Worship Is Forever

Of all we do as Christians, few things are as durable.

A seminary professor once asked his class to write down their first thought when they heard the word “waitress.” The results: “bored,” “angry,” “inefficient,” “soup spots on her uniform,” “always looking for a tip.”

“Fine,” said the professor when the results were read in class. “I wondered what you would write. You see, my mother was a waitress.”

Suppose we were asked the same question, but this time using the phrase “worship.” What words would jump out first?

Speaking ideally, we would bear in mind that the value of what we do is measured by how long it lasts. And of all we do as Christians, few things are as durable as worship. (But would we write down “durable”?) Evangelism will end, and education, as will prophecy and social service. But worship is forever.

Still thinking ideally, we realize that the best and the brightest in the eternal realm already know this. John’s vision of heaven has four terrifyingly magnificent and wise creatures singing day and night, without ceasing, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come!” (Rev. 4:8). That is all they do, forever and ever. Each time we turn a page in the Book of Revelation we are looking at yet another scene of worship in heaven. Here it involves the 24 elders, there ten thousand times ten thousand angels, elsewhere the martyred saints.

But all this excitement over worship was for years pretty much theory to me. In fact, it disturbed me, especially when I was in junior high school. Heaven seemed nothing more than one long performance of Handel’s Messiah (“Bor-r-ring” was the word I would have written down about worship!). That made it only slightly preferable to hell. When I told my youth director of my misgivings, he assured me that I need not worry, since all those heavenly worship scenes were only symbolic. His words were comforting, for I took them to mean that whatever was going to happen in heaven would be a whole lot better than just singing praise to God for all eternity. That reassurance has held me up until quite recently.

Effect On The Worshiper

But lately I have wondered if I have been missing out. C. S. Lewis is responsible. He suggested an analogy I have adjusted a little: Suppose I were to read Shakespeare’s famous love sonnet “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” to my dog Pippin. This is specially preposterous because Pippin is an ancient, deaf, indefatigably lascivious mutt, showing nothing of “the noble beast.” As I begin to read from this exemplar of the West’s literary tradition, his reaction is predictable. After looking at me expectantly for scraps from the table, he slumps back down and goes to sleep; he lacks the capacity to appreciate what he hears. But suppose that, as I read to him, he perked up his ears, looked at me brightly, and barked approval. I could only conclude that something radical had happened to his nervous system, and that he had been given the instinct for literature.

Still, would Shakespeare’s sonnet be any better because my mutt appreciated it? No. But would my mutt be any better off? Yes. Pippin’s appreciation of Shakespeare would not ennoble Shakespeare, but it would ennoble Pippin.

What I have been missing, and continue to miss, is the capacity to appreciate God so much that I can think of nothing more delightful than to sing my love to him for eternity. Those strange and wonderful beasts in Revelation have that capacity, the elders and angels and martyrs have it, but I do not. Someday, when I have been glorified, I will. As with Shakespeare and my mutt, God will be no better off because I can then see him whole, but I will be.

So to the eternal quality of worship we must add the value of ennobling the worshiper. (Would we write down “ennoble”?) A popular Sister Corita poster of the 1970s was of Irenaeus’ famous “The glory of God is man fully alive.” But missing was the remainder of the quotation: “and the life of man is the vision of the glory of God.” It is a mystery that God loves to have us worship him: How the immortal, invisible, God only wise could get anything out of our feeble praise may be beyond us. But we can understand the benefit we receive from praising him. It seems that when God made finite humans he had this wonderful notion of giving them the capacity to know something of him, the infinite God, and in that knowledge to become like him. He chose to make men and women who could actually grow to be little copies of him as they learned to appreciate who he is and what he does. Worship was made for us and we were made for worship. God is glorified as we come alive; and we come alive, are glorified ourselves, as we awaken to the vision of the glory of God.

The same can be said of an evangelical church. If it is to come alive, it must come alive to the worship of God, and, further, it will come alive by the worship of God. The great awakenings in this country were hatched in worship. God’s people began to be awestruck by his majesty and holy love. It was not then as it is now, for we today seem interested only in his love, sans holiness and majesty. But the awakenings of the past linked love to a holy God. With this came holy fear, deep repentance, and confession of sin. Then with the cleansing work of the Holy Spirit came an outpouring of praise and intercession for sinners, which led to massive revival.

Teaching And Worship

For many congregations, worship has degenerated into mere convocations for the teaching of the Bible. A hymn or two, some announcements, and then the pièce de résistance—20 minutes (or 40) of Bible teaching. The only liturgical furniture required is an overhead projector.

Do not misunderstand. Bible teaching is integral to Christian worship. It is in the hearing of the Word of God that we are summoned to worship God in the first place. Without the proclamation of the Word, worship would be all effect with no cause. But without significant time in a Sunday service devoted to praise and thanksgiving, the service becomes all cause with no effect. The history of Christian worship shows that while the early church included teaching as a critical part of its Sunday service, it relegated its major effort at instruction to another time in the week.

Teaching is a crucial duty of the church. But it is an instrumental activity. Its importance derives from the end it serves: to lead men and women, and boys and girls, to a vision of the glory of God so they can love him with all their hearts, minds, and souls—that is, worship him.

Seven, Eight, Nine--Ten?

Nowhere is the devaluation of worship more evident than in our cavalier attitude toward the Lord’s Day. I know Christians who are downright scrupulous in their observance of nine of the commandments, but act as if the command to remember the Sabbath and to keep it holy somehow never even existed.

Although it was the last day of the week, for the Jew the Sabbath was the center, not the end, of the week’s activities. For three days he prepared himself. Then came the Sabbath. Then for three days he meditated on its meaning. As the last, or final, day of the week, the Sabbath was understood to point ahead to the goal toward which history was moving: the great rest of God. When a Jew ceased from his labor, a little eternity invaded his life. He dwelt no longer in the kingdom of necessity, but lived for a few hours in the freedom of the coming kingdom. For this reason, the Sabbath Day’s worship was an eschatological act, an anticipation of and participation in God’s future. The Sabbath told the Jew where he was headed.

When the early Christian church made Sunday the day of worship, it was proclaiming something new about that great final Day Israel looked toward in the Sabbath: the church believed that Day had been inaugurated in the resurrection of Jesus. What had been lived toward in the Sabbath, was now being lived out of in the Lord’s Day. Henceforth there was the New Creation, already here and yet to come—now begun, and yet awaiting its consummation at Christ’s return. Sunday said to the worshiper that all of life flowed out of that reality and to that reality.

Sometimes it seems that when we gather for worship on the Lord’s Day, we are headed somewhere, all right, but not toward the consummation of the kingdom of God. We are headed toward what we will do after we go to church. We are anxious to have worship over and done with. We want it crisp and snappy, and scheduled early, so, as we put it, we can “get on with the day.”

“Get on with what?” I want to know. Get on with family gatherings, recreation, the weekly TV sports extravaganza.

“The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of the glory of God.” Worship on the Lord’s Day is the way, par excellence, that we cultivate the vision that keeps us fully alive. British Baptist Stephen Winward writes, “If all of our days are to be the Lord’s, then we must keep the Lord’s Day.” It is the consecration of the part that makes holy the whole.

We who worship the true, living God would be better, if not completely different, if we worshiped him better. For to worship him as we ought is to become what we ought.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.