“When a certain immoral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them.
When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching him. She’s a sinner!”
— Luke 7:37-39 (NLT)
Whatever caused the woman to cry she used her tears to wash his feet and with no towel available she used her hair, the most glorious part of her (1 Corinthians 11:15) to dry them. Throughout all of this indignity, she continued to kiss the feet of her Lord, our Lord. How undignified, yet how incredibly passionate!
This woman’s worship was at huge cost her – the expense, the humility, the rejection she faced from the others in the room (all of which were likely her social superiors). But her desire to worship Jesus was so much bigger than her fear of any of these things – she only had eyes for him!
7.
It is all about Jesus
The woman’s worship was consumed with thoughts of Jesus and Jesus alone. She didn’t care what other people thought about her or what they might say about her. She knew that whatever it was that they thought or felt, it didn’t change what Jesus thought and felt about her. Her only concern was him; she understood who it was that she was there for.
Hebrews 12:28 says “let us be thankful and praise God by worshipping him with holy fear and awe”. Jesus is the visible image of our invisible God (Colossians 1:15), our great God and Saviour (Titus 2:13) and he is worthy of our worship; for through him all things were made (John 1:3).
Hebrews 1:1-4 teaches us that Jesus owns all things because he made all things. He reflects the complete radiance of God’s glory and is the exact representation of God’s being. He continues to sustain all things through his word. He paid the price for our sin and he oversees heaven, ruling over all things.
That our worship is all about Jesus might sound like a simple concept, and yes, it is – in theory. But believe it or not, the person of Jesus can be overlooked in worship. Rather than lifting up his name simply because he is good, we can come to Jesus for what we can get, what he can do for us or because of how it makes us feel. We pursue the power of the Holy Spirit to move in our lives because of the goose bumps or #feels rather than to strengthen us to carry out the will of Jesus in our lives.
That’s not to say that asking from God or experiencing the benefits of the presence of the Holy Spirit are not good things. They are. Absolutely. But they cannot be the focus of our worship.
In John 14, Jesus tells us that his spirit will comfort us when we’re hurting (14:18) and will bring us peace (14:27). But the Holy Spirit also leads us into all truth (14:17) and convicts us of our sins (John 16:8) and if our focus is on simply what we can receive that makes us feel good, we will ignore or turn away from anything that doesn’t and miss out on the richness of truth that comes with the intimacy of worship.
How often are we simply lifting up the name of Jesus with no other reason than to worship him? How often are we bowing before him simply because of who he is, rather than what he can do for us? When we worship, we must make Jesus the focus, the centre of it all, with no other motive than to simply lift up his name and draw nearer to him.
“At the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth” — Philippians 2:10
Yet worship isn’t only about the awe of who Jesus is. Hebrews 12:28 instructs us to be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with awe and reverence. It acknowledges his sovereignty, yet also our unworthiness. We worship Jesus by not only lifting his name but by also giving him his rightful place in the position of Lord over our lives.
8.
Worship takes place at Jesus’ feet
Our posture is so important in our worship. Worship is two-way communication with our Father in heaven and as with any communication, our non-verbal communication accounts for so much more than our words ever could.
In the late 60s, Professor Albert Mehrabian conducted several experiments to find out just how important gestures and intonation are for conveying a message and concluded that only 7% of communication is actually about what we say. 38% is actually about how we say it (meaning tone and intonation) and 55% is not verbal at all (gestures, hand signals, body movements and posture).
And the same goes for worship. Not only is what we say or do important, the attitude with which we worship and posture that we take are extremely important as well. When we come to worship, our words must glorify the name of Jesus, our attitudes must reflect Jesus and our posture must be turned towards Jesus.
Jesus doesn’t need our worship. Jesus isn’t insecure. He doesn’t doubt himself or need us to remind him of how amazing he is. He doesn’t need our reassurance that we desperately need Him. God never changes.
But when we worship, we are transformed. Worship takes our eyes off ourselves, off the busyness and the trials of life and turns us towards the person of Jesus. We are aligning our heart with his will and we come into deeper relationship with him, which can only make us better for it – God is already perfect!
“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” — 2 Corinthians 3:16-18
Without Jesus, we are a shadow of the person we were designed to be (The Process of Becoming) but when we enter into worship, the transformative power of the presence of God begins to remove the “veil”, extinguishing the power of the opinions and the distraction of others.
As Brad Kohring from Hillsong, Queensland puts it, as we worship “unveiled, we stand before God face to face. In the place where we “contemplate the Lord’s glory” with our attention fully on him, God transforms us into his image.” When we turn our attention towards Christ, God transforms us to be like Jesus.
Jesus is worthy of worship – no external circumstances, opinions, accusations or pain can ever change that fact. Nothing can prevent us from extravagant worship if all of our focus is on our incredible Saviour and we are in complete submission to him.
Lord God, you are worthy of all worship and honour because you are incredible.
I love you and I long to love you more.
Help me to always live a life of worship, both in awe and reverence, submitting to your will and recognising that you alone are worthy of all praise.
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