Colossians 2:5
For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.
Worship is warfare: it is organized, intentional, and lethal against those who oppose it. It is not haphazard, sporadic, or poisonous, however, to those engaged rightly in it.
“'Let all things be done decently and in order' (1 Cor. 14:40). We want nothing to do with those who walk disorderly (2 Thess. 3:6-7, 11). 'For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ' (Col. 2:5). That word for order in Colossians is taxis, a military term. Think regimentation. Christian worship should be disciplined, focused, intentional, trained, and powerful." — Douglas Wilson, Christ and the Gods of Chaos
We have fallen prey to thinking that authenticity is the most important aspect of any emotive action and that authenticity is best tested by an action's spontaneity. In other words, we have been tricked into thinking that standing with everyone else and turning to #93 in your Cantus Christi to sing Psalm 47 is not worship.
"The gods of chaos are going to be cut into pieces, and it is going to be Christian worship that does it. So we do not want an ordered worship service because we are tidy-minded people who simply want an ordered worship service. We want an ordered worship service because we are putting the world in order. We do not fight against flesh and blood, but rather with the gods of chaos." — Douglas Wilson, Christ and the Gods of Chaos
Right worship is not merely for right-brained saints and it is not right merely because right-brained saints might prefer it. Some might not. But that is beside the point. Right worship is not the kind that any particular personality type likes, it is the type that God likes. He commands what He enjoys. He isn't impressed by any and every act of spontaneity. He isn't against originality, but He is opposed to pride.
"The chief aim of order is to make room for good things to run wild." -- G.K. Chesterton
In my house, we have two rules: (1) obey, and (2) have fun! If you obey, I promise you'll have fun. If you refuse to obey, I promise you no one will be having fun. When discipline must be applied, I remind the kids that I don't want to discipline them, I want them to obey. What I want is alacrity: brisk, cheerful readiness to obey. When that happens, everyone is guaranteed to have a blast.
It is the same with worship. If you try to manufacture fun without obeying, it may be fun for a while... but then Dad shows up. And all the fun is gone. But if you do what Dad says, He promises us that we will have fun. We have no idea the joy He has planned for those who walk in His ways. He withholds no good things from those who love Him and one of the first and most obvious blessings is that His commandments are not burdensome, but a blessing in themselves. David delighted in the Law. He likened it to honey, only better. Honey is sweet, but it borrows its sweetness from God. So, if He can make something that good, how much better is He? All that said, God is a God of order, not of chaos. Chaos isn't as fun as it looks. You can only burn down the city for so long before you burn through all the real estate. But in Christ, the fun is sitting at the Father's right hand and His pleasures are inexhaustible, inextinguishable, and eternal.
"So if we are talking about worship of the God of the Bible, disorderly worship, unstructured worship, froth and bubble worship, is therefore oxymoronic. Right worship is stable, structured, firm, and formed." — Douglas Wilson, Christ and the Gods of Chaos
A saint may experience an extemporaneous emotion in the midst of his regular, right worship, but he doesn't push the buttons in the right order in order to produce it or feverishly try to go back after the fact to capture the recipe for replication. He doesn't trying to catch the wind and he doesn't confirm the value of order by its ability to produce the occasional spark.
"The nations of men, with all their tumults, are a great ocean. This is a figure that Scripture uses for them often. The oceans stand in for the turbulent transformations and upheavals among the nations of the world (Dan. 7:3; Rev. 13:1). And so the difference between structured worship that is God-centered, Christ-honoring, and Bible-believing, and worship that is not, is the difference between an island in the middle of the ocean, like Hawaii, and a huge raft made out of balsa wood.” — Douglas Wilson, Christ and the Gods of Chaos
Right worship is not aimed at eliminating our emotions, it is aimed at bringing joy and honor to God. He has, in His grace, told us what He likes. We may enjoy our right worship of Him, but we may not use our enjoyment as the metric by which we determine what is right in worship. The standard by which worship is measured is, "Would God like it?" If the answer is, "No," it does not matter how much we might enjoy it.
This all being said, orderly is not godly. Aaron had to fashion the golden calf, but that didn't make it any better.
Exodus 32:4-8
He [Aaron] received the gold at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, and made a molten calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.” And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down; for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves; they have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them; they have made for themselves a molten calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’”
So, here we see that order can be heretical and personal fulfillment can be chaos. The golden calf was orderly and unorthodox. The dancing was decadent and unorthodox. The calf required special attention and the celebrating gave way to special inattention. There is a way to honor God in order and emotion and there is a way to dishonor Him in order and emotion. This is why it is particularly important to obey Him in order to delight in Him.
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