Biblical Worship 3

Many times when we see the appearance of an angel in the Bible, the angel will normally start by telling the witness not to fear.

What is there to fear about an angel?

I know someone is wondering why I am such a fool.

But I am asking so intentionally.

An angel is a being endowed with power beyond the natural. He is in simple terms a supernatural being.

His appearance in the natural must therefore arouse a dread, though we know them as servants of the divine towards those submitted to Him.

We also see several times the persons facing an angel having to be stopped from prostrating before (worshipping) them.

If an angel is that terrifying, what then do we expect from an encounter with the One who created that angel? What do we expect when we encounter the One whose errands the angels run?

There simply can be no comparison between encountering an angel and encountering God, which is what worship is.

Yet we think worship as a fun event.

In the Old Testament there were rules and guidelines whenever God was concerned, whether it was His worship or presence.

‘Lest you die’, is something you will read time and again because God is not anywhere close to our normal.

I find it scary when I see people talking to God as if He was at their service instead of being their Lord and King.

To imagine that Daniel’s companions fled the scene when God was showing His servant a vision!

And I Daniel alone saw the vision: for the men that were with me saw not the vision; but a great quaking fell upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves. (Daniel 10:7)

Where is the fear of God in our worship?

Are we really worshipping God or is what we call worship our own thing?

When Praise becomes Blasphemy

He that blesseth his friend with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, it shall be counted a curse to him. (Proverbs 27:14)

As I have been reflecting and writing about praise, I have come to the point that I see the bulk of what we call praise (and of course worship) as for the most part blasphemous.

I know many are shouting at the top of their systems that I have overstretched and so I will ask to be allowed to walk us through the reasons I am saying it.

What constitutes a false friend?

A false friend is simply someone who openly confesses their friendship yet behind the scenes is working feverishly to bring you down.

Allow me to give a very fresh example from the church I have been involved in.

There are these friends of the pastor who have over the three or so years I have been in that church been pouring praise on the pastor. They have talked about the wars they have fought for him in the many battles he has had in ministry for over twenty years.

According to their narrative, they could very easily take the bullet for him for the ministry and impact he had had on them.

Then early this year they cooked such muck, muck that was intended to completely obliterate the same pastor’s ministry from the damage they had cooked against his person. That for the single purpose of taking over his position.

Simply speaking, Judas would have looked like a saint if he was compared to what they have done to the same pastor they were pledging to take the bullet for when they wanted to take over his position.

Could you call such people friends just because their words spoke very positive about their pastor? Could you treat their words as praise when they are telling the congregation that they are not part of the scheme yet at other fora arguing for the guilt of this man of God in such detail as would make any ears tingle?

Of course not.

That is the point I want to make about praise.

Praise is not about the words we speak to and about God, words that may sound very pious.

Praise is not the amount of money we pour into what we think God needs.

Praise is not the actions we perform in God’s name.

Though praise may have those and even more, words and actions do not constitute what praise to God is.

At its root, praise is the overflow from a heart totally consumed by God’s revelation.

Praise originates from the heart. And it is from the heart that God receives it.

When we use words and songs to define our worship and leave out surrender, we are not talking about praise to God.

I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? (Amos 5: 21 – 25)

I hope you are getting what I am saying.

It is only a heart that is completely submitted to God that can able to truly praise Him.

Anything other than that is not praise.

This because praise is not about us or our interests or feelings.

How then does God look at praise that is not completely centred on Him?

It is simply bogus praise, or the praise of another, even if it is feigned as praise to God.

That is why I am calling it blasphemy.

Otherwise explain to me why Christ would call something that was ordered by Him in Exodus a den of robbers?

The order to Moses was to accentuate the worship of the Israelites who lived far from the centre of worship by removing the hassles of driving livestock those distances and looking for acceptable currency to offer in their worship.

But they had made that trade something completely different with a completely different focus.

A simple instruction had been transformed into something that was so abhorrent to God who had issued it that He had to whip people to stop it.

I believe we should start thinking about praise or worship void of words or music to be able to recapture what they are.

Otherwise we could be fueling blasphemy in our worship.

Biblical Worship 2

The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate. (Proverbs 8:13)

And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD; (Isaiah 11:2)

One word associated with worship is fear. In the scriptures it is sometimes called dread, an extreme form of fear associated with the Divine.

Is there any fun with dread?

Yet that is what we experience when we approach God, going by the examples we have in the scriptures.

As I said in my earlier post, this is the result of coming face to face, even from a large distance, with the Object of our worship.

Allow me to give an analogy.

High voltage electricity is useful. One reason it is raised to so many kilovolts is to enable it travel those distances. For that reason, the cables are raised to great heights

How many can come close to those cables?

We have heard of people who steal oil in the transformers lowering those voltages for domestic use.

Are there any who survive an error, however slight, in their stealing?

They are simply roasted dry, not much different from those hit by lightning.

That power is too much for a person to handle at close range.

Is that much different from God?

And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. (Exodus 33:20)

To be able to handle that much power, someone has to be attired appropriately and there is some that even with enough protection it has to be switched off and earthed before you can work on the system.

God is incomparable to such power. He is called a consuming fire because He will leave nothing after that encounter.

A few examples are in order

Remember Aaron’s sons?

They had been anointed into the priestly office as per God’s orders to Moses.

They had even completed their induction.

Then they became creative. Or isn’t creativity a gift from God?

That slight infraction cost them their lives. Their anointing was no match to God’s power.

Or Uzzah. He was just steadying the ark yet he was obliterated.

Or Korah and his 250 comparing their anointing with Moses’ being blasted even as their accomplices were swallowed by the earth.

Do you remember what happened after Elijah prayed for God to manifest?

Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. (1Kings 18:38)

Even the soil and water that are used to extinguish difficult fires were themselves consumed.

Nobody and nothing can stand before God without being consumed unless they do it under His direct orders.

Remember Moses was able to stay in that presence for two consecutive terms of forty days and nights each uninterrupted when he did not need food or water essential for living.

And he came out glowing, simply meaning radiating God’s glory.

But it was because Moses was so submitted to God and His orders that there was a single error in his forty years of ministry, the error that disqualified him from getting into the Promised Land.

Nitaendelea baadaye

Touch not Mine Anointed

He suffered no man to do them wrong: yea, he reproved kings for their sakes; Saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm. (Psalm 105: 14, 15)

I want to touch on this touchy subject today because it has been preached and quoted bare.

I want us to look at what the Bible says and how we can relate to it.

Let us travel to its source.

Do you realise that the context of the verse is Abraham lying about his wife and a king taking her as kings do?

Now therefore restore the man his wife; for he is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live: and if thou restore her not, know thou that thou shalt surely die, thou, and all that are thine. (Genesis 20:7)

We can from our vantage point easily say that Abraham was walking in sin, the sin of lying and refusing to cover his wife.

Yet even then God spoke and protected the person who had willingly chosen to leave all for God’s call.

It is important to realise that anointing originates only from God.

Another thing we need to realise is that it is God and not the anointed who talks about the anointing.

Worth noting is that when the anointed needs to remind others of the anointing it is because they probably do not have it or may have been rejected as king Saul was.

Nobody speaks of his anointing since it is plainly visible. It is when I doubt its presence that I will want to remind people that it is present.

Moses was anointed. Nobody doubted that, even pharaoh and his people.

You will realise that anybody who treated that anointing flimsily met with the wrath of God, even if it was the sister who was instrumental to his being a prince of Egypt.

Even Samson was anointed despite his stubborn rebellion and self- and pleasure-seeking lifestyle. That is why we see him killing more people at his death than he had killed during his ministry.

The same applied to Jephthah who was the son of a harlot and the captain of good for nothing fellows.

I will probably write some time about the purpose of anointing. But suffice it when I say that it is to accomplish God’s ends.

But allow me to get us to the New Testament.

You see, many preachers love the New Testament when it gives them the chills without the responsibilities yet run to the Old Testament when it suits their fancy as they always do when using this verse or about tithing.

Who is anointed in the New Testament?

But ye have an unction (anointing) from the Holy One, and ye know all things. (1John 2:20)

That is the clear thrust of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light: (1Peter 2:9)

It therefore means that each and every believer is anointed. Or what does Romans 8:9 say?

Since we are not the ones doing the anointing, we have no measure for that anointing since only God as the One doing the anointing knows it.

Moses had such anointing that even after it being shared with seventy others remained as powerful. Yet many people, including his own siblings and clan doubted it. And I am sure they had adequate reasons for the same.

It is therefore very easy to pour scorn on someone’s anointing without realizing that it weighs infinitely more than your flimsy one.

We are anointed for service. Our anointing is therefore commensurate with our assignment in God’s scheme of things.

Allow me to go to gifts to add some emphasis.

We are called the body with many members, each with its assigned duties.

Some are visible while others are not. Some are respectable while others appear to be just there.

Just think about the arm pit or butt for example.

How many wittingly display them as attractions?

Yet who can do without them?

Ever encountered someone with a boil on their arm pit or buttocks?

That is when you will realise how pivotal those ‘shameful’ parts are to your existence.

Using anointing as an analogy, those parts carry so much anointing for the amount of support they give to the rest of the body.

Compare that to the face, our PR body part.

Apart from being unattractive to some, a disfigurement of the same may pose no threat to normal living. A person with a spotted face or one having two colors is only so outwardly.

A similar boil on the same brings about a little discomfort while one on those hidden parts could be crippling.

This means that if I was the person doing the anointing, I would pour more on those unattractive parts than I would on the visibly attractive ones.

Do you think it is much different with God?

But now are they many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary: And those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness. For our comely parts have no need: but God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked: (1Corinthians 12: 20 – 24)

Why do you think you are the only one anointed just because God has given you a public ministry?

Are people in those in your eyes insignificant arm pit and butt ministries not anointed or as anointed as you are?

What am I saying?

God is the One who anoints. He is therefore the One who determines the amount of anointing we need to function as He would have us.

Nobody has the capacity to know who has more anointing than the other.

You could in pride with your little face anointing be touching God’s arm pit anointed when you threaten him to not touch God’s anointed. You could very easily be the one touching the anointed.

Just look at Jesus to get what I mean

Can you imagine the people who were laughing at and making fun of Him at the cross?

That is what you could be doing when you are talking about your anointing in the presence of the arm pit calling ministers since they may be handling an anointing incomparable in superiority to yours.

That is one reason Jesus taught us to serve instead of seeking to be served as He did.

That is also the thrust of Philippians 2

We have no idea about our anointing, leave alone that of others.

We should seek to support other believers excel in their anointing without seeking to draw their attention to ours since none of it comes from ourselves anyway.

What is Praise? 2

There is one pivotal point I must make even as I write about very many aspects of our Christian life.

This is the point at which Christianity diverts from all other beliefs and religions and the single reason it is treated as the enemy of the world and its systems.

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, … (Psalm 2: 1, 2)

Christianity is relational as far as God is concerned.

Did Christ have to be born and live amongst us, really?

 Was He not crucified even before the world was created?

The simple reason for that was because God intended for us to have a relationship with Him. That is why Christ lived amongst us before He died for us.

He did not do so for the sake of us following a set of rules. He did it so that we can have God close to us and have Him involved in our lives.

For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for? (Deuteronomy 4:7)

That was God’s whole idea of choosing Abraham from the nations.

This in effect means that anything God does for us is for the purpose of enriching our relationship with Him.

We are deceived when we think that God is about God demonstrating is superiority over any other god when He performs miracles because He is not in competition with anybody since He created everything, even those so-called gods.

A father does not fight to prove his fatherhood to his children unless he is unsure of his paternity.

Everything he does is due to the fact that he is the father of those children.

But he will delight in the fact that his children relate to him as their father.

In this context then, praise is what happens when a toddler or infant immediately falls asleep when they fall in the arms of their father because it demonstrates a peace that is the product of complete faith and rest in his father’s arms.

I love children. Or probably I should say that children love me.one day in public transport I was seated next to a young couple with a child who was crying so pitifully.

I looked at the child and told them that he was sleepy.

They said that he has refused to sleep and so can’t be sleepy.

So I took the child and he immediately slept.

They were amazed and told me it was impossible.

I told them that a child can know safe hands to sleep in.

They wanted to prove me wrong and so the mother took back the child who immediately woke up with a scream and refused to be rocked to sleep.

They then gave him back to me and he immediately went back to sleep, waking up almost an hour later as we were getting back to the city centre.

I explained to them that as new parents they are still learning to hold the child in a way that can be interpreted by the child as safe and so should not despair.

Their amazement at this was astounding.

Do you realise that this is what God expects from us?

Our greatest expression of praise to God is our rest in His arms.

Though that child could not speak or even look at me since both times he slept immediately he fell into my arms, his response was very clear statement of praise.

You are good. You are safe. You are strong. I trust you. That is what the child was saying by sleeping in my arms.

Isn’t this what God is expecting from us? Isn’t this what our praise should be like?

It is the words proceeding from our restful position in His arms that can be called praise.

Just assuming the child could have spoken.  He most likely could have pleaded with me to start living with them so that he could enjoy that rest all the time. Or probably asked me to take him with me.

I have many times held children who have to be wrenched out of my hands by their mothers because they simply refused to leave me.

What we sing as we rest in God’s revelation is our praise to Him. What we do in response to that revelation is our worship.

I hope I have not made it too simple. But I wanted to make it practical.

We must therefore thoroughly acquaint ourselves with His revelation (Bible) to be able to properly offer praise to Him since God does not expect us to be instinctive as toddlers in our relationship with Him.