Worship by the Book #4 - "Does Style Matter?" Pt 2 (Selected Scriptures)

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Worship by the Book #4 - "Does Style Matter?" Pt 2 (Selected Scriptures)

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Psalm 100, Psalm of Thanksgiving. It's been an inspiration for a great number of hymns and songs that have been written down through the years.
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Psalm 100. And we're going to read the entirety of the psalm.
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So, Psalm 100. If you have one of the Harbat Bibles to give away, I believe that's on page 524.
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524, Psalm 100. And if you're able to do so, can I invite you to stand with me out of reverence for God's Word.
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Psalm 100. Brothers and sisters, these are God's very words.
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Let the whole earth shout triumphantly to Yahweh. Serve Yahweh with gladness.
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Come before Him with joyful songs. Acknowledge that Yahweh is God. He made us and we are
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His. His people, the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise.
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Give thanks to Him and bless His name. For Yahweh is good and His faithful love endures forever.
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His faithfulness through all generations. The gospel is the flower fades, but this
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Word of our God will abide forever. Join with me as I pray, ask for the Spirit's help, and then we get to working God's Word this afternoon.
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Well, Heavenly Father, we thank You once again that we have this privilege to come and to hear
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You speak to us through Your Word and to respond in prayer and in song and to partake of the
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Lord's table today. Father, we pray that as we come to Your Word, that as always we ask
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You would shine light upon the Word, help us to understand, help us to see the things that are written in Your Word clearly so that we may do them and ultimately be blessed by them.
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Father, it's our habit to pray for other churches throughout our valley, and this afternoon we take a moment to pray for our friends at Community Bible Church in Central Point.
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Thank you for Pastor Pete and Pastor Kevin and their entire leadership team there. Pray that You would bless them and encourage them.
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Pray that their labors would be fruitful as You would be gracious to give and that Christ would be honored through that gathering of Your people there.
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We pray that for them and we pray that for us even now as we come to Your Word, we ask it in Jesus' name and for His sake.
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Amen. Please be seated. Well, we come to the final part of this series that we've been in for the month of January.
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As you know, it's usually our habit here to work our way through books of the Bible, and next week we will continue our journey through Genesis.
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But for the month of January, we took a pause to deal with this subject of worship, and in particular, our corporate worship.
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If I can give you a quick review of where we've been. In our first week, we took a few moments to consider the idea of the regulative principle of worship, this idea that we only do in worship that which
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God explicitly commands us to do in His Word. Sounds simple, but when you start to actually think about the implications, you start to realize not everybody does that.
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Same thing with the principle we looked at in the second week, this idea of what we call the dialogical principle, this idea of a principle of renewal and communion, that when we come to worship, worship is not just our offering to God and potentially
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God doing something in light of that, but actually it's a dialogue, that God comes to speak
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His gospel Word over us, not just in the preaching of His Word, but in everything we do in our worship.
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And we respond to God speaking in our songs and in our prayers and in the faithful and intensive hearing of His Word.
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And so we looked at that in week two. Now for the last couple of weeks, we've been thinking about style.
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We started to get more practical, so we started more on the theoretical end, and now we've moved to the practical end.
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We started asking the question, what exactly should our worship look like when we gather together?
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I gave this couple of messages the title, Does Style Matter? Does Style Matter?
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And you can see from the subtitle there, it's a little wordy even for me, but I wanted to not look at this in terms of just a style, but I wanted to ask some biblical and doctrinal questions.
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I wanted us to consider this more from the vantage point of, what does the Bible say and how does our theology inform the way in which we worship?
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For those of you who were here last week, by the way if you weren't, you can listen to that message on our YouTube channel, we looked at four principles.
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Four principles that should govern our worship. I'll just review them quickly, they'll be up on screen. So first of all, we said that our worship should be
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God -centered, not man -centered. That it has God's desires, God's aims, and God's purposes at the forefront, not necessarily ours.
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We also saw that it's word -driven, not preference -driven. So again, this is kind of a reiteration of week one, that when we gather for worship, we don't get to determine what we do in worship, and really it's not driven by our preferences or what we want.
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It ought to be ultimately driven by the Word of God. Thirdly, we said that it should be reverent and not flippant, and you remember that I said that reverence isn't so much a, again, it's not so much a style as it is an attitude.
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An attitude that says, I'm coming into the presence of God, I should treat the presence of God with the respect, with, remember what
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I said, it carries this idea of caution, of restraint. And finally, we talked about the fact that worship is spiritual, not carnal.
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It is empowered by the Holy Spirit. We cannot worship God as He ought to be worshipped, doing it in the flesh, doing it carnally.
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It is as the Spirit of God empowers our worship, driven by the grace, the Word of God, and as we surrender to the
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Spirit of God in not getting in the way by over -complicating worship. It's in that way that worship becomes truly spiritual, not carnal.
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While I told you that I had like five or six, I managed to boil them down to just four, thankfully. So I've got four more principles that I want us to consider this week.
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We'll finish the list and finish this series, and hopefully, as we conclude, you'll come away with a full understanding of what we attempt to do in our corporate worship.
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So I'm gonna pick up the numbering where I left off. So this would be number five, principle number five.
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Worship ought to be participatory, not spectatory. Now, you can probably tell by that second word,
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I had to make up a word. As amazing as English language is, we actually don't have a word for describing someone being a spectator, which baffles me.
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Someone needs to work on that. So for now, I made up a word, spectatory. But for a moment, turn back to the passage we kind of focused on last week,
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John chapter 4. I want you to notice something there as we think about this idea of worship being participatory, not spectatory.
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John chapter 4, that's where we were last week. I want to draw your attention particularly to verses 23 and 24.
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So John chapter 4, verses 23 and 24. This is what
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God's Word says. But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the
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Father in spirit and in truth. Please note that language there of the true worshipers.
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Yes, the Father wants such people to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship
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Him must worship in spirit and in truth. Did you catch in verses 23 and 24 that Jesus doesn't abdicate worship to a priestly class, as it were.
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He doesn't say there will be people who worship and people who don't. In the church,
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I'm not saying unbelievers worship, of course they don't, but among God's people. He just has one category, the true worshipers, those who worship the
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Father. In this new age that He describes that's coming, there will be no priest or non -priest, no clerical class or laity class.
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I should pause for a moment. Sometimes we view ministers as though they are a set -apart group from the rest of the body of Christ.
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They aren't. I'll simply remind you that the Bible says that every believer is a king and a priest before the
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Lord, the priesthood of all believers. Yes, there will be some who are tasked with leadership in the church, but they are not a special class of people above everybody else.
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Jesus simply says that in new covenant worship, there are simply worshipers.
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It's very easy for folks who believe like I do to throw shots at your more seeker -sensitive churches.
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I mean, we've all done it at some point, I've done it. You know, we kind of mock them for, you know, their lights and their fog machines and their big bands.
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We all like to poach. I mean, I've done it, I'm not gonna lie. I've done it more than once. We've all poked fun at all of that at some level.
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And let's be clear, that is indeed a problem. Church is not a concert. We don't come to hear musicians.
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Musicians lead us in our corporate singing. I think sometimes we miss that in our modern age.
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For those of you who are versed in church history, you'll know that the Reformation was quite a raucous time. All sorts of things were being re -examined and tested and changed.
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But you know one of the things that we don't often talk about in relation to the Reformation? Singing. In the
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Reformation, there was a recovery of participatory and congregational singing.
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The Reformers and those who followed them advocated for the singing of the Psalms and later the singing of other hymns by all of God's people.
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If you read the descriptions of medieval worship, it was a show, it was theater. In fact, some of them use that term to describe it.
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You came and you watched something happen. Yes, you may partake of the Mass, actually not that often, but you may partake of it.
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But by and large, it was a show. You went to go see something happen. Well, the
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Reformers said, no, no, no, no, when we read the Bible, all God's people participate in worship. So you see
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Martin Luther, you know him as a theologian, as a preacher. He was also quite the hymnist. We sing some of his hymns today.
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A Mighty Fortress is Our God, based on Psalm 46. From the depths of woe I raise to thee my song of lamentation.
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That's a Luther hymn. I believe it's, was it Psalm 130? Yeah. Calvin, we don't think of him as a musician much, but Calvin oversaw the production of what became known as the
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Genevan Psalter. Some of those are still around with us today. I alluded last week to my late mentor, one of his favorites,
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All People That on Earth Do Dwell, based on Psalm 100. That's from the Genevan Psalter. That set the standard for worship on the continent of Europe.
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One of the great blessings of the Reformation that we enjoy to this day is congregational singing.
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If you like singing in church, Luther, Martin Bucer, and Calvin all would like to say, you're welcome.
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But if I can be honest, again, I travel a lot, I see a lot of things. And one of the things
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I see is that we're kind of rolling back, we're rolling back the Reformation in a lot of ways unhealthily in our church.
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Not our church, but the church at large. But one of the ways I see this kind of roll back towards the
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Reformation is less of an emphasis on congregational singing. You know, some churches, they're explicit in saying, we try to avoid you hearing other people sing.
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Some will say, it's because we don't want you to be self -conscious. Okay, I can respect that. But for some, it's just, listen, you're not that good.
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They are. Let them take care of it. Have you considered that this is the only place, if you're a
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Christian, we don't congregationally sing anywhere else. You ever thought about that? Unless you're singing the national anthems at a game or something.
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By and large, we don't sing anywhere else but in church. And it's heartbreaking to me that more and more churches are trying to downplay, if not just eliminate, congregational singing all together.
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I'm very thankful for our worship team, and one of the reasons I'm thankful for our worship team is that there was a clear emphasis on congregational singing.
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I know this because I've talked to them about the songs they pick and why they pick them. There's a clear emphasis on, we want songs that everybody can sing.
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And yes, not everybody can sing well. Not everybody should join the worship team. Please, some should not join the worship team.
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But by and large, we recognize that congregational singing is important.
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And this is where I have to throw some stones at more contemporary forms of worship when it comes to the church, because when
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I read Ephesians 5 .19, which tells me that I'm to speak to one another—not I, we are to speak to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
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When Colossians 3 .16 says that we are to teach and admonish one another. Ever thought about that?
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That in our singing, we're teaching one another and we're admonishing one another? If that's what we're called to do in our worship, then that requires all of us participating.
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When we sing, when we are ministering to one another, we're teaching one another, we're admonishing one another.
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Yes, there is the vertical aspect of our worship that we're singing to the Lord, but we're also singing to each other.
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If I can make this practical for a moment. Can I encourage you saints, when you come to church, sing.
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Sing. Sing out and sing well. Well, Kofi, I'm not good at singing.
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First of all, the church should be the one place in the world where we're not judging one another, so if somebody doesn't sound that great, show them some grace.
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It's okay. Well, Kofi, I don't know our songs as well as I should.
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Well, there's one reason we have an email list. If you're not on it, come see me. I can add you to it. We send out our songs every week, so you can learn them and sing them with confidence when you get here.
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Sing them during the week. Sing them in your family worship. Sing them in the car. It might eliminate road rage.
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I know it does that for me, but don't lose sight of the fact that when we come to worship, we come to participate together as God's people.
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So there's a singing aspect of our worship as participatory, but allow me to touch on something that maybe you've not thought about.
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As much as it's easy for me to poke fun at the seeker -sensitive churches and some of the ridiculous antics they do,
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I mean, they make it easy, I think it's also important for us to be self -critical when we look at our own camp, so to speak.
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We can criticize those churches for being non -participatory because they basically turn their worship into a show, but can we talk about our own camp for a moment and the ways in which sometimes we are not the most participatory?
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I mean, think about it. Why do we criticize those churches for their worship not having an adequate amount of participation when we can be guilty of the very same thing in our circles?
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Kofi, what on earth do you mean? How are we not participatory in our worship? I'm glad you asked. In fact,
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I'm not gonna say anything, I'm gonna borrow from someone. Dr. Sam Waldron, I've referenced his book a few times in this series,
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How Then Should We Worship? This is what Dr. Waldron said in his book, quote, every form of monological or spectator worship is condemned by biblical gospel worship.
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This condemns the priestly worship of those churches that have turned worship into an act done by a priest in the presence of the congregation.
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This condemns a contemporary worship of those churches which have turned worship into a performance by a great band and a message by a talented speaker.
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This even condemns, this is Dr. Waldron again, this even condemns the traditional worship of those churches that have turned worship into something done mainly by a minister praying and preaching in front of a mainly passive audience whose only duty is to pray quietly and listen even more quietly.
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Gospel worship, again, this is how he concludes his little section, gospel worship is not about spectating.
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Now I think about it, maybe we could use the word spectating. There we are. Gospel worship is not about spectating.
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It is about participating. I love
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Reformed theology. Our church would claim to be Reformed in its theology without question. But if that doesn't sound, that last description he gave, if that doesn't sound like a lot of Reformed and evangelical churches, there's a reason why sometimes
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Reformed churches have the nickname the frozen chosen. You've heard that phrase? This might sting, but here goes.
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There's no verbal affirmation of readings of Scripture, no verbal affirmations after prayers or pronouncements, like we have an assurance of pardon every week, you might get the crowd murmur if I say something funny, people might laugh, but by and large we don't really participate as much as we should in our circle, should we?
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Now I'll tell you what, when I've brought this up in the past, I'll tell you what people have told me. Kofi, you can't mandate that. After all,
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Kofi, it wasn't you who preached in week one, that if we understand the relative principle, it guards our consciences.
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Well, I'm not comfortable in my conscience, okay? I can't mandate that, you're 100 % right.
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I can't, nobody can. But I don't have to because your Bible does.
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Let's take something simple, I'm not saying get wild and crazy, let's just pick something simple like saying amen in church.
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Can I show you in the Bible that that's actually mandated for all God's people to do? If you're taking notes, four points real quickly.
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Number one, saying amen was a part of Old Testament worship. So, First Chronicles chapter 16,
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First Chronicles chapter 16, you see this happen where the people have got gathered for worship and, let me read it,
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First Chronicles 16, 36, blessed be Yahweh, God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting.
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Then all the people said, amen, and praised the Lord. How about during the reading of the
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Word? Ezra chapter 8 and verse 6, Ezra blessed the
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Lord, the great God, and with their hands uplifted, all the people said, amen, amen. Bear in mind, this is while he is reading, he's not even teaching this, he's just reading it.
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Then they knelt low and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. You see it in calls to worship in the
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Old Testament, Psalm 106 verse 48, blessed be Yahweh, God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting.
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Let all the people say, amen, hallelujah. So, the people in the
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Old Testament are explicitly commanded to say amen in their worship. How about number two, even in heaven, amens are mentioned.
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Revelation chapter 5 verse 14, the four living creatures said, amen, and the elders fell down and worshipped.
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Revelation chapter 7, 11 and 12, all the angels stood around the throne, and along with the elders and the four living creatures, they fell face down before the throne and worshipped
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God, saying, amen, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and strength be to our
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God forever and ever, amen. Revelation 19, 4, then the 24 elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshipped
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God, who is seated on the throne, saying, amen, hallelujah. You get the picture.
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In the Old Testament, they're commanded to say amen. In heaven, they are saying amen in their worship. How about in the church?
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That's what I want you to see with me. Tell me the first Corinthians chapter 14. First Corinthians chapter 14, the context of this is,
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Paul is, funny enough, writing about corporate worship and the disorder that the Corinthians have brought to their corporate worship through their misuse of the spiritual gifts.
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So he's writing this final section, really starts in chapter 12, but chapter 14 is the final section in this treatment of their use of spiritual gifts, and as he's writing to correct their worship, pick it up with me in verse 13.
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First The Bible says, therefore, the person who prays in a tongue should pray that he can interpret.
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For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful. What then?
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I will pray with the Spirit, and I will also pray with my understanding. I will sing praise with the Spirit, and I will also sing praise with my understanding.
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For if, verse 16, for otherwise, if you praise with the
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Spirit, how will the outsider say amen at your giving of thanks, since he does not know what you are saying?
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And just to be on the safe side, I read just about every commentary on First Corinthians I could this week when I came to this verse.
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They all agreed that it was a central part of the early church's worship, that when the giving of thanks was made, people responded with amens.
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This passage makes it very clear that it was part of the worship of God's people, it was the norm, and it was expected.
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Once again, I want to quote Dr. Sam Waldron, and by the way, Sam Waldron is not a wild -eyed charismatic. He's a Reformed Baptist. I love my
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Reformed Baptist brethren. I'm theologically very close to them. But they are not known for their exuberant and wild services.
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But listen to what he says. Quote, if you go back to the passages we have considered, some of which we just looked at, you will see that this covers pretty much everything.
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There was either praise, petition, the reading of Scripture, or proclamation.
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How would that apply to us? Well, he says, in our context, we should appropriately sing the amen after praise.
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If you've been to some Reformed Baptist churches, they actually do this. When they sing their hymns, they finish their hymns with an amen.
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We should say amen at the conclusion of the public reading of Scripture. It should be said occasionally during the preaching of the Word. Again, not a wild -eyed charismatic or Pentecostal, but even he's saying during the preaching of God's Word.
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Never mind, he's a local church pastor saying this. We should be saying amen. Interestingly, he says it should be said occasionally during the preaching of the
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Word and will be said if we are engaged as we should be. The amen should be said at every appropriate place where people should be responding.
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There should be a responsiveness from all people expressed by a vocal amen.
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Now, some of you will probably say, that's just weird. That's not what
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I do. Or culturally, that's not what we do. Dr.
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Waldron has some more words for you. He goes on, this is not only a temperamental thing. It was
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David who said, let all the people say amen. Funny, don't we have a hymn that we always sing that says that?
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Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King. Doesn't it say, let the amen sound from his people again. Gladly for I, we adore him.
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I love this from Dr. Waldron. He goes on, would you be convinced to, this is a fascinating question, would you be convinced to attempt an inquiry into the
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Christian religion by watching yourself worship? Would the unbeliever look at you and say,
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I don't believe a thing they are saying, but it is clear they do. He's into this.
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His whole soul is involved in this worship. He goes on, this true public worship should manifest sacred development.
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No bystanders are allowed in public worship. Worship is not a spectator sport.
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You are not here to watch. You are here to worship, and part of your worship involves saying the amen.
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Thank you. Quick learner. I invite you to consider that because our worship ought to be participatory, not spectatory.
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You're not watching somebody do something. You're actively participating. I would love to camp here, but I still have a ways to go, and I'm not trying to preach an hour and 15 like I did last week.
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So we'll keep it moving. So our worship should be God -centered, not man -centered.
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Word -driven, not preference -driven. Reverence, not flippant. Spiritual, not carnal. Participatory, not spectatory.
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Number six, our worship should be particular and general. Particular and general.
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True worship is both particular and general. Now this is where I need to address a common distinction.
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Chances are, as you've gone through this series, you've probably thought about it. If you've been around church, you've probably heard this said.
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We typically say something along the lines of, worship is not just what we do on Sunday, it's all of life.
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How many of you have heard that before? Now let me tell you up front, that's a hundred percent true.
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I'm not here to actually delete that phrase from your vocabulary because it's a hundred percent right. I do want to correct a misunderstanding of this, however, where it can end up sounding as though what we do in these 90 -odd minutes on a
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Sunday aren't that important compared to what we do the rest of the week.
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How many of you have heard people say something along those lines before? Maybe not so much in here, but I've heard it over the years.
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In its most extreme form, some people would say, well, I worship God on my job, I worship God when I'm out in nature. I remember one guy was trying to—not here, this was back in the
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UK—I was trying to convince to come back to worship, and he was a—in the UK we call them anglers— fisherman.
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He liked fishing, recreationally. He said, well, I can worship God with my rod in my boat.
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Now, some of you say, well, no, I'm not there. That's just not an excuse for disobedience, and you're right, it is an excuse.
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But sometimes I fear that because we want to emphasize worship in all of life, we do so by diminishing what we do in our corporate time together.
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Well, allow me to give a few thoughts as to why our worship is both particular, what we do on the Lord's Day, as well as general.
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Well, first of all, like I said, we have to affirm, if we read our Bibles well, that there is a sense in which our whole lives are offered up to the
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Lord in worship. So, the text, before we all know it, Romans chapter 12, 1 and 2, you know, by the mercy of God, I urge you to present your bodies a living sacrifice to God, holy and pleasing.
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This is your—translations go different ways—CSB says your true worship. First Corinthians 1031, so whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.
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That is true. In the words of one of my favorite preachers, Dr. Woody Barker, amen, hallelujah, praise the
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Lord. Nobody is arguing that. So, when you go to work, you work as unto the
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Lord, as husbands and fathers, wives and mothers, as friends, as anything we do in life.
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All that we do is in the shadow of the cross. Everything in life is an act of worship in the sense that it is all done for the glory of God.
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It's not like we—you've probably encountered Christians like this. I have. Christians who play by two sets of rules.
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I've got my—when I'm in church, I have my rules for church people and when I'm in church. But when
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I'm out in the world, you know, when in Rome, do as Romans do, so I play by the world's rules. I've worked for bosses over the years who said they were
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Christians and were no different to their non -Christian colleagues, and then I go to church on Sunday and see them and be like, which one am
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I dealing with today? Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde? No, we don't play by two sets of rules, one for the world and one for when we're
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Christians. All of life is lived to the glory of God.
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But there's a second thought we need to, as it were, balance that, which is this, that there is a relationship that exists between what we do here in worship and what we do out there, metaphorically speaking, out in the world.
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This is where I think sometimes the conversation about all of life being worshipped can go wrong, because what do we often say?
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Well, because I spend more time out there, what I do out there is of a higher priority than what
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I do when I come to church on Sunday. Well, is that true?
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Do we focus too much on our corporate worship on Sundays? Well, for a moment, for a moment, let me get philosophical.
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I try not to in the pulpit, but for this one, just bear with me. Which is more important, the six or the one?
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I'm going somewhere with this. Which is more important, the six or the one?
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What am I asking? Which is more important? Is it how the six days of my week go determine what
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I do on Sunday? Or is it what I do on Sunday sets the pace for the rest of the week? That's the question
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I'm asking, which is more important, the six or the one? Of course, you probably can guess if I give you that definition that I'm probably going to say that the one is a little more important, not by much, but a little more important in this sense.
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If you let the six, the rest of the days of the week, determine how you view this time, you'd never participate in it if you were honest.
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I know this because, you know me, I like to be transparent. Have there been seasons in my own life when
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I heard the alarm go off on Sunday morning and I just wanted to go back to sleep? Yep.
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You're the preacher. Yes. There have been days I've been like, not recently, thankfully.
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Have there been seasons where everything was going on in the week so wore me down that I had to drag myself to church?
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Yep. I have no shame in saying that because if you're honest, some of you have had moments just like that, where you've had to drag yourself to it.
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You didn't want to go, but you came anyway. I'm comforted when
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I read the Bible because when I read the Bible, I'm not the first person to have felt that way.
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If you're taking notes, Psalm 73? If you don't know Psalm 73, you should read it.
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It's a great psalm. Gives you some great perspective in times of trial. It's written by Asaph.
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Asaph was a worship leader, if you want to use our modern parlance, but he was a worship leader.
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He was having some trouble. You read Psalm 73, he's like, I'm looking at the wicked and they're prospering.
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I'm looking at the wicked and everything's going great for them. They don't have problems. Life is good.
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At least it looks good on their side. And then there's me.
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Life doesn't look so good. Why does life look bad for me but look great for them? And you can see in the first half of the psalm, he's having this internal dialogue with himself.
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He's reminding, he's singing this for congregational worship, but he's telling this story of the dialogue that happens within him.
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Like, why is it the wicked are prospering and I'm not? But if you've read that psalm, you know where the turning point in the psalm is.
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If you haven't, let me read it to you. Psalm 73, verse 15 through 17. This is what
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Asaph says. He said, if I had decided to say these things out loud, his internal resting, which eventually he does say out loud, but at that moment, he says, if I had decided to say these things out loud,
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I would have betrayed your people. When I tried to understand this, it all seemed hopeless.
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Verse 17, until I entered
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God's sanctuary. Then I understood their destiny.
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Essentially, the psalmist says, it wasn't until I came to worship. By the way, imagine that. He's the worship leader. He says, it wasn't until I came into God's sanctuary.
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Then he says, then I understood their destiny. Asaph couldn't make sense of the world.
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He was watching this, and it was wearisome to him. And then he came to worship.
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I love Matthew. You all know I love Matthew Henry. Here's what he had to say on this section from Psalm 73.
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He says, there are many great things and things needful to be known, which will not be known otherwise, than by going into the sanctuary of God, where worship and prayer is.
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The sanctuary must therefore be the resort of the tempted soul.
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So again, I ask you, Redeemer Bible Fellowship, which is more important? The six or the one?
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I put it to you, like the Puritans would have when they called the Lord's Day the market day of the soul, that what happens here, if we rightly engage it, it's not just by doing the stuff that what
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I'm talking about happens. It's as your heart rightly engages with what
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God is doing in this time of worship. It's in that as our hearts unite with faith, and they engage in this time.
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This sets the tone for everything else. That's why, as I've gone on, I'm a little more emboldened to tell people to leave bad churches and find good ones.
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I believe it was Dr. Owen Strand who tweeted and caused a firestorm on the internet when he said, life is too short to be in bad churches.
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And that's not to say, please hear me, I am NOT saying that your personal time in God's Word, your family worship, for those of you who do that, and you should, other midweek times of gathering, that those are unimportant.
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That's not my focus at all. I am NOT one of those people who bash having a quiet time. I think everybody should. I am one of those, as some of you know, men,
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I took a Monday night to teach on family worship because I think it's that important. We have growth groups, come to them.
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I'm not saying they are unimportant. I'm simply recognizing what I think is a biblical reality, that this, this specific time of worship, this particular time, puts our general worship into proper perspective.
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You might not agree with me, and that's fine, but at least consider it. At least consider it.
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God -centered, Word -driven, reverent, spiritual, participatory, particular, in general. Number seven, let's keep moving, it should be timely, yet timeless.
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Timely, yet timeless. I told you in week one that I wasn't going to address the question of traditional or contemporary till I got to week four.
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Well, we have finally come to that time. Which one should we be? Which one should Redeemer be?
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Well, my answer is, the truth is somewhere in the middle. That's my short answer.
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Truth is somewhere in the middle. Before I give you my slightly longer answer, allow me to say a few words.
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Human beings are not very good with the past. We just aren't. We're not good with history. On the one hand, we kind of fall into the era of basically worshipping the past.
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The people in the past could do no wrong. That's not history, that's called hagiography. That's the technical term for that.
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Treating the people in the past like they were sacred? No, the people in the past were human, they got things wrong, they were people of their time too.
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So that's one era we fall into. On the other end, you basically have those people who think that, yeah, the people in the past, forget them, we need to just modernize, modernize, modernize.
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Unfortunately, we're in the generation where we've kind of been taught to look at history with some level of disdain.
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Yeah, there are some great characters in history, but by and large, that was then, this is now. You've probably heard the trend, younger folks, okay, boomer.
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For the record, I despise that phrase because it's disrespectful. My Bible tells me that you're to honor those who are older.
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That's a principle in Scripture. Bible refers to gray hair as a crown. So this whole idea of we disrespect previous generations and we treat them with contempt,
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I'm not with that. And quite frankly, any Christian who does that hasn't read their Bible very well. But because we've been taught to look at the past with disdain and to look at the present with kind of rose -tinted glasses, when it comes to the worship issue, that's no different.
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Just this week, I read an article with people saying, you need to get rid of traditional hymns, get rid of traditional instruments, because the younger generation don't like that, and we need to appeal to them.
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They're the future of the church. Is that true? I'm a little,
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I'm a little suspicious of that phrase. I'm a little suspicious, excuse me, of that train of thought for the simple fact that we're the entertainment generation.
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Think about it. Most of us can't envision a world where television stopped. If every television signal stopped tomorrow, there were no
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YouTube, there was no Hulu, or whichever streaming platform, Netflix, or whichever one you prefer. If all that died tomorrow, most of you can't fathom a world with that.
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Not some of you can, because you're old enough to remember when none of those things existed. I'll be honest,
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I can't. I was born in 1990. TV has always been around. I remember my shock as a kid discovering that TV was invented at one point.
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Now, literally, I genuinely thought people for hundreds of years have always had television, and with being an entertainment generation, we're told that we're more visual, we have shorter attention spans, we can't have too much content because people can't track.
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We're told people are too self -conscious, that's why we need to get rid of the awkwardness of public singing, and people don't want to be preached to.
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So that thing that you do where you preach Kofi, no, we don't need that. It needs to be more conversational.
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Less declaration, more conversation. Here's the thing, even non -Christians recognize that's a problem.
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Some of you maybe have heard of a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death. If you haven't, those of you especially homeschool parents, that might be a book you want to read with your kids when they get older.
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Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Neil Postman wasn't Christian. He was at best a sort of lapsed
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Jew, if you will. But in Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman's thesis is very simple.
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He says we as a generation are—bear in mind, he was writing this in the 1980s, and the book is still in print because his insights were almost prophetic.
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He said we are over -entertained, and this has affected everything, and he even says religious worship has been affected by that.
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Some of you say, okay, Kofi, you're overselling this. I'm not sure that's really the case. Oh, really? That's why we will refer to some worship services as being boring and others as being exciting?
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Those are entertainment terms. I find it funny, as you all know, I love my older hymns.
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I'm always quoting them in sermons. I find it funny that so many older songs are called cheesy, and we're basically told to just, you know, kind of retire them.
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You know, we need the newer and the best stuff. Now, some will say,
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Kofi, hold on, hold on, hold on. I have the right to whatever preferences I want. I don't have to like everything.
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If I don't like something, I'm free to reject it, and I would agree. You do have your right to your preferences, just not when it comes to worship.
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So, yeah, you're free to pick what you want to wear, what jobs you want to take, who you date or marry, how many children you choose to have, where you choose to live, whatever healthcare choice is within reason you want to participate in, whether you like Coke or Pepsi, you can pick.
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No one really cares in that regard, but when it comes to worship,
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I think there's a sense in which our modern generation has to ask ourselves, what have we been raised by, and what are our expectations?
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And if that's the case, that we have some off expectations, what do we need?
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What do we need to understand in order to have the right kinds of expectations? I think
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Paul gives us an answer, if you take, you know, it's 1 Corinthians 9 27. Paul says, in referring to his own ministry, he says, you know,
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I don't run like someone who is running aimlessly, boxing the air, and then he says, verse 27, instead, I discipline my body and bring it under strict control, so that after preaching to others,
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I myself will not be disqualified. Part, I would argue, of disciplining our bodies and bringing them under strict control is disciplining ourselves in the area of our preferences, such that when we come to worship, we don't say, well,
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I hate this, why can't they do it the way I want? Maybe there may be a degree to which you need to say,
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I'm not going to let that get in the way. I go down that rabbit trail for a moment because I want to say that I think a purely contemporary sound has its issues, especially when it's influenced by the culture in which we live.
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That being said, I'm not a slave to history either. I don't think that we just need to do stuff because people in the past did it, even if it doesn't translate into the world in which we live.
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One of my favorite thing is Dr. Mark Ward. He has a three -word phrase that I love that explains this.
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Edification requires intelligibility. In other words, you can't be edified by what you don't understand, and if we are so beholden to it needs to look like that of the past that people come to church and it feels like, whoa, this is disorienting, that might not be the most helpful thing either.
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So what do I mean when I say that our worship should be timely and timeless? Well, here's my longer answer, and in fact
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I put it on screen so you could read it. Here's my longer answer. We want our worship to be informed with the best practices and principles of previous generations while being timely in presentation to the world of today.
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We want our worship to be informed with the best practices and principles of previous generations while being timely in presentation to the world of today.
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Those of you who are somewhat savvy in the more technical areas of worship, this is what some would call a blended approach.
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I kind of lean in that direction with maybe a little more deference to some traditional forms.
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So for example, our liturgy that we follow, the reason why we follow that liturgy is it's one that comes out of the
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Reformation. Yes, we've modernized it and tweaked it in areas, and that's okay because we're not beholden to everything from the past.
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We take the best practices and principles while we're being timely in our presentation today.
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So no offense to the King James Version, but we don't generally use the King James Version in our public reading. We live in 2023, not 1611.
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And we use guitars and we sing a mix of older songs and newer songs.
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Because why? We want to be informed with the best of the past while being timely in our presentation today.
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It saddens me that, in a sense, that this even has to be a conversation, that we have the worship wars where believers go, you know, hammer and tong as I'd say back home, fighting one another on these issues, when it's just like, guys, guys, guys, you're missing the point.
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And there are other things that come into play with the worship wars, what people are used to, what they grew up with, and all of that. That's a whole other conversation to deal with.
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But ultimately we want to be timely in our presentation while holding to timeless biblical and historic principles in our worship.
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I don't want to end there. I want to end on a happy note. Here's my final principle. God -centered, not man -centered, word -driven, not preference -driven, reverent, not flippant, spiritual, not carnal, participatory, not spectatory, particular in general, timely yet timeless.
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Finally, if we worship properly, our worship should be eschatological, not temporal. Eschatological, not temporal.
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All I mean by that, our worship ultimately is a reflection of the hope that we have for the future, and it ultimately points us to the day where we will worship imperfect.
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It saddens me that in our Reformed community we're scared to talk about eschatology. We generally don't talk about that subject.
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If people do, they're usually more heated than they should be and say things that they shouldn't towards brothers in Christ.
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We make out like this is the hardest topic in the world, or worse, we make out like only prepper weirdos with nuclear bunkers and overactive imaginations care deeply about the end.
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I'll spare you my rant about how neglecting to study eschatology and find all things is bad for your spiritual health.
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For now, I want us to be close. I want us to see how an understanding of the future informs our worship in the present.
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Because when you start to read the Bible, the Bible focuses a lot on our future hope as a fuel for our worship in the present.
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You see this in the Old Testament. It's two verses, Isaiah 26 and 19. Isaiah 24, 25, 26, and 27 are what's often called
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Isaiah's little apocalypse. It's his little treatment of the end of the world as we know it. In chapter 26, he says this, speaking of the resurrection to come, he says, your dead will live, their bodies will rise.
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And the prophet, as it were, gives a command to the dead.
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He says, awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust. For you will be covered with morning dew, and the earth will bring out the departed spirits.
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Zephaniah. Chances are you've not heard a sermon series on Zephaniah. But if you have, you know that Zephaniah is about the day of the
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Lord. His final end time act of judgment and salvation, where God will judge the world and deliver his people.
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Zephaniah 317, one of the most fascinating verses in all the
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Bible. Yahweh your God is among you, the warrior who saves.
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He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you in his love.
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He will, this is referring to the end of the day of the Lord when the righteous are saved, he will, and it's a future tense in the
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Hebrew as well as the English, he will delight in you with singing.
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And yes, that's a picture, we understand that. But have you ever thought, why would the Bible employ the imagery of singing in relation to that day of the
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Lord? You see, all through Revelation, they're singing a lot in Revelation. How about the
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Lord's table? So we've read it before,
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Matthew 26, 29. Jesus says, but I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when
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I drink it new with you in my father's kingdom. Points to the future.
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Jesus says, this is gonna be the last time I partake, at least physically, with you in this table. I won't partake of it with you again until I drink it in the kingdom that's yet to come.
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We read it every single week. First Corinthians 11, 26, for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the
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Lord's death until he comes. Couldn't help but quote
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Matthew Henry again. Quote, dying saints take their leave of sacraments and the other ordinances which they enjoy in this world with comfort, for the joy they enter into supersedes them all.
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I love this, this is the kind of thing only Matthew Henry would say. When the sun rises, farewell go the candles.
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Our worship is like lighting, okay we don't do this really in 2023 I guess, except for ambience.
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But in his day, when the sun went down, what did you do? You lit candles so you could see.
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But you don't light candles in the day to see, do you? And he says that's how it is with our worship.
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Our worship is like right now, we light a candle so that we can see somewhat. But when the dawn comes, we won't be candles, will we?
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You see, if we understand our worship correctly, what we partake of in our worship now is just a sweet, sweet foretaste of what we will one day enjoy in full in the kingdom of God.
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One of my favorite older hymns, Brethren We Have Come to Worship, the last verse of that hymn says this, let us love our
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God supremely, let us love each other too, let us love and pray for sinners till our
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God makes all things new, then he'll call us home to heaven, at his table we'll sit down,
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Christ will gird himself and serve us with sweet manner all.
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Beloved, our worship is inherently tied to our understanding of the end.
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And could it be, go there with me for just a moment, could it be that so much of our contemporary worship, the reason why it's so light and anemic is it's so focused on the here and now, and there's not much talk about the future?
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That's one of the reasons I love our older hymns. They seem obsessed almost, if talking about the end in some way, shape, or form.
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They could talk about their own day and yet look forward to the future. Might it be that our worship lacks weight because we talk and sing and think so little about the end?
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I think ultimately our worship is anemic when it's just focused on the here and now. Because you see, worship ultimately is not just the proclamation of a past salvation, it's not just a proclamation of present grace.
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No, if we understand our worship correctly, ultimately worship is a proclamation of our future hope. And that's why
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I want us to end this series on that most blessed of notes, that one day our blessed
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Redeemer will come back for us. That the one who lived the life that we were unable to live and died the death that we so rightly deserved, that one day that one who died and who rose and who ascended again will fulfill his promise when he said that one day he will return.
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That he will come, John 14, and take us to be with himself so that where he is, there we may be also.
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And on that day we will worship with no more weariness, no more distractions, no more sucks of our time, no more half -heartedness and wrestling with our flesh to worship as we ought.
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For now we worship in part, but on that glorious day we will worship with all we have and with all we are.
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And so I leave you with this thought as I conclude. If that is true then, how about we get some practice in here and now?
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Faith family, let us worship God. Let's worship him with body and soul, with heart and mind, with voice and with life, and let's ultimately, as we've titled this series, worship by the book.
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And Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the privilege of worship. Thank you for all that you've taught us in the last few weeks as we have been in your
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Word and have been thinking about the subject of worship. Father, we ask that as we move forward and we worship on the
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Lord's Day with all of our lives, that we would do so by your Word, knowing that as we do so we enjoy your blessing and that ultimately we don't worship just for the here and now, but we worship in preparation and in anticipation for that final day.
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Be with us as we come to the Lord's table now. We ask you in Jesus name and for his sake,