What is a Worshiping Church?

A sermon preached at Queen Street Baptist Church.

Introduction

Queen Street Baptist Church has identified itself as a worshiping community. It is hardly controversial that a church would want to be active in worship, and yet worship is one of the hottest topics among congregations. There has been and continues to be something called the worship wars. Countless churches have split over styles of worship and other related issues.

This should not really surprise us. What was the background to the first violence we see in the Bible, Cain’s murder of his brother Abel? It all emerged out of conflict about the nature of worship in terms of the sacrifices that each brother offered to God. How we worship God is something that touches our emotions.

My intention here is not to talk about styles of worship. I believe it is more important to look at the nature of worship. Do we even know what worship is?

Before becoming a Baptist, I came from another tradition. In that church, worship was defined as the music time that would take place before the offering, prayer, Bible reading and sermon. Worship was limited to that musical expression of love toward God. When I applied for pastoral position at a Baptist church, I saw that the responsibilities including helping to lead in worship. I completely panicked. I cannot play any musical instruments and my singing is worse than my playing. What was I going to do? Should I even apply?

I discovered, to my relief, that they considered things like prayer, responsive readings and reading Scripture as being a part of worship leading. They saw every part of the service as being included under the umbrella of worship to God. This would be the position that I would hold today.

Worship is defined as:

the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity.

That sounds very technical, but what does worship really look like? We are going to look at five aspects of worship that we need to understand if we are going to take our identity as a worshiping community seriously.

Worship is Sacrifice

It may surprise you to discover the context in which the word “worship” first appears in the Bible. The first time you will find that word is when Abraham is going up the hill to sacrifice his son Isaac. Can you believe that? What does that do to our understanding of worship?

When I hear people talk about worship, it is often in terms of their preferences and what they enjoy. People tend to see worship as being about what we get out of the experience. And yet we have worship being introduced to us in the context of sacrifice, not just any sacrifice but that of which is most precious. Yes, we must acknowledge that God stopped Abraham before Isaac was harmed, but Abraham did not know that. He was intending to worship God by giving that which is most valuable.

Even as we look at the rest of the Old Testament, we see that worship is about sacrifice. It was not easy for people to offer animal and grain sacrifices. This was not a society with a lot of disposable income. It was something that cost people, they felt the impact of their worship on their life.

What does sacrifice look like for us today? One thing is to consider our financial giving as a means of worship. Yes our tithes and offering are used to fund the ministries of the church. But it is more of that. It is a way for us to take from our comfort and to sacrifice as an act of devotion to God. However, there are other ways that we sacrifice. What about when there is something that makes us uncomfortable but is being used to bring people into the presence of God? I know of people who are okay with preaching but are really at church for the musical aspect of worship. For myself, I like the music, but it is in the preaching where I’m making my connection. The truth is that we can never please everyone. In any given Sunday there will be people who think the music/prayers/preaching is too long and too short. This is a problem only if we see worship as being just about what we get. If we see worship as primarily of what we can give to God, it turns the entire worship question on its head.

If we see worship as primarily of what we can give to God, it turns the entire worship question on its head. Share on X

Worship is Ethical

I think that the way worship is introduced with the sacrifice of Isaac is frightening. I would say a passage that is equally frightening is what we find in Isaiah 1. The book of Isaiah begins with a prophecy of how God is disgusted and sickened by Israel’s worship. Some very strong language is used to describe how God detests the things that they are doing. But if you look closely, all the things that God says he hates are the very ceremonies and rituals he commanded them to perform. How could God condemn what he commanded?

The problem that God had with their worship is not the nature of their rituals but rather their confidence in those rituals in the absence of ethical living. People would sacrifice animals and observe holy days but would at best not take of the poor and at worse participate in taking advantage of the poor. They thought they could have worship divorced from how they treated people. This made God sick.

What does this mean for us? The Christian Church has a rich tradition of ritual and ceremony. There is nothing wrong with this. But how do we treat other people? Do we treat people with love and respect? Do we see people, no matter how different they may be from us, as having the image of God? Are we active in taking advantage of others to achieve our own goals or do we just not care about those who are less fortunate? If Isaiah could speak to us about God’s view of our worship, what would he say?

Worship is Edifying

Worship is affected by how we treat other people, but there is another way that worship is connected to the people around us. Paul makes this comment about worship:

Speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music from your heart to the Lord. (Ephesians 5:19)

This may sound very strange to our ears because hymns and songs should be aimed at God and not people. And yet Paul sees something in worship that builds up other people. In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul talks about speaking in tongues and prophecy. There is nothing wrong with speaking in tongues, but if there is no interpretation, it does nothing to build up other Christians. Prophecy, on the other hand, is understandable to all people and so is appropriate for public worship.

I will tell you that the moments that I most feel the presence of God is when Amanda sits at the keyboard and sings worship songs. She is not doing it for me, but I am blessed by it as I listen to her worship. The worship we participate in should be aimed at God, but is also shared with the people around us and should build them up in the faith.

Worship is Corporate and Individual

Do we really need to come to a church service to worship? Can’t we just sit by ourselves and read a Psalm or listen to a worship CD? Yes we can do those things, but there is something special about gathering in worship as well. The Church is described a body with many parts, each needing the other. When we gather to worship, we are acting as the Church was designed to be. Solitude can be a good spiritual discipline, but it is meant to augment our corporate worship, not to be a substitute for it.

Having stressed the corporate nature of worship, there is an individual aspect of worship as well. However, this is not about separating ourselves from other worshipers. Rather, we can acknowledge that God has created as individuals with different personalities and attributes. We do not have to worship in the same way as another person, no matter how spiritual they may seem. There are some people who can spend hours and hours in prayer. But that is not me. Others can play an instrument and sing songs with beautiful voices. That is not me either. But I have my ways of worshiping God and I don’t impose those on others. The key is to not try and copy other people’s spiritual life but rather to discover the way God created us and to connect with God in that way.

Worship is Based in Truth

One of the most important things that I want to stress to you is that Christian worship is not just some vague spirituality. So many people claim to be spiritual but not religious. The fastest growing religious category right now are the “nones.” These are not atheists, but people who have a wide variety of spiritual beliefs but are not prepared to identify with a specific religious tradition. This gives us plenty of opportunities for us to have good conversations, but it is not Christian worship.

Christian worship is based on truth. As we saw in the message about being a growing church, there is content to what we say about God and about Jesus. If we worship a God that we have created for ourselves, one that we are comfortable with and who makes no claim on our life, it is not Christian worship. The basic creed of the early church was that Jesus is Lord. Anything that is not based in that conviction is not based in truth. The things we do with discipleship and Bible study and other learning activities are not side activities to worship but rather tools by which we can worship the true God in a deeper way. Doctrine and theology matter. These things are not just for academics, they are for Christian worshipers. You do not need a PhD to worship the Christian God but you need to care about the truth. Jesus told the woman at the well that the time was coming when we would worship God in spirit and in truth. Spiritual worship is important, but worshiping in truth is equally important. In order to worship in truth, we need to understand and hunger for the truth.

Conclusion

We say that we are a worshiping church, specifically that we worship God in Jesus Christ. This means so much more than that you come into this building on a Sunday morning and hear a few a hymns being sung. If we are a worshiping church, then we must take worship seriously. Worship is not something that we are to compartmentalize into a small area of our life. Christian worship should encompass our entire life, both in how we address God and how we treat other people. Christian worship should have a sense of understanding of who God is and have a willingness to sacrifice that which is dear to us for his sake. There is only one being in all the universe who deserves worship and that is God. Let us worship our God.

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