Our Cherished Traditions – Second Commandment

Our Cherished Traditions

The Second Commandment

Exodus, 20.4, 5; Deuteronomy 5.8, 9

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them…”

Are you limiting God by your preferred style of worship?

It looks as though the “worship wars” which have been stewing for about a generation have just about come to an end. The traditionalists have been silenced or exiled to small congregations that are determined to hold on to the old hymns and forms, at least until the current generation of leaders and members dies off. Contemporary forms of worship everywhere are triumphant, and those churches which haven’t yet gone completely contemporary have accommodated the enfant terrible through “blended” services. Certainly there should be room in our worship of God for new songs to the Lord. But we must also include in worship those elements that remind us where we’ve come from and who our forebears are – like the old hymns and liturgical forms used by previous generations. We see David doing this, for example, in the opening lines of Psalm 68, which derive from Numbers 10.35 and were the rallying cry of an earlier generation. It seems to me that settling for one particular worship “style” can’t help but limit God. Traditional worship alone limits God. It can be a form of idolatry. Contemporary worship also limits God, with the same potential for idolatry. The second commandment wants to keep us from limiting God. We must not allow our worship to undermine obedience to what God requires.

How do you respond to the idea that the kind of music we sing in worship might become an idol?

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“In the Gates” is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.