Improve your songwriting. Christian Praise and Worship songs will be specific.
Category: Worship (Page 1 of 3)
If you are tasked to choose the worship songs we sing on Sunday, or if you are a writer of Praise and Worship songs, you need to strive to have every word in their praise and worship song to be the perfect word. But one cannot know if a word is the perfect word until one has developed a poetic ear. Fortunately, it is possible to develop such an ear.
How to write praise and worship songs. I think that we could have better lyrics in our Christian praise and worship songs. Wouldn’t it be great if most of the songs we sang had powerful lyrics? This series, called the Poetry of Praise is my modest contribution to improving the lyrics of our praise and worship songs. My desire is that almost every song we sing in church gets more powerful every time we sing it, rather than less. Diction is the first, but it is not the only step toward this end.
We need to do better. Too much of what we sing in corporate worship is mediocre or worse. I’m talking lyrically. We need to choose better songs, and someone needs to write better songs. Better lyrics are poetry–they will evoke, not just the emotions of worshipers, but their imaginations as well. This video is the first in a series called The Poetry of Praise.
kareni / Pixabay
We don’t go to heaven when we die.
In a previous post, I presented 12 questions that might reveal the degree to which we unknowingly separate God out from the rest of life. In a comment, Monica asked me to go a little deeper into question number 3:
3. Do you speak of going to heaven when we die?
Answering this in the affirmative might be an indication that you suffer from Modern Secular dualism: the idea that material things and spiritual things are radically distinct. This separation leads to two false views of reality. The first is the secular manifestation of this idea: that the spiritual world does not exist, or is irrelevant to our lives. A second error, like unto it is that of the Christian under the influence of Modern Secularism–that although the spiritual realm exists, it is very distant. This view leads to the idea of “going to heaven when we die.”
Since its beginning, the church battled heresies involving the relationship between physical and spiritual realities.
Gnosticism: Material Bad
Gnosticism is an ancient heresy that was very influential in the early centuries of the church. One of the basic ideas of Gnosticism is that the spiritual world stands in opposition to the material one because they have to distinct natures–the material is evil and the spiritual is good.
Accepting this premise, it follows that the body is evil and the soul is good. The soul is imprisoned in the physical body, but upon death, it is freed and goes to a spiritual heaven where it has always truly belonged.
Modern Secularism is a lot like Gnosticism in that it also separates the physical from the spiritual. The difference is the Gnostics undervalued the physical and the Moderns undervalue the spiritual.
We find neither devalued in the Bible.
Genesis
In the first verses of Genesis, God creates all that is. He called it all good. On the sixth day, he created people.
Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Genesis 2:7
Human beings are certainly physical beings, but we are spiritual beings as well. Both are good. Jesus offers and even more complete anthropology when he quotes the Old Testament command to
‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ Luke 10:27.
Human beings are created with bodies and minds and hearts and spirits–all of these are declared it “very good” (Genesis 1:31). The Fall results in a twisting or distortion of all things, not just physical things. Contrary to both Gnostic and Modern teaching, all dimensions of humanity are valued, all are fallen. Consequently, all aspects of humanity are in need of redemption. In his death on the cross, Jesus redeems all of the whole person, not just her soul.
God declared all of creation to be good. All of creation is fallen because of Man’s sin. All of creation, not just some human souls, have been redeemed by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.
This is why we speak of the Cosmic Redemption–Christ redeems the entire Creation–all that God has made. On his return, he will complete redemption when he makes “all things new.”
Revelation
At the end of the book of Revelation, we see a picture of where history is headed.
I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”
Revelation 21: 3-5
John sees the new Jerusalem, the dwelling place of God, “coming down out of heaven.” God will dwell among his people, on earth.
This is not new. It is a biblical pattern. God delights to be with human beings in the Garden. He travels with the nation of Israel, living in a tent as they did. He lives with the Jews in the temple in Jerusalem. He dwells among us as the God/man, Jesus. Today, Christ takes up dwelling within us in his Spirit. So it is no surprise that God would once again be the one who comes to us.
It sounds to me as if we won’t be going to heaven.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”God lived with his people in The Garden, in the wilderness, in the temple, in the first century, and indwells us today. Why do we talk about going to live him in heaven when we die? Isn’t it likely He’ll stick to the same pattern? #heaven” quote=”God lived with his people in The Garden, in the wilderness, in the temple, in the first century, and indwells us today. Why do we talk about going to live him in heaven when we die? Isn’t it likely He’ll stick to the same pattern?”]
[click_to_tweet tweet=”It seems pretty clear that none of us, or very few of us, are going to heaven when we die. #heaven” quote=”It seems pretty clear that none of us, or very few of us, are going to heaven when we die.”]
Eternal life starts now
One’s view of heaven can make a tremendous difference in our lives right now.
If heaven is just spiritual and spiritual things are distant in both time and place, then eternal life has little to do with “real” life. The Christian life is a life of waiting. And so we wait.
If heaven is a holistic reality involving the whole person and all of creation; if Jesus lives in us and if heaven will be on earth, then a lot of the conditions for heaven are already in place and it is pretty close. Eternal life will certainly be different when all things are made new, but it will also be a continuation of what God has started in us and with us. This makes the present, eternally significant.
Modern liturgies reinforce the idea that the spiritual is non-existent or far away. Christians need to counter these with our own liturgies that practice the wholeness of creation. Ones that reinforce the spiritual significance of our thoughts, words, and deeds. Ones that increase our awareness of the nearness of Christ in us. Ones that help us to see all life is worship. Ones that equip us to embrace our purpose to steward creation.
God had the first word in the worship service. And he gets the last word. His last word is a blessing.
The Benediction
We have encountered our active God throughout the worship service and are now released into the world with his blessing. The benediction reminds us that the Grace we received through the Word and Sacrament, follow us out the door. The benediction signifies that our whole lives are covered by his Grace.
Sacred and Secular Dualism
The ritual of the benediction can train us into a proper understanding of the relationship between Sunday and Monday. We need some instruction here because our culture proclaims that Sunday has very little to do with Monday.
Dualism is the idea that all of life can be separated into two categories: the sacred and the secular. Traditionally, faith and life may have been distinct, but they weren’t separable. Faith and life were part of each other. Today, the modern obsession with clear categories assumes a radical separation between the two. Modern life is filled with these dualities, false dichotomies. Here are just a few:
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- physical and spiritual,
- temporal and eternal,
- natural and supernatural,
- body and soul,
- faith and reason,
- state and church,
- public and private,
- science and religion,
- Sunday and the rest of the week.
The Sacred/Secular dualism profoundly affects how both Christians and non-Christians experience reality. In many cases, non-Christians find it fairly easy to dismiss half of the equation and live under the illusion that half of reality isn’t even there, or at least it is irrelevant. Christians maintain at least an intellectual belief in both sides, but many see them separated by a vast abyss.
These 12 questions can begin to help us see the degree to which we, or our individual congregation is unknowingly separating God out from the rest of life.
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- Do you think that singing worship songs and prayer are more spiritual than eating and sex?
- Do you reduce redemption to the saving of souls?
- Do you speak of going to heaven when we die?
- Do you think that eternal life starts when we die, or sometime later?
- Do you believe that missionaries and pastors have a more spiritual calling than plumbers and accountants?
- Do you assert that certain parts of the creation are “off limits” to Christians?
- Are you more concerned with personal piety than the environment?
- Do you assume that faith has very little effect on the work we do?
- Do you believing that one’s spare time has nothing to do with what one believes?
- Do you thinking that the church is out of touch with “real life”?
- Do you use the word singing interchangeably with the word worship?
- Do you live as if work is an unpleasant necessity?
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Here are 12 questions that can help you determine if you are suffering from Christian dualism. 1. Do you think that singing worship songs and prayer are more spiritual than eating and sex? #dualism” quote=”Here are 12 questions that can help you determine if you suffering from Christian dualism. 1. Do you think that singing worship songs and prayer are more spiritual than eating and sex?”]
In Modernism there is a radical separation between the sacred and the secular. It is often useful to differentiate between the two, to consider them as aspects of a whole, but they are each a whole unto itself. Our bodies and our souls, our reason and our emotions are all part of a whole person. Our private lives and our public lives are both parts of a whole life. Worship in the church of Sunday and worship in the world are a part of each other. The benediction is a declaration that that the two are inseparable. In both life is worship and worship is life. We are depended on God’s Grace as we worship in church, and we are dependent on Gods Grace as we worship in the world.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Worship in the church on Sunday and worship in the world are a part of each other, and it is in the benediction that the two are fused in to an integrated whole. #benediction #worship #dualism” quote=”Worship in the church on Sunday and worship in the world are a part of each other, and it is in the benediction that the two are fused in to an integrated whole.”]
In the benediction God says, “Go. Make disciples, Do the work for which I equipped and called you.” The benediction blurs the lines between our worship in church and our worship in the world.
The Order of Worship (1): Call to Worship
The Order of Worship (2): Confession
The Order of Worship (3): The Sermon
The Order of Worship (4): The Creed
The Order of Worship (5): Pastoral Prayer
The Order of Worship (6): The Lord’s Supper
Order of Worship (6): Lord’s Supper
The dialogue of worship continues.
Ordinance or Sacrament?
As an ordinance, the Lord’s Supper is a memorial. We remember Christ’s death on the cross. As a sacrament, we commune with the risen Lord and receive from his hand the life he extends to us. All churches who celebrate Communion do so “in remembrance of what Christ did for us on the cross. The question is, is that all it is? Is it just a memorial?
This is where I started thinking about God’s involvement in worship. If it’s an ordinance, Communion is just a memorial, an act of human remembering. In this scenario, human beings do all that there is to be done in Communion–they remember. This seemed to me to be a contradiction because if you argue ordinance it seems silly to proclaim God’s active sovereignty from the pulpit. How can God be active in our lives, when he’s inactive in Communion.
The essential difference between an ordinance and a sacrament is whether or not God is doing anything in the event. You already know where I am going with this. I have been arguing that God is active in our Sunday gatherings, so of course he’d be involved in the supper we’ve named The Lord’s Supper.
God is active in Communion and his first act is to invite us to the table.
Invitation to the Table
It is fitting that the first action belongs to God. In the establishment of the First Communion, Jesus was very active. He found the room, gathered his disciples, washed their feet and moderated the sacramental meal. God does the same for us and his Invitation is an act of Grace.
Communion
God is active in The Holy Supper. What does he do? He speaks. He says, “Take” and then he extends something to us. What does he offer? Well, we are not exactly sure, but if we read the symbols, it might have something to do with nourishment and sustenance. Literal bread and wine are basic foods that nourish our physical bodies. Spiritually we need sustenance as well. His body and blood are nourishment for our spiritual life. Perhaps he is conveying unity; all Christians eat and drink of the body and blood of Christ, and in so doing, we are united in him. The bread and wine are symbolic, but this term is not understood by those steeped in Modern reasoning. The communion elements aren’t “just symbols.” (The allusions present in the sacrament itself ought to be enough to convince us of this.)
In some way we receive Christ and Grace by the Holy Spirit through faith. What actually happens at the table is a mystery. Modern secularism doesn’t like mysteries, and neither do modern Christians–we like to have clear explanations for spiritual things. But we don’t get to have clarity here, and I don’t think we should want it. A ritual engaging in a spiritual mystery will teach us that reality is comprised of mysteries that we can neither understand nor control. We simply receive and accept by faith. This might go a long way to counter the secularizing pressures of living in the Modern world.
In Communion, through the physical elements of bread and wine, Christ signifies our salvation through his sacrifice on the cross. The really interesting thing here is that we are presented with a convergence of the spiritual and the physical reality. Modernism wants to make distinct and separate categories, again, so do Modern Christians. But the two are not as distinct as we naturally conceive it. That Word became flesh, and yet never ceased to be God.
All of worship, all of life, all of reality is both physical and spiritual–sex is a spiritual communion, Kraft Dinner is morally reprehensible, coffee tastes terrible in Styrofoam, the first thing we do when we wake up in the morning is likely an act of worship, and we ought to fold our hands when we pray, and possible consider kneeling or lying prostrate.
Screwtape, senior tempter (demon if you will) in C. S. Lewis’ book, The Screwtape Letters tells us why.
At the very least, [humans] can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers; for they constantly forget, what you must always remember, that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls. It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.
Because we struggle with seeing the spiritual reality in our ordinary lives, we find it easy to dismiss it from Communion.
But this is the very reason why we should emphasize divine agency in the Lord’s Supper. We need to be be trained out of the foolish view that the physical and the spiritual are separate. We are trained by ritual. By regularly entering into the mystery of the Eucharist, we again and again experience an incarnational reality.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Because we struggle with seeing the spiritual reality in our ordinary lives, we find it easy to dismiss it from #Communion. But this is the very reason why we should emphasize divine agency in the #LordsSupper. #Incarnation ” quote=”Because we struggle with seeing the spiritual reality in our ordinary lives, we find it easy to dismiss it from Communion. But this is the very reason why we should emphasize divine agency in the Lord’s Supper. “]
A Sunday encounter with the mystery of the incarnation in Communion can perhaps be the vehicle by which we begin experience the nearness of the Holy Spirit on Monday.
The Order of Worship (1): Call to Worship
The Order of Worship (2): Confession
The Order of Worship (3): The Sermon
The Order of Worship (4): The Creed
The Order of Worship (5): Pastoral Prayer
The Order of Worship (7): The Benediction
Prayers of Intercession/Pastoral Prayer
In the dialogue of Sunday worship, the people continue to speak in this section. The Pastoral Prayer is a continuation of our response to God’s word.
This prayer is primarily intercessory. In it, we petition God for the needs within the church, the universal church, and the world.
This was the killer for me as a kid. It was “the long prayer,” and for some reason, I could not be fortified with a peppermint as I had been for the sermon. It was interminable because there was a lot of need in our particular church, but this prayer’s scope was global. It was long but learned a lot about reality from the Pastoral Prayer even when I was very young.
What I learned from the Pastoral Prayer
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Seven things I learned from the ‘Pastoral Prayer.’ Or ‘the long prayer’ as I called it. It was interminable, but its lessons have stuck with me. #worship #prayer #pastoralprayer #CongregationalPrayer” quote=”Seven things I learned from ‘Pastoral Prayer.’ Or ‘the long prayer’ as I called it. It was interminable, but its lessons have stuck with me. “]
- We can speak to God about all of our needs.
- God is big. My father was the pastor, and he was talking to God whom he addressed as “father.” He talked to God like he was big. When I was a kid, my father was big too–so to hear my father speak to God this way was revealing. He prayed like God could really do something for the missionaries in Africa or the victims of flooding in China. All my father prayers started, and still do, with praising God for who he is.
- God is Father. My father talked to God with familiarity and sincerity as well as respect. This paradox was not lost on me as a young child. I learned that God is big, but he is also good. A heavenly father.
- God cares. He cares about this person who had this ailment, and that family who has lost someone. He cares about the people in the world who didn’t have clean water or food. He cares about the missionaries who are bringing good news.
- I learned that he wasn’t just the God of people in my church, and not just the God of Christians, but of everybody. We prayed for our town and about the leaders of the country, and for the leaders of other countries. That they would be wise and that they would be obedient.
- I also learned that God could do something about these things we were praying about. My father prayed with expectation. But I also learned that the prayer wasn’t some kind of a magic trick. The prayer wasn’t valuable for its utility–there was something else going on. That prayer was, in large part, for the sake of the one who prays.
- At some point, I figured out that I could send my own small requests to God during the Pastoral Prayer. My father had opened the conduit, as it were, so I figured I could still fire up some requests alongside his.
There are more things that I learned, but the important thing is that I learned them because they were repeated every week. They have stuck with me for many decades now, because of the repetition.
My current church always prayers for another local church, and a missionary. I love this ritual it shapes us. we come to know, among other things, that the Body of Christ involves other congregations and denominations in this town. These other churches are not in competition with us but are all trying to achieve the same thing–the learning and spreading of the Good News.
Offertory Prayer and the Offering
We continue in our response to the Word with the offering.
The offertory prayer is a regular reminder that God has blessed us richly. All that we have comes from him. He gives the gifts through which we love our neighbours.
Giving is both a sacred duty and a “joy.”
These terms seem contradictory, but they are not–when you fully understand that God has given you everything, and everything you have belongs to God, giving is quite easy. When you think that what is your’s is your’s, cheerful giving is impossible.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Just as your parents always gave you a nickel to drop into the collection plate, the weekly giving, and the prayer that goes along with it, is a training exercise that is meant to train us into joy. #offering #tithe #tithing ” quote=”Just as your parents always gave you a nickel to drop into the collection plate, the weekly giving, and the prayer that goes along with it, is a training exercise that is meant to train us into joy. “]
Just as your parents always gave you a nickel to drop into the collection plate, the weekly giving, and the prayer that goes along with it, is a training exercise that is meant to train us into joy. The joy that comes from understanding that all we have belongs to God and are to be used for his purposes.
Other posts in this series:
The Order of Worship (1): The Call to Worship and Greeting
The Order of Worship (2): Confession
The Order of Worship (3): The Sermon
The Order of Worship (4): The Creed
The Order of Worship (6): Lord’s Supper
The Order of Worship (7): The Benediction
pixagod / Pixabay
The dialogue continues. God contributed most to the conversation in the Proclamation section of the liturgy. In this section, we do most of the talking as we respond to the Word and the Grace we received from our Father’s hand.
Song or Hymn of Response
The song we sing after the sermon is not just a song. At least it shouldn’t be. It should be a song that articulates musically and poetically, the appropriate response to God’s Word and Grace. Which song we sing depends on the sermon, for the service is a unified whole.
In some churches, a great deal of thought goes into the choice of this song. The content of the lyrics is a significant determiner. Some churches just sing one of the ten songs that we’ve been singing for the last few months. What the song says doesn’t matter as much as the feelings the song generates.
The concern here is the dialogue of worship. God says something, presumably significant–let’s say today’s sermon was about “Gracious Giving”–and our response is, “Glorious Day.” It’s nice to have conversations each Christmas with dear Aunt Martha, they are beautiful and relational, but because of their lack of coherence, they don’t really go anywhere. In this analogy, we are dear Aunt Martha.
The Apostles’ Creed
Although many proclaim it, there is no such thing as a “No Creed But Christ” church.
Either you affirm one of the traditional creeds, or you will affirm another more organic creed that rises up out of your context and your interpretation of the Bible within it. The problem here is that culture tends to influence the formation of this creed. Either way, you will be a “creedal” church. And your creed will be reinforced with ritual.
I suggest that we might as well adopt the traditional creeds of the Christian tradition. The Apostle’s Creed is the one that reviews the foundational doctrines of orthodox Christianity.
The Apostle’s Creed affirms
- the Trinity,
- the historical facts of the gospel,
- the person and work of the Holy Spirit,
- the existence of a “holy” universal church,
- the communion of saints,
- the forgiveness of sins,
- the resurrection,
- and life everlasting.
This creed is not infallible, but it is based on the Bible within a long tradition. It is old, and in this, there is some merit. New is not necessarily improved.
Even with the regular recitation of a traditional creed, we are still in danger of ritualizing other non-biblical cultural beliefs. But without this practice, what is to prevent the church from sliding away from the basic tenets of Christianity without even being aware of having done so?
[click_to_tweet tweet=”In the absence of a Creed (or despite one), here are 12 organic creedal statements that some churches may have passively adopted. #noCreedButChrist #noCreedButTheBible” quote=”In the absence of a Creed (or despite one), here are 12 organic creedal statements that some churches may have passively adopted. “]
Here’s a partial list of organic creedal statements that rise out of context and a particular interpretation of the Bible.
- “New means improved.”
- “We experience the Holy Spirit in worship through our feelings.”
- “The most important aspect of the Bible is its inerrancy.”
- “It is better to be married than to remain single.”
- “There are spiritual things and then there are sacred things.”
- Sin is doing bad things.”
- The worst sins are sexual.”
- “Christian living is about striving.”
- “All people are created equal”
- “The worshiper’s experience is important in the Sunday service”
- “Worship is singing and singing is worship.”
- “Efficiency and practicality are Christian virtues.”
Would you add anything to this list? The comment section awaits.
If you don’t recite a creed, take a long hard look at the implicit creeds that have been ritualized in your church. This is a good practice for every church, even those who regularly recite a traditional creed.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Either you affirm one of the traditional creeds, or you will affirm another more organic creed that rises up out of your context and your interpretation of the Bible within it. Either way, you will be a ‘creedal’ church. #ApostlesCreed #NoCreedButTheBible ” quote=”Either you affirm one of the traditional creeds, or you will affirm another more organic creed that rises up out of your context and your interpretation of the Bible within it. Either way, you will be a ‘creedal’ church.”]
Other posts in this series:
The Order of Worship (1): The Call to Worship and Greeting
The Order of Worship (2): Confession
The Order of Worship (3): The Sermon
The Order of Worship (5): Pastoral Prayer
Order of Worship (3): Proclamation
If the liturgy is a dialogue between God and his people, in the Proclamation section God does most of the talking.
God speaks to us primarily through his word–the Bible. The sermon is an encounter with, not just the Bible, but God as revealed in its pages. What we find in the Bible is a collection of ancient texts that were written for us, but not to us. The Bible is a story. That’s not all it is, but it helps us to understand how to approach it. It is not our story, but it is the story in which we live, not just Christians, but all of humanity. It is a story centered on Jesus Christ–the Word as spoken of by John in the first verses of his gospel.
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Prayer for Illumination
Rituals are not empty, they are full in the sense that they train us on the deepest level. What sort of training is provided by the weekly repetition of the prayer of illumination? It trains us how to approach the Bible. This prayer is an admission that we need God’s help, to understand what we find in scripture, an admission that we can’t rely on our own reason and knowledge to understand. This is an acknowledgment that the Bible is a book that must be read with spiritual assistance–the Holy Spirit.
This prayer focuses our attention beyond ourselves as readers, indeed, beyond the text to our Lord, Jesus Christ, the Word of God. In this prayer, we anticipate the working of his Grace through our encounter with the text. In a real sense, then, we are preparing for a supernatural event.
The Sunday Prayer of Illumination will change how we approach daily devotions on Monday, for it is a reminder that the words of the Bible are a site of miraculous encounters.
The Sermon
The sermon is, or ought to be, about the Bible.
What is the Bible?
What the Bible isn’t is an encyclopedia, or an instruction manual for life, or a rule book. It’s hard to resist looking at the Bible in these ways because our cultural default is set to view everything as an object that might have a use.
In a recent Tweet, Tim Keller said, “It is impossible to understand a culture without discerning its idols.” This applies to our culture as well. And one of our idols is Reason. Rationalism is the idea that the best, or even only, way to know things is through human reason. Our confidence in human reason has taken some blows in the last century, but we still stubbornly hold onto our faith in it. It is so powerful that it has effected how we read and understand the Bible.
As Christians, we believe that the Bible is true. As Westerners, we believe that truth is an object of human Reason. The Bible, then, becomes nothing more than an object that we study and use as rational subjects. We look for “applications,” instead of implications. We get too wound up about biblical inerrancy. But truth is much bigger than fact or useful information. The Bible becomes something more like an encyclopedia than a story, or a poem, or a painting. As Western Christians we must resist this limited notion of Truth.
So what is the Bible?
Rather than give a long rational treatise on what the Bible is, let me do what the Bible does and offer a picture of what a sermon, rooted in the Word, can be.
The image is found in Ezekiel:
37 The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”
I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”
4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 5 This is what the Sovereign Lordsays to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”
7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.
9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army
We are dry and lifeless. The Word of God, preached by inspired human authors, brings life. God could himself speak directly to the bones, but he chooses an intermediary–Ezekiel. He uses the preacher before us.
This image presents the Word, not as an object that we approach as rational subjects, but as active agent. We are the passive pile of dry bones–we are the object; the Holy Spirit is the subject. He brings life though the hearing of the Word. God is active in the sermon.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Do we listen to the sermon to learn about life or to receive it? The former is a happy by-product. The sermon is not the reflections of a pastor. It is an act of Grace, and we receive the life that flows from it. #sermon #preaching #liturgy” quote=”Do we listen to the sermon to learn about life or to receive it? The former is a happy by-product. The sermon is not simply the knowledgeable reflections of a pastor. The sermon is an act of Grace, and we receive the life that flows from it.”]
Other posts in this series:
The Order of Worship (1): The Call to Worship and Greeting
The Order of Worship (2): Confession
The Order of Worship (4): The Creed
The Order of Worship (5): Pastoral Prayer
The Order of Worship (6): The Lord’s Supper
The Order of Worship (7): The Benediction
