King Ahaz traveled to
Damascus (v10) to congratulate the king of Assyria on his recent victories.
While there, Ahaz was enamored by the detailed workmanship of a pagan altar and
immediately commissioned Urijah the priest to make a copy for worship in Yahweh’s
Temple. And thus began Judah’s horrible slide into apostasy.
At first, the two altars
were positioned side by side (v12). Shortly thereafter, the original altar was
moved to a back corner and replaced by the Damascan altar (v14-15). And
finally, the water basin that stood before the original brazen altar was cut
up for repurposing, and the brazen altar itself was turned into a private
oracle for Ahaz; a means for him to “inquire [of the LORD] by” (v15).
So then, perhaps not surprisingly,
we read this of God’s people in 2 Kings 17:15: “They despised his statutes and
his covenant that he made with their fathers and the warnings that he gave
them. They went after false idols and became false, and they followed the
nations that were around them, concerning whom the Lord had commanded them that they should not do like them.”
Note then, the pattern of
Ahaz and Judah’s slide into wholesale idolatry:
-
Enamored by the
sensual practices of pagan worship.
-
Imported the practices
of pagan worship into the true worship of Yahweh.
-
Allowed the pagan
practices to supplant the God-given practices.
-
Began to worship
the false gods associated with the pagan practices.
-
Became “false” just
like the gods they worshipped, and just like the nations that God had commanded
them not to imitate.
As Pastor Alistair Begg (and
others) have noted, “We must worship the right God in the right way.” We must
worship God in the way that He has prescribed while avoiding the means employed
by those who worship false gods, e.g. concerts, TED-talks and talk-shows. Why?
Because those who today worship the right God using the world’s means, tomorrow
will worship the world’s gods. Which provokes the question: What has God prescribed for true worship?
The following would be a
good start
in answering that important question:
-
Corporate gatherings
(Psa. 122:1; Acts 2:42; Heb. 10:25)
-
On the first day
of the week (1 Cor. 16:2)
-
The preaching of
the Word and apostolic doctrine (2
Tim. 42-3; Acts 2:42)
-
Christ-centered
fellowship (Acts 2:42)
-
Communion (Acts
2:42)
-
Prayer – literally,
the
liturgy, which the people who were listening to Peter would have understood to
include prayers of confession, thanksgiving and petition (Acts 2:42)
-
Singing psalms,
hymns and spiritual songs (Psa. 98:5; Eph. 5:19; James 5:13) And while we’re on
the topic: Why is the singing of psalms considered optional today?
-
Congregational
singing that is joyful (Psa. 98:4), skillful/loud (Psa. 33:3; 47:1), and glorious
(Psa. 66:2)
-
Characterized by “reverence
and awe” (Heb. 12:28)
-
Confessing the
faith (1 Tim. 6:12)
-
Presentation of
tithes/offerings (Deu. 16:10; 1 Cor. 16:2; Philip. 4:8)
-
Bodily (Psa. 63:4;
Psa. 138:2; 1 Tim. 2:8)
-
Multi-generational
(Exo. 12:3; Deu. 29:10-15; Acts 2:39)
Of course, relevance, in a
narrow sense, is good and necessary. And certainly every expression of the
Church needs to take its own cultural context into account when crafting its
liturgy. But the idea is to make the world more like the Church, not the other
way around. And as Ahaz’s story reminds us, adopting the world’s means and
modes of worship to serve the living and true God is most often the quickest
way to become just like the nations that we are commissioned to disciple (2
Kings 17:15; Matt. 28:19-20).
All this is to say, when
considering how to “worship the right God in the right way” it would be good to
bear in mind the maxim: When a glove falls in the mud, the mud doesn’t get
glovey. The glove gets muddy.
GH
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