Worship Unaware

When the people of God gather together to "honor and praise" the Lord together we experience God's glory.  God's glory includes all the praise and adoration of the saints together.  The people of God praise Him verbally through both public and private worship.  Also, the people of God proclaim His glory through their lives by how they demonstrate God's character and power through their daily comings and goings.  However, we are often unaware that this praise and adoration is not only demonstrated to the physical world as we know it, but also to the unseen spiritual world.  We glorify God in both realms, even though we are unaware of all that is taking place in the spiritual world.

I have often said to the worship choir, "If we could see the spiritual world we would be amazed at how our praise and adoration is joined by all of creation."  This includes the whole of the physical universe as well as the spiritual realm.  Psalm 19 describes the praise of the physical world.  We see in this Psalm that all of the unknown universe is surrounded by and exists within the praise of God.  In Isaiah 6 the prophet witnesses the truths that God is being praised by the hosts of heaven continuously, and that all of the earth is full of the glory of God.  In Revelation we are reminded that the four living creatures surround the very throne of God "day and night,"  never ceasing the praises to the Lord God Almighty.  

We can be assured that at all times God's praises are being proclaimed by His saints throughout the whole earth, by all of creation, and by the heavenly hosts.  Whenever we think of praise and God's glory, we must always be aware that His glory includes all of these praising Him and His being lifted up.  So, let's join creation and the heavenly hosts in constant worship and be aware, not unaware, of His glory!  mjm

The Centrality of Hymns in Worship

The worship of our church includes classical, contemporary (including many of the newest worship choruses) and influences such as Celtic, African, Caribbean, South American, etc.  And even a little country and Southern Gospel sprinkled in at times.  Yes, we do it all.  But we also continue to worship with hymns.  Sometimes we sing them very traditionally and sometimes we use other stylings.  But we continue to sing hymns... not because they are old, but because they are great.

Hymns are a rich treasury of Christian worship - a heritage that should be embraced and built upon by us today.  Hymns are not a "style" of worship; they are a spiritual and physical element of worship given to us in scripture. They encompass the corporate voice of God's people over the span of many generations, responding to His Word, creation, teaching and truths. Quality Christian hymns help protect us from a theology-of-the-moment. They grow our knowledge of who God is.  Hymns are a living, energizing call to service and remind us why we serve.  Hymns help communicate basic Christian doctrine and Biblical teaching.  Hymns are a part of our history, our present, and our future.

Both hymn tunes and texts and their characteristics transcend time and speak authentically to any age.     Yes, "hymns, psalms, and spiritual songs" continue to be a part of our worship.  They are varied - crossing generational, national, cultural lines and making a difference in people's lives.  Whether we are singing a hymn, a spiritual song, or a psalm, may we do it with the same passion for the glory of God!  mjm

P.S. We have an invitational area-wide choir and orchestra, made up of different denominations of believers, presenting powerful arrangements of a musical of hymns entitled "The Hymn Song" this coming Sunday evening, March 30, at 6:00 p.m.  If you are near, come and be blessed!

Praise the Lord!

Praise the Lord! . . . is the great finale of the Psalter...and notice it is an imperative.  Throughout the Psalm we are called over and over to praise the Lord!  The greatest truth about God is that He is worthy of our worship.  And the deepest truth about ourselves is that we were created to worship Him. When we are faithful to do this we find the real purpose of our lives, our very existence.  When we give ourselves completely to worship we are dwelling in His very presence, and receiving the power of almighty God that is given to us through His Son in His Spirit.

At the end of the age the battle lines will be drawn.  We either worship God or we worship the deceiver.  The Psalms teach, inform and reform our worship if we will but listen to God speak through them.  They will lead us to God-centered worship.  This is why I committed years ago to read through the Psalms and Proverbs every month.  We are challenged to wait upon Him, to sit in silence, to listen to His voice.  When we do He transforms our worship.  We also learn how to petition Him to expect His healing, deliverance and peace as we hear His Word and remember His mighty acts in our own lives.  The word "praise" is repeated some 13 times in this Psalm. It is both an introduction and summary of what authentic worship is:  expressing joyful delight in the presence of God.

What is our motive as we come to worship? - to praise Him!  We praise Him for His mighty acts and according to His excellent greatness!  We praise Him for all He has done, and we praise Him for who He is.  The 150th Psalm concludes with another exhortation which harkens back to verse 1.  "Let everything that has breath praise the LORD."  This is the purpose of breath - the spirit which God Himself breathed into us (Gen. 2:7).  The essence of our lives is to breathe it back to Him in praise!  Praise the Lord!  mjm

Your Offering of Sacrifice!

In reading this morning through 2 Samuel 24 I was reminded of God's command to David to make a sacrifice of worship to Him.  He is told to set up an altar on the threshing floor of Araunah.  David went up in obedience and even though Araunah offers to give Him the place, David insists,  "I will not offer anything that costs me nothing." This heart attitude of worship and obedience should infect us today as we seek to give ourselves wholly to God.  We are not asked to sacrifice our sons as Abraham was brought to a place of willingness to sacrifice Isaac.  We are no longer asked for burnt offerings or sin offerings.  The price has been paid by the blood of the Lamb.  

Now our Lord asks us to give ourselves, all that we are, a living sacrifice of life in obedience, and a sacrifice of praise with lips that acknowledge His name.  "I appeal to you therefore brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship."(Rom. 12:1) "Through Him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge His name." (Hebrews 13:15)

For all of us, even as with David,  our heart attitude should be, "I will not offer anything that costs me nothing."  It is interesting that in the Romans passage it goes on to talk about "not being conformed to this world's way of thinking".  In other words don't get caught up in the things of this world, forgetting what the Lord requires.  That would be a sin of commission. And in the Hebrews passage it goes on to talk about doing good and sharing all that you have in the Lord.  Not doing that would be a sin of omission.  

The Message states David's statement as such: "I'm not going to offer God, my God, sacrifices that are no sacrifice."  What is your sacrifice of worship? Is it really a sacrifice?  mjm

From I to Us

We have often said that corporate worship when the church gathers is totally dependent on the worship life of the individual believers who gather.  I-to-Us worship is found in Psalm 34:1-3:

I will praise the Lord at all times.

I will constantly speak His praises.

I will boast only in the Lord;

let all who are helpless take heart.

Come, let us tell of the Lord's greatness;

let us exalt His name together.  

                                                     Psalm 34: 1-3 NLT

David starts with the personal pronoun early in the Psalm, "I will praise . . . "  But then he switches to the corporate pronoun, "Come let us . . . let us exalt His name together."  The gathered/corporate worship of the church flows out of the contribution of every person gathered who has been redeemed by the blood of Jesus.  It combines all that we have brought as an offering of worship, as individuals, into a concerted expression of love from the body of Christ.  

We each bring the expressions and worship of our own hearts, our experiences with Him, our struggles, our joys, and all of our thoughts and emotions.  All of those individual expressions combine together in a symphony of worship and praise.  Wait a minute.  Does that mean every one of us has a responsibility as to the corporate expression of worship when we gather?  Yes, that is exactly what it means.  Because of His unique work in each of our individual lives we come together united in Him, joining in one glorious voice to give praise and glory to Him!  Our personal worship lives contribute to the glory of God as His church gathers together.  May we all, always, come prepared. mjm 

Four Cords of Worship

Four cords of worship in the Old Testament become tied together in Christian Worship.  Even though one or the other of these cords seemed to dominate in particular times of history, they become bound together in some of today's worship patterns.

The first is Personal/Family worship. In the beginning worship was personal, not corporate.  Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph didn't have a synagogue or temple to attend or even Ten Commandments to follow.  Their worship was a direct, personal, one-on-one experience with God.  It was a personal activity which eventually led into an intergenerational family activity.  The focus was intimacy.  Appearances of this influence today is in private devotional time and family worship.

The second cord is Temple/Tabernacle.  This was a big change as visiting a temple or tabernacle was not a private matter, but public.  It was impressive, exciting, and moving.  It was rich with symbolism and sacred actions that served to pass their faith down to the following generations.  This cord of worship did not appear in the early centuries of the church but later began to reappear. The focus was celebration.  Appearances of this influence today is the celebration approach to worship by the gathered church, musical and pageant presentations and praise gatherings.

The third cord is Feasts and Holy Days.  Old Testament worship was not just about sacrificing for the sins of the people.  It was also about remembering God's mighty acts throughout history. Holy Days are a way of remembering all that God has done in the past.  This cord continued into the early church. Christians adopted the first day of the week as their day of worship - remembering the resurrection - and they soon developed a calendar of holy days.  The focus of this cord was remembering.  Days and seasons such as Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, etc.,  continue to influence today's church.  

The fourth cord is Synagogue Worship.  Synagogue worship seems to have come into being when God's people were in Babylonian captivity.  Far from Jerusalem and its temple site, perhaps this was their way of preserving and passing on their faith to their children.  Synagogue worship was more simple, cerebral, and teaching-oriented than the experiential worship of the temple. The focus of this cord of worship was teaching.  Appearances of the influence this cord has on our worship today is a focus on Scripture reading, teaching, and preaching in our worship.  Also, our small Bible study groups and Sunday Bible Study seems to have come out of this influence.

We should note that every one of these strong cords of worship was intergenerational in nature.  This also should influence our worship today. Four cords of worship, bound together by Scripture, tradition, and the history of God's people, rightly influence the ways we worship today.  mjm

Passover and Worship

God's plan for the deliverance of Israel from Pharaoh came with a sacrifice - the Passover.  This ritual would call for faith in the Lord's promise to save His people.  If the people believed the word from the Lord, each family would kill an animal and apply its blood to the doorway of the house.  Of course as we remember, the blood of the sacrifice protected them from the plague of death -  redeeming the firstborn.  This ritual would become a communal meal with the people awaiting the deliverance from the Lord.  At this early time the Passover was instituted as a meal in the homes, a meal that was both joyous and meaningful.  Later it would be celebrated in part in the temple with great ritual and praise.  It was a ritual of worship based on faith in the Redeemer and never lost that meaning.  This feast was one of the richest celebrations of worship in history.  Explaining what it all meant to the children was a proclamation of the wonders of the Lord's redemption from age to age.

This ritual centered on a blood sacrifice and was a celebration of redemption and life.  Its connection to the Exodus made it the celebration of victory over the world that worshippers ultimately would experience.  Important parallels between the Passover and its fulfillment in the Lord's Supper exist. Prophetically it was typological of the Messiah, the Lamb of God, whose blood was shed so that people everywhere might escape the judgment on the world.  Paul said to the Corinthians that "Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us." (I Cor. 5:7) Today's believers celebrate the fulfillment of the Passover in the rite of the Lord's Supper and the fulfillment of Unleavened Bread, in holy living.  As we see, our own observance and celebration of the Lord's Supper was foreshadowed by the Passover, giving greater meaning and understanding of our worship around the table.  mjm

40 Days of Worship

Today is Ash Wednesday on the Christian Calendar.  This is celebrated from a Christian tradition as opposed to Biblical imperative.  More importantly it begins the 40 days leading to the celebration of the Resurrection, Easter. Again, some of the Christian faiths observe these 40 days as Lent. Southern Baptists historically do not observe or celebrate these events, but there are individual Southern Baptist Churches today who do.  Interestingly enough there seem to be between 30 and 40 different denominations who observe or celebrate these days.  If you saw or see someone on Ash Wednesday with a black cross on their forehead, there are some churches who put the cross from ash on their foreheads in observance of Ash Wednesday - signifying their need of repentance.  This tradition has been going on since somewhere between the 8th and 10th century.  

As I said, this is not a Biblical requirement. As believers we are free to observe it or not.   But in our own personal worship leading up to Easter, it is good for us to remember what God said to Adam after he had sinned, "You are dust, and to dust you shall return."(Gen. 3:19)  So it is well for us to remember the bad news of our sinfulness, preparing us to receive afresh the good news of forgiveness in Christ Jesus, our Lord.  

This season affords us an opportunity to freely confess our imperfections. Because we all stand guilty before a Holy God and are mortal, expecting to experience bodily death at some point, we all need a Savior.  However remembering these things should not bring on depression or gloom but an eternal gratitude for the saving life of Christ, and a new spiritual energy and passion for living in Him!

The season helps us look at death so that we can cherish life even more! Blessings in your personal worship over these next 40 days.  mjm

The Axis of Worship

There is a pivot or turning point in worship at the Last Supper.  By His death Jesus completes His sacrifice for sin and guarantees by His resurrection that His death would set us free from the power of sin and secure for us eternal life everlasting.  The beginning of Christianity begins with these events but the pivot or axis of the faith was the last supper.  Therefore, it was the turning point of worship.

At the Last Supper Jesus explains the meaning of the Passover sacrifice and ushered in the new covenant.  All the accounts of the Last Supper show us that Jesus was totally in charge of not only the Passover meal but also what it stood for and just how it was going to work out.

Jesus used the Passover to explain His death of sacrifice.  He transformed that Last Supper into the Holy Communion or Lord's Supper as we know it today.  It would now be a passionate celebration of communion with God through Jesus' sacrifice.  The Lord's Supper grew out of the very meaning of the Passover, but it is not the Passover.  It is the new axis of the worship of God.  It changed worship forever.   mjm