Wor­ship that Pleases God

Chris­ti­an praise and wor­ship gath­er­ings (some­times simply called Chris­ti­an con­certs) are very pop­u­lar these days. Organ­isers make much effort to attract many people, rent­ing large ven­ues and even sta­di­ums equipped with big stages and soph­ist­ic­ated sound and light­ing equip­ment. Large ven­ues require big names, so sing­ers and wor­ship bands travel from far to head­line these events. Often you even have to pay to enter. These events are gen­er­ally open to any­one, regard­less of their denom­in­a­tion, since the goal is to “wor­ship the one God as one,” even if there are sig­ni­fic­ant dif­fer­ences in ques­tions of teach­ing. But does all this really serve the glory of God? In this art­icle, we will look to the Bible for the answer to this question.

1 “Praise Befits the Upright”

Accord­ing to Scrip­ture, only sin­cere, pure-hearted, right­eous people can stand before God, and only their praise is pleas­ing to Him.

Shout for joy in the LORD, O you right­eous! Praise befits the upright. Give thanks to the LORD with the lyre; make melody to him with the harp of ten strings! Sing to him a new song; play skil­fully on the strings, with loud shouts. (Psalm 33:1–3)

Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceit­fully. (Psalm 24:3–4)

Vin­dic­ate me, O LORD, for I have walked in my integ­rity, and I have trus­ted in the LORD without waver­ing. Prove me, O LORD, and try me; test my heart and my mind. For your stead­fast love is before my eyes, and I walk in your faith­ful­ness. I do not sit with men of false­hood, nor do I con­sort with hypo­crites. I hate the assembly of evil­do­ers, and I will not sit with the wicked. I wash my hands in inno­cence and go round your altar, O LORD, pro­claim­ing thanks­giv­ing aloud, and telling all your won­drous deeds. (Psalm 26:1–7)

If you live in sin and do not seek God’s will in your daily life, but fol­low your own plans and sin­ful desires, you are far from God. In this case, it is not by attend­ing a wor­ship con­cert or par­ti­cip­at­ing in loud music that you will come closer to God, but by stand­ing before Him sin­cerely, repent­ing of your sins, and turn­ing away from them. If you do this and exper­i­ence the joy of deliv­er­ance, you will not seek a loud con­cert to express your grat­it­ude to God, but rather fel­low­ship in which you can share this joy with oth­er sin­cere believ­ers, and then praise God togeth­er with your lives, pray­ers, and songs day after day.

2 Col­lect­ive Praise

Praise the LORD! I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart, in the com­pany of the upright, in the con­greg­a­tion. (Psalm 111:1)

Praise the LORD! Sing to the LORD a new song, his praise in the assembly of the godly! (Psalm 149:1)

When we praise God togeth­er, it is import­ant that we all do so with one heart. God is only pleased by the praise that comes from the fel­low­ship of those who sin­cerely hon­our him. This fel­low­ship is so much more than enjoy­ing music togeth­er, but first of all means turn­ing to each oth­er with love, know­ing each oth­er­’s lives, and being united in mat­ters of doc­trine. Without the lat­ter, it is not cer­tain that we are prais­ing the “same” God, since we may have com­pletely dif­fer­ent notions of Him.

Unfor­tu­nately, this does not hap­pen at large inter­de­nom­in­a­tion­al con­certs. People do not know each oth­er, nor can they know each oth­er, and in fact, they often do not even wish to. Many are there because they hope for some per­son­al exper­i­ence, which is usu­ally facil­it­ated by vari­ous sound, light, and emo­tion­al effects, as well as the large crowd. How can this love­less indif­fer­ence and lack of interest in each oth­er be recon­ciled with the slo­gan of wor­ship gath­er­ings, which is to exalt God’s name? How can this glor­i­fy God, whose essence is love and whose highest com­mand­ment is devo­tion to one another?

3 Sin and Celebration?

Sadly, there are also count­less examples of wor­ship lead­ers liv­ing in ser­i­ous sin, yet the audi­ence is unaware of this—perhaps they don’t even want to know. Many are only inter­ested in the music. It often hap­pens that if the wor­ship team does not have a good gui­tar­ist or drum­mer, they ask a skilled but unbe­liev­ing musi­cian to help out. What counts is the qual­ity of the music. How­ever, God’s val­ues are different!

… this people draw near with their mouth and hon­our me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a com­mand­ment taught by men, there­fore, behold, I will again do won­der­ful things with this people, with won­der upon won­der; and the wis­dom of their wise men shall per­ish, and the dis­cern­ment of their dis­cern­ing men shall be hid­den. (Isai­ah 29:13–14)

In many cases, striv­ing for out­ward per­fec­tion is a sign of inner corruption.

You blind Phar­isee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the out­side also may be clean. “Woe to you, scribes and Phar­isees, hypo­crites! For you are like white­washed tombs, which out­wardly appear beau­ti­ful, but with­in are full of dead people’s bones and all unclean­ness. (Mat­thew 23:26–27)

Praise has no value in God’s eyes if it is not accom­pan­ied by a holy life:

When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this tramp­ling of my courts? Bring no more vain offer­ings; incense is an abom­in­a­tion to me. New moon and Sab­bath and the call­ing of con­voc­a­tions — I can­not endure iniquity and sol­emn assembly. Your new moons and your appoin­ted feasts my soul hates; they have become a bur­den to me; I am weary of bear­ing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many pray­ers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil. (Isai­ah 1:12–16)

I hate, I des­pise your feasts, and I take no delight in your sol­emn assem­blies. Even though you offer me your burnt offer­ings and grain offer­ings, I will not accept them; and the peace offer­ings of your fattened anim­als, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and right­eous­ness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:21–24)

4 Wor­ship­ping God and Lov­ing the World

God wants us to praise him with our whole lives.

Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offer­ing and come before him! Wor­ship the LORD in the splend­our of holi­ness; (1 Chron­icles 16:29)

I appeal to you there­fore, broth­ers, by the mer­cies of God, to present your bod­ies as a liv­ing sac­ri­fice, holy and accept­able to God, which is your spir­itu­al wor­ship. Do not be con­formed to this world, but be trans­formed by the renew­al of your mind, that by test­ing you may dis­cern what is the will of God, what is good and accept­able and per­fect. (Romans 12:1–2)

The last pas­sage also shows that God does not approve of “wor­ship” that con­forms to the val­ues of the world. Stage lights, smoke machines, deaf­en­ing volume, rock con­cert atmo­sphere, adop­tion of par­tic­u­lar music styles (rap, met­al, etc.), spend­ing lots of money to achieve the best effect, pro­du­cing albums in pro­fes­sion­al stu­di­os, then selling them—this is the world.

In con­trast, God’s word says:

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any­one loves the world, the love of the Fath­er is not in him. For all that is in the world — the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in pos­ses­sions — is not from the Fath­er but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but who­ever does the will of God abides for ever. (1 John 2:15–17)

God does not need extra­vag­ant lux­ury! He rejoices in the wid­ow’s two cop­per coins.

Jesus looked up and saw the rich put­ting their gifts into the offer­ing box, and he saw a poor wid­ow put in two small cop­per coins. And he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor wid­ow has put in more than all of them. For they all con­trib­uted out of their abund­ance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” (Luke 21:1–4)

Jesus also spoke clearly about what kind of wor­ship­pers the Fath­er seeks:

The woman said to him, “Sir, I per­ceive that you are a proph­et. Our fath­ers wor­shipped 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 wor­ship­pers 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.” (John 4:19–24)

From this con­text, it is clear that wor­ship in the Spir­it does not mean that we must com­pletely sur­render ourselves to our feel­ings dur­ing praise, but rather that prais­ing God is not bound to any par­tic­u­lar place. He asks us for daily obed­i­ence, always and every­where: to love him with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength (Mark 12:33). If we live in truth, fol­low­ing His com­mands, then we are true wor­ship­pers of the Father.

5 Wor­ship Music as a Tool for Evangelism?

Wor­ship con­certs are often organ­ised for evan­gel­ist­ic pur­poses. The organ­isers of these con­certs often openly admit that good music and atmo­sphere, aided by sound and light effects, can be used to “lure” people to come who do not know God, where they can then hear Chris­ti­an lyr­ics, testi­mon­ies, ser­mons, and finally a call to con­ver­sion. Jesus and the apostles also praised God with song and music, but we see no example in the Bible of them preach­ing the gos­pel in this way or using such manip­u­lat­ive methods.

There­fore, hav­ing this min­istry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced dis­grace­ful, under­han­ded ways. We refuse to prac­tise cun­ning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open state­ment of the truth we would com­mend ourselves to every­one’s con­science in the sight of God. And even if our gos­pel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are per­ish­ing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbe­liev­ers, to keep them from see­ing the light of the gos­pel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Cor­inthi­ans 4:1–4)

It is import­ant to make the mes­sage of the gos­pel under­stand­able to people today, but this does not mean water­ing it down. How can a rock concert-style “evan­gel­ism” bear wit­ness to the fact that Jesus lived a humble, simple, and pure life, and also call us to not love the world? If someone is not moved by God’s pure word, it is because they are not open to receiv­ing it. Both Jesus and the apostles accep­ted that only a few would choose to go the nar­row way (Mat­thew 7:13–14). They did not want to widen the path or make it more attract­ive by worldly means.

Loud music and a con­cert atmo­sphere cre­ate a strong emo­tion­al influ­ence. Even if the atmo­sphere does suc­ceed in bring­ing someone to a state of mind in which they are ready to say yes to the call at the end of the event, the ques­tion arises wheth­er a decision made in this state can be deep and long-lasting. It is quite doubt­ful, espe­cially since the full mes­sage of the gos­pel is not even heard at the event. How can someone who did not and could not under­stand the grav­ity of fol­low­ing Jesus make a mean­ing­ful decision? Jesus, on the oth­er hand, nev­er hid the full mes­sage from those who came to him.

Now great crowds accom­pan­ied him, and he turned and said to them, “If any­one comes to me and does not hate his own fath­er and moth­er and wife and chil­dren and broth­ers and sis­ters, yes, and even his own life, he can­not be my dis­ciple. Who­ever does not bear his own cross and come after me can­not be my dis­ciple. (Luke 14:25–27)

The Apostle Paul took great care to ensure that those who heard the gos­pel from him would make their decision solely for Christ’s sake, free from any human influence.

And I, when I came to you, broth­ers, did not come pro­claim­ing to you the testi­mony of God with lofty speech or wis­dom. For I decided to know noth­ing among you except Jesus Christ and him cru­ci­fied. And I was with you in weak­ness and in fear and much trem­bling, and my speech and my mes­sage were not in plaus­ible words of wis­dom, but in demon­stra­tion of the Spir­it and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wis­dom of men but in the power of God. (1 Cor­inthi­ans 2:1–5)

Paul wanted to testi­fy to the Cor­inthi­ans about Jesus, who was mocked, des­pised, humi­li­ated, and cru­ci­fied by the world, to make it clear to them who he was and what it means to fol­low him. In this way, he wanted to help them aban­don those val­ues which were com­mon in the ancient Greek world, like suc­cess, elo­quence, extern­al beauty, and phys­ic­al strength. Today’s wor­ship con­certs do not present this Jesus, because even if someone hears true state­ments about Him, the whole envir­on­ment and atmo­sphere testi­fy to a com­pletely dif­fer­ent set of values.

6 Con­clu­sion

God calls us to praise him with our whole lives. Let us not fol­low the shal­low­ness and empti­ness of the world! The “recharge” we get from con­certs is mostly emo­tion­al, so it does not last long. God wants to give us much deep­er joy that does not pass away like a good mood. Par­ti­cip­at­ing in such events by listen­ing to and hum­ming along to wor­ship “hits” rather dis­tracts us from seek­ing hon­est repent­ance. God calls us to live in a way that is worthy of him and to bear fruit for him. Only in this way can our lives praise and wor­ship him in a pleas­ing manner.

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Fath­er is glor­i­fied, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my dis­ciples. (John 15:7–8)