“… it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule” - Gandalf, in The Return of the King

“It is best to love first what you are fitted to love, I suppose: you must start somewhere and have some roots, and the soil of the Shire is deep. Still there are things deeper and higher; and not a gaffer could tend his garden in what he calls peace but for them, whether he knows about them or not. I am glad that I know about them a little.” -Meriadoc Brandybuck in The Return of the King (the book, not the movie!)

I had the privilege of teaching on the Worship value of Peine Ridge Church on Feb 07, 2010. By God’s grace, I learned an incredible amount as I prepared to give this message.
Below are a couple of excerpts from it, and the full manuscript is here. I pray that God uses your reading of this to bless you as much as he used the writing of it to bless me.
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“Any form of Christian worship that is not according to God’s instructions will bring death, either physically or spiritually. And it cannot truly be called the worship of God. As the Reformer Martin Bucer said, “Only the worship that God asks of us really serves Him”. And so, in the words of Hebrews 12, we must “offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire”. We are not given the option of worshiping God in the way that is most comfortable for us, or seems most normal in comparison to the culture around us, or fits in best with what we personally like the most. When we worship God, we worship on His terms, or we don’t worship at all…”

“…This is why we will receive the Lord’s Supper together weekly at Peine Ridge Church. Not because it will give us a chance every week to “clear the slate” and confess and repent of all of the sins that we’ve committed over the past week- although that is a good, sanctifying thing- but because as we partake of the elements in faith, they serve to unite us by faith with Christ, to glorify Him by displaying our dependence on Him, to be reminded of our inability to offer worship perfectly and to be reminded that He has offered Himself as the supreme act of perfect worship so that we can come and worship without fear of judgment. He is our great high priest, He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, He is our holiness, He is our righteousness. And so as we come together to corporately worship God each week, we come to Him in the same way that we came to Him the first time. With nothing. God is not honored when we come to worship Him with our hands full of something to give to Him, as if He needed anything. God is honored when we come spiritually starving, and we ask Him to fill us with Christ, who is the Bread of Life. When we come guilty ashamed and accused, and we ask for the defense of our Advocate, Jesus. Not when we come boasting in our knowledge of Him, but when we come confessing our ignorance of Him, and ask to be taught by the one who knows Him perfectly, our Rabbi, our Teacher, Jesus.  Not when we come with a clean slate, but when we come acknowledging and confessing our sin, knowing that we are in need of forgiveness and we ask to be covered by the one perfect atoning sacrifice for our sins, Jesus Christ, the perfect Lamb of God.”

“Little fellowships within each local church that met at people’s homes on Sunday afternoons or in the evening. People shared their personal religious experiences, held informal Bible studies, sang hymns, and prayed about each other’s needs.”
(quoted from Worship: Reformed according to Scripture, by Hughes Oliphant Old, pg. 104)

Sound familiar? Interesting that many evangelical churches in the last 50 years have “discovered” the benefits of small group ministry. The quote above is a description of what was taking place within the German Pietist movement in the sixteen hundreds!

Nothing new under the sun…

We’ve heard (and used) some phrases so much in our churches that we don’t stop to question anymore where they’ve come from. Take the ever-popular invitation for lost people to “pray to receive Christ”. We’ve heard it a lot. Sounds easy enough. Sounds spiritual. Must be right… Right?

The phrase “to receive” is used in John 1:12 in reference to Jesus, but it is not an encouragement to pray a prayer. Rather, those who are said to have “received Christ” are those who have “believed on His name”.  So receiving is equated with believing, not with praying. It’s true that prayer can be an expression of belief, but it is not necessarily the case, and it is dangerous to equate the two.

Another Biblical use of language would be to speak of those who have “received Jesus” as those who have adopted, or fed, or clothed, or otherwise comforted children in the name of Jesus. Luke 9:48a “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me.”

Let’s stop to think about what we’re saying. Does anyone who encourages someone to “pray to receive Christ” really intend for them to pray that God will bring children into their lives for them to love and care for?

Trying to think, and speak, Biblically,
nathan