What Worship Is

To worship is to ascribe worth.

The English word comes from the old "worth-ship." When you worship, you are saying, "You are worthy. You are glorious. You are worthy of my attention, my allegiance, my love, my life."

But worth to whom? The Bible is clear. Worship belongs exclusively to the God of the Bible. "You shall have no other gods before me," the Lord commanded at Sinai. That was not the jealous whim of a provincial deity. It was the declaration of absolute reality. There is only one God who is worthy of worship. To worship anyone or anything else is to bow before an idol.

Biblical worship is a whole-person response to the revelation of God.

It involves the mind. Understanding who God is and what He has done. It involves the heart. Being moved to love, gratitude, repentance, and joy by that understanding. It involves the body. Kneeling, singing, raising hands, eating and drinking in the sacrament. It involves the will. Committing yourself to obedience and allegiance.

When you worship, you are not checking a box. You are placing your entire self under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Jesus taught this to the woman at the well. She tried to make worship about geography ("Should we worship on this mountain or in Jerusalem?"). He corrected her. "The true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth." Spirit. From the depths of your being, in authenticity. Truth. In accordance with God's actual revelation of Himself.

This is where the regulative principle comes in. Mayflower's worship follows this principle, drawn from the 1689 confession. The principle is simple. God alone determines how He is to be worshipped. We do not invent forms of worship based on what appeals to us. We receive them from Scripture. We submit to the way God has prescribed because His way is always better than our way. The worship He commands is the worship He blesses.

Paul takes worship further in Romans 12. "Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship."

This is the scandal of Christianity. Worship is not escape into the mystical. It is the surrender of the concrete, material, everyday self to God. Your body is not your own. Your time is not your own. Your money, your words, your relationships, your work, are not your own. All are presented to God as an act of worship.

You were created for worship.

Your deepest need, beneath hunger and thirst and the longing for love, is to know God and dwell in His presence. Everything else that promises to satisfy your soul will eventually disappoint. Only in the worship of the true God, as He has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, will your heart find rest.

This is the foundation of everything that follows.