Who is the object of our worship?
“True worship involves reverential human acts of submission and homage before the Devine Sovereign in response to His gracious revelation of Himself and in oaccord with His will.” -Daniel Block
By this definition, who we worship helps to define true worship.
Who do we worship?
Don’t we worship so many things? In our culture, we adore celebrities, we cheer at football games, we raise our hands at concerts, and we work till our hands are bloody so that we can have wealth. Surely, God didn’t say that we couldn’t do these things… Surely God didn’t mean that we couldn’t nurish ourselves with the fruit from that tree… See where I am going here? There is something about relying on God that puts in the correct posture for worship. Eve could have eaten from any other tree. There are countless belssings that we can feast on. But we want that one thing. And the enemy wants us to have it. But, I can promise you, whatever he is tempting you with, it’s nothing compared to the glory that God wants to bless you with. It’s nothing compared to His presence. We will talk about that a little more, but first, let’s look at “false worhsip”
If we worship something other than the Devine Sovereign, we are commiting “false worship.” Another way to say that is that we are worship a false god or an idol. That can be anything. We have all kinds of idols. All kinds of imposters. Things that want to challenge the wealth of blessings that God gives his children.
Idols want to give you “real satisfaction”. They want to offer “security”. They want you to have “real fun.” “Real joy.” They want to keep you “safe”. They want you to feel needed, loved, and secure. But most of all, idols lie. They promise you all of these things, but they don’t have the ability to give them to you. Idols steal our worship and quite literally steal from you everything that they promise you. Who has a vested interest in stealing from you, lying to you, and ultimately destroying you? ((Thief scripture)) There is one idol with many faces. Let me take a moment to plead with you. Do not give him the worship he jealous of. It does not belong to him. He is not able to give you the desires of your heart, no matter how many promises he makes, he will break them. He will counterfit the gifts of God, and it will be convincing. But as sweet as they taste, they will trun bitter in the end and cause us to be sick and malnourished.
This is why the object of our worship helps to define true worship. Worship is something that we are always doing. We were literally made for it. But if we aren’t careful, the object of our worship can change. When eve took the fruit, she didnt stop worshiping. She just wasn’t worship truly, because the object of her worship changed. She stopped looking at grace, and started looking at a lie that was handed to her on a silver platter. The lie that God didn’t walt the best for her. The lie that He was holding out on her. We can relate, can’t we? Imposters come. They appeal to us in our deepest needs and insecurities. And without a second thought, we say, “Sure. Here. You can have my worship. Just give me what I want. Just give me what I need.” One of our first mistakes is that we think that worship is just there to comfort us with things that we want. This kind of thinking makes us vulnerable to lies. We have to be fixed on the real thing. Don’t we know that nothing else comes close?
God in his grace reveals himself to us and even goes as far as promising to heal us of our idols. ((Scripture and story)) What other god does this? The revelation of Himself is enough. We breathe in his good, humble and righteous character, and breathe out, “This is what I was made for.” It fills us in ways that nothing else can. It fills is in the depths where idols have tried to ruin us and cause us to decay and it surges new life and healing to those places.
There is no competition.
When we experience this, what is our reaction? Submission! Surender! Homage! -And gladly. I once was dead and now, I’m not. When we step into his will with acts of submission an homage, we worship truly. Instead of only worshiping for blessings, we find that we are worshiping because he is diserving of it. It is a diferent experience than worshiping something that is not deserving. When we worship truly, we are as we were created to be. We are in alignment with our true purpose. Things are as they should be and there is an ease to it that our idols could never truly give us.
Truth has to be on our minds. At one point in my life when the enemy was attacking me full force, there was so much confusion. I literally wrote the word truth on my hand every day for months. The Lord God was teaching me to take every thought captive. To measure it against Truth. Slowely and sometimes quickly, the confusion faded and I could measure thoughts against the truth and decide to worship. As I went through this process, He was with me every step of the way. Maybe you need to write the word truth on your hand. Or maybe you need to find some other way to remind yourself about the importance of truth. But dig for it like your life depends on it, because it does.
There is a reason the reading of the Torah was always an element of biblical patterns of worship. Truth. The word of God and the reading of scripture is an element of true worship. Know the truth and the ((truth shall set you free.)) Idols captivate, but Truth liberates. ((Set the captives free))(( life more abundantly. ))
I love Daniel Block’s teaching on worship in For The Glory of God: Recovering A Biblical Theology of Worship. I highly recommend this book if you are interested in exploring worship theology. He really expands on this teaching and breaks it down in bite-sized pieces.
