Worship and the Reflection of God

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Ephesians 5:15-21

As a church, we are preparing to enter a series called Songs of Heaven, Songs of Earth. We have done this before.  It is a series that is meant to take us behind the words of the hymn to find its biblical roots.  From those roots, we want to find what the bible always presents, the person of Jesus Christ.  Hymn Theology is a walk-thru of the history of a song and its biblical basis so that we can become more informed and engaged worshippers. The mind informed by God in Christ produces a heart that delights in Christ.

To see God, to enter into His presence, is to engage in an unending dialogue.  As God reveals Himself to us, and it always starts with God making Himself known, we receive and respond.  Like discipleship, worship becomes a reflection of who God is and what God has done.  The more we know Him, the more deeply we can worship.

As we enter this series, my pastoral counsel and hope for our church is this:

Embrace Varied Expressions of the Art of Worship.

We worship in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.  There are varied vehicles of worship.  Some are scripture put to music.  Some are poems of praise.  Some are odes to our King Jesus.  The forms are often updated.  On any given Sunday at church we will worship with words penned across the ages.  It is not uncommon in a worship set to credit writers from the 5th, 19th, and 21st centuries.  We aren’t doing anything new.  Lutherans during the Reformation wrote expressions of reformed worship and put them to common tunes often used in taverns.  The American colonists took common folk tunes as the backdrop for their praise.  The focus and function of worship is eternal.  Revelation 5 gives the picture of heaven and earth singing the praises of the Lamb Who Is Worthy.   There is a harmony between the song of heaven and of earth.  It is all Christian worship.  The form of Christian worship changes.  It follows the principle of the incarnation.  An eternal message takes shape in place and time.

Engage the Heart in Worship.

I love that we have varied sounds and styles.  I appreciate the graphic design, video and songs that are part of a worship set.  These components are not worship, however.  Worship is a product of the heart of man, woman or child moved by the Spirit to respond to the Lord. In Ephesians 5, we are told to make melody to the Lord from the heart.  In worship, art is purposeful if it cultivates the heart.  It aids in taking believers from an inner life with God to an overflowing outward expression of that relationship in the form of worship.

Worship Well Together.

Worship builds our community.  The scriptures tell us to “address one another” with these expressions of worship.  We call to the Lord words of praise, and we encourage one another to join the chorus.  It brings the intimate and important matters of the soul into singing of God, in poems of praise, from isolation to a chorus.  Worship gathers us and encourages us to sing these poems of prayer and praise out loud.  It brings varied people across all spectrums together.  It binds tribe, tongue and nation as we are pulled into the orbit of the weight and gravity – the glory – of the Lord.

Worship Christ in the Spirit with a Holy Abandon.

“All true worship is a response to the self-revelation of God in Christ and Scripture, and arises from our reflection on who He is and what He has done…The worship of God is evoked, informed, and inspired by the vision of God.  The true knowledge of God will always lead us to worship,” wrote pastor and Anglican Bishop John Stott.  To know Him, to see Him as He is, requires the grace of God.  It is the work of the Spirit to enliven us and show us Him whom we previously had not seen, loved or served.  Paul writes to the church at Ephesus and contrasts being drunk to being Spirit-filled.  Both are outside influences that carry a person away.  While drunkenness takes our time and misdirects our efforts, being filled with the Spirit takes us over to a better way.  The Spirit focuses our hearts and minds on what is of greatest worth.  Unlike the ‘shot of courage’ that can create a chorus of sloppy crooners, the Spirit creates in us a new and better song.  We engage in the ending chorus of praise.  We join the song of heaven as we sing hymns on earth.