Worship

I read Barbara Hughes' chapter on 'The Discipline of Worship' in her 'Disciplines of a Godly Woman' this week for a ladies' discipleship group, and the following post is the result of our group discussion on the issues it raised.

True worship is not judged by outward appearances, but by the state of the person's heart towards God. You could sing with 100% energy, and yet not be worshipping God. You could attend church every Sunday, but if your heart is not striving to love God and obey Him, your worship is meaningless. In 1 Samuel 15, Saul makes the mistake of thinking he can worship God in the way that he wants to. He is commanded to kill all the Amalekites, including their livestock, but he keeps Agag the king alive, and keeps the best of the livestock to sacrifice to God. His motives seem fairly good, but fundamentally he was disobeying God's command, and so Samuel rebuked him.

Therefore, to worship God 'in spirit and in truth' (John 4) means that you engage both your heart and your mind. We need to worship the God of the Bible, not shape our own god from what we think God should be like. It's no use singing songs to a god that we've decided could never send anyone to hell. We wouldn't be worshipping in truth then. But similarly, there's no use being doctinally correct without engaging our hearts in real love for God and all He has done for us.

In everything we do -our work, our social time, our leisure- we can worship Christ by doing everything for Him and to please Him (Col 3:17). But does this mean that we don't need to go to church? What makes our Sunday services different from this everyday worship? Well, on Sundays we participate in corporate worship. Our corporate worship is not just singing songs together, but hearing the Bible read and preached. It is vital for us to be members of a local church for our own spiritual health and for the sake of the world. God designed us to live the Christian life as part of the Body of Christ- it's not a solo pursuit. It's much harder to stand for Jesus when you're alone in a hostile world. Knowing other Christians and meeting with them regularly helps to strengthen you and encourage you that you need to stand firm till the end. Also, hearing God's word preached can challenge you with things in your life that God wants you to change, and help you get to know God better.

The church is God's designated place for Christians to meet together, disciple each other, and send each other out into the world to preach the good news of the gospel. In one sense the church is not a physical building, but God's people all over the world. But in another sense, each local church is an important unit of God's people, and we should make every effort to commit ourselves to it. The church needs you and you need the church!

Free will

I just read Wayne Grudem's section on the concept of 'free will' in 'Systematic Theology' and wanted to post it as I found it so helpful:

'Scripture nowhere says that we are "free" in the sense of being outside of God's control... But we are nonetheless free in the greatest sense that any creature of God could be free- we make willing choices, choices that have real effects. We are aware of no restraints on our will from God when we make decisions. We must insist that we have the power of willing choice; otherwise we will fall into the error of fatalism or determinism and thus conclude that choices do not matter, or that we cannot really make willing choices. On the other hand, the kind of freedom that is demanded by those who deny God's providential control of all things, a freedom to be outside of God's sustaining and controlling activity, would be impossible is Jesus Christ is indeed 'continually carrying along things by his word of power' (Heb 1:3)... An absolute "freedom", totally free of God's control, is simply not possible in a world providentially sustained and directed by God himself.' p331

Creation

There is no doubt in my mind that someone can be a sincere Christian and not be a creationist. Many people view Genesis 1-2 as a poetic account explaining the purpose of humanity, and see no conflict between this and the Big Bang theory. Perhaps God created a Big Bang. Either that, or Christians feel unsure what to think, how to reconcile the Bible account of creation with scientific theory.

I want to suggest that the creation controversy has many far-reaching implications in a Christian's worldview and life, and encourage Christians to prioritise what the Bible teaches above what men theorize.

Firstly, the whole apprach of marrying evolution and the Bible shows our human tendency to patronise our ancestors and believe that future = progress = better. We like to smile and say knowingly, "Yes but the people who wrote the Bible were unscientific. They didn't know all that we know now." I think it's a mistake to dismiss the intellect of people from Bible times. Cain built a city with no precedent! (Gen 4:17) If humans are inventive and intelligent now, they certainly were from the beginning- after all, we were made in the image of God and He is the ultimate Inventor and intelligent One.

Secondly I think it's dangerous to bring human ideas to the Bible, and try to squash the Bible to fit them- or worse, ignore what the Bible says, in favour of a human idea. The Bible was certainly written by men at a specific time in history where they didn't have space travel and electric power etc, but it was ultimately God-breathed (2 Tim 3:16). It is God's book about Himself and the world He created. It is His gracious revelation to us. It defines wisdom.

We, as flawed and sinful human beings, are not smarter than God. We weren't there when the universe was created. God was. Our puny human ideas don't touch a smidgen of the immense capacity of God's mind. He has NO LIMITATIONS!

Many people cling to evolution because they have rejected God and want to find a way of explaining the universe without Him in the picture. Many non-Christians scoff at a creationist: 'How can you believer that the universe was created in six days?' Their worldview does not include a God who is all-powerful, all-knowing and 100% good.

The crux of the matter is this: if you are a Christian and believe in a God who can raise from the dead, then you believe in a God who is the author and giver of life, who is perfectly capable of creating a universe in six days. And if you believe in this God, what exactly is so ludicrous about creationism? If you believe that God IS capable of a six day creation (which Genesis 1 asserts that He is), and yet choose to believe that He chose instead to form the world over millions of years from tiny cells, why exactly are you making that decision? What motivates you? If it's social acceptance, then surely you're valuing the theories of men above the Word of God?

Wayne Grudem in Systematic Theology points out that there are a number of problems with being a theistic evolutionary:

• Randomness vs God's clear purpose. 'after three hundred eighty-seven million four hundred ninety-two thousand eight hundred seventy-one attempts, God finally made a mouse that worked'.
• Scripture says God's word has immediate response
• Scripture says God made different species
• Adam and Eve were specially created to be different from other animals
• The New Testament affirms the historicity of Adam and Eve as real people (Rom 5, 1 Cor 15, Lk 3:38 etc)
  

Christians who support evolution have some seriously tricky issues and questions to grapple with, such as:

1. When did humans first exist? When did a Neanderthal become a human being with a soul?

2. Who were Adam and Eve? Two of many people who had all evolved at the same time? Mythological characters? If so, how much else of the Bible is mere mythology?

3. When did the Fall happen? There has to be a Fall, because even if you don't believe God created the world in six days, you have to believe that God created the world good-unless ou have God create something imperfect which throws open a whole other can of worms.

4. When did death enter the world? Evolutionary theory is based upon survival of the fittest, and the development of species over generations. The Bible teaches that death is a consequence of sin. No sin = no death. God HATES death. It is the antithesis of who He is- the life-giver. It makes no sense that He would create death as part of His perfect world. Any thinking which suggests death is necessary is only based on the world we see today- we cannot imagine a world without death. Yet that is what Jesus came to save us from, and the future we have to look forward to in heaven.

There are many things I don't understand about the world, the universe and the Bible. But I believe that God created everything and knows best:

'By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.' Hebrews 11:3

I don't want to bury my head in the sand and ignore science completely. But I feel happier taking God at His word and waiting for heaven where I'll understand much better! I'd rather stand before God and have Him say, 'You fool, Sophie, for taking Genesis 1 literally!' than to have Him say, 'Why did you believe what men said above what My word revealed to you?' And judging on Jesus' reaction to His contemporaries ('for they loved praise from men more than praise from God' Jn 12:43; 'You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men' Mk 7:8), I think the latter is more likely than the former.