Bob Kauflin: God takes the initiative. He gives us what we need to come to him. So why do we think when we worship him gathered together that God needs something from us?
David Zimmer: Welcome to Sound Plus Doctrine. The podcast of Sovereign Grace Music, where we explore what the Bible has to say about music and worship in the church and encourage those who plan, lead, and participate in their Sunday gatherings each week. Welcome to the Sound Plus Doctrine podcast. My name is David Zimmer.
BK: My name is Bob Kauflin. David, I thought you… I thought the intro was a little fast.
DZ: You said that so stately.
[laughter]
BK: I was just trying to balance out your… You just like zoomed through it.
DZ: Energy?
BK: And people they listen to this in the middle of the day, whatever, it’s like, “Oh my gosh, it’s coming at me” and then say calm down. It’s okay.
DZ: You’re right.
BK: Alright.
DZ: You’re – welcome. Welcome to the Sound Plus Doctrine podcast. [laughter]
BK: Anyway, here we are on the Sound Plus Doctrine podcast. I’m so excited.
DZ: So am I. What are we talking about today, Bob?
BK: Today, well, we are gonna talk about something that I actually spoke on at a kind of a retreat I was at in Guadalajara, Mexico, not too long ago. It was an unusual situation. My son Devon, and I have… Devon, but not everybody does. We were gonna be there together to talk about what matters to God in our gatherings, but Devon got COVID before… He came, so he was unable to travel out of the country. So I ended up having to do one of his messages and then another pastor in Sovereign Grace, Joselo Mercado, did the other, but I prepared a new message. And it was from Psalm 50. I’d read this Psalm… Couple years ago when I was reading this Psalm, I thought I would love to do a message from this Psalm one day and I thought, “You know what? This just seems to be…
DZ: A great opportunity.
BK: The right time. And I talked to a couple people about it. I said, I could just kind of take what Devon had done. In fact I was talking to Nate Stiff about this, and one of the songwriters, good friend. And, “Or I could do the Psalm 50.” He said, “It sounds like you’re a lot more excited about Psalm 50 than you are about just doing Devon’s message”. I said, “Do you know what?” You’re right. So it was a crunch, but it was so worth it because when you prepare to preach, you really research the Psalm. You dig into it in a way that you don’t typically do. And the message was called “What God looks for in our worship”. And it was fun preparing it somewhat in Spanish. I speak a little bit of Spanish, but just getting an idea of what the Spanish version actually says, but more than that, it’s what the Psalm actually says.
DZ: Yes.
BK: So if you were gonna, if we were gonna give a title today, it would be, “Why God Doesn’t Need Our Worship.” Because that’s kind of what the Psalm is about. It’s one of the few Psalms where God is addressing us, that most of the Psalm is God’s speaking to us. And it begins with just the Lord, the Mighty One, God, the Lord speaks in some of the earth, from the rising of the sun to its setting, out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth. And you get this picture that before anything happened, before anything existed, there was God, shining forth from eternity, in perfection. And then he goes on our God comes, he does not keep silence, before him is devouring fire around him, a mighty tempest. It brings up images of Mount Sinai where God met with his people. And it’s very sober. It’s a somber event, it’s a significant event. He says, “He calls to the heavens above to the earth that he may judge his people”. So we are getting a perspective here on what God thinks of his people’s worship. So it’s just… And the topic, or the theme of that message was gonna be that “Our gatherings is of God initiated, and God exalting”, it’s one of the first of the five marks of what God looks for.
DZ: Right. Which we talked… We talked about some of those distinctives.
BK: We did, we did.
DZ: Yeah. On our podcast. Yeah.
BK: Five podcasts on that. Five Values of Corporate Worship. So this was that one, God initiated God exalting. So he says, “Gather to me my faithful ones who made a covenant with me by sacrifice the heavens declare his righteousness for God, himself as judge. And all that sayin’ is that, you know what God says about a worship is right. And we talk a lot about this a lot, that it’s not really up to us to define what our worship is like. We have this whole worship world. The worship industry, contemporary worship. And we tend to get our thoughts about what worship is from that.
DZ: Totally.
BK: Worship musician magazine and worship conferences.
DZ: YouTube.
BK: YouTube, and so… And a lot of that’s good, but it can be easy to drift away from what God says to us about our worship. And so in Psalm 50, we have this clear statement, these clear statements from God as to what matters in our worship. So he begins by talking to his people in verse seven, “Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God. Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you. Your burnt offerings are continually before me.” And I just hear some people thinking right now, “What are they doin’ ? They’re talking about sacrifice, burnt offerings. I’m gonna listen this podcast, ’cause I just wanna learn something about how they gotta sing better or how I enjoy my meeting really it’s relevant. Trust me. It’s relevant. These sacrifices were ordained by God as a means…
DZ: He initiated them, yeah.
BK: Sorry?
DZ: Yeah, he initiated them.
BK: He initiated them as a means by which after the fall, after we blew it and Adam and Eve, we were rejected from God’s… Ejected from God’s presence. They were the means God provided for us to come to him. To come into his presence without being consumed by his holiness. So he says, “I don’t condemn you for that. They’re continually before me”. And then he says, verse nine, “I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds”. And the Hebrew means I will not take these. For every beast of the forest is mine the cattle on a thousand hills. And you’ve probably have heard that phrase referenced. That verse referenced. The Lord owns the cattle on a thousand hills. Well, what does that mean? Does it mean that he’s really rich?
DZ: Yeah.
BK: That he doesn’t need to go to Ruth’s Chris or a Texas Steakhouse to get anything, he’s… He got it… He’s got the cattle on a thousand hills. What it means is we can’t bring him anything that he hasn’t given us. We can’t give God anything that he didn’t originally give to us as a gift.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: So it’s all of grace. We got an email recently from a worship leader in the UK who listens to the podcast. Thank you for listening. And he was just encouraging us and he said our aim is to serve Christ in his church. This is what he was saying he learned. And when we sing on a Sunday morning, whether I’m in the congregation, playing guitar, singing in the band, or leading, it’s been super helpful to remember the purposes to enable the Word to dwell in us richly. Yet, as I come, it is not because God needs me, but because he has called me. He initiates it. I’m responding to him. And I can only come because of him. So, so often we come into our meetings with this mindset like the Israelites had here of “You know what maybe God needs something from me”, [laughter] or maybe in giving him something, I’ll get something back. It was like the pagan nations that they offered food to their gods.
DZ: Right.
BK: And thought their gods were hungry, so they needed to give him food and drink. And we’re giving you this and maybe you can make the crops grow and maybe you can give us rain and maybe you can bless our family life and give us wealth. And it was kind of like a tit for tat deal.
DZ: Right, right.
BK: And God’s saying, “I don’t work like that”.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: That’s not who I am. You’re misunderstanding something about our relationship.
DZ: Yes.
BK: But as I was thinking through this passage and as we were talking about this podcast, I thought, wow, how often do we do this?
DZ: Well. And how often do we do we… Are we so burdened and stressed and anxious to bring something, that should be a cause of relief. Just, I don’t have to muster up the offering that God has already, he’s already given it to me.
BK: If it’s a gift, why are we stressed?
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Why are we that you just… Why are we anxious? Why are we…
DZ: To get it right.
BK: Yes.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Yeah. And we we’ll talk about that. Like what…
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Okay. What is it we think we’re bringing to God.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: But he goes on to say, “If I were… ” In verse 12, “If I were hungry, I would not tell… I wouldn’t tell you”.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: For the world and all its fullness are mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? And these are… These sound like, well, that’s kind of a weird question, but oh, no, it’s not weird. When we think about what we bring to God, does God need our songs? Does he need our skills? Does he need our technology? Does he need our planning? Not that any of those are necessarily bad.
DZ: Right.
BK: But the important word is “need”.
DZ: Right.
BK: Does he need them?
DZ: Right.
BK: And I think so often, I mean, we’ve been guilty of this. We prepare or we’re in rehearsal or whatever and we feel this weight or we feel this pride like, “Oh, this is really good”.
DZ: Right.
BK: This is so good.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Like the Lord’s going.
[applause]
DZ: Yeah, finally, you did it right.
BK: Good job, man. That’s five creatures out there. They’re just a mess. But you guys, you got… And I’m just loving this because.
[laughter]
BK: And finally, I can find someone I can glorify myself through.
DZ: Right.
BK: The Lord doesn’t choose us because we’re so great.
DZ: Right.
BK: So I think we can be so envious of people with great voices, great instrumentalists and that’s kind of what’s modeled for us often on YouTube and other places. Yeah, you could… This is what God uses.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: He needs this to really glorify himself. You need to have someone with a great voice.
DZ: Right.
BK: Or someone who looks good, those are the people that God really uses. And actually, he doesn’t look for those kind of people. He can use them but not because he needs that… Those attributes. I mean how have you experienced this… Experienced this in your own life?
DZ: Yeah. Well, I think as you were mentioning YouTube and even just how you mentioned the worship industry, I think it’s no wonder that “worship music” would be popular when it is so focused on us when it is so typically man centered.
BK: That’s good. Good. Yeah.
DZ: And we have this from the Lord’s… We have this from God’s perspective, everything that I’ve given you, you’re just returning back to me.
BK: Yes. Yeah.
DZ: It’s not about, “Hey, we’re looking around and we look great doing this”.
[laughter]
DZ: And I think that’s funny, but I think that can so often be the… What we see in the worship industry.
BK: It’s hard not to see it.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: I mean, that’s why I’ve said before. Our worship services aren’t meant to be YouTubable. So the whole COVID thing. As people pouring hundreds of hours, thousands of dollars into making their livestream look amazing. It’s like why? That’s not the gathering. Live stream is not the gathering.
DZ: Right.
BK: Gathering is like where we have people next to each other.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Where we can actually touch each other, serve each other, hear each other. That’s the gathering. So it’s not as though, getting what’s on YouTube to look really good is the goal. It’s not the goal. Our services aren’t meant to be Instagramable. They’re not meant to be Facebookable.
[laughter]
BK: They’re meant for gathering. And sometimes it just looks like ordinary people gathering around singing their hearts out because Jesus is such an amazing gift. And think of when your child or your grandchild in my case brings you a painting that they’ve done. And you gave ’em the color pencils. You gave them the paper. You gave them the home. You give them food, you gave them life and it’s as though they would come to you and you go, “Wow, that’s amazing. What an incredible work of art.” No one does that. [laughter] And no one says, “You know what? This looks like trash. You can’t be my child. You can’t be my grandchild. I’ll just throw this thing right in the trash.” [laughter] I don’t do that. I’m so overwhelmed, not because of the quality of the offering, but because of the relationship. And God has initiated our relationship with him. From the garden, from Adam and Eve when they sinned God called them out, he went after them.
BK: Noah, God established a covenant with him. Abram, He called Abram out of Ur to go to the promised land. God appears to Moses in the desert, said, “He’ll deliver his people.” Not because Moses was any special thing, because God said, “I’m gonna use you.” God called his people together at Mount Sinai, God called and out and raised up Samuel and David. God spoke to us through the prophets. He sent his Son to redeem us. God sent his Spirit to assure us and sanctify us. In all these ways, God takes the initiative. He gives us what we need to come to him. So why do we think when we worship him gathered together that God needs something from us. It just makes no sense.
[laughter]
BK: So you might wonder, you might ask, so what’s the purpose? What do we do? Well, then this is what’s so great. In Psalm 50, he says, in verse 14, after this judgment, he says, “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and perform your vows to the Most High and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving. How thankful are we? When we gather together with our team, with God’s people on a Sunday morning, how grateful are we that God has made this possible that he’s called us together. That he has blessed us with the resources, the gifts, whatever it is that we have. And we’re able to come together by this power of his Spirit to give him honor, to give him glory, to hear from him in his word, to pray to him, to fellowship because of Jesus. Shouldn’t that make us thankful, rather than stressed out, or…
DZ: Yes. Yes.
BK: Burdened. And yet, how often are we not like that?
DZ: Right absolutely. [laughter]
BK: So be thankful. And then he says, “Call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you. And you shall glorify me.” Again, how many times have we been in a situation where we’re rehearsing or we’re getting ready for the meeting and something goes wrong. No charts, the power goes out. Your instrument stops working. You break a string. It’s like, “Oh my gosh. Oh.” What do we do in those instances? It’s like, “Oh, the meeting’s gonna be terrible,” whatever it is that goes wrong. What the Lord says, you know what, like I gave you that moment so you could call out to me. ‘Cause that’s how I’m gonna glorify myself through you. I will deliver you, call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you and you shall glorify me. But we don’t like to be in those situations. [laughter]
DZ: Right. It’s total dependence.
BK: Oh man.
DZ: It’s total dependence. And it’s not that, obviously we don’t want to be in those situations on a Sunday morning when something happens, that’s a panic. But I’m just even thinking about like week to week, month to month dependence. When you’re planning a set for Sunday, where is the dependence? When you’re planning for your Easter service at the beginning of the year, whenever you do it.
BK: Which we don’t do, [laughter] we plan for our Easter service the week before Easter. Just so everybody’s clear on that.
DZ: Well, I know, and yeah, and we’ve talked about that on previous podcasts, how much planning, how you should think through the year and calendars and schedules and stuff. But however you do it that… Bob, how would you practically encourage leaders that are listening to this in dependence?
BK: Oh, that’s a great question. And you should talk about this too, ’cause I think you model this really well. It begins with prayer. It…
DZ: Has to.
BK: Yeah. If we don’t talk to the Lord, you know, do I really think this is a day of trouble? Or do I think that I’ve got everything together? And, I really don’t need the Lord that much. I mean, I needed the Lord before. So we’re about to move into a new building, Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville, which I praise God for. I’m so happy about. But that will make us less dependent in some ways, you know, right now we’re bringing in cases, we’re loading them up an elevator…
DZ: We have to rent spaces.
BK: One at a time, rent spaces. You know we do all that kind of stuff and you feel dependent. Well, when you have a building, it’s like, it’s all right there, One, flip the switch, everything’s on, power’s on, instruments in place. It’s really great. I don’t need people as much and I don’t wanna lose our dependency. I don’t… We need the Lord every time we gather. We need the gospel, we need his word, we need the Spirit and we have all three, but God wants us to cry out to him. Because in some sense, this is our day of trouble. We may not think we have any problems, but there are people battling sin, battling suffering, battling self-sufficiency and anything could happen. So we just wanna be walking in reality and saying, “Lord, we can’t do this on our own.” So that’s what prayer is for.
DZ: Yeah. And I think you model that really well, Bob in, I mean, me being on staff with Sovereign Grace Music with you and working with you in a lot of projects previously, there’s always, we’re starting with a level dependence through prayer in everything we’re doing.
BK: That’s something that’s just years ago the Lord. Well, over time, Lord convicted me of. I would… Saying these kinds of things, but I wasn’t doing it.
DZ: Yeah. And I think, you know, it doesn’t matter what it is really. I mean, we just did two full days of shooting for a new Spanish project that we’re working on.
BK: Oh, yeah. En Ti Esperamos.
DZ: Yes, it’s 14 translations.
BK: 12 actually.
DZ: Oh, sorry. 12 translations.
BK: Maybe you know of two, I don’t know about.
DZ: There’ve been very long days.
BK: They have been very long days.
[laughter]
DZ: But, it doesn’t matter if we are on set, we’re all ready to go and all the lights are cued and the cameras. We’re gonna stop and we are going to prepare and we are going to make it clear we’re dependent on the Lord.
BK: Yeah. Yeah.
DZ: It doesn’t matter how much preparation or time or money you’re putting into something, you need the Lord’s help.
BK: Yeah. How little time you have left.
DZ: Yes. Yes. You need the Lord’s help. I think another, I guess I would say after prayer, our dependence on the Lord, absolutely… I would say our dependence on others.
BK: That’s good.
DZ: I feel like you have to draw other people into your world. We need each other. If you’re a worship leader and you have a staff, you have a pastor, there needs to be a relationship. Maybe not a best friend, but someone that there has to be a dependence on. “Hey, I need your help, I’m thinking through this.”
BK: Yes. And not be afraid to ask.
DZ: There needs to be a dependence on your team as well, “Hey, I value your opinions. I value your perspectives. I value your input. I value your wisdom.” You’re not an island. You’re not alone, because that can create… I don’t know, at its worst…
BK: Lot of problems.
DZ: Narcissism.
[laughter]
BK: God will oppose you.
DZ: God will oppose you. You know, he humbles the proud and exalts the humble.
BK: Yes, yes.
DZ: So, I guess I would add that.
BK: Yeah. No, that’s really good. A gratefulness is another aspect. He offers sacrifice of thanksgiving, glorifies me. I think he says it the end of the Psalm. Yeah. That’s what it was. “The one who offers thanksgiving as a sacrifice glorifies me.” So, we’re thankful. We’re just being thankful for what we have. And we’re not seeing this as an opportunity to impress.
DZ: That’s huge.
BK: But to respond with gratefulness, to what the Lord has done for us, what he has given us. And it’s so easy to overlook all that and think, “Okay, the next thing I do, this gathering, this meeting is that’s gonna get me in better with God, and it’s gonna move me on and… ” Gathering together with God’s people is meant to be a means of grace that nourishes us and strengthens us and matures us and builds us into Christ and into each other. But it’s not something that God needs. And it’s not something that he hasn’t given us the means to accomplish in the first place. And in one sense, we are hearing from him and just bearing witness to what he’s done. We’re just acknowledging. This is the Lord’s doing, it’s marvelous in our eyes.
DZ: Absolutely.
BK: I started doing something recently that has been very helpful. And that is some point in the first, like 15 minutes of the day. I just say these three phrases: “I need you. I depend on you. I trust you.” And I just fill that out in my mind. It’s just saying, “Lord, I need you. You don’t need me to do something for you today.” And even today. Oh my, even today I was… I’m just so aware this morning of all the things I need to do today.
[laughter]
BK: And I woke up to two texts that they woke me up, that were not… They were problems. Both these texts were problems.
DZ: Good morning. [laughter]
BK: Yeah. That’s right. So I just said, “Okay, Lord, I’m not gonna let this problem dominate my vision. I need you. I depend on you. So I’m gonna depend on you. You’re the one I’m gonna run to. You’re gonna be my refuge. You’re gonna be my shield.” All the metaphors that the Psalms use to tell us, “Hey, God’s the one you need to go to. He’s your sword, your shield, your refuge, your rock.” I depend on you, but then thirdly, I trust you. It’s not like I’m hoping you’ll come through. I’m hoping you’ll give me what I want. I trust you. I trust your goodness. I trust your wisdom. I trust your love. I trust your sovereignty. So I think there has to be an active expression of those things, I need you, I depend on you, I trust you. And that’s been very helpful for me personally, but I think even for our gatherings, we can say, “Lord, I need you for this meeting. And I depend on you. I’m not depending on our technology, on our, the fact that everybody’s actually here this Sunday, nobody canceled last minute, that’s not what I’m depending on”.
DZ: Yeah. Yeah.
BK: I’m not depending on the fact that all the technology seem to be working, because it may go out, you just don’t know. And the goal is not to make sure we have everything perfect, ’cause that will absorb all your time, all your energy, all your expectation.
DZ: Expectation, yeah.
BK: God’s left out of the picture. You don’t need the Lord if you’ve got it all covered. And it’s not that we don’t try and get it covered, it’s just that’s not our main concern. And then we trust him. We trust that the Lord’s going to reveal himself to people. I mean, just having a great time of gathered worship and song that the church gathered, it doesn’t necessarily mean people’s lives are changed. The Spirit’s gotta do that.
DZ: Yep.
BK: So, we can come together humbly knowing God, you’ve made it possible for us to come to you. You have initiated our relationship with you. And now you wanna do things in our midst that are totally your doing and for your glory. And we just wanna acknowledge that where we failed, acknowledge that you are great, forgiving, merciful, good, powerful, strong, that you have good in your heart towards us, and you are accomplishing that even as we meet. And I think as we have that mindset, we will be doing what Psalm 50 says to do.
DZ: Yes.
BK: “Come to God with a sacrifice of thanksgiving.” Let other people know, this is all, this all has to do with the salvation of God, it’s the fact that Jesus Christ came. He came and He became one of us and He absorbed the wrath of God for us. He took the punishment for our sins and is risen from the dead. And now He has ascended to his Father’s right hand and is reigning and interceding for us. And one day He’s coming back for us. It’s the story we tell a lot on this podcast. And we should be telling a lot in our churches, because it’s the story! It’s what we have! And so, how do we think we can bring something to our Sunday gathering that God needs is confusing. God doesn’t need us but He’s invited us.
DZ: [chuckle] Yes.
BK: He’s made it possible for us to meet with him and what a joy to do that every week with the church.
DZ: Amen. Amen. Yes. It is a joy. That’s the end.
[laughter]
BK: Yeah. I guess that’s where we’re gonna close. Thank you for joining us and thank you for listening, for watching. We will look forward to next time we do this together.
DZ: Yep. Thank you.
[music]
BK: Thank you for listening to Sound Plus Doctrine, the podcast of Sovereign Grace Music. Sovereign Grace Music exists to produce Christ exalting songs and training for local churches from local churches. For more information, free sheet music, translations and training resources, you can visit us @sovereigngracemusic.com.
