Biblical Elements of Corporate Worship

Colossians 3:16-17

The Christian life is not about externals, but it is about the heart. It’s about a mindset that puts the eternal first, things above, and puts to death sinful actions and desires and putting on the internal characteristics that make one a reflection of Jesus Christ. Compassion, love, peace and all these things mentioned in the verses leading up to today’s text come from the heart. You can’t externalize them. So when we get together, we want to worship God from the heart. He wants our heart, but is there a certain pattern that should be followed in a church service, what we call corporate worship?

Verses 16-17 is one of the rare occasions that Bible describes the corporate worship of a church. Paul instructs the people how to worship and describes what is to be in public gatherings to worship. Paul give three elements of corporate worship in these verses: information, instruction, and emotion.

Information
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” This is a command. It is in the imperative tense. It is not optional, but necessary to be an obedient Christian. So let me stop right here and ask you. Based upon this one command, are you an obedient Christian? “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” It has the force of heaven’s authority around it and behind it. This is the word of God revealing Jesus Christ. The Bible is God’s revelation of Jesus Christ and should govern every thought, word, and deed. Why is this so crucial? Why is it so crucial to have the “Word of Christ” dwelling richly in us? Well Colossians says something about why this is crucial. Colossians 1:19 says, “In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell;” In Christ , not in a set of principles, not in a set of truths, but in a person. Col. 2:3 says, “In (Christ) are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” No wonder Paul says in Colossians 1:28, “(It is) Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” That’s why Paul asked them in Colossians 4:3 to pray, “that God would open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in bonds: 4 That I may make it manifest (or clear), how I ought to speak.” His desire was to make Christ clear. That is far different than making a set of principles or standards of morality clear. We make much of the Word of Christ, because the Word makes much of Christ.

The word makes much of Christ and as we see Christ in the word, we begin to know how much we need him. So we err when we treat the word as nothing more than a collection of principles or morality stories. A preacher once said it like this. “When we moralize the Bible we ultimately trivialize the congregation’s view of God and Christ, and we consequently trivialize their living so that it is not ultimately about a God-focused, Christ-centered, Word-saturated life.” So the word of Christ is not calling us to some kind of morality; it calls us to repent of our sin and believe on the Word. It calls us to submit to Him as King; to serve through Him. It calls us to forsake father and mother, brother and sister and to love Him above all else. It calls us to take up an instrument of death…our own cross as it were and follow Him. It calls us to go into all the world and make disciples of Him. That is why the word of Christ must dwell in us abundantly.

Look at verse 16 again. It says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you.” “You” is plural, so the church is in view here. The word "dwell" means "to be at home." Let the word of Christ be at home in you. Home is comfortable, right? Home is where you like to be. Home is home and let the word of God and the word of Christ not be any stranger to you, but let it be home. In other words, let it be settling there and living there, and the word “richly” is best translated "abundantly." I mean, you are jammed full of it. When I lived in Tennessee, the volunteer state, some people would have t-shirts that said, “I bleed orange.” What God is saying is that if they cut you anywhere you will bleed Bible verses.

You can't be content with spiritual snacks. You've got to feed on it. So the word of Christ is to dwell in you abundantly. How is it going to do that? Well, first of all you've got to read it, then you've got to study it, then you've got to live it. When you're all done you'll have it richly. You're going to have to get into the wealth of it. You know, it's a beautiful thought here, because 3:16 of Colossians is a direct parallel to Ephesians 5:18, and in Ephesians 5:18 it says, "And be not drunk with wine where it is in excess, but be filled with the Spirit." Then you have the same response: teaching, admonishing, singing, making a melody in your heart to the Lord; it's all the same response. You have exactly the same response in Ephesians to being filled with the Spirit that you have here in being dominated by the word. Do you know what the conclusion is? There's a very simple conclusion. Do you know what it means to be filled With the Spirit? What does it mean? Let the word of Christ dominate you. You see, the word of Christ in your heart and in your mind is the handle by which the Holy Spirit turns your will. It's the same thing.

Instruction
Notice the next phrase, “in wisdom.” The comma break in the text is unfortunate, because wisdom is actually modifying teaching and admonishing. Teaching has to do with the orderly expelling of information. In Ephesians 4:11 teaching is closely associated with the role of a pastor and Paul says that teaching is a spiritual gift. Here the church members teach each other in the ways of God. The word is just a part of you. It saturates you. Now this kind of commitment he can't resist throwing in, He says, "if you'll just let the word of Christ dwell, do you know what the result is going to be?" In all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another, do you know what's going to be the response? You're going to go out and with all wisdom you're going to teach (that's positive) and you're going to admonish (that's negative). Positive is saying, "Do this and do this." Admonishing is saying, "Don't do this. Don't do that. It's not right." And as the word of Christ dwells in you richly, then you can go out and teach people. You can go out and you can admonish them. It means to warn them that if they continue in that behavior, God will chasten them. So you have the positive teaching and the negative warning. That's going to come as a result of the dwelling of the word of Christ richly in your heart.

When the word of God dwells richly in your heart you are going to go about ministering to others. You are going to use your spiritual giftedness and you know what the end result is? Joy! You see God wants His word to dwell in you richly, not so you become walking Bible encyclopedia, but so that it flows out of you. That is where the emotion comes from. This joy will cause singing.

Emotion

The passionate expression of truth.
This is illustrated by the word “singing.” It is to be expected such singing would be a natural expression of gratitude to God; inspiration and thankfulness go hand in hand. It is an expression of truth. Listen to something that Martin Luther said, “Music aids in the enlivening of the Word, so that it may intensify the Biblical text through melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic means. Striking the hearer in full force.” It is not enough to treat truth as it were encyclopedic entries or dictionary definitions. God carries it even further saying, “I want my word to dwell in you richly…SINGING IT!”

So our challenge is to find and compose text and tunes that match the force of the words we are singing. That is why we can sing and still be moved by the words of such songs as When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, and then we can be overwhelmed when we hear the same hymn updated with a modern variation like we sang last week with The Wonderful Cross. Whose heart doesn’t resonate with a song such as And Can It Be? This is why we shouldn’t raising our children on such weak songs as Give me Oil in My Lamp. Or the silly variations such as: Give me Gas in My Ford. When we lived in Hawaii, it would have been Give me Wax for My Board, keep me surfing for the Lord. How does this help the young children to have the Word of Christ to dwell in them richly? It doesn’t.

Sure it burns off energy, but why not let them burn off energy singing about God, and learning about God. Did you know that the text for I Sing the Mighty Power of God was actually a children’s hymn?
            I sing th’ almighty power of God,
            That made the mountains rise,
            That spread the flowing seas abroad,
            And built the lofty skies.
That would be a demonstration of a “spiritual song.” I also believe that this is why we ought to carefully, but intentionally retire some of our older tunes. The texts are great, the texts are rich, but the tunes are outdated, and need revision. A well-written text deserves a well-written tune. Some of us need to realize that there is a certain disposable quality to the musical tunes. Teens, college students, and young adults let me tell you what is going to happen. Twenty years from now, you are going to sing one of your old favorites and your kids are going to roll their eyes. Let me give you an example of a tune that should be retired and the words place with a different one:
            I’ve found a Friend who is all to me,
            His love is ever true;
I picture myself on a carousel every time I hear that song. The words are great, but the tune doesn’t match the majesty of the words.
PRINCIPLE: We are to let the Word of Christ dwell in us richly, and we are not to let even our good traditions to be elevated to the level of scripture.

Now I don’t want to get too controversial today, so I’m going to move on to a concern. I am concerned that there are some who are seeking an experience with God, and that’s a good thing, but it is not primarily the truth of God’s word or the truth concerning Christ and His Gospel that moves them. It is really nothing more than skilled presentation and powerful performance which is exciting their senses. And there are equal opportunity offenders. It can happen in the high-church setting and it can happen in the contemporary setting. I love a high church service with a majestic pipe-organ, and I love a service with touching contemporary and praise and worship music. Just because it is beautiful and powerful doesn’t mean its worship, and just because it’s amped-up and really moves you doesn’t mean its worship either. Often we can make the mistake of thinking the spirit of God left the house because it didn’t “feel” like it did at some other place. Young people don’t make the mistake of thinking that because the music at church doesn’t “feel” like it does on your iPod that the spirit is not in the church. Don’t mistake the skill of the musician and the technological advantage of a professional at a sound board for the spirit of God.
Likewise we should not avoid skillfully played and skillfully sung music. One author writes, “Because music is so naturally affective great care must be taken to assure its Biblical fidelity. Too often today the church serves up affective sentiments without much care for the discipline of the Word.” And being moved by skillfully performed music is not the same as letting the Word of Christ dwell in us richly. The Word of Christ is central not skill and musical ability. This is what gives me hope.

Second concern, there are those who are skillful at worshiping God with their minds but have little appetite for worshiping God with their affections. And even remain suspicious of anything that produces an emotional response. This passage in Colossians 3 ought to be their text of study for a little bit, because there is emotion playing out here. They need to study the worship in heaven like we did two weeks ago there is intensity of emotion in heavenly worship. You are not more spiritual because you are stoic, because you act like a walking corpse in church. I think that we repress genuine spirit generated emotions because we either deem them to be less spiritual or we are afraid that someone else will look at us this way.

I think that when the word of Christ dwells in us richly and we are singing to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs there will be a sort of momentum generated that allows us to do those things well.

It is to be grace-filled expression of truth
Not only is it to be passionate expression of truth but grace-filled expression of truth. “Singing with grace in your hearts.” The word “grace” meaning thankfulness. Thankfulness and gratitude is a consequence of letting the word of Christ dwell in you richly and letting the truth of the Gospel affect you, and meditating of the Gospel, and believing it and resting in it. When you are walking in the Gospel day by day how can you not but express your gratitude. This message of ours is God’s message of grace and rescue. How can we not be a grateful people, and yet in so many of our corporate gatherings there is so little gratitude. Often there is far more complaining, “Well it didn’t go the way I thought it should.”

When we are a singing people with gratitude in our hearts, we really are instructing each other in what is important. I know that when I come into a corporate worship setting that my heart is often filled with cares and worries and concerns and distractions. I have my own set of complaints at any time. But how powerful is it when I get in a group of people who say, “I am setting all that aside, and at least for the next hour I am going to express the glories of Christ.” In the midst of the expression of Christ’s glory all the baggage seems to find its right place.

Conclusion: When the word of Christ fills your heart then your singing is going to be grace-filled and remind us that every good gift is from God and not of our own merit. So may God help us to sing the Christ-centered song. And as we sing it to accurately passionately and gracefully sing it to Him.