In Pursuit of Praise May 7, 2000 - EBC

From time to time as your pastor, I’m going to try to address issues that I feel are important for us to talk about and to think about as a congregation. Today is going to be one of those occasions. I don’t have a sermon for you today—it’s going to be more like a heart to heart talk. We’re not going to be expositing a particular passage of Scripture; we’re going to be thinking through some issues with reference to the Bible as our guide.

I want to talk to you about the issue of praise and worship—why we do it and how we do it. The reason I want to talk to you about it is because this issue of worship has the potential of uniting our church or dividing our church—it can either bring us together and bring us closer to Christ, or it can tear us apart and get us fighting with one another. And if that happens, of course, our fellowship with Christ will be damaged and our testimony for Christ will be ruined.

So let’s think together on these things…

About a hundred years ago there lived a man named Robert Ingersoll. He was a brilliant man and a great speaker. But in spite of the fact that he had grown up as the son of a minister, he became an agnostic—a man who didn’t believe in God or the Bible. He became quite famous for being a skeptic—a critic of Christianity.

When Robert Ingersoll died, there was a notice in the newspaper about his funeral service. It concluded with the words: “There will be no singing.” Robert Ingersoll, the skeptic, went into eternity in silence. At his funeral, there was nothing to sing about.

But Christians, in contrast, are musical people. When you open the Bible, you find right in the middle of it the book of Psalms—the hymnbook of praise to God. It’s no accident that we Christians love music. And we love it not just for its own sake, but because music provides us with the perfect vehicle for praising our Creator. What better way to express our wonder, our worship, and our faith in God than through music!

That’s why, for2,000 years, the church of Jesus Christ has been singing. We’ve sung hymns in the good times and in the bad. We’ve sung in prisons, we’ve sung in the midst of natural disasters, we’ve sung while being burned at the stake, or while being torn apart by wild animals. We’ve sung because we believe that our God is worthy of praise, and that nothing can separate us from His love.

When we praise God, we are doing something that is natural and healthy. C.S. Lewis gave us some insightful thoughts on praise. He wrote “It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch.”

We, as Christians, are excited about God—that’s why we sing His praises. We want to communicate to others our excitement. If you’re not excited about God, you won’t be terribly motivated to sing praises to Him, and what music you make won’t be very inspiring. Listen to what the Psalmist says in Psalm 92…

It is good to praise the Lord and make music to your name, O Most High, to proclaim your love in the morning and your faithfulness at night, to the music of the ten-stringed lyre and the melody of the harp. For you make me glad by your deeds, O Lord; I sing for joy at the works of your hands.

That’s why we make a joyful noise—not just because we love music, but because we love the God who gave us the music, and who gives us every good gift. That’s why we worship!

Having said that, though, let me tell you that there is a terrible problem afflicting the church in North America today. There’s a war going on, and this war is raging in many churches even as we speak.

Now the idea of there being conflict in the church is nothing new. The devil is constantly trying to get us fighting over one thing or another, and the church has come through many wars in her history. There was a war between Catholics and Protestants. There was a war over liberal theology versus conservative. There was a war over the inspiration of Scripture. There was a war over the charismatic movement. But for the most part, those doctrinal wars are all over and done with.

The war that is raging now is the Worship War. It’s a battle that’s being fought over the issue of worship, and specifically over styles of worship—how we worship God.

You say “How in the world can the church be fighting over the issue of worship? Of all things to be fighting over!” Let me tell you that this is nothing new. The very first murder in human history took place over the issue of worship! It’s recorded in Genesis 4. Cain killed Abel because Abel worshiped God with a different style and in a different spirit than Cain did. And ever since then, Satan has been attacking us and trying to bring us down on this issue.

I talk to a lot of church leaders and pastors, and I read a lot about what’s happening in churches today. And everywhere I go, and in almost every church I know of, the battle lines are drawn over this issue of worship.

On one side, you have the traditional worship people. They’re the folks who love to sing the grand old hymns of the faith, accompanied by piano and organ. They love to listen to a choir and a follow the leading of a songleader and sing out of a hymnbook. A worship service like that feels solid, it feels stable, it feels structured, and for them, that’s what real worship is all about! That’s what really turns their crank!

On the other side, you have the contemporary worship crowd. They’re the folks who love to sing praise choruses with the words up front on the screen. The newer it is, the better they like it! They love music with a beat, and they feel comfortable when there’s a praise team leading, with guitars and keyboards and drums. They don’t want structure, they want spontaneity. They don’t want to hold a hymnal because they want to be free to clap their hands or raise their hands to God as they worship. That’s what worship is all about for them.

Now when you put these two groups of people together in a church and tell them to worship, you’ve got a problem! So you know what a lot of churches have done? They’ve kept them apart. They’ve gone to two services: one for the traditional people and one for the contemporary.

And what you end up with there is two congregations, and you do have peace—but it’s the kind of peace that you had in Berlin during the Cold War. You had a wall down the middle of the city and all the easterners were on one side of the wall and all the westerners were on the other side of the wall. And there was peace, but it wasn’t a very happy kind of peace.

Some churches have gone even farther than that—they have chosen which side they’re going to be on as a whole church. They have defined themselves as either a traditional worship church or a contemporary worship church, and if whichever doesn’t happen to be your style, then you can go find another church. It’s like the evangelical equivalent of “ethnic cleansing” such as we had in the Balkans a few years ago—you just get rid of the people you disagree with. Churches like that don’t even have to deal with the problem, and because of that they have peace.

Well, call me naive, but I don’t think that either of those solutions is a great solution. I think that there’s a better answer. It’s a more biblical answer because it calls for us to act like true Christians. But it’s a harder answer because it calls for us to be kind to one another, to be patient and understanding, to forebear with one another in love.

So what’s the answer? The answer is to try to blend these two worship styles in one church and one congregation.

Now a lot of people try to make out that this is a theological problem. (You find this a lot among Christians—when they can’t get along with each other, they try to make it into a theological problem so that they’ll have an excuse not to get along with each other!)

But this Worship War is not a theological problem—it’s a problem of preferences. The Bible does not give us one set style of worshiping God. Take the worship music we use, for example. If we could bring King David here today along with his Levitical worship team and have him lead our service, we’d think that it was the strangest thing we’d ever heard! The instruments, the musical scale they used in those days, the way they presented it, would be completely foreign to our ears and to our tastes.

Take the matter of prayer, which is another important component of worship. We think that when you pray in a group, you close your eyes and maybe fold your hands and listen to one person pray at a time. Well, Christians don’t pray like that everywhere.

Perhaps the prayingest church in the world is in South Korea. They have pre-dawn prayer meetings there that involve hundreds of thousands of Christians. And they pray with their eyes open, and everyone prays at once! Totally foreign to us, but to God—no problem.

So we’ve got to learn that there’s more than one acceptable, proper way to worship God. It really saddens God to hear some of his children who may have one particular preference in worship style criticizing those who enjoy worshiping in a different way.

I’ve heard traditionalists criticize contemporary worship for being shallow and repetitive and too emotional. They worry that the grand old hymns of the faith are going to be forgotten in favor of these confounded new praise choruses. Listen to the following quote by someone of that persuasion:

“For some years it has been apparent that the rage in singing choruses has been driving out the use of the old precious standard hymns. Hymns are not memorized as they once were. They are scarcely sung at all. They are not contained in the chorus books, which in many churches have replaced our hymnals. We cannot afford to lose our old hymns. But the young people today are unfamiliar with them and will seldom hear any of them if the present tendency goes on.”

Sound familiar? That was written over a hundred years ago in 1891 by one of the founders of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

And as for the criticism that the new praise choruses are shallow, well many of them have words that are taken right out of Scripture. “As the deer panteth for the water so my soul longeth after thee.” “This is the day that the Lord has made we will rejoice and be glad in it.” “Seek ye first the kingdom of God”.

The truth is that worship music has always been a renewable resource in the church. God has always been giving a new generation of believers a new song. But that fact hasn’t always been accepted by the old believers. When John Newton wrote “Amazing Grace” that hymn was not immediately accepted by the church because it was sung to a secular tune that was associated with a barroom song.

The problem is that we all have a tendency to kind of freeze at a certain point in time, and we resist anything new or different from what we’re used to. As someone said “People resist change; especially for the better.”

But on the other hand I’ve also heard contemporary people who look down their noses on anyone who likes to sing the great old hymns of the faith. For them, it may be that those hymns are associated with a boring, outdated, irrelevant church.

But let me tell you, many of those hymns contain tremendous biblical truths and they are set to beautiful, rich melodies. Hymns like “Amazing Grace”; “The Church’s One Foundation”; “Great is Thy Faithfulness”. They’ve stood the test of time, and we’d be foolish to just ignore them.

So it comes down to having a wider outlook on worship than just my limited set of preferences. I’m trying to do that personally. I love the great old hymns of the faith. I’ve sung in traditional choirs and just love doing that. But I also love the contemporary choruses. I love their freshness and depth of emotion.

We’ve got to cultivate an attitude of understanding and caring for each other on this issue. This church is made up of many people of diverse backgrounds and different tastes. And we’ve got to learn to get along with each other for Jesus’ sake.

If you look at Ephesians 4:32, you’ll get the picture:

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

There’s another passage that you all know well, but it bears hearing again. It’s 1 Corinthians 13—the love passage.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Now if I understand that passage correctly, Paul is saying that it is possible to worship God and not have love. It is possible to speak with the tongues of men and angels and to prophesy and to be able to understand deep spiritual truths, and yet not have love. And if that is the case what is the result? I’m only making unpleasant, irritating noise. In God’s ears, I sound like fingernails on a chalkboard.

You want to know why there is a Worship War in many churches? Same reason why Cain killed Abel. Sinful pride. The problem at the bottom of the Worship War is our own sinful selfish pride.

We live in a culture that tells us over and over again that you can have whatever you want and you deserve whatever you need. And we are presented daily with almost unlimited choices. When you walk into Tim Horton’s, how many kinds of donuts do you get to choose from? And how many kinds of coffee, and how many ways to have that coffee?

When you bought your last car, how many kinds of cars did you have to choose from? And how many options did you have to choose from? And how many ways to finance or purchase that car did you have to choose from?

So we grow up in this environment of almost unlimited choice, and in order to cope, we build up a set of preferences to help us navigate our way. When I walk into Tim Horton’s I invariably order a large English Toffee cappucino and a Boston Cream donut, because that’s what I’ve grown to prefer. And if I can’t get that, I’m a little put out, I’m a little disappointed, I’m a little miffed, because my preferences have become very important to me. My preferences have become priorities.

So this tendency in our culture is just a reflection of our own sinful desire to have everything our own way. In fact, Burger King built a successful marketing strategy on that idea: Have it Your Way.

Now we all come to church with that same attitude. We all have expectations of what church ought to be like; we all have preferences of how the service ought to be, and what kind of music we should sing, and how long the speaker should speak, and all that sort of thing. And if the service disappoints us—if it fails to live up to our preferences—we leave feeling a little bit miffed, because our preferences have become our priorities.

And when that happens, you know what it proves? It proves that that church experience was all about ME not all about God. If I am worshiping with the attitude: Do I like this music, do I like this service, is it pleasing to me, is it according to my tastes and my preferences—then my focus is totally wrong. If I’m keeping a little mental score card, counting how many hymns we sing versus how many choruses—then I’m totally missing the boat.

A couple of weeks ago, the worship team sang a song called “The Heart of Worship” and the lyrics of the song were about how we often turn worship into something other than what it is supposed to be. “I’m sorry Lord, for the thing that I’ve made it, ‘cause it’s all about you, Jesus. It’s all about you.”

The purpose of worship is not to get my kind of music sung in the church. It’s to come into the presence of God with clean hands and a pure heart. When we worship in spirit and in truth, we become so focused on God that we forget all about ourselves. And it doesn’t matter what the worship style is: I can enter in and learn to praise him in a new way and with a new song.

So where are we at as a church?

Here at Erindale, we’re going to continue to try to design services that will enable us to express our worship in a variety of styles that represent the diversity of our wonderful congregation. We’re not going to get ourselves into “ghettoes”—with the traditional ghetto over here and the contemporary ghetto over there. We’re going to blend our worship together in a great song of praise for God. We’re going to practise “broad-band” worship.

And as we do that, we are going to grow in our love and appreciation for one another, and we are going to develop an expanded vocabulary of worship, because our God will be pleased if we do that.