Caulfield Evangelical Methodist Church
- Weekly Pastoral Message -

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"Continuing steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine" Acts 2:42

Weekly Pastoral Message prepared by Rev. Murray Adamthwaite
for Sunday 27th September 1998

From the Pastor: Three plus Four is not Seven V

"Three are the things which are majestic in pace, even four which are stately in walk" Proverbs 30:29

The modern generation, we are told, dislikes ceremony. I'm not sure that this is entirely true. The recent Commonwealth Games certainly turned on a spectacle for its opening ceremony. The highlight of that programme, as always, was the march around the stadium of the athletes from the participating nations. "Were they proud to be involved in such a parade?", asked the journos, with considerable frequency. Of course they were!

This final set of four in Proverbs 30:29-31 dwells on the theme of people, and animals, on parade: the lion, the strutting cock (or is it a greyhound?), the male goat, and the king at the head of his army, as in antiquity. There is a certain martial pageantry and majestic order to all of these examples, which illustrates God's ordained order in the affairs of men, just as in the animal kingdom.

There is a further lesson for us in this emphasis on order and pageantry: ceremony is a proper part of the human scene in general. While we may shudder, as a previous generation did, at the intimidating parade of German soldiers in spiked helmets, or goose-stepping past the raised arm of Adolf Hitler, there is still a proper place for due ceremony in public life. Who was not moved, for example, at the recent state funeral for the two murdered police officers? Equally, in the Church also there is God-ordained order (cf Corinthians 14:40) which we do well to observe. Today's emphasis on easy informality has undoubtedly led to a loss of both the majesty and dignity in worship, and with them a loss of the sense of the majesty of God Himself. The next time we watch a nature programme and see the lion marching supreme through the wild, let us think of the majesty of the Creator.

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Caulfield Evangelical Methodist Church
Please email comments to: cemc@genesis.net.au
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