October 07, 2015
Call to Worship
The man opening the worship
service cradled a large shofar in his arm and spoke heavenward, “Shout to the
Lord! Bring everything that is good in here; blowing the shofar brings the
Spirit.” He then blew a long sustained blast and worshippers applauded his
skill. The trumpeter is a seasoned believer, so I feel confident that he knows the
Spirit dwells within believes and is not summoned to a church assembly with the
blast of a ram’s horn. However, in his zeal to connect OT worship with NT worship
he may have confused the fact that it is people who are called to worship. “On
the first day of the seventh month hold a sacred assembly and do no regular
work. It is a day for you to sound the trumpets” (Numbers 29:1 NIV).
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Gail;
-----I call this being “thingy”. People are so “thingy” that they don’t realize the Lord needs them to be empty before they can be anything. We need to start at knowing nothing before we can rightly know something. God even alludes to this reality in telling Moses His name is “I AM THAT I AM”, and then commanding that no-one make any graven image of Him. In other words, “You know nothing of what I am, so start there and learn who I am only by believing and obeying what I say. Don‘t use your imaginations to see Me; use your commitment to My Word and know Me by what follows your obedience.” Of course, that’s not a quote; it’s rather a giant boil-down of the Bible.
-----I like to make a big deal about intimacy, not just in our relationship with God, but also in the propriety of our relationships with everything else. Bringing intimacy with His Word into doing whatever we do makes finer and more resolute attachments to Him in our thinking as well as better correctness in what we do.
-----If I want to summon the Holy Spirit to my meeting with a shofar, God has given me the opportunity to do so, “Let everyone be fully convinced in his own mind.” (Rom 14:5) But walking thought one step further into intimacy with the Word, He has not necessarily given me the opportunity to do so AND to be correct about it, too, “I have applied all this to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brethren, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written.” (I Cor 4:6)
-----This “not going beyond what is written” stuff interestingly ties quite well into the “I AM THAT I AM” thing. It tells you there is a boundary beyond which “getting it right” is no longer under the Holy Spirit‘s warranty. And since Paul did not specify any degree or distance “beyond what is written” to not go, then the imperative boundary is right there at what is written. What you said about this is also right there at what is written, the shofar is an important element of summoning people to God’s holy feasts and convocations with minds and emotions focused. I have never read in the Word any idea that blowing the shofar was a summoning of the Holy Spirit. I will change my mind when I have read.
-----We are plagued with the company of a particular kind of person who also has the Spirit and salvation. They are the kind who think rhetorically while failing to understand rhetoric is for persuasion and logic is for thinking. They are the ones who plagued my earlier years with, “Who’s to say what’s right?” supposing that meant whatever they wanted to be right was right merely because they could ask that question while thinking their desired thought. They are the one’s who go, “Well what’s wrong with summoning the Spirit with the shofar if he wants to?” thinking any answer by anyone would be an embarrassing overstep of authority. This is like the Sunday school teacher who once started making hay about women’s right to teach and preach and be elders in the church just because it can be questioned, and for some inexplicable reason began reading I Cor 11:3-16. Had she actually begun at verse 3 instead of 4 she may have stopped before she started, but she didn’t. So she choked on verse 9 and began trying to chuckle it off at verse 10. This is not good to chuckle off God’s Word. It is good to get intimate with it: Did it say it? Then it meant it. Did it not say it? Then it didn’t mean that. It is best to not know what you need to know so God’s Word can tell you what to know, then you will know. He IS far more than we are, so His Word is a better boundary than are our desires.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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