Someone has put it, “ It is not that our doctrine is false but that our experience is flat.” What we believe is tre mendously important but it is high time that conservative, evangelical Christianity face up some other questions: Whom do I trust, love and obey? Our Lord conditioned true Christian happiness on obedience: “ If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them” (John 13:17). It is a 3-D formula, Doctrine, Duty and Delight. It is possible to argue over some tweedledum and tweedledee in theology and live all the while in outright disobedience to God. Our theme says, “ Thy statutes have been my songs.” The Psalmist said of the righteous man, “ His delight is in the law of the Lord” and again, “ I delight to do thy will, O my God,” a declaration perfectly realized in the Saviour himself. Some think of God’s law in terms of duty only but^he Psalmist found it a delight. With him the words were set to music. Is your duty your delight? Jeremiah said of his genera tion: “ Behold, the word of the Lord is unto them a re proach; they have no delight in it.” Call upon average church-members today to obey God and hear them com plain! Ask them to give up the world, to make Christ Lord, to give God a bit of their time and money, and some will act as though it would kill them. The Word of the Lord is not their delight. Some say they are Christians and believe the Bible but, if so, they save only the words and not the time. Yes, orthodox Christianity needs to set its words to music. At the close of a Bible conference some years ago, Lena, the Negro cook, was asked to sing for us after Sun day morning breakfast devotions. In her own inimitable way she stood with arms folded and began: Immediately we felt the Spirit’s presence. I sneaked out my handkerchief and looked sheepishly around to discover that everybody else was doing the same thing. Denominational lines made no difference. Lena’s song had lifted us above our fences and made us one. We might have argued about unification but here was unity. The song did not create it but reveal it, for it is always there though we obscure it. If we had spent that Sunday hour arguing prophecy or sanctification we might have gone out upset and belligerent. I do not mean that these things are not important. They are, but more important still is a closer walk with Jesus. I decided that maybe Lena ought to go around to a lot of our churches, conferences and conventions. She might do more with a song than we do all week in a symposium. Hot and bothered as we are, it would put us to shame, but if it called us back to a closer walk with Him; that is what it is all about anyway. Then his statutes would become our songs, words and music, and duty would be come a delight in the house of our pilgrimage. “ Just a closer walk with thee; Grant it, Jesus, if you please.”
here?” She could not sing the Lord’s song in a strange land. If we are to sing his song we must keep his statutes. We cannot have the music without the words. There are also those who say, “ It does not matter what you believe, all that is important is whom you trust.” They would have the delight without the doctrine. It sounds nice but you cannot have a miraculous experience based on a mythical gospel. If 2 Timothy 3:16 is not true and the statutes, the Scripture, are not God-breathed, then John 3:16 is not dependable. “ Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.” Some have said that they could be Christians even if it were proven that Jesus never lived. But the Gospel is based on historic facts, that Christ died and rose again. It is the good news of something that took place, an event in history. We are witnesses unto him but he also said, “Ye are witnesses of these things.” We testify to the facts about him. You cannot have the songs without the statutes, the doxology without the theology. Trying to have the music without the words, we end up with a synthetic faith, a simulated love, a substitute joy. It is God’s lawbook that becomes our songbook, his mandates that become our melody. A RADIANT THEOLOGY But not only would some have the music without the words, there are others who have the words without the music. The tragedy of a lot of fundamentalism lies in theology without doxology, being right without being radiant. I can remember earlier years when I attended my first Bible Conference. What blessed fellowship we had around the Word of God! We were like travelers meeting in a foreign land and discovering that we spoke the same lan guage. Recently a friend of mine whom I had known in those early years asked, “What is the matter with us these days? Now we discuss prominent personalities and split hairs over technicalities.” I know what she meant. I am not sighing for the good old times. “Distance lends enchant ment to the view.” But sometimes I do think of the Dutch man who asked, “Vot iss all dis argument? I sure vould like to get into a good old Jesus meeting.” For all our religious revival and gigantic church ac tivity these days something is missing. “ Something new has been added” but something old and precious has been subtracted. We have the words without the music, the statutes without the songs, the form without the force. We wave the scabbard but the sword is gone. JOY FROM SACRED TRUST I used to think that David’s prayer, “ Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation” applied only to people who, like David, have committed some terrible sin. But there are church workers hard at it, choir singers, denominational officials, ministers in pulpits, who have lost their song. They would be embarrassed to admit it and some would resent being told about it.
JUNE, 1961
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