Worship Does Not Wait for Better News

Job had just lost everything. Oxen, servants, sheep, camels, and all ten of his children. Before one messenger finished, the next ran in with worse news.

I have Job 1:21 hanging on the wall in my study at home. It is on my mind a lot. Lately it’s meant a lot more to me than it has in the past.

Job did not wait for the smoke to clear. He fell down immediately and worshiped. I need to be reminded of this often.

What Job Did Before He Spoke

Look at what Job did before he ever opened his mouth. He tore his robe. He shaved his head. In his world, those were the open signs of grief, the body language of a man undone. He did not pretend he was fine. There was no religious face on him. He let the loss show.

Then he fell. There was no standing up to recite a creed, no gathering of composure. He fell to the ground, and from that posture, in a torn robe, he opened his mouth and named the Lord.

That is worship at its barest level. A wrecked man on the floor, saying out loud that his God is still worthy. Scripture closes the scene with the verdict of heaven. Through all this Job did not sin, nor did he give offense to God. The grief was real and so was the worship.

Yahweh Gave, Yahweh Took

The line we usually quote from this scene is the one that catches people off guard. Yahweh gave, and Yahweh has taken away. Job names the Lord as the Giver of his children, his herds, his servants. Then he names the same Lord as the One who took them. Same name, same Sovereign behind both columns of his life.

You can find a way to worship a God who only gives. Most people can. The hard worship comes when you confess that the God who gave is also the God who took, and He is to be blessed in both motions of His hand. That is the worship of a man who has settled who sits on the throne. His comfort, his children, his livestock, his standing, none of these had been sitting up there. God had, the whole time.

The Witness of the Church

If worship required ideal circumstances, church history would look a lot different. Paul would not have sung in jail. The early believers would not have praised God on the road to the lions. Polycarp would not have prayed before they tied him to the stake. There would have been no preaching with executioners’ fires lit in the next county. There would have been no Anabaptists singing as they sank beneath the rivers. You’d know nothing of John Bunyan or Pilgrim’s Progress. There would have been no Chinese believers gathering in living rooms at the risk of arrest. And that Bible in English you use every day would not be the same as what it is today were it not for men like Tyndale who knew worship does not wait. The work must be done, even when circumstances are not ideal.

The witness of two thousand years is consistent. Worship has never depended on having things go well. It has depended on the worth of the One being worshiped.

Christ in the Worst Hour

Christ is the greater model in all this. Job points us to Him. He is the Hero of the Book.

In Gethsemane, the Lord Jesus knelt with sweat like blood on His face. The cup He was about to drink held the wrath of His Father against the sins of His people. From that ground, He prayed for His Father’s will to be done. That is worship. Submission to the Father in the worst hour a Son had ever known.

Hours later He hung on a Roman cross with His own people mocking Him, His friends scattered, and in the most terrible darkness that day He cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Even there, He committed His spirit to the One who had brought Him to that place.

If our Lord could worship from the cross, our circumstances do not get to keep us silent.

When the Props Go

Look at the evidence. Jesus is all we need when Jesus is all we have. This was true all along.

Sometimes the Lord lets the things we leaned on go. The job, the health, the church building, the comfort, the standing, the people we counted on. We never realize how much of our weight was resting on those props until they are pulled away. With our hands empty, we discover that Christ was enough the whole time. We just could not see Him past what we were holding.

This is sometimes how God teaches His own. He does not let us settle for half worship while we keep the world in our other hand. He strips us bare so we can look up. In that lowness, we find that the One we used to manage with a small portion of our heart is actually all we ever needed. That is mercy in a hard shape. But it is mercy.

The Question Underneath

So here is a question worth considering. Why do we sometimes feel we cannot worship until life lines up, whatever that might mean for us?

We all know the unspoken version of it. I’ll worship when the bank account looks better. I’ll come back to the Lord’s Day when the kids get a little older. I’ll praise Him when the marriage softens. I’ll come back to church if they’d ever get more comfortable pews, or maybe even a better location to meet in. The condition keeps moving. The praise keeps waiting and the months become years.

If our worship has to wait for what we want, then something else has quietly become the object of our worship. Our circumstances have moved toward the throne, and God has slipped further from it.

Job did not move the condition. He met the worst day of his life with his face on the ground and the name of Yahweh on his lips.

Maybe the season you are in right now is the Lord doing exactly that. Stripping you down to discover that the props were never the point. Christ was. He always has been.

The Lord’s Day closes tonight with none of us having lost what Job lost. Worship does not need to wait for better news. We have all we need because we have what Job had.

We have Yahweh. We have Jesus.

Job was alone. You do not have to be. Jesus gave us His church to share the weight.

The pattern is clear. We do not need to navigate through life without other Christians.

If you are reading this and feel like your circumstances are not quite right, well, neither are ours. We would love to have you come worship with us. All our boast is in Jesus, and we gather to worship Him.