Thumb through the first dozen pages of a hymnal and you’ll find some of the greatest music ever written: Holy, Holy, Holy; Holy is the Lord; Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee; A Mighty Fortress; Praise to the Lord, the Almighty; O Worship the King.
The titles alone tell something about their purpose, and the verses and majestic melodies concur: These are not just songs about God; these are hymns of worship. They say: God alone is “worthy of worship, worthy of praise, worthy of honor and glory.”
Worship is the practice of giving God the attention and respect only God deserves. It stands above all our other spiritual practices.
In worship, we are not petitioning God as we do in prayer, and we’re not thanking God as we do in praise, although prayer and praise can be part of worship. The over-arching purpose of worship is to acknowledge God’s infinite power, wisdom and holiness. Through worship we say, to quote another hymn, “how great Thou art.”
We worship in part because God has asked this of God’s people since the beginning of time. “And God said, ‘I will be with you. . . . you will worship God on this mountain’” (Exodus 3:12).
But even without prompting, we are compelled to worship God. When we’re truly aware of God’s greatness, we can’t help but want to worship God in a meaningful way.
Worship has changed through the ages. In the earliest chapters of the Bible, Cain and Abel and then Abraham worshiped independently, each one building altars and making sacrifices. Under the law of Moses, worship was formalized with holy places, priests, animals, rituals and times. After the temple was destroyed and the Israelites were scattered, worship became decentralized into local synagogues and the focus turned from sacrifices to scriptures, prayers and songs.
And with the accessibility of the synagogues, the Sabbath became a weekly day of worship. Jesus was born into this worship tradition, and the book of Acts tells how his followers spread these practices: “Those who accepted (Peter’s) message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2: 41-42).
With the teachings of Paul, worship seemed to come full circle to a more personal acknowledgement of God’s holiness, and Paul’s letters to the new Christian churches of his time didn’t promote any particular style of corporate worship.
In our own lifetime, we’ve seen worship take on many forms by different Christian denominations and individual churches. Even among Baptist congregations, worship styles vary greatly.
At Wilshire, our philosophy is that the Sunday worship service is a time of reverence and communion with God through the spoken word, music, meditation, prayer and silence. While some congregations have brought more contemporary elements into their services, including some practices that border on “entertainment,” our worship follows a more traditional Christian format.
We believe worship does not need to compete with other activities for our attention. There’s a time for entertainment, and there’s a time for worship.
But much more important than the worship style we choose as a community of believers is the attitude each person brings to it.
First and foremost, we should come to worship with the firm belief that God alone is worthy of our worship. No other person, activity or possession rises to that level of adoration.
We should come to worship in a spirit of obedience and honesty. We shouldn’t be hypocritical in our practice. While it’s true that we all come before God as sinners, we should strive to be the same person Saturday night we are Sunday morning in worship.
We should listen attentively with our ears and our hearts during prayers, the reading of scriptures and the preaching of the Bible. And we should participate enthusiastically in the singing of hymns, responsive readings and other times when we’re invited to participate.
We should come to worship reverently and leave joyfully, acknowledging, as another great hymn does, “To God be the glory, great things he hath done.”