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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