Covenantal/Biblical Worship vs. Modern Day “Worship”

 

Covenantal/Biblical Worship vs. Modern Day “Worship”

Remember on the Day of Pentecost when the Apostles jammed on the guitar and drums and said, "Holy Spirit come, be welcome in this place"? Me neither.

So-called "worship" today has more in common with the prophets of Baal cutting themselves to summon their god than worshiping according to His Word. The proper response, like Elijah, is to scoff, but ultimately rebuke and warn against this wickedness.

For Satan's prophets of Baal are now masquerading as God's ministers, angels of light, deceiving the foolish ignorant and scratching the itching ears of those who want false teaching and a god who pacifies them.

Christian, if you are in a church that worships this way, repent. Leave. Find a biblical church that preaches God's Word and actually believes in the power of the Holy Spirit to work through His Word, and who worships the way that God has commanded in His Word. Do not go to a church that “unholies” the Holy Spirit by reducing Him to a dog you have to summon.

The entire motif of Scripture is that man, due to his sin, cannot be in the presence of a holy God. God then always initiates and "comes" to those whom He has chosen of His own free will.

Like the Grammy performance, so many in the church have become “unholy”. We know nothing of the fear of God, actively preach against it and against keeping His commandments, and make the center of our faith ourselves.

Our idol today is the self. That's why we have glorified the selfie, TikTok, SnapChat, Instagram, etc. Worship is a performance, entertainment, an experience, and we baptize it as feeling the Spirit or God moving or working. We think God is supposed to be invited into our presence, at our behest, rather than humbly coming through the blood of Christ into His presence when, and where, and how He commands.

Friends, don't you think it's time to grow up in the faith a bit and put away these childish things? Many of you have been on the milk of God's Word your entire Christian life, your growth has been stunted, and you cannot recognize the wickedness of our modern-day churches and its so-called worship. You are duped by the feelings music evokes, with uplifted hands, emotive facial expressions, and having a good time. Some of you are deceived even about the state of your own souls before God.

The Apostles were simply sitting, perhaps praying, when God sent the Holy Spirit upon them, as Christ had promised and instructed them to do at the place He appointed (see end of Luke and Acts 1-2). That had little to do with worship of course. It was for their equipping to make disciples of all the nations. Even here, the disciples were not summoning God and His Spirit, but obeying Christ, waiting when, where, and how He had commanded, until the Day of Pentecost had fully come.

But the point/connection to worship today is that so-called charismatic/Pentecostal worship has virtually nothing to do with Christianity and the Christian/Biblical God. Yet churches of all stripes have embraced this as their steady diet for Sunday/Sabbath worship.
Sanctification isn't a mere feeling. Holiness isn't an emotion that has to be cooked up with modern instrumentation and sound amplifiers. Worship isn't some concert experience concocted by those paid to produce and perform for your entertainment and ease. You don’t make the Spirit come when the beat drops.  

So what is worship? In brief, it is going to Heaven, into the thrice holy God’s presence, through Christ’s blood, as His children, to hear from Him, be blessed by Him and His presence, and to respond appropriately to these incredible realities as He commands and desires!

So imagine then, meeting with God to worship Him on the Lord's Day, entering into heaven, and then telling GOD that HE is welcome HERE! Since when was heaven vacated, and you could just stroll up into it and give God permission to show up, that you are ready now for His presence? This reminds one of Jacob in Genesis 28:16,

"Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, 'Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.' And he was afraid and said, 'How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!'"

You have much to learn, indeed we all do. And if you have been taught wrong your whole life and realize you have been sinning in ignorance, offering to God vain and foolish and empty worship, now is the best time to repent and leave those churches that practice false worship, whether in ignorance or malice, to gather a crowd, get some cheap baptisms, and/or pass the offering plate. The Lord indeed is full of grace and mercy, and the blood of Christ covers a multitude of sins. There's still faithful churches that worship God according to Scripture. We at Heritage Reformed certainly strive by God's grace to be one.

Learning how to worship God as He commands in Scripture is a transformative experience, but it doesn't look flashy, and it isn't that empty, fleeting kind of concert "experience" that you are probably thinking of. It is something closer to a "covenant renewal" with the Lord, passing through God's acts of redemption. It may well not cause your heart to flutter in the moment, it isn't a sugar rush, but like your daily bread, your meat and potatoes, you'll find that it sustains you throughout your week, it strengthens you for life and service to the Lord.

You must learn that worship is not just music and singing, but coming into God's presence as He calls/summons you to worship Him (rather than summoning Him), to enter into a covenant dialogue with the Lord by His invitation (even as God's people Israel did at various times in Scripture, at Mt. Sinai, and later to renew the covenant at various points).

You respond to His invitation (you don't invite Him, this is His place, not yours; His house, heaven itself and His throne of grace that you are drawing near to, the heavenly holy of holies not made with hands!) with confession that you need Him/His help, receiving His blessed greeting of grace and peace as He receives you into His presence. Then you respond in praise and adoration that Almighty God has redeemed you, invited you, and blessed you in His holy presence.

He then speaks to you from His Word/Law, for you are His covenant people and the sheep of His pasture. You confess your sins, your failure to keep His law, and yet you praise Him that through Christ's blood you have been redeemed from the curse of the law and are full of His Spirit, in order to now obey His law from a loving and glad heart.

With such expression of faith and repentance in Christ and thankfulness to God, He then extends to you His assurance of pardon of your sins from the Scriptures (for if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, I John 1:9), which will then lead to your praising Him again in song. Now, assured of His pardon after confessing your sins, you are free to come to Him and His throne of grace, drawing near to make your requests known before Him.

Prayer for the congregation, community, etc., both spiritual and physical needs, are given. We cast our cares upon the Lord, for He cares for us, and we are commanded to be anxious for nothing, but in prayer make our requests known to God so that His peace that passes understanding comes upon us (I Pet. 5:7; Phil. 4:6-7).

Thus prepared and having come to God's throne of grace, we sing and pray, preparing our hearts and humbly asking the Lord to feed us with the preaching of His word, to open our hearts and minds to receive it as Truth and know/love Him and His people more. God speaks to us through His Minister in the Preaching of His Holy Word, which feeds and nourishes us, and we again respond in song to what we have heard from God.

The Lord then pronounces, through His minister, the benediction, His parting Word of blessing upon us, dismissing us from His holy presence, from heaven itself, refreshed and ready to serve the Lord for the coming week ahead, God being with us until we meet again for worship as He calls us.  

In summary, God calls/summons, God greets/blesses, God teaches/commands, God pardons/assures, God hears/aids. He is the shepherd, leading with his crook, and we are the sheep, following His lead. God initiates His worship, structures it as He sees fit, and we respond in word and song and prayer and confessions.

If this sounds unspontaneous, structured, perhaps stifling, that's because God has commanded that we do everything "decently and in order" in worshipping Him (I Cor. 14:40). And frankly, God's worship is "freer" through the blood of Christ than it was in the old covenant under the Temple system with the blood of bulls and goats. The temple pattern was given to Moses by God on Mt. Sinai, when he received the 10 commandments, and the book of Hebrews also tells us it was a copy of the heavenly places, Heb. 8:1-6. See all of Hebrews 9 also.

Are you wiser than God, are you holier than He? Do you have the right to worship Him as you see fit, to fit your fancies, or as God sees fit, as delights Him? Who is the object of worship -- you, or the Lord? But if you submit to the Lord, worship Him according to His law, His commands in Scripture, you will find as you always do with heartfelt obedience to God's commands, that obedience to His law of worship produces lasting fruit and joy in Him. Something that could never be "drummed up" (pun intended) by man and his modern, pagan methods.

Hebrews 10:19ff.: Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a High Priest over the house of God, 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. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.

From Hebrews 12: "For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire, and to blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words, so that those who heard it begged that the word should not be spoken to them anymore. (For they could not endure what was commanded: “And if so much as a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned or shot with an arrow.” And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I am exceedingly afraid and trembling.”)

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.

See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven.” Now this, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire."


Blasphemous song summoning the Holy Spirit indicative of contemporary “worship”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktsPuZvH-rQ