Worship: where and how?

The New Testament reminds readers that God gave commandments for worship and a location where worship should take place:

“Now even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness.” (Hebrews 9:1)

In the Old Testament, the place of worship was Zion, the mountain of God:

“Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at his holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy!” (Psalm 99:9)

From this and perhaps from the human tendency to want rules and ritual, we have buildings and call them our place of worship. The problem is that it the ease of sliding into a Sunday-only routine in which worship happens on the first day of the week and in the local church. For many, this place and time are precious, yet even the OT defined worship in ways that go beyond a place and a day.

“Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; bring an offering and come before him! Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.” (1 Chronicles 16:29)

Worship is about giving God the glory due Him. Certainly He demonstrates His goodness and power every day of the week and in all places. It seems that worship should be the same.

Worship is also about bringing an offering. In the OT God defined a sacrificial system yet it pointed to the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ. When we worship, our offering is not a lamb or grain or anything we can produce; it is the offering God made to us. His Son shed His blood for our redemption. When I worship God, the salvation of Jesus Christ for my sin is a large part of why I bow before Him.

“Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.” (Psalm 29:2)

Having tried to list all the wonders of God and the glory due His name, I run out of paper and ink. The world and all that is in it; the way things work; the amazing creation including the heavenly bodies and human bodies; beauty and color; the weather; and most of all the wonder of His visit to this planet to bring redemption to sinners. The glory due His name has no end and for these I worship.

“Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth!” (Psalm 96:9)

Worship is also about attitude, about my standing before Him. He is holy but because of Jesus and the power of the Word of God, I am also set apart for Him, made holy by His blood. It is not about ritual but a way of being and in that way of being I can worship Him. And because I know what I am without Jesus, I worship with awe and trembling. I know that I cannot deserve this privilege, this awesome opportunity and experience of worshiping Almighty God.

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Lord Jesus, what more can I say? You are entirely worthy of every good thought, every praise, every thankful expression I can muster. Fill me today with worship — and I know it is Tuesday and I know I am in a condo basement and not at Your holy mountain, but I also know that I can worship You all the time and wherever I am.

Worship from a new heart

This week, the flooded areas in southern Alberta are experiencing some ebbing of the rivers. However, the task ahead is unimaginable. Four-story underground garages are filled with water and floating cars. Many homes and businesses not only have water-filled basements but the first floor is submerged. Water is destructive by itself, but added mud, debris, fuel, rotted food, and dead things makes this task astronomical.

As my mind tries to wrap itself around just one home (my sister’s split-level), I feel overwhelmed and have difficulty keeping my attention on the needs at hand. Praying about them is even a challenge. Part of me just wants to ignore the whole thing, think of better things, or do my own thing. Today’s devotional challenges that attitude.

G. Campbell Morgan says that worship is finding my own life and yielding it completely to God. My first question is what does he mean that I find my own life? Jesus said I must first lose it and for the most part, my focus has been negative, the goal of getting rid of my sinful self. The trouble is, sin in me is a bottomless pit and sometimes looks like the gigantic mess on the television news. 

Where does one even begin to deal with all that displeases God? How can the unholy be made holy? The devotional says to read all of Jesus’ statement about losing my life…

Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 10:39)

Morgan says sacrifice and self-denial are necessary, but these are preliminary. I’m to take up my cross and die to the ambitions of selfish desire, but go beyond that. Jesus does not want my old life laid on the altar in dedication to Him; He wants the new life.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Romans 12:1)

The old life is dead, separated from God and useless. It died with Christ on the cross. The new life is that “living sacrifice” in this verse. It is created by God, holy and acceptable. When I come to worship, He says, “Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth!” (Psalm 96:9) Put away the old and unholy, but find that new life and give it to Him.

Morgan also talks about an “inner song” in worship. This is the joy of the Lord who lives in the heart of all who truly believe. It springs up when the old self gets out of the way. It can be blocked by complaining, gossip and greed, but it can also be blocked by my self-efforts to be a good person.

In worship, the inner song must be there, finding full expression in a life yielded to Jesus. Outward actions and mouthing the words are not important. If I have not been worshiping God all week, I struggle to worship Him on Sunday morning. The inner song prepares and enables me to sing His praise, and that inner song is part of the new life, never the old.

It is also spontaneous, flowing out of a life that has been made new, not merely cleaned up. Using the flood mess again as an analogy, some of those homes will need a bulldozer, not drain hoses and disinfectant. They will never feel clean and right again, and are better razed and rebuilt.

That is what Jesus does with our sinful selves. Instead of fixing them up, He makes all things new, and out of that newness flows worship in the splendor of holiness. Almost without being aware of it, my life becomes a song, a praise, full of worship. This is what happens for those truly find themselves and become what God intends we should be.

Worship and rabbit trails

My Uncle Edward was a storyteller who at the same time built patience in those who listened. His stories were worth hearing to the end, but he had a habit of going down rabbit trails. That is, parts of his story would remind him of events or people somewhat related to the story, but he had to put them in. A yarn that could be told in five minutes might require an hour.

This morning’s devotional verse seemed at first to take me down a rabbit trail. It is the same verse as yesterday and the reading is about worship. My Bible has “cross references” which means there are numbers on words and phrases with corresponding links to other verses with the same or similar words and ideas. God seemed to prod the reading of them, and one thing led to another. This is the path that I followed…

Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth! (Psalm 96:9)

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness. (Psalm 29:2)

Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob. (Psalm 114:7)

All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. (Isaiah 66:2)

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. (Psalm 34:18)

After reading these together, I’m wondering about the connections in my head. How did I get from the first verse to the last? What does God want me to understand from these verses?

The reading asks, “What is worship?” Its answer is “prostration, bowing down” with the attitude that recognizes His throne and superiority, and that takes the low place of reverence in the presence of God. It is also speaking from that attitude in words that ascribe to God what is due Him. He is splendid in holiness (and so I am to be as I worship). That is the bridge from the first verse to the second.

Both were in mind when I read verse three. Worship is about trembling in the presence of God, and the Bible calls the whole earth to this act of reverence. Why tremble? There is something about the majesty of God that is so awesome, so beyond all else, that my trembling can be related to sheer amazement and delight.

But there is another reason to tremble in worship. As I realize my sinfulness and total lack of anything in me that I should even be able to worship this Holy God, I know that it is by mercy that I am in this place. I stand before God because of Jesus Christ, with no other reason or claim. He died that I can be brought into a saving relationship with my Creator, and for this I tremble.

Again, the whole earth is called to tremble at the presence of God. All these things His hand has made, yet all can see that not all people in the earth are in that saving relationship with their Creator. This relationship is enjoyed by those to whom God has revealed Himself. He has shown us our sinfulness and we have responded with “Yes, God” to truth about ourselves and our need of grace. The rest of the world shakes its fist at God. Only the contrite who are brokenhearted over sin and crushed in spirit will feel the eyes of the Lord upon them and sense His presence near them.

This runs full circle back to the first verse. Holiness is about being set apart for God. This happens when God opens our eyes to His great love for us and when we respond to that love by giving ourselves back to Him in humility and with a contrite spirit. The reading describes how I feel as the Spirit mixes these thoughts into my mind.

I worship in the presence of God as I recognize that in him I find everything that my life demands, that in myself I am incomplete. A sense of my need and his resource, a sense that my life finds its heights and its best and fulfills itself in relation to him produces the act and the attitude of worship. The attitude of worship is the attitude of a subject bent before a monarch; the attitude of a child yielding all its love to a parent; the attitude of the sheep that follows the shepherd and is content in all the pasturage that the shepherd appoints. It is the attitude of saying yes to everything that God says.

If anything is lovely, think on these things…

Beetle dances on head of a pin.

Today’s devotional reading ending with a brief anecdote about looking at roses under a microscope and finding perfection. He wrote, “The beauty of God is revealed in the tiniest cell of the flower. God is very beautiful, and everything that is of God is essentially beautiful.”

This sent me on an Internet search. I typed “microscopic beauty” and clicked “images” and was taken into fascinating places. Some of the links are at the end of this post.*

The verse for today is about worship, but also about coming to the Lord in an awareness of what He has done in creating us, His creatures.

Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth! (Psalm 96:9)

By doing a little research, I found that the word translated “splendor” is associated with what adorns me as a child and creation of God, but also the glory of nature as together we reflect the goodness of God. That is, the emphasis is not on the worshipper except that in worship, God brings to our hearts the realization of His holiness and beauty of God, and that brings out a response that is comparable to what He reveals. One writer said this verse could be translated as “Prostrate yourselves before the Lord when he appears in holiness” but it could also say, “When you see the glory of God, you cannot help but worship Him as a reflection of His glory.”

The Bible says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). As I looked at those microscopic images, I thought that the earth certainly declares the beauty of God. It is reflected in His handiwork. This is not confined to butterfly wings and tiny plants, but includes humanity.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. (Psalm 139:14–16)

Recognizing that God creates beauty in the tiniest details, including the retina of my eye and the tissue in my lungs puts an awe for Him in my heart. This ‘seeing’ is not about me, but about my beautiful God. Today’s devotional reading says it well:

The psalmist is appealing to people to praise God, calling them to recognize his greatness, his glory, calling them to think of his power and majesty, urging them to answer the things their eyes see and their hearts feel by offering praise to him. In this call so poetic and full of beauty is revealed the meaning of worship, its condition and glory. “O worship the LORD.” The supreme thing is worship. But how is worship to be rendered? “In the beauty of holiness.” Wherever you find beauty, it is the outcome of holiness. Wherever you find beauty as the outcome of holiness, that beauty itself is incense, is worship. To live the life of holiness is to live the life of beauty, and that is to worship.

God is a God of glory. God is a God of love. But he is also the God of beauty. His glory and beauty are seen in the blossoms, in the starry heavens, in tiny organisms as well as majestic mountains and the sunlit sky beyond them. The beauty of flowers in form and color and perfume is from a beautiful Creator, but so also is everything that is lovely, even in human beings.

When I look in the mirror, it is so easy to focus on the blemishes, the hair out of place, the unwanted shapes, but God tells me to look deeper. None of what I see in the mirror is about the glory that is to come, and none of it is a reflection of all that He intends for me.

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16–18)

Putting all of this together, the Lord gives me a glimpse of His creative power, of the beauty that comes from a mind and heart that simply must overflow with lovely things. And for this, I worship Him.

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* http://www.cbsnews.com/2300-205_162-10014287.html

http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/micropolitan/

http://seedmagazine.com/portfolio/22_library-of-lungs.html