We find ourselves today in the middle of what some have called ‘the worship wars’. The worship wars are the ongoing debates among professing Christians about what worship is, and how we are to do it. What should we do in worship, and how should we do it, what should we sing, and how, what kind of music, what kind of preaching, what kind of atmosphere, what kind of architecture.

Now there have always been some kind of worship wars, just as there have always been doctrinal wars. God allows heresies in doctrine to allow the church to clarify orthodoxy. And God has also allowed deviant worship to allow the church to clarify orthopathy.

But in the last 50 or sixty years, the debate has heated up to a new level, because the church has lost agreement on how we are to relate to the world. And once we no longer agree on our identity as the church, we will not be able to agree on what is appropriate in worship.

The church is a pilgrim church. We are pilgrims through a world system that denies the supremacy of Christ, and lives for self. We have to work in this system, and be around it, but it is not our home.

If there is any area where we are to be profoundly different to the world system, it is in our worship. Our worship, more than anything else, displays who it is we love, what he is like, the very character of God. And if we allow the cultures of the world to shape our worship, we are not a pilgrim people.

We’d like to consider three fundamentals of pilgrim worship today, and contrast them with the worship of the world. Everybody worships – that’s part of being human. The object of our worship is different, as will be the approach and the expression.

I. Pilgrim Worship Directed To God, Not Ourselves – Right Object

Psalm 115:1-8

Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, But to Your name give glory, Because of Your mercy, Because of Your truth. 2 Why should the Gentiles say, “So where is their God?” 3 But our God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases. 4 Their idols are silver and gold, The work of men’s hands. 5 They have mouths, but they do not speak; Eyes they have, but they do not see; 6 They have ears, but they do not hear; Noses they have, but they do not smell; 7 They have hands, but they do not handle; Feet they have, but they do not walk; Nor do they mutter through their throat. 8 Those who make them are like them; So is everyone who trusts in them.

God’s people understand that the absolute bottom line truth of worship is this: worship is not about us. Worship is not about using God or religion or church to in some way enhance ourselves, make ourselves feel better, or celebrate ourselves. Worship is honouring and loving someone who is not us.

The first line of this Psalm is Pilgrim Worship 101 – “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to Your name give glory.” Pilgrim worship says, when we gather to worship, it is not to glorify our names, but to glorify God. Worship is not glorifying ourselves, using God as the pretext. Worship is not a celebration of us, using God as the excuse. Worship is a response to God. The psalmist says that it is only appropriate and fitting that God should receive the glory, the honour, the admiration, the love.

Verses 1 and 3 tell us that worship is a response to God. Because of mercy and truth. We worship because God has acted mercifully to us. These are not inventions of our own minds, like the pagan gods. God has done this. He has spoken truthfully, acted truthfully. Because of these actual truths about God, we respond by glorifying Him. Our God is not a creation of our own minds. He has acted in time-space. Our worship is a response to Him, because He is a certain way. We do not create Him with our worship. He is not like some black and white outline, which we colour in however we want, with whatever crayons we wish to use. He is independent of us and real. In fact, so independent and real is our God that verse 3 shows His magnificent independence of us.

3 But our God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases.

What that means is, God is a sovereign God, who does what He pleases, whether or not men worship him. He does not come into being when we worship Him. He is not a figment of our imagination, made up to give ourselves glory. But here the Psalmist says, our God is so sovereign, so free, so independent, so powerful, that glory is what we want to give to Him. He doesn’t need it; He doesn’t need us, but He invites us. The Christian church worships God because of Who He is, and what He has done. We do not worship ourselves, we do not worship our worship, we do not imagine that we are in the position of benefactor, and God is our beneficiary. We humbly, gladly respond to who God is.

By contrast, the world makes different gods. Verse 4 tells us that unbelievers make their own gods. They do not worship someone who is; they bring into being the gods they wish to worship. Verses 5 through 7 tells us that the gods of the world have the appearance of life, but are lifeless. They resemble people, but they are dead. They do this so that they can glory in themselves.

When man invents his own religion, he doesn’t make it impossible or inconvenient for himself, he makes it easy, or at least doable. He also makes sure the worship is fun, familiar. He makes gods in his own image, and then worships them in ways that he enjoys.

In the time of Israel, the surrounding nations had invented Baal and Ashtoreth. Since the Canaanites were a people of the land, they wanted gods who would control the rain cycles and the fertility of the earth. So they came up with Baal, the god of the sky, and Ashtoreth, the goddess of fertility. So when you want rain, Baal needs to sleep with Ashtoreth, and you will have rain and good crops. But how do you get Baal to do that? You go to the high places, which were their places of worship and perform acts of immorality, which will arouse Baal. So what do we have at the end of the day? Rain, food, and illicit pleasure for the worshippers. That’s what the world does. It makes gods to suit itself, gods to serve self, gods whose worship enables the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. And in the end, the worshippers are giving glory to themselves. Their gods are lifeless and dead, they are their own creations, so their worship is actually all about self-glory.

The world system in our day does not not worship Baal and Ashtoreth. Certainly, we have plenty of false religions and false gods. But think about the broader secular culture. What are gods of our culture, made with men’s hands, that people worship and adore?

Really, secular culture worships the god of Self. All the consumerism, the glamour, the celebrityism, the obsession with fitness and health and beauty, the fashion, the jewellery and gadgets, the status symbols, when idolised are celebrations of Desirable Me. The talk shows and magazines preach the Gospel of Self. Love yourself, be true to you, respect yourself first, be true to number 1, massage your inner person. It’s the old formula: lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life. These are all about Self, pleasing myself independent of God. Being the object of worship. And just as the Canaanites set up gods that were advantageous to themselves, so modern man creates gods that serve self.

Now I think you know this. But the whole point of being the Pilgrim Church is that we do not allow the world to shape us, and put us into its mould. We must not absorb the world’s self-worship and bring it into the church.

How would we do that? We could come to corporate worship, and think that the main idea would be to come away feeling good about ourselves. We could approach the church’s worship and judge it by how much did I enjoy it, how much did it resonate with me, how familiar did it seem to me? And we could walk out saying things like “You know, I didn’t get much out of that service.”

We could come to worship and feel offended that other people didn’t make a big deal over us. We can make and sing songs that pretend to be about God, but are actually about us.

Henry Liddon was an Anglican theologian who wrote these words not in 2015, but in the 19th century. “Look at a modern hymn; it is, as a rule, full of man, full of his wants, of his aspirations, of his anticipations, of his hopes, of his fears, full of his religious self, if you will, but still full of self. But read an ancient hymn: It is, as a rule, full of God, of His awful nature, of His wonderful attributes; it is full of the Eternal Son, of His acts, of His sufferings, of His triumphs, of His Majesty.”

One huge way that we could do this is to turn worship into therapy. The whole experience of worship is no longer about encountering our Creator in awe and reverence, but about experiencing healing for our brokenness, help for our troubles, encouragement for our personal pain. God is a means to my end, the end of me feeling better about myself. Worldly worship wallows in its own emotions, where we love how deeply we feel, we use God as a springboard to get to some place of ecstasy or closed-eye weepiness or on a revved up high. I don’t know know how many times I have heard an unbeliever tell me about some church service they were in and say, “That was very uplifting. That was very inspirational.”

We get the term narcissism from the Greek legend of Narcissus. Narcissus was a beautiful, handsome young man, very proud and arrogant. He loved people loving him, but did not love others. He had not seen his own face, but one day was led to a pool of water where he saw his own face. Not realising it was himself, he fell in love with the face, thinking it was some kind of water spirit. He tried to kiss it, but it seemed to disappear when he disturbed the water. He fell so in love with the face in the water, that he chose to stay there and die in frustration and grief, not being able to kiss the one he saw reflected in the water. When we speak today about narcissism, we mean the same thing – people in love with themselves, in love with their own feeling, their own expressiveness.

There are many people who go to church and think they’re worshipping, but they are loving their own experience, enjoying the mirror in the name of Jesus.

Pilgrim worship is worship of God, not of ourselves. So once we have that understanding, we have to have the right approach to worshipping God.

II. Pilgrim Worship Is Adoration, Not Amusement – Right Approach

Psalm 29:1-2

Give unto the LORD, O you mighty ones, Give unto the LORD glory and strength. 2 Give unto the LORD the glory due to His name; Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.

Here we are told that worship is actually a transaction. In verse 2 we read that God has glory, honour, beauty that is due to Him. If something is due, we mean it is owing. It has the right. God’s person has worship due to Him, His splendour and beauty cause every living thing to owe Him our praise and adoration. Once again, God is a certain way, so every one ought to admire and adore God for who He is.

The worship of the church is all about finding out who God is, so that we know why He is due our admiration, and adoration. So here is one of the ways you know you are worshipping like the church is supposed to: a large section of our worship is examination. We are studying God, considering, analysing, scrutinising the Word of God, which reveals the Person and works of God.

Why do we do that? Because we want to know who He really is, so that we will admire Him, and then adore Him. By careful, sustained, patient examination, we come to see who He is, and we then admire and respond with the glory due His name.

This is why Christian worship includes the careful exegesis and exposition of the Word of God. The reason we do not do a 10 minute sermon and an hour of singing is that the church knows it must study, learn, understand, and then respond. If we don’t take the time to study hard, learn well, give our patient attention and humble reception, we will be like what Jesus said of the Samaritans, “You worship what you do not know.” Our worship is both in Spirit, that is inward and genuine and controlled by the Holy Spirit, and in truth, rooted in God’s Word, a response to revelation.

Christian worship involves some of the most serious thinking, careful examination, clear thought, deep study.

Now compare that approach with how the world worships its gods. The world worships its gods not with careful examination and admiration, but with entertainment and amusement. Entertainment, whether it be television and movies, whether it be pop music, whether it be some other form, is a very different experience.

• First, it is not asking you to study, examine, engage, and respond. It is the opposite. It wants you to be as passive as possible, a pure spectator, where you disengage your powers of examination and just absorb.
• Second, entertainment is all about a performance that someone put on, which we absorb for our own fun. In some ways, the whole thing is unreal, a game, a show.
• Third, entertainment is shaped by what is popular, whatever is enjoyed by most people, and will sell the most tickets, or guarantee the widest audience, or sell the most records shapes what it will be. It is fickle, and shaped not by the beauty of one thing, like Christian worship is, but by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life.

You know that entertainment is like a drug for most people in the world. They cannot imagine life without the diversions and distractions of popular entertainment. I don’t say that these are always wrong, or forbidden to the Christian in all times. But as pilgrims, we have to beware of how amusement can come into the church and substitute for genuine worship. In his book, Ashamed of the Gospel, John MacArthur describes what is becoming popular in churches:

“staged wrestling matches, pie-fights, punk-rockers, rappers and any other form of secular music used to perform some kind of vaguely Gospel song, ventriloquists’ dummies, dancers, weight-lifters, knife-throwers, body-builders, comedians, clowns, jugglers, show-business celebrities, prominent businessman, politicians or sportsmen giving their testimonies, restaurants, ballrooms, roller-skating rinks, special-effects systems that can produce smoke, fire, sparks, and laser lights in the auditorium.”

What is this? It is entertainment. It is the church foolishly thinking that amusement and worship can be combined, and that if people feel amused and entertained in church, then that means they are happy about God.

Do you remember what God told Israel to do with the Canaanite high-places? He told Israel to demolish them. They were usually beautiful places, often built in a grove of trees, picturesque, shady, often beautiful masonry. But they had been used for wickedness, and God did not tell Israel to just co-opt those places and use them to worship Him. He knew that the very form of Canaanite worship was corrupt, and using the high places would distort His worship. And we read through the kings of Israel and Judah, that they continued to worship on the high places. Only two kings, Hezekiah and Josiah actually removed them.

God does not call on the church to take the high places of our culture, and worship God upon them. He does not say, find every popular form of amusement and entertainment, and create Christian versions of them. That’s because Pilgrim Worship is admiration and adoration, not amusement. Our worship is about valuing God for who he is, esteeming Him rightly, not about feeling amused in His name.

Tozer: “A church fed on entertainment is no New Testament church at all. The desire for surface stimulation is a sure mark of the fallen nature, the very thing Christ died to deliver us from. A curious crowd of baptized worldlings waiting each Sunday for the quasi-religious needle to give them a lift bears no relation whatsoever to a true assembly of Christian believers. And that its members protest their undying faith in the Bible does not change things any. “Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” (The Next Chapter after the Last, p. 14)

Using pop music and popular entertainments for worship is like using candy floss as a main course at a meal. Sweet, easy to process, very immediate, very obvious, very accessible, but without any of the richness of taste of a real meal, of good food. Candy floss cannot carry the weight of a seriously good meal. Pop music is the same. Very catchy, very simple, very familiar, very immediate and familiar, but without any depth or richness to carry the weight of worship. God is trivialised, and man’s abilities to worship are weakened.

Pilgrim worship is a lot more like the experience of trying to understand serious and beautiful music, studying beautiful art or architecture, reading a beautiful poem or literature, carefully examining nature, than it is the experience of being amused or entertained. I am not saying there is no place for entertainment in your life. I am saying don’t expect worship to be entertainment, and don’t make a diet out of entertainment.

Pilgrim worship is about God, not us – that the right object of worship. Pilgrim worship is adoration, not amusement – that’s the right approach of worship. If you have the right object, and the right approach, that will lead to the right response.

III. Pilgrim Worship is Reverent, Not Revelry – Right Response

Psalm 29:2

Give unto the LORD the glory due to His name; Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.

The psalmist says here that God is to be worshipped in the beauty of holiness. The worship is to have a beautiful character, a holy character. The worship of God’s people is not only to have a right object and the right approach, but flowing out from that, it should have a right expressions. The outward form and shape of our adoration of God cannot be the same as the world delighting in its gods, because the gods are different.

The writer to the Hebrews tells us about the character of Christian worship. He says,

Hebrews 12:28-29

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire.

The word for serve is the word from which we get the English word liturgy, it carries the idea of the service of worship. And what is the acceptable service of worship? Reverence and godly fear.

Christian worship worships in the beauty of holiness, with soberness, dignity, joy, gladness, gratitude, but all in reverence. Remember when God said to Israel through Malachi:

Malachi 1:6

“A son honors his father, And a servant his master. If then I am the Father, Where is My honor? And if I am a Master, Where is My reverence?”

Different gods, different approaches, and so different expressions. When the world worships self, and does so through entertainment, how they express their desires are in keeping with the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life.

1 Peter 4:3

For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles– when we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries.

Romans 13:13

Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy.

Here is a Greek Lectionary definition of the word translated ‘revelry’ in your Bible. “a nocturnal and riotous procession of half-drunken and frolicsome fellows who after supper parade through the streets with torches and music in honor of Bacchus or some other deity, and sing and play before the houses of their male and female friends; hence, used generally, of feasts and drinking-parties that are protracted till late at night and indulge in revelry;

Sounds pretty familiar. Sounds like what the world calls a great party. Plenty of sensuality, self-indulgence, hilarity, obscenity, amusement. Sounds like the outward expression of lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life.

Now imagine for a moment that definition of revelry, and put it in the hands of those who say we must be like the world to win the world, that we must redeem the culture. It would look like this: “ a nocturnal and riotous procession of half-drunken and frolicsome fellows who after supper parade through the streets with torches and music in honor of Jesus.”

No, it doesn’t work that way. We do not take the world’s expressions of their lusts, and adopt them, or co-opt them for Christian worship. God always wanted His people to know that the actual expression of worship mattered.

In Leviticus 10, you have the sons of Aaron, apparently almost the first day on the job, and they get consumed by fire. Now Nadab and Abihu were not outright idolaters. We trust they understood that they were actually approaching God. However, what they presented to God, the actual expression of worship was deficient. God calls it strange fire, fire which had not been commanded, fire obtained from somewhere else. We could argue, fire is fire, but not to God. The fire was kindled a certain way, and brought from a certain altar. And here God says to Israel, you are not free to improvise and innovate when it comes to worshipping Me. You do not get to go to the world, borrow their expressions that they use to express lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life, and then present it on God’s altar, just because you’re sincere. You approach God with a unique kind of reverence, because He is unique. That’s what holy means.

We do not use the strange fire of the world’s expressions of worship, and put them on the altar. We do not seek to redeem revelry, and narcissism, and lewdness. We do not worship God on the high places, using the evil worship of the Canaanites and offer it to Yahweh. Spurgeon said, “It is idolatry to worship the true God by a wrong method.”

But that’s what’s happening. The evangelical church is so obsessed with relating to people, with popularity, with familiarity, with relevance, that it uncritically imitates the world in its worship expressions. It turns its sermons into motivational talks. It brings theatre and movie into the sanctuary. It turns the service into a show. It plays the cards of the world, entertainment, celebrity, sexual appeal. It turns worship into an entertainment product to be purchased by religious consumers. It looks to pop music to become the vehicle for worship.

The result is worshippers turn into spectators. Admirers and adorers become religious consumers, shopping for the best entertainment. And the more the church does this, the weaker people get at truly worshipping. They mistake selfish revelry as worshipful reverence.

We read in Psalm 115:

Those who make them are like them; So is everyone who trusts in them.

People who make idols make the idols in their own image, and then they in turn come to resemble the idols they have made. They become as lifeless and dull and soulless as their gods. That’s why the vast majority of unbelievers you will meet are steadily becoming numb and unfeeling.

But what a travesty if that happens in the church. What a terrible thing when narcissism takes over, and people become dead and dull worshippers of self, always hoping that next Sunday will be a drug to wake them up out of their dullness and boredom.

Pilgrim worship is nothing revolutionary, though it is becoming more and more unusual. It is simple: worship God, not self – the right object. Worship by admiring and adoring Him, not by amusing yourself in His name – the right approach. And once you admire and adore, express that adoration with the reverent joy that is fitting, not with the revelry that expresses the world’s lusts.