Thursday, 19 June 2008

• Worshipping with sticks

  Heb 11:21 By faith, Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff.

   

  Over my 7 years of being a Christian I have been to several types of churches. I’ve attended Baptist, Nazarene, Orthodox, Catholic, Assembly of God, Jehovah Witness, Non-denominational, LDS, Judaic, Presbyterian, and Pentecostal services, and have witnessed several different forms of worship. The shouts of alleluia of Baptists, the hand clapping of the Nazarenes, the tongue speaking of the Pentecostals, the solemn adoration of Orthodox and Catholics, yet I have never seen someone worshipping with a staff. We get this funny idea of someone lifting a staff in the air, or maybe someone praying with it at the altar. What the heck does this whole bit of worshipping while leaning on a staff mean at all?

  Once again to understand this we need to think like Jews, or at least figure out what this meant to a Jew. The Book of Hebrews was of course written to who else but Hebrews or Jews, thus, for them this whole business of leaning on staffs while worshipping made sense. It was customary for a Jewish man to carry with him a walking stick or staff. And on his staff he would record history or events on it, from the bottom to the top. For example say a man gets married, has kids, becomes wealthy, watches a miraculous event happen, and so on and so forth, these are all examples of things that he would have inscribed on his staff. This was used for various reasons, most importantly to track family history and also as a way of showing God’s faithfulness. I guess it would be like if you wrote down prayers in a journal and wrote down when you received an answer. You could return time and time again to the journal to show God was there for you.

  David, when talking to Saul about fighting Goliath, references his staff. He said that whenever a lion or bear would take off with a lamb he would chase after it and strike the predator and retrieve the lamb. He later goes on to say that God was faithful to deliver him from those animals and God will be faithful to deliver him from Goliath. How could he bo so brave and make such a claim? Maybe the first time or every time he chased down the animal stealing a lamb and hit it with his staff, he would inscribe it that same staff. So when he would chase after the lion or bear he would look down at the staff and see all the times that God had rescued him and know that this was going to be another showing of God’s grace.

  Alright you say, I understand, but what does this faith in a staff have to do with worshipping on the staff. Well whenever you think about all the times that God has rescued you or shown you his love didn’t it just want to make you say “thank you” or “I love you.” We as Christians should never stop looking back to all the times that God has saved us. From when we first accepted him as he saved us from the road that led us to Hell, to the times now where he gives us the strength to overcome adversity. We need to reminiscence over these times and just realize how good God has been to us. That’s what Jacob was doing when he was leaning on his staff. On Jacob’s staff were inscribed the day he was married to Rachel, the birth of all his children, but most importantly the day he thought that his favorite son Joseph was dead. When you go back to Genesis when Jacob was leaning on his staff he was there with Joseph and his two children, Ephraim and Manasseh. Jacob looked up and down his staff and probably said to himself, “God is truly faithful, the son I thought was dead is alive, and what more my eyes at my old age are beholding his children, Alleluia.” As Jacob’s life was ending he leaned on that staff and recounted all the times that God had rescued him and maybe his final inscription that his son whom he thought was dead is in fact alive.

  So many of us today have forgotten from the height we fell from. Maybe today we should all whip out our own staff and inscribe on it all the times that God has been good to us. We might be amazed to see we’ll need several staffs to do the job.

   

  • 7:29 PM
  • 54 Views
  • 0 eProps
  • 0 Comments