Songs for Sunday

These are the songs the worship team selected a few weeks ago when I thought I would be preaching on the idea of deliverance in the Psalms. Now I think God is having me go in another direction for the message, but the songs are still good and we'll see if Providence is better at song selection than we are. That's been the case in the past!

The opening choruses will be the Chris Tomlin tune "Enough," and another chorus, "Good to Me," that I believe we've sung before. There is a post below to a video that will familiarize you with "Enough" if you're not sure how to sing it.

The first hymn will be "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah." This wonderful hymn was hurt in the estimation of some by its use in "The African Queen." But, written by William Williams it became an anthem of the Welsh revival in which Williams was saved. He went from being a college student on his way to a career in medicine to being a preaching, singing evangelist because he happened to hear someone preaching in a churchyard. Within a short time of having written this hymn it was being sung by thousands of Welsh believers in soccer stadiums throughout Wales. Our version of the hymn is a translation from the Welsh.

The prayer hymn will be Decide This Doubt For Me. To listen to a version of the song go to http://www.redmountainchurch.org/rmm/b-sides/b-sides.html. This will take you to the site of the church whose music ministry team came up with the music for the hymn from the 17oo's by one of England's greatest poets.

And the closing hymn will be "I Know Whom I Have Believed," written by a Daniel Whittle, some time after his experience as a POW in the Civil War.

One of this Sunday's Choruses

I would encourage you to watch this video if you are unfamiliar with the song, both to help you figure out how it's sung and, more importantly, why we're singing it.

Having a Grasp of Things

Concerning tomorrow's sermon:
Modern assumptions about scientific materialism shape our thinking in ways we hardly know. Scientific materialism limits reality to the strictly natural and material, and limits our knowledge to what we can observe about the natural and material. (That's a crude definition.) The funny thing is that modern science is convinced that by reducing and compressing the landscape of reality and then narrowing and limiting the means by which we might know anything about it we have actually advanced our understanding.
Science offers things like cell phones, genetically modified organisms and satellites as evidence for this advancement.
1 Cor. 1:19-20 (ESV) For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart." [20] Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
So here's a question that might serve as a partial antidote to the wisdom of the wise that infects us all to some degree: Who has a better grasp on things?
The scientist says that the conditions for fire are fuel and a means of ignition, but that water will inhibit or prevent fire and that some materials are simply not flammable.
Elijah demonstrated on Mt. Carmel that while all of that is predictably likely, none of is true.
So, who has a better grasp on the nature of nature? The scientist with his rules or the wild-eyed prophet with his shocking exception.
Or consider the scientist who states with confidence that when a rock is struck by the end of a stick being swung by a person with moderate force, the wood will make a sound and bounce away from the rock. Moses, however, demonstrates that the rock will produce sweet water as a result.
So who has a better grasp of nature then? The thirsty scientist, or the well satisfied primitive?
The scientist says that there is no connection between snakes and walking sticks. Moses demonstrates that the one may turn into the other. Moses had a very literal grasp on the nature of snakes so that we might reasonably presume that he knew more about snakes than any herpetologist alive today. I know of no herpetologist who can turn his snake into a staff.
The scientist with his mystical faith in gravity and his worship of the supposed laws that govern matter in its liquid form says with confidence that water will always obey gravity and flow downward to a level. Moses and the whole people of Israel made a sham of that conviction when they crossed the Red Sea on dry land.
Moses had a better grasp of the natural world than any meteorologist or physicist or oceanographer alive today. He understood that it was a miracle that the water was piled up for him on either side and restrained there for a time. But it seemed like a reasonable sort of miracle, coming from the God who also miraculously stores immense amounts of water in large, nebulous containers apparently floating some distance above the earth. We call these containers clouds.
It's a miracle that water feels wet every time we touch it.
I would challenge you to make an effort to weed the scientific materialism out of your mind so that you can think like a Christian about the world around you. If you do, your cell phone will still work, I think. But you might find some unusual things happening to you or occurring to you.
You might find yourself, like Peter, walking on the water instead of sinking under it.

chris tomlin - how great is our god

This is one of the songs that we'll be singing this Sunday. Listen to Chris Tomlin explain how he wrote the song and then listen to him explain how to sing it.

Songs for Sunday the 27th

This Sunday we'll be starting out with three choruses. How Great Is Our God, Shout To the Lord, and Wonderful Maker were selected because, in addition to being energetic and worshipful, they help us focus on God's might as demonstrated in his sovereignty over nature.



Check out the post above which features a video of Chris Tomlin performing the song How Great Is Our God.



Our first hymn will be All Creatures of Our God and King, written by St. Francis of Assissi, who loved nature, but loved nature's God even more. The version of the hymn that we will sing is slightly different, musically speaking, from the familiar version in the hymnal.



The prayer hymn will be For the Beauty of the Earth, written by Folliot S. Pierpoint.



And the concluding hymn will be I Sing the Mighty Power of God, by Isaac Watts, who included it in a volume of hymns and poetry written especially for children. Though he had no children of his own, Isaac Watts loved children and so gave us these words to sing that say something to and about God with simple directness.



(Here's another song from the same volume, as found in One Year Book of Hymns, by Robert Brown and Mark Norton:



Let dogs delight to bark and bight, for God hath made them so.

Let bears and lions growl and fight, for so their natures go.

But children, you should never let such angry passions rise.

Your little hands were never made to tear each other's eyes.



Amen and amen!)

Readings for Sunday, April 27th

April 27, 2008

Call to Repentance
Psalm 51:17 (page 890)

Call to Worship
Psalm 29 (page 866)

OT Reading
Isaiah 41:17-20 (page 1123)

NT Reading
Matthew 14:20-36 (page 1520)

Message
The Wilderness of God
Psalm 107:33-43 (page 948)

Readings for Sunday, April 20th, 2008

I should have posted these much earlier in the week. I'm going to get the hang of this, though, so you can look forward to daily posts (or almost daily.)

Here are the Scripture readings for this Sunday's service:
Call to Repentance
Hebrews 10:37-39 (1874)

Call to Worship
Psalm 76 (page 913)

OT Reading
Jeremiah 10:1-10 (page 1188)

NT Reading
2 Timothy 1:8-14 (page 1853)

Message
A Scoreboard Mentality
Psalm 96 (934)

And here are some of the songs that we will be singing:

I Stand in Awe (80)
Stand Up and Bless the Lord (65)
Lead On, O King Eternal (724)

But with Lead On, O King Eternal the 2nd and 3rd verses will actually be the 2nd and 3rd verses of another hymn, An Endless Line of Splendor, by Vachel Lindsay in 1913:

Onward the line advances,
Shaking the hills with power,
Slaying the hidden demons,
The lions that devour.
No bloodshed in the wrestling—
But souls new born arise—
The nations growing kinder,
The child-hearts growing wise.

What is the final ending?
The issue, can we know?
Will Christ outlive Mohammed?
Will Kali’s altar go?
This is our faith tremendous—
Our wild hope, who shall scorn—
That in the Name of Jesus
The world shall be reborn!

The Whole Asparagus

Back when I was an RD my wife and I often found ourselves caught up in the romantic plans of the students who we worked with, because we had a kitchen and an apartment that were not constrained by the visitation rules that applied to the rest of the residence hall. I remember one time that my RA and friend Jason asked if he could use our kitchen and apartment to prepare a romantic meal for his girlfriend.

Christine and I did our best to stay out of his way and honor his desire to make the gesture by himself, but when we saw him cutting the top three or four inches off all of his asparagus spears we were curious. When we saw him throwing them in the trash we stepped in. He didn't really know asparagus very well and for some reason the smooth stalk looked right to him, but the part where buds started showing up did not.

We, as New Testament believers, are to have the mind of Christ. And we know from reading the Gospels that Jesus himself read the Psalms and made use of them. I have become convinced that it is important to wrestle with the thought patterns of the psalmist, both as an initial step in forming the mind of Christ in us, and as a way of getting the value out of the Psalms themselves. When we read the Psalms as though they were written by primitive barbarians, filtering out everything that doesn't fit with our modern sensibilities and discarding it as spiritual rubbish, we're missing out.

For the next several weeks I'm going to be preaching on aspects of the mind of the psalmist as revealed in the Psalms, starting this week with the psalmist's startling lack of respect for competing faiths. G.K. Chesterton said "These are the days when Christians are expected to praise every creed but their own." The psalmist only has praise for God and His law, expressing nothing but hostility to competing truth claims. Do we share the mind, share the thought patterns of the psalmist? Do we need to?

These are some of the questions I hope to answer this Sunday and in the Sundays to come.

In Absentia

Today I am going to be worshiping by myself in the parsonage. My recovery from hernia surgery is going a little slower than I'd hoped. If I were to come to church I would be in pajama bottoms and I'd be more of a distraction from than participant in worship.

But I'm excited that our small church boasts such depth that I can ask Rev. Elliott to fill the pulpit and Mr. Peck to lead GROW and others to step up in many other areas. I feel rich to be the shepherd of such a flock.

I have no doubt that God will bless in my absence at least as much as He does in my presence.

Love you all,
Joel

Love Like You've Never Been Jilted

I remember girls in college who demanded an awful lot from the guys who would date them. They would require such proofs of intention and degrees of commitment before giving any encouragement that they seemed aloof and haughty. It wasn't really that they wanted to keep guys from liking them. It was that they wanted to keep guys from hurting them.
Usually in these cases there was a backstory involving a young man who did not feel as deeply about her as she did about him. When he left her, he gave no indication of it being difficult for him to do so. And she, having opened her heart so wide, was all the more crushed for it.
I say all this, in light of last week's sermon, because I think our church can identify with that girl.
We're not interested in flirting with potential attenders, or with doing one-night-stands (one-Sabbath-stands). We're the sort that like to go steady.
But the problem is that because we are not casual about our love we are sometimes too reluctant to love. We demand evidence of intentions and proof of commitment before opening up our hearts to the new people that God brings into our midst.
This is wrong-minded, on the one hand, because playing hard to get is a technique best suited to making sure that a spinster stays that way.
And it's wrong-hearted, on the other hand, because Christ does not expect those who follow him to make it to heaven with their vulnerable hearts unscathed. According to Philippians 4:7 our best hope for the protection of our hearts is the peace of God which passes understanding, and not a distrustful, wary, defensive posture toward fellow believers and the searching lost.

Music for Sunday, April 6th

It's going to be a new music Sunday.
In future weeks I'll do a better job of posting all the music ahead of time, but this week, with there being very few readers, I'll just highlight the one. Our Prayer Hymn is going to be "Decide This Doubt For Me," written by the British poet William Cowper. Brought to faith and discipled by John Newton (of "Amazing Grace" fame), Cowper struggled with serious bouts of depression throughout his life. This hymn is poignant and real and says out loud what many of us feel but hate to admit.

For an audio file to hear the tune follow the link and click on the music button to the right of "Decide This Doubt for Me."

http://www.redmountainchurch.org/rmm/alb/lyrics.html


The Lord will happiness divine
On contrite hearts bestow;
Then tell me, gracious God, is mine
A contrite heart or no?
I hear, but seem to hear in vain,
Insensible as steel;
Insensible as steel;
If aught is felt, ’tis only pain,
To find I cannot feel,
To find I cannot feel.

I sometimes think myself inclined
To love Thee O, if I could;
But often feel another mind,
Averse to all, all that is good.
My best desires are faint and few,
I fain would strive for more,
I fain would strive for more;
But when I cry, “My strength renew!”
Seems weaker than before,
Seems weaker than before.

Thy saints are comforted, I know,
And love Thy house,
Thy house of prayer;
I sometimes go where others go,
But find no comfort there.
Oh make this heart rejoice, or ache;
Decide this doubt for me;
Decide this doubt for me;
And if it be not broken, break,
And heal it, if it be,
And heal it, if it be.

Readings for Sunday, April 6

April 6, 2008

Call to Repentance
Jeremiah 5:23-25 (page 1179)

Call to Worship
Psalm 51 (page 889)

OT Reading
Ezekiel 36:22-32 (page 1344)

NT Reading
Hebrews 3:7-15 (page 1865)

Message
Ephesians 4:17-24 (page 1821)
The Heart That Can Be Saved

Text for Sunday's Message

This Sunday I will be preaching on hardness of heart and the text for the message will be Ephesians 4:17-24, with a special emphasis on verses 18-19.

Consider this hymn written by John Fawcett (1769-1855)

Lord, dissolve my frozen heart,
By the beams of love divine;
This alone can warmth impart
To dissolve a heart like mine.

O that love, how vast it is!
Vast it seems, though known in part;
Stange indeed if love like this
Should not melt the frozen heart.

Savior, let thy love be felt,
Let its pow'r be felt by me,
Then my frozen heart shall melt,
Melt in love, O Lord to Thee.