A Word in Season: The Lord's day (Psalm 42:1-4)

Good morning. This is Pastor Jeremy Walker from Maiden of Our Baptist Church. It's a beautiful morning here, but I wonder where you would like to be today. Perhaps for some of you it's a question of being far away, or you can imagine some sun-kissed beach or some clear and lonely mountain.

The Desire to Gather With God's People

But if you're a healthy Christian, your great desire, I hope this morning, I believe this morning, would be to gather with God's people in God's presence to worship His holy name. In Psalm 42, King David wrote these words.

We don't go like David did to a physical temple. But Christianity in the New Testament is still essentially a corporate experience. It is a gathering together as a church, and that particular privilege happens on the Lord's Day in a distinct way when the risen Christ by His Spirit draws near to His people and God makes Himself known to us.

The Loss of Gathered Worship and the Lord's Day

The privileges of gathered worship are something that for many of us today we might be deprived of. And I hope in one sense we'll find that everything else just doesn't fill the gap. I hope that this will give us a sense of sympathy for brothers and sisters who perhaps would have crawled on their hands and knees if they could to be among God's people Sunday by Sunday, but they're deprived.

They're not able to be there because of particular sicknesses or weaknesses or the frailties of old age. And perhaps we've not really taken account of what it's like to be in that position, and now we'll begin to learn.

I hope that we'll begin to get a sense of perhaps what we've presumed upon or what we haven't valued as we might have done. Not that we've been necessarily careless or thoughtless, but have we relished the privilege of the Lord's Day?

Have we really desired and delighted in the possibility of going to meet with God's people? Not to the church building as such, but to a building where the church meets to sing His praises, to pray together, to read the Word of God and to hear it preached to our souls.

Because of the dynamics of that, nothing is going to really replicate that reality, and we should, I hope, then be stirred up to long for it more and more. This is going to be a period when, in some measures, we're deprived of that weekly feast.

We won't have the blessing of meeting face to face with each other before God, and all the supernatural realities of that that flow along at least some natural channels are going to be strange to us over the coming weeks.

God Blesses His People in Every Circumstance

And yet I hope that two things at least will happen to us as we do what we can today to keep the Lord's Day and to seek His face. I hope the first is this, that whatever scraps we might feed on, God, in His mercy, will indeed bless our souls.

He is the good shepherd of the sheep, and He will not leave His people. He knows how to bless us under all these circumstances, and He is not far from us, and He can draw near to us to bless us in distinct ways.

I also hope that it will give us an appetite not just for God's kingdom of grace on earth, but also God's kingdom of glory when it comes in heaven, for what we desire now is just a foretaste of that which is to come.

And if this experience gives us an appetite to be back with God's people under God's word and an appetite for heaven itself, then it will have served at least something of a good purpose. But if you've never known that sweetness, and if you've never known that blessing, and if you have no idea what I'm talking about, then I would urge you, when you next have the opportunity, go to a place where the word of God is being faithfully preached, where Jesus Christ is being held out, and where God's people are meeting to worship Him in peace and with joy.

And I trust that there you will meet with God, and you will know Him to be God indeed, and you will come to know Him as your Saviour. Amen.