I had a bit of fun with Anne Rice’s recent apparent turn towards Emergent a couple of weeks ago. Truth be told, I am a great respecter of her life of Christ novel series and I can recommend that you read them – not necessarily for their doctrinal perfection, but for their excellent imagining of who Jesus was at various stages of life.

Christianity Today recently interviewed Anne Rice on following Christ without Christianity. A great quote from the interview:

Are there any other religious authors you read?

I read theology and biblical scholarship all the time. I love the biblical scholarship of D.A. Carson… I still read N.T. Wright. I love the Catholic theologian Karl Rahner. I love his writing on Jesus Christ. It’s very beautiful to me, and I study a little bit of it every day. Of course, I love Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

You mentioned D.A. Carson, Craig Keener, and N.T. Wright. They are fairly conservative Protestants.

Sometimes the most conservative people are the most biblically and scholastically sound. They have studied Scripture and have studied skeptical scholarship. They make brilliant arguments for the way something in the Bible reads and how it’s been interpreted.

I don’t go to them necessarily to know more about their personal beliefs. It’s the brilliance they bring to bear on the text that appeals to me. Of all the people I’ve read over the years, it’s their work that I keep on my desk. They’re all non-Catholics, but they’re believers, they document their books well, they write well, they’re scrupulously honest as scholars, and they don’t have a bias.

Many of the skeptical non-believer biblical scholars have a terrible bias. To them, Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, so there’s no point in discussing it. I want someone to approach the text and tell me what it says, how the language worked.

Read the rest of the interview here. (HT: Aaron Armstrong)

Part 1 - My Story
Part 2 - A Biblical Theology of Offending Your Brother
Part 3 – How to Offend a Legalist and Not Sin

Part 3 – How to Offend a Legalist and Not Sin

This is the part we’re bound to struggle with since it can too easily turn into the wrong kind of offense. You have to do the work of discernment before stepping into the water. You need to make sure you’re in the presence of a genuine legalist. A genuine legalist is someone who wants to exercise control for no other reason than to have power over another believer.

You should feel free to offend a genuine legalist in any way your conscience allows. In fact the opposite (playing by your legalist friend’s rules) give tacit approval to his faulty formula for salvation (Faith in Jesus + [NOT doing this or that] = salvation). Once you’ve approved the formula by which it’s determined who is and isn’t a Christian, watch out –  more plus (+) signs are sure to follow.

How much light could this have brought to the small-church, selectively legalistic bubble I was living in? Plenty.

1. I could have had a much less burdened conscience.
I had to live with head knowledge of truth and a conscience that was trained to deny that truth in some ways. Some things we did weren’t wrong but we were counseled not to do them anyway on the grounds that some people found them to be a “stumbling block.”

2. I could have done a lot less second-guessing.
Was the way I was dressing and cutting (on not cutting) my hair really offending people or did they just want me to be a slave to their preferences? I battled this constantly. In retrospect I don’t think there was a single person who was genuinely, biblically offended.

3. When someone is offended by everything, inevitably there are things you allow yourself to do that are genuinely offensive.
It may not be a completely conscience decision, but a heart that is told too often that it’s doing wrong starts to feel like it can’t do anything right anyway, so why not do something really wrong? (Not claiming victim status here, BTW)

4. Offense as a tool was never offered as an option.
That we could have – as Carson describes – wisely used offense as a tool AGAINST legalism would have spared the turmoil of the above three points and probably kept us a bit more “on the path” at times when we were feeling the frustration of point #3 above. When you give people too many things to rebel against they’ll act accordingly.

(I’ve always thought my dad was very wise in this through my teenage years, eben though he was in the unenviable position of being the pastor of the church AND the father of the kid that made a habit of “offending” people. He set boundaries for me but only when needed – and not so many that I couldn’t step out of the house without breaking one. Love ya, Dad!)

So in the end, as long as you’ve done the work of discernment and are sure you’re not offending for the sake of your own pride and ego, you should be able to go forward, with much prayer, and make this your slogan:

“Hard-core legalists.

May God bless ‘em as I offend ‘em.”

Part 1 - My Story
Part 2 - A Biblical Theology of Offending Your Brother
Part 3 – How to Offend a Legalist and Not Sin

I wish I’d been familiar with D. A. Carson during the time I described in my previous post. Carson is a top-notch Evangelical scholar who has often brought clarity to my thought over the years. A passage from his chapter in the book The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World could have revolutionized my thinking at the time:

Paul refuses to circumcise Titus, even when it was demanded by many in the Jerusalem crowd, not because it didn’t matter to them, but because it mattered so much that if he acquiesced, he would have been giving the impression that faith in Jesus is not enough for salvation: one has to become a Jew first, before one can become a Christian. That would jeopardize the exclusive sufficiency of Jesus.

To create a contemporary analogy: If I’m called to preach the gospel among a lot of people who are cultural teetotallers, I’ll give up alcohol for the sake of the gospel. But if they start saying, “You cannot be a Christian and drink alcohol,” I’ll reply, “Pass the port” or “I’ll think I’ll have a glass of Beaujolais with my meal.” Paul is flexible and therefore prepared to circumcise Timothy when the exclusive sufficiency of Christ is not at stake and when a little cultural accommodation will advance the gospel; he is rigidly inflexible and therefore refuses to circumcise Titus when people are saying that Gentiles must be circumcised and become Jews to accept the Jewish Messiah.

Is Carson implying that we might sometimes be completely free and justified in causing purposeful offense to another believer? I think he is. Of course the application tends to be tricky, but Carson has laid some pretty good tracks here with alcohol analogy.

Part 3 – How to Offend a Legalist and Not Sin

Part 1 - My Story
Part 2 - A Biblical Theology of Offending Your Brother
Part 3 – How to Offend a Legalist and Not Sin

Part 1 – My Story

Strike up a conversation about a contentious issue with a group of Christians and you’re bound to visit Romans 14 somewhere along the way. This is a chapter in the Bible that deals with believers judging one another and not causing each other to “stumble.”

Where I come from the word “stumble” was defined very, very loosely. It meant roughly “anything I don’t like, disagree with, makes me uncomfortable or insecure, might cause people to think you’re strange, etc.” It was used as a precision tool in the hands of people seeking to control the lives and actions of others.

Defined this way it is the ultimate control mechanism. “Don’t do that, you’re causing me to stumble!” was used to keep us from everything from tattoos to alcohol to “spiked” hair.

The logic of the argument ran like this: If something you’re about to do will offend another Christian, don’t do it.

Seems fair, seems simple, and it worked for a while, but applying it consistently revealed a few challenges to my maturing logic:

1. What qualifies as “offense” or “causing someone to stumble”?
2. Is it just in the offended person’s presence that I can’t do this or all the time?
3. If I only abstain around those who are offended but participate when they’re not around, doesn’t that make me a hypocrite?
4. By the time we stop doing all the things people say are causing them to stumble, what’s left?

It took me a good while to discover nuance in the passage and until I did I had to live with my guilty conscience since there were things I engaged in that people were “offended” by that I was pretty sure God had no problem with.

So I did them anyway, concluding that if I stopped doing everything that anyone in the church found offensive I might as well stay in my room all day, every day – unless, of course, it was discovered that someone in the church was offended by solitude.

Then what?

Part 2 - A Biblical Theology of Offending Your Brother

At our Saturday service this week our speaker for the night (Bill Harder) took on the parable of the sheep and the goats. In the discussion groups that followed afterward there was a bit of confusion that I want to clear up.

First, Bill was saying that this parable is referring (when it says “the least of these”) to other Christians. So this parable in particular is focused on believers caring for other believers in need.

Second, Bill was not saying that this is the only thing commanded in scripture. We ARE commanded to good to all.

There are two places you can do further reading on this. One is an earlier post here, and another is below where I’ve pasted some highlights from a sermon by John Piper, the entirety of which can be found here. Highlights from Piper’s sermon below. Comments welcome:

Here I want to make two points. One is that we are drawn to show mercy to some people because they are Christians. The other is that we are drawn to show mercy to some people because they are not Christians. We are drawn to show mercy to Christians because we see Christ in them, and we are drawn to show mercy to unbelievers because we want to see Christ in them. We help suffering believers because they bear the name of Christ. And we help suffering unbelievers in the hope that they will come to bear the name of Christ.

Galatians 6:10 puts it like this: “So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” The “especially” is because there is the added delight of affirming in them what God has already done in saving them. So in the complexities of urban trouble and ministries of mercy we are carried by two motives: on the one hand, the desire to confirm and honor the Christ-exalting faith of a brother or sister who is suffering by giving them relief and help; and on the other hand, the desire to waken Christ-exalting faith in suffering unbelievers by giving them relief and help in Jesus’ name and with Jesus’ gospel.

Ministries of Mercy to Believers

Consider two teachings of Jesus. First, the teaching of Matthew 25:31-46, the great judgment when Jesus comes and separates the sheep and the goats and sends one group of people to hell and the other to heaven. Verse 46: “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

What’s the difference between these two groups? The difference Jesus focuses on is how they treated his brothers, that is his disciples. And the issue is ministries of mercy, most of which are concentrated in the urban centers of the world: Verse 35ff: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger [refugee] and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” Then in verse 40 Jesus explains how they were touching him: “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers,you did it to me.’”

His brothers are his disciples. This is not everybody. This is not every suffering person. Jesus does not call his enemies his brothers. Matthew 12:49-50, “And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’” When Jesus says in Matthew 25:40 that doing ministries of mercy to the least, namely, his brothers, is doing them to him, he means, doing them to his disciples is doing them to him.

We see the very same teaching in Mathew 10:42, “Whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.” In other words, Jesus says that true Christians do ministries of mercy to Christians because they are Christians. And that’s one of the main ways that your Christianity is shown to be real—which is why heaven and hell hang on it.

James explains how this fits with faith as the way of salvation: James 2:15-17, “If a brother or sister [a disciple] is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? 17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” If we don’t ever bear the fruit of practical love toward brothers and sisters—the least of them—our faith is dead and we are not saved. That’s Jesus’ point.

So ministries of mercy—many of which are concentrated in the city—must flow toward Christians because they are Christians, or we are self-deceived.

Ministries of Mercy to Unbelievers

Does that mean then, that unbelievers should not get our mercy? No. In fact Jesus was very strong on this matter. He said that if we only love those who love us, if we only do good to those who do good to us, we are no different than unbelievers. So yes, show mercy to your brothers and sisters when they suffer. This is what true families do. But if you only love your family, if you only sacrifice to relieve the suffering of your family, you are no better than an unbeliever.

Listen to Luke 6:27ff where Jesus says,

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. . . . 31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. 32 If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. . . . 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

Conclusion

So I conclude: If we are a true church, if we are true disciples of Jesus, then we will be drawn to show mercy to some suffering people precisely because they are Christians. And we will be drawn to show mercy to other suffering people because they are not Christians. We will be like our Heavenly Father, when we love his children and love our enemies. And that love means “doing good” to them.

It is not always easy to know what the good is in complexities of urban pain, or what mercy should look like in Haiti or Florida or Sudan or your loved one’s hospice. But Christ never said it would be easy. He simply said, Love your neighbor as you love yourself. And then he died and rose again to cover all our sin and make mercy possible.

We’ve been discussing tradition on Sunday mornings at my chrch as we work through New Testament and Reformation history. We Protestants have a strange relationship with history, as Don Carson points out here:

MANY PROTESTANTS ARE suspicious of “traditions.” In popular polemic, Protestants have often portrayed Roman Catholics as embracing the Bible plus traditions, while we ourselves simply hold to the Bible. There are several matters that need clarification before we can hear aright what Mark 7 says about traditions.

***

The word tradition simply refers to what is handed on. If what is handed on is apostolic teaching, then traditions are a very good thing (e.g., 1 Cor. 11:2); if what is handed on conflicts with what God says, then traditions are unhelpful and dangerous (as here in Mark 7).

***

…in the New Testament, traditions are praised or criticized not on the basis of their social function but in the light of their conformity to or departure from the Word of God.

***

[W]e must recognize that confessing evangelicals who nominally eschew tradition sometimes embrace traditions that effectively domesticate the Word of God. These may be traditional interpretations of Scripture, or traditional ecclesiastical practices, or traditional forms of conduct that are “allowed” in our circles but that are a long way from holy Scripture. In every case, fidelity to Christ mandates reformation by the Word of God.

Read the whole thing here.

For those of you who aren’t aware (I wasn’t until last week), renowned theologian and scholar D. A. Carson posts regularly on his blog at The Gospel Coalition website. Carson’s blog is called “For the Love of God“. The blog provides little commentary on current events and controversies but is instead more like a running commentary on scripture. This is quite refreshing in a landscape of current events commentators (myself included).

In a recent post, Carson comments on Matt. 25:31-46 (questions for discussion at bottom):

THE PARABLE OF THE sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:31-46) focuses attention on the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, and those in prison. It speaks volumes to us in a culture where the poor, the wretched, and the unfortunate can easily be ignored or swept aside to the periphery of our vision. Here Jesus, the Son of Man and the King, declares, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me” (25:40; cf. v. 45). Doesn’t this mean that somehow when we serve the wretched we serve Christ? Doesn’t this then become a distinguishing mark — perhaps even the distinguishing mark — of true followers of Jesus Christ?

That, at least, is how this parable is usually interpreted. At one level I am loath to challenge it, because it is always important for those who know and follow the living God to show their life in God in the realms of compassion, service, and self-abnegation. Certainly elsewhere the Bible has a great deal to say about caring for the poor.

But it is rather unlikely that that is the focus of this parable. Another ancient stream of interpretation has much more plausibility. Two elements in the text clarify matters.

First, Jesus insists that what was done by the “sheep,” or not done by the “goats,” was done “for one of the least of these brothers of mine” (25:40; cf. v. 45). There is overwhelming evidence that this expression does not refer to everyone who is suffering, but to Jesus’ followers who are suffering.  The emphasis is not on generic compassion (as important as that is elsewhere), but on who has shown compassion to the followers of Jesus who are hungry, thirsty, unclothed, sick, or in prison.

Second, both the sheep and the goats (25:37, 41, 44) are surprised when Jesus pronounces his verdict in terms of the way they have treated “the least of these brothers of mine.” If what Jesus is referring to was compassion of a generic sort, it is hard to see how anyone would be all that surprised. The point is that it is Jesus’ identification with these people who have (or have not) been helped that is critical — and that is a constant feature of biblical religion. For example, when Saul (Paul) persecutes Christians, he is persecuting Jesus (Acts 9:4). Real followers of Jesus will go out of their way to help other followers of Jesus, not least the weakest and most despised of them; others will have no special inclination along these lines. That is what separates sheep and goats (25:32-33).

So how do you treat other Christians, even the least of Jesus’ brothers?

This priority on good treatment of other Christians is stated elsewhere in scripture, such as Galatians 6:10 where it says: “So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”

Are you comfortable with this principle?

How does it play out in everyday life?

Do we avoid these type of interpretations because they might cause us to be be seen as catering to “club members”?

Zach Nielson (Fb|Twitter) recently posted an excellent series about alcohol. Each one is worth reading and I encourage you to click on the links to each of Zach’s posts:

Part 1
In the next few days I want to interact with what Pastor [James] MacDonald presents here. I care little about resurrecting a tired debate about alcohol and Christians, but I think there are deeper issues in this message that I would like to address.

In his message he gives six reasons why he believes that total abstinence from alcohol should be the norm for all Christians. His six reasons are:

1. Because drunkenness is a sin and not a disease.
2. Because alcohol impairs wisdom.
3. Because alcohol is an unnecessary drug.
4. Because alcohol is destructive.
5. Because alcohol is addictive.
6. Because wisdom calls me to set it aside.

Part 2
Highlight:
Consider The Lord’s Supper and the example of Jesus. Should we assume the only time that Jesus and his disciples drank alcohol was in a very unique and sacred moment when Jesus ushered in the New Covenant and they never before nor never after participated in alcohol? Was this just a ceremonial one time event? I should think not.

If you want to make the case (like Pastor MacDonald) that alcohol is never fit for those in prominent positions of leadership then the disciples who where given the responsibility to usher in a whole new epoch in Christian history would certainly have had to observe total abstinence. Obviously, this seems to have not been the case.

Part 3
Highlight:
The problem with the statement, “Alcohol is destructive” is that is fails to make careful distinctions. What would you think if I said, “Sex is destructive”? I hope you would pause and think about that for a second. It seems that sex taken out of it’s God-ordained context is very destructive, but sex in the right context is very beautiful and affirming.

Part 4
Highlight:
[MacDonald's Reason #] 5. Because Alcohol Is Addictive

Yes, and so is sex, eating, exercise, and a whole host of other things. Just because alcohol (or anything else) may be addictive for one Christian, doesn’t mean that alcohol should be abstained from for all believers. Should we abstain from sex because it has even more addictive power than alcohol?

Part 5
Highlight:
How many times in the Gospels did Jesus and his disciples offend religious people? If you are a person who is offended by all consumption of alcohol by fellow Christians, are you also offended when you read in the Bible that Jesus turned water into wine, drank wine at the Last Supper, and that he clearly spent much time with those who consumed alcohol (Luke 7:34)?

Part 6
Highlight:
Our churches should not be divided on these types of issues. When it comes to this message, I fear that Pastor MacDonald has contributed to an ethos at his church that is unhelpful and unbiblical. We should be communicating freedom on extra-biblical matters and not give such a strong word on one side or another. Most Christians are spring loaded towards legalism and we should not add fuel to that fire. In the end, these posts are probably less about alcohol and more about healthy ecclesiology.

__________________________

Go read the posts in their entirety and interact with the ideas either at Zach’s blog or in the comments section below. This is a conversation worth having and long overdue.

“Some think of the gospel as so slender it does nothing more than get us into the kingdom. After that the real work of transformation begins. But a biblically-faithful understanding of the gospel shows that gospel to be rich, powerful, the wisdom of God and the power of God, all we need in Christ. It is the gospel that saves us, transforms us, conforms us to Christ, prepares us for the new heaven and the new earth, establishes our relations with fellow-believers, teaches us how to work and serve so as to bring glory to God, calls forth and edifies the church, and so forth. This gospel saves — and ’salvation’ means more than just ‘getting in,’ but transformed wholeness.”

- D. A. Carson, “Four Questions with D. A. Carson“

(HT: Justin Buzzard)

Let’s try to separate music from the idea of worship for a while.  We’ll talk about it a little bit at the end.

Worship as a noun
1. The feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity : the worship of God
2. The acts or rites that make up a formal expression of reverence for a deity; a religious ceremony or ceremonies : the church was opened for public worship.

Worship as a verb
1. Treat (someone or something) with the reverence and adoration appropriate to a deity
2. Take part in a religious ceremony

Like many English words, the meaning and usage of the word “worship” has taken a few turns.  In its earliest use it was used in reference to God but then it became a less religious word and was used to describe anything virtuous – like a home or a town.  In all cases it was still indicative of the “worthiness” or “worthship” of a person or thing to be ultimately honored.

As Christians, we believe that only God is ultimately worthy of our highest affections, and so that is the context in which we will discuss worship this morning.

Worship as a Living Sacrifice

Before sin entered the world, finite man and infinite Creator were in a harmonious relationship. God created us with a desire to worship – that is, a desire to call something worthy above ourselves.  This desire still exists in every human being, child of God or not.

Because of this, there is no question about whether we will worship; we will, the question is “What will we worship?” Worship is the seeking out and admiration of that which we perceive to be greater than ourselves.

To the Christian, worship must be telling God how much he is worth and showing how much he is worth to us in the actions of our lives.

Worship and Idolatry

A proper understanding of worship must also include an understanding of idolatry. If worship is the acknowledgment that God is the only worthy recipient of our highest affections, then it’s opposite – idolatry – is every action we take or word we say that contradicts that belief.

Idolatry is not just another sin, it is the underlying root cause of all sins. Just as Jesus told the woman at the well that worship would no longer take place only in set places at set times, now too idolatry is loosed from its definition as people worshiping a graven image. Now, idolatry happens any time we indicate by action or word that something is of greater worth than God.

Martin Luther pointed out that the first two commandments (1. No other Gods 2. Do not make an idol) refer to idolatry and then the other eight commandments refer to more specific things like murder and adultery and stealing and lying.  Luther proposed that if you never broke the first two commandments, you would never break any of the others.

Whatever commandment you break, whether it’s a problem with sexuality or stealing or lying, the sin itself is not the problem.  The underlying cause is that you are an idolater.

Elements of Worship

Some common word pairings:

“Worship service”

-    What is the “service” that happens in a worship service? “Service” is the action of helping or doing something for someone. How does this happen in a typical Sunday morning gathering?

-    What is distinct about when we gather on a Sunday morning is not that we are worshiping, but that we are worshiping together in order to build each other up.
-    Does every element of the service contribute to the worship of God?
-    Worship is more than what we do in a worship service; it emerges from our entire being, it indicates what hope our hearts are set on. If on God, then worship is true and gives joy; if on anything other than God, it is robbing from God and leads to misery.

“Place of worship”

-    Is this the church building? -    Jesus tells the woman at the well in John 4:

21 “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

-    In the OT worship was associated with times and rituals and places.  In the NT it is for the people of God at all times and in all places – how we live IS our worship! No longer is worship tied up with the sacrifice of animals, now it is ourselves that we must sacrifice, we are to become “living sacrifices” as it says in Romans 12.
-    If what we call “worship” only happens inside the walls of our church buildings we have done a poor job as leaders. If the only time we can be bothered to give all the praise and honor that is rightly due to God is for one hour on Sunday morning, well, that says a lot about our priorities.

“Worship leader”

Having established what “worship service” is and what and where the “place of worship” is, and having defined worship itself as the living, continuous, sacrificial acts of a child of God that affirm a stated belief that only God is worthy of ultimate honor, what then does it mean to be a worship leader?

In many churches this is the term used for what is actually a song or bandleader.

Who is a worship leader?

Just like the question “Who will worship?”, the answer is EVERYONE. Whatever or whomever you have decided is most important to you – you give your time, your energy, your money, your love, your devotion, your hopes, your dreams, your fears to that person or thing – THAT is what you worship. Today, you might lead the worship of Nascar, or your favorite TV show, or your favorite band.

As soon as you place something in the highest place of your affections, above God you are going to sin, you are going to walk into a trap that you set for yourself.

Anyone who is an example of putting God first in their life, of showing that God is the thing of most worth in their life is a worship leader. When we sing, “I will give you all my worship…” do we understand what we’re saying? “I will give you, God, all of my notions of worth. Above my job, my spouse, my money, my car, my family… I think you are more worthy of my attention than any of those things!”

Music

So what is the place of music? Why do we equate “worship” with “music”? I think its because the culture (and we along with it) worships music.  For an obvious example: American Idol. Could we make our intentions any clearer than that?!

Music can open a place in the heart where a door is closed. It may be for just a minute or two, but when that place is open, Christ can come in, pain can go out, sin can be revealed, anger and doubt – sometimes hidden even from their possessor – are seen and are dealt with.

I believe that this is the power of music, both for good and for bad.

In addition to music, various descriptions of corporate worship in scripture include the following:
-    Corporate prayer
-    Reading of scripture
-    Preaching based on scripture
-    It is linked with gathering to eat
-    The singing if songs that praise God and encourage one another
-    Giving to the poor
-    Public confession of faith
-    The receiving of God’s blessing
-    Response to praise and prayer with the saying of “Amen”
-    Baptism and communion
-    Prayers of thanksgiving and the breaking of bread

Challenge

Worship is our proper response to God, ascribing all honor and worth to Him because He is worthy.  “In other words,” says D.A. Carson in the excellent work Worship by the Book, “worship becomes the category under which we order everything in our lives.” (p46)

Genuine worship is loving God with heart and soul and mind and strength, and showing what a statement like that means in the daily decisions of life.

How will you lead in the worship of God today?

Ok, I’m done now… I told Anne Marie not to let me go out again.

Here’s the academic stack:

…and the other stack. You’ll notice I out the Bell and Pagitt books between some more solid theological works.  I tried to put them closer to MacArthur but there were sparks.

By the way, we’re going Rob Bell’s church (Mars Hill) tomorrow morning. I’ll put up a post about that sometime next week.

 D. A. Carson in a talk before last week’s Desiring God national conference:

4. There is a trend in our churches to be consumed by social concern.

In the most intriguing point of his talk, Don said that the Gospel plus caring for the poor was an inseparable couplet. He cautioned that if the gospel was merely assumed (and not clearly articulated), our passion for social justice would overshadow the gospel. While we are not intentionally exalting social concern over the gospel, people learn what we are excited about (gospel over caring for the poor). Carson warned, “Our passion must first be the gospel and not assume it to be understood.” He continued, “We must be careful to keep the gospel central and not turn our responses to the gospel as the main target.”

(read the rest here)

This question is of particular interest to me having gone to the Everything Must Change conference one weekend and the Desiring God conference the next.  At the first conference global issues were front and center, at the second there was no mention of global social issues at all.