Worship · Core Doctrine
Worship
A woman at a well asked Jesus which mountain was the right place to worship, and He told her the question was about to stop mattering — because the Father is looking for a kind of worshipper, not a location. This page starts there, then takes the words Scripture actually uses (most of them are about the body), reads both halves of the strangest worship chapter in the Bible, and sets out the two great principles of church worship with the people who hold each.
THE ARTWORKMagnasco paints the moment most artists skip. The king is off-centre and mid-step, his arms up, in a crowd that is going with him rather than watching him — and the ark, the actual point of the day, is a small bright thing behind the people. That arrangement is the argument of this page: worship in Scripture is a body doing something in front of God, long before it is music.
The Father Is Looking
— John 4 — the sentence the whole subject hangs onA woman drawing water in the heat of the middle of the day — the hour nobody else came to the well — asks Jesus a question her people and His had been fighting over for four hundred years: which mountain is the right one? Hers worshipped on Gerizim; His worshipped in Jerusalem. It was a real dispute with real history behind it, and He does not settle it. He tells her it is about to stop being the question.
Then He says the thing that makes this passage strange. Not that God accepts worship, or requires it, or deserves it — but that the Father seeks worshippers. God is the one doing the looking.
“Sir,” the woman said, “I see that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews say that the place where one must worship is in Jerusalem.” “Believe Me, woman,” Jesus replied, “a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. But a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such as these to worship Him. God is Spirit, and His worshipers must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”the place question, answered by changing the subject to the worshipper.
"For the Father seeketh such to worship Him." Why does the Father seek such to worship Him, not on a mountain, not in the temple, but in spirit and in truth? "God is Spirit." If God were body, it were right that He should be worshipped on a mountain, for a mountain is corporeal; it were right He should be worshipped in the temple, for a temple is corporeal. "God is Spirit; and they that worship Him, must worship in spirit and in truth."
Augustine of Hippo· Tractates on John 15, 430
John 4:21-24
Note, The worship of God is not now, under the gospel, appropriated to any place, as it was under the law, but it is God's will that men pray every where. Our reason teaches us to consult decency and convenience in the places of our worship: but our religion gives no preference to one place above another, in respect to holiness and acceptableness to God.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710
John 4:21
The hour cometh, etc. - The time was now at hand in which the spiritual worship of God was about to be established in the earth, and all the Jewish rites and ceremonies entirely abolished. Worship the Father - This epithet shows the mild, benignant, and tender nature of the Gospel dispensation. Men are called to worship their heavenly Father, and to consider themselves as his children. In reference to this, our Lord’s prayer begins, Our Father, who art in heaven, etc. See Joh 4:23.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832
John 4:21
“In spirit and in truth” — what the phrase is doingJohn 4:23-24 · defined from the text
The phrase is often used as a slogan for a worship style — quieter, or louder, or more spontaneous. That is not what it is answering. It is answering a question about place, and it answers by pointing at the nature of God: God is spirit, so He is not localised, so worship is not localised either.
In spirit stands against worship tied to a building, a mountain, or a set of physical arrangements. In truthstands against worship offered to a God the worshipper has got wrong — Jesus has just told the woman, in the same breath, “you worship what you do not know.” Sincerity is not enough on its own, and neither is correctness on its own.
A.W. Tozer built a whole preaching life on the first half of that — his The Pursuit of God(1948) is a sustained argument that most Christians have settled for knowing about God rather than seeking Him. He is worth reading on this page’s subject; he is quoted nowhere on it, because his work is still in copyright.
A Body Word Before It Is a Music Word
— what the Hebrew and Greek actually say — and it disarms the style argument before it startsAsk most people what worship is and they will describe a part of a Sunday service with singing in it. Scripture’s vocabulary is not shaped that way. The main words are about what a body does: bowing, kneeling, prostrating, throwing the hands out, shouting, whirling. Music is in there, and it is not the centre. That moves the question before any argument about styles can start — it is not asking what songs you like, but what your body is doing in front of God and who it thinks He is.
Two absences worth noticingwhat the concordance does not find
The bowing word is not in 2 Samuel 6. Shachah, the standard Old Testament word for worship, appears nowhere in the chapter about David worshipping before the ark. That chapter is a karar chapter — whirling, not bowing.
The singing word is not in Psalm 150. Zamar, “to sing praises with an instrument,” does not appear in the loudest psalm in the Bible, which is built almost entirely on halal. It turns up instead in 1 Chronicles 16, where the music is being organised.
Neither absence proves anything on its own. Both are useful correctives to a habit of reading modern categories back into an ancient vocabulary.
O come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD our Maker. For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, the sheep under His care. Today, if you hear His voice,three verbs, all of them physical, before any reason is given.
Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth. Serve the LORD with gladness; come into His presence with joyful songs. Know that the LORD is God. It is He who made us, and we are His; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and bless His name. For the LORD is good, and His loving devotion endures forever; His faithfulness continues to all generations.shout, serve, come, know, enter, give thanks — six commands, and only one of them is about singing.
Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the nations, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. Ascribe to the LORD the glory due His name; bring an offering and come before Him. Worship the LORD in the splendor of His holiness;ascribe, bring, come, worship — worship as a set of actions with an object.
David appointed some of the Levites to minister before the ark of the LORD, to celebrate, to give thanks, and to praise the LORD, the God of Israel. Asaph was the chief, Zechariah was second, then Jeiel, Shemiramoth, Jehiel, Mattithiah, Eliab, Benaiah, Obed-edom, and Jeiel. They were to play the harps and lyres, while Asaph sounded the cymbals and the priests Benaiah and Jahaziel blew the trumpets regularly before the ark of the covenant of God.the first worship team on record, and the job description is three verbs: to record, to thank, to praise.
Here the exhortation to worship is renewed and backed with a motive which, to Israel of old and to Christians now, is especially powerful; for both the Israel after the flesh and the Israel of faith may be described as the people of his pasture, and by both he is called "our God." O come, let us worship and bow down. The adoration is to be humble. The "joyful noise" is to be accompanied with lowliest reverence.
Charles Spurgeon· The Treasury of David (1869-1885)
Psa 95:6
Know ye that the Lord, he is God. Our worship must be intelligent. We ought to know whom we worship and why. "Man, know thyself, "is a wise aphorism, yet to know our God is truer wisdom; and it is very questionable whether a man can know himself until he knows his God. Jehovah is God in the fullest, most absolute, and most exclusive sense, he is God alone; to know him in that character and prove our knowledge by obedience, trust, submission, zeal, and love is an attainment which only grace can bestow.
Charles Spurgeon· The Treasury of David (1869-1885)
Psa 100:3
By this he showed that the outward worship of God principally consisted in the sacrifice of praise, and not in dead ceremonies. He enjoins haste upon them; by which they might testify their alacrity in this service. For the Hebrew word qdm, kadam, in the second verse, which I have rendered, let us come before, etc., means to make haste.
John Calvin· Commentaries, 1554
Psa 95:1
One Chapter, Both Halves
— 2 Samuel 6 holds a man struck dead for touching the ark and a king dancing in the street — eight verses apartThe honest place to argue about worship is this chapter, because it contains both of the things people usually quote against each other — one story, one king, one week. Teach only the first half and you get fear without joy; teach only the second and you get joy without weight. The chapter refuses to be read either way, and so does this page.
The first half — verses 1 to 11
How God said it must be carried
David fetches the ark on a new cart, which is how the Philistines had moved it. The oxen stumble, Uzzah puts out his hand to steady the box, and he dies on the spot. The procession stops. David is angry, then frightened, and the ark sits in a stranger’s house for three months.
The detail that makes sense of it is not in this chapter: the ark had poles, and Levites were to carry it on their shoulders and were told plainly not to touch the holy things, on pain of death (Numbers 4:15). It was never meant to be on a cart at all. When David tries again in 1 Chronicles 15, he says so himself.
When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God, because the oxen had stumbled. And the anger of the LORD burned against Uzzah, and God struck him down on the spot for his irreverence, and he died there beside the ark of God.the hand that reached out to help is the hand that broke the rule.
The severity of Uzzah's fate may seem to us too great for the nature and degree of the offense. But it does not become us to sit in judgment on the dispensations of God; and, besides, it is apparent that the divine purpose was to inspire awe of His majesty, a submission to His law, and a profound veneration for the symbols and ordinances of His worship.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871
2 Sam 6:6-8
The principle this half has taught
The regulative principle
What God has commanded or shown in Scripture is what belongs in the worship of the church; sincerity does not sanctify an invention. Uzzah is this reading’s textbook case, and it is not a small point: it is the conviction that worship is God’s to define, not ours.
Who holds it: John Calvin, and after him the Reformed, Presbyterian and Puritan churches; confessed in the Westminster Confession (chapter XXI). Among the voices this site reads, R.C. Sproul works from it — his The Holiness of God(1985) opens on exactly this instinct, that God’s holiness sets the terms of any approach to Him.
2 Samuel 6
The second half — verses 12 to 23
How the king worshipped when it moved
Eight verses after Uzzah, the same king is dancing down a public street with all his might, wearing a priest’s linen apron instead of his royal robes. His wife watches from an upstairs window and despises him for it. When she says so, David does not apologise — he tells her he will be more undignified than this, and that the servant girls she is embarrassed in front of will honour him for it.
The painting at the top of this page is this column. Magnasco caught the thing the chapter is careful to record: a king who has just watched a man die for carelessness is now the least careful-looking person in Jerusalem — because reverence and abandon turned out not to be opposites.
And David, wearing a linen ephod, danced with all his might before the LORD, while he and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the LORD with shouting and the sounding of the ram’s horn. As the ark of the LORD was entering the City of David, Saul’s daughter Michal looked down from a window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD, and she despised him in her heart.'with all his might' — and one window with nothing but contempt behind it.
As soon as David returned home to bless his own household, Saul’s daughter Michal came out to meet him. “How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today!” she said. “He has uncovered himself today in the sight of the maidservants of his subjects, like a vulgar person would do.” But David said to Michal, “I was dancing before the LORD, who chose me over your father and all his house when He appointed me ruler over the LORD’s people Israel. I will celebrate before the LORD, and I will humiliate and humble myself even more than this. Yet I will be honored by the maidservants of whom you have spoken.”his answer is not a defence of dancing; it is a statement about who he was dancing for.
It is a pleasure to a good man to see his errors rectified and himself in the way of his duty. His dancing, I suppose, was not artificial, by any certain rule or measure, nor do we find that any danced with him; but it was a natural expression of his great joy and exultation of mind.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710
2 Sam 6:14
Linen ephod - The usual habit of the priests and Levites, in their sacred ministrations yet sometimes worn by others, as it was by the young child Samuel; and so David, who laid by his royal robes, and put on this robe to declare, that although he was king of Israel, yet he willingly owned himself to be the Lord's minister and servant.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, 1765
2 Sam 6:14
But the things which viewed corporeally are unseemly, when viewed in regard to holy religion become venerable, so that they who blame such things will involve their own souls in the net of blame. Thus Michal reproves David for his dancing and says to him, How glorious was the king of Israel to day, who uncovered himself to day in the eyes of his handmaids!
Ambrose of Milan· Letter 58.6, 397
2 Sam 6:20-22
The principle this half has taught
The normative principle
Whatever Scripture does not forbid may be used, if it serves good order and builds people up. Freedom is not the enemy of reverence; David’s dancing is not commanded anywhere, and it is recorded with approval while the one who sneered at it is not.
Who holds it: Martin Luther, and the Lutheran and Anglican churches after him; set out most fully by Richard Hooker in Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity(1594). The same instinct runs through Matthew Henry, Ambrose and John Wesley above — and through the Pentecostal and charismatic churches, which is where this site’s own heritage sits.
Where the chapter resolves
But a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such as these to worship Him.John 4:23 — BSB
Both halves of 2 Samuel 6 are about the same thing from opposite ends — that God is not casual and is not distant. The chapter does not settle the argument between the two principles, and neither does this page. It settles something else: the Father is the one doing the seeking, and what He is looking for is a kind of person.
Two principles, both held by serious readers — and neither is stamped here as the answerthe regulative and normative principles
These are not rival teams. They are two answers to one narrow question: what may a church do in corporate worship that Scripture has not explicitly commanded?The regulative answer is “nothing”; the normative answer is “whatever it has not forbidden, if it serves good order and edification.”
Most congregations in practice sit somewhere along the line rather than at either end — including congregations that would name themselves firmly at one end. The differences are real and worth understanding, and they are differences among brothers who are trying to honour the same God.
MannaFest does not stamp a verdict on the question. Marcus’s own place to answer it is at the foot of this page, and it is his to write.
Loud, and Careful
— instruments, dance, and the fear of the Lord — Psalm 150 next to Exodus 20 and Hebrews 12The Bible ends its songbook with a psalm that is essentially a list of instruments and a command to be loud. It also carries a commandment against making an image to bow down to, and a warning that the God being approached is a consuming fire. Both belong to the subject, and holding them together is most of the skill.
Praise Him with the sound of the horn; praise Him with the harp and lyre. Praise Him with tambourine and dancing; praise Him with strings and flute. Praise Him with clashing cymbals; praise Him with resounding cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the LORD! Hallelujah!trumpet, harp, timbrel, dance, strings, pipe, cymbals — and then everything that breathes.
You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in the heavens above, on the earth below, or in the waters beneath. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing loving devotion to a thousand generations of those who love Me and keep My commandments.the limit that has shaped every argument about images and worship since.
Therefore, since we are receiving an unshakable kingdom, let us be filled with gratitude, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe. “For our God is a consuming fire.”'reverence and awe' and 'a consuming fire' are in the same sentence as 'acceptable worship.'
Praise him with the timbrel and dance. Associated with the deliverance at the Red Sea, this form of worship set forth the most jubilant and exultant of worship. The hands and the feet were both employed, and the entire body moved in sympathy with the members. Are there not periods of life when we feel so glad that we would fain dance for joy? Let not such exhilaration be spent upon common themes, but let the name of God stir us to ecstasy.
Charles Spurgeon· The Treasury of David (1869-1885)
Psa 150:4
Nor was it without reason that God under the law enjoined this multiplicity of songs, that he might lead men away from those vain and corrupt pleasures to which they are excessively addicted, to a holy and profitable joy.
John Calvin· Commentaries, 1554
Psa 150:3
Praise God in his sanctuary. This psalm in general commends the spiritual worship of God, which consists in sacrifices of praise. By the sanctuary there is little doubt that heaven is here meant, as is often the case elsewhere.
John Calvin· Commentaries, 1554
Psa 150:1
Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. "Let all breath praise him": that is to say, all living beings. He gave them breath, let them breathe his praise. His name is in the Hebrew composed rather of breathings than of letters, to show that all breath comes from him: therefore let it be used for him. Join all ye living things in the eternal song. Be ye least or greatest, withhold not your praises. What a day will it be when all things in all places unite to glorify the one only living and true God!
Charles Spurgeon· The Treasury of David (1869-1885)
Psa 150:6
It is worth noticing what Calvin actually says there. The man whose name is attached to the strictest view of church music is not against music; he says God gave Israel this multiplicity of songs to draw people away from cheap pleasures into a holy joy. Read him and Spurgeon on the same psalm and the caricature does not survive.
Come in singing — Psalm 95 and Psalm 100, walkedSpurgeon on the two great call-to-worship psalms
O come, let us sing unto the LORD. Other nations sing unto their gods, let us sing unto Jehovah. We love him, we admire him, we reverence him, let us express our feelings with the choicest sounds, using our noblest faculty for its noblest end. It is well thus to urge others to magnify the Lord, but we must be careful to set a worthy example ourselves, so that we may be able not only to cry "Come", but also to add "let us sing", because we are singing ourselves.
Charles Spurgeon· The Treasury of David (1869-1885)
Psa 95:1
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving. Here is probably a reference to the peculiar presence of God in the Holy of Holies above the mercy seat, and also to the glory which shone forth out of the cloud which rested above the tabernacle. Everywhere God is present, but there is a peculiar presence of grace and glory into which men should never come without the profoundest reverence.
Charles Spurgeon· The Treasury of David (1869-1885)
Psa 95:2
Serve the LORD with gladness. "Glad homage pay with awful mirth." He is our Lord, and therefore he is to be served; he is our gracious Lord, and therefore to be served with joy. The invitation to worship here given is not a melancholy one, as though adoration were a funeral solemnity, but a cheery gladsome exhortation, as though we were bidden to a marriage feast. Come before his presence with singing. We ought in worship to realise the presence of God, and by an effort of the mind to approach him.
Charles Spurgeon· The Treasury of David (1869-1885)
Psa 100:2
How living teachers frame it — named, with their booksmodern voices, cited rather than quoted
These writers are in copyright, so this page names them and their work rather than printing their sentences. They are worth going to directly; that is the point of listing them.
A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God (1948) — worship as pursuit, and the charge that the church has substituted knowing about God for seeking Him.
Bill Johnson, Hosting the Presence(2012) — the manifest presence of God as the church’s treasure, and worship as cultivated attention to it. Corey Russell, The Glory Within (2012), works the same ground from the indwelling Spirit.
John Piper, Desiring God(1986) — worship as delight in God’s supremacy, framed more theologically than experientially. A difference of emphasis from the stream above, not a quarrel with it.
John Bevere, The Fear of the Lord (1997) — worship as holy fear enacted, with reverence treated as the precondition of intimacy rather than its opposite.
R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God (1985) — the same conviction from the Reformed side, and the ground of his regulative reading of corporate worship.
Your Body, and the Room Where It Never Stops
— Romans 12 puts worship into an ordinary week; Revelation 4-5 shows it already happeningAfter eleven chapters of argument, Paul’s conclusion about worship is not about a gathering at all. He asks for a body — living, whole, handed over — and calls that the reasonable response to everything he has just described. The sacrifice is not something you bring to worship; it is you, and it is the week, not the hour.
Therefore I urge you, brothers, on account of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.a living sacrifice — the one kind the old system had no category for.
The divine Word wants you to offer your flesh to God in purity, with the understanding of your reason.
Origen of Alexandria· Homilies on Leviticus 1.5.1, 253
Rom 12:1
A body sincerely devoted to God is a living sacrifice. A living sacrifice, by way of allusion--that which was dead of itself might not be eaten, much less sacrificed, Deut. xiv. 21 ; and by ways of opposition--"The sacrifice was to be slain, but you may be sacrificed, and yet live on"--an unbloody sacrifice.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710
Rom 12:1
It has a reference here to the entire gospel, to the whole economy of grace or mercy, delivering us from "the wrath of God," and exciting us to all duty. To present - So chap. vi, 13; xvi, 19; now actually to exhibit before God. Your bodies - That is, yourselves; a part is put for the whole; the rather, as in the ancient sacrifices of beasts, the body was the whole.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755
Rom 12:1
And the last word on the subject is not an instruction. It is a room. John is shown a throne with worship already going on around it and not stopping — living creatures who rest neither day nor night, elders who keep getting up and going back down, and eventually every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea joining in. Nobody there is starting worship. They are joining something already in progress.
And each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around and within. Day and night they never stop saying: “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” And whenever the living creatures give glory, honor, and thanks to the One seated on the throne who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before the One seated on the throne, and they worship Him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying: “Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things; by Your will they exist and came to be.”worship offered to the Creator — because He made everything, and because He wanted to.
And they sang a new song: “Worthy are You to take the scroll and open its seals, because You were slain, and by Your blood You purchased for God those from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign upon the earth.” Then I looked, and I heard the voices of many angels and living creatures and elders encircling the throne, and their number was myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands. In a loud voice they were saying: “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing!” And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying: “To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power forever and ever!” And the four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped.the same worship, now offered to the Lamb — and the circle widens until it takes in everything.
There are two words in the original, very different from each other; both which we translate holy. The one means properly merciful; but the other, which occurs here, implies much more. This holiness is the sum of all praise, which is given to the almighty Creator, for all that he does and reveals concerning himself, till the new song brings with it new matter of glory.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755
Rev 4:8
Closing
The question the woman asked was about real estate, and the answer was about God’s own character: He is spirit, so He is not somewhere, so worship is not somewhere either. Which leaves the harder question, the one 2 Samuel 6 asks from both ends of one chapter — not where, and not what style, but who you think you are standing in front of, and whether your body knows it.