As we make disciples of Jesus, our true goal and desire is to make worshipers. Worshipers of God through Jesus Christ. But what does it mean to be a worshiper?
The study below will take us through some basic Biblical ideas of what worship is and what it means to be a worshiper. As you consider teaching this to your disciples or introducing the ideas in new churches, you may need to break each of the sections below into separate 3/3rds Group studies, looking for applications within your the disciple’s personal worship and connection with God as well as within the corporate life of the church body.
The writer of Psalm 95 says:
Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker.
Psalm 95:6
We must show reverence, bowing before God, kneeling before the Lord. To worship God means that we are giving honor and glory to him. We take the spotlight off of ourselves and we put it all on him.
As Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, he told her:
You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
John 4:22-24
Jesus says that we must truly know God, truly know who he is and worship him in the Spirit. We can’t fake our worship. Our hearts and minds must give honor and glory to God on the inside of us in the same way that we may be showing our worship on the outside with our external expressions. Jesus, in fact, gave a warning when he quoted the prophet Isaiah about the Jews worship:
You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
Matthew 15:7-9
“‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules. ’”
Let’s study some passages from the Bible to understand the nature of worship:
Discussion
Study these passages to determine the different ways that the Bible says that we should worship. Write down each method of worship that you see in these scriptures.
Discussion