Postures Of Worship

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

Pastor Steve is here. It is a Tuesday. Buenos dias. Steve, we just got an answer machine message from a caller, from a listener, who ordered 18 or 19 copies of Discovering Romans, the S. Lewis Johnson Romans Commentary.

How encouraging is that? I know! I know! Man, I didn�t catch his name. I�ll go back and re-listen to the message. Our secretary is out today.

I think it was Biff Burfelstock.

Man, that is great. You know, when these United Methodist Churches order the Romans Commentary, I�m especially happy. Yeah, that�s very encouraging. What was she saying on the phone? Oh, funny. I�m the pastor of I know, Pastorette, Elder Enos.

Leaving a Church When a Pastor Is a Woman

Yeah, you know, we always get asked the question, or sorry, regularly get asked the question, you know, there�s kind of trouble in our church. Should we leave our church? And we are pastors and we are on the receiving end of people leaving the church well, and sadly, poorly.

So, I always try to make sure that people are kind and nice and they don�t slander, they fulfill their ministry, they give their pastors the benefit of the doubt. It�s a hard job to do, right? It�s basically impossible.

Is it? Pete. Is it? But if your pastor is a woman, you should leave the church. Pete. That would be a good clue.

If you can�t get, you know, 1 Timothy 2 and 3 and Titus 1 right, you know, then what can you get right?

I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. And when you can say, no, that verse actually means I do allow a woman to teach and exercise authority and to be vocal, then it�s probably time to go.

Pete Well, then, yeah, because if you can do that, you can make the New Testament, you know, even the Gospels, say whatever you like, you know?

Pete Yes, but those words in Timothy, Steve, or just to the church at Ephesus, they had a particular problem of women getting rowdy.

There�s nothing like rowdy women. Pete. Of course, when Paul ties that into creation and Adam and Eve, then that becomes a little bit more of a transchronological issue.

Pete. Pastor Steve, okay. Mike Ebenroth here with Steve Cooley. We have a board game received from the Do Not Be Surprised ministry team. I think she's, I think Erin's got a team of maybe like 20 or 30 crack staff over there.

Pete. At least.

Pete. Yes. Pete. I mean, because we've been playing this game nonstop. I mean, it's just been consuming the life of No Compromise Radio. We set up tournaments and it's just crazy.

Mike Steve, I'll tell you the amount of hours I've played with each particular game, ranking them throughout my entire life, it would be Risk number one, Stratego number two, Yahtzee number three, and Your Best Life Now number four.

Mike It's really, it's overcome like life and some of those kind of, you know, chutes and ladders. Pete I'm impressed.

You know, for me, it'd probably be, no doubt, Diplomacy, maybe Ticket to Ride, you know, a few other games. I'm going to guess that that's probably somewhere around 274 for me.

Mike Well, here it sits in the No Compromise Radio studios as a mute reminder of Erin's, you know, appreciation for the ministry.

Pete. Well, you know, of her willingness to go the extra mile to serve her compatriots.

Mike And you know what? I think it was actually delivered on time for Christmas. In other words, it's on time delivery. Pete It just doesn't get any better than that. Mike I do have some cards here and there's about seven decks, or yeah, seven decks of cards in the game and each deck is different.

And on the top of this, it says Wonder Words, and I didn't know if that was a sitcom in the 70s.

That yet wonder years, maybe. Pete Yeah, I think that was the 80s or 90s or something. Mike Oh, it was? Pete Yeah. Yeah. All right. Pete I just love the theme song. You know, Joe Cocker, the late Joe Cocker singing with a little help from my friends.

Mike I thought the theme song was one banana, two banana, three banana, four. Pete No, that's the banana splits. Mike Okay, so let's just look at some Wonder Words. I have not looked at these particular words, and I'm just going to flip them out as we go.

The first one is Pete Dynamic. Mike Yes. And so this is a word association. When I flip out the word dynamic, Pete I just think Mike Avendroff. I was wanting you to think about some kind of Bible character, you know, like David was a Pete Samson.

Mike Man. Pete He was dynamic. Mike Dynamic equivalent. Okay, this is fun. I like this game so far. Pete Yeah, okay. Mike All right. Ready? Number two.

Pete Potential. Mike Okay. Pete Samson had great potential. Pete It's just going to be all about all about Samson. Mike Everyone. Let's do the next one about Samson. Pete Love.

Samson loved himself. Pete. And had a high self-image. You know what he really did? Mike. Yes, he did. Pete. That would be bad to try to moralize judges in that particular section of scripture and then say, this is how you're supposed to get a wife.

You say to your parents, get me a wife.

We talk about, you know, dare to be a Daniel preaching, and I've always like, I've loved to hear dare to be a Samson. Hey, he's in the hall of faith. So why not emulate Samson?

You know, go. Mike I know. Well, think about it. Okay, with the hall of faith to and Rahab. Can you imagine the grace of God and Rahab's life? If anybody needs grace, of course, you know, we all do, but she especially so lots of sins to pay for paganism, prostitution, rejection of the God of the universe, Yahweh.

And then in God's distinguishing condescending love, he saves her and she believes she has faith in the Lord God Almighty. And so she is commended in Hebrews for her faith, that exact thing. She exercised her faith.

Yes, it was a gift, but she did exercise it in response to the grace of God. And then we, what do we do, Steve? Well, she's in the hall of faith.

So therefore, lying must be okay. And I guess prostitution must be okay too. Why don't we ever say that?

It's those little tiny kind of little tiny sins. Yes. Those hobgoblins of inconsistency. All right. I do want to put one more card out and then we'll get to our topic du jour here because this topic I think is going to run into infringement and copyright and patent laws and maybe even trademark.

Oh, cool. Yes. Yes. Fire up the lawyers. Get the legal team ready. This is the Joe Osteen card game called Your Best Life Now. And my guess it's probably listed at about $29 .95, something like that.

I'm guessing, you know, since we did get it from Erin and since she's a giver, it's probably available for about three bucks or less.

Well, she's good gag gift giver and I gagged when I got this gift and so I think it's mission accomplished. All right, here's the next one. But I think there's going to be an infringement on some kind of legal statute.

Purpose. See? Or is it porpoise? It's purpose driven. And now all of a sudden he's gone over.

Yeah, I think he's got a problem because I don't. I don't see the trademark thing there. You know, you can't even use the word purpose anymore. I don't even think we're. Are we allowed to say it?

I mean, does the FCC come in and you know, they trademark it unless you're speaking to Ted's or Muslims.

See, if we didn't actually have the game, could Mike be shuffling the deck on on on air? Uh huh.

The Posture of Worship and Why It Matters

Hey, you know, there's one extra game that comes with this. It's 52. Pick up. Whoo. All right, Steve. Let's talk a little bit about worship today, because there's a variety of ways we express ourselves in worship.

And so what I'm after is Manos Arriba. Yeah. Yeah. Hands are held high. Steve's got his hands up right now. I don't know if he's signaling touchdown, the number 11. He's getting slain in the spirit or I surrender or I surrender all.

So let's talk about worship, and it will probably spin into a variety of different topics, subtopics. But Steve, when you think of worship, and if we were to do a little card game and I'd flip down the word worship, how do you think it's expressed?

Are there physical expressions for worship? And let's start with first individual worship at home by yourself, prayer closet, something like that at home, you know, in a room. Are there physical manifestations of worship?

Well, I'm really not sure exactly what you're after here, but I would, you know, are there places or positions that I can, I could take, you know, am I worshiping the Lord more if I'm on my face? Is that kind of what you're after?

Yeah. You know, in my prayer closet on my face, you know, with the Bible over the back of my head.

Right. Do you find it, I don't, for a long time, I prayed on my knees, and sometimes would lay down kind of just having my, I was wanting my mind and my will to follow my body's posture. And so here's what would happen.

I think I would actually kind of have that attitude of submission. But I regularly fell asleep, because I'm just getting older. On your knees. And my knees would hurt. And then if I laid all the way down, I'd fall asleep.

Yeah. See, I do have the problem with my knees. I can't even do that. So that makes it more difficult. But it's not prescribed in the Bible. It's not commanded. But that wouldn't be bad to do if you wanted to get on your knees.

Some people like to read their Bible on their knees. As long as you're not making it a legalistic thing, other people don't do it, and I'm better than they are because I do it. That'd be really wrong.

Well, you know, I'm pretty, and I'm going to say it this way, I'm pretty loose when it comes to the position that I pray in and then, you know, I worship and everything else. And there's a reason for that.

And I become, when I say loose, I'm pretty generous when it comes to thinking about how other people ought to do things. And the reason is, because if I bow my head for a long period of time, and I put my neck just so, I will get a headache that is like level 12, you know, off the scale.

Why? Because I have neck injuries. You know, if I kneel for a long period of time, my knees will be killing me for days. Well, why is that? Because I have bad knees, you know, and I can go right down low.

So for me, I've learned that posture is, you know, not just scripturally is a secondary issue, but physically it's a secondary issue. It doesn't, it's my mindset that I'm really concerned about. Okay, agreed.

And when we are to pray, having a mindset, an attitude of praying without ceasing, as Paul directed the church at Thessalonica, you can pray when you're driving down the street. You could pray anytime, right?

With your eyes open. Yes, with your eyes open. Jesus prayed with his eyes open, I think, as he looked up to heaven before. There's not one way, just like with evangelism, people want to have one particular way to always evangelize.

This is my strategy on evangelism. And you'll look at the New Testament and you'll see the priority of evangelism, the central person who we are talking about, Christ Jesus in evangelism, but all kinds of different ways.

And I think it's similar when it comes to private worship and communion with God.

I mean, people say, what's your strategy for evangelism? And I say, preach the gospel. What's your strategy for prayer?

Pray, you know? What's my strategy? Do you know what? I could probably spend a lot of time talking about prayer, and then I don't pray that much. I don't need a strategy.

You know, what I need is just an attitude and action. That's what I need.

Pete. One of the things I like to do is I like to just walk. And so, I like to walk outside because I see God's creation before my very eyes, and I'm reminded about his wisdom and power and other attributes.

But if I can't do that, I just walk around the Awana circle.

Pete. Which reminds me of the chaos of creation.

Pete Well, and I do this because maybe it'll help other people, not because I'm so pious. It's definitely not that. But when I walk around and I walk, we have just a smaller building here in West Boston in a small little sleepy town.

And we have one room for fellowship, for youth ministry, for Awana, for, you know, worship services. And so, the Awana tape is, it's a circle, you know, that all kinds of carnal games are probably played.

Pete Mmm. Pete Uh-huh. You know, winners and losers and boys competing with Pete. And it's actually taped on the floor.

Pete. Boys competing with girls. Pete. Doesn't that open up a, you know, a door to another dimension?

Pete. Of sight and sound. And so, when I walk past the platform, not the stage, but the platform, I might think, you know, let's pray for the music, right? Let's pray for the preaching. I make the bend around the corner by over the nursery.

And I think, you know, Lord, would you save the kids that are in the nursery? Would you protect them? Would you protect us from scandals? You know, all kinds of things like that. And so, walking around inside.

But if you want to kneel, you want to close your eyes, it's light, it's dark. Posture is not so important, Steve. Hit the proverbial nail on the head, it's that you actually pray.

Pete. Yeah, what's your strategy? People ask that question all the time and I'm like, I guess I just don't even think in those terms. Having been saved later in life, you know, it's just not something that occurs to me.

What's my strategy for this and that and the other thing? Just do.

You know? Just do. Pete. That's right. And I think you'll be helped with your prayer life if early in the morning, you read the scriptures. You know, you can read them early in the morning and late at night, in the middle of the day, a bunch of times, space it out.

But I just find that I'm thinking things now properly at the very beginning of the day, sit down, have a cup of coffee. I was reading today Psalm 29 about the voice of the Lord and Psalm 27, one thing I have asked of the Lord that I seek after that I would dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.

And it just sets the tone for the day for me. Pete Steve, now let's move to corporate worship. There are expressions of corporate worship that are a little, Steve's got his hands up again. A little more dicey, because what we do with other people probably affects them in some way, shape or form.

Corporate Worship, Singing, and Audience of One

Let's go to the extreme first. Someone's in the front row, and they've got their hands up in the air straight up. They're jumping up and down like a pogo stick. What would you be thinking?

Steve. That there must be a robbery in progress.

Pete. Yeah, they're robbing the attention that's supposed to go to the Lord and they're putting it on themselves.

Steve. No, I'm guessing that, you know, there's somebody that they're looking at with a weapon, you know, so they're….

Pete. With a weapon, it's always the cop stuff with Steve. It's the weapon. And you know, some don't like me to say cop because they think it's irreverent. So the police officer.

Steve. Thank you for being so reverent.

Pete Steve, if I were, though, just to let our listeners know, because I, you know, with you and Tony Miano and other people I know, we have retired police officers at our church. In all honesty, I really respect those men and I'm thankful for them, and ladies as well.

And so when I say cop, though, it's with no disrespect. If I were to say the fuzz are pigs or something, then that would be bad. But for me, that's a reverent term for me.

Steve. Well, and see, I don't think anything negative. I mean, if you're around police officers, we call ourselves that. I once heard, I don't want to talk about this, but I once heard a guy, you know, debating with a child about whether it was okay for the child to say cop or not.

And I just thought, give it a rest.

Pete. You could call them ministers of God, Romans chapter 13.

Steve. Yeah, but this police officer was not a, you know, he was not a Christian, so he wasn't thinking that. He just didn't want the kid to say, cops, he went, no, I'm a police officer, or I'll take you into, you know, custody.

So yeah, not that big of a deal to me. Pete. Okay.

So back to corporate worship and expressions. How about, this is a thing that I know is close to your heart. What about singing with enthusiasm and singing with, you know, have you ever, were you ever singing so loudly that you might have broken into a sweat?

You know, that'd be a good question to ask people with worship of all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Steve. Yeah, I think too many people, you know, are afraid that they don't sound good, or they just don't like to sing, you know, in front of other people or whatever, you know, and so they, because the focus, wrongly, is on them, you know, and how they're perceived.

Pete Steve, my son, Luke, as you know, is in the master's college, is at the master's college. And they have chapels. Steve. In the master's chorale. Pete Yeah, yeah, the chorale and the chapel.

And Steve. No, the chorale, the singing group, he's not really. Pete I know, I know, I know.

He would like to be. You get better discounts there at the school. Why do the singers get deals?

Steve. Because they travel all around the world.

Pete. No, because they have good voices that they didn't even get. But God gave them to them. And this is like distinguishing sovereign grace, and it's making me bother. It's like Malachi 1, how have you learned me?

I know what is going on with that. So there's no debtor's prison, though. That's the good thing. Anyway, Luke said to me the other day, he was describing his friends, and he's been there now one semester.

And it's really neat. He said to me last night, you know, almost all my friends, not all of them, but the majority of them go to Grace Church. You know, we have that in common. And he said, this one guy I like, and I said, Why do you like him?

And he said, because he, even though he doesn't have a good voice, he sings really loud at chapel and I appreciate that about him. And I thought, you know what, that's a pretty good way to pick a friend.

It's a very good way to pick a friend. I mean, there's somebody who's who really understands what worship is about, which is not the quality of your voice. It's about your attitude. You know, just like with prayer, it's about your attitude about what you're thinking about.

If we are to sing songs, as Ephesians talks about, what are some hints, Steve, for singing songs? Let's start off with one from Sinclair Ferguson. Sing like you're holding the hymnal with Jesus.

Petey I dare say, and I venture to say that if people were actually holding the hymnal with Jesus, they would sing differently. You know, they wouldn't be like, well, he's sure singing loud, but I should sing loud too.

Maybe that's the way you're supposed to do it.

Steve, secondly, let's talk about sing with an audience of one. We have, there's one eternal God, Yahweh is his name, and we think now with progressive revelation, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And when you sing for one, you don't think about, well, other people who hear my voice.

Well, let's just think about, let's just get back to the word worship. You know, when you're preaching, what do you think? Gee, I hope the people like this. No, you don't. If you're a pastor and you're preaching the Bible, you think, I hope the Lord is not displeased by what I say today.

I want to please the Lord. So, if you're singing the same thing, if you're praying the same thing, it's not about what are other people going to think. That's the wrong attitude. You're not in worship mode.

You know, if you want to worship the Lord, you need to be focusing your attention and your energy on him and him alone. So, that goes for singing, that goes for everything.

Peter. Maybe it'll be easier for our listeners to think through it with a comparison. Steve, when you preach, when I preach, on good days when I'm thinking properly, I have many faults. This just doesn't happen to be one of them on most days.

I think I preach for the Lord. If nobody likes it, but the Lord likes it, then so be it. So, for instance, last week, I preached through Matthew 18 regarding church discipline. It wasn't upbeat. It wasn't warming and soothing and friendly.

It was…. I was getting warm and fuzzy. God requires a pure church, and this is what you must do if you're going to call yourself a Christian church. And so, I thought, you know, if nobody likes it, I have to be faithful.

And so, how about the same kind of methodology and attitude people could have regarding singing? Wouldn't that work?

That would totally work. And you know what, here, you want to talk about something that will jar you out of worship. Let me give you an example, and then I'll get back to what I really wanted to say. Let's say that during the opening prayer, during the prayer after, well, it's not really the opening prayer, the intercessory prayer that we pray every Sunday after we read the scripture.

Let's say that during that, the person who was praying cracked a joke. What would we think? We'd say, well, that wasn't right. That wasn't very reverential. So, let me put it another way. Why would we sing songs that make us think of other things other than Christ Jesus?

Why would we think, why would we sing songs that would take away from the glory of God? Why would we sing songs that talk about us and our goodness and our faithfulness and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?

Is that worship? You know, well, I want something that talks about me. Pete. Me, myself, and I. Yeah. Just as I am. You know, which is actually not that bad, but I mean, there are songs that totally distract you from thinking about Christ.

Why would we sing a song like that?

I know. Steve, what about, everybody's going to ask the question, as we're talking about worship today, manifestations, physical manifestations of worship. What about raising hands? Just, you know, we don't have a whole lot of time left, but people that love to raise their hands, I guess my direct question is, why don't they raise their hands during preaching or scripture reading, but they only seem to raise their hands during, like, up-tempo rock songs that feel good?

Or how about raising their hands during the giving? I mean, we don't see that, right? I mean, it's just a misperception of what worship is. If you think that worship is supposed to be an emotional experience where you, listen, feel close to God, then you're missing the point of worship.

Worship is where you actually are devoting yourself to thinking and focusing on the goodness and the grace of God. And it doesn't matter what part of the worship service you're doing, that should be your attitude.

And the wonderful thing is, we're not robots and androids and all these kind of, you know. Speak for yourself. Yeah. But when you chase after, when you seek after the glory of God, Matthew chapter 6, and His righteousness, all the other things you get, and I know the context, there's more physical things, but when you worship God, then the feelings are also given to you by the Lord, and you do feel better.

Even if your circumstances are awful, you're thinking, you know what, I do feel better with my attitude. I am thinking rightly.

It's true, right? Feelings follow actions. That's true in every single circumstance. You know, whether it's marriage or whatever, if you are pursuing your wife, if you're honoring your wife, et cetera, et cetera, well, then guess what, you're going to feel closer towards her.

I mean, this is just the reality of it.

To tell you how bad our hearts are and how deceitful our hearts still are, even as redeemed Christians, we can go worship corporately with other saints and end up worshiping ourselves too and our own preferences and what we want and what we didn't get out of it.

That is, man, we are, I am wicked.

Pete I mean, what kind of worship service would it be if you could leave right away and, say, blast somebody else at the church or, you know, write a nasty email to the pastor? You just weren't listening to what was preached.

You weren't worshiping. You weren't thinking about God. You were thinking about other things and then you decided to act on them afterwards. So a worship service ought to leave us really in awe of our Redeemer and our Creator.

Pete God alone is worthy of worship and that's where worship comes from, worth. He has worth, intrinsic worth, and we want to honor him for that. Good to have you on No Compromise Radio.

Announcer. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church. Firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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