Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition

Posted: June 4th, 2009 | Author: | Tags: , , | 2 Comments »

picture-12A few people around these parts have been insisting that gross errors of misapplying Scripture, as we saw with Noble’s teaching on Simeon, happen so infrequently at NewSpring that we need not be concerned. That being the case, here’s something else they can be unconcerned about.

Brad Cooper posted the sermon he was preparing when we last saw him with an assault weapon. I took a quick listen, as can you here.

His basic point was that worship is a weapon like his gun. (By the way, whoever thought it was “excellence” to open a meeting of high school students with a slow-motion video of a guy spraying bullets, then walking out on stage with the gun? Stupid, stupid, stupid.)

Cooper used a passage from 2 Chronicles 20 in which Judah faces the prospect of annihilation from an overwhelming enemy, and, led by Jehoshaphat, asks God for deliverance. God tells the people that he will save them. In a part of his response he says,

The battle is not yours, but God’s. Tomorrow march down against them…. You will not have to fight this battle.

For most of Cooper’s sermon he reads and applies the story faithfully, but when he comes to the concluding application, he gets it all backwards.

When the men … begin to sing and give praise to God, it was a weapon. …When they started praising–and notice[d?] that praise and worship is a weapon–God starts blowing up the enemy….

Here has been my prayer all week–that God would have some spiritual land mines out here where you’re standing tonight, and that as you rightly praise God, he would start blowing up your flesh, … that he would start blowing up and sending artillery back into your home where you’re facing this struggle, … that it would start sending grenades back into your schools….

As we worship tonight, that’s what our focus is going to be.

Worship is a weapon.

Worship was a consequence of victory, not the cause of it. It was a reaction to God’s power, not the reason for it. It’s a distinction that makes a big difference. The weapons in 2 Chronicles were all God’s; nothing the people of Judah did had anything to do with how God (the battle was his, remember) fought the battle. Cooper is supposing that worship is the cause of victory, which is why he advocates that his congregation engage in assault worship after his sermon.

Note his intended focus in worship–our problems. It’s worship inverted. We focus on ourselves and tell God to do good stuff for us.

Even so, narcissistic worship is still worship, just of a different god.

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2 Comments on “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition”

  1. 1 Albert said on June 4th, 2009:

    JDuncan,

    I don’t see a problem with using incorrect and inverted theology–so long as it proves the speaker’s point.

    After all, “we won’t survive unless we plan to change the truth to accommodate the brilliance of man.”

    (sarcasm)

  2. 2 Rob said on June 4th, 2009:

    In my reading, the worship began in vs 4. I didn’t listen to BCoop’s sermon, so I can’t say if his interpretation is right of wrong.

    I do like what Dr. Mark Dalbey at Covenant Theological Seminary has to say about this passage (Christian Worship, Lesson 6) “At another level it is very instructive for our understanding of the centrality of the people of God worshiping their God in the advancement of His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven…. We [Israel] are going to Christian Worship have a big all-of-Judah worship service before deciding what to do…. They [Israel] are all waiting on the Lord. They fasted, they prayed, and they remember the prayer of Solomon at the dedication of the temple. They are doing what God had instructed them to do: ‘Gather at the temple and cry out to Me when you have a problem.’ They humbly waited upon God, and the Spirit of the Lord speaks through a prophet.”

    But I think JDuncan missed the most obvious criticism. Verse 13, “All the men of Judah, with their wives and children and little ones, stood there before the LORD.” In Jehoshaphat’s kingdom, everyone worshiped together. Something you can’t do at NewSpring on Sunday morning.