In reaction to the trend that separates preaching and worship as distinct…where worship is up, preaching is down and never the twain shall meet…
“I contend that the Bible depicts preaching and worship as tightly bound in a symbiotic relationship.” Jeffrey Arthurs
-The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching,
Robinson and Larsen, Zondervan
Currently in our culture, there is an abundance of spirituality (ad nauseum) but sadly a woeful, colossal, neglect and famine of truth. Spirituality today has become the SuperWalmart of religious preferences where you can go anywhere in the store and pretty much get what you want at a good price…and get more of it, too! Honestly, I prefer the regular, non-industrial sized Wal-Mart (my favorite store btw). I get lost in the Super Wal-Mart, frustrated seeing so much of everything when all I want is a little of something. I get easily seduced into wanting what I don’t need that sometimes I behave like the sailors in Homer’s epic, The Odyssey, who were ordered to stuff wax into their ears so they wouldn’t lose their reason or lives to ruin by listening to the immediately pleasing but ultimately fatal song of the Sirens. Their leader, Odysseus, almost went insane by allowing himself to be lashed to the ship’s mast, ‘wax-less’, so he could experience their seductive serenade.
In the religious world, there has been a seductive serenade sung for centuries and is still on the top 40’s charts of pop religion. It’s the whole notion that truly enlightened thinkers abandon the archaic and faulty presuppositions of Christ as presented in the Bible, and instead to evolve to the more sophisticated view that Jesus, although special, was no more special than Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius, Krishna and Oprah! For many proponents in this elite group of patrons, Jesus Christ holds a prestigious, nigh unto egalitarian status among a pantheon of religious leaders whose teachings are all pretty much the same and accomplish for mankind results that are also pretty much the same.
Aside from the fact that any serious reader of these leaders’ philosophies and teachings will discover startling contrasts that make it fundamentally impossible for them to be on the same dais, as a born again believer in Christ, I cannot ignore the startling truths and principles of Scripture, particularly, the following:
Colossians 1:18-19 (ESV) And he [Jesus] is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
He is preeminent in everything! “Preeminence” means supreme in authority, priority, and superiority. “Everything” means everything! How does one reconcile that One who is supreme can also be equal to one who is not? In America, we pride ourselves on the ideal that all men are created equal and that is indeed true, but that cannot apply to One who claimed and has been acclaimed as One who is, in His very essence, “uncreated”? That’s a whole different category that can in no way be seen as similar to anything else on any aisle or shelf in the religious SuperWalmart! Theologians refer to Jesus having an “infinite qualitiative distinction” to any other religious figure.
Crude example. It’s ludicrous to tell me that having $2 is the same as having $2 million. If I went into a Dollar Store to spend $2, I walk out with 2 items. If I go into that same store with $2 million, I walk out with everything in that store including the racks, shelves, plastic bags, windows, roof and foundation! The lesson: what you come out of the store with is determined by how much you go into the store with! Jesus Christ cannot be and must never be put on the same shelf, in the same aisle or anywhere in the same store as all the others! His own claims and the claims of Scripture make that impossible. He is supremely preeminent with infinite transcendence. It is to our great ruin and His great displeasure for us to consider Him in any way less.
The quality of our worship is related to how we are affected by the reality of Jesus as exclusive in His divine supremacy or supreme divinity. Since the kind of worship God is after is that which is done in spirit and truth (John 4:24), to see Jesus as anything less than He is or as anything equal to other religious figures is to be disqualified from the kind of worship worthy of God. We must come into the arena of worship with the conviction of the true character of Christ as revealed from His lips and affirmed among the pages of Scripture. True worship cannot happen where Jesus is not truly revered as Supreme Lord. Consider the words of the startling prophecy of what Christ would be considered:
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. -Isaiah 9:6 (ESV)
Look carefully at the titles the ancient prophet foretold Jesus would be called! Among the title, He will be called, Mighty God and the Everlasting Father! To that I can legitimately and rightly exclaim, Oh, My God! Such a One can never be lumped into a club of even the best of humanity and considered equal.
Let me be clear. This is not a militant, hyper-protective, imperialistic diatribe intending to whip up the Christian masses into a wild-eyed, angry collection of religiously intolerant conquistadors seeking to “Take America Back!” (Hardly anyone reads my stuff anyway!) On the contrary, my hope is to affect as I have been affected and to call true professing Christ-followers to celebrate the supreme foundations of our faith in the trans-human, God-incarnate, Jesus, and then to move about in the world with absolute gentleness and respect for others but with resolute intolerance for mixing the foundations of our faith with any other religious haz-mat. It’s a call to purity in our faith and charity to those who don’t hold to our views.
I have already confessed the ways I treat Jesus as less than God. (It wasn’t the first; it won’t be the last!). Right now I am so grateful for a profound sense of awe for a greater regard for Christ in response to His Word to us. May you find that same reverence in response to Him, far above my feeble words!
May we never forget that the majesty of things made is greatly surpassed only by the majesty of the One who made it. Amnesia here or getting these mixed up brings about destructive consequences!
"Imprinted" on Worship 