Louie Giglio - Worship is a Verb
I want to just take us on a journey today, can I do that? I'm asking your permission like if you say no, I'm not gonna do it. But I want to take us on a journey through God's word, because as we go through God's word it's gonna open up your understanding, our understanding of what worship is. So, when we answer the question, what is worship? We're gonna have a way bigger answer than probably the answer that we have right now, and we find this by looking at the original languages. And I know everybody loves it when we get into Hebrew and the Greek and just can't wait to dive deeper into all that. But it matters because the scriptures were written in Hebrew, Old Testament and in Greek, New Testament.
And so, you have to go back into those languages to really get the meat of what God is communicating to us. And I know you're probably not gonna take notes on this today, but just journey along with me. The first place we see this word worship in scripture is in Genesis 22. And this word worship is when Abraham was taking Isaac up the mountain to bring a sacrifice to God. And as they're going along the way it says in verse 5 and, "He said to servants, 'Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you".
Now, this Hebrew word worship is the word "shachah". And the word shachah is the one of the main Hebrew words for worship. And what shachah means in Hebrew is it means to bow down. So, what he's saying isn't when we get up to that place the boy and me, we're gonna sing a song of praise, or we're gonna hit our playlist, or we're gonna have a little 15, 20-minute journey. He says, "When we get to that place the boy and me, we're gonna bow down before God Almighty. We're gonna worship there," shachah.
So, you got to understand that's what's behind this idea. We opened our gathering today with Psalm 96. So, this got all kinds of verbs in it and what we're really gonna see today is that this idea worship is if you look at that way it is already a verb. Worship is a verb. So, what is worship? It's a verb, all kinds of verbs, but it's something you do. It's something in motion. It's not really a state of mind or state of being. There's activity involved in worship because worship is verb. So, we're looking for the verbs and when we start looking for the verbs, man we got a lot of stuff to look at here. Psalm 96, this is what we opened our gathering with, "Sing to the Lord a new song".
The word sing in Hebrew here is "shir" and shir means, hello, to sing. So, that's what sing means. So that's great. That was easy. That was a joke, but no one laughed. But hey, I did. And then, when it says sing down here, and sing down here, we're singing so that's great. Just a little note here, it's not a verb, but check this out. Sing what? Sing a new song. Isn't that cool? That is the word khadash and "khadash" means a fresh new thing. So, the Psalmist is saying, "Sing to God a fresh new thing".
So, the debate between hymns and choruses kind of ends right here in Psalm 96:1. Yes, we wanna sing some anthems of the church, some songs that have been bulwarks for us over centuries of time and maybe some hymns out of scripture that have been a part of the church from day one, but we also want to sing a fresh new thing because that's what the Psalmist is calling us to do in this text as well. It says, "Sing to the Lord and praise his name". So, that's the first time we see praise in our little study today and this word praise is another major Hebrew word. By the way, is everybody doing okay so far at class? Class, is everybody okay? Cause we got a little bit further to go than you think we're going today, so I need everybody to be feeling great so far.
This word is "barak" and barak is another major word and it also means to bow, to kneel down, to bow down, also could mean to bless, but this is barak. So, we had shachah already to bow down, now we have barak to bow down. It gets translated here as praise because it also could mean bless. In some of your translations might actually say bless His name. And then, we have proclaim, we're just looking at the verbs here, and declare. And proclaim means to bear the tithings of. In other words, I come to bring you great news. This is the Hebrew word, little more empathetic that just proclaim. And declare means to recount.
In other words, to count literally like, there was that, and then there was that, and there was that, and that, and that, and that, and that, and then to recount all that and then to relate that or to relay that to somebody else. So, here's something about God, "Oh, and there's that, and there's that, and that, and that, and that, and that, and that, and here's what God did, and then He did this, and He did this, and He did this". That's what the Hebrew word. "Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all people. For great is the Lord most worthy of praise". He's most worthy of praise.
You're like, "Hey, we just had the word praise. It was barak, right? Same word"? No, new word. This word is haal, and haal, hello, is a hallelujah. And this word means to shine, or to boast, or to give foolish glory. Anybody ever given anything any foolish glory? Hello? Can I just show of hands? Cause that wasn't very good. Yeah, okay everybody has given some foolish glory. That's haal. So, it could be shine, could be boast, but it could be some foolish glory involved in this Hebrew word. "He is to be feared," there's another verb, "above all Gods". Amen. What does feared mean? It means fear. "For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before him, strength and glory are in his sanctuary. So, ascribe to the Lord, all you families of nations".
There's a verb. What does ascribe mean? It means to give. And then, it comes over here, "Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Give the Lord the glory due his name". So much of church culture is about get, and so much of worship culture is about give. "Bring an offering and come into his courts". Bring, the word here is to carry and to lift up. An offering here is a tribute. So, come with something and bring it and lift it up. Lift up a tribute of some kind to God and then worship, it's the first time we see that word. "Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness".
What do you think this word is? Worship, right here? Shachah. And what does Shachah mean? To bow down. That's the main word in the Hebrew language. Worship, to bow down, not just physically, not just the act, not just the outward, but bow yourself down before God. "Tremble before him, all the earth. And say among the nations, 'The Lord reigns.' The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved". Say in Hebrew means say. Tremble in Hebrew, and this Hebrew word is the word cool, and it means to whirl or to dance. Okay, again I'm not prescribing anything I'm just saying that what the Hebrew text is saying is you might wanna dance a little before Him or just whirl a little bit if that's really what hits you. That's all coming out of this text.
And then, he says, "That's people up there doing that, but creation get in on it as well". "Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad, let the sea resound," that Hebrew word means to thunder, so that's loud... "And all that is in it. Let the fields be jubilant," that is to give a victory shout. That's just a, "Hey, we won, and we're gonna shout that the victory is ours, the victor is His and it is ours". "Let all the trees of the forest sing for joy". You're like, "What is that word sing mean? I'm guessing it's the word that we had before that means sing". So, like no, this word means something else. It's the word "ranan" and it means to give a ringing cry.
"Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the people in his faithfulness". That's a lot of verbs. Worship is a verb. Just getting started good class. If you would just turn now with me to Psalm 95 because there's a few other things I want you to see here. "Come". Thank you. You did that today. "Come, and let us sing for joy to the Lord," sing here is to give a ringing cry, that one, "And let us shout aloud," that comes from this root word "ruwa" and it's a shout. So, when someone comes up in church or in a gathering and our house then say, "Let's lift up a shout for Jesus," that's not a hype call. That's just a Hebrew word call.
"Let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving," and thanksgiving, obviously just means gratitude, "And let us extol him," again, the root of ruwa which is shout we get it translated extol. "Let us shout him down with music and song. For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land". That's what we're responding to right there. That's who He is. So, "Come, come let us," here's a verb, "Bow down in worship".
This is the word barak we talked about, to kneel, to bow, or to bless. This is shachah to bow down. So, he's really saying when he adds on, "Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker". And kneel here is a different word. Well, actually kneel is the word barak and bow down is a different word. So, this bow down word is a different word that means bow down, and this is barak which means to kneel, or bless, or to bow. And then, this is shachah, which means to bow down. So, it says, "Come, let us bow down, bow down, let us bow down before the Lord our Maker for he is our God".
So, we're gonna talk about in a minute how we got the English words from the Hebrew words. But if we just got this verse in straight Hebrew, it would let us know what worship is all about. "Come and let us bow down, bow down and let us bow down". Because worship, literally, is to bow down. "For we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care," so connected to that today here's a verb, "If you would hear his voice, do not harden your hearts".
See, part of worship informs how we move in life. We doing good? I am having a great time. We're almost there. Psalm 33, we just got to go to it. Psalm 150, so we're part of the way there. Psalm 33, just want you to see a few more cause this gets down to the musical part of worship, which is very, very important. "Sing, sing joyfully," by the way. Don't have to sing on key, but you do have to be joyful about it and that's ranan which is to give a ringing cry, "You righteous for it is fitting for the upright to praise him". Which word is that in praise? This is a whole new word, not the ones we've seen before, and this word means to sing a song of praise, different word.
And then, we got, "Praise the Lord with the harp". And this praise word is "hadah" which means to throw, or cast, or extend your arms. And you're gonna have to do that to play the harp. So, now I'm not here, I can't play the harp here, I got to extend my arms and my hands. And I think that's apart of our whole expression of worship. So, hadah, "Praise the Lord with the harp, make music to him". And this is another word, another verb we get here, and this is "zamar" and that's just to make music and praise of God. "Here we got a ten-stringed lyre going and then again sing to him a new song", and sing here is the first thing, shir just means sing. But what are we singing? We're singing one of these fresh new things.
And then, "play skillfully," beautiful that's "nagan" and that's to play an instrument. And I love the qualifier here we're hoping for this at PCC, not just that you play, but that you play skillfully makes a difference. "And shout," there's our root word again coming up from ruwa, a loud shout of rejoicing to God. Man, so our main two words were barak, to kneel and shachah, to bow down. But in our Bible, we get the word worship. How do we get the word worship from the Hebrew words barak and shachah?
Well, we got that word when the Bible was translated originally the first time from Hebrew to English and from Greek to English. And the one who translated this Bible was William Tyndale. It's the Tyndale Bible and this happened 500 years ago. And he took the Hebrew brought it into English, took the Greek and brought it to English. And he's the one who put the word worship in the Bible. Because obviously we have shachah, and barak, and haal, and all these other words coming around worship. So, the way worship got in our text is William Tyndale, is understanding what these words are and then he's connecting them into the word worship. But recently, it was discovered what his motivation and his thinking was and someone on our team brought this to me and it just really blew my mind.
I hadn't seen it before, but in some notes of Tyndale's in his introduction to his translation of the book of Exodus, he explains the use or choice of the word worship to replace some of the Hebrew words or to bring to life some of the Hebrew words into our English Bible. And this is what he says, he says, "By worshiping whether it be in the Old Testament, or the New Testament understand the bowing of a man's self upon the ground as we often times do. As we kneel in our prayers bow ourselves and lie on our arms and hands with our face to the ground". So, Tyndale, when he's putting the word worship in English in our scripture, he isn't connecting primarily to the worthiness of God. Worship is worthiness of God.
Although, worship is about the worthiness of God. What Tyndale is doing is primarily connecting worship as a response to the worthiness of God, and that response is to bow down oneself before God as if to lay on ones hands or arm prostrate before God. This is what Tyndale is thinking when he's putting worship in our text for the very first time. But let's jump to the New Testament. John 4, we saw this text last week the woman at the well and she got a question about worship, so she says, "Where must we worship"? And Jesus now replies, and He's gonna use a word for worship. He says, "The time is coming when you will worship the Father and neither here or there. You worship what you don't know, we worship what we know.
A time is coming and has now come when true worshippers will worship the father in Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit and his worshippers must worship in Spirit and truth". This word appears 59 times in scripture, this Greek word. So, now we've change from Hebrew to Greek and it's the word "proskuneo". And literally, it is two words, pros coming towards and kuneo to kiss. So, when Jesus is using this word worship, underneath it in the Greek is come towards, bow down, and kiss as if to kiss the hand of, this is the word.
So, again, different than the Sunday service, it's about a heart posture moving towards someone to bow down and kiss the hand of. That's Jesus' concept of worship. Again, it is to bow down. And then, you look over to Romans 12, a text that a lot of us know has a beautiful picture of worship. "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view," that's the response part, "Of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper," there it is, "worship".
So, that's proskuneo, right? To come towards, and to bow down, as to kiss. Now, different word, this word is another word, and this word "latreuo" has as his heart service. So, some of your translations may say around this verse, "This is your true and proper service of worship". And so, it's not the coming towards to kiss, it's not the loud shout, it's not a foolish glory, it's not a song, or even a new thing. This is actually serving into the worship of God and serving into the purposes of God. This is your reasonable, or your true and proper serving of God, is what he's calling us to. When you see mercy, then you would lean in with everything you've got to the serving of God. Different word.
And then, the last text, cause I just want us to get to Heaven and see that in Heaven, worship is happening. We've got, "People from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. And they cried out in a loud voice, 'Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.' And then, all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne". Why did they fall down? Because worship at its core is to bow down. "They fell down before the throne, and they worshipped God".
"Proskuneo" to come towards, to kiss, to bow. They worshipped God. So, maybe in our corporate worship it's hard to bow, but there has to be somewhere in our life that we bow. And even here where maybe physically there's a constraint, there has to be a bowing down of life before God, because to worship is to bow down. So, looking at all these different verbs and all these different words, what is our definition of worship? Worship is not primarily about singing. It's primarily about seeing. So, we have three theological anchors at Passion City, if you're new. Not the only things we believe theologically, but three big anchors in our house.
The first one is the glory of God. Second theological anchor is radical grace, not a little tiny bit of grace, but a grace that understands it not one of us is perfect and none of us being imperfect can do anything to get connected to a God who is prefect. But the God who is perfect came into our world to lay perfect down for the imperfect, so the imperfect could become perfect and connect to prefect. And I'm telling you, that's for everybody. No matter how far you've run, you cannot outrun the love of God. It is higher, and deeper, and wider, and longer and everyone who finds it, and surrenders to it and to Him is swept up in radical grace. Not a little, teeny-tiny eye drop of grace, but radical grace defines lost people and save sinners, and puts the crocked path straight and brings the dead to life.
Third anchor, extravagant worship. Glory of God requiring radical grace and when they're seen, and received, and experienced, they result in extravagant worship. The alabaster jar of the expensive perfume broken for Jesus to say, "I'm not counting up the cost. I'm not adding up what I might lose here. I'm realizing what I've gained here. I'm not, you know, being a little stingy because this stuff costs a lot of money. I'm realizing nothing cost more than your life laid down for me".
So, I wanna respond to that with extravagant haal, barak, shachah, proskuneo, latreuo. I wanna give you everything in response to what you have given to me. I used to go and teach worship so often and a lot of the places I would go a pastor would say to, "Louie, our church just isn't really you know, breathing like a strong atmosphere of worship. What do we do to kind of get people worshipping a little more enthusiastically"?
I said, "Well, I think the only thing that you can do to bring people into a greater atmosphere in response of worship is to preach Jesus, to proclaim the cross, to lift up what God has done, the zenith of His sovereignty, and His love displayed on the cross of Christ. Because when you see it, you can't help but respond to it. And when you see Him, you can't help but respond to Him". So, the question is, have you seen Him? Paul said, "I'm praying that you'll have the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God, so that you may know Him more". I'm praying that the eyes of your heart will be enlightened and that's what we're praying for you. Dear God, give us sight.