"When we
believe that we should be satisfied rather than God glorified in
our worship, then we put God below ourselves as though He had
been made for us rather than that we had been made for Him." -Stephen Charnock
Many times I wonder which god is being worshipped in our
churches, and where this god developed his characteristics.
Many (of we) modern evangelicals seem to think that the
purpose of a church service is to entertain, exhilarate, and
energize. Some of us go to church, not so much to worship God,
to stand in awe of His grace to us in Christ, to stir up our
affections for Him but rather to consume, sit back, fancy the
musical experience and apply the self-help advice we gleaned
during the sermon. The pastor is expected to be to be clean-cut,
non-offensive and smooth, the musicians to be talented and
contemporary, the congregation to be good-looking, middle-class,
look and act like you (homogenous unit principle). A great
majority of us appear to actually select our churches, not by
the sound and dynamic preaching of the Scriptures, but by these
outward considerations alone! Some newspapers have even begun to
go around and rate churches on these externals as one would a
local restaurant. There you have it, a worship of consumerism -
In other words this new mentality we have embraced is none other
than the worship of self. Then we self-righteously attack those
who differ from us, who do not use the seeker sensitive model,
and lose sight of the fact that the worst enemy is, more often
than not, the person we see in the mirror.
After you’ve narrowed it down and found a local church which
preaches the word and faithfully administers the sacraments I
don’t contend that there are other valid secondary
considerations, but we must be faithful to God in maintaining
that worship is in no way a form of diversionary entertainment.
A church that is self-congratulatory has become a questionable
fellowship because the function of the service has gone from the
Scriptural command to worship God to the idolatrous worship of
itself. God should be central to worship, not you ... that is,
He should be the central focus in our song, proclamation of the
word and in the administering of the sacraments. Self-focused,
self-absorbed psychological sessions whose main purpose is to
generate good feelings about ourselves is idolatry, a breach of
the first/second commandments. This tragic lapse into
consumerism is devouring the Church and making mincemeat of our
local assemblies. Instead of finding the service meaningful and
God-glorifying, many spend their time asking themselves what
they got out of it. Rather, we need to be asking ourselves, “Was
God glorified in our time of corporate worship today?”
We worship a Holy God. We must always recognize that we are a
hell-deserving people who have been shown mercy in Christ. There
is now no condemnation for us in Christ. Real sanctification is
continuing to apply this same truth through your entire life and
in all your worship. The gospel must be central to Christians as
well as non-Christians. We never graduate from the gospel and
then go on to higher things, for the gospel is to be applied to
every area of our lives. There is nothing at conversion
and nothing now
that we can do to maintain or contribute to the price of our
salvation. From beginning to end we worship a God of grace. True
worship in Spirit and Truth is worship of God - a loss of all
confidence in oneself and a recognition of the gift of mercy
given to us for all redemptive blessings we have in Christ. The
elements of the Lord's table should be a constant visible
reminder of this to us ... that God fully accepts you because of
Christ.
God did not promise to bless methodologies, marketing
techniques, sermons about psychology and self-esteem but He did
promise to bless the preaching of the word. Paul, concluded at
all points in his life that the only thing he would proclaim was
"Christ crucified". He said that his message was a stumbling
block to Jews and foolishness to the Greeks, but "through us
spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. We are
to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and
those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death;
to the other, the fragrance of life." So encourage the
leadership of your church to return to the biblical model, to
abandon all market-driven techniques, and the unhealthy emphasis
on consumerism and unbiblical models of seeker-sensitivity,
which may very well be an unacceptable offering to the Lord. The
preaching of the Word must continue to remain central to the
worship. Marketing techniques may indeed bring people in to be
entertained, but the only thing God has promised to bless is
"the foolishness of preaching" the gospel.
Today's self-oriented evangelicalism is quickly abandoning
any semblance to historic Christian orthodoxy and unless we
return to a biblical gospel, the influence of the Church will
continue to wane. We must once again come to Him empty-handed,
naked and without hope save for His merciful intervention for
the Church, whom He loves so much that He gave His Son for her.
