Building Muscle Memory Against False Liturgies

Why Corporate Worship Is Your Primary Defense

In 1945, when World War II had ended, the Allied powers began to round up Nazi war criminals to put them on trial and bring them to justice. One of the first ones they captured was Adolf Eichmann, the chief architect of Hitler's evil scheme to eliminate the Jewish people. But Eichmann escaped. He fled to Argentina, took on a different identity, got a factory job, and set up a whole new life.

The newly formed state of Israel formed their secret spy agency, Mossad, and they eventually found Eichmann in 1959 in Argentina. They deployed a small unit to capture him and bring him back to Israel without an extradition agreement.

For months, they studied Eichmann's every move. Every day they would rehearse. When they finally found him alone, they would simultaneously grab his hands and feet, put their hands just strongly enough around his throat to keep him from screaming but not choke him, put him in a car, and whisk him away to a safe house.

Month after month, they trained—day after day, multiple times a day—until one said, "Every day we rehearsed pulling a man into a car until it became muscle memory."

May 11, 1960, they saw him by himself at the bus stop. They drove up beside him, jumped out, grabbed his arms and legs, put their hands around his neck, swooped him into the car within 30 seconds, and took him to the safe house then Israel.

Maybe using the analogy of a war criminal seems a bit strong to you, but I think Asaph, the writer of this psalm, would have appreciated the analogy. In worship, we're not just looking to be inspired or distracted. We're in a battle against the false liturgies of this world that assault us every minute of every day, provoking us to fear, anger, disunity, anxiety, or rebellion.

Asaph was a choir director under David and wrote 11 psalms. They are not all feel-good hymns. They are raw, authentic expressions of faith in the midst of doubt written down by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to be sung by the people of God in their worship on Saturday morning and Saturday evening.

Asaph wrote psalms like Psalm 44 and 45: "You have forsaken us. You have turned your back on us. You haven't fulfilled your promise. We are like sheep led to slaughter." They sang that in their worship services as they poured out their hearts authentically before God, and God drew them to himself.

Maybe you, like Asaph, are on the brink of throwing in the towel, saying, "It's just not fair. Everybody else gets along. The world seems to chug along, and things are easy for them. They get the new cars, the promotion at work, the dates. They get liked by certain people. They become influencers. They are popular. And I am trying to follow the Lord, but I am having a different experience. It's not worth it, Lord."

Asaph was a professional churchgoer. He was a choir leader. He was on the verge of deconstructing his faith. He was on the verge of throwing in the towel, chucking it all. “My foot had almost slipped,” he wrote. Then, he went to worship:

But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task,

until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end. (Psalm 73:16–17)

God, by the rehearsal of the good news, gave Asaph the muscle memory to repel the false liturgies that were overwhelming him. Corporate worship can do this for you as well.

For this reason, corporate worship must be the central organizing principle of your life. In corporate worship, God has given you the primary tool by which you will repel the falsehoods of the world and keep yourself in the center of understanding that God loves you.

It is on the Sundays when we feel like going to church the least that we need corporate worship the most. By faith, we must get ourselves back to worship every week with the expectation that God can and will use it to keep our feet from slipping.