A Troublesome Word

Greetings! It's been a couple of years. Here's a new post; the restart of more frequent writing.

What to do with Worship?

Referring to the importance of choosing right words, American humorist Mark Twain famously wrote, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

There is a word used in today’s Bible-believing, Christ-exalting, Spirit-empowered congregations, a small word, the use of which causes a great deal of misunderstanding, confusion, and even trouble. Everyone knows what this word means yet no one knows what it means. It’s not a cuss word; It’s not used much on the evening news; It’s not a theological word – although all words used in the church have a theological implication; It’s a word used 114 times in the Scriptures: Old and New Testaments combined.

The word? Worship.

This word worship is a problematic English word. It was chosen by William Tyndale in the 1520’s to translate both the Hebrew and Greek words for “bowing down in obeisance.” When in your modern English Bible you read “he bowed and worshiped,” know that the original language text reads word for word, “he bowed and bowed.” That the first “bow” is the literal physical gesture is obvious. But the second “bow” has to mean something else; and to my thinking the something else is the motivation behind the bowing, namely obeisance, homage, surrender. You’ll find this phrase in these passages: Genesis 24:26, 48; Exodus 4:31, 12:27; Judges 7:15; Nehemiah 8:6; Psalm 95:6; Matthew 2:11.

True worship that is biblical and uncompromising and acceptable to God is not a noun - a thing - but the willing, joyful, humble bowing of the worshiper’s will before God.

The modern hubbub about traditional versus contemporary, guitar versus organ is irrelevant to this discussion. Worship, the verb, is the act of surrendering to God. Style, volume, or tempo has nothing to do with it.

The Rev. Dr. Stuart Briscoe said recently, “Worship Wars is not about worship. Worship Wars is about music. A lot of people think that worship is music. Music is a wonderful gift of God. It is an aid - an aid to worship. Do you know what worship is? Worship is an appropriate response to divine self-revelation.

Did you know God is in the business of revealing Himself? God reveals Himself in creation, and in covenant, and in Christ, and in the community of faith. So there is no lack of opportunities to see Him in self-revelation.

Worship is assimilating all this self-revelation and responding appropriately. And it isn’t something we do at the bewitching hour on a Sunday morning. It is something we do every single hour of every single day.

Worship is spending your waking hours discovering God’s self-revelation in creation, covenant, Christ, and the community of faith and responding appropriately 24/7.”

With the dawning of a new year, let’s commit ourselves to be God’s people who pursue God in response to His self-revelation.