Had a good mini-discussion about God's presence with my BSF leader yesterday.
You know how worship leaders love to use those phrases-- "let us come into God's presence...", "Come and dwell among us, Lord", "As we draw nearer to God...", etc. Both my BSF leader and I agreed that these phrases have all been used wrongly.
He was sharing with me about how his youth put up this skit about God's presence. This was in a bid to share with others about the common misconceptions about "entering God's presence". For one, don't we all agree that God is everywhere? That this world is His, that out God is omnpresent and omnipotent? Then how in the world do we "enter into His presence in worship" when He is always around us? Rather, the real question is-- do we acknowledge that God IS in our midst, 24hrs a day, 365days a yr? (not that God is limited by time)
By attempting to say that we can invite God into our midst is demeaning the power of our God. Also, it suggests that man can reach out to God when in actual fact, nothing we could have ever done would have allowed us unhindered access to God the Father. Nothing. Man's problem throughout the ages has been to reach for the "heavenlies". In the period of the Old Testament (OT), this was what the pagans, gentiles, and even the Israelites themselves did. They thought that they could enter God's presence by their own efforts.
Sadly, they were mistaken. However, all was not lost... Grace was displayed.
This Grace was NOT displayed by accepting our efforts at reaching God (as some might be led to believe). Nope, This Grace was displayed by God coming down... Jesus Christ. However, that wasn't enough. God is holy, pure, sinless. For us to ever enter God's holy presence in worship, we have to be clean, holy, sinless. God's wrath towards sin had to be appeased. And Jesus Christ, sinless, holy, blameless, took on God's wrath and sacrifised himself for us... on that cross, both Justice and Love were displayed. Power was displayed in Jesus' resurrection... sin and death had no hold over Him. And as Christians (literally meaning "belonging to Christ") we have no fear over sin and death as well. Hallelujah!
So, everything points back to the gospel (the paragraph above)... and the bigger theme of "entering God's presence" is in fact, worship (which, i feel, many people have a misconception of).
I won't go on about talking about worship in this blog (its an immense theme!), but I do recommemend an excellant (and short!) book about this by Vaughan Roberts. It's aptly titled "True Worship" I have a copy of the book... but I can't remember who I've lent it to! (alamak!)
Well, in the light of all this, I'm once again reminded that I can commune with God, in His presence, not by works, but by grace! What a privilege! :)
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5 comments:
i agree with what u said about grace and all..but i think when worship leaders use all those phrases, it isn't wrong la... just that the context has changed. and most of us don't know about it, and worship leaders assume that we know... tt kinda thing. but aniwae, i think those phrases are used more metaphorically than literally - based on the tabernacle.
When Moses brought the Israelites out of Egypt, that was how they worshipped God back then. Only the high priest could go into the holy of holies, and even then it was once a year, after cleansing, etc.
aniwae..yeah, wat u said ain't wrong - but neither is it wrong tt those phrases are used. if it's wrong then a load of the songs tt we sing aren't right too...heh. check out "Awesome in This Place"
:)
Hey yahwee! Thanks for the comments! Makes you know that someone's reading my blog! :p
Hehe... with regards to what worship leaders say, that's where the danger comes in. (and i must admit, i've made the mistake in the past myself) That most Christians don't realise its metaphorical and take it as truth. Much like a lot of my youth think worship=singing=music when in actual fact, worship is a whole lot more than that! :)
And with regards to the Tabernacle, thanks for raising it up! :) In today's context, we shouldn't use that "model" anyway, Christ overshadowed the tabernale by the cross. That model shouldn't be taught as us taking the role of the high priest and "sacrifising" our burdens on the alter before coming to God in "worship". Rather, the tabernacle was meant as a foreshadow of the greatest sacrifice of all-- Christ himself (Heb 5-10).
Well, I hoped I've managed to help a bit. I really value these friendly discussions... if you have any views, do pop it here :) Oh, I also hope we can really have that coffee we've been wanting to have since the hols :P
oops... forgot about the songs bit! :p *forgetful*
Well, with regards to songs... the problem is that songs(because of the nature of music) are, more often than not, expressions of emotion of how we think and feel about some things. Some of them can be taken literally, some of them we can't. I won't go to the point by saying that all songs have wrong lyrics (though there are some which are totally outrageous!) but I would say that when the song-writer was penning those lyrics, he could have been thinking about singing the song in a different context as when we sing those songs. You get what I mean? ;)
So ya, in essence, I gotta agree that there are many songs which tend to slightly mislead Christians into understanding what worship is. Which is why the role of a worship leader (again, another slightly misleadin term, but let's not go into an argument of semiotics) is not that easy. He/She has the role of choosing songs which are clear, biblical, easy enough to sing without explaining too much of what the songs mean :p
One final thing I've learnt recently. Worship Leaders don't just lead songs. They're ministers of the Word. Just that here, there's the added dimension of music :)
coffee..? soon la, soon. hehehe.
aniwae, about the Tabernacle... not that we are like the high priest now lah.. haha. after Jesus came to die for us, it's all different already. but i think there's still a bit of the Tabernacle thing that we can appreciate, like how it used to be so difficult to even want to be with God... it reallie puts everything in perspective. it was so tough! and so many things u could have unwittingly done would have killed u, back in OT times la. hmm.
but yeah, thank God that all this has changed now. :D
well, rushing for class. heh. another time! :)
yeah... Grace :)
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