Barriers to Worship
Matthew 4:10, Matthew 16:23
Did you struggle to get to worship this morning? Raise your hands. It seems that more than any other time, we are under spiritual attack on Sunday mornings. Barrier after barrier gets in our way trying to prevent us from getting to worship. For some, it’s tough to get up early on Sunday after a hard week and get ready. For others, it’s the challenge of getting the kids up, dressed, fed and in the car. Barriers can even come on the drive to church. I remember on Easter morning 2 years ago, I was driving on I-10 in New Orleans East at 6:15 in the morning and making the turn at Morrison when all of a sudden a red truck zoomed by me going at least 90 miles an hour. It cut in front of me and I had to slam on my breaks so the truck wouldn’t clip me. It then tried to move from the right lane over two lanes to the left lane and when it did, it hit another car which forced the car into the guard rail, spinning it out. The driver of the truck lost control and bounced over to lanes, hitting the right guard rail and blowing out the tire and then it spun out. I again had to slam my breaks so as not to run into the truck. When all of the cars came to a stop, the drivers got out shaken. I stopped and got out to check on the drivers as did the other drivers. Then I noticed the driver of the truck and his two passengers slip down the hiway, over the rail, over a fence and disappear under the overpass of Chef Hiway. I looked at the time I was going to be late which isn’t a good thing when you’re the scheduled preacher for the sunrise service! There seem to always be barriers in getting to worship.
The barriers can even appear at church. Don Chapman writes, Recently I visited a church where I had to jump over a few unnecessary hurdles before I finally took my seat in their worship service. There was no sign out front. I drove to the church’s location and was surprised not to see a sign. Was I in the right place? I’ve probably driven by the church building 100 times, and since it’s in an old warehouse, I never knew it was a church! I suspected I was in the right place because of all the cars in the adjacent parking lot. Then as I parked my car I saw a sign on the side of the building facing a side road (but no sign BY the road.) Then we tried several doors and all of them were locked. We finally found an unlocked door on our fourth try! Then there were no greeters. I walked into the church and stood in the lobby, spinning around with a blank look on my face as I tried to figure out which door led to the sanctuary. It was like the old game show “Let’s Make a Deal” where you pick one of three mystery doors. Nobody was around to help me find my way, no signs, nothing. A bunch of kids were entering door #1 so I guessed that wasn’t right… then I saw adults going in door #2 so I followed them down a hallway to the sanctuary entrance. After all this, I expected to enter a room with 10 people…To my complete shock I entered a large auditorium that was literally packed with about 500 people And then he writes, “I felt like I was on a treasure hunt! You really have to want to go to this place since they put so many obstacles in your way.”
Barriers are not just that. They are a battle over your worship. And anything that gets in the way of that needs to be dealt with. Dealing with barriers is doing battle with Satan himself over the praise of God. Ezekiel 28 describes a scene where Satan who was originally created to be an angelic leader but wanted to be totally in charge and overthrow God’s rule by leading a number of other angels in an insurrection. As a result, God cast him and his cohorts out of heaven. Ever since his expulsion, Satan has had an agenda to defeat the purposes of God and the people of God and undermine their praise of God. Satan, who is called the “adversary” 56 times in the Bible, is diametrically opposed to everything that God is accomplishing today and will do anything he can to derail it.
When Satan attacks the person and purposes of God, he does it very boldly. When he attacks the people of God, he’s much more subtle. If you will, he uses a “stealth attack” to divide, divert, deride and dishearten believers. One way he does that is to attack the praises of God. The devil hates it when we sing praises to God because it rouses our souls, gives us courage, lifts our hearts, restores our faith, builds our confidence, unites our voices and hearts, and lifts up Jesus’ name like a mighty banner. Worship is not just preparation for warfare, it is spiritual warfare. When God’s people sing together, we invade the devil’s agenda and take him head on.
The first thing we must understand is that Satan, does not want us worshipping God and will do whatever he can to hinder true, heartfelt worship.
One way that Satan battles our worship is through barriers he places in our way to worship the High and Holy God.
Today, we’re going to look at four barriers to our worship. The first is sin. Psalm 24:3-4 states, "Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false." When we discuss the issue of coming before the Lord with sin, we often imply that in order to have true worship, we must be sinless. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We have to remember that we are all sinners. But we also remember that Jesus came and died for all our sins and because of that, we are able to approach God and worship Him. What we’re talking about here is ongoing sin in our lives, times when we are deliberately disobedient to Him day after day where we knowingly disobey His will. This can affect His acceptance of our worship. It's one thing to get angry with your children or the guy that just cut you off, and another to live in sin daily. Those who choose to live in sin - who choose to continue to be disobedient to God’s will, will find their worship stale and meaningless, empty and unempowered.
When we come to worship, we have to be ready to give all of ourselves to God, including our sins. That means you not only have to confess your sin, but you must be willing to turn from it for your worship to be true and acceptable to God. Worship is one thing you can't give to God as you harbor continual sin. He won't be fooled by our doing all of the right things. You may "do" the motions of worship, but the heart doesn't lie. “The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7 So as we seek to worship God, we should examine our hearts and lives that there not be impure elements of habitual or ongoing sin in your life. To bring a clean heart, you have to not only confess that sin but also repent of it, which means to turn from sin and seek to never do it again.
Second is head worship. John 4:23-24 says, “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” True worship according to Jesus is a balance of both the Spirit or heart and the mind. Too often, we find that one is emphasized over or even to the exclusion of the other. In the United Methodist Church, we have perfected head worship. Head worship is coming to worship seeking to be intellectually challenged and to learn new things about God and wanting to encounter God primarily through the mind. Now that in and of itself is not a bad thing. But when that is the only thing we seek in worship, we miss out on a big part of worship which is to experience the power and the presence of God in worship.
Head worship takes the intended emotional and spiritual experience of worship and turns it into a mental experience only. In head worship, we encounter God through the mind. The problem is in doing so you will never be able to fully allow the Spirit to move in worship. I think one of the things which causes us to worship God in the mind is that it is more tangible. It’s a truth we can wrestle with and know that it is based on fact. It’s based on the objective. Worship in the Spirit is much more subjective and thus considered to be less reliable. The second issue is control. We have a fear about letting go and allowing the Spirit to move in our lives. We like control. It gives us a feeling of security. We feel that if we do, we might lose the control that we so desire. But here’s the price we pay. If our worship is dependent upon our mind then we will miss the intimacy that God wants to have with us and that’s an issue of Spirit and the heart.
Third is our cultural and generational bias. This is the “idea” that true worship can only take place when it includes that which is familiar to our own cultural experience and is only right when it is based on the right formula, usually years of tradition. Any deviation from the established program is met with harsh criticism and condemned. I received this letter echoing these sentiments from a man I’ll call Bill in my last congregation. He was complaining about changes to the worship service: “There has also been a jumbling of the order of worship that appears to be arbitrary and unpredictable….The ancient order of worship is deeply rooted in Judeo-Christian tradition, as anyone who has ever attended a Sabbath or Passover service can attest. For thousands of years, the order of Praise and Prayer, Liturgy of the Word and Sermon, Offering of Gifts, Communion, and Benediction has been followed throughout the Jewish and Christian traditions, across many denominations. We have abandoned our roots...”
A person who is committed to their idea of worship depends almost completely on their cultural experience and the traditions that they are familiar with. Worship must take place a certain way or it is not true worship. Many Christians and even ministers believe that unless worship takes place when they started in the faith, it is not real or true worship. While head worship allows for little or no expression of experience, this approach to worship is based entirely on experience. You can easily identify someone with this mindset because you will hear them say things like: “We never did it that way at my old Church”. When you hear these types of comments, someone is probably operating with an attitude of cultural bias when it comes to worship.
Two things result from this. First, they become judgmental of other forms of worship and music which is meaningful to other people and connects them to God, causing division in the church. Second, it can stymie the move of the Spirit. The dangers of having a set liturgy or program with no variance whatsoever is that the Holy Spirit is often programmed right out of the service. Remember, the Holy Spirit does what He wants to do when He is given access and freedom to move. Sometimes, despite our best planning, what He wants to do does not follow our planned program. For this reason we must be sensitive to the move of the Spirit during our services. But my point with this is that we should invite the Holy Spirit into our services, not with just our mouths, but primarily with our hearts and not be so focused on the flow of the worship but rather move of the Spirit.
The fourth barrier to our worship is isolationism. Perhaps the biggest contributor to this is the move toward individualism in our culture. If we work hard, anything is possible by ourselves, we are responsible for our own actions and we can take care of ourselves. In other words, "every man and woman man for themself". The result is that our confidence and trust is only in ourselves. We don’t rely on the government to take care of us. We don’t rely on other people and even worse, we don’t rely on God. Rugged individualism is the "American Way". And to be honest, "rugged individualism" is an attractive idea. There’s is a lot to be said about having self-confidence, being responsible for our own actions and accomplishing a lot on your own. The problem is we have brought the same rugged individualism of our culture to the church and even worse, to our relationship on God.
That flies in the face of the Gospel. There is a communal aspect of the Gospel message and the life of the early church which is all but lost in our present day society. Speaking of this, seminary Professor Luke Johnson writes, “There are many persons who call themselves Christians in America (today), but there is not much church in America.” In other words, there is not much community or unity when the church gathers, especially for worship. We have fallen prey to the lies of the Evil One who wants us to think that faith is an individual and private matter. But it is meant to be anything but that. Faith is meant to be something which is shared with others, the journey of faith is meant to be traveled with others and the worship and praise of God is meant to be done with others. When we bring rugged individualism to church, we become a group of individuals worshiping God rather than the body of Christ and our praises are limited. And when we do that, we fail to live up to or fulfill Jesus’ last prayer for us, “I pray also for those who will believe in me….that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” John 17:20-23
When we give all of ourselves to God, even our habitual sins, when we seek to worship God in both heart and mind, when we seek when give up our own bias’ of worship and realize that worship is not about us or our preferences but instead God’s preferences which are for surrendered praises and a surrendered life, and finally when we seek to leave our isolation and enter into community in the life of the church and unity in our worship, then our worship will be true and acceptable to God what we will find is that God will be there to meet us in our praises and we will become truly victorious in the real battle of worship.
