became more than a liturgy or order of service, and song became more than “preliminaries.” These young women were reaching out to express love and devotion to God and inviting us to join them. That act had to be at the core of the spiritual life. What my heart learned that evening became something my mind then pursued. I became convinced that worship is the central priority of God’s people. It is at the heart of what He is calling us to do today. And it is the foundation of everything else that He wants to build into our lives.
For many conservative and evangelical Christians the center of life is evangelism or mission. But John Piper makes it clear that there is something more basic:
Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exist because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever.
Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal in missions.8
The Bible and Worship
For Christians, however, worship is central not because Jon Dybdahl experienced it or John Piper writes about it, but because the Bible makes it so. Worship is the predominant activity of believers and the natural response when the awesome, loving God of the universe manifests Himself. While biblical instances of worship are sometimes difficult to define, Scripture has at least 400 examples.
But even more than sheer numbers, the call to worship is the most basic command in Scripture. When an expert in religious law asks Jesus, “What is the greatest commandment in the Law?” He gives a clear answer.9 First and foremost, He declares, “You are to love God with all your heart, soul and mind. Then second, you are to love your neighbor as yourself.” According to Jesus, the whole Old Testament hangs on these two commands, because the law and the prophets are the two major sections of that sacred collection.
What does it mean to love God? I have heard it said that you show your love to God by loving other people. That can’t be the whole answer, because it turns the first commandment into the second one! While loving God should lead to loving one’s neighbor, it has to be more than that.
Scripture makes it clear that you love God by worshiping Him. The two great acts of God in the Old Testament that tower above the biblical landscape are His creation of the world and His deliverance of Israel from Egyptian slavery. Both show God’s love and concern for the world and form the reason for all worship. Creation and redemption call forth worship as a loving response to these actions. Since God has created and redeemed us, we ought not only to worship Him, but also to love our neighbors, who also are objects of His love. No wonder Jesus declares that all the Old Testament hangs on these two “commandments.” The starting point, however, always is the worship response to God’s actions—both large and small—in our lives. We must love/worship Him with all of our hearts and souls.
The centrality of worship also becomes clear as we look at the Ten Commandments personally engraved by God on tablets of stone. Those 10 “words” or commands formed the heart of God’s covenant agreement with Israel, and the punishment for breaking them was death. Christianity has a long tradition of connecting the Ten Commandments with the two commandments to love in Matthew 22:10. Commandments 1–4 define love to God, and Commandments 6–10, which admonish us to refrain from stealing, murder, adultery, etc., describe the reality of love to our neighbor.
A close look at those first four commandments reveals that they all deal with worship. They safeguard worship of Israel’s God. Not only that, but the preface in Exodus 20:2 gives the basis or reason for true worship—Yahweh God is the one who has delivered Israel from Egyptian slavery. All calls to true worship stem from the convicting power of that truth about God’s redemption.
The first commandment states: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). In a world that believed in a multitude of gods and in which polytheism was rampant, God summoned Israel to “have” or worship only the Redeemer God Yahweh. The commandment does not specifically or implicitly deny the existence of other deities, but simply says that we should not worship them. They are not worthy of the adoration reserved only for the delivering God of the Exodus.
The second commandment forbids the making of idols (verses 4–6). Since worship of the idols of other gods would already be covered by the first commandment, the real essence of the second commandment would be the forbidding of the use of images of the true God in worship. Israel was to avoid the worship methods of the surrounding peoples—who made wide use of idols. Idols lessen God by capturing or localizing Him. He is too big and too universal to be limited to a humanly made representation. Those who worship Him can do so any place at any time without dependence on a material representation.
The third commandment forbids taking God’s name “in vain” (verse 7, KJV) or misusing it (verse 7). Traditionally many Christians have interpreted the passage as speaking against what we call “swearing” or profanity. Many understand it to mean the use of God’s name to curse someone else, or the voicing of inappropriate expletives when we are angry or hurt. No Israelite who valued his life would have even thought of doing such a thing. In later times God’s people came to consider His name as so holy that they could never utter it, even in worship. What the passage refers to is using God’s name to support one’s own words or promises by an oath, such as “I swear by the name of the Most High that I did not steal your lamb.” We bring disrespect to God and fail to worship Him when we use Him to back up our words that may or may not be true. Such a concept lies behind Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:34–37: “Do not swear at all … Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’” Using God to support our human schemes is failing to give proper worship to Him.
The fourth commandment, Exodus 20:8–11 (see also Deuteronomy 5:12–15), speaks of keeping the Sabbath holy in order to remember God as Creator and Savior from Egyptian slavery. It sets aside time to remember Him. Love requires opportunities for remembrance and thus is part of worship. The fourth commandment safeguards that time of love and worship.
Worship is not only the predominant activity of believers in the Bible and the core of our response to God—it is even a preoccupation in heaven. The book of Revelation graphically pictures a divine realm in which praise has a central place. Four living creatures praise God (Revelation 5:11–12). The chorus of praise songs bursts forth from “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them” (verse 13). For the saved believer, praise flows joyfully with a loud voice in the courts of heaven (Revelation 7:9–10).
Why does the Bible identify worship as central to human existence? Why does it call for its careful safeguarding? Why do God’s creatures do it not only here but in heaven?
The answer is a simple one. It is that worship shows we understand God’s free grace. When we earn something, we do not worship the giver. After all, we deserve what we have received. When I get my salary, I do not worship the one signing my check, because I’ve worked for that money. The issuing of the check is the treasurer just doing his job. Rather, worship is so central because it vividly demonstrates a response to something undeserved. God’s rescue of Israel did not result from their merit. His deliverance of us from sin does not have its basis on our goodness. There is no way we deserved the grace that we received and no way that we can repay it. The only response we can make is worship as we acknowledge and clearly realize the tremendous love and grace that we have received. To fail to worship is to misunderstand or ignore grace, the core of Christian belief.
What Worship Is (and Is Not)
We may define worship first of all, as a response to God’s presence and/or action. Worship, then, sees Him as our primary audience, one whom we believe sees our reaching out to Him in praise. While this response can be personal and
