It’s 10:30 AM on Sunday morning. (Maybe your services don’t start at 10:30 AM, but humor me here.)

Worship is about to start. How will you know when it does?

• The song/worship leader begins to sing a song.
• Someone in the audience spontaneously begins to sing a song and the congregation follows.
• An elder gets up to make announcements and says, “Good morning!” Then he repeats his greeting if the congregation doesn’t reciprocate loud enough.
• As congregants enter the auditorium, they see a scripture displayed on the screen. At 10:30 AM, a man goes to the podium, greets the congregation, reads scripture, and says a few words to help the assembly prepare for the next hour in the presence of Holy God.

J. Randal Matheny, a missionary in Brazil, writes one of the blogs I sometimes read. He suggests we’ve become too casual in our approach to worship. A few years back, he observed…

…kids are text-messaging during worship. Elders must move them to repent (parents, to discipline), and repent themselves for not taking action.…Praise teams, praise music and contemporary worship have not elevated our sense of the divine presence in worship, but coarsened our spirits to be titillated by sensual and visual stimulation. We miss seeing the Invisible.

We need to prepare for worship — not just appear at the appointed time (or 10 minutes late; after all, what do we miss? A couple songs?), but to recognize that we’re being “ushered into the Lord’s presence”, as Matheny wrote.

He also believes it’s shameful to “start a song to quieten people down”. I think I’d agree with that, if that were truly the reason. I’ve been a member of more than one congregation though, where we did begin services that way, and the reason wasn’t to quiet people down. The song was chosen specifically to help us remember that we are indeed sinners in the presence of a Mighty God, and were assembled to worship Him. What’s wrong with that?

“We miss seeing the Invisible.” Indeed!

Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen. (1 Timothy 1:17)

If that’s what’s on your heart when you begin worship — great! If not, why not?

Matheny observed, “Our worship, also, has been sanitized. The blood and gore of the cross have been mopped up.” I agree. The cross was a horrendous way to die! It was painful. It was humiliating.

You’ve seen The Passion of the Christ. If you thought Mel Gibson went overboard, if you thought he made the scenes from the scourging through the crucifixion needlessly gory, I’d like to suggest you don’t have a real sense of how terrible it was to be sentenced to death at the hands of the Romans. If anything, Gibson sugar-coated it.

Here’s the crux of the matter, according to Matheny:

The main issue, probably, is emotional burnout. We’ve thrilled ourselves to death. Worship doesn’t send a shiver up our legs. So it’s ho-hum, ho-hum, to dreary church we go.

That’s right. We’ve become tired of worship. It does take 1-2 hours out of our weekend, after all. Why be bothered? In fact, I know of people who have admitted to attending worship (not to mention never attending Bible class) only on Sunday morning “because that’s all that’s required”. Ouch. Let’s reverse that. What if Jesus did “all that was required”? Not a single one of us would have a hope of eternity in heaven. Jesus, yes, did what was required in order for us to have a hope of eternal life, but He didn’t do only what was required for Him to remain Holy God. He already had that stature, and nothing can change that.

What was required? Nothing. What was necessary in order for His younger brothers & sisters to have a hope of eternal life with Him? Exactly what he did. He, the perfect, spotless Lamb of God, gave His life so that I, the ugly, blemished-all-over black sheep sinner, might live with Him forever.

Hallelujah!