Are You Worshiping God in Vain?
An Affair of the Heart
Almost everyone would agree that biblical worship involves some kind of outward act. The very word in Hebrew means “to bow down.” Worship is bowing, lifting hands, praying, singing, reciting, preaching, performing rites of eating, cleansing, ordaining, and so on.
But the startling fact is that all these things can be done in vain. They can be pointless, useless, and empty. This is the warning of Jesus in Matthew 15:8–9 when he devastates the Pharisees with God’s word from Isaiah 29:13:
This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
in vain do they worship me.
First, notice that the parallel between the phrases “honor me” and “worship me” shows that worship is essentially a way of honoring God. Of course, that doesn’t mean making him honorable or increasing his honor. It means recognizing his honor and feeling the worth of it and ascribing it to him in all the ways appropriate to his character.
Splendor and majesty are before him;
strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength!
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name. (Ps. 96:6–8)
So the first thing to see in Jesus’s words is that worship is a way of gladly reflecting back to God the radiance of his worth. The reason for saying gladly is that even mountains and trees reflect back to God the radiance of his worth:
Desiring God
John Piper
John Piper’s influential work on Christian Hedonism, Desiring God, challenges the belief that following Christ requires the sacrifice of pleasure. Rather, he teaches that “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”
Praise the Lord from the earth, . . .
Mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and all cedars! (Ps. 148:7, 9)
Yet this reflection of God’s glory in nature is not conscious. The mountains and hills do not willingly worship. In all the earth, only humans have this unique capacity.
If we do not gladly reflect God’s glory in worship, we will nevertheless reflect the glory of his justice in our own condemnation: “Surely the wrath of man shall praise you” (Ps. 76:10). But this unwilling reflection of God’s worth is not worship. Therefore, it is necessary to define worship not simply as a way of reflecting back to God the radiance of his worth but, more precisely, as a way of doing it gladly.
The word gladly is liable to misunderstanding because (as we will see in a moment) worship at times involves contrition and brokenness, which we do not usually associate with gladness. But I keep the word because if we say only, for example, that worship is a “willing” reflection back to God of his worth, then we are on the brink of a worse misunderstanding—namely, that worship can be willed when the heart has no real desire or, as Jesus says, when the heart is “far from God.” Moreover, I think we will see that in genuine biblical contrition there is at least a seed of gladness that comes from the awakening hope that God will “revive the heart of the contrite” (Isa. 57:15).
How to Worship God in Vain
This leads to the second thing to see in Matthew 15:8—namely, that we can “worship” God in vain:
This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me.
An act of worship is vain and futile when it does not come from the heart. This was implied in the words of Jesus to the Samaritan adulteress: “True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him” (John 4:23). Now, what is this experience of the spirit? What goes on in the heart when worship is not in vain?
Worship is a way of gladly reflecting back to God the radiance of his worth.
Worship is more than an act of mere willpower. All the outward acts of worship are performed by acts of will. But that does not make them authentic. The will can be present (for all kinds of reasons) while the heart is not truly engaged (or, as Jesus says, is “far way”). The engagement of the heart in worship is the coming alive of the feelings, emotions, and affections of the heart. Where feelings for God are dead, worship is dead.
The Affections That Make Worship Authentic
Now let’s be specific. What are these feelings or affections that make the outward acts of worship authentic? For an answer, we turn to the inspired psalms and hymns of the Old Testament. An array of different and intertwined affections may grip the heart at any time. So the extent and order of the following list is not intended to limit the possibilities of pleasure in anyone’s heart.
Perhaps the first response of the heart at seeing the majestic holiness of God is stunned silence:
Be still, and know that I am God. (Ps. 46:10)
The Lord is in his holy temple;
let all the earth keep silence before him. (Hab. 2:20)
In the silence rises a sense of awe and reverence and wonder at the sheer magnitude of God:
Let all the earth fear the Lord;
let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him! (Ps. 33:8)
And because we are all sinners, there is in our reverence a holy dread of God’s righteous power: The Lord of hosts, him you shall regard as holy.
Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. (Isa. 8:13)
I will bow down toward your holy temple
in the fear of you. (Ps. 5:7)
But this dread is not a paralyzing fright full of resentment against God’s absolute authority. It finds release in brokenness and contrition and grief for our ungodliness:
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Ps. 51:17)Thus says the One who is high and lifted up,
who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
“I dwell in the high and holy place,
and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly,
and to revive the heart of the contrite.” (Isa. 57:15)
Mingled with the feeling of genuine brokenness and contrition, there arises a longing for God:
As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God. (Ps. 42:1–2)Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Ps. 73:25–26)O God, you are my God;
earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. (Ps. 63:1)
God is not unresponsive to the contrite longing of the soul. He comes and lifts the load of sin and fills our heart with gladness and gratitude:
You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
you have loosed my sackcloth
and clothed me with gladness,
that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever! (Ps. 30:11–12)
But our joy does not just rise from the backward glance in gratitude. It also rises from the forward glance in hope:
Why are you cast down,
O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God. (Ps. 42:5–6)I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope. (Ps. 130:5)
In the end, the heart longs not for any of God’s good gifts but for God himself. To see him and know him and be in his presence is the soul’s final feast. Beyond this, there is no quest. Words fail. We call it pleasure, joy, delight. But these are weak pointers to the unspeakable experience:
One thing have I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. (Ps. 27:4)In your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (Ps. 16:11)Delight yourself in the Lord. (Ps. 37:4)
These are some of the affections of the heart that keep worship from being “in vain.” Worship is a way of gladly reflecting back to God the radiance of his worth. It is not a mere act of willpower by which we perform outward acts. Without the engagement of the heart, we do not really worship. The engagement of the heart in worship is the coming alive of the feelings, emotions, and affections of the heart. Where feelings for God are dead, worship is dead.
True worship must include inward feelings that reflect the worth of God’s glory. If this were not so, the word hypocrite would have no meaning. But there is such a thing as hypocrisy—going through outward motions (like singing, praying, giving, reciting) that signify affections of the heart that are not there: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.”
This article is adapted from Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist by John Piper.
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