[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.]
The worship services I grew up in – whether I was in a Southern Baptist, Presbyterian, or non-denominational church – all had a similar flow. There were a lot of songs at the beginning of the service; there was a sermon; and there was one song of response at the end of the service. When I was in college, I attended a worship service that flipped the script. The singing came AFTER the preaching!
With this, I experienced a depth of richness in the singing that I had never experienced. Why was that? I wasn’t trying to muster up the motivation to sing; I was responding from the heart with a real desire that had been awakened in my heart as I listened to the Word of Christ.
It turns out that what I experienced in that worship service has biblical precedent. In the Bible, worship is always and only a response to seeing the glory of God. There is no true worship where there is no response. We are incapable of mustering up worship that is worthy of God. But when God shows us His glory, and exposes our sin, and provides us with grace in Christ crucified – when we experience the salvation of the Gospel – we are compelled by joy to respond in worship!
This explains the response of Isaiah in Isaiah 6:8. Isaiah saw God high and lifted up; he saw himself for the sinner he truly was; and he received forgiveness and cleansing of his sin through God’s gracious provision of a sacrifice. After experiencing all this and then hearing God’s call, “Whom shall I send?”, Isaiah cried out, “Here I am! Send me!” How could he not eagerly give himself to the service of this God?
How could we not eagerly give ourselves to the service of our God, the God who has made His Son to be sin for us so that we could become His own people? This is why at Redeemer we spend extended time singing in response to the proclaimed Word of Christ. And our response of worship doesn’t stop with the last song. That is the beginning, the commissioning, to lives given in worship to the God of the Gospel. May our worship be shaped by this Gospel, with a vision of this God, so that we would be able to respond by giving Him the glory.