Worship and the Word

As we walk through Jeremiah as a church on Wednesday nights, I have been struck by how similar the problems Jeremiah faced in his day are to the problems that we face in ours. Two verses in particular stand out in Jeremiah 6.

Jeremiah 6:19 “Listen, earth! I am about to bring disaster on these people, the fruit of their own plotting, for they have paid no attention to My word. They have rejected My instruction. 20 What use to Me is frankincense from Sheba or sweet cane from a distant land? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable; your sacrifices do not please Me.” (HCSB)

In these verses we see a close connection between the Word of God and the worship of God. In essence, the people’s sacrifices and offerings of worship were not pleasing to God because of their rejection of His Word. They would reap the fruit of their own actions because they had rejected God’s commands, even though they had continued to offer sacrifices to God. They were claiming to worship God while rejecting His Word, and God tells them that He would bring disaster on them for having done so.

Today, we can still fall into the trap of performing acts or rituals of worship while ignoring or downplaying the Word of God. We find this in messages that downplay, minimize, or redefine the commands of God or in sermons that question the importance of and reliability of the Bible or in churches where the sermon is essentially a few out of context Bible verses used to deliver a message of self-help and the power of positive thinking.

But surely we would never fall into this trap. At this point, we need to be reminded that this trap is often more subtle than we think. To take an easy example, Joel Osteen begins his messages by having his audience hold up their Bibles and recite a statement about the importance of the Bible, claiming that what they are about to hear is a message from God’s Word. Then what follows from Osteen in the above example is a half-hour word of faith message about the power of our words with a few Bible verses attached. But the entire content of the message runs counter to the message of the Bible. Osteen’s message is about us and our power, not about God and His power.

But again, surely this is just the Osteen’s of the world and not us. But the point is that just because we say we believe that Bible, and just because we use the Bible in our worship services, does not necessarily mean that we are honoring God’s Word and keeping His commands.

As Jeremiah went on to say about the destruction of the land:

Jeremiah 9:13 “The Lord said, ‘It is because they abandoned My instruction that I set in front of them and did not obey My voice or walk according to it. 14 Instead, they followed the stubbornness of their hearts and followed after the Baals as their fathers taught them.’” (HCSB)

So the question is, are we trying to worship God while ignoring His Word? Do we think that our religious acts of apparent devotion to God can counteract a disregard for His instructions and His commands? Any attempt to worship God while ignoring His Word and His commands will produce no better results today than it did in Jeremiah’s day. As Jesus himself said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

The Pressures of Easter

I ran across a blog recently called “11 Reasons Pastors Struggle on Easter.” I resonated with a lot of the points made, like the business of Easter weekend and the pressures that come with increased expectations during the Easter season. But one of the given reasons that pastors struggle on Easter just made me sad: “Pastors get a glimpse of what the church could be… but typically isn’t.” The explanation given was, “Parking lot attendants are ready, and they even arrive early. Greeters are well dressed and easily identified. The best musicians and singers are enlisted. The sermon is well rehearsed. The church gives its best for this one day – but then returns to mediocrity the following week. That’s frustrating.” What makes me sad is my sense that for many of our churches, this is our vision of what a great church looks like: well-dressed greeters, talented musicians, and a flawlessly delivered sermon. But how close to a biblical picture of the church is this? You can have all of these elements and still not have something that can biblically be called a church. I am burdened for the church because I think that we are losing ourselves in the struggle for a well-oiled Sunday spectacular, and we are forgetting what it really means to be a church. Church is not an event, a time of the week, or a place, but a group of people. The success of the church is not measured by how professional we appear on Sunday morning but by the content of our proclamation and the character of our lives. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:4-5, “My speech and my proclamation were not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a powerful demonstration by the Spirit,  so that your faith might not be based on men’s wisdom but on God’s power” (HCSB). One of my fears for the church is that we are getting so caught up in putting our best foot forward that we are in danger of leading people to trust in us: the persuasiveness of our words, the talent of our leaders, and the grandeur of facilities. The real test of a believer though is not whether they will come to our services, but whether they have been changed by the gospel and gifted with the Spirit of God. So what happens when life hits hard and the dynamic speaker is nowhere to be found, the well-dressed greeters aren’t there to point the way, and the lighting show isn’t there to illuminate us in our time of despair. What are we left with? We are left with the truth that we have learned, the Spirit that we have been given, and the believers that have become our family to walk alongside us. What we need in our worship services is not more of us and our talents, but what we need is a demonstration of the power of the Spirit of God. I am not arguing for laziness in worship or in the preaching of the Word. But giving our best has less to do with elevating to prominence the most talented and presentable among us, and it has more to do with proclaiming and trusting in the one who changed us, believing that he can change others too. In other words, do people leave our services thinking much of us, our talents, our capabilities, and our achievements, or do they leave thinking much of our God? Do they leave trusting in our might, or do they leave trusting in Almighty God?