PASSPORT FOR WORSHIPPING IN SPIRIT & IN TRUTH E-Book

Mikael Reale

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 124

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

For some years now, the term Tabernacle of David has been embraced whole-heartedly by the world of evangelical Christians, and especially so in charismatic groups. We are seeing more and more churches who are discovering or rediscovering the importance of praise and worship in their meetings and who are now organising meetings entirely for the purpose of worship.

Leseprobe

To those who search…

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

What Is Worship?

Coming out of Egypt

Worship in Church Meetings

Building the Temple

The Cloud of God Comes

Deeper in the River

Beit Tehillah

The Pursuit of Happiness

INTRODUCTION

For some years now, the term “Tabernacle of David” has been embraced whole-heartedly by the world of evangelical Christians, and especially so in charismatic groups. We are seeing more and more churches who are discovering or rediscovering the importance of praise and worship in their meetings and who are now organising meetings entirely for the purpose of worship.

And it is true: what could be more natural than to consecrate some of our meetings exclusively to God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit!

All over, teams of worshippers are gathering for 24-hour non-stop “Tabernacle of David” meetings.

This passion for praise and worship seems to me to be the result of a prophetic breath preparing for the return of Jesus Christ. Does the Bible not tell us that God is seated in the midst of the praises of His people?

But in order for this zeal not to be merely yet another fashion amongst Christians, I believe it is important to understand what praise and worship actually is. What is its purpose? How does it honour God? But more than that, what is at stake spiritually?

To understand this, we need to realise that since the beginning of creation, worship has existed, and the one who was put in charge of it was an angel named Lucifer, who after his fall, would become Satan!

Today, as people bought at a price, we are called to take up the place that Satan lost – that of bringing worship to the Lord. We have every reason, therefore, to be apprehensive of the spiritual battle resulting from this function entrusted to the Church.

Satan has certainly understood this issue, and that is why he is so keen to have the whole world bowing at his feet. He is even willing to give everything he possesses to get us to do this.

Let’s read together Matthew 4 vs 8 and 9: “Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour. ‘All of this I will give you,’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me.’”

You and I know that all the earth belongs to Jesus Christ (Psalm 2), but we know, too, that for a set time, they were given to Satan (Luke 4 vs 6, John 12 vs 31).

We need to understand what this represents. The authority that Satan has over the nations allows him to keep some in the most extreme poverty, to fling one lot of people against another in bloody wars, to promote abortion, homosexuality, drugs, alcohol, prostitution throughout the world; to allow Islam to develop at a pace in the Arab world or the most selfish kind of materialism in the West! And he is willing to give up all of his power over the nations if we are prepared to worship him!

If all this is true, there must be a very good reason for it. In spite of his hatred for mankind created in God’s image, the devil is prepared to allow those who worship him to prosper. Not because he loves them, but because he derives his very reason for being from their worship.

In the garden of Eden, before the fall, Adam and Eve were themselves an act of permanent worship to God, simply by being the perfect handiwork of God that had not yet been soiled. It was only after their fall that worship would become a sacrifice and would need to cost those who worship.

The Law of Moses would later institute sacrifices, and King David, submitted to the Spirit of God, would set apart men consecrated to maintain a state of worship permanently at the centre of the people of Israel.

Jesus, the perfect man, without sin, is Himself a permanent act of worship to God, as was Adam before the fall, and in all things, He worships His Heavenly Father.

But He goes even further than that since He becomes the complete Sacrifice! This implies that the victim is entirely consecrated to God; the offering that Jesus brings to the Father is, thus, an absolute gift of Himself, the visible sign of the magnitude of His worship to the Father. He brings together the worship from His perfect being in the very way that the Father had intended before sin came into the picture - the kind that costs - in the way God instituted after the fall.

Through His life of total worship, Jesus teaches the Church its role of “the Kingdom of those who sacrifice” as described in Revelation chapter 1, verses 4 - 6: “John, To the seven churches in the province of Asia: Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father – to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.”

This position makes us, today, the main enemies of the devil. He cannot bear us taking his place in worship. This is why he will do everything in his power to stop us from entering into our calling of being those who bring a sacrifice.

WHAT IS WORSHIP?

It is the expected, normal manner of communication, established by God Himself from the beginning of time. It is a fundamental principle of the Kingdom of Heaven and never, ever has it been something that was created by man to honour God. It is, therefore, the appropriate, fitting way of expressing ourselves in our relationship with the Creator! It is also the way the three persons of the Trinity communicate with each other.

This means we can then assume that God Himself engages in worship.

He honours His Son in Matt 3 vs 17: ”And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased,’” or again, in chapter 17 vs 5: “While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!’” This is very clearly worship.

Jesus does the same towards the Father in Luke 11 vs 21, in the “Our Father” which begins with worshipping God the Father: “hallowed be your name!”, just as He says when speaking of the Holy Spirit in John 16 vs 13 and 14: “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and make it known to you.”

There are many other passages that can’t all be noted here.

It is worth noting that worship is also the manner of communication that is used in the relationship between nature and its creator. Isaiah 44 vs 23: “Sing for joy, oh heavens, for the Lord has done this; shout aloud, oh Earth beneath. Burst into song, you mountains, you forests and all your trees, for the Lord has redeemed Jacob; he displays his glory in Israel.”

We can therefore define worship in the kingdom of god as being the natural way of communicating in our relationship with god

God wants to restore a relationship between us and Him according to His relationship norms, not ours! This means we can be sure of the fact that right from the first chapters of Genesis and all through the Bible, that the Lord is a God of relationship. Let’s read together a few verses from Genesis 2.

Verse 18: “The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’” Contemplating the human being, God realises that he can’t be alone. God does not wonder about this problem with regard to the rest of His creation, but only in respect of the one He made in His image, and who, thus, has similar needs to his Creator’s.

God, therefore, decides to give Adam a spouse who will be his “helper” and in so doing, brings in the first institution that will govern relationships between men: Marriage. “For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” (Verse 24)

During all of the first few chapters of Genesis, we see that God regularly visits man. He engages with Adam to see what he will call the animals, when evening comes. He comes to visit the first couple. God is an integral part of their life. In fact, the relationship between the two spouses is based on worship. “The man said, ‘This is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called “woman” for she was taken out of man.’” (Genesis 2:23)

But alas, the first sin of an interminable list intervened. We know all of its spiritual consequences: Romans 6 vs 23: “For the wages of sin is death”, but I want to draw your attention to the immediate consequence today resulting from this, in terms of human relationships.

Having declared that woman was flesh of his flesh, bone of his bones, Adam completely dissociated himself from her in terms of their responsibility. In verse 12 of chapter 3, we read: “The woman you put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

In other words, it’s not my fault; it is the woman’s! Not MY wife, but THE wife that YOU gave me. So, it’s your fault, not mine!

From this moment, human relationships would become poisoned, the first fratricide, Cain and Abel, then wars, murders, genocides, abortion, suicide, etc…

The relationship between man and God experiences the consequences of sin too. Firstly, fear comes in. Verse 10: “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” Then a relationship perverted by pride, that leads God not to accept the sacrifice offered by Cain, ultimately Cain’s rebellion, as rather than accepting God’s recommendations that are full of love, he throws off restraint, abandons himself to sin and rebellion, and assassinates his brother.

But God has a plan allowing Him to restore this relationship. He throws a bridge over the gulf that Satan dug between Him and humanity. That bridge is in the shape of the cross of Calvary.

It is thanks to this that we have eternal life, Romans 5 vs 10: “For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life?”

It goes without saying that Satan is not pleased to see the relationship with God and with the rest of humanity being restored in Christ! The two main reasons for his anger are the following:

He is jealous and behaves like a kindergarten child who has broken his toy and so decides to break another child’s toy. He can’t bear the fact that we have taken his place, even if he himself doesn’t want to fulfil this task anymore.

Then, and tragically so, he understands a whole lot better than many Christians what is at stake when it comes to worship!

Satan knows that when we worship God, we come before the throne of grace, and it is there that God will bless us, heal us, equip us for battle, and give us His “MISSION ORDERS” so that we can rise up against the devil and his demons to take back our heritage! Satan knows it is through worship that we are victorious. Psalm 18 vs 3: “I call to the Lord, who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemies.” He will thus fight to make sure we are not able to enter fully into worship.

COMING OUT OF EGYPT

A good example of what this battle may entail can be seen in the first chapters of Exodus. We will read a few passages and then discuss them.

To begin with, let’s ask ourselves the following question: What is the reason Moses asks Pharaoh to be allowed to leave Egypt? We read the answer to this in Exodus 5 vs 1: “Afterwards, Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival to me in the desert.’”

The first thing to note is that we see God expects His people to celebrate Him, whereas Pharaoh, who symbolises Satan, affirms that he does not know God. “Pharaoh said, ‘Who is this Lord, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go.’” And under this pretext, he refuses to allow Israel to offer God the worship due to Him.

This reminds me of some situations that we find ourselves in when our families or our friends are not converted. These people don’t understand why we go to a worship service on a Sunday morning instead of staying in bed. They do not understand that we are making God the priority of our lives.

A young woman once admitted to me that her parents, who lived above them, had never said a word when, as a young couple, they would come back at 4am to carry on partying noisily with friends in their lounge.

A few months after the conversion of this couple, these same parents kicked up a huge fuss about the noise they made when they were worshipping the Lord in their garden at 21h45 during a home cell meeting!

But let’s get back to Pharaoh. He goes further than that. He makes sure that Israel cannot in any way worship their God, and in verse 9 of the same chapter, he decides: “Make the work harder for the men so that they keep working and pay no attention to lies.”