Gospel-Shaped Worship: God

*Gospel-shaped worship is a way to describe an order of service which moves us through the progression of the gospel from the beginning to the end of a service. In every service, we want to see the glory of God, humbly come to him in our need as finite, sinful, broken men, see and embrace God’s grace in Christ, and respond in faith and trust and consecration to Christ. For all the distinctiveness of each worship service, it is our goal that each service would move us from GOD to MAN to CHRIST to RESPONSE.

In the Old Testament book Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah tells us that he saw God:

“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:

‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;

the whole earth is full of his glory!’

And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke” (Isaiah 6:1-4).

It is here, with a vision of the glory of God, that Gospel-shaped worship begins. When we gather together to worship on Sunday mornings, we need to begin by recognizing the God to whom we are drawing near:

– He is the King. Before anything else ever was, God was there. Everything that exists exists because He created it. Every one of us, therefore, lives under His sovereign reign. The whole earth, and all that is in it, belongs to this God!

– He is majestic. Isaiah says that God is “high and lifted up” and that “the train of his robe filled the temple”. These statements communicate to us that this God is transcendent and he is immense. He is above his creation, and his presence is overwhelming. This is the God we worship.

– He is holy, holy, holy. God is set apart from his creation. He is higher than the holiest angels in his absolute purity and righteousness. And when we come, we come to the presence of this holy God.

– He is glorious. The God of the Bible, the God Isaiah saw, the God we come to as we gather on Sunday mornings, is inherently and fully glorious. The weight of who He is is of ultimate significance. We need to feel this weight of glory as we come to Him.

We may do this through a song like “10,000 Reasons” that reminds of the attributes of God and calls us to worship His holy name. We may begin the service with a passage of Scripture, like Romans 11:33-36, which reminds us that all things are from God and through God and to God, and that the glory belongs to Him forever. We might begin our service by having a time of congregational prayer and adoration. Whatever we do to begin our time together, we want it to call our attention upward to our great God.

As we’ll see the next few weeks, nothing else about the Gospel will make sense if we don’t remember together that our God is the majestic, holy, glorious King of all.