Let me begin with a general observation; one to which there are likely many exceptions. In the worship wars, there seems to be a divide between those who push exuberance in worship and those who feel uncomfortable with what seems to be an excess of personal feeling in worship.
Think of things like raising or clapping your hands or moving around. On the one side, people will point to the many passages in scripture, which support such actions. There are calls to raise your hands in the scripture. There are calls to shouts of joy. They will conclude that worship should be an informal expression of such feelings. Worship should be a heart experience.
On the other side, many will point to other passages in scripture. These emphasize the Holiness of God and the sober reflection necessary to enter his courts on the Lord’s Day. They will call for formal worship. Worship is a heart experience, but they emphasize the heart in its role of confessing and learning. They will often dismiss the calls to demonstrate exuberance as cultural practices, which are not necessary to follow today.
In my mind, this is a very frustrating conversation because both sides are ignoring certain scripture passages. I sympathize more with those who emphasize formal worship for reasons I will detail below (They have a better beginning than those who call for worship according to personal feelings toward God), but I am distraught that they often fail to integrate calls to exuberance in scripture in their worship.
In order to understand how to fit the calls to exuberance in scripture to worship, we need to examine worship in light of a theme that is often ignored in scripture: holy war. As James Jordan has argued repeatedly, “worship is holy war.” This doesn’t mean that worship is merely holy war. Worship is also a drawing near to God. Worship is about renewal for the week ahead.
Why do we say that worship is holy war?
I want to work from three different passages in the Old Testament where Christ used the worship of his people in order to accomplish a victory for his people. The first comes from Exodus 17. At the end of that passage, the Amalekites attack Israel. In the war that ensues, it is the place of Moses’ hands that decide the victory. While Moses’ hands reached up to God the battle went well. When Moses let his hands down the battle went badly. The battle depended on the worship of God.
Another passage comes from 1 Samuel. In 1 Samuel Israel gathers to free herself from the Philistines. In the midst of that battle, Samuel is offering a burnt offering. By that burnt offering; by that holy worship, God accomplishes victory.
A 3rd passage is found in 1 Chronicles 20. In that passage, King Jehoshaphat, obeying the command of the Lord, puts singers in front of his army to singpraises the Lord. We are told that the moment they began to shout and praise the Lord, God set an ambush against their enemies.
A fourth passage confirms what we have seen in these other passages. In Psalm 8, God tells us that it is through the praise of babies that he ordains strength.
We need to understand that the war is won in the worship that the Israelites offer, not in the actual war with swords and arrows. The war is won through a humble expression of need for God. And when God knows that his people believe in his promises and are seeking his righteousness that is when God acts in favor of his people. We should not hold to this in a simplistic way though. Perhaps God wants to use dark times in order to accomplish his purposes.
The fact that worship is Holy War certainly affects the matter of our worship. We emphasize that Christ is a king and through us he is fighting a war against principalities and powers (Ephesians 6). The church fight that war in worship. She wars against our own corrupt flesh in worship. We are at war with Satan in worship. We also fight the war as we go out from worship.
Worship trains us for war during the week. Think of our last example from the Old Testament, the story of Jehoshaphat from 2 Chronicles 20. In the beginning of the chapter, the people come together to worship God. Later in the chapter, they go out to war worshipping God. Through their worship, they have learned how to fight against their enemies. It should be the same with us. We need to learn to approach our big struggles in life with confession, with prayer, with praise and with hearing the Word of God.
At the same time, the fact that worship is Holy War affects the manner of worship. If worship is holy war, then the church is an exercise room, where Christ trains us in the disciplines of following God. Such an understanding demands formality in worship.
Type of exuberance
That formality is not without exuberance. It must have exuberance. God commands exuberance in scripture. But this is not an informal exuberance. Rather, it is an ordered exuberance. We might say, “a military exuberance.” As we have said, when we go to worship we are in the training room of God. That is why it is fitting for us to kneel, to stand to raise our hands because we do so as the mighty army of God. We offer God our praise as the corporate body of God. Each individual adds his or her zeal within order that is given.