What is Worship and How To Do It

Today my message is “What is Worship and How to do it”!

Last week we looked at our Everlasting God and our life.

Today, we are going to see what worship was like in the old testament times and the new and today.

Worship:

“SAHAH” Hebrew – To prostrate oneself, bow down.¹

Proskuneo – To make obeisance, do reverence to, an act of homage or reverence. ²

Ralph P. Martens, in his book “The Worship of God” states, “The worship of God is an act of the community and is to be done under the authority of the Word of God.” ³

The Encyclopedia of the Bible defines it as: “True worship is a genuine response to God which shows itself in a life lived to please God. Worship centres on God.” ⁴

Now we go back to the times before Jesus came to earth. What was worship to those people?

Remember that we are looking at the Jewish people, so this is their worship style we are looking at, not all nations handled worship the same.

2 Chronicles 29:27-30 NIV

27 Hezekiah gave the order to sacrifice the burnt offering on the altar. As the offering began, singing to the Lord began also, accompanied by trumpets and the instruments of David king of Israel.

28 The whole assembly bowed in worship, while the singers sang and the trumpeters played. All this continued until the sacrifice of the burnt offering was completed.

29 When the offerings were finished, the king and everyone present with him knelt down and worshiped.

30 King Hezekiah and his officials ordered the Levites to praise the Lord with the words of David and of Asaph the seer. So they sang praises with gladness and bowed their heads and worshiped.

Joshua 22:26-27 NIV

26 “That is why we said, ‘Let us get ready and build an altar—but not for burnt offerings or sacrifices.’

27 On the contrary, it is to be a witness between us and you and the generations that follow, that we will worship the Lord at his sanctuary with our burnt offerings, sacrifices and fellowship offerings. Then in the future your descendants will not be able to say to ours, ‘You have no share in the Lord.’

As you can see, the Jewish religion was into sacrifices and altars for worshiping God. The people were separated from God and had no permanent sacrifice yet. That is why Jesus came to earth in the body of a human, to be that final sacrifice to God for all mankind.

The Encyclopedia of the Bible gives us this explanation:

“To worship is to give God the honour due to Him. In the Psalms God’s people worship Him for who He is; for what He has done in creation; for what He has done in redemption, rescuing and freeing His people; and for all God’s good gifts and blessings to individuals. ⁵

Psalm 95:1-7 NIV

1 Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;
let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.

2 Let us come before him with thanksgiving
and extol him with music and song.

3 For the Lord is the great God,
the great King above all gods.

4 In his hand are the depths of the earth,
and the mountain peaks belong to him.

5 The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.

6 Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;

7 for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care.

Now we go to Jesus’s encounter with the woman at the well and Jesus explains worship to her. 

John 4:19-26 NIV

19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet.

20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

21 Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.

23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.

24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in Spirit and in truth.”

25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

26 Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”

A report about the Christian religion from the Roman governor, Pliny, to the Emperor Trajan, about AD 113.

“They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang an anthem to Christ as God, and bound themselves by a solemn oath not to commit any wicked deed, but to abstain from all fraud, theft and adultery, never to break their word, or deny a trust when called upon to honour it; after which it was their custom to separate and then meet again to partake of food, but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.” ⁶

Finally, what is worship to us today? We have our Sunday service which many call a worship service.

We have the freedom to worship God, anywhere and at anytime

I want to leave this look at worship today with a final verse.

Romans 12:1 NIV

1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.

What do you think is God’s definition of worship?

Next week we will look at the ways we worship in our community today and other ideas of worship that we should consider.