Worship and the Word

By Joshua Mills

Theology for Life Magazine — October 2026

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:21)

And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him” (Mark 7:20).

What are you mastered by? That might be a hard question to answer right away. Let me ask you one further question: What fills your mind? What comes off your tongue? Your answer to that question will tell me what is on your heart, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:21). Worship is the outflow of what our heart is set upon. Either we are worshipping self or we are worshipping the Father, through the Son, and by the Spirit. Either our worship is word-centered or man-centered. We want to recover word-centered worship in our own personal lives.

This article will seek to establish how we can recover word-centered worship in our own heart. I will argue, in the words of D. A. Carson, that word-centered worship is not simply mastering God’s Word in our worship, but having our hearts mastered by the Word in worship. That posture has the ethos of John Calvin, who would often pray each morning, “I offer up my heart to you, O Lord, promptly and sincerely.” The theologian B. B. Warfield once observed that Calvin’s strength lay in his extraordinary sense of the presence and majesty of God and his submission to divine direction.^[1] Imagine if the same could be said of us! Imagine living with such a deep awareness of God’s glory that our hearts, affections, decisions, and daily conduct were continually submitted to His Word. This is the kind of worship that God desires: not merely outward religious activity, but worship that flows from a heart transformed by His grace. To see this, we will analyze Mark 7:1-23 in three ways.

The Deadness of Man-Made Religion

First, consider the deadness of man-made religion. Mark 7 begins with the Pharisees and scribes gathering around Jesus. They had come from Jerusalem, and their attention was fixed on His disciples. They noticed that some of them were eating with unwashed hands. The Pharisees were concerned that the disciples were not following the traditions of the elders: Their question seemed straightforward: “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” (Mark 7:5). But beneath their question was a deeper problem. They had elevated human tradition to a position of authority that belonged to God’s Word alone.

Jesus exposed this problem directly. Quoting Isaiah, He said: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (Mark 7:6). The problem was not that the Pharisees lacked religious activity. They had plenty of it. They knew the traditions, observed the rituals, and appeared outwardly devoted to God. But their hearts were far from Him. Their hearts were not subdued by the Word of God. What a warning for us! We can be busy in the Word but not be transformed by the Word. When the Word only sits in the intellect, and does not reach the heart, it is only a dead man’s religion. True reform occurs when we allow the Word of God to search and correct us.

The Supernatural Power of God

Second, having considered the sad state of the dead man’s religion, let us consider the supernatural power of God in true Christianity. The content of Mark 7 brings us to the great physician of the soul.

Mark 7 exposes the corruption of the human heart and the inability of outward religious practices to make a sinner clean before God. Ezekiel 36 reveals the gracious remedy: God Himself must give His people a new heart and put His Spirit within them. What human effort cannot accomplish, the Lord accomplishes through His sovereign grace.

To move from a dead man to a man who is submissive to the Word of God in worship takes the supernatural power of God. He must change our dead heart of stone into a heart of flesh that longs to obey His commands (Ezekiel 36). We might describe this work as God’s spiritual heart surgery on unworthy sinners! A skilled cardiologist can treat serious heart conditions, but no earthly physician can reverse the curse of sin or make a spiritually dead person alive to God. Only the Lord can remove our heart of stone and give us a heart that loves Him. Before coming to Christ, we were enslaved to sin, unable to free ourselves from its guilt and power.

Consider the picture given in Ezekiel 37, where the prophet sees a valley filled with dry bones. There is no life in them. They cannot restore themselves. This is a striking picture of our spiritual condition apart from grace. We could not breathe life into ourselves. We could not overcome our spiritual death by our own determination. God had to act. My friend, there is good news! God does act. Through the gospel, the Lord brings sinners from death to life and makes them new creations in Christ. God, in His mercy, came to us through the saving work of Jesus Christ and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. He sought us when we were lost. He gave us life when we were dead in sin. He opened our eyes to see our need for Christ. What flows out of our heart now? Do you remember what our Lord Jesus said in John 7:37-38?

“On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”

Now, when we consider the heart of a redeemed man or woman in worship, we see a heart that longs to know more of God and walk more closely in His ways. There is a hunger and thirst for God’s Word. There is an application of God’s Word to every area of life! Do you remember those early days of your walk with the Lord? The Bible was eaten up. Every verse was underlined. Every paragraph was highlighted. You were an infant in Christ, longing for the pure spiritual milk of His Word. Do you still have that hunger and thirst? May God restore it to each of us. As we grow in grace, and as we journey through this world, may our appetite for God’s Word only increase.

The Aim of the Transformed Heart

Third, having seen the contrast between the dead heart and a transformed heart, I want us to consider the aim of the transformed heart. By that, I mean, what practical goals can we aim at so that we have a heart set on word-centered worship always? Let us consider the steps:

1. Plan: To have the word of God saturate your worship you must plan for it. By that, I mean you must find a system to incorporate the word into your daily worship. In terms of my prayer life, I enjoy using Donald Whitney’s resources on how to pray through the Psalms. Find a psalm a day! Use it as a springboard for your own prayers. Let the content of the Word shape the thought of your prayers. Additionally, find a reading plan that you can systematically read through large chunks of the Bible over the year. When you come across a verse that stands out to you, write it down. Muse and meditate on it for the rest of the day!

2. Posture: Do not approach the Bible primarily as a textbook to be mastered. Approach God’s Word as the living and active Word of God that the Spirit of God will use to transform you into the likeness of Jesus Christ. Approach God’s Word with the prayer that God would use His Word for your eternal good. Pray that you would taste and see His goodness in the Word. Pray that you would have your mind renewed in green pastures and still waters. God’s Word is a great treasure. Live by every Word! Be like John Bunyan, who was said to have bled the Bible!

3. Place: Finding a quiet place to read the Word in worship is essential. If a place and time is not set out at the beginning of the day, or worked into your weekly schedule, it will not find a place in your week. A friend of mine always reminds me that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Never fail to plan for reading and digesting God’s Word. It is your lifeline.

As we conclude, have you considered your answer to my initial question? What are you mastered by? Why does that question matter? “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:21). Worship is the outflow of your heart. When your heart is gripped by the God of the Word, you will inhale and exhale the Word in all that you do. And when that occurs, then you will have Word-centered worship in all that you do.

[1] B. B. Warfield, “John Calvin the Theologian”, Calvin as a Theologian and Calvinism To-day: Three Addresses in Commemoration of the Four Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of John Calvin, p. 17. ↩