WORSHIP!!

Jack Hayford, writer of the ever popular ‘Majesty’, says God wants us to ‘show some skin’. Are you ready for physical worship?

If man is to gain meaning and purpose and direction for fulfillment in his life, then worshiping God on God’s terms is the central point of all understanding. Intellectually, we worship God with a language of worship. Our emotions are involved in worship with appropriate humility.

But what about our bodies in worship? Just the other day I was with one of the executives in our congregation. He’s a man who works a great deal with other executives. He represents one of today’s best known corporations world-wide and he travels to help them solve their problems. I watched him in one of their seminars. As he began the seminar with these coolheaded, calculating executives, he said, ‘I’m going to ask for your response. I’m going to want you to show me some skin.’ What he meant was that he wanted them to signal with their hands when they responded. He wanted them to actuate and activate their responses. When we come to worship the Lord, I think He would say the same thing to us, ‘Show Me some skin.’ The Lord wants us to demonstrate our response to Him, and He wants us to use our bodies to do so.

The Way of Worship

What are the similarities and the differences between the Old Testament and New Testament worship? The Bible is very explicit that our bodies are to be involved in worship. In Psalm 50:5 the Lord says, ‘Gather My saints together to Me, those who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.’ In the Old Testament, worshippers offered sacrifices of animals and grain, but that is not all that was required. The worshipper also came with praise and thanksgiving. Psalm 107:22 is one passage where we are explicitly told that thanksgiving is a sacrifice to the Lord.

The New Testament also speaks of the need for sacrifice. Of course, the Old Testament system of sacrifice for atonement was fulfilled when Jesus Christ hung on the cross for us. He satisfied the justice of God with the sacrifice of Himself. It is through Him that we are granted the privilege of coming into God’s presence in worship. But don’t make any mistake - there are still sacrifices and the New Testament describes them. Five times the New Testament speaks of sacrifices, exclusive of the numerous references to the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus for our sin. These five Scriptures all refer to actions or actual physical things.

In Philippians 2:17 Paul speaks of himself as being a sacrifice. When Paul wrote to the Philippians he was in prison and he knew he could be facing death. This is perhaps the most dramatic example of sacrifice. There are people in the world who face having to make that literal sacrifice of their lives, but all of us can apply that verse to our lives along with Roman 12:1: ‘I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.’

We are directed to no less than complete sacrifice of ourselves to the Lord. When we gain that perspective we realize that all other that all other sacrifices are contained in that one. Further on in Philippians, Paul speaks about a gift that the believers had sent to him, and he says that was an acceptable sacrifice in the eyes of God. This verse echoes the sentiments of the writers of Hebrews who tell us to ‘do good and share, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.’

(Hebrews 13:16) Our giving and service, both to those who preach the Gospel and to those in need, is a sacrifice to God.

Finally, Hebrews 13:15 tells us that the fruit of our lips is a sacrifice of praise unto our God. This sacrifice is perhaps the most obvious one to include in an article on worship, but it is important to see that all of these sacrifices are acts of worship. Remember that the basic meaning of ‘worship’ is ‘ascribe worth unto’. Therefore, presenting our bodies, our service and our praise is worship - acknowledging Him as God Most High.

The Words of Worship

There are six Hebrew words which have and tell what physical forms of worship latent in their meaning. In the Old Testament, and particularly in Psalms, we are repeatedly told to praise the Lord. However, within those commands to praise are connotations as to how we are to praise. Let’s look at some of the Hebrew words for praise and discover what they tell us about the physical aspect of worship. The two words yadah and todaw are closely related words, and they account for many of the times the word ‘praise’ appears in our Bibles. One example is in Psalm 54:6, ‘I will freely sacrifice to You; I will praise Your name, O Lord, for it is good.’ In that verse the word yadah is translated ‘praise’, but both of these words have inherent in their meaning the idea ‘to hold out the hands’. The word todaw also contains the implication that the stretching out of the hands was to be done with the congregation or as part of a choir of worshippers.

Another commonly used word for praise was hawlal; in fact it is the word that is part of the word ‘hallelujah’. This word means to boast or rave and it indicates sincere and deep thanks. In the Old Testament it is frequently used in the plural form, again indicating that praise was to be expressed in the congregation.

There are three other words we can study briefly. Shebakh or Shawbakh are translated ‘praise’ or ‘praised’ a total of ten times, and the primary idea behind the word is to praise with a loud voice. The word zawmar is translated ‘praise’ in Psalm 21:13 where it occurs in
conjunction with singing. This is a logical translation because zawmar means ‘to praise with a musical instrument or with singing’. Finally,barak is translated ‘praise’ on a few occasions. It contains the idea of bowing of kneeling in homage to God.

The Work of Worship

There are five physical expressions of worship which are shown in scripture. We have now seen that our sacrifice is to involve our physical bodies, and the words used in the Old Testament imply that physical action accompanies praise. But throughout scripture there is additional direct reference as to how we should use our bodies to worship the Lord. It begins with the sacrifice if our lips.

The Lord says, ‘I want you to offer the sacrifices of your lips, which are praises to your God.’ The Bible tells us to sing, speak and even shout at times. This isn’t rank fanaticism or silliness, any more than singing is just pointless redundancy.

The speaking is not intended to be mindless babbling, but an understood expression of worship and praise spoken aloud to Him. In the book of Psalms alone, we are directed to speak or shout more than 50 times, and that doesn’t include the numerous commands to sing. The Lord wants us to speak to Him - to use our voices and our minds in praise.

Physical expressions of praise keep us honest, open and committed. There are many ways that the Scripture shows us to praise with our bodies. We kneel before His presence - that’s a physical exercise. Psalm 95:6 says, ‘Let us kneel before the Lord our maker.’ Philippians 2:10 tells us that every knee will bow to the Lord Jesus. Hands are also often used in praise. We saw that two of the most common Hebrew words for praise indicated that hands be stretched out. Psalm 63:4 directs us to lift our hands, and Paul says, ‘I desire that the men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands…’ (1 Timothy 2:8) Hands are clapped in a declaration of His triumph. ‘Oh clap your hands, all you peoples!’, the psalmist says (Psalm 47:1).

Our heads may be bowed in reverence (Genesis 24:26) or raised up in a sense of releasing joy from the condemnation of our past (Psalm 27:6). But the open acknowledgment of verbal praise and the physical declaration of acclaim is that sacrifice of worship which involves our bodies. Intellectually, we come with the language of worship; emotionally we come with joy and gladness, yet with humility and obedience.

But don’t ever suppose that worship pre-empts the sacrifice of a physical presentation of ourselves. Worship with you body; it is a sacrifice pleasing to the Lord.

This is drawn from Exploring Worship (Sovereign World). It is reproduced here with the kind permission of the publishers.