David makes clear what He thinks our highest act of worship is in Psalm 40. "In sacrifice and offering You have not delighted . . .Burnt offering and sin offering You have not required . . . I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your law is within my heart." David loved God's Word, treasured it in his heart, and worked hard to be obedient to it. That was the reason God called him . . . "a man after His own heart." David was far from perfect, but was serious about doing God's will. As far as David was concerned, obedience was one of the highest expressions of worship. In Psalm 5 right in the middle of passionate worship David reaffirms his desire to live a life of obedience. "I will bow down toward Your holy temple in the fear of You. Lead me, O Lord, in Your righteousness."
Jesus echoes this principle in John 14:15, 21. Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep My commandments. Whoever has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me." Jesus very succinctly and simply is telling us that we can not supposedly express love and adoration for Him and yet ignore His will and His commandments, doing whatever we please.
God very strongly rejects Israel's worship in Amos because of their superficiality and selfish disregard for His teaching about the poor and oppressed. He straight forwardly tells them He doesn't want to hear the noise of their songs or the melody of their harps. When our worship and our worship song doesn't match what we do in following His commands, the result is a hypocritical worship that God absolutely despises. When we disobey His commands, we replace God and His glory with our own inferior substitutes which is nothing less than idolatry. A.W. Tozer stated that that is simply worship directed in any direction but God's.
As we can see, our highest act of worship is obedience. May we have the same passionate desire as David to be "one after His own heart", remembering Jesus' words, "If you love me, . . ." mjm
