This semester, I’ve had the opportunity to preach to a number of demographic groups: Asian Americans; children; psychologists; and now women! A couple of days ago I was asked to preach for “The Beloved,” which is Biola’s women’s discipleship ministry.
Here is a summary of my sermon:
What is the most important thing in Christianity?
-Some would say the Gospel. After all, we are evangelicals, and the evangel, the Gospel, is at the heart of our faith!
-Others would say the Kingdom of God. This makes sense, as it is the main thing that Jesus preached about.
-Or how about Love? Surely God is love, and love is the two greatest commandments!
-Or let’s take the Ten Commandments themselves — they’re the center of the Law, aren’t they?
-How about missions and evangelism? After all, they encompass all of the above, and they call us to bring that message to the world!
-And finally, some people would say worship.
If you were stranded on a desert island, and you could only have one of these, which would you choose?
I’m a missiologist, and I often argue that missions is the central theme of the Bible, as you can see here. Clearly Biola agrees, since we have a Bible conference every fall and then a missions conference every Spring! Biola is saying that these two are our most important values: Scripture, and witnessing our faith to the world! The Bible is our authority, missions is our command. But Pastor John Piper has a fairly convincing argument when he says this (from his book, Let the Nations Be Glad!):
Missions exists because worship doesn’t… All of history is moving toward one great goal, the white-hot worship of God and his Son among all the peoples of the earth. Missions is not that goal. It is the means. And for that reason it is the second greatest human activity in the world… Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal in missions… The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God… Missions begins and ends in worship.
Missions is for now, worship is for all time. Missions is the second-greatest human activity in the world, worship is the greatest human activity in the world! OK, I’m happy relegating missions to second place especially if #1 is something so important as worship!
However, I think we often misunderstand the word “worship,” though we use it so much.
We use the word “worship” usually to mean:
-Singing songs: We call the musicians the “worship band.” Or if there’s one person, he or she is the “worship leader.” We say that we start with worship (meaning singing) then we move into the rest of the service, as if everything else isn’t worship! [Btw, did you know that, biblically, angels do not sing? In the Greek, the word is always “say” rather than “sing.” However, humans have the privilege of singing. Some theologians speculate as to why this is, and some say it’s because angels don’t know God’s redemption. Once an angel falls, always a fallen angel. However, being rescued from hell is a privilege only of humans and “even angels long to look into these things” (1 Pet. 1:12). So perhaps we humans have a fuller expression of praise for God because we have the possibility of being redeemed!]
-What we do on Sunday morning (or the equivalent, such as this time right now).
We call this whole thing a “worship service.” You can see this expressed in liturgical churches where the person leading the whole service (not the person leading the singing) is called the “worship leader.” For Catholics & Orthodox, worship must include the Lord’s Supper.
-Everything we do!
Col. 3:23-24—“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”
We have a tendency to think that if we want to be truly spiritual, we have to enter full-time ministry. But this is a secular-sacred divide. Everything you do should be full-time ministry, whether it be singing to God or planting your garden or being the CEO of a Fortune-500 company! As such, you can do worship with or without words. If you are living your life for Christ, that is worship. Your whole life should breathe worship.
Worship = Worth-ship
Worship is basically giving God what is due to him. What is glorious deserves to be praised. Is God self-centered? No. It’s like a beautiful painting. It deserves to be praised. I love art, and spent a week this past summer in Paris doing a tour of its many museums: The Louvre, Musee d’Orsay, Marmottan, Delacroix, Rodin, Orangerie, and assorted other museums. One of my favorite paintings is The Virgin of the Rocks by Leonardo da Vinci which hangs in the Louvre (and has a twin in the National Gallery in London). It is a glorious painting, but whether or not people come in to praise it, it is still glorious. Even if we do not say how amazing it is, the painting maintains its majestic beauty. But who misses out when we do not praise it? Us! It is sad for us when people do not acknowledge the painting and its majesty. On a much grander scale, God deserves to be praised. It does not detract from His gloriousness if we do not praise Him, but how impoverished we would be if we did not recognize Him! So, worship is essentially glorifying God’s name because of His worth. Anything you can do to glorify his name, is worship, because He’s worthy! So God is not being self-centered, he is merely getting the praise that He deserves.
If any of you know me, you know my chain of theological influences:
St. Augustine influenced John Calvin, Calvin influenced Jonathan Edwards, Edwards influenced John Piper. And they all influenced me. You know what’s the #1 thing they talk about? Happiness! Augustine calls it felicity. It is our happiness. But now doesn’t it sound like we’re being self-centered? Jonathan Edwards argued that you are happiest when you are doing that for which you are made. And you are made for worship, not for sin! Worship is what you were created to do—like a racecar. The ultimate driving machine thrives on the track, which it is made for. However, it’s not so good in the water!
Another way to answer the charge that God is being self-centered is this: when we worship God, it should bring us the most happiness, so God is actually doing for us the best thing he could! Us worshiping God is like fish swimming or racecars racing. It’s what’s we’re built for. And God is doing us the biggest favor by putting us in the environment in which we thrive.
And to answer the charge that this would make us self-centered, consider this illustration by John Piper—what if he brought flowers to his wife on their anniversary, and when she says how wonderful it is, he replies, “Honey, it’s my duty!” Not very romantic, is it? But what if he said: “There isn’t anything that would make me happier than loving you!” What if she responded, “Oh, you’re being so self-centered! All you think about is your own happiness!” But no, the more he delights in loving his wife, the more she is honored! John Piper’s happiness, and his wife being honored, are directly proportional to each other! It’s our felicity and God’s glory.
Consider this: every attitude we do comes from delighting in God, even repentance.
Remember in Romans 2, the Apostle Paul says, “Is it not your kindness that leads us to repentance?” Not fear! Fear of the Lord leads to wisdom, but the kindness of God leads to repentance.
I always thought, the best way to get someone to do something is to make them want to do it! I remember I was riding a bus once, and the bus driver could have said: “Fasten your seat belts, because it’s the LAW.” But no, instead he said, “You might want to buckle up, because I’m a crazy driver!” That got all of us buckling up really fast!
In some traditions, the offering is every bit as much worship as the singing. That gives a new meaning to “put your money where your mouth is”! In some African American churches, people dance as they come down the aisle and deposit their money in the offering basket. Not that they’re showing off, but rather they’re joyous to be giving it all away—to Jesus! Because, after all, Jesus gave it all away to us!
In light of this Advent season, I titled this sermon, “O Come Let Us Adore Him.”
I think of Mary, Jesus’ mother, fondly cradling her child. I think of the shepherds who heard the angelic pronouncement. I think of the wise men from the East who later came to lavish gifts on Jesus. But what about outside this narrative? Surely worship isn’t limited to the events surrounding Jesus’ birth?
As a missiologist, I’ve traveled all around the world, and one of the things that I’ve noticed is that women are often the most worshipful, no matter what culture/context we are in. We could be in the U.S., we could be in Japan, we could be in Kenya, there are more women in churches than men, and women tend to be more prayerful than men. In Protestant missions history, women usually outnumbered men 2:1 on the mission field. Why is this so, since most societies in world history tend to be male-dominated and patriarchal? I think that it’s because of Jesus’ upside-down kingdom: the last shall be first, and the ones who are most humble are most exalted. You see this all over the Bible too.
Women in the Bible
-Women were the first people to see Jesus after his resurrection. I think Jesus appears to those who have greater spiritual eyes. The women were the first to see Jesus. They “got it” when the male disciples were too blind or stupid to get it. Mary Magdalene (unlike what Dan Brown thinks, Mary Magdalene did not marry Jesus, but she was one of his most faithful disciples!) and the other Mary quickly recognized who Jesus was, and their immediate response was to worship and to tell others about Jesus!
-So essentially the women were the first worshipers of, and the first missionaries about, the resurrected Christ. In contrast, Thomas had to feel the holes in Jesus’s hands, feet, and side before he would worship!
-Women were the only Gentiles (Ruth & Rahab, and Bathsheba was married to a Hittite) in the genealogy of Jesus! This is remarkable since Jewishness comes from the mother.
-I think about the widow’s mite (Mark 12:38-44; Luke 21:1-4), the woman who sacrificed more than anyone else because she gave out of her poverty rather than her wealth.
-And there was the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:1-42) who was Jesus’ first Gentile convert! She is the first person to whom he reveals himself as “Messiah.”
-Jesus called the Syro-Phoenician woman in Mark 7:24-29 a woman of “great faith”! (the only other person that Jesus says this to was the centurion). Why did she have great faith? Because she said she’d rather, like a dog, eat the crumbs that fell from the Master’s table.
And there are many other examples of amazing women in the Bible!
Two Stories of Jesus’ Anointing
I’m going to focus on two women who anointed Jesus.
There’s Luke 7:36-50, where Jesus is anointed by a sinful woman.
She loves much because she has been forgiven much.
Compare it to Jesus’ anointing at Bethany which is in (Matthew 26:6-13; Mark 14:1-11; John 12:1-10). A lot of people think this is the same thing, and the two anointings have often been conflated. But they are different stories. However, they both have a woman anointing Jesus.
Jesus’ title:
In Greek: “Christ” (it’s not Jesus’ last name! It’s a title, more properly, Jesus the Christ).
In Hebrew: “Messiah”
In English: “Anointed”
It’s the same word that was used of Saul and David when they became kings!
This is worship—to anoint! Because this is a recognition that Jesus is King, and that is worth-ship, because you are acknowledging the King for his worthiness!
The anointing at Bethany is significant because it takes place after Lazarus’s resurrection! And the anointing happens right before the Triumphal Entry! In light of Jesus conquering death, and entering Jerusalem as the coming King, he is worthy to be praised! These two events frame his Messiahship.
It is significant that Mary and the sinful woman were two of the first people to recognize Jesus as Messiah! Of course the Samaritan woman at the well was told that by Jesus, and Peter also confessed it earlier. But these two women acknowledged it by their action! This is worship without words. Also, Mary anoints Jesus openly, in public, unlike Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea who later prepare Jesus’s body for burial secretly for fear of the Jews! (John 19:38)
Finally, worship is eschatological.
It prefigures the end times, when “every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”
-Salvation. Think about Matthew 25, the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. Jesus said, whatever you’ve done it unto the least of them, you’ve done it unto me. Now you might say, what about Judas’ objection in the anointing at Bethany? This money could’ve been given to the poor! And Jesus says, “You will always have the poor.” So some people object, this seems to suggest that worship is more important than serving the poor. But actually Jesus says, “But you will not always have me.” Obviously this is not referring to Jesus’ spiritual presence but his physical presence. Remember the difference between Jesus’ disciples and John the Baptist’s disciples, who fast? Jesus says, “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them?” So Jesus’ physical presence, his incarnation, necessitates a different type of behavior. But when Jesus is taken up to heaven, things change. In the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, Jesus equates loving the poor with worshiping him! Do you ever think that worshiping God has something to do with how you treat your neighbor? The first and second commandments are intimately linked.
-Justice. Worship comes from the words “worth-ship”, i.e. ascribing worth to the One who is truly worthy, or giving value in accordance with how valuable someone or something is. In that sense, worship is ultimately justice, giving someone what they deserve.
-Sabbath. Augustine talks about this a lot, as does the writer of the book of Hebrews. We often think of worship as being a primary activity on our Sabbath day, but that temporal Sabbath is merely an earthly reflection of that greater Sabbath, that eternal rest which we look forward to, in which we will spend the rest of eternity with God, in absolute felicity, happiness, delight—this is worship!
Post-sermon Discussion Questions:
1) The word “worship” in English does not exist as a single word in Greek or Hebrew. Rather, “worship” is described by a number of words. How are these expressed in your life? Are there any areas of your life that you feel are lacking in any of these? Is worship primarily an activity or an attitude, or equally both?
leitourgia (Greek)—a service or ministry of the priests relative to the prayers and sacrifices offered to God, a gift or benefaction for the relief of the needy (e.g. Luke 1:23, 2 Cor. 9:12); lit. “the work of the people” from which we get “liturgy”
‘abad (Hebrew)—religious ceremony, service, work (e.g. Ex. 13:5)
latreia (Greek)—worship, service, rite, sacrifice (e.g. Rom. 12:1)
proskuneo (Greek)—prostrate myself before, do reverence to (e.g. Matt. 28:9,17)
shachach (Hebrew)—bowing down (e.g. Gen. 22:5)
thusia (Greek)—sacrifice, self-sacrifice in the service of others (e.g. Eph. 5:2)
2) How do you, in the present day, “anoint” Jesus, i.e. acknowledge him as Christ/Messiah (the Anointed One)? Another way to say this is, in what ways do you practically worship (ascribe worth to) Jesus? Has today’s sermon changed how you worship or think about worship?