Exhortation, June 27

The worship of the Christian church is ?spiritual?Eworship, worship ?in the Spirit?Eand ?through the Spirit.?E Every Christian can agree on that. What we cannot agree about is what this means for our worship.

For some Christians, spiritual worship means worship that ignores our bodies as much as possible. Spiritual worship is worship that majors on our internal life, highlighting feelings, emotions, and thoughts, rather than actions, gestures, and objects. Spiritual worship is quiet worship, peaceful worship, soothing worship. Spiritual songs are songs that calm us, or elevate us beyond the concerns of daily life.

But this is not the accent of the Spirit?s work in Scripture. One writer has said that the Biblical testimony that ?God is Spirit?Edoes not mean primarily that He lacks a body. Spirit has more to do with power than with bodilessness. This same writer suggests that Spirit in the Bible could almost be called the ?violence?Eof God.

This is evident in many of those passages that describe the Spirit?s work in the OT. The Spirit came on Othniel and he judged Israel and went into battle. The Spirit clothed Gideon, and he gathered an army for battle. The Spirit of Yahweh rushed onto Samson and he killed a lion and slaughtered Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. The Spirit came on Saul, and he led an army to deliver the city of Jabseh-gilead. Judging by word count alone, as I?ve said before, Samson was the most Spiritual man in the OT.

And the Spirit is anything but quiet. In the OT, the Spirit manifested Himself in the form of the glory-cloud that came down upon Mount Sinai and later settled above the cherubim in the tabernacle and the temple. When the glory-Spirit descended on Sinai, ?there was thunder and lightning flashes and a thick cloud upon the mountain and a very loud trumpet sound, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled . . . [and] the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder?E(Ex 19). At Pentecost, similarly, the Spirit came like the sound of a rushing mighty wind. Jesus said the Spirit is like the wind, which blows wherever it wills. But don?t think of a cool evening breeze; think instead of the locomotive sound of an approaching tornado. That is how the Spirit comes.

Elsewhere in the OT, the sound and sight of the Spirit is reflected by the people of God. At the dedication of the temple, the song and instruments of the Levites and priests calls down Yahweh?s glory to the temple, and the people elsewhere respond in praise to the coming of the Spirit of Yahweh in His glory. At least we can say that our song and worship is a way of calling on God to draw near, and a way of acknowledging His presence.

But I believe we can say more. The glory came on Sinai with the sound of a trumpet; and when Israel gathered on the temple mount the Levites blew trumpets, crashed cymbals, and played stringed instruments. Yahweh?s Spirit came on Sinai as a cloud; and the Israelites gathered at the temple mount offered sacrifices in abundance, thousands, so that the temple mount was capped with a raging fire and smoke. At Sinai, the Spirit descended in a cloud; on the temple mount, the Spirit-filled people sang and worshiped.

In short, Israel in her worship not only called on the Spirit and responded to the Spirit. Israel in her worship was a human reflection and even expression of the Spirit. And the same is true in the church?s worship. Through the Spirit who has been poured out on us, we replicate in our worship the sound and sight of the awesome glory-Spirit of God. And that is Spiritual worship.