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Who’s The Audience?
February 20, 2011
I used to view the worship service in church as a time for entertainment. Speaking of folks like me, Sören Kierkegaard said that we tend to think of church as a kind of theater: We sit in the audience, attentively watching the actors onstage. If sufficiently entertained, we show our gratitude with applause. Church, though, should be the opposite of the theater. God is the audience for our worship.
What matters most takes place within the hearts of the congregation—not onstage. We should leave a worship service asking ourselves not “What did I get out of it?” but rather “Was God pleased with what happened?”
God took pains to specify details of animal sacrifice for the ancient Israelites in their worship. Yet He said that He didn’t need their animals: “I will not take a bull from your house, nor goats out of your folds. For every beast of the forest is Mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills” (Ps. 50:9-10). What He wanted was their praise and obedience (v.23).
By focusing on the externals of worship, we too miss the point: The Lord is interested in a sacrifice of the heart, an internal attitude of submission and thanksgiving. The goal of worship is nothing less than to meet and please our God.
Lord, may our worship and our praise,
From hearts surrendered to Your ways,
Be worthy offerings of love
For all Your blessings from above. —Sper
At the heart of worship is worship from the heart.
Read: Psalm 50:7-15
It is the music and the hymns that move people, touches their heart, to praise, and to open their heart, as well.
On Christ, the Solid Rock, I stand.
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
When darkness veils His lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.
His oath, His covenant, His blood
Support me in the whelming flood;
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my hope and stay.
When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh, may I then in Him be found;
Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne.
Refrain:
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand,
All other ground is sinking sand.
—Edward Mote (1797-1874)
The name of Edward Mote does not often rest on the lips of the Church today in the same fashion as Fanny J. Crosby, B. B. McKinney, Ira Sankey, or other greats in hymnody. However, the testimony of his life is one that should inspire all Christians. Mote was not brought up in a godly home and did not have the advantage of early exposure to Scripture. In fact, his parents managed a pub in London and often neglected young Edward, who spent most of his Sundays playing in the city streets.1 Of his theological upbringing, he said “So ignorant was I that I did not know that there was a God.”2
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;
’Midst all the hell I feel within,
On His completed work I lean.
I trust His righteous character
His council, promise, and His power;
His honor and His name’s at stake,
To save me from the burning lake.
I actually go, to be fed, to learn and to worship God.
