RELIGIOUS WORSHIP OR RELIGIOUS ENTERTAINMENT

We live in a day when true delight in the spiritual worship and service of God is rare. Few in our day sincerely echo the heart-felt utterance of the Psalmist when he said: “How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts! My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.” “I was glad”, he had also to say, “when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord.” To him a day in the Lord’s house was better than a thousand.

In past days the religious services of God’s sanctuary were thronged with eager worshippers. Though there were those at that time who had no spiritual understanding of the great things of God’s law, there were many others who had real spiritual delight in the things of God and who counted it a privilege to draw near to God in the courts of His own house. In those days Communion seasons were not decried as mere Highland traditionalism but were regarded as joyful spiritual feasts where the poor of the flock and seeking souls were fed with the manna of God’s Word. In believingly partaking of that manna, how often they found themselves partaking of the True Bread that cometh down from heaven. What sustenance they derived from such spiritual feasts where Christ was set forth in all the glory of His Person as the Divine Son of the Everlasting Father and in all the perfection of His finished work! Christ and Him crucified was the main theme at such times and for the living exercised soul it meant a sumptuous repast and a time of joy in their spiritual experience.

So it must have been, too, to the spiritually exercised in Israel in days of old in going up to Jerusalem to take part in the set feasts. It is true that they did not possess the full measure of light which the Church is now possessed of in New Testament times, yet how well they used the measure of light they had then. If we think of Abraham who lived in earlier times even, what light he possessed, what an entrance into divine things he obtained when Christ could say to him: “Abraham rejoiced to see My day: and he saw it, and was glad.” But whether Old Testament or New, the spiritually exercised people of God always had delight in the spiritual worship of Jehovah.

Today, how different is the tale! Where religious worship has not been altogether abandoned, as is the case with multitudes, there is little, if any, spiritual relish for the things of God. To many religious worship is regarded as something stale and uninteresting — and the more spiritual the worship is the more it is despised — and men turn away from it in the hope of finding something that will more appeal to the natural heart of man. We do not need to be surprised to find that there are those who are more than ready to provide for such tastes. Consequently in our day religious entertainment is beginning to usurp the place once occupied by religious worship.

Religious entertainment in its grossest form no doubt means the use of religious drama in what is supposed to be the worship of God. Today this is quite a common practice in many churches and is defended by many as a legitimate practice. The forms that religious entertainment can take are many, including dramatic presentation from the pulpit or religious teachings, something abhorrent to the Spirit-taught child of God and utterly out of keeping with the solemnity and weightiness of the doctrines taught and with the issues involved.

In professed evangelical circles religious entertainment often comes in the form of religious meetings of one kind or another — meetings that are often of little spiritual value. To these meetings many are ready to gather who would absent themselves if there were gatherings for true spiritual edification. This preference for what is unspiritual or of little spiritual value reflects on the glory of the gospel of Christ and on Him who is not only the Author of that gospel but the sum and substance of it as well. This desire for religious entertainment rather than for religious worship is an indication of the low spiritual state to which the professing Church has fallen in our time. When the Lord will again build up Sion it is certain that things will be very different. The courts of God’s house will then be thronged with worshippers eager for the spiritual services of His sanctuary.

How the present state of affairs has risen in the Church! We know that in order to appreciate spiritual worship a spiritual mind is required. If then we show a preference for religious entertainment surely this indicates that either we have no spiritual mind or else that spiritual life is at a very low ebb in our soul. Where the carnal mind reigns or is in the ascendency there is ever a desire for novelty but where grace is in living exercise in the soul, the soul finds spiritual feeding not only in the unfolding of what is new but in the oft-repeated truths of God’s Word as well.

What need there is to be taken up with spiritual things, delighting in them as those things that are life-giving and enduring. The natural man cannot delight in the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. But the spiritual man delights in them and seeks an entrance into them more and more. Let us then ask of the Lord that He would be pleased, for the sake of His beloved Son, to give us a spiritual mind and to send His Holy Spirit to lead us into spiritual things. Only then will the worship of God become truly a delight to our soul and we will then be of one mind with the Psalmist when he says:

“One thing I of the Lord desir’d,
And will seek to obtain,
That all days of my life I may
Within God’s house remain.
That I the beauty of the Lord
Behold may and admire,
And that I in His holy place
May rev’rently enquire.”

Ps. 27:4

(This article taken from the Free Presbyterian Magazine is certainly not only for Scotland, but can also apply to our country. The religious pages of our newspapers give adequate proof that Sunday services are often changed into entertainment of one sort or another.)

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