UNITY
ONE CHURCH. ONE FAITH. ONE MISSION.
“I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit.” – Ephesians 4:1-4
UNITY IN WORSHIP
By Mark Robertson and Josh Lambert
In these brief essays we’ll discuss how our unity impacts the three major areas of church life: worship, community, and service. There are some crucial biblical reminders we want to give in the area of worship with the aim that our people will approach worship confidently, without suspicion or fear of one another or our leadership.
First, worship is the first thing that defines the church of Christ – it is our primary action. You see this from the beginning of God’s people in the Old Testament to the end of Revelation – we were made to worship our creator. A great refrain that occurs numerous times throughout the Old Testament is this, in Psalm 96:9:
“Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength!
8 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
bring an offering, and come into his courts!
9 Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness;
tremble before him, all the earth! (Psalm 96:7-9)
The church is called to sing praises to the Lord, to preach the Word, to read God’s Word, to pray, and to participate in the sacraments. All of these elements are commanded for us in God’s Word – and we don’t neglect any of them but instead make them each a regular practice in our worship. In order to understand our emphasis here on unity in our worship, however, we need to explain first how worship has progressed through redemptive history.
In the garden of Eden Adam and Eve walked with God, there was no gap whatsoever between God and man. Then sin changed all of that. Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, God’s presence having been removed from them. All of the biblical story can then be seen as a restoration of man into God’s presence. Although he would promise an answer to the problem of sin (Genesis 3:15), until that Savior arrived, God would not be in the presence of his people without strict mediation. In his graciousness, he made a way to be with his people, to be in their presence first in the tabernacle, and then later in the temple – the more permanent tabernacle structure. In Exodus 25:8 God said – “Let them make a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.” God appeared to the patriarchs (and notice they worshiped the Lord even before there was a temple), then appeared to Moses, but then God said he would dwell in the center of his people Israel.
God then gave them very specific commands about how to operate inside and outside the temple. The specifications about the temple were detailed right down to the color of the curtains. The tabernacle, then the temple, was meant to represent the beauty of God in its splendor and anticipate a return to God’s full presence as in the garden of Eden (hence all the carvings in wood of fruit in abundance). They were to build the tabernacle “exactly as God has shown them” (Exodus 25). The way the priests operated in the temple were specifically regulated, the sacrificial system was also particular, right down to measurements for amounts in sacrifices. Festivals for worship were also highly regulated in commands from God himself. The high specificity for temple worship led to a great offense to the Lord when those instructions were not followed, like in the episode of Nadab and Abihu (Lev. 10). What the Lord commands, we will always follow. Which drives us to a very important question: is worship regulated like this under the new covenant?
There are a few major changes to consider when it comes to new covenant worship. The first is the elimination of the temple itself. If the temple is the place where God dwells, Jesus has every right to call himself the true temple (John 2:19), making the physical temple obsolete, as he is the presence of God on earth. The tearing of the temple curtain at the death of Christ symbolizes that removal of a barrier between man and God, Jesus having reconciled God and his people again by his one-time sacrifice for sin. Jesus said that he would then depart, ascending into Heaven, sending in his place the Holy Spirit, the presence of God in the heart of every believer. The second principle to consider is the inclusion of the Gentiles into the people of God. No longer will God’s people be one tribe and one nation worshiping in one place before the presence of God. Believers will be from every tribe, tongue, and nation, which has obviously become reality as you see Christ praised all over the globe. And the third major thing to consider are the instructions in the New Testament about worship itself.
I want to start with the narrative of the woman at the well, from John 4. Here is the text, beginning in v. 20:
“Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Jesus is speaking to an important issue when it comes to New Testament worship: the decentralization of the temple. No longer will the presence of God be in one place, but now you can worship wherever you are as a gathered body of believers. It’s not on one particular mountain, but as you will have the Holy Spirit, worship can happen in any location. The importance, he says, is that worship happens in spirit and truth. That means, we must worship according to the guidelines governed by the Spirit, contained in his Word – absolutely; but also that our hearts are pointing towards Him, towards the one true God; we worship him truly, which means we worship Father and Son by name, we use the name of Jesus, and we declare true things about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To worship the Lord in Spirit and in truth is to freely praise his name, tell of the things he’s done, and give thanks for Jesus Christ in song, word, and prayer. The New Testament does describe for us some things in new covenant worship – and we follow those things – preaching, praying, reading Scriptures, singing, and participating in the sacraments: the elements are all there, while the form they take will vary based on the context – the language we speak, the length of service, whether we come up front for communion or stay seated, etc. This leads to a wonderful balance in worship – hearts engaged in praising the Lord and hearts learning about the Lord through his prescribed elements of worship. Consider this quote from John Piper:
“Truth without emotion produces dead orthodoxy and a church full . . . of artificial admirers. . . . On the other hand, emotion without truth produces empty frenzy and cultivates shallow people who refuse the disciple of rigorous thought. But true worship comes from people who are deeply emotional and who love deep and sound doctrine. Strong affections for God rooted in truth are the bone and marrow of biblical worship.”
But it’s also quite clear that the New Testament does not give us many specifics about how we are to carry out these elements of worship. It differs greatly than the Old Testament in this way, because of that decentralization of the temple and the abundance of the presence of God in the Spirit. This allows us to engage in each one of these elements no matter where we are, how large the congregation, what language we speak, etc. You can offer the Lord’s Supper to a congregation of 20 people or 2,000. If we had to follow the same specificity seen in the first Lord’s Supper (sitting on the floor, men separated from women and children, etc.) we could not contextualize for various groups and rooms. We sing with instruments that are available and culturally appropriate, and we preach in the language common to the place where we live. Now worship can be done in spirit and in truth in all kinds of different contexts, led by God’s Word and responsible men called to shepherd the flock in worship, the elders.
We also consider Bible-believing, gospel-centered churches to be our brothers and sisters in Christ – and they may worship differently than we do. A huge part of the Reformation was the idea that we could interpret the Bible for ourselves and did not need one church to share authority with God’s Word interpretively. The result of that is a beautiful unity amongst faithful churches despite our differences. Because our worship is often different, either God is displeased with most of us most of the time, or we worship in spirit and in truth, and because we focus our hearts on the Lord: praising his name, singing, preaching, hearing the Word, then he is pleased with us. This should give you an extraordinary confidence when you come into worship. It would be highly inappropriate for your heart to be wired to find mistakes, to worry about error, or to allow for self-righteousness to creep in when people aren’t doing things to your approval. This is a threat to our unity and creates conditions where you may be missing opportunities to worship the Lord. Instead, worship the Lord. Josh will never let us sing songs that are untrue – we’re never going to preach heresy, and we’ll always be guided by God’s Word in how we do worship. That’s it. Now let any other worry about it go and be united with your church family in worship. Take the invitation like the woman at the well – worship the Lord in Spirit and in truth.