Principles of Worshipping God According to the Way Ordained by Him in His Word

In Exodus 20:22-26 God unveils to His redeemed people how they should worship Him; before this time, He has never revealed this to anyone – not even to Abraham, the friend of God. After God brought His people to mount Sinai and gave them the Ten Commandments, He revealed some specific things related to the worship of God.

Worshipping God doesn’t mean that we worship God by doing our best according to what we think it is to worship God; worshipping God needs to be in God’s way, according to His principles. However, like Cain, many seekers of God throughout the ages have invented their own way of worshipping God, and their followers continued in that way.

We need to be brought back to the divine revelation in God’s word to see what is the way to worship God as it is ordained by God. Today we would like to see some principles of worshipping God according to the divine revelation in God’s word, as recorded in Exodus 20, unpacked by entire Bible, and opened to us by the ministry of the age.

Principles of Worshipping God According to the Way Ordained by God in His Word

First of all, in the worship of God there should be no place given to riches, as signified by “silver and gold” in Exo. 20:23. When we worship God we should forsake mammon, and worship God only (Matt. 6:24); also, there should be greater respect or attention given to those among us who have more than to those who have less (see Acts 3:6; 2 Tim. 6:17).

Let us now see more principles of worshipping God according to His way, the way ordained by Him in His word.

The Proper Worship of God must include Christ as the Burnt Offering and Peace Offering

As seen in Exo. 20:24, the proper worship of God must include the burnt offering (signifying Christ offered to God for His enjoyment and satisfaction) and as the peace-offering (Christ offered to God for our enjoyment and satisfaction mutually with God). As we come to God to worship Him, following the pattern of Abel, we apply Christ as the trespass offering and sin offering, and we worship God with the burnt offering.

In a very real sense, our fundamental problem before God is not that we sin but that, even though we were created by God and for God, we are NOT FOR GOD but we are still for ourselves. After being saved and coming into the church life we realize that we are so much for ourselves: we have a lot of self-interest and self-expectation, and we are disappointed if things don’t go our way.

Under the Lord’s shining we realize that we are not for God – and we cannot be for God in ourselves, but there’s one Person, the wonderful God-man Jesus who was and is absolutely for God. Christ is our burnt offering, and we lay our hands on His wonderful head, we are identified with Him, and we can pray,

Lord, You are for God. You bore the judgement of our not being for God, and now we are one with You. Lord, by faith in You what You are is now reckoned to us! We are now for God through Jesus Christ! Lord Jesus, we offer You to God as our burnt offering, the One who is absolute for God!

Christ is our peace-offering; there’s such a discord between us and God and between us and others on so many levels, but Christ has made peace, He Himself became our peace, and in resurrection He announced the gospel of peace!

When we come to the Lord’s table meeting by exercising faith in the blood of the covenant, we can testify, Father, we are at peace with You, and as far as it depends on us, we are at peace with any member of the Body of Christ.

We need to worship God with Christ as the reality of the offerings; we need to know Christ, experience Christ, and be constituted with Christ as these offerings. We offer Christ as our burnt offering for His satisfaction, and we offer Christ as our peace-offering for our enjoyment and satisfaction with God.

Lord, we offer You to God as our burnt offering, the only One who is absolute for God, for God to be satisfied. We are not absolute for God but we are so much for ourselves, but we lay our hands on Christ to be identified with Him as the One absolute for God, and in Christ we are absolute for God! Lord, we offer You as our peace-offering, the One who made peace between us and God and who became our peace, so that we may enjoy God and be satisfied with God! Oh God, we come to You with Christ as our burnt offering and peace-offering for our mutual satisfaction and enjoyment!

In the Proper Worship of God there should be no other Name but the Name of the Lord

Again and again throughout the Old Testament God insists that, when His people come to worship Him, there would be no other name but the Lord’s name (see Exo. 20:24; Deut. 12:5, 11; 14:23; 16:6, 11; 26:2). We need to know, love, adore, and worship only ONE name, the name of Jesus Christ, who is God.

We should not have any other name, no matter how many spiritual benefits we received from others. It is a shame for someone to be called a Calvinist, a Lutheran, a Wesleyan, a Catholic, an Orthodox, a Baptist, a Pentecostal, or any other name besides the name of Christ. It is a disgrace to the Lord if we are of any man.

We have only one name, the glorious name of Jesus! We honor the ministry of the ones who went before us and opened up the word of God for us, but we do not call ourselves by their name – we are only of Christ, we honor Christ, and we worship Him! Such a proper worship invites God’s visitation and His blessing.

Worshipping God through the Cross and with No Human Wisdom or Power

In Exo. 20:24-26 God is very particular when it comes to how His people should worship Him: the altar had to be of earth, or if made of stone then the stones should not be worked on by man, and there should be no steps going up to the altar. What do all these signify in our spiritual experience?

The altar God requires for His worship is primitive and uncultured in the eyes of man and offers no place for man’s wisdom and power (1 Cor. 1:17-25). It was to be erected with materials created by God, either earth or unhewn stone (Exo. 20:25). This indicates that the cross has been prepared entirely by the work of God, with no place given to man’s work. Thus, to erect an altar in this way means to receive what God has prepared, with no human work added. An altar made of earth or stone also points to the availability of the cross. (Exo. 20:24, footnote 2, Recovery Version Bible)

God doesn’t require our work or wisdom in worshipping Him; the altar He ordained for the sacrifices was “primitive” and “uncultured” in man’s eye, offering no place for man’s wisdom and power. This altar signifies the cross; we worship God through the cross, and the cross annihilates any form of human wisdom (1 Cor. 1:17-25).

The cross has been prepared entirely by the work of God (just as the earth or unhewn stones were prepared by God) and no place was given to man for his wisdom or work. We simply need to receive what God has prepared and add no human wisdom or work to it.

However, many people today “wear the cross” but they don’t bear it; the cross may be on top of a building, but is it proclaimed and experienced in our daily life? People may be proudly wearing the cross around their neck, but do they bear to hear a message on the cross that terminates them?

In order for us to be true worshippers of God, we must know the cross; the cross it the greatest leveler in the universe: it brings everyone down to zero. The cross not only redeems us but also terminates us and replaces us, so that Christ may constitute us and live in us. God must touch our natural life and our being so that we may be able to render proper worship to God.

Worshipping God without adding Man’s Work or Natural Ability

The altar was not supposed to be built with hewn stones, because anything that man worked on is polluted. This means that adding man’s work to the worship of God brings in pollution (Exo. 24:25). Because fallen man himself is sin, pollution, in the eyes of God (see Psa. 51:5; 2 Cor. 5:21), no work of man is acceptable to Him (see Gen. 5:3-5; Gal. 2:16). Every fallen man who worships God must be terminated, with all his work and his ways.

What a liberation to be nothing, and what a relief to be zero! What a deliverance it is to have every high thing torn down so that Christ and Christ alone remains! What a grace it is to realise our absolute dependence on God as God. What a blessing it is to be saved from every form of independence and self-confidence and draw near to God to tell Him simply that we love Him and cannot live without Him!

God ordained that in worshipping Him the people of Israel will not build steps to the altar so that their nakedness would not be uncovered on it; these steps refer to man’s way, which promotes achievement by natural ability, thus creating “different levels of attainment” among God’s people (Exo. 20:26).

In the church life we don’t want to achieve a position, because there’s no “up” to go to; there’s only down – being terminated by the cross, and we all are on the same level; the only “going up” is at the time of the rapture, as a reward by the Lord.

How wonderful it is to be in a place where there’s no levels of hierarchy, where there’s no one higher because of their natural make-up…what a wonderful realm is the church life where God is all and in all, and no one is looking down to others because we all are in the same position under God!

God’s salvation clothes man with Christ as his righteousness (see Gen. 3:21; Luke 15:22; 1 Cor. 1:30; Phil. 3:9), but man’s way uncovers the nakedness of his fallen nature. In principle, the exercise of man’s wisdom in building an altar with steps puts Christ aside and causes man’s fallen nature to be exposed.

Therefore, instead of exercising our wisdom in things pertaining to God, we should fully trust in Christ and thereby remain under Christ as our covering. In His wisdom, God uses the cross to destroy the wisdom of the wise, annihilating the wisdom of the rulers of this age, the fleshly wisdom.

Don’t appreciate human wisdom: as seen in James 3, this wisdom is earthly, soulish, and demonic, and the cross annihilates it. In the worship of God there’s no place for our cleverness, opinions, ideas, suggestions, or our view of things; we have only Christ, the divine revelation, and the cross reducing us to nothing so that Christ would be everything to us.

Lord, save us from exercising our human wisdom, cleverness, opinions, ideas, or suggestions when it comes to worshipping God. Oh Lord, deliver us from our self! May we be saved from every form of independence and self-confidence so that we may draw near to You through the cross and with Christ as the offerings. Lord, we love You, and we cannot live without You. Without You, Lord, we are nothing! We forget ourselves, we enjoy You, we experience You, and we worship God with Christ and through the cross!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, brother Ron Kangas’ sharing in the message for this week, and the Life-study of Genesis, msgs. 22-23 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Exodus (2), week 10 / msg 10, The Worship of God.
• All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
• Hymns on this topic to strengthen this burden:
  # Lord, Thou art our peace offering; / We lay our hands on Thee. / We’re one with Thee, Lord Jesus, / In fact and practically. / Here in the tent of meeting / We offer Thee to God / And with the Father feasting / Enjoy Thee as our food. (Hymns #1104)
  # Name Him, brothers, name Him, / With love strong as death, / But with awe and wonder, / And with bated breath; / He is God the Savior, / He is Christ the Lord, / Ever to be worshiped, / Trusted, and adored. (Hymns #76)
  # In wisdom, by the cross, Thou hast / For us redemption made, / That in our spirit we may have / Thyself, the treasure, laid. (Hymns #23)