Worship

On one end the psalmist says, “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord’” (Ps. 122:1). On the other end were the people of Malachi’s day who had a different thought about going to God’s house, “What a weariness this is” (Mal. 1:13). On one end is the psalmist, “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere” (Ps. 84:10). On the other end were the people of Amos’ day who inquired instead “[When will] the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?” (Amos 8:5). The psalmist delighted at the thought of worshiping God; the people of Malachi and Amos’ day loathed it and couldn’t wait till it was over.

With this as our “worship continuum,” where do you graph on the line? I suspect somewhere in between. But are you comfortable with your position?

Most parents have to deal with the tired teenager who wants to sleep in on Sunday after being out late on Saturday. Sometimes there is an estranged relationship at church that you want the week off from having to deal with. Maybe you convince yourself you’re up for missing because you haven’t for a while. Or it’s that favorite NFL or NBA team on television that starts at 10 a.m. Or maybe it’s the thought of a quiet house while everyone else is at church that is just too tempting of a scenario.

Let’s call the examples above “worship skirmishes”—skirmishes with self or with others in your family. Do they reveal something about you or a family member’s passion and joy of worshiping? Is what is revealed move you further away from the psalmist’s end?

The psalmist really liked worshiping God, “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in His temple” (Ps. 27:4). If we find ourselves asking instead for “two more hours of sleep,” or for a “break from church,” isolated requests may be no big deal. But if they start piling up, we’re sounding far too much like the people of Malachi and Amos’ day—and that’s the end of the “worship continuum” we don’t want to be.

Pastor Rich Hamlin

February 23, 2012

You didn’t pray for your Pastor last week. You may not even have asked God to prepare your heart for the preaching of the Word on Sunday. (2 Thessalonians 3:1-5)

You were sleepy in church because you stayed up too late the night before. Maybe you were even late for church (as always ?). And because you got up late, and didn’t eat breakfast, all you can think about is lunch.

You didn’t take time during the week to read and meditate on the text. You should expect to hear from God during the sermon—and be different when you leave. Prepare yourself!

You were just a spectator, not a worshipper. There are parts of the worship service you don’t like so you don’t participate fully. When it’s time to sing—sing. When it’s time to pray—pray. When it is time to read—read. When it’s time to give—give. Get the idea?

You didn’t listen attentively to the reading and the preaching of the Word. This next Sunday, while the Pastor is preaching, try to make eye contact with the him. It helps the pastor know you are listening and connecting, and it helps you stay alert and focused. Open your Bible and follow along—it is easier to do if you turn your phone OFF! (Galatians 6:6)

You didn’t take notes. Try writing down some things the Lord is speaking to you about, not just what the Pastor says. Then work through the Bible text with your notes when you get home. Talk to your family and friends about what you heard and learned. (Psalms 119:18)

You didn’t think the Pastor was entertaining or dramatic enough to hold your attention. You think he should tell more stories to be effective and more spellbinding. If your Pastor is a humble man of God and loves the Word, and he opens up the Word and seeks to make its meaning plain, consider yourself blessed! (1 Thessalonians 2:13)

You think the Pastor should be more __________ ; say more _________; not say __________. If you have unrealistic expectations of your Pastor you will never be satisfied. Remember that the power is in the truth, not in the messenger.

You didn’t think any of the sermon applied to you. But you were sure glad the guy in the second pew was hearing it. If your heart is humble, your focus won’t be on evaluating the content of the sermon or how it’s delivered; you will let the sermon evaluate you. Be like the men and women in Nehemiah 8:3.

If you are not gaining any profit from the faithful preaching of the Gospel in your church, the defect does not lie in your Pastor’s proclamation of the Word. It is in your lack of readiness to hear, receive and respond to the Word of God.

“O my Savior, help me. I am slow to learn, so prone to forget, so weak to climb; I am in the foothills when I should be on the heights….” Those Puritans sure knew how to pray; and it’s not because they had extensive vocabularies and were good with metaphors.

Theirs was a deep piety grounded in the Scriptures. As a result, they knew the depth of their sin; it is why their confessions were rarely, “God forgive me”—but instead, nuanced to precision:

I am pained by my graceless heart, my prayerless days, my poverty of love, my sloth in the heavenly race, my sullied conscience, my wasted hours, my unspent opportunities. I am blind while light shines around me: take the scales from my eyes, grind to dust the evil heart of unbelief.

Their petitions then got to the heart of the matter:

Make it my chiefest joy to study Thee, meditate on Thee, gaze on Thee, sit like Mary at Thy feet, lean like John on Thy breast, appeal like Peter to Thy love, count like Paul all things dung.

They were bold in asking for more grace:

Give me increase and progress in grace so that there may be more decision in my character, more vigor in my purposes, more elevation in my life, more fervor in my devotion, more constancy in my zeal.

And they knew how to end a prayer well:

As I have position in the world, keep me from making the world my position; may I never seek in the creature what can be found only in the Creator; let not faith cease from seeking Thee until it vanishes into sight. Ride forth in me, Thou King of kings and Lord of lords, that I may live victoriously, and in victory attain my end.

One doesn’t need to wax poetic to pray like this; for it is never about the words. As I heard one time, “some prayers break the backs of words”; the point being that sometimes our best prayers are our silent ones. But we won’t be able to pray like this unless our love and devotion to the One we pray to is deep; and our understanding of self is as well. And depth of both is gained in one place; the Scriptures.

The Puritans knew how to pray because they were trained by the Book. Go read and study and you will be amazed at the prayers that come out of your mouth.

[above prayer taken from, "The Disciple's Renewal," in The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions]

There is a surprising word in our Bibles. According to my Exhaustive Concordance, it is used only once in the sixty-six books that comprises our Holy Spirit inspired Bible; but it is there. And if it was used more than once, you’d remember it. I came across it in my devotional reading a month or two back. I was so surprised to see it in my NIV; I went looking for my KJV to see how the “authorized version” guys translated the Hebrew. In 1611, the King James scholars literally translated it “draught house”. What’s that? I went to the Easton’s Bible Dictionary to find out. Easton told me it was a place that receives “offal or ordure.” That sounded like something you would order at a French restaurant. So I went to the online English Dictionary next and they defined a “draught house” as a privy. And I knew what that was (that also gave me a pretty good idea what offal and ordure was, too!). My NIV hadn’t taken too much liberty, after all, when I read the word translated “latrine” in 2 Kings 10:27 during my “quiet time” with my Lord.

The context of the passage is Israel around 900BC. Evil King Ahab is dead but Queen Jezebel is still around; their son Joram now on the throne. He’s a little bit better than mom and dad but not much. Through the prophet Elisha, God anoints a new man to sit on Israel’s throne, the man Jehu. Jehu was not godly but he would be used to blot out the despicable line of Ahab. He immediately goes to work. In 2 Kings 9 Jezebel is killed; in 2 Kings 10 he proceeds to kill the seventy sons of Ahab.

Baal worship had been promoted by Ahab and Jezebel. It was everywhere. King Jehu then dupes the priests of Baal by saying “Ahab served Baal a little; Jehu will serve him much” (10:18). When all the prophets, priests, and ministers of Baal show up to congratulate their new king and supposed fellow Baal worshiper, Jehu has them slaughtered. It is then we read in 2 Kings 10:27: “They [Jehu and his soldiers] demolished the sacred stone of Baal and tore down the temple of Baal, and people have used it for a latrine to this day.”

I know that smacks of bigotry and intolerance; big “no-no’s” in our pluralistic and diversity-saturated culture. But Baal worship was the reason Israel was a mess and cost many their soul; her idolatrous ways would lead to the Assyrian invasion about a century and a half later—God’s judgment upon Israel for her spiritual adultery. Turning the place into a “draught-house” where “offal and ordure” would be offered instead of false worship was a great idea—the place went from “praise to privy.”

This isn’t a call to desecrate other houses of worship; it is a reminder, however, that there is only “one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, Who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:5-6). And the difference between Him and other supposed deities is as stark as a house of worship is to a toilet.

Theologians call the gathering of the church in heaven “triumphant” and the gathering of the church on earth “militant”—the label indicating her state; the congregation in heaven rests, the congregation on earth works. The division is descriptive but it can also confuse; leading some to think that our earthly worship is distinct, even separate from the worship of heaven. But there is only one church and when we worship down here, we really are joining a worship service already in progress up there.

Let’s develop this further. Jonathan Edwards said long ago: “Let it be considered that the church on earth is the same society with those saints who are praising God in heaven. There is not one church of Christ in heaven and another here upon earth.”¹ There is only one but the congregation in heaven started its service long before; the angels beginning to worship and sing when the “Call to Worship” went forth the first day of creation. The heavenly congregation grows each time God transfers a saint’s membership from here to there. But we must not forget; it is our Sunday morning worship that joins theirs.

This isn’t some esoteric conversation. It has implications. The congregation meeting around the Throne has in attendance the patriarchs, prophets, saints, and angels. They see God face to face. When a few highly favored from earth’s congregation viewed heavens, as Isaiah (Isaiah 6) and John (Revelation 1) did, they collapse as though dead. There must be some pretty reverent worshiping going on in heaven’s church—and it’s been going on for some time.

Why then the need for this generation of believers to be so driven to change or contemporize worship down here? Shouldn’t change start at the top—literally? There is so little appreciation or attachment to the past. The World War II generation is called the “greatest generation”; we come across as thinking we are the “smartest and most spiritually mature generation.” We’ve become the worship leader and not the worship follower; and when it comes to worship, following is better. We are to follow the Bible and it generally is a good idea to follow the church and the saints who preceded us; diverting course only with biblical warrant.

When I began writing on this topic last October, I had envisioned a three or four-part post—certainly not twenty. Toes have been stepped on but not on purpose. It’s just that change seems to be the church’s new default mode—a lot of “That’s sounds great, let’s try it this Sunday” going on whereas biblical wisdom and discernment says otherwise.

We have been given worship instructions—instructions followed for centuries. But for the past generation, new ones are being written every few years. Where is it headed? I wonder if at some point the church will have its “Ezra moment”—Nehemiah 8 and 9 reporting that after hearing God’s Word, God’s people weep and confessed their failure to worship God as He had instructed (9:3). Afterward, they went back to the basics. Is it time for us to do the same?

Word and Sacrament ministry isn’t flashy or edgy, but it is weighty and substantive; and most importantly, it is prescribed. In an age where pop culture has invaded the church, its fingerprints all over Sunday morning’s “choruses, pep-talk, and offering”; isn’t it time to take a prayerful step back and ask again the most fundamental question: “How does God want to be worshiped?”

Who’s changed? Not God. The word used to describe His attribute is immutability. It is why God is often compared to a rock: “He is the Rock…” sang Moses in Deuteronomy 32:4. If we miss Moses’ lyric and metaphor, God declares of Himself: “I the Lord do not change” (Malachi 3:6). If you want some New Testament, James 1:17 will do: “[God] does not change like shifting shadows.” So if He hasn’t changed, at the very least, shouldn’t the caution sign be up anytime we think its time for Sunday morning to evolve some more?

Within one generation, there has been more change then there was in the previous ten. Why is that? Here are some possible reasons behind all the new ideas and changes:

1. In 1988, church growth guru George Barna said: “The audience, not the message, is sovereign.” In his book, “Marketing the Church”, Barna explains: “Our message has to be adapted to the needs of the audience.” And off the church went “adapting”—polling the pews and even the unreached and unconverted in neighborhoods asking them what they wanted. Ergo! Sunday morning started to change.
2. We have become a very casual culture. Lot’s of men don’t own a suit anymore. It is not uncommon to attend a wedding or funeral and see Levi’s. Visit the cubicles of a high-tech company and you find a lot of people in shorts and flip-flops; their dog may even be at their feet. No “fashion policing” going on here but the formal has given way to the casual. Sunday morning capitulated and reflected the new norm. The pulpit was tossed for the podium; the pew for the theater seat; the formal musical accompaniment for the informal; and so on and so on. There has been a growing move from the sacred to the comfortable—henceforth the change.
3. The belief that Sunday morning is more about evangelism and less about “Word and sacrament”. The church seems to be in a constant state of flux, trying to come up with more and more creative ways to reach the lost on Sunday mornings. The altar has become a stage; the preached Word a video clip. The “worship committee” keeps advocating changes they heard about another church trying, and on and on it goes. When God isn’t sovereign regarding salvation, man starts thinking too much “outside the box” and pretty soon Sunday morning worship can look pretty bizarre.
4. But this might be the most troubling reason behind all the changes—the belief that we are smarter and more spiritually in-tune than the saints who preceded us. Is the question ever asked: “How come Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, Spurgeon, and Lloyd-Jones didn’t do that?” May it not be assumed they would have if we were on their church staff throwing out new worship ideas!

You see, there are reasons Sunday morning worship did not change much through the centuries and reasons why today it has. For the sake of our Immutable God, let’s slow down a bit.

“We need to get back to the first century church.” How many times have you heard that? Their point being that the 21^st century church has lost its purity, focus, and way. What is interesting is that many who say this are the very ones pressing for a progressive and ever-evolving Sunday morning worship. In other words, the ones wanting us to look back and emulate are the very ones wanting us to press forward in ways of worship the church has never worshiped before. It seems to be a contradiction; they want the “old ways” but they are creating “new ways” instead.

It is safe to say that Sunday morning worship has changed more in the last forty years then it has the previous four-hundred. Worship practice, not denomination or theological distinctive, links or separates churches. In other words, fifty years ago, the First Lutheran or Presbyterian or Methodist Church in town worshiped like their Second, Third, and Fourth denominational namesake. That can longer be said. First Lutheran on Sunday mornings is just as likely to resemble First Assembly of God more than Second Lutheran across town. What a church believed used to determine their worship (liturgical form); it appears to matter far less now. Perhaps someone is saying “so what”; but it shows what we believe about God has been trumped by a worship style instead.

Here would be an interesting experiment: Blindfold “Dick and Jane Worshiper” and drop them into a church somewhere in town. When its over, keep them blindfolded and take them to another. Here is the hypothesis: Dick and Jane won’t be able to tell you the church they were in. They won’t be able to identify the theological differences between Church “A” and Church “B”. On paper, these two churches’ “Statements of Faith” are quite different; but because worship practice has become so congruent, they may ask, “Did you just spin us around and take us to the same church?” Dick and Jane won’t be able to tell you the name on the outside because on the inside, many churches look and sound alike.

What has driven so much worship change over the last generation? And why have so many churches settled on such a similar style and format of worship that so easily crosses denominational and theological lines? That’s for next time in a series critiquing worship where much of it can be characterized by the less-then-complimentary phrase: “Some Choruses, a Pep-talk, and an Offering.”

We spoke of the “three marks” last time. It is time to comment on the disappearance of the third and why such a discussion belongs in a series on worship. The third mark the 16^th century reformers used to distinguish the true from the false church was the practice of church discipline; the true church practices church discipline, the false one does not.

What is meant by church discipline? In short, it is pastoral shepherding that loves the sheep (and the goats) within the flock enough to confront un-confessed sin. The unbeliever’s chief sin is his unbelief; the believer’s is particular sin he holds to with clenched fist. Zeal for God’s glory as well as love for the sinner motivates the confrontation.

Generally speaking; when confronted, sheep confess and goats do not. The church, desirous of being what its name means (God’s “called out ones”), understands that it must discipline. After all, as the Apostle Peter says: “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him Who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9).

Why so little of it then, today? There are multiple reasons; some of them being it’s hard, not fun, and can be messy, too. But Sunday morning has also created a dynamic that makes it difficult—the worship as well as the relationship with the church has become so casual. “I came, I worshiped, and I leave to live my life.” As easy as it was to come to church (even join it); the same ease is enjoyed when leaving it.

The church as a “buffet line” developed to attract worshiper’s, but has sadly become the means to insulate them instead. That probably needs some explanation. The church template of today is to come and “take what you want”; as the consumer, the parishioner decides based on his needs and his family’s and the church’s ability (generally through its programs) to meet them. And when those needs change or the church no longer satisfies those needs, he simply moves on.

He may find another church right away but generally does so only when his “needs” demand it; or maybe he just moves in with his girlfriend and enjoys that for awhile, instead. He probably doesn’t get a call from one of the pastors or elders because people entering the front door replace people leaving the back door all the time. Because of the church’s size, many times, those in charge of shepherding don’t even know the name of the guy who just left. And he leaves thinking it is no big deal; but it is a big deal.

This gets us back to the discussion of the third mark of the church. Writing on the subject, Mark Dever comments: “Trying to lead a church without discipline is just as unworkable as trying to parent children without correcting them. An undisciplined church confuses sinners, discourages saints, and dishonors God.”

Nobody wants to do that but that’s what happens. Dever continues: “For our own sake as well as for the sake of others, for our churches’ and for God’s own name’s sake, let us not disregard God’s clear commands to discipline His Church” (Modern Reformation, July/August 2002, p. 51).

Here is a pastor’s fear: That someone sits in a pew and believes that by doing so all is now well between God and him. His life says otherwise yet no one from the church says so. He flits in and out of church, living life as he pleases; before one day finding himself before God. And as he is hauled to the left with the rest of the goats, if permitted to speak, he turns and says to his observing pastor: “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” And that pastor won’t have a good answer in reply.

Do we need to revisit church discipline? This series has attempted to persuade that there are several things we need to revisit about Sunday morning.

They called it the “marks of the church.” As a result of the 16^th century Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church no longer was the only church in town. Questions arose: “What’s a true church?” “How do you recognize one?” “What’s the difference between a true church and a false one?” These were very good questions and they demanded answering. And the reformers responded succinctly and well. The true church, they said, (1) preaches God’s Word, (2) properly administrates the sacraments (baptism and the Lord’s Supper), and (3) practices church discipline. How many churches today fail their test?

In this series, we’ve commented on the first mark, now let’s address the second. Let’s begin by asking where has the Lord’s Supper gone? Once a month is a common practice (I have even heard of once a quarter); so is sequestering it to an occasional evening service. Something is mumbled about “Doing Communion too often will make it less special.” Really? If that same kind of logic was used to monitor other Sunday morning worship practices, we shouldn’t preach and sing every week, either? We better stop our daily devotions and prayer, too.

But I suspect there are other reasons working against Communion. The first is the wrong-headed notion that Sunday morning worship is mostly about evangelism. “After all, we don’t want seekers to feel left out when we commune with our Lord.” The second is time. For many, the worship service would become too long and the thought of “stealing some minutes from the singing time” would be unacceptable. Music, remember, has become the new sacrament (see Part 10).

The third is perhaps the biggest reason, however; the Lord’s Supper is no longer viewed as all that significant. If there is any of that going on, we better get back to the Upper Room. “This is My body given for you; do this in remembrance of Me” (Luke 22:19), Jesus said. So we “look back” at the Table; and we need to. It is here we are reminded with our eyes and taste with our mouths that “I really am forgiven because of what He has done for me.”

And equally important at the Table, we “look ahead.” We look ahead to the day when we will be ushered to our reserved seat at the table of the “marriage supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:7-9)—the meal we one day will enjoy with our Lord and Savior in heaven. So at Communion, we look back and remember how and why we are His now; and at Communion we look ahead with great hope that we shall be forever.

That said; weekly Communion sounds really good. In an age of “Some Choruses, a Pep-talk, and an Offering,” we not only need to think more about what we are doing in our worship; we also need to think more about what we are leaving out.

We’ve been tiptoeing through the mine-field of Sunday morning worship and music. Have I stepped on any mines yet? I’m sure I have. But this is a discussion the church needs to have. “Cultural creep” is incessant and subtle; and when it comes to the most holy of all earthly exercises—the worship of the One Who is the “blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, Who alone is immortal and Who lives in unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 6:15-16)—we have to be vigilant.

Regarding music, a case has been made for Psalm singing and for hymns (Part 13 and 14). Generally speaking, however, Psalms and hymns have gone the way of albums, eight-tracks, and cassettes; a phase-out to something newer. And the “newer” is the phenomena known as the “praise song.”

The “Jesus-people” of the 60’s and 70’s are probably most responsible. With new-found sobriety, old-friend guitar, and a saving faith in Jesus; they went to work writing songs of love and devotion to the One Who saved them. They were kind of anti-establishment, anyway, so doing something musically different in worship was no stretch at all. Before long, a genre was born (praise songs/choruses) and so was an industry (Contemporary Christian Music).

Psalms were penned by Holy Spirit inspired men. Hymns (generally speaking) were penned by older theologians and pastors. Choruses (generally speaking) were being penned by younger musicians. “BOOM!” some are saying right now, “He just stepped on another mine.” Maybe, but I stand by it. Psalms aside, I’m speaking generally and there are plenty of exceptions, I know, concerning the age and vocation of hymn and chorus composers.

But grant the generalization for it is illustrative of our situation. The Psalms are always safe to sing—for God wrote them. Hymns and choruses, on the other hand, need to be evaluated and screened biblically for content and appropriateness. Watts and Newton and Toplady and the Wesley boys’ hymns have got that “psalm paraphrase model” going for them (see Part 14) and bleed Bible and awe; Fanny Crosby, not always so, poetic sentimentalism sometimes gets the best of her. So we must evaluate all the hymns we sing. Is there biblical content? Is it theologically correct? And so on.

And if we must do so with the hymns, all the more reason to do so with the choruses. How many of us actually have sung “Kumbaya” in church or swayed to “Alleluia” over and over again?—too many. To the credit of the chorus industry, there seems to be a movement away from the simply-stated verse with the word “repeat” at the end. Substantive music is starting to be more of the norm.

There is no reason the “new song” (Psalm 33:3; 40:3; 144:9; 149:1) we are instructed to sing and modeled in Revelation 4 and 5 cannot be composed and sung today. But let’s rigorously evaluate them for what they say and their appropriateness for worship.

After quoting Hebrews 12:28-29 (“…worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our ‘God is a consuming fire.’”), Doug Wilson writes: “Let those words, reverence and awe, roll around in the mind and heart while singing “Spring Up O Well,” with all the splish-splashy hand motions. The difficulty is not the music, but the incongruity of the music and what the Bible says the occasion of formal worship should be like. The music itself, that song itself, would be perfectly fine at a birthday party for someone’s kindergarten class. In the worship of the God of Abraham, it is a wretched insult.”

And that is the impetus of this series; that in an age of “Some Choruses, a Pep-talk, and an Offering,” there seems to be little evaluation going on at all.