Tag Archives: worship

Genesis 2:16-17 a Call to Know God and Enjoy Him Forever

by therev2011

“And the LORD God commanded the man saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:16-17). It was a call to adore and acknowledge the goodness and greatness of God. His goodness was seen in the invitation to eat from every tree of the garden, trees that were pleasant to the eye and good for food; his greatness was seen in the prohibition to eat from one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil-a sign that God alone was God, and man was to have no other gods before him. In sum, it was a command to know God and enjoy him forever.” -Reformation Worship, pg 3

Tradition and Scripture in the Reformed… Tradition

by therev2011

“Just because one seeks to recover a tradition, one is not necessarily
committed to what we have called an archaeological reconstruction of the tradition. For a Reformed theologian any tradition, the Reformed tradition as well, needs to be measured against Scripture to determine whether it is of value. It is Scripture which has authority and the tradition only has authority when it is based on Scripture. The tradition needs to be evaluated and re-evaluated and those elements in it which are most solid emphasized. In any tradition there are elements which have played a significant role because of the needs of the day, but which in few generations no longer seemed meaningful. In every tradition, there
are the marks of compromises with the culture. There are things the
religious leaders would have liked to have done but which the state would not permit or the people would not support.” -Hughes Oliphant Old, Worship

Wrong Reasons for Worship

by therev2011

“Worship must above all serve the glory of God. Now there are those today who would justify worship for any number of other reasons. We are told that we should worship because it brings us happiness. Sometimes worship does make us happy, but not
always. We are told that we should worship because it will give us sense of self-fulfillment. Surely worship does fulfill the purpose of our existence but we do not worship because it brings us self-fulfillment.
We are often told that we should worship in order to build family solidarity: “the family that prays together stays together.” The high priests of the Canaanite fertility religions said much the same thing. All kinds of politicians have insisted on participation in various religious rites in order to develop national unity or ethnic identity. Queen Elizabeth I was not the first or the last who tried to consolidate her realm by insisting that the worship be in some way English. One can always find medicine men and gurus who advocate religious rites for the sake of good health, financial success, or peace of mind. True Worship, however, is distinguished from all of these in that it serves above all else the praise of God’s glory.” -Hughes Oliphant Old, Worship

No Vertical without the Horizontal

by therev2011

As far back as the eighth century before Christ the prophet Amos
had insisted that true worship must be holy. It must come from a people
whose lives are consecrated to God. God has no interest in the sacrifices
of a wicked people or the praises of those who ignored the ethical
demands of the law.

I hate, I despise your feasts,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings,
I will not accept them,
and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an everflowing stream.

(Amos 5:21-24)

With these words, Amos announced God’s displeasure with the worship
of Samaria. Mistreatment of the poor, militarism, the luxury of the rich,
bribery in the courts, sexual promiscuity, high interest rates, and op
pressive taxes revealed the religious hypocrisy of the kingdom of Israel.
Jesus must have had this prophecy in mind when he made very clear to
woman of Samaria that the day had finally come when the true wor
shiper would worship God in spirit and truth (John 4:1-26). For the
Christian, holiness of life and sincerity of worship must go together;
they must be of one piece.” -Hughes Oliphant Old, Worship

No Vertical without the Horizontal

by therev2011

“Indeed, the Bible lays great emphasis on the importance of right relations with our fellow-men, teaching that a right relationship with God is impossible without them. The great Hebrew prophets of the seventh and eighth centuries B.C. constantly reiterated this theme. The offering of sacrifices to God was not only useless, but positively nauseating to Him, they said, if the worshippers were living lives of immorality or injustice to men.” -John Stott, Confess Your Sins

Some Thoughts on Arguments for ‘Beautiful Church Buildings’ Based on the Aesthetics of the Temple

by therev2011

Recently, my church has been studying the tabernacle in Exodus 25-31, and looking at the various pieces of furniture and their meaning. We had noted that there was an aesthetic quality to these tabernacle pieces. The incense was a kind of ‘theology by the nose.’ The bronze and gold and precious stones, etc were a kind of ‘theology by the eye.’

This led someone to ask a fair question, if aesthetics were so valuable in the tabernacle and temple worship, shouldn’t they be important in our modern day worship services? For instance, shouldn’t we have incense in our services?

For some background, I am a Presbyterian Pastor, which means we tend to play it conservative with the aesthetics of worship. But here are a few thoughts on the ‘If tabernacle, therefore Church’ argument.

1. Recognize the discontinuity between the tabernacle/temple and the Christian worship service. The argument above seems to look at the temple as though this was the place for weekly worship for an OT believer. It was not. Those that lived at a distance from Jerusalem would’ve only attended a temple ritual a couple of times a year (coming for the major holidays). Otherwise, at least after the exile, weekly public worship was done in a synagogue setting, which was much more restrained in architecture. In fact, some have said the synagogue is the actual precursor to Christian worship. So, in one sense ‘if tabernacle/temple, then church’ assumes a continuity that does not really exist. The tabernacle/temple existed to address a specific set of concerns that are much narrower than just providing a place for worship (see #4).

2. Recognize an OT believer’s limited access when at the tabernacle/temple. Most of the furniture in the tabernacle/temple was never seen by an Israelite believer. Think about it: most of it was in the sanctuary, and you had to be a Levite to go in there. So, as much aesthetic charm as there was to the tabernacle/temple, this was not a quality of the temple that was ordinarily experienced by believers. It was only seen by the Levites. In fact, only the high priest ever saw the ark of the covenant. In view of this limited access, nothing is being deprived or lessened for Christians today by not having very ostentatious gathering places.

3. If these connections are sound, one would expect the New Testament to utilize them. The New Testament is aware of OT worship practices. It constitutes the bulk of the NT’s worship and service language (think of how we are called “priests”, and we offer “sacrifices” of praise and service, and the work of missions is an “offering” to God). Yet, nowhere does the NT attempt to bring temple furniture into Christian worship. If you do a concordance search for “incense” in the New Testament, it will appear in two places: Hebrews 9, describing the OT temple and Revelation 5,8 describing a heavenly incense altar. So, if it is wise or productive to include these elements in a Christian worship service, one would expect the New Testament to say something about it. It does not.

4. These connections, arguably, misunderstand the function of the tabernacle/temple. Properly speaking the goal of the tabernacle/temple was not merely to be a place of worship, but a place of mediation. That is why only the priests could go in. All of the furniture, even with its aesthetic charm, was showcasing the benefits of having a mediator in your place (the bread, showing the securing of God’s presence; the incense, showing the pleasure God in us and our prayers; etc). So the furniture is less about a nice-looking worship place, and more about showing why you need a good mediator. This is why Reformed polemics have tended to be content to say, ‘these things were fulfilled in Christ our high priest, and therefore we do not carry them into the New Covenant era worship setting.’ They served the purpose of showing why we need Jesus, and what benefits he gives to us.

5. These connections, arguably misunderstand the focus-point of Christian worship. In the book of Hebrews, it is fascinating how we are taught to see ourselves as entering a temple in worship– but that temple is in heaven. Historically, churches have the sursum corda in the liturgy (“Let us lift our hearts to God in heaven”). This isn’t just piety, it’s expressing the directional/spiritual movement of the congregation in a Sunday service. We move, by faith, from the ‘courtyard’ of this world/age into the holy of holies in the presence of God in heaven, not earth. I just wonder if the attempt to put temple-like furniture in a sanctuary obscures that the worship service is a spiritual movement out of this age/world, and that the real liturgical service that God desires can only be rendered through a heart of faith?

6. A pastoral problem? Sometimes I wonder if aesthetic arguments are expressions of deeper frustrations with a worship service. If the songs are good, the liturgy is good, the preaching is good, and our heart is rightly processing these blessings it is hard to imagine aesthetics becoming a point of major concern.

Pastors and worship leaders need to be ever-committed to the craft of creating good liturgies, prayers, and sermons. That starts with respecting the inherent challenges in ‘living by the word’ on Sunday morning. We are not easy to listen to sometimes, especially when folks are tired or distracted by kids. For that reason, we need to work hard at our communication skills, and constructing simple and yet moving liturgies. The better our ministry of the word is, the less people will want something ‘more.’

That being said, congregations need to understand how difficult it is for the pastor and worship leaders to ‘live by the word’ on Sunday. We try our best to say things well, but we are finite, and sometimes even we know there’s more that could’ve been said, but we just didn’t know how to, or have time to due to other pastoral responsibilities that week. I assure you it is hard to create a different and fresh liturgy from scratch every week. There are many churches in which the pastor is doing the best he can, and you need to meet him half way, instead of complaining about how ‘dry’ the preaching is.

A final thought on the pastoral aspect. If aesthetics really is The Answer, one would expect that aesthetically rich-looking churches would be full and overflowing every Sunday, with revivals breaking out there all the time. Is that the actual lay of the land in Christianity? In fact, many of them are emptier than the simpler word-based services of evangelicalism. That ought to be a corrective  to our thinking. Aesthetics isn’t the ‘automatic blessing’ some take it to be. Even ‘good’ aesthetics can get boring and unedifying, without something more.

7. Christians and Outsiders are Better Than ‘Furniture.’ If there is a general movement in Scripture from OT types to NT fulfillment, such that the OT points to a greater NT reality, could this be the case on Sunday morning too? Is there a greater furniture in our church service than was had in the tabernacle and temple? 1 Peter 2 says that we are “living stones” being built into a spiritual house for God. Does such a consideration change how we think about a Christian worship aesthetics? What if instead of looking for artwork in the church, we simply looked for each other? What would happen to a church if, instead of looks for images of the divine on the walls, we saw each other as images of God, and means of pointing us on to God?

Further, what would happen if we saw in each other the reality of the showbread (God’s presence with my brother and sister), the altar of incense (God’s pleasure in that person over there for worshiping him today, God’s pleasure in my praying for that person)? What would happen if instead of making inanimate objects our chief concern in the church building, we made the people, their burdens, their joys, their sorrows the chief concern in our services (second to God’s glory)? I’ll tell you what would happen, you would have a church that really was worthy of the name “temple of the living God,” because you would see a community in which grace, truth, love, faith, and repentance were the actual dynamics of their life together. In essence, I’m saying: challenge yourself to make the people around you the thing you notice in the service when you need help focusing on God. And yes it is a challenge, I’m not a doe-eyed fool, but this is how the church grows up into maturity as the body of Christ. This would certainly commend God to the world.

8. Is there a place for aesthetics? Sometimes I do think the Reformed tradition has glamorized the destruction of aesthetics in worship, per se. We are iconoclasts through and through. However, I think there is a place for suggesting that some of the Reformers may have over-argued their case. We need to remember that Calvin’s critique of, for instance, Christian symbols (fish, bread, cross, anchor, etc) and stained glass was written by a second-generation Reformer. He was presenting a somewhat untested theory about why the medieval church had became so ill-informed and worldly. It is possible that he made generally good points, but over-argued some of his points, such that they don’t apply to any and all visuals today (This qualification does not apply to pictures of Jesus/God which are a clear second commandment violation).

A couple of points show this, Calvin critiques the notion that images are the ‘books of the laity,’ saying that the Word should be the source of instruction. As a critique of idol worship, this is fair and right. But as a critique of any and all pictures/diagrams/maps used for instructing in the word, this is not as sound (EX: are there pictures of Israel in your study Bible, or is there a picture of the tabernacle in Exodus 25-31).

Calvin also seems to suggest that ostentation is a direct cause of distraction in worship. Yet, this theory has been ‘tested’ over many centuries and it is clear that there is no necessary connection between the two. Someone once told me that in the church they grew up in, they could be distracted by the pattern of bricks on the wall behind the pulpit. Distraction can be rooted in other things besides pretty designs, and also, pretty designs don’t necessarily distract.

In fact, an argument can be made that the deliberate attempt to make a worship setting dull and ‘plain’ can have a negative effect on one’s view of the ministry of the word. Example: ‘This place is dull-looking because what we are doing on Sunday morning is truly dull and boring.’ The visual learners among us will struggle because the building is non-verbally preaching to them a message that is at odds with the service itself.

So, perhaps there is a way to arrange a worship setting so that it commends the business at hand, which is the ministry of the Word and Sacrament. This works in much the same way that our good works are to commend the word of the Gospel, and not distract from it or replace it.

Perhaps there is a place for aesthetics in worship. But, these considerations need to be 1) controlled by the Word (that would mean no temple furniture, or man-made traditions). Being controlled by the Word means that what is done needs to be held loosely and in submission to Scripture. You need to be able to let it go if something isn’t exactly the way you want it. If you’re church is in a fight over the paint color in the sanctuary you have already failed. And 2) if a church desires to be intelligible to the world around it, these aesthetic considerations should probably be developed in ‘conversation’ (sorry if you hate that word) with the ‘common sense’ sensibilities of the world around us. This is especially true since, as Presbyterians, we believe that God has no strong architectural desires for a church building, but that he definitely does have strong opinions that an “outsider” should be able to understand a worship service (1 Cor. 14:16, 23-24). In the end, the aesthetics of a church building need to be such that the spotlight is on the worship service and not the building itself.

These are just a few thoughts that have been percolating in my head since I was asked the question a few days ago.