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I have often said to the people I
pastor, “We do not come together to worship; we are worshipers who come
together.” Though we use the vernacular “coming to worship” to mean
“coming to church,” we must have a better understanding of where and how
the real worship is taking place. We know these things, but by losing
the battle of definitions we may be losing the important thing: the
ability to worship biblically.
A.W. Tozer wrote, “If you cannot
worship the Lord in the midst of your responsibilities on Monday, it is
not very likely that you were worshiping on Sunday.”1
The German hymn goes,
“Alike at work and prayer, to Jesus I repair, May Jesus Christ be
praised!” The familiar point being that we cannot say and perform one
thing on Sunday in church, while living another thing throughout the
week, and call our Sunday attitude “worship.” It was at best
performance and yet, ironically, performance is what is being advocated
today with the attitude of “coming together to worship.”
Our general lack of perspective
in worship is our deficiency in understanding the function of our High
Priest in Hebrews 8-10 and the heavenly worship service in which He is
officiating every minute of every day! Sunday-only performances
(perhaps “Sunday Matinee” would be a good description) in contemporary
worship services are not helping us regain reality in worship, they are,
rather, taking us further into formalism and sacramentalism than ever
thought possible.
I believe that in a subtle and
alarming way, contemporary worship is taking us further back to Old
Testament Judaism and even Romanism than it is bringing us to New
Testament worship! By thinking that we are the active ones in worship,
that we must become priests or “facilitators” of worship, we are rushing
into the presence of God without the real High Priest, the Daysman, the
Mediator, who is over the House of God, and who only can lead us in
worship, interceding for us by His own blood before a holy God.
William Newell is right when he
reminds his readers that the “new and living way” is more of a contrast
to the old, than a fulfillment of it.
If you do not go to the Cross and get deliverance from all
‘religion,’ and find yourself in the presence of God, with all
claims met, these Levitical things will have a subtle hold upon you,
like the Cross on top of a Romish cathedral—while the ‘Word of the
Cross’ (1 Cor. 1.18), the ‘power of God’ which sets people free, is
wholly unknown to the monstrous pagan system. In the Levitical
things, you are to see the contrast to what you now enjoy, not the
very example of it.2
Where the old formalism became
itself the priesthood and performed the worship for the people by
sacrament, liturgy and icons, the new formalism (i.e. contemporary
worship) is performing the same function with its worship leaders,
crafted service structure, and technological shows that require nothing
of the attendees in knowledge, belief or practice.
This criticism of contemporary worship
should not seem extreme or unfair. It will be admitted that there is
every degree of participation in this new formalism, but the gurus of
the movement are making no excuses for what they are trying to
accomplish. Barry Liesch3
argues that “Our entire worship culture is in transition. We are
becoming, in some respects, more Hebraic” (p. 150). Also, “When
leitourgia
involves a large group, more vision, more planning, more drama, more
mystery, more symbolism are required” (p. 173). Liesch argues for
giving “worship” more priority over preaching, “An increasing number of
writers, theologians, and researchers of worship are taking the view
that worship should receive priority over teaching, evangelism and
fellowship” (p. 157). He even uses Kierkegaard (the father of
Neo-Orthodoxy) as an example to promote worship as performance with God
as the audience and “prompters” (read: “worship leaders”) as coaches,
rather than God as the coach (p. 123).
Robert Webber4
criticizes the break from Catholicism as a step backward in worship,
transubstantiation and the Eucharist being far better symbols than what
traditional churches have used (p. 136). He advocates using the Book of
Common Prayer (p. 138) and describes a service at Tyndale Theological
Seminary in which the students celebrated the Eucharist by carrying the
bread and wine down the isle above their heads to singing which may
“explode in praise and thanksgiving and may experience the healing touch
of the Holy Spirit” (p. 134-5).
In an online article about the
Catholic Lenten season titled, “Get Lent: Protestants do the Sober
Season,” Andrew Santella writes, “So, maybe it’s not that surprising
that more Protestants are now dipping into the well of Catholic ritual
and devotions. In that sense, Lent may be part of a trend: Check out
[another site] which recasts Catholic devotional beads for Protestant
use by eliminating those troublesome Hail Marys. . . . But our shared
affection of late for some of the old ways of worship represents a small
victory for mystery, ritual, and awe.”5
More sobering is to see our Fundamental churches doing the same things.
My point in this is that rather
than being worshipers all the time, the emphasis now is that we can come
together and be led by worship leaders into God’s presence with all the
emotion and symbolism that the liturgical churches ever had! Having
accomplished this in an hour or two, the attendee is now sufficiently
spiritual to make it through the week until the next worship
experience. The contemporary approach to “worship” is facilitating this
error, not combating it. Rather than our worship being based on the
church’s understanding and doctrine it is based on the unbeliever’s idea
of what he wants church to be. This could never coincide with Hebrews
8-10.
We have a High
Priest over the House of God!
This is what Hebrews 10:21 says. We only can participate in what the
New Testament calls “worship” if we have come unto God by Him (7:25); if
our evil conscience has been purged by His own blood (9:14); and we have
been perfected forever through His once-for-all offering for sin
(10:10). It is He who has done and is doing any action that propitiates
God (9:24-28), none of our actions nor the sacrifices of animals being
acceptable in His sight (10:2-4).
Christian worship is, therefore, our participation through the
Spirit in the Son's communion with the Father, in his vicarious life
of worship and intercession. It is our response to our Father for
all that he has done for us in Christ. It is our self-offering in
body, mind and spirit, in response to the one true offering made for
us in Christ, our response of gratitude to God's grace, our sharing
by grace in the heavenly intercession of Christ.6
Newell wrote it this way,
Yes, we need a Priest, and we have a Priest, thank God,
a Great Priest over the house of
God (vs. 21). Let us mark, however, that we do not serve Him
as Priest: He serves us. We are not directed to come to Him as
Priest, but to God’s throne of grace, relying on Christ’s shed
blood, and having Him as Great
Priest over the house of God.7
Hebrews 10:21, where the presence
of our High Priest is declared, is followed by the “Let us” patch.
Seeing that this arrangement is true for us, we are invited to do three
things. I submit that these are samples8
of the believer’s true “worship,” that worship not being a “performance”
whereby we “come into the presence of God,” but a cognitive recognition
that we are always in the presence of God!
Even when we were
dead in sins, [He] hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye
are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in
heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:5-6).
We are worshipers who are sprinkled and
washed.
Let us draw
near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts
sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water
(22). Homer Kent describes this
twofold process which makes us continual worshipers before His presence,
Just as the Old Testament priest entered the divine presence by the
sprinkling of blood and by virtue of bathing his flesh with water,
so the Christian believer may confidently exercise his approach to
God on the basis of a heart purified judicially by the blood of
Christ and with a life that is cleansed from defilement by the Word
of God (Eph. 5:25, 26).9
We are worshipers who are waiting and
confident.
And let us
hold fast the profession of our [hope] without wavering; (for he is
faithful that promised) (23). Our
continual worship should always be in light of His soon return. Paul
commended the
patience of hope of the
Thessalonians and that they were ready
to wait for his Son
from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered
us from the wrath to come (1 Thes. 1:3, 10).
F. F. Bruce wrote, “Each successive Christian generation is called upon
to live as the generation of the end-time, if it is to live as a
Christian
generation.”10
Our worship is also involved in
Looking for that
blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and Savior
Jesus Christ (Tit. 2:13).
We are worshipers who are considering
and assembling.
And let us
consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not
forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some
is; but exhorting one another: and so much more, as ye see the day
approaching (24-25). A vital part
of our continual worship is to think about how we can stimulate our
fellow believers to love and good works. We cannot do this by forsaking
them but by assembling with them as often as the church meets. In this
way we are truly worshipers who come together and the activity we do
there is merely a continuation of our worship!
And so . . .
Let us do one more thing. Should
we not put aside the “obvious lie” that is such a part of the
superficial world around us?—the gestures, the mechanical voices, the
artificial scenery, the rolling of the eyes and the hypocritical
motions. Why should we be any different singing, praying, reading and
listening than we are at any other time? Let’s be real! And let’s not
fall back into the ritualism that has stolen our faith.
Notes:
1.A.W. Tozer,
Whatever Happened To Worship
(Camp Hill: Christian Publication, 1985) 122.
2. William Newell,
Hebrews
(Chicago: Moody Press, 1947) 280.
3.Barry Liesch,
The New Worship (Grand
Rapids: Baker Books, 2001).
4 Robert Webber,
Planning Blended
Worship (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998).
5. Slate Magazine (www.slate.com, 2/28/06).
6. James B. Torrance,
Worship, Community and
the Triune God of Grace (Downer’s Grove:
IVP, 1996) 15.
7. Newell, 348.
8. All of Christian activity on earth is worship before
God. Christ and the Holy Spirit are representing it before God for us.
Hebrews 13:13-16 shows that with such sacrifices God is well pleased.
9. Honer Kent,
The Epistle to the Hebrews
(Grand Rapids: Baker Book, 1979) 200.
10. F.F. Bruce,
The Epistle to the Hebrews
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964) 256.
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