We sometimes refer to the Lord’s Day gathering of the saints as a “worship service” wherein we serve the Lord by giving Him our worship. But what is worship exactly? The term gets a bit slippery.
Some will say that everything in your life is worship, and they have a distaste for any formalism in the Lord’s Day service. While there certainly is truth to this view, the folks that holds it are often lax in actual works of righteousness and holy living. It turns out that the distaste for formalism in one area turns into irreverence in others. The principle that we are to present our bodies as living sacrifices, that all our life and work should be presented to God as a sacrifice of thanksgiving is solid, but this flows from robust weekly worship; it is not in competition with it.
Another view limits “worship” to the 2-3 songs the guy with the guitar plays up front and which you close your eyes and sway to before the sermon. This also has a grain of truth, namely that the songs we sing to God are a potent means by which we render Him the honor due His name, but it fails both in scope and execution. Meaning that it is both too narrow and also really bad at living up to its own narrowly defined claims.
Here is a simple thought experiment: Worship is that which is given to God and to God alone. What is idolatry? It is the rendering of worship to anything which is not God. So there is this thing, which we call worship, which is for God alone. The comparison to a marriage is apt. A wife is always married to her husband, and her whole life is an act of love and devotion to him, but there are also particular expressions of this devotion which cannot be overlooked and which must not be given to anyone else.
So what is God owed? Of course, He rightly claims your whole self, but also He is owed your particular praise and adoration. When we gather here, we do so in response to His lovingkindness in calling us, in order to give to Him that which is owed to no other. And when we go out from here, we go with His blessing on our heads and hands, ready to render to Him our whole selves as we carry out the work of our vocation.
And finally, practically, God is owed our fear. What we fear is as good an indicator as any of what we worship. But fear is something we owe to God alone. It is worship. Too often we talk about what this doesn’t mean (“don’t be scared of God”) and fail to consider what it does mean: that when we continually fear something other than God, we are guilty of idolatry and should repent. And this is good news, supremely good news in that it frees us from bondage to cowardice and depression, but it also reminds us of our need to confess our sins.
Joshua Edgren – March 17, 2024
