God Cares How We Worship
God cares about our worship. Throughout the history of the church since Pentecost, God’s people have gathered locally on the Lord’s Day to worship Him. In fact, God saved us through Christ so that we might be worshippers of Him. Paul says that we have been saved, forgiven, adopted by God to the praise of his glorious grace (Eph 1:6). In the Old Testament, just before God saved Israel from the hand of Pharoah, he told Moses his purpose, “when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” So, worship is baked into the very purpose of salvation. We worship God on Sunday because we were created and redeemed to worship God.
But God does not just care that we worship Him. He cares how we worship Him. After God saved Israel out of Egypt, he gave them instructions for how to live in a relationship with Him. The first two commandments have to do with worship. First, “you shall have no other gods before me” (Exod 20:3). This command means God is concerned that we worship Him and no one else. Second, “you shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Exod 20:4). This command means God is concerned with how we worship. Carved idols represented the pagan gods that the surrounding nations worshipped. That is how they worshipped. Israel fell into this sin while Moses was on the mountain meeting with the Lord. They made a golden calf to worship the God who brought them out of Egypt (Exod 32). They were trying to worship God in a way that did not please Him!
Similarly, Jesus told the woman at the well that we would not worship God on a particular mountain, but that we must worship Him “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24), that is, by the Holy Spirit in us and according to the truth God has revealed to us in His Word.
So… how does God want us to worship? How can we please God in our worship on Sunday morning?
Lord willing, over the next several weeks, I hope to unpack the following elements of Christian worship found in the Word so that we might always grow in delighting in the worship of God that He delights in. When we gather to worship, we:
Read the Word
Preach the Word
Pray the Word
Sing the Word
See the Word
May our worship be pleasing in His sight!
In Christ,
Pastor Mark