Sermon Tone Analysis

“The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

[1]

Christians have been fighting “worship wars” for decades, perhaps even for centuries.

This continuing war arises from the assumption that everyone should like the style that I like.

If we don’t fight over music, we will fight over some other aspect of our liturgy (yes, evangelicals have liturgies).

It has been truthfully said that it is easier to change one’s theology than to change their liturgy.

Move an anthem or change the benediction or alter the form of the message, and it is certain to cause acute distress for some within the congregation.

If we don’t fight over music or liturgy, we will squabble over dress.

This continuing conflict arises from something far more nefarious than our likes or dislikes.

James presses hard on the painful source of our war, “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?

Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?

You desire and do not have, so you murder.

You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

You do not have, because you do not ask.

You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” [JAMES 4:1-3].

Earlier in the brief missive bearing his name, James wrote, “How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire!

And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness.

The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.

For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue.

It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.

From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.

My brothers, these things ought not to be so.

Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water?

Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs?

Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water” [JAMES 3:5-12].

I want to think the best of those who worship in the congregation I pastor.

I know and you know that selfishness is indefensible.

So, I assume that worshippers actually believe they are acting in the best interest of everyone when they defend or condemn some particular practise in what is called “worship.”

What is needed is for us to discover, or at least remember, what truly matters.

*PEOPLE WILL WORSHIP* — Mankind is incurably religious.

We will worship!

What we worship is not so readily defined.

I wish I could say that professing Christians worship the Son of God.

I fear that I could be proven wrong were I to make such a contention, however.

Many people worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator [see ROMANS 1:24, 25].

They surrender to their own desires, worshipping the sexual experience, worshipping the acquisition of things that are destined for dust, worshipping power or position or pleasure, worshipping, in short, almost anything other than God.

That people would worship their own passions is a dreadful condition; however, I suggest that an even more reprehensible situation occurs when people who profess to know God worship the experience of worshipping.

Tragically, multitudes of professing Christians appear to be worshipping an experience rather than worshipping the God they claim to love.

Let me explain that charge by referring to something that John Boquist, a pastor in Virginia, wrote.

He writes of the period when he was courting his wife.

His account is a parable of worship in the modern context.

Brother Boquist writes, “My wife, Yvonne and I were separated by about 600 miles in the year before we wed.

I had moved to Virginia to minister in a church and she was in Ohio completing her college degree.

We couldn't talk on the phone or write enough letters to satisfy our longing to be together.

On rare occasions one of us travelled the 600 or so miles to see the other.

“Every time we travelled, the trip was a little different.

Sometimes the trip was made on a gleaming jet plane.

Other times we drove, be it my ‘69 Chevy or her family’s Buick.

One time, she and her brother made the trip from Ohio to Virginia in a 20-year-old Ford pickup with floorboard air conditioning.

Every time they stopped for gas, they added at least a quart of oil.

“Anytime one of us travelled, seeing the beloved was all that mattered.

The way we got there—the vehicle—was almost irrelevant.”

He concludes that account with this insightful statement, “Worship is the vehicle in which the church, the bride of Christ, travels to see her beloved.

We must care more about where we are going than how we are to go.” [2]

What must our Master think when believers say things like, “I can’t worship with that sort of music?”

I have served in churches where people attempted to hijack the services by demanding certain instrumentation, by demanding particular styles of music, by insisting on a particular colour of carpeting!

Let me say quite clearly that if our worship can be stymied by changing how we worship, we must question how much we love Him.

I suggest that far too many of the professed people of God worship the experience rather than the Master.

In the worship wars of the churches, the battle lines are drawn dividing into the traditionalist camp and the contemporary camp.

The traditionalist camp argues that churches must honour the wisdom of the past, refusing to compromise on such vital aspects as instrumentation, rhythm and style or they will dishonour God.

The use of an overhead projector will mean the end of music as we know it, and introduce discord and chaos into the service.

The contemporary camp argues that without changing the music style and adopting a hymnody that is marked by syncopated rhythms and repetitious choruses, we will never attract younger people.

Each is saying, “I have preferences and my preferences are better than your preferences.”

Tragically, the positions marked out reveal a people who worship worship; the activity is more important than the One worshipped.

I pastored a congregation on one occasion that was growing rapidly.

New people were coming and the building was filled.

I recommended a course that would permit us to move into a larger building that would permit continued growth.

A woman in that congregation almost cried as she charged me with gross insensitivity.

“He wants to throw all these new believers out into the street just so he can preach in a larger building.”

Her arguments swayed the congregation as one after another of the older members clung to the old building because “God had blessed the building so greatly” in the past.

Would it surprise you to know that that particular congregation has passed by the opportunity to move the Kingdom forward; they are moving toward death.

Jeremiah confronted a similar condition in the last days of Judah.

God commanded His servant to say, “Stand in the gate of the LORD’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the LORD, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the LORD.

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place.

Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD’” [JEREMIAH 7:2-4].

There was scant difference between worshipping the building and worshipping the act of worship, they sinned against God.

God’s ancient people were condemned because they worshipped worship rather than worshipping the True and Living God.

In this, they were not unlike many of the churches of this day.

Through His prophet, God charged Israel with worshipping worship.

“Cry aloud; do not hold back;

lift up your voice like a trumpet;

declare to my people their transgression,

to the house of Jacob their sins.

Yet they seek me daily

and delight to know my ways,

as if they were a nation that did righteousness

and did not forsake the judgment of their God;

they ask of me righteous judgments;

they delight to draw near to God.

‘Why have we fasted, and you see it not?

Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’

Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure,

and oppress all your workers.

Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight

and to hit with a wicked fist.

Fasting like yours this day

will not make your voice to be heard on high.

Is such the fast that I choose,

a day for a person to humble himself?