In My Place Condemned He Stood

If you are a worship leader wrestling with how to continually point your church to the Gospel in worship, and care about the cross being championed – this is an amazing resource.  The ideas of atonement, penal substitution and propitiation are carefully defended and dissected.  

These ideas are something God has been stirring in me as a worship pastor – to be mindful that our songs clearly lead people into truth – singing responses to the unchanging truths of scripture.  Tomorrow I will post the lyrics to a song Michael Bleecker (the Village) and I just finished in response to this book called – In My Place.  

More than leading in worship, this book is a great tool for people longing to walk with a fresh awareness of what was accomplished at the cross – the centerpiece of the Gospel.  You can buy this book through Crossway or Amazon.

The Only Way to Worship Part 2 :: Trinitarian Worship

In part one of The Only Way to Worship, we looked at the scriptural instruction to worship in spirit and in truth.  This week we will explore in the “truth” part of this equation.  The Trinity is a theological term that is used to best describe the eternal state in which God exists.  The Trinity is comprised f God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, God three in one.  The trinity is not something I can come near wrapping my head around, much less put on one sheet of paper.  The existence of God goes far beyond our understanding, but that doesn’t mean we can’t at the same time know God.

At the age of twenty, Charles Spurgeon said, “The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls Father.”  This is the aim we take at a brief look at the Trinity.

Wayne Grudem says, “We can understand some of truth of the Trinity by summarizing the teaching of scripture in three statements: God is three persons. Each person is fully God. There is one God.”  We learn from early on in the scripture that God exists in a plural, but single union.  Genesis 1:26 says, “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”.” When we worship in a biblically acceptable way, our worship must be Trinitarian. We worship the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit.  Let’s take a closer look at how this works in a practical way as we worship.  

We worship the Father.  God is the sole object of Christian worship.  If worship is to be true at all, it’s object must be the sovereign God of the Bible.  All other worship is misdirected.  There is none as worthy as God.  He is the uncreated one – all other things are created.  The modern day interpretations of God fail to be accurate when they are built upon outside of scripture.  The sad realization of this is that many people “worship” a god they themselves have created.  In the scriptures, we find God the Father is shown as the one who spoke the words of creation into being (Hebrews 1:2, John 1:3), God the Father is the one who sent Jesus to mankind (Galatians 4:4, John 3:16). God the Father is also the originator of foreknowledge and election (1 Pet 1:2). 

God the Father alone is the one worthy of worship.  Psalm 145:3 says, “Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.”  The God we worship is the God of the Bible, God the Father, who is to be feared and obeyed.  

We worship through the Son.  This means that it is through Jesus that we worship God the Father.  1 Timothy 2:5 says, “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”  Jesus’ role in worship today is to act as our sole mediator in bringing our worship to God.  

Without Jesus functioning as our mediator, we have no covering to approach God with worship.  Ephesians 3:12 remind us that “we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.”  God does welcome us, but only through the Son.  Apart from the Son, we are denied all access to a holy and righteous God.

We worship by the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is often times the overlooked person of the Trinity in the evangelical world.  However, the Holy Spirit is a central person of the Godhead.  In Paul’s letter to the Philippians he wrote,“ we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh. (Philippians 3:3)

In his book Worship Matters, Bob Kauflin writes, “But some Christians have so minimized the Spirit’s role in worship that he’s functionally irrelevant.  Like a person’s appendix – it’s there, but we’re not sure why.”  The Holy Spirit is God in us, and is what empowers our worship and gives is heart.  God requires we worship him with both our head and our heart.  

It is important to us as worship leaders to understand the Trinity.  We need to be learning and growing to cultivate a biblical and grounded view of what biblical worship is, and how it works.  If we are to lead our churches in worship, we must first be worshipers who walk with an awareness of who God is and how God operates.  As we continue to grow in our knowledge of God, my prayer is that our love for Jesus, his kingdom, and the gospel will flourish.

 

Reflections:

What has your previous church background taught you about the Trinity?

Was anything overlooked?

Why is it important to have an understanding of how God has revealed himself to us?

The Only Way to Worship

The Only Way to Worship – Part 1

John 4:23-24

²³Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

Worship vernacular is filled with theological ideas that many of us have never stopped to wrestle through to determine what they mean.  As worship leaders, we are called to continual learners of worship. As we do this, our leading becomes much more effective.  

In a culture that glorifies being able to “do your own thing” and “find your own truth” it is wildly unpopular to make a statement that says there is only one way to worship.  However, in light of scripture, it is vital to grasp how worship happens at all.  To understand this, we first must ask, how has God commanded to be worshiped.  The gospel of John records a powerful encounter between Jesus and a woman living in sin to give us some insight. While we only have time for a cursory look at this passage, we will focus our lens on the worship element in the text.  It in in verse 24 Jesus explains to us that God is not a man created, but a spirit, and the ONLY way to worship him is in spirit and in truth.  What does that mean exactly to worship in spirit and in truth?

D.A. Carson writes in Worship by the Book, “God is Spirit, and he cannot be domesticated by mere location or mere temples, even if in the past he chose to disclose himself in one such temple as a teaching device that anticipated what was coming.  Moreover, in this book(the Gospel of John) – in which Jesus appears as the true vine, the true temple, the true manna, the true Shepherd, the true son – to worship God “in Spirit and in truth” is first and foremost a way of saying that we must to worship God by means of Christ”.

As we survey the book of John, the context in which Jesus is speaking becomes much clearer.  We are drawn to the conclusion that the only way to worship is in and through Jesus.  Jesus is the centerpiece, the vehicle and the origination of all biblical worship.  True worship is Jesus-mediated, it is cross-focused, it is gospel-centered.  It is obtained through the provision and to the specification by which God has set forth.  Over the next few weeks we will be looking more extensively at what worshipping in “spirit and truth” means on a deeper level, and discover more how it is that God commands to be worshipped.  My prayer for us as worship leaders is that we would walk away with a renewed sense of wonder of the cross, a deeper passion for Jesus, and greater love of the Gospel.

Reflections:

Define in your own words what it means to worship in “spirit and truth”?

What scriptures reveal more on how God commands to be worshipped?  Write them down and meditate on them.

Inward Adoration

Psalm 26:2-3

    Test me, O LORD, and try me, examine my heart and my mind; for your love is ever before me, and I walk continually in your truth.

    Inward adoration is the idea of walking with an awareness of the attributes and character of God and allowing our hearts to remain amazed.  In looking over my history of leading worship now for the last 14 years, I can’t help but feel convicted of the times I have stood before the people of God with my heart in the wrong place.  At times my affections have been pointed toward a less worthy object, or my thoughts plagued by fear or pride.

    Isaac Watts is one of my favorite songwriters throughout history.  In his wisdom he wrote, “The Great God values not the service of men, if the heart be not in it.  The Lord sees and judges the heart; he has no regard to outward forms of worship, if there be no inward adoration, if no devout affection be employed therein.  It is therefore a matter of infinite importance, to have the whole heart engaged steadfastly on God.”

    The word in the Greek bible most commonly used to translate ‘to worship’ is proskynein.  Thie word is a compound of pros (towards) and kynein (to kiss).  Throughout Greek literature this word was used to describe the widespread oriental custom of casting oneself to the ground, or bowing out of reverence.

    David Peterson, in his book Engaging with God, points out, “At an early stage proskynein came to be used for the inward attitude of homage or respect which the outward gesture represented.”  In other words, the outward, tangible signs of devotion were fueled by an inward affection.

The heart is a funny thing.  I heard someone recently say, “The heart wants what the heart wants”’.  The  times my heart wanders is that I had lose my sense of reverence and awe.  Andy Stanley encourages leaders by reminding them that, “Vision leaks”.  In the same way, wonder leaks.  Amazement wanes.  Luster fades.

Does that happen with our worship?  Has the cross become common?  Has the gospel lost it’s luster?  Or have our hearts misplaced their affections?  When Watts’ calls us  to have our hearts “engaged steadfastly” on God, what does that look like? 

My prayer for us as followers of Jesus, and worship leaders, is that we be a people whose hearts first and foremost be tenaciously in love with Jesus Christ.  When we stand in front of our churches we are calling people to lavish love and adoration on Jesus.  Are we leading the procession?

On a weekly basis we are called on to sing of the love and wonder of God.  Sunday morning for me begins on Mondays.  It begins with me leaving enough margin, enough space to harbor these ideas within me.   If I lack to walk with a continual wonder and fascination with the cross of Christ, how am I able to call our church to do so?  Heaven forbid we go through motions or worship without our hearts engaged.

Watts encouragement to us is to continually walk with an overwhelming sense of gratitude and passion for the Gospel of Christ, and allow this to be the fuel for living for God.  as we continue to grow and develop in our gifting, let’s remember the words of a man who urges us to overflow with inward adoration. 

worship by the book

 

d.a. workin the mic

 

 

d.a. carson has written (edited) probably one of the most vital books that every worship leader should go through.  in his 63 pages of the overview of biblical worship, he is able to make me want to resign as a worship pastor, and go figure some stuff out, get my act together, then plead to come back get hired again as a new man… at least a dozen times.

 

for the sake of space (and time) i am going to share with you a quote on his exposition of his half a page definition of what worship is. 

 

“in an age increasingly suspicious of (linear) thought, there is much more respect for the “feeling” of things – whether a film of a church service.  it is disturbingly easy to plot surveys of people, especially young people, who drift from a church of excellent preaching and teaching to one with excellent music, because it is alleged, there is “better worship” there.  but we need to think carefully about this matter.   let us restrict ourselves for the moment to corporate worship.  although there are things that can be done to enhance corporate worship, there is a profound sense in which excellent worship cannot be attained merely by pursuing excellent worship.  in the same way that, according to Jesus, you cannot find yourself until you lose yourself, so also you cannot find excellent worship until you stop trying to find excellent worship and pursue God himself.  despite the protestations, one sometimes wonders if we are beginning to worship worship rather than worship God.  as a brother put it to me, it’s a bit like those who begin by admiring the sunset and soon begin to admire themselves admiring the sunset.”

 

ahh… nothing like a kick in the pants.  

 

i have been a part of churches who have done this very thing – worship worship.  worship music.  worship themselves in worship.  worship the experience.

 

the end result of such pervasive practices is that in the end, our worship is broken.  God turns his ear away from the sounds of our words, and cannot be pleased with worship that reeks of this stench.

 

where this gets very uncomfortable is that i too have done this.  it’s embarrasing to write those words.  it’s healing to write those words.  

 

too often, we as worship leaders find too much joy in ourselves rather than in the one who is the object of our affection.  artsy people are prone to this.  it’s romantic…  and sin.

 

if you are a worship leader, or worship pastor, and you haven’t taken the time to learn from guys who have gone before as to what biblical worship looks like.  don’t let another day go by.  there’s far too much at stake.

 

oh, and d.a. – thank you.