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Biblical Worship: Theology for God's Glory
A biblical theology of worship spanning both the Old and New Testaments
While many books on worship focus on contemporary trends, Biblical Worship plumbs every book of the Bible to uncover its teaching on worship and then applies these insights to our lives and churches today. A team of respected evangelical scholars unearths insights into a variety of issues surrounding worship, Pastors, worship leaders, instructors, and anyone who wants to grow in their knowledge of the Bible’s full teaching on worship and how it applies today will benefit from this volume, part of the Biblical Theology for the Church series.
While many books on worship focus on contemporary trends, Biblical Worship plumbs every book of the Bible to uncover its teaching on worship and then applies these insights to our lives and churches today. A team of respected evangelical scholars unearths insights into a variety of issues surrounding worship, Pastors, worship leaders, instructors, and anyone who wants to grow in their knowledge of the Bible’s full teaching on worship and how it applies today will benefit from this volume, part of the Biblical Theology for the Church series.
- GenresTheology
544 pages, Hardcover
Published February 23, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 13, 2022
We all know our worship is ultimately based on the Bible. We may watch YouTube, listen to podcasts, read books, blogs and tweets but ultimately we know we get our understanding of worship from the Bible. The problem is very few of us would read the Bible from cover to cover to study worship. That’s why we read the 100, 200 page books because someone else did the hard work.
What I’m saying here is instead of reading that, which is okay, it is good, why don’t you try going nearer to the Bible. Why don’t you read an essay on what is worship in Joshua? What is worship in the Letters of John? Get a more solid grasp of the source material.
Reading this book, or any Biblical Theology book, will help you be a better Bible reader, a better Bible thinker. You will be more familiar with the themes and outlines of the books of the Bible. You will see how the writer takes a verse and walks you to the conclusion, so that next time you can take a verse and make your own biblical conclusions. Your understanding of worship will be more than Jesus said we are to worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:24), you can see worship in every book of the Bible. And isn’t that a worthy goal? If everybody did this, would we have worship wars?
This is not to say that this book is the definitive word on worship and everything here you should accept without consideration.
There are statements in the book that I am not fully behind. For example, in one essay it says that the Jerusalem walls in Nehemiah was purely for consecration not for defence. That’s my first time hearing it so I need to study it a bit more before I get behind it.
In another essay, it says that priests and Levites, their roles are fulfilled by worship pastors today. Once, I would have just accepted that as true. Now I think you need to back it up a bit more and with more nuance. The way I understand it, you can’t say worship leaders are priests because we are all priests. You have to explain how does the priesthood of all believers work in that scheme.
But overall, many of these statements are not the main thrust of the essay, so accordingly, I set them aside. These statements do not derail the main points of the essay, or the approach, the Biblical Theological approach the writers take, that we can learn.
Full 3,830 word review: https://readingandreaders.com/podcast...
What I’m saying here is instead of reading that, which is okay, it is good, why don’t you try going nearer to the Bible. Why don’t you read an essay on what is worship in Joshua? What is worship in the Letters of John? Get a more solid grasp of the source material.
Reading this book, or any Biblical Theology book, will help you be a better Bible reader, a better Bible thinker. You will be more familiar with the themes and outlines of the books of the Bible. You will see how the writer takes a verse and walks you to the conclusion, so that next time you can take a verse and make your own biblical conclusions. Your understanding of worship will be more than Jesus said we are to worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:24), you can see worship in every book of the Bible. And isn’t that a worthy goal? If everybody did this, would we have worship wars?
This is not to say that this book is the definitive word on worship and everything here you should accept without consideration.
There are statements in the book that I am not fully behind. For example, in one essay it says that the Jerusalem walls in Nehemiah was purely for consecration not for defence. That’s my first time hearing it so I need to study it a bit more before I get behind it.
In another essay, it says that priests and Levites, their roles are fulfilled by worship pastors today. Once, I would have just accepted that as true. Now I think you need to back it up a bit more and with more nuance. The way I understand it, you can’t say worship leaders are priests because we are all priests. You have to explain how does the priesthood of all believers work in that scheme.
But overall, many of these statements are not the main thrust of the essay, so accordingly, I set them aside. These statements do not derail the main points of the essay, or the approach, the Biblical Theological approach the writers take, that we can learn.
Full 3,830 word review: https://readingandreaders.com/podcast...
November 23, 2023
This is an interesting attempt at gleaning a theology of worship by mining the subject from most of the books of the Bible. The authors lay out the task in an introduction, then 36 different contributors write on the subject of worship from a book (or collection of a few books) in which they have significant expertise. The result is better than I expected.
I admit coming to the book with a little bit of skepticism: will theologians remove all the joy and wonder from worship as they parse words and argue ideas? A few tried to live down to my expectations. Thomas Petter spent some ink on "Yawist" and "non-Yawist" wives and managed to work in the idea of the "Sinaitic" system of worship (twice) in his chapter on Nehemiah. A. Chadwick Thornhill spent a frustratingly few pages on disputes over which of the Prison Epistles were actually from Paul, a needless effort for the book's objective. But most authors did spend the bulk of their effort trying to capture the awe and wonder worship: what it is and what it means to worship our God well. I found John Oswalt's chapter on Isaiah, each of five different contributors on the five books of the Psalms, Donald Roe Love III's chapter on John and Karen Jobe's on I Peter to be particularly thought-provoking.
Two main conclusions from my reading: first, we don't really have a good grasp on what worship is. Definitions offered by the authors are interesting, but sometimes quite dissimilar. We all agree we go to worship God on Sunday (at least intellectually agree. I'm not sure that in practice we have worship foremost in our minds) but we have little understanding on what exactly that means or requires of us.
Second, we have some work to do in the church. We are created to worship. God requires our worship. He has set aside a day every week for us to bring our worship to Him. But we haven't yet plumbed much of the depth and richness of what it means to worship and worship well. This is true of me individually as well, and I'm pushing 70. I'd better hurry. This book will help.
I admit coming to the book with a little bit of skepticism: will theologians remove all the joy and wonder from worship as they parse words and argue ideas? A few tried to live down to my expectations. Thomas Petter spent some ink on "Yawist" and "non-Yawist" wives and managed to work in the idea of the "Sinaitic" system of worship (twice) in his chapter on Nehemiah. A. Chadwick Thornhill spent a frustratingly few pages on disputes over which of the Prison Epistles were actually from Paul, a needless effort for the book's objective. But most authors did spend the bulk of their effort trying to capture the awe and wonder worship: what it is and what it means to worship our God well. I found John Oswalt's chapter on Isaiah, each of five different contributors on the five books of the Psalms, Donald Roe Love III's chapter on John and Karen Jobe's on I Peter to be particularly thought-provoking.
Two main conclusions from my reading: first, we don't really have a good grasp on what worship is. Definitions offered by the authors are interesting, but sometimes quite dissimilar. We all agree we go to worship God on Sunday (at least intellectually agree. I'm not sure that in practice we have worship foremost in our minds) but we have little understanding on what exactly that means or requires of us.
Second, we have some work to do in the church. We are created to worship. God requires our worship. He has set aside a day every week for us to bring our worship to Him. But we haven't yet plumbed much of the depth and richness of what it means to worship and worship well. This is true of me individually as well, and I'm pushing 70. I'd better hurry. This book will help.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews