The “Altar Call”: James 1:21 and the Circumstances of Worship

I believe we have good biblical grounds for regulating worship by Scripture.   True worship recognizes Who God is and gives Him what He wants.  We find out Who He is and what He wants in the Bible.   God’s Word is sufficient.   In so being, Scripture limits what worship is.  It is only what God says He wants, which is only in His Word.  We know from the Bible that God forbids additions and deletions to the elements He prescribes for worship—since worship is only what He wants.  God is God, He wants what He wants, and that’s alone what He will receive.  He rejects those elements He does not prescribe.

Worship in and by the church is regulated alone by the Bible.  The New Testament reveals elements of worship that God wants from the church:   reading the Word, preaching the Word, singing, prayer, baptism and Lord’s Supper, and collection of offerings.  You’ll notice that among those six that the altar call or invitation is missing.  You won’t find the altar call in the New Testament—it isn’t an element of worship.

Preaching of God’s Word is an element of worship.   Regarding preaching, we read the following in James 1:19-21:

Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:  For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.  Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.

Is the listening to preaching an element of worship?  I believe that it is part of the element of preaching.  The preacher and the listeners, the congregation, are worshiping simultaneously.  They are all saying “yes” or “amen” to the message of God from His Word.  This is an offering to God, an offering of one’s mind, heart, and body to whatever God says, as preached and heard in the preaching.   Only a certain hearing of the preaching is to God acceptable, which is, as seen in v. 19, “swift to hear.”  In line with that in v. 21 is “receive with meekness the engrafted word.”   “Swift to wrath” and “slow to hear” are both unacceptable to God as an offering.  God rejects those two.  God doesn’t accept any kind of hearing to His preaching than “swift to hear” and “receive with meekness.”

And then we can see in the above text in v. 21 that besides the preaching and the hearing, there is also a response to the preaching.  This too is prescribed worship.  What is it?   It is to “lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness.”   A part of the element of preaching is the response to preaching, which is doing what this first part of v. 21 says.  This is an actual sacrifice on the part of the hearer.  He is sacrificing something:  filthiness and naughtiness.  Not fulfilling this response is taking away from the Word of God and is not acceptable to God within the perimeters of the element of preaching.

How does someone lay aside filthiness and naughtiness either during preaching or after preaching?  How he does this is a circumstance for worship.   A church could choose to have him do this sitting there in his seat. A church could suggest to him as an application to get some further instruction and application from someone in another room.  A church might apply this Divine instruction by inviting those with the filthiness and naughtiness to come forward and kneel at the front of the auditorium.  None of these are the actual element of the worship, but merely the circumstances of the element.

Concerning the circumstances of worship, Brian Schwertley writes:

The circumstances of worship refer not to worship content and ceremony but to those things “common to human actions and societies.”   The only way someone can learn a worship ordinance is to study the Bible and see what God commands. But the circumstances of worship are not dependent on the explicit instructions of the Bible; they depend only upon general revelation and common sense (“Christian prudence”).

The Bible does not command for offering plates, hymnbooks, pews, or microphones.  Those are all circumstances of the elements of either the collection, singing, or preaching.  The “altar call” or invitation could fall within the perimeters of the circumstances of preaching.

Richard Baxter wrote:

What a loathsome and pitiful thing is it, to hear a man bitterly reproach those who differ from him in some circumstances of worship.

I don’t think we should assume that someone who gives an invitation at the end of preaching is disregarding the regulative principle of worship.  I don’t believe we should regard someone who practices an invitation as an innovation beyond that which God prescribed.  He could be obeying James 1:21 as a circumstance of worship.

“Redeeming the Culture”

This last week I was out evangelizing with quite a few others from our church and I came to the door of the jr-high pastor of one of the local Rick-Warren-Purpose-Driven types of churches.   I was with two teenagers.   The man’s wife answered the door-bell and she seemed happy we were there once she knew we were out preaching the gospel (not JWs).  She said her husband was the jr-high pastor at that particular church, which I know well.  A first thought for me was what does a jr. high pastor do all day, but I refrained from asking that question, although I was really curious.  I considered the oiling of the skateboard wheels and the proper wrinkling of the urban chic t-shirts.  But I digress.  I talked to her for awhile about the gospel to find out what they believed the gospel was.  I had about finished with her thinking, which wasn’t quite developed enough for me to conclude, when her husband arrived.   I spotted her husband before she did.  As much as people stereotype fundamentalists, evangelicals might be easier to identify in their desperate desire to blend.  Information:  stop trying so hard.  You blend like a Chinese tourist at Dollywood.  Next.

The wife had to leave, so jr. high man and I talked first about the gospel.  I was a little surprised to hear that he was a Calvinist.  The senior pastor is a Dallas graduate.  He didn’t disagree with most of what I said there on the basics, although I’m hard pressed to have even an LDS contradict me up to a certain point.  It’s become all how you define the terms.  Maybe that’s always been it.  A big one is:  Who is Jesus?  A lot of different viewpoints there all under the banner of Jesus.  But I moved on to worship.  I kinda see that as the next thing.   In a certain sense, I see the gospel and worship categorically as the same (see John 4:23-24).  My question is:  do you worship God in your church?  Just because worship is happening doesn’t mean that it is actually happening.  What people think is worship relates to Who they think God is.  I already knew that at this church the worship was a matter of one’s taste.  Those were almost the exact words I heard from their senior pastor when I had a previous conversation with him.  I will say that talking to the jr. high pastor was a little like talking to a jr. higher.  The arguments were similar to jr. high ones.  I made a note that he needed to get out of the jr. high department a little more—pooled ignorance was happening.

Jr. high guy asked what music was appropriate for worship.  I’m fine answering that question, and I knew it was a trap to offer the name of a particular style, but I did name some I did not believe were acceptable to God for worship, namely rap, hip-hop, grunge, and rock, among others.   Upon listing those, his eyes lit up and he fired off a derogatory question as an answer:  “So you’re saying that God can’t take rap music and redeem it for his worship?”  The answer to that question is, of course, “N0,” but that is not how you answer.  The key word in his question, I believe, was “redeem.”  How he used that word says a lot about his view of the world and his understanding of God, of Christ, of worship, and of the Incarnation.

I believe this man’s concept of “redeeming the culture” is quite popular today.  It is also new.  It is not a historic understanding of either “redemption” or “culture.”  The phraseology is an invention, designed to justify worldliness.  What is most diabolical is that the phrase, “redeeming the culture,” is used to categorize a wicked activity into some sort of sanctified one.  You should be able to conclude what damage this would do to the cause of biblical discernment.

Earlier I said the man carried on a jr. high type of approach.  What did I mean?  He used questions as a form of mockery.  For instance, he asked, “So you’re saying that individual notes are evil or something?”  He also leaned on the time-honored, “So any kind of song that is upbeat, I guess, is wrong then?”   Who said anything about “individual notes being evil” or “upbeat songs being wrong”?  No one.   And he asked them with a kind of accusatory and incredulous tone, as if he was shocked.

To get the right idea of what God will redeem, we should consider 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, which says that our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost and that we can glorify God with our body.  The body itself is not evil, despite what the Gnostics might say.  It is how one uses the body.  Paul explains that in Romans 6 when he says that the body can either be used for righteousness or unrighteousness depending upon what it serves.  Letters and notes are about the same.  They can be either used for evil or for good.  Cloth is the same way.  The material that turns into immodest clothing is not itself evil.  What is evil is what the cloth is turned into, how it is used.  Letters can be turned into foul language.  Paint can become wicked or profane art.  Notes can be formed into godless, pagan music, just like they can be made into sacred music.

However, someone can’t take pornography and redeem it for God.  I explained this obvious point to jr. high man.  I illustrated it by asking if naked women on the streets of a Marine base could be redeemed by handing out tracts.   The Marines would show more interest.  More tracts would be taken.  The contents of the tracts was holy.  Does the message justify the medium?  Of course, he said no.  The beauty of the illustration is that it makes it simple even for a jr. higher.

At a root level, this wrong idea about redemption relates to a perversion of Christ’s incarnation.   It is very much a Gnostic understanding of the Incarnation.  The logic of it goes like the following.   Jesus became a man.  Men are sinful.  Jesus became a man so that He could relate with sinners.  This takes His condescension right into the sewer.  Jesus was a man, but He was a sinless, righteous man.  He was tempted like men were, but without sin.  Jesus didn’t relate to men.  There was nothing wrong about the body.  A body isn’t wrong.  Jesus took a body.  That wasn’t wrong.  Jesus wasn’t redeeming the thing of having a body.  He didn’t take a body to relate with what sinful men do with their bodies.  He took on a body to die for us.  That’s how Jesus redeemed.  Jesus didn’t take a body to be like men; He took a body so that men could be like Him.  These “redeeming the culture” people turn this right around.  We Christians are not to take on the characteristics of the world, become like the world.  That isn’t incarnational.  We should be turning the world upside down, not the world turning us upside down.

To go a little further, we can also see an attack on the atonement in this idea.  Jesus redeemed by dying in His body, and shedding real, physical blood in His body.  He did not redeem the whole thing of sinful men having sinful bodies by taking a body Himself.  This borders on a moral example theory of atonement, as if Jesus showed to sinful men how to have a body through his moral example in and with His body.

Here’s what the “redeeming the culture” people take out of this.  If Jesus could take a body to do His work, then we can take rock music to do our worship.  Just like Jesus accomplished what He did with a body, we can accomplish what we need to with modern art.  This is incarnational to them, redeeming like Jesus redeemed.  We redeem these things, making good use of them, sanctifying them, like Jesus made good use of a body.

What should be sad to anyone reading this, and really anyone period, is how that this brand of so-called Christianity destroys scriptural concepts and just about makes it impossible to follow Jesus for these people.  The people of their churches think that their feelings, that are really orchestrated by sensual passions, are actually love.  They are convinced of it.  They are told that it is true, and in so doing, they are deceived.  And now the most conservative of evangelicals and most fundamentalists would say that we can’t judge that to be wrong.  Sure we can.  Those feelings are not love.  They are not love for God.  Ironically, they are love for self, fooling someone into thinking they are love for God.  Rather than redeem anything, they have taken something already redeemed, love, and have perverted it as a result.  And God requires His own to love Him.  You can see what this does to Christianity.

Professing Christians should just stop using the “redeeming the culture” language.  They have it all wrong.  They’re just excusing their love for the world and their desire to fit in with the world.  You don’t take a profane or sinful activity and “redeem it.”  The letters can be used for God.  The notes can be used for God.  A body can be used for God.  But a wrong use of letters, notes, a body, or cloth is not redeemable.   Whether any of those will be used for God will depend on what to which they are yielded.  If they are yielded to God based upon biblical principles, therefore, acceptable to God, then culture is being redeemed.  And only then is culture being redeemed.

Culture is a way of life.  If one’s way of life smacks of this world system, the spirit of this age, it is not redeemed.  Only a way of life surrendered to the way of God will God redeem.

Dan, Bethel, and Parachurch Organizations

1 Kings 12:25-33 is a pivotal section of scripture.  In those verses we get some insight into God’s thinking about what He said about worship.  God wanted the kingdom split at that juncture (1 Kings 11, 12:1-24).  However, He didn’t want changes in worship, like changes in the manner, the place, and the time of prescribed worship.  To keep his crowd and make it all more convenient, Jeroboam built new places of worship at Dan and Bethel.  “But God didn’t say that they couldn’t worship somewhere else!”  He did say Jerusalem, but He didn’t say “not Dan and Bethel.”  And Jeroboam did argue the advantages of Dan and Bethel.  And that reminds me of Saul arguing the advantages of what He did.  Stuff makes sense to us that is different than what God said.

Today God prescribes the worship in a place too—the church.  I’m happy about all the writing today that criticizes the modern violations of the means and manner of worship.  I believe we have New Testament absolutes about the kind of music God wants to receive in worship.  I think contemporary Christian music is a travesty.  But what about all the deviations of New Testament place of worship?  Why then the silence about this aberration?  The worship prescriptions of Romans 12 don’t stop at vv. 1-2.  You move to vv. 3-8 to find the place of the “reasonable service,” that is, “spiritual worship.”  The place is the church.  Is modern evangelicalism and fundamentalism moving out of the limitation of the church akin to Jeroboam moving out of the limitation of Jerusalem?  I believe they are.

The church is the New Testament temple of God (1 Cor 3:16-17).  The church is the means by which God has chosen to make known His manifold wisdom (Eph 3:10).   God designed the church to protect and propagate the truth (1 Tim 3:15).  God has chosen in this age for the church to judge all matters (1 Cor 6).   Unto God is glory in the church (Eph 3:21).   Jesus gave His authority and the promise of His presence to the church (Mt 16:18-19; 18:15-17; 28:18-20).

Neither the college, the mission board, the convention, the association, the fellowship, nor the camp are found in the Bible.  They fall outside the limits of biblical teaching, like Dan and Bethel did and like the cart that carried the ark did.  Some might say that those things are not prescribed, but neither are they wrong.  They are simply out there to supplement the church.  They come up beside the church (“para”) to help the church.  Consider what God says about the issue of place with Jeroboam in 1 Kings 12:30:  “And this thing became a sin: for the people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan.”  Worshiping in Dan was a sin.

Some might argue that these organizations are just additions.  They aren’t replacements for the church.  But they are innovations that deviate from scriptural worship.

Someone might say that they are well-intentioned.  They’ve got good motives.   Uzzah seemed to have a good motive too when he touched the ark.  And Saul had a good motive when he kept the best of the animals to use for sacrifices.

Someone might contend that these people are doing good things.  They have good preaching, good music, and say the right things to one another that are helpful for the Lord.  They are a good opportunity to serve.  For instance, in the chapel at the Christian university, the preacher preached a good message and the student body sang really good hymns to worship the Lord.  Is that true?  If you took various components of Jerusalem worship and moved them to Dan and Bethel would they be acceptable?  Verse thirty of chapter twelve says it was a sin.  It was a sin.  Deviating from God’s prescription for worship is sin.

Faith is simply taking God at His Word.  Romans 14:23 says that “whatsoever is not of faith is sin.”  God says do it this way and we do it another way.  That’s sin.  Jesus always did the Father’s will.   Like Him, we are to be sanctified by the truth, not by our opinions, by what we think will work, or by what makes us feel good.  We are not sanctified by an unbiblical way of doing things.

The Jews thought signs were an effective means of accomplishing God’s will.  The Greeks thought that wisdom would work if relied upon.  Fundamentalists and evangelicals think that parachurch organizations will help.  They can even start listing all the good ways that those non or un-scriptural organizations have helped, just like Charismatics will list all the ways that signs have helped their ministries.  But then in 1 Corinthians 3 we see that if we don’t do it His way, it is wood, hay, and stubble.  It’s not how God wanted us to build.

So, in other words, I’m not wanting people to have their works be worthless.  I don’t want them to be sinning.  We probably would all say that we want God to be honored.  So I want you to think about this.  The fact that I wrote this could become the big deal here.  The big deal is our worship of God.  What God says about that worship is the big deal.  I can’t make someone’s worship valueless.  They do that to themselves.  I’m just reporting.

OK.  Now this is the part that most will think is the tough part.  I could have even left it out.  But I don’t want to be confusing here.  Still, however, I’m going to put it in the way of question.  What about Bill Rice Ranch, The Wilds, Bob Jones University, Pensacola Christian College, Ambassador Baptist College, Baptist World Mission, Baptist International Missions Incorporated, or the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches?

I’ll ask it before you do.  What about Jackhammer?  What about ‘What is Truth’?  Fair question.   These aren’t organizations.  These aren’t institutions.  I’m not serving the Lord at Jackhammer.   I’m sent by my church to preach where ever I preach, including online.  Jackhammer is nothing more than an element like an offering plate, a cell phone, or a letter.  Everything I write here represents my church, exactly what my church would teach.  I don’t compromise anything my church teaches to write here.   Jackhammer and What Is Truth for me are elements in the ministry of my church.

Many of the arguments for parachurch organizations parallel very closely to the kind of rationalization that Jeroboam made in his own heart.  They will work better.  They’re just necessary in the times in which we live.   A lot of good experiences have been had in and through them.

I know my last three paragraphs might be the most popular in the whole piece.  The other popular thing, even more important than judging whether the teaching is scriptural, is to make sure that I’m practicing it all consistently.  But read everything that comes up to those three paragraphs.  Think about that first and consider whether parachurch organizations are sin.

Can or Should God Be Worshiped Merely by Musical Instruments without the Words or Lyrics?

The breadth of Psalm 98 tells me that God can be and should be worshiped not just with voice or lyrics alone or with voice and instrument combined but also solely with instruments.  Here are the words of the psalm:

1 O sing unto the LORD a new song; for he hath done marvellous things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory. 2 The LORD hath made known his salvation: his righteousness hath he openly shewed in the sight of the heathen. 3 He hath remembered his mercy and his truth toward the house of Israel: all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. 4 Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise. 5 Sing unto the LORD with the harp; with the harp, and the voice of a psalm. 6 With trumpets and sound of cornet make a joyful noise before the LORD, the King. 7 Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. 8 Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together 9 Before the LORD; for he cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the world, and the people with equity.

In v. 1 the psalmist calls on his audience to sing a song to God for worthwhile reasons seen in vv. 2-3 and then at the end of v. 9.  Everyone is called to praise God, Israel and the rest of the world (vv. 3-4).  As we move through here, we can see that God is praised by more than just voice.  For instance, in v. 7 the sea is called upon to roar.   The sea sings to God in that unique way.  And then the floods or streams clap (v. 8a), the hills be joyful together (v. 8b).   This passage isn’t calling on people to find the sea or hills to accompany their voice.  Each of these—voice, instruments, seas, or streams—separately can praise God.

Certain men allegorize these psalms based upon their New Testament priority.  They spiritualize much of the content, leaving the New Testament as the only literal guidebook for worship.  And the New Testament doesn’t mention instruments, so churches shouldn’t use them.  However, in Ephesians 5:19, the term “making melody” (psallo) means “to pluck on a stringed instrument.”  God wants psalms sung, so the psalms are still in play as songs to be sung.  Both singing and making melody are to be presented to the Lord, but what about just the “making melody.”  I believe Psalm 98 would say “yes.”

I would like to see great musical pieces composed and played for God, offered to Him as worship.  It doesn’t have to be the music from a hymn that is sung.  It can be music that on its own will praise the Lord.  Music that communicates within the nature of the Lord can be used to worship Him.  I believe an orchestra even without vocalists can and should play music to God.  A soloist can and should play his instrument to the Lord.  This justifies becoming a great musician for the Lord not just as accompaniment and with only songs that people may know the words.  Great music can and should be written and then played to God.  This would be a worthwhile project of a church.

Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism: The Embrace of Neutrality

Nobody is really neutral.  Paul writes in Romans 1:18:  “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.”  The word “hold” means “suppress.”  Whoever does not receive the truth suppresses the truth.  Everyone starts from a position of knowing the truth.   Paul elaborates a little further in v. 25 by saying that these truth suppressors “change the truth into a lie.”

You might be thinking, “well, they suppress the truth about God, but they don’t suppress all the truth.”  Wrong.  When you suppress the truth about God, you have also suppressed all the truth.  Why?  Without God there is no absolute truth, no objective truth.  Without God, everything is random and haphazard.  Someone may say that he believes the truth about something, but he cannot qualify it as truth without some standard of truthfulness, a standard that does not exist without God.

Now you might be thinking, “well, someone can say that an object is the color red without God.”  Wrong again.  There would have to be the idea of color, and someone can’t know there is color and that a color is red unless an idea can exist and that someone could think.  Without God, everything is essentially molecules indiscriminately meeting and bouncing off of one another.  Why is that color?  And how could it be red?  Without God, everything is subjective.  What’s happening on earth is of no more consequence than what is occurring on Neptune.  Chemical processes and colliding matter can’t think or make value judgments.  They’re just accidents moving toward ultimate entropy.

So for all truth, we start with God.  And everybody knows that even if they do suppress it.   Since God began everything, He defines everything, and He determines reality.   We know God and we know because of God.  We don’t really know without Him, so what we know, including what is true, beautiful, and good, is based on Who He is.  And there is no neutrality.  We all begin with God.  It’s just that one admits it and the other suppresses it.

Evangelicalism and fundamentalism, however, have embraced neutrality.  This is a trick of Satan, a shell game that he plays with men, so that they will begin to look at life on his terms.  He would like men to think, in contradiction to God’s Word, that everyone starts out on even ground or with a blank slate in the development of his beliefs and the determination of what is true or false.   With neutrality, revelation is personal so theological knowledge is ambiguous, requiring a response to evidence.

WHERE WE SEE AN EMBRACE OF NEUTRALITY IN EVANGELICALISM AND FUNDAMENTALISM

This embrace of neutrality is seen in the evangelical and fundamentalist explanation of beauty.   Beauty has been reduced to a mere mechanical response to sensory input.   This neutrality denies intrinsic or inherent beauty or any absolute standard of beauty outside of man’s personal choice.  While once Christianity accepted an objective standard of beauty that started with God, evangelicalism has fallen prey to the world view espousing man as the arbiter of beauty.  This is manifested today in the evangelical embrace and fundamentalist acceptance of anything-goes in music.  Objective beauty, sacred and unprofaned, has been sacrificed on an altar of modern and post-modern culture.

I expect evangelicals to deny this, which, of course, they’ll especially have the right to do in their contemporary realities, dogmatic in their tolerance.  Modernism broke down traditional institutions through secularization and urbanization, giving numerous opportunities of pleasure and self-fulfillment.   Men then looked at life on their terms.  Instead of concentrating on what God expects, churches focused on what people thought or felt they were missing.  As modernity stripped life of meaning, which begins and ends with God, men have turned to self to explain.  The individual became the ultimate adjudicator of what is beautiful.  Evangelicals have accepted this.

In many ways conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists have objected to doctrinal relativism.  They have held the line to a certain degree at certain fundamental truths.  They seem to be proud of this.  However, they have embraced neutrality in relationship to aesthetic values—what is beautiful—and all absolute truth to maintain their credibility in a post modern world.  This embrace of neutrality is seen in the rampant subjectivity in music for worship both personal and corporate, in the casual and coarse, often immodest, apparel, the vast slippage in the realm of entertainment values, and in the wide-ranging acceptance of doctrinal ambiguity, which includes a shunning of the doctrine and practice of separation.  God has been marginalized by having far less importance in man’s actual life.

When you watch evangelicals and fundamentalists talk about doctrine, you hear the damage that their own embrace of neutrality has caused.  They pander post-modernity with their theological reductionism, relegating truth to essentials and non-essentials.  This plays right into the attack on meaning and the self-autonomy of interpretation.  Men are on a quest for knowledge, whose progress is slowed by the oppressiveness of unequivocal and authoritative conviction.  Certainty violates personal viewpoint and self as source of meaning.  This has reduced the church to a shop for religious consumers.   The message must be contextualized to the shopper for accomplishment of mission.

With a conformity to post-modern culture, unity has become the highest value of evangelicalism and fundamentalism.  You hear this narrative in today’s political speech, the era of post-partisanship.   Political operatives vie for the admiration of the independent voters, a mass of humanity in the ambiguous middle, who are proud for not having made up their minds.  Uncertainty is elevated to a sacramental place in American culture with few exceptions, such as food and celebrity.   Evangelicals and fundamentalists won’t hold your differing belief and practice against you.  You can join in by agreeing to disagree and all getting along based on the supreme injunction of unity in the body; well, with the exception of a few essentials that even in those it’s probably just going to be a matter of interpretation.   The embrace of neutrality is witnessed in the compliance to this view of unity.

THE RESULTS OF THE EMBRACE OF NEUTRALITY IN EVANGELICALISM AND FUNDAMENTALISM

Evangelicals and fundamentalists proclaim the supremacy of the gospel.  I don’t mind an emphasis on the gospel.  But the point of the gospel, the worship of God, is often lost with this embrace of neutrality.  God is seeking for true worshipers (John 4:23-24).  The profane, desecrated music that evangelicals especially, but also fundamentalists, offer as worship results from their aesthetic neutrality.  They have forsaken an objective beauty and worship is the casualty.  God doesn’t accept the ugliness they have decided is acceptable to Him because they have forsaken an absolute standard of beauty.

Evangelicals and fundamentalists have devalued aesthetics, resulting in heteropathy.  And as they relate to God, they can’t separate doctrine and practice from affections.  Without the proper affections, our relationship to the Lord can’t be right, even if we happen to be doctrinally and practically orthodox.  The imitation affections, actually passions, desires mistaken for love, are more blasphemous to God than if He had received nothing, no affection, no passion, no nothing.

The product that is devised and delivered by churches today and called worship blasphemes God by its deviation from beauty.  It is often profaned by its fleshly stimulation, its banality, or its kitsch.  Like animals churches have become driven by their desires, needs, and appetites, and have treated God and worship itself as an instrument to fulfill those things.  God is to be the end in itself of worship, the worship to be governed by devotion to Him and not those things that are the means to us.   In his book, Beauty, Roger Scruton has called this profanation that he has seen the “Disneyfication of faith.”  He has also written, and I agree (pp. 176, 182):

Desecration is a kind of defence against the sacred, an attempt to destroy its claims.  In the presence of sacred things our lives are judged and in order to escape the judgment we destroy the thing that seems to accuse. . . . One cure for the pain of desecration is the move towards total profanation:  in other words, to wipe out all vestiges of sanctity for the once worshipped object, to make it merely a thing of the world, and not just a thing in the world, something that is nothing over and above the substitutes that can at any time replace it.

What people really love is themselves and the world.  They know that’s not right.  Their true love they profess is about God is really still about them.

Almost all evangelicals and fundamentalists would say they love the truth.  But truth can’t survive their embrace of neutrality.  Some truth, sure, but truth as a whole won’t make it with the accession to modern and post modern culture.  It does start with certainty about the Words of God.  Evangelicals and fundamentalists can’t know that because they have elevated reason above faith in line with modernism.  And then meaning of Scripture comes crashing down close behind, because how can we know what words mean if we aren’t sure what they are.

The next victim of the embrace of neutrality is discernment.   With the forsaking of objective beauty, what is goodness and true must also necessarily fall by the wayside as well.  The certainty here all comes from the same source.  When you change the basis of your conclusion to make way for your own opinion, you lose the ability to decide with any authority.  Various factions of evangelicalism and fundamentalism stand at various stages of deterioration, but none will survive their embrace of neutrality.

In the end, perhaps what is lost more than anything is obedience to God.  God is not pleased.  His truth is not respected.  His ways are not kept.  And the churches are not so concerned.

CONCLUSION

If your whole life has been lived in a bunker, it will be hard to see the world with any other perspective than the bunker in which you live.  That’s what will make this essay hard to accept for evangelicals and fundamentalists.  Most will likely never understand because they will refuse to separate themselves from the bunker.   If they hear this in a post-modern way, influenced by the world and the Satan’s work to that extent, they will hear this about how Bill Clinton listened to Ken Starr during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.  I’ll be the villain like him for attempting to impose my oppressive and narrow moral narrative on their unity and their freedom.  I’m pretty sure I’ll be thought to be kooky right wing fringe who attempts to dictate my personal preferences to others.

The barbarians are not standing at the gate any longer.  In many ways, we’ve become the barbarians.  We have allowed the Philistines to have their way.  Churches have lost their will to contend.  We’re at a very serious time for the truth, for Scripture, for obedience to God, for true worship, for what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful.  Please do not dismiss this.  Do not take it lightly.  Don’t marginalize it.  Don’t be fooled.  I ask that you consider whether it’s me or it’s you.

We Shall Rise! (Hallelujah!)

Finding a subject for Sunday’s sermon always presents a challenge.  Not because we run out of good material for preaching.  Let it never be said!  Who could exhaust the pages of Scripture?   I for one can say that the more I attempt to preach through the various books of the Bible, the more I find them inexhaustible.  I recently spent three weeks on Proverbs 3:5-7 in our Wednesday night service.  And when I finished, more subject matter came to mind that I had not covered.  I am currently preaching through the Book of Acts on Sunday mornings.  The series began in January of 2009.  I just preached through the first part of chapter 12.  I had to move on from chapter 11, even though I had more that I wanted to do.  The Bible is always that way.  It is impossible to “run out” of good material.

The challenge of finding a suitable subject for preaching has nothing to do with a lack of suitable material.  Rather, the refrigerator, the deep freeze, and the pantry are so packed full of good things that I sometimes find it difficult to choose which one.  It is like the menu at a really great, four-diamond restaurant with a world-renowned cook.  You know that everything on that menu will be outstanding, and you just can’t decide which dance you want your tastebuds to do.  The Bible is so full of great truths and power-packed verses that we sometimes find ourselves tossed between texts like a boy in a ball closet.

Never is this more true than at Easter.  I’m a “series” guy.  I like to preach a series of some sort, often through a particular book of the Bible.  But at Easter, I always take the time to preach on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and on the promise of the resurrection of the saints.  But what to preach?  There are so many wonderful texts to choose from.  We can do the resurrection story itself, or cover any one of the hundreds of verses and passages that deal with the resurrection.  Of all the doctrines of grace, it is the most chock full of rich goodness.  We shall rise!  Hallelujah!  Because He lives, we shall live also!  We shall be caught up together in the clouds with the dead in Christ that rise first.  We shall meet the Lord in the air.  And so shall we ever be with the Lord!  Christ has gone to prepare a place for us, and since He has, He will come again, and receive us unto Himself; that where He is, there we may be also!  Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed!

What a day that will be!  But, anticipating that great resurrection morning, we are reminded that the resurrection is for the here and now as well as for then.  And you hath He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins.  Christ came that we might have life, and that we might have it more abundantly.  Having received the gift of God, we live the resurrection life (Colossians 3:1-3).  Let’s live it up, then!

Wasting Energy=Worshipping God

8:30-9:30 p.m., March, 27, 2010. Pagan Hour.

Pagan Hour

If it’s already 9:30 p.m. for you, it’s too late.  Sorry.  For the rest of you, turn your lights ON between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m. TONIGHT.  Why on?  Because you love God and are jealous for his glory and worship.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.  (Genesis 1:1)

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. (Genesis 1:28)

Maybe I won’t explain myself well enough, but I’m going to make a defense for reckless waste during this one hour of the year.

When God created the earth and man, he gave man responsibility for it and we, therefore, are to be stewards of the whole world.  For this reason, I conserve my resources everyday of my life.  God has given to me bountifully and as his steward, I strive to keep good care of his gifts.  I try to save money and resources all the time because all my money and resources are not really mine–they’re on loan from God.

The World (and it’s ideologies) wants me to make a statement tonight that I’m concerned about the earth and the crisis we are in globally.  Are we in a global climate crisis?  The Word tells me that God is in control and that He is the one that will destroy it someday.  For it to be here for Him to destroy, it will have to stick around until He’s ready to do that.  Also, the World tells me that I should surrender the responsibility God has given me and do what my “Mother Earth” wants.  If I do that, I’m rebelling against God.  If I cave in to the pagan idea of “gaia,” I’m joining the heathen in their worship of the earth.  I want to stand in STARK contrast with pagan-heathenism. (2 Corinthians 6:14-18)

So I’m turning every light on I can think of:  and to revel in the bountiful goodness that God has created the earth with, and allowed me to steward, I’m also turning on every electric device I can think of, and leaving plugged in every appliance I can think of, and if I think of anything else, I’m turning that on too.

Tonight at 8:30 p.m. is NOT the time any Christian should be “off the grid.”  Consume all the energy you can to the glory of God!  (1 Corinthians 10:31)

Three Imperatives for the New Man (Colossians 3:15-17)

If You’re Not Interested in This, You’re Already Disobeying This

The new man puts on new clothes with his new belt, but he’s not quite ready to walk out the door without these three commands that every new person needs to keep to act like the new man that he is.

First,  “let the peace of God rule in your hearts” (v. 15). Whatever decision we happen to have come up in our life, we don’t break the pact of peace that we have with God.  “Rule” is in essence ‘to make a decision for you.’  A president has to think about his relations with other countries when he makes decisions.  We have to think about our relations with God when we make our decisions.  The peace we have with God needs to be what makes our decisions for us.  The treaty we signed when we got saved has to rule our decision making process.  We chose not to be at war with God any more, so we continue to honor that compact.

This peace with God is the basis for our union with the church.  We all get along based on the same peace pact.  The body life of a church is a oneness with each other that we get from our oneness from God.  We don’t come together based on doing our own thing, but based on what will keep us aligned with God.

How does that command relate to being thankful?  When God’s way comes down the pike, we just keep thanking God for it.  We’re thankful for this new life that God has given us and we keep thanking God for it.  A lack of contentment, unthankfulness, will lead you to go searching for satisfaction outside of God and His people.  We keep thanking Him and that’s akin to letting peace with Him rule in our hearts.  We didn’t join His church to do our own thing, but to fit together with others who as well want to do what He wants, and are thankful for it.

Second, “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom” (v. 16). That’s to say that God’s Word should control our lives.   We look at life through chapter and verse eyes.  Scripture has its home in a settled, complete way in us.  The parallel of this is in Ephesians 5:18 with “be filled with the Spirit.”  Being controlled by the Spirit and by the Word of God are the same thing.  The “sword of the Spirit is the Word of God” (Eph 6:17).   When God’s Word controls us, we will have the discernment to make right applications to all the various areas of our life, that is, “in all wisdom.”

When you are filled up with God’s Word, you can teach and admonish others one another in the body and then sing to the Lord in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.  You can truly help others and truly worship the Lord in song.  What people need to hear is the Word of God and what God wants to hear in praise is the Word of God.  Psalms are the Word of God.  Hymns and spiritual songs should also be Scriptural.

Since the direction of singing in the Bible is “to the Lord,” then what matters is whether God likes the singing.  The Words and the music both need to be scriptural, that is, in fitting with the taste of God, His nature and His standard.  We sing among each other as a church, but we sing to the Lord.

Third, “do all in the name of the Lord Jesus” (v. 17). Everything that we do, both verbal and non-verbal, spoken and action, should be consistent with the Lord Jesus Christ.  What did Jesus do?  What would He have you to do?  Don’t have anything you do be something that Jesus wouldn’t do.  Honor Him in everything.

Since we’ve put on Christ, we want to make decisions that are at peace with Him, have His Words control us, and only do things that would be consistent with Who He is.

Thoughts about a Few Fine Points in These Verses

Verse 15 — “to the which also ye are called in one body”

I’m mainly wanting to think about what the “one body” is.  “Body” is not soteriological, but ecclesiological terminology.  “One” is not “one” as in “numeric one,” but “one in unity.”  A physical body is one.  A church is one.  The “one” is about “unity” very much like the “one mind” and the “one mouth” are about unity in Romans 15:6.  Colossians 3:15 is not telling us that there is one numeric body.  A body, a church, is one through aligning itself with God.  The church is where the believers at Corinth realized or experienced the true belief and practice that was peace with God.

We obey God in a church.  The church is where we find the oneness that God wants, expects, and requires for believers.  God’s peace is not ruling where false doctrine exists and wrong practice occurs.

The “ye” are the church members of the Colossian church to whom Paul was writing.  Notice that Paul excludes himself from that group here by saying “ye.” If this was thinking about some mystical body that one enters by faith alone, Paul would need to say “we” in order to include himself in that group.  He doesn’t say that.  He says “ye.”  Each believer allows peace to rule His life through a church.  A church is one because the church members submit to the will of God.

Verse 16 — “psalms . . . , singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord”

If a church is not singing the psalms (Psalm 1 through 150), could it be obeying this verse?  So a first fine point here is the singing of psalms.  That has been the norm in the history of the church.  Spurgeon’s hymnbook had a full psalter in the text.  His church sang all 150 psalms to various tunes according to the meter of the versification of that psalm.  I commend you to return to the singing of the psalms.  “You” is plural in v. 16, when Paul writes “in you richly.”  The Word of Christ is to dwell in the church, and it in part does so through the psalms.  I contend that a church disobeys Colossians 3:16 without implementing a psalter in worship.  Some do it out of ignorance, but having read this, that would no longer be the case.

I also want to emphasize that singing in Scripture is “to the Lord.”  God is the audience of worship.  We sing to Him.  That is the only direction of singing in the Bible.  For that reason, the music is not a matter of our taste, but God’s taste.  “What kind of music does God want to hear?” should be our question.  Instead, as influenced by the mainstreaming of Charismaticism into evangelicalism, by the labeling of and acceptance of the Jesus movement as a legitimate revival, and by the reception of the principles of the modern church growth movement, churches now use music that God does not tolerate.  The scriptural content of songs, like the versification of the text of the psalms, does not correspond with or harmonize with worldly, fleshly, ungodly tunes.   Most forms of music in the world are unacceptable to God.  By singing them to God, the people doing so manifest either a blatant self-gratification contradictory to scriptural worship or a woeful lack of discernment.

Why Am I in a Church like the One I’m in? pt. 2

Churches today use a lot of different means to get people to join.  They often start with the interests that people have, their carnal desires, hoping that their lust could be a jumping off point for spiritual interest later.   A whole new theology has been built around this, a doctrine to justify talking people into coming to church on their terms.   Fundamentalists, evangelicals, emergents, and even the orthodox use marketing techniques and strategies to lure people in.  This does give one major explanation for why you will hear people offer many different reasons why they attend church or why they go to the church they do.

In my first submission in this series, I contended that God should be the top priority for why you’re in the church you’re in.  God should be what and Who church is about.   This one thought should serve as a baseline for elucidating why we’ve joined the church we have.   In one sense, the thinking about God relates to the subject of eternity.  Since we believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we make decisions based upon the fact that we will face God some day and that He is our ultimate Judge.   With this in mind, all the following reasons for why I’m in the church I’m in do relate to the first.   All the reasons hence will correlate to the first reason.  All the other reasons consider what will please God, since He is why I’m in church.

With pleasing God as the major grid for my church decision, the doctrine and practice of a church stands as the next two criteria for joining a church.  I want a church that believes and practices according to Scripture.  As long as a church keeps the same, right doctrine and practice, I will stay a part of it.   I see those as the emphasis in the Bible.   We want the right view of God and then to do what He says.  Those both keep God in the highest priority.  We know God exalts His Word.  Jesus said that those Who love Him will keep what He said.  With all other factors considered, belief and practice will determine what church I’m a part of.

If a church continues in the right doctrine and obeys the Bible, I can keep fellowshiping with it.   I may have a personality issue with someone else in the church.  I want to get that resolved.  Of course, that’s what God wants me to do, but it will be worth it to remain in fellowship with a church that believes right and does right.  Even if I’m the one that has been offended, I want to do what it takes to stay in the church.

Why Am I in a Church like the One I’m in? pt. 1

On some other blog someone asked this kind of question.  I thought it was a good question and something I wanted to explore with everyone for perhaps more than one post, that is, unless we pick a topic and go after it.  I’ll put this on hold then for a little while.  The other two jackhammers can write on this too if they want.   I think we’ll be back to our old schedule sometime soon.

First, I should get to the most basic part of the question, why am I in a church?   Perhaps the first thing you thought of was those people who say that they don’t believe in organized religion.  You get that out there when you’re talking to the lost.   But I’m not going there first.  I’m going to get into something that is even more basic than saying something good about the institution of the church itself.  The reason I’m in a church is because of God.

I want to please God.  I’m not in a church for myself.  I’m in a church for God.  That guides all the other thoughts and actions that I have about a church.  I don’t attend church for myself.  I go to church for God.  I don’t determine whether the church is good by what it does for me.  I make that decision based on what I believe is best for God.  I might have a bad relationship with someone in the church, but that doesn’t stop me from being in church.  Why?  I’m not there for other people.  I’m there for God.  I’m there for other people too, but entirely without one single other person, I would still be there.

God never fails.  He never changes.  He’s always great.  He’s always the best.  He’s amazingly worth it.  What it is that I like about whatever church that I’m going to be a part of starts with who God is.  He loves me.  I love Him.  Every good and perfect gift has come from Him.  I could never repay Him, but this life I’m living is going to be about Him.   So I’m there for Him.  I don’t care if my feelings are hurt.  He didn’t hurt them.   No one or no thing is going to keep me away, because it is all about God.

If you don’t have that as the reason, I feel sorry for you.  If you don’t have it as the reason, I think you’ve got it wrong right off the bat.  You’ll likely have problems because you don’t have that settled.  I also think that not having that as the reason is at the root of most problems with churches and with people toward churches.  Have church first be about God.  It will be the best thing you’ve every done for church is to have it not be about you or about your family, but about God.  It will be the best thing for you and for your family and for everyone else in the world if church would be about God to you.

The Hypocrisy of Contemporary “Conservative” Evangelicalism pt. 2: Dovetailing with ‘Reacquiring a Christian Counterculture, pt. 2’

Not too long ago I had written the first part of an essay entitled “Reacquiring a Christian Counterculture.”  It was only part one, but we moved on to another topic here.  I post-scripted it with:  “I will be continuing this next week, Lord-willing.  I want to talk about the way that the scriptural understanding of holiness was forsaken for pragmatic purposes.  I will get into the point of reclaiming a Christian culture.”  That short paragraph fit nicely with what I was writing at the end of the first of this multi-part post.

I began breaking down Romans 15:15-21 as a choice passage to expose the hypocrisy of conservative evangelicalism.  I believe that fundamentalists are also hypocritical as it relates to conservative evangelicals.  Someone has mentioned that in the comment section here.  How so?  They complain about segments of fundamentalism that are revivalistic and man-centered, and yet they seem to turn a blind eye toward the conservative evangelicals who participate in revivalism and man-centeredness.  In this regard, I like the comment Art Dunham wrote:

I believe the time has come for us to be independent MEN of God and state the truth whatever the consequence to any affiliation, friendship, or Bible College.

Bravo Art.  That’s what we need.  We don’t need to move from one big, bad example to another big, bad example.  It reminds me of the historic Baptist martyr, Balthasar Hubmaier:  “Truth is immortal.”

Back to Romans 15

There are many truths to flesh out of this text in Romans 15, but the first we called to your attention was “instrumentality.”  I drew your attention especially to the end of v. 17, the teaching here being that Christ is glorified or worshiped only “in those things which pertain to God.”  Paul was ministering as an Old Testament priest, who presented to God his sanctified sacrifices, and he wanted these Gentile converts to be acceptable offerings to the Lord.  For this to occur, all of His service must be found within the confines of those things which pertain to God.  Things which pertain to men won’t fulfill the goal of glorifying Christ.  They are not the instrumentality that God will bless with that result.

I think we should be able to understand how that the things that we use to accomplish the noble goals of glorifying Christ and offering up acceptable sacrifices to God must be those things which pertain to God.  It is very much akin to the use of carnal weaponry to attain spiritual ends in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5.   Paul didn’t war after the flesh.  In the end, that warring wouldn’t even work.  As I have read from many different sources through the years, “You will keep them with what you get them.”  Carnal weapons can’t succeed in spiritual warfare.

Here’s what happens today.  Hard packed, stony, and thorny hearts today don’t want the incorruptible, life-giving seed.  The idea is that if we could package that seed in something that those hearts do want or love (zoom to 2:25 on the link), then we could make the seed work.  The seed needs a little help.  It needs music.  It needs entertainment.  It needs stage lights or a night club environment.  It needs to look like a theater.  It needs a trap set.  Maybe even some tattoos.  It needs syncopation and driving drum beats.  It needs the enticement of some hormonally charged boy-girl interaction.  It needs the license of personal expression in the hip-hop cap, soul patch, or oversized shirt.  It needs stylin’.  It needs “dude.”  It needs the emotionalism of some rhythm induced hand-waving.  It needs the hip, ghetto, graffiti font on the decaying, urban brick background.  It needs youtube ads that mimic the twittering hand-held production values of the Blair Witch Project (this defines authenticity).  It needs sensuality and things conforming to the world and its fashion (play numbers one and two, you’ll get enough of a sample).  These are all things that hard, stony, and thorny ground might be able to relate to or with.  Today we might call this missiological or contextualization, you know, just to make it sound like it is spiritual, when it isn’t.  The adherents know everything they are doing and the meaning of everything they do, and yet they’ll often say that it is meaningless and can’t be judged.   It smacks of the spirit of this age.  It pertains to man.

Holiness Pertains to God

To comprehend this more, we should unpack the theological understanding of “those things which pertain to God.”  Those things which pertain to God are holy.  Holiness is not just moral purity.  It is God’s majestic transcendence, His otherness, His non-contingency.  Holiness is sacredness, which means it is not common or profane.  It is distinct, unique to the attributes and character of God.

The Old Testament term kadesh or the adjective form, qadesh, translated “holy,” is not used just for that which pertains to God.  It is used to describe, for instance, the temple prostitutes of pagan religion of strange nations (Deuteronomy 23:17).  That means that those prostitutes had qualities that were unique to their gods.  The root of the word means “to cut,” that is, “to separate.”  Holines is related to consecration.  When an item was holy, it was devoted for and only for the worship of the Lord.  Items associated with pagan and defiled concepts could not be used in the worship of the Lord.  Something that is holy is designated as sacred and was distinct from the profane or common.

The Christian does not look to the world to find worship forms.  He looks to scripture.  He sees certain qualities of this world system—sensual, carnal, of the spirit of the age, making provision for the flesh.  A basic element of Israelite worship was the maintenance of an inviolable distinction between the sacred and the common.  They guarded against the sacred being treated as common.  While the realm of the holy was conceptually distinct from the world with its imperfections, it could nevertheless operate within the world as long as its integrity was strictly maintained.

Holiness was not and has not been just a separateness from sin.  It is a maintaining of distinctions between those things consecrated to God and those that are common.    The common may not be sinful, but it is not sacred.  God’s name and His worship should not be treated lightly.  They should not be brought into association with that characterized by earthliness.  Certain aspects of the world are not redeemable as sacred.  They were invented by men for men’s passions, to touch his will through the body to influence affections inordinately.

Opponents to holiness today say that worldliness is only a matter of the heart, only an attitude.  They fall far short of what scripture says about worldliness.  Romans 12:2 commands, “Be not conformed to this world.”  “Conformed” is not internal.  It is external.  1 Peter 1:14-15 reads:

14 As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: 15 But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation;

“Fashioning” is external.”  “All manner” includes internal and external.  Sure, being a friend of the world is internal (James 4:4), but the external manifestations also anger God.  That’s why God said through Zephaniah (1:8):

And it shall come to pass in the day of the LORD’S sacrifice, that I will punish the princes, and the king’s children, and all such as are clothed with strange apparel.

He would punish those clothed with strange apparel.  In other words, they were appearing like the world, associating themselves in their externals with pagan culture.  God didn’t want them fitting in with the world.  He wanted a sacred Israel.  He wanted to keep a difference between the sacred and the profane.

I believe that the redefining and the dumbing down of holiness comes because of professing believers, maybe unconverted, who want to fit in with  the world.  They know how to do it.  Almost everybody does.  The philosophies of the world can be seen in dress, music, art, and more.  We can know on the outside what message a particular form is communicating.  We know when a man is acting effeminate.  We know when a woman is acting masculine. We know a foul word.  We know a term, an appearance, and a composition that carries ungodly associations.  The conservative evangelicals are using these to reach their desired ends.   When they succeed, they say that God was responsible.  God was also responsible for giving water to Moses when he struck the rock.  That end did not justify the means.  And men who drank became carcasses in the wilderness.

Hollywood knows what it is doing with styles.  It knows how to play something sensual or sexual.  It knows how to target certain human emotions (emotionalism) and carnal passions.  Conservative evangelicals imitate them.  They offer their adherents the same thing as the world with some Christianity mixed in.  This is called syncretism—“worshiping” God and using worldly means.  It blurs the dinstinction between the sacred and the common, between God and the world, between the Divine and the worldly.

Limitation to Scriptural Parameters

To accomplish the glory of Christ and an acceptable offering to God, Paul limited himself to Scripture—he would only regulate his audience according to a Divine message (vv. 18-19).  To make the Gentiles obedient,” in either “word or deed,” he would not “dare to speak” anything but that which was given Him by Christ.  Those were all that were authoritative and authenticated by means of “mighty signs and wonders.”

The Bible wasn’t given to us to read between the lines.  Certain actions aren’t forbidden in God’s Word.  That doesn’t mean they become our means of accomplishment or a strategy for success.  God gave His Word as sufficient to regulate any area of our lives.  Even if our own ideas aren’t sinful, they aren’t what He said.  Only what He said, when obeyed, will give glory to God.

Conservative evangelicals often expose scripture.  However, they are just as guilty as revivalist fundamentalists at looking for non-scriptural techniques to influence believers toward what they believe will be salvation and spiritual growth.  Even if they “worked,” they wouldn’t give glory to Christ or be acceptable to God.  They would not require faith and so they couldn’t please God.  Paul kept just preaching the gospel.  He limited himself to the activity God endowed to fulfill His work.  We must limit our means if we will glorify Christ and send up that acceptable offering to God.

Reacquiring a Christian Counterculture

We’re to be regulated by Scriptural precept and example.  We’re to be distinct from the world.  We should have a unique Christian culture.  Culture itself isn’t amoral.  Many ways that a culture expresses itself are filled with meaning.  Some of those expressions may honor God and others may not.  God laid out some very detailed laws to distinguish Israel from the rest of the nations on earth.  He wants us to be different.

If we’re going to reacquire a Christian counterculture that separates from the world’s culture, however it is expressing itself, we must get a grasp on scriptural holiness.  We must understand it, let it influence our affections above indifference, and then choose to be holy as God is holy.  Our music, dress, and other cultural expressions will change.  They will become distinct from the philosophies of the world and from the spirit of this age.  The change will not allow us to fit into the world.  The world will also know that we’re different–not just in matters of righteousness versus sinfulness, but in those of sacredness versus profanity.

A Bonus (a comment I wrote under a blog post about Peter Master’s recent article about worldliness).

In the Bible, not once is music directed to men. Never is it said to be for evangelism. Preaching is for evangelism—not music. At the most, unbelievers “see” the worship of believers (Ps 40) and fear. They don’t sway and laugh it up because it is the same stuff they’re accustomed to. As a byproduct the music can teach and admonish, but we would assume that it does so only when it is pleasing to God. And it is more than the words, because of what we see in the psalms again and again, Ps 150 for instance, and then in Col 3:16 (psallo–making melody, which is literally “to pluck on a string”).

Men talk about rich theological content. Let’s just say that we all agree with scriptural content that is befitting of the worship God shows He wants in the psalms. This can’t be an either/or—neither the music or the content justifies the other. The Word of God should regulate the words and the music. When we present it to God using a worldly, fleshly medium, this is the syncretism that Masters is talking about. And the medium truly is the message. The vehicle for conveying the message, the music, must also fit with God’s character.

What we seem to be really talking about here is whether music itself can be worldly, fleshly, make provision for the flesh, relativistic, conform to the world, or be unholy, that is, profane. The world knows what it is doing with music. The world uses certain aspects of the music to communicate all of the above that I listed earlier in this paragraph. The world talks about it in its own descriptions of its music. And we can catch the philosophy behind the music itself in the history of the music.

Jonathan Edwards described genuine Christianity as involving religious affections and not men’s passions. He distinguished the real from the counterfeit by differentiating between affections and passions. Affections differ than passions in that they start with the mind and then feed the will. Passions, on the other hand, begin with the body. Not only are passions not genuine affection but they also harm discernment. What is thought to be something spiritual is actually a feeling that has been choreographed in the flesh.

This is a second premise scriptural argument. It is akin to applying Eph 4:29, which commands believers not to have corrupt communication proceed out of their mouth. Based on some of the comments I’ve read here, certain foul language could not be wrong, because the English words aren’t found in the Bible. This, I believe, is part of the attack on truth part of postmodernism. We can ascertain truth in the real world. We can judge corrupt words. We too can judge when music conforms to the world, fashions itself after our former lusts. We can know when it is that passions are being manipulated by music, that it isn’t joy, but a fleshly feeling that impersonates happiness. It is actually fleshly self gratification.

Much, much more could be said about the relationship of externals and internals in the matter of worldliness. The four books by David Wells could be referred to for those who would want to understand. Evangelicals seem not to recognize the danger of accepting the means pagan culture expresses itself. We blaspheme a holy God, profaning His name, by associating it with these worldly, fleshly forms.

CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW Starts at Home

So, we’ve laid the foundations of the Christian worldview. You can refresh your memory here and here, or you can keep reading. And since foundations serve a vital role in building, we see the necessity of covering our bases. Since we view the world through Christian eyes, we understand that God is absolute, that God is sufficient, that God is the ultimate reality, the Uncaused Cause of all things. We understand that nothing exists apart from or independently of God, and thus we understand that Creation is entirely dependent on God. And this means that we depend on God for knowledge. We can only know what God intends that we should know, what God has revealed to us in nature or in Scripture. God knows all things originally and exhaustively, we only know after Him. And that includes our knowledge or understanding of right and wrong, and how right and wrong is determined. We do not make up our own ethic. God has revealed the Christian ethic, and we receive that ethic.

This, in a nutshell, is the foundation. And foundations, as they go, are fine things. I once knew of a man who spent a great deal of time digging out footers, setting in reinforcement, and building a very sturdy foundation for his future home. After several years of work, he finally finished with the foundation. We all admired it, wondering what would sit on it. But the foundation just sat there, holding up nothing but leaves, dust, and the occasional stray ant. Foundations need a house hat.

Our Christian Worldview, while certainly an admirable thing, needs something to cap it off. In other words, we need to take this fine Christian Worldview, and put it to some practical use. Foundations are only good when they are useful. And foundations are only useful when they prop something up. A Christian Worldview is viewing the world through Christian eyes, which implies that we Christians do some viewing, and that we are actually looking at something. We apply our Christian Worldview. This work of applying the Christian Worldview begins in the home.

Ephesians 6:4 gives us a mandate for applying the Biblical Worldview, starting in the home.

And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

The modern meaning of nurture is similar to the word nourish – to feed, to promote growth. But the word nurture is broader than mere physical nourishment and nurturing. It includes growth in maturity. This is accomplished through education. To nurture is to educate, to train up. The Greek word in this passage is paideia, which is the word the Greeks would have used for education. In the Greek world, classroom instruction and formal education was a central part of paideia, but it was not the entirety. The central point of paideia went further than mere knowledge, extending into the culture at large. The goal of paideia in the Greek world was the establishment and furtherance of a culture. Children were cultivated, both by the culture and for the culture. Greek philosophers pictured the ideal citizen taking his place in the ideal culture, and all education aimed at producing that ideal.Then along came the Apostle Paul. Paul presents a new picture – a new ideal. “Bring them up” Paul says, “in the paideia… of the Lord.” A new culture, Paul argues, a new kind of culture is required. And, unlike the Greek world, Paul places the responsibility for this enculturation on the fathers, not on the government. Fathers must bring their children up in this Christian culture, this “culture of the Lord.”

Obviously, this “culture of the Lord” looks different than Ephesian culture. But

Missions Exists Because Worship of God Doesn’t: Psalm 96

The central theme of missions, Scripturally, is not the deep burden of God from His love for lost men, but a deeply and more important motive—His desire to be worshiped.  It also speaks of why men are saved and what it is to be lost.  To be lost is to not be able to worship and praise and glorify God, and men are saved to worship and praise and glorify God.  I know this is no headline, but God, not man, is the center of God’s universe.  It is not consistent with a Biblical approach to believe, teach, or practice missions as though man were the central focus of missions. The conclusion is that doxology, that is, glorifying God, is the proper motive of missions; rather than soteriology.

The primary motive of God in the salvation of lost men in Scripture is “for the sake of His name.” There are many verses to back this up, these are just a few:

• 1 Samuel 12:22—”For the LORD will not forsake his people for his great name’s sake: because it hath pleased the LORD to make you his people.”
• Isaiah 48:9—”For my name’s sake will I defer mine anger, and for my praise will I refrain for thee, that I cut thee not off.”
• Acts 15:14—”Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name.”
• Romans 1:5—”By whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name:”
• Romans 9:17—”For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.”

There would be no reason for God to save people if He was not doing it for His glory, so that His name would be glorified, so that people would worship Him. God is concerned with the advancement of His glory. The Great Commission is the regaining of the authority of the Lord over all creation. His disciples obey His commission because He has all authority, and, therefore, out of recognition of His authority.

Spurgeon called Psalm 96 the “missionary hymn.” The children of Israel knew and were to have known that God had designs for all the children of men. It was always that through Abraham and his descendants God would bless all the families of the earth. No Jew could read this psalm and think that it was God’s will for them to remain exclusive. They were not to be of the world, but they were in the world, and they were to be multiplying the praise of God among men.

THE MANDATE TO MULTIPLY PRAISE (Psalm 96:1-3)

Sing It (vv. 1, 2a)

We are already being introduced to the evangelistic flavor by the phrase, “all the earth,” as this is the ultimate goal—to have the whole earth worshiping. 

Gloria Deo

To God only wise, be glory through Jesus Christ for ever. Amen.

Thanksgiving is here, and hopefully not without your taking time to give thanks. Of course, our thanksgiving should not be limited to one day of the year, duly set aside and observed. Every day should be a day for thanksgiving (I Thes 5:18; Heb 13:15). Nor should a single day end without our taking note of the many reasons we have for giving of thanks.

Are we not blessed in the simple fact that we have someone to thank? We have so many blessings, both simple and grand. Who do we thank? To God only wise, be glory. We would glorify Him as God, and we would be thankful. We need not wonder whom to thank, as if we received an anonymous gift. God gave the gift, and He put His name on the tag. We know Whom to thank, and that is a blessing.

But we should also note that God is glorified through Jesus Christ. God filled the earth with all things to delight the senses, and for that we thank Him as Creator. But Creation is not the greatest gift given by God to man. Creation, in the grand scheme of things, is sort of the “stocking stuffer;” the preliminary gift. Creation is indeed a grand gift, chock full of good things. But our deepest gratitude is reserved for God’s unspeakable gift (2 Cor 9:15). And thus we glorify God through Jesus Christ.

It is through Jesus Christ that we are able to glorify God. Apart from Christ, we were God’s enemies, alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that was in us, because of the blindness of our heart. And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight: Through Christ we are reconciled. Through Christ, fellowship with the Father is possible, for Christ is our mediator. Through Christ, we can please God. Through Christ, God is glorified.

For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell; And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.

May our praise never cease. May our thanksgiving only increase. May God be continually glorified through Jesus Christ for ever.

AMEN!

The Musical Style We Offer to God: Can It Be Inherently Sinful?

An incredible lack of discernment exists in the area of worship music.   Someone can’t be wrong on worship and be right with God.  It is very serious.  Our music is offered to God.  Some say God likes all music offered to Him, because musical style itself is amoral.  Arguments are made with that regard over here.  I write some brief rebuttal below here (see 4., 8., 9.).  God requires wisdom from believers that is guided by Biblical principles and the leading of the Holy Spirit.  We can judge properly and we are to judge.  In 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22, God commands, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. Abstain from all appearance of evil.”  So we’re to judge everything, except for worship music?  No way.  If anything is to be judged, it is to be our worship and according to a strict standard.

The music-is-amoral crowd (essentially only a group of professing evangelicals; almost everyone else in the world knows and says it is moral) says that this is one thing that we can’t judge.  We can know what the attire of a harlot is. We can know what “the world” (world system) is.  But they say that we can’t know what inherently moral or immoral music is.  When Scripture commands us to “abstain from fleshly lust,” we are assumed to know what “fleshly lust” is.  We are supposed to know what “uncleanness” and “inordinate affection” is in Colossians 3:5.  We can judge any and all of these things.

As a basis for your understanding that music can be moral or immoral and so that you can judge these things, I have provided just a few websites for you to look at.  What do you do with this kind of material?  Find out what God likes and doesn’t like.  You can understand what music has the inherent qualities He doesn’t like and you never offer that up to Him.  You know He won’t like it, because it doesn’t match up with His holy character.

1—(click on March/April, then click on Morality in Music under The Arts) This is a Catholic, not someone in the evangelical/fundamental music discussion, but someone highly qualified musically. Jonathan Peters is a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College. He is currently working towards his masters degree in music composition at Northridge University in California.

2—Another Catholic article—why print these?  This is about whether music has an effect, and the Catholics won’t be seen as having a theological axe to grind.

3—“Final Paper: Does Music Affect You?”

4—Here is a brief excerpt of a paper entitled: “Negative Music And The Effects On Human Behavior.”

5—This research says that it is this: “The present study focused on mood effects of high-tempo (HT) or low-tempo (LT) music on a high-or a low-arousal stressful task condition (HST or LST), manipulating the relationship between affective valence and psycho-physiological arousal.”

6—Here’s a study titled: “The role of music in adolescents’ mood regulation.”

7—Here is an 18 page article with research that shows that the music itself causes problems.

8—Look for: “Is listening to negative lyrics or “angry” music really harmful for my child?” Notice that it differentiates between negative lyrics and “angry” music. Here’s how it starts: “Question: Is listening to negative lyrics or “angry” music really harmful for my child? Answer: Yes — although, surprisingly, the sound of the music has more impact than the lyrics.”

9—Here is a source of history of music. Found here is this: “Those moaning saxophones and the rest of the instruments with their broken, jerky rhythm make a purely sensual appeal. All of us dancing teachers know this to be a fact. . . . The music written for jazz is the very foundation and essence of salacious dancing.”

10—I don’t even want you to look at this site, but I link it to show that it exists, as written by someone just being honest about music.  “The earthy tabla beating a steady pulse brings the body into a rhythm, creating a natural form and structure. This structure grows from the ground up. Being receptive to the nuance of music – and often live music – the dancer’s feet and hips feel the rhythm. The oud and qanoon’s vibrations and sensual quarter tones bring their movement and mystery to her belly and hips. Arms surrender and ride on the airwave of the flutes. The dancer is absorbed into the music, and the music into her.”

11—This is full of applicable quotes—very convincing.

12—“Zouk music makes you want to move, it has a sensual rhythm that is sexy and powerful.”

13—“Rockabilly was perhaps the most sexually charged music American white people have ever made. It was full of supple, slap-bass-driven rhythms, and while it was as manic as two high school kids having a quick one while their parents were away, it still swung, and swing is a sexual rhythm.”

14—“The highlight of the evening was their ‘52000ft High’ with its very contagious rhythm and beat that makes it hard not to stand up, put your glass down and dance. It’s got a sexy rhythm, enticing you to move sensually on the dance floor.”

15—“Often at the conclusion of a recital, the musician may choose to play a “thumri’ or “dhun.” This semi-classical style is much freer and completely romantic, sensual and erotic.”

Notes are to music what letters in the alphabet are to words.  The notes or letters can be put together to communicate the wrong message.  God wants the right message communicated to Him.  False worship occurs in two ways:  1)  We worship the wrong God, and 2)  We worship God the wrong way.  Wrong music offered to God is at least worshiping God the wrong way.  If someone thinks that God wants that kind of music, then he might also be worshiping the wrong God.