In addition to the New
Testament command that believers must worship in Spirit and Truth, worship
involves obedience, humility and fear and there are examples of each of these
in the Old Testament. In Genesis chapter
22, God commands Abraham to offer his only son Isaac as a burnt offering unto
the Lord. Every father has a love for
their child that is beyond compare and it is unimaginable the feeling of
emotional torment Abraham felt after hearing this command. True worship is far from the mere feelings of
our flesh, but this is a trend going on in today’s worship scene and right away
can be classified as unbiblical. In this passage in Genesis, we can see that
true worship is absolutely void of Abraham feeling like he is worshipping. Many Christians may associate worship with
whether or not they feel like they
are worshipping the Lord, but verse 5 in this chapter tells us that Abraham
associated obedience with
worship. Abraham was like any other
human being and I’m sure that he had all types of things going through his mind
on the way to Moriah and ever since the Lord's command. Abraham yielded
everything he had, including his feelings, to worship and submitted his only son to his God. Worship is far from feeling like it is worship.
Complete obedience to the Lord
is worship. Also in the book of Genesis
is the account of the great flood that destroyed all the earth and everything
in it, except for Noah and his family. All the friends Noah had, the industries he
was involved in and the different cities of the world, were gone. All Noah had when he finally came out of the
ark was his family. In chapter 8 verse
20, it says “And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD;…” There was nothing left on this earth to help
restart life and economy and such and instead of finding shelter or food or
ways to restart life on earth, Noah chose to worship God. Noah saw that God destroyed everything upon
the earth and therefore was in awe and fear of the power of the Lord. Noah had never ever seen rain before the
flood and just by using water, he saw that the almighty and powerful God could
destroy everything. Noah was fearful of
God and worshipped God with fear. There
is another account of worship in the Old Testament. The Lord gives permission to Satan to take
away all of Job’s possessions, his sons and daughters, servants and
cattle. Later on, Job’s wife also turns
against him and tells him to curse God and die.
Job 1:20-21 is probably one of the greatest record of the right attitude
and expression of reverent humility to the Lord. All of Job’s belongings and all of his life’s
work had been taken away and yet Job “…fell down upon the ground, and
worshipped,…” Job completely humbled himself and his life
to the will of the Lord. Complete humility to the Lord is worship.
No comments:
Post a Comment