28: Serving, Not Just Singing: The New Testament Truth About Worship

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29: Your Church Isn’t a Temple, So Why Call Your Gatherings Worship?

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Welcome to the Ready for Eternity podcast, a podcast and blog dedicated to inquisitive

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Bible students exploring insights and biblical truths that might not be fully explored in typical sermons or Bible studies.

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I'm Eddie Lawrence. We are continuing our series on worship terms, drawing from Dr.

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Tom Wadsworth's extensive research on this topic. His work explores why the

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New Testament never refers to Christian assemblies as times of worship.

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In today's episode, we're going to talk about the New Testament truth concerning worship, how that it's serving, not just singing.

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When we think of worship, we imagine things like singing hymns, praying or attending church services.

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Modern Christians describe these activities as worship. But are these ideas what the

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New Testament conveys? What did the Greek terms that our English New Testaments translate as worship mean in their original context?

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In this episode, we're going to examine two important Greek words, Latruo and Latreia.

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Our Bibles translate these words as worship or serve. Let's look at just three examples of Bible verses that use these words, and then we'll consider the definition.

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Away from me, Satan, Jesus declared, for it is written, Worship the Lord your

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God and serve Latruo, him only. Matthew 4, 10,

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And then was a widow to the age of 84. She never left the temple, but worshipped

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Latruo night and day, fasting and praying. Luke 2, 37.

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Therefore, I urge you, brothers, on account of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

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Latreia, Romans 12, 1. The Greek words Latruo and Latreia share a common root, with the distinction being that Latreia is a noun and Latruo is a verb.

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Lexicons define the words like this. To perform religious rites as a part of worship, to perform religious rites, to worship, to venerate, worship.

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This definition is correct, but there's more to it. Thankfully, we can use the

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Septuagint to help us refine these meanings. So, what is the

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Septuagint and why do we care? The Septuagint, which you'll often see abbreviated with the letters

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LXX, is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which was completed by Jewish scholars around the 3rd century

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BC. This translation was widely used by Greek -speaking

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Jews and Christians in the 1st century AD. The Septuagint is relevant to this study because it helps us understand how

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Greek words functioned in the context of the Old Testament. The Septuagint influences many of the

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Greek words in the New Testament, and understanding their usage there helps us understand their meaning in the

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New Testament. During his research, Wadsworth noted how the

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Jewish translators of the Septuagint rendered the Hebrew word avad, which roughly translated means serve.

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For the Septuagint translators, latruo is one of several Greek terms used to translate avad, which is the standard

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Old Testament Hebrew word for serve or work. The term avad is found in the

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Hebrew Old Testament 287 times, but the Septuagint translators translate it as latruo only 78 times.

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When avad describes service or work for people, the Septuagint usually chooses doluo, which typically means to serve as a slave.

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But when avad describes service to deity, latruo is the primary choice of the Septuagint translators.

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Strathman, in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, said, Strathman emphasized that latruo and latreia connoted sacred and sacrificial significance.

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He goes on to note that the whole conflict between Moses and Pharaoh related to God's demand to let my people go so that they may worship latruo, me in the wilderness,

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Exodus 7 16. In Exodus 10 26, we see that taking their livestock with them was another point of contention with Pharaoh.

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This is further evidence that animal sacrifices were implied by the term latruo.

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You see in the Old Testament, worship involved literal sacrifices.

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The Old Testament tied latruo and latreia to the sacrificial system in the temple.

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Here's what Dr. Wadsworth has to say about this connection of latruo and latreia with the sacrificial system.

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It is a mistake to assume that latruo connotes the idea of generic service. Latruo always refers to a specific kind of service, service performed for deity.

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But in the Septuagint, latruo can be narrowed more specifically than that. It refers to serving deity with sacrifices, whether to the

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God of Israel or to other gods. A study of all the contexts in which latruo or latreia appears in the

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Septuagint reveals that the activity connected with the terms is sacrificing, which is made explicitly clear in more than two dozen passages.

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The Septuagint uses latruo and latreia to describe these rituals.

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So when someone talked about worshiping God in the Old Testament, it likely meant something directly related to these sacrificial acts.

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And we can't miss this point. Latruo and latreia were words used to signify sacrifices to God in the temple.

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Now, here's where it gets interesting. In the New Testament, latruo and latreia continue to connote serving deity with sacrifices or simply sacrificing.

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However, the focus of this service changes in the New Testament. Jesus's death and resurrection brought a huge shift in how people relate to God.

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God would no longer require sacrifices in the temple for a relationship with him.

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Instead, the New Testament introduces a new way for believers to serve

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God through their lives. In Romans 12, 1,

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Paul writes, Therefore, I urge you, brothers, on account of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship, latreia.

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Here, Paul is encouraging Christians to offer their lives as living sacrifices, meaning that service is no longer about killing animals and offering them on an altar.

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Instead, it's about living a life that honors God in everything we do.

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Because of the centuries of animal sacrifice, this concept of a living sacrifice was a radical idea for early

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Christians. It meant that worship wasn't about formal rituals anymore.

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It was about how you lived. The New Testament speaks of worship as a daily offering of our lives to God, where we serve others, live with integrity, and seek justice.

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It's about reflecting the values of the kingdom of God in our actions, not just in our words.

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Paul also uses latreia in his letters to describe this new form of service. In Philippians 3, 3, for example, he says that true worshipers worship

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Latreo by the Spirit of God rather than relying on external rituals.

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In this way, Latreo becomes more about internal devotion with an attitude inclined toward good works rather than actions like animal sacrifice.

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This brings us to a very important question. When we sing songs or pray, are we offering worship to God in the biblical sense?

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The answer depends on how we define worship. If we define worship as anything that praises

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God, then yes, singing and praying can certainly be acts of worship. However, the

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Bible never connects Latreo and Latreia with singing or praying, with the lone exception of Luke 2, 37, where Dr.

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Wadsworth says that Latreo is used figuratively. While they are important expressions of faith, singing and praying don't align with the scripture's use of Latreo and Latreia, which in the

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New Testament involves living a life of service, sacrifice, and devotion to God's will.

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In Hebrews 13, 15, the writer speaks of offering a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to his name.

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Here, Hebrews describes praise as a sacrifice. But it's not just the act of singing or praying.

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It's the attitude behind those actions. According to the New Testament, we offer our whole lives as living sacrifices, not just our words.

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So how should this affect our daily lives? If spiritual service is about serving

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God through the way we live, then it changes the way we think about our daily actions.

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The New Covenant doesn't confine service to God to a church building or a ritual or an hour on Sunday morning.

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It's something we offer to God every moment of our lives. Every act of kindness, every moment of honesty, and every decision to put others before ourselves is a form of spiritual service.

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Serving is more than singing and praying. The Bible's usage of Latruo and Latreia reminds us that we don't limit spiritual service to singing songs or saying prayers.

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While those acts are important, service involves living a life of dedication to God.

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It's about offering our lives as living sacrifices through our actions, our kindness, our love for others, and our commitment to living in a way that reflects

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God's character. When we understand service biblically, we understand the

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Bible doesn't confine it to a church building or a Sunday service. It's a 24 by 7 way of life, a way of being that honors

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God in everything we do. So the next time you think about serving God, remember, it's not just about what you do in church, but how you live every day to serve others and reflect

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God's love to the world. In the next episode, we'll examine another worship term,

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Laturgia. Thanks for listening to the podcast.

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We hope this episode has deepened your understanding of Scripture. If you found this content valuable, please share it with your friends.

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For more biblical studies, visit our website at ReadyForEternity .com. That's the word ready, the number four, and the word eternity.

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ReadyForEternity .com. Be sure and leave a comment on the Ready For Eternity Facebook page or reach out on Twitter.

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That's all for now. Keep studying your Bible, growing closer to God, and getting ready for eternity.