The Lamedh [ל] is the twelfth letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the symbol of learning. It begins the second half of the alphabet and the second half of Psalm 119, thus putting learning at the heart of the human experience, and spiritual learning most central of all.
One of the most important lessons we can ever learn is to worship appropriately.
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The Lord’s table is a sufficiently important subject that I’ve felt the need to touch on it recently outside this series. Today’s post is probably more effective if you read it in connection with that one.
Our reading in Malachi is the first of five complaints made by the Lord against his people approximately a century after they were allowed to return to their historic homeland by a Persian monarch with respect for Israel’s God. Sadly, all that God had done on their behalf didn’t keep Judah and Israel from going astray in a variety of new ways.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Writer Andrew Sullivan gives this advice to churches:
“If the churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, perhaps they might begin to appeal anew to a frazzled digital generation. Christian leaders seem to think that they need more distraction to counter the distraction. Their services have degenerated into emotional spasms, their spaces drowned with light and noise and locked shut throughout the day, when their darkness and silence might actually draw those whose minds and souls have grown web-weary.”
Tom: “The greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction.” What do you think, IC? Is technology dangerous to Christians?
“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”
Eating and drinking to the glory of God?
What a strange idea. I get the “eating” part, and I get the idea of “glorifying God”. But what does our action of eating have to do with God’s glory?
That’s going to take some explaining.
The subject of the first few chapters of 1 Corinthians is Paul’s concern about divisions in the church. It takes him only nine verses of introduction to jump right into it, and because it is the first of many different church-related exhortations in his letter, we may reasonably infer that the apostle viewed the matter as very significant.
The fact that the churches down through the centuries have pretty much entirely failed to process the lesson he was teaching and put it into practice in no way diminishes the importance of what Paul said or the clarity and intensity with which he wrote about it. Expressing the unity of the body of Christ in every possible way on every possible occasion is a mark of mature Christian faith. More, please!
When I was a kid I listened to a lot of rock music.
Most of it I got off the radio. I owned a few albums of my own, but was never the avid collector some of my friends were. I had some favorites, and I tended to stay with them for as long as they pleased me, then move on.
One thing I noticed right away, both on my albums and on the
radio, was the
I always thought that was weird.
“Moses said, ‘Please show me your glory.’ ”
What makes a person give up everything in order to follow Christ?
What motivates a lifetime of obedience and service?
What makes men into real men, spiritual men, dedicated men, godly men, and what makes women into women of substance?
Well, let’s see what the Bible says about that.
It’ll soon be Sunday again.
Time to go and meet with the Lord’s people and think about him.
That’s good work, really. It’s just about the best thing we really ever do. The works we do here on earth end when the Lord returns. But some things continue into eternity. Paramount among those things is worship. It’s one of the few things we do that lasts forever. I think that makes it worth getting up for.
“… golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.”
Stop for a moment and contemplate with me the wonder of having our prayers presented to God as an act of worship, of having our meditations before God described as “incense” in his sight, a fragrant offering. On my best day, I would never dare put it like that ... but God does. “What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer” indeed!
But would that be ALL our prayers in those golden bowls? I sincerely doubt it.
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A man and a woman are going to bed. It’s been a long day — work has been vexing, the children have been demanding, calls and emails have piled up, and best efforts at getting it all done have failed. Irritations have built up; and at times, the couple has actually been a bit snappish.
The husband is middle-aged, and somewhat dumpy and slightly graying. His earlier grumpy mood has subsided only into a plodding weariness as he gets ready to turn in. He’s left his slippers askew in the corner again, and hung his trousers over the chair instead of putting them in the closet.
The wife turns to her husband and says, “I love you.”
A few days ago, I was talking with an atheist.
Yeah, I know …
The conversation came around to the Great Judgment. Of course, he doesn’t believe in it. But I asked him a question I’ve found useful in sorting out how people are thinking about God.
I said, “Well, whether you believe it or not, one day you’re going to face God. And if he were to ask you why he should accept you, what would you say?”
On September 9, 1939, The Telegraph reported that a woman from London, England named Frances Fripps was accidentally struck by a local bus. Taken to Middlesex hospital, Miss Fripps awoke to find someone bending over her bed. To her utter astonishment, she recognized her visitor as none other than the Queen of England, there for a surprise tour of the hospital.
“They told me I had been trying to knock down a bus,” gasped Miss Fripps, “and now I find you here, your Majesty. What a day!”
What a day indeed.
I went to an old-time hymn sing last week.
It’s not that I prefer the old hymns. I’m just as much a fan of new choruses as the next guy … provided they’re theologically sound, of course. And singable: there’s no point in trying to sing something that’s lame musically. But if it’s all coming together, I don’t much care how new or old the tune is. If the words are good, and the tune is great for congregational singing, I say let’s go.
People: you just can’t count on them.
That’s one of the things you can count on about human nature. We don’t have what it takes to see things through.
Oh, we mean well enough … and we intend to try our best … but often our best is a lot less impressive in the delivery than we thought it was going to be.
And let’s face it: most of us are just not in anything for the long haul. While the idea is new and the fire in us is fresh, we’re all enthused about whatever’s going on. But fires cool, and new turns old, and we lose interest.
A career, a program, a plan, a commitment, a hobby or a marriage … all fine in the short term, but give any of them enough time and everything turns out to be work.
So we quit. And honestly, sometimes by the time we do it’s just as well that we do.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
It’s been years since I paid a great deal of
attention to the charismatic movement, but David de Bruyn’s
post on The
Pentecostalization of Christian Worship at ReligiousAffections.org is a
real
Tom: Mr. de Bruyn’s thesis is fairly simple: the current patterns of worship in the charismatic movement are not leading Christians within it anywhere good. Worse, these practices are catching on throughout the evangelical world. I’ve experienced them myself in my early twenties, but never really stopped to analyze the significant differences between the way charismatics engage in “worship”, and the historic patterns of worship across many other Christian traditions. Far more importantly, the charismatic approach differs radically from the patterns of worship we observe in the scriptures.
What did you think of the post, IC?
Immanuel Can: So many things … where shall we start?
The Israelite legal requirement for multiple witnesses to any criminal charge goes back to the Law of Moses and the book of Numbers, but is itself restated many times in scripture. By the time we encounter it in the New Testament from the apostle Paul, there is a new twist on the “two or three” rule. “This is the third time I am coming to you,” he writes. “Every charge must be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.”
Did you catch that? In this case the three witnesses are all the same person. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure that’s not precisely what God intended.
“Should we worship the Holy Spirit?”
Long before the Word was made flesh, the Holy Spirit was present in the world and active on behalf of the Godhead. We find him in the second verse of Genesis, the fourth-last verse of Revelation, and everywhere in between. He is mentioned approximately 100 times in the Old Testament and well over 200 in the New. It has been demonstrated from the scriptures that he possesses the same attributes as both Father and Son.* His significance to us can hardly be overstated, since without him we would not have the written Word at all.
So it’s a good question: Why not worship the Holy Spirit? He’s certainly worthy of our worship.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Christianity Today notes a new trend in “worship”: electronic dance music. As writer Jeff Neely puts it, “layers of computer-programmed electronic backing tracks, quarter-note bass thumps, and cycles of musical ‘builds’ and ‘drops’, much of it set to a tempo around 130 beats per minute.”
*headdesk*
Tom: That’s my sister’s response, Immanuel Can, and I think it’s entirely apropos. Some things are beyond the pale. But perhaps we can use it as a jumping-on point to discuss the role of enthusiasm in worship, what sort of place the arts might have or not have in the context of local church gatherings, and so on.
That work for you?
Immanuel Can: Certainly.
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| What do you think: worth dying for? |
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| Better entertained in goatland ... |
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| Just another divine bovine ... |
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