God Provides the Lamb for Worship

As I was thinking today about how God provided Christ as central to our worship, I began to think about the following.  God's provision for us is threefold.  He sent Jesus to die on the cross as our Savior;  He raised Him from the dead to make Him the Head and Lord of the Church, His Body; and He exalted Him to His right hand and gave Him all power in heaven and upon earth that He might share Himself  and all He possesses with us as His joint heirs here on earth.  Because of His provision we can accept Him as Savior, yield to Him as Lord, and appropriate Him as our resurrected Life.  The Resurrected Lord, our very life, is central to our worship.  And the way we get there is obedience.

We see a picture of this in Genesis 22 when Abraham, with his son, goes to the place of sacrifice commanded by God.  In answer to his son's question about the sacrifice, Abraham says, "God will provide Himself the lamb".  When indeed God provided the Lamb for the sacrifice of worship, Abraham named the place "The Lord will provide". 

We were made to worship and God provided the ultimate and final sacrifice of our worship and  empowered us by the resurrected Life to worship the Lord of glory.  Now, that's what I call Easter and a reason to celebrate!

This is the last of my blog posts while I am on Sabbatical for the next three weeks.  I will be doing more intensive study in the two areas of worship and choral conducting.  I am so thankful to my church family for giving me this opportunity.  I will also be experiencing worship with about 10 different churches in California with my base of study being California Baptist University.  

Blessings on you all as you continue to worship Him both in your own private/personal prayer closet and as you gather with the Body of Christ to worship in the church.  Until my next blog - mjm

Celebrate! He's Alive!

Our worship is about His aliveness. As said before, every Lord's Day is a mini-Easter.  But we will worship, especially this coming Lord's Day, the Resurrected Lord and celebrate what the fact of His being alive does to us and how it affects our worship.  The priority is that it is a celebration.  Let's allow Psalm 47 to inform our celebrating.

"Clap your hands, all peoples! Shout to God with loud songs of joy! . . . God has ascended amid shouts of joy, the Lord amid the sounding of trumpets.  Sing praises to God, sing praises!  Sing praises to our King, sing praises! . . . He is highly exalted!"  

This Psalm is a hymn to the King and gives us a picture of very dramatic worship.  The ancient believers didn't just come and spectate worship; they allowed themselves to be caught up in worship.  They praised with every part of their being - intellectually, emotionally, and physically.  They used all five senses - sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch in worship.  This Psalm resonates with passion, energy, and excitement.  Look at the very verbs that show the passion of this psalm: "Clap your hands!""Shout to God with loud songs of joy""Sing praises""sound the trumpets".  And . . . these verbs are in imperative form.  Passionless, lackluster worship is unacceptable.  Why such passion and exaltation?  Because the King has "subdued nations"; "chosen our inheritance", and "has ascended in the midst of shouts of joy".  It's a royal procession of the people of God as He ascends, accompanied by trumpet fanfares and highly involved worshippers praising the Lord in song with musical instruments.

When we come for Easter worship - we need to come as involved, passionate worshippers rather than as spectators.  Church worship services are not sit-coms which "couch potatoes" view for entertainment.  They should be a dynamic, living, encounter with a resurrected Lord - challenging, convicting, and a little uncomfortable!

How we need to lay aside personal inhibition and apathy and get caught up in the spirit of these ancient worshippers.  When we see the resurrected Lord high and lifted up, we should praise with passion, longing to exalt Him with every means at our disposal.  It still amazes me that believers can read passages such as this and still say things like, "the instruments are too loud . . . I just don't sing. . . my act of worship is just to listen . . . I don't want to get too caught up in emotion . . . I don't want to be accused of being a fanatic . . . I think you can get just a little too passionate" . . . and then watch these same people at a football, basketball or baseball game.  It's Easter.  Let's Celebrate!  mjm

No Stone Could Hold Him! Hallelujah!

Our Easter musical presented today was such a great message and wonderful experience of worship.  Both lyricists for the musical did a wonderful job of telling the story that we repeat and rehearse every week in worship as we worship the risen Lord Jesus Christ, making Him central to all of our worship.  Lloyd Larson's text, as well as all of the music, was very effective.   J. Paul Williams was the lyricist for a couple of the anthems.  He was actually a very close friend of one of my former pastors, Joe Mosley.  J. Paul died in 2010 having written hundreds of texts for anthems.  His legacy lives on through his wonderful texts.

Months ago, as I read through this musical, I was hooked because of the wonderful emphasis on Jesus with the imagery of the rock.  For hundreds of years that imagery has been used in both scripture and song.  So many of the very names given to our Lord Jesus have to do with rock or stone.  Jesus prevailed throughout His life, becoming the Chief Cornerstone.  In Ephesians 2:20 Paul calls Him the foundation upon which the household of faith was built.  In this musical we were able to recount Christ's life of strength and ultimate victory over sin and death.

No stone could hold the living-eternal Rock of our Salvation.  A supposedly immovable stone, sealing the tomb of Christ, was supposed to signal the end of Christ's influence here on earth.  Instead it became the open gate through which His message would break forth into the world, changing everything.  Praise the Lord as we worship Jesus week after week -  our living, eternal Rock and hope of glory!  mjm