What is worship?

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English: An image of Psalm 23 (King James' Ver...
English: An image of Psalm 23 (King James' Version), frontispiece to the 1880 omnibus printing of The Sunday at Home. Scanned at 800 dpi. Français : Illustration du Psaume 23 (version autorisée par le roi Jacques), en frontispice de l'édition omnibus du Sunday at home. Version numérisée à 800 dpi. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Worship is the proper response of all moral, sentient beings to God, ascribing all honor and worth to their Creator-God precisely because he is worthy, delightfully so.” —D. A. Carson, Worship by the Book
Tim Challies says: "If you do a word search in the ESV for worship, you’ll find almost 200 occurrences of some form of the word. Scan through these and you’ll soon learn what the biblical authors meant by worship. 

Here are the most common aspects of worship:

1) Worship is about giving glory to God by responding to his self-revelation.
“All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name” (Psalm 86:9).
2) Worship is about bowing down, literally or figuratively, to show subservience to God.
“And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worshiphim who lives forever and ever” (Revelation 4:9-10).
3) Worship is about offering sacrifices to God.
“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” (Romans 12:1).
There is a progression:
  • worship is most essentially the glorifying of God by responding to his revelation of himself;
  • we glorify God (and therefore worship him) by bowing down and obeying him; and
  • we obey God (and therefore glorify him, and therefore worship him) by offering all that we have and all that we are as a sacrifice to him.
Worship is a believer’s response to God’s revelation of Himself. It is expressing wonder, awe, and gratitude for the worthiness, the greatness, and the goodness of our Lord. It is the appropriate response to God’s person, His provision, His power, His promises, and His plan.

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