Worship
SHOULD CHRISTIANS FEAR THE FUTURE
JESUS SHOWED ME MATTHEW 3:1-15
Today on March 19, 2019 I read about Jesus in Elaine Larsen’s book “Israel”, a book about Israel’s history. She briefly mentions Jesus Christ and His works as a Lord and Savior. I was deeply dismayed when she ends her only paragraph on Him through the eyes of the Romans who saw His death as a “minor incident” in a pattern of continuous revolt. I then I asked my Lord Jesus what Bible verse do you want me to see on You. He showed me this when I opened my Bible.
Matthew 2:1-15
The Magi Visit the Messiah
2 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod,Magi[a] from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.4 When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:
6 “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’[b]”
7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”
9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
The Escape to Egypt
13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt,15 where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”[c]
PSALM 96 A Song of Praise to GOD Coming in Judgment
The first scripture I was lead to today March 1, 2019 by Jesus was:
Psalm 96
A Song of Praise to God; Coming in Judgment
Sing to the Lord a new song;
sing to the Lord, all the earth.
2 Sing to the Lord, praise his name;
proclaim his salvation day after day.
3 Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous deeds among all peoples.
4 For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;
he is to be feared above all gods.
5 For all the gods of the nations are idols,
but the Lord made the heavens.
6 Splendor and majesty are before him;
strength and glory are in his sanctuary.
7 Ascribe to the Lord, all you families of nations,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
8 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
bring an offering and come into his courts.
9 Worship the Lord in the splendor of his[a] holiness;
tremble before him, all the earth.
10 Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns.”
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.
11 Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;
let the sea resound, and all that is in it.
12 Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them;
let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.
13 Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes,
he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness
and the peoples in his faithfulness.
Lifting hands in worship makes some people uncomfortable and it should not be required of them in churches, but it does bring a particular spiritual freedom, John Piper says.
The Reformed theologian and former lead pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in St. Paul, Minnesota explained in an AskPastorJohn podcast episode earlier this week that during the 1970’s he sat in a chapel service beside a faculty member who during a prayer simply laid his hands, palms up, on his lap. Piper felt disgust seeing him do that at the time.
“I don’t remember what was going on in my soul at that time, but what I feel now is nothing but shame and remorse at such an arrogant and judgmental attitude.”
Approximately five years later while pastoring he had encouraged Bethlehem Baptist to do an all-night prayer meeting once or twice a year to pursue God intentionally as a church. At 2 a.m. in the morning, twenty to thirty people were praying together and their worship leader was leading simple choruses of praise.
“[A]nd suddenly I found my hands lifted in the air, and it was as though I was watching myself rather than doing it. I had never, in 36 years of my life, lifted my hands in song until that moment,” Piper said.
“To this day, I cannot explain what happened, except that it bore fruit in what felt and feels to me now like a release from a very significant bondage.”
He recounted these events as part of an answer to a question a listener to his podcast asked him about passages of Scripture like 1 Chronicles 16:23-31 and Psalm 95:1-2 which speak of bold praise, which made him wonder why everyone did not raise their hands.
Coercing people to lift their hands is not advisable, Piper offered, noting that he tries to create an atmosphere where people feel the liberty to do so or not.
“[C]oerced or constrained demonstrations of heart worship are self-contradictory. Either it comes from the heart and is valuable as an expression of the heart, or it is a performance and has no worship value at all,” Piper said.
“I wouldn’t, as a worship leader, ever say, ‘Come on, people, get your hands up. We just sang a song that said, ‘Our hands are lifted up.” I wouldn’t scold people like that at all. It creates an unbelievably hypocritical crisis for them because they’re going do what you say when they don’t feel like it. And it will ruin authentic worship.”
Yet others see the value in pushing past that self-conscious discomfort.
In a 2016 sermon Robert Morris, pastor of Gateway Church in Dallas, recounted the first time he ever lifted his hands during worship.
“I just thought, that’s not me,” he said, explaining how as a young person several in his Baptist church would lift their hands.
But on one specific occasion, the worship pastor urged everyone to lift their hands.
He hesitated but ultimately turned his palms upwards by his sides, feeling awkward.
“I remember thinking: ‘Everybody is looking at me. everybody thinks I’m a charismatic now,'” he said, to chuckles in the audience.
But he remembers that as he made that slight change in the posture of his body “something in my heart flipped,” Morris said.
“And I remember thinking,” he added, “I don’t care what anybody thinks anymore. I don’t care. I’m going to worship God.”
Piper stressed the motivations of the heart are what matter, not the style of the music.
“Hymns can be sung with just as much inauthenticity as worship songs. Organs can be played with just as much hypocrisy as guitars. Hands can be kept down for motives just as defective as motives for lifting them up,” he said.
“As a hand raiser, I would just say to those who don’t do it that, for me, it is both a natural expression of inner admiration for God, and an intensifier of inner exultation as it finds expression in the body.”