Worship is of immense concern in the church and ironically the source of controversy and dispute. Can we get behind the question of what style of worship we should engage in to understand the bedrock foundation for God's people--honoring him as he desires? Is the dissatisfaction with worship voiced by so many perhaps a result of our having wandered from biblical teaching on the subject?
Through careful exegesis in both Old and New Testaments, David Peterson unveils the total life-orientation of worship that is found in Scripture. Rather than determining for ourselves how we should worship, we, his people, are called to engage with God on the terms he proposes and in the way he alone makes possible.
This book calls for a radical rethinking of the meaning and practice of worship, especially by those responsible for leading congregations. Here is the starting place for recovering the richness of biblical worship.
"The author cuts back through the undergrowth of our inherited traditions to the clarity and straightforwardness of the biblical teaching. . . . Despite the scholarship behind it, all this is done with a beautiful simplicity and clarity that makes the book readily available to a wide circle of readers." I. Howard Marshall
Owner Reviews
In preparing to develop and teach a theology of worship for our church's Sunday School, I have of late accumulated a large number of works on the topic which provide some rudimentary background and systematic foundation, only to turn and focus primarily on practical methodology. I have also found a fair number of writings with 'an agenda'...several appear to have been intended to rebut a recent argument or conflict. What has been sorely lacking is a balanced and sound exegetical development of a Biblical theology of worship FROM THE BIBLE, apart from the contemporary rhetoric and 'worship wars' which characterizes so much current thought. Peterson begins with a thoughtful (though not entirely comprehensive...Carson's seems more thorough to me) definition of worship, and works through detailed examinations of key OT and NT passages of prescriptive and descriptive texts. I found his textual work both defensible and insightful, and his conclusions provocative and resonant with the corpus of the Scriptures. This book, in conjunction with the recent "Worship By the Book" (edited by D.A. Carson) to be the two most useful materials on worship I have found for my preparations. Other works which I found more narrowly useful on particular related subtopics include John Frame & Marva Dawn (useful in a David Wells-ish postmodern perspective on worshippers, although a subtle Christian Feminism perspective is noted). Hopefully, an objective reading of Peterson and Carson will yield similar conclusions in your studies.
