Foundations of Biblical Worship
The similarities of heavenly worship between Isaiah’s vision and John’s vision reveal that this is eternal worship, the reality of heavenly worship as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. The heavenly worship of John’s vision, coming as it does after the incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, does elevate the Lamb who was slain in a way absent in Isaiah’s vision, but nevertheless even the atonement provided Isaiah was based upon the sinless Servant who was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. The core and essence of heavenly worship in both cases is the same.
“Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”
This ancient hymn captures three eras of worship: as it was in the beginning—the worship of Old Testament Israel, as it is now—the worship of New Testament Christianity, and worship in the world without end—the worship of heaven. In one sense separating worship into these three eras emphasizes their discontinuity; yet, while there are certainly discontinuities between the worship of Israel and the New Testament church, for example, there are also important continuities, and where we find an emphasis on the continuity is in that little phrase, “and ever shall be.”
Yet Christians have long wrestled with the continuities and discontinuities of worship, and confusion in this area has often led to problems with theology and practice of worship. The solution is found in a proper understanding of the foundations of biblical worship.
Understanding properly how worship as it was in the beginning and worship as it is now relate to worship in the world without end helps us to recognize what shall ever be, the center of true worship and, consequently, the purpose of what we do as we gather for worship now.
Scripture presents us with two extended descriptions of the worship of the world without end that provide the foundation for our discussion, notably one set in the context of worship in the Old Testament and the other set in the context of worship in the New Testament. In both cases, these descriptions of heavenly worship were presented during a time of problems with earthly worship, revealing the fact that problems with our worship now are corrected when we bring our worship into proper relationship with the worship of the world without end.
Isaiah 6
This was true for the nation of Israel; during Solomon’s reign and especially following the divided kingdom, God’s people forsook the pure worship of God and began first to fall into syncretistic worship, and eventually full blow idolatry. Even noble kings in the southern kingdom, such as Uzziah, approached worship presumptuously and not according to God’s explicit command by entering into the sanctuary though he had no right to do so.
It is no coincidence that the death of Uzziah is the very context for the prophet Isaiah’s vision of heavenly worship in Isaiah 6:1–13. In a way, this was God reminding Isaiah of the true reality upon which pure earthly worship was supposed to be based. God called Isaiah up into the heavenly temple itself, where he “saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up” (verse 1). Surrounding God were seraphim singing the Trisagion hymn (“thrice holy”),
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
The whole earth is full of his glory!
The sight of God in all of his holiness and splendor caused Isaiah to recognize his own sin and unworthiness to draw near to the presence of God in his temple, what Uzziah should have known before entering the earthly temple as he did. Thus, Isaiah confessed his sin before the Lord: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (verse 5)!
Yet God did not simply expel Isaiah from the temple due to his impurity; rather, God provided means of atonement. One of the seraphim took a burning goal from the altar and placed it on Isaiah’s lips, proclaiming, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” Now Isaiah was welcome in the presence of God by the means God himself had provided.
Standing accepted in God’s presence, Isaiah heard the voice of the Lord giving him a message, to which Isaiah willingly offered obedience, and God sent Isaiah forth with that message of both exhortation and promised blessing to the nation of Israel. Later, Isaiah’s message to the people of Israel reveals that if they submit to God’s exhortation and commit themselves to him, then “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all people’s a rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined” (Isaiah 25:6). God displays his acceptance of forgiven sinners through a celebratory feast.
This reality of heavenly worship contained a theological pattern that should have provided a corrective for the syncretistic and idolatrous worship of God’s people:
God reveals himself and calls his people to worship
God’s people acknowledge and confess their need for forgiveness
God provides atonement
God speaks his Word
God’s people respond with commitment
God hosts a celebratory feast
Isaiah’s vision and message from God were supposed to correct the idolatrous worship of his people, but, of course, the hard-hearted people did not listen, and thus they never experienced the full blessings God had promised to them if they repented.
Revelation
In the book of Revelation, God granted the apostle John a similar glimpse into the temple of heaven. As with Isaiah during the reign of King Uzziah, it is no accident that this vision of heavenly worship came at a time when worship on earth was in chaos; even a noble church like the one in Ephesus had lost its first love, and many Christians like those in Laodicea had become lukewarm.
In John’s vision, like Isaiah’s vision, heavenly worship contains a theological pattern that should inform and correct earthly Christian worship. It begins with a Call to Worship: “Come up here” (chapter 4 verse 1), followed by a vision of God himself and angels singing the Trisagion hymn (verse 8) and hymns of praise for creation (verse 11).
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Getting Grace and Faith Right
If you are a Christian, you are trusting in the One who is truly trustworthy. Jesus is the only One who really is. He really did pay for your sins. There are many people in this world who have faith in something, probably stronger faith than you do, yet they are trusting in the wrong thing.
Christians love to use the words ‘grace’ and ‘faith’. You would be hard pressed to listen to a Christian sermon or sing a Christian song without mention of one of these words. But what do they mean? Can you come up with a short and simple definition of each one? Sometimes we assume we know what words mean but cannot explain them well; these are words we need to be crisp and clear about.
Grace is getting something good that we don’t deserve. When it comes to God, this word is especially applied to what God has done for us in Jesus. If we trust in Jesus, we do not only have our sins forgiven (though that is terrific!), we also get incredible blessings we don’t deserve. We get adopted into God’s family, we get God’s favour not his anger, and we get a certain hope, only to name a few.
Faith is the companion word to grace. Having faith in something or someone is simply to trust them. It is a relational word. So, when we say that we have faith in Jesus, we are saying that we trust that Jesus is who He says He is, and He has done what He says He has done. Faith is our response to God’s grace. God gives us what we don’t deserve, and we receive it by faith.
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When Humans Don’t Procreate: An Update
Written by Mark W. Hendrickson |
Tuesday, January 11, 2022
If more and more people view children as a burden instead of a gift, and life as a dreary nuisance rather than a splendid opportunity to enjoy God’s creation—our population will indeed implode. If taken to an extreme, societal suicide becomes a possibility.Two years ago, I wrote about the pending global population implosion. Demographers predict that 90 countries will lose population between now and the year 2100. Shrinking populations have portentous implications, including major shifts in geopolitical power and the possible financial collapse of welfare states.
The United States’ population is part of this global trend. In a truly stunning article in The New York Post, journalist Suzy Weiss reported, “Last year, the number of deaths exceeded that of births in 25 states—up from five the year before. The marriage rate is also at an all-time low, at 6.5 marriages per 1,000 people. Millennials are the first generation where a majority are unmarried (about 56%).”
The story gets grimmer: An increasing number of 20-something American women are reportedly undergoing voluntary sterilization. There is a growing anti-natalist movement in America. Once again, the vital question is: Why?
I will offer three explanations that overlap somewhat with what I wrote two years ago: ideological indoctrination, stunted psychological growth, and alienation from God. (Please note: I am not stating that every person, female or male, who chooses to remain childless is doing so for these reasons. What I am saying is that there are sweeping sociological currents in play.)
Ideology
The opening paragraph of Ms. Weiss’ article told of a young woman from a conservative background who went to college and had a “political awakening … toward progressivism.” A key component of progressivism is environmentalism. According to one professor interviewed for the article, many 20-somethings have come to conclude that “humans are the problem” and “a mistake.” This anti-human animus is one of the major tenets of environmentalism I was subjected to myself as an undergraduate a half-century ago. Then, the “green bible” was Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb and its related activist group ZPG (Zero Population Growth). The message then was that there would be mass die-offs of humans as the world’s population swelled. As it turned out, a more populated world became a less poor and less polluted world.
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When God’s Sovereign Will Seems Inscrutable: Elisabeth Elliot
Elisabeth reached a number of solid conclusions about such incomprehensible developments: (1) Sometimes God’s sovereign will is inscrutable and defies easy explanation. Our “why?” questions may not be satisfactorily answered for a very long time, or perhaps not ever in this life, although they doubtless will be in eternity. (2) Such situations provide Christians with the opportunity to continue trusting and obeying God even in the face of incomprehensible, painful developments and stubbornly-persistent questions about them.
Sometimes God’s sovereign will seems inscrutable, especially when it involves His allowing overwhelming trial or crushing disappointment. Or when He permits the thwarting of what consecrated Christians had become thoroughly convinced was in keeping with His plan and would bring great glory to Him.
Elisabeth Elliot (1926-2015), a prominent American missionary, writer and speaker, as well as one of the most influential Christian women in the second half of the twentieth century, experienced God’s imponderable sovereign will more than once in her life and ministry. To follow is an account of an early occasion when that happened to her. It has some important lessons to teach us about responding properly to God’s will in the midst of our own distressing, perplexing circumstances of life.
In 1952 Elisabeth went to Ecuador as a single missionary. There she joined three other single lady missionaries in seeking to minister to the Colorado Indians from a ministry base in San Miguel. The Colorado Indians lived nearby in the jungles of Ecuador’s western rainforest.Elisabeth, a trained linguist, had as her primary objective there to render the Colorado language into written form. She needed to hire a Colorado Indian language “informant” who could patiently work with her in learning the vocabulary and phonetics of their native tongue. But none of the Indians she met had any interest in doing so. They were proud, independent and a bit disdainful of the white women’s presence in their world.
Elisabeth, however, was confident that God would answer her prayers and grant her success in learning the Colorado language, harnessing it into an alphabet, and teaching the Indians to read and write in their own tongue. They would then be able to read the Bible for themselves, thus facilitating their coming to saving faith in Christ and their subsequent Christian growth and service. Great glory would be brought to God.
The Lord provided an even better informant than Elisabeth could have imagined in an Ecuadorian named Don Macario. He had grown up on a hacienda with Colorado children, and was completely bilingual in Spanish and Colorado. He was a Christian and was willing to work with Betty for what she could afford to pay him.
The Colorado Indians called their own language Tsahfihki, “the language of the people.” Macario taught Elisabeth Tsahfihki vocabulary, vowel pronunciations, inflections, parts of speech and sentence structure. She created detailed notecards and charts as well as orthography (spelling) lists, using phonetic symbols that represented Tsahfihki sounds. For several months the language work progressed well.
Then suddenly, tragically Don Macario was murdered! He had been clearing brush on a piece of property when a group of men showed up, claiming the land belonged to one of them. When Macario insisted the property was his, one of the men pulled out a gun and shot him in the head several times at point-blank range.
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