4. Rejoice – Simon Newbould. Simon wrote this one about a month ago and the church have quickly picked it up. It’s easy to sing and the words pretty much proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.
Sermon – The Mission Heart of God – Peter Somervell. In this evangelistic sermon, Pastor Peter preaches the good news of Christianity, explaining and proclaiming the truth that God desires all people to come to the knowledge of.
“Chris Neilson dies to find himself in a heaven more amazing than he could have ever dreamed of. There is one thing missing: his wife. After he dies, his wife, Annie killed herself and went to hell. Chris decides to risk eternity in hades for the small chance that he will be able to bring her back to heaven…”
OK, admittedly it’s a particularly well-rated film. But it does portray a human concept of heaven. The worldview in this particular motion picture basically states: unless your spouse is with you, heaven is not heaven.
So here is my question: “Is there marriage in heaven?”
You’d think no, right? I mean, Jesus said this: “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.” (Matt 22:30) And if you thought no, you’d be correct, in one sense.
But look how the concept of marriage is further expounded in the Apostle Paul’s writings in the book of Ephesians. Towards the end of the book, Paul gives some practical advice for husbands and wives. He quotes back to Genesis to outline the biblical framework of all marriage, and then he states this: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and thetwo shall become one flesh. And I tell you, this is refers to Christ and the church” (Eph 5:31-32).
Profound.
So actually, the answer is yes. There *is* marriage in heaven. With this passage in view, marriage becomes a picture of Christ and His bride, the church for whom he died for, and loved sacrificially. So what if our earthly marriage is an imperfect picture? Thankfully, in heaven all things will be made new (Rev 21:5), and our imperfect pictures are no longer necessary.
If we turn from our sins and trust Christ for salvation, once all is said and done we’ll be in the midst of the perfect marriage between Him and His bride, for whom He paid such a massive price for.
So… I guess there won’t be any bachelors in heaven then!
We’ve just come back from an enjoyable weekend away in the beautiful river town of Wanganui. The drive down from Auckland took 5 1/2 hours, and we thoroughly enjoyed the rolling hills and lush landscapes (though the North Island still have nothing on the vistas of the South!)
We were fortunate to be able to stay with Jonker family. Calvyn was formerly a pastor at HBC, one of our close friends, and officiated our wedding in February. We stayed at their beautiful farm house (complete with veggie garden, chickens and two cheerful farm dogs).
Admittedly it’s true that many of us at HBC still miss the Jonker family terribly. In just 18 months, they made such a huge impact on the lives of many people. Yet one thing we picked up from being their guests this weekend is that for them, Wanganui is home. As Calvyn took us for a quick tour around the town, folks were constantly stopping to say hello to him. He talked of people he’s known since they were schoolchildren, and pointed out the various ways in which the town had changed and developed over 12 years. It almost felt like he was the mayor of the town!
It was also good to see Alice, Clare, Jenny and her Wellington-beau Dave. These two ex-students are now jobhunting, nervous yet eagerly anticipating the next phase in life. Clare is standing very straight after her recent surgery, and loves to sing to us her favourite Andre Rieu songs. She picks up the various classical melodies with ease on the piano.
Alice looks the part as the quintessential country gal, feeding the chooks and clambering up and down the grassy banks of their lifestyle block. On a clear day from their deck, you can see Mt Ruapehu one side, and Mt Taranaki in the opposite direction. A sliver of water on the horizon has Alice excitedly thinking of ways to build a homestay cottage and trumpet it as accommodation with “sea views”.
We also visited Wanganui East Baptist Church on the Sunday morning. The people are friendly, and they sing God’s praises with a gusto that fills the room. Calvyn’s currently preaching from the book of 1st Peter, and they’re already up to chapter 3. His preaching style has changed since we last heard him; it’s less lecture-like and more pastoral. It’s preaching that’s down-to-earth and thoroughly biblical – and we appreciated the thought and care he evidently put into making the verse-by-verse approach as practical as possible for the congregation.
Most of all, CJ and Alice don’t just preach the gospel – they live it out. Here’s a couple that seek first His kingdom and righteousness (Matthew 6:33), and continually encourage us to trust in God’s transforming power to mould us to love each other better. For better or worse, for richer or poorer, they’re another picture of Christ and the church (Eph 5:25) that we can, and do, look up to.
Since taking on the worship director role at HBC, one recurring feedback that comes through is that a list of songs we did each Sunday would be useful, for people to look them up at a later stage and get to know them better. So I think I will at least try to put up the order of service for each Sunday.
This morning, Craig Starrenburg led the worship service, and Jono Macfarlane preached from Psalm 73.
Order of Service
(If you click each title, you’ll get a link to a video of each song or item in the service.)
1. From Everlasting – Brian Doerkson. A favourite call to worship at HBC. We picked it up off Denys when he introduced it at Impact 2009, and we’ve kept singing it ever since. It’s particularly useful as its lyrics help us to declare God’s sovereignty over “culture’s shifting sands”, and to affirm that He is “unchanged by all the vanities of man”. This is one example of a good song, intentionally taught, that quickly became part of HBC’s worship music furniture!
2. You Are My All In All – Dennis Jernigan. This was new for the church. Craig tried to lead the church into a round where one half of the church sang the chorus, while the other sang the verse. It worked to some extent, though we had a bit of a mismatch with the lyric projection, where only verse 2 was put up for most of the round. Overall, nice lyrics that fit well with the theme – though from memory, the chorus was easier to pick up than the verse.
“You are the One that we praise
You are the One we adore
You give the healing and grace
Our hearts always hunger for
Oh, our hearts always hunger for!”
4. By Faith – Keith & Kristyn Getty, Stuart Townend. I’m always surprised at how the Lord ties together the song and the theme of the service. With the sermon and readings revolving around trusting in the Lord despite difficulties and perceived injustices, it helped me to sing this song about “walking by faith and not by sight” afresh. The instrumentation was a bit on the light side, as without drums or the rhythmic drive of a bass, the pace of the song threatened to drag. In any case, this is one the church knows well now, so it was sung with plenty of gusto!
“Grace paid for my sins
And brought me to life
Grace clothes me with power
To do what is right
Grace will lead me to heaven
Where I’ll see Your face
And never cease
To thank You for Your grace!”
6. Be Thou My Vision – Eleanor Hull, Mary Elizabeth Byrne. We closed the service with this fantastic hymn. Being encouraged that God is all we need to endure and strive on the straight and narrow path helped me to sing this hymn afresh, as I considered:
Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise
Thou mine inheritance now and always;
Thou and thou only first in my heart
High King of Heaven, my treasure thou art!
All in all, it was a great morning of worship. I left being really encouraged of God’s amazing grace and kindness towards me!
We celebrated Reformation Day, the day when fallible people read the bible for themselves and recovered the gospel that we boldly proclaim today.
It was the first time we used a choral group to lead the church in musical worship!
By God’s providence all three of these exciting things happened to fall on the same day… so it was a busy week preparing for this one! Here’s a recap of the service (31 October 2010).
Service redux
1. A Mighty Fortress – Martin Luther. It’s commonly known as the battle cry of the Reformation, and based loosely on Psalm 46. A line that is sometimes lost on us today, has heightened meaning when you consider the trials and persecutions the early reformers went through:
Let goods and kindred go
This mortal life also
The body they may kill
God’s truth abideth still
His kingdom is forever!
2. Glorious and Mighty – Todd Twining, Joel Sczebel. There’s quite a few churches that have done excellent choral renditions of this very easy-to-sing, rousing song. We opted for an easier part which dropped the extended choral bridge, but kept the interesting descant parts of verse 3 (you can hear two different arrangements — both done well — here and here).
I also like how it doesn’t shy away from declaring: “Over all the plans of the nations Your judgements reign”. The lyrics are straight from Psalm 96, which is worth pondering on whenever the pangs of this fallen world become overwhelming and disheartening.
Testimonies, Baptisms. We had a guy that was saved by watching a Youtube clip of the gospel, another that was an ex-Mormon, former alcoholic, one that gave her life to Christ when pondering on life after friends she knew died in the Elim drowning tragedy. All glory to God for these testimonies.
“Jesus paid it all
All to Him I owe
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow!”
Bible reading. The following was from my notes (and Peter referred to the same thing in his sermon):
A leading figure in the reformation was a man named William Tyndale. He was the first to translate the bible from the Hebrew and Greek texts into English, so that everyone could have access to the Word of God. For his work in doing this, and being part of the reformation, he was tried for heresy, strangled and burnt at the stake in 1535.
To celebrate Tyndale’s legacy, that by God’s grace we have today the sacred scriptures in a language we can understand, let’s all read a passage together. Our scripture reading today is from Colossians 1:15-23.
4. All I Have is Christ – Devon Kauflin. We have to be careful not to do this one too often, because each time we do it the church really engage and respond by exulting with really, really loud singing! This song is the equivalent of a movie blockbuster in my mind… and I think when the gospel is spelled out so clearly in the 2nd verse, you just can’t help but sing at the top of your voice:
“Hallelujah, all I have is Christ!
Hallelujah, Jesus is my life!”
You can watch a clip of the “HBC choir” in action with this song:
Sermon. Peter prepared a special Reformation Day message, honing in on one of the “solas” of the reformation — solus Christus, or “Christ alone”. He showed from the bible how Jesus is the only way, the only mediator, and the only hope for this world. You can watch him in full flight here.
5. In Christ Alone – Keith Getty, Stuart Townend. On Peter’s request, we closed with the same song as the week before. But what other song would work better to follow a strong, stirring message that in Christ alone is our only hope?
——————–
Some observations and lessons learned from this service:
I think if we were to do a singing group again, it would be helpful to have the conductor separate to the worship leader. While my first time swinging a chopstick for the choir was quite fun, it meant that my back was turned to the congregation for the most part, and it was harder to cue them in during the singing. I had to turn around and give a fist pump(!) to get everyone back in for one of the choruses – probably funny to watch, but a bit unorthodox…
Often, less is more. Choosing fewer strong, well-known songs seemed to be quite effective, compared with other Sundays where we’ve crammed seven or eight songs into the same timeframe. This week’s lighter set list also helped the singers to spend more time practising the parts for song, and also to work at things like blending, dynamics and the shape of the melodies they were singing.
A lot of people commented on how it was “so good to have a choir again”, and I definitely saw some of the benefits of having a group of confident singers up the front that the church could model and be encouraged by. I’d want to be careful that creating a choir would not encourage any elitism in terms of setting apart “choir-level” singers from the rest of the church.
With the diversity of musical giftings in our music team, it’s been really refreshing to see that our church is game enough to worship the Lord in music accompanied by a four-part choir one week, and accompanied by a well-oiled rock band another week. As one person said to me afterwards: “Man, I can’t wait to hear what musical styles we’ll get in heaven!” If anything, I’m sure it will surpass all our expectations and shatter our own limited preconceptions.
