Fullness (6): Sing Out!
- Rev Norman Cameron
As we look at these
verses today in Colossians I want us to look at our theology of worship. A lot
of words have been written about worship – what it is and what it isn’t. People
have strong opinions on it, theologians have strong opinions, church attenders
have strong opinions and God has strong opinions also. In the ten commandments
we are warned not to worship anything other than God, not to make an idol or
direct our worship to any god other than the true God otherwise there will be
serious ramifications (Ex.20:4). So worship is a serious topic. In this passage
we will see that Paul sees praise as having a key role in corporate worship as
the people of God come together. But before we get there can I say a word on
verse 15 which we could easily miss as we get into the more controversial and
exciting debates about worship.
PEACE
Our theme for
Colossians has been Fullness and one
of the benefits of opening ourselves increasingly to the fullness of God which
is available to us through faith and a relationship with Jesus Christ is a
sense of peace and well being. “Let the peace of Christ rule in your
hearts”. God’s fullness leads to a sense of peace and well being within
ourselves and that extends to our relationships with others, especially other
believers. As we open ourselves up more and more to the influence of Christ we
ought to find that we are less bitter and quarrelsome with people. Within a
local church fellowship we strive to be more at peace with our brothers and
sisters, to bear them no ill will, not to gossip and back bite.
Now let me also say that Paul
himself would recognise that living with each other in peace does not mean that
we sweep everything under the carpet and if we have a problem that we ignore it
– peace peace when there is no peace –
rather, in love, we deal with the problem and seek to resolve it. We can live
at peace with one another also and hold to differing interpretations of a
scripture or a doctrine. Paul himself where there was a major point of doctrine
at stake, such as Christ’s death alone being sufficient to save us, was not
behind the door in arguing his case, sometime forcefully. But he argued in love
and with the interests of the other person and of God’s glory in his own heart.
The peace that Paul speaks of is
not a false peace where there are real issues at stake that need to be
resolved. But so often we go to war over petty issues and the fullness of
Christ needs to flow into us and through us and we will see these petty things
as what they are. Jesus knew that unity made a huge impact on the world, it was
a strong witness to the truth of the gospel and the power of Christ. So let us
strive for peace. Let us strive as individuals for a situation where we can
look any brother or sister in the eye and not have bitterness or a grudge in
our hearts, but rather a spirit of thankfulness for them. May the peace of
Christ rule in our hearts, this will be good for us as individuals and for the
church.
TEACHING & SINGING
The fullness of God
comes mainly through the word of Christ dwelling in us. In v.16 Paul says “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly
as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms,
hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.” Now in terms of what Paul is saying here we
can ask this question – do we link the word of Christ and the teaching and
admonishing with the singing of psalms, hymns and spiritual songs; or is
the singing element something separate. In other words is Paul saying that we
teach and admonish one another in Christ as we sing, through the singing itself?
Is this one of the ways in which the word of Christ dwells in us as we gather
together for corporate praise? The songs themselves teach and admonish us. Is
that what he means?
Or is the singing
element not referring specifically to the teaching but is something that exists
alongside the teaching. We are taught in the context of praise, the
teaching and admonishing is there but is not done through the singing. The
original Greek is not actually clear. Most translations and translators lean
towards the singing happening alongside the teaching rather than the teaching
being done through the singing. But surely Paul words it in this way exactly because both can happen. We can
present our teaching surrounded by praise and that is helpful and ought
to complement the teaching, and surely we should also be aiming to teach and
encourage through the praise as we sing truth to each other.
The christian faith is a singing faith precisely because it helps us to
do a number of things – it enables us to praise God, it enables us to get into
a frame of mind for teaching and hearing the truths of God and it encourages us
in our faith as we sing great truths. This should therefore shape the choice of
songs that we sing for they should praise God, edify us and encourage us. So we
are singing to God – the vertical – and we are also singing to each other – the
horizontal, and perhaps this is a forgotten emphasis today. We will return to
this later.
The other point I want us to touch on is whether the psalms, hymns and spiritual songs are
three definite and separate categories of praise that Paul has in mind in v.16.
Again different people have differing views but I think Paul is not as concerned
with how a psalm differs from a hymn and a hymn from a spiritual song as to be
inclusive and say whatever you sing make
sure you sing with good content, sing to praise, sing to teach, sing to
encourage and sing with gratitude to God. All this is important and all these
types of song are worth doing and in High Kirk I hope that we have the full
balance of these different types of song however we define them.
WHAT IS WORSHIP?
Now let us look at a
theology of worship. What is worship and how do we do it in a Biblical way?
We can be led
helpfully into this discussion by verse 17 which rounds off this section which
reminds us that whatever we do, whether in word or deed, we do it all in the
name of the Lord Jesus and in a spirit of thankfulness. This surely is worship
in the broadest sense of the meaning. For under the NT there is a sense in
which all of life is worship if we live our lives unto God. Romans 12:1 says we
should offer “our bodies as living
sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship” - or
in E Peterson’s Message translation – “Take
your everyday, ordinary life-your sleeping, eating, going to work, and walking
around life – and place it before God as an offering.”
The Christian is called to worship
God Monday through Saturday as well as Sunday. The catechism reminds us that Man’s
chief end (or purpose) is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. That glorifying
should be done through our whole lives. This is worship in the broad sense, it
is living a God honouring life. Thus Archbishop Temple defined worship as “the response of all that man is to all that
God does and is”. That is a broad definition. Or here is another from John
Piper “Worship is a way of gladly
reflecting back to God the radiance of his worth”. This again is something
that we can do 24/7. This is declaring God’s worth in everything that we do.
That is worship in its broadest sense.
But surely the Bible also speaks of
worship in the narrower sense of what God’s people do as they come together in corporate
worship at a church meeting. This has been the main concern of all the books on
worship. What do we do when we come together? What is the Bible’s view on this?
What are the biblical principles? One of the things we discover in the NT is
that actually the NT has very little to say on corporate worship. In fact this
passage in Colossians is one of the few that mentions songs in detail.
If
we look for lists of what we can do and cannot do like in the OT we will not
find them. The main aspects of corporate worship in the OT were the Temple, the
priests, the sacrifices. All these have been satisfied in Christ. The temple is
gone, there no longer holy places only holy people. The sacrifice is gone,
Jesus was himself the sacrifice and he paid the price for sin, and as for
priests we are all priests now – we can all approach God ourselves, we do not
need a mediator. Christ was the mediator and we can all approach him through
prayer.
We still have offerings, we still have singing and we still have the
word of God. All the other trappings of corporate worship are fulfilled in Christ
and are no longer necessary. Some people cannot get their heads around this and
crave some OT touches – on both Prot and Catholic side.
For what it is worth let me throw in
what I regard as the biblical principles that shape my view of corporate
worship. There are four.
1. Worship is about
adoration
Both the OT and NT words that we translate as
worship have two main roots. One is bowing and the other is serving. Of the
four main Hebrew words used the most common literally means to bow down or do
homage. Worship is performing service to honour someone other than ourselves. Ps.95:6
“Come let us bow down in worship…”.
Another NT word for worship (proskuneo) literally means to kiss toward. The idea may come from
kissing the ground in prostration before a king. Another word group means to serve or minister (Gk latrio and
liturgeo) Deut.6:13 “Fear the Lord your
God and serve him only”. When we put all these together we get the ideas of
showing reverence, bowing, serving, adoring, praising, loving. This is what we
aim to do in corporate worship. God is our main audience – it is unto him. It
is about adoring him for who he is and thanking him for what he has done. This
is worship. Underhill thus defines worship as “the total adoring response of men and women to the one eternal God”.
In effect we are saying God you are great, and there is no-one or nothing like
you. You have made everything and we owe to you our very life’s breath. This is
worship.
We offer such worship to God the
Father, through Jesus the Son by the power and enabling of the Holy Spirit. The
Bible speaks of worship to God as Father and Son but does not specifically say
that we should address our worship to God the Spirit. The Spirit operates more
of a floodlight ministry where he prefers to throw light and glory upon the
Father and the Son.
In our worship we are giving God his
due as our creator and we declare that he is worth our reverence and respect. No-one
or nothing should take God’s place and the worship due to him alone as the
creator of the universe and the
redeemer of mankind.
Our worship does not make God greater than he is but it glorifies him
and it declares to others that he is worthy. It extends his reputation amongst
people and this glorifies him. So worship is about adoration.
2. Worship is about
action.
We have seen that
there is a group of words which speak of worship as service. We have already
referred to Rom.12:1 where as we offer our bodies it
is our spiritual act of service, or worship. In serving we do something so as
we serve as a S School teacher or Youth Club leader or BB Officer or small
group leader it is an act of worship, an act of service.
Within corporate worship we worship
through actions, we sing, we pray, we give an offering of money. These are
worshipping actions requiring thought and action. If we say that we believe in
God and trust in Jesus as our saviour then our words are empty unless they are
followed up by action. Worship is love in action. It involves the whole of our
being. Thus William Temple’s definition of worship is the one I like the best.
“Worship is the submission of all our
nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by his holiness; the
nourishment of mind with his truth; the purifying of imagination with his
beauty, the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of will to his
purpose - and all this gathered up in adoration…”
Worship is adoration
and action. If we say we love him that should be evident in our actions. We are
commanded by God to love him with all our heart and with all our soul and with
all our strength (Deut.6:5).
We worship God throughout the week
but as we gather for corporate worship everything is focused and concentrated.
It is like taking the daylight and for one hour focusing it on one spot through
a magnifying glass. That creates one white hot spot of light. Our worship
service should be that focusing of praise and worship, we give our best.
3. Worship is about
attitude.
But as we sing and
pray and give our money in corporate worship it is not just about the outward
action for it ought to come from a worshipful heart. Indeed if anything our
attitude and our motivation is more important than the outward action. We can
sing loudly but our heart actually be indifferent to God, we just like singing.
Others may be impressed by this but God looks on the heart. The most important
statement in the NT on worship was given by our Lord in John 4:23 “Yet a time is coming and has now come when
the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth for they
are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit and his worshippers
must worship in spirit and in truth.”
In other words the truest and purest worship happens in here, in the
heart. Get the heart right and the rest will follow. God is not as concerned
with holy places as holy hearts. What is our attitude, are we a reluctant
worshipper, or a wholehearted worshipper. Attitude is important.
4. Worship is about
one another.
The last thing to say
is that as well as the vertical aspect there is a horizontal aspect to worship
and we see this in our Colossians passage. Worship is primarily adoration of
God, the audience of One. But there is an aspect we need to also consider. In
corporate worship others are present and are impacted by our worship. It is
supposed to edify and encourage us as well. As we have seen we can also sing
truth and as well as praising God it can build us up in our faith – it can do
us good, we are singing truth to each other to encourage us.
Thus it is important that the words
mean something and have biblical content for the words teach us, they edify us,
they build us up. Now the question of musical style and type of praise is also
relevant here. If there is a manward as well as a godward aspect to worship
then we need to choose musical styles that resonate with those who are
gathered. This is where life gets a little complicated because in our culture
we have so many musical styles and everyone has their own preference. This is
where I try and settle somewhere in the middle and encourage people in love to
exercise patience if their own particular style is not sung or played all the
time.
This is another reason why it is
good to have a variety so that we can touch on a number of styles and be able
to connect with as many people as possible. I am convinced God likes all our
music if it is presented with the right attitude. The content of the words is
the main thing, but the music style is not irrelevant, especially if we are
trying to reach a modern culture.
Here then are the four
things that shape our worship, our praise but more than that everything we do
in our worship services.
We have excellent worship leading
but as we seek to improve what we do we are looking for more singers for our
choir. Just as we brought on board more S.School teachers on the principle of
teaching less so also if you can offer some time to singing, maybe only being
on once a month or six weeks then we are holding a special evening on 1st
February to share our vision for the music
ministry and how it can be even better. Please come along to hear more.
We have a singing faith. We have a
great God to sing to and about. May our worship be pleasing to God and edifying
to each other. May the fullness of God fill us so full that we cannot stop
singing and praising him. And to God be the glory.
Revelation 7:9-12