GYC SE 2008: One

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GYC Southeast

Bruce Ashton - My Way or God's Way: Defining Christian Worship

J. Bruce Ashton

This Mystery Called Music

I'd like to start with number 73, which is familiar, I think, to most of you.

But it's a privilege for us to be able to sing the same thing the angels sing.

You read in Isaiah, in the Old Testament, you read it in the Revelation in the New Testament, what the angels sing is, holy, holy, holy.

Early in the morning, our song shall rise to thee.

Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty, God in 3 persons, blessed Trinity.

Now, Everybody got along fine with the punctuation that time, whether you thought of it or not, because it sort of fits with where the notes go.

But there's some punctuation in the next stanza that doesn't go exactly where you think it's going to go.

Paul says we sing with the understanding as well as with spirit.

So let's see if we can get all the meaning that is here by taking the breaths where they're called for.

Casting down their bright crowns around the glassy sea.

Thousands And 10 thousands worship low before thee, Which words and art and evermore shall be.

Holy, holy, holy, though darkness hide thee, though the eye of man thy great glory And thy great glory may not see.

All thy works shall praise thy name in earth and sea, I am seen.

Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty, God in 3 Persons, blessed Trinity.

Father in heaven, we are grateful that you extend to us the privilege of bringing praise back to you.

We pray that as we talk about worship and talk about praise that you will enlighten us that you will strengthen us that you will accept what we bring to you because we bring it to you in response, our love response to your great love for us in Jesus name, Amen I would like to introduce our subject by what I think is a rather interesting quotation from Marva Dawn's book, the second book she wrote on the subject of worship, and the title of the book is, a royal waste of time.

To worship the Lord is in the world's eyes a waste of time.

It is indeed a royal waste of time, but a waste nonetheless.

By engaging in it we do not accomplish anything useful in our society's terms.

Worship ought not to be construed in any utilitarian way.

Its purpose is not to gain numbers nor for our churches to be seen as successful.

Rather the entire reason for our worship is that God deserves it.

Moreover it isn't even useful for earning points with God.

For what we do in worship will not change 1 whit how God feels about us.

We will still be helpless sinners, caught in our endless inability to be what we should be or to make ourselves any better.

And God will always still be merciful, compassionate and gracious, abounding in steadfast love and ready to forgive us as we come to Him.

But it is indeed royal, for it immerses us in the regal splendor of the cosmos.

Do you go to church every week to be immersed in the regal splendor of the King of the cosmos?

The church's worship provides opportunities for us to enjoy God's presence in corporate ways that take us out of time and into the eternal purposes of God's kingdom.

As a result, we shall be changed, but not because of anything we do.

God, on whom we are centered and to whom we submit, will transform us by the His revelation of himself.

To understand worship as a royal waste of time is good for us because it frees us to enter into the poverty of Christ.

We worship a triune God who chose to rescue the world he created by means of the way of humility.

God sent his Son into the world to empty himself in the obedience of a slave, humbling himself to suffer throughout his entire life and to die the worst of deaths on our behalf.

He did not come to be solving the world's problems in any sense that the world could understand.

Worship of such a God immerses us in such a way of life empowered by a spirit who does not equip us with means of power or control, accomplishment or success, but with the ability and the humility to waste time in love of the neighbor.

It is actually a contraction of the phrase worth-ship.

Worth-ship, an acknowledgement of the rank or the status of another being.

Is it ever right to attribute worthiness to other people?

Are there people who are worthy of your respect?

I'm interested in Luke 10 verse 7, the Lord says, the laborer is worthy of his hire.

Apparently there is some sense at least in which worthiness can be attributed to human beings.

That really should be a caution to those of us who like to think the world owes us a living.

If the laborer is worthy of his hire, he sort of ought to be sure he's under obligation to give back that which he is being paid for.

Just because Southern has promised to X many dollars on your account if you work at grounds or service or the CAF, you have a responsibility to see that SAU gets a fair benefit for the worth they are attributing to your time.

There are some in our community who have money, a fair bit.

A good friend of mine who gave a million and a half dollars to help build a wellness center over here.

I haven't got a million and a half dollars.

We kind of think so, but if his money was honestly come by and is used morally and responsibly, I think yes.

Scholarship, Are there people who are worthy because of their scholarship?

If they can use it in areas of study which will make mankind's condition better, or his understanding of himself better, or his understanding of his God better.

That's a bad question to ask in 2008, isn't it?

I think yes, provided they know how to use political office intelligently and responsibly and morally.

There are people who are spiritually alive, spiritually vital, who have much to offer.

And yes, it is worth recognizing their accomplishments and their contributions.

And I'm interested also in the centurion who built the Jews a synagogue in Capernaum he was in need 1 time because his trusted slave was sick about to die and the elders of the Jews came to Jesus they said what help this man he is worthy he's worthy because he loves our nation he's worthy because he built as a synagogue what did the centurion say when Jesus started off to his house Lord I am NOT worthy that you should come under my roof there are different views of worthiness who else in 1 of Jesus parables said he was unworthy the prodigal son the prodigal son had broken his father's heart he had deprived his father of years of good service, he had wasted buku bucks in degenerate living.

He knew that was not the way his father's son ought to live.

He knew that was not the way any father's son ought to live.

And in his honest moments of self-examination, he recognized that he had given up any right, any claim to honor, or responsibility, or worth.

But what intrigues me always about that story is, that boy never was worthy to be called his father's son, because worthiness has nothing to do with it when you are your father's son.

No matter what I do, I am my father's son.

No matter what my sons do, they are my sons.

Yes, he was right to feel guilt, he was right to feel shame for what he had done, but worthiness is not a factor in sonship.

None of us are worthy to be God's children, but he claims us all, and for that we are grateful.

I like it in Psalm 18 verse 3 where you says very straightforwardly the Lord is worthy to be praised.

If we had any questions there's a settlement there.

On what basis is God worthy of our praise?

Revelation 4 verse 11, thou art worthy O Lord to receive glory and honor and power, why?

For thou hast created all things and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

He is the sovereign over everything and in his sovereign greatness he has chosen to create, to create you because he wanted to spend time with you, because he wanted to get to know you because he wanted you to be on His short list of friends.

Sacred and Secular in Church and Culture

Well, there may be more people wanting to come in a little later, but let's go ahead and get ourselves started.

And I would like to set our tone by singing again.

We're going to talk about music and worship, we ought to sing some.

In your handout, the backside of the second sheet, If I have it all figured out correctly should be Jesus the very thought of thee Which is number 241 from the hindle?

When was this written The music in 1866 the text by Bernard of Clairvaux written when?

We have a hymn in our hymnal from the second century, a hundred years after the death of John the Revelator, and some from almost every century between then and now.

We don't realize what kind of a treasure house this hymnal is.

And it's probably not the best 1 in the world, but it serves our purposes well.

So Let's sing something that comes from a thousand years ago, from a larger poem by Bernard of Clairvaux.

This particular portion of it has been translated several times by different people.

A portion of the same poem is also, O Sacred Head Now Wounded, which most of us at least are acquainted with, know what it is.

I'd like us to sing all 5 stanzas together.

Jesus, the very thought of thee, with sweetness fills my breast, but sweeter for thy face to see, and in thy presence my presence no voice can sing no heart can frame nor can the memory find the sweeter sound than Jesus name the savior of mankind the Savior of mankind.

O hope of every contrite heart, O joy of all the league.

His tongue or pen can show the love of Jesus what it is none but his loved ones know Jesus our only joy ye know has now will be, in Thee be all our glory now and through eternity.

Father in heaven, we are thankful that you have allowed us to know about Jesus and the great plan of salvation.

But we thank you even more that you have gone beyond and allowed us to know Jesus, our Lord, our Savior, and our Brother.

We want to know how to sing His praise and your praise more effectively.

And so we ask for your wisdom and your grace to teach us and your Holy Spirit to guide our thinking as we spend an hour together in Jesus name I was asked to make 2 announcements which I will do before we get further on with things 1 is just to remind everyone that there is a consecration service at 445 after the second seminar this afternoon.

It apparently was not announced this morning and those who are organizing wanted to be sure it's fresh in people's minds.

I've been asked also to say that all of the seminars will be available from audioverse.org online including this 1.

I do know this thing works because I did a similar presentation in Minneapolis and sure enough on the website there I am loud as ever or whatever.

Well I didn't know I would have certain people in my crowd or I wouldn't be able to start by just asking the question but I'll ask it anyway.

I know 2 people are going to knock this 1 off real fast.

How long would it take you to figure out what the following names have in common?

Nadab, Bayasha, Ela, Zimri, Omri, Ahab, Ahaziah, Jehoram, Jehu, Jehoiahaz, Jehoash, Jeroboam II, Zechariah, Menahem, Pecahiah, and Pekah.

I stumble over them occasionally these are 16 of the 19 kings who ruled Israel that is to say the northern kingdom from the time of the dividing of the kingdom until it was taken into a Syrian captivity as near as I can tell and of every single 1 of these 16 people, Scripture records this, and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.

He departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat who made Israel to sin.

There are 3 other names that should be on the list 2 others Shalom and Hosea and of course I left off the first 1 who was Jeroboam the first of the other 2 Shalom and Hosea there are negative things said but not quite so strongly of these 16 he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord he departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat I have to wonder what in the world could Jeroboam the son of Nebat have done that would make him the lodestone of evil for a hundred and 75 years I was going to try to remember and I forgot to look up who the President of the United States was a hundred and seventy-five years ago.

Some of you that are history majors might be able to come up with that.

But whatever it was, I don't recall anybody saying that Clinton and Bush and Reagan and so on have all done the same sort of thing he did 175 years ago and yet here is this story repeated over and over about every single king of Israel he did make calves of gold, Jeroboam did, which was the wrong thing to do he took it on himself to offer sacrifices which he was forbidden to do he declared feasts which the Lord had not declared all of which is true but I'm interested in first Kings 13 33 to 34 which reads after this thing Jeroboam returned not from his evil away but made again of the lowest of the people priests of the high places whosoever would He consecrated him and he became 1 of the priests of the high places and this thing became sin under the house of Jeroboam, even to cut it off and destroy it from the face of the earth.

He openly and deliberately disregarded God's distinction between sacred and secular.

Choosing those who were profane, which is another word for common, which is another word for ordinary or secular, choosing those who were profane to fill a sacred office.

I have to believe, if I had no other basis than that, that God makes a distinction between sacred and secular.

I'm going to be quoting a little later on from a significant document from the 20th century, but I would like to give you just 1 sentence from it at the moment.

Religion consists of those actions, purposes and experiences which are humanly significant.

The distinction between sacred and secular can no longer be maintained.

I've heard that in circles other than the 1 whence this document.

But I suggest that if we read Exodus 28 to 11, that notion cannot possibly stand.

6 days, we are told, are for the doing of our secular activities.

That's what the 6 days are for, providing for the necessities dealing with the contingencies of this earthly life.

1 day is to be remembered as different, preserved for sacred purposes.

That's a designation that I don't have the authority to be so, neither do you.

And the commandment says, 6 days shalt thou labor and do all thy work.

Now I don't know about you, but I would have kind of expected that the other 1 would say, but the seventh day you shall come and do God's work.

It says the seventh day we are supposed to come and enter into God's rest, not His work.

We'll deal with that a little later on also.

Not only did God rest on the Sabbath day, He blessed it, he hallowed it.

If something as immaterial as time can be divided into holy and profane segments, surely the understanding of sacred and secular as separate categories makes sense and is still valid.

Now, I'm going to try real hard to stretch your imaginations.

For the sake of this 5 minutes of argument, and not beyond that, will you try to pretend with me for just this argument, that rock and roll represents the highest cultural form that mankind has yet devised.

That there is nothing offensive about its subject matter, its associations, or its manifestations.

I still suggest that rock is what the world listens to 6 days a week, 7 days a week for that matter.

It is the common language, the profane language, and I use that in the most polite sense of the word.

It is the ordinary language of the culture of our world.

No matter what you listen to, you will hear evidences of good old American pop rock in almost every piece of music that comes.

Listen to the world, from American Public Radio.

Their last 10 minutes is always a piece of music from somewhere in the world.

You listen to it, it's got a little American pop rock somewhere in the background, if it isn't dominating.

No matter what corner of the earth, the world's youth culture has adopted American pop rock as the language.

Rock is as close as we have come to a global musical language, it is the way people express themselves, it's the way they entertain themselves, it's the way they do their work.

If there were no other reason at all to challenge the appropriateness of using rock in worship, the Sabbath commandment would have to require a change of style during those hours that are sacred hours and different from.

The day is not just another profane day and we ought not treat it in that fashion.

On your bibliography you'll find a book by Dan Lucarini, a rather nice narrative of his own journey through the rock scene and the CCM praise and worship scene, confessions of a former praise and worship leader.

Along the way, as he describes his experience, He quotes Rick Warren, a name that probably more of you know.

Rick Warren, the author of The Purpose-Driven Church, and this is what Rick Warren said, We use the style of music the majority of people in our church listen to on the radio.

They like bright, happy, cheerful music with a strong beat.

Their ears are accustomed to music with a strong bass line and rhythm.

And again, a quote from the same writer, the music used on Sunday in church should not be any different from the music people listen to on their car radios during the week.

If we accept that argument, we make music the 1 realm of human experience which does not need to bow to the sacredness, the sanctity of Sabbath time.

And in the book of Ezekiel, the Lord spells out very clearly how he sees that.

Ezekiel 22, 26, her priests have done violence to my law and have profaned my holy things they have made no distinction between the holy and the profane and they have not taught the difference between the unclean and the clean and they hide their eyes from my Sabbaths, treating them the same as weekdays.

And I am profaned." God says, I am made common, I am made ordinary, I am made cheap among them.

To undertake to worship the Holy God on His holy day, by using the most secular, which equals common, which equals profane manifestations of our contemporary culture, is not just an oxymoron, folks.

I'd like to talk about church and culture.

1 can identify that there is a distinction and an intersection between the 2 from Jesus' words in the John 17 prayer I do not pray that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil." Now I don't think all culture is evil, and I would like to explain how I use the word culture, what I think of.

I'm borrowing a description from Marva Dawn, a very fine writer on worship, 2 of her books are on the list there, I recommend them both very, very highly.

She says, quote, culture connotes every aspect of life that is produced by human beings as opposed to that which is given in creation.

Selling Worship or Selling-out Worship?

Father in heaven, our wisdom is not sufficient for these things.

We are not wise enough, understanding enough, to know how to live even in this world without the guidance that you have promised to give us.

And so we ask that you will teach us, that you will send your Spirit to inform our minds and our hearts about the greatness of your love and the best way we can respond to it.

This session is entitled, Selling Worship or Selling Out Worship?

The title, Selling Worship, comes from a book which I read recently by 1 Pete Ward.

The title of his book is, selling worship.

I find that to be quite an oxymoron, at least a conundrum.

If worship is, as we described this morning, the proper response of all moral sentient beings to God, ascribing all honor and worth to their Creator God, precisely because He is worthy, delightfully so.

I don't really understand how an appropriate response can be sold.

I have an even harder time figuring out how an appropriate response might be bought.

In order for selling worship to mean anything at all, worship must somehow be perceived as a commodity something thingifiable if I may invent 1 which is going to cheapen our notion of what worship is right off the bat But his subtitle tells us a little more.

Now that presents a problem for those who contend that music is morally neutral or morally irrelevant.

In order to know whether the problem is a real problem, we have to know whether what or what we sing has changed the church.

If his phrase is exaggerated or inaccurate, there's no problem.

We should get on to more important matters.

And maybe the church and worship shouldn't be so synonymous that there's even a connection between his title and his subtitle.

Selling Worship, How What we sing has changed the church.

I have to assume, though, because he puts them together in that way, that he sees them as at least connected.

And I believe, indeed, what we sing at the 11:00 hour and other hours when we get together does have an impact on what the church becomes has what people are singing has what people have been singing changed the nature the experience of the church at worship I want to be careful not to wrest things out of their context, but I wish to share with you 4 sentences from the introduction of his book.

The first 1, the culture of selling has begun to influence the culture and practice of the church.

I should point out in all fairness that he is writing for the United Kingdom, where apparently the contemporary worship music scene has been even more pronounced than in this country.

But his perception is that the culture of selling has begun to influence the culture and practice of the church.

Beyond that, he says, the shifting patterns in metaphor and imagery, common in worship songs, reveal a gradual theological development.

The observation that the theology of the Church is being changed through the songs that we sing is very significant.

If we add to this the realization that the changing patterns in theology are related to the way that popular music markets and sells itself, then some important and perhaps less than positive observations can begin to be made.

1 approach to how our singing influences the Church may come from the writings of Lionel A.D.

Who suggests that the content and purpose of hymns individually may be described as objective, subjective, or reflexive.

Objective hymns are doctrinal, or they narrate some particular biblical experience.

They state some facet of truth about God in a straightforward way.

They point us to some scriptural evidence about our Maker and His worthiness.

Subjective hymns introduce a strong mixture of the worshipper's personal experience.

They talk about how my life has been changed, or how I have responded in commitment to what God has done.

In general, those 2 categories are pretty much the same thing as the difference between hymns and gospel songs, a distinction which, up in Minneapolis, I had time to go into, I haven't had a chance to hear.

Gospel songs have to do with telling others about what the gospel did for me.

Hymns have to do with explaining to God how much I appreciate who He is, ascribing the worthiness of his characteristics.

The reflexive hymn, on the other hand, is a hymn about my singing, or a hymn about my own worship itself, rather than even my experience.

Those of us who have a great controversy understanding have a basis for responding to these.

Objective hymns are a strong theological content.

His actions as they relate to the human family should be kept alive and fresh in our experience as a touchstone by which to evaluate our own experience.

The Gospel Song is a subjective genre, and it focuses on how an individual has responded.

To whatever extent, feelings matter, and they do.

If there are warm fuzzies in our worship, they're going to be found in the gospel song.

Think for instance, I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses.

That's about me and my God, but from my point of view.

And that's a nice, warm, fuzzy kind of song, and we sing it that way.

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Series

Bruce Ashton - My Way or God's Way: Defining Christian Worship

Selling Worship or Selling-out Worship?

Transcript

Parent Series

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Recorded

Parts

This Mystery Called Music

52m

Sacred and Secular in Church and Culture

58m

Selling Worship or Selling-out Worship?

48m

Sound Doctrine