Worship, the Missing Jewel

So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty: for he is thy Lord; and worship thou him. PSALM 45:11

In the last years of his life Tozer preached a series of sermons on worship, and one of them, God Made Man to Worship, is among his addresses in the Ochorus library. It opens with a thesis he had been pressing for decades. God made man for a purpose, and the purpose was worship. Man fell, and in falling lost both the ability to worship rightly and the knowledge of whom to worship. Redemption restores what the fall destroyed. We are saved, in the first place, not to be busy for God but to adore Him. Tozer summed up the condition of the church around him in a phrase that became the title of one of his best-known booklets: worship, he said, was the missing jewel in evangelical Christianity.

Made for this

He built the case from the whole drift of Scripture rather than from a single proof text, and he told the preachers in his audience that this was the right way to handle any doctrine. From Eden to the new Jerusalem, the Bible presents God as desiring the adoration of His creatures. It was God who came looking for Adam in the garden, not Adam who came looking for God. And the vision of heaven that closes the Bible is a vision of worship.

Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. REVELATION 4:11

Tozer found it one of the most moving truths in Scripture that the God who needs nothing should nevertheless want to be loved and admired by the creatures He has made. He noticed, too, the strange contradiction in fallen human nature: the longing to worship survives the fall, even when the capacity to worship the true God has been lost. Men will worship something. The whole history of religion bears witness to it. The question is never whether a man will worship, but what and how.

Worship God refuses

Here Tozer turned, as he often did, to hard words. He believed it was necessary to clear away false worship before true worship could be recognised, and in the same sermon he named several kinds that God rejects.

There is the worship of Cain, which comes to God without atonement. It rests on a false idea of God, as though He were too easy-going to require a sacrifice for sin; on a false idea of man, as though he were already on good terms with God by nature; and on a false idea of sin, as though it were a small matter.

By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. HEBREWS 11:4

There is the worship of the Samaritans, which picks and chooses among the truths of God, keeping those it likes and quietly neglecting the rest. Tozer observed that a truth need not be denied to be killed; it is enough to leave it alone.

Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. JOHN 4:22

And there is the worship that is really an aesthetic rapture — the feeling of sublimity a man may have before a sunset or a mountain, or the pleasant religious sensation stirred by soft music, candlelight and a sonorous voice. Tozer did not despise beauty. He loved poetry and music. But he insisted that such feelings are not yet the worship of God, and that a man may enjoy them richly on Sunday and live as a scoundrel the rest of the week.

In spirit and in truth

Against all of these he set the words of Christ to the woman at the well.

God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. JOHN 4:24

True worship, as Tozer described it across many sermons, has several marks. It is directed to the true God as He has revealed Himself, and so it is bound to the truth of Scripture. It comes through Christ and His blood, and not by any other way. It is inspired by the Holy Spirit, and not manufactured by atmosphere. And it is a response of the whole person — mind, will and affections — to the sight of God’s glory. At its heart there is a kind of astonished love, a reverent wonder that fills the soul when it sees God as He is, mingled with trust, delight and self-forgetfulness.

O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our maker. PSALM 95:6

Worship before work

One of Tozer’s most persistent themes was the order of priority between worship and service. He believed that the church of his day had reversed it. It prized activity, measured success by numbers and organisation, and recruited workers eagerly while neglecting to make worshippers. Tozer held that God wants worshippers first, and that work which does not spring from worship is of little value to Him, however impressive it looks. He liked to point to Mary of Bethany, who sat at the Lord’s feet while her sister was distracted with much serving.

But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her. LUKE 10:42

The point is not that service is unimportant. It is that service is meant to overflow from adoration. A man who has been with God will work for God, and his work will carry something of God in it. A man who works for God without being with Him will sooner or later work for himself.

Weighing it

Tozer’s recovery of worship is among the most valuable things he left the church, and much of it is simply the Bible read aloud. Two cautions are worth adding. First, his critique of the music and methods of his day was sometimes sweeping, and a reader should not assume that every form of worship Tozer disliked is displeasing to God. The test he himself gave — spirit and truth, through Christ, by the Spirit — is the right one, and it cuts across styles.

Second, worship in the New Testament is wider than the act of adoration, precious as that is. Paul describes the whole of the Christian’s life, offered to God, as his reasonable service.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. ROMANS 12:1

Tozer knew this well, and he would develop it in his teaching on the sacrament of living. But it is worth holding the two together from the start: the hour on the knees and the day in the world are one offering.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Read Tozer’s sermon God Made Man to Worship in the Ochorus library, with John 4 open beside it.

2. Examine your own worship against the three kinds God rejects. Is any of it without atonement, selective, or merely aesthetic?

3. Begin your prayer each day this week with five minutes of adoration only — no confession yet, no requests, only praise.

4. Ask whether your service for God has outrun your worship of Him. Cut back one activity if necessary, and give the time to God.

5. Read Revelation 4 and 5 aloud. Let the worship of heaven set the tone for your own.

A PRAYER

Lord, You made me to worship You, and I have given my adoration to a thousand lesser things.

Forgive me for coming to You without the blood of Christ, for choosing which of Your truths to hear, and for mistaking pleasant feelings for worship.

Teach me to worship You in spirit and in truth. Show me Your glory, and let my heart answer with wonder and love.

Make me a worshipper first, and then a worker, and let all my work flow out of my worship. Amen.