What is liturgy?
Malachi 1:6–14
“When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not evil? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil?” (Mal. 1:8).
Some of the most heated debates in church history have been associated with worship, and this should not surprise us. People tend to argue passionately about the things that are most important to them, and worship is perhaps the most important labour of the church. Men and women engage in debates about worship because, consciously or not, they recognize the importance of worship issues.
We do not have to look into the debates concerning worship very long before we see people draw lines regarding the church’s liturgy. Some Christians argue for highly structured services, where everything is laid out in print precisely for the worshipers to follow.
Others think worship services should have more of an informal structure. Often this argument takes the form of whether it is better to have liturgical or nonliturgical worship, “liturgical” being used as a synonym for highly formal, structured services.
Right away, we should note that we make a bit of false contrast to pit liturgical worship against nonliturgical worship. Most literally, the term liturgy means “public work,” and is shorthand for the form that provides guidance to corporate worship, since worship is the public work of the church.
Today, the word liturgy refers in common usage to an order of service, but every worship service has an order of service even if it never gets written down. Even congregations that might claim to have nothing prescribed for worship, giving space for people to do things spontaneously, are implicitly following an unwritten form that says to leave room for spontaneous outbursts from individuals in the congregation.
We noted a few days ago the importance of having the right attitude of heart and mind when we gather to worship. We also noted that it would be wrong to say that the need to have a proper intent in one’s soul means that the outward form—the liturgy—of worship is unimportant. Yes, the prophets of Israel condemned people when they simply went through the motions and their hearts were far from God (see Isa. 29:13–14).
Nevertheless, they were not revolutionaries who said that the problem of wrong intent was solved by rejecting the outward forms prescribed by God’s Word. As we see in Malachi 1:6–14, the reform of worship meant returning to the divinely ordained instructions that only blemish-free animals be offered as sacrifices (see, e.g., Ex. 12:5; Lev. 1:3). Whatever our liturgy, it must be in line with the Lord’s directions in Scripture.
The New Testament does not have a book like the Old Testament book of Leviticus, which contains highly detailed instructions for public worship. Yet this does not mean that there is no guidance for new covenant worship in the New Testament. Passages such as Acts 2:42 give the basic liturgy of the Apostolic church. Let us encourage our church elders to develop liturgies that are in line with God’s Word.
