Welcome back to the podcast on this Monday, last time we worked together.
You told us, Pastor John, that God enlists us in his service, which means he calls us to
have a part in accomplishing his purposes, not in meeting his needs.
Yeah, that's really key.
He uses us and in using us, we meet no need in God.
And that's true.
Then comes the question, what do we do with all the texts that talk about what we give to God?
That's the dilemma in the mind of a listener named Jeff thinking about Sunday mornings.
Pastor John, thank you for this podcast, Jeff, right?
You have taught that we are to come to corporate worship gatherings hungry to receive,
not to give to God as if you needed anything.
That's Acts 1725.
Yet there are other passages related to corporate worship that clearly use the language of giving.
Like, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.
That's Hebrews 1315.
Or bring an offering to him that Psalm 968, or give thanks to him, bless his name that Psalm 100 verse four.
How do you harmonize these two seemingly opposite perspectives on our role in corporate worship?
What do we give to God?
It's true that I have said very often that I think pastors make a mistake.
If they scold their people for coming to worship to get rather than to give us a mistake, they shouldn't do that.
If I hear a pastor say, if you people would just come to give to God rather than get from God,
we would have meaningful worship services.
I think that's a serious mistake.
In fact, I don't hear that so much anymore.
It makes me happy.
Now, I do suspect that such a pastoral rebuke is really on to something true.
People can come to worship to get the wrong thing.
They can come to get seen for their new outfit.
They used to happen on Easter at the church I grew up in.
They can come to appear moral in the community as an upstanding churchgoer.
They can come to merely see their friends.
They can come to merely take their children to get some moral instruction.
They can come in the hopes that their marriage will get better.
And pastors sense this wrong coming to get, and they know it's not healthy.
My people are coming to get all the wrong things.
But when the pastor diagnoses this problem,
as a disease of wanting to receive instead of wanting to give, that's the mistake.
It's not a disease to want to receive in worship.
I have argued that the very essence of worship,
not just the outward acts of worship, but the inward essence of worship,
is being satisfied in all that God is for us in Jesus.
Therefore, the way people should come to worship, if I'm right,
is to come hungry, to be satisfied in God,
to see God more clearly, to taste God more sweetly,
to be amazed at the way God is,
and to feel the admiration and the wonder of His greatness,
and to feel the hopeless, unthinkfulness,
and confidence of heart welling up because of the bounty of His grace.
All that is a way of getting.
Not giving.
And the right posture of that kind of getting
is a sense of hunger and neediness and desperation and longing and praying
for more of God, more of Christ, more of grace, more power.
That's the kind of getting I'm talking about.
And my point is that when we assume
that kind of needy, expectant, God-word posture,
God gets glory, not us.
And that's the essence of worship and worship services
and preaching should aim to awaken and satisfy that kind of God-hunger,
that kind of God-getting.
But Jeff is right to ask if I am contradicting the biblical language
of giving to God in worship.
Of course, I don't want to do that.
I don't want to contradict the Bible.
I love the Bible.
I believe the Bible.
Getting all this from the Bible.
If we read our English Bibles, we will see, give praise to God, Joshua 7, 19.
Give thanks to God, Psalm 751.
Bless God, Psalm 103.
Give glory to God, Romans 420.
Give power to God, Psalm 6834.
Offer sacrifices to God, Hebrews 13, 15.
I know these texts are in the Bible.
I love them.
I aim to obey them.
And I don't think they contradict what I just said.
About the essence of worship being satisfied in all that God is for us
and coming to worship services hungry to get more of God.
So here are five quick observations to support this claim that that's not a contradiction.
Number one, now this is just a pointer.
It's not a kind of absolute statement about the use of giving language in worship.
If you look up all the uses of the word give, which I did to get ready for this,
the Hebrew word Nuttan, super common word for give in a hundred contexts.
If you look up all the uses for the word Nuttan or give in the Psalms,
there are 95 uses of the word give.
Only three refer to giving to God.
Two, deny that we should do those three.
No one can give the price of his life.
Psalm 49, eight, you will not delight in sacrifice otherwise I'd give it some 51, 18.
The single one other text says, give power to God whose majesty is over Israel.
Virtually all other places in the Psalms where we read in English
that we should give to God praise or give to God thanks.
The Hebrew has no word for give.
It's just the word praise and the word thank.
And we use the word give and so create the problem for ourselves.
None of that says we should not use the language of giving to God.
I don't want to go that far at all, but it should be a caution
that maybe the Psalmwriters were jealous not to put God in the position
of being the main receiver in worship rather than the main giver in worship
since the giver gets the glory.
That's number one, number two.
That text, by the way, back in Psalm 68, 34, this says give God power,
give power to God is translated in the ESV, a scribe power to God.
And surely that is right.
So I think what we ought to mean when we speak of giving God glory
or giving honor or giving strength or giving wisdom or giving power
is that we are ascribing those things to God, not adding anything to God.
We are in essence receiving those things as gifts for us to enjoy
and echoing back to God our admiration and enjoyment that we call give God glory.
Number three, the Bible teaches that all our gifts to God,
whether ourselves or our resources or our praises or our thanks, are already gods.
And he himself is giving us the willingness and the ability to give him what is his.
First Chronicles 29, 14, when the people of Israel gave generously, David says,
I remember I used to use this over and over when I was a pastor to try to encourage
the right kind of giving to the church.
Here's what he says, but who am I?
And what is my people that we should be able thus to offer willingly?
In other words, the willingness was a gift for all things come from you.
And of your own, we have given you.
Now that means that both the thing given and the active giving are gifts to us.
Number four, Paul says in Romans 1135, who has given a gift to God that he should be repaid
for the answers, nobody.
And then he gives the reason for 36.
For from him and through him and to him are all things to him be glory forever and ever.
In other words, the Bible really wants to discourage us from thinking of ourselves.
As originating any gift to God, we are always receivers, even in our giving.
And we should love to have it.
So finally, number five, C.S. Lewis expresses why it is that our giving in worship is really a
getting, our giving praise to God is really getting joy in God.
Here's this famous quote that I've quoted so many times.
I love it.
The Psalmists Lewis says in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak
of what they care about.
My whole more general difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly
denying to us as regards the supremely valuable, what we delight to do,
what indeed we can't help doing about everything else we value.
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses,
but completes the enjoyment.
That's the key right there.
John Piper talking.
That's the key.
Here's Lewis again.
It is it's appointed so the praise is the joy's appointed consummation.
It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are.
The delight is incomplete till it is expressed.
So I end where we started.
Yes, we come to worship to give praise to God, but the essence of that praise is being satisfied
in all that God is for us in worship and the overflow in outward acts is the completion of the joy.
Joy in God, which is a gift from God to us.
Yeah, our giving praise to God is really getting joy in God.
That's a remarkably profound point about praising him and how his glory and our joy are bound
together, profoundly bound together, which is what we're all about as Christian
heatheness. Thank you, Pastor John.
And speaking of praise, how do we authentically praise others?
That's up next time.
When we host Tony Ranki, we'll see you back here on Thursday. See you then.