth. This is how to do things "decently and in order." Does it sound like our traditional “five act” worship?
Does that mean anything goes? By no means. But let’s not limit our thinking to what we’ve created. Let’s let the Bible speak to us.
Worshipful Acts
• It is right to “perform the five acts,” as well as other acts of worship. We should sing. We should pray. We must take the Lord’s supper. There should be preaching, there should be teaching. I’m not saying to do away with those things. But I’m saying that those things are not "worship," those things help us worship. God has to be our focus, not the "five acts." We need to raise our eyes and not focus on the steps to God but on God himself.
• They must never become rigid rituals or merit-earning acts. You can’t say "I’m good with God; I did the five acts this week." They have to be the loving, natural expression of a lifestyle of worship. The problem with talking about a "worship service" is that we can think that when we are leaving here that we are no longer worshiping God. This helps us to worship God, but it is not the totality of our worship. It’s getting us ready to worship God. We worship together so that we can go out and worship every day.
• In Acts 2:42-47 we see what a lifestyle of worship was like in the New Testament. The early church knew how to perform acts of worship; we should imitate their example:
Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Every day they met together and worshiped God. Can you see that it’s not talking about Sunday from 8:30 until 9:30? It’s not talking about "five acts." It’s a lifestyle of worship.
If you are not at the point in your life where you feel confident worshiping God daily, we want to help. If you need to put on your Lord in baptism or need the prayers of the church, if you have any need that’s public, won’t you come as we stand and sing?
