Worship Archives - Page 13 of 24 - Kuyperian Commentary

On December 29, 2018 By Kuyperian In Culture, Family and Children, Men, Politics, Theology, Worship 1

Extending the Christmas Season

Guest post by Steve Wilkins written on December 23, 2016 & published by permission

Stretching Christmas
For many people Christmas comes on December 25 and is over December 26. The tree is taken down along with the lights and the other decorations, and everyone begins setting the house in order for the new year. No more Christmas hymns. No more celebrations (well, until New Year’s Eve). Christmas comes but once a year – and thanks be to God, because we’re exhausted!

So, if I were to ask, “How’s your Christmas going?” most people would give me the blank stare. But according to our calendar (and I mean the Church calendar), Christmas is just getting started on December 25. Christmas day is just the beginning of a “season” numbering twelve days (the “twelve days of Christmas”).

During this season of celebration we remember not only our Savior’s birth (the feast of the Nativity on December 25) but our first martyrs (St. Stephen, December 26), St. John the evangelist, and the murder of the boy babies in Bethlehem by Herod (“The Feast of Holy Innocents”). Then on January 1, we commemorate the circumcision of Jesus (circumcised on the 8th day). All that before closing out our celebration of Christmas with the Feast of Epiphany on January 6!

Christmas is intended to be a “season,” not just a day.

You say, “But who can stand this? By Christmas day I’m already worn down to my last frazzle!”

Well, granted, given the way things are presently, changing our practice and getting into the new rhythm of the Church calendar is going to take some time — and realistically, it may now be impossible to turn the culture away from the present “tradition.” I’m not quite sure how to go about it or what it would look like. But somehow, I think it would be good to try to get back to the old rhythm of the Christmas season.

The fact that we have lost the rhythm of the various “seasons” has contributed, at least in part, to the fleeting joy (and often extended depression and disappointment) we have during these times — and here, I’m speaking especially about Christmas — the celebration is simply too brief to be appreciated fully. The traditional Christian calendar gives us a different rhythm for life and time — especially Christmas time.

And following the Christian calendar is not just another way to thumb our noses at secular ideas of the “Christmas season.” The twelve days are important because they give us time to reflect on what the incarnation and birth of Jesus means. We need the twelve days to celebrate the wonder of God becoming man and all that was accomplished by our Savior.

Why twelve days? No one knows for sure. Perhaps this was to be an analogy to the twelve tribes of the old Israel that have now been transformed into the new Israel. Or maybe the 12 days signify the twelve months of the year pointing to the fact that Christ is with us not just one day but year-round.

Whatever the intention, the twelve days give us an opportunity truly to rejoice and reflect on the great mercy and grace of God in giving us His Son.

We have been baptized into Jesus’ death and resurrection and have now entered the “new heavens and new earth” (though not yet perfected). Whether we are called to martyrdom, or to prophetic witness, or simply to faithful living in the joys and sorrows of our daily lives, we must live all of our days in the knowledge of our blessedness: redeemed by Jesus and in Him made acceptable and beloved in God’s sight. We are part of the society of people whose world has been turned upside down, and we are to live out this truth that overturned the old world and made all things new.

Observing Christmas as a season helps us to move beyond the sentimentalism that has become so much a part of “Christmas” and commemorate the true significance of Jesus’ birth. It enables us to see that Jesus’ coming truly transforms all things. It marked the end of the old world (under the dominion of sin and death) and the beginning of the new. And it reminds us of our new identity and purpose. We are now children of the King and are called to rejoice and give thanks and show the world the new destiny that now has come in Him. To celebrate for twelve days (as opposed to one) enables us to realize afresh the significance of what happened in Bethlehem and it declares to the world the remarkable reality that Jesus has destroyed the works of the devil and established a kingdom that shall have no end.

So, I don’t know exactly how to begin to do this, but it sure seems like a good idea to me. Stretching Christmas out over a number of days — making it a more full (and perhaps a more relaxing and refreshing) celebration — might bring far more benefits than frustrations; it just might bring us more joy than worry; more peace and less hustle and fuss. Whaddaya say? I think we should give it a shot.

Steve Wilkins is Pastor of Church of the Redeemer in West Monroe, Louisiana.

On December 16, 2018 By Bill Smith In Theology, Worship 1

Singing In The New Creation

In the beginning there was God and nothing else. Then Word carried by Spirit begins to pulse in harmonious tones into the nothingness. A world outside of God himself begins to appear. The song sung by the Triune God creates and begins to shape the world. As each element in the cosmos comes into being through this song, the song continues to reverberate in each created thing’s existence. The morning stars created by the song echo back and enhance the song as they become millions of voices (cf. Job 38.7). Mountains and hills, raised from their watery darkness, break forth into singing as they emerge. The trees that spring from the earth clap their hands (cf. Isa 55.12). Sea creatures, birds, and land animals all take up the song and sing the song of their Creator. Then the song shapes the dust of the earth into the form of a man and breathes the song into him. And when the woman is created from the man, the song is then sung in praise to God for the woman.

God is musical. God is a singer. His speech is glorified, and his glory cloud is made up of angelic hosts who surround him with music. The prophet Zephaniah says that he exults over us with loud singing (Zeph 3.17). Is it any wonder why, then, from the beginning of our existence, music and singing have been so prevalent? We are images of the Great Musician. His song, his image, vibrates through every fiber of our being. We are intended to continue this song, continuing to shape and create the world in harmony with God. (more…)

On November 27, 2018 By Uri Brito In Worship Like

Pastoral Blues on Monday Morning.

Early in my pastoral work I often wondered why I was on such spiritual high on Sunday and somewhat depressed on Monday morning. I still ponder that question today. I would and still wake up without much enthusiasm. It was a fairly distinct feeling than the previous Sunday morning. Sunday gives me a rush. Perhaps it is due to the spiritual component that comes with a high liturgical service where kneeling and standing and singing and confessing do not allow the body to remain passive, motionless. Preaching is also a unique sensation. To this day, when I walk up to the pulpit, my heart still races. I am ready to address my congregation as if it were my first time. In my case, it’s almost the 500th time and still, every Sunday feels fresh and that same insecurity coupled with boyish eagerness still strikes at about 9:50 AM each Lord’s Day.

Sundays are full days for ministers. After the service is over there are the enlivening conversations consisting of life updates, sermon-follow ups, general back and forth about casual day-to-day issues, setting appointments to meet during the week, eating, and sometimes serious counseling issues and more. Every pastor knows that after the service, there is much more energy to be poured. As I say, it’s enlivening, but emotionally draining. The afternoons continue to feed off morning worship. Hospitality and friendships continue. The joy of following up with visitors, the remaining melodies of hymns and psalms are hummed throughout, family responsibilities and the entire Sunday is consumed. And there was evening and there was morning, day one.

When Monday arrives, most pastors I talk to find themselves unhappy, bewildered by the newness of the week as if they’ve never been at this stage of the week before. Some take the day off. I refuse to do so. There is something powerful about beginning things early in the week. At least two pastors I spoke with said they had a hard time getting out of bed on Monday mornings. They are not lazy people. In fact, these guys get up quite early during the week, but Mondays they generally cannot. So what’s the cause? It can’t be a rare phenomenon because it’s too common among people in my field. In fact, it’s not common in other professions.

One obvious explanation is that Mondays are days where exhaustion appears most frequently. This makes sense. On Sunday, pastors uphold a high degree of alertness and awareness, emotional stability, and outward energy before, during and after church and when Monday comes as surely as the sun, all that is spent. Jared Wilson observes:

On Monday mornings I enter my office and find that, like Sisyphus, the stone I spent the week previous pushing up the hill lay at the bottom again, ready for another go. Monday morning I must pastor. But what kind of must?

Sometimes it’s a half-hearted must; a weak and overwhelmed must. But shepherding must go on.

Sundays are the culmination of lots of things: the delivery of a sermon worked, meditated and prayed over all week, the administration of the sacraments which is anticipated throughout the week, the face to face interaction with all your people at once. It’s completion embodied and enjoyed. In sum, Sundays are Sabbath rests; days of pastoral repose; for the pastor, Sunday is the “very good” of creation. It is easier to see God’s hands at work. Mondays are the beginning of a new construction project. New beginnings are daunting, overwhelming and mentally challenging. As Jared Wilson so appropriately summarizes the pastoral vision for Monday:

My first thoughts on Monday mornings are to my fatigue and all I must do, but I must push them into thoughts of Christ, all he is and all he has done. There lies the vision that compels my will.

Let Christ shepherd us when we are weak. Let him compel us to work for the kingdom as he takes our burdens and gives us rest.

On September 24, 2018 By Bill Smith In Theology, Worship Like

The Environs of the Spirit

In Luke’s two-volumes, The Gospel of Luke and Acts, the Holy Spirit has a prominent place in the life of Jesus and his church. Whenever the Spirit shows up, our minds should race back to the first place we see him in Scripture: brooding in the darkness over the newly created, unformed and unfilled world. He is the Breath of God that carries the Word to tear apart and put everything back together in a new unified, fruitful relationship: light and darkness, waters above and waters below, seas and dry land, vegetation and ground, and man and woman. All of this is done with an eye on creating an environment for God and man to dwell together (Rev 21.3). (more…)

On August 22, 2018 By Uri Brito In Worship 1

13 Thoughts on Reading the Bible

We need to see our entrance into the Bible’s words as something of a heavenly excursion. The Bible is a window into the New Jerusalem; the place where faith turns into sight. Indeed it’s the wardrobe into a new world.
Coming to the Bible is formational. We are being formed into something, or better yet, into Someone. Entering into the Scriptural drama implies that we vow to dwell in that story together with God’s people. It is not a mechanical experience, but an experience of togetherness.
The Bible is to be experienced like excellent wine. It has to be savored, explored, cherished slowly. The Spirit of God does not waste his breath, so every text is a revelation of that divine truth.
Reading the Bible cannot be an exercise in proof-texting. Prooftexting atomizes the Bible and fails to see the redemptive flow of Scripture.
God’s love is manifested in His sharing revelation with humanity. The Bible is the “perfect” which has come (I Cor. 13:10). Thus engaging the Scriptures is entering into a community of love.
We often treat God’s Word as an encyclopedia. We seek data to fill up our tank of knowledge, but knowledge is an (ad)venture, the pursuit of self-giving love. As Dr. Esther Meek observes, “Knowledge is not information, but transformation.”
Devotional pietists fail to see the necessity of singing the Bible. When we sing the Bible, it is treasured and memorized. It is the grammar stage of biblical literacy.
We wish to saturate ourselves in the biblical story through various means available, and singing is an indispensable part of this process. To know the Bible is to sing the Bible.
I have always been fascinated with the practice of corporate reading of the Scriptures. We should probably have people over our homes merely to read the Bible out loud. Our children and our families need to hear the Bible.
It is always pitiful to visit evangelical churches where the Scriptures are only read–partially–during the sermon, while mainline churches continue the liturgical pattern of three readings per service, evangelicals who cherish sola scriptura shy away from it.
The prophets were clear about this. Where there is no prophetic revelation the people perish, which is to say where the revelation is not treasured the people find alternative revelations to satisfy their desires for ultimacy.
Reading, engaging, speaking the Bible is a way we express our union with Jesus since Jesus is communicated most clearly and objectively in God’s holy writ.
Scriptural language is the language of faith, hope, and love. In the Scriptures we are renewed in our faith, we find hope in the work of Messiah, and we are engaged in the language of love with the great lover of our souls.

On August 6, 2018 By Bill Smith In Worship Like

Discipling the Nations, Starting at Home

After his resurrection, Jesus gave the church the commission to disciple the nations (Mt 28.18-20). In fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, all the nations would be blessed through Abraham’s seed: Christ, head and body. When John sees a vision of the glorious church, the New Jerusalem, he sees kings bringing their glory into the city. The glory of kings is the realms of their dominions. Entire cultures will be brought in and made part of the city of God.

This glorious vision is overwhelming. The task seems daunting. We hear this grand narrative of “the world” and “nations” consciously arranging their cultures under the lordship of Christ, look at the task before us, and say, “How in the world do we get there from here?” We have trouble maintaining personal disciplines, ordering our own family life, and arranging local church life so that the church acts the way she is supposed to act. How are we expected to be changing the broader culture around us? The task, while glorious in its vision, seems hopeless. (more…)

On July 30, 2018 By Bill Smith In Worship Like

The Church: God’s Glory

The first sanctuary for worship wasn’t much. It was beautiful, but it was simple: a garden filled with pristine, freshly created trees. The man and the woman were themselves also in their simplest state: naked and unashamed. The sanctuary and man were glorious but not as glorious as God intended them to be. In all of his dominion taking, man was to take the materials of the world around him and make the garden a more glorious place, which would eventually include man himself being glorified with clothing. The sanctuary and man within it was to move from this pristine state of glory into the greater glory of a developed world.

We can know that this was God’s intention by looking at the rest of the story of Scripture. As the story progresses, God moves his people from making stone altars (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) to building the Tabernacle (Moses) and eventually the Temple (Solomon). Man himself doesn’t return to a state of nakedness, but is clothed with garments of glory and beauty (Exod 28.2). All of these structures include the original garden sanctuary in some form, but they are all more developed. The place where God is meeting with man is becoming more glorious. (more…)

On July 9, 2018 By Bill Smith In Theology, Worship Like

The Church: The Holy Of Holies City

At the end of Revelation, John sees a vision of the church, the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. She is a “holy city.” This holiness takes an architectural shape in this vision. John tells us that the city is a perfect cube; its width, height, and length are all the same. This cube-shaped image of holiness is not unusual. The Temple had a room that was cube-shaped: the Holiest Place or the Holy of Holies. Those measurements were distinct for this room. The Holy Place (the first room one entered in the Temple) was twice as long as it was wide. But the Holy of Holies was a perfect cube: 20 x 20 x 20 cubits (1Kg 6.20; Ezek 41.4). John’s vision is that the New Jerusalem, the church, is a “Holy of Holies city.” There are no more veils to hide us from God or God from us. No boundaries exist between the church and the throne of God. We, the city of God, live in the presence of God continually.

Understanding the architectural reference of the church being the Holy of Holies shapes the way we are to think about holiness. What is the Holy of Holies, and, consequently, what does that tell us about our own holiness? (more…)

On June 4, 2018 By Bill Smith In Theology, Worship Like

Filled With All The Fullness Of God

One thing theologians like (especially Reformed theologians) is precision. Our theological statements must have fine points on them so that we are not accused of drifting into heterodoxy or heresy. There are several bloggers out there who will call you to task if you don’t say things just right or if you don’t say everything there is to say about everything every time you say anything.

Then there is Paul. When he prays for the church in Ephesus, he uses imprecise language when he states his desire for them. He wants them to be “filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph 3.19). What does that mean? (more…)

On May 19, 2018 By Kuyperian In Scribblings, Theology, Wisdom, Worship Like

The Impracticality of Application

Guest post by Remy Wilkins
Remy is a teacher at Geneva Academy.
His first novel Strays is available from Canon Press

I have never heard anyone say that the Bible is impractical, but I have heard people, after an in depth exegesis of a passage, ask for the practical application. Offer a class on childrearing, marriage, finance and the church members flock to it; offer a course on Leviticus, the visions of Elijah, the importance of the periphrastic participle in the writings of St. John, and you get the weird guy and the retired couple. The church tacitly views great swaths of Scripture as tertial; what good does knowing the furniture of the temple have when the children are screaming, dinner needs fixing, and the job runneth overtime? Getting out in the tall grass of the Bible is fine if you’ve got the time, but who has the time? We need our Biblical tips and techniques in easy and digestible portions. At the heart of this complaint is the idea that the Word of God isn’t clear and that it requires esoteric skills and the free time of an eremitic monk in order to understand.

(more…)