August 07, 2006
Desert Worship
Because of rebellion, Israel wandered in the desert for forty years while a whole generation met their end and died off. I’m beginning to have an inkling of how that doomed generation must have felt. Recently the topic of hymns (or lack of hymns) came up in a meeting. Exasperated one of the elders said, “…then you’re asking for us, you’re asking for this church to cater to let’s say 200 people who want to hear hymns and tell the rest of us to go fly a kite ‘till these people die off?” Actually, I think I could live with that scenario. Right now I’d like to have a few hymns during the desert worship service, because after I ‘die off’, I don’t think I’m gonna care.
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Gail;
----The brief exchange you refer to serves well to indicate the heart of the problem: who is the worship service for? Some say it is for God alone. Some say it is for those who belong to the Lord. Some say that it is for those who are looking for the Lord (often, these are the same ones who at other times said it was for God alone). But who does the Word of God say it is for?
----It is certainly true that worship is for the Lord alone. That is the substance of the first and second commandments. But to Whom the worship flows is not the entirety of the worship service. The Bible always uses the verbal action of worship and worshipping with man as the subject of the action and God as the object of the action.
----So the Bible acknowledges a different possession of the two sides of the worship action. Man has his side which is the giving side, and God has His side which is the receiving side. God owns the receiving side outright, but how much of the giving side does He own, specifically?
----The Bible answers that question clearly. Before the atoning work of Jesus Christ was finished, God laid out in very plain and detailed terms how He required the Israelites to worship. Therefore, He had a high degree of ownership of the mannerisms and expressions of their worship for Him. But, in Acts 15:28-29, when the inevitable question arose about what would be required of the Gentiles, God dissavowed that kind of deep and technical ownership of worship mannerisms and expressions. The New Testament actually becomes skimpy on what and how the worship service should be. This then shows us a big difference between His ownership of the Old Testament worship and His ownership of the New Testament worship.
----So God owns all of the worship in the service, and the worshippers own most of the expressions of the worship with minimal Biblical constraint or definition. Paul even states this freedom of expression in Romans, I Corinthians, Colossians, and in other letters with statements such as:
---"One man considers one day more sacred than another, another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind." Rom 14:5, and
---"Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a new moon celebration, or a Sabbath day." Col 2:16
----Besides all that Scriptural stuff, isn't it just common sense to recognize that all of the Biblically undescribed and loosely described worship expression belongs in form and content to the one who is making that expression? It must belong to them if they are going to give it to God. And should it take Rom 15:7 and Matt 25:40 to inform us that any expression of worship acceptable to Jesus should be acceptable to us as well, and therefore we should welcome one another's worship expressions into the worship service?
----Finally, God has described for us a great deal of elements that He expects to be in our worship services. So there really are many aspects of the worship service that we must make sure is there if we are going to be Biblically serving Him. These elements are found scattered throughout the New Testament in large numbers, in every letter there. They are referred to in Eph 2:10, "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." And they are referred to in ! Cor 12:1, "Therefore, I urge you brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God --- this is your spiritual act of worship." A few of these many, many descriptions of our worshipful expression that God does require are:
----be devoted to one another
----honor one another
----serve one another
----accept one another
----please one another
----look to the interests of others
----be kind and compassionate to one another
----and on
----and on
----and on.
----Therefore we must all serve one another in acknowledging one another's worshipful expression. We must all realize that we all own the worshipful expressions that are brought together in one place to offer up to God. And that participating in your brother's expression is participating with your brother, while denying your brother's expression is denying your brother to own the whole service yourself. How selfish!
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