NOTE: Interacting with John Owen on worship. Owen wrote a short study on the purpose and practice of worship. It contained a short catechism (a set of questions and answers). It brought into focus the issue of entertainment that is driving many worship experiences today and the need for the church to seek something higher and far better in our worship of God.

Worship has a specific and glorious purpose. But we may be absolutely certain that our entertainment was never conceived, nor was it ever in the mind of God that it should become in the least or smallest degree included in, or substituted for, the true and purposeful worship of Almighty God.

Entertainment is not the worship of God in any sense. It is the worship of man.

Here is Owen’s quotation:
“That we may profitably and comfortably, unto the glory of God and our own edification, be exercised in the observation of the institutions and worship of God, we are always to consider what are the ends for which God hath appointed them and commanded our attendance unto them, that so our observance of them may be the obedience of faith. For, what end soever God hath appointed them unto, for that end are they useful and effectual, and to no other.

If we come to them for any other end, if we use them for any other purpose or with any other design, if we look for any thing in them or by them, but what God hath appointed them to communicate unto us, we dishonor God and deceive our own souls.”

Owen, John (2012-10-02). Brief Instruction in the Worship of God (John Owen Collection) (Kindle Locations 204-209). Prisbrary Publishing. Kindle Edition.