Limapela Education Project
Faith in Action
This project aims to provide quality education to children in Zambia's Copperbelt Province.
Since God gave us life and knows what is best for us, the supreme purpose of human life is to live for God and find fulfilment in serving him. Offering our lives in service of God is the broadest definition of worship, which Rob Yule discussed at Greyfriars Presbyterian Church, Mt. Eden, Auckland on 6 March 2005, when he introduced the first purpose of the 'Forty Days of Purpose' programme, 'You were planned for God's pleasure'
The simplest and best definition of worship is 'worthship': recognizing or acknowledging someone's worth. Christians distinguish the praise that is due to a human being because of their achievements, from the worship due to God as the creator of the universe. For example, we can rightly praise the consummate artistry of a musician like Mozart or a painter like Rembrandt.
Worship is giving honour where honour is due. When we worship God, we are giving God the honour that he deserves for what he has done. God deserves worship, because he is the creator and originator of the universe and the one who brought us into existence. 'You are our Lord and God, you are worthy of glory and honour and power, because you made all the universe and it was only by your will that everything was made and exists.' (Revelation 4: 11, JB)
God deserves our worship not only because of what he has done, but also because of who he is. 'The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.' (Deuteronomy 6: 4-5, NIV). This is the central Jewish confession of faith. Jesus endorsed it when he answered a young lawyer's question about what is the most important commandment. Jesus reply was: 'Love the Lord you God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.' (Matthew 22: 37-38, NIV)
One of the great historical strengths of our Presbyterian and Reformed heritage is in being a God-centred Christian community. This is expressed in the famous opening question and answer in the Westminster Shorter Catechism. The question, 'What is the chief end of man?' has as its answer, 'Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him for ever.'
The supreme purpose of our life - its 'chief end' - is to glorify God. To 'glorify' is to extol or praise God for his intrinsic worth - giving him the honour and recognition that he deserves. This is our main purpose in life: to worship God, to give God the honour that he merits as the only God, and the origin of everything that exists. Life's main purpose is to give honour to God, who is worthy of highest honour.
Many people think that worship is a kind of optional activity, like a hobby, a pastime, or a recreation. It's something that religious people do, but not something that everyone should do.
This is a great misunderstanding of worship. To worship God is simply to acknowledge the true purpose and goal of our life. Conversely, to reject God is to reject our supreme joy and fulfilment.
Jesus told a story about a self-centred individual, from a cultured rural family, who demanded his family inheritance, and set off for the bright lights of a big city to make his fortune. He lived it up and for a while his life was a roaring success. While the money lasted he had many friends. But then he fell on hard times. We're not told how it happened, because that's not the point of the story. The bottom may have dropped out of the stock market. His partner might have left him for another man. He might have ended up with a sexually-transmitted disease. We're not told. But what we are told is that he ended up working for a pig farmer, so hungry that he that he wanted to eat the food scraps fed to the pigs. (Luke 15: 11-16).
He began in a happy and cultured family-and ended living like an animal. That is the point of Jesus' story. Rejecting his father, his family, and his home, he became little more than a beast. Jesus story is a parable, a mirror of many people's lives. When we reject God our father and originator, we don't choose fulfilment. We choose a downward path of self-destruction, down and down, to the level of the animal.
The prophet Jeremiah warns those who deny or reject God: 'Is it really me they spite - it is the LORD who speaks - is it not in fact themselves, to their own confusion?' (Jeremiah 7: 19, JB).
The Bible often warns about worshipping idols. An 'idol' is any substitute for God. An idol is something less than God that we put in first place in our lives. An idol is something not worthy of worthship, an object intrinsically warranting being given the chief priority in our lives. Paul in his letter to the Romans describes this as 'foolish' and 'futile', because it puts lesser things in place of the greater, created things in place of the Creator, enticing us from our true fulfilment into deceived and depraved lifestyles that cannot ultimately satisfy.
Paul says of such people: 'They know about God, but they don't honour him or even thank him. Their thoughts are useless, and their stupid minds are in the dark. They claim to be wise, but they are fools. They don't worship the glorious and eternal God. Instead, they worship idols that are made to look like humans who cannot live for ever.' (Romans 1: 21-22, CEV).
The Bible puts this very simply: 'Worshippers of other gods will have much sorrow.' (Psalm 16: 4, CEV). Putting something less than God in place of God doesn't bring fulfilment. It brings unhappiness, much unhappiness.
By contrast, when we worship God, when we put God in first place, we discover the secret of our true purpose and fulfilment in life. People often think of God as a spoil sport, out to cramp our style and deprive us of joy in life. Nothing could be further from the truth. God is our chief joy, the deepest, most lasting satisfaction we can ever experience. When we choose God, we choose our supreme joy and ultimate fulfilment in life:
'You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.' (Psalm 16: 11, NIV).
'Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.' (Psalm 37: 4, NIV).
This is well expressed in the hymn, 'Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation', by the seventeenth century German poet and hymn-writer Joachim Neander:
' Hast thou not seen
How thy heart's wishes have been
Granted in what He ordaineth ? '
Because God made us for himself, our lives are most truly satisfied when we surrender our lives to him and live for him. Paradoxically, but truly, his service is perfect freedom.
Worship is our response to God. It acknowledges who God is and what God has done. Worship is a reflex, a response. 'We love him, because he first loved us.' (1 John 4: 19, AV). Worship is our response to God's love.
How we are to worship is succinctly set out in the supreme commandment: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' (Mark 12: 30 NIV).
First, God wants each of us to love him passionately, 'with all my heart and soul.' We accept that people can become wildly ecstatic cheering for thirty players running an oval leather ball around a muddy field in cold wet weather. Yet we think it is somehow bad form to engage in enthusiastic worship of the maker of this majestic blue-green ball which supports the only known life in the universe! We need to get real! God desires our heartfelt, passionate, most intimate worship. 'My heart says of you, "Seek his face!" Your face, Lord, I will seek.' (Psalm 27: 8, NIV).
Second, God also wants each of us to love him intelligently, 'with all my mind.' Paul develops this in a surprising verse. 'I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - this is your reasonable act of worship.' (Romans 12: 1, NIV).
Worship is not only our response to God's mercy. It is also the most reasonable activity we can ever be involved in. God is the highest being. He is the creator of our life. It makes sense to worship him. To worship is to pursue the very law of our existence, to find the path to eternal joy and fulfilment. Worship makes sense: it is rational and sensible to honour God with the first place in your life.
Thirdly, God wants us to love him energetically, 'with all my strength.' Worship is using all our abilities for God. 'Whatever you do,' say Paul, 'work at it with all your heart, as though you were working for the Lord and not for people.' (Colossians 3: 23, TEV).
Worship isn't just our singing in church. Worship should be our service in the community. Our worship of God should involve all of life. Not just an hour of worship on Sunday, but all the other 110 hours of our waking week. All of life should be our worship of God. 'Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.' (1 Corinthians 10: 31, NIV).
Rob Yule, 6 March 2005
© 2005, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church
