Should Worship Be Great? pt. 3

We started this journey because I am trying to discern if "Helping Make YOUR Worship GREAT" was a good tagline for my new part-time consulting venture, Worship Coach.

Last time I said worship should be great because God is great. Worship should be for, about, and with God.

This time I'd like to suggest that God actually requires our worship to be great.

I know, I know... that offends our grace-thirsty sentiments.

But really, if we will consider the totality of Biblical teaching more than our traditions or opinions, I'm confident God desires and requires our worship gatherings be great.

Let's consider...
--the Old Testament sacrificial system and its requirements,
--the expectations of God for other elements of worship,
--the sacrifice of Jesus, who ended the need for animal sacrifice, because he was not just great but perfect,
--the totality that's required to follow Jesus,
--the metaphor of the church as a bride, which I'll just consider icing on the cake.

This could easily become a "too long" blog post, so I'm going to be as brief as I can. If you have questions or comments that give me the chance, I'll take more time with any of these handful of considerations.

A) Sacrificial system.
I know this is sort of harsh for my preferred "warm fuzzy," encouraging style of writing, but it is in the Bible, and that's where we're taking our cues. So hear deeply the prophet Malachi (1:14) “Cursed is the cheat who has an acceptable male in his flock and vows to give it, but then sacrifices a blemished animal to the Lord. For I am a great king,” says the Lord Almighty, “and my name is to be feared among the nations. (emphases added)

And it's not just Malachi. The standard was set way back in Leviticus and Numbers. It's even referenced in Genesis 4 with the story of 2nd generation humanity. God's requirement for an acceptable offering has always been one without blemish. Not just a turtledove, a lamb, or a bull. But a turtledove, lamb or bull that is without blemish. 

B) Other worship elements, like music.
When David was putting together the worship leaders for the Temple, a whole segment of scripture is devoted to "The Singers." Specifically, in 1 Chronicles 25:7 we're told that all 288 of them were "trained and skilled in music for the Lord." 

C) Jesus as perfect sacrifice.
With A and B in mind, consider Hebrews 9:14: "How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!"

And we really need to pause for a moment here. No matter how great our worship is, it is essential to remember that the only reason it is acceptable to God is because the sacrifice of Jesus makes it great. The closest we can come to perfection is still never good enough to "impress" God. Our finest work is filthy rags next to God's righteousness. (Is 64:6) We don't give our best to appease God, but to please God. Not to impress God, but to demonstrate how impressed we are by Him.

D) Sold out devotion.
It's hard to imagine God being pleased with one of his daughters or sons flippantly saying, "well... yeah... I guess that's good enough."

No way. God's wants us sold out. All in. Here are examples from both the old and new covenants:

"You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." That's from the prophet Jeremiah (29:13).

And I love the way Eugene Peterson translates this part of Paul's letter to the church in Rome: "So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you." (Rom 12:1-2)

E) Bride of Christ.
According to Ephesians 5:26-27, "[Jesus] gave up his life for [the church] to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault."

That all starts to make "great" sound like an understatement to me! And those passages convey to me that our worship gatherings should be great, without blemish.

So that's my take on God's requirement for worship to be great.

Not perfect, that's not possible. Not artificially great, that's inauthentic.

Great.

So... what do y'all think?