(Previous posts in series:
The previous two posts emphasized:
- The pursuit of holiness – particularly in worship – is a transforming process taking a lifetime.
- God’s people were specifically guided regarding the place of worship and the forms of worship.
To modern tastes - negatively - the least constricted, formulaic, and liturgically guided worship is “great” worship. Positively – to modern tastes – the most expressive, passionate, and experiential worship is “great” worship. Why? Because “great” worship today places a premium on performance, feelings, and self-expression.
This kind of “great” worship is, supposedly, more spiritual. But is it, really? No. It is not.
The Bible is, at best, suspicious of all such sensual and rudderless worship. The Deuteronomy passage (quoted in the last post) teaches self-guided, self-appointed, self-satisfying worship with “everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes” is worship unpleasing to God. God did not want His people to be influenced by the religious practices of the Gentiles as they entered the land He was giving them. So displeasing is this conception of worship that God’s people were to destroy it upon encountering it. It was dangerous to their spiritual health. The danger was not only because of the temptation to worship another “god.” The danger lay, also, in any approach to worship that displaces the glory due to God with the felt experience of the worshipper.
Do you remember Aaron and the golden calf, from Genesis 32? After Aaron capitulated in weakness to the people as they clamored for a “god” they could experience, the people said of the calf: “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt”. (32.4) The people were not so much rejecting God totally as much as they were attempting to make God conform to a Gentile conception of “a god.” The golden calf was a product of their own hands and imagination. It was something visual, experiential, towards which they could focus their attention. They were willing to acknowledge “God”, in some way, had delivered them from Egypt. They were unwilling to accept God by faith, as He was, as He is, as He required covenant obedience from them. The “God” they wanted to worship was just an Israelite variation on a theme of what they believed to be true about all “gods.”
Conflating how the world understands worship and what the Bible teaches about worship is an ever-present challenge. It was for the Israelites long ago. They conflated what they knew about the worship of the gods while they were slaves in Egypt with what God Himself was going to expect from them as His covenant people.
By the time of the New Testament, Paul warned about conflating Gentile worship practices with true worship of Christ. That is why Paul warned the Corinthians about eating food sacrificed to idols, about “drinking the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons.” (1 Co. 10.21) Paul also warned about reverting to the practice of being “led astray” into excess and nonsense. (1 Co. 12.1-3) No one can hide behind the supposed experience of being led by the Spirit while at the same time saying and doing decidedly un-Christlike things. Being “led astray” to ecstasies and mystical experiences was a normal Tuesday in the worship of “the gods.” Gentile worship was all about unlocking the mysteries of sensual experiences through repetitive rituals and trances. Gentile worship strove to free the inner spirit from the confines of what is physical.
Today, getting a good worship buzz on through ear-numbing volume, mind-numbing repetition, and heart-hardening self-seeking ... is thought to be “great” worship.
It is not. Let me tell you why in the next post.