How Worship Should Be Done -- Part Five

By James Boice

How Worship Should Be Done
Revelation 4:1-8
Theme: Reverence for holiness.
This week’s lessons teach us the appropriate way to approach the Almighty.
 
Lesson
The fullest worship is with others and with the entire creation. Should we worship God individually? Of course we should. When you read the Bible and pray, and in your own times of Bible study, you should be worshiping God; you certainly want to respond to his teaching by praising him for it - it’s a glorious Gospel of grace. But we mustn’t forsake the worship of God with others, either, because there’s something in the corporate worship of God by the assembled people of God that is right, enhanced, and beneficial - especially beneficial because the worship of others keeps us on track. It reminds us that God really is God and that he is in control of history and that we’re his people, and that it’s our chief responsibility, duty, and joy to praise him.

And that’s why worship matters. When you don’t gather with the people of God to worship God, it’s the world that’s going to form you according to its mold and its values: trivial, and trivial values - the world being caught up in television and things that only last fifteen minutes, let alone fifteen years. That’s going to be your value system, that’s going to be your way of thinking, it’s going to be your way of life unless you learn what it is to order your thinking and your life from the perspective of eternity. How will you do that? Will you read the Bible? Yes, of course. But what you need to do is gather with the people of God and worship God, because God alone must be and will be worshiped. If you do that, the other things will fall into place and you’ll find that you’re already living in this world as one who, like John, has had a taste of heaven. Nothing on earth will ever have the same appeal for you again.
 
Study Questions

  • What is the fullest form of worship? Why?
  • What happens to those who do not gather regularly for corporate worship?

Application
Are your thoughts taken up with earthly trivia or do you have an eternal perspective? Observe what you do in your spare time and you will learn a lot about your hidden values. Commit to changes where necessary.