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July 13, 2008
Worship That PleasesGod
a sermon on Amos 5.21-24
& Isaiah
29.13-14
by David C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama
The following is a true story. I know because it happened to two of my friends
when we were in high school. They dated for over a year, and for while believed
they shared true love. They were always together. In the spring of our junior
year, their happiness began to unravel. The relationship became unhappy, then
tense, and finally it fell apart completely. Love morphed into loathing, and
neither could stand the other, and they called it quits … two weeks before the
prom. Consider the problem they faced. Both wanted to go to the prom, but not
with the other. Only two weeks out, however, everyone who was going already had
a date. Enter the parents. Her mother called his mother for a concerned chat.
Her parents had spent $300 on a dress, and this young man had invited her and
promised to take her, and she (the girl’s mother) thought he ought to fulfill
his obligations. The young man’s mother agreed. She thought both young people
ought to be mature about it. He already had the tickets. With their moms in
collusion, my friends’ fate was sealed. Their parents ordered them to go to the
prom together. He showed up at the appointed hour dressed like James Bond at a
Mexican wedding, corsage in hand. They smiled and posed for the mandatory two
rolls of pictures of the dress. Once at the prom, they danced the first dance
together, then headed straight to a table and began to seek other dance
partners. They barely spoke the whole evening, though they did pose for the
professional photographer. The pictures look good. At dinner, which of course
was at a fancy restaurant, they spoke to others at the table and traded barbs
with each other. Their feelings for each other were mutual and evident. Finally
he took her home, and I suspect both were glad it was over. Funny thing about
that prom. Some couples were in love, or thought they were. Some were just
friends having a good time. This couple couldn’t stand each other. If all you
had was the pictures, though, you’d never know who was who. Going through the
motions. They sure did. Everything tradition dictated about the prom they went
though with. The clothes, the flowers, the pictures, even the dinner.
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Funny thing about worship. Some people are here to express their love for God,
eager to hear his Word. Some are here because they are looking for something.
Some are just going though the motions. Enter Amos. Amos is my favorite Old
Testament prophet. Not because he offers a cheerful message of hope. He doesn’t.
Amos preached the end of God’s people—Israel was too broken to fix, to sick to
cure; she would have to die. Later prophets, like Ezekiel, brought the message
of resurrection; God was not through with his people. Amos was a pioneer
prophet, and he sounded the alarm. God was not pleased with his people. The
reason I am so fond of Amos is that during high school I was on a church drama
team, and I played the prophet Amos in a play. It was the best role I ever had.
The other actors started on stage, and they played a church full of
self-righteous hypocrites. I started out in the middle of the audience. At a
certain moment, I jumped to my feet and yelled, “Stop!” Whenever we performed
away from home, this always took everyone by surprise. Once a woman tried to
shush me and get me to sit back down. It took her a while to realize I was part
of the play. The other reason I like Amos is, he answered God’s call with a lot
of courage. Amos was not a professional prophet. They had those in ancient
Israel. They were on the king’s payroll and usually said what he wanted to hear.
Amos was a shepherd and vinedresser. He tended sheep and fig trees. He lived in
a small town called Tekoa, a little south of Jerusalem. According to the Book of
Amos, the Word of God came to him like the roar of a lion. “The lion has roared;
who will not fear? The Lord GOD has spoken; who can but prophesy?” [3.8] That
was his call. It led him from a small town in the southern kingdom of Judah to
the center of power in the northern kingdom of Israel. There Amos spoke truth to
power, blasting the king, the priests, and the well-to-do. Nobody enjoys being
on the receiving end of preaching like his, but everyone likes to see it turned
on other people. Amos lived and preached about 750 years before Christ. It was a
time of peace and prosperity for Israel. Times were good. The economy was
booming. The rich were living it up. Then along comes Amos crying, “Woe to those
who are at ease in Zion!” Amos was not the first prophet, but the Book of Amos
is the earliest of the prophetic books named for the prophet. Amos was a
trendsetter. He preached a message of judgment because God’s people had failed.
He spoke about God’s concern for justice. And he had a pronounced anti-religious
leaning. As Amos saw it, the religious leaders were corrupt, worship was empty,
and religion was part of the problem. Later prophets sounded all these notes,
especially the biggies: Isaiah and Jeremiah.
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In our reading from the Book of Amos, the prophet takes aim at worship. Actually
the Lord takes aim, because God is speaking through the prophet here in the
first person. “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your
solemn assemblies.” Actually the Hebrew of the last line is more poetic. It
literally means, “I can’t stand the smell of your solemn assemblies.” Think of a
noxious odor that makes you nauseous the instant you smell it. That’s how God
felt about his people’s worship. Consider how shocking this message was. We are
accustomed to a religious critique of religion. It’s a hallmark of
Presbyterianism. We are a church reformed and always being reformed according to
the Word of God. Most of the time we are harder on ourselves than we are on
others. And rightly so. But this was something new when Amos attacked worship in
the name of God. Perhaps back then people thought that worship is inherently
pleasing to God. Certainly many people today assume that. You go to worship, you
sing, you give—God likes it when you do that, right? God is disappointed when
you don’t worship. That only stands to reason, doesn’t it? The idea that worship
might make God angry or disgusted seems counter-intuitive. We rarely ever ask
ourselves during the time for reflection while the prelude plays, “Am I about to
offend God by what I’m doing?” Worship always pleases God, right? Sometimes a
lot, other times perhaps just a little, but it is always good. Amos says no. Why
did God reject Israel’s worship? What was wrong with it? Let’s start with what
was not wrong with it. They got the words right. They got the actions right.
They were going through the motions just fine, following the Law of Moses
carefully. The festivals were probably beautifully and dramatically done.
Participants felt moved. As for the sacrifices, nothing wrong there. They
weren’t trying to slip in old, sick animals. They didn’t skimp. And the music?
Professionally done. Very inspiring. It was a prosperous time. The arts were
flourishing, and for Israel at worship that meant the musical arts. Nothing was
wrong with the form of their worship. So what was wrong? Two things. God hated
their worship because of (1) what did not happen in worship and (2) what did not
happen outside worship. What did not happen in worship? The people did not seek
God. The passage in Isaiah goes to the root of the problem: “These people honor
me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me.” To worship is to draw
near to God, to love God, to celebrate God, to give voice to your trust and hope
in God. Worship happens more in the heart than anyplace else. At its best,
worship involves all of us, heart, mind, and body. At its worst, we go through
the motions, but our heart isn’t in it. We become like my old friends at the
prom. We put on a show, but for whom? God isn’t impressed. He sees our hearts.
He knows. And he doesn’t like being showered with empty words any better than
anyone else does.
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The Isaiah passage lends itself to misunderstanding. When God complains that
worship is a human commandment learned by rote, he is not taking a stand against
a set liturgy, such as the Lord’s Prayer. The point is that worship had become
merely rote, with no heart in it. I’ll give you a counter example. Few things in
worship are as rote as the traditional wedding vows. They have changed a little
in the past 400 years, but not much. Young people today get married using the
same words their parents and grandparents used. Yet how much feeling I have
witnessed in those words while presiding at weddings! Couples choke up. They
giggle. They cry. Grooms too. Sometimes I think they won’t get the words out.
Take the Lord’s Prayer as another example. We say that every week. If we don’t
mean it, if we say it without thinking, then that’s bad. But if we mean it, it
is wonderful. When I was in college I worked in churches during summers to test
my calling and gain experience. Another student doing the same thing remarked
how praying the Lord’s Prayer with 50 college students gathered for ministry was
so different from praying it with his high school football team, who said it
each week as part of the pregame ritual but without meaning. Isaiah, like Amos,
cared about the heart. Another point about that Isaiah text. When God promises
to do shocking and amazing things, these are not good things. This too is a
message of judgment. God is never boring. Whether saving or judging, he is full
of surprises. God rejected Israel’s worship then because they did it with their
lips but not their hearts. The other reason involved what did not happen outside
worship. For this we go back to Amos, who famously declared, “Let justice roll
down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” God’s people
were coming to worship and putting on a good show. They looked so pious, so holy
at their festivals and assemblies. But the rest of the time they were greedy
[I’d better not say the word for what they were, although I bet Amos did!] who
cheated the poor, perverted justice through bribes, and otherwise polluted the
moral and ethical climate. God was disgusted by it. “Don’t come calling my name
if that’s how you live your life,” he said. “I don’t need that kind of worship.
In fact, I hate it.” This passage posits a connection between worship and the
other 167 hours of the week. Never imagine that this hour is holy and the rest
are not. Every hour is holy for Christians. Yes, we set aside special times to
gather for worship. But our whole lives are an expression of worship. We are
“living sacrifices,” as Paul wrote in Romans 12. Think of a married couple.
Every Friday night they share a romantic dinner. That is a special and important
time for them, but they remain married the rest of the time—even when they are
asleep or at work. When you become a Christian, your whole like is oriented on
God. Everything you do becomes an act of worship … or desecration. The natural
human tendency is to separate our experiences into distinct boxes. I act one way
at work, another way with my family, another way at church. It doesn’t work that
Worship That Pleases God 5
way. God is with you all the time. Worship that pleases God flows out of a life
of love for God. Now for the important question: Why this sermon? It comes from
a challenge a friend gave me. He pondered whether our worship pleases God if we
are holding back on him. We come to worship, we celebrate God’s promises, we
sing and pray; but somewhere, deep down, we are holding something back. We know
God wants us to do something. We hear his call. But we ignore it. We are content
to live our lives the way we want with a layer of faith slathered on like icing
on a cake. Does our worship become a game if we are not open to God’s call? The
challenge struck me. And so I am preaching this sermon to you and to myself. I
know what self-righteous hypocrisy looks like, and I rarely ever see it in our
church. You are, in my opinion, sincere and dedicated. Even those who are still
wrestling with God’s call are honest seekers, and who can fault that? Certainly
not me. Granted we have room for improvement. Who doesn’t? But we are not so bad
as Amos thought Israel was, at least I hope we’re not. And yet, I believe we
need this message too. We need to remember that all of life is holy and what
happens out there has everything to do with what happens in here. We also need
to come to worship each week eager for an encounter with the living God. Never
just going through the motions. Always with the conviction that God will bless
and honor our worship because we come to him humbly and sincerely, desiring
nothing more than to know him and to honor him with our lives. John Grisham has
written many good books, among them The Testament. It’s about a lawyer sent into
the swamps of Brazil to find a missionary who has inherited a multi-billion
dollar estate. The lawyer is fresh out of rehab, his family broken, his future
in jeopardy because of crimes he has committed. He’s worshipped money all his
life and made a mess of everything he has touched. At one point he has this
conversation with the missionary. She begins, “You worship money, Nate. You’re
part of a culture where everything is measured by money. It’s a religion.”
“True. But sex is pretty important too.” “Okay, money and sex. What else?”
“Fame. Everybody wants to be a celebrity.” “It’s a sad culture. People live in a
frenzy. They work all the time to make money to buy things to impress other
people. They’re measured by what they own.” “Am I included?” “Are you?” “I
suppose.” “Then you’re living without God. You’re a very lonely person, Nate, I
can sense it. You don’t know God.”
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He squirmed and considered a quick defense, but the truth disarmed him. He had
no weapons, no punches, no foundation to stand on. “I believe in God,” he said,
truthfully but weakly. “It’s easy to say that,” she said, her words still slow
and soft. “And I don’t doubt you. But saying is one thing, living is another
matter.” [paperback ed., p. 285] In this world, where we are beset by
temptations, pressures, discouragement, and lies—all of which threaten to make
us someone we are not, to take away what is most real and precious about us—we
have a gift from God that anchors us and reminds us who we are and that we are
in his hands. This gift is worship. Simply come with hope, seeking God. Come
with faith, trusting God. And God will receive you with open arms. He will also
make you strong and send you back out to do his work. The most valuable gift God
gives us is himself. That’s what worship is about. God giving himself to us, and
us giving ourselves to God. How heartbreaking that we would ever just go through
the motions. That we would smile and look good for the pictures but have a
miserable evening. Worship is life. We were made for worship. But a life
centered on self is incompatible with worship centered on God. They cannot exist
in the same person. The mixture is volatile and unstable. Either worship puts
God in the center of life, so that all of life becomes worshipful, or worship
becomes empty and vain—honoring God with the lips while the heart is far from
him. My hope for you is that you will worship joyfully. May you hear God’s call,
and when you do, obey. Hold nothing back. Lay your soul bare before your
Creator, and drink deeply of his grace. After all, Christ died for you. The
Father raised him from the dead. We have a living Savior. He is not absent from
our worship. He is here. Worship should be the most powerful part of your life.
Is it? Does your worship flow from a life lived for God? Or does it stand in
stark contrast to a life lived for self? Please, don’t miss what God has for
you! Amen. rev_mauldin@yahoo.com
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