Worship is to Please God
41 The other lamb you shall offer at twilight, and shall offer with it a grain offering and its drink offering, as in the morning, for a pleasing aroma, a food offering to the LORD.
In our modern day church worship we are very much concerned that those who attend the worship service “get a lot out of it.” Our consumer minded approach has caused us to design a worship service that is worshipper-centric vs God-centric. We very much want to know that the worshipper is pleased. The struggle with that mindset, however, is that the entire point of worship is to make sure we please God, not ourselves. In this section of Exodus God has gone to great lengths to describe how to come to Him in worship. In fact, it might be well noted that God spent only two chapters of the entire Bible to describe the creation of the earth, but entire books on how to worship Him. You could say that the entire Bible is a story of how we are to worship God. Yet, we are more concerned that those visiting the church that day have a “valuable experience.” God is not interested in “our” experience. God has designed the entire setting of the Tabernacle to bring pleasure to Him. In fact, when you consider all the animals that were slaughtered on the Day of Atonement, we can put into perspective the “experience” of the worshipper with today’s worship service. The flow of blood alone, as well as the smell of dead flesh would have turned many away. But, as the above verse points out, the entire experience was to bring pleasure to God. The next time we hear a song on the radio or from our favorite artist and we “feel good” and our “foot starts tapping,” we need to remember, that that is okay. But, that is NOT the point. We might be pleased with the tune and sound, but we need to ask, “Is God?”
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