Worship is not entertainment, why we must know this

This is a selfish motive on our part.

This is the reason people cannot be satisfied with the worship service when their emphasis is not on the proper object of worship, God. People want to "do their own thing" in the worship of the church. What the Biblehas to say about worship for many people is of little consequence as long as they are happy and feel good. We must be concerned with what God says on how He is to be worshipped instead of what we might want to offer Him.

We have more forms of amusement than has ever been known to man, but we still want more. In our age, everything is designed to appeal to our emotions and to entertain us. We seem to have forgotten that a worship service is to bring glory and honor to God, and not entertain ourselves. When we have choirs to sing to us and concerts to entertain us, we are not worshipping God; but we have become the spectators who are being entertained.

Worship is not a spectator event.

We dare not become spectators, because in worship it is God who is the ultimate spectator, He comes to bask in the praise we offer, He descends to enjoy it and glorifies our midst. People have the roles reversed. The emphasis is how the worship service can be made more entertaining to people to please themselves and not God. People expect divine will to conform to what seems right in their own eyes.

Proverbs 12:15 says, "The way of the fool is right in his own eyes."

Worship to God is holy and sacred.

To pervert and corrupt it with entertainment and what we can "get out of the service" in trying to please and gratify ourselves is nothing short of blasphemy! The sacredness of true worship must not be sacrificed on altars of entertainment-oriented quartets, choirs, and other entertainment groups. We are as Hebrews 13:15 says to "Offer the sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name." In worship we must be the participants, not the observers. We want to please and entertain ourselves. In Galatians 1:10 the question is asked, "Do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a servant of Christ."

Worship is God-centered not man-centered.

When our worship is to please God instead of ourselves, then and only then will our worship be much more meaningful and spiritually uplifting to us and acceptable to God.

When people seek an "emotional high" from worship and don't get it, they are disappointed and start blaming the song service, the choir, the preacher, etc. The world wants their worship service to be "more entertaining", thus they are failing to worship God in spirit and in truth. Where in the Bible can we go to show that our worship is designed to please the worshipper. The desire to have an experience or an encounter along the lines of mysticism also gives little regard to what God says in the Bible.

Worship to God requires commitment on our part.

People had rather worship Christ as a babe in a manger than Christ as their crucified savior. Their worshipping Christ as a babe in a manger requires no commitment on their part. They feel they can put Him in a box and live the rest of the year as they please. But worshipping Christ as our crucified savior requires commitment, a complete change of our life, and a willingness to do all that He says. Jesus says in Matthew 10:37, "He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me."

God and Christ must be first in our lives, and this requires that we be committed to them.