Ep. 199: Worship: It’s More than Words

Kourtney Cromwell:
Welcome to the indoubt Podcast where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week we talk with guests who help answer questions of faith, life, and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s Word. For more info on indoubt, visit indoubt.ca or indoubt.com.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Hey everyone, it’s Kourtney. I’m so glad that you’re here for this episode of indoubt. This week’s guest is Worship Pastor and university professor, Johnny Markin. And he’s joining us again, continuing the conversation on modern contemporary worship and what that looks like in today’s culture. Part of what you’ll hear is some discussion on what worship is and how it isn’t just a song. So often when we think of worship, we are thinking of music. Because of that, Johnny and Daniel take some well-known worship songs, look at the lyrics and give helpful notes along the way. So, I hope that you enjoy this episode with Daniel and Johnny Markin.

Daniel Markin:
Hey, welcome back to the indoubt podcast. My name’s Daniel Markin, I’m one of the hosts here and I’m joined in a second episode now, we’re having him back on the program. Excited to have him back, but I’m joined again by Johnny Markin, AKA my dad, AKA a guitarist extraordinaire, AKA the Sheriff, as I call him. The Sheriff of Shred is one of the names I have and it’s catching on, Johnny.

Johnny Markin:
Oh wow. That’s big shoes I got to walk in.

Daniel Markin:
You fill them well. Good to have you back and to be sitting here with you and discussing, our last discussion that we had on worship was amazing. I learned a lot from it and there’s so many things as we just think about what was talked about with the modern pitfalls of modern contemporary worship that I think everyone can learn from, you don’t necessarily have to just be a worship leader. But one of the things that we mentioned in that last episode, we were looking at the idea of singing creeds and singing Scripture. And we have so many modern worship songs today that don’t seem to be doing that, that don’t seem to be singing Scripture, singing things that are even really found in the Bible. There’s a lot of metaphor, but sometimes not really singing creeds or Scripture or doctrinal things about the Lord.
So where I want to go today is, I want to look at how worship forms us and the question of like, does it really matter what we’re singing? Then I want to look at a few songs, new songs and old songs and I want to evaluate them and kind of compare and see how the orthodoxy that we sing, right, and what I mean by orthodoxy is the right thinking, the right content, how that actually transfers and influences the way that we live, right? So, orthodoxy will translate to orthopraxy, the right practice.

Johnny Markin:
One of the things that strikes me is that when talk about worship in our modern evangelical culture, we think largely about music. And so, this discussion is going to revolve around song because singing and music takes a large part of the amount of time that we spend doing things in our church services. The largest two things that we do, in most churches, are music or singing and preaching of the Word. But when we speak about worship, it’s a bigger picture than just singing. And matter of fact, if you talk to some people who say, “Oh, I love worship” – they’re actually just talking about a music genre: worship songs. And we need to understand that biblical worship is much bigger. I mean you could go through a lot of different definitions of what worship is and that’s because sometimes our English language is insufficient in how we describe things. Like the word love that we have, there’s multiple words in Greek to talk about love, brotherly love, erotic love, a selfless love, agape, phileo, eros.
The same thing is true in Greek about the word worship that we use. So, we have three key words that we use, which kind of can help us in our understanding of what’s being asked of us when we talk about worship. One is proskuneo. Proskuneo is this sense of bowing or doing homage and it’s this physical action that we do. And that should be a part. When you think about somebody paying homage and worshiping somebody, you have this mental image and you know like if it means in Greek bending at the waist, okay, so that’s, you get an idea. Another one though is latreuo which is service that you do. And the two can be connected because you should do service and pay homage to somebody by showing that respect to them. And latreuo is also about life service. So it was used about, like in Hebrew, a vow to worship or to serve meaning like the king, you were a cup bearer to the king or you waited on them and you did things for them, that you serve them.
And latreuo was like that. It’s like life service worship. Romans 12:1, “Make your lives a living sacrifice,” is latreuo worship. Whereas the sense that and they bow down and worshiped him is a proskuneo moment. It’s an action that took place in that moment. And then there’s this third word, this subjective sense. It’s called sebomai, it’s this awe, this sense of respect, this thanksgiving that wells up from within. And that’s the third part of this because without the sebomai in your proskuneo well, I could bow down to you just because it’s your office or pay respect to you. But if I pay respect to you because I truly appreciate and thank you for what you’ve done, you see that’s closer to a reflection of worship in spirit and in truth. And so, we have to get to grips with what we’re talking about when we’re talking about this word worship. So there’s an action, there’s a life, a devotion, but it should all come out as a heart of thanksgiving.

Daniel Markin:
So it sounds to me, and here’s a great quote that I think, I hear you say all the time.

Johnny Markin:
What’s that?

Daniel Markin:
“All of life is worship.”

Johnny Markin:
Sure, yeah.

Daniel Markin:
In many ways. So, when people say worship, oftentimes what they’re describing is well, the singing or the music because we would also say that, well, prayer is worship. When we take of the sacraments, when we take of communion together, baptism.

Johnny Markin:
That is worship as well.

Daniel Markin:
That’s worship. And these are all physical things that we’re doing.

Johnny Markin:
The preaching of the Word is worship.

Daniel Markin:
It is. And then your mental assent of listening to the Word preached and engaging your mind is worship. So, when we sing songs, just to change it a little bit now specifically just honing in on worship songs, as an act of worship, what does it really matter what we sing? Like come on, does it really matter? Because, I would ask that, yeah, we could sing some songs that we’d say, well it’s kind of like they’re kind of good, they’re kind of solid. But look, it is really impacting my relationship with the Lord. Like I’m really connecting with the Lord in this moment. And you could say in a real emotional or tangible way. But come on. Does it really matter? What do you think? Does it matter what we sing?

Johnny Markin:
I actually do think it matters what we sing in church because … on a number of levels. The things we say in church, go back to how the early church used creeds to, here’s the word I’m going to use, catechize or to teach the faith because the time when you hear about the people hearing from God’s Word was when they gathered. When you hear about the public reading of Scripture in Timothy, when Paul says, “Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture,” one thing that’s lost on us in our enlightenment age is that most people can read today and since the invention of the Gutenberg press, and we can all have a Bible to take home, it was the great cry of the reformers. Wow, we can all take a Bible home and see whether or not what they’re teaching is accurate or not.
In the time of the early church, most people could not read. So, to hear the Word of God, it had to be read to them. And that reader then represented the voice of God speaking to the congregation. And that’s a really important place to start because even in Scripture we actually have knowledge that there were songs that they were singing as creeds that were sung like hymns in the church.
Two very famous ones, Philippians 2, I think it’s chapter two and then verses five through 11, Paul writes, “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.” And then begins this creedal hymn. “Who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather He made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
That doesn’t sound very poetic and most songs when you sing them today, they have a poetic structure. That’s because it wasn’t written in our language. And it was written at a creed and we have to understand how early song was written. It wasn’t written to have rhyme and it wasn’t written, it had certain melodies. It had a cadence to it, but it’s lost on us in the original language, right? We’re getting a translation of that. But you think about what they’re doing is they’re teaching you all about Jesus and how then we should live in light of it. This is catechesis. This is teaching people about the faith through the songs. So if that’s good enough for the early church, it should be good enough for us.
Now the criticism is going to come as, well if all you do is sing songs about what’s going to fill my head about God, how am I ever going to apply this?

Daniel Markin:
Or express what I feel because it’s relationship.

Johnny Markin:
Sure. I mean the Psalms are all about expression, right? So, the early church always had a Psalm read in church, which was a way of speaking back to God. You’re using the prayers that God has written for you to say back to Him, which cover, as Eugene Peterson puts it, the whole gamut of our emotional experience of life, if we pray the Psalms regularly. So, we have the sense that we have a need to be singing songs about God and singing songs to God and to one another. Because that’s what Paul says in Ephesians and Colossians. Colossians 3:16, “Sing to one another.” Not just to God, but “Sing to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, so as to make from the Word of Christ in us.” And so, there’s the purpose, what we do. And then of course the next verse, “In whatever you do, do it for the glory of God the Father with a thankful heart.” And that’s Colossians 3:17, there’s that life worship that you’re talking about again.

Daniel Markin:
Well, it occurs to me too that when we sing, we do remember things way better. Like you can remember old Beatles lyrics from years ago.

Johnny Markin:
Yes, I can.

Daniel Markin:
Right. And when’s the last time you might have read those lyrics?

Johnny Markin:
Oh, it would’ve been probably a decade ago or something. At least.

Daniel Markin:
Yeah. And I can remember song lyrics from way back, but because I remember the melody and then the words come.

Johnny Markin:
And because you heard them over and over and over again, repetition helped with the memory.

Daniel Markin:
Yes. So, you can imagine that if you sing this song all the time, right. We can sing, “Come thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy praise.” I remember those words because I remember the melody. And a lot of times it’s hard to memorize Scripture, but when I think it’s a massive, massively important piece as to why we should sing good songs because if we’re singing, especially if they’re written with Scripture in mind. We’re in a sense singing those scriptural truths. And remembering them. And that keeps you actually in the faith and it keeps you like from veering outside into, this is some other kind of Gnosticism or maybe some liberal theology or hyper-conservative theology, but about staying in that main channel of the river and saying, “No, we’re singing true and good things about God.”
So I think it is important to have songs and creeds that are recited for the sake of remembering. And we talked a bit about that last time, but that we forget that there’s this, we have like a spiritual amnesia. But the repetition, taking communion, doing these things over and over and over again reminds us of what we’re doing.

Johnny Markin:
Reciting the Lord’s prayer until it becomes something that you can say without reading it from a screen. We need to sing a song until it gets down into our souls so that it becomes part of us. And that only comes through some repetition. So, it’s finding the balance between repetition that ingrains truth and repetition that becomes dull and meaningless.

Daniel Markin:
So that would be a good segue then into some of the repetition that we see in modern songs. So, what I want to do now, with kind of what we just had in the back of our minds, let’s look at some new songs and some old songs. We’re going to look at ones that we’ve kind of decided that are a little bit problematic. They have some good parts of them, but they’re a little bit problematic. And then some songs that are just really, really strong. And I want to hear from you as to why you think this. So, let’s look at then how some of these songs, whether written well or written poorly, the songs we have here are pretty, I would say, on the musical side quite good. But as far as content, that’s, I think we’re looking at the lyrics here for content. Because I mean I could start singing all the songs as we’re doing this.
So let’s start with an old one. There’s a song called Blessed Assurance.

Johnny Markin:
Right. One of the revivalist hymns from Fanny Crosby.

Daniel Markin:
Yes. It says, “Blessed assurance Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine. Heir of salvation, purchase of God, born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.” Then the chorus. “This is my story. This is my song. Praising my Saviour all the day long. This is my story. This is my song. Praising my Saviour all the day long.” Any first thoughts as we read these?

Johnny Markin:
This is a classic hymn. People love to sing this hymn and it contains great truths of Scripture. One of the hallmarks of this song though, is it comes from a period of emotional experience, where that emotional fervour was the hallmark of early evangelical hymns in the 19th century. And again, we always talk about this balance that we have to keep in our songs between the head and the heart and between the us and the me and various things. One of the hallmarks of this song is it takes a grand story of salvation and it applies it down to the individual. Is this a bad thing? No, it isn’t.

Daniel Markin:
But would you say there’s a time and a place for that?

Johnny Markin:
Yeah. A lot of songs that are really personal might be better suited to just prayer time or your own personal devotions. A lot of songs I hear on Christian radio are a lot of songs about my struggle and me and me and Jesus and those are good testimony songs. Blessed Assurance is like a testimony song that would, could have been sung and might’ve been sung in the context of these revivals, evangelistic revivals, these outreach campaigns to the world where somebody is saying, “Hey, look what Jesus has done for me. He can do it for you.” It’s classic testimony. Look what this toothpaste does for my teeth. You should use it too and there is a danger in commodifying Jesus that way.
Okay. There’s great stuff in the text of Blessed Assurance. There is good stuff. Christ is a foretaste of glory divine by the Holy Spirit in us and we are heirs of salvation. We are the purchase of God. We are born of His Spirit and washed in His blood. “This is my story. This is my song. Praising my Saviour all the day long.” My story, my song, one of the dangers is it can be all about my story and my song. Not that this song is always like this, but it does point us in that direction that what’s important in our gathering here or the point that could be taken is that what’s going on in me is most important, not what God is-

Daniel Markin:
It’s me, me, me.

Johnny Markin:
It’s me, me, me. So, when you get to the second verse, “Visions of rapture now burst on my sight.” This is this personal moment of wow going on with the writer. Not everybody might be experiencing that when you sing this song in a congregation. Right? And the third verse, “All is at rest. I in my Saviour am happy and blessed.” Well, the person who’s just gone through a financial tragedy and lost their business, or maybe they’ve lost a loved one or they’re unjustly accused and thrown in jail for their faith even, right? How can they sing that? Well, maybe they still can, but that’s the grace of God and the gift of God. That’s like Paul and Silas in prison in the book of Acts. So, we have to be careful that we don’t just take a song and over-personalize it. We have to keep in mind the bigger picture of the song that Fanny Crosby… Fanny Crosby is known as one of the greatest hymn writers, very prolific, and there’s a lot of good gospel and theology in her hymns, but it’s just a warning to maybe be careful about how personal a testimony is in the gathering.

Daniel Markin:
Yeah, you make a lot of the points there. Again, it’s not wrong to have these personal moments, but I think what you’re saying, there’s testimony songs and there’s more corporate songs.

Johnny Markin:
Sure.

Daniel Markin:
And so we should lean to singing more corporate songs together, recognizing that, look, there might be some I language, but if it’s all about I language, then it’s just me having this little personal bubble moment with God. And forgetting then, with gathers my friends and family and we are singing as a community, as a covenant people.

Johnny Markin:
Yeah.

Daniel Markin:
Okay. That was good. So that’s the first one. That’s Blessed Assurance. Let’s go on to, here’s a modern song. Yes, I Will. Do you know this one?

Johnny Markin:
I have sung it a couple of times. Yes.

Daniel Markin:
Sung it a couple of times. What are some of your thoughts?

Johnny Markin:
Let’s just say that this is in some ways subjective in the things that we’re doing, but there’s some good statements being made here. In terms of what we see in this song, we have to understand that there is this pattern of worship in Scripture of revelation and response and that God initially reveals Himself to us and we respond. And it’s also the pattern of what happens in our liturgy, in our church services is that if we launch into simply saying about what I’m going to do without any knowledge of what God has done, it’s kind of like, “What, I don’t have a context here. What are you saying?”
This song is a great testimony song. “I count on one thing, the same God that never fails will not fail me now, you won’t fail me now. I will lift You high in the lowest valley.” It’s a song about persevering in the faith. The danger that I see in this song is one that comes back time and again in a lot of songs it’s talk about persevering in the faith is You won’t fail me now, is the context of again, I mean are we commodifying Jesus? Is that I can trust in Jesus like I can trust in this cup of coffee in the morning to wake me up. I know what you’re going to do. You won’t fail me now. I mean are you talking about just the immediate circumstance here? Or are you talking about what God has done where He said that, “I will preserve you to the end and even though your life may be taken from you and you are martyred still I will preserve you and bring you to Myself in the end.”

Daniel Markin:
Yeah. I think a danger here is that we forget the story of God. Because yes, You won’t fail me. You haven’t failed me in salvation. And like, because we sing these things and in the right mind, the Lord will never fail. His plans were always-

Johnny Markin:
Absolutely.

Daniel Markin:
Will always come up the way He has designed them and might not be the way we have planned it. Right? But again, if it’s our plans, then He would fail us. Right? Like, “Well, I didn’t get that job, so God you failed me.” Right? And so, if you’ve placed it all in there, like if you’re singing that with, “Well, Lord, I’m going to get this job. You’re not going to fail me. You’re not going to fail me.” What about when he does fail you? So would this one be more of a we need to understand right theology and understand that it’s God doing the work before we sing the song or?

Johnny Markin:
I think so. I think that’s why a song should be placed after a description of what God has done for us. Whether that’s the story of creation, preservation, the story of redemption, personally and cosmically, the story of growth. But, and then apply it to, I’m brought into God’s story. We think that we bring Jesus into our story.

Daniel Markin:
Oh, totally.

Johnny Markin:
But the gospel is way bigger than my life. It’s an eternal story. And we are brought in, we are privileged to be brought into God’s story. He brings us, He opens our eyes by the Holy Spirit and creates in us anew and makes us one with Christ.

Daniel Markin:
Yeah. Story is a buzzword nowadays because everyone’s very much, “Hey, tell me your story. Tell me.” And that’s a very postmodern thing. And I think as, as everyone’s looking for their own truth, your story is part of your truth. And so I think the danger is that we say, “Well, I’m bringing God into my story,” but you’re, you’re completely right. It’s about God’s story. I mean He has been from the beginning to the end. He is the Alpha, the Omega and His story continues. We are like a few words on the page of His book, barely. Like we’re there. If you look at the scope of time, we’re a blip, right? But we have an awesome privilege and opportunity to enter into His story. And I find that gives me personally way more meaning.

Johnny Markin:
This is why the table of God is so meaningful is because in participating in the table of God and communion in the Lord’s supper, however you want to call it.

Daniel Markin:
The bread and the wine.

Johnny Markin:
You are not only in that moment connecting with Jesus and that meal is not supposed to be about personal piety. First Corinthians will show you that it’s really all about the body. So you’re remembering and recognizing you’re connected with believers who have gone before you, believers who are with you now and believers who are not even in that same room, but who are in this day and age partaking on that Sunday morning.

Daniel Markin:
It’s like you’re sitting at the same table together.

Johnny Markin:
Yes, you are. And then believers who are going to come in the future. You’re connected in this eternal way though you’re only in that small part of the story. And I think you raise a point about the transcendence of God versus the imminence of God. Whereas we like to bring God into our lives.

Daniel Markin:
Transcendent meaning God is so distant and far away. We could never understand Him.

Johnny Markin:
He’s huge and he’s holy. And we’re separated from that. And so how dare we approach Him. We need to have that sense because-

Daniel Markin:
But imminence, meaning that He has come close and He now dwells with us as a human and understands the way we feel because He lived it.

Johnny Markin:
And He’s done that through Jesus. Hebrews 1 says, “He’s most fully come now in the person of Jesus opening that way to the Father. And then by the Holy Spirit we are brought into His presence.” Right? So this is the sense that He is both imminent and He is transcendent and we need to keep those two things in intention and balanced as well.

Daniel Markin:
You’re totally right. So why don’t we just move into really briefly hear some songs that are really, really strong. Here’s one I think about all the time, we sing it every Christmas: Hark the Herald Angels Sing. And let me just, these are such strong lyrics where it’s almost like you’re singing a creed, right? “Hark the herald angels sing glory to the newborn King. Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled. Joyful all you nations rise. Join the triumph of the skies. With angelic hosts proclaim Christ is born in Bethlehem. Hark the Herald angels sing, glory to the newborn King.”
There’s a lot packed in there. It’s just about, it’s about Jesus, it’s about the newborn King. It’s about God the Father reconciling.

Johnny Markin:
The Incarnation. The plan of salvation and the kingdom, all the things that are going on. I love the second verse in which we were saying, “Christ by highest heaven adored is Christ the everlasting Lord.” And on earth as it is in heaven. If Christ is adored by all of heaven. And we see that in Revelation chapter five and then we see, well, so that’s how we should do. It gives a sense to the idea that Christ by highest heaven adored. So should we be adoring him. Christ the everlasting Lord. Here’s the eternal nature of the Son of God and it goes on, “Late in time behold him come.” Late in time. Ah, the end time, right? And we’re not just talking about the return of Christ, we’re talking about the Old Testament and then the New Testament era, that in the fullness of time Mary was pregnant and gave birth to Jesus. Now we’re in that latter day. And that’s what we’re talking about. “Late in time, behold him come. Offspring of a virgin’s womb.”

Daniel Markin:
The Virgin birth.

Johnny Markin:
Wow, that speaks to the duel natures of Christ.

Daniel Markin:
“Veiled in flesh the Godhead see this-”

Johnny Markin:
Incarnation.

Daniel Markin:
Yes. The “Hail the incarnate deity,” right? That is a deep theological position right there in a song. He’s the Incarnation. But He’s God. Man and God.

Johnny Markin:
“Pleased as man with men to dwell. Jesus our Emmanuel,” which means God with us. So speaking to the incarnation in a beautiful way. But what I love about the refrain is that it brings it back to a crescendo each time where I’m getting revelation and I can respond. This is the perfect example.

Daniel Markin:
And people yell out, “Hark the herald angel sing.”

Johnny Markin:
They do. “Hail the heaven born Prince of Peace. Hail the sun of righteousness. Light and the life to all He brings.” And by the way, in the actual writing of hail the sun, S-U-N of righteousness. And this is why it says, “Light and life to all He brings, risen with healing in His wings.” And it pushes back on the reason we first had Christmas was to, it was implemented because of the Roman holiday. This emperor decided he wanted to bring back Sol Invictus or worship of the sun god. And he was the incarnation of the sun god and the Christian says, “We’ll show you who the real Sun of Righteousness is.”

Daniel Markin:
Yes. That’s cool.

Johnny Markin:
It hearkens back to that story.

Daniel Markin:
So that’s a song that I’m, it’s an amazing song.

Johnny Markin:
But even there are some great modern songs such as like a take Hillsong’s Oh Praise the Name.

Daniel Markin:
Oh fantastic.

Johnny Markin:
This is a great sense of declaring what God has done.

Daniel Markin:
From and that one, yeah, declaring what He has done and that’s a song that you can just belt out to and respond. And about the resurrection. And another one by Hillsong that I really enjoy is So Will I. That incorporates the entire story of God from creation and then to now, to the resurrection, but then calls us, will you respond, will you continue to sing? And I will as well. So Will I, right. That’s great. And I think to sum this up then, if the song’s well-written, it describes God’s love for us.

Johnny Markin:
It is an accurate view of the character of God and the work of God.

Daniel Markin:
Yeah, in a greater way and more rich and clear way for us and for everyone else, the outsider.

Johnny Markin:
But at the same time, a good response song has biblical forms of response in which it engenders.

Daniel Markin:
So I guess all this to encourage, we looked at some of these songs and we’re coming to the end now, but.

Johnny Markin:
We could go on this for a long, long time.

Daniel Markin:
Yes, we could. But we, in our love for God, I think that we should be singing songs that are truest about Him and that are clear. And because of His love for us.

Johnny Markin:
Worship in spirit and truth would say that worship originates with the Holy Spirit and whenever the Holy Spirit hears Jesus being uplifted, He resonates with that. In fact, He’s the one who puts those words in our mouth in the first place. “For no man can say Jesus is Lord, but by the Holy Spirit,” says Paul in First Corinthians.

Daniel Markin:
Amen. Thank you for being here, Johnny, and we look forward to having you joining us on the indoubt Podcast.

Johnny Markin:
Yeah, that would be great. Thanks so much.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks for joining us for this episode! If you have a question, feedback, or a suggestion about anything that we’ve said or if you’d like to dig deeper into something that you’ve heard, you can email me at info@indoubt.ca. Or you can send us a message on social media.
I hope you join us again next week as we’re celebrating indoubt’s 200th episode.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks so much for listening. If you want to hear more, subscribe on iTunes and Spotify or visit us online at indoubt.ca or indoubt.com. We’re also on social media, so make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.