If David Danced for the Lord in Worship, Should We?

If David danced for the Lord in worship, should we? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity. Well, hi, this is Bill Meyer, along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez practicing his waltzing right now. And this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. Of course, you can also post your question on one of our social media sites, and you can always email us your question at questionsatcorechristianity.com.

First up today, let's go to a voicemail from one of our listeners named Ann Marie. The other day you were talking on the Holy Spirit and the day when all of the disciples were getting a language in their own language. What do you say about Paul's teaching in Corinthians that says, Paul says, I speak in tongues more than you all, and that there is a prayer language, and there is English, or whatever our regular language is, and then there's an unknown tongue. What about those of us that, since I was 12 years old and I'm 70, I have been able to speak in tongues, first in English and then speak in tongues in prayer. How do you address that issue for those many of us that speak daily in our heavenly language to the Lord? Thank you.

Hi, Ann Marie. Thank you for giving us a call and just delighted to hear that you've been walking with the Lord for so many years. God bless you. Of course, we've got to go to that text in Scripture, and you're talking about 1 Corinthians 14. And because I want us to get the context, I'm going to begin in verse 6, and I'm going to read a few verses.

I really appreciate your question. Paul said, Now brothers, if I come to you speaking in tongues, how will I benefit you unless I bring some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching? If even lifeless instruments such as the flute or the harp do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is played?

And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle? So with yourselves, if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air. There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning. But if I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me. So with yourselves, since you are eager for the manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the Church. Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret. For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful.

What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, and I will pray with my mind also. I will sing praise with my spirit, and I will sing with my mind also. Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say, Amen to your giving of thanks, when he does not know what you are saying?

For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up. I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue. Now first, what is Paul trying to do here? Obviously, the Corinthians are eager for spiritual gifts.

He says it himself. You're eager for these manifestations of the Spirit. The problem in Corinth, sister, is that they were abusing these things, if you will. They weren't doing it decently and in order, as the Lord had called the church, to operate in this way. They're in the apostolic church, and he's saying, look, everything that you do in the church when you gather together should be for instruction, for edification. He's going to go on to say, if an outsider comes into your church and everyone is speaking in tongues, they're just going to look around and say, Ben, these people are out of their minds.

I don't understand what's going on here. So the focus really in this section of 1 Corinthians is, whatever we do in the body of Christ should be for the edification of the whole, for the building up of the other. And so he says to the Corinthians, if somebody has the gift of tongues, they should also pray that there's an interpreter so that the rest of the congregation can say amen to the giving of thanks, whatever is said. Now, I don't think that Paul is talking about a heavenly prayer language there. I think he's talking about real languages that were given by the grace of the Holy Spirit. In fact, he seems to suggest that in the verses that I just read, in verse 10 of 1 Corinthians 14, where he says, there are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none of them is without meaning.

And so this wasn't just meaningless repetition of words or babble. These were real languages that had never been learned by these people, but that the Holy Spirit, by his miraculous power, gifted them with the ability to speak in these tongues. And ultimately, going back to Acts chapter 2, which was the day that you were referencing there at the beginning, what happens?

The disciples speak in tongues, it gets the attention of the crowd, and Peter is then able to preach the gospel so that thousands of people come to faith in Jesus Christ. And so these gifts, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, were given, in particular these sign gifts I think, sister, were given for the edification of the church and the advancement of the gospel, especially early on. I don't think that God is ordinarily giving these miraculous gifts today. God is free to do whatever he wants.

So I don't deny that, and I can't speak to your own personal experience, and so I wouldn't want to do that. I'm just saying here, based on the text of scripture in 1 Corinthians chapter 14, these were gifts given for the edification of the church, meant to operate decently and in order within the body. And so I appreciate your question, Anne-Marie, and thank you for giving us a call. May God bless you as you continue to seek him and to follow him and to grow in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Thanks for that explanation, Adriel.

Appreciate that. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and if you've got a question about the Bible or the Christian life, we would love to hear from you. Here's the phone number. It's 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Our phone lines will be open for the next 15 minutes or so, and we would love to hear from you. Let's go to Brenda in Nashville, Tennessee.

Brenda, what's your question for Adriel? Hi, I was wondering if Paul ever spoke one-on-one or had interactions with Jesus while he was on earth. I have seen where he was, I think maybe it was just the Holy Spirit, and I just never see conversation back and forth like Jesus had with a lot of other people. Did Paul live after Jesus or in a different area? I don't think that Paul had interaction with Jesus while Jesus was conducting his earthly ministry, but we do of course have the story of Paul's conversion where the risen Christ came to the apostle Paul, then Saul of Tarsus, as he was persecuting the church, and confronted him.

There is a conversation that the two of them have there. I'm thinking of Acts 9. It's repeated a number of times in the book of Acts. We read there in verse 1, Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the way, that is Christians, the church, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him, and falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said, Who are you, Lord?

And he said, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, but rise and enter the city and you will be told what you are to do. And so at one sense I think we can say, yes, he did have a real vivid interaction with Jesus, not while Jesus was conducting his earthly ministry, but after he had accomplished that earthly ministry, died on the cross, rose again from the dead, and ascended into heaven. Here he's appearing to Saul of Tarsus, converting him to become the apostle Paul, and so this is where Paul gets his apostolic authority from, directly from the Lord, as God is revealing to him the Gospel, and in fact, this is what Paul is going to bring out in the book of Galatians specifically. He says, The Gospel that I received, I didn't receive it from men, he says, I received it directly from a revelation, directly from the Lord, commissioned by Jesus himself as an apostle, and so that's where you have that interaction. And then of course, for the rest of his life, he's communicating with Jesus just like we do as well. We have this communion, this sweet communion and fellowship with Jesus Christ where we can speak to him directly as his children, where we're united to him by the grace of the Holy Spirit so that we can call upon him. I think of what Paul says in 2 Corinthians where he pleaded with the Lord to take away the thorn in the flesh that he had that was given to him to humble him, and he said that the Lord said to him, My grace is sufficient for you.

My strength is perfected in weakness. And so he did have these vivid experiences, this encounter with Jesus, but throughout his life I think he had this continual communion with Christ in prayer, and I think that's what we're supposed to have as well as followers of Jesus. God bless you, Brenda.

Brenda, thanks so much for calling in and for your question. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. We have some excellent Bible studies available to you here, and we have a brand new one on the parables of King Jesus. That's the title, the parables of King Jesus.

I'm holding it here in my hand. It's a beautiful 10-week Bible study. Actually, one of the reasons I'm excited about this is not just because I love the parables of Jesus. I think there's so much for us to learn from the parables of Jesus. But it was written by a friend of mine, a minister, a colleague in ministry, Chuck Tedrick, and I just have so much respect for him.

I know that this resource is really going to bless you. In the introduction to this study, asking the question why the parables, it reads, Jesus' parables are familiar and popular, but they are sometimes misinterpreted or misapplied, treated as timeless stories with moral lessons. But Jesus isn't simply relaying information or providing instruction.

He's ushering in his kingdom. In this Bible study, we'll discover that the parables are not merely describing something but doing something through the words and works of Jesus. So this is really a wonderful study. Hope that you'll get ahold of it, and you can get ahold of it over at corechristianity.com for a gift of $20 or more.

We'd love to get that in your hands. Go to corechristianity.com forward slash studies and look for the parables of King Jesus. As Adriel said, one of our great new Bible studies would highly recommend it either for your individual study or maybe for a group or a Sunday school class.

Perhaps as you're looking forward to what your next Sunday school class is going to do, this would be a great choice. Well, let's go back to the phones. Here's a voicemail we received from one of our listeners earlier this week. This is from Barbara.

I'm calling about, I don't know what to call it. It's when a woman gets up in front of the church and dances for the Lord in a costume that's all black with gold cuffs and a gold face mask that you can't see. Anyway, the idea was that David danced before the Lord, so that validates this kind of worship. The music that's playing is very difficult to even understand the words.

I'm just not sure about this. It seems like the person dancing is drawing all the attention to themselves, and it's hard for me to accept that. Anyway, I want to know about the biblical stance on dancing before the Lord in a worship service.

Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Is it okay to dance before the Lord in a worship service? I guess it depends on how good of a dancer you are. I mean, if you're a terrible dancer, me dancing in a worship service would not bring honor to the Lord.

I would just, you know, bring shame to myself. First, I think the text that's being used maybe in order to support this is 2 Samuel 6, where David does dance before the Lord. The ark is being carried back to Jerusalem, and it's this time of celebration. He's just overjoyed. If you've ever been so overjoyed by somebody, you just want to do a little dance.

You know, you want to leap for joy. That's what David is doing there in 2 Samuel 6. Now, what's interesting is right before that, a guy named Uzzah reaches out his hand to touch the ark, and God strikes him dead. It's one of those scenes that people hear it, and they just think, whoa, what was going on there?

But a couple things are being communicated here. I mean, obviously, the joy that we should have in worship, but also the reverence that we should have in worship. I think both of those things are brought together in 2 Samuel 6. I remember years ago when I was a brand new Christian, maybe, you know, first year of walking with the Lord, I was at a church, and there was a dear brother whose name happened to be David in his 70s. And one time, you know, during the musical part of worship, as everyone's singing, this brother in his 70s, I mean, I feel like he really had a hard time walking, but in the middle of a song, jumped in the air and did a 360.

I kid you not. And all of us around him just sort of like, whoa, David, that was amazing. And it did draw a lot of attention. We clapped, I think.

People clapped. But is that what we should be doing? My concern, well, one, I want to say, look, worship should be, when we're singing to the Lord, especially those songs of praise, those psalms of praise, those anthems of praise, I think there should be joy, right? And there's nothing wrong with that.

There's nothing wrong with that. And I think celebration, loud shouts of joy, I mean, how often do the psalms talk about this? But when it comes to what we do in worship, and again, I mentioned this verse earlier at the very end of 1 Corinthians chapter 14, everything being done decently and in order, and for the edification of the whole. One of the things that you said is it's hard to even understand the music, the words that are being sung. And I would say that's exactly what Paul is getting at in 1 Corinthians 14, where he says if there's no understanding, if we don't know what we're singing, how can we actually say amen? How can we actually worship the Lord? It's so key that one, what we sing to the Lord is coherent, right? We're able to understand what we're saying is orthodox, is rooted in scripture.

This is one of the reasons I love singing the psalms that are given to us in the Bible and is done for the edification of the whole. We're not trying to draw attention to ourselves. And so that's something that concerns me.

If somebody is getting up there wearing a costume, I mean, that also just seems strange to me, too. I mean, it's just saying, eyes on me, focus on me. The focus in worship needs to be the triune God.

That's where the focus needs to be. And so anything in our worship and our singing that puts the emphasis, the focus on the individual, I think there's a problem. And I don't think that's something that we should do when we're gathered together as a church in worship, because we're not focusing on us, on our talents, even on how well we sing. We're focusing on making a joyful noise unto the Lord or a cry of lament unto the Lord, as scripture says.

And so I hear what you're saying. I don't think that going to 2 Samuel 6 is the best application to saying, well, David did it, so we should have dancers in our worship service, that kind of a thing. No, we want to do everything decently and in order with the focus on the triune God rooted in scripture and still not minimizing the joy and the excitement that we can have as we're singing to the Lord. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with emotion as we sing to God. Boy, that's a good thing.

It's a gift from God. But let's not draw attention to ourselves. Let's put the attention on Jesus.

Some great advice. Thanks for that, Adriel. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. We are always open to your questions about the Bible, the Christian life, doctrine, or theology, any questions you might have. You can leave us an email. Send us an email at questions at corechristianity.com. Or, of course, you can leave us a voicemail 24 hours a day. Here's the number. It's 1-833-843-2673.

That's 833-THE-CORE. Let's go to James in Robinson, Illinois. James, what's your question for Adriel? Hi, Pastor Adriel.

Hey, James. I appreciate all you do and enjoy your program. My question, I listen to the Bot Network and a lot of really good preachers, including yourself, that all agree that salvation is by grace through faith alone and not of works, and I agree with that also. My question is, when it comes to revelation, like-minded preachers are all over the place on revelation.

Everybody's vastly different on how they believe, so my question is, honestly, does anyone really understand the book of Revelation? Thank you. Yeah, I do. I'm just joking.

I hope I do. I just started preaching through the book of Revelation. But here's the thing.

A couple of things, brother. One, we sometimes talk about the clarity of Scripture. It's one of the attributes of Scripture, the perspicuity of Scripture. What we mean by that is that, at least with regard to salvation, the Gospel, the Scriptures are so clear that even a child can understand what we need, the grace of God that we need, the forgiveness of sins, that the Scriptures are clear in communicating this to us. But not all Scriptures are equally clear. There are passages and books of the Bible that are more difficult. Peter himself, instead of Paul's writings, you know, some of those things that Paul says are kind of hard to understand, and the unstable will twist those things to their own destruction. And so we have to approach Scripture with humility.

We have to think through, okay, what is the genre here that I'm looking at? We have a great Bible study, by the way, on how to read the Bible, which I think can be helpful in sort of figuring this out as we're approaching different books of the Bible. But one of the reasons why, and I'm seeing this as I've begun studying the book of Revelation for this series we're doing at my church, one of the things that people have a hard time with the book of Revelation with is just, one, there's so many symbols, apocalyptic imagery, visions.

It's not to be read like one of the historical books, per se. We're looking at these visionary prophecies and we're trying to understand what the symbols relate to. And that requires wisdom. That requires, you know, digging into the Scriptures a lot. What I'm finding, and what others have recognized, is so much of the book of Revelation is rooted in the language of the Old Testament. It just seems like every single verse is echoing something in the Old Testament, so it's really hard to understand the book of Revelation if we're not also steeped in the Old Testament Scriptures, because John is drawing from those as he communicates his visions. And so when we realize that not all Scripture is equally clear, and that some books of the Bible, like the book of Revelation, have all this apocalyptic imagery, these symbols, it should cause us to say, okay, we need to be extra cautious here as we're unpacking this book and explaining the meaning of these various symbols.

And sometimes the meaning of the symbols is given to us right there in the text. When John sees the vision of the seven golden lampstands, he's told those seven lampstands, what they're symbols of is the church. It's Jesus walking in the midst of his church, so sometimes the Scripture gives us the inspired interpretation, but not all the time. And so we have to be humble. We have to read the text of Scripture in its context, understanding its genre, understanding the Old Testament background, understanding the original audience.

And sometimes people don't do that. They don't do the hard work of digging into the Old Testament first, of thinking through, okay, what is the genre here of this prophetic letter, this apocalyptic vision that John has received? And so we start to approach these books the wrong way, I think, and that's why you have so much diversity of interpretation. Again, studying the Bible, friends, requires humility, the help of the Holy Spirit. We call it the illumination of the Holy Spirit, so when we open up the Scriptures, just want to encourage you to pray and say, God, help me. Help me to understand your word, to receive your word into my heart, and guide me as I read.

We want to do it in the context of community, in the context of the church. That is, we're not just reading it alone in our closet and coming to these theological conclusions that nobody else has come to in the last 2,000 years of church history. We're reading in communion with the whole church, and in particular with our local church where we go to church growing together with the believers there. And so I think as we do that, there's more unity, there's more of an ability to come together and sift through some of the challenges in interpretation, but a lot of times, James, people don't do that. And as a result, you get all these ideas, all these interpretations, all this disagreement, but the good news, as you noted, is when it comes to the main thing, the Gospel, the fact that Christ is victorious over sin and death, which frankly, when we're looking at the book of Revelation, is central to that book as well, we agree that Jesus is victorious and that Jesus is coming back to judge the world, regardless of what people's take on the book of Revelation is.

In terms of an orthodox understanding of the book, that's something that everybody agrees with, is that Jesus is going to return to judge the earth and that he's conquered sin and death and that we the church, the believers, are going to reign with him through his great sacrifice. And so, brother, thank you for that question, and may God give his church unity around these matters because that's what I believe the Lord wants, is us to be united around his word. We also have a wonderful Bible study on the book of Revelation for our listeners that want to dig deeper, and I'm just curious, Adriel, as you're going through your sermon series right now, has anything jumped out at you that didn't jump out before?

Honestly, like I said earlier, just the relationship that the book of Revelation has to the Old Testament, really knowing the Old Testament is so helpful for interpreting the book of Revelation, but not just the book of Revelation, the entire Bible as well. Thanks for listening to CORE Christianity. To request your copy of today's special offer, visit us at corechristianity.com and click on offers in the menu bar, or call us at 1-833-843-2673. That's 833-THE-CORE. When you contact us, please let us know how you've been encouraged by this program, and be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's word together.