A great little book from Puritan Matthew Henry.
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1 Minute Book Review (Episode 05) | A Church in the House by Matthew Henry
worship
What Are We Doing?
One of the more vital needs of the church is for us to do what we do on purpose. In other words, while there’s a right sort of habitual piety, there’s also a very real threat of putting our worship on spiritless autopilot. We should ask ourselves, “What are we doing here?” And we should have an answer that’s derived from what God, in His Word, told us to do in our gathering.
This is a service of prayer (Acts 2:42) in which God renews His covenant with His people (Heb. 12:22-24). Let me break that into two parts. The reason we assemble is to offer our prayers up to the Lord. True prayer humbles itself before the Living God. As such, it brings praise for Who He is & petitions Him alone for deliverance from evil. Our songs are sung prayers; largely derived from the Psalms or from themes clearly tied to the text of Scripture. We bring God our praise by praying back to Him how He taught us to pray.
But this leads to how we know our prayers are heard. We pray in Jesus’ name. This isn’t a sweet tagline to our prayers. It is a covenantal acknowledgement. And so, God cuts us up through his Word as it is sung, read, preached, and displayed (by Baptism & the Supper). In Christ, we are united unto His perfect sacrifice, and in this way and this alone we offer ourselves up to God.
God doesn’t desire false worship. He wants righteous worship. The only way which sinners like us can bring right worship (in our prayers & praise) is if we bring it in covenant. Every other attempt is really idolatry, self-worship, and sin. You’ve come to Mt. Zion, not to do God a favor, but because of His favor towards you.
God’s Word cautions us that our tongues are an unruly member of our body. With it we curse our fellow man and then imagine we can turn and praise the Lord with the same vile tongue. Indeed, we have sinned against our God in our thoughts, words, and doings. We have not only not offered Him the right praise He deserves, but we have offered ourselves to the false gods of envy, lust, pride, and vanity. It falls to us to turn to the Lord for forgiveness for thinking we can have it both ways.
Pint-Sized Saints
If you haven’t noticed, our congregation is populated by a goodly number of pint-sized saints. This is a visible evidence of God’s goodness and blessing. Children are indeed a blessing, but a foolish son is like bone cancer. Parents who treat these blessings like burdens, or who crush these blessings with burdens will find they’ve raised fools for children. Parents who receive their children from God & offer them up to God will enjoy the blessing that accompanies such faith-filled parenting.
Part of offering them up to God, is by bringing them with you into the company of saints as we worship God together. Fathers, the task of shepherding your children to participate in worship falls primarily to you. To that end, here are a few reminders for raising your children not only to be present with us here in the worship service, but for them to be a blessed contribution.
Crying children are not unwelcome, but oblivious parents of crying children are like the neighbor in the book of Proverbs who shouts a blessing to his neighbor at 3am. Fathers, take initiative in whisking the pip-squeak out, disciplining them as appropriate for any unruliness.
Don’t think that it’s less spiritual to have missed half the sermon or losing your spot in a song because you were correcting your child. You are coaching them, leading them, training them. Very soon they’ll get the hang of it, and you’ll once again be able to hear the pastor’s very funny joke after his third point.
Talk about church during the week. Ask your children what they learned. Sing together. Practice sitting still & silent, and reward them with jelly-beans. In short, actively parent your kids both here & at home. Don’t grow flustered, but faithfully train your sons & daughters to delight in the worship of the Triune God.
Our culture abhors children. It glares at them on airplanes, calls the murder of the unborn a right, and lets the television raise their offspring. But God’s Word tells us that the Lord has ordained praise from these tiny lips, and from these cries of infants. Many parents grow weary or frustrated with the, at times, slow progress of rearing little children. Parents must go to God for grace to diligently train their children to walk in all His ways, and this congregation must exercise joyful patience in assisting each other in nurturing up these children to love & fear God. May God forgive us as a nation for despising our offspring, and let the people of God demonstrate the great joy and calling that it is to raise up sons & daughters in the grace of our Lord Jesus.
How Abram Fought the Culture War
When Abram first came into the land of Canaan we see him building altar after altar to Jehovah. This is both a sign of God’s kindness, and a warning of His wrath upon those who won’t receive this kindness. Some are offended when later on in history God commands Israel to go on a Holy War against the Canaanites. Before God set the hosts of Israel into those battles to conquer the Promised Land, He first marched a prophetic witness to these nations in the form of Abram’s worship. Many Canaanites were, in fact, converted and brought under the care of Abram’s community.
There is important instruction for us here. God fights culture wars with worship. When God’s people worship, they declare the downfall of pagan idols. Abram set up altars to the Living God. In so doing he summoned all the worshippers of sun, moon, wood, and stone to forsake their feeble gods and find glory in the presence of God Most High.
Our worship each Lord’s Day is an act of prophetic ministry. The worship of the saints compels men to leave their impotent idols or else face God’s swift wrath. Our worship defies the glory of man as we insist on lifting high the name above all names.
But this worship must be done in true faith. You cannot worship God with your lips while treasuring up evil in your heart. This worship will be potent only insofar as it springs from evangelical faith. Faith that Christ has cleansed you. Faith that Christ is King. Faith that all the idols & idolaters will soon vanish, and only those who worship in spirit and in truth shall remain. In other words, our worship sets up an altar which both invites men to come and warns men of judgment to come.
God doesn’t desire cold worship. He doesn’t need our half-hearted songs. He has no interest in the tunes of hypocrites. He will not abide double living. He desires our worship because He sought us and bought us. The church of our day is too often anemic in our worship because our hearts are lifted up unto vain idols. May the Lord grant us true faith, faith in Christ and Him crucified. May He open our eyes to behold the great glory of Christ’s face and in so doing, cast down all idols. By looking to the glory of God in Christ all our follies & vanities will be driven out. And then our lips will be loosed to praise God from hearts made alive.
You can’t bring false worship to God and expect Him to be pleased. You can’t pull a fast one on the Almighty. This is why we must humble ourselves, laying before Him the honest truth of our sin, and then lay claim to the righteousness & free grace which is given to us through the Gospel of our Lord Jesus.
Potent Corporate Worship
Corporate worship is an embodied activity. Our body isn’t a flatbed-trailer whose only purpose is to move our brain around from place to place.
This is why we stand, and sit, and kneel throughout various portions of our service. It’s why we apply actual water to actual bodies in baptism; and why we eat real bread & wine with real mouths in the Supper. We sing with actual voice boxes. We raise our hands in the Doxology, and extend them to give & receive the Benediction. We shout our assent in our Amens. We pass the bread & wine to each other. These are various elements that should put us in mind that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit.
Standing and sitting at various parts of our service is part of the choreography, not just indifferent actions. If done well, this choreography adds to the luster of the glory of our worship. Partaking together. Loud joint Amens. The rustle of jointly rising or kneeling. We are one body, with many members, acting as one to offer the praise our Lord is worthy of.
Think of a massive flock of birds, and how as they fly together, their murmuration makes mesmerizing shapes, swirls, and patterns. Thousands of individual birds swaying & flowing & spinning as one. They do so out of creaturely obedience. As saints in the image of God, our worship together should be choreographed with regenerate grace & glory. Your singing, standing, kneeling, amen-ing, eating, drinking, and hand-lifting is both individual & corporate, single & concerted, personal & collaborative.
Know your dance steps. Know your part of this enacted drama that is our service of worship to the King of glory. And offer it all in evangelical faith, with a heart made new, with renewed minds, and with redeemed bodies which are the dwelling place of God Almighty.
The Word chastens us for failing to prize the Lord above all things. Our idolatry knows no bounds, and we find ourselves worshipping and serving all manner of cheap gods. We put little thought to the dance steps of our corporate worship of the Living God; while throwing ourselves helter-skelter into the chaotic dance of self-absorption, self-expression, and selfish gratification. May we never offer strange fire of self-centered worship. By the Spirit, may we be strengthened in the work of worshipping God according to His Word from hearts which sprang to life in the first place from the implanted Word. Our worship is too often anemic because it is drawn from the poisoned well of vain imagination. Our prayer should be that the Lord would make our worship potent as we offer it in accordance with Scripture and in sincere faith, with joy in Christ alongside our fellow saints from every nation, tribe, and tongue.
How God Builds – The Eternal House of David
Introduction
Because you’re confronted with it each Sunday, it might be easy to think that our musical style is high up on the list of important Christ Church distinctives. In actuality, it’s further down the list in importance. Not unimportant, but not of first importance. On the other hand, You could hang around for a good while without knowing the first thing about our eschatology, which actually looms large over much of what we do around here. This text is an instance of both distinctives being woven together, providing an opportunity to highlight why we worship the way we do, and what the heck that has to do with the end of the world.
The Text
Zechariah 12:7-13:3
The LORD also shall save the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem do not magnify themselves against Judah. In that day shall the LORD defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David; and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of the LORD before them. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon. And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart; The family of the house of Levi apart, and their wives apart; the family of Shimei apart, and their wives apart; All the families that remain, every family apart, and their wives apart. In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered: and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land. And it shall come to pass, that when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of the LORD: and his father and his mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he prophesieth.
Summary of the Text
Zechariah, along with the other later prophets, encourage the returning exiles in the work of rebuilding Jerusalem. Though enemies threatened the work, those dwelling in tents wouldn’t be more vulnerable than those in the more secure habitations (12:7). Jehovah would defend His people; the feeblest would be like David in the height of his greatness, and the house of David would be as God, an angelic warrior of the Lord (12:8). With such a warrior within her, no enemy shall overcome this New Jerusalem (12:9).
Upon the house of David, God’s spirit of grace & supplication would be poured out; they would look upon a pierced Warrior-God, whom they pierced, and greatly mourn Him (12:10, Cf. Jn. 19:37). They’d mourn as Judah had once mourned for the death of good king Josiah (12:11, Cf. 2 Kg. 23:29, 2 Chr. 35:22-25). Every family & household––royal & priestly, great & small, husband & wife––would mourn (12:12-14). Calvin’s remarks on these verses are worth sharing, simply for the humor of it, “Zechariah seems to have used more words than necessary to complete his subject.”
In that day, a cleansing fountain would rain down on the house of David, cleansing sin & all uncleanness (13:1). This fountain will wash away both idolatry & false prophecy (13:2-3).
The House of David
It isn’t a stretch to say that David is the central character of the Old Testament. His reign is the crescendo of the OT narrative, and after his reign, Israel falls into a sad decline. The centuries after David are filled with nostalgic yearning for that Golden Era. The prophets foresee that Davidic glory returning. Later Psalmists are both students & conservators of David’s musical brilliance.
Zechariah is no exception to invoking Davidic imagery. He uses the term “house of David” because of how laden it is with historic significance, liturgical bearing, and Messianic meaning. He seems to compress all of Israel’s hopes into a singular household, and then from there into a singular person.
The historic significance which is used here is to remind the exiles of David as Israel’s champion. The House of David was the undisputed Royal household, so it would be quite natural for the regathering Jews to look there for God’s deliverance. This is just nostalgia, it is godly remembrance of past faithfulness.
But Zechariah also draws out one of David’s other significant contributions. David brought musical worship into a prominent part of the religious life of Israel. His preparations to build the temple were motivated by an insight that is expressed throughout many of the Psalms: behind God’s command for burnt offerings, was a greater desire for contrite sacrifices of praise (Cf. Ps. 51:16-17, 69:30-31). One of David’s most important episodes was the building of the tabernacle of David on Mount Zion, in order to bring the Ark of Covenant to a permanent resting place. This tabernacle wasn’t identical to the one which the Levites offered animal sacrifice in (that was in Shiloh, and later in Gibeah). This tabernacle of David, in the stronghold of David, in the city of David was full, not of the smoke of burnt offerings, but with the sound of Psalms. Zechariah prophesies that the Spirit of true prayer would return to the lips of David’s household.
Finally, we cannot miss the Messianic hope latent in this reference to David’s house. God’s promise to David was that he would not fail to have an heir sit on the throne (Cf. 1 Ki. 2:4). Zechariah picks up on this promise and foretells that David’s house would arise like the avenging Angel of the Lord; a real boon of hope to the feeble regathering exiles then dwelling in Jerusalem. The Messianic promise was that David’s Son would conquer all enemies, wash all the people, cleanse them from their idolatry & false prophets. This Messianic Angel would be pierced in the battle, but still He would wash the entire house of David & Jerusalem clean. All of this while Zechariah & Haggai stirred up the people to rebuild the temple.
A Service of Song
Zechariah expresses the Messianic promise as a renewal of a spirit of grace and supplication. This Spirit would rest in a particular way upon the house of David.
Matthew Henry makes a wonderful comment on this passage: “When God intends great mercy for his people the first thing he does is to set them a praying.” It’s no small matter that a large portion of our worship service is comprised of spoken & sung prayers. An enterprising 5th grader might tally up 19 prayers in our service.
This is a service of prayer. We bring our supplications to the Lord, and it is fitting that we do so with glorious music. The casual air of our age has led many to misinterpret what it means to come before the throne of grace with boldness. We slap indie-band chord progressions on the lyrics of a High School cheerleader’s diary, and think it a worthy offering to Royal David’s heir. We come boldly, not impudently. While musical style should not be a matter of dogmatism, neither should it be a mindless adoption of consumerist appetite.
Singing is a peculiar feature of the Christian faith. We owe that heritage to David. When God sets out to grant revival and reform, it is always accompanied by His Spirit. That Spirit energizes us, to come by the blood of David’s heir, to bring our pleas to the Father. It does no good just to have songs. We must have the Spirit. And if we have the Spirit, we will also recover the singing of Psalms with joyful reverence (Ps. 105:2, Eph. 5:19, Jam 5:13).
Weekly Renewal of an Eternal Covenant
Weekly worship in the Lord’s house shouldn’t be viewed as merely an activity to entertain religious people. Rather, this is a weekly ratification of a vow which God made to David. But that vow is older than even David. It was a covenant more ancient that Moses. It predated Abram. God’s covenant mercies existed long before the bow was hung in the sky for Noah to behold. For the covenant of grace was in the heart of God even before He promised a skull-crushing heel to the Serpent.
Christ gathers up all these iterations of the covenant of grace in himself, and by Him we order our service to follow that pattern of covenant renewal. He calls us by His Word. He convicts us of our sin, commanding us to confess our sin. He consecrates us as His own, by His Word preached. He communes with us in a feast of bread & wine. He commissions us to walk in our covenant duties by covenant grace. Our worship is the dawning of New Covenant glory (Jer. 31, Ez. 36:25-27)
Following a Davidson to Conquest
The worship of the saints isn’t a peripheral aspect of Christian faith. Our weekly worship is how we are to prepare for and hasten the end of the world. The Son of David has bought the world. The kingdom is His. Look on Him who was pierced. Sing His praise, loudly, triumphantly, exuberantly. With head and heart. Render a faithful service of reverent adoration to this Son of David.
Are there idols in your own heart? The Goliath-slayer won’t tolerate mixing praise for idols with His praise. Are you besieged by great enemies? The Lord pours out His Spirit of grace and supplication. So call upon God to deliver. The mighty, Angelic Messiah, the Christ, the Lord’s anointed Messenger shall conquer all His enemies. He conquers by filling the house of David with David’s songs. Bending before the rightful King, singing His praise, is how we overcome.
A Davidson has taken up the world’s government by taking His rightful place upon the Israel’s throne. We worship & serve Him, and this praise shall crescendo until all His many enemies fall. Our worship each Sunday foretells the end of the World: Jesus shall reign.
Christian Duty in Peace or War
As rumblings of war in Eastern Europe arise, some cheer for it, others ignore it. Some are frightened, others fevered with blood-lust. What is your Christian duty in a time of looming war? Put simply, it’s to keep doing what you’re to do at all times: glorify God & enjoy Him forever.
As we’re fond of saying: “Worship is warfare.” It doesn’t matter to us, the Church militant, if it’s a time of peace or war, we’re called to wage holy war against sin, the devil, and the world. We fight with songs, and water, and bread, and wine. The sword we swing is the Word. The centrality of worship roots our allegiance firmly to the Word.
Unless we’re anchored in the reality of our union with Christ, we’ll be swept along with the various sinful reactions to this latest war. Worship of Christ doesn’t produce apathy towards the conflicts of this world, it sharpens our discernment as to whether or not a war is just, or if our nation is justified in joining a particular side.
Acknowledging Christ’s sovereignty over all nations, by faithfully worshipping Him according to Scripture with fellow saints, equips us to stand firm in the day of trouble. Worshipping the Christ who is seated there, at the Father’s right hand, fortifies us here in our earthly troubles.
Sinners want us to rush along in their conspiracy to shed-blood. This is one of the tell-tale signs Solomon gives us of foolish men (Pro. 1:10-12). Sinners are also selfish cowards, who want to save their own skin (Pro. 22:13, Num. 13:32-33). Christians, regardless of the season, regardless of the news, worship the Risen Christ. This makes us bold in battle, stubborn in our determination to fight only for righteous causes, and fervent in prayer that the swords might be bent into plows.
We long for the hastening of the day which the hymn-writer described so well, the day when “They shall hang the trumpet in the hall, and study war no more.” Our nation has not acknowledged Christ as its head, and so we’ve lost our head. We’ve both waged unjust wars, and also fled like cowards from just wars. The church has shirked her duty to proclaim the Gospel Word in the public square, and so we’ve allowed evil men to lead us. Our failure stems from not to worshipping the Father in spirit and in truth. He promises that His blessing rests on those who keep His Word, but He opposes those who break it. May the Lord grant that we in the church return to faith-filled obedience in our lives, our homes, our business, our churches, and our towns; and so, bring about a great revival of justice and peace in our land. For, we will not recognize a just cause if we do not first see that Christ’s sacrifice for sin is the only way that justice can be established either with God in heaven or between men here on earth.