No Sweat!

“[The priests] shall have linen turbans on their heads, and linen undergarments around their waists. They shall not bind themselves with anything that causes sweat.” [1]

God is concerned about the smallest facet of the lives of His children. It is not an insignificant matter to speak of the relationship of Christians with other people. Our conduct toward outsiders is a matter of great importance to the Lord. Even cursory reflection on this point will obtain almost universal agreement from professing Christians. We know intuitively that we who follow the Master must not to enter into their deviant practises. We must not give tacit approval of that which is evil; we must never embrace those practises or attitudes that dishonours the Master. In fact, we are to be gentle toward outsiders, knowing that they are incapable of honouring God.

How we treat fellow believers sharing this holy Faith is critical in the eyes of the Lord. We are to pray for one another, holding each other accountable for our conduct. These are big issues that most of us recognise and treat with the seriousness expected.

How we conduct worship, how we praise Him, is a matter of concern. I don’t mean that God prescribes a ritual that we must slavishly follow. I don’t mean that we must fight over whether we have a written liturgy that must be strictly followed, whether we have stringed instruments or pipe organs to accompany the hymns we sing, or even whether we must avoid the use of instrumentation altogether. I don’t mean that we must dress in a certain way if we intend to worship. I do mean that principles concerning how we honour the Lord are provided in the Word of God. And these principles should be recognised intuitively, and applied to our worship.

Throughout the message, I will be equating worship and service. Those who will honour the Lord with worship seek to serve Him, to exalt His Name, to glorify Him through doing what He wills. Consider one portion of Jesus’ instruction to His disciples. “If you love me, you will obey my commandments. Then I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it does not see him or know him. But you know him, because he resides with you and will be in you.

“I will not abandon you as orphans, I will come to you. In a little while the world will not see me any longer, but you will see me; because I live, you will live too. You will know at that time that I am in my Father and you are in me and I am in you. The person who has my commandments and obeys them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will reveal myself to him.

“‘Lord,’ Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, ‘what has happened that you are going to reveal yourself to us and not to the world?’ Jesus replied, ‘If anyone loves me, he will obey my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and take up residence with him. The person who does not love me does not obey my words. And the word you hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me” [JOHN 14:15-24].

I am not suggesting that we should not plan how we will conduct our services of worship, nor am I even suggesting that it is somehow wrong to think of how we may make our service more meaningful, more vibrant, whenever we gather for worship. I am, however, suggesting that the attitude which we hold as we prepare to gather for worship and our conduct during those times is critical. If our excitement is contrived, if our emotions are stirred by false fire, if all we experience is self-generated fervour, then we cannot say that we have worshipped. If despite all our efforts to worship we failed to meet the Risen Saviour, we have nothing of eternal worth for the effort we have exerted.

ACCEPTABLE WORSHIP — I should imagine that an explanation is in order. From the biblical perspective, worship is the response of the individual when he realises he is in the presence of the One True God. This worship is spontaneous, unplanned, an unbidden response to the knowledge that the individual is in the presence of One who is pure, One who is righteous. Tragically, few of us have ever had such an experience. However, once we have found ourselves in the presence of the LORD God, we will never again be content with merely going through the motions of what is commonly called “worship.” That is worship—real worship!