|
|
Saturday, October 09, 2004
Over the last week, we learned that confession is something that should be part of our worship. We also saw that confession has two distinct categories, corporate as well an individual.
Corporately, we saw where the Israelites, after their 7-day fellowship feast/celebration, called a solemn assembly in which they modeled several ways we can worship. They were fasting, in order to focus on God. They also understood that they needed to keep God the focus of their confession, and did so by illustrating their spiritual poverty before God...even to the point of mourning. This is still staggering to me that they viewed their corporate failure as such a serious reality. I often wonder what our corporate prayer as the church in America would sound like.
Then we took a look at the background to Psalm 51, which is an Psalm that vividly expresses the nature of personal confession. We learned that it's easy to see the sin in others lives while difficult to see the sin in our own lives. We also saw that David viewed his sin primarily against God, not man...and we often get that backwards, too.
We saw how David didn't feel a need to grocery list his sins...rather to focus on the holiness of God and where he fell short. In other words, God's holiness should always be our focus, not ourselves.
When then took a look at how David realized that God wasn't pleased with our sacrifices and our offerings, but rather realizing that there isn't a sacrifice or an offering that will cover up murder (which, in the words of Martin Luther, we carry the very nails of Christ in our pockets), depending on the loyal love of God to cleanse us.
Lastly, we looked at the reality that we're to make our decisions with eternity in mind, and that it isn't really good to be short-sighted...which is what sin really is, and ultimately, what this week's worth of lessons is really about: Admitting that God is God, we're not Him, and that He can cleanse us if we really just ask him to do it.
This is setting the tone for a bigger picture of worship that we'll look at beginning tomorrow in Sunday School.
Brent 4:11 PM
|