Pensamientos para hoy (afterthought for today)
Praise and Worship
Worship of God is the core of our faith towards God, and the Bible gives us clear instructions about how to worship. Biblical worship is described as prayer, sacrifices, praise, singing, and thanksgiving. One of the primarily ways to worship God is to come before God and bow down to him in humility and prayer. David says, "Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker (Psalm 95:6)."1 Another important way to worship God is to bring him an offering of sacrifice. Joshua says, "We will worship the LORD at his sanctuary with our burnt offerings, sacrifices and fellowship offerings (Joshua 22:27)." Today we no longer make sacrifices of burnt offerings but we do present our tithes to God and we offer him praise. As the Bible says: "Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name. And do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices God is pleased (Hebrews 13:15-16)." Another way, therefore, to worship God is through our joyful praise. The Bible says: "Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs (Psalm 100:2)." We praise God by coming before him with thanksgiving, joyful singing, joyful shouting, and dancing. The psalmist says: "Let them praise His name with dancing; let them sing praises to Him with timbrel and lyre (Psalm 149:3)." And David says: "I sacrifice with shouts of joy; I will sing and make music to the LORD (Psalm 27:6)." The Bible gives us many examples of how God's people worshipped God. One of the first examples is when King David made arrangements for the people to worship God. We read that "David spoke to the chiefs of the Levites to appoint their relatives the singers, with instruments of music, harps, lyres, loud-sounding cymbals, to raise sounds of joy (1 Chronicles 15:16)." Next, King Solomon arranged for the people to worship God:All the Levites who were musicians--Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun and their sons and relatives--stood on the east side of the altar, dressed in fine linen and playing cymbals, harps and lyres. They were accompanied by 120 priests sounding trumpets. The trumpeters and singers joined in unison, as with one voice, to give praise and thanks to the LORD. Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments, they raised their voices in praise to the LORD and sang: "He is good; his love endures forever." Then the temple of the LORD was filled with a cloud, and the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the temple of God (2 Chronicles 5:12-14).King Hezekiah also arranged for the people to worship God.
The whole assembly bowed in worship, while the singers sang and the trumpeters played. All this continued until the sacrifice of the burnt offering was completed. Now at the completion of the burnt offerings, the king and all who were present with him bowed down and worshiped. Moreover, King Hezekiah and the officials ordered the Levites to sing praises to the LORD with the words of David and Asaph the seer. So they sang praises with joy, and bowed down and worshiped (2 Chronicles 29:28-30).Celebration is also an important aspect of worship. Although most of the biblical references to celebration are connected to the annual feasts especially the feast of Tabernacles and Passover, David tells us that we should celebrate daily before the Lord: "Every day I will praise you and extol your name for ever and ever. . . They will celebrate your abundant goodness and joyfully sing of your righteousness (Psalm 145:2, 7)." The Bible tells us also that we need to have the proper attitude when we worship him. Probably the most frequent of all attitudes of worship mentioned in the Bible is the attitude of joy: The Bible commands us to: "Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD, let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation (Psalm 95:1)." How you express your joy to the Lord is between you and the Lord, but make no mistake, if you come on Sunday morning and your heart is not filled with joy, praise to God, thanksgiving, and awesome reverence; then something is missing from your worship. Jesus told us that we must also worship in spirit and truth:
A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.(John 4:23-24)."To worship in the spirit means to worship sincerely from the heart not simply with empty words. God commands us to praise him saying: "Sing to the LORD, you saints of his; praise his holy name (Psalm 30:4)" So then, the next time we come to worship God, let us have an attitude of thanksgiving and gratitude, humility, reverence, and awe. As the writer to the Hebrews tells us: "Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe (Hebrews 12:28)." And always remember that worship is good and pleasant. As David says, "Praise the LORD. How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise him! (Psalm 147:1)." Praising God with joy in my heart, Pastor Steve May 9, 2008
Footnotes 1 Psalm 95:6, NASB (New American Standard Bible). Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations taken from the NASB.
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