1 Peter 2:9-10 "True Worship"

If we want to understand what worship is –or what it consists of, we need to start by looking at the Bible. Instead of looking at random passages about worship, I'm thinking more about the big picture of the Bible. If we look at the story of the Bible in its entirety, from beginning to end, we will notice that the story revolves around events. There are several defining events in the Bible –events that have shaped the Hebrew people, and the Christian Church. There is the act of creation, and the event of the fall. There is the event of the Jewish Exodus from slavery in Egypt. There is the Christ Event –the birth and life and death and resurrection of Jesus –and there is the promised event of Christ’s second coming. This is the story of the Bible in a nutshell, isn’t it? And since these are the events that shape the story of the Bible, and since the Bible is our official Book of Worship, these same events form the basis for our worshipof the God of these events.

What I’m suggesting is that true worship is not a warm fuzzy feeling that we get towards God. True worship is not an emotion. And, in fact, true worship is not even an action exactly. True worship begins at least as a remembrance. Worship begins as we remember the saving events of God. In the Old Testament, many of the Psalms, for instance, recount how God called them into being as the Children of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, about how God established a covenant with them, and how God, after the Exodus and the wandering in the desert, went before them into the land He had promised them and drove out the other nations before them. And as they remembered what God had done for them as a people, they also acknowledged how God provided for them as individuals. Again, in the Psalms, David wrote often about how God had saved Him from the miry pit, from destruction by his enemies, from despair.

These remembrances of God’s saving events became the basis for worship. In fact, throughout the Old Testament, almost always when we find people worshiping, we also find them remembering.

The primary saving event in the Old Testament was, of course, the exodus out of Egypt. Consequently, the vast majority of Hebrew corporate worship, including most of their holy holidays, Passover, for example, revolve around remembering how God saved them as a people from slavery in Egypt.

In the New Testament, we also have a saving event around which almost all of our worship focuses. Jesus lived and died and rose again from the dead. In the Christ event, God brought us out of our bondage and addiction to sin, and he forgave us and he restored our relationship to Himself. Through Jesus God gave to us a new covenant and we became His people and He became our God.

In 1 Peter 2:9-10, Peter tells us: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

In other words, since we once were not a people, but are now the people of God, since we once had not been forgiven, had not received mercy through the shed blood of Jesus, but now our sins have been forgiven, we declare the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into light. There is a cause and effect relationship between acknowledging and remembering how God has saved us and our ability to give Him praise.

In worship, God does what He has always done. He reaches out to us with compassion and mercy; He brings us out of bondage and addiction. He heals and restores us. He forgives both the guilt of our sin and the shame of our sin. And He calls us to gather around His throne and give Him thanks and give Him praise.