So I have been putting this off since Sunday and I decided that instead of living in fear of what these concepts could bring, I am going to embrace the things the Lord has been showing me recently. These thoughts started when I was supposed to have a night of worship for our church. I had decided to do a little teaching before the time of music and singing. As I began to survey this topic, God couldn’t have led me any farther from where I thought I might go for a discussion of worship. I wanted to share it with you, because God has been really dealing with me about not communicating what he is doing in my life. I hope you can look past my stream of consciousness thinking and my writing style. I typed this as fast as I could, so please bear through it. I love you all.
Basically, as I started I thought I would go to some of the well known places about worship, you know, psalms, the tabernacle, all things that every good worship major comes into contact with in school. However, as I began to look into the word worship, I found that the first mention of the word “worship” was in a rather strange story. It was Genesis 22.5, which is the story of Abraham, Isaac, and how God had asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac.
As I read this story, I am pulled so many ways thinking about a father having to kill his only Son. The emotion, the pull, the dissonance that was created in that moment where God asked Abraham to give his promise bearing son up. That is what Isaac what, the fulfillment of a promise God had spoken to him. In this situation there are few things that need to be identified as contextually important before I explain what God revealed.
Let me define this word “worship” according to the Hebrew mind and language. The word used in Genesis 22.5, is the word “shahkah,” this word means to bow lowly and to worship something that is superior. In the eastern culture where this story occurred it was imperative for a person who was lesser (in class, age or in title), to bow in reverence and respect to the superior person. So in that culture the whole concept of worship and bowing was more about attitude than a mere action. It was the consideration that you would adhere to a person who was greater than you.
So we have Abraham who is going to worship (attitudinally) the Lord with his son. This introduces another concept in middle eastern thought. Progeny is one of the most important points in that life. For in your ability to reproduce was your ability to spread your name, your beliefs, your life through the extension of your children. This father-son relationship is obviously a theme that recurs in the Bible constantly, always about fathers and sons.
Another contextual concept that appears is the whole concept of covenant. Both sonship and sacrifice were covenantal approaches to life. Sonship fulfills covenant as the son is the promise. And then the sacrifice is a necessity for all who are in covenant which returns to the garden where Adam and Eve had to have a sacrifice for God to have mercy on them and their disobedience. In the situation of a covenant, there is a need for a specific place and time for the sacrifice, and most sacrifices where made upon an altar, again which occurs in this story of Abraham and Isaac.
Now for a little more ground work, we can see and can understand the culture of the day was centered around the deity and thus, when you worshipped a deity, it was all encompassing. In this sense, worshipping a deity, or giving homage or honor was about everything that you do. Every action was correlative to your religion. This eastern mentality believes that everything is spiritual. That every “non-spiritual thing” we accomplish or practice, it has spiritual value and purpose behind it. Everything is spiritual to the ancient near eastern person. This reveals that worship to their mindset would be holistic, involving every parts of who they were.
Due to the fact that we were created beings created by a creator God, who poured out into creation, we find ourselves either holistically worshipping God or worshipping something else. This would basically fall into the category of idolatry. Anytime we are worshiping something besides the Lord, we are committing idolatry. The interesting thing about this concept is that idolatry is not about an object, it is about the failure to listen and hear what God is saying and doing, because if we did, we would have no need for a substitute.
So this is where hearing is juxtaposed into worship. Throughout people’s experiences in the Old Testament and even now, we find that worship occurs when God reveals himself to individuals, and they respond to that revelation. Isaiah 6 is a fantastic picture of this as Isaiah sees the Lord high and lifted up and then he both presents himself for service and for cleansing. This worship attitude/lifestyle comes full circle as we begin to understand that the revelation of God occurs through his Word, his people, and his Spirit. When we come into our lives of serving the Lord, we see that we must hear what he is saying, no matter which of the mediums he might use. In the case of Abraham, he spoke to him through his voice.
As Abraham heard the voice of God and had an attitude of both reverence and fear of the Lord, he was able to hear all that was said and then to act upon it. Although he heard that his son must be sacrificed, he was still able to obey the Lord by having faith and coming into agreement with the promise of God that even if God took his son, God will still extend his family as the sands of the sea and the stars of the sky. As we hear the Lord in our lives, we begin to worship, through obedience.
Only through obedience would we be able to surrender to God. To obey God is definitely a challenge to all of us as we are uncertain of the outcome. However, the remarkable think about obedience is that we are able to be okay with submission to the Lord. As we begin to submit and surrender we end up seeing that my submission to God is not just about submitting to him, but also to others (his people). We come into relationship with others and respond to them as they begin to speak into our lives. We are able to totally surrender to God and yield to both him and others in our worship.
Worship takes on this individual approach and this communal approach, for as I worship God, I am affecting everyone else that I know due to the outflow of my life. There is no worship that is solely toward God. Worship must be experience both in one’s personal life as God works in and through them, however, if those things are not dispensed to others then what is the purpose and benefit. Worship is about me and about us.
So in this thinking, let’s take it all back to Abraham & Isaac. In the sense of doing God’s will and purpose by submitting to his voice, Abraham, was both taking an individual approach to worship and he obeyed God, however, his son Isaac was going to be encouraged and blessed by his father’s obedience. This example revealed that submission was on Isaac’s part in and through Abraham. Crazy that although Isaac didn’t hear God himself, he heard his father who in relationship with the Lord was able to reveal the Lord to him. Isaac and Abraham were about to see God reveal himself again to them through obedience and submission to God’s voice. Through this story, we are watching showing how his relationship works with us. That as we believe his covenant promises and agree with him and what he is saying, we are able to watch our sacrifice become a promise fulfilled. Then we watch God reveal himself to us in a new way of provisionary goodness. Abraham put himself into a position of willingness and an attitude of worship and therefore he saw his worship affect both he and his son for all time.
Let’s take this passage to a new level of understanding: Romans 12:1-2. I know it is a super common passage, but I can’t help but to think that as Paul wrote this under the Spirit’s working, that he wasn’t recalling Abraham. Most of the book of Romans chats about Abraham. Why should Romans 12:1-2 be any different? Well Abraham went to present his Son to the Lord, he was taking action on his son to worship, even when Isaac might not been okay with the whole concept. He trusted his dad. Well God now decides to reveal that we get to present ourselves to him in a living sacrifice. I was blown away to think about how God basically was saying that he no longer needs us to kill ourselves for him, but instead that he wants us to worship him by living all the above concepts of relationship, sonship, covenant, faith, obedience, surrender, etc. It is a reasonable deal for us to listen to what God is trying to do in our lives.
We come and holistically present ourselves to the God we know has promised us life and life more abundantly even if it takes our sacrificing our desires, dreams, promises, because we know that as we obey his voice, his people, his Word that we will not go wrong. Worship is that place where it is all about life and life with God enwrapped in it. I love that worship through music and singing voices this so well. The extension of our hands communicate our surrender, our voice sings truth that agrees with his truth, our faith comes alive as we realize that God is right there in the midst of it. Our experience becomes ones of revelation and response. And our response could be acing a test, loving our friends, sharing the gospel, or any other outpouring you can think of.
There are so many things that come into play with what I am learning. For instance, we are dealing with a formless God (dt. 4) who is jealous of us when we worship anything but him. We are looking at the way Israel was worshipping God individually and through a person, instead of knowing that now God has sent Jesus as our Isaac so that all may be able to experience life. Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, there is no life. We also have to consider Hebrews 4 where we can realize that God is totally approachable and we can talk to him about what is going on in His voice, his people, or his Word.
Romans 12:1-2 uses a different word for worship: proskuneo. This word means that basically worship is about service. I love that God totally wrapped all these things into it: we can’t serve until we are able to recognize and have an attitude of whatever you are saying God, I am down with it. I will do it, no matter the cost.
Anyways, this is a lot of ramblin’ about God’s heart to mine and from mine to yours.
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