An Old Testament Model of Worship...

Numerous studies have been done on worship in Ancient Israel there is a however a tendency for them all to fall into the same familiar structures with does what we have done today, the examine the holy places e.g. temple, altars and sacrifices or in other words on a biblical scholar “holy places, holy people and holy seasons”. But Robin Rutledge in this chapter of the book ends importantly with two clearly different types of worship, which have been largely ignored, prayer and music and singing. Here considers these as of enough importance to place them in the same chapter as the more formal types of worship. These elements are two key and central themes to the nature of worship in the Old Testament and especially in the Pentateuch and throughout the Psalms where we see King David worship God through and through. The systemic problem of recent studies on Old Testament Worship is that they focus solely on these important elements of formal worship but ignore or give little time too the other elements of Old Testament and this is my task today. For us all to consider the other forms of worship in the Old Testament and what they teach us about worshipping God and the theology of Old Testament worship.

Many Christians have an inherit floor in their biblical model of worship. Many skip over the Old Testament thinking that all they did was sacrifice and go to the temple with all their orders, rules and regulations that govern there worship and therefore think that now Jesus came that this has been done away with and now we can worship however and wherever. In my tutorial David my thinking on Old Testament was challenged and shaped dramatically because I realised I skipped it and went straight to the New Testament so many times but there is richness in the Old Testament. I am going to focus here on 5 elements out of many I could have choose to give an overview of Old Testament Worship and the model for it.

Taken for seminar on informal worship in the OT