Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 149 | Worship Music

Episode Date: August 12, 2019

What does it mean to worship? Is all worship music created equal?

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Today we are going to talk about worship. Now, this is something that a lot of you guys have asked me about, specifically in relation to worship songs. How do I decide which worship songs to listen to? Are there worship songs that are not okay to listen to? Worship songs that are okay to listen to, but we're really going to start talking about worship in general and what it is, according to God's word, we will get into how. that relates to worship song specifically, but we need to define worship according to God's word before we can get into that, because that will kind of set up our premise for the discussion about worship music. So worship, as you guys already know, means to give honor to, to admire, to revere, to bow down to, to love something a lot, to be consumed by something, probably even more accurately. For example, when I was eight years old, I worshipped the backstreet boys. I did. In a lot of ways, I hate to say it. I worshipped the backstreet boys. I mean, I listened to every album. I would go into a room and just listen to their millennium album and be like, I think that

my life will be over if I do not meet the backstreet boys. Well, I still haven't met the backstreet boys. Life turned out great. So I wish I could go back to my eight-year-old self and tell her, you know what, it's going to be okay, but I worshipped them. I had their posters. I had a nightgown with the backstreet boys on it. I loved the backstreet boys way over in sync, way over 98 degrees. I will still go to the man on this one, by the way. But I worship them. If you look at people going to a concert of any artist that they really love, it is a form of worship. Everyone worships something. Everyone worships someone. There is not a person in the world. I don't care if They're atheist, agnostic, whatever they are, whatever they say their belief system is, everyone worships something.

They put their hope in something. They are consumed by something, whether it's their own body. And so they're consumed by working out and how they eat, whether it is their kids, whether it's their spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, job. Everyone worships something. Everyone has a kind of center of their universe that is pulling them towards the next thing that they do. And for Christians, of course, we know that that sinner, we know that that object of worship or that person of worship is to be God and God alone. We are called to worship God. We are called to worship no one else.

We are to put, as the Bible says, no other gods before him, meaning we are to make nothing and no one else are God or our object of worship except for the God of Scripture, which means our worship belongs to him alone, our obsession, our admiration. or our adoration belongs to the God of the Bible. Now, this doesn't mean that we don't have hobbies. This doesn't mean that we don't have affections. Of course, I love my husband very much. I love my job. I love Chick-fil-A. I love a lot of things in life,

but none of these things are the center of my world, pulling me into its orbit and demanding my time and my energy and my worship except for the God of the universe. The call to follow Jesus for Christians is a call to come and die. Nothing less. It is not a call to come and just change a bit of your behavior. It's not a call to just come and listen to some worship music or to go to church on Sundays. Jesus said it is a call to come and die to take up your cross, a form of brutal crucifixion,

to deny yourself and to follow him. We deny the things that we want. we deny our flesh, we deny our old selves in pursuit of Christ. It is a call to self-sacrifice, and it is all-consuming. It is a life dedicated to worship. Romans 12-1 says, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. So what does that mean? Spiritual worship, if you have, I think it's the NIV might say a spiritual act of worship. That's how I first knew this first growing up. So what does that mean? Well, verse two tells us, do not be conformed

to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. So this spiritual worship or the spiritual act of worship is to not be conformed to this world, but to be transformed in the renewal of our mind, that we might follow God in knowing what is good and acceptable and perfect. So this means that worship, biblical, godly worship is not something we do for 20 minutes on a Sunday. It's not something we just do in our quiet times, our reading of the Bible every morning, but our worship is our entire life. It's our entire mind.

It is a transformation from what we were to who we are now because of Christ. It is an about face of the heart from sin to a life of Christ-likeness and purity made possible by the power of the Holy Spirit. Our worship is a dedication of our entire lives to God. Matthew 15 8 through 9 states, this people, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain, do they worship me? Which means it is possible to pay lip service to God. It is possible to sing songs on Sunday. It is possible to memorize verses and to read our Bible, say that we're

worshiping and not actually be worshiping because our lives are not dedicated or dedicated to the adoration and the glory of God, which he says is worship. We make a mistake when we make a mistake when we categorize our worship as something we only do on Sunday mornings. In reality, the Bible tells us that our bodies, our lives, our spiritual acts of worship, meaning that the God of the Bible is consuming every aspect of our being. First Corinthians 131. So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God, Matthew 2247 says, and he said to them, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. And why should we do this?

Why do we dedicate every single part of who we are to the glory and the honor and the praise and the worship of God as Christians? Revelation 411 says, worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power for you created all things. And by your will, they existed and were. created. So we worship, we dedicate our lives to the worship of God. We dedicate our hearts and our minds and our spirits and our bodies to the worship of God because His glory demands it, because it is all

consuming. Nothing else except full-fledged, fully committed self-sacrificial worship of the Holy God of the universe will do. We worship him because his own glory compels us to. We worship him because his own glory compels us to because he is worthy. John Piper puts it this way. True worship is a valuing or a treasuring of God above all things. It is a valuing and it is a treasuring God above all things. And seeing worship this way, seeing worship as a full dedication of your body and of your mind to the glory of Christ makes sin and makes the thought of sin, the thought of disobedience, that much more heartbreaking. I mean, I think about the sins that I've committed while I've been a Christian, and I think about the things that I've done in disobedience while I've been a Christian.

And when you think about, well, my body is supposed to be a living sacrifice to God. my life is supposed to be an act of spiritual worship to God. My mind is supposed to belong to God. And I've misused that not to honor God, but to honor myself and to do what I want to do. It just breaks your heart. It moves you to this, what Paul calls a godly guilt that leads you to repentance. When you think that worship is just this compartmentalized thing or this thing that you can put into compartments on Sunday morning, it's really hard, I think, to take sin seriously from Monday to Saturday. But when we think that when we think about the fact that our entire lives and our entire bodies are supposed to be immersed in this worship of God, well, we realize that whenever we

deter or whenever we detour away from that, whenever we misuse our bodies that are meant to be vessels of worship to God, how egregious of a mistake that this really is and how much of a misuse this is of who we are in Christ. God does not need our worship. He does not need our worship. This is another important characteristic of worship to point out for the Christian. He does not need our praise. He does not need our gratitude. He is self-sustaining. He is self-sufficient. He is glory and honor and praise in and of himself. He does not need us. This is not something that we have to do because he is down. He is doubt. He is desperate for it in the sense that he needs it to be made to feel better about himself. No, he is

self-sustaining. In Christ, our very soul yearns to worship the God who redeemed our souls. And so we worship because he exists and because his glory demands it, not because he needs it and not just to make ourselves feel better. As C.S. Lewis stated, a man can do, can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship him that a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word darkness on the walls of his cell. So God does not need your worship to be who he is. He is self-sufficient. He is self-sustaining. But he created us to be vessels of worship. And time and again throughout the Bible, we see the command to worship him, to give thanks to him, to honor him, to submit to him. He created us to reflect his glory.

And really, whether or not you're a Christian, you do reflect his glory. You can't even get away from that. That's the thing that drives and that can drive an atheist mad is when you tell them, whether you like it or not, you reflect the glory of God because you are made in the image of God. You can't get away from that, even if you wanted to. Now, of course, an atheist is not going to believe that, but that's the reality. Whether or not someone chooses to worship God,

they reflect the glory of God because they are made in the image of God. And we are made all the more satisfied when we fulfill the purpose of dedicating our lives to worshiping and glorifying Him. The awesome part, that really is. The awesome part about worship is that we actually are beneficiaries of very good things. When we fulfill that purpose of glorifying God through obedience and holiness and adoration, we are also beneficiaries of peace and joy and assurance. And again, we don't worship because of what we get out of it, but because God's presence actually demands that worship,

but we do get beautiful things out of it because God's glory for the Christian is our good. Now, there are a couple things to remember about worship in addition to that. Our worship, or really, this is just one thing. We already listed the other thing. Our worship is based on truth. It is based on biblical truth. As we've said before, it is impossible to know God intimately unless you know God accurately. So if we are worshiping a God whose character is not in alignment with who he says he is in his own word, then we are not worshiping God at all. So if we are thinking thoughts about God, praying to a God like he's a genie in a bottle

or attributing characteristics to God in our heads that are not referring. in scripture, we are not actually worshipping God at all. We are worshiping who we want God to be, which means in essence we are worshiping our own imaginations, our own feelings, which in essence means we are worshiping ourselves. That is why an essential part of worship is knowing our Bibles, is reading our Bibles. I did an episode back in May. I think it was episode 117 called reading your Bible about why reading your Bible is important and how to read the Bible if you're a beginner. So I encourage you to go back and listen to that. If that's something that you're curious about, if we are to live lives, as Romans 121 says, that are defined and one through two, that are defined

by the kind of worship to which God calls us, we have to live lives that are based on truth. And the whole of truth, the way of holiness, the path of righteousness, is found in. in God's word. So do not expect, you cannot expect, to know how to worship rightly if you do not spend time in God's word. Worship is not a feeling. It's not just a state of mind. It's not just a spiritual experience. A lot of times people are very concerned with what they feel when they worship, how they look when they worship. Do I look like I'm into this enough? Am I crying? Is my hand up or my eyes closed? There's nothing wrong with any of those things. but they're not measures of worship.

There aren't measures of sincerity of worship, especially today in this age where people are fascinated with a charismatic arm of Christianity, which not all parts of charismatic parts of Christianity are wrong, certainly not, but people in that realm can often get caught up in the spiritual experience of Sunday worship and of singing and of these outward expressions of the Holy Spirit

being made manifest in their lives, well, that's not necessarily any sign of genuine or sincere worship. It's not just a feeling. Worshiping sincerely and genuinely is, as Roman says, a renewal of the mind. It is a dedication of our life to God, and that is predicated on the knowledge of truth. That, through the Holy Spirit, we have the ability to obtain through Scripture. John 423-24 says this, this is Jesus. The hour is coming and is now here when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.

So we already know for Moments 12 what it means to worship God and Spirit. It means life-consuming obedience. And Jesus also says that we have to worship Him in truth. Well, Jesus tells us what truth is in John 17, which when he says, sanctify him in truth, your word is true. So knowing your Bible, knowing truth is vital specifically, specifically in regards to worship songs that we sing. The songs that we sing in church, in our car, at home, wherever, have to be based on

scripture for us to be able to say that we are worshiping both in spirit and in truth. Because again, if we find ourselves singing a baby, about a God whose character is not reflected in his own word. We are no longer worshiping him. We are worshiping our own feelings. And consequently, we are worshiping ourselves. We are worshiping what we would like God to be, which is actually idolatry. A big controversy was about the song. It's centered on the song, Reckless Love that came out over a year ago. I'm not even sure. Maybe more than that. Two years, a year and a half ago, I'm not sure. So there's a lot of controversy around this song. Of course, it was a song that became very popular. I have sang it at

church before. It was sung at church at one point before in the past, but a lot of people said, okay, well, this is a problem? Hang on a second, because is God's love reckless? Is that an accurate, biblical description of God's love? Reckless means to do something without thinking of the consequences. And a lot of people said, well, okay, God can't be reckless. Nothing he does is reckless because he is sovereign. The consequences of something are never out of God's knowledge. They're never out of God's control. He is calculated in all that he does because he is in control of all that he does. And everything that happens, there is nothing, not even a sparrow drops out of the sky without his knowledge and without his control. He knows exactly the cost of his love.

and he still chooses to give it. That does not make him reckless. That makes him extremely deliberate. And it's the deliberateness of that love that we should be worshipping and glorifying. There's a lot of people that were making that argument. I happen to agree with that. Now, let me give a little bit of credence to the other side.

I don't think that everyone who has ever sang this song or even the person who wrote this song has these terrible intentions. Because I do see, I do totally see where this is coming from. And honestly, I sang the song for a while not even really thinking about it. It's a very catchy, beautiful song that I do think contains some truth. But I remember when I sing it one Sunday at church, the pastor actually came up and said, now I like that song, but look, God is not reckless. And he was absolutely right to make that correction. I do see the side of people

who like this song, maybe the person who wrote the song. I don't know the person. I've not talked to him personally, I think probably what they were trying to communicate with this song is that God in his own terms is not reckless, but in human terms, we don't have the proper terminology for just how radical and just how all-consuming and how unconditional God's love is. So it might not be literally reckless, but it feels reckless to humans because he loves us imperfect people so completely, so fully, so unconditionally that it seems something like reckless to us. He loves Christians when we fail, when we fall down, when we shake our fist at him in anger. He still loves us. His love covers our deepest in our darkest sense. His love for us

sent his sinless son on a cross so that we might be righteous despite because of how undeserving we were, that feels reckless to us. And so I think that was probably the intention of the song. However, it's important for thoughtful Christians to think about this, that recklessness is not, according to the Bible, a true characteristic of the God of the universe, the God who created everything, who is in control of everything. It's not the best word choice for the song because it's not reflected in God's word. Now, again, I think it's possible to sing that song and still have probably a right understanding of who God is and just kind of have some confusion there and maybe didn't think about it that hard. I totally understand that. So I'm not condemning you if you sang the

song. But I do think it's important for us as Christians who are striving to worship, as God says, in spirit and in truth, to make sure that we are checking the songs that we are singing with scripture, which is our source of truth. The Word of God has to be our guide. That, Any song, any song that portrays God as some sort of genie who portrays God as someone who just exists to make you happy or exist to tell you how great you are is not a biblical worship song. Now, that doesn't mean that songs can't include us and can't include our relationship with him. They do. David throughout the Psalms certainly talked about his own feelings, his own fears, his own struggles, and how God is going to deliver him. And he talked about his own concerns.

He was very vulnerable in that. He turned his morning into praise and into worship of God. But the task for our worship and the task for our worship song specifically is whether or not this is glorifying God by reflecting his true character rather than reflecting the things that we feel. Again, there is unfortunately just kind of this, I don't want to say, say a movement, but a segment of Christianity who genuinely believes that feelings are the Holy Spirit and that you should follow your heart and it's going to lead you into a right relationship with God.

Well, the Bible says that our hearts are desperately wicked, that we can't even understand them. Like, we can't even understand our own hearts. And everyone who has ever tried to follow their heart can tell you that that's true? Like, how many times in your life can you, can you count that your heart misled you or your feelings misled you or what you thought were your instincts misled you. And I'm, I'm talking to someone who is a pretty intuitive person. I have been able to discern things using, of course, the Holy Spirit, but a sense of intuition pretty well. But I can think of about 10,000 times in my life where I thought I was right on something or I just had a feeling about something or maybe I, you know, didn't feel convicted about a certain area of my life. So I kept

going in it or whatever where I was wrong. Why? Because my heart, apart from Christ, your heart, apart from Christ, is desperately wicked. We cannot understand it. It's not something that is worth following. It's the same thing in worship. Just because you have a feeling about who you want God to be and what you want God to do does not mean that's who he is. And we don't have to guess it who he is. I mean, in a lot of ways, he's always going to be a mystery to us because we're finite and he's infinite. We're fallible. He's infallible. We are. temporary, at least our bodies. Well, okay, maybe that's not even accurate. We're temporary in some ways, but God is eternal and that we have a limited time on this physical earth, but he is suspended

in the eternal now. And so we're not going to be able to fully understand him. But we can know what we can know about God's character. Yes, using our own experience, but first and foremost and fundamentally under everything is the Word of God. So to worship with our lives, in spirit and in truth, we have to know our Bibles and we have to be able to judge our worship based on what scripture says. This is one reason why hymns are so classic, why they don't go out of style and why you can sing a hymn that was written hundreds of years ago and still you can be brought to tears because the truth of God does not change. It doesn't need to be made trendy in order to be relevant. No, it is ever relevant because God is ever relevant because he does not change

and our need for him does not change. Now, I'm not against modern worship songs at all. There are a ton of songs by Shane and Shane, for example, that I think are amazing and they do a really good job, I think, of basing their songs, at least the songs that I've heard on scripture. And so I have nothing wrong whatsoever with a lot of modern worship. I think it's great. I'm not one of those people. that saying, oh, no, we only have to sing hymns. I'm not saying that at all. But there is something to the classicness and the tradition of hymns that I personally think shouldn't be messed with.

Now this, what I'm about to say is just a personal preference. This is not basing anything off scripture. I personally don't like it when we mess with worship songs by adding a repetitive chorus. Like whenever I'm at church and I'm like singing a worship song or when I'm singing the hymn and I'm just so excited that we're singing this hymn. And then all of a sudden I realize in the middle of it that we're about to break out into a 2011 chorus. I'm like, dang it. And I thought that we were sticking with the hymn. I was really excited about the next stanza up. But then we go into some kind of, there's nothing wrong with that.

Nothing wrong with that. But it's just not my personal preference. But like I said, as long as we are basing our worship on what the Word of God actually says, on what scripture actually says, then we can assure ourselves that we are worshiping in spirit and in truth. And of course, this is true in all things, whether it is acts of obedience, whether it's how we are reading our Bibles, how we're speaking to people, what kind of movies and TV shows we're watching, which is something that we're going to talk about soon. Everything goes back to the Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit helps us to persevere in that. It gives us wisdom. It gives us wisdom. gives us a discernment of that. And we're going to fail. We're going to mess up. We're not going to be

perfect. But thankfully, thankfully, he gives us grace and he gives us the ability to discern these things. Now, we have a few minutes left. And a lot of you have asked me specifically about like certain songs that I am for in certain songs that I'm against. And I don't really want to get into all of that because we could take like 30 minutes to break down these songs. and to say, okay, yes, this is founded in scripture, this is not founded in scripture, this takes a decontextualized verse and makes it mean this when it doesn't really mean this. There's really no point in that. And the same thing about bands, I would just be discerning as we are in everything.

Also, I do want to say, like there are some people who say, you know, I just am not, I'm not a singing person. like I like to listen to instruments or I like to read to worship or I like to go outside to worship. Well, as we said, worship is our entire lives as Christians. It is we are a living sacrifice, the Bible says. And so in everything we do, whether we eat or drink, it is for the glory of the Lord. So it's not just singing song. So I do think that that's fine. Now, there is a call to, there is a call, it seems like, to have kind of concentrated times of worship or concentrated moments or whatever you want to call it, especially if we look throughout the Psalms of giving

thanks to the Lord. You don't have to be a singer, I don't think, in order to do that. Now, there are a lot of people who, because of these things are like really dejected and are really disheartened by the kind of worship that they have at their church. I would, unless it is a matter of scripture, I would not worry too much about the style of worship that you have in your church. Now, that said, let me give a caveat on that. Like, I'm just talking about, say you're an older person and you absolutely hate any time they do any contemporary music or you're a younger person, you absolutely hate any time they're doing hymns. That's what I'm talking about. I'm saying that that shouldn't be a deal breaker for you if you're like trying to switch churches.

is. But of course, if you are going to a church and the worship is unbiblical or you think that it's just a concert, I went to a church that was singing. It's a very popular church, by the way, if I said it, everyone who would know, that sings secular songs, sing secular songs. And this is, like, really part of the, like, heart of that church. Like, they believe they need to be, like, a seeker-friendly church. And so it'll warm people up if they seek some secular or if they sing some secular songs. There's no need for us to do that. Like, there's no need for us to try to, quote, redeem secular songs that were not Christian in nature. There's just so much good stuff that's based on scripture out there.

There's just no need for that. So if you are going to a church that you feel like the specific time of worship, the singing of worship is not based on biblical truth. And it's more about the people who are on stage or it's more about themselves or it's more about making non-churchgoers or non-Christians feel like, wow, this is so awesome and cool. then that may be a reason for you to examine just the mission of your church in general, because it might speak to some other theological issues in the church.

Do they believe in the supremacy of scripture? Are they preaching God's word? Are they preaching the true gospel? Are they just existent to make people feel good? Because remember, as we have talked about it, as we've heard people say on this show before, the kind of message that Jesus was preaching, and the kind of message that the apostles were preaching was not a seeker-friendly message. It was a call to come and die.

It was not a popular message. And so I do think that is probably something to think about when we're thinking about the worship at our churches. But I also don't think that we can be like, oh, I don't like that person's voice or I hate when he sings Chris Tomlin or something like that for that to be a reason to leave your church. In all things, we have to be discerning using the Word of God. That means worship. And that means, of course, every part of our church, most important,

importantly, the doctrines. And so I just wanted to add that one part. I feel like worship is something that people are, it's such a contentious subject sometimes when we talk about like the kind of church that you're going to. Sometimes I think people are too picky. Sometimes people aren't picky enough. As long as you're basing it on scripture, I think that you're going to be good. Okay, that's it for today. I hope that you have a great day and we will talk soon.