Thank you for your patience in waiting for next blog posts on worship. I have been reading in the first books of the Bible since the new year and I am in Leviticus right now which is the book about what being a priest was like and now just read of festivals etc. As I am reading this, I am reflecting on various movements who have sought to reclaim the biblical festivals in our lives, the obedience to the laws of Moses and living out a Yeshuah focused life but endorsing obedience to everything Moses taught as well. So my question sometimes is God, what are you requiring of me? What does worship look like for me as a new covenant believer. The thought that occurred to me that if the festivals are binding on me, and the law then it should still be eye for eye and tooth for tooth, and animals must be sacrificed, festivals absolutely must be celebrated, all these things must be obeyed, you can’t pick and choose parts of a covenant with God, it’s all or nothing.
The other thing I have been reminded of is the consequences of sin and the only way for justice and mercy to be done when we sin is either we or an animal has to die for forgiveness and right relationship with God to be restored. I have to admit I have totally lost sight of this for the most part. I’m way to casual about sinning against God. So much so I have a hard time with some of God’s consequences in Old covenant before Christ. Some sins were so bad and contagious that death of the person committing them was the way God required us to deal with sin. Forgiveness eternally with a repentant person being put to death, but their sin required forfeiting the rest of their earthly life. Certain sins committed were dealt with like we deal with mad cow disease, kill all those infected because there isn’t a way to separate the disease organism from the host to eradicate it. In light of this I realized the importance of regularly celebrating the Lord’s supper or communion which is the fulfillment of the passover meal which Jesus completely fulfills as the Lamb of God who takes away of the sin of the world. Celebrating this regularly as part of worship is importance as we need to remind ourselves of the price of sin, the price of our forgiveness with God, and to be provoked to thankfulness and praise. It is the least sacrifice we can do to say thank you to Jesus for the high price he paid for our forgiveness, many beatings, a crown of thorns, carrying his cross, and being hung by nails on a cross, suffering shame, mockery, and identifying with us as criminals, rebels and lawbreakers, when He wasn’t one, and to top it off, separation from the Father and going to hell with us to get us out. Wow, what a Saviour we have who is worthy to remembered and worthy to be praise forever and ever!
The new covenant we have because of Jesus death is a new covenant based on Christ’s shed blood of himself rather than an animal for forgiveness of our sins, this is the agreement we have with God now. I am reminded of Paul and the writer of Hebrews who is particularly focused on helping understand Jesus in light of the old covenant and the priesthood and it’s duties they were so familiar with.
Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise–the fruit of lips that openly profess his name. Hebrews 13:15
Then he goes on to say immediately, and do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased. Hebrews 13:16
Which then also reminds me of Paul in confronting the Judaizers which were saying circumcision is required and obedience to law of Moses says this. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor circumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. And later in Galatians 5:13 as Paul talks about our freedom in Christ and not being bound to law he says this “But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh, rather, serve one another humbly in love”
So putting this all together as worship leaders and musicians in new covenant what is our responsibility and call from God. We are a subcategory of the royal priesthood Jesus established in a new order of Melchizedek priesthood not the Levitical priesthood established through Aaron that sacrifices animals for sin under old covenant. I believe our call is to serve the rest of the body by leading the body in offering the sacrifice of praise regularly. Together with the other gifts including, pastors, teachers, evangelists, prophets and apostles we are to focus the attention of the body of Christ on giving thanks and praise to the One who gave us life for us, for the forgiveness of our sins. We can do this through live praise and worship leading on Sunday morning and evening services. We can do this in small groups. We can do this through recordings both video and audio to inspire praise to rise continually is the command to us. You have an important role so keep the praise rising and keep serving the body in this way and keep offering your gift to God and others. He loves you, and your willingness to honour His Son in this way.
Next time I am going to talk about the Melchizedek priesthood and how I believe this relates to us as ministering musicians who often are bi-vocational and if you happen to be in full time music ministry you will have this other component to your life which sometimes is referred to the kingly domain of business.
As I promised early I am going to share with you another version of You are Mine that I did using Garage band a program I haven’t used until now to do a basic recording using an M audio preamp interface with my computer and midi to USB input into my MacAir. This would be an example of a songwriter taking things the next step and playing with rhythm ideas, sounds, chord structure, melody and incorporating harmony and antiphonal singing into the spontaneous song I sang into my phone as a first step of capturing inspiration when it hits. I was amazed at how easy it was to start to learn Garage Band, up until this point in time I have only used Protools and at that I was just a basic user not a professional engineer or producer. So this is maybe a next step before recording a professional demo or a pre-produced version of a song with a producer. Hope you enjoy it.