ANTIOCH CHURCH OF CHRIST

There is an erroneous idea today that the main reason we attend worship is to "get something out of the service", rather than going to give our worship to God. This is a selfish motive on our part. This is the reason people cannot be satisfied with the worship service when their emphasis is not on the proper object of worship, God. People want to "do their own thing" in the worship of the church. What the Bible has to say about worship for many people is of little consequence as long as they are happy and feel good. We must be concerned with what God says on how He is to be worshipped instead of what we might want to offer Him.

The United States has produced the most entertainment-oriented people the world has ever known. We have more forms of amusement than has ever been know to man, but we still want more. In our age everything is designed to appeal to our emotions and to entertain us. Our pleasure-mad society gives little thought about pleasing God in their worship. We seem to have forgotten our worship service is to bring glory and honor to God, and not to entertain ourselves.

Much worship today has digressed to be no more than entertainment for people. When we have choirs to sing to us, and concerts to entertain us, we are not worshipping God; but we have become the spectators who are being entertained. Let us not try to call this worship. This is very demeaning toward God to reduce our worship of God to entertaining ourselves. Worship is not a spectator event. We dare not become spectators, because in worship, it is God who is the spectator. People have the roles reversed. People expect divine will to conform to what seems right in their own eyes. Proverbs 12:15 says, "The way of the fool is right in his own eyes." The emphasis is how the worship service can be made more entertaining to please people, themselves, and not God.

Worship to God is holy and sacred. To pervert and corrupt it with entertainment and what we can "get out of the service" in trying to please and gratify ourselves is nothing short of blasphemy! The sacredness of true worship must not be sacrificed on altars of entertainment-oriented quartets, choirs, and other entertainment groups. We are, as Hebrews 13:15 says, to "Offer the sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name." In worship we must be the participants, not the observers. We want to please and entertain ourselves. In Galatians 1:10 the question is asked, "Do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a servant of Christ." Worship is God-centered, not man-centered. When our worship is to please God instead of ourselves, then and only then, will our worship be much more meaningful and spiritually uplifting to us and acceptable to God.

When people seek an "emotional high" from worship and don�t get it, they are disappointed and start blaming the song service, the preacher, etc. The world wants their worship service to be "more entertaining", thus they are failing to worship God in spirit and in truth. Where in the Bible can we go to show that our worship is designed to please the worshipper? The desire to have an experience or an encounter along the lines of mysticism also gives little regard to what God says in the Bible.

Our worship to God requires commitment on our part. People had rather worship Christ as a babe in a manger than Christ as their crucified savior. Their worshipping Christ as a babe in a manger requires no commitment on their part. They feel they can put Him in a box and live the rest of the year as they please. But worshipping Christ as our crucified savior requires commitment, a complete change of our life, and a willingness to do all that God says. What about you? Do you come to be entertained, or to worship the God of heaven �in spirit and in truth?�