There was a time when the question of how we should worship God was viewed as a matter of importance to professing Christians. It still is, though for a different reason. Whereas our forefathers struggled with what was right, today the struggle is over what individuals like, or what gives scope to their perceived ‘gifts’. Taste and scope are the great considerations, rather than right or wrong.
Who Decides?
It is often blithely assumed that sincerity and perhaps the absence of clearly heretical content render any worship acceptable. Acceptable, that is, to us and therefore, presumably, to God.
This approach is totally wrong. If it is God we are to worship, it is for God to decide how that worship is to be performed. We must acknowledge God to be God before we even begin our worship, by submitting to what He says is pleasing to Him.
God told Israel “what thing soever I command you, observe to do it; thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it” (Deuteronomy 12:32). The Lord Jesus reproved the Jews, “In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men” (Mark 7:7).
How?
When coming into a service of our church, a visitor may find some things in the service a little unusual. We want to worship God in those ways He has appointed, and no other. As a result, our worship normally consists of the reading and preaching of the Word of God, prayer and the singing of psalms without musical accompaniment. Occasionally, also, the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are observed. We find no Biblical basis for going beyond these parts of worship.
The beauty of New Testament worship, compared with the Old Testament, is in its simplicity, not in its being less tied and confined to what God has appointed in His own Word.
God’s way of worship is designed to show us what God is really like. He knows best, doesn’t He?
The Lord Jesus said, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in Spirit and in truth” (John 4:24).