“God is spirit,” Jesus tells the woman at the well in John chapter four, “and those who worship him will worship in spirit and in truth.”

We live in an age, not unlike the time of the Old Testament prophet Amos, where people are much interested in the appearance of worship and in the feelings it generates for them.  On any given Sunday, the seeker of worship can call down to the local church and ask when the “worship” takes place. When they arrive they can make their way into the “Worship Center” where the “worship team” under the guidance of the “worship leader” will guide them into the “presence of God”. If, at the close of the “worship service”, the seeker feels happy, even euphoric, excited, refreshed and/or blessed, then the “worship” has been successful. So pervasive and powerful is this paradigm in the modern American church that one can hardly speak of a Sunday morning without being awash in “worship” language and, oftentimes, the most important player in the Sunday morning event is the “worship leader”.

The problem with this understanding of worship is that it is both un-biblical and antithetical to the true meaning of worship. For most Christians, the experience of the Sunday morning service is as far from true worship as they can possibly get.

Here’s why.  Worship is all about God and not at all about us.  Our English word “worship” comes from the Old English “weorthscipe” (worth ship) and meant “to value or hold precious”.  It has come to mean in church parlance, “The ceremonies, prayers, or other religious forms by which the reverent love and devotion accorded a deity, an idol, or a sacred object is expressed.”  In other words, it has become a purely religious word.   The Old Testament word translated “worship” means simply to “bow down”.  It is what slaves did before their masters, what the defeated did before their conquerors, what subjects did before the king.  It is an act of helplessness, of submission, of humiliation.  If you are much like me, you can feel your prideful self rising up against the very idea.  My stiff neck does not like to bow down, even before God.  “Bowing down” was demonstrated in sacrifice.  The whole worship system under the Law was based on sacrifice.  The unblemished lamb, the first fruits were offered because they were highly valued.  Abraham takes his son, his only son, Isaac, whom he loves, to sacrifice him as a burnt offering in obedience to God.  He tells the servants with him to wait at the base of the mountain while he and the boy go up to worship. (Genesis 22)  There is no raucous celebration here, only faith and faithful obedience, only bowing down before the God Abraham trusts more than life.

When Israel became comfortably settled into brick houses, wealthy and secure, worship grew more pretentious.  Both Isaiah and Amos brought God’s message of displeasure at the joyous festivals, feasts and solemn assemblies that passed for worship.  Out of their plenty, the people offered sacrifices that cost them neither loss nor denial.  Their religion was for show – grand and empty.  The prophets spoke God’s unambiguous truth.

“I hate, I despise your feasts,and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.  Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them.  Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.”  Amos 5:21-24

“The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.  Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.”  Isaiah 29:13

“The multitude of your sacrifices— what are they to me?” says the Lord. “I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.

“When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts?

“Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me.

“New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations— I cannot bear your worthless assemblies. Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals I hate with all my being.

“They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.

“When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening.”  Isaiah 1:11-15

 Israel was keeping the Law, obeying the traditions, and having a wonderful, warm and fulfilling religious experience.  But they had ceased to worship.  Their hearts would not bow down before the Lord in obedience.  In the voice of the prophets, their lack of true worship was dramatic.

Your hands are full of blood!  Wash and make yourselves clean.  Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong.  Learn to do right; seek justice.  Defend the oppressed.  Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. Isaiah 1:15-17

 “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Amos 5:24

 New Testament worship does not rely on the sacrifices of animals or grain.  Christ, our great high priest, having offered the supreme and sufficient sacrifice in his own body, completed the sacrificial system of the law.  But the essential attributes of worship remain constant.  God still seeks our “bowing down” above our religious celebration.  Twice Jesus directs the Pharisees to Hosea 6:6, “I desired mercy and not sacrifice.”

“Go and learn what this means,” he tells them.  More gently, he explains to the Samaritan woman by Jacob’s well (John 4) that God desires those who will worship him in spirit and in truth.  This truthful, spiritual worship is described by Paul in Romans 12: 1;  “to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.”  Your daily holy living is the true worship God seeks.  When you choose to go God’s way when you want to go your own, when you make the obedient choice even though disobedience looks beautiful, delicious and wise, when you put off your old self and act in accordance with the new self, created to be like God in all holiness and righteousness, even when no one is looking and no one but God cares – then you are engaged in worship.  When you care for afflicted widows and orphans (in all their various guises), when righteousness and justice flow like rivers in your life, when you offer up your very self in service to God – then you are engaged in worship.

This is not what we have created on a Sunday morning.

We have mixed together the idea of praise with a misconception of worship and then, too often, turned both into idolatry.  When the measure of a successful “Praise and Worship” is how those in attendance feel at the end, it is likely neither praise nor worship.   It is clear that God takes no pleasure in a show of piety, reverence and praise, even when sincere and heartfelt, if it is not accompanied by holy living and righteous behavior. In fact, such displays from people whose lives are not lived in worship are detestable to him.  Woe to the leader who sends people home on a Sunday morning, thinking they are right with God because they feel so holy, but who have felt no challenge to lay their lifestyle on the altar in an act of true worship.  They have bowed down to the idol of their own feelings, but have taken a step away from God.

Tellingly, the one part of a Sunday morning service that actually moves in the direction of worship, the offering, is also the part that is most disliked and most likely to be eliminated in a “Worship” event.

This raises two questions.  First, if Sunday morning is not worship, what is it?  In the best case, it is a “God party”.  It is a time for God’s people to get together and rejoice at what God has done for them.  Call it a celebration.  Bring in a water slide and an inflatable bounce house.  Fill the place with joy and tell all the neighbors that Christians are a happy lot.  Just don’t call it worship if it is focused on the performances, the emotions of the audience, the size of the crowd, or anything other than dying to self and living for God (actually dying to self and living for God, not merely singing or talking about it; we are better at talking about worship than we are at worshipping).

Second, if what we do on Sunday is not worship, what should we be doing?  What did the first century church do?  Those early Christians came together so they could learn.  They were devoted to the teaching of the apostles.  They came together for fellowship.  Luke calls it koinonia – more than just hanging out in the same room or singing the same songs.  This fellowship is deeper.  The word is used to describe the communion meal.  It is the word that describes the collection of funds to support the Jerusalem church in its need.  These were people who suffered and died together.  The first Christians came together to remember the sacrifice of Jesus.  They gathered for the Lord’s Supper, to examine themselves, to proclaim his death and to be in remembrance.  And they came together to pray together.  (Acts 2:42)  This is not a bad pattern to follow.  These activities prepare us to worship.  They help God’s people draw near to God for the means and strength and heart to worship in spirit and truth during those 167 hours of the week when they are not at a “worship service”.