Psalms 103:17: “But the mercy of the LORD [is] from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children’s children;”
I am researching to write a book where I will take every Hebrew word for praise and worship, as well as my research into the ancient Hebraic form of worship and try to plug it into a modern setting. I imagine it would come as a surprise to young people that once upon a time there were no worship teams. There was just a choir with robes who sang a song. Then the congregation would open a hymn book and sing a song. The pastor, who always dressed in a suit and tie would pray a gosh awful long prayer, then we would sing another song from the Hymn book unusually just one stanza and the pastor would preach his sermon and we would end with an invitation hymn, usually Just As I Am where people could come forward for salvation (nobody hardly ever did) then the pastor would give his benediction: “And now to the God of Jeroboam Rehoboam Jehospahat and all his phat and all them other phat boys – Amen.” And that was worship.
But then a new age of worship was ushered in as all those bored young people who endured those long prayers and hymns sung in ¾ time took charge. They disrobed the choir and replaced it with a worship team. They junked the organ and Steinway and replaced it with guitars, drums and a keyboard and they began to make noise. At first it was really good as there were some really talented worship teams who presented some great artistic expressions. However, as this began to catch on the talent was running thin and the not so talented found a way to have an audience and soon we were faced with mediocre talent on musical instruments and music to fit the mediocre.
Alright, I’m really being hard and judgmental. I will admit. Bless their hearts, there are the mediocre who love the Lord and their love for God makes up for their lack of talent. I’m just an old coot who longs for the return of the music of Maratha and the Brooklyn Tabernacle choir.
But I ask you, this everlasting to everlasting business. That is a long time and we will be praising God for his mercy in all these everlastings. Can you imagine spending eternity in a worship service like we have in some churches? There will be no noon hour to end our suffering either. I have been in some services, however, where the worship went for three hours and it seemed like three minutes. Then I have been in some worship services where I begin to glimpse what everlasting to everlasting really is as they drone on and on with the same song, same drum beat, same loud oh there I go again on a rant.
I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon in many worship services. They sing the same song over and over. I mean at least with the old hymns when we sang the same songs over and over we sang different verses and we would wait a few weeks before we would sing it again. Now, however, the songs have only one verse of six or seven lines and they repeat the song over and over and over for forty five minutes and sometimes they pick out one sentence and repeat that over and over. Do you ever have an annoying fly buzzing around your head with that same buzz, he never changes his tone. I don’t think I would mind flies too much if each sang a different buzz.
In the past few months I have been in three different worship services where the song was sung over and over. Quite frankly, in two of them I did not mind at all. One was in an inner city church where they just don’t endure their worship service they enjoy it. That was the three hours that seem like three minutes. Then my pastor had one of those rare occasions when he led the worship service. He is quite gifted musically, but that is not what made it a wonderful experience (although it did help). He also repeated a song over and over but when he did it, it was like he was on a journey of discovery and you could not help but be drawn into this journey with him to discover something about the heart of God. There the words were repeated over and over as if there was some secret code that we were trying to discover. That worship service also ended too soon. Then I attended a worship service in a suburban church were people were leaving the church because they did not like the music. So they were experimenting with different types of worship. They had some young kid who was too young to even remember the Maranatha music and he droned on and on with one song forcing us to stand, stand I’ll have you, for forty five minutes as we repeated these words over and over for no other reason than that was what this kid knew to be worship. I mean that is what they do it in the big churches so it must be worship.
For me personally, worship in heaven will be like that inner city church and my pastor’s worship service. It will be a celebration of joy and happiness and it will be a journey, a search and what will we be searching for? Psalms 103:17 tells us it will be chasad. I read this a little differently than His mercy is from everlasting to everlasting. True His mercy will endure for eternity but I think there is something else in this as well. The word everlasting is ‘olam which means continuous existence, perpetual and without end. Isn’t that enough? Why does the Psalmist repeat the word? One everlasting says it all. You can’t go from one everlasting to another, there is no end to the first everlasting to pass the baton unto another. One rabbi explained it this way. One everlasting is God’s heart the other everlasting is the chasad of His heart. From God’s eternal heart comes eternal chasad. I say chasad because chasad has many possibilities and many more we have never even considered. Sure it means mercy, but it also means kindness, goodness, instruction in kindness, kindness to the needy, the miserable, piety, love and the many forms of love etc. etc. etc. Another idea put forth by a rabbi was that from His everlasting chasad we will advance to a higher degree of everlasting chasad. When my pastor sang that song over and over and over, he was singing of the chasad of God over and over and over and with each over I was experiencing a new level of chasad and for once I was not checking my watch and anxious to move on with the program, I wanted it to go on for everlasting to everlasting. Learning and experience God’s chasad.
Recent Comments