Ray Stedman Quote on "God and Worship"

Worship does not deal with what we make our bodies do, (either singing, kneeling, or praying), but worship consists of who we are, what our heart is feeling. This is the aspect of worship I want to explore with you. It is startling to realize that everyone worships! Everybody! Everywhere! Worship is the fundamental drive of life. Atheists worship. Infidels worship. Skeptics worship. Even Republicans and Democrats worship. Lawyers, insurance agents, and even Internal Revelationenue Service agents worship! All people worship for worship is the fundamental difference between humans and animals. Animals do not worship. They have no sense of the beyond or of the numinous. But God has placed eternity in man's heart, as the book of Ecclesiastes tells us (Ecclesiastes 3:11). This urge causes men everywhere to worship. If they are not worshipping the true God, they are worshipping a god of their own composition. Worship, therefore, is a universal phenomenon. The word comes from the old English worth-ship which means "to ascribe worth or value to something or someone." Clearly there are two forms of worship. From the Christian point of view there is true worship and there is false. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- True worship is to attribute worth to a real Being, one who is truly there and who is truly worthy. Dr. Francis Schaeffer wrote a book called The God Who Is There to make the point that, although God is invisible to our eyes, he is actually there. The function of believers is to learn what God is like and to acknowledge him -- to ascribe worth to him, to reflect upon the value, beauty, and character of God. This is true worship. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Old Testament is particularly designed of God to make the great truths of the New Testament come alive for us. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Exodus is all about God. Exodus is God's answer to man's need and God's supply for man's sin. It begins immediately with God's activity and throughout the whole course of the book you see God mightily at work. The book is the picture, therefore, of redemption, of God's activity to redeem man in his need, in his sin, in his degradation and misery. As such, it is a beautiful picture and contains tremendously instructive lessons to us of what redemption is; that is, what God has done, is doing in our lives, and what he intends to do with us -- the steps that he will be taking. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The great message of the book of Exodus is that by means of the cross, God has made it possible for a holy, unchangeable God to dwell with us. The whole of the tabernacle is a picture of God's dwelling with his people. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The house of God in the New Testament is a human body. "You are the temple of God," Paul says (I Corinthians. 3:16). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------