Beauty in Worship

Psalm 29:2 “Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.”

Along with worshipping the Lord in Spirit and in truth, the Lord commands worship to be done in the beauty of holiness.  Earlier it was mentioned that Holy means to set apart and in any case of the Christian walk, believers need to set things apart unto the Lord.  This verse also tells us that there is a certain beauty to holiness.  The Lord is beautiful because of his holiness.  Most likely, there have been times in your life when you felt that something was harming you.  Whether it was a bad eating habit or TV, etc, and after realizing that something is harmful to your life, when that is taken away, there is a feeling of relief.  It’s a struggle at first to refrain from those harmful things, but after a little while, it becomes easier.  All believers need to refrain from certain things in their daily life and believers sometimes know in certain cases that separation will be good in the long run.  The apostle Paul uses the analogy of running a race in 1 Corinthians chapter 9.  Someone who is training to run the Boston marathon isn’t going to have cheesecake every night before bed.  That is probably the worst thing they can do for their body.  That person needs to, in a sense, be holy unto their training.  This needs to be expanded to every area of our life, because the Lord is the sustainer of all life and is worthy of our holiness towards him.  It’s amazing to even think that fallen humans can be holy to the Lord, since believers are fallen and sinful and all our righteousness’ are as filthy rags, according to Isaiah 64:6.  In some cases, we may think that it is impossible to give this area or that up to the Lord, but the scriptures remind us that the Lord does not command the impossible when He commands his children to be holy.  Philippians 4:13 promises us that “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”     

Believers also need to make sure their worship is beautiful.  What is meant by this is that worship to the Lord needs to be beautiful because everything about the Lord is beautiful.  When worship is conducted in a way that is not beautiful, that diminishes the testimony of who God is and the way that He is to be approached.  Let’s think of a simple analogy and for the sake of this analogy, we’ll say that worship is likened to water.  Water can be poured into a glass and it takes the shape of that glass.  Water can also be poured into ice trays, frozen and turned into a solid.  Finally, water can be put over a heat source and turned into a gas.  All these are forms of the same substance.  Different situations demand the different forms of water.  Worship has not changed and therefore cannot take various forms like water can and there is one manual for worship and that is in the Bible.  It is saddening to know that believers and churches are trying to change the form of worship to suit the wants of the fallen, human nature.  God put forth in His Word how He is to be worshipped and there is no other form that He will accept.  Proverbs 15:8a tells us that “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD:…” It is my prayer that my worship is acceptable to the Lord.  Comparing this verse with Jeremiah 17:9, where the heart id desperately wicked, it is a very dangerous thing to approach the Almighty in a casual way.