Ultimate Worship

 

Occasionally I get my ‘knickers in a knot’ over comments by church worship leaders that have not been well thought through.  That happened again recently.  After the first song in an opening bracket, we were told: “Our worship this morning will lead us into the presence of God”.  Really!?!  It’s troubling too that in such pronouncements ‘worship’ is usually regarded only as the gathered community’s time of praise.  Since when was worship limited to congregational singing?  I’ve yet to hear someone say that our listening to an exposition of God’s Word in a sermon will lead us into God’s presence.

It reminded me of a Christian music CD I once had in my collection.  It was yet another instance of a Christian lack of discernment getting right up my nose.  The title of the CD...?  Ultimate Worship!  Good grief!  If that was meant to impress I was totally under-whelmed.  Okay, there are some lovely songs on that CD... but to label the collection as ‘Ultimate Worship’ should be offensive to thoughtful Christians.  According to my understanding, ultimate is that beyond which there is none.  Ultimate is the last word... the final experience... the definitive... the decisive.  It just can’t get any better.

If the CD artists gave that album its title then it says little for their humility – but then, an album entitled Humble Worship, is not exactly going to cut it in today’s competitive consumer market.  The marketers undoubtedly selected that title for promotional reasons, but I’m afraid it had the reverse effect on me.  It wasn’t going to help sell that CD to this consumer.  Why not?  Because it is falsely so named!  Ultimate worship is something we will never experience this side of glory.  Ultimate worship is that which we read about in the book of Revelation chapter 4, where all creation worships the Lamb who was slain.  Ultimate worship will happen only in a perfect world when sin and distraction no longer hinder the perfect praises of our blessed Saviour and King.  The worship we listen to on a CD can never, ever be ultimate worship.  Compared to “live worship” before the throne, together with all the saints in glory, even the world’s best CD will seem frightfully bland.

I did end up with a copy.  My daughter heard I was looking for Christian albums to play on my Sunday night radio program.  She turned up with a box of Christian CDs from a garage sale.  I notice, by the way, that there’s more than one collection of Christian songs called ‘Ultimate Worship’ and these days you play the songs from them on Spotify.

There was a reviewer of this CD when it first came out who also needed to be more discerning – or was the reviewer simply quoting some advertising blurb used to market the album?  In any case the review ended with these words: “Ultimate Worship is designed to provide a way to enter into the presence of God.”  You’ve got to be joking!  Didn't that reviewer ever read the book of Hebrews?  If this was written knowingly then it borders on blasphemy.  There is only One who provided a way to enter into the presence of God and He is not a music CD – He is the glorious Lamb who was slain but who now sits on the throne of the universe.  It is through Him – and through Him alone – that we enter into the presence of God.  No CD can provide a way for us to enter into the presence of God.  For that matter our worship (and no one else’s worship) ever provided a way to enter into the presence of God either.

Is this just carelessness on the part of the reviewer?  And is it just carelessness that leads song-leaders to claim that “Our worship this morning will lead us into God’s presence”?  I suspect not.  Those words echo an increasingly common outlook in many Christian circles.

To some extent we’ve lost the Biblical understanding of what praise and worship really is.  Praise is our response to knowing that through Jesus’ shed blood we have already been brought into the presence of God.  Worship (praise) is not primarily about what it does for us, it is rather our response to what has already happened to us through faith in the doing, the dying and the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Am I overreacting?  Perhaps!  But, hey, the glory of Jesus as our ONLY Mediator is at stake.

John Westendorp
2MaxFM 13/7/2025

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