Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! - Psalm 95:6 (ESV)
Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, - Hebrews 12:28 (ESV)
Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth! - Psalm 96:9 (ESV)
Another facet of the design of God's church that has been corrupted by the Purpose Driven Church model is worship. When we think of worship today, we view it more as entertainment than what it should be - acknowledging the Creator of the entire universe. Worship however is crucially important in the lives of believers and the health of the church, which is why the devil loves debasing it. Most modern worship is banal and droning in its repetitiveness. We rarely ever give pause to what we keep repeating but it ends up informing our theology. What you say over and over again about the God we claim to worship becomes imbedded and informs our faith. I remember once visiting my pastor's new church and we walked in a little late, so the worship had already started. Like good, churched folk, we quickly sat down and raised our hands, but I kept feeling the literal presence of God pushing my hands down. After the third time, my eyes shifted to the screen with the lyrics, of a song I had not heard before. The song was "Oh How He Loves Us" and it turned out to be horrifically bad and so cringeworthy as a Christian. Sure, they had swapped out the "sloppy wet kiss" reference that was in the original lyrics but saying God greats earth with an unforeseen kiss is equally disturbing. It was poorly constructed and written. It included a bizarre reversal in saying we are God's portion, when He is supposed to ours. The worst facet of the song however was in the overarching theme. It is not worship to tell God how much He loves us. This is the typical problem in a great deal of today's worship, which is focused on man and not God. Decades ago, we sang How Great Thou Art and that is the polar opposite of How Much He Loves Us. The latter is actually worshipping ourselves. Consider the three key verses above. When we sing songs about ourselves, or how much God must love us, we are not kneeling before our Maker. We are in fact making Him kneel before us. The second verse reminds us that our worship must be acceptable to God, a concept that is never taught in churches today. What is acceptable to God? Reverence and awe! As the third verse exclaims, we should be trembling before Him. That is how we should approach the Creator of everything, including humanity. Unfortunately, in modern purpose driven church teachings, Jesus is just our friend. He is our buddy. I once heard a sermon that said He was our wingman. There is a popular heresy that eschews religion in favor of "relationship", but relationship Jesus is not real. It is a figment of our sin and imagination that we create to make sure we are the ones on the throne. It is the sin of Lucifer really. To prefer to be God as opposed to worship God. If Jesus is not Lord than there is no relationship. Now, let us consider one of the more recognizable sections of scripture regarding worship:
Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here." The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true." The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But 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." The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things." Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he." - John 4:16-25 (ESV)
The Samaritans and the Jewish people were always at odds. Jews considered Samaritans half-breeds because their ancestry was not purely Jewish but mixed. Samaritans believed that true worship should only take place on Mount Gerezim, where Moses worshipped, and they believed was the first place Noah disembarked after the great flood. They even built a temple there to rival the one in Jerusalem. That is what Jesus is saying to the Samaritan woman. Stop thinking of all the man-made views of worshiping God. Gerizim or Jerusalem does not matter. Relationship or religion does not matter. Who are you worshiping and why? The Osteens once famously argued that we worship for ourselves, not for God. They caught a lot of flack for that, including from me at the time but maybe they were just being honest? That is true for most modern worship, isn't it? We worship to feel better about ourselves when we need to feel better about Christ. A great deal of worship lyrics today are simply unbiblical as well. That means there is no spirit or truth in them. They often reflect the false theologies of the churches those worship outfits come from. Take the some of the lyrics from the song "Champion" by Bethel:
When I lift my voice and shout
Every wall comes crashing down
