For the Glory of God

Recovering a Biblical Theology of Worship

Block, Daniel I.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781441245632
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Christianity Today Book Award Winner
One of Worship Leader Magazine's Editor's Picks Current discussions about worship are often driven by pragmatics and personal preferences rather than by the teaching of Scripture. True worship, however, is our response to God's gracious revelation; in order to be acceptable to God, worship must be experienced on God's terms. Respected Old Testament scholar Daniel Block examines worship in the Bible, offering a comprehensive biblical foundation and illuminating Old Testament worship practices and principles. He develops a theology of worship that is consistent with the teachings of Scripture and is applicable for the church today. He also introduces readers to a wide range of issues related to worship. The book, illustrated with diagrams, charts, and pictures, will benefit professors and students in worship and Bible courses, pastors, and church leaders.

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Toward a Holistic, Biblical Understanding of Worship

The time is coming—indeed it has arrived—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for worshipers who will worship him this way. (John 4:23)1

To be human is to worship. This statement is supported in the Scriptures,2 declared in our creeds,3 and evident from history. While the impulse to worship someone higher than ourselves seems innate, the types of beings that people worship are diverse. These may be plotted along a continuum, from concrete objects identified with divinities (animism) to the abstraction of divinity and the separation of God from material reality.4 Secular historians assume that this continuum reflects the evolutionary development of religion from primitive to sophisticated, and that modern, Western secularism—liberated from notions of divine realities—represents the zenith of history.

We are concerned with Christian worship here, which in its orthodox forms is committedly monotheistic but also mysteriously trinitarian, acknowledging the one Triune God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In recent decades the evangelical church in North America and Europe has struggled to establish broadly appealing patterns of worship, a struggle we have exported to other parts of the world. Frequently the tensions revolve around music and whether it should follow traditional or contemporary tastes. Increasingly we see congregations respond to these tensions in one of three ways: (1) they split into two or more churches, so each is free to pursue its preferences; (2) they establish multiple worship services, each gratifying one of these musical tastes; or (3) they adopt the philosophy of the contemporary music and worship industry, simply marginalizing those with traditional hymnic preferences and forcing them to leave or retreat into passive, resigned modes. While these responses have made worship attractive for younger people, their effects on the church’s witness are disastrous. Instead of worship uniting God’s people, conflicts over worship have divided them.

The Scriptural Basis of Worship That Glorifies God

In the hubbub over worship styles, I sometimes wonder if we have explored seriously enough what the Scriptures have to say about acceptable worship. In evangelicals’ recent fascination with ancient practices and perspectives, we often observe a tendency to accept early worship forms as authoritative but a decreasing attention to the scriptural theology of worship. Sometimes enthusiasm for the worship traditions and practices of the early church pushes features of these as normative and threatens the Reformation principle of sola scriptura, even when these lack explicit biblical warrant.

But even if we agree that the Scriptures are our ultimate authority for faith and life, we are divided on how we should use the Scriptures in designing corporate Christian worship. On the one hand, some adhere to the regulative principle, which says that true worship involves only components expressly prescribed in Scripture and forbids anything not prescribed.5 In extreme manifestations, churches that follow this principle reject musical instruments and the singing of songs not based on the Psalms. On the other hand, many prefer the normative principle, which allows Christians to incorporate in their worship forms and practices not forbidden by Scripture,6 provided they promote order in worship and do not contradict scriptural principles. While the former is quite restrictive, the latter opens doors to creative and expressive worship. Our challenge, then, is ensuring that even when forms of worship are culturally determined, the principles underlying them are biblically rooted and theologically formed.

But even when we agree that the Scriptures alone should be our ultimate authority for Christian worship, we are divided on which Scriptures are determinative for Christian worship. Should our worship be governed by the whole Bible or only by the teachings and practices of the New Testament?7 While rarely stated, the latter is implied by many scholars who write on this subject. In what I consider to be one of the most important books on worship, Engaging with God: A Biblical Theology of Worship, David Peterson sets out “to expose the discontinuity between the Testaments” on the subject of worship.8 Although Peterson presents his book as a biblical theology of worship, and although the First Testament9 is three times the length of the New Testament and probably contains a hundred times more information on worship, Peterson disposes of its treatment of the subject in fifty-six pages, while devoting almost two hundred pages to the New Testament. For Peterson, the First Testament’s focus on place, festivals, and priestly rituals provides a foil against which to interpret New Testament worship, which is centered on a person, involves all of life, and focuses on edification when it speaks of gathered Christians.10

This problem also appears in John Piper’s work. In a sermon titled “Worship God!,”11 Piper contrasts First Testament and New Testament worship, asserting that First Testament worship was external, involving form and ritual, while New Testament worship concerns internal spiritual experience.12 Such generalizations are misleading on several counts. First, they underestimate the liturgical nature of worship in the New Testament. What can be more cultic and formal than the Lord’s Supper, the worship experience par excellence prescribed by Jesus, or the ritual of baptism, called for in the Great Commission? Acts 2:41–42 describes the early church engaged in a series of external activities: baptism, instruction, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer.

Second, generalizations like these misrepresent worship as it is actually presented in the First Testament. D. A. Carson is correct to interpret Jesus’ statement in John 4:21–24 as a prediction of a day when the focus of worship will shift from place to manner, and to suggest that “in spirit and in truth” is “a way of saying that we must worship God by means of Christ. In him the reality has dawned and the shadows are being swept away.”13 And Peterson is also correct to suggest that the worship “in spirit and in truth” contrasts “with the symbolic and typical” represented by First Testament forms. However, his portrayal of worship “in truth” as “real and genuine worship” rendered by “true worshippers” is problematic.14 In ancient Israel the worship of many folks was true; that is, it was both real and genuine. Peterson is also correct when he says that worship “in spirit” refers to the Holy Spirit, “who regenerates us, brings new life, and confirms us in the truth.” However, if this represents a change, then we must admit that in ancient Israel worshipers were unregenerate, lacked new life, and were not confirmed in the truth. This does not seem to match the image of Caleb, who possessed a different spirit and “was full after God” (Num. 14:24; Deut. 1:36; Josh. 14:9), or of David, who authored so many of the psalms, or of Isaiah in Isaiah 6.

Piper’s interpretation of Jesus’ statement is even more problematic.

I take “in spirit” to mean that this true worship is carried along by the Holy Spirit and is happening mainly as an inward, spiritual event, not mainly as an outward bodily event. And I take “in truth” to mean that this true worship is a response to true views of God and is shaped and guided by true views of God.15

If this is correct, and if Jesus intended to contrast First Testament and New Testament worship this way, then we must concede that in ancient Israel (1) true worship was never carried along by the Spirit, (2) worship was primarily a matter of external actions rather than inward spiritual events, and (3) the Israelites lacked true views of God that would have guided true worship. By driving these wedges between the Testaments, we dismiss the only Bible that Jesus and the New Testament authors had as irrelevant and lacking authority for us, and we sweep away significant continuities between the faith of ancient Israel and the early church. In so doing, we impose problems that may have existed within the Judaisms of Jesus’ day onto ancient Israel, refuse to let the First Testament speak for itself, and deny the true worshipers in Israel the hope that YHWH offered them with his gracious revelation.16 Furthermore, we rob the church of a rich resource for establishing permanent theological principles that could and probably should guide our worship.

But evangelicals are often inconsistent in the way they treat the First Testament. Most believers find the Psalms to be a rich resource for personal and corporate Christian worship, but they do so without realizing that the entire Psalter is rooted in the Torah, especially the book of Deuteronomy.17 To dismiss Deuteronomy and the rest of the constitutional revelation found in Exodus–Numbers as irrelevant for establishing the theology and practice of worship is to violate Paul’s own declaration in 2 Timothy 3:16–17. However, this marginalization also violates the intentions of the psalmists, who would have been horrified to observe Christians’ elevation of the authority of the Psalms above the Torah. Those who will not take seriously the authority and transformative power of the Pentateuch and the rest of the First Testament have no right to appeal, nor grounds for appealing, to the b...