Worship: Worship in the Garden

When we think of worship, we might think of a church service and a choir or members singing to God. Beyond the church building, maybe you think of singing in a car, doing a bible study, or having a prayer group. Whatever images we have in our heads about worship, I believe, are truly limited and do not truly encompass what it means to worship. In this series, we are going to explore through the Bible what worship is and what it means. 

We are going to start in the Old Testament to find out what it means to worship and how the biblical authors talked about and portrayed worship. A simple definition of “worship”, if there ever could be one, would be ‘a state of glorifying God’. In other words, anything done or said or thought to promote God’s will on earth as it is in heaven is glorifying God and therefore worship. We are going to start where the biblical authors started, the garden. 

In the garden, God created Adam and placed him in the garden. He then gave him a role to work the ground. By doing so, Adam became a ruler of the ground as God had put him and started his vocation. By vocation, we mean fulfilling the original calling and role God has for human kind. Our original calling was to rule the land on behalf of the Creator God who ruled in the skies (Genesis 2:15). God was present in the garden, because he walked among the cool of the day. By working the ground and ruling the creatures (naming them) and being in the presence of God, Adam was glorifying God and therefore worshipping God. 

In Revelation 22, John’s vision of the new garden-city includes a description of servants “serving” God. This word “serve” is the same word as “worship” just as the priests serve God in the tabernacle and temple. We are made to be priests to God and serve him and while on this earth, we serve God by following his instructions. 

In today’s world, worship is too constricted as to what it should look like, sound like, and feel like. As we see from Genesis 1-3, worship is fulfilling our role that God has made for humanity. This can take on many different forms and most certainly happens outside of a church building. Worship is active as we see from Adam’s role to work the ground and rule. True worship is not passive, one must participate and be active to worship. True worship is being a light to the world and being God’s image bearing humans we were made to be, our entire life is worship. As we study the Old Testament we will learn how some aspects of our life can be seen as worship which will broaden our perspective and awe of God.