Ignorance of the Bible’s very consistent architecture has led to the assembly of many well-meaning but errant doctrinal constructs over the centuries. With reference to it, however, the conflicts are made plain. Our own towers to heaven, however historic they might be, and however cherished, must be torn down.

Just as the “tabernacling” of God in human flesh established a new temple, so the architecture of God serves as the measure for the edifices of man in every sphere. As the Bible repeatedly shows, the city of God will only be built according to the blueprint from heaven, the one given upon the mountain. Anything else will be revealed by fire as mud bricks and straw, a house built on sand, or wood, hay and stubble.

Architecture as Process

The Bible’s sacred architecture is not “solid state.” Not only does it become more and more glorious as the story progresses, from garden to tent, from temple to city, from nature to culture, the elements of the building themselves constitute a process of maturity, recapitulating the pattern of “forming and filling” established in Genesis 1.¹For examples, see Revelation – Cycle 2 Just as that pattern underlies the shape of Genesis 2 — the social architecture established in Adam and Eve²See Covenant Structure in Genesis 2 — so it also underlies the dictation and construction of the Tabernacle in the latter part of the book of Exodus. These chapters are the worst kind of tedium unless we are willing to think visually, or architecturally. If, after careful and repeated readings of the book of Genesis, we have the “heavenly pattern” hidden in our hearts, the details of the tent of God are not a boring list but a tour of the gallery of grace, an architectural representation of the work of God in every sphere, from the creation of the world down to the heart of the humblest saint. Although these sequences are far more complex, we can begin to sing along because we already know the tune.³See The Shape of Exodus 25-31

Since all God’s works are “musical” in that sense, we should not be surprised to find the same architecture in biblical worship. Jeff Meyers writes:

Jesus taught us to pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). He thereby established heaven as the pattern for what is done on earth. (Actually, this pattern is symbolized in many places in the Old Testament, beginning in Genesis 1:1-2.) This is especially the case with regard to the church’s worship. Surely the manner in which worship is conducted in heaven functions as a model for the church on earth. When the Apostle John was privileged to observe heavenly worship, as he records for us in the Revelation, he saw an orderly, formal service performed by angels, living beings, and the twenty-four elders (the precise identity of each of these beings is not our concern here). They repeated various rituals and ritual responses (Rev. 4:9-11). They alternated responses antiphonally (Rev. 5:11-14). They sang hymns in unison (Rev. 5:9). They fell down together (no doubt, a prearranged liturgical action), and they jointly recited prayers of praise and thanksgiving that must have been pre-composed and memorized. How else would they have all prayed (or sung) simultaneously?⁴Jeffrey J. Meyers, The Lord’s Service: Worship at Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church, 19, a condensed version of The Lord’s Service: The Grace of Covenant Renewal Worship.

Meyers notes that, just like the Creation week, and indeed like any good music, the liturgy of worship “moves from tension to rest, from mourning to joy.” What began as “formless and void” becomes “formed and filled.” Our weekly worship is thus a celebration of the new creation established in the death, resurrection, ascension and enthronement of Christ. The action moves from bloodshed on the earth to rule over the nations. This process is called “Covenant Renewal Worship” because it follows the pattern of all biblical Covenants.

The process begins with the authority of God, purifies His people, then sends them as representatives into the world. This is the Above, Beside, Below architecture found in the Ten Commandments.⁶See God-In-A-Box  The threefold Trinity becomes fivefold by Covenant and then sevenfold in history. The pattern instilled in us in the house of God is then recapitulated in our own houses, tribes, cities and nations.

But this process of the Spirit “coming down” always follows the ascension offering, the sacrifice “going up.”⁷For more discussion on the meaning of the ascension offering, see The First Ascension. The three-level “ziggurat” described in Exodus 20:4 and Philippians 2:10 is turned upside down in the ministry of Christ.

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything…

that is in heaven above,
(Step 3: Jesus’ ascension – Authority to Rule: GOVERNMENT)
^
or that is in the [land] beneath,
(Step 2: Jesus’ transfiguration – Authority to Die: SACRAMENT)
^
or that is in the water under the [land].”
(Step 1: Jesus’ baptism – Authority to Testify: WORD)⁸For more discussion, see Jesus’ Three Ascensions

Jesus sent His Spirit only after He ascended into heaven as the ultimate sacrifice. Man must be represented in heaven before he can be commissioned to represent God on earth. This is why Adam was put through a process of ethical qualification. His submission to the word-sword of heaven would qualify him to be its bearer on earth.⁹For more discussion, see “The Spirit of Adam” and “The Meekest Man” in Inquiétude: Essays for a People without Eyes. Just as there was tension and rest in the testing and enthronement of Christ (Below, Beside, Above), so there is now tension and rest is the conquest of the nations by the Gospel (Above, Beside, Below). ¹⁰Interestingly, although the flow of divine authority in the fivefold Covenant is Above, Beside, Below, the sevenfold process includes both an ascent and a descent. God always works in fractals.

Architecture as Drama

Now, as a visual thinker, some things are obvious to me that are not obvious to other people. Thinking visually not only allows one to think spatially or architecturally (how things are placed in a given space), it then allows you to make some observations concerning the spatial “relationships” between those things. In dramatic terminology, this placement of people is referred to as “blocking.” Eric Sean McGiven writes:

Blocking is the positioning and movement of the characters to tell the story in visual terms. This placement can suggest the attitudes of the characters toward one another so the story situation is conveyed to the audience with or without dialogue. It makes the audience understand, at times contrary to the dialogue, the inner meaning existing within and between characters.

Blocking should make the dramatic or comedic purpose of the scene so clearly apparent to the viewer that even a deaf man could understand it. For example, silent films were almost all physical behavior. A whole generation grew up understanding and enjoying these films.

The visual story reflects the moment to moment failure or success of each character’s struggle toward their objective, as well as the intensity (commitment) and focus (direction) of their emotions. Blocking is thus the accumulation of several components: the dramatic relationship, the character’s wants, what he feels, what stands in the way, and how is the conflict presently resolving. Now when I say winning or failing, I don’t mean whether the character achieves their end goal, but whether they are succeeding or failing at specific moments along the way.

Blocking, is therefore, a comparative portrayal of strong and weak movements, and relative positions. This means that certain body positions; stage areas, planes, and levels along with character movements have definite values. They inject meaning into the picture and the telling of the story.

For instance, a strong movement of a figure is one rising from a chair, straightening up, placing weight on the forward foot, raising the arm, or walking forward. A weak movement, on the other hand, is stepping backward, slouching, placing the weight on the rear foot, sitting down, lowering the arm, walking backward, or turning around and walking away from a figure or object.

We could also define, in general, whether physical behavior is strong or weak, whether it signifies a winning attitude or one of struggle or failure.¹¹Eric Sean McGiven, Blocking and Movement.

The first point that should be made here is the importance of physical posture in liturgy. The saints kneel or prostrate themselves to confess sins because we are slain as living sacrifices. The saints stand to sing and pray because these are priestly acts of service, and servants stand. The saints hear the word and receive communion seated because we are priest-kings, friends of God. Covenant renewal worship (or whatever you choose to call it) purifies our hearts and leads to the saints walking among the nations as prophets.

Liturgy, under the Old Covenant and the New, is sacred drama. People used to go to church to absorb patterns for life. Now, sadly, they watch TV and movies to learn how to live, and entertainment rather than the Bible informs the pattern of modern worship as it does the method of modern Bible teaching. It is little wonder that Christians learn nothing new at church. It is also telling that the first generation to skip Sunday School is responsible for the current plague of corruption in public and private institutions. Cultus always leads to culture. Men must learn to kneel before they can stand and walk with authority.

When it comes to the Bible, obtaining an understanding of the blocking of all the actors on the ubiquitous “sacred stage” explains many mysteries.¹²See Orientation Day My favourite example is the blocking of the actors in the account of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery. The placement of all the people in the “legal” architecture of the court of God reveals it to be a replay of the events in Eden, only this time there is a better Adam. Not only this, but the careful mentions of Jesus sitting, bending down and standing are also architectural cues. There is no drama so deep and rich as even the simplest Bible story.¹³See The Emancipation of Eve.

Children And Liturgy

Since every Bible story has the same shape (the Bible Matrix), and each of the seven steps in that process corresponds to some element in the Tabernacle, every Bible story is an expression of the house of God, the heart of the city of God. This is very obviously the case with Exodus 24, and this chapter exposes one of the “architectural conflicts” mentioned above.

The pattern of biblical worship is not compatible with the doctrine of paedosacraments held by Jeff Meyers. Why? Because God never puts children in the Sanctuary. As it was in Eden, even before the children were born, the Sanctuary was only open to those who legally represented them.¹⁴For more discussion, see Cultivation and Representation. Even in the account of the woman caught in adultery, where the real target of the serpent is Jesus, the Offspring of the Woman, it is Jesus as the Man. Those whose intention is to include children in worship patterned after the biblical order should look more closely at that pattern, and this is where Exodus 24 is extremely helpful. The children were included, but we ought to observe how and where they were included.

Here is the pattern of Covenant Renewal Worship in its sevenfold form (from Bible Matrix, p. 217):

As in Genesis 1, the process begins with the authority of heaven and concludes with the establishment of a representative authority on earth. This is also what we see in Exodus 24.

The events of Exodus 24 occurred just before the dictation of the instructions for the Tabernacle. In this chapter, the people of God are not only gathered, cleansed, consecrated, commune with God and are commissioned, they are also divided up within the different stages of the “ascension” process on Mount Sinai. The entire nation, as the “corporate firstborn” of God became a picture of the process of sacrifice, and what we must notice is that the process not only moves from Below, to Beside, to Above, it also takes us from the sons of men on earth to the Sons of God in heaven:

The most common arguments for paedosacraments rely on Circumcision (for paedobaptism) and Passover (for paedocommunion). However, even though women served at the Tabernacle, and even young children had a place in the courts of Solomon’s Temple, not even Israel’s children qualified as legal representatives with Sanctuary access.¹⁵My friend Luke Welch totally screws this up, architecturally-speaking, here. Both Circumcision and Passover concerned the households of men, and their earthly offspring. What we see in the books of Exodus and Leviticus is the establishment of divisions within Israel to accommodate the house of God. Just as Israel was the “firstborn” of God, corporately speaking, the Levites were set apart as legal representatives for those sons of Israel.

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Behold, I have taken the Levites from among the people of Israel instead of every firstborn who opens the womb among the people of Israel. The Levites shall be mine, for all the firstborn are mine. On the day that I struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, I consecrated for my own all the firstborn in Israel, both of man and of beast. They shall be mine: I am the Lord.” (Numbers 3:11-13)

This shifted the focus from the Land and womb to the Sanctuary, from the firstborn of the womb to the firstborn from the dead, or, in Tabernacle terms, from bloody flesh to fragrant smoke. Where the Bronze Altar represented the four-cornered earthly inheritance, the Incense Altar represented the coming “heavenly country,” the inheritance of the resurrected saints, the courts of God. The architecture on Mount Sinai prefigured the ascension of the saints at the end of the Old Covenant as a mature, human representative government in heaven. To use Circumcision and Passover as proof of the veracity of paedosacraments is to lift raw flesh into heaven without purification by fire. Paedosacraments are the liturgical equivalent of the tower of Babel, or gathering sticks on the Sabbath to warm your own tent instead of gathering around God’s. Sons of men are not Sons of God.

The conclusion is clearly that children, indeed anyone, is welcome in the New Covenant house of God. The Garden is now free of the accuser, so Eve now rules as co-regent with her Bridegroom. Baptism and table are thus for “both men and women” (Acts 2:18; 5:14; 8:12) as New Covenant “Levites” (men) and “Nazirites” (men and women), but restricting the sacraments to believers does not exclude the children any more than restricting ministry of the Word to men excludes the women. Just as the restriction of priesthood to “Adams” who “died” made worship a safe place for women and children, so the restriction of priesthood to “Adams” and “Eves” under the New Covenant makes worship a safe place not only for our children, but for anyone else who wishes to attend. New Covenant worship is open worship, a drama for all the world to see, and the sacraments are part of the liturgical story which we dare not get wrong. They do not constitute “an intellectual fence” which divides the Church any more than did the divisions within Israel upon Sinai or around the Tabernacle.

Now, we all know a picture is worth a thousand words. It has taken me almost three thousand to explain an inconsistency I noticed by comparing Exodus 24 and Covenant Renewal Worship in a single mental image. This might be why software companies are employing people with varying degrees of autism to find bugs in computer code. I am no genius, but I do know my way around the house.

“We come as those who receive first and then, second, only in reciprocal exchange do we give back what is appropriate as grateful praise and adoration.”

The next excerpt from the condensed version of Jeff Meyers‘ The Lord’s Service. You might start to see the “head and body” Bible Matrix pattern beginning to show through here…

The Biblical Purpose of The Divine Service

Through Christ we. . . have access by one Spirit to the Father — Ephesians 2:18

What, then, is the purpose of our Lord’s Day service? According to the Scriptures, in corporate Christian worship members of the believing congregation are engaged by the Spirit and drawn into the Father’s presence as living sacrifices in Christ. “Through Christ we. . . have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Eph. 2:18). Our reasonable liturgy, the apostle Paul says, is to offer ourselves as living sacrifices (Rom. 12:1-2). On the Lord’s Day the Lord himself visits his people in judgment and salvation, reconstituting and restoring them for life in his presence and work in his kingdom. In response to God’s covenantal initiative—his drawing near to us—we confess, thank, praise, and pray as renewed creatures who through the Spirit are enabled to give unto our Covenant Lord the glory due his Name.

God’s Serves Us First

In view of the one-sided emphasis in some evangelical (even Presbyterian) circles that the congregation gathers to give praise to God and not to get anything, I must insist on the lopsided, impoverished nature of this teaching. We have been told by well-meaning teachers, even Reformed theologians, that it is downright wrong to come to church in order to get something. A popular shibboleth has it that Reformed or Presbyterian worship stands apart from other theologies of worship in that we don’t come to get anything but to give praise and honor and glory to God. This conception must not be permitted to go unchallenged.

First, and above all, we are called together in order to get, to receive. This is crucial. The Lord gives, we receive. Since faith is receptive and passive in nature, faith-full worship must be about receiving from God. He gives, and by faith we receive. We are given his forgiveness, his Word, his nourishment, his benediction, etc. We come as those who receive first and then, second, only in reciprocal exchange do we give back what is appropriate as grateful praise and adoration. More and more I am discovering how crucial (at least in our current situation) such a conception of worship is. Too often in current Reformed and evangelical circles worship or liturgy is described first of all as the “work of the people.” While I do not deny that we “work” during worship, I do regard this definition as dangerously one-sided. Whatever we “do” in worship must always be the faithful response to God’s gifts of forgiveness, life, knowledge, and glory—gifts we receive in the service! Much of what goes by the name “contemporary” worship has evacuated the Sunday service of God’s service to man! It is all about what we do. The reduction of Christian worship to “praise” and “giving worth to God” by well-intentioned pastors desirous of purging the church of superficial worship forms will only continue to feed the very thing that they oppose.

For example, to name one side effect of this kind of thinking, the disappearance of the pastor as the Lord’s representative and spokesman, the ordained man through whom the Lord gives, is tied to this kind of mentality. Many pastors no longer lead the worship service. This departure of the leadership of the pastor in contemporary worship follows from the kind of onesided conception of the Lord’s Day service that I have been critiquing. If what the people are doing in worship is merely getting together to praise and pray and offer God all kinds of human devotion, then we can all just do it together and anyone can lead us. If, however, the Lord himself is meeting us and giving us his gifts, then the ordained minister will be prominent so that the people can be left in no doubt that it is the Lord himself who is speaking, forgiving, baptizing, offering us food and drink, and finally blessing us and sending us out into the world to further his kingdom.

That is not to say that the Lord serves us in worship exclusively through the pastor, since the Lord is at work even in the corporate praying, reciting, and the singing of the congregation. How many times have we been truly served by God as we listened to and joined in with the united voice of the church in prayer and praise? The Lord, then, serves us on the Lord’ Day as his Spirit speaks through both the voice of the minister as well as the voices of his people. We should never lose sight of the primacy of the Lord’s service to us when we gather to him on the Lord’s Day.

Moreover, the terminology we use to describe what happens on the Lord’s Day can be confusing. We’ve inherited the designation “worship service,” which, to my mind, tends to introduce confusion. “Service” comes from the Latin servitium, as in servitium Dei (“the service of God” or “God’s service”). This older way of designating the Christian liturgy is delightfully ambiguous. In the “Divine Service” or “the service of God” who’s serving whom? Is God serving us? Or are we serving God? Or is it both? Classically, the “Divine Service” was thought to include both God’s service to us and our service to God. Even so, our fathers in the faith considered God’s service to us (the forgiveness of sins, the ministry [service!] of the Word, the Sacraments, etc.) as primary and our service to him as secondary response. But this emphasis is exactly what is lost when we call our corporate, Sunday assembly “worship.” This term comes to us by way of the Anglo-Saxon word “worth-ship,” which simply meant to accord someone his proper worth. What we appear to be emphasizing with this term is not God’s gifts and ministry to us through his Word and Sacraments, but our ascribing “worth” to him. Some Reformed writers have a tendency to miss this. We are too ready to accept the misleading definition of liturgy as “the work of the people,” which is in fact only half of the story, and the second half at that! What happens on Sunday is the continuation of the service of the ascended Lord Jesus for his people. “For who is greater: the one at the table or the one who serves? The one at the table, surely. Yet here am I among you as the one who serves! (Luke 22:27; see also Matt. 20:28; John 13:5-16; Phil. 2:7-8).

Allow me to hammer this point home. Without this understanding, our worship inevitably degenerates into paganism with a Christian veneer. Our service is not first of all for God. We first receive from God, then, secondly, we give back to him with gratitude precisely that which he graciously continues to give us. He stands in no need of our service or praise. He has not created us primarily so as to get glory for himself, but to distribute and share the fullness of his glory with his creatures. He is not like the pagan gods who need to suck up as much of the glory and praise as they can. With the true God the determination of the amount of glory possessed by him and us is not a zero sum game. If he has all glory, that does not imply that we have none. If we possess glory, it does not come at the expense of his glory. Only when we refuse to acknowledge the source of our glory and assert our own over against his do we then fall under the condemnation of the prophets. Thomas Howard rightly challenges this distortion:

If God alone is all-glorious, then no one else is glorious at all. No exaltation may be admitted for any other creature, since this would endanger the exclusive prerogative of God. But this is to imagine a paltry court. What king surrounds himself with warped, dwarfish, worthless creatures? The more glorious the king, the more glorious are the titles and honors he bestows. The plumes, cockades, coronets, diadems, mantles, and rosettes that deck his retinue testify to one thing alone, his own majesty and munificence. He is a very great king to have figures of such immense dignity in his train, or even better, to have raised them to such dignity. These great lords and ladies, mantled and crowned with the highest possible honor and rank are, precisely, his vassals. This glittering array is his court! All glory to him, and in him, glory and honor to these others (Evangelical Is Not Enough [Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1984], p. 87).

It is this cruder form of the doctrine that is too often the popular view. If anyone has an ounce of glory, then it must be confiscated by God. This is pagan, not Christian. Rather, we must say that if anyone has an once or two pounds of glory, it has been bestowed by God from the plentitude of his own glory and so all glory in the world must ultimately redound to him. “For of Him and through Him and to Him [are] all things, to whom [be] glory forever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36).

Christian worship provides the occasion for God’s service to the church, that is, in the liturgy God serves us by granting us the gifts of the kingdom, which includes, but is not limited to knowledge. We gather to receive. The Lord gives. So, for example, I believe, the diminishing place of the pastor in the Sunday service corresponds to the deformation of the service from what God does for us to what we do before God. When the robed pastor is prominent the people are left in no doubt that God is speaking and acting through the instrumentality of the office of the Ministry to deliver his gifts to the congregation.

Thus, God’s operations on us come first and our actions are in grateful response to God’s gracious activity. [Note: I do not mean to suggest that our response is not also included in God’s gracious provision in Christ. It is. It is not as if God works but then stops just where our human response begins. Rather, God’s grace includes precisely that human response to the extent that our human response takes place “in Christ.” God is at work in us even when we are at work praising him. We “work” at thanking and praising him because he is at work in us (1 Cor. 12:3; Rom. 8:26; Phil. 2:13). The entire process of covenant renewal or sacrificial worship can only be performed as we are graciously given to participate in the priestly work of Jesus Christ. Our offering of ourselves as Christians will always be a participation in Jesus’ own priestly offering of his humanity to the Father in the Spirit.]

If the Church’s worship is the place where God himself distributes his lifegiving Word and Sacraments, if it is the occasion for God to serve the congregation, then with this understanding we can, to some degree, transcend the rigid dichotomy regarding the purpose of the Sunday service—is it for evangelism or worship? Why do we have to choose between one or the other? Is worship for the people of God or unbelievers? Well, primarily for the people of God, but if unbelievers are present they may be served as well. If through the liturgy God graciously delivers gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation, then he offers them to everyone present, the people of God as well as those who are not yet part of his people. Inasmuch as the Lord’s Day service is the place and time where God comes through his Word and Sacrament to serve people, it is obviously beneficial to both. The Spirit can enliven any unbeliever present and use his Word as it is read, prayed, sung, and preached to bring them new life. What else is this but evangelism?

Therefore, the fundamental purpose of the corporate Sunday service is to receive by faith God’s gracious service in Christ and then to respond with thanksgiving in union with Christ worshiping the Living God. This is what we call “covenant renewal worship.”

More from Jeff Meyers on The Lord’s Service.

Worship as Education?

Another segment of the church believes that the Sunday service ought to be for the purpose of communicating truth. Education is the chief end of worship. Churches that have this emphasis tend to degenerate into lecture halls complete with overhead projectors and armies of note-taking members. Presbyterians and Bible churches often fall into this error. The sermon is elevated out of all proportion as the key element of worship. Education is the primary goal.

Nothing else is of much importance in the service. Most of what comes before the sermon functions as “pre-game ceremonies” for the main event. People may like to sing, and singing may make them feel good, but they have not really thought through what purpose, if any, hymns and songs ought to have in the overall structure of the service—besides preparing the congregation emotionally for the sermon.

Worship as Experience?

There are others who emphasize the experience of the congregation in worship. They believe that the Sunday service ought to produce some kind of beneficial emotional response in the people. Many liberal churches fall into this category. Religion is reduced to sentimental and pious feelings. Pastors smile all the time and read poems from the pulpit to help the people feel good about themselves. For those who have embraced this philosophy of worship (a kind of liturgical Pollyanna-ism), the focus of the church is anthropological—that is, on man. I recently phoned the office of a church whose biblical orthodoxy is questionable and heard the following answering machine message: “Remember God loves you just the way you are!” Actually, God loves his people in spite of what they are, through faith in Jesus Christ. At all costs, people must leave the service feeling that they are O.K. and believing that everyone else is too. Christianity is reduced to religious sentimentalism. In modern American church services, edification is cut loose from its doctrinal moorings and is blown about by every humanistic, trendy gust of psychological and sociological silliness.

Worship as Praise?

I tried but couldn’t think of a suitable synonym for “praise” that begins with an “e”! From this perspective the purpose of worship is to gather and give praise to God. Churches that emphasize praise as the goal of worship often style their services “celebrations.” All of those passages that call believers to “ascribe” or “give to the Lord the glory due to his Name” can be marshaled in support of the truth that the corporate service is a service of praise (Psalm 29:1-2; 96:7-8). This fourth conception of worship is much closer, but still not quite adequate to express the fullness of biblical worship. Certainly there are numerous passages that exhort us to “Praise the Lord” and to “worship” him. I would caution you, however, that in many cases the word “worship” has not served us very well. It is not the most helpful translation of words used to designate “bowing down” or “prostrating oneself” (e.g. Psalm 95:6). For example, when we are called to “prostrate” ourselves before God, this does not exactly correspond with the way we use the word “worship.” To fall down before God is to allow oneself to be lifted up by him. It is to give one’s self over to the Lord’s service. In effect, falling down before God puts us in the position to be served by God. Much more, therefore, is often going on in these passages than merely ascribing “worth” or “praise” to God.

Often the giving of praise or glorifying of God is set over against the worshiper’s expectation of receiving anything from God in church. Worship is what we give to the Lord, we are told. I will examine the one-sidedness of “worship as praise” in the next section as well, but here let me say that not only is the super-spiritual-sounding assertion that “we just gather together to give praise to God taking no interest in what we might get from him” unbiblical, it may also easily slip into doxological hubris. Presbyterian pastors and theologians are particularly vulnerable to this distortion of the purpose of worship. The slogan “we gather for worship to give not to get” has become something of a Reformed shibboleth. We love to beat other evangelicals over the head with it. It makes us feel superior. As if we don’t go to church because we need anything! We Reformed Christians go to church to give God glory and honor. As I hope to show, this kind of thinking is extremely dangerous.

For us, as creatures of God, there can be no such thing as “disinterested praise.” We simply cannot love or praise God for who he is apart from what he has given us or what we continue to receive from him. We are not his equals. The notion that pure love and worship of God can only be given when it is unmixed with all thoughts of what we receive, has no biblical grounding. To be sure, it sounds very spiritual and pious. It even comes across as self-denial. In fact, however, there is no such worship in the Bible for the simple fact that we cannot approach God as disinterested, self-sufficient beings. We are created beings. Dependent creatures. Beings who must continually receive both our life and redemption from God. Our “worship” of God, for this reason, necessarily involves our passive reception of his gifts as well as our thanksgiving and petitions. We cannot pretend that we do not depend upon him. We will always be receivers and petitioners before God. Our receptive posture is as ineradicable as our nature as dependent creatures. We must be served by him.

Recognizing this is true spirituality. Opening oneself up to this is the first movement in our “worship,” indeed, the presupposition of all corporate worship. It is faith’s posture before our all-sufficient, beneficent Lord. Praise follows after this and alone can never be the exclusive purpose for our gathering together on the Lord’s Day.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Obviously, there is some truth in each of these four perspectives. A Christian service that does not proclaim the Gospel to the lost (and saved!), engage the emotions of the congregation, teach God’s word, and ascribe to God praise and honor will likely be a distorted, dangerously truncated service. All four of these opinions, however, err to the extent that they reduce the purpose of the church to one of these dimensions. Moreover, those who embrace one of the first four purposes tend to see the Sunday service as primarily a technique for producing a particular effect on the members of the congregation, either on their will, mind, or emotions. All four of these dimensions—evangelism, preaching, edification, and praise—in and of themselves are important. They each have their proper place in the worship service. But the overall purpose of a biblical worship service should not be reduced to any one of them. Moreover, the purpose (and practice) of our Lord’s Day worship service must never degenerate into an attempt to engineer or manipulate some desired effect in the congregation. Worship must not be understood as a technique. “As C. S. Lewis said, ‘The charge is feed my sheep not run experiments on my rats.’ When worship is reduced to a pep rally for the pastor’s latest crusade or to a series of acts that contain the minister’s own hidden agenda, our concern for worship is called into question” (William H. Willimon, Worship as Pastoral Care [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1979], p. 17). Every conception and form of liturgy that focuses on man will eventually degenerate into intellectual or psychological manipulation.

Why Go To Church on Sunday?

When you come together as a church. . .
1 Corinthians 11:18

What is the purpose of our Lord’s Day assembly? Why do we come to a church service on Sunday? The answer to this crucial question will help explain why certain words and actions are included in the church’s worship and also determine the way in which the service is ordered from beginning to end.

Unfortunately, there are serious disagreements about the purpose of Sunday worship. There are at least four different popular perspectives on the purpose of the Sunday worship service.

Worship as Evangelism?

First, some feel that the purpose of the service ought to be evangelism. Many “independent” and “community” churches tend to adopt this view, although more and more Presbyterian and Reformed churches also think that outreach defines the chief purpose of the Sunday service. Accordingly, worship becomes a technique for evangelism.

Too often, according to this view, results are what counts. The worship service is then evaluated based on the results obtained. At its worst, a church that adopts this posture may end up accepting whatever techniques that it judges to be effective in attracting unchurched people into the service. Churches that choose evangelistic effectiveness as the criteria by which they evaluate their services tend to look for ways to attract and entertain people, and they generally model their services after the broader cultural events (T.V. talk shows, concerts, sitcoms, etc.).

It is important to stop and note that these pop “styles” are not neutral. They embody a distinctly American, 20th century world view. Transforming the worship of the church using these cultural “styles” and the latest technological innovations in communication will affect the mindset and lifestyle of the community which submits to these popular “forms.” Form matters. Style = form. The manner in which doctrine is embodied, communicated, lived, and sung is not neutral. Form is not something entirely “indifferent” (adiaphora). The way we pray/worship is inexorably related to who we are praying to and what we believe about the one we engage in prayer and praise. Style (form) and doctrine are mutually conditioning. Or at least they ought to be. What you believe will influence how you pray, worship, and sing. And conversely, the way in which you worship will impact what you believe. I maintain that we have really not thought through this issue at all in our circles. When we say things like, “I am not concerned with the music style just the doctrine” or “musical style is merely a matter of taste, what’s really important is our confession” or “as long as you believe correctly it doesn’t really matter what style of worship you choose,” I think it is frightening evidence of our sloppy theology of worship and music.

These evangelism-driven church services are very carefully engineered to produce the desired results. Ed Dobson describes the seeker church criteria for music selection:

We wanted a musical style that would elicit a response. Unchurched people come to a service hesitantly. Their mind-set is ‘you’re not going to get me.’ Their defenses are up. We felt that a style of music that would get them moving in a physical way (nodding heads and tapping feet) would help break down their defenses. This does not mean that the crowd are on their feet nodding heads and clapping; they seldom clap during a song, but they always applaud at the end (Starting a Seeker Sensitive Service: How Traditional Churches Can Reach the Unchurched [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993], pp. 42f.).

There you have it: “breaking down their defenses” and the crowds always “applaud at the end.” You see how marketing and emotional manipulation often play key roles in determining the shape of these services. The inside of the church may look and feel like a concert hall (with a large band and choir up front), a movie theater (where everything is projected up onto a large screen), or an auditorium (with a “stage” up front). Typically, during the service the people are relatively passive: they function less like a congregation of active worshipers and more like an audience. Generally speaking, what happens in practice in these churches is that most of the traditional forms are jettisoned, and the church unashamedly embraces the dominant and omnipresent entertainment models so prominent in American culture.

An excerpt from Jeffrey Meyers’ The Lord’s Service: The Grace of Covenant Renewal Worship, pp. 283-285.

Faith comes from hearing. —Romans 10:7a.

One does not need to read very far into Emily Dickinson’s poetry to discover that her verse often captures the quintessential American religious consciousness. Consider these lines from three of Emily Dickinson’s poems:

Some keep the Sabbath, going to church
I keep it, staying at home. Of course—I prayed—
And did God care?

At least—to pray is left—is left—
O Jesus—in the air—
I know not which thy chamber is
I’m knocking everywhere—
Thou settest Earthquake in the South—
And Maelstrom in the sea—
Say, Jesus Christ of Nazareth—
Hast thou no Arm for me?

Poor Emily. She doesn’t know where to go, where to find Jesus, where to find Jesus’ “arm for her.” “O Jesus—in the air—I know not which thy chamber is.” Knocking everywhere, but nowhere in particular, Dickinson makes the shocking discovery that grace is nowhere to be found. She has no assurance that Jesus is for her because she doesn’t know where He is. God’s power is manifested everywhere. But how does knowledge of God’s omnipotence and exhaustive control help? How can she know He loves and cares for her? The sovereign Lord is in the air and in the sea, but where is He for me?

I saw a placard on a church last year that asked passersby, “Looking for Jesus?” The answer was provided below in bold letters. “YOU WILL FIND HIM IN YOUR HEART. ” What does that mean? I thought. What do unbelievers think when they read that advice? Where in the Bible does it say that we should look for Jesus in our hearts or that we should turn inward to try to find Him? We find precisely the opposite. Jesus came down from heaven and took on our flesh  1:14). And the true God, the God for us, is found when we learn to “come to” and “listen to” Jesus. But what does that mean for us today? While He was on earth people could literally come to Him. But now, since He has bodily ascended, where is He? Where is He to be found? How do we “come” to Jesus today? Where do we hear His voice? Did He come in the flesh and then leave this world only to leave us to our own mental or emotional inner resources?

No! Our Lord loves us so much, that He ordains that He can be found. He can still be heard. But where? Where are His hands and feet? Where is His voice heard today? Where can we find Him now that His physical body has been removed from us? He has bodily ascended to heaven, to be sure, but is that all that the Bible has to say about the “body of Christ”? That it is now located in heaven? The New Testament says that the Church is the body of Christ. Jesus promised that “when two are three are gathered, there I am” (Mt. 18:20). Jesus sent the apostles to continue the mission the Father sent Him on, breathing on them so that they would possess the same Holy Spirit (Jn. 20:19-23). And, of course, Paul clearly states that the Church is the “body of Christ” (1 Cor. 12:12-14, 27). When Paul persecuted members of the Church, Jesus complained to Paul, “Why are you persecuting me” (Acts 9:4-5).

The problem in American Christianity is that the possibility and enjoyment of a relationship with Christ has been severed from His Body, the Church, and from the ministry and sacraments of the Church. When this happens the Christian faith becomes unspecified, generalized, and abstract. Grace cannot be found here or there, or anywhere. Jesus in the air = Jesus nowhere.

Christians have an answer for Emily’s dilemma. At least one—third of Calvin’s Institutes (Book IV) is devoted to the doctrine of the Church. The doctrine of God, man, Christ, and salvation all culminate in the mystical Body of which Christ is the Head. This “high” ecclesiastical theology can be found in all of the sixteenth-century Reformers and especially in early sixteenth-century Reformed theology. It is in this community of flesh and blood saints, oral speech, material rituals, and physical sacraments that God meets with us and does such wonderful things. Luther says, “The Holy Christian Church is the principal work of God, for the sake of which all things were made. In the Church, great wonders daily occur, such as the forgiveness of sins, triumph over death… the gift of righteousness and eternal life.”

 

I see that the Gospel reading in the lectionary this week is Mark 12: 38-44. I’m preaching through the 10 commandments, so I won’t be commenting on this passage on Sunday. But I would like to give a different perspective on this passage than what is normally heard.

It should be carefully noted that the 2 synoptic Gospels that include the account of the destitute widow dropping her little gift into the offering box at the temple have it sandwiched between 1) Jesus’ warning about the scribes “who devour widows’ houses,” and 2) his indignant prophesy that Israel’s temple/house will be destroyed (Mark 12:38–13:2; Luke 20:45–21:9).  These three blocks of texts are inexorably connected.

• A warning against the scribes devouring widows’ houses
• A poor widow giving all she has at the temple/house offering box
• Jesus condemning the temple/house of Israel to destruction

The widow is often used by preachers as an illustration of exemplary giving. She gives all that she has. Isn’t that wonderful? Really? Would I as a pastor accept everything a poor widow had if I knew she was putting that much into the offering plate? No way. Think about it. Apparently this widow’s poverty was known. And Jesus is not happy that the leaders of Israel are permitting this—more than that—encouraging it. He’s pretty angry.

This story of the widow’s offering is not intended to be read as a object lesson about sacrificial giving. It’s not really about the exemplary piety of this widow. She is so faithful that she gives sacrificially and generously. There’s some truth to this, of course. She is only following the advice of her pastors. The problem is that the advice of her pastors is monstrously wicked and she apparently doesn’t know any better.

This story is an indictment of the leadership of Israel—this is how they “devour widows’ houses.” They have created a system that preys on the weak and helpless. That makes them believe they are being faithful and godly when they give much more than they need to or can afford to give. They have taught the poor to give everything they have to the temple building fund, which is contrary to the intention of the temple and the treasury system in Israel. And all to line their own pockets. Jesus is not first of all praising the widow’s action. We are being told this story so that we can know why the temple treasury system is going to be demolished and destroyed – because instead of providing for widows and the poor, it sucks up their wealth and leaves them utterly destitute. This is why the temple must be torn down, not one stone left upon another.

“Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the mutilation!”
Philippians 3:2 (NKJV)

Jeff Meyers copped flak for his take on the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. He says the tax collector was justified for his Covenant faithfulness, and the Pharisee was not. Was it not the Pharisee who was faithful? And, either way, is this not justification by works? Has Jeff got night and day around the wrong way?

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Human talent amazes me. Totally aside from the child prodigies, we are an extremely gifted bunch. After only a couple of decades on the planet, from those who have the opportunity to apply themselves with enthusiasm to their particular area of interest, we see some incredible achievements. For the godless, this should certainly seem miraculous. But for our dark hearts it just proves how smart and wonderful we already are in ourselves. This is the ingratitude Paul speaks of.

For Christians, talent (or beauty or wealth) is just another dead giveaway of God’s existence. And God Himself almost seems to despise this early glory as a short-lived covering of wildflowers that appears suddenly after some long-awaited rain. This is the glory of youth and it is insufferably vain. It exalts itself by calling its competition dumb and ugly.

It’s even worse when we don’t grow out of it. We bury our talent, even build a civilisation upon it, and pretend there will be no reckoning. One of the characteristics of ungodly men and kingdoms is the belief that because they are strong they can do no wrong, that the process of maturation through history, under the shaping hands of God, is no longer (or never was) necessary. [1] They think they are springs instead of channels.

Fools like this refuse correction. Fools like Obama neither learn from history nor listen to sound advice. Fools like Dawkins might postulate about future evolution for mankind, but in their hearts they revel in the idea that they are the gold at the end of the refining process. While the gifted, gilded and good-looking regard their talents, heredity or inheritance as personal achievements, the Spirit-led come to see themselves as good bread baked by God to be broken.

The faithful always become aware of this. By the Spirit, they know correction and humility. They understand that this willingness to be broken is our very hold on the future. Death is a door to the greater glory of resurrection. Any institution or administration that claims to have arrived, that needs no further grace from God, is the one that trades in God as a commodity. It loves to turn stones into bread, cast out demons in Jesus’ name, and buy the power of the Spirit with cold, hard cash.

But history is a series of deaths and resurrections, from glory to glory, and the only way to escape this humiliating process is to disconnect yourself from history and replace it with a fiction that puts you out of the reach of the correcting Hand of God. You defiantly hop off the unstoppable eschatological train and are left forever standing at the station. The Kiplingesque story of evolution puts atheists out of God’s reach, so they think. Liberal historians have worked hard to put western civilisation out of God’s reach.

This self-exaltation over actual history is also the key to understanding the Reformation. Jeff Meyers says:

What we call the Reformation was in truth one of the biggest death-and-resurrection events for all the regional churches in the Middle Ages. But it wasn’t the first. The church had been suffering and dying, humbly, periodically, in various regions for many years. This produced reform in the church, and advanced Christian culture as well. Sometimes Rome participated in these events. A reforming pope would promulgate needed corrections. But later on, especially, Rome became the enemy of the prophetic movement of the Spirit through the Word of God to bring death and resurrection to the churches. Rome solidified her opposition at Trent, where she proclaimed herself to be the “eschatologically arrived,” glorified church. Bad move.

[Here's] a reading from Karl Barth. Barth has some good things to say. He’s not always wrong. He latches onto a problem that is really bedeviling our communities right now… All this talk about community, community. Of course, in the Roman Catholic Church it’s the body, the congregation. He says there’s a danger in this, and it consists in

“an exaggerated estimate of the greatness of the community, in consequence of an equally exaggerated estimate of its present existence in relation to the future. Or, as we may also say, of a failure to recognise the criticism of the Holy Spirit, whose work keeps the community moving toward its Lord in dissatisfaction with its present condition. When this is not perceived, the community, or “the church” as it loves to call itself, forgets that it is on the march, and that the inauguration of the consummation is still to come. Instead of bearing witness to the authority of Jesus, it invests itself with its own authority, attributing absolute perfection to its order and cultus and dogma, and interpreting historical progress as the automatic development of the divine truth incarnate in itself. Thus, at each successive stage of its development, it acts and speaks as if it were itself permitted and commanded to blow the last trumpet now. Its doctrine, at any given moment, is the normative voice of Jesus and His apostles. Its tradition perpetuates the original apostolic witness, claiming equal dignity and attention. But in these circumstances, what place is there for Christian hope? The church of Rome is the typical form of this de-eschatologised church.”

No eschatology, no movement, no march, no continuation, no humility, no acceptance of the Spirit’s criticism through the Word of God and the prophetic voice of people in the church. We’re here. We’re it. It’s us. Submit to us, our tradition, our dogma. The Roman Church, I pray, will be reformed some day, maybe a thousand years from now. She is not the arrived church. [2]

Before the Reformation, things were dark for those with the Spirit. It seemed there was no hope for a corrupted Christianity.

When things are dark, and unbroken men fancy themselves as gods, brave men of faith pick up the cross as a door and walk through it. They drag their own flesh through it, kicking and screaming. And the unbroken kingdoms inevitably get dragged kicking and screaming through it in their glorious eschatological train. This is our work, and in its every occurrence, no matter how mundane, we transform the world.

For Christians, it’s easier to hold onto our lives loosely. Like Abraham, we know something better awaits us. As Tozer puts it, we know “the blessedness of possessing nothing.” But we also need to hold onto our confessions, traditions and institutions wisely but loosely. Until the last day, these too can only ever be baby sacs and wineskins.

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[1] See also The Significance of Jabal and Jubal, Omega Males, Where the Wild Things Were, and Knowledge and Wisdom.
[2] Jeffrey Meyers, On the Significance of Martin Luther’s Name Change, “The Necessity of the Reformation,” 2010 Auburn Avenue Pastors Conference. Series available from Auburn Avenue Media.

“It often seems to me that the night is much more
alive and richly colored than the day.”
—Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother Theo in 1888

Last week I had the privilege of viewing seven Van Goghs, all in one room, including Starry Night Over the Rhone, the depth and texture of which has to be seen to be believed.

The impressionists went out of their way not to paint what they saw. They stretched and strained the norms to communicate how it made them feel. They were expounding—explaining—reality. As Jordan writes, made in the image of God, man is the only symbol which is also a symbol-maker. [1]

This post has been slain and resurrected for inclusion in my 2015 book of essays, Inquietude.

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And the LORD said, “Arise, anoint him, for this is he.” Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward. And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.
Now the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and a harmful spirit from the LORD tormented him. And Saul’s servants said to him, “Behold now, a harmful spirit from God is tormenting you. Let our lord now command your servants who are before you to seek out a man who is skillful in playing the lyre, and when the harmful spirit from God is upon you, he will play it, and you will be well.” (1 Sam. 16:12-16)

Does God send evil spirits? …

God is always the “Prime Mover” in Scripture. He speaks, and things happen. Sometimes, God speaks and something bad happens that brings an ultimate good.

Jonathan warned Saul not to kill David, but an evil spirit from the Lord caused him to throw spears once again. David fled and was persecuted so he would not become like Saul. The evil spirit came after repeated warnings. If we continue in sin and harden our hearts, like Pharaoh, God eventually makes us hell bent on our own destruction. We see the same thing in the early chapters of Romans. After repeated rebellion, God gives people up when there is no more that can be done.

Jesus, like Jonathan, warned the Jewish polity. He cleaned Jerusalem of its demon, but warned that if they blasphemed the Spirit – did not receive Him as the replacement – it would return with seven worse demons. And it did. Herod glorified the “house,” and the demons found it clean, decorated and empty. Instead of receiving the Advocate, they received the Accuser.

Judgment begins at the house of God. When God’s people, the mediators, reject His Spirit, Satan rushes in the fill the vacuum and use the church’s authority to deceive. Some of the 20th Century’s worst dictators were the children of ministers of religion, and the first century illustrates this pattern. The Temple became a “speaking idol” (Revelation 13:15). It spewed out a river of false doctrine, but God used even this evil deception to sort out the true saints from the false (1 Cor 11:18-19, Rev 12:15-16).

The demons, like the “dirty birds” and beasts we see so often throughout the Bible as a Covenant curse, are allowed by God at certain times to do what they do by their nature. In this way, they are sent by God. First century Judaism, like Saul, persecuted David the successor. With the departure of the Spirit (signified in the Book of Acts by Jews no longer being able to cast out demons), their ‘Babylon’ became the haunt of dirty birds. Under the curses of the Covenant, the hard hearted would be eaten by the birds and the beasts (Rev. 17:16; 18:2, 19:17-21).

There is an example where there was no warning, however. God pointed Job out to Satan, and gave him free reign over all but Job’s life.

“God uses Satan to further His own gracious purposes for His people… Poor Satan. Just a pawn. God’s errand boy. Terrifying to us, but completely under God’s thumb.” 1

1 Jeffrey J. Meyers, Leviathan and Job, Part 2, BIBLICAL HORIZONS No. 88, www.biblicalhorizons.com