Continuing our series on worship, looking at the many words from Hebrew and Greek that we translate in our English Bibles by the single word: WORSHIP.
This week we are looking at the word leitourgia from which we get the English word liturgy and it conveys the idea of ritual service, referring to those things done in the temple as sacrificial ceremony (especially in the Septuagint or Greek version of the Old Testament). This word is most often used with reference to the activities of the priest serving at the altar. In the New Testament the word is used primarily in reference to serving others as an act of worship, but is also used in reference to putting our own lives on the altar as a living sacrifice.
So how do we apply this to our worship? Of first importance is that real worship is costly. I give of myself, my time, my resources (so it could involve money). King David once said, he would not offer to God a sacrifice that cost him nothing. So for us this kind of worship means we put ourselves into it, and we spend ourselves on the worship of God.
Secondly, it means being intentional, even if doing some things regularly, becomes ritual, it does not make it less meaningful. It only becomes less meaningful when we do them mindlessly rather than intentionally and that can never be considered worship anyhow.
You and I are called to make our worship intentional and costly. It can be spontaneous, it can be ritual, and it can be somewhere in between, but anything less than intentional and costly just isn’t worship.
Next week we will talk about aineo.
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