WORSHIP-CONCERNS

The best worship that we ever render to God is far from perfect. Our praises, how faint and feeble they are! Our prayers, how wandering, how wavering they are! When we get nearest to God, how far off we are! When we are most like Him, how greatly unlike Him we are!

C.H. Spurgeon

40.330.

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

Anytime we long for something apart from God, fear something more than God, or trust in something other than God to make us happy, fulfilled, or secure, we worship a false god.

Ken Sande

Reprinted from The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict, Ken Sande, Baker Books, 3d ed., 2004, p. 109. Peacemaker® Ministries. www.PeaceMaker.net, Used by Permission.

The concept of "name" has to do with person, character, nature, essence, who someone is. Therefore, we are not to take God, in the fullness of who He is, and treat Him in a vain way, or an empty, irreverent, impious, insincere, phony, fraudulent manner. Not taking the Lord’s name in vain, then, is not limited to cursing or something like that, but it means to treat God with irreverence, superficiality, insincerity, or phoniness, or to bring to God empty worship, hypocritical worship or honor. Someone has said frankly that God’s name is taken in vain more often in the church than outside of it, where people come and offer empty worship with their needless repetition, empty praise-words, singing without thought of God, praying with indifference, hearing the Word and never applying it – all of this is empty worship, phony, hypocritical. Such worship is damnable, condemned in the Word of God.

John MacArthur

Confusing Man's Traditions with God's Commandments, Part 1 – Matthew 14:34-15:9. The article originally appeared (http://www.gty.org/Resources/Sermons/2311) at www.gty.org. © 1969-2008. Grace to You. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

We belittle God when we go through the outward motions of worship and take no pleasure in His person.

John Piper

Worship: The Feast Of Christian Hedonism, Sermon. September 25, 1983, www.desiringGod.org, Used by Permission.

There is no greater love song to proclaim than the once for all sacrifice of Jesus Christ our Lord at Calvary, but yet others feel content to sing about the chaff of this world. What the New Testament church wrestled with the least is what our industry craves the most – money. How dare we think we can play politics with God, with His truth and with His church? We can't negotiate with sin no matter what kind of capital is at stake – and that really is the issue here.

Author Unknown

A Call for Reformation of Contemporary Christian Music.

I am concerned that there exists in Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) today a pervasive growing attitude of unteachableness, unaccountability, and a lack of submissiveness to the Word of God and the authority of the local church. It seems today that anyone who challenges the CCM industry as to its current practices and alliances according to the standard of God's Word is labeled as divisive, condemning, and unloving. While those that are constantly operating outside of the purview of God's Word are labeled as innovative, visionary, and kind? Tolerance is not a spiritual gift; it is the distinguishing mark of postmodernism; and sadly, it has permeated the very fiber of Christianity. Why is it that those who have no biblical convictions or theology to govern and direct their actions are tolerated and the standard or truth of God's Word rightly divided and applied is dismissed as extreme opinion or legalism?

John Stott

Corporate Worship for the Church? Chevrolet and the Word of God, An Open Letter to the CCM Community.

For many churches, designing worship has become most closely associated with that which will best suit the attendees or best attract the hesitant church-goer, rather than that which is most pleasing to God.

Bill Izard

The Sensitivity of True Worship, Christian Communicators Worldwide, www.CCWtoday.org. Used by Permission.

There is a difference between going to a service “‘for the worship” and going to a service “to worship the Lord.” The distinction appears to be a minor one, but it may imply the difference between the worship of God and the worship of music!

Sinclair Ferguson

A Heart for God, 1987, p. 110, by permission Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA.

We’ve watched the biblical content of services shrink beyond visibility. But doesn’t faith come by hearing the word of Christ (Rom. 10:17)? Are the spiritually dead not born again by the living and abiding Word of God (1 Pet. 1:23)? Do the people of God not grow by the pure milk of God’s Word (2:2)? Then does it not matter what we read, preach, and sing in our services, and in what quantities? Should we not be alarmed when we see self-centered sermons replace biblical exposition, repetitious choruses replace biblically rich hymnody and psalmody, token prayers replace a full-diet of biblical prayer (for example, praise, confession, thanksgiving, intercessions), and Scripture reading disappear altogether?

Terry L. Johnson

On Being Negative, September 2009, Tabletalk, p. 38. Used by Permission.

The gratuitous leap of logic comes when church leaders think that because people are searching for benefits only God can give them, they must therefore be searching after God. No, they want the benefits without the Giver of the benefits. And so structuring worship to accommodate unbelievers is misguided because these unbelievers are not seeking after God. Seeking after God begins at conversion, and if we are to structure our worship with a view to seekers, then we must structure it for believers, since only believers are seekers.

R.C. Sproul

Good Intentions Gone Bad, Tabletalk, October 2007, p. 6. Used by Permission of Ligonier Ministries.

The modern movement of worship is designed to break down barriers between man and God, to remove the veil, as it were, from the fearsome holiness of God, which might cause us to tremble. It is designed to make us feel comfortable.

R.C. Sproul

How Should We Then Worship? Tabletalk, January 2005, p. 7. Used by Permission.

As difficult as it might be, the early church had far more to work through than what music would be sung. Their struggles and successes are instructive to us who may have less to work through than they did. It will be sad to face Christ in the future and say, “We could not be the glorious church you called us to be because we could not get together on the music.”

Jim Elliff

Multi-Cultural Glory in the Church, Christian Communicators Worldwide, www.CCWtoday.org. Used by Permission.

What you want to be careful of is looking around at people in the church service and seeing people really into it – on their knees, people singing with glazed-over eyes, people expressing a lot of emotion, people weeping – and drawing the conclusion that because people are responding emotionally that they have a deeper connection with God or a more mature faith than the person who is not reacting emotionally at all. This is a profound error.

Gregory Koukl

Genuine Revival, Stand to Reason Commentary.

Worship, as we find it in Scripture, is the exclusive right, privilege, and responsibility of the child of God. It is spiritually impossible for an unbeliever to worship. The prevailing idea that the church needs to sound like the world in order to win the world demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of what church really is. It demonstrates more concern with what the world thinks than with what God thinks.

Ron Owens

The Worship Service: A Hindrance or a Highway for Revival, Revival Commentary, v. 2, n. 2.

Certainly joy and celebration are appropriate responses to the grace of God revealed in the gospel. But no less essential is the fear of God rooted in the recognition of His majesty and holiness. We must be careful that our emotions and physical displays in times of worship are conscious expressions of gratitude, awe, love, and devotion, rather than an unconscious reaction to the mood or rhythm of the music.

Sam Storms
Dangers of Intimacy, November 8, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

Christians don't tell lies they just go to church and sing them.

A.W. Tozer

God is no gainer even from our worship. He was in no need of that external glory of His grace which arises from His redeemed, for He is glorious enough in Himself without that.

A.W. Pink

The Attributes of God.

A steady diet of performances by soloists or even choirs can have the unintended effect of undermining the corporate, participative nature of our musical worship. People can gradually come to think of worship in terms of passive observation, which we do not see modeled in the Bible. Such a diet may also begin to blur the line between worship and entertainment, especially in a television-sopped culture like ours, where one of our most insidious expectations is to be always entertained. Of course, this blurring is hardly ever intended. But over time, separating the “performers” from “the rest of the congregation” can subtly shift the focus of our attention from God to the musicians and their talent – a shift that is frequently revealed by applause at the end of some performance pieces. Who is the beneficiary of such applause?

Mark Dever and Paul Alexander