(I’m wrapping up the first part of a series on worship. In this first part I have asked us to look at and to learn from how God regarded the worship of Abel and Cain.)
The worshipper of Psalm 50 is like Cain.
In Psalm 50 what would be acceptable worship is negated by what festers in the heart of the worshipper. The worshipper, “hates” the accountability of God’s discipline and God’s word in his life. Rejecting God's authority leaches outward into personal relationships.
It becomes a downward spiral.
- They lack self-control.
- They scoff at sin.
- Their lips lie.
- They attack their own family.
In Psalm 50, when challenged by the high bar of God-centered worship, the needed response is not to lower the bar of what is expected in worship.
- Don’t stop making sacrifices.
- Don’t stop articulating God’s will.
- Don’t stop confessing God’s way.
Don’t blame the forms of worship for the failure to worship.
- Fulfill them.
- Live up to them.
- Lean into them.
Don’t be like wicked Cain. Be like righteous Abel.
There are momentous applications for worship, and especially today. Please read the previous posts in this series ... just one more time. I’ll wait.
- What Cain and Abel teach about worship as a matter of taste, Part 1
- What Cain and Abel teach about worship as a matter of taste, Part 2
- What Cain and Abel teach about worship as a matter of taste, Part 3
- What Cain and Abel teach about worship as a matter of taste, Part 4 - Pivot to Psalm 50
Did you read a single word about music, hymns, styles, what is traditional or what is contemporary?
- No, you did not. Not a single word.
But in keeping with the video on this page, I hope you heard an explosion, nonetheless. I want to pulverize to a fine mist the bogus assumption that worship is merely, or only, a matter of personal taste or preference. It is not. The Bible doesn't give a golden calf's rump, ground down to a fine powder and sprinkled into your drinking water, how you feel about worship or whether any particular experience of worship makes your socks roll up and down on your ankles.
It is the way of Cain to view worship as the occasion to point to who I am and what I bring to God.
- The way of Cain makes the worshipper's experience of his/her own worship the object, the focus and the center of worship.
- The way of Cain is the beginning of idolatry.
It is the way of Abel to view worship as the occasion to point to who God is and what God gives.
- The way of Abel makes God the object, focus and center of worship.
- The way of Abel is the way of faith ... commended by God.
From the first recorded instance of ritual worship in Scripture, what falls under God’s ultimate condemnation is the worshipper who places himself first. This lie about worship remains evergreen in its capacity for self-deception.
Perhaps the worshipper genuinely believes the lie "how I feel about worship," is the actual truth of worship.
- If a "feeling / experiential" approach to worship is everywhere modeled;
- If sensualist, self-absorbed navel-gazing 'worship' drives clicks, captures eyeballs and sells downloads;
... then it is understandable such a worshipper will assume "how I feel about worship" is the actual truth of worship. Understandable, but not acceptable. Understandable, but not beyond correction.
Parsing the heart's intentions is trying to unravel a dusty knot dried tight into an old leather strap. Best just to cut the knot and salvage what can be had from the strap. Blow up the foundational assumption "how I feel about worship". Don't argue it. Don't debate it. Blow. It. Up. Have done with it. Being self-centered in a self-centered world is not easily exposed, much less undone.
Being self-centered requires repentance
... daily repentance
... life-long repentance
not negotiation.
Teaser: as we move through this series on worship, what will hopefully become clearer and clearer and clearer is that the ultimate idolatry has always been the same.
- We enshrine self and abandon God. Everything else is window-dressing.
Our next part in the series on worship will ask, “What’s so special about a place?”
Thanks for hanging with me in this series. There's more to come.