My wonderful wife, Amanda, has slaved so very hard as of late and is about to graduate with her Master’s from USC in Music Education this Saturday. We are so very excited now that we will have Monday evenings where one of us is not in school and every free moment is not dedicated to some book to be read or some assignment to be completed.
Part of this last week was her having to sing in some choir concerts in Columbia. The group sang two-thirds of Handel’s Solomon. This masterpiece follows some of the themes of King Solomon’s life. In the midst of this piece on a wooden pew sitting in a packed Rutledge Chapel on a Sunday afternoon 100 degree temperature with the AC busted, God spoke to me. And if He can do that there, you know He is amazing. A couple of the lines of the text really got me:
- The Chorus of Priests sing that “With pious heart, and holy tongue, resound your Maker’s name, till distant nations catch the song, and glow with holy flame.“ What a fantastic line. Living with a holy heart and tongue, we are to proclaim our God’s name until distant nations start catching that song and glow with the light of the world within them! John Piper actually states that the whole reason why missions exist is because worship does not. The goal of Christian missions is to make worshippers of Jesus. This line supports his concept that our job is to worship our God so that others catch the melody too and begin to make His praise their song in their lives!
- The other great line is sung by the character of Solomon. He is talking about his work on the temple of the Lord which was an amazing, impressive feat. He sings “Bless’d be the Lord, who look’d with gracious eyes upon His vassal’s humble sacrifice, and has with an approving smile my work o’erpaid, and grac’d the pile.” What a fantastic line for any worker of the Lord – Jesus’ approving smile is a massive overpayment to anything that we ever could deserve! As servants of the Lord, we don’t work for the approval of men (Gal. 1:10), we don’t work for the applause of our peers, we don’t work for the notice, the money, the fame, we work with one thought and ambition in mind – the approving smile of Jesus.
And if we receive that one day, we have been well overpaid.
Travis Agnew serves as the Lead Pastor of Rocky Creek Church in Greenville, SC. His most recent book is Just (About) Married.