The End and Beginning of Biblical Worldview

I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous rules. -- Psalm 119:7

Biblical worldview begins and ends in worship. Which makes the matter of the current “worship wars” one that worldview-minded believers cannot ignore. Without frequent, vibrant worship, Biblical worldview languishes in the doldrums of mere ideas, no wind in our sails to move us onward. Worship is the launch pad for worldview living; it is the climax to which worldview builds. Improving worship – whether our preference is contemporary or traditional – must therefore be a central concern of all worldview thinking.

THE BEGINNING AND THE END
Biblical worldview, as a way of life that increasingly realizes the Kingdom presence of Christ, begins in worship.  In worship we encounter the majesty and glory of God, and bow before our exalted King in fear and trembling, but with hearts overflowing with gratitude and praise. The ministry of the Word refines the quality of our salvation and hones our tools for ministry. Singing enlarges the soul and deepens commitment to Christ and His Kingdom. The sacraments renew us in the presence of the Lord and reaffirm our identity as His people. The presentation of tithes and offerings expresses our priorities, fortifies the Church and her servants, and nurtures us in the fear of God (Deuteronomy 14:22,23). The convictions and resources we need for Kingdom living in an age in flight from God are thus all present for us in personal and corporate worship. The more we are able to improve worship, the more powerful will be our Kingdom lifestyle in the world.

But worship is also that which Biblical worldview seeks. Our desire is nothing less than that the banner of King Jesus should be hoisted and unfurled over all of life and the entire world. We intend to see Jesus exalted, honored, and obeyed in every area of human life. We are determined that all of life should be devoted to Him as a “reasonable worship” (Romans 12:1,2), and that every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Philippians 2:5-11). Biblical worldview comes to supreme expression as men and women offer themselves and their whole lives to God as living sacrifices, and when they join together in united acknowledgment of their complete allegiance to Jesus. So, again, improving worship must be a primary concern of Biblical worldview.

THE SOURCE OF WORSHIP
For our Biblical worldview to be compelling it must rise from the wellspring of vibrant Biblical worship.  Such worship is deeply felt, enthusiastically expressed, and utterly life-changing. In our day, church leaders have sensed that something has gone awry in our worship of God. It too often fails to engage worshipers, leaving them dissatisfied and looking for another church. To remedy this situation pastors and worship leaders have attacked the moribund state of worship from every direction: new instrumentation and songs, modified worship environments – theater seating, klieg lighting, the removal of pulpits – the addition of drama, and the transformation of preaching from proclamation to story-telling, with a healthy measure of humor salted in for an entertainment-crazed population.

But the way to renewal in worship is not through jimmying the forms and elements. We cannot resort to tweaking the order and contents of worship every time we feel as though the life has gone out of what we’ve been doing.  For vibrant, compelling worship – worship that forms and expresses a Biblical worldview – does not arise from the tools and methods we use to express it. True worship rises, as the psalmist indicates, from an “upright heart.” Only when the hearts of God’s people have been renewed and reformed will their worship be as rich, full, and meaningful as they desire.

The word “upright” in our text is significant. In Biblical parlance this word signals a return to mankind’s original state (cf. Eccl. 29). God made people “upright,” all their systems in good working order – oriented toward God and His will, devoted to pleasing Him, and consecrated to His purposes and pleasure. “Heart” in this verse is being used as a synecdoche, and stands for the inner person – the soul – in all its completion. Thus, the text implies that heart (affections), mind (understanding), and conscience (will) must all be properly attuned and earnestly engaged – just like Adam and Eve before their fall – in order for worship to rise up to God as He intends.

As I suggested above, worship as God has designed it contains sufficient elements and forms to reach to every part of the soul. Preaching renews the mind, and reinforces known truth with new perspectives and applications. Singing and the sacraments strum the affections, summoning emotion and aspiration around salvation and Biblical and themes. Creeds, giving, and singing call forth declarations of intent, and can train the will to submit to God’s priorities in every area of life. Prayer engages the entire soul in a conversation with the living God. The ambience and arrangement of worship usher us into the divine presence, reminding us of that Kingdom not of this world, beckoning us to envision Christ enthroned and His angels serving our every need, and enlivening us to the hope of everlasting life and the beatific vision of God.

Most services of worship contain all these elements in one form or another. And yet we continue tweaking, adjusting, innovating, and, in many cases, overhauling our services of worship, in the belief that we will one day find just the right combination of forms to reignite the sluggardly hearts of the people of God. For over a thousand years worship leaders led the flocks of God in worship using the same basic forms and elements, but with an effect on life and culture which our generation of “worship mechanics” has yet to produce. The medieval synthesis that arose out of the persecutions of the third century, was solidified during the gains of the fourth century, and stood the test of the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century served to unite disparate peoples and equipped them to express their faith in their trying times. Out of the medieval synthesis, carried along by an unchanging pattern of worship, arose movements of social relief, popular education, and innovation in the arts, as well as the modern university, the Renaissance, the foundations of free market economics, and the foundation of the scientific revolution.  The Middle Ages of Church history was by no means a “golden age”; there is much with which to find fault.  But in spite of this, the Church from 325 to 1400 AD experienced powerful revivals, witnessed the rise of devoted religious orders, overwhelmed the paganism of the Western world, and kept heresy in check.  And at the foundation of medieval Christianity was worship that flowed, more often than not, from upright hearts.

THE SOURCE OF AN UPRIGHT HEART
But if the elements of worship have little power to renew the heart, where shall we turn? Again, our psalmist points in the direction of an answer: “I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous rules.” We will never gain true renewal of heart, mind, and conscience – the revival of our souls – as long as we give lip-service only to obedience to God’s Law.  The psalmist insists that worship comes from an upright heart, and an upright heart is formed by learning the holy, righteous, and good Law of God.

The idea of “learning” in this text goes beyond the kind of information-gathering, processing, and sorting that characterizes so much Christian learning today. The Hebrew verb here means something like “to become accustomed to.” When we in every area of our lives have become accustomed to living according to the holy, righteous, and good Law of God (Romans 7:12), the perfect law of liberty (James 1:25), the standards which define love for God and neighbors (Matthew 22:34-40), then our hearts will be returned to an upright condition, as we are shaped from the outside-in to become more the people God has called us to be (Ephesians 2:8-10). How can this be so?

The Law of God reveals the beauty and glory of the Lord. It illuminates the path of full and abundant life (Leviticus 18:1-5). Under the loving tutelage of the Holy Spirit, the Law convicts us of sin, points to the way of righteousness, and warns of the judgment of God against all who ignore or transgress His counsel (1 Corinthians 2:12,13; John 16:8-11). The Law does not save us. We are saved by the righteousness and sacrifice of Jesus, which we appropriate by grace through faith. But, while the Law does not save us, it enables us to achieve our salvation, the salvation we already possess, with ever-increasing glory (Philippians 2:12,13).  As we become accustomed to living in God’s Law we learn to delight in it, and make more time to meditate in it day by day (Psalm 1:1,2). The Law thus fills our minds with God’s view of the world, showing us what love, justice, and true prosperity are like.  t teaches our hearts to desire the things that God prescribes, and leads us to exclaim to God, “O how I love your law!” (Psalm 119:97) The Law scours away the dead works accumulating on our consciences and renews them in New Covenant grace and truth (Hebrews 9:14; Romans 2:14,15; Hebrews 8:10). The Law of God, as we learn it and grow increasingly accustomed to living in it, utterly reforms and revives our souls, giving us new vision, new aspirations, and new priorities in line with those of God Himself.

And when that occurs, praise and worship well up within us and spill out into every area of our lives, as the Spirit of God within us flows through the riverbed of divine Law (Romans 14:17). Biblical worldview living follows supernaturally from such worship, and reinforces and strengthens that worship, creating a perpetual synergy of obedience issuing in transformation issuing in praise issuing in obedience, and on and on.

We cannot tweak our way to improved worship. We must rather work for it, by devoting our minds, hearts, and consciences to understanding, loving, and submitting to the Law of God. As we thus begin to learn the Law, and become accustomed to living in its beauty and glory, we will know the kind of improved worship which is the beginning and end of Biblical worldview.

FOR REFLECTION
How much time do you spend each week “becoming accustomed to” the Law of God? Can you say that you love God’s Law? Delight in it? Meditate in it day and night? Do you expect to be able to improve your worship, and thus realize the beginning and end of Biblical worldview, apart from becoming accustomed to living in God’s Law?

T. M. Moore is dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of 20 books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet), and Culture Matters (Brazos). He and his wife and editor, Susie, make their home in Concord, Tenn.