There’s nothing wrong with being
childish—providing you are a child. Paul speaks of this in 1 Corinthians
13:11, writing, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a
child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish
ways.” It’s cute when a mom tucks a 2.5-year-old toddler into bed and cuts
the crust off their sandwiches. Not so much when the kid is 25. There is a
level and a process of maturing in worship. We do not (or should
not) worship Him in the same exact way as in the infancy of our path
in Christ. Are we growing in our worship to the Lord? Is our relationship
maturing? Are we still trying to hold onto a fervent time, early in our
conversion, that was less complicated, and free of the variables we know now?
C.S. Lewis writes in Reflections On The Psalms....
"There is a stage in a child’s life at which it cannot
separate the religious from the merely festal character of Christmas or Easter.
I have been told of a very small and very devout boy who was heard murmuring to
himself on Easter morning a poem of his own composition which began ‘Chocolate
eggs and Jesus risen’. This seems to me, for his age, both admirable poetry and
admirable piety. But of course the time will soon come when such a child can no
longer effortlessly and spontaneously enjoy that unity. He will become able to
distinguish the spiritual from the ritual and festal aspect of Easter;
chocolate eggs will no longer be sacramental. And once he has distinguished he
must put one or the other first. If he puts the spiritual first he can still
taste something of Easter in the chocolate eggs; if he puts the eggs first they
will soon be no more than any other sweetmeat. They have taken on an
independent, and therefore a soon withering, life."
He says that in his innocence and
sincerity it is very well and is no evil for the simple mind to see
no great contradiction between his best expression of devotion and praise, and
the biblical truth. Now though, we are no longer in that position. We
can't unlearn what we know. By wishing for that earlier time, it would be
like wishing to start your walk over again. Doesn't a relationship get
sweeter as time goes on? Not one of you would I wish to start over again. I
love you all more deeply now than I ever have. That comes with
knowing each other MORE, not less. Peter in 1 Peter 2 says
that "like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual
milk, that by it you may GROW UP into salvation," but Paul says
in 1 Corinthians 3 that the milk is not bad but is for the
immature. "i fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not
ready for it." The point, it would seem, is
that the meat is the goal. Not that the milk is sacrificed but it
compliments the meat. So as we mature in our relationship
with the Father, the foundation of the simple gospel (the most basic
understanding we had of it at our conversion) is the bedrock that the more
ornate or functional aspects build upon (the freedom and glorious depth that a
deeper understanding of the gospel compels us to and sanctifies us by).
There is
a reason why the Lord does not give a lot of instruction on HOW
to worship Him but that He is to be worshiped only. It is very clear
through scripture that the simple and the complex, the barren and the ornate
are both correct. It doesn't get more succinct and guttural
than Psalm 57:5 "Be exalted, O God, above the heavens!
Let Your glory be over all the earth!" And nothing is better
thought out, thematic, artistic, and poetic then Psalm 119. Both are holy
and the Lord accepts. The sum of His instruction comes directly from
our Lords mouth "But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the
true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit (emotion and
conviction) 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." John 4:23,24
That is our foundation.
The passion that moves us unto song: Psalm 43:4, and the glory of the
accuracy of His truth is the theme of that song: Psalm 119:54. The only
thing He prohibits as motivation in the worship of God is....anything
else. I almost get the sense (maybe in my own deficit in the
knowledge of His commands), that the purpose of writing/playing for
the body of Christ (for that person who has that as their
purpose) is on the same level of the vilest anti-Christ, demonic or
worldly direction. It is, I think, the same as the chocolate egg
and Christ being raised. If the purpose of being on stage to lead the body is
your first purpose it makes everything dead and vapid. But when the Lord is
really the sole purpose, and the leading of the body is a dwarfed
motivation in comparison, then and only then will you truly worship and lead.
Which brings me to my next point.
Even though we have seen that music and artistic expression of the greatness
and glory of the Lord is something the Bible declares as good, does the Lord
need us on stage...or even music for that matter? Lewis points out the
absurdity in the thought that sacrifice (the physical act) and worship (the
spiritual act) are inseparably the same.
"Even
the Psalter, though largely a Temple collection, can do so; as in Psalm 50
where God tells His people that all this Temple worship, considered in itself,
is not the real point at all, and particularly ridicules the genuinely Pagan
notion that He really needs to be fed with roast meat. ‘If I were hungry, do
you think I would apply to you?’ (v. 12). I have sometimes fancied He might
similarly ask a certain type of modern clergyman, ‘If I wanted music — if I
were conducting research into the more recondite details of the history of the
Western Rite — do you really think you are the source I would rely on?’"
It is, in worship sometimes, easy to
totally forget the Lord entirely..."Did I learn that part right?"
"What do I do with my hands again?" "I wonder what I'm doing for
lunch." "Boy, I sound off today." You know I can say that, that
goes through our heads because all of those things have gone through mine and
the one common denominator in those is self. A focus on ourselves and to a lesser
extent, anything else beside the Lord, is the main thing impeding a true
worship of the Lord (which is really the only purpose of being a worship "leader").
Those things hit at the core of sin, which is our pride. Here are a few
ways this works itself out in real
life off the stage and divides one passionate church worshiping Him according
to His truth, from another passionate church worshiping Him according to His
truth (inaccurate/heretical/anti-
"A
passage from Job (not without its own wild poetry in it) may help us: "if
I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness; and my
heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth kissed my hand; this also would
be an iniquity" (31: 26-28) . There is here no question of turning, in a
time of desperate need, to devilish gods (or ourselves). The speaker is
obviously referring to an utterly spontaneous impulse, a thing you might find
yourself acting upon almost unawares. To pay some reverence to the sun or moon
is apparently so natural; so apparently innocent. Perhaps in certain times and
places it was really innocent. I would gladly believe that the gesture of
homage offered to the moon was sometimes accepted by her Maker; in those times
of ignorance which God "winked at "(Acts 17, 30). The author of Job,
however, was not in that ignorance. If he had kissed his hand to the Moon it
would have been iniquity. The impulse was a temptation; one which no European
has felt for the last thousand years."
He knows that turning to anything,
or worshiping anything but God was a sin, even if it had been done in innocence
before. That is what we do when in any of the things I have described; we worship
ourselves, or somebody/something else. We are worshiping our own superior
extra-biblical stance on genre, volume, or any other stance beside the accuracy
of our worship to scripture. I say these things not to shame anyone of you (the
Lord knows that is not my intention), but to encourage you in the Lords truth.
We are not just "musicians." We are Gospel presenters, and if the
Lord wants us to grow and mature in Him (which He does), glorify Him in that!
He is a great and powerful God, who is worthy to be praised! Let His righteous
statues, your position without/apart from Him, His truly amazing sacrifice to
reconcile us to the Father, and the power of our helper the Holy Spirit that
sustains us till His Glorious return in power and glory, be the motivation and
expression of your worship both in front of the church and in your daily life.
That is the Gospel! Let me end with one of my favorite semi modern expressions
of the depth of our great God.
"Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky."
"Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky."
-from "The Love Of God" Frederick M. Lehman, 1917
In the love of God,
Paul
