The REAL Purpose of Worship

I am a very emotional and expressive person in all that I do. It is part of my personality, as an extrovert, to be very open and honest with my feelings. That can be both positive and negative. It is a negative when I let my emotional state drive me to be mean spirited or overly angry when the Gamecocks do poorly in sports.  It can be very much a positive when I am expressing joy and pleasure in Christ when I am worshiping Him.

  

As I worship, my focus always needs to be on God and not the well-being of my emotional state. If my worship is relegated to my emotions and I worship for the primary purpose to “feel good,” then my worship is on self and my feelings and not on the Lord God Creator of all.  Worship is a lifestyle and not something to focus on once a week during a worship gathering. Worship ought to impact every area of our life. I express daily worship to Christ by the way I treat my bride, or the way I disciple my children, and even in the patience I display while driving.  (OK, the last one is not as consistent as the others.) 

The same applies when we worship together on Sundays. The goal of corporate worship is not to leave feeling satisfied emotionally.  “Worship” that depends of the proper placement of lights, and certain types of music can be man-centered. Worship is not be used to illicit an emotional response, but rather worship should keep the focus on the awesomeness of God.  The heart is to be moved by the truth of the Scripture and the power of the Holy Spirit. Our goal in worship is not to have an outlet to express our emotional state. Our goal is to celebrate and stand in awe of what we know about the living God and about what God has revealed about himself. 

When talking to the woman at the well Jesus said, “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). Jesus never said our goal is to experience a “feeling” about yourself or even about God. Our goal is that we worship in “spirit and truth”. What does that mean? The overall lesson about worshiping the Lord in spirit and truth is that worship of God is not to be confined to a single location. Worship should be a matter of the heart, not external actions, and directed by truth rather than ritual.

If you are looking for a church that is not focused on a style or genre, and the focus is on the exaltation and the majesty of Jesus Christ, State Street Baptist may be for you. Our worship is not going to be mindless, vain repetition, but it will be grounded in God’s Word with the purpose of guiding the worshiper to focus on Christ and our need for Him. 

Take, for example, the hymn we will sing during our time of worship through commitment this Sunday, February 19. The Hymn is called “COME, YE SINNERS, POOR AND NEEDY.” It was written by Joseph Hart in 1759. There was a time when I would have dismissed this hymn as old and stale because of the date It was written and the title contained the word “ye.” But look at the Scripture drenched words of this hymn:

Come, ye weary, heavy laden,
Lost and ruined by the fall;
If you tarry till you’re better,
You will never come at all.

View Him prostrate in the garden;
On the ground your Maker lies.
On the bloody tree behold Him;
Sinner, will this not suffice?

WOW! This hymn gets right to the heart of the matter that, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). It also help us to reflect on the fact that our only hope for reconciling with God is for us to receive the gift of salvation through the sacrificial atoning death of Jesus Christ, and his glorious resurrection.  While reading the words of this hymn, I couldn’t help but reflect on Romans 5:6-8 which states, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” May God get all of the glory and be the focus of all our worship, both in our daily lives and as we worship together on Sunday.

Truth is Polarizing

Matthew Henry once said, "Peace is such a precious jewel that I would give anything for it but truth." Truth can be very polarizing. Jesus said, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34). The sword to which Christ is referring is a representation for the inevitable separation between those who believe in Christ and those who do not in a family. Jesus goes on to say, “For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law— a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’ Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:35-37). It is not Jesus' intention to pit one family member against another, but when one family member loves Jesus and the other doesn’t, there will friction and division. Jesus asks for complete and total faithfulness. Jesus demands the type of faithfulness that makes our love for him supreme to where it takes precedent over every other relationship. 

Truth indeed polarizes. And ultimately truth is a person. Jesus also said, “I am the way and THE TRUTH and the life. NO ONE comes to the FATHER except THROUGH ME” (John 14:6, emphasis mine).