Worship, Sacrifice, and the Sabbath

I'm always grateful when someone provides a biblical insight into something pretty basic to my faith, but which I, despite 50 years in the church, hadn't heard before. This doesn't happen a lot. But it did happen a few days ago when I read a blog entry by Michael Hines called "Biblical Worship."

The whole post was excellent, talking about the sabbath and the intertwining of sacrifice with worship throughout the Old Testament. It provided a fine lesson in Bible history. The part that gave me a Eureka moment was, "The sabbath day was not set aside as a day of worship. It was, instead, a day of rest." And then he quotes Exodus 20:10-11, which says exactly that. It doesn't mean you can't worship on Sunday. But he explained how people went to the temple to offer sacrifices during any day of the week, and that worship and sacrifice occurred together.

He brings it all together in the New Covenant with Romans 12:1, which says we are to make our bodies living sacrifices all week long, "which is your spiritual act of worship." Suddenly, a bunch of things came together for me and fit snugly.

I thought of Willow Creek, where the believers come on Wednesday and Thursday for their worship service, or preaching service--at any rate, the counterpart to what most of us do on Sunday. I attended one of those services a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. But it felt odd (to me) doing this particularly thing during the middle of the week. Willow still holds services on Sunday, but those are outreach oriented, geared more for nonbelievers. But now I realize (dumbly) that Sunday wasn't designed for worship, but for rest, which I'm confident includes watching football games. ALL of the days were designed for worship. (I'm sure I've heard these same ideas articulated in countless sermons. My sudden enlightenment probably speaks more to my attention span and general intelligence than anything else.)

Anyway, it's a wonderful piece, and I learned a lot about something I assumed I was already knowledgeable about. Those surprises are nice.

Posted on May 18, 2006 09:01 AM|

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