Worship

     Who is worthy of our worship? Our Lord and Savior, Jesus is certainly worthy of worship but whom does Jesus call us to worship in His inspired words? The New Testament instructs us to worship “God” nine times, “Lord” once, “Jesus” twice, “Father” twice and “Jehovah” 3 times (because they were quoting the Old Testament which used God’s name Jehovah). In the Old Testament, we are called to worship “Jehovah” twenty times, “God” three times and “Lord” twice. (Yes, I’m sure I missed one or two but an accurate count isn’t my purpose).

   In Matthew 4:10 and Luke 4:8, Jesus quotes an Old Testament verse to Satan “Then Jesus said to him, Go, Satan! For it is written: “You shall worship the Lord your God and you shall serve Him only.” (quoting: “You shall fear Jehovah your God and you shall serve Him and you shall swear by His name.” Deuteronomy 6:13). Again, in Matthew 15:8,9, Christ quotes from Isaiah to the Scribes and Pharisees “This people draw near to Me with their mouth, and with their lips honor Me; but their heart is far from Me. But in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the ordinances of men.” (“Me” being Jehovah, this was a quote from Isaiah 29:13). An important additional point brought out in this verse is, how we should avoid worshiping God, "in vain" as the Jew's did during Christ's first advent, Christ calls them to worship God correctly.

   In John 4:21,23, Jesus made a couple of predictions about worship to the woman at the well, (21)“Jesus said to her, Woman, believe Me that an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither in this Mountain nor in Jerusalem.” (23) “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father also seeks such ones that worship Him.” There is much information in these two verses: what I understand first is that Jesus is warning us that worship in the familiar and designated places of worship will not be held to or that it will not be pure, and according to His prediction, worship will be tainted with error and not acceptable to God. Could He be referring to the Jews at that time only or farther in the future, even to our time when honored worship may be on an individual basis, because the established Christian denominations will not be worshiping in truth or to the Bible's God, “Jehovah"? And the second verse (John 4:23) could be confirming the first (John 4:21), worshiping the Father (Jehovah) outside the expected places, so that we can worship, loving the truth without error. Jesus could be alerting us to future changes in Christian church doctrine that would occur (maybe in the fourth century), namely, when Sunday worship and the Trinity doctrines were introduced and established into Christianity by the imaginations of men. There were other non-Biblical doctrines added to the original church after that time, all which brought on the need for church reform. Reform did eventually take place hundreds of years later, but only in part. Another important part that Jesus was saying is that we are to be worshiping the Father, His Father and God, and our Father and God, this He clarified in John 20:17 “…I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.” plus, we are to be worshipping in truth, according to what is written in God's word, “God is a spirit, and the ones worshiping Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:24).

     Paul states, “But I confess this to you, that according to the Way, which they say is a sect, so I worship the ancestral God (KJV: God of my fathers), believing all things according to that having been written in the law and the Prophets.” (Acts 24:14). This also refers to Jehovah of the Old Testament, according to what Jesus taught because He is the “Way” to the Father, named in John 14:6 “Jesus said unto him, I am the Way and the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father except through Me.” In Philippians 3:3 “For we are the circumcision, the ones who worship by the Spirit of God, and who glory in Jesus Christ, and who do not trust in flesh.” Here the disciples worship Jesus by the spirit of God. Jehovah’s spirit is blessing His Son by encouraging these men that He gave to Christ, to worship His Son, because Jesus is also divine. Then in Hebrews 1:6 the Father of Jesus declared, “And again, when He brought the First-born into the world, He said, And let all the angels of God worship Him.” The first part of Hebrews is more about Jesus, taken from Psalm 2:7, “I will declare concerning the statute of Jehovah, He said to Me, You are my Son. Today I have begotten You.” and Psalm 110:1, “A statement of Jehovah to My Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I place Your enemies as Your footstool.” Not only did Jesus tell us to worship the Father, but the Father asks us to worship the Son. This is a direct reference to the divinity list that makes up the “Godhead”: Jehovah is from eternity, and then at some point during eternity the Father brought forth His only-begotten Son. What is also important here is that a “Holy Spirit” is not included or mentioned in reference to the Godhead, nor were we ever instructed to worship a separate spirit person, anywhere in God's word.

     In Revelation 14:7, the first of the three angels said “saying in a great voice, fear God and give glory to Him, because the hour of His judgment has come; also, Worship Him who has made the heavens and the earth and the sea and the fountains of water.” This is a quote from Exodus 20:11, sighting the fourth commandment which uses the name “Jehovah” in the original Hebrew text. There is one God, and one Son “but to us is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him.” (1 Corinthians 8:6). The main point instructed us in these verses is to worship in truth and spirit, according to the words of God given to us by His only-begotten Son, Jesus. The truth can ONLY be acquired from the Bible, and the purest way is by reading Jehovah's words before the translations and interpretations by men, meaning the Hebrew and the Greek text, (if you believe Greek was the original text) which are available in an Interlinear Bible that has the Old and the New Testaments, the Hebrew and Greek text. I only know of one, the J.P. Green Interlinear Bible but there may be others. This Bible makes it possible to check the Hebrew and Greek by its inclusion of the Strong's Concordance numbering system, plus the Greek and Hebrew to English dictionary section in the last part of Strong's Concordance. We can learn much by exploring the same Hebrew and Greek text that was used to translate the King James Version. We must seek the truth in God's word, to worship Jehovah correctly, it may make a difference in how Jehovah responds to your prayers. Seek God through His pure word and reap its many blessings and rewards of wisdom, and caution is given for those reading a book written about the Bible, and not the Bible itself, this may be a departure from the intended information and understanding that Christ has given for us to know our God and Father, “Jehovah”.