LIE: Worship is an experience of God’s presence, part 2

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Worship is not AN experience, but is meant to fill ALL our experiences

In part one, I tried to define worship, both what it is and what it is not. In this part I’ll talk about the way that worship changes us. Specifically, I’ll look at how the first four of the Ten Commandments are intended to shape our lives into a life of worship.

In some ways we are the sum total of our experiences. Marva Dawn makes this point in her book Reaching Out without Dumbing Down:

When I was studying the relationship between worship and ethics for my doctoral exams, I asked a Jewish professor how Judaica envisions the correlation. Some faiths see spirituality and ethics as two sides of the same coin; some place spirituality/evangelism as primary with ethics/social action as a secondary outflow; others advocate social responsibility almost to the exclusion of spirituality. The professor laughed. “There is no difference between worship and life,” he said. “Both are the same thing — fulfillment of the Torah.”[1]

Yes, there are particular times that we consciously become aware of God. And in those times we may respond in worship with combinations of sincere adoration, praise, and thanks. These times may occur in the sanctuary with the saints, singing a hymn or a song, but they may also happen in our homes, in the out-of-doors, in the car, or anywhere we go. But what fosters, or conversely, what hinders these times? How can we actively participate in God’s instruction of worship?

The Lord gave Israel just such an instructional roadmap in the proclamation of the Ten Commandments, especially the first four commandments which comprise the first tablet concerning our walk with God. Let’s take these one by one and ask the question: How does this commandment teach us to worship?

In teaching us to worship, the Lord starts out with a clear warning NOT to fall for the traps laid all around us. Then, after warning us with three clear prohibitions – all related to the ways in which to think about and relate to God – he gives us the Fourth Commandment in which he frames true worship in terms of a whole life structure – of time and remembering. These commandments are intended to establish a rhythm of life that encompasses the totality of our lives.

1 The First Commandment: Avoiding syncretism – don’t ‘tack on’ God to your life

You shall have no other gods before Me.

In this simply-stated first commandment – You shall have no other gods before me – God is saying that, if we are to worship him, and therefore if we are to live rightly and in the way that we were designed to live, we must worship him exclusively. Since it’s true that the One true and living God created and sustains all things, including us, who is all-powerful and who loves us, then we only need him as our ultimate source. All other so-called gods are rivals and fakes and worshiping them too will only serve to dissipate our allegiance and awareness of our dependency on him. But he’s got all the bases covered; we do not need a syncretistic pantheon to do life – we need him. Period. Full stop.[2]

We have to be clear here. Most people do not worship idols to replace God, but add on idols because God is not perceived to be big enough. Or they’ve brought their pantheon of idols with them and then tack God on, not seeing that he is sufficient for absolutely everything.

The importance of adoration

When we see the Lord as he truly is, we will willingly humble ourselves and know that everything that we have and are is due to him. This is where we learn to adore him. And when we regularly adore him, not obsequiously as if he wanted to dominate us. But rather adoring him from an elevated place that he has made for us. God takes no pleasure in our groveling, but he simply wants us to ask him about anything, confidently as his own children. This adoration is key and, in my life, is present especially when I realize his own humility and sacrificial love for us.[3]

This commandment teaches us the first lesson in worship, and that is, we must be aware of our propensity to think we need other powers, other ultimate sources, to reinforce our weaknesses and vulnerabilities – to seek wealth or intelligence or beauty in themselves (and not their source which is God). We seek these idols especially when we’re feeling insecure or inferior or insignificant, or just poor, dumb or ugly.

Quick now – be honest and fill in the blanks:

‘If only I had _______________, I’d be satisfied (or happy or okay or _______________).

As you read that, if you put anything in the first blank other than God, that thing is most likely an idol, another god.

In learning this ‘first lesson in worship’ we realize that it sits at the foundation of everything. And so if we learn that God himself is sufficient for everything in life, that, no matter what, God will provide, we will have learned the most important life lesson. But the truth is, we will likely be learning and re-learning this lesson throughout the course of our entire lives.

This commandment precedes all others because it’s the foundation for all the others. If we follow this one, the others will likely fall in line; but if we miss or neglect this one, we will never really be able to follow any of the others.

2 The Second Commandment: Avoiding idolatry – don’t try to shrink God to a manageable caricature of himself

You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

In the second commandment – You shall not make for yourself a carved image . . . – he is saying that, to worship him exclusively, we need not and must not reduce the invisible God to a visible form or likeness. Why? Because any likeness or image that we could possibly conceive is actually dependent on him, is swallowed up in him. He is so far beyond any conception we could ever make.

Any thing elevated to a god-like status — an absolute essential that falsely promises to ‘save’ us — will end up enslaving us. It is not capable of being God or even a god; it will simply descend into a brutal control and domination of us.

This second commandment reinforces the first by teaching us to structure our life around his Word – his revealed instruction, his revelation in creation and finally in the revelation of his Son. There is no image that could possibly capture his substance, his essence. It’s only in hearing his Word that we get to know him.[4]

So we learn to worship God by hearing his Word, by letting it wash over us, by letting it instruct and guide us. This is worship.

3 The Third Commandment: Refusing to carelessly use God’s Name – don’t use God

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.

The third commandment – You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain – perhaps links back to the second commandment by alluding to the making of idols and to syncretism. Elsewhere, idols are referred to as vanities.[5] We make idols because we imagine that by managing them we can manage our life. But this is a deep deception.

The third commandment has traditionally been interpreted as a prohibition against perjury or swearing falsely or even hypocrisy. Although that’s all true, it goes deeper than that. It basically means invoking or using the Lord’s name for an unworthy purpose – a purpose unworthy of him. For example, we take the Name of the Lord in vain, that is, we use God, when we sell Christian trinkets or produce a Christian concert to simply make money or sell music, or we claim the Lord, intending to use that name for any other purpose than the pure and exclusive glory of God.

This is related to the first two commandments wherein it’s a casual or careless ‘use’ or exploitation of his Name. The first commandment is casually or carelessly lumping God in with all your other gods.[6] He becomes one more god among many and therefore equated with all the others. The second command is a careless assumption that the Lord is like or can be identified with or reduced to some thing. This third commandment is the casual use of his Name for our own purpose or benefit.

The third commandment then teaches us to worship God by seeing how we can so easily ‘use’ God for our own benefit. We use him when we go to church to network with potential clients; or when we write about God only to get a following; or when we put an ICHTHUS symbol on our business card to sell more widgets, or when we wear a cross necklace to ingratiate ourselves to a potential girlfriend, and a thousand other subtleties.

But I would also say that designing worship as an experience, that is, to elicit an experience, may also be using God. That’s a serious charge, but one that I do not make lightly.

4 The Fourth Commandment: Remembering God – don’t forget him

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it..

In the fourth commandment – Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy . . . – God structures time itself as the environment in which he and humanity play and live. In time we humans intersect our life with the life of God. Time facilitates, provides the ground, the base, the matrix in which we hear his word and respond. It is the domain where we learn to worship by loving and trusting him and thereby become his image bearers to the world – glorifiers of this God. In time our story and the story of the people of God develops and becomes the story that is told and retold across the generations. Keeping the Sabbath holy allows us dedicated time to pursue that story.

The first four commandments combine and interlock to forbid us from lowering or reducing or homogenizing God. They teach us to refrain from normalizing or assimilating him, which we tend to do since we too easily presume that WE are in control of our lives. But these commandments draw us in the opposite direction – God is not in our universe, but we are in his. God invites us to live our story within his grand, overarching story of love and redemption.

So then in the final analysis, this is worship: that in all of life we learn to draw upon this God and live so that he is glorified through us.[7]

Conclusion

Our current deep deception is that worship is or must include an intense emotional experience, and that without it, it must not be worship. But nothing could be further from the truth. The sophisticated production of worship spectacles may actually serve to demotivate us and weaken our ability to worship. If the only food we ate was served to us in large, gourmet, beautifully-crafted plates, then the impression would become that any humble meal that I could make would not be worth eating. But of course that’s just not true. Is it okay to eat a gourmet meal occasionally? Of course. The problem occurs when gourmet equates with, and then becomes our only food. And if that’s the case, we may end up starving ourselves.

We can easily do the same with planned worship experiences, whether they are produced by megachurches or not. A steady diet of them may delude us and prevent us from learning to live a life of worship.

[1] Dawn, Marva. Reaching Out without Dumbing Down, pg 106.

[2] See also Lie: I don’t need God.

[3] See especially Philippians 2:5–11.

[4] See also Lie: Idolatry is rare, part 1 and part 2.

[5] See for example: Jeremiah 8:19.

[6] Some may unconsciously assume that God could accept being first among other gods, but he refuses to share his glory. He is a jealous God and a consuming fire.

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