Here I am to worship
Here I am to bow down
Here I am to say that You're my God
You're altogether lovely
Altogether worthy
Altogether wonderful to me
Lyrics from Tim
Hughes’ CD
HERE I AM TO WORSHIP
This is one small lyric sample from one very popular “Christian”
worship CD, but it says volumes about the focus of so much of the mega-industry
known as Worship Music.
If you read these lyrics, you find that what makes God
special is the fact that “I” am now here to worship. He is wonderful because He is wonderful to
ME!
The current top seller at Family Christian Stores is an
album by Michael W. Smith called Healing Rain. Michael is the reigning god of the worship
genre. He is Worship Music
Incarnate. One can only wonder and only
time will tell how many churches this man’s music has ripped apart. Anyway, Track #1 from this album is entitled,
Here
I Am. Track #11 is entitled, “All I
Want”.
See the pattern? And
these are just a few examples.
In so much of what is passed off for worship music these days,
there is a 180-degree turn in the direction and focus of our worship. Isn’t this the attitude that got Satan booted
out of God’s presence to begin with?
It took me all of 3 seconds to find an example like this,
which proves there’s a ton of stuff out there being marketed (sold) as
Christian worship music that is entirely self-centered. I stopped listening to so-called “CCM” or
contemporary Christian music about 2 years ago because of the current
non-Biblical trends that are driving the industry. Tune to a CCM station and see how often a Michael
Card, Don Francisco, or other Word-based artist is played. No, instead you’ll be hit with some
cool-sounding group like Skillet or Big Dismal.
John Hendryx of the Monergism web site has a short and very
good piece on “Self Worship”. The
Christian God is not seeker-sensitive, nor is He impressed when we announce we’re
here to worship. He is a consuming
fire, angry with sin every day – He’s jealous and terrible. Our worship should always be done in reverence
and yes, even with fear.
But until we get back to a vision similar to that of the
prophet Isaiah, we’ll completely miss the point of worship and dishonor God
with our so-called sacrifices.
I’m sure Isaiah had a pretty good idea of what a true SurroundSound
and multimedia presentation was all about.
In the year that King
Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and
the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were
seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered
their feet, and with two they were flying.
And they were calling
to one another: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is
full of his glory." At the sound of their
voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
"Woe to
me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I
live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD
Almighty."
Isaiah 6:1-5
R.J.
-----------------------------------------------------
Self Worship by John Hendryx
http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/self_worship.html
"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
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Many times I wonder which god is being worshipped in our
churches, and where this god developed his characteristics.
Many (of we) modern evangelicals seem to think that the
purpose of a church service is to entertain, exhilarate, and energize. Some of
us go to church, not so much to worship God, to stand in awe of His grace to us
in Christ, to stir up our affections for Him but rather to consume, sit back,
fancy the musical experience and apply the self-help advice we gleaned during
the sermon. The pastor is expected to be to be clean-cut, non-offensive and
smooth, the musicians to be talented and contemporary, the congregation to be
good-looking, middle-class, look and act like you (homogenous unit principle).
A great majority of us appear to actually select our churches, not by the sound
and dynamic preaching of the Scriptures, but by these outward considerations
alone! Some newspapers have even begun to go around and rate churches on these
externals as one would a local restaurant. There you have it, a worship of
consumerism - In other words this new mentality we have embraced is none other
than the worship of self. Then we self-righteously attack those who differ from
us, who do not use the seeker sensitive model, and lose sight of the fact that
the worst enemy is, more often than not, the person we see in the mirror.
After you’ve narrowed it down and found a local church which
preaches the word and faithfully administers the sacraments I don’t contend
that there are other valid secondary considerations, but we must be faithful to
God in maintaining that worship is in no way a form of diversionary
entertainment. A church that is self-congratulatory has become a questionable
fellowship because the function of the service has gone from the Scriptural command
to worship God to the idolatrous worship of itself. God should be central
to worship, not you ... that is, He should be the central focus
in our song, proclamation of the word and in the administering of the sacraments.
Self-focused, self-absorbed psychological sessions whose main purpose is to
generate good feelings about ourselves is idolatry, a breach of the
first/second commandments. This tragic lapse into consumerism is devouring the
Church and making mincemeat of our local assemblies. Instead of finding the
service meaningful and God-glorifying, centering in the Trinity and especially
the person and work of Christ, many spend their time asking themselves what they
got out of it. Rather, we need to be asking ourselves, “Was God
glorified in our time of corporate worship today?”
We worship a Holy God. We must always recognize that we are
a hell-deserving people who have been shown mercy in Christ. There is now no
condemnation for us in Christ. Real sanctification is continuing to apply this
same truth through your entire life and in all your worship. The gospel must be
central to Christians as well as non-Christians. We never graduate from the
gospel and then go on to higher things, for the gospel is to be applied to
every area of our lives. There is nothing at conversion and nothing now that we
can do to maintain or contribute to the price of our salvation. From beginning
to end we worship a God of grace. True worship in Spirit and Truth is worship
of the Triune God - a loss of all confidence in oneself and a recognition of
the gift of mercy given to us for all redemptive blessings we have in Christ.
The elements of the Lord's table should be a constant visible reminder of this
to us ... that God fully accepts you because of Christ.
God did not promise to bless methodologies, marketing
techniques, sermons about psychology and self-esteem but He did promise to
bless the preaching of the word. Paul, concluded at all points in his life that
the only thing he would proclaim was "Christ crucified". He said that
his message was a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to the Greeks, but
"through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. We
are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who
are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the
fragrance of life." So encourage the leadership of your church to return
to the biblical model, to abandon all market-driven techniques, and the
unhealthy emphasis on consumerism and unbiblical models of seeker-sensitivity,
which may very well be an unacceptable offering to the Lord. The preaching of
the Word must continue to remain central to the worship. Marketing techniques
may indeed bring people in to be entertained, but the only thing God has
promised to bless is "the foolishness of preaching" the gospel.
Today's self-oriented evangelicalism is quickly abandoning
any semblance to historic Christian orthodoxy and unless we return to a
biblical gospel that fully encompasses the work of the Trinity, the influence
of the Church will continue to wane. We must once again come to Him
empty-handed, naked and without hope save for His merciful intervention for the
Church, whom He loves so much that He gave His Son for her.