What is Worship?

We’ll start in the Old Testament with the most common Hebrew word translated as worship, which is the verb shachah (pronounced “shaw-khaw”; pro-tip – clear your throat to make the “ch” sound). It occurs 172 times in the Old Testament, and in addition to being translated as some form of “to worship,” it is also commonly translated as some form of “to bow down.” In fact, most concordances give “to bow down” as the primary definition of shachah. In quite a few cases, it’s even used alongside some other word that also has to do with bowing or lowering oneself. So to shachah is not just to sing a song or say certain nice things to God, but involves the imagery of physically lowering oneself as a sign of respect.

Moving on to the New Testament, the most common Greek word for worship is the verb proskuneó (pronounced “pros-koo-neh-o”). It occurs sixty times in the New Testament and the technical definition is “to do reverence to,” but because that’s awkward in modern English, it is most often translated simply as some form of “to worship” or “to bow down.” Sound familiar? One additional detail about this word is that it’s a compound word made from the two Greek words pros, meaning “toward,” and kyneo, meaning “to kiss.” Because of this, scholars have generally concluded that proskuneó is meant to invoke the image of someone bowing down before a king or ruler in order to kiss the ground in front of them. You might have seen something like this in a TV show or a movie set in the ancient world. That’s the image that the word proskuneó is trying to conjure up.

So why are any of these details important? From these two words, we get an image throughout the Old and New Testament of worship as bowing down before God. Whenever the biblical authors talk about worship, they are not talking about a set of religious practices or singing the Psalms. Rather, when they talk about worship, they are referring to the way that we stand (or bow) before God. In other words, for the biblical authors, worship is not an action, but a posture. That gets us closer to answering our original question, but now the question is: What is a posture of worship?

I would guess that when most people hear the word posture, they think about whether someone slouches or not, and maybe how that conveys respect or lack thereof. I think about how I was often told before some kind of important interview to sit up, maintain eye contact, and just generally communicate respect through my body language. An example that comes to mind is the military. Each branch teaches early on that when an officer of a certain rank enters an area, anyone of a lower rank is required to stand at attention and salute until that officer permits them to relax. Now this is probably not quite as extreme as bowing before a king, and is certainly less striking than kissing the ground at their feet, but the message is the same: “This person has authority over me, and I am expressing respect for that authority.” Similarly, we can show respect and honor to God through our physical posture, and many churches still recognize that how we stand physically before God matters. A lot of traditional churches still have kneelers, which are cushions attached to the backs of the pews where worshipers are invited to (you guessed it) kneel at specific times throughout their services. Even here at FBC Tecumseh, we make a point before the musical portion of our service to invite people to kneel as they pray to prepare their hearts for worship.

However, we recognize that a certain physical posture alone is not enough for proper worship. When we think about worshiping through music, there are many postures we find acceptable for expressing worship and acknowledge that worship may look different for any given person. Jesus addresses a similar issue in John 4 when he speaks to the Samaritan woman drawing water from a well. For some reason which isn’t immediately clear, the woman expresses confusion over the proper place to worship, and in part of his response Jesus gives us the well-known line, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:24 ESV, emphasis mine) So though our physical posture, location, etc. are important things to consider, they are not God’s primary focus in our worship of Him. Instead, if I can offer my own interpretation of verse 24, God is concerned with the posture of our hearts (spirit) and minds (truth). With that, we can get a little closer to what it means to adopt a posture of worship. To do that, let’s apply what we learned earlier from those Greek and Hebrew words, starting with the mind, building up to the heart, and finally arriving at a holistic view of worship which encompasses our whole state of being.

What does it mean to have the right posture with respect to our minds? I think a helpful illustration of this should look like is found in Genesis 2. In this story, God gives humanity dominion over the rest of creation, with the following rule: “You may freely eat fruit from every tree of the orchard, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17 NET) As we know, humanity fails to obey this charge and, as a result, they lose the privileges of living in the garden and ruling the earth. But this dilemma about eating fruit also represents a choice that all humanity must make on a daily basis. The choice is this: humans must choose whether to trust God’s wisdom and receive knowledge of good and evil from Him, or to take knowledge and wisdom for ourselves and define them according to our own standards. To put it in more relevant terms, we have the choice to bow down with our minds and submit to receiving knowledge and wisdom from God, or to attempt to define those things for ourselves. Worship of our mind, then, is choosing to trust God’s revelation about the world and our place in it. This revelation is found first in the Bible, in which God communicates and tells the story of His people. But God also reveals much to us through the disciplines of the mind. He reveals certain knowledge about Creation through the disciplines of science and mathematics, and has gifted us with the ability to understand certain abstract truths through disciplines like philosophy. But as followers of Jesus, we acknowledge that all of these forms of revelation come from God first, and true and complete understanding only comes when we use these gifts in submission to Him. Solomon, one of the authors of Proverbs, captures all of this in one of his more popular sayings. “The beginning of wisdom is to fear the Lord, and acknowledging the Holy One is understanding.” (Proverbs 9:10 NET)

Now, as we bow down to God with our minds by trusting Him for our understanding of Creation and our place in it, we can also bow down with our hearts by trusting Him with our very selves. Worship of the heart is this: giving my entire identity over to God in an ultimate act of trust and submission, recognizing that His will for my life is better than anything I could come up with. At face value, this may sound relatively simple. At its core, this is the basic message of the Gospel that many of us have heard for most of our lives. But as those of us who have tried to live it out can attest, it’s not simple and it’s definitely not easy. The Old Testament character Job is a testament to this truth.

By anyone’s standard, Job was a righteous man that even God does not find fault in. He trusted God in every way that we have already talked about, yet he ended up losing nearly everything, including all of his children and every bit of wealth he had to his name. On top of that, he never gets an answer as to why any of these things happened to him. After many pleas to God and a lot of arguing with some less than stellar friends, God shows up to Job and gives him something approaching an answer, but which is really a non-answer. As my favorite Bible scholar, Tim Mackie, puts it, God takes Job on a virtual tour of the universe. He shows Job great beasts that he couldn’t have imagined, as well as all these tiny details about the world that Job would have spent his whole life overlooking. Yet God tells Job that He is constantly mindful of all of these bits of Creation and daily provides for all these countless creatures. His response to Job throughout this revelation is the repeated question, “Where were you when I…?” Now I recount this story to bring us to Job’s final response, which I believe is a brutally honest picture that captures this heart posture of worship. Job finally says to God,

“I know that you can do anything,
and no one can stop you.
You asked, ‘Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorance?’
It is I—and I was talking about things I knew nothing about,
things far too wonderful for me.
You said, ‘Listen and I will speak!
I have some questions for you,
and you must answer them.’
I had only heard about you before,
but now I have seen you with my own eyes.
I take back everything I said,
and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance.” (Job 42:2-6 NLT)

In the end, Job doesn’t really understand. God doesn’t provide a systematic answer as to why Job lost his family and his wealth. He doesn’t give Job a convoluted line of reasoning that shows how He is going to use this experience to “strengthen Job’s testimony.” All Job gets is the reality that, as wise and righteous as he is, he’s not as wise or as righteous as God. The kicker, which you should take with a grain of salt, is that Job is not all that happy about this. There is an emerging line of scholarship (as I said, take this with a grain of salt) which believes that Job is dissatisfied with God. He would still rather have an explanation of what the point of all this suffering is and why God allowed it. But, again, God doesn’t give him that. Yet, Job recognizes that God is still wise and, even though he’s not happy about it, ultimately submits his life to God. So he worships. He doesn’t pull out his book of Psalms and sing his suffering away. He doesn’t thank God for this opportunity to prove his faith and strengthen his testimony. All Job does – all he can do – is acknowledge that God is wise and that God has authority over all of Creation, including Job’s own life.

I know that when I began this conversation, it sounded like I was going to arrive at a more systematic, practical answer for what worship is. But as I reflect on Job, I’m reminded that worship is not that simple. It’s not some mystical function where you put in X-attitude/action and it produces Y-response. Worship is submission to God. In that sense, it’s simple. But the reality is that every person must trust God for themselves, and obedience will lead different people to different extremes. Many followers of Jesus, in submission to God, have already been called to lay down their lives, and many more will answer that call. That is their “true and proper worship,” as Paul puts it in Romans 12. For others, submitting their lives to God will lead them through a relatively peaceful life serving their communities and their local church, and that is just as much true and proper worship as losing your life for the Gospel. So I can’t give you a clear, prescribed method for worshiping God in your daily life that applies to every person. Instead, you, like Job, must acknowledge God’s wisdom and authority over your life. You must daily choose to live in obedience and submission to Him, whatever that looks like for you. And you must trust Him for understanding, also trusting that He is still wise and good, even if He chooses not to grant understanding to you. The best advice I can give is to make Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane your daily prayer. Father, not my will but Yours be done.