In Amos 5, God calls the worship of those who don’t truly seek him “noise”. “Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps.” (v. 23). Paul summed it up like this: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal” (I Corinthians 13:1). From these passages, we are challenged to search out what God considers perfect praise. That is the only kind we can be certain God will accept from us.
After his rebuke of the Pharisees in Matthew 21, Jesus lays out three requirements necessary to offering up perfect and acceptable praise to God.
In verse 16, Jesus starts with the words, “out of the mouth”. During his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had already taught an important insight about our mouths. He said, “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart...For out of the overflow of his heart, his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). He is telling us here that the first requirement for praise to be perfect is this: Perfect praise emerges from a worshipful and passionate heart. God hated to hear the songs of Israel in Amos 5 because their praise did not spring from love for him; their hearts were evil.
Next, in Matthew 21:16, Jesus says, “of babes and nursing infants”. The second requirement of perfect praise, then is that we approach him as little children. This doesn’t mean we should act childish. Rather, what God wants to see in us are certain childlike qualities such as humility, trust and total dependence.
That bring us to our third and final aspect of perfect praise. It’s summed up in one all-important word: “Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants, You...” The “You” Jesus was referring to is God himself. “You have perfected praise”. We must depend on God to initiate and perfect our praise. It was God who put it in the hearts of those little ones to celebrate Jesus in the Temple. The Father was perfectly blessed by their praises because he set up that entire praise moment. There was no doubt their praise would be accepted by he who matters most -- our audience of One.
[taken from Pure Praise: A Heart-Focused Bible Study on Worship, Dwayne Moore, 29-30.]
No comments:
Post a Comment