What is Worship?
At HSCC, I’ve uniquely experienced a people who love to sing! Whether hymns or contemporary songs, whether is a familiar face leading or a guest, whether it’s in a season of wonder and thanksgiving or in a season of grieving, High Street Community Church loves to sing songs to God! What a gift! And it’s even more so now that we’re freed-up to sing in church again!
This Sunday I get the privilege of leading worship. For me, worship—as in songs and lyrics—flows easier than the content of a sermon. It’s not that I’m necessarily better suited for one or the other, but worship music tugs at the heart. A song sung from the depths that can be reorienting, expressive, honoring, humbling—taking in the spectrum of emotion and experience as we attune to God-with-us.
Is this true for you? What is your experience of worship right now? What is it about worship that makes it easier to enter-into than a content-heavy sermon?
What is it about relationship with God that makes us want to sing? Do you ever consider how strange it is? Especially for those not raised in the church…when they walk into this building for the first time, everyone stands and starts belting a song to the ceiling! If you didn’t know Jesus, what would you think about this strange activity?
But when you step into relationship with Jesus, we step into a legacy of song.
As we witness hearts healed, the word of God spoken, prayer answered, sacrifices given, we begin to see God’s heart in His people—and one fruit of this is to sing like a child to our Father.
Did you know that there are angels in heaven whose only job for eternity is to sing praises to the worthiness of God! Forever singing worship in His presence. What a job!
God made worship for a reason, and worship in song is a special part of that.
Ancient Israel was a people of song, especially after powerful moments of God’s deliverance or in response to His glory and presence filling the tabernacle.
King David especially understood this. He was the first King in Israel to institute 24/7 worship of God in song at the tabernacle. This became the standard at the Temple that his son Solomon built. This 24/7 worship mirrored heaven’s beautiful response to God.
In the centerpiece of Israel’s worship practice was the altar of sacrifice. At the altar, the sins and sufferings of Israel were cleansed by the blood of sacrifice and exchanged for relationship with God. This continued practice kept their covenant alive. Priests served daily at the altar, offering the blood of bulls and sheep for sin.
This messy, sacred job was worship for Israel.
It was the “altar of sacrifice” that Jesus laid upon when He willing faced the cross, and placed Himself as a living sacrifice—once for all. His blood made the way for our worship to be lifted freely, without fear, shame, guilt, or condemnation—we can worship in freedom.
Jesus’s sacrifice connects the grief and despair of sin and suffering with the victorious power of God amid the songs of heaven. Our sung worship can do this too. Like He said, true worshippers will “worship the Father in spirit and in truth,” (John 4:23).
Even Jesus, after the Last Supper on His way to the Mount of Olives where He would be betrayed, pauses with His disciples to sing a hymn of worship as a part of their Passover meal.
Can you imagine what it would have been like for Jesus to worship God? To sing to His Father? Especially before he faced that "altar" that would alter it all. To sing praise while He knew He was facing betrayal. To sing in worship when He knew He would shoulder our sin and suffering in the days ahead.
This song would change everything.
In this final act of sacrifice, He himself would lay upon the altar of Israel’s sin and the world’s rebellion, and open the pathway to relationship with God. Wow, how magnificent.
Today, this altar of sacrifice is still active in our worship. The forgiveness given. The price paid. It stands finished, like the broken stone table in Narnia, it is a place brings us to continually surrender ourselves afresh to God. We experience in reality what God has already declared over us.
This is where we can live. In willing surrender. Giving our daily lives, our everyday, ordinary moments to God. In our songs we declare these realities. The rest of the week, we live these realties out.
Our worship song isn’t expressed just through lips and lungs. It’s meant to be sung with our lives. A living-song. The lyrics of our lives, the melody, the rhythm, can be offered to God. So, the reality of heaven’s eternal song, in a way, is continued in the everyday song of our lives. Paul said it this way:
“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Join me in entering into this song, not just on Sunday, but every day this week…and the rest of our lives. What a gift to live in response to the presence of God, may His grace and love make it easy for us as we listen to for what He’s singing over us! (Zephaniah 3:17)