Tag Archives: holiness

WORSHIP THE LORD

Apologetics, ,

I sometimes wake in the morning with nothing on my mind, like turning the page of my life, waiting to record the day’s thoughts and activities. At other times, my clean page already has a heading…

“Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.”

My earliest memories of church are of people gathering in an old church building, probably built in the 1800’s, with long, uncomfortable wooden pews, and a choir stall in the front, opposite to the raised pulpit…all the trappings of a conventional “church”.

Across the front wall, above the platform, were emblazoned these words on an ornate cement scroll… “Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness”. Although I did not understand their meaning then, I woould gaze at the words throughout the long sermon, tracing each letter over and over with an invisible finger to occupy my mind until the church service was over.

This verse, taken from Psalm 96:9, was a silent reminder to the congregation of our solemn duty to worship the Lord whenever we gathered in that building on a Sunday…or was it?

Had we then, and do we still now, relegate worship to a once-a-week ceremony on a Sunday? We have, in the latest dispensation of doing church, come to view our gathering on a Sunday as a “worship service”.

These ideas are so deeply engraved into our thinking that we hardly ever stop to evaluate what we are doing? We are “holy” during that brief time in church but for the rest, we get on with living our ordinary lives. We relegate worship and the spiritual feelings we enjoy, to a Sunday, satisfied that we have been faithful to God’s requirements.

Am I being harsh in my thinking?

Jesus had a conversation with a woman outside a village in Samaria, an unlikely situation for a Jewish man. He was on His way to Galilee. She was fetching water in the middle of the day. They met at the well.

Jesus kicked off the conversation by asking the woman for a drink of water. She was startled by His words because Jewish men don’t talk to Samaritan women, but Jesus didn’t care. He broke protocol because He was thirsty and she was lost.

Carefully, Jesus unpacked her need in their conversation, guiding her to the point where He revealed God’s dream for all humanity. Worshippers! The Father wanted worshippers!

John 4:23-24 NIV
[23] “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. [24] God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

True worshippers…in spirit and in truth? What does this mean? Did my verse, painted on the front wall of the church, somehow hold the secret to God’s dream?

Worship…what is worship? In its simplest meaning, to worship is to prostrate oneself before a superior person, not necessarily God. So, for example, Joseph’s brothers fell down before him after their father had been buried, when they thought that he would have his revenge.

Genesis 50:18 NLT
[18] “Then his brothers came and threw themselves down before Joseph. “Look, we are your slaves!” they said.”

However, to worship the Lord means far more that prostrating ourselves before Him. In that action is enshrined an attitude, as Google explains…

“In the Bible, worship encompasses more than just religious rituals; it signifies a deep, reverent devotion and heartfelt response to God, encompassing both outward expressions and inward attitudes. It involves acknowledging God’s worth, submitting to His authority, and expressing love and adoration through various means.”

Can you see, then, how far short our modern concept of worship falls before this definition?

Our verse continues…

” …In the beauty of holiness.”

What constitutes beauty in this requirement?

Again, Google helps us…

“The phrase “beauty of holiness” refers to the intrinsic attractiveness and desirable quality of being set apart for God and living a life that reflects His holiness. It encompasses both an inward purity and an outward expression of that purity in actions, attitudes, and worship.”

We ascribe beauty to the Lord, not in any physical way because God is spirit, but in the comeliness of His attributes and actions. Just as a beautiful sunset calls forth feelings of pleasure and delight, so God’s beauty lies in His being and doing that delight us and draw from us expressions of satisfaction and pleasure.

So, God desires that we express, in our worship, that beauty, “attractiveness”, in our ways that brings Him pleasure and delight.

What is the holiness that must accompany our worship? What is the holiness God requires that allows us access to Him and qualifies us to “see” Him?

Again, we turn to Google for help.

“Holiness, in essence, is being set apart, consecrated, and morally pure, primarily associated with God and His divine nature. It signifies a state of being entirely devoted to God and separated from sin and the things of the world. For humans, holiness involves striving to reflect God’s character through obedience, righteous living, and a growing relationship with Him.”

2 Corinthians 7:1 NIV
[1] “Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.”

The holiness of God’s people is not only beautiful to us…
It’s beautiful to Him, the lives of His people

So, the verse I stared at every Sunday sets out clearly the desire of God’s heart that we, His people, should approach Him with clean hands and a pure heart and worship Him in spirit and in truth.

Psalms 24:3-4 NIV
[3] “Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? [4] The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not trust in an idol or swear by a false god.”

Before I end this short meditation, why is it so important that we worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness? What difference does it make to us if we do or do not worship the Lord in this way?

God had a plan for people from the beginning. Like the intimacy between two people in a marriage relationship, their union produces new life. God uses the picture of marriage to illustrate the union within the Godhead that produces life…God’s life that continually perpetuates and sustains all life.

God has called us into partnership with Himself to fulfill His purpose to restore the life on earth that sin has destroyed. Through the intimacy of prayer and worship, He impregnates our spirits with His “seed”, His Word through which He carries out His will.

God has entrusted to us His promises, His declaration of intent, to which we agree and add our “AMEN!” which is far more than simple assent. Our “AMEN” implies our willing participation with the Father in the execution of His will on earth.

2 Corinthians 1:18-20, 22 NIV
[18] “But as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not “Yes” and “No.” [19] For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us—by me and Silas and Timothy—was not “Yes” and “No,” but in him it has always been “Yes.” [20] For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. 0
[21] Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, [22] set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.”

Can you see, then, how God has graciously involved us, in participation with Him, in fulfilling His will in earth? He impregnates us with His Word and gives birth to His purposes through us…and all this through the intimacy of true worship. His purpose is not possible outside of true worship, our hearts and lives at one with Him.

Hence the profound simplicity of Jesus’ prayer…

Matthew 6:9-13 NIV
[9] “This, then, is how you should pray: “ ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, [10] your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. [11] Give us today our daily bread. [12] And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. [13] And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’”

“Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness” in not a call to worship for a few moments on Sunday morning in a building we call “the church”. It is a rallying call to all God’s people to exalt and honour Him in every part of our everyday lives, giving glory to Him in the mundane as a witness to His Lordship over us as the supreme authority in our lives in everything.

DEATH OR LIFE?

Bible Study, ,

DEATH OR LIFE?

“I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness.” Romans 6:19.

Have you noticed the progression in what Paul was saying about our slavery either to sin or to obedience? Slavery to sin sets us on a downward path to unrighteousness which is nothing but purely selfish living, gratifying every whim and fancy of our fleshly nature, dehumanising us until we are fit for nothing else but the trash heap.

Slavery to obedience puts us on another path; this one leads to righteousness, imitating our Master who loved, cared for and served others. Righteousness leads to holiness, to being set apart from sin. The more we care about what God wants above what we want, and the more we obey Him instead of following our own appetites, the more we hate the sin that once enslaved us and enslaves the people who refuse to follow Jesus. We see what it does to them and we pull away from doing what they do.

Obedience to Jesus as our Lord puts us back on the path to becoming human again, and we become more alive to God and less alive to sin and to what the people in the world do. We have the assurance that God will complete the job of perfecting us in holiness and giving us the gift of everlasting life.

“When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at the time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you receive leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 6:20-23.

When we serve sin, we earn wages – like an employee working for an employer. If we have never received the new life Jesus offers us by accepting His forgiveness and turning our lives over to Him, we have to serve sin because sin is our master and because we are bound to it as slaves. We earn the wages that sin pays, death, and there is nothing we can do about it.

But eternal life isn’t like that. It is God’s free gift to us. We cannot work for it; we can do nothing to earn it; no amount of effort can produce it. God freely gives it to us when we respond to His invitation to receive it by receiving His Son and becoming God’s son or daughter.  Once we have received His gift, it us up to us to respond in faith and obedience to the leading of the Holy Spirit who has taken up residence in our spirit and who leads and prompts us to follow Jesus.

Only those who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God (Romans 8:14). When we give ourselves to Him to obey Him, we set off on the pathway to becoming fully human again , in other words, towards becoming the people God created in the beginning to be in perfect harmony with Him. God’s intention is to remove all sin so that we can once again be sinless and perfect.

Watch the progression. As we choose to obey God and to become slaves to righteousness, we progress towards holiness – separated from sin to God – and holiness will eventually lead us to eternal life. Sin leads to death. Obedience leads to life. The gift of eternal life is already ours but we must possess it by following the path to eternal life.

And so our participation in eternal life is a co-operative venture. It is impossible for us to possess it by our own efforts but, at the same time, we cannot just sit back and float towards our future. It is through trust in God and obedience to the promptings of His Spirit that we progress towards holiness and take hold of eternal life.

It begins by recognising that we died with Christ, were raised to new life with Him and are now in Him by His Spirit. It continues by participating with His Spirit by counting ourselves dead to sin and alive to God, progressing towards the possession of eternal life by choosing to do what is right, shunning sin and being perfected as true human beings once again, perfectly united to God once more when Jesus returns.

Which path are you one?

Acknowledgement

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

MOLLY AND ME – DISCIPLINE

Christian Life, , ,

At fourteen months, I guess it’s normal for Molly to have a little trouble with discipline. Like all human children, she also has a mind of her own.

The problem, though, is that she doesn’t know what is good for her. If she had her way, she’d chew every old bone, or bit of discarded food she finds on the pavement when we take our daily walk or, worse still, she’d sample every bit of rubbish that smells “good” to her, no matter whether it is harmful or not.

Fortunately for her (and for my peace of mind, I might add), our home is inside a walled garden from which there is no escape. She is never allowed outside the property except when she is securely under my control with harness and leash.

She sometimes obeys my commands like, “Sit,” when there is a treat being offered or, “Take your bone to your bed,” when I am on my way out and she gets a bone to chew while I am away. However, like a young child, she still falls short on obedience most of the time.

Why is it so important for her to learn to obey? An unruly puppy, like an unruly child, is a danger to herself. If I allowed her to do as she pleases, she would not last long in this world. For example, small as she is, it is her ambition to take on every dog in the neighbourhood, big or small, Fortunately for her, apart from my control, they are either behind a high wall and a strong gate or held securely on a leash by their owners.

Humans, from birth, have an inbred capacity to destroy ourselves. It all began with Adam. Lured by the promise of being “like God”, regardless of what God had instructed him, he fell for the lie that doing his own thing was good for him… and our world as it is today, is the result.

Believe it or not, God knows far better than we do what is good for us. Since He is our Creator and He loves us with a passion we will never understand, the whole world of us, good or bad, He has set the boundaries within which we can live in peace, safety and happiness. However, like self-willed puppies and toddlers, we test those boundaries because we neither love Him more than ourselves nor trust His love for us.

Discipline… obedience… trust… these are closely linked together. The writer to the Hebrews encourages his readers to trust the Father enough to submit to His discipline because, not only does He want to save us from ourselves but in doing so, He is slowly transforming us from wayward and unruly brats into sons and daughters who resemble Him and are fit to live in His presence

eternally.

…Have you forgotten the encouraging words God spoke to you as His 

children? He said, “My child, don’t make light of the Lord’s discipline, and don’t give up when He corrects you. For the Lord disciplines those He loves, and He punishes each one He accepts as His child.

As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as His own children.Whoever heard of a child who is never disciplined by its father?

… Since we respected our earthly father who disciplined us, shouldn’t we submit even more to the discipline of the Father of our spirits and live forever?

For our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years, doing the best they knew how. But God’s discipline is always good for us, so that we might share in His holiness. (Hebrews 12:5-7; 9-10) 

In all animal society, there are boundaries that each generation must learn in order to survive in the wild. Molly is only a dog. She knows nothing of God and His love for her but, like all creatures, she must submit to my discipline if she is to live with me in peace.

I you and I are members of God’s family, we are serving our apprenticeship on earth for an eternal home with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. How important it is for us to submit to the hardships that are part of daily life and trust the Father to work in all things for our good so that He can prepare us to live with Him forever.

 

Continue reading MOLLY AND ME – DISCIPLINE →

Relax – Respond – Rest

Christian Life, , , ,

RELAX – RESPOND – REST

Many books have been written on the subject of holiness. Some are helpful; others, like the one I read recently, have angered and frustrated me because, instead of sticking to God’s Word, the authors have created their own version of holiness and what God requires of us to meet His standard.

I found that the book I read, although promising an exciting insight into the truth, is a yet another misleading, self-help volume that adds to the hard labour of an already over-burdened Christian reading public. Like the rabbis of old, a well-meaning but misinformed writer has garnished the simple truth of God’s Word with additions and prescriptions which have obscured what God intends to be a liberating and joyful experience.

In response, I decided to write my own book! Which I did! Which is on the threshold of release. Which is called The Heartbeat of Holiness.

I have made three simple observations and drawn two conclusions. It is impossible for me to rewrite the book for a blog but, over the next few days I plan to give you a summary – and perhaps whet your appetite to read the book.

Point number 1 – Relax!

Have you noticed that God always does for us what He demands of us? Now isn’t that amazing?

Throughout the Bible, we see the same principle at work. He demands that we deal with our sin which requires death as payment for our debt. We can’t; because each sinner must pay his own debt, which is eternal death, so He sent His Son, Jesus to live among us as one of us, sinless and without any debt of His own. He died in our place so that God’s wrath against sin could be satisfied and the sinner be reconciled to the Father.

The same principle applies when we come to the subject of holiness. God is holy; He demands that we be holy. Without holiness we cannot “see” Him. What is holiness? God is totally separated from sin and separated to Himself. He cannot have anything to do with sin. He is always consistent with His own nature. We know that God is just, righteous, merciful and good because all His actions reveal who He is.

Since He created us in His image to have fellowship with Him and to be one with Him, it follows that we are also to have nothing to do with sin and to be separated to Him. Like our toothbrush which we share with no one else, God created us to belong exclusively to Him. We are His because He made us and because He bought us back from slavery to sin and Satan.

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore, honour God with your bodies (1 Cor. 6:19-20).

Trying to be holy by ourselves is as futile as trying to save ourselves from our sin. Why would God demand of us what He knows we cannot achieve? No amount of self-effort, including self-awareness and self-scrutiny, endless confession of sin, repeated prayers to become holy, breaking so-called “generational curses” and…and…and…can achieve what God demands. We might as well give up before we start.

If we can’t make ourselves holy, no matter how hard we try, what is the answer? How will we ever achieve God’s standard to make it in the end? Will we fail to see God because we fell short in spite of being saved from sin by God’s grace? How will we know if we have satisfied God’s demand?

I have good news for you. Relax! God does not only demand that we be holy – He promised to make us holy. This immediately takes the pressure off us. Of course, it is impossible for us to be holy through our own effort but He has a simple plan to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

Watch this space. Tomorrow we shall explore His plan and discover that holiness as God requires, is completely within our reach because He does the work from beginning to end.

Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or Kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Do you like this post? Then buy your own copy of my book, Learning to be a Disciple, which is also available from www.amazon.com or www.takealot.com in South Africa. You can also order a copy directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com

Watch this space!

My latest book, The Heartbeat of Holiness, will also soon be available.