“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.

I learned a long time ago as a Christian minister that I can’t hope to out-cool our apostate culture, and if I try, I’ll gradually create followers who crave coolness and will gravitate to a “community” cooler than mine.

I learned also, however, that while I can’t hope to compete with our cool culture, that culture couldn’t compete with a churchly culture of Biblical truth, Gospel reality, and holy living. After all, if our apostate culture could compete with such a church, it wouldn’t be apostate.

So, I learned by God’s patient, illuminating grace, that if I preach the Bible (the entire Bible) with Holy Spirit power, theological richness, and moral imperatives; spearhead an evangelistic message that refuses to separate salvation from discipleship; inspire prayer in which believers pour out their souls to God in expectation of his answers; administer baptism and communion to families and individuals with stress on both the goodness and severity of God; encourage content-rich music both older and newer that brings honor and glory to the Triune God; foster self-sacrifice among the saints; and, most importantly, lead the congregation to understand and act on the fact that everything flows from worship — I learned, I say, that if I can do these things, God will bless me and bring sinners and saints who long for the un-cool, Triune God.

I learned that if my church is right with God, it doesn’t need to be cool.

“Jordan lays out all of the theological and typological issues connected to worship, and more specifically to the Lord’s Supper itself.”

Adam Ross, who I reckon gets through five books on a slow day, has reviewed James Jordan’s From Bread to Wine: Toward a More Biblical Liturgical Theology on goodreads.

In this book, Jordan seeks to demonstrate that the Eucharist replicates the deep patterns of human history, human life, and human ritual. As a result, the book is more focused on the huge, sweeping patterns of Scripture than on Communion itself. This was absolutely fascinating, but not what I was looking for nor expecting. Jordan is right on the money, of course, but I was looking for more exposition of the Eucharist passages and their OT backgrounds. He does have several chapters on this stuff, though, which was extremely helpful.
He also links the move from bread to broken bread, wine to poured wine to the growth of the human person and human society from priest to king to prophet, and shows that the transition from these always involve suffering and crises. Thus, priesthood spans childhood from birth to the creation of a new home in marriage, kingship spans from marriage to the mid-life crisis, and out of this crisis the renewal of life as a prophet, a king-maker and world-maker. The benefit of all this for understanding and processing human struggle in life and for counseling those currently in the midst of such crises, cannot be overestimated. So many give up and depart from their husbands or wives, abandon their hope, etc, because they don’t understand the need to persevere in this state until God gives renewal and a third stage of new creation.

Jordan also links these stages to faith, hope, and love, in that order. The priest simply performs what is heard in faith. The transition from priest to king is typically hopeful – when you get married you are full of hope in the future. The transition from king to prophet must be focused on love and loyalty, because it is a dark suffering, a dark night of the soul, and only love in perseverance will see you through. Which is why for Paul, love is the greatest of these three. It completes the transformation of human life and human society.

All of this gets put together to show that the Eucharist spans all of these patterns, and therefore is the grounding needed to survive them. It makes a new world every week when it is celebrated, and it takes you through a microcosom of the span of human life, programming your liturgical rhythms to progress through these stages, so that every Sunday you are pulled apart by God and put back together into a new creation more and more.

The book is available from Biblical Horizons.

Andrew Hong summarizes some ancient Confucian rites and their meanings, and then writes:

We don’t have many rituals in our modern world – but if you take that one simple ritual, and multiply that into every sphere of life, and every relationship, then you are coming close to the kind of society that Confucius sought to create through the rites. The rites become the means for society to go from inhumane behaviour (in the form of warfare during the Warring States period) to humane and dignified behaviour.

The rites were also the way for society to go from disordered relationships (in the form of rebellion) to ordered and reverential relationships… You may recall that there were five key relationships in the Confucianism: ruler-subject, father-son, husband-wife, older-younger, and friend-friend. These relationships were largely hierarchical in nature, and the rites gave people a way to express and reinforce those relationships.

This is what missiologist Paul Hiebert has to say about the importance of rituals,

“Modern people commonly regard rituals as harmless interludes or discount them as meaningless performances. But rituals play a central role in most societies. They are multilayered transactions in which speech and behaviour are socially prescribed. [...] They give visible expression to the deep cultural norms that order the way people think, feel, and evaluate their worlds. [...] Because rituals dramatise in visual form the deep beliefs, feelings, and values of a society, they are of particular importance in studying worldviews.” Paul Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews, 82-83.

And so it should come as no surprise that Chinese Christianity will express itself in forms that contain rituals. And in particular rituals that express some kind of relationship. They may not be elaborate, but if you tinker with them you will discover that they are jealously guarded!

Consider the period of reverential silence before a service. Consider the call to worship, the rituals surrounding the offering, the threefold Amen. Consider the practice of holding the service on a Sunday morning. Consider also what is appropriate dress for a worship service.

All of these function to express and reinforce a humble and reverential relationship to God. But more than that, they are considered important: the feeling would be that something would be missing if the collection was done through electronic funds transfer, it would be wrong to wear untidy clothing to church – because of what that would mean for them about that relationship. Remember that the rituals give expression to the relationship!

Now in saying this it is quite legitimate for a particular culture to express it’s love for God in its own forms. And for a culture that prizes rituals, it is entirely appropriate for it to create Christian rituals to express Christian realities. As a result Christians from other cultures should be careful of demanding that they relinquish those rituals and becoming just like them.

However what is important to consider is the reality that is being expressed by those rituals. Is it expressing an awe-filled, grace-filled, gospel-shaped relationship with God? Or is it expressing a transactional Christianity and a distant God? Does it acknowledge God as glorious and sovereign? or as a deity easily fooled by our attendance at his shrine, whose favours are easily bought off with cheap offerings?

It would be terrible if our rituals more closely resembled and reinforced the Confucian reverence for the distant t’ien. Or if they promoted a transactional relationship that is at odds with the Bible. Our wordless rituals, just as much as our words in a sermon, must reinforce, and never undermine the gospel. They must uphold the truth of God, and not a lie. [1]

Even in our iconoclastic, secular culture, we teach reality with rites, don’t we? Rites that are the inventions of man are liable to misinterpret reality and miscommunicate it. The rites that God gives us are intended to be correctives to our collective insanity. They re-establish the Covenant relationships broken and defaced in Eden. The question is, have we twisted the inspired rites, as Israel did?

Baptism and Table are the beginning, middle and end of the story. They both re-enact and prefigure. Are we Christians, with legal access to the new Eden, using these holy rites to tell a different story about our relationship with God — a false reality that appeals to our carnal natures? If so, we are historical revisionists concerning the Fall, we are liars concerning the requirements for unity with Christ, and we are false prophets concerning the future judgment.

They offer superficial treatments for my people’s mortal wound.
They give assurances of peace when there is no peace.” (Jeremiah 6:14 NLT)

[1] HT: Albert Garlando

“But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep.” (1 Cor. 11:28-30)

Some more detailed thoughts on what God is doing in the Lord’s Table. Part 1 here.

Covenant Renewal Worship follows the Bible Matrix. This means that our Christian worship recapitulates the Creation Week, the Feasts of Israel, and the journey from slavery to Sabbath (servants to sons), and the process of maturity, from childhood to adulthood. [1]

Covenant Renewal Worship gets ridiculed by some, but there is plenty of Biblical and historical background for it. We are not under the Old Covenant, so there is certainly an amount of freedom in how we worship. But the kinds of “freedom” we prize as spiritual adolescents today have only been around for about the last two per cent of Church history. It’s time to wind back the clock.

The process is simple:

Call

…..Confession

……….Ascension to Worship

……………Teaching of the Word

……….Offertory

…..Communion

Commission

Most churches follow something close to this order by spiritual instinct. Although the church bells aren’t heard too often (the Call), the real pity is that many have dropped a Corporate Confession.

We won’t get into steps 3, 4 and 5. My target here is Communion.

If we subscribe to the idea of Covenant Renewal worship, there are implications for those who are practicing paedocommunion. They’re right in linking baptism and Table. But, despite all protests to the contrary, their baptism is hereditary. It is generational instead of “re-generational”, so now their Table is hereditary. The kids who are able to eat solid food are welcome to join in as part of the Covenant community. They have been declared “Christian” in their baptism, and in some mystical way the Table feeds them.

Well, the emphasis on Covenant Community is great. But the typology behind the Table, and its institution by Jesus, make it plain that this is, if not an abuse, a terrible misunderstanding of what the Table is about.

So, just what is God doing in the Lord’s Supper?

Among other things, Communion is a “jealous inspection.” (See Bible Matrix II, chapter 18, “Goblet of Fire,” for more on this.) Communion isn’t a disconnected, freestanding element of worship. Some pastors like to move the order of service around so people don’t get bored. But Communion is part of a process of worship, and it should be celebrated every time we worship, if possible. God is doing something very real in the entire process, so moving the order around is as sensible as drying your clothes before you wash them.

God calls us into His presence (Creation) and separates us from the world (Division). Under the New Covenant, unlike the Old, the world is welcome to come with us as witnesses to the glory! This includes our children. We sing the sacrifice of praise (Ascension).

We are taught the Word (external Law – Pentecost – Testing), [2] then examine and present ourselves (internal Law – Trumpets – Maturity). This brings us to the “Atonement” part of the service. But unlike Israel’s Atonement Day, we do not mourn but celebrate. We did our mourning at Confession (Division).

However, notice that Confession and Communion mirror each other in the “there-and-back-again” process. There is a link between the mourning and the celebration. We examined ourselves and confessed our sin. But God has done something new in the teaching of the Word, while the minister imaged Christ to us in heavenly places. Now the Spirit judges the thoughts and intents of our hearts. We judged ourselves that we might not be judged. In most cases, if not all, He finds internal Law. The Word has not returned empty.

So, the actual feeding isn’t Communion, it’s the Word. In some real sense, in this rite, the Word is eating us — from the inside. Will Jesus spit us out?

If we examine ourselves according to the Word, we don’t drink to the dregs (Atonement). The sword that “passed over” at Confession now passes through, but Communion is a sacramental “dose” of death. This is because we are already clean. We are washed. Like our High Priest, we “taste death for every man.” Firstfruits (Ascension of the Head) was a “taste” of Pentecost (Garden > Land). Atonement (Ascension of the Body) is a “taste” of Booths (Land > World). We taste the cup before handing it to the nations as prophets.

What this inoculation does is turn us into food. At this restricted Table we become an unrestricted Table, a Love Feast for all those “looking in” (Booths). [3] If Communion is about nourishment at all, it’s not about our nourishment. It’s about the Vindication of the Word in us as nourishment for the nations. So, worship begins with the Called and ends with the Sent.

This Table is not for the nourishment of the flesh. It is Covenant renewal, but it is not the renewal of Jesus’ side of things. Jesus renews us so we can be recommissioned to go out and renew the world.

This involves the renewal of our own vows on pain of judgment. This might sound stern, but “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins.” That’s why we celebrate. If we are struggling with sin, we lay our burdens upon Him and receive new grace. The New Covenant cup only becomes a curse if we have a controversy with God about our sin, not if we are faithfully fighting it and mortifying it. Otherwise it would be a curse to every Christian. The Supper is only a curse to those whose vow is a pretense, like Judas.

Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. (1 Cor. 11:27)

In context, it is likely Paul had Judaizers in mind when he wrote this. And it explains much of the book of Hebrews, where all unbelieving Judah, post-Pentecost, gave Judas a new “body”:

“…since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame…” (Hebrews 6:6).

So, if your intentions are not those of Judas, or the Judaizers, or anything like them, come! Be renewed!

The bread and wine are consumed separately, but reunited in our own bodies. The saints are the resurrection body of Jesus. The food the children need is the gospel, mediated by hands and hearts made clean by the power of His resurrection.

It should be clear that the Table is not the place for infants or toddlers. It is a grave place, a place for those who carry the world on their shoulders. The Lord’s Table is for royal advisors, legal mediators, loyal knights, chosen ambassadors, Covenant delegates. It is only “for” the children in the sense that they shelter under this ministry until they, too, can take the vow of the martyroi.

Next post, I’ll cover how I suspect this is all echoed in the architecture of Exodus 24.

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[1] See Bible Matrix p. 217 for a basic chart, and Jeff Meyers’ The Lord’s Service for more historical and ecclesiastical background detail than I could ever hope to get my head around.
[2] James Jordan says that this should be primarily teaching, not preaching, at least not the kind of preaching that is aimed at non-Christians. Many churches continually preach at the saints as though they are not saved.
[3] See Eat Local and Die.

“So I commended
…..enjoyment,
……….because a man
……….has nothing better
……………under the sun
…..…..than to eat,
…..drink,
and be merry…”
(Eccles. 8:15)

If you love the chiasmi of the Bible, why not arrange a “Covenant” Christmas banquet using the Bible Matrix?*

“…whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do,
do all to the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10:13)

*Based on a structure by Albert Garlando. See also Kindle Your Nostrils for how to smoke a pipe according to the matrix.
**This is the 24 angels carrying out their final Old Covenant tasks in the Revelation and leaving the Holy Place vacated for the saints. The Old Covenant servants leave the house to the New Covenant sons.

What worship does to the citadels of unbelief: Sneak Peek of Grace Agenda Conference DVD from Canon Wired on Vimeo.

Psalm 33

If you feel spiritually barren, that is a good thing. It is because you are, and because God has shown it to you. However, a barren heart cannot praise God. So often we rock up to church with empty hearts and attempt to feel “worshipful.” Well, we are commanded to worship, but must we draw water from dry wells?

The spiritual can only follow the death of the natural. I think it was George Mueller who said that reading the Bible beforehand helped him to pray. Every act by the saints, including the “Acts” of the Apostles, is in fact a response to the Word and an act of the Spirit. Attempting to whip up the crowd into a fleshly frenzy is flogging a dead horse. We all need to hear and meditate on the Word first, then our praise will be the most natural thing in the world. The song of the Bride is always a response to the Word of the Bridegroom. [1]

Psalm 33 is the first psalm to mention musical instruments for praise. It begins with a command to praise and reasons to fear God (forming) but continues with reasons to praise God (filling), because if we fear Him, we have nothing else to fear.

A first glance at the Psalm shows the matrix order of its general subject matter. We have:

Praise

…..Righteousness / Waters

…..…..Counsel of the Lord

…..…..…..God’s eyes

…..…..Armies

…..Deliverance for the Faithful

Hope for the Future [2]

After defining the basic thematic structure, it’s a matter of observing the flow of each of these seven sections. The authors seem to use repeated key words to make “Covenant pattern” allusions. This strategy really shines in the Psalms.

What is really interesting is the way that each line has to have a double reference. For instance, line 5 of stanza one has to be a combination of Maturity within a “house” of Creation. My favourite example of this is when Isaiah needs a “Pentecost” within a “Trumpets.” What does he do? He refers to the battle of Midian, a military reference with flaming torches. How smart is that?

Praise:
Initiation – Word – Light – Day 1. Cycles often begin with a command or someone speaking. It focusses on the Lord (Transcendence)

TRANSCENDENCE (Sabbath)
Rejoice in the LORD,
…..O you righteous!
……….[For] praise from the upright is beautiful.
……………Praise the LORD with the harp;
……….Make melody to Him with an instrument of ten strings.
…..Sing to Him a new song;
Play skillfully with a shout of joy.

Notice the “upright” at Ascension and “ten strings” at Maturity. At Conquest/Atonement, there is a new song. The Day of Coverings made everything new. This corresponds with the angels in Revelation 5 and the redeemed Jews in Revelation 14.

“And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation…”

Righteousness / Waters:
This is a combination of the chosen Hierarchy and the waters of Day 2. The Lord also gathered the waters of the Red Sea and the Jordan into heaps, but it goes back to the “waters above” being “kept in store” for Noah’s day of wrath.

In the structure of the Psalm, it’s the opening of the Red Sea. But within the stanza itself, it is the opening of the Veil for the people of God on the Day of Atonement, followed by their ministry to the nations. This is played out in history as the dividing and plundering/gathering of the Gentiles into the house of God as a crystal city at the feast of Booths.

HIERARCHY (Passover)
For the word of the LORD [is] right,
…..And all His work [is done] in truth.
……….He loves righteousness and justice;
……….The earth is full of the goodness of the LORD.
……………By the word of the LORD the heavens were made,
……….And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.
…..He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap;
He lays up the deep in storehouses.

The next three steps are the Ethics of the Covenant. I’d expect to find symbols relating to 1) The Law given 2) the Law opened 3) the Law received

Counsel of the Lord: the Lord speaks. The Land rises up on Day 3. Notice the double hit on Ascension for Altar and Table (Land and Firstfruits) and also the mention of generations at Succession (Glorification). As the Ascension stanza, we have a reference to “standing” at Ascension (the Covenant Head) and also at Conquest, where the now-vindicated Mediator stands qualified before God with His bride.

ETHICS 1 (Firstfruits)
Let all the Land fear the LORD;
…..Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.
……….For He spoke, and it was [done;]
……….He commanded, and it stood fast.
……………The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing;
……….He makes the plans of the peoples of no effect.
…..The counsel of the LORD stands forever,
The plans of His heart to all generations.

God’s eyes: the Lord sees and considers.
He watches over men as the Lampstand.

ETHICS 2 (Pentecost)
Blessed [is] the nation whose God [is] the LORD,
…..The people He has chosen as His own inheritance.
……….The LORD looks from heaven;
……………He sees all the sons of men.
……….From the place of His dwelling He looks
……….On all the inhabitants of the Land;
…..He fashions their hearts individually;
He considers all their works.

The “hearts” are those of the men who face God as Mediators, the Land of Israel.

Armies: Here, trust in military strength is an ungodly replacement for the Law.

ETHICS 3 (Trumpets)
No king [is] saved
…..by the multitude of an army;
……….A mighty man is not delivered by great strength.
…..A horse [is] a vain hope for safety;
Neither shall it deliver [any] by its great strength.

Notice that line 5 of stanza 1 had a military allusion (fives and tens are military numbers). So the rest of the Psalm is actually a “germination” of the seed of stanza 1.

It is interesting that this stanza and those following only seem to have five lines. These are the “Bridal” stanzas, and they are Covenant scrolls that are yet unopened, un-”filled.” This is a song of an Israel which fears God and is waiting on Him for resurrection.

Deliverance for the Faithful: The theme here is Mediation, Mercy, and the Day of Atonement. There is usually a reference to blood. Here it seems to be deliverance from famine, which Jordan observes was a judgment from God for the shedding of innocent blood. This is the Covenant Sanctions.

SANCTIONS (Atonement)
Behold, the eye of the LORD
…..[is] on those who fear Him,
……….On those who hope in His mercy,
…..To deliver their soul from death,
And to keep them alive in famine.

Hope for the Future:
Succession is the “future orientation” of the faithful.

SUCCESSION (Glorification)
Our soul waits for the LORD;
…..He [is] our help and our shield.
……….For our heart shall rejoice in Him,
…..Because we have trusted in His holy name.
Let Your mercy, O LORD, be upon us, Just as we hope in You.

This final stanza moves from the Covenant Head, the Lord, to the Covenant Body, the people. Israel has plenty to praise God for, but the architecture of the Psalm contains another subtle message: Israel was to be a clean house awaiting the Shekinah. She had not yet been filled, but she had the promises of God, and they were enough of a reason to praise Him.

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[1] In the Lord’s service, Praise appears at Ascension, but this follows the Confession and Absolution at Division. So we certainly have something to sing about.

[2] This analysis resulted from a discussion which included John Barach questioning why I arranged these verses in a “chiastic” pattern when there are no obvious “mirror matches” in the layouts. That is a very good question! The answer is that the underlying matrix structures are chiastic.

This is not an exact science, but it is far more exact than the analysis of any other poetry I’m aware of. The authors have an existing chiastic trellis and the vines they come up with to grow on it are amazing. The vines aren’t necessarily chiastic, but laying the text out like this is a simple way of identifying what is going on for those familiar with the pattern.

ART: Firmament by Estelle Carraz-Bernabei