Worship – Part 2
Romans 12:1; Isaiah 6:1-11a; Revelation 4:8
In Part 1 of our study of biblical worship, we saw what worship is and what it isn’t, and we looked at Isaiah 6:1-11a, as a model for us to pattern our worship after. Keep in mind that a model is only a general pattern to follow, not a template for exact duplication. With a pattern to follow, we keep ourselves from giving the Holy Spirit reason to stand back from our worship. Instead, we open ourselves to the free flow of the Spirit, allowing Him to lead and guide and bring us to that place where God is revealed, where God is encountered, where God is experienced.
We also looked last time at the five ways that God reveals Himself to us in worship. Tonight we will look again to our text in Isaiah and look at the fundamental responses biblical worship has to God’s revealing of Himself. Once we have done that, we will put the two together and we will have our worship model.
The first response to God’s revelation is adoration and praise. God is the ultimate being in the Universe and, as such, He is worthy of praise and worship just for who He is. We are not to focus on ourselves in any way – not our needs, not our inadequacies, not our unworthiness in comparison, not anything; just Him.
Look at the worship of the seraphim in Isaiah 6:3. We see this worship phrase repeated and expanded in Revelation 4:8. Compare the verses. What do you see?
In both, the word “holy” is stated three times. Anytime something is repeated in the Bible, it is significant, and it is to be given special consideration, as when Paul says in Philippians 4:4, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!” In our texts for this evening, we see “holy” stated not twice, but three times. These are the only places in all of Scripture when something is said and repeated three times. “Holy, holy, holy…” Think about two people who are totally infatuated with each other. Aren’t they giddily happy just being together, no matter where they are? This takes us beyond that in our level of worship for the pure holiness of God. The radiance of his glory is overwhelming; it suffuses our surroundings, our minds, our entire beings. Look at the abject humility of the seraphim, who themselves are holy and without sin: they cover their eyes because they are not worthy to look upon His holiness. How, then, should we respond when we encounter Holy God?
We are to praise and exalt and glorify and honor and adore and love and bow before Him in open and unrestrained worship.
This then leads us to the next part of biblical worship – contrition and confession. Contrition is an old word that we rarely if ever hear today. It encompasses a great deal. It means repentance, remorse, regret, sorrow, apology, penitence. It is an attitude of the heart that demonstrates realistic regard for and understanding of our true condition when we do encounter Holy God. Look at the prophet Isaiah’s response when he encounters God in this way.
Isaiah is able to see himself in a way that he never has before. It is what one author called his “moment of truth.” He suddenly understands that his sin and sinfulness and that of his people condemn him to death and separation from Holy God. Isaiah’s response? The same as ours should be – confession.
Here is where most of worship falters in America today. When was the last time you heard in a worship service an admission of the sinfulness of those in attendance and a petition for the healing and cleansing of God’s forgiveness? Too seldom do we – and I include myself in this – too seldom do we come out and admit openly and out loud that we are sinners, that we sin, that we have unconfessed sin, that we are now confessing that sin before God, and that we are seeking His forgiveness, cleansing, healing, and restoration. This I purpose to change, and I ask you all to keep me accountable to this. I have the responsibility in my role in the body and within this fellowship to lead our people to this place in our worship. It needs to be in my prayers, not just my daily prayers for myself, but I need to begin including it regularly in my prayers for you and for us as a group. So shall it be.
Now, what is the result of this lack, do you think? What happens to sin that is unconfessed? It accumulates. The results of our sin and the repercussions of that sin accumulate and grow. It is the sow and reap principle that the Bible speaks of so clearly and so regularly. Almost the entirety of the book of Proverbs demonstrates a “sow this, reap that” economy.
So, unconfessed, accumulating sin does what? And, make no mistake; it does this in the life of the church just as readily and just as much – if not more – than in the life of the individual. Sin is an offense to God – how much greater offense is it to Him when it is within His Church? Sin robs, steals, kills, corrupts, sickens, confuses, perverts, divides, weakens, blinds and destroys. Sin is anathema to the very nature and character of the Holy God whom we come to worship. How can we then worship Him in spirit and in truth if there is unconfessed sin? We cannot.
Want to experience God in worship? “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matthew 5:8).” Contrition and confession must be an integral part of our worship experience, or we are not truly worshiping God. We can’t be.
The third response in genuine worship is submission and dedication. This is a complete yielding of our will, our desires, our life, all that we are and have to the will and purposes of God. God asks the question, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us? (Isaiah 6:8)” Isaiah’s response is to be our response, “Here I am. Send me!” If you are not willing to do this, then you are not willing to worship God in spirit and in truth. Think about that statement for a moment. If you are not willing to do as Isaiah did…then, you are not willing to worship in spirit and in truth.
Our act of surrender to God must be total, it must be complete, and it must be unconditional. No holding back, no negotiation. At that moment in our worship experience, God may well reveal something to you that He wants you to do, and He is expecting, He is anticipating, your immediate obedience with gladness. That is what we pray for when we pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Think the angels hesitate? Think they question? Think they look to other angels to step up and do it for them?
In the book of James we are told that “faith without works is dead”, and that we are to not be just hearers of the Word but doers also. Look again at Romans 12:1. How much of us are we supposed to give? Our bodies as “living sacrifices”. That means a fully alive, fulltime, ongoing submission and dedication of all we are and all we have. Every-day, all-day – a lifestyle of worship.
The fourth response in genuine worship is supplication and petition. In Philippians 4:6, the Apostle Paul writes, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Paul was a man who knew what it was to pray. Read what he says in 1 Timothy 2:1-3: “First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be Made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority [high position], in order that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior.”
God not only expects us to come to Him in prayer with all of our needs and the needs of others, especially those in positions authority and responsibility and those who suffer; He commands it. Through Paul in Ephesians 6:18, following our instructions for putting on the whole armor of God, he tells us specifically, “With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.”
When we come as Jesus taught us to come, daily and laying our physical and spiritual needs before our Father in Heaven, we worship Him by acknowledging and affirming that He is our sustainer, our supplier, our source of all we needs. We also demonstrate faith, love and obedience by coming with the expectation that He will hear and answer our prayers. Prayer is like the light switch that brings the electricity into the room so that the lights will come on – God’s power is available; all we have to do is access it. This honors and glorifies Him by our not depending on ourselves, not leaning on our own understanding, but being dependent upon Him alone.
All right; now we are going to combine what we learned about God’s revelation of Himself in worship, our responses to that revelation, and the reality of what that celebration of worship is to look like today. Again I am grateful to Dr. Bruce H. Leafblad, Professor of Church Music and Worship at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, for his insights into this model.
Revelation and Adoration. Only God can direct and control His revelation of Himself. We can’t coerce God into revealing Himself, nor can we command it. All we can do is provide the environment for God to feel welcome, to feel invited to reveal Himself. How does God primarily reveal Himself? Through His Word. Throughout all of history, God has revealed Himself primarily through His Word; through His spoken Word, through His written Word, and through the Living Word, Jesus Christ. All expressions of God’s revelation should be centered on His Word. It is through His written Word that we have recorded for us His spoken Word, as well as the life of the Living Word.
What does this look like in the worship environment? We should be reaffirming God’s revelation by repeating His Word. We should read Scripture, sing songs that reaffirm the truths revealed in His Word, share affirmations of His person and His ways. He is the focus of worship, remember. It is about who He is, not what we get from it. Our focus must be on bringing ourselves and our environment into alignment with the nature and character of God and the environment that He is most comfortable with. That is the picture that is given us in our passage in Isaiah 6.
By celebrating what God has already revealed of Himself, we bring ourselves into the place where we who have “seen the Lord” humble ourselves in adoration and praise. God inhabits the praises of His people. When we give Him the praise and adoration that is His due, we open ourselves and our environment in invitation for Him to come.
Our desire should be for God to make Himself known to us at that time and in that place. That is why we should be singing the songs that we are singing. That is why we should be offering up praises that at least echo the praises that David and the other psalmists recorded for us – after all, if David was “a man after God’s own heart”, wouldn’t the words of praise he left behind be the words that bless God? They are, in the end, the Word of God.
The words we should be using at this time are words such as praise, thanks, love, exalt, rejoice, bless, adore, hunger, thirst, awe, wonder, glorify, fear, desire, long for, magnify, and words of this nature. These are the words that express worship of the nature and character of God and our need of Him.
Hymns, psalms, praise songs, prayers, choruses and things that visually draw us into the place where we are reminded of the magnificence of God all have a part here. The atmosphere we create for worship is important in our being able to aptly worship God. Driving down the road, we can experience worship from the overflow of our own worship experience with God. Corporate worship is, in many ways, another thing all together.
Confession and Expiation. When God reveals Himself, when we encounter God in this environment, we should immediately be overcome as Isaiah was with the disparity between Him and us. His holiness should automatically expose our sinfulness and show us our need of forgiveness and cleansing. This portion of our worship should resound with words and phrases that express humility, grief, shame, repentance, sorrow, and honest confession – keeping in mind that confession, from the biblical perspective, is being in complete agreement with God on the exact nature and character of our wrongs.
Through our humble and honest confession, we open ourselves to the revealing of God’s character through His covering over of our sin through the Blood of Jesus Christ – expiation. This is where the depth of our souls is laid bare before God and he is invited to make us pure and blameless in his own sight. Only when this occurs can we truly enter into a place of worship that is in spirit and in truth.
There are types and kinds of songs and music that aid this, as well as certain passages of Scripture, certain types and kinds of prayer (either aloud or silent and private), and certain affirmations of the forgiveness bought through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that are conducive to aiding in this portion of worship. Our need of and His supply of this forgiveness are key to worship being what it is intended to be.
Proclamation and Dedication. This is where the nature and character of God through His revelation of Himself can be manifested in any of the five dimensions that we looked at last time. Those five dimensions are His presence, His person, his power, His purposes, and His plans. This is where the reading and exposition of Scripture become an essential ingredient of worship. Remember; it is through His Word that God primarily reveals Himself to us. This is where the Word of God is brought to us in a manner that we can gain a better understanding of the nature and character of god, what our response is to be to that revelation, and how His Word applies directly and specifically to our own life.
Following the proclamation of the Word come acts of dedication. This is where prayers and other acts of submission to the truth revealed come into play. Words such as submission, surrender, commit, follow, yield, and obey. This is where we actually do something to demonstrate our willingness to obey. Many fellowships use this time for taking an offering. If properly taught, this can be effective, but too often people have preconceived ideas that they bring with them that cause immediate distaste and rebellion for this act of submission. This being so, the next portion of our model can serve as one act of dedication, yet it is a statement of worship all in its own right.
Communion. The Lord’s Supper, as it is also known, is the celebration of the bread and the wine that represent His body and blood broken and shed for the remission of our sins. This was commanded by Jesus to His disciples and to all those who would follow Him. Some fellowships celebrate it every week, others every other week, while still others do it monthly or even quarterly. The more I examine the Scriptures, especially conjunctively, the more I am convinced that it does us good to celebrate Communion each week, as long as it is done with the proper preparation and seriousness. This is not a mandate that I find in the Scriptures, but I do feel it is commended to us to do so “often”. The early church met more than once a week and celebrated Communion at most of those meetings because it symbolized the great and unique bond they had as believers in and followers of Jesus Christ, no matter what walk of life they were from.
The richness of Communion needs to be emphasized and maintained. It is this one sacrament that distinguishes Christianity from all other religious forms, and it is universal in every Christian denomination, no matter how often or little it is scheduled.
Supplication and Commission. As we who have congregated in that “holy place” prepare to go out into the world and bear out the worship we have offered to the Lord, the forgiveness we have received, the revelation of Himself that He has given, the truth that He has laid before us, and the celebration of His death and resurrection that we have shared, we come to the portion of the worship time when we give over the burdens and needs of our hearts and lives and those of them who we know and love, and when we also receive our commissioning to go out into the world and “make disciples in your going.”
Here is where the face-to-face encounter with God takes on its reality in our lives. His is where we cast all our cares on Him and accept in their place His blessings and His charge. Having encountered God, we have been changed. Maybe we cannot readily see or identify that change, but it is there nonetheless. At the very least, the seeds of that change are in place. This is the opportunity we have to make a final submission of all we are and have to Almighty God and to walk away with our faith strengthened for the tasks ahead.
We must always keep in mind that god left each of us here after we received salvation because “we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us… (2 Corinthians 5:20a).”
There is work for us to do. This is where we get to apply ourselves to what Paul instructs us in Romans 12:1; presenting ourselves as “living and holy sacrifices, acceptable to God, which is (y)our spiritual [rational] service of worship.”
This, after all, is what worship in spirit and in truth is all about.
My hope is that we will all use this study to reexamine our own reasons for worship, as well as our approach to worship. Hopefully we have all come to understand that, though we can get bored with much of what we call “worship”, it is a matter for our hearts to consider first before we become critical of how things are done in a worship time. We in leadership within the Body do have a duty and obligation to make worship the focal point of our service to Christ, not an addendum as is so easy to do. I have had to ask the Lord to forgive me for falling into the trap myself.
This study is the fruit of that process of forgiveness and restoration that He is taking me through. I pray that it will minister to you and instruct you as well.
Let’s pray.
