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Genesis and the Gospel

THE BEGINNING OF WORSHIP

And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering.

GENESIS 4:4

Worship, like witness and mission, is part of a “living sacrifice” of one’s life to God that must be “holy and acceptable” (Romans 12:1). And God has every right to express what is “good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2)—what is pleasing to him and what is not. Worship must be focused on the character and the pleasure of the One who is worshiped. To “worship” with no thought of God, who is both the object of and mediator for worship, usually results in a service that merely manifests the effort, gifts or intentions that please worshipers and that they find acceptable. This chapter will highlight foundational principles of biblical worship from the beginning of God’s story in the texts of origins through the practices of the patriarchs of God’s people prior to the emergence of Israel as a nation under the leadership of Moses.

It’s not unusual today for Christian congregations to have two styles of worship, usually designated “traditional” and “contemporary”—and often meeting in two different settings. Often the decision to develop these two styles is based on congregational interest in attracting different kinds of worshipers with distinct preferences, especially in music. When worship is designed for congregational taste and preferences, however, God as the mediator and center of the worshiper’s intent is easily lost. Services of worship can become storefront windows advertising the attractions of a community instead of an offering of the congregation’s gifts intended for God’s acceptance and pleasure, centered on God’s glory.

Worship that is pleasing and acceptable to God can be offered in many different styles; style itself is not the issue. A liturgy encompassing biblical patterns and focused on God as the only “audience” can please God no matter the style of accompaniment, whether praise band and bongo drums or pipe organ and handbells. A congregation may use either hymnals or overhead projections, but worship itself is evaluated not by the satisfaction of personal preference but by its acceptance by God as pleasing and honoring to him.

The First “Worship War”

Today’s “worship wars” are often waged around issues, such as “style,” that are not of ultimate concern. A congregation may split into two communities, usually designed to offer what each group wants. People with the praise band in the gym, a short sermon with a shirt-sleeved pastor propped on a stool, assume the people in the sanctuary with no overhead projection—just hymnbooks, a choir, a robed pastor and a pulpit—really need to loosen up. And the sanctuary pew people assume the gymnasium people in their folding chairs need to get serious. But those who attend the traditional service and those who attend the contemporary service canboth fail at worship that pleases God because they are more concerned with what pleases them!

“Worship wars” can be pretty serious. The first murder in the Bible happened as the result of a worship war! Genesis 4 is an account of two brothers who each brought an offering from their chosen work to the LORD as an act of worship. Both brothers were engaged in work that God had mandated (Genesis 1:29-30; 2:15). The elder brother, Cain, was a farme