144 - Worship, Hymns and the Spiritual Life [C]

Worship, Hymns and the Spiritual Life; Psalm 71:23

Psalm 71:23 ^NASB "My lips will shout for joy when I sing praises to You; And my soul, which You have redeemed."

The core idea of worship is submission to God. We submit to God because He is the creator. This is the theme of that first hymn of praise that we studied that was directed to God by the 24 elders in Revelation chapter four, because God is the creator. Because He is the creator He is worthy to be worshipped. We express that authority orientation through gratitude, through praise—we sing songs that focus upon His person and His works. We worship through giving, through ritual—in the church age we have communion and baptism, both of which speak of spiritual realities. The ultimate form of worship is learning His Word, because as we learn His Word, the mind of Christ, we learn to think as God thinks. God the creator defines reality, determines what everything is, and it is only when we orient to God that we can orient to reality as it is.

As the Davidic monarchy unified the nation Israel David expressed his desire to build a permanent house for God, a temple in Jerusalem. God said no, but He promised David a dynasty—the Davidic covenant—and David was promised that his son would build the temple. So David prepared. That is why he organised the Levites under the three clans.

The concept of wisdom and understanding and discernment are linked together in wisdom literature. In Job, the wisdom of dealing with suffering in life; Psalms, wisdom applied in singing praise; Proverbs, wisdom is taking doctrine and applying it in different areas of life; Ecclesiastes is also wisdom literature, and the Song of Solomon. There are two issues in music today, one is the lyrics and the other is the music. We should have some discernment about quality music and quality hymns.

Example of contemporary chorus:

I need you

My heart is restless in me,

My wings are all worn out;

I'm walking in the wilderness

And I cannot get out

I need you, O I need you.

Blessed Saviour come;

I need you, O I need you,

Filled with every longing in my soul.

O how I need you Lord,

I need your perfect Word;

Tearful eyes to see,

The sin that I abhor.

I need to weep and pray

For all the thousand ways

That I have failed you

Just today.

What we are dealing with here is what would be like a penitential psalm, a confession of sin. But the emphasis here is totally based on "me," the writer. When we have gone through these hymns in the past we have seen that even though they may talk about personal experience they are always theocentric. This song, like most Christian choruses today, is anthropocentric. Also, we look at this term "I need you, I need you."  What we see is a focus on "me orientation." This whole concept of "me" and focusing on what people need is an outgrowth of modern secular psychotherapy. We don't find this kind of terminology in the Bible. The Bible never approaches anything from the viewpoint of man's needs. That is not the Bible, it is just human viewpoint worldliness, secular psychotherapy. It has nothing to do with the Bible. Further more, it emphasises remorse and weeping and sorrow as a means to somehow impress God that he needs to do something for me because I feel so badly about all of my sin, or whatever is going on in my life. So I need to weep and wail about this to get God's attention. So it encourages wallowing in self-pity and guilt over what we have done and the idea is that I need to weep and wail. We don't find that kind of terminology anywhere in the Scripture. Because we see words in here like "I need your Word," we tend to think this is okay. But it is couched within a psychotherapeutic view of life and not divine viewpoint.

In terms of these lyrics they are simplistic and it is not good poetry. This doesn't even rise to the quality of basic nursery rhyme. If we look at the Psalms we don't have the music, we just have the words, but they are considered by people who don't even believe the Bible to be some of the greatest poetry in all of human history, especially in the Hebrew. When we look at some of the great hymns that we have seen and just take the words apart from the music and read them, and they are fabulous poetry. They are full of good poetry; it is quality literature. But when you take these words in the contemporary chorus they barely even rise to the level of the trivial and the mundane. And that isn't even talking about their theological input.

Now we have to have a comparison, a penitential psalm; from modern man's impression of his need, his psychotherapeutic-oriented relationship to God, to how this same kind of thing is expressed by David. This is after he has committed adultery with Bathsheba and conspired to have her husband murdered. This is David's prayer to God and his reflection upon how sin has affected his life. He is not talking about how he needs God, he is focusing more on the sin that he has committed and how it has affected him. He is not describing his misery to impress God, he is merely describing it because that is the effect that this sin has had on him and this is part of the natural consequences of that sin.   

Psalm 38:1 ^NASB "O LORD, rebuke me not in Your wrath, And chasten me not in Your burning anger." The focal point from the beginning is directed to God as a prayer to God for grace despite his own failure. [2] "For Your arrows have sunk deep into me, And Your hand has pressed down on me. [3] There is no soundness in my flesh because of Your indignation; There is no health in my bones because of my sin. [4] For my iniquities are gone over my head; As a heavy burden they weigh too much for me. [5] My wounds grow foul {and} fester Because of my folly. [6] I am bent over and greatly bowed down; I go mourning all day long. [7] For my loins are filled with burning, And there is no soundness in my flesh." As the guilt has worn on him he is describing how this has affected and impacted him physically. He is in depression because of sin. But notice he is not crying out in terms of his needy psychotherapeutic framework! [8] "I am benumbed and badly crushed; I groan because of the agitation of my heart. [9] Lord, all my desire is before You; And my sighing is not hidden from You. [10] My heart throbs, my strength fails me; And the light of my eyes, even that has gone from me. [11] My loved ones and my friends stand aloof from my plague; And my kinsmen stand afar off." He is saying that now his sin has affected him so much that he is in isolation, he has become almost non-functional and his enemies are about to take advantage of him. He is calling upon God to rescue him from his own bad decisions. [12] "Those who seek my life lay snares {for me;} And those who seek to injure me have threatened destruction, And they devise treachery all day long. [13] But I, like a deaf man, do not hear; And {I am} like a mute man who does not open his mouth. [14] Yes, I am like a man who does not hear, And in whose mouth are no arguments. [15] For I hope in You, O LORD; You will answer, O Lord my God." Everywhere he focuses his attention on God. His only hope is in God. [16] "For I said, 'May they not rejoice over me, {Who,} when my foot slips, would magnify themselves against me.'" He has expressed his confession in the form of an argument to God to grant him forgiveness and to deliver him. [17] "For I am ready to fall, And my sorrow is continually before me. [18] For I confess my iniquity; I am full of anxiety because of my sin. [19] But my enemies are vigorous {and} strong, And many are those who hate me wrongfully."

He is in anguish over his sin and we are at times in remorse and sorrow over sin in our life because we recognise how it has offended God. There is nothing wrong with that, but that is not what impresses God to forgive us. We confess our sins and God forgives us because of Christ's work on the cross, it is not based on how we feel about it at the time. God is not impressed with our remorse. It is not that it is wrong to have remorse, but that is not what impresses God.

Psalm 38:21 ^NASB "Do not forsake me, O LORD; O my God, do not be far from me! [22] Make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation!" Even though he describes the consequences of his sin in his life, throughout this psalm it is still theocentric, it is still God-centred. He never wallows in his guilt, in his sorrow, he never becomes self-absorbed; it never become man-centred or me-centred, it is still God centred.

Compare the hymn, Come, thou fount of every blessing. It was written by Robert Robinson and it is a hymn where he is dealing with the same kinds of things, with sin in his life before God, and we note how he expresses this.

COME, Thou Fount of every blessing!

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;

Streams of mercy, never ceasing,

Call for ceaseless songs of praise.

Teach me, LORD, some rapturous measure

Meet for blood-bought hosts above;

Let me sing the countless treasure

Of my GOD'S unchanging love.

JESUS sought me when a stranger,

Wandering from the fold of GOD;

He, to rescue me from danger,

Interposed His precious blood.

Oh, to grace how great a debtor

Daily I'm constrained to be!

Let that grace, LORD, like a fetter,

Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Prone to wander, LORD, I feel it,

Prone to leave the GOD I love:

Keep my heart from wandering, keep it,

Till I'm perfected above.

Here I raise my Ebenezer,

Hither by Thy help I'm come;

And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,

Safely to arrive at home.

This is theocentric, it is not anthropocentric. It is the result of a man's profound study of the Word and his mature spiritual growth as he reflects upon the grace of God despite the fact that he is prone to be a wandering sinner.

This is why we sing and are careful about what we sing. It is because if we are to do all things, as the New Testament says, to the glory of God, then that means what we sing and how we sing it should be done with quality, with excellence. It should not reduce itself to the trivial, the commonplace and the mundane.

In the New Testament the first time we see worship is in Matthew chapter two with the Magi. They came to worship, and this is the Greek word which means to bow the knee, to show obeisance to one in authority. Matthew 2:11 ^NASB "After coming into the house they saw the Child with Mary His mother; and they fell to the ground and worshiped Him. Then, opening their treasures, they presented to Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh." So we see this connection between worship and giving gifts in response to the grace of God.

Later on in Matthew 14:33 ^NASB "And those who were in the boat worshiped Him, saying, 'You are certainly God's Son!'" They realised who Jesus was. Worship is defined here as recognising who Jesus Christ is. This brings us back to the fact that worship is recognising who God is and what He has done. In Matthew 15:9 Jesus quotes the Old Testament ^NASB "BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME, TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN." There is right worship and there is wrong worship. When we teach our own opinions, our own viewpoint, when we teach motivationally and don't go into the Scriptures and exposit and explain the Word of God, and we are teaching the precept of men, that is not worship; it is false worship.

In John chapter four Jesus is talking to the Samaritan woman at the well and in the context of the conversation they talked about whether the Samaritans worshipped correctly. "Jesus said to her, 'Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father…. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth'." That English preposition "in" indicates what is inside. The Greek preposition en [e)n], while it can have the idea of a locative influence, in something, it really has the idea of by means of—worship by means of the Holy Spirit. Worship in the church age is energised by the filling of the Holy Spirit—by means of the Spirit and by means of truth [doctrine], by means of the Word of God. So the Word of God is always going to be central in worship.

The phrase en pneumati [e)n pneumati] is found in another important passage, Ephesians 5:18 ^NASB "And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, [19] speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord." The first result that Paul mentions related to the filling of the Spirit is that is an attitude of joy. Joy is the second fruit of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5:22. There is this rejoicing over the grace of God and that rejoicing is expressed through singing hymns and spiritual songs. It flows out of the soul to God. Colossians 3:16 repeats the same principle where it is not related to the filling of the Spirit, it is related to the Word of Christ: ^NASB "Let the word of Christ [doctrine] richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms {and} hymns {and} spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God."

Illustrations