Not about the Ritual
By Shauna Leis
“You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? Have you suffered so much for nothing – if it really was for nothing? Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?”
Galatians 3:1-5
Our church has begun a New Testament challenge to read through all of the New Testament in the next nine weeks. In going back through some of the New Testament books, I was reminded again and again what God desires out of a true heart of worship. He is not looking for the rituals and the observance of the laws. He is looking for a changed heart that longs solely to be with Him and know Him more deeply and intimately than before.
In the passage above, Paul was writing to the church in Galatia. He was serving under house arrest for preaching to the Jews and Gentiles throughout the land. The Jews believed he spoke heresy concerning God the Father because he was preaching about God the Son. So, they took him before the Roman government for inciting “riots” in the land, and the Roman government placed him under house arrest until they could come to some type of conclusion on Paul’s guilt or innocence. Many years before, Paul had visited with the people here in Galatia and shared with them the gospel of Jesus Christ. And, so with lots of time on his hands, he began to write to his foundling churches with deep compassion to encourage them along their journeys and admonish them to stay the course.
Now, one might think that many of these churches were starting to fall away because of other fanatical religions. And, that was indeed the case for many of the New Testament churches. They were letting false teachers and preachers woo them away to believing in something else. But the church in Galatia suffered from a more subtle enemy. They fell under the attack of the “ritual.” They were so consumed with trying to meet all of the Jewish laws and rituals that they started to worship the ritual instead of worshipping the One who had originally set the laws in place at the beginning of creation. They were attempting to once again “win” God’s favor, instead of trusting in the gospel of a loving Savior to be all that they could ever need.
While Jesus was still on the earth, He preached numerous messages on what true worship involved, and every time it came back to a matter of the heart. When confronted by the Pharisees and other religious rulers in Matthew 15:5-9, Jesus responded to their attacks by saying, “But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, ‘Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,’ he is not to ‘honor his father’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’” The religious rulers of Jesus’ time were so caught up in being better than everyone else in following the rituals that they totally missed the Son of God sitting before their very eyes.
Psalm 100 is basically a recipe for true worship. “Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth. Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the LORD is God. It is He who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.” The psalmist knew that the only way to worship the Lord was with thanksgiving, joy, and gladness. He knew that the earth would shout out in praise of its Creator! If the earth can shout out praises to our Creator, shouldn’t we?
Have you ever been in a worship service that was absolutely contagious? Maybe you did not come into the service with a heart exactly “prepared” to worship God, but as you sat there and listened to the songs, you finally started to pray that the Holy Spirit would come in and fill you up to worship God the way that He desires. Dear friend, may I challenge each of us that instead of waiting to feel that contagious Spirit to move in us, to invite Him into our times of worship from the beginning. Just imagine that if everyone walking through the church door would forget about the “rituals” getting ready to take place and instead would pray to the Holy Spirit to bring them into a true sense of worship, what a different church service we might all experience.
My prayer for us today is that we would never become so comfortable with the rituals within the church that we forget what it is like to truly worship God. May God work in our hearts every minute of every day to help us understand how to worship Him.
Pray with me: DearGod, oh we shout for joy and praise in Your Holy Name. You alone are worthy, worthy of adoration. You alone are worthy of honor. You alone are worthy of all glory.
Lord, move in our hearts, minds, and souls today to remind us again of what true worship is like. Teach us to not become so comfortable with the rituals that we neglect to worship You in the middle of it all. Send Your Holy Spirit to infuse within us a longing to just be near You – to know You more deeply and intimately than ever before. When we truly know Your character, we will seek to worship You every minute of every day because we will just not be able to contain it any longer. God, we love You so very much and pray all of this in the precious name of Your Son, Jesus Christ! Amen!