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
