More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Furthermore, God’s people gather for worship on the Lord’s Day in response to His gracious gifts. God summons His people to make a command performance before him. Unbelievers do not gather for worship. The Lord’s family assembles on the Lord’s Day for worship. In Christ the saints have sanctuary access. They are invited into heaven itself. If unbelievers are present, they are nevertheless not the focus of the assembly. They are not “in Christ” and therefore have no heavenly access to the Father. Jesus described the temple as “a house of prayer” (Mk. 11:17). Prayer is offered to God. In Matthew
...more
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
After all, when Paul conjectures about the presence of unbelievers in a Christian service he does not envision them being “comfortable” or “entertained.” On the contrary, when the Church behaves properly in worship,
the “outsider” who enters “is convicted” and “called to account by all” so that “the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really present” in the assembly (1 Cor. 14:24–25).6
Usually, during the service the people are relatively passive: they function less like a congregation of active worshipers and more like an audience.
Style (form) and doctrine are mutually conditioning. Or at least they ought to be. What you believe will influence how you pray, worship, and sing. The way in which you worship will impact what you believe. This is just the old principle lex orandi lex credendi (“the law of prayer is the law of belief ”).10
One commonly hears comments like these: “I am not concerned with the style of music, only the doctrine” or “Worship style is just a matter of taste or culture, what is really important is our doctrinal confession” or “As long as you believe correctly it makes no difference what style of worship you choose.” I think this is frightening
evidence of our sloppy theology of worship and music. What do the forms (styles, etc.) we use uncover and communicate about what we believe? How ought what we believe impact upon the forms we use to embody our faith? I cannot advocate strongly enough the need for ministerial students and elders to come to grips with the meaning of
American pop culture and technology, especially the subtle danger latent in the Church’s capitulation to thes...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Let the future worry about any possible long-term consequences that might develop because our worship services
have been transformed to achieve immediate results.12
The sermon, for
example, is elevated all out of proportion as the dominant element of worship.
The heavenly hosts are not seated as armies of students armed with note pads and pencils around the throne of the Lamb in Revelation 4 and 5. Rather, we see them “fall down before him who sits on the throne” (Rev. 4:10) and
hear them “singing a new song” (Rev. 5:9).
Religion is reduced to what happens “inside” of us, sometimes even to sentimental and pious feelings.
“Remember God loves you just the way you are!”
In truth, God loves his people in spite of the way they are, because of his Son Jesus Christ.
“ascribe” or “give to the Lord the glory due to his Name”
(Ps. 29:1–2; 96:7–8; 149:1).
“We just want to praise You for who You are, God. We love You and praise You, O God, not for what we get from You, but just
for who You are.” In fact, however, there is no such worship in the Bible for the simple fact that we cannot approach God as disinterested, self-sufficient beings.
We are created beings. Dependent creatures. Beings who must continually receive both our li...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
We will always be receivers and petitioners before God. Our receptive posture is as ineradicable as our nature as dependent creatures.
Additionally, those who embrace only one of the first four purposes often tend to see the Sunday service as primarily a technique for producing a particular effect on the members of the congregation, either on their will, mind, or emotions.
As C. S. Lewis said, “The charge is feed my sheep not run experiments on my rats.”
only when we pattern our worship according to the structure of God’s covenantal relations as revealed in Scripture will we experience the fullness of God’s gracious work for us in corporate worship.
Here at the outset I should emphasize that the end or goal of God’s covenant is always a
feast.
this is the eschatological goal of all of God’s covenantal works—the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:6–10)?
Trinitarian shape of the Christian worship
His covenant with His people (Gen. 6:18; Deut. 5:3; Ezek. 16:60; Lk.1:72; 22:20; Heb. 8:10). The people for their part must not break, but remember and renew their covenant with God (1 Chr. 16:15; Ps.103:18; Hos. 6:7). There are covenant making rituals (Gen. 15:1-21; 21:27; Exod. 24:7–8; 34:27; Jer. 34:18), covenant documents (Exod. 34:27–28; the Decalogue, Deut. 31:9, 26; the entire book of Deuteronomy; Heb. 9:4), covenantal laws (Exod. 21–23; Ezra 10:3), covenant signs (Gen. 9:12; 17:9–14), covenant meals (Lk. 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25), covenant mediators (Heb. 12:24); covenant sacrifices (Exod.
...more
I, Jeffrey, take you, Christine; To be my wedded wife; And I do promise and covenant; Before God and these witnesses; To be your loving and faithful husband; In plenty and in want; In joy and in sorrow; In sickness and in health; As long as we both shall live.
by not giving us a cute little ten-word definition, God forces us to come to grips with the astonishing richness of his covenants with mankind.
“personal relationship.”
This phrase has become a popular substitute for the word covenant.
The solution offered is that you can have a “personal relationship with God.” Accept Jesus and you can experience a wonderful and exciting personal relationship with Him.
Great strides have been made in our understanding of the covenant with the introduction of the discipline of “biblical theology” in the twentieth century.
Here in Genesis 2 we discover the basic form of God’s covenant with man. For pedagogical purposes I will analyze God’s
covenant under five headings: 1) God takes hold, 2) God separates and makes something new, 3) God speaks, 4) God grants ritual signs and seals, and 5) God arranges for the future.
A separation and a union produce something new. What was once merely
dust is now transfigured into a new creation—Adam.
Implicit in this covenantal arrangement thus far is a proper hierarchy: Yahweh is God and Lord, man is a dependent creature under Yahweh and answerable to Him.
He is the covenant Lord, Yahweh. And Adam is now therefore in a living covenantal relationship with Yahweh, his Creator and covenant Lord.
Fourth, covenantal arrangements involve tangible signs and seals (often accompanied by public oaths of loyalty) with promises of blessing for faithfulness and threatened curses for disobedience.
More importantly, however, it is about food. Here
But the important point here is that essential to every biblical covenant are these public, very physical memorials of the covenant.
Faithfully maintaining the covenant demands that Adam and Eve maintain a faithful relation to these two trees. Faithfulness to God means being faithful in relating to these two trees. This same pattern is found throughout the Bible: keeping God’s covenant means faithfully performing the covenantal rituals established by God.
As covenant Lord, Yahweh takes hold of His creation in order to do something new with it. The Lord effects a separation. What God grasps is then transformed from one state to another, from the old to the new: a new creation. This new union (dirt and life-giving breath of Yahweh) receives from God a corresponding new name, which implies a new hierarchical relationship. There is a covenant head (Yahweh) and there are
those who are dependent on that covenant head (human creatures).
A new verbal communication of stipulations is expressed by the covenant Lord, a way of life fit for the new covenantal situation, a gracious enumeration of how to live fully and joyfully in this new covenant. The Lord offers His covenant partners a fellowship meal. He gives the gift of signs and seals of the covenant (two trees) together with a setting forth of blessings for grateful faithfulness and curses for ungrateful disobedience. The Lord arranges for the future succession of the covenant, which in this covenant involves marriage and children.5
