What is worship? (7 most common definitions)

Show Notes

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📚 REFERENCES (in order of appearance)

• Max Lucado, Just Like Jesus: A Heart Like His
• David Peterson, Engaging with God: A Biblical Theology of Worship
• John Piper, "Worship and World Missions"
• Bryan Chapell, "Worship as Gospel Representation"
• John Piper, "What Is Worship?"
• Jimmy Needham, "Clear the Stage"

🎥 RECENT VIDEOS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck8GjAhDgs8 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUOJA4ZRIyk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNImoRWQE6U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjJdRVDmlzE

What is Study Worship?

"Let us offer to God acceptable worship."

Caleb: 00:00

Worship is hard to pin down. It seems like defining worship is completely up for grabs. I mean everybody has their own definition of worship. Worship is the act of magnifying God. Worship is an engagement with God.

Caleb: 00:19

Worship is the echo of the supremacy of God in the heart of a believer. Worship is a lifestyle of humble service. And I could go on and on and on. In fact, I've read over a 100 different definitions of worship, but instead of rattling them all off to you in this video, I'm going to boil them down into what I've found to be the seven most common definitions of worship. By the end of this video, I hope that you'll have a clearer understanding of what worship truly is and that you will be better equipped to worship, to lead worship, and to study worship.

Caleb: 00:59

But before I reveal the first definition, let me just quickly introduce myself. My name is Caleb Peterson. I'm the worship leader at King's Tree Church in Sabina, Ohio, and I created this channel because I want to study worship with you. So if after watching this video, you want to continue studying worship with me, there are three ways you can do so. First, subscribe to this channel and you'll be notified anytime I put out a new video essay like this one.

Caleb: 01:27

Second, comment below with your thoughts on my video essays. And then third, click the link in the description below, and I'll give you access to your first free course, How to Write a Biblical Theology of Worship in Five Steps with only your Bible. All right, let's go ahead and get into the definitions. I've divided these seven most common definitions of worship into two groups. All right, so there's the biblical definitions of worship and the theological definitions of worship.

Caleb: 02:01

Note that I didn't say biblical definitions and unbiblical definitions. I said biblical and theological. We'll get to the theological definitions in a minute, but let's go ahead and start with the biblical definitions. By a biblical definition of worship, I'm referring to the definitions of the original Hebrew and Greek words that are now translated as worship in our English Bibles. Alright, so when you come across a passage in Scripture that has the word worship in it, there can be at least three different things that it means.

Caleb: 02:39

Alright, so it's kind of like the word bat in the English language. If I were to say, a bat flew at me, you would need more context about what I mean, what image you should get in your mind when you hear that sentence. I could mean a flying rat flew at me, or I can say a long wooden stick flew at me. So the word bat, which looks exactly the same, has two completely different meanings. That's the same way with worship in the Bible.

Caleb: 03:14

You need to do a little bit more digging either into the Greek or the Hebrew text or looking at the context to know exactly what worship is meaning. But let me go ahead and give you those three different words, the three different definitions of worship that come directly from the Bible. So here's the first one. The first biblical definition of worship is to bow down, And this comes from either the Hebrew word Shecha, which comes up 175 different times in the Old Testament, or the Greek word proskuneo, which comes up 60 times in the New Testament. Both these words mean the same thing, and that is to physically bow down.

Caleb: 04:00

So let's look at one example from two Chronicles seven:three. It reads, When all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the Lord on the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord. Another example in the New Testament is in First Corinthians fourteen twenty four-twenty five. It reads, But if all prophecy and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all. And going on, and so falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you.

Caleb: 04:43

In both of these instances, the word worship means physically changing your posture to bow down, in these cases, before the Lord. All right? The second definition, biblical definition of worship is to serve. And this comes from the Hebrew word avad, which shows up two ninety times in the Old Testament, or the Greek word latraio, which comes up five times in the New Testament. So, both of these words mean the same thing, which is to serve.

Caleb: 05:20

Here's an example from Exodus, reading from the NIV, Exodus ten twenty six. Our livestock too must go with us. Not a hoof is to be left behind. We have to use some of them in worshiping the Lord our God, and until we get there, we will not know what we are to use to worship the Lord. So if we were to import the first definition, biblical definition of worship, bowing down to the Lord, this verse wouldn't make as much sense.

Caleb: 05:50

I mean, what use does livestock have for you to bow down before the Lord? And that's because here worship means to serve. It's because in the Hebrew, it's a completely different word. It's not the first word, which is Shecha, it's the second word, Avad. We get this in Joshua twenty-two 27 as well, which reads, It is to be a witness between us and you and the generations that follow, that we will worship the Lord at his sanctuary, how?

Caleb: 06:24

With our burnt offerings, sacrifices, and fellowship offerings. Alright, so now we get a little bit more context around this. This word for worship, which is completely valid, it means that we are serving the Lord in his temple while we offer burnt offerings and sacrifices and fellowship offerings. So this literally means serving God in his temple and doing religious activities that he's called us to do. We see this in the New Testament as well in Romans twelve:one, which reads, Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.

Caleb: 07:12

This is your true and proper worship. So now, it's the same word in the New Testament. We're serving God, but now we're offering our own bodies as living sacrifices. So here, the image that you should have in your mind when you see worship is not bowing down, but serving God in his temple now in our bodies. Alright, the third biblical definition of worship means to fear or obey God.

Caleb: 07:43

This comes from the Hebrew word Yare, which shows up 65 times in the Old Testament, and the Greek word sebomai, which shows up 10 times in the New Testament. So for example, Matthew fifteen:eight-nine, which is also a quote from Isaiah 2nine 13, says, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. So here, what's in view is not a change in bodily posture. It's not serving God in his temple.

Caleb: 08:25

Here it means fearing God in such a way that you obey his commands, or maybe the other way around, obeying God out of fear of Him. That probably makes the most sense. And we see this even in the context here, the worship that they give to God is vain, because they're teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. This means that the worship that God is receiving is vain because they're not obeying his commands, they're obeying the commands of men. So those are the three biblical definitions of worship.

Caleb: 09:03

And again, that means that these definitions directly accord with the words that are used in the original Greek and Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible. But we have four more definitions left, and I'm calling those theological definitions. So what I mean by a theological definition is a definition that is given by a non biblical writer who is trying to summarize their understanding of worship from the biblical text. So this is still a valid use of the word worship. They're just filling its context so that it can more easily teach a greater breadth of biblical data, if you will.

Caleb: 09:52

All right. So theological definitions can be correct and biblical, as long as they accord with true biblical teaching. So this is the fourth common definition of worship, and that is worship is congregational singing or music. Now, you may hear that and some of you may laugh and say, Caleb, we've been working so hard to say that music and singing is not worship, or at least it's not all of worship. And I say, Yes, I agree with you.

Caleb: 10:28

But in the common vernacular, like the way that worship is actually used in language the most is referring to congregational singing and music. You may hear someone say, the worship was awesome today, or I'm on the worship team. And the image that you have in your mind is not everybody bowing down was awesome today, or that they're on some, you know, laying prostrate team. No, you know what they're saying. They're saying, I'm on the music team, or the music in service today was awesome.

Caleb: 11:06

And it's also filled out like they're saying our engagement with God in music was awesome. And I think this is biblical in a very, very small sense. Okay, so let's look at Psalm 95, which begins, O come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving.

Caleb: 11:31

Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise. Then it gives reasons why you should sing to the Lord. Then in verse six it says, Oh come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our maker. Now, I'm not trying to show that singing and worship here are exactly the same thing.

Caleb: 11:55

What I'm trying to show is that these things exist in the same concept, in the same arena. And so it's understandable for the word worship to be starting to be used synonymously with music, because that's become the, at least in contemporary worship churches, the primary means of engaging with God. And therefore that's what we call worship. So this is a valid definition, even though it's not the only one, and worship is definitely more than a song like Jimmy Neenum has told us. Let's move on to the next definition.

Caleb: 12:35

The fifth most common definition of worship is as a personal expression of adoration. So this kind of fills out the previous definition saying that music isn't the only expression of worship. There is countless expressions of worship as long as they are done out of adoration for God or even for other things that are not God. This means that worship can be good and biblical and true, again, if it's pointed toward God, or it can be evil and wrong and sinful if it's directed toward something or somebody else. And John Piper has probably championed this the most with his definition, his fuller definition of worship.

Caleb: 13:21

And I'll go ahead and read that for you now. He says, The inner essence of worship is to know God truly and then respond from the heart to that knowledge by valuing God, treasuring God, prising God, enjoying God, being satisfied with God above all earthly things. So that's the inner. But then the outer, he says, and then that deep, restful, joyful satisfaction in God overflows in demonstrable acts of praise from the lips and demonstrable acts of love and serving others for the sake of Christ. So again, this is a theological summary of biblical teaching that applies what we learn about worship, both its bowing down, its serving God in his temple, and it's fearing God and obeying his commands.

Caleb: 14:13

We're putting all of that together into one understanding of worship. So that's the fifth definition. The sixth most common definition of worship is worship is a public meeting between God and man. So you may have heard somebody say, I didn't see you in worship today, or our worship service starts at 10AM. What they mean is that worship is not just an action, it's an event.

Caleb: 14:44

It's God meeting his people and his people meeting with God. We see this in Exodus 19. On the morning of the third day, there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast so that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. So again, this is a theological construction where we can look at biblical texts, moments where God is actually interacting with man and man is interacting with God, And we can see those all as worship moments, study them as worship.

Caleb: 15:28

This means it goes beyond any one person's expression, and you can study everything that's involved with that. What did the order of the service look like? What were the things that were being used, like in the tabernacle or in the temple? What did God say and how did He lead His people? And what did man say and how did they actually approach God?

Caleb: 15:52

So this is another valid definition. But again, the Bible itself, like even in this Exodus passage, the word worship doesn't show up. And the last most common definition of worship is worship is a way of life. All right, so this mainly comes from a theological understanding coming from Romans 12, which I've already read this, but I'm going to read it again, and this time in the ESV. It says, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Caleb: 16:36

So here, as we've already said, the word worship means to serve God in his temple. But as we understand this teaching, we realize that our serving God in his temple is everything that we do because we are now his temple, Which means that worship, the definition of worship gets filled out, and you can see every single action of your life, whether consciously thinking of God or not, as an act of worship. I am worshiping when I brush my teeth. I'm worshiping when I'm watching a TV show. I'm worshiping when I eat food and drink water.

Caleb: 17:23

I'm worshiping when I go out and hang with friends. Like worship is now not just when you gather with other people, and it's not just those moments where you are considering God and adoring Him in your heart. Worship is now everything that you do with your life and with your body. Now, the problem with this definition is nothing's actually wrong with this definition. What's wrong with people defining worship is they try to take all of these different definitions and force them into one big conglomerate word.

Caleb: 18:03

All right? But nobody ever does that. You can't say worship and expect when you say that for all of these things to come to the mind of the person who's receiving it. So it's okay for worship to have broad and different meanings, as long as you make it clear which definition you're using, just so that you and the person that you're working with actually know what you're talking about. All right?

Caleb: 18:34

So what I mean when I say studying worship can mean any one of those things, these things. You can study the progression of Shecha, to bow down. You can just study that word and see how it progresses throughout the Bible. Or you can study Avad or Latraio, to serve. You can just study that word and see where it goes.

Caleb: 18:59

You can study Yareh, to fear or to obey God. Or you can look into the Scripture and see every experience of congregational singing or music, and that would be studying worship. Or you can look throughout Scripture and look for individuals personal expressions of adoration toward God. Or when this is one of my favorites to do, you can study every public meeting between God and man and see how those progress over time. And then finally, and probably the most difficult, studying worship as a way of life.

Caleb: 19:37

So those are the seven most common definitions of worship. And if this helped, if this cleared things up for you, let me know by leaving a like on the video. I'd also love to hear more of your thoughts. Which one of these definitions do you think of the most when you hear the word worship? Or were there any of these definitions that were new to you?

Caleb: 20:01

Would you remove any of them or add any new ones? Just let me know in the comments below and I'd love to respond. And again, now that you know what worship is, if you want to continue studying worship with me, I'd love to do that. So please subscribe to this video, stay in touch by commenting on the videos. And then if you're interested, click the link in the description, and I'll give you access to your first free course, which shows you how to write a biblical theology of worship in five steps with only your Bibles.

Caleb: 20:40

Hope to see you there. If not, I'll see you next week.