The Proper Posture for Worship, in Seven Moods, Part 3

worshipposture2Mood, the Fourth

The normal posture of worship in the ancient Near East was prostration — as we can see in such passages as —

(Gen 19:1 ESV) The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth

(Isa 49:7 ESV) Thus says the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation, the servant of rulers: “Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves; because of the LORD, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”

(Psa 5:7 ESV)  But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you.

Does that make bowing mandatory? Well, if we take Paul  in 1 Timothy 2 seriously, it’s really hard to lift holy hands toward God while lying prostrate (face to the ground, as the Muslims do in the mosques today). I bet you never, ever thought about that one, did you?

And the singing is really going to be really bad if we worship with our faces on the ground. But then, nothing says we have to maintain but a single posture throughout the service!

Bowing was also a standard form of obeisance in the ancient Near East. As previously shown, several passages refer to even kings bowing in the presence of God. As was also true of prostration, bowing was not uniquely about worship. Rather, a man bowed to his king, and a lord bowed before his overlord. It was recognition of subordination — which can certainly be part of worship but can happen in many other contexts as well.

Notice further that we’ve stretched “worship” a bit beyond the breaking point in attempting make our Sunday morning assembly fit the word. After all, beginning with the relocation of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem by David, “worship” in the Old Testament meant to go to Jerusalem to offer sacrifice, which David did while dancing!

The Jews did not go to synagogue to “worship,” as worship was considered uniquely a Temple event. To worship, one must take an offering to the priest to be slaughtered and burned on the altar. The Jews did not engage in congregational singing or listen to sermons at the Temple. They sacrificed.

Thus, the correct posture for “worship” to a Jew of Paul’s generation was holding a leash around the neck of an animal to be given to the priest for an offering. Doubtlessly, once the animal was given over to the priests, the worshipper might bow or even prostrate himself, as a sign of his submission to YHWH. He may well find this a perfect time to say a prayer.

He might step back and listen to the Levite choir and orchestra, who performed throughout the Temple rites. He would likely pay a voluntary offering to the Temple treasury. He may even owe his temple tax and pay it while there. But he “worshiped” when he gave up the animal to the priest.

(Psa 99:9 ESV)  9 Exalt the LORD our God, and worship at his holy mountain; for the LORD our God is holy!

(Isa 27:13 ESV) 13 And in that day a great trumpet will be blown, and those who were lost in the land of Assyria and those who were driven out to the land of Egypt will come and worship the LORD on the holy mountain at Jerusalem.

(Act 8:27-28 ESV)  27 And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship  28 and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah.

(Act 24:11 ESV)  11 You can verify that it is not more than twelve days since I went up to worship in Jerusalem,

And we can’t finish the discussion without considering Jeremiah 31. It’s from this chapter that we get “new testament.” When Jesus referred to the Lord’s Supper as the “new covenant,” he was referring to this chapter. Countless other New Testament passages refer to this chapter as prophesying the coming Kingdom of God.

Jeremiah says that when the Kingdom comes and the new covenant is established,

(Jer 31:4, 6-7 ESV)  4 Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel! Again you shall adorn yourself with tambourines and shall go forth in the dance of the merrymakers. … 6 For there shall be a day when watchmen will call in the hill country of Ephraim: ‘Arise, and let us go up to Zion, to the LORD our God.'”  7 For thus says the LORD: “Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob, and raise shouts for the chief of the nations; proclaim, give praise, and say, ‘O LORD, save your people, the remnant of Israel.’

A sign of God’s displeasure with the Jews, leading to their Babylonian Captivity, will be the end of dance and tambourines, because these are how the Jews celebrated good news, and there’d be no good news until the Kingdom comes.

But when the Kingdom comes, and a new covenant is made, the coming of God back to his people will be celebrated with shouts, dance, singing, praise, and instruments.

(Jer 31:12-13 ESV)  12 They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the LORD, over the grain, the wine, and the oil, and over the young of the flock and the herd; their life shall be like a watered garden, and they shall languish no more.  13 Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy; I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.

And over and over, Jeremiah speaks of how this will all happen in Jerusalem (on Mt. Zion). Why Jerusalem? Because this is where God is worshiped.

Obviously, we see in John 4 and Acts that Christian worship does not dictate worshiping only in Jerusalem at the Temple. But the church was founded, and the Kingdom came, on Mt. Zion because of prophecies such as this one. The new worship, the celebration of the Kingdom, had to begin in Jerusalem.

And if you know anything about the people of that region, you know that when they saw the Spirit outpoured and heard that God’s salvation had come through the Messiah Jesus, they danced. They probably slipped some tambourines in there, too. They’d been waiting nearly 500 years for these prophecies to come true! They weren’t about to wait for the next issue of CENI Monthly to find out if it was okay to celebrate in physically expressive ways.

So right there, under the noses of the 12 Holy Apostles, immediately after Peter’s big line in Acts 2:38, they did what Jews do when God acts among them to bless them: they sang, they danced, and they celebrated with all their might — right there during the baptism ceremony.

And they sang “O Happy Day.”

Or maybe it was “Wade in the Water.”

Or something like that. And they sang it with all their hearts and souls — even if it meant smiling. (I just happen to hear it with a blues inflection, but maybe I’m eisegeting that part. It’s a mood thing.)

Moreover, the idea of worship being sacrifice remains true in the New Testament —

(Rom 12:1 ESV) I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Therefore, worship is not measured by such things as our posture sitting in the pews. Rather, it’s really about giving oneself up to God.

[Found this late. Play in full screen mode, with plenty of bass. Give it a second to build.]

About Jay F Guin

My name is Jay Guin, and I’m a retired elder. I wrote The Holy Spirit and Revolutionary Grace about 18 years ago. I’ve spoken at the Pepperdine, Lipscomb, ACU, Harding, and Tulsa lectureships and at ElderLink. My wife’s name is Denise, and I have four sons, Chris, Jonathan, Tyler, and Philip. I have two grandchildren. And I practice law.
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One Response to The Proper Posture for Worship, in Seven Moods, Part 3

  1. The Kenyan missionaries were required- of course- to include “Happy Day” in the little hymnals they put together, kindly translated from English to Swahili. However, the meter of the song created a problem. “Siku (happy) ku (day)” translated well enough. However, the meter of the song renders this (sing it with me) “SEE-EE-EE KU KU! SEE-EE-EE KU KU!” This changes things, as this pronunciation has a different meaning: “Si (no) kuku (chicken)!”

    Made us sound like some sort of vegan denomination…

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