1. Who and How

The Who and How of Worship

Worship is supremely important!

Obviously, the first question is to determine who or what  we worship.  Get it wrong here and everything else is wrong.  It's idol worship, in other words. 

Even when we profess to be worshiping God, we must make sure that we are worshiping the true and living God, and not a god of our imagination.  That's the reason we must devote ourselves to Scripture.  Without a Scriptural knowledge of God - a knowledge of the God who has revealed Himself to us in Scripture - we are likely to be worshiping a god of our imagination or of our desires, rather than worshiping the God of Scripture.

Having determined that we must worship the one, living and true God, we must realize that we are obligated to worship that God in the way of His own choosing.  Since He is the living and true God, He has the right to command HOW we are to worship Him.

Did you ever have a child cross a dangerous road that was "off limits" in order to bring back a flower that was growing on the opposite side of the road?  If you've had that experience, you probably emphasized to the child that obeying your rule is more important than picking the flower. How much more so must we worship the living and true God in the way that He commands, and not according to our desires!

The Westminster Confession of Faith underscores the necessity of worshiping God only as He commands by saying:

"But the acceptable way of worshiping the true God has been instituted by himself, and so limited by His revealed will, that he may not be worshiped according to the imagination or devising of men, or the suggestions of Satan, or  under visible representation, or any other way not commanded in Scripture"  (Chapter 21, "Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day").

God must not be worshiped in "any other way not commanded in Scripture."  That's a huge principle. Does this truth control and direct the corporate worship of your church?  Is the underlying principle to worship God only in the way that He has commanded us to do?