Acceptable Worship - II

I want to blather on more about acceptable worship. The Old Testament worship is so radically different than New Testament but I believe that we cannot worship properly without reflecting on the relationship between the two and what we learn from the interaction of the two.

The OT worship is detailed, regulated, and very ritualistic. Does this mean it's bad or inferior worship to the NT? I don't think so. I think that when God says, "Do this" or "Do that" then that is acceptable and proper worship. OT worship actually must be seen on two levels. The first level is Israel's worship before God. The regulations allowed Israel to approach God as His people. The second level is the picture it paints of salvation under the messiah. OT worship was both specific for Israel and a picture of what God would do in the future.

OT worship changed some over the years. It started off with a tabernacle (mobile temple) and then morphed into a fixed temple. Tim Woodroof (The Church that Flies) suggests that God didn't ask for the changes but He did accept the changes. I'm not sure that is a proper view of the changes. When Hezekiah was restoring the temple worship (in this case the musical instruments) in his day, it is written that he did so according to what David, Nathan, and Gad had commanded. What they commanded came from the Lord (2Chron.29:25). So I think Scripture states that the changes came through God's guidance, not man's desires.

The regulations teach us that worship is about what God wants not what we want. Maybe God hasn't been as specific in the NT as He was in the OT but worship still belongs to Him not to us. Just because we act excited and get teary-eyed doesn't make our worship acceptable. God didn't require of the Jews to be emotional during worship. That doesn't mean they couldn't be emotional but it also means that they don't have to be emotion to have worshiped properly.

Since God is so specific in the OT it makes sense to believe that God will at least give us some clues in the NT as to what He wants. We do see an assembly in Acts 20 and we have Paul telling the Corinthians about some of the things they ought to be doing in their assembly (11:17-34; 14:26; 16:1-2) - like the Lord's Supper, singing, teaching, and giving. Paul also told them that their assemblies should be orderly (14:40). Paul doesn't say what order things should be done in just that they should be orderly. So some clues but not as detailed. There is nothing I know of that tells us to emotional or lively in our worship. I'm not saying we can't just that the Scriptures don't tell us we have to be.

Why is it that we (churches of Christ) are wrong just because we discourage lively worship? Is it wrong for us to genuinely practice our faith even though that may be different than others? Is it wrong for us to have no instruments when others do? It seems to me that we really need to spend a little more time comparing the two testaments and seeing exactly what is in the NT.