Worship that pleases God

Chris­t­ian wor­ship ser­vices and wor­ship evan­ge­lisms are very pop­u­lar these days. Large sta­di­ums and halls are rent­ed for this pur­pose, with large audi­to­ri­ums, stages, mod­ern sound and light­ing sys­tems with famous singers and wor­ship teams vis­it­ing. Some­times you have to pay an entry fee to get in. These events are gen­er­al­ly open to any­one, regard­less of their reli­gious affil­i­a­tion, as the goal is “togeth­er wor­ship­ing one God” even if there are sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences in teach­ings and bib­li­cal inter­pre­ta­tions among those who attend these pro­grams. But does all this real­ly serve the glo­ry of God? In this arti­cle, we will look at the Bible for the answer to this question.

“Praise is fitting for the righteous”

Scrip­ture teach­es that only the sin­cere, pure-heart­ed, right­eous peo­ple can stand before God and that only their praise is accept­able to Him.

Sing joy­ful­ly to the Lord, you right­eous; it is fit­ting for the upright to praise him. Praise the Lord with the harp; make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre. Sing to him a new song; play skill­ful­ly, and shout for joy. (Psalm 33:1–3, NIVUK)

Who may ascend the moun­tain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not trust in an idol or swear by a false god. (Psalm 24:3–4, NIVUK)

Vin­di­cate me, Lord, for I have led a blame­less life; I have trust­ed in the Lord and have not fal­tered. Test me, Lord, and try me, exam­ine my heart and my mind; for I have always been mind­ful of your unfail­ing love and have lived in reliance on your faith­ful­ness. I do not sit with the deceit­ful, nor do I asso­ciate with hyp­ocrites. I abhor the assem­bly of evil­do­ers and refuse to sit with the wicked. I wash my hands in inno­cence, and go about your altar, Lord, pro­claim­ing aloud your praise and telling of all your won­der­ful deeds. (Psalm 26:1–7, NIVUK)

If you live in sins and do not seek God’s will in your dai­ly life, but fol­low your own plans and sin­ful desires, you are far from God. In such a case, you will not draw clos­er to God by attend­ing a wor­ship con­cert, play­ing loud music or singing, but by rec­on­cil­ing with Him: by hon­est­ly com­ing before Him, repent­ing of your sins and turn­ing from them. If you do this and thus expe­ri­ence the joy of deliv­er­ance, you will not look for a loud con­cert to express your grat­i­tude to God, but rather a com­mu­ni­ty of oth­er sin­cere believ­ers with whom you can share this joy and then praise God with your life, prayers and songs day by day.

Praise together

Praise the LORD! I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart, in the com­pa­ny of the upright, in the con­gre­ga­tion. (Psalm 111:1)

Praise the LORD! Sing to the LORD a new song, his praise in the assem­bly of the god­ly! (Psalm 149:1)

Only praise that comes from the con­gre­ga­tion of those who sin­cere­ly wor­ship Him is pleas­ing to God. When we praise God togeth­er, it is impor­tant that we all do so with a tru­ly unit­ed heart. This does­n’t mean enjoy­ing music togeth­er, but it does mean turn­ing to each oth­er in love, know­ing each oth­er’s lives, and being unit­ed in doc­tri­nal mat­ters. With­out the lat­ter, we may not even be prais­ing the same God, since we have a very dif­fer­ent image of Him. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this does not hap­pen in large-scale inter­de­nom­i­na­tion­al con­certs. Peo­ple don’t know each oth­er, per­haps even, can’t know each oth­er, or in fact, more often than not, there is no need to know each oth­er. Many peo­ple are there more for some kind of per­son­al expe­ri­ence, usu­al­ly facil­i­tat­ed by the dif­fer­ent sound, light and emo­tion­al effects and the large crowds. How can this unlov­ing indif­fer­ence and dis­in­ter­est in each oth­er go togeth­er with the slo­gan of the wor­ship gath­er­ings, which is to exalt the name of God? How can this glo­ri­fy God, whose essence is love and whose supreme com­mand­ment is devo­tion to one another?

Sin and celebration?

Sad­ly, there are also many exam­ples of wor­ship lead­ers who play music on stage who live in seri­ous sins but the audi­ence does­n’t know it — per­haps even does­n’t want to know. Many just want to hear his music. Some­times, if the wor­ship team does not have a good gui­tarist or drum­mer, they ask a tal­ent­ed but unbe­liev­ing musi­cian to fill in. The point is to have qual­i­ty music. But God’s val­ues are different!

…these peo­ple come near to me with their mouth and hon­or me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their wor­ship of me is based on mere­ly human rules they have been taught. There­fore once more I will astound these peo­ple with won­der upon won­der; the wis­dom of the wise will per­ish, the intel­li­gence of the intel­li­gent will van­ish.” (Isa­iah 29:13–14, NIVUK)

In many cas­es, the focus on per­fect out­ward appear­ances is a sign of inner corruption:

Blind Phar­isee, cleanse first the inside of the cup and the bowl, that the out­side may be clean also. Woe to you, hyp­o­crit­i­cal scribes and Phar­isees, for you are like white­washed tombs, which look beau­ti­ful on the out­side but are full of dead men’s bones and all kinds of unclean­ness on the inside. (Matthew 23:26–27)

Wor­ship has no val­ue in God’s sight unless it is accom­pa­nied by a holy life:

When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this tram­pling of my courts? Stop bring­ing mean­ing­less offer­ings! Your incense is detestable to me.New Moons, Sab­baths and con­vo­ca­tions — I can­not bear your worth­less assem­blies. Your New Moon feasts and your appoint­ed fes­ti­vals I hate with all my being. They have become a bur­den to me; I am weary of bear­ing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you;even when you offer many prayers, I am not lis­ten­ing. Your hands are full of blood! Wash and make your­selves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. (Isa­iah 1:12–16, NIVUK)

“I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assem­blies. Even though you offer me your burnt offer­ings and grain offer­ings, I will not accept them; and the peace offer­ings of your fat­tened ani­mals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not lis­ten. But let jus­tice roll down like waters, and right­eous­ness like an ever-flow­ing stream. (Amos 5:21–24)

Praising God and loving the world

God wants us to glo­ri­fy Him with our whole life:

Ascribe to the LORD the glo­ry due his name; bring an offer­ing and come before him! Wor­ship the LORD in the splen­dour of holi­ness; (1 Chron­i­cles 16:29)

I appeal to you there­fore, broth­ers, by the mer­cies of God, to present your bod­ies as a liv­ing sac­ri­fice, holy and accept­able to God, which is your spir­i­tu­al wor­ship. Do not be con­formed to this world, but be trans­formed by the renew­al of your mind, that by test­ing you may dis­cern what is the will of God, what is good and accept­able and per­fect. (Romans 12:1–2)

The last verse also shows that God is not pleased with “wor­ship” that con­forms to world’s val­ues. Dis­co lights, smoke, deaf­en­ing vol­ume, a rock con­cert atmos­phere, adopt­ing pop­u­lar music styles (RAP, met­al…), spend­ing lots and lots of mon­ey to get the best effect, pro­duc­ing CDs in pro­fes­sion­al stu­dios and then sell­ing them — that’s the world.

God’s Word, on the oth­er hand, says:

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any­one loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world — the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in pos­ses­sions — is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is pass­ing away along with its desires, but who­ev­er does the will of God abides for ever. (1 John 2:15–17)

God does not need lav­ish lux­u­ry! He rejoic­es in the wid­ow’s two pennies:

Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offer­ing box, and he saw a poor wid­ow put in two small cop­per coins. And he said, “Tru­ly, I tell you, this poor wid­ow has put in more than all of them. For they all con­tributed out of their abun­dance, but she out of her pover­ty put in all she had to live on.” (Luke 21:1–4)

Jesus also spoke clear­ly of the kind of wor­ship­pers the Father is look­ing for.

…Our fathers wor­shipped on this moun­tain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where peo­ple ought to wor­ship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is com­ing when nei­ther on this moun­tain nor in Jerusalem will you wor­ship the Father. You wor­ship what you do not know; we wor­ship what we know, for sal­va­tion is from the Jews. But the hour is com­ing, and is now here, when the true wor­ship­pers will wor­ship the Father in spir­it and truth, for the Father is seek­ing such peo­ple to wor­ship him. God is spir­it, and those who wor­ship him must wor­ship in spir­it and truth.” (John 4:19–24)

The con­text shows that wor­ship­ping in the Spir­it does not mean that we must give our­selves over com­plete­ly to our feel­ings in wor­ship, but that wor­ship­ping God is not bound to a place. He demands obe­di­ence of heart from us in our dai­ly lives, always and in every place: to love Him with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our strength (Mark 12:33). If we live in truth by fol­low­ing His com­mand­ments, then we are true wor­ship­pers of the Father.

Is worship a tool for evangelism?

Wor­ship con­certs are often orga­nized for evan­ge­lis­tic pur­pos­es. The orga­niz­ers of these con­certs often open­ly admit that good music, atmos­phere, sound and light effects can be used to “lure” peo­ple who do not know God to the gospel, where they can then hear Chris­t­ian hymns, tes­ti­monies, ser­mons and, final­ly, a call to repen­tance. Jesus and the apos­tles also praised God with songs and music, but there is no exam­ple in the Bible about them preach­ing the gospel in this way and using such manip­u­la­tive methods.

There­fore, hav­ing this min­istry by the mer­cy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced dis­grace­ful, under­hand­ed ways. We refuse to prac­tise cun­ning or to tam­per with God’s word, but by the open state­ment of the truth we would com­mend our­selves to every­one’s con­science in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are per­ish­ing. (2 Corinthi­ans 4:1–4)

It is impor­tant to make the mes­sage of the gospel clear to the peo­ple of our day but this should not mean dilut­ing it. How can a rock-con­cert type “evan­ge­lism” tes­ti­fy to the hum­ble, sim­ple, pure life of Jesus and call us not to love the world? If the pure word of God does not speak to the heart of a per­son it is because he is not open to receive it. Both Jesus and the apos­tles accept­ed the real­i­ty that only a few peo­ple want to walk on the nar­row way (Matthew 7:13–14). The apos­tle Paul was very care­ful that those who heard the gospel from him should make a deci­sion free from all human influ­ence; for Christ’s sake alone:

And I, when I came to you, broth­ers, did not come pro­claim­ing to you the tes­ti­mo­ny of God with lofty speech or wis­dom. For I decid­ed to know noth­ing among you except Jesus Christ and him cru­ci­fied. And I was with you in weak­ness and in fear and much trem­bling, and my speech and my mes­sage were not in plau­si­ble words of wis­dom, but in demon­stra­tion of the Spir­it and of pow­er, that your faith might not rest in the wis­dom of men but in the pow­er of God. (1 Corinthi­ans 2:1–5)

He want­ed to tes­ti­fy to the Corinthi­ans about Jesus, who was mocked, despised, humil­i­at­ed, cru­ci­fied by the world, to make it clear to them who He was and what it meant to fol­low him. In this way he want­ed to give them all the help they need­ed to give up their val­ues, shaped by the ancient Greek world, of suc­cess, elo­quence, exter­nal beau­ty, phys­i­cal strength. Today’s wor­ship con­certs do not present this Jesus, because even if they make true state­ments about Him, the whole envi­ron­ment and atmos­phere tes­ti­fy to a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent set of values.

In conclusion

God calls us to wor­ship Him with our whole life. Let us not fol­low the shal­low­ness and empti­ness of the world! The “recharg­ing” at con­certs is most­ly emo­tion­al, and there­fore can­not last long. God wants to give us a much deep­er joy that does­n’t just fade away like a good mood. Par­tic­i­pat­ing in a wor­ship ser­vice, lis­ten­ing to wor­ship hits, hum­ming them rather just dis­tracts us from the things that are impor­tant to hon­est­ly face and repent from. God calls us to live a life that is wor­thy of Him and to bear fruit for Him. Only in this way can our lives be a praise that is pleas­ing to Him:

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask what­ev­er you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glo­ri­fied, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my dis­ci­ples. (John 15:7–8)

You blind Phar­isee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the out­side also may be clean. “Woe to you, scribes and Phar­isees, hyp­ocrites! For you are like white­washed tombs, which out­ward­ly appear beau­ti­ful, but with­in are full of dead peo­ple’s bones and all unclean­ness. (Matthew 23:26–27)