Rightly Dividing Worship?

If worship is to be divided into two parts, it should not be divided between “worship” and “message,” nor between preaching and music. If we must divide worship, it ought to come between Word and Sacrament. Even then this is no division, but only a means of worshipping in the ways that God has ordained for worship.

This is the division properly made when we come to worship the Almighty. I think this is also the Scriptural division between the parts of our proper worship. We can see this as we read Scriptures. Beginning in the Old Testament, many times we will find worship begins with God speaking to His people. This either happens in theophany, as at Mt. Sinai, or it might happen through His Law being proclaimed to His people as in the days of Ezra the priest and Nehemiah.

When God’s word is proclaimed the people respond with courage and honor for Him. The proclamation of the Word is not merely preaching, nor is it merely the reading of Scripture. It is the telling of God’s mighty acts in history. The Psalms record these mighty acts as songs, so we could even include music under the proclamation of the word. To proclaim God’s work in history is the purpose of preaching, singing, and reading of Scripture and the recitation of the creeds.

We hear God’s work and actions proclaimed and we respond. This is also seen in Scripture as the people respond to the Lord’s word with sacrifice and ritual. The proclaiming of God’s word leads to a response of giving back to God as a sign of their commitment to Him. In the Old Testament these responses were the sacrifices of animals, produce and offerings of money in the Temple. Today, these sacrifices are the sacramental gifts we offer to God as we are reminded of the once for all sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

The sacrifices of the Old Covenant have been replaced with Jesus’ great sacrifice. He came to fulfill the Law, to bring it to completion and through His righteous, sinless life, death and resurrection; He has finished the work of that Old Covenant. There is now no more sacrifice to be offered for our sins of for our relationship to God. He has done it all. He has provided the acceptable sacrifice.

Thus our response in worship is not sacrifice and offerings for our sins, but looks rather to Christ’s sacrifice for our sins. It would be improper to call them sacrifices in the same way as the sacrifices offered in the Old Testament. The sacrifices of the New Covenant could properly be called sacraments.

There is a healthy debate within the church about how many sacraments have been ordained by God for His people at least since the Reformation. No matter where people stand on this issue, there is general agreement that there are two basic foundational sacraments that God has ordained for His people: baptism and Holy Communion.

The sacraments are our proper response to the Word of God being proclaimed. We hear God’s word proclaimed to us as sinners and by His grace we believe and have faith. This response to the word initially comes in the sacrament of baptism. Baptism is our response to God’s saving action in our lives. Our salvation is seen in this sacrament as it reflects Christ’s saving work as a one-time event. He was offered once for all time, we are baptized once for all time as a sign that we belong to Him.

Recognizing that we cannot be baptized every day for our sins, or even every week, God has provided a second sacrament to remind us of His saving work in our lives, Holy Communion. This is the on-going response of God’s action in our lives from week to week or month to month depending on how often one’s church or congregation comes to the Lord’s Table.

In one sense, coming to the Lord’s Table for communion reminds us of our baptismal faith and that we are secure in God’s grace. This does not mean that the Table secures our faith and salvation, it does not. It does mean that we are reminded regularly that we belong to God as His purchased people who have faith in Christ’s work on the cross. Christ taught His disciples on the night He was betrayed to remember him in the breaking of bread and the drinking of the cup. These are the signs of His death for us and the New Covenant we have been given by God through Him. As such they keep us focused on Christ’s saving work in our lives as we remember them. The security in such comes from the reminder; it is not made efficacious with the reminder.

These two sacraments were Jesus’ final enduring commands to His disciples. He told them to break bread and the drink the cup to remember His death and resurrection. After His resurrection He commands His disciples to go into all the world to make other disciples by baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

True worship, then, is not music and message, but rather Word and Sacrament as we hear the word proclaimed of God’s saving work in human history and offer or lives as an act of sacrifice back to God. This is liturgy’s meaning at its deepest level. Liturgy is the work of the people. We need to return to this work of the people in our worship of God.

Music can be an offering and a sacrifice of praise, but it is not the God-commanded offering of response to the word proclaimed. Good worship music is word of God proclaimed. To have true worship that involves God’s word and our response we need baptism and Holy Communion. Forcing music to take on the role of our response pushes it into a role for which it was not designed. It becomes a man-made replacement for God’s gracious and acceptable gift in the sacraments.