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The
theme of worship has been receiving increasing attention of late. This
is a theme that God has been dealing with me about—and I believe God
has given me new understanding of worship.
I have always realized that
worship was one of the main themes of the Bible and something that is
of tremendous importance in our lives, but I never felt I had a real
clear grasp of the nature of worship. I believe true worship is very
different from what many contemporary churchgoers have become
accustomed to. In many churches people talk about the “morning worship
service.” Without being critical, it has been my experience that in
many of those churches not much true worship is taking place. So I want
to examine the steps to true worship as well as the nature of worship.
And then I want to suggest to you the fruit of true worship, which I
believe is rest.
I
think you will agree there is one scarce commodity in the United States
these days—it is rest. How many people really know what it is to rest?
So, let’s take a look at Psalm 95, and then I’m going to offer you some comments on it.
Come,
let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our
salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with
music and song. For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all
gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks
belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the
dry land. Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the
Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden
your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the
desert, where your fathers tested and tried me, though they had seen
what I did. For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said,
“They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my
ways.” So I declared on oath in my anger, “They shall never enter into
my rest.” (niv)
It is unusual to have a psalm that ends with such a negative statement as that, but I believe it has a special emphasis.
Three
things are closely associated: thanksgiving, praise and worship; yet
they are distinct. I would liken them somewhat to the colors of the
rainbow that are distinct but blend into one another. Very simply, I
would say that we thank God for what He does, particularly for what He
does for us. We praise God for His greatness. But worship relates us to
God in His holiness.
Of
all the attributes of God—and they are many—the hardest for the human
mind to understand is holiness because it has no parallel on earth. We
can talk about the wisdom of God, and we know wise people. We can talk
about the greatness of God, and we know great people. We can talk about
the power of God, and we see demonstrations of power. But apart from
God there is no demonstration of holiness; it is something that is
unique to God and those who have received it from God. I believe
worship relates us specifically to God’s holiness.
Because
it is hard to understand God’s holiness, it is hard to enter into
worship. But I believe there are steps we can follow. In Psalm 100, it
says we should “Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with
praise.” Those are two steps of approach to God. You come into the
gates with thanksgiving, and then you move farther into the courts with
praise. But neither of those is worship. Thanksgiving and praise are
essentially utterances of our mouths.
Every
word in the Bible, Old Testament and New, that means “worship” or is
translated “worship” is always descriptive of an attitude. I think this
is what God has been speaking to me about, that worship is primarily an
attitude. There are also certain specific postures associated with
worship all through the Scripture—bowing the head, bowing down the
upper part of the body and, in particular, extending the arms with
hands reaching upwards.
There
is also one other posture spoken of many times in Scripture: falling on
our faces before the Lord. I question whether any man who has never
been on his face before God has ever been very close to God. You would
be hard pressed to find any of the really key men of the Bible who had
not been on their faces before God. For myself, I practice it not as a
matter of legalism or ritual, but from time to time when I feel I need
security. The most secure place I know is on my face before God. John
Bunyan said, “He that is down need fear no fall.” When you are on the
floor, there is no lower you can go. Jesus said that everyone who
humbles himself shall be exalted; likewise, everyone who exalts himself
shall be humbled (see Matt. 23:12).
Isaiah
had a vision of heaven and the glorious creatures of heaven and the
throne of the Lord in Isaiah 6. He saw worship conducted in heaven. The
particular creatures that he focused on were called the seraphim. The
Hebrew word seraph is directly related to the word for fire. The
seraphim are the fiery creatures that are very close to the throne of
God. It says there that each one of them had six wings in three pairs.
They were crying day and night, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord.” What
has always impressed me is what they did with their wings: with two
they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet and with two
they flew. I interpret covering the face and feet as worship, and
flying as service.
Notice
the order and the proportions. First of all, worship comes before
service. I have often wondered whether our service is ever truly
acceptable unless it is preceded by worship. And look at the
proportions. Out of six wings, four were used for worship and only two
for service. I believe that’s a correct proportion. Worship, I believe
we can safely presume, is twice as important as service.
The Pattern
Let’s
look in Psalm 95 at what I believe is a pattern for entering into
worship. The first two verses speak of exuberant praise and
thanksgiving.
Come,
let us sing for joy to the Lord, let us shout aloud to the Rock of our
salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with
music and song.
I
believe it is hard for God to accept half-hearted praise. Scripture
says, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised” (Ps. 48:1). In
fact, if you are not prepared to praise Him greatly, maybe you
shouldn’t do it at all. Psalm 95 definitely gives ample room for loud,
vocal, excited, exuberant praise: “Come, let us sing for joy to the
Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come
before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.” That’s
what I call the entrance into His gates with thanksgiving and into His
courts with praise. That is the way of access, and I don’t believe
there is any access without it. In Isaiah 60:18 the prophet says: “Thou
shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise” (kjv). In other
words, if you want to come into salvation you’ve got to come by the
gate and every gate is praise.
Verses 3–5 give us reasons why we should praise God:
For
the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hand
are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The
sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.
As
we look at the whole created universe, we witness the wisdom and the
greatness of the Creator. That should elicit a response of thanksgiving
and praise from us.
Having
approached by these steps of thanksgiving and praise, we still haven’t
arrived at worship. In verses 6–7, the mood of Psalm 95 changes, and we
get to what I believe is the heart of the matter.
Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
As
I see it, this purposeful worship isn’t the type of loud boisterousness
that has become the norm; it is quietness. Then in verse 7, we are
given two reasons why we should worship the Lord.
For he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.
The
first reason to worship God is because He is God, and He is our God. He
is the only being in the universe actually worthy of worship. We can
praise men and women, but we must never worship men and women. Worship
is the most distinctive way we have to relate to God as God.
I
have become convinced that whatever we worship gains control of us. The
more we worship it, the more like it we become—and the more it gains
power over us. If we don’t worship God, how much is He really our God?
The
second reason given that we should worship Him is that we are the
people of His pasture, the flock under His care. Worship is the
appropriate response to God’s care for us. It is the way we recognize
Him as our God; it is the way we respond to His care for us.
It is significant that the psalm doesn’t end there. It ends with a solemn warning:
Today,
if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah.
[Then God discusses that generation.] For forty years I was angry with
that generation; I said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and
they have not known my ways.” So I declared on oath in my anger, “They
shall never enter into my rest.”
This
sets before us two alternatives: choosing to enter into true worship or
choosing not to. In worship we hear God’s voice. Upon hearing God’s
voice and obeying it, we enter into rest. The inescapable condition of
this is the importance of hearing God’s voice. In Jeremiah 7:23, God
says to His people:
But this is what I commanded them, saying, “Obey My voice, and I will be your God.”
(nas)
That is one of the simplest statements I have ever read of what God requires. “Obey My voice and I will be your God.”
Deuteronomy
28 lists all the blessings of obedience and all the curses of
disobedience. The blessings begin, “If you diligently obey [hearken]
the voice of the Lord your God . . . all these blessings shall come
upon you” (nkj). The curses begin, “If you do not obey [hearken] the
voice of the Lord your God . . . all these curses will come upon you.”
The watershed is listening, or not listening, to the voice of the Lord.
I believe worship brings us to the place where we can hear God’s voice.
I don’t want to shock you, but it is not enough simply to read your Bible. Look at John 10:27.
“My sheep hear My voice, and [hearing My voice] . . . they follow Me.” (nkj)
Notice
Jesus didn’t say His sheep read the Bible, or go to church, or dress a
certain way. He said His sheep “hear His voice.” You cannot follow
Jesus if you don’t hear His voice. It’s a good thing to read the Bible,
but it is entirely possible to read the Bible without hearing the voice
of the Lord. I believe worship is the appointed way to come into that
attitude and relationship where we really hear God’s voice.
In
hearing God’s voice, we enter into His rest. I believe worship is the
way to rest. Only those who really know how to worship can really enjoy
rest. As I said before, rest is very rare among contemporary Americans.
Look now at Hebrews 4:9.
There
remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who
enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from
his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that
no one will fall by following their example of disobedience. (niv)
Again
the Scripture brings out the fact that because of disobedience they
failed to enter into rest. The Scripture says, “There remains,
therefore a Sabbath-rest for the people of God.” I am not talking about
observing the Sabbath or making Sunday the Sabbath or any of that, but
there still is something there we can miss if we are not careful. I
believe God can do something in your heart that will cause you to
naturally keep His divine, eternal, unchanging laws. God is doing
something in my heart about Sabbath-rest. I have come to believe that I
am not pleasing God if I am busy every week, seven days a week.
Furthermore, I’m sure to be endangering my own health.
Consider
these questions as you meditate on this study: Are you making the best
of your time? Do you really know what it is to rest? Are you capable of
disciplining yourself to stop doing things and even doing them
mentally? Can you ever lie down and stop thinking about what you ought
to be doing?
So,
when are we going to rest? Well, I have experienced something new in
learning to worship and learning to rest, and I find they are very
close together. I believe in thanking God and praising Him out
loud—even dancing, clapping, singing. But there comes a time when I’ll
put my wings over my face and my wings over my feet and I’ll hear what
God says.
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