KANSAS CITY, Mo. (BP)–Like the Israelites of Jeremiah’s day, American churchgoers are typified by a worship that leaves them unchanged, according to Oklahoma Baptist leader Anthony Jordan. Turning to Jeremiah 7:1-11, Jordan called believers to leave behind worship which is deceptively comforting, yet devoid of life-changing value.
“Jeremiah was dealing with a people who were able to walk into the temple and fill their hour with religious activity, but when they walked out, they were exactly the same as when they walked in the door,” explained Jordan while speaking at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Mo., April 16. “I am confronted by the reality that if that is what was going in Jeremiah’s day, there is strange relationship to what is going on in our day.
Jordan, executive director-treasurer of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, warned against participation in the self-deceiving worship of Jeremiah’s contemporaries.
“I am captivated by the fact that they were faked out into thinking they could somehow mouth religious words, that they could couch these religious platitudes and invoke the blessing of God, and think that because they had come into the church building, their temple, that they were fine and related to God in a right way,” Jordan said of the worshipers described in the passage. “In reality their worship was empty, their going to church meant nothing, and there was no life change that was affected in their lives by what went on whenever they came to worship. Nothing happened. Worship was empty.”
Jordan suggested worship in Jeremiah’s time failed in two essential aspects: The people failed to recognize the presence of God and the prophets failed to proclaim the truth of God. He began by describing the worshipers’ blindness to God’s holiness.
“It was as if, in the very holiest of places on planet earth for those people of that day, that they could come into that context and walk away from it and never give the proper recognition they were standing in the presence of holy God,” Jordan said. “What I read in the rest of the Bible is this: When you come into the presence of God, there is a recognition that there is the Wholly Other of Israel where you are. Moses came into the presence of God, and God said, ‘Moses, take your shoes off because you are on holy ground.’”
Jordan has served in various capacities within the Southern Baptist Convention, including work as a member of the Executive Committee and as chairman of the Committee on Committees. Jordan said that in his travels he has found the worship leader to be the key element to meeting God during the worship service, regardless of other factors.
“I have preached in the little church where there were 20 or 25 in Sunday school led by a volunteer minister of music who had a ring around his head where his farm cap was, and I have preached in the largest churches not only in our state but some of the largest churches in this convention,” Jordan recounted. “What I have discovered is that I have been able to meet God in both of those contexts. I have been where they sing choruses and that’s all they do, and I have been where they sing hymns and wouldn’t let a chorus in the front door. But I have met God in those places, and the difference is that the worship leaders led me into the presence of Almighty God. I knew that I was in the presence of God, and not simply fulfilling religious ritual and going through religious activity.”
Jordan challenged worship leaders and ministers to focus primarily on the character and nature of God in worship, rather than a particular style or form. The responsibility of the worship leader, he explained, is to lead worshipers into the presence of God such that people recognize God’s transcendence and praise him accordingly. Jordan noted how it is appropriate to praise God directly in song, and to stand up or kneel down before him in honor. Once God’s holiness is acknowledged, worshipers should then be led to lavish their love upon God, thanking him for his presence and declaring his mighty actions in our lives to others.
Jordan also observed a failure of the prophets in Jeremiah’s day to declare God’s truth. Instead of announcing God’s impending judgment, they spoke words of peace and comfort to the people, which led to a self-satisfied hardness. Jordan suggested modern preachers could learn from Jeremiah, whom God commanded to confront temple worshipers with truth and the need for repentance.
“There is an eternal need for the restoration of the prophetic voice in worship,” he declared. “I’m not talking about a harsh kind of Christianity that beats up on people and leaves them as if they had been thrashed on Sunday morning. But I am afraid we have come to a day when we are soothing and tickling ears far more than we ought to, and that confrontation with reality and with truth and warning of judgment is almost absent from our preaching. We desire to bring crowds in, and crowds don’t want to hear the truth, so we won’t tell them so we can keep them there. That may be good crowd building, but I’m not sure it’s good worship.”
Jordan called on ministers to preach the Bible expositionally, prophetically declaring the truths of the Scripture as they arise. He likewise urged ministers not to neglect confrontation with sin and warning of judgment.
“We need to warn people, ‘If you keep going the way you are going, you’re flying in the face of a holy God who loves you enough, if you are a child of God, to chasten you whenever you get out of his will and allow sin in your life. He loves you enough to do that. There are consequences to sin. Sin pays wages, and I don’t think that’s been erased from the book, do you?
“And the lost man who comes in the door needs to hear someone say to him, ‘You know what, I love you, and I am telling you the good news of Jesus Christ,'” continued Jordan. “‘But the good news is so good because the bad news is so bad, and friend, if you don’t line up with God, there is an eternal hell that you must face. That’s the consequence of sin.'”
Jordan warned until God’s presence is recognized in worship and his Word is declared prophetically, Christians will continue to have nominal impact on American society.
“It seems to me that empty worship produces empty followers,” Jordan observed in conclusion, “and empty followers look like everybody else.”
