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Worship is a dangerous activity because it involves
the meeting of men, who drink iniquity like water, with a God
more perfect than light. In the words of the Puritan-of-the-forgotten-name,
“We serve a precise God.” Far from the breezy, careless
attitude that we impute to the Most High, God cares about the
nuts and bolts of our worship. What we sing and how we pray
and the order of it all is not indifferent to God. Accordingly,
Scripture specifically commands us, when we enter the house
of God, not to act hastily and offer the sacrifice of fools
(Ecc. 5:1). Who are these careless fellows? Solomon leaves no
wiggle room: fools are presumptuous men who reason that wrong
worship offered sincerely is still acceptable to God.
If we pause to reflect upon that for a moment, this truth will
sober us. The Bible tells us that there exists a class of people
who enter worship, who act with haste and spontaneity and who
never dream that their sincere attempts at piety are acts of
evil for which Christ had to die. It has been said that sin
is merely a perversion of something good. Sincerity is good.
But America has made an idol of it.
We have done this, first, by equating spontaneity with sincerity.
Careful planning is old mahogany and dim light, hotel carpet
in the living room, stifling air and a fork for every course-even
the soup. Careful planning is formal and formal things are rigid
things, and stuffy things, and dead and impersonal things. And,
after all, didn’t we all accept Jesus as our personal Savior?
And is He not our Friend? Well, friends are about skylights,
and decaf coffee, and convertible VW bugs, and personal relationships.
And personal relationships are about informality, and intimacy,
and starting sentences with “And.” True worship-sincere
worship-can’t include all those formal things. It’s
simply antithetical to genuine heart-religion.
So reasons the modern evangelical mind. And quite sincerely.
Yet, somewhere we have lost our way. Sincerity is good, for
to act insincerely is to act hypocritically, and that is certainly
wicked. Whatever we do, we ought to do it because we are convinced
God requires it. But just because sincerity is necessary for
right worship does not mean that it is sufficient for right
worship. The absurd notion that all God requires for right worship
is warm fuzzies radiating from a sincere heart has given birth
to untold evil in the church.
Sincerity is good, but it is not a panacea that renders all
actions righteous. The idolater who sacrificed his sons to Molech
did so with sincerity. How else could he bear to look on while
his sons roasted in the flames? But did the man’s sincerity
suddenly make this repulsive and abominable act a pleasing and
acceptable aroma to God? Could anything be more preposterous?
Or take Nadab and Abihu, Aaron’s sons, who in their priestly
office offered to God a little bit of spontaneity and innovation
which the Lord “had not commanded.” There is nothing
in the text of Leviticus 10 to indicate they did so in duplicity
and hypocrisy. We have every reason to believe they were quite
sincere. But their sincerity did not save them. Fire came down
from heaven, and they were utterly consumed (Lev. 10:2). Again,
sincerity is necessary for right worship, but it is not sufficient.
Now let’s make some application to our day. Across America
millions will enter churches this Lord’s Day with good
intentions. In fact, the charitable thing to believe is that
no one comes with the express intention of doing evil. And yet
nevertheless, there is a class of people who, though they sincerely
desire to do the good, all they accomplish is evil (Ecc. 5:2).
They act with haste in the house of God. Impulse and emotion
dictate their actions, instead of the Word of God. They are
sincere. Oh most assuredly yes. And they are zealous too. But
their sincerity is not an informed sincerity, their zeal a “zeal
without knowledge” (Rom. 10:2).
If we are to take this lesson to heart, then we cannot just
assume that what we do in worship is right. We must think it
all through deliberately with an open Bible in front of us so
we avoid the errors of sincere men who are sincerely wrong.
We must inform our sincerity and educate our zeal so that we
act in worship just as God would have us to act. Sincerity is
good, but it is “not good for (sincerity) to be alone.”
She was created as a helpmeet. She was created to be wed to
truth.
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