Chapter 1

THE SONG OF EDEN

The gospel is a story about worship. It begins with promise and serenity, spins wildly and terribly off course, and is rescued in the most unexpected and surprising way possible. I want to tell that story.

Worship as Story

I want to tell it because I think we don’t get it. When we say the word worship, a lot of activity comes to mind—singing, reading the Scriptures, preaching, praying, celebrating baptism and the Lord’s Supper—but we often see those practices as ends in themselves. Doing so defines worship in our minds as merely a list of things that we do even if we aren’t certain about why we do them. They become empty duties, and we start to believe that it’s necessary to do them to earn God’s favor. Worship then becomes associated with religiosity—a belief that good behavior qualifies us for membership in God’s family. We begin to doubt our standing before God any time we miss a worship service, or we don’t participate enthusiastically, or we don’t identify emotionally with the content of the songs, prayers, and sermons. Obviously, we just need to try harder and get it right at the next gathering.

Or do we? The story of worship as told in the Bible defines worship in a radically different and surprising way. It’s a story that surprises us because we discover that it doesn’t primarily feature us. The star of the story is God, who is at the center of all worship but is also at its origins in history and its origins in our hearts. The story of worship (like the story of the gospel) is all about God.

I want to tell that story because I believe it will reinvigorate our passion for worship and for all the activities we normally associate with it. The gospel story is the worship story. Worship was God’s idea as he initiated creation. Just when it looked as though sin had corrupted worship beyond repair, he rescued it by sending his Son and making a way through him to worship the Father again. The Son, in turn, sent his Spirit, who awakened corpses like you and me and put a song in our hearts that we’ll be singing with every breath from here to eternity.

So buckle up. Let’s dive into the story of worship, which is to say, let’s dive into the story of the gospel. Because the gospel is all about worship.

Before the Foundations of the World

When we think about the beginning of the gospel story, we tend to think Genesis 1. There the author brings us to the explosive moment when God spoke creation into existence. It’s a good place to begin, for sure, but perhaps we should start in the moments before then. To even imagine that, we can hear the words from the Gospel of John, where the apostle tells us that before the dawning of creation, there was the loving community of the Trinity (see John 1:1; 17:24).

So before the world began, there was love. It flowed—perfect, complete, and constant—between the three persons of the Trinity. This love was an unending appreciation, a perpetual beholding and rejoicing in the goodness and perfection of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The scene was what theologian Fred Sanders calls the “happy land of the Trinity.”1 It was, and is, a totally self-sufficient community of love and glory.

At its heart, worship is rooted in this love. The Trinitarian community is, in a sense, perpetually beholding one another with love and amazement. We’re able to peek through the windows on that love in the Bible, where we see the Son worship the Father, the Father adore and exalt the Son, and the Spirit being both celebrated and celebrating the others. The word worship comes from the Old English weorthscipe, which combines two words meaning “ascribe worth.” The Trinity can be said to be always at worship because the three persons of the Godhead perfectly behold the worth and wonder of one another.

To our imaginations, it’s probably strange (at the least) or gross (at the worst) to envision anyone perpetually exalting himself. We live in a world full of bluster and bragging, where Nicki Minaj boasts “I’m the best,” LeBron James tattoos “Chosen 1” across his shoulders, and everyone from pastors to porn stars are self-celebrating on Twitter and Facebook. The idea that God would be associated with anything like that behavior is disconcerting.

But God’s own self-adoration is nothing like ours. Unlike our own self-congratulatory spirit, God’s view of himself is unmistaken and unexaggerated. As hymn writer Fredrick Lehman said:

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.2

God’s glory and perfection are inexhaustible. We can’t say enough about how glorious he truly is. The greatest gift he can give us is a revelation of himself. Exalting anything else would be cruel.

Creation: God’s Overflowing Love

It’s out of the overflow of this endless love that God created the world. The whole Trinity is present at creation’s dawn as the Father speaks, the Son—who is the Word—carries out the creative work, and the Spirit fills the creation with heavenly presence: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Gen. 1:1–3).

In The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien imagines the creation of the world as a divine chorale, with creation appearing out of nothingness like a glorious unfurling tapestry as God sings and the heavenly hosts watch in awe and wonder. It’s easy to imagine it this way as you read the opening passages of Genesis. Each day builds momentum as the cast of creation makes its appearance.

First out of nothingness come the heaven and earth, then the explosion of light and the division of day and night. Once upon a time, there was no light. Then suddenly come billions of boiling stars and galaxies. The waters of the seas part and the Creator’s imagination spins out majestic mountains and valleys, volcanos and rivers, deserts and icebergs, each one carved up by light and shadow. The song continues as life begins to teem and whir, grass takes root, and redwoods stretch heavenward. Kelp forests and grapevines sprawl and spin. Grasslands roll in rhythm with newborn tides.

Then come the animals. The dinosaurs. The dolphins. Lemmings and lightning bugs. Hummingbirds and wildebeests. There are themes like reptiles and bears, and variations upon each theme: polar bears, grizzly bears, black bears, Asiatic bears, panda bears. Creation has an improvisatory flair, bursting with imaginative energy and glory.

As God sings the song of creation, the creation responds with its own exaltations. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” as the psalmist says (Ps. 19:1). Creation’s song can be heard in the crash of perfect, spiraling waves on the coast of South Africa and the explosion of lava on Hawaii. Its melody is as subtle as the whirring of bees and as gentle as a breeze across the black hills of South Dakota. The psalmist isn’t merely being metaphorical; he’s noticing that God has imbued creation with a song that can be heard by ears tuned to the work of the Creator.

The Trinity’s song roars to a climax on the sixth day. Dust is gathered and sculpted into flesh and bone, and into the new-formed lungs of Adam God gives man his first breath. Adam’s first exhale is an entirely new kind of “hallelujah,” the response of the firstborn image bearer of God.

Here, the Bible shows us that God isn’t the disinterested god of the deists, who imagine him drawing up the world on a drafting board, winding it up like a clock, and leaving it to spin alone. Nor was creation a cosmic accident or the product of warring gods who sought to outdo one another.

Instead, the universe is the work of immeasurable brilliance, crafted with love and grace, and inhabited by the presence of the Creator, whose Word made the world and whose world sings of his glory, from the smallest blade of grass to the aurora borealis. Creation was made out of the overflow of God’s own effusive and loving being, a reflection of the way the persons of the Trinity live in harmony, love, and community with one another.

And we were invited to join him in his song.

Adam: Creation’s Worship Leader

Adam and Eve were the crown of creation, blessed with an image and breath given straight from the Creator, and tasked with carrying on the creative work on a scale suited to their smallness: subduing the earth and ruling over it (Gen. 1:28). God placed them in a garden called Eden, and the call to subdue the earth was an invitation to expand the garden out into the world around them. Adam and Eve were king and queen in a world ruled and inhabited by God, who reigned as King over them all.

The garden itself was more than an agricultural project.3 It was a meeting place for God and man, where God “walked” among humanity (Gen. 3:8). It was the first temple, the first sacred space, set apart from creation for the intersection of heaven and earth. Adam was, in a sense, the priest over all of creation, appointed by God to oversee it, steward it, and represent it...