Now To Him

Putting Christ back at the centre of our worship

J. John, Simon C Ponsonby

• Publisher: Monarch Books
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780857211729
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Rituals & Practice

The authors, a theologian and a worship leader, are concerned that modern worship is growing self-indulgent: more about performance, less about an encounter with the divine. They consider what the Bible teaches about worship, addressing four key concerns: Worship as entertainment; worship which lacks wonder and awe; worship as irrelevant to mission; worship which gratifies the worshipper rather than honouring the Almighty. The authors each contribute six chapters, looking at biblical aspects of worship. They tackle worship and holiness; worship with passion; worship and the danger of idolatry. How, they ask, can we rediscover the mystery of an encounter with God, in corporate worship? How can leaders open themselves and their congregations to the heart of God, releasing his presence and power? How should we craft the unique dynamic of a people gathered to sing to God?

Chapter 1

Worship

THE BIBLICAL CHARACTER AND CULTURE OF WORSHIP

Simon Ponsonby

Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430) is perhaps the greatest theologian of the Western church. He fought against heresies on several fronts; he articulated the great doctrines of the church in grand architectonic fashion to the glory of God. He is often quoted, from his autobiographical work Confessions, as expressing the innate human longing for God: “you have made us for yourself and our heart is restless till it finds its rest in you.”

What is less well known is that this very statement, which defines human identity in terms of innate orientation towards God that is only able to find its fulfilment in God, is found in his reflection on worship:

Great are you, O Lord, and worthy of high praise. Great is your strength and of your wisdom there is no counting. Even man is, in his own way, a part of your creation, and longs to praise you… You stir us up to take delight in your praise; for you have made us for yourself and our heart is restless till it finds its rest in you.¹

For Augustine, to be a human is to long for God – a longing fulfilled only in the act of worshipping God. One cannot be fully human if one doesn’t worship God.

The prophet Isaiah declared that we were created to praise God.² Saint Paul thrilled at the thought that we were adopted and redeemed to praise and glorify God.³ Paul wrote that the archetypical sin was to withhold worship and glory from God, and to offer worship elsewhere to created things, to idols.⁴ The vision John the Beloved gives us of heaven is bursting with worship and the very songs that are sung around the throne declare God worthy of worship by all he created.⁵ The Protestant tradition picks up these themes and in the famous statement of faith, the Westminster Catechism, declares that “we are created to give glory to God”. In the twentieth century, C. S. Lewis (and, in similar vein, John Piper) mused over this theme of being created to worship and wondered, even worried, whether it suggested God’s sole purpose in creating us was to have sycophants.

But Lewis rightly saw that in our worship, in our giving to God, we receive – we are actualized, we become who we are, we are fulfilled:

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with… If it were possible for a created soul fully… to “appreciate”, that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beatitude… To see what the doctrine really means, we must suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with God – drunk with, drowned in, dissolved by, that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves as incommunicable, hence hardly tolerable, bliss, flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression; our joy is no more separable from the praise in which it liberates and utters itself than the brightness a mirror receives is separable from the brightness it sheds. The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.⁶

The culture of worship

God’s first commandment, given through Moses to the people of Israel, is about worship.

Exclusive, God-giving worship:

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything… You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God.⁷

This worship is God’s due, for He alone is God, He alone is the deliverer. But the fact that He had to give this commandment shows that He knows the tendency of the human heart to worship just about everything other than God. We are made to worship God – we are saved to worship God, but as St Paul highlights in Romans 1:18–25, we will often choose to worship the created over the Creator, inanimate things rather than the very source of life. We create idols and bow down before them – an idol being anything we substitute for God.

As Augustine above said, we are all born worshippers. The issue is never whether we worship but what. In Oxford, where I live, often God is replaced by gods of intellect, the mind, academic success. The biggest and best brain is worshipped. We have the high priestly hierarchy of dons, fellows and professors and their vestments of hood and gown, and we have their religious ceremonies of initiation, matriculation, confirmation, examination, and graduation.

In the suburbs, millions get up on Sunday and worship by going to car boot sales, or washing their Mondeos or BMWs or 4x4s. Audi once had an advert for their Cabriolet which simply stated, “Worship here”. The new cathedrals are our shopping centres or the giant out-of-town shopping malls where millions go on pilgrimage and offer homage at the altars of the tills. On Christmas Day 2007, more people in the UK bought online than attended church!

In 1998, billions were glued to their TVs watching the football World Cup. At the cathedrals (stadiums) the high priests (players) gave offerings (goals) on the altars (nets), with churchwardens (referees) in attendance. At the inauguration of that World Cup in France, a little girl read a poem entitled “Take us to a better place”.

Millions cheered, or were in tears!

Worship!

The music on the BBC to accompany the 2006 football World Cup was the tune to the hymn “Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son”. Was this not close to blasphemy – attributing to a game what belongs to God alone?

The character of biblical worship

Romans 12:1 indicates that worship is a way of life – rather than just the songs we sing in a church! Paul wants the believers to offer every aspect of their lives to God – in particular stressing holy living. Many people are quick to sing on Sunday and sin on Monday. But “worship” is our “walk” with God. Whatever we do, we do as unto the Lord. Whenever we step out in faith or sacrifice the flesh, we are worshipping – offering ourselves as a sacrifice to God.

In Scripture, however, the normative understanding of praise and worship words (occurring about 400 times) reflects speech expressing adoration, blessing, and honour. Our word “worship” is from the Old English “worth-scipe”, meaning to give or declare something or someone’s worth, to give value.

Other words in the original biblical languages that are translated into English generally as “worship” or “praise” include:

• Old Testament Hebrew: segad (bow down), abad (serve), shacah (bow), halal (bless), yadah (praise; from the root yad = hand).
• New Testament Greek: doxazo (glorify), eusebeo (revere), proskuneo (bow/kiss), latreo (serve).

These convey a demonstrative aspect to worship alongside the vocal aspect.

The right response of creature to Creator (Psalm 95)

Worship is a recognition of who God is as Lord, Saviour, Master, King, and Ruler.

We worship at God’s footstool, we worship at His feet, we acknowledge our dependence and creatureliness, we humble ourselves, and we honour God. But even as we humble ourselves before God, we are also aware that we meet Him as the beloved before our divine lover. The psalmist understood this; hence his constant worship refrain, “his steadfast love endures forever”.⁸

Worship can be the whispers between lovers, an intimate expression of affection.

The splendid obsession of heaven

Worship is the preoccupation of eternity.

Whatever else we do, however else we will be occupied, in heaven there will be joyful, spontaneous, overflowing, uninhibited delighting in God. Revelation 4 shows the saints laying their crowns before Him and falling down. The Greek is iterative, a present continuous action of constantly laying down crowns and laying down ourselves before the throne. In order for this to occur, the Lord must constantly raise us up and crown us each time. What incredible extravagant grace! God gives us the very gifts we worship Him with.

The response to revelation

Those who worship little, understand little.

As we study God’s word, understand His character, and experience His goodness, worship becomes our automatic response. The medieval saint, Julian of Norwich, would shout out loud praises to God in Latin after reading her Bible. John and Elaine Beekman went as missionaries to the Chol Indians in Mexico. After faithful sacrificial service for twenty-five years, there were 12,000 converts. Interestingly, when they arrived, no one ever sang; there were no songs, no singing in the Chol tribe’s tradition. They didn’t even have a word for “sing” in their vocabulary.

But when they were converted, when they were Spirit-filled, they began singing praises to God, so much so that they invented a new word and changed their name to become the “singing tribe”.

The goal of our salvation

We are elected, chosen, redeemed and sealed, all to the praise of God’s glorious Grace.⁹ But as C. S. Lewis points out, this is not because God desires sycophants, though worship is God’s due; it also restores our fallenness and fulfils our humanity – it’s what we were made for.

Paul in Romans 1:18–24 says that we were created to know and worship God. In turning away and worshipping idols, we lose the glory that God gave us as beings created in His image. Worship glorifies God but it also restores us to our right glory. When we worship, we become authentic, whole. The converse is also true, as Peter Shaffer said in his play Equus: “If you don’t worship, you shrink.”

The conflict over worship

Jewish Tradition says that the devil was once an archangel who stood before God and conducted the worship being offered to God. Rather than being content with his role as a choir conductor, a conduit of worship, he became proud (beware, worship leaders!) and desired to draw that praise and worship to himself. And God threw him and the angels that adored him out of His presence. Ever since, Satan has continued to deviate worship from God to himself. Even as God was giving the first commandment – to have no idols and to worship no gods but Yahweh – the devil was at work in Israel’s camp, causing them to create a golden bull-calf idol, worshipping it and engaging in licentious behaviour.

Idolatry and immorality have always gone hand in hand.

Paul clearly links the two in Romans 1, as if summing up Israel’s history, where they worshipped the pagan gods Baal and Ashtoreth and indulged in the indecent sexual expression associated with these fertility gods.

Satan seeks to rob God of His due, and he seeks to corrupt humanity in their duty. Paul writes that behind every idol is a demon.¹⁰ All worship not given to God in Christ Jesus is worship that the evil one draws to himself. In Revelation 13, St John records that a key mark of the personified antichrist is robbing God of His worship and drawing worship to an image of the beast!

Long ago God said to Pharaoh: “Let my people go, that they may serve me”, but Pharaoh resisted, wanting to keep them to worship him by their subservient work, building buildings to his glory, not God’s.

Satan has always resisted the worship of God in Christ Jesus. Satan sought to deflect worship from Christ at His birth.¹¹ The Magi went to Herod and said, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we… have come to worship him.” Herod, demonically inspired, tried to have Christ killed rather than worshipped.

Satan sought to deflect worship from Christ after His baptism.¹² Having been declared the Son of God, Jesus is tested by Satan and the climax of the tests is: “Worship me, and all this I will give you.” The devil is trying to buy true worship. Jesus rebukes him, saying, “It is written, worship God, and serve Him only.”

Satan sought to deflect worship from Christ at his triumphal entry, when the Pharisees were incensed at the worship being offered to Jesus, and told Him to rebuke the disciples for singing hallelujahs.

Elsewhere the term “rebuke”, meaning “to muzzle”, was used by Jesus against the demons – but here the demonic wanted to silence the worship. Jesus replied that the very stones would cry out if they tried to stop the praise.

In the early church, one major reason why the authorities persecuted and killed Christians was because of their “exclusive worship of Jes...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• 1. Worship The biblical character and culture of worship
• 2. The Kingdom of Grace God courting the affection of His world
• 3. The Scent of a Woman Personal devotion in worship
• 4. Sing Holding on to the gift of corporate worship
• 5. Love and Loved A loving response to being loved by God
• 6. Everything in its Right Place Honouring the holy in worship
• 7. Coram Deo – Living Life to the Face of God The presence and power of God in worship
• 8. The One We Worship The glorious Christ
• 9. Moments of Closeness Recapturing a sense of wonder in our worship
• 10. In Awe or an Eeyore? Grumbling in worship
• 11. A Church that Dances Engaging in passionate, sacrificial worship
• 12. Now to Him Doxology