My Daily Pause

Woe unto You, Scribes and Pharisees – between 1886 and 1894 – James Tissot (1836–1902)

“The way I like to worship is ______”

“My favorite part of worship is ______”

“Worship is a personal thing with me …”

These statements and their variants are common in any conversation about the worship service and church attendance.

If we are going to have a conversation about worship, it should certainly should include a discussion of Mark 7. Here, we get to witness Jesus and his disciples running afoul of the Pharisees because the disciples chose not to do the ceremonial washing before eating. (Mark 7:1-4)

Jesus responds with a prophesy from Isaiah:

This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. – Mark 7:6-7

When we read these passages and compare what they are teaching to the typical comments we make about our worship, we should realize the danger! Is God telling us he doesn’t care about traditions and what we like when it comes to proper worship?

Take a look at Cain and Abel for a minute. (Genesis 4) We can assume from this event a couple of things:

• Abel obeyed God with his sacrifice
• Cain did not please God with his sacrifice

God goes on to ask Cain, “…if you do well, will you not be accepted?” The take away from this is that God is rather particular about how we worship him. The Hebrews writer praised Abel for having enough faith to worship exactly the way God told him to. (Hebrews 11:4)

To restate that: Obeying God in our worship is a measure of our faith!

Jesus equated the forming of new traditions to the rejection of God. (Mark 7:9) In light of his teaching, it sounds like a good idea to review how we worship. Today I challenge us to ask ourselves:

Are we offering God what he wants?

Are we putting what we want before his commandments?