What is Worship?

Introduction: The Confusion about “Worship”

We’re going to talk about worship and why we sing when we worship. Why do we want to talk about this? Because we do this every week as a church! Every Sunday morning, the church gathers together in local assemblies around the world. It can look very different from church to church! In America, we get to enjoy great blessings like the freedom to thrive as large churches. In China, the church there is so persecuted that they usually have to gather in secret. From Africa to Europe to Australia to the Middle East to here, the church looks very different. And, churches here look very different. Why does it look so different? Why are the things we do on Sunday morning different from what another church does? Maybe in a church you used to go to, people stood up and spoke in tongues or in different languages. Maybe you come from a church that sang mostly hymns with just a piano and an organ. Maybe your pastor at another church preached from the Message Bible.

It begs the question, does the Bible tell us what to do when we gather as a church? The answer is yes! We’re going to hone in specifically in this class on one of the things we do every week when we gather as a church: why do we sing? We’ll briefly touch on other aspects of what the church ought to do when they gather, but this will be our focus. But I’m not going to start by asking the question “Why do we sing?” today—I have another question first. First, I want to ask, “What is worship?”

I think it is easy for us to get confused about worship. Here’s a quote from one of my favorite books, Rhythms of Grace by Mike Cosper.

"When we talk about worship today, confusion abounds. One person uses the word to describe a particular style of music. Another uses it to describe a formalized liturgy, vestments, candles, and incense. Still another talks of worship as a way of life. And in between these varied definitions, debates rage.

"Many of us grew up in churches that went through years' worth of worship wars, where the piano-and-organ crowd battled for control of the church platform with the guitars-and-drums crowd. Conversations about worship get loaded with emotion and weighed down by preferences. One crowd laments the lack of depth in the lyrical content of our songs, while another laments the lack of contextualization and stylistic flavor.

"Whole movements emerge arguing that worship should be shaped by evangelistic mission of the church, and thus our services need to be 'attractional' and friendly. Others swing the pendulum the other way, arguing that worship is only about the church gathering and worshiping their God, and that outsiders shouldn't even factor into our planning for the gathering.

"So who's right? Who has the weight of the Bible on their side? What should worship look like among the exiles who enjoy God's grace here and now, yet suffer with sin and its destructive consequences, all while eagerly anticipating Christ's return?" (Rhythms of Grace, 74)

That’s what we’re going to discuss in this class! Here are my three goals for us as we talk about worship and singing and the church:

·       I hope you are stirred to worship God in response to the good news that Jesus has saved you!

·       I hope you understand that worshipping Jesus is the purpose of our whole life, not just the music we sing in our church.  

·       I hope you understand more fully what our church ought to do when we gather on Sunday morning and have deeper joy in worshipping Jesus together.

The need for worship

Instead of starting with a definition of worship, I want to start with a description of the need for worship. Jesus gives us the example of thirst for why worship should be central to our lives. We’re going to find this in John 4. As we read this, I want you to hear the longing of the human heart and hear Jesus's response.

John 4:1-30

“Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob's well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”

27 Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” 28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him.

Isn’t this story so beautiful?

In verses 7-15, the woman was coming to the well because she was thirsty for water, but Jesus immediately identified that her soul was even more in thirst. If she knew who she was talking to, she would ask for Him to give her what she needs: for the need in her soul to be satisfied. In verses 16-18, Jesus proves His power--He knows her, and He knows her life is showing that she is looking for the satisfaction her soul needs in the wrong places. Her response, like ours, is that we think we know what we need. After all, the Samaritans had worshipped there for a long time.

In verses 21-24 we see the great change: the Jews have known about how to worship God but could not do it in their own power. They had proven it time and time again. Now things were going to change: no longer would worship be tied to a place, to works that we could never hope to achieve by ourselves to satisfy a hole in our hearts we could never fill. Now, true worshippers will worship in spirit and truth."  That is what she needs: not empty ritual on a mountain, but something true she could know in her heart.

She reveals she does know this--she knows she is waiting on what she needs. They always have been. Jesus is what they were waiting for. He had come to show them what would satisfy their thirst--He would. And with Him would come the worship that would satisfy them forever--THIRST. NO. MORE.

We have thirst because we were made to worship God, but we cannot do that on our own because of sin. That's a problem, because we need to worship.

Augustine put it this way, " But still this man, part of Your creation, seeks to praise You; You inspire in him delight in praising You, for you have made us for Your sake, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You."

So what is worship? Worship is literally to "display worth or value."

John Piper said, "True worship is valuing or treasuring God above all things. The inner essence of worship is the response of the heart to the knowledge of the mind when the mind is rightly understanding God and the heart is rightly valuing God. That is, worship is showing, displaying the worth of God. We worship God authentically when we know Him truly and treasure Him duly” (“What is Worship?” on Desiring God)

Do you know the worth of God? We know His worth because He has revealed His worth to us through Christ, the Word of God, and His good news: the Gospel.

What is the gospel? 

This is the gospel:

In the beginning was God, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God--and God said "Let there be light," and there was light.

In the crescendo of creation, God created man and woman and placed them in a beautiful garden where they would walk with Him and know Him and enjoy relationship with Him--to enjoy the overflow of God's love 

When presented with the choice, however, we chose to glorify our own choice rather than God's choice. We willfully rebelled, breaking our relationship with holy God. Ephesians 2:1-3 says, "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 

But that isn't the end of the story: John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in HIm should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him."

Ephesians 2:4-10 says "But God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved--and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."  

This is the story of the world: that we were made by God to know Him and enjoy Him forever, but when given the choice between God and our own will we chose sin—but God, rich in mercy and gracious love, gave His son to be sacrificed in the cross in a plan made before time began to justify his rebellious, wayward people and restore right relationship with Him, that at the name of Jesus every knee would bow and confess him as lord, and to secure an everlasting life with him in a new heavens and new earth--where, as Revelation 21 says, "a holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.' And He who was seated on the throne said, 'Behold, I am making all things new." Also, He said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true." And He said to the apostle John, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be His God and he will be my son."

Isn’t the Gospel STIRRING?

This demands a response. We can't just do nothing about this! What is our response to the gospel? Worship. There is no thing of greater worth than God the Father who made us, God the Son who saved us, and God the Spirit that walks with us--we forfeited this world with our sin, and God in His grace has saved us for a better home with Him forever in a new heaven and new earth. So, we worship: we display the worth of God. Brothers and sisters in Christ, the whole of your life now is about displaying the worth of God. It is what we were made to do, and it is what we will do for all of eternity.

What does worship look like? How do we demonstrate that we value and treasure God before all other things? We walk with Him in our individual life and we walk with His church, the body of believers.

Worship 1-2-3

Mike Cosper helps us understand worship in his book Rhythms of Grace by saying worship has one object and author, two contexts, and three audiences. (Cosper, “Rhythms of Grace”)

Cosper writes, “The object is the easiest and most obvious place to start. The story of worship makes it clear: God is at the center of all of our worship,” (Cosper, 75).

There is only one object of our worship, only one who is worthy: God, whom we know is Three Persons in One--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our worship should be equally for all three members of the Trinity: for the Father who is over all things, for the Son who has saved us and will reign forever, and for Holy Spirit who indwells us and walks with us, making us more like the Son to the glory of the Father.

There are two contexts for our worship: scattered worship and gathered worship. Cosper writes, “Participating in God’s glory-sharing life, then, happens in two contexts: scattered and gathered. Worship scattered is the Spirit-filled life of the Christian in the world, and worship gathered is the meeting of God’s people to remember, encourage, and bless one another” (Rhythms of Grace, 76).

Scattered Worship: Worship as Individuals

We are each scattered seeking to worship God in our individual lives (Rhythms of Grace, 76-77) Scattered worship--worshipping Jesus in our lives--is living the way God intended in the first place.

You are meant to worship God in your individual life first. Ask yourself this question: do you really treasure Jesus more than anything else in your life? More than your spouse? Your kids? Your job? Your things? Your hobbies? Just like the woman at the well, we are all so prone to try satisfying our thirst on everything but Jesus—but Jesus’s promise to the woman at the well is the same promise to us: as Christians, we have been given access to the Living Water with which we can thirst no more!

What is this living water that satisfies us? It’s the Holy Spirit inside of us!

Romans 11:36-12:2

36 *For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

A Living Sacrifice

12 I appeal to you therefore*, brothers,[a] by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.[b] 2 Do not be conformed to this world,[c] but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.[d]

Paul says that because of God’s grace, because all things are from Him and for Him, your spiritual worship is to be a living sacrifice. He draws this out more in 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” You by the grace of God belong to God—now, your worship is to love and obey Him in this life. It’s easy to love the “love Jesus” part, but let’s turn to John 14 to see the really, really beautiful part about obedience as worship.

John 14:15-31

15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper,[f] to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be[g] in you.

18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” …  23“If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me.”

So, Jesus Himself clearly makes the tie that if you love Him, you will obey His commands. In the same way that a spouse wouldn’t willingly do something that would hurt or offend their spouse, we live in such a way that we show Jesus is our greatest love—our greatest treasure—by keeping His commands. And look at this beautiful promise: the seal of salvation is the presence of the Holy Spirit inside us.

25 “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. 28 You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 29 And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place you may believe. 30 I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, 31 but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us go from here.

Do you see the connection? We were bought with a price to be the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. The beautiful part of being a living sacrifice is enjoying intimate life with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—which is what we were made for, and the only thing that satisfies! And God helps us grow more and more intimate relationship with Him—deeper satisfaction—through walking with the Holy Spirit and putting sin to death. Galatians 5:16-17, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” There is a very direct tie between the death of sin—the putting off of your old, pre-Jesus self—and deeper intimacy with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Now, does this mean that if we sin we no longer have intimacy with God? No, but the more your soul is satisfied by Jesus the more you see how your sin makes you put distance between yourself and God. I love the book Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund because he really helped me understand that Jesus does not move further away from me when I sin. His heart is moved closer to free me from the sin that makes me want to hide from Him. He draws me closer to Him, and that lavish, loving grace makes me want to stay away from sin and stay closer to Him. I don’t have time to unpack that more but I highly recommend that book!

I love our 1 John series because John really draws this out in several places in his letter. 1 John 3:9-10 says, “9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's[b] seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. 10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.”

In Jesus, you are children of God—brothers of Jesus the firstborn. Treasure that relationship more than anything else in your life—it’s the satisfaction you are looking for. Worshipping Jesus in your life means valuing your relationship with Him over your sin.

This kind of worship of Jesus then overflows into every other aspect of your individual life: your family, your work, and your play—the things you enjoy! When Jesus is your first treasure, everything else falls into place. You enjoy your family as a gift from a good father (James 1), and seek to worship God as a family. How do you display the worth of God in your marriage? How does your family worship together? How do you treasure Jesus together as a family?

Do you see your work as worship? How can you worship him at work? Does your conduct and integrity at work reflect the worth you place in God? Do you share the Gospel with your coworkers that are seeking satisfaction for their soul just as you are? 

Do you see your play as worship? God has made all good things to be enjoyed in His presence: nature, competition, fellowship and friendship, art and creativity… the list goes on because God wants us to worship Him in every part of our lives!

Cosper writes in Rhythms of Grace, “This means that, for the Christian, whatever you are doing—whether serving the poor in Guatemala, serving Communion in a local church, flipping hamburgers in a diner, or flipping channels on TV—it all happens in union with Jesus, before the eyes and presence of a loving God, who by a miracle of boundless grace receives each and every act, though offered with mixed motives or frailty of heart, as a pleasant and acceptable offering.

“Scattered worship reveals the scandal of God’s grace. The whole mess of our lives is transformed in Christ, from corrupted to glorious, from ashes to beauty. The addict who can only cry out in miserable faith, ‘Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner,’ is just as accepted by the Father as a faithful missionary or a clean-cut-Christian celebrity pastor. There are no mountains to climb to seek God’s presence, no gates to unlock, no feats to accomplish. There is only Jesus, who throws wide heaven’s gates and cries, ‘All who are thirsty, come and drink!’

“He extends that invitation to you and me. Draw near. Walk behind the curtain. Behold God’s glory as you live out your days. Unrestricted access is yours in Jesus. Worship, as Jesus told the Samaritan woman, no longer has an address. It’s about a man named Jesus, who has given us more than we dared dream” (Rhythms of Grace, 76-77).  

It is my prayer that you are beginning to see that worship is a lot, lot more than you may have thought when you came in here! But our worship is not just us as individuals—not just the vertical relationship of you and God. There is a horizontal aspect to worship that is actually just as important as your individual relationship with Jesus!

Gathered Worship: Worship as a Church

We are not just individuals but the Body of Christ, and we worship together as a church. This is the “worship” of our process at Rock Point: worshipping together on Sunday.

1 Peter 2:9-10 says this, “9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” Salvation isn't about making Christians--it's about making a kingdom. It’s about raising a people after God’s own heart, and if you are in Christ Jesus, if the Holy Spirit is in you, you are part of that kingdom. This kingdom has outposts all over the earth: the local church! While worship is scattered, the regular rhythm of our worship revolves around the gathering of God’s people to worship Him together. The gathering is how we mark our weeks, where we are refreshed, where we are trained for spiritual battle and confess together our desperate need for the Holy Spirit to help us put sin to death in our lives.

In Acts 2, we see the early church begin to gather immediately. Why? What is the goal of this gathering? Acts 2:42-47 says this, “42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

Do you see the togetherness of the church? They devoted themselves to teaching, fellowship, and worship together. This is amazing! This is the kingdom of heaven on earth that Jesus described. The apostle Paul even goes so far to chastise those Christians who are not gathering in Hebrews 10:22-25, “19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”

So we see we are to gather. We are to be a church. Who does the gathering? God gathers us by His grace! Matt Merker in Corporate Worship writes, “A local church is an assembly of blood-bought, Spirit-filled worshippers who build one another up by God’s Word and affirm one another as citizens of Christ’s kingdom through the ordinances [of baptism and communion]. This means that being a Christian—a worshipper of God—entails identifying with God’s worshipping people. You’ve been adopted into His family. So when you sit down to the dinner table of corporate worship, you don’t do so alone. Since salvation is corporate, worship is corporate.” (Merker, 35).

We are gathered to:

·       To rehearse the Gospel, to minister the Word together: to read, pray, sing, and preach the Word of God to and with one another.

·       To encourage one another to love and good works in small groups

 So what do we do when we gather? Colossians 3:15-17 - "Let the Word dwell richly among us."

Colossians 3:12-17

12 Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

How do we do that?

·       We read the Word

·       We pray the Word

·       We preach the Word

·       We sing the Word

·       We see the Word

Here’s what that looks like for us at Rock Point—and also how we want to grow in these things! (There is so much we could say about all of these things so keep in mind this is an overview!)

Read the Word. The Bible, God’s revelation of Himself to His people, is our lifeline. It is how we know God. It is how we know truth. It is all we need for life and godliness: (2 Timothy 3:14-17) “14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it 15 and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

Also 2 Peter 1:3-4: “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, 4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.”

 If your house catches on fire, grab your Bible before you grab anything else. As Jesus said when He was tempted by Satan, “Man does not live on bread alone, but by every word that comes from the Father.” So, when we gather, we want to read the Word of God. We don’t just do that when we preach—that’s something separate. You may have noticed we are doing that more often, reading the Word out loud together on Sunday morning. That’s because it is our conviction to read the Word together when we gather.

Pray the Word. When we gather, we pray together. We pray that God would bless our gathering, that Holy Spirit would illuminate the Word for us as we gather, that God would preach through the one preaching the Word this morning, that God would orient our hearts towards Him when we sing. We pray for our community, we pray for our nation, we pray for those who are sick among us. One thing we want to do more is to pray and confess our sins together as a church—that’s super important!

Preach the Word. When we gather, we preach the Word. This is done by our pastors, whose calling in Titus and 1st Timothy is different than that of a church member or a deacon—a servant leader, a ministry leader in the church—because our pastors are charged with, among other things, preaching the Word and protecting the doctrine of the church. What I’m doing right now is not preaching to our whole church: I am encouraging people in the church with the Word, but it’s been shaped by our pastors and directors for this topical study. On Sunday, we want to for the most part preach through the books of the Bible—to be led by the Word, not shaping the Word to say what we want. John Piper in a podcast I listened to recently answered the question “If we have the Bible, why do we need preaching?” He said God has chosen in His wisdom as part of His plan that we have the infallible Word of God written down for us—and we have it contextualized for our time today by fallible preachers also saved by grace just like us! There’s so much more to be said about all of these things, of course.

Sing the Word. That’s what this whole class is about! We’ll get wayyy more into that next class. It’s important and I’m super excited about this!

See the Word. How do we see the Word? We see it in the ordinances of the church: baptism and communion. At Rock Point, we believe baptism is the outward sign that someone has been saved by Jesus. Baptism doesn’t save you, it is a public profession of faith that is commanded in Scripture. Baptism means you can’t hide your faith: it is on display. And if worship is showing the value of God, baptism publically shows the value of God in saving you.

Communion is the remembrance of Jesus’s death on the cross, consistently—for us, once every month. We remember His body broken and His blood poured out for us in a tangible, visible way. Just like baptism, communion doesn’t save you or get you any more points with God—it’s a way we see the Word. It’s a tangible opportunity to confess sin and visibly demonstrate you are part of the church.

So, when we gather, we do these things: read, pray, preach, sing, and see the Word.

 So who do we do these things for? Or do them to? Remember worship 1-2-3? There are three audiences for our gathered worship: God, each other, and the unbelieving world. When we gather, we worship God in the presence of God—so it matters how we worship Him. But it also matters that we worship God in the presence of each other. That’s the “building each other up” part. Our church worship is to encourage the Body to treasure Jesus more together. To encourage one another to cast off the sin that so easily entangles (Hebrews 12) that we may enjoy even more of that beautiful presence of the Holy Spirit on our way to perfectly knowing Jesus face-to-face in heaven. And, we worship God in the presence of the unbelieving world—of the unbelievers in our church, of the people who say they are Christians but don’t treasure Him and are still captive to sin who are with us every weekend, and even those who are here to see what Jesus is all about. Our worship is on display for the world to see. Worshipping God together is the reason we gather as a church.

Do you see that worship is bigger than you thought it was? Do you see how important it is? If you hear nothing else, hear this: we are all thirsty and Jesus is the only One who can satisfy our thirst. Jesus is the treasure we need, and the only one. We worship Him as individuals and as a church—to the glory of God the Father.

And, a little PREVIEW: One of the ways we worship God together as a gathered body of believers is that we sing praises to Him.

Sources & Further Reading

Augustine of Hippo. Confessions, Book 1. Translated and Edited by Peter Constantine. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2018.

Cosper, Mike. Rhythms of Grace. Wheaton: Crossway, 2013.

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Merker, Matt. Corporate Worship. Wheaton: Crossway, 2021.

Piper, John. What is Worship? Desiring God. https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/what-is-worship