What Does "Worship" Really Mean?

by Jeff Cranston

(Fifth of a five-part series on the Core Values of LowCountry Community Church)

In Psalm 100 the Psalmist says: “Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful singing.” - Psalm 100:1-2, NASB95

I sometimes think that if the followers of Jesus got nothing else right, if all we got right was that we were known as people who make a joyful noise, that the Gospel would be largely unstoppable because in this sorry, fallen, dark world, people are starved to death for a joyful noise. There’s a lot of noise, but very little of it is joyful.

Psalm 95:1-5 says: “O come, let us sing for joy to the Lord, let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving, let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods, in whose hand are the depths of the earth, the peaks of the mountains are His also. The sea is His, for it was He who made it, and His hands formed the dry land.”

I see in this passage one overall truth that we will break out into five components. First, the overriding truth: WORSHIP CALLS ME TO REJOICE.

1. Worship is corporate.

Three times in verses 1 and 2 we read, “Let us…” Let us sing for joy. Let us shout joyfully. Let us come before His presence. While worship should have a private element to it throughout the week, the psalmist here is stating that worship is designed to be congregational, not merely individual. Let us. Let us. Let us.

2. Worship is vocal.

Too often we think of worship as not only private, but fairly silent as well. We may worship God in our heart or even sing quietly, but God is longing for us to speak out to him, to sing out to Him.

3. Worship is vibrant.

Psalm 95 says, “Sing…shout…come!” There’s vibrancy, life, and energy in those words. And we’re to engage in this together. When I worship, it connects me to other people, and we become bonded together in some way that no other human activity can accomplish. Worship is something that happens in different ways, styles, and people, but God is at work in it. That makes it vibrant!

4. Worship is God-centered.

We need to make sure our worship is Christ-centered, not man- or woman-centered. Instead of singing about how happy we are to be together worshipping God, the psalms call us to sing directly to God. In other words, we are not to just talk or sing about how we feel when we worship, but rather engage our body, soul and spirit, complete with our emotions, in a total preoccupation with the Rock of our salvation. Our worship must be focused on God and God alone.

5. Worship is based on Truth.

We want to plunge every depth, ascend every peak, conquer every sea, and explore every inch of the dry land. And the more we do it, the more we discover, the more we realize and remember that He – God – made it all. He is sovereign over it all. The world is not only the work of His hands -- it is in His hands. Thus our collective, vocal, vibrant, God-centered rejoicing must be founded on the truth of who He is and what He has done.

You can do this. Open up the Scriptures and read again some words from Jesus. Sing a song of praise that comes from deep inside you. Tell Jesus of your love for Him. God loves you so much that when you and I come to Him and say to Him, “God, I love you…”, for some reason that God only knows, it gives Him joy like a father with a little child that makes a joyful noise.

Watch the full message below.

Pastor Jeff Cranston is the Lead Pastor at LowCountry Community Church