Proper Reverence in Worship

This is a public declaration of the gospel, of the Good News of Jesus Christ.  The gospel is declared when an evangelist goes out and preaches the Good News to those who have not heard it, or who have yet to accept it as theirs by faith.  But this is not the only way the Gospel is proclaimed.  Each Lord’s Day we celebrate the Lord’s Supper and Paul tells us that every time we eat the bread and drink the cup we proclaim the Lord’s death (a nickname for the gospel).  The gospel is declared in this service of worship.

Everything leading up to that communion service is gospel as well.  You are summoned by God because He initiates gospel.  You hear Him call you to worship Him.  He then declares our sinfulness and inability to come before Him except with blood-washed hands – washed by the blood of Jesus Christ through our confession of sin and profession of faith.  Our songs and prayers are lifted to Him in Jesus name through the Holy Spirit and God receives us in that name and power.  The Father instructs us through His Word, rearranging us, remaking us, renewing us, and then sits us down for a meal of fellowship and life with Him at His Table – providing us with His food.

This is a great and wonderful and joyful event – leading up to a great feast.  But it is not to be entered into irreverently – in some kind of breezy, informal and casual way.  Hebrews warns us that we must worship God with reverence and godly fear – and this teaches us what our demeanor in our church worship services must be like.  Psalm 2 instructs us to worship the LORD with fear, to rejoice with trembling.  And so our worship is to be full and robust, it is to engage our minds, our mouths, our bodies.  While it is celebration, it is not a tailgate party, a circus, a comedy show or a rock concert.  We have come to worship the Ancient of Days.  We are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken.  Come and worship, but come with the proper balance, well thought through and prepared, of great rejoicing and proper reverence.

Mother's Day and Ascension Sunday - 2013

The church, Paul instructs us in Galatians, is the New Jerusalem, the heavenly Jerusalem, and she is the Mother of us all.  Life comes to the world through Jesus Christ and He is proclaimed by means of the life and words of the church.  United to Christ, His bride is fruitful, and the world is being dominated, grace-dominated by her offspring.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you then.  To mothers who are the life-givers and nurturers of us all, we give you special honor today in our nation – and you all should – it is a good holiday.  In a culture that treats your calling as something less than glorious, God says that your role, and your work, often mundane and behind the scene, is what is shaping the world to come in far more profound ways than any legislation, any military force, any state welfare system ever could.  But we also honor mothers for what they symbolize and declare in their roles – the life-giving and nurturing nature of the church.  And so all of us gather to honor our Mother each Lord’s Day as well.

This day is also Ascension Sunday – the Sunday after Ascension Day which was this last Thursday, 40 days following the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  His ascension guarantees that mothers who are in Christ are ruling the world with Him and are discipling future rulers for Him.  Ascension Day declares that a Man, the Man, the God-Man, has been installed and is ruling heaven and earth with His rod and staff.  All nations and all mothers are placed on notice:  in all that you do, whether in word or deed, do it all to the glory of God – for at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow – both yours, and your little ones, and the nation in which you live – and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God.  This is what mothers are called to live and proclaim to their children and in doing so they will bestow the greatest gift of wisdom ever – God is your Father through Jesus Christ.  Believe – and live.

Gathered in Heaven

This passage in Hebrews (12:18-24) goes on to tell us that as we gather here with the great assembly of saints and angels before God’s throne, our worship and our communing with Jesus is shaking up the unbelieving world around us.  It is another great blow against the walls of Hades which will not be able to prevail.  We come in victory to proclaim that victory and to call upon God to spread His victory – Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven – we cry.

We see what life is like in heaven as we look to Jesus – and then we say, Yes, Lord, do that here too.

And through our singing to one another, through our praise and worship of God, through our observance of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper, through the Word preached and received, through our prayers and offerings – God accomplishes all that He promises He would.  What happens here will make earth-shaking differences, to the glory of God, over the rest of the world in real time and space.

The veil has been torn, you have entered into heaven, you have come to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant – and He is pleased to hear your praise and prayers.  But you must come with faith – you must come believing.  And if believing, then it only follows that we must stop and confess our sins before this mighty and holy God.

Jesus is Lord All Week

Jesus Christ is Lord and King over all.  He is this Lord’s day and He was this last Lord’s day.  He was Lord and King all week long as well.  There was nothing which occurred this week which took Him by surprise or caused Him any consternation.  Not a single event in your individual life, nor in our city, our nation, or throughout the world and the whole universe.  Jesus Christ is Lord and King over all.

Not only is He the Creator of all things – and not only is He the Redeemer of this sorry world – but He is the Sustainer in the meantime.  Colossians teaches us that Christ is before all things and that in Him all things consist.

That is why you may come to Jesus with all of your sins.  He was there when you sinned; in fact, you were only able to sin because He worked through you – yet in a way that does not allow any blame to be placed upon Him.  You may come to Jesus with all of your sufferings.  He was there when the suffering began, in fact, you are only suffering in that circumstance because He is working through you in that suffering – yet in a way that only will bring good and glory to you and to Him when He is done.  You may come to Him and honestly share all of your concerns and worries.  He already has the future in His hands and He intends to use your prayers and your works, shaped by Him and supplied by Him, to shape and to supply the world with His grace, rule, and reign.

And so we come to worship God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ by the powerful work of the Holy Spirit in us – so that we might be used by God to more greatly manifest that which is already and completely true – Jesus Christ is Lord and King of all.

Easter and Suffering - 2013 exhortation

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ teaches us many things.  One of the central things it teaches us is that for every Christian, every single suffering that God will take us through – God will actually take us through – and when He does – the end of it will be gain – much gain – gain for us – gain for God’s glory – gain through our sufferings for others.  How do we know?  Because the greatest suffering, the greatest wrongdoing, the greatest offense and injustice the world has ever known or ever will know was the Cross.  At the cross, Jesus, the perfect and righteous man, without sin and blameless in every way, was whipped, crucified, and buried.

No one has ever not deserved the punishment, the shame, the death, and the curse of God in any way like Jesus did not deserve such treatment.  But where did it lead?  It just so happened that God was completely in control all the way.  It just so happened that God placed all of our sins upon Christ in that horrific act and through His death, our sins were paid.  Through that death, Jesus killed our condemnation.  And God, good to His Word and promise, raised Jesus from the dead, declaring Him to be the Son of God with power, and providing us with our justification.

We come to worship and especially this Sunday, regardless of the sufferings and trials which we are going through, knowing and being reminded in this service, that there is no death that God allows us to go through, no trial, no difficulty, that He is not able to take us through.  And not only that, because we are in Christ, there is no suffering that He will not go through with us – of course He will – and of course, in Christ we will find at the end gain – much gain – gain for us – gain for God’s glory – gain through our suffering even for others – and all to His glory.

Palm Sunday 2013 exhortation

Fittingly, this Palm Sunday, the children sang the meditation for us.  When Jesus went to the temple on Palm Sunday, the religious folk were condemning Him and practicing abominations while the children were singing His praise – praise to the Son of David.

Jesus teaches in a number of places that the kingdom of heaven is made up of children.  Infants and nursing babes are the true priests of Jesus’ temple and they instruct us as to what it means to give fitting praise.

Now, We older folk are invited to join in the praise as well – but we must do so like children.  We must do so like children who believe that Jesus will change everything – and can do so in the here and now.  We must do so as weak people with a strong faith alone and no merit of ourselves.  We must do so with a willingness to simply turn to Him because He is here – without knowing all the answers to everything right now.

We must do so as people who would sing, as these children just sang –

“O blest the land, the city blest, where Christ the Ruler is confessed.  O happy hearts and happy homes to whom this King of triumph comes.  The cloudless Sun of joy He is Who bringeth pure delight and bliss.”

We must come believing that this Jesus can bless our city, bless our land, bless our nation, bless our homes, and bless our hearts with delight in Him forever and no matter what.

St. Patrick - 2013 Call to Worship

(HT – George Grant) - St. Patrick was not an Irishman – he was a missionary to the Irish, a nation full of pagan religion and fear of the gods.  He was apparently born in the 4th Century AD, into a patrician Roman family in one of the little Christian towns near present day Glasglow.   Although his pious parents nurtured him the Christian faith, he later confessed that he much preferred the passing pleasures of sin.

One day while playing by the sea as a teen, marauding pirates captured Patrick and sold him into slavery to a petty Celtic tribal king, named Milchu. During the next six years of captivity he suffered great adversity, hunger, nakedness, loneliness, and sorrow while tending his master's flocks in the valleys of Ireland.

It was amidst such dire straits that Patrick began to remember the Word of God his mother had taught him. Regretting his past life of selfish pleasure seeking, he turned to Christ as his Savior.

Of his conversion he later wrote, “I was sixteen years old and knew not the true God and was carried away captive; but in that strange land the Lord opened my unbelieving eyes, and although late I called my sins to mind, and was converted with my whole heart to the Lord my God, who regarded my low estate, had pity on my youth and ignorance, and consoled me as a father consoles his children….”

Amazingly, Patrick came to love the very people who humiliated him, abused him, and taunted him. He yearned for them to know the blessed peace he had found in the Gospel of Christ. Eventually rescued through a remarkable turn of events, Patrick returned to his family in Britain. But his heart increasingly dwelt upon the fierce Celtic peoples he had come to know so well. He was stunned to realize that he actually longed to return to Ireland and share the Gospel with them.

Though his parents were grieved to see him leave home once again, they reluctantly supported his efforts to gain theological training on the continent.

Thus, Patrick returned to Ireland. He preached to the pagan tribes in the Irish language he had learned as a slave. His willingness to take the Gospel to the least likely and the least lovely people imaginable was met with extraordinary success. And that success would continue for over the course of nearly half a century of evangelization, church planting, and social reform. He would later write that God’s grace had so blessed his efforts that “many thousands were born again unto God.”

We have come to worship God,  the same God Patrick worshipped and served.  This God transforms our lives by the work of His Spirit, applying to us the blood of Jesus, shed for our sins, and granting us resurrection lives – lives that give themselves away in love, in hope, in great trust, fear, and delight in the God Who saved us.  Come and worship our God.