My Savior My God
Boy, talk about being clueless as to songs to be found in the hymnal. I’ve been going through the hymnals I’ve got in the office, and I ran across I Am Not Skilled to Understand. I thought, wow, this is a really up to date hymnal. Duh! Aaron Shust used this old (1873) hymn by Dora Greenwell as the basis for his song. By the way, I still take issue with the chorus. I contend that he could have easily said My God He was, My God He is, My God He always will be, rather than always gonna be. I cringe every time I hear that.
Secondhand Jesus Review
Last Friday I read through the new Glenn Packiam book Secondhand Jesus. Glenn is one of the worship pastors of New Life church in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He runs the New Life School of Worship and regularly leads worship for the college ministry there, theMILL. I’m sure you will recognize the church name New Life first from the Ted Haggart scandal and then from the shocking tragedy that happened there only a couple of years later.
This book is primarily about the wake-up call that happened as a result of the former scandal. He calls this the first of many what-the-heck moments that happened that caused him to reevaluate his walk with Christ, and his ministry to the Church. In this book he talks about four rumors of God that have crept up in the “suburban church.”
#1: God will give me what I want.
#2: God can be added to my list of loyalties.
#3: God is pleased with my goodness.
#4: God prefers specialists.
I won’t go through the rumors, I’ll let you pick up a copy of the book and let you do that yourself, but the fourth rumor is the basis for this book. When I read the title, “Secondhand Jesus,” I assumed that it was about spreading the gospel. Instead the title refers to the cosmic game of telephone that many Christians have chosen to play. Rather than getting their information straight from the source (Christ himself through the Bible), they have contented themselves to learning about Him from secondhand sources. This is why when you ask many Christians why they believe what they believe, they can’t tell you. Too many people skipped the steps to reach conclusions, and are satisfied with being told the answers by someone else. I wonder if this isn’t the reason that when I read the book, UnChristian, I saw such a disconnect between who and what Jesus calls His Body to be, and what we actually are.
To talk about each of these rumors, Glenn walks through the story of the Ark of the Covenant. He does so in a straightforward fashion. I found the book an easy read, yet it was deeply insightful and often convicting. I found Glenn’s openness throughout the book to be refreshing. He closes the book with a description of the tragedy that happened only a short time after the scandal that caused him to reevaluate his walk.
I would highly recommend you grab this book. Read it with an open heart and mind.
New worship CDs coming out this month
Boy, there’s some great stuff coming up in the worship music world. There are several albums coming out soon that I’m really looking forward to hearing soon, so I thought I would share them with you.
Already ordered, and I’m waiting with baited breath for, the new Keith and Kristyn Getty album, Awake the Dawn. What can I say, I’m growing more and more attached to the Getty’s modern hymns. I’m sure you will be singing many of these songs someday in church. Actually, if you come to Grace, you already are! You can listen to previews of the album here. Future favorites: Come People of the Risen King, By Faith, Benediction, and who doesn’t love to listen to an Irish person read Psalm 57 in a full on Irish accent. I should move to Ireland long enough to pick up an Irish accent……
There are actually a couple of albums coming out on the 23rd (of June) that I’m really looking forward to. The first is beauty & chaos by my cousin Aaron Ivey. He is one of the worship pastors at Austin Stone church. Since I got Spur 58’s (his old band) indie cd, Image of New, I’ve loved the way he does hymns, and his original songs are sweet. He has promised a site redesign with streaming audio of his new album soon, so keep an eye on aaronivey.com.
The other cd I’m looking forward to is Rumors and Revelations by Glenn Packiam. Harmony folks will recognize songs like My Savior Lives which has been used by Hillsong. Also he has cowritten songs with a bunch of guys, including Paul Baloche’s Your Name. Glenn is one of the worship pastors at New Life Church, which I’m sure you will recognize. If not, watch this video. Glenn has written a book called Secondhand Jesus partly about these experiences. Review to follow. Anyway, Glenn is releasing a cd on the 23rd. You can listen through most of the album here. There’s a sort of Psalms feel to the songs that I appreciate. These songs will be in my playlist and I’m sure some will make their way into Sunday mornings. Take a listen to Burning in Me, For Love I Sing, I Will Stand ….. Take a listen to the album. I’ll put up a full review after I’ve lived with it for a while.
Other albums I look forward to hearing, but don’t know anything about. July 14, Robin Mark is releasing a new album. August 14, a new Hillsong album comes out. On August 25, it seems like the worship community is all releasing an album. Ditto Sept 22, then we get into Christmas Album season. Check out newreleases.com for details!
Psalm 27 Part 1
The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, my adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall. Psalm 27:1-2 (ESV)
Have you ever been lost in the dark (talking literally here). I’m a stereotypical male in the directions category, so being lost isn’t a cause for great concern. I’ll figure out where we are and where we’re going eventually. Being lost in the dark is a totally different matter though. I don’t like to drive to unknown places in the dark but walking around on a pitch black night can be downright scary. This was us. We weren’t just lost, we were wandering around in pitch black, clueless, no point of reference, no hope that we might find our way. We needed God to light our lives and Christ to set our feet on the path. Listen to the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 42:6-9:
6 “I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, 7 to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. 8 I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols. 9 Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them.”
He calls us to show His light to others! This is a common theme throughout the Psalms and the Bible. God is great! Don’t keep it to yourself. Yet we have a bunker mentality as Christians. At whom are most of the ministries of the church aimed at? Who are our friends? It’s almost like we have a “bring them to church/youth group so the pastor can preach the gospel to them” mentality. BTW, I’m preaching to myself above all here. Get to know the “heathens” (kidding) around you. Have them over for a movie night. Have a bonfire. Invite your neighbors over for dinner. Before you venture out, I would encourage you to read UnChristian. It’ll give you a startling view of what your “unbelieving” friends probably think about you. Then become friends with them. Love them as they are. Don’t love them just because you’re going to share the gospel with them. Be friends long enough for them to notice there’s something different about you. For that to happen: a) there has to be something different about you!! b) your friendship has to be solid enough to talk about spiritual matters. Above all, pray for them! We used to talk about 3 friends. Have 3 friends always that you’re praying for that God might open their hearts to the gospel of Christ.
I’ve ventured pretty far off topic here, so let’s return to verse 1! We’re at a severe disadvantage in terms of intuitively understanding the word stronghold here in America. Places like Ft. Riley are strongholds protected by technology and fence. We don’t see the unassailable aspect of it. I grew up next to the Iowa State Penitentiary, but that’s really designed to keep people in, not out. I don’t think I really got the stronghold concept till I visited Ireland. The sheer size of the castles is intimidating. When I read passages like this, I can’t help but think of Ireland and places in Israel like Masada, which was built into the mountain right to the sheer cliff face. Yet all of those fortresses were assailable. Masada was conquered (it took the Romans some fancy engineering to build a ramp), along with the awesome castles in Ireland are the ruined castles. We have something greater yet in the Lord. He is the unassailable stronghold of our lives. With that, who do we have to fear? When evildoers attack, it is they who fail! When you are under siege, remember this and praise the Lord!
Psalm 150
" Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens! Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his excellent greatness! Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals! Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!" (Psalm 150, ESV)
Wow, I think the psalmist managed to put every instrument of the ancient world in here. I suppose he felt the need to hammer his point home. Let’s start with all the instruments and then end up back at the beginning.
Ah, the trumpet! What a biblically foundational instrument to play. Trumpet players must be in a higher echelon of God’s people…. JK. We first hear about the trumpet in Exodus 19:16-20, where the trumpet announces the coming presence of the Lord. The trumpet was used to call the people of Israel (Lev 23:24, Num 10:2, Num 10:8). Also, the trumpet was used often in war, but I think it’s important to notice the significance of Num 10:9. The trumpet was used so the people might be remembered before the Lord. Fast forward to the New Testament, and we see in 1 Thess 4:16 that the Lord’s coming again will be announced by the sound to the trumpet of God.
Next we praise Him with the lute and harp. Unfortunately we don’t actually know what any of these instruments looked or sounded like. We can infer, but that’s it. When I think of a lute, it’s almost like a guitar with a whole lot of strings, but like I said, that’s speculation. The harp referred to here is the lyre.. I think I’ve got a mental picture of these two instruments, but then I read 1 Chr 16:28 where it says they made loud music on harps and lyres (same Hebrew words). I had pictured these stringed instruments as being a soft sound, but perhaps not. I would guess the author is simply poetically contrasting the “brass” (actually likely a ram’s horn, although in Numbers the Israelites were instructed to make 2 silver trumpets) with the stringed instruments.
Boy, I hate to even bring up the next verse in the Baptist church……. 
The tambourine was an instrument associated closely with dance. We see dance as a part of praise throughout the bible in places like 1 Chr 16:29 where David was being undignified in his praise to the Lord. We get the picture from the ensuing argument with his wife that fear of man should not drive our worship, but rather our reaction to the Lord. How much does the fear of man drive our worship today? Say you’re a person who likes to raise their hands in worship? It’s a biblical expression in worship (Ps 28:2, Ps 134:2, Lam 3:41, 1 Tim 2:8). Some people feel called to lift their hands in worship, some don’t. Both are okay, it’s accepted in the Bible, but it’s not commanded in the Bible. If you were a person called to raise hands in worship, and you were in a congregation with hands down, would you raise your hands? Why not?
The same case of using every instrument we have at our disposal is again built with the cymbals. Clashing cymbals aren’t the most elegant of instruments. There isn’t a lot that you can communicate with a cymbal. There is no finesse to a cymbal. Cymbals are not poetic, or orderly for that matter. Yet the psalmist says that we can praise the Lord in cymbals. For whom do you crash the cymbal? Do you draw attention to the Lord, or yourself?
So who should be doing all of this praising? Everything that has breath!!!! We look forward to the day when every tribe, and every nation and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. How wonderful it will be before the throne, in His sanctuary Praising the Lord.
Psalm 40 Part 4
“In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. Then I said, “Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me: I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.”” (Psalm 40:6-8, ESV)
This portion of the Psalm is wrought with Messianic connections and yet speaks so closely to our hearts as we dive into the text.
Immediately upon reading this passage, I’m reminded of passages like Hos. 6:6, Micah 6:6-8, Isa 1:11 and especially Amos 5:21-24. (BTW, if you’re on the blog, if you hover your mouse over the reference, the verse should pop up!) As a worship leader, verses like this hit me pretty hard. If you spend any amount of time reading worship blogs or books, you begin to realize that there are a whole lot of folks out there that spend a whole lot of time trying to figure out what the right way to worship is. What songs do we use? How often do we serve communion? Should the lights be dimmed or full? The questions and “biblical” answers go on and on! How we “do worship” has spawned whole volumes of material.
The Jews had a worship manual straight from God. They had the Law of Moses, handed down directly from God specifying the sacrificial system and worship rites to follow. There was just one problem. The sacrifices weren’t about the animals, they weren’t about the ritual. The sacrifices were about hearts bent towards God! After all, if ever a group of people “had it together,” it was the Pharisees. Jesus didn’t react well to the Pharisees. In Philippians 3:2-11, Paul lays out just how good a Jew he really was. He was as good of a person as you could be in the Hebrew world. If anyone could boast, it was Paul. What does he say about this? “… I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Our hearts are what are important here. We are to count all of our works and stuff as nothing compared to knowing Christ!
So what is the Psalm talking about when it says, “You have given me an open ear?” The Hebrew here is a bit ambiguous, but the same phrase is used in places like Ex 21:6 talking about a slave’s ear being pierced. In one way here, this could be read essentially, though You have not delighted in sacrifices and offerings, you have made me your servant. The Septuagint translated this phrase, “a body hast thou prepared me,” which is the translation that the writer of Hebrews uses in Hebrews 10:5-7 when referencing this passage as a Messianic prophecy. Since Jesus himself used the Septuagint, we can be fairly certain that it was a faithful translation of the Hebrew into Greek.
Out of curiosity, I spent some time reading Jewish commentaries on this passage where they backlash against the use of this verse in Hebrews saying that the passage is obviously David talking. They miss entirely the idea that the Spirit speaking through the writer can say something and mean two things. There is sometimes an obvious meaning and a meaning that won’t be fulfilled until the remote future. This passage is one of those with amphibological meaning. There are two different, but fully correct interpretations.
The writer of Hebrews rightly realized the second meaning of these verses as the pre-incarnate Christ speaking through David. In this section of Hebrews, the writer is pointing out how the sacrificial system was and could never be enough for God. Christ therefore comes to offer a better way. Look at this passage from the perspective of Christ saying it,
“Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’ ” (Hebrews 10:5-7, ESV)
The writer of Hebrews goes on to explain, “When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (Hebrews 10:8-10, ESV)
Let’s head back to the David centered meaning of the Psalm to end up. David says, “I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your law is within my heart.” Kind of reminds you of Jeremiah 31:33-34 doesn’t it? We have the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Rather than studying the Torah, we have the Law of the Lord written on our very hearts. He forgives our iniquities and remembers our sin no more! What a great truth that is. Praise God for the work done at the cross!
Stott’s The Cross of Christ
Okay, so I’ve been really connecting with my inner bookworm this week. I’ve read (or finished) like three or four books. Reviews possibly coming, but that would require me to put the book down too long. Okay, so I just picked up The Cross of Christ and couldn’t make it out of the preface without quoting, especially in light of what I talked about at the end of the latest Psalm study.
In daring to write (and read) a book about the cross, there is of course a great danger of presumption. This is partly because what actually happened when "God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ" is a mystery whose depths we shall spend eternity plumbing; and partly because it would be most unseemly to feign a cool detachment as we contemplate Christ’s cross. For, whether we like it or not, we are involved. Our sins put Him there. So, far from offering us flattery, the cross undermines our self-righeousness. We can stand before it only with a bowed head and a broken spirit. And there we remain until the Lord Jesus speaks to our hearts His word of pardon and acceptance, and we, gripped by His love and full of thanksgiving, go out into the world to live our lives in His service.
John Stott, The Cross of Christ
Good stuff.
Psalm 40 Part 3
You have multiplied, O LORD my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you! I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told.
(Psalm 40:5)
I loved growing up in the country. We had the aforementioned timber, a pond to fish in, and snapping turtles to shoot BB guns at. You know what one of the coolest things was? Stars. Yes, on a clear night, you could clearly see the stars. Have you ever lain out at night and started counting stars? The funny thing is, the more you stare at the sky and focus, the more stars you begin to see. That’s the picture I get here from David. The more we see God for who He is, the more we see His glory!
Let me quote the good Dr. Spurgeon here, because he says it better than I ever could. “Creation, providence and redemption, teem with wonders as the sea with life. Our special attention is called by this passage to the marvels which cluster around the cross and flash from it. The accomplished redemption achieves many ends, and compasses a variety of designs; the outgoing of the atonement are not to be reckoned up, the influences of the cross reach further than the beams of the sun. Wonders of grace beyond all enumeration take their rise from the cross; adoption, pardon, justification, and a long chain of godlike miracles of love proceed from it…. Let our interest in our God be ever to us our peculiar treasure.”
Then we hit a recurring theme throughout the Psalms, and indeed the whole of the Bible. David says yet again, “I will proclaim and tell of them.” Noticing is one thing. Proclaiming is quite another. How are the lost to hear if we don’t tell them? The Word tells us that if He so desires, the very rocks can cry out for us, but it is our task to share His gospel.
Are we running out of things to say? If we are, then we need to open our eyes! The Lord is doing a work in your life. He is guiding you, changing you and sustaining you. Here is where that study of theology comes in. I’m convinced that the more we study Him, the more we will be drawn to praise Him! Here’s the part I love most. No matter how many books have been written, Psalms or Hymns have been sung, preachers have preached, His wondrous deeds are still too much than can be told! Throughout the whole of human history, we have been trying to tell of the glory of God, and that hasn’t and will never be enough! If you ever hear someone say they’ve got a grasp on God and His works, they might not quite understand just who God is.
Let us consider the Trinity. There is a lot out there you can read on the Trinity, and you can come to a good knowledge base about the Trinity. You can begin to understand the relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in oneness as God. You can read many scholarly works of men who have thought of the Trinity. You can know that it is a true doctrine through that study. You can understand many aspects of it, but can you ever truly understand the Trinity this side of heaven? I’m going to say no. But that certainly doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t pursue a greater understanding the length of our lives. The nice part is, we can be sure that we will never really understand our Lord until we are faced with Him before the throne, and then we will really worship!
Stuff Christians Like Post
Great stuff today on Stuff Christians Like. Check it out.
http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/2009/04/527-thinking-god-needs-you.html
