All Worship the King

Since we’ve been speaking about sports, imagine going to a football game. You go through the parking lot where everyone is tailgating in their team’s colors. They are talking and laughing, eating and debating about the upcoming game. Hopes are high and excitement is real. You make your way through the parking lot with the masses of excited fans, hearing the team’s song as you walk, people bursting out in song as they go. You are ready to see the game! And then you make your way through the gates of the stadium. Does everyone have his or her ticket? Yes, OK, we’re all good! And now past the concession stands with eight-dollar hot dogs and five-dollar diet sodas. What a wonder! But now we must get our favorite player’s jersey before we go through the tunnel into the stands. And then to the seats! You look out as you take your seat and see a great sight: tens of thousands of people crowding together, shouting and cheering for little ants running around the green field warming up. The cheerleaders (or yell-leaders) are there. Kickoff is about to ensue.

But what if, just as the game was about to begin, someone in your group declares that he or she is going to spend the next few hours doing other things, and you simply must come along. You ask if they have lost their mind because, after all, you have come to watch the game. But they respond that they will be looking at the concession stands and walking around the stadium to see the architecture and assessing the functionality of the electronics work at the entrance gates. They muse that they could go back into the parking lot to see how many cars there were or how many of those cars tailgated and how many did not. Then they urge you once again to accompany them. After all, together you could spend the next few hours counting each member of the audience one by one, or sketching the architectural design of the stadium. What would you say to that person? We don’t know what you would say, but we know what we would say! “Do what you want, but I’ve come to watch the game!”

All the fanfare that is associated with a football spectacle is there to focus and highlight the main thing: the game itself. People don’t go to a football game for the parking, the concessions, or the people. They go for the game.

Now let’s take this thought to a worship service. It is entirely possible to be distracted away from the focus of worship. Lights, sounds, music, people, or clothes are not the focus of true worship. Rather, true worship focuses on the main thing, and the main attraction in worship is God Himself. When we look at Hannah’s Song, we see the “main attraction” in worship. Others might go to worship for other reasons, but notice how many times Hannah focuses her worship on God. Just by the number of times she uses God’s name in her praise, we count that she focuses her worship on God no fewer than 21 times in the span of these 11 verses.

Her singular focus on her God enables her to sing of His deliverance, her reversal from shame to honor, and the future hope of the coming Messiah! Only encounters with the living God in worship enable us to have a radical shift in perspective. Even if circumstances do not change, when we encounter the living God in worship, our perspectives on our circumstances do change! Hannah saw her God, and that changed everything.

People “go to church” for a number of reasons. Consider the following list:

Do any of these reasons sound familiar? If we are fully honest about what we do on a Saturday or Sunday, at least some of these in the list touch on real reasons we attend a service on the weekend. But Hannah’s experience with God in worship reminds us of a powerful and terrifying truth: Our focus in worship is the living God and His Savior, Jesus Christ!

It is not merely about our needs or our hopes or our prayers. It is about encountering a living God who meets us and changes us in worship. This is the reason, for instance, that the writer of Hebrews encourages the church to hold fast to assembling together in worship: the living Christ has purified the church of her sins and meets with His bride as we anticipate His second coming (Heb 10:25). His encounter with His people is grand and powerful; as we are encouraged and transformed to stay the course, hold to the faith, and proclaim the gospel to a world that desperately needs the Savior:

Let us hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us be concerned about one another in order to promote love and good works, not staying away from our worship meetings, as some habitually do, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. (Heb 10:23-25)

We have heard it all our lives, and likely you have too, that God wants us to “go to church.” Maybe parents scolded us at some point or another for not “going to church.” But we must remember this bold reality: God does not want us to come to church; we are the church! And as we gather together to worship the living Christ, we are encouraged and changed.

At the Summit Church in the Raleigh-Durham metroplex, we have to ask the same question readers ask as they make their way to worship each week: When we make the pilgrimage to worship on the weekend, why exactly do we do it?

Of course the admonition from Hebrews 10 is one reason. But on the other hand, no one is forcing us to do this. Why do we sing songs and hear God’s Word preached, and pray and thank and plead with God? Why do we receive the ministry of the Spirit? Why do we look for God to do miracles when we enter into this sacred space?

We do this not to fulfill an obligation but to encounter the Holy One who has saved us and has changed us forever through the shed blood of the risen Christ! We gather together to worship for an audience of one. We worship our God and Him alone.

It is a good thing to reflect on the purpose and motivation of our participation in worship. Before the service begins, it may be helpful to ask yourself the following leading questions:

Why have I come today?

For whom am I here?

Whom do I want to see most of all?

As these questions open us up to our true selves, we can then turn our mind’s attention and heart’s devotion to the person who heals and saves, the object of our worship: the living Christ!

Hannah’s Song in 1 Samuel 2:1-11 is the embodiment of praise. It is a radical song of worship to the true God. Her focus lay firmly on the living God, her “rock” and her “salvation.” Her experience opens all of us to worship the King!

Through Hannah’s worship in 1 Samuel 2, we discover that her life was transformed. When we read of her experience from chapter 1, it is apparent that the text presents her as agitated, irritated, troubled in spirit, anxious, and in deep pain. Another way we can describe this is that she was at war with others, herself, and God:

She was at war with others, particularly her rival and her husband. She was provoked and abused by a woman (Peninnah) who ridiculed her infertility (1 Sam 1:6-7). This is perhaps one of the most sensitive issues in the biblical story: barrenness and infertility. It is a potent source of pain, and here the other woman mocks the deepest wound in her life. Have you had that experience? Have you ever experienced the shattering effect of another person scorning you for something you cannot control (especially what others see as physical deficiencies)? This is no small matter. But to make this issue worse, her husband is absolutely clueless. As we discussed in the previous chapter, Elkanah cannot comprehend why she is so upset! He thinks he is everything she needs in life! Easy for him to say. He already has children with Peninnah. Hannah, however, is all alone. For those who are married and are reading this commentary, is it not possible to hear Hannah’s experience with her spouse ringing in your ears? Have we ever had the experience of our spouse not understanding or supporting us the way we think we ought to be supported? The loneliness and frustration, the pain and the agony of not being known and understood can be all too immense, leading us to be, like Hannah, “deeply hurt” (1:10).

But Hannah’s conflict did not simply come from without. She experienced emotional and spiritual turmoil from within that the text describes as Hannah having a “broken heart” and experiencing “anguish and resentment” (1:15-16). She was at war with others, but she was also at war with herself. Hannah’s story is not unusual in the biblical material. Oftentimes those who experience trouble all around them also reflect the storm within.

But finally, Hannah was at war, in a sense, with God. She wept bitterly and pleaded with Him (1:10) and poured out her heart to her God (1:15). She wondered what in the world God was doing with her! Why was He allowing her rival to do this to her? Why did God create her for barrenness rather than fertility? It was a bitter and jagged pill to swallow. She could go to no other court of appeal than the highest court imaginable: to the throne of God Himself!

That was Hannah’s story in 1 Samuel 1. But look at her story in chapter 2: she is radically transformed! Look at her worship now: it is radically transformed. She is transformed in a number of ways we see in 2:1-11:

When we read her song, we see that the life of Hannah moves from emptiness to fullness. She moves from pain to praise. Her heart moves from mourning to joy.

Worshiping the Lord transforms because in worship God meets with His people.

It is vital to note something extraordinarily important in the light of this. Worshiping the Lord transforms us whether we “feel” like it or not! Now, we may not feel like worshiping. Well-known pastor and author Eugene Peterson captures this point about feeling and worship in his fantastic book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. Peterson says,

I have put a great emphasis on the fact that Christians worship because they want to, not because they are forced to. But I have never said we worship because we feel like it. Feelings are great liars. If Christians worshiped only when they felt like it, there would be precious little worship. Feelings are important in many areas but completely unreliable in matters of faith. Paul Scherer is laconic: “The Bible wastes very little time on the way we feel.”

We live in what one writer calls the “age of sensation.” We think that if we don’t feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting. Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship. When we obey the command to praise God in our worship, our deep, essential need to be in a relationship with God is nurtured. (A Long Obedience, 54)

No doubt worship stirs up feelings for God, but worship is not about feelings for God alone. Transformation through worship comes as a result of our bowing our hearts and lives before our Maker, through the good and the bad, whether we feel like it or not. As we worship God in times of trouble and “press through,” as an Anglican pastor friend has said, we experience the radical transformation that comes through communion with God.

The point is this: worship is the doorway to transformation.

In times of trouble, we want to commend the importance of talking with friends, spouse, family, and those closest to us. We want to commend the importance of exercise and leisure when times are difficult and the pain of life extends its icy fingers into our world. Still, while we commend these things, we would ask whether our first action in times of distress is, in fact, worship. Worship brings transformation.

First Samuel 2 is really the last word we hear of Hannah in the Bible. Hers is a story of transformation from pain to joy because of the radical experience with the God she worships. She will forever be known as that woman greatly transformed, that one whose life ends in worship. Can you say the same of your life?