worship

Communion

Matt Powell, Leave a comment

We celebrate the Lord’s Supper this Sunday.  We also refer to this sacrament as Communion,
because it is a symbol of our union with Christ.  The Apostle Paul told us that the bread we break
is the communion of the body of Christ, and that we all are one body since we
eat of one bread.
In salvation we are united to Christ.  We become one with Him in a mystical and
covenantal sense.  He obeyed the Father
perfectly, and died for the sins of His people. 
When we have faith in Him, we are united to Him, and these benefits
become ours.  His perfect obedience is
counted for our obedience, and His death pays the price for our sins.  That is true in a legal or covenantal sense,
but that union goes beyond the merely legal. 
We are united to Him really and truly. 
The Holy Spirit becomes the link between us and Christ, and by the
Spirit’s power Christ’s perfect human life is worked in us, so that we gain
access to His strength, knowledge and wisdom. 
All of these things, by the power of God, are worked in the life of the
Christian.  This is what it means to be
united to Him.
Communal
Participation
When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we celebrate this union
with Christ.  It is a powerful symbol to
us of what it means to “eat” Christ, to lay hold of all of His
benefits by faith and to be sustained by His life.  Further, it points us to the real communion
we have with each other.  It is
impossible to draw close to Christ without also drawing close to all other
believers; as we eat of that living bread, we are transformed by it, and by
that transformation we gain more and more closeness to all others being
transformed in the same way.

Why We Sing

Matt Powell, Leave a comment

Some thoughts from this Sunday’s bulletin:

We come to church in order to praise God and to learn about
who He is.  When Jesus commissioned His
church, He said that their work was to “make disciples”, which means
teaching. 

People learn a lot of different ways, and church done right provides a lot of
different ways to learn.  There’s
reading, there’s listening to sermons, there’s reciting creeds and Scriptures,
there’s discussion about the meaning of things. 
The Sacraments provide a lesson to our sight, taste and touch about the
nature of God’s grace to us.  Active,
passive, aural, even visual and tactile learning are all present. 
Any teacher of children will tell you that singing is one of
the best ways to teach.  When people
learn something in a song it often sticks with them in a way that nothing else
does.  People remember songs their whole
lives.  I have seen Alzheimer’s patients
that can’t recognize their own children, but remember hymns they learned when
they were children themselves.
Paul says the same thing in Colossians 3:16- “teaching
and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing
with grace in your hearts to the Lord.”
Songs in worship therefore need to have content, and good
content.  The Psalms are a great example
of what worship music should be like. 
They are artistically beautiful, doctrinally rich and have some
repetition but not a great deal.  Music
should be simple enough that the congregation can all participate in
singing.  Novelty should take a back
seat; songs should be sung often enough that they can be learned.

This Sunday we sing “O For a Thousand Tongues”, a hymn of praise to
God.  The writer expresses his great joy
at knowing God, knowing that one tongue alone is not nearly enough to properly
express the magnitude of God’s worth.  So
he asks for God’s assistance to give him strength to praise God in a way worthy
of His great name.  He focuses on all the
things God has done and is doing for him, especially through the saving work of
Jesus Christ.
We also sing “God is our Refuge and our Strength”,
from Psalm 46.  That hymn concentrates on
God’s might and preserving power.  The
psalm uses the image of a river that brings life and prosperity to a city; the
life-bringing Spirit of God is often described in Scriptures as a river, a river
that brings life.  Jesus said that all
who come to Him would receive living waters, that all who drank of that water
would never again thirst.  God’s power is
such that all His enemies will be cast down and God’s people will dwell in
peace and prosperity.