“O Come, let us worship and bow down…….” (Psalm 95:6).
The Septuagint version says “fall down before Him” and that describes exactly what happens when we truly worship God. Firstly, we are told to “come”, that is, come to Him, putting aside every distraction that exists, blotting out the world from our thoughts, emptying our hearts, minds and souls of all but Christ. Then we must see God as He is, not as we imagine Him to be, but as the Word declares Him to be. True worship depends upon our seeing God as He truly is; if we do, we will also see ourselves as we truly are; nothing will bring us to fall upon our faces with more alacrity! The Septuagint version of this verse goes on to say; “let us weep before God our maker”; and why not, if we see Him as He is, and see us as we are.
There is not much bowing down or weeping in what passes for worship today. “True worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth”, Jesus said (John 4:23). We worship God in spirit because we were created as spirits, and then given a body; we are not bodies with a spirit and our worship must come from the spirit, not the body. Further, the truth is that we are fallen creatures, fallen so tragically far from the ideal that God created in the first instance. Understanding these things is basic to truly worshipping God.
From God’s perspective, no worship is wholly pleasing to Him unless there is nothing displeasing in the worshipper; that is not to say that God demands a perfect ideal of worship, all or nothing, because man being what he is, that would deny God any worship at all. But to truly worship God, we must understand it as a priestly sacrifice.
In the priesthood of all believers, the sacrifice of worship begins with a faith that is lived, and a heart-love for God; for true worship seeks union with its Beloved, so as to close the gap between the worshipper’s heart and the God that it adores. There will follow loyalty, obedience and high conduct of life; all of these must be regarded as burnt offerings to God. The supreme act of worship is the sacrifice of self; this is the holy example set by the Lord of Glory.
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