Christ Church

Doug Wilson

Biblical Child Discipline in an Age of Therapeutic Goo #2

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INTRODUCTION

In order to work through a series of messages on parenting, it is necessary to pay some attention to the parents. The parents are the ones doing the work, and the quality of the participle (parenting) is going to be dependent on the quality of the source. If the parent is foolish, so will the parenting be. If the parent is dictatorial, so will the parenting be. If the parent is wise, so will the parenting be. So rather than turning immediately to the interactions between parent and child, it is necessary to look first at the relationship between parent and God. 

THE TEXT

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith” (Rom. 12:1–3). 

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

Every Christian, regardless of their station, needs to present their bodies (and whatever their bodies do) as a living sacrifice to God. Your bed is an altar, your car is an altar, your chair at the dinner table is an altar, and from that place, all day long, you present your body and whatever your body is doing as a sacrifice to God (v. 1). This would include speaking to your children, and disciplining them. What you do here needs to be acceptable to God, and a reasonable act of worship. We are created as conforming creatures, and so it is not a matter of whether we will conform to a pattern, but rather which pattern we will conform to. Paul says here that it is not to be the pattern assigned by the world (v. 2), but rather that we be transformed through the renewal of the mind, conforming to the entire goodness of the will of God (v. 2). And then we come to the place where we see how it all plays out. It plays out in what we think of ourselves. Do not think of yourself more highly than you should (v. 3), but rather to think of yourselves in a God-given and sensible (sophroneo) way (v. 3).

THREE KINDS OF PARENTS

Parents are assigned the rule of their children. Children are instructed, for example, to obey their parents (Eph. 6:1). They are told that they must honor their parents (Eph. 6:2). They are told that their responsibilities to their parents do change over time, but some sort of responsibility is always there (Mark 7:10-11). We can see if we put all this together that parents are assigned the rule of their children as they grow. This being the case, we can divide parents into the three broad categories of rulers that we find in Scripture. 

A ruler can be foolish and indulgent (Prov. 25:5). A ruler can be foolish and dictatorial (Ecc. 4:13). And a ruler can be wise and prudent (Prov. 20:26). Bringing this down into the micro-kingdom of the home, parents can be indulgent, parents can be tyrannical, and parents can be authoritative. In the nature of the case, the wise parents will be humble, and therefore not that sure about how wise they are being. The dictatorial parent thinks he is simply being firm, and the indulgent parent thinks she is simply being kind. But no one should think of themselves more highly than they should. 

And remember our propensity to guard against the sin we are least likely to fall into. The indulgent parent is all on his guard against tyranny, and the tyrannical father is being very careful to not be too soft. Remember this observation from Screwtape: “The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers when there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under.”

WHY NOT ASK?

At this point it is easy to throw up your hands in mock despair, and lament the fact that this is so hard to figure out. But perhaps the problem is not that it is too hard to figure out, but rather that we are too hard to want to figure it out. Lewis again:

“It is no good passing this over with some vague, general · admission such as ‘Of course, I know I have my faults.’ It is important to realize that there is some really fatal flaw in you: something which gives the others just that same feeling of despair which their flaws give you . . . But why, you ask, don’t the others tell me? Believe me, they have tried to tell you over and over again, and you just couldn’t ‘take it’ . . . And even the faults you do know you don’t know fully. You say, ‘I admit I lost my temper last night’; but the others know that you’re always doing it, that you are a bad-tempered person” (The Trouble With X). 

Why not ask? First, ask God to reveal where you actually are on this map. Are you indulgent? Are you harsh? Are you kind and wise? “Search me, O God, and know my heart: Try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23–24). And then, having humbled yourself this way, ask one further thing from God. Ask Him to speak to through your family and friends. Then go to them and tell them to please be straight with you. If they are critical, you promise not to get angry or to go weird on them. “Would you describe me as an indulgent parent, a harsh parent, or a wise and kind parent?” Do not do this with one person and then go put their opinion in the bank. Ask 5 to 10 people, and see if you start to notice a pattern. 

LOVE IS

As you evaluate the “parenting” that is going on in your home, do not attempt to tinker with the fruit. All the attention should be given to the tree.

“Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.” (Matthew 7:17–18). 

And if the examination brings you to a point of humiliation and regret, take it as God’s kindness to you. “Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness: And let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head” (Psalm 141:5). Do not despair, and do not drop your name into that glorious passage in 1 Cor. 13, in order to overwhelm yourself with a sense of your sinfulness. No . . . put Christ’s name in there, and use that passage to look to Him. 

“Christ suffereth long, and is kind; Christ envieth not; Christ vaunteth not Himself, is not puffed up, doth not behave Himself unseemly, seeketh not His own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things” (1 Corinthians 13:4–7). 

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Biblical Child Discipline in an Age of Therapeutic Goo #1

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INTRODUCTION

Over the years I have preached on marriage, and family, and child-rearing any number of times. Seeing that I am about to do it again, I need to begin by noting the way this series will overlap with the others, but also to point out a significant way that it will differ. Some of the basic principles remain constant, of course, and to refresh your thinking concerning those principles, there are a number of our books available, and recordings of previous series. 

But this series of messages is going to be dwelling on biblical child rearing as a profoundly countercultural thing. What does it mean to bring up children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord in a generation that is profoundly hostile to any such endeavor? That worldly hostility is expressed in countless ways—from overt persecution to surreptitious lying, and from surreptitious lying to online seduction and subversion. 

THE TEXT

“Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; But the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.” (Proverbs 22:15). 

“Withhold not correction from the child: For if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell” (Proverbs 23:13–14). 

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

We have two texts before us. The first says that folly is intrinsic to the heart of a child, but the situation is not irremediable (Prov. 22:15). The folly that is closely bound there in the heart of the child can be driven far away from him by means of the rod. This is a rod of correction, meaning that there are things there that must be put right. This does not mean that “beating your kid” is equivalent to gospel. The rod must be applied in context, within the framework of everything Scripture teaches us. 

This leads to the second text. Because this is the case, because folly is inborn, a father should make sure not to withhold correction from his child (Prov. 23:15). The word there refers to a lad, or boy. If the father uses the rod judiciously, his son will not die, sound effects notwithstanding. If the son is beaten with the rod, he will be thereby delivered from Sheol (Prov. 23:14). This short-term pain is a long term kindness.  

ROOT ASSUMPTIONS

Our first glance at these passages is informative, as far as it goes. We can see that the Scriptures are fully supportive of corporal punishment in child rearing. Those who object to every form of spanking “as abusive” are plainly at variance with the Word of God. We will see later that “gentle parenting” is anything but. But my interest here is not to parse the passages with a pro-spanking/anti-spanking debate in mind. What we need to look at first is the apparent callused toughness behind what the passages are saying. There is a different world there, and that is what we must get back to first. 

Children do not begin at a neutral place, and they do not start out their days from some innocent space. As my father used to say, with great affection, babies are “little bundles of sin.” All that is necessary for the sinning to start is the requisite muscle strength and intelligence. Once they have that, their career in sinning starts. The apostle Paul tells us that all of us are “by nature” objects of wrath (Eph. 2:3). We are, all of us, sinners by nature. Is a child in the cradle a walker? Yes, in that he belongs to a race of walkers, but no, in that he has not yet taken his first step. Is the child in the bucket a talker? Yes, in that he is a talker by nature, but no, in that he has not yet spoken his first word. In an analogous way, we are all participants in Adam’s rebellion from the very first instant of our conception. By nature, we are sinners—bad to the bone. And the fact that the parents have not yet seen their sweet baby smoking cigarettes or pounding shots in the crib does not signify anything.

Biblical child rearing begins with answering one question accurately. That question is what is man? The answer is that we were created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27), male and female, and that subsequent to that creation we were estranged from our Creator through the rebellion of our first parents (Gen. 3:6). As a result, we are all entailed in Adam’s sin. The task of child rearing is therefore the same as the task of presenting the gospel to an unbeliever. What is that task? It is that of finding our way back.

Now someone is going to say that our children are baptized, are they not? They are being treated as members of the new covenant community, are they not? Yes, of course. But what do we ask parents when we baptize an infant? What is the first question? “Do you acknowledge your children’s need of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ, and the renewing grace of the Holy Spirit?” The promise to bring children up in the covenant surely includes the need to instruct children in the terms of the covenant. Remember that Romans 1 teaches us that pagans outside the covenant are big fat sinners, Romans 2 teaches us that the Jews inside the covenant are big fat sinners, and Romans 3 teaches us that they are both the same kind of big fat sinners. Your children must therefore be taught the central covenantal duty of looking to Christ.  

NO NEED FOR SIN LESSONS

So what does all of this mean? Even assuming genuine love for Christ, when the world and the devil come after your kid, they will find that your child’s flesh still wants to serve as a welcoming committee. We are accustomed to speak of childhood innocence, but we must be careful to define our terms. A child is innocent, in the sense that he is immature and inexperienced in sin, as well as in everything else. But this is a relative innocence, not the innocence of an unfallen angel. It is not necessary for you to bring in any tutors to make sure your kids learn how to sin. They have all of that down already. You must have piano lessons, or driving lessons, or cooking lessons, yes. But sin lessons are never needed. There are degrees of corruption that require instruction, but the baseline for all of it is a given.

HARD TRUTH, SOFT HEARTS

It all comes down to our fundamental assumptions about human nature. Do you believe in innate human goodness? Then in that case, you are a Pelagian, and this is going to skew everything about your child rearing. Such soft, flattering words will result in hard hearts. The sinful heart needs a jack hammer, not a feather duster. One of the results of such an assumption is that your home will be a place without gospel, without forgiveness, without grace. 

But do you believe in human depravity? Then you are living in a world where the good news of the gospel will make some sort of sense. Is your home a collection of sinners, saved by real grace? Or is there a tendency to just say that because it is orthodox?

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The Resurrection of the World

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INTRODUCTION

Two thousand years ago, a man who had been wickedly betrayed by the religious authorities, murderously crucified by the Roman civil authorities, did the unthinkable by rising from the dead. This was God’s plan from the beginning, and the Lord Jesus knew that this was the plan.

“Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father” (John 10:17–18).

And when Jesus took up His life again, He was taking up absolute dominion. A man who dies and comes back to life again in history is the Lord of history. And this has enormous ramifications.  

THE TEXT

“But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Romans 8:11). 

“For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:18-23). 

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

Not only did Jesus take up His life again, but He did this in the power of the Spirit. The Spirit raised up Jesus from the dead (Rom. 8:11). Paul’s point here is that the Spirit who accomplished this extraordinary thing is the same Spirit who dwells within Christians. The Spirit who did it once indwells the believer now, and that indwelling is itself a promise and commitment. That Spirit will quicken “your mortal bodies.” Note that the Spirit is going to do something to the mortal bodies of these Roman believers. These are the bodies that they had then, but which are now dead and gone. The Spirit is going to raise those mortal bodies. It does not say He will give them different bodies up in Heaven.  

And a few verses down from this, Paul teaches us to compare our present state with our future state. Take our current trials, afflictions, suffering, and woes, and they are not even worth comparing to the glory that is coming, and that will be revealed in us (v. 18). This present time is being compared to a future time. All creation has an earnest expectation that it longs for, and that longing is for the manifestation of the sons of God (v. 19). What does that mean? It refers to the general resurrection of the dead. The created order was subjected to vanity, not because that was desired by the creation, but rather because of God’s reasons—He is the one who bound up the creation “to vanity” so that this created order would learn to long in hope (v. 20). When the sons of God are manifested fully at their final adoption (e.g. the general resurrection), then the creation itself will be delivered into the glorious liberty of the children of God (v. 21). The creation is pregnant with resurrection, and groans and travails in its labor (v. 22). She groans and travails in pain [synodino, birth pangs], longing for the delivery of a new order. There are three that groan all together—the Spirit does (v. 26), the creation does (v. 22), and we who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan (v. 23). All the groans are teleological—they are aimed at one thing, which is our final adoption in the resurrection. We groan toward that final adoption (Eph. 1:5), which is to say, the redemption of our bodies (v. 23). 

HYPER-PARTIAL PRETERISM?

You have been taught by us that many of the prophecies in the Bible that are popularly assigned to the end of the world are actually prophecies about the end of Jerusalem and the Judaic aeon. This is true regarding many such prophecies (e.g. Matt. 24:29), but there are some who have fallen into the trap of thinking that “if one’s good, then two’s better.” They move all biblical prophecies into that category, a position which is variously called hyper-preterism, or full preterism. The perspective we teach is called partial preterism, although I must confess that I was recently called a hyper-partial preterist, which is what might be noted to be an oxymoronic and meaningless taunt. 

Now the full preterist position does not just alter the timing of a few things, but rather alters the entire architecture of biblical faith, to such an extent that it has to be called a different faith altogether. For example: physical death is not a result of the fall, Christ’s bodily resurrection was the only one (the sole exception), sin remains an eternal feature of time, history has no telos point, we don’t go forward, but rather we just go “upstairs,” and many other distinctives. These are two completely distinct systems of thought, which is why full preterism is rejected as heretical. But the systems are so different that this actually needs to be acknowledged in both directions—the rejection ought to be mutual. If full preterism were correct, all orthodox theology would need to be written off. The only reason they don’t do this is because that would be off-putting to potential recruits, and they need to fish in orthodox waters (Acts 20:29-31).  

THE HOPE OF THIS WORLD

Faithful Jews knew that there was going to be a resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. The Pharisees held to this belief, while the Sadducees denied it (Acts 23:8). Martha was a good representative of this faith, when she confessed to the Lord that she knew that Lazarus was going to be raised eventually, at the last day (John 11:24). This is the basic structure of faith—this decrepit world is nevertheless pregnant with glory, and the day of delivery will eventually come. God in His mercy determined to give us a foretaste of this final glory by raising up Christ, the first fruits of that final consummation, and to do this in the middle of human history. This testifies to us that what happened to Him will happen to us, and what will happen to us will happen to the entire created order. The Spirit has been given to us, and He was given to us as an earnest payment (1 Cor. 1:22; 5:5). “Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory” (Eph. 1:14). The redemption of the purchased possession is the general resurrection of the dead.

So as we commemorate the resurrection hope of Easter to the end of the world one of the corollaries is that there will be an end of the world.

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Our Gibbeted Christ (Good Friday 2024)

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Ever since our rebellion against God in the Garden, the human race has been locked up in the chains of fear, guilt, and shame. We were promised one thing, and we have received another. We planted what we thought were the seeds of our own deification, but when the crop came up, it was nothing but milkweed, thistles, thorns, and brambles. As Bunyan once recounted something similar, when Faithful was telling Christian about his encounter with an old man who promised him many carnal dainties.

“Then it came burning hot into my mind, that, whatever he said, and however he flattered, when he got me home to his house he would sell me for a slave.”

The Pilgrim’s Progress

So I mentioned the three different kinds of chains—whether or fear, guilt or shame. All descendants of Adam and Eve know something of each, but different personalities and different cultures struggle more with one of them over the others. For some, it is overwhelmingly fear—as in animistic cultures. For others it is guilt, which is the peculiar condition of the West. And for still others farther east, it is shame, as can be seen in “honor cultures.” And because all of us bear the image of God, and all of us are sinners, we all know what it is to fear, what it means to be guilty, and how it feels to bow the head in dishonor.

This evening we have gathered to commemorate the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who was sent into the world in order to die. And He was sent in order to die so that by that death, He might strike these chains off our wrists. In order to understand this, we have to come to grips with the fact that the death of Jesus was a vicarious, substitutionary death. He became the propitiation for our sins, as the Scripture repeatedly declares (Rom. 3:25; 1 John 2:2; 4:10). All of this means that all the consequences of our rebellion—including fear, guilt, and shame—were poured out over Him. These burdens were laid across His shoulders so that He might die with them there, carry them all to the depths of Hades with Him, and then to come back from the dead without them. That is the message. That is why the death of Christ is such good news.

If your sins are now in the depths of the sea, it is because Christ took them there. If the consequences of your sin are now on the deep ocean floor, it is because Christ sank with them to that point, and there abandoned them.

Christ began His ministry through being baptized by John the Baptist. But that baptism was a baptism of repentance (Luke 3:3). Christ had no sin and hence did not need to repent, an incongruity that John the Baptist noted (Matt. 3:14). Christ did this because it was His mission to identify with sinners. And He identified with all of it, every aspect of it apart from the sinning itself (Heb. 4:15). So consider His vicarious passion and death, and how He encountered each of these three things.

We certainly see the fear—and yet without sin. This means He faced that fear, which was certainly present, with steadfast courage. “Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me” (Matthew 26:38). In John 16:21, He uses the word anguish in His comparison. And what are we told about His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane? “And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44). “Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared” (Hebrews 5:7). In that He feared . . . and so obviously, He feared God above all. But He knew the acrid taste of fear on His tongue. He faced it, embraced it, and conquered it.

What about guilt? “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus Christ was never a sinner, but for our sakes, the guilt of sin was imputed to Him. That means that the guilt of our sin, the guilt of your sin and mine, was assigned to Him by His own Father, and then the wrath of God over that sin was poured out upon Him. This is what the word propitiationmeans. Because our guilt was imputed to Him—justly, because He is the new Adam of a new human race—the fist of God struck a blow of holy hatred against sin, and Christ was the one who took the blow. When God struck Christ so that He died, He also struck you, and me, so that we too died. And when He raised us in Christ, we came back to life, without the guilt. Therefore, walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:4).

Perhaps you are wondering about the shame. Again, look to Christ. “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2). Perhaps we have seen too many silver cross necklaces, or crosses on steeples, and we have forgotten what an obscenity it was to be flogged and crucified. Preaching a crucified Messiah was a scandal, an offense, a blasphemy. The law even said that anyone hanged on a tree was cursed (Gal. 3:13). This is what we embrace when we preach the cross. “But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness” (1 Corinthians 1:23).

“Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”Philippians 2:6–11 (KJV)

So are you fearful? Are you guilty? Are you disgraced and ashamed? Then look to Christ, our gibbeted Christ, and in evangelical faith, say farewell to all of that.

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Psalm 150: Crescendo and Conclusion

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INTRODUCTION

This is a short psalm, but it is densely packed with hallelujahs. There are twelve of them here, and one hallelu-el. Together they praise Jah, the covenant God of Israel—Yahweh or Jehovah, and El, the great God Almighty. The longest stretch of words here between any two hallelujahs is four words, with all the rest of the bridges being two words. This conclusion to the Psalter is a great crescendo of praise.  

THE TEXT

“Praise ye the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary: Praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise him for his mighty acts: Praise him according to his excellent greatness. Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: Praise him with the psaltery and harp. Praise him with the timbrel and dance: Praise him with stringed instruments and organs. Praise him upon the loud cymbals: Praise him upon the high sounding cymbals. Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord” (Psalm 150). 

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

We have yet another hallelujah psalm, concluding the psalter in a great crescendo. The psalm begins with hallelujah (v. 1), and it concludes with the same word (v. 6). At the very first, we should notice where Jehovah is to be praised in this way. We are to praise Him in the sanctuary first, and in the heavenlies also. Inside the sanctuary and far above the sanctuary—inside and outside. The second thing we do is praise Him for His great deeds down through history. We serve and praise the God of history. He created history in Genesis 1, and He called Abraham in that history, and He delivered Israel through the Red Sea in that history. He took out Sisera in that history, as Deborah sang. Praise Him for His mighty acts (v. 2). These acts of His proceed from His very nature and being, and so we also praise Him for His excellent greatness (v. 2). As the human voice is not strong enough to get the effect we need, we bring in various means of amplification—the trumpet, psaltery and harp (v. 3), with the timbrel, dance, stringed instruments, and organs (v. 4), with loud cymbals and with the high hat (or finger cymbals?) (v. 5). At the end of the psalm, we turn away from loud but inanimate instruments and turn again to the singers. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord (v. 6). Hallelujah.  

THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLE

As we look around at what we offer God in our weekly worship, we can recognize a number of the things mentioned in this psalm. We have singers. We have stringed instruments. We have brass. We have percussion. We have a psalter. Okay, you might be muttering, but where are the dancers? Some of you might be anticipating the point with gladness . . . dancers? Others might be quite worried about it, with furrowed brow. Nobody needs dancing Presbyterians. 

One of the principles that arose out of the Protestant Reformation came to be called the regulative principle, which states that if something is not commanded of us in worship, then it is prohibited. This, in distinction from the opposing principle, which is that if it is not prohibited, then it is allowed. “And nobody said that we couldn’t set up a statue of the Virgin Mary in the foyer.” Now I want to argue that all Reformed Christians must be regulativists of some stripe. We say this while rejecting the restrictions of what might be called the strict regulativists—their standard excludes far too much, even for them. They want to exclude any accompanying instruments because pianos aren’t in the New Testament, but they would also have exclude singing out loud—Paul says to sing and make melody in your heart (Eph. 5:19). We would also have to ban women from the Lord’s Supper, along with a number of other oddities and novelties.  

Now in this debate there is obviously an interpretive hermeneutical principle involved, because stringed instruments are in the Old Testament. So exactly how does God require certain worship practices of us, and what do we get to bring across from the Old Testament? And if we bring over the stringed instruments, then on what principle do we exclude the dancers? Obviously excluded would be animal sacrifices (as we see through the entire book of Hebrews) and things directly associated with animal sacrifices (burning altars and incense). Remember that the Temple was a slaughterhouse, and the incense dealt with the smell.   

TABERNACLE, TEMPLE, STREETS, SYNAGOGUES, CHURCHES

Remember that this is a psalm of cosmic praise. It begins with praise in the sanctuary, but it extends to praise outside the sanctuary—praise Him in the firmament of His power (v. 1). The appropriateness of what you are doing depends upon where you are, along with the nature of your culture. There is no indication of any musical instruments in the Mosaic tabernacle. The Tabernacle of David was dedicated to music, and there were various instruments everywhere (1 Chron. 25:1-8). We know that the Temple of Jesus’ day did have a great organ. David danced before the Lord in a religious procession that was not contained within any sacred space (2 Sam. 6:14), and remember that Miriam led the women of Israel to dance beside the sea (Ex. 15). Some of you have gotten close to that spirit at some of our block parties. Synagogues had the shofar (trumpet), but apparently not as a means of accompaniment.

Now the institution of the Christian church brings together elements of all of these—the Temple, the synagogues, but I think centrally the Tabernacle of David. The prophet Amos prophesied the Gentile church under the figure of that tabernacle (Amos 9:11), and at the Jerusalem Council, the Lord’s brother James applied this prophesy to the inclusion of the Gentiles: “After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up” (Acts 15:16). And here we are. “By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name” (Hebrews 13:15).

So is dancing excluded then? Not in principle, although other principles must always be remembered. “Let all things be done decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40). In cultures where dancing is woven into everything, there is obviously an easy way to incorporate it into worship fittingly. But even in a place like west Africa, say in Anglican worship, the worshipers dance their way to church, and away from it, but not in the service—although there is still a lot of moving in place. And don’t leave out processionals, whether of a choir, or elders serving the Supper.   

PRAISE HIM

But let us return to the theme of true praise. The great acts of Jehovah are not glorified through pious muttering. We need to be loud about it. “Sing unto him a new song; Play skilfully with a loud noise” (Psalm 33:3). “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: Make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise” (Psalm 98:4). We engage with the enemy of our souls through this potent weapon of praise. All evangelism is recruiting for the choir. Our choir members are in the regular army, and all the congregational singing is conducted by the militia. But everyone is in the choir somehow. So praise Him.

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