So, let us worship!

So, let us worship !

by Grant Thorpe

It is fashionable to seek the greatness of human beings in their abilities and confidence and accomplishments and their self-projection-in a word, by looking at what a person is of themselves. Few would doubt that a human being-any human being-is an amazing phenomenon, but we cannot find the mystery of that greatness by admiration of their parts. What we are is determined more by a relation-with the God who made us, or perhaps the idol we make for ourselves.

The nature of worship

As human beings we are created to worship-to look beyond ourselves at Another greater than ourselves. We are made to give thanks to God for all things, to trust him for our life and to live by every word that he speaks. Our life is to serve and love and adore and give ourselves up for the Creator of all things. Our life has been made for participation in divine things, not merely the manipulation of things that are seen.

It may seem to be a simple thing to understand the worship of God, but if we think about what worship is it will soon be apparent that this is not so. Worship is service, and, in order to render that service, one needs to be given over to the other. Worship is the acknowledgment that Another is God and not ourselves and that power and glory belong to him.

A person-that is, someone actually being human-is someone who knows God as Jesus Christ knew him-one to be loved and served with all honour, whose worth could only be fully declared by the laying down of all that he has for him. Worship is not one activity among others; it is our whole life.

Worship is communion

But worship is not slavishness, or obligation, or fatalistic necessity, or superstition, or appeasement or manipulation. It is not a human activity in isolation. Rather, it is communion. The law which reveals the call of God to us starts by saying: 'I am the Lord your God . . .'.

God was already among his people when he announced his will for them. He had already made provision for their safety and resources and vocation and future. He had even made provision for their sin and their restoration. Worship is not 'our side of the bargain'-he is good so we have to thank him. It is communion-in which our greatest giving remains the enjoyment of all that he provides.

False worship

What if a person worships nothing-acknowledges nothing higher than themselves? Does this actually happen? Or, does something awful take its place-something even sinister. A person without Another to whom they give devotion and honour becomes locked into themselves. It could be said that they have no way of finding out who they are because they have no vantage point from which to look at themselves.

People, of course, admire and serve many things other than God. It is a good thing, for example, to give honour and service to other people. But if this worship has taken the place of the true God, the person offering the worship must become deformed-an image of something less than the Creator.

In fact, it is impossible to avoid worship. As we are made, so we function. We will give glory to something, turn something into a god, be it ourselves our something else in the creation. But nothing other than the true God can truly be God to us. Apart from him, we descend into littleness or even nothingness. We may even grow to detest ourselves for having nothing great for which we would willingly give up our lives.

Some are now suggesting that the concentrated focus on ourselves that has been promoted in the West for several hundred years has gone full term and that we need to find another way to live.

But what of our suspicions of God, our agnosticism or hostility? Do we have grounds for failure to worship God? Or, if we confess that God is, and even that he is good, what of our reserve which keeps us distant from him?

Years ago, Martin Luther said: 'Man is by nature unable to want God to be God. Indeed, he himself wants to be God, and does not want God to be God'. He also noted that reason plays blindman's buff and 'consistently gropes in the dark and misses the mark. It calls that God which is not God and fails to call Him God who really is God'

Quoted in The Freedom of the Christian by Eberhard Yungel, p. 24.

The gift of worship

Our calling is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But what will free us from this preoccupation with ourselves and unworthy toys and let us see who is really is?

It is God himself who brings us to worship. God has provided the worship we are to bring. It is as though we participate in God's appreciation of who he is as Creator and Father. This may seems strange: how can God give to us what he ought to receive from us? The answer lies in understanding what a god is-at least, what the God is whom Jesus revealed to us as his Father. We live and move and have our being in this God. We could not even be evil, let alone good, apart from him.

If we look for worship within ourselves, we will not find it. Our lives have turned inwards and our thoughts are a polluted fountain. For all this, God has drawn near to us. He has sent us his Son. God does not keep his distance because we ignore him. He is near to us in maintaining the creation and he is near to us in the proclaiming his word through his church. He never stops speaking to us and calling to us.

The true worshipper

The word he is speaking to us is the word of Christ-God's own Son present among us as our Brother.

He came to be a human being for us, to pray human prayers for us, to listen to his Father for us, to submit to his Father as a human being. By God's will, he bore our hatred of God in his own flesh, stood under God's judgement for us and rose from the dead for us. This is what God says to us: 'You have a Leader in worship!'

The worship Jesus has offered is not hypocritical, changeable or half-hearted. He really loved his Father-with all his heart and mind and strength. Just as God gave Israel a temple and its sacrifices to draw near to him in worship, so he has given us Jesus Christ as a Temple and a Priest-a place to come and a person who actually worships God. To confess belief in Jesus Christ is to stand with him in the presence of God. We are there-before God and worshipping.

Calling on God's name

What does it mean to 'call on the name of the Lord'. It means we know his name and so we know who he is. It means we call on him because we need to call on him-he is God, he can save us, he can provide for us. We honour him by calling on his name. Here is where we enter into worship-not as an experience or a creed or a religious observance or a code of behaviour. We call on his name. He who comes to God must believe that he is and that he rewards those who diligently seek him.

God-hearing my calling on his name! Can this be so? All that Jesus has revealed says 'Yes'. 'Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved' said the apostle. We are not to give ourselves up to despair or dissipation. Nor are we to give ourselves over to calculation and manipulation of the affairs of this life. We are to call on the name of the Lord and see that he is the true God. Our calling is to reach out-in the name of Jesus Christ-to God, and to find ourselves in him and in his saving deeds.

Could it be true that there is a God and that he is who the Christian Church has proclaimed him to be? Could it be that I can stand before the living God and not die? Could it be true that there is an offering for sin, peace in this evil world and a life everlasting? Could there even be love for my enemy?

Call on the name of the Lord! Do not be hemmed in by what the world likes to call its secularity or its autonomy. God is who he has proclaimed himself to be in Jesus Christ and all who call on the name of this Lord will find that God is true. And in calling on his name, they will come to be truly themselves.