Show Me The Ring!

 

(Taken from, "How to Worship a King," by Zach Neese)

What is worship? The word itself - worship - is a smaller form of the Old English word, worthship, and it literally means to give something worth or value, especially to a deity or god. That's easy enough to remember. We "worthship" God by communicating and demonstrating His value. 

Demonstrating value costs something. To value something, we have to put a price on it. That is why worship is so often partnered with sacrifice. We make a sacrifice only for something or someone that is important to us, something valuable. 

Worship is sacrifice. The first mention of the worship in the Bible is in Genesis 22:5 when Abraham is bringing his son Isaac up to the mountain to offer him as a sacrifice to God. Abraham told his servants, "Stay here with the donkey. The boy and I will go over there and worship and then return to you." WORSHIP??? What he really means is, "I will offer God the greatest sacrifice I have to offer, the most valuable thing in my world, my son, because God is worth even more to me."

Of course God doesn't want us to sacrifice our children, so He provided a ram for Abraham to give instead. God also provides the sacrifice through Jesus, but the principle remains. Worship - valuing God - must cost the worshiper something. Worship is sacrifice - it always involves giving. If worship is ascribing worth to God, then the price of our worship shows God and the world how much we value Him. 

Women typically can understand this pretty well. How does a woman announce to her friends that she is engaged? Does she email them, tweet, call, Facebook? Does she say anything at all? Nope, she walks into a room with a sideways smile, her hand preceeding her. Her friends, instinctively recognizing the cue, gather around the outstretched hands to touch and admire the ring. THE RING!!!  Do any of them talk about the man? What's he like? Does he have a job? Does he live with his mother? Does he have a hunchback and a 3rd eye? NO! None of that matters. The world has come down to this: THE RING! 

The ring tells them all they need to know. They don't care about the groom until they see how much he values their friend. They come to the newly engaged woman with one question: How much are you worth to him? How much does he value you? Are you valuable enough for him to spend six months eating Ramen noodles, riding a bike to work, scrimping and saving and sacrificing in order to buy a ring that somehow reflects how empty his life would be without the woman he loves. Does she mean more to him than life itself? How much does he think she's worth? 

Of course, this is a worldly sense of value, but switch gears. Here we are, the bride of Christ - unlovable, unfaithful, adulterous and fickle. How could anyone love such a woman? How could the perfect Prince of peace - glorious, holy, faithful, powerful, righteous - choose such an unlovely, wayward woman? The angels are mystified. Hell cannot comprehend it. The lost cannot believe it. Who could love a people like the church. Only one thing will silence their doubt. 

Show them the ring. 

The only way for God to silence the skeptics was to demonstrate His love, to prove how much we are worth to Him. Romans 5:8 says, "God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." What is the cross? It is the engagement ring of Christ, bought at the price of God's own Son, to woo the heart of the bride away from her other suitors and prove once and for all that He loves her more than life. The gospel is our engagement ring, and it says everything the world needs to know about the Groom who is pursuing us. 

If the cross proves how much we are worth to God, our worship proves to God how much He is worth to us. We are surrounded by a world that thinks we are delusional. Our engagement to Him is a myth. And the way we live often proves their doubts. The church doesn't act like we are engaged to the King of kings. We don't act betrothed. We act like we are single, like we're still shopping around, playing the field. 

Heaven is watching and wondering. Do they really love the God of all the universe?

The lost are watching and wondering. Do they really believe what they say they believe? Is He really valuable?

They're asking us to show them the ring! Our worship communicates more to the world than you know. Our worship shows the world how valuable our God is. Worship demonstrates that we have a Savior worth loving, worth living for, and worth dying for. You are a worship leader to the world around you. Lead them to worship Jesus by demonstrating that He is worthy of your our worthship. Worship ascribes value to our King.