“Worship Together!”

Faith Baptist Church

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Ephesians 5, follow along in your copy of Scripture as we read, beginning in verse 15.

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Paul writes, See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

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Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the

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Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the

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Lord, giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.

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Our Father, use these verses to encourage us and challenge us about worshiping rightly together.

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We pray in Jesus' name, Amen. We were on vacation one time and we entered in the auditorium of a church where we had never been before.

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We were visiting that church with some friends of ours, and the first thing that struck me as we entered into the auditorium was how dark it was.

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I realize our auditorium isn't as bright as we might like it to be, but I'm talking dark. You looked up and the ceiling was painted that matte black, and there were some can lights in the ceiling, but they were dimmed so that the congregation itself was in a little shroud of darkness, if you will.

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But the lights were blazing on the platform, and the spotlights were there, and the platform was well lit up.

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When it was about time for the service to start, the praise team members came out onto the platform, onto the stage, and they fiddled a bit with their instruments, kind of doing last minute tunings or whatever.

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And then at the appointed time, the worship leader came to the platform, came front and center, shared a few announcements, a word of welcome, and then said, let's all stand together and worship together.

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Well, nearly everybody in the congregation stood, maybe just a few people who were elderly didn't, but nearly everybody else complied, stood together, and the instruments started playing, started their thing.

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And the lyrics were put up on the screen behind the praise band, and the lyrics to the first song showed up, and the worship leader started to lead us in song.

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And we were going to stand for the next 20 minutes singing a set of four different songs, and at some point there was a prayer interspersed.

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Now, I didn't know any of the songs, and that's okay, that doesn't bother me. I think it's good to learn new hymns,

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I think it's helpful, I think every generation needs to have new hymns that are reflective of that generation's learning and understanding and growth in Christ.

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That doesn't bother me in the least bit. But it was incredibly difficult to pick out the melody of those songs.

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As the band is playing, there's such a volume with the band that there wasn't any one instrument that's playing the melody that stood out, so you couldn't really pick out the melody line like you can when you're just simply playing a piano and organ together or something like that.

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So it was very difficult to pick out the melody, and to make matters worse, the band was playing so loud that it drowned out any singing in the congregation at all.

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So you couldn't hear the person sitting next to you or behind you as they were singing, which if you've never heard a song before and you're new to a place and the congregation knows the song and they're singing it, that helps you pick out the melody.

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Well, it was absolutely impossible to hear anybody else singing. So it didn't take long, like maybe halfway through the first song, and I pretty much gave up, gave up trying.

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I thought, well, maybe the next song. Next song, it was the same thing. And it was about the middle of that second song,

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I started to look around at the rest of the congregation, and the auditorium was pretty well filled, and I'm looking around at the congregation, and everybody's standing, almost everybody's standing, and as I'm looking in and out,

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I'm realizing, you know, there really are, you know, probably not even half the people are singing, and everybody else is just, you know, standing there watching the band, watching the band do their thing.

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And I wondered, are we really worshipping here together?

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This seemed to be more of an audience watching what was going on on the stage, and what was going on on the stage was like more of a concert or a show or a performance.

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Now, don't get me wrong, I think there is a place for sacred music concerts, where, you know, there is an audience that watches and listens and as a, you know, whatever presents sacred music for our enjoyment and for our enrichment.

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But when it comes to the local church, we're called to something more.

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We're not called to gather together to watch a performance. We're called to gather together and to participate, submissively participate, in spirit -filled corporate worship.

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Now, let's back up from this text in Ephesians 5 and get the bigger picture of the context.

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All the way back at the beginning of chapter 4, when Paul does this transition going from what we call the indicatives to the imperatives, from writing in chapters 1 through 3 about these great theological doctrinal truths that thrill our souls, he moves from the doctrinal section of his letter, the primarily doctrinal section, to the primarily application section, from the indicatives, this is what is true, to the imperatives, this is what you now need to do.

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In chapter 4, verse 1, he begins that section with this exhortation to walk worthy of the calling to which we are called.

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So, he's calling us in this, almost the rest of the book, or letter, to walk worthy of our calling as Christians.

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And so then in chapter 4, verse 2, he tells us that that walking worthy as a Christian demands that we have a humble attitude toward others in the church.

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He says, do so with all lowliness and meekness and longsuffering and so forth.

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In verses 3 through 6 of chapter 4, that walking worthy demands of us that we maintain the unity in the local church, but we do so while in verses 7 through 16, we appreciate and employ the diversity of gifts within a local church.

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And then in verses 17 through 21 of chapter 4, walking worthy demands that we avoid the old paths of our pre -conversion life.

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We don't go down that path. And then in verses 18 to 32, a worthy walk demands of us that we are properly outfitted with Christ's likeness.

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We put on the right garments, the right clothing for this walk that we're on with Christ.

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Chapter 5, verses 1 to 7, this worthy walk demands that we travel with the right partners in this journey.

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We can't be traveling with those who will constantly be wanting to take us off the path and take us down an aberrant path.

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We don't want to go that way. We don't want to go with those partners. And then in verses 8 through 17 of chapter 5, this worthy walk demands of us that we have our eyes wide open to who we are and to where we are in this world, seeing that we walk circumspectly, he says in verse 15, with our eyes wide open, not as fools, but as wise.

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But now in chapter 5, verse 18, through chapter 6, verse 9, it's a pretty large section, Paul exhorts us to walk worthy by being submissive.

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Verse 21 gives us that theme of submission that's going to cover this entire section, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of the

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Lord. So the section we're looking at today, verses 18 through 21, calls us to a mutual submission in the local church, a mutual submission in the local church.

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Chapter 5, verses 22 through 32, calls us to marital submission in the marriage relationship.

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Chapter 6, the first four verses, speak of familial submission within the family, within the home.

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And then chapter 6, verses 6 through 9, for lack of a better way of describing it,

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I call it a commercial submission that takes place in the workplace. So, this whole section from chapter 5, verse 18, through chapter 6, verse 9, focuses on the idea of submission.

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Now let's zero in on verses 18 through 21, and the kind of submission that's called for here is a submission that revolves around our worship together as a local church, and we're called to a mutual submission in the local church in the context of our worship.

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And we're called to worship rightly as we gather together as God's people.

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But to worship rightly, we need to be filled with the Spirit. See this right away in verse 18.

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Paul says, "'Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the

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Spirit.'" So you get the sense of what he's saying here, that the first half of the verse has something to do with, to explain, help us understand the second half of the verse.

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Don't be drunk with wine. What happens when one is drunk with wine? When one is drunk with wine, he is robbed of control to some degree.

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And the depth of the drunkenness determines the depth of the robbery of control.

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The more drunk one is, the less control he has over his body, over his thinking, over his actions and behavior and so forth.

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That drunkenness impairs his judgment. It displaces rational thought.

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He doesn't think things through rationally. How many people have caused accidents and drunk driving incidents that got behind the wheel thinking they were rational and that they could handle it, they were fine?

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It's a very typical problem. Drunkenness displaces rational thought. It induces recklessness.

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People do all kinds of stupid, stupid things when they're drunk. You've heard people talk, and maybe it's your workplace, maybe you've seen it in a television show or something like that, where somebody gets up the next morning and say, what was it

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I did last night? They don't even remember what they did the night before. And then someone tells them, and they bury their hand in their face, and oh man,

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I'm so ashamed of myself. Yeah, exactly. That's what drunkenness does to you.

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It induces recklessness. And completely diminishes the concerns about the consequences for that behavior, that reckless behavior.

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And this is what Paul means when he says, don't be drunk with wine, wherein is excess. All of those things that I just mentioned are wrapped up in that word excess.

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It means a recklessness of behavior. Well, being filled with a spirit is not to be anything like that.

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It's the absolute opposite of that drunkenness. But I want you to notice the tense of the verb that Paul uses here when he says, be filled with a spirit.

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He is not talking about a one -time punctiliar thing that happens at a point in time.

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Like I got converted, I got saved, and then it was about three years later when

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I was filled with the spirit. And that was accompanied by some kind of ecstatic expression.

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That's not the case because Paul uses the present tense. He says, be being filled with the spirit.

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This is an ongoing thing. This isn't a one -time thing that happens and then you're good. This being filled with the spirit is an ongoing normative thing for the believer in Christ that will have an effect on the gathering together of believers in the local church.

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So being filled with the spirit, what are we talking about then, being filled with the spirit? Well, being filled with the spirit involves his filling us,

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I would suggest, with three things at least. It involves filling us in the first place with God's Word, with God's Word.

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Now, let me show you the parallel passage to this one. It's in Colossians 3, this is just over a few pages in your

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Bible. Paul wrote the letter to the church at Colossae at the same time that he wrote this letter to the church at Ephesus.

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Paul was in prison and these are called his prison epistles, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, and then also

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Philemon. But in Colossians 3, verse 16, here's our parallel to Ephesians 3, 18 through 20.

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He says here, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, look, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the

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Lord. You get the parallelism, right? You see that? The singing of psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the

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Lord. All right, so here's the parallel between Colossians 3, 16 and Ephesians 2, 18.

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In Ephesians 2, 18, Paul says, be being filled with the spirit. Colossians 3, 16 helps us understand what that being filled with the spirit means when he says, let the

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Word of Christ dwell in you richly, abundantly. Let the

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Word of Christ dwell in you. So being filled with the spirit involves being filled, having

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God's spirit fill us. This is the filling of the spirit, the spirit of God filling us with the truth of God's Word.

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And correspondingly, that means being filled with an understanding of the

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Lord's will. Being filled with not only God's Word, but God's will.

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Now we get this right in our context here in Ephesians 5, because in verse 17, verse just before this, what does he say?

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Wherefore, be not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.

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Don't be drunk with wine, be being filled with the Holy Spirit. Understanding what the

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Lord's will is, is involved in this being filled with the Holy Spirit.

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Now, I can't understand what the Lord's will is apart from His Word. It is

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His Word that gives me the understanding of His will. These two things go together. So being filled with the spirit means having the spirit of God fill us with God's Word and fill us with a sense of understanding of God's will, but there's more.

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It also involves, being filled with the spirit also involves the spirit of God filling us with the fullness of the triune

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God. Now, where do I get that? I get that from back here in Ephesians chapter 3, in verse 19, when

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Paul prays, he says, I want you to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

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And in chapter 4, verse 7, he says, unto every one of us is grace given according to the measure, not verse 7, it must be verse, never mind,

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I lost the verse here. But anyway, the key idea is be filled with the fullness of God.

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And that's talking about the character of Christ, being filled with the character of Christ, with Christlikeness.

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So to worship rightly, we need to be filled with the spirit, be filled with God's Word, with an understanding of God's will, with the character of Christ as He is transforming us into the likeness of Christ, through the

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Word, and all of that fullness of the spirit, that filling of the spirit will then overflow into something.

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It will overflow into something, into what? Here's our text, it tells us, be being filled with the spirit, speaking to yourself.

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The next three verses, 19, 20, and 21, contain four participles, those of you who are

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English scholars, the ING words. You see them?

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Speaking, singing, giving, submitting. As you are filled with the

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Holy Spirit, being filled with the Holy Spirit, and then coming together as we gather together as God's people, in God's house, in the local church, we are not to be like those who are drunk, who are reckless, and filled with excess, and lacking control, and lacking rational thought, and unconcerned about consequences, or anything like that.

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That's not how we live, that's not how we behave, that's not how we worship. No, what do we do? We gather together, being filled with the spirit, which overflows then in submissive participation in corporate worship.

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Now, this is brought out here in verses 19 through 21, so look at how what is demanded of us here is participation.

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So to worship rightly, we not only need to be filled with the spirit, but we need to actually participate ourselves in worship.

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Now, let's look at those four participles, and in doing so, we understand how we are to participate.

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And so, first of all, in verse 19, we are to participate vocally, vocally.

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He says, speaking to yourselves in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs. And the goal of this vocal participation is brought out in that parallel passage we just looked at in Colossians 3, verse 16, where he says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom.

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What is it that we're supposed to do vocally? He says in Ephesians, speaking to yourselves.

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What do we speak? What do we speak? He tells us in Colossians.

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Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another. Teaching and admonishing one another.

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So the goal of our vocal participation, when we gather together in corporate worship on the

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Lord's Day, the goal of our vocal participation is mutual edification, the teaching and the admonishing one another.

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We teach each other in our worship. You realize that? That's what we should be doing.

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We teach each other as we communicate doctrine and truth.

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So even songs that we sang this morning in our congregational worship, we were teaching truth about how great our

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God is, the creator of all things, who made all things. And then when we go into the creation, the woods, and we hear the creation of the birds singing and so forth, we respond, how great you are, our

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God. How great thou art. We're teaching each other some truths about doctrine, but we also admonish one another in our speaking to ourselves.

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We admonish one another. To admonish can mean, it can mean to exhort, but it can also mean to encourage, and this takes place in our, even in our hymnody, in our singing together, in our worshiping together.

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We are admonishing one another to walk in a particular way. We are encouraging each other to forsake certain things, certain behaviors, certain attitudes, to develop certain loves.

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This happens. This is to happen. This is the goal of what goes on in our corporate worship as we participate vocally, the mutual edification of one another.

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Now, the means of that edification is, notice here in our text in Ephesians 3, it's, shall we call it, a varied hymnody.

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It says, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

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So, the means whereby we participate vocally and edify one another is the use of these varied expressions of word -inspired hymnody, psalms, hymns, spiritual songs.

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Now, what's the difference between these three? It's interesting that some of the commentators say, well, you know, there's really no way we can, you know, definitively, you know, categorize what's involved in these three things.

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And then they go on and try to do so, and that's good because I think if there was no difference,

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Paul would just say, in your songs, in what you sing. But he talks about these three categories of hymnody, and I think there is a distinction.

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Some of the commentators bring out these distinctions. Psalms would be simply that collection in your

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Bible called the psalms, and having those psalms set to music.

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In other words, the psalms would be biblical God -inspired texts. Now, we sang a psalm this morning,

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Psalm 3. I would love for us to be able to learn and to sing more of the psalter, as it's called, the psalms that are in the inspired

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Scripture. These, I mean, what better way to teach one another and admonish one another than through the inspired text of Scripture set to music, psalms.

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But then there are hymns. And notice how there's not an exclusivity here, and that, you know, in the course of church history, there have been pendulum swings.

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There was a time when certain groups of believers refused to sing anything but psalms, and with no accompanying instruments, just singing nothing but psalms.

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Well, but, you know, here Paul talks about singing with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

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And those hymns, I think, would be those songs that have a primarily God -focused content.

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It's not that I don't enter into the picture at all in the singing of it or no references to me or to the individual singing or anything like that, no.

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But the focus of the hymn is on God, such as,

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O LORD my God, when I in awesome wonder Consider all the worlds

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Thy hands have made, How great Thou art! We opened this morning with a

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God -centered, God -focused hymn. We then sang a psalm,

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Psalm 3. What about spiritual songs? That's probably the broadest category that might exist.

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I would suggest that the spiritual songs would be songs that may be of a personal testimony, expressing truths and the experience of the songwriter and experiences common to believers in Christ, experiences of God's grace and salvation and sanctification in living out the

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Christian life. Hence, joy floods my soul since Jesus has found me.

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Now I belong to Jesus. Now I belong to Him. Not for the years of time alone, but for eternity.

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That's a spiritual song. It's not a hymn because it's not a primarily

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God -focused thing. It's a song that really is talking about my personal experience and what

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Jesus has done for me in saving me and so on, and my response to that salvation.

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And it's a perfectly legitimate song to sing. Why? Because it's a spiritual song.

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And the thing of it is that all three of these kinds of hymnody songs are helpful in reaching that goal of mutual edification.

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But if they're going to be helpful, we have to participate vocally.

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We have to actually sing them, don't we? Songs, hymns, spiritual songs.

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How do we do that? Well, I just indicated, and Paul tells us here. We do that by singing and making melody.

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Singing and making melody. We speak to ourselves singing and making melody.

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In other words, we accomplish this vocal participation by using our voices to sing.

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Doesn't need any explanation, does it? It may need some application. It may need some personal application.

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And it may need some personal conviction. Well, I don't like to sing because I can't carry a tune in a bucket.

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I don't see that as a qualification here. You know, make a joyful noise unto the

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Lord, all ye lands, you know. It's not a qualified thing.

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This is what God's people do when God's people get together. And this is one of the unique things about the

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Christian church. Christians sing. And they gather together, they sing.

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They don't gather together and spectate in their worship services. And that's the problem, the frustration

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I had in the church where we visited. We felt more like spectators and not participants.

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Paul is calling us to participate vocally by actively singing. Not just a few of us, not just some of the people up on the stage or the platform, but the congregation, all of us, singing.

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And the method also involves making melody, making melody.

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And the word that is used here is an interesting word. It actually is talking about the instrument that is used, some kind of instrumentation that facilitates the singing itself.

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The word literally means to pluck a stringed instrument, to pluck a stringed instrument.

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A guitar is a perfectly legitimate instrument to use in the worship of God's people.

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A piano is a perfectly legitimate instrument to use. It's the plucking of a string. You say, well, the organ isn't the plucking of a string.

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I don't really think that's the point. The point is using some kind of instrumentation that will help to carry the melody of your singing.

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It will help to facilitate the singing together of God's people.

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Again, this was one of our frustrations in visiting that particular church. There were plenty of instruments, but there wasn't anything helping carry the melody.

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We couldn't pick out the tune of the song that we were supposed to be singing.

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It's not that the instruments were in competition with each other or clashing with one another, but the instruments that were supposed to be subdued and harmonizing didn't support the melody, and so we couldn't sing.

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It was frustrating. We do this by singing together.

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Now, notice how the worship here in this vocal participation is both, watch it now, it's horizontal and it is external.

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What do I mean by that? Paul says, speaking to yourselves, and in the parallel passage in Colossians 3, speaking to one another.

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So as I'm worshiping God together in the worship service on Sunday morning, I am just as much communicating, ministering, we're ministering to each other.

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So there is a horizontal aspect to our worshiping together, but it is also external.

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This is something that I'm doing outwardly. I have to be vocalizing these songs and these song texts if it's going to do you any good whatsoever, and you have to do it if it's going to do me any good whatsoever.

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We have to do it together. So there's a horizontal and an external aspect.

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So we participate vocally. Now, secondly, in this last part of verse 19, we participate wholly,

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W -H -O -L -L -Y, completely, entirely, with our whole being. We are to sing, singing, here's our second participle, singing and making melody in your heart to the

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Lord. It might better be translated here, singing and making melody with your heart to the

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Lord. So this last part of verse 19 is actually kind of an expansion upon the first part, isn't it?

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So, yes, we speak to ourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, but the heart has to be involved in it.

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What do we mean by the heart? We encourage you to come to Sunday school the next several weeks, and our adult

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Sunday school class just this morning began a new series on the heart.

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And one thing we discovered about it so far, even today, in our definition of the heart and what we're talking about, we're talking about that inner person, the inner man, that is comprised of our mind, our desires, and our will.

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So if I am to participate in congregational worship,

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I need to participate with my whole being. I need to participate thoughtfully as I am engaged in song.

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Have you done what I've done way too many times? I've gotten off the hymnal.

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They say turn to hymn number, let's see, 247, the old rugged cross.

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And this instrument starts to play, and the congregation starts to sing, and I've sung this song since I was knee -high to a hymn book.

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On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, an emblem of suffering and shame. And before I know it,

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I'm singing the words, and I'm thinking about the coronavirus, or I'm thinking about where are we going to find any toilet paper?

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It's just like your mind just goes somewhere else, even while you're not really multitasking, because multitasking is supposed to mean that your mind can do two things at once, and it's not.

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It's really only doing one thing. It's thinking about something else, and your lips are just reciting words that you've sung a long time ago, and you're not thinking about it.

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No, listen, we are to be singing and making melody with our mind, thoughtfully engaged as we sing, but we also sing with our desires.

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Talking about our heart, our mind, our desires, and our will. I sing with my desires.

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That is, I am eagerly engaged as I sing. I want to worship the

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Lord. I've come here today to worship the Lord. This is what I want to do.

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So when Jim says, turn in your song supplement to hymn number or song number or whatever, then I want to do that.

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I pull out the book, and I choose to do it. I want to do that, and so I do. And then it involves my will.

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Being intentionally engaged as I sing. That's singing from the heart or with the heart.

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Intentionally engaged. What does that mean? It means I will worship, but I don't know the song.

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I don't know the song. Pick up this blue book. I mean, there are songs in here I've never sung before.

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There's this one in here, Come Quickly, Lord. He just told us to turn to number 14, and I look at number 14, and it's the song

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Come Quickly, Lord. And I say, I don't know this song. I've never sung this song. Forget it, man.

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I'm not singing this one. No, wait a minute. Pause. Worship with your heart where you thoughtfully get engaged with this text.

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What was that song? Number 14. And I start to look at this text. Boy, we should have sung this song today.

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Creation groans beneath the curse. Whoa. Okay.

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That's going on right now, even as we're here. The whole creation is groaning over these little cells, these virus cells.

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Rebellions just reward. We long to see the fall reversed and Eden's joys restored.

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So, okay, I'm engaged with my mind. I'm reading this, and I'm saying, Okay, I understand this. And I want to worship, but I don't know this song.

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I will worship and learn it. I will. This is the will.

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Well, I don't like this song. We pick up this hymnal and it tells us to turn to hymn number...

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Hymn number... Son of my soul. Son of my soul, thou savior dear.

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Yeah, good words, but man, the tune. I don't like this tune. I just don't like this, man. I don't want to sing this.

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I don't like this tune. There are a lot of song tunes, hymn tunes that I may not particularly like, but boy,

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I like what it says. I've shared before, and Alice Newton kind of was like,

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Are you kidding me? The first time I shared this, I said, You know, honestly,

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I really don't like the tune to A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, especially when the original, maybe it was the original,

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I don't know, the tune that had the hold on every half line. A mighty fortress is our

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God. A bulwark never failing.

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And it felt like forever before you get to the end of the thing, and I just don't like it. But you know what?

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I picked it out. I picked out that song many times. Why? Because we have a mighty fortress, and He is our

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God, and there's a truth to that hymn that we need to communicate to each other, and there's some encouragement in that hymn that we need to share with one another, and there is some admonition in that hymn that we need to trust in that God who is our mighty fortress.

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That's why we'll sing it. And so I may not like a song,

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I may not like a hymn, but I will sing it. I will learn it. Why? Because I want to worship my

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God, and as my mind is engaged in the truth of this hymn, I can profit from it, and you can profit from it, and I'm exhorted to participate wholly.

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Now, notice how this external worship is ultimately directed to the Lord. It says, and making melody with your heart to the

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Lord. So the point is this. Again, why? Why will

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I go ahead and worship even though it may be a particular song I don't like, or I don't know it, and so therefore

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I don't want to do it. Why? Because this isn't about me. This isn't about me.

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I participate wholly because this is all about the Lord, and for the benefit of the

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Lord's people. It's not about me. It's for the

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Lord. So I participate wholly. And then the third participle in verse 20 is giving thanks.

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Giving thanks. Now look at this. Giving thanks always for all things unto

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God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Participate.

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I need to participate not only vocally and wholly, but I need to participate gratefully.

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Now again, turn with me to the parallel in Colossians chapter 3, and look at how verse 16, which talks about letting the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace or gratitude in your hearts to the

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Lord. Look at how that verse is bookended by gratitude. Verse 15 says, ends with, be thankful.

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Verse 17 says, and whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the

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Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him. Participate gratefully.

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Paul tells us we need to be grateful. We need to be thankful for all things all the time.

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I need to be thankful to my heavenly Father for His grace and His kindness in all things.

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I need to be thankful to my Savior, the Lord Jesus, by whom I receive all things.

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Now get the significance of this gratefulness in our participation in this context here in Ephesians chapter 5.

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Here's the thing. How many times have you come to church and you've had sort of a griping spirit?

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You know, you're discontented about something, complaining about something. Your whole attention is focused on you.

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You're self -absorbed. You're really just filled, consumed with your problems.

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Be honest with yourself. How actively did you participate in the worship together of God with God's people?

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You probably went through the motions. I mean, I've been there. I've done this. I've done this.

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You've done it. You know, you're doing it. You're doing the thing. You're following the directions.

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You're going through the motions. What are you getting from those who are teaching and admonishing you?

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Not a thing. What are you giving to others? Not a whole lot.

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But turn this around. How much more enthusiastically and intentionally and engaged are you in your worship together with God's people when your focus is on how gracious your

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God has been and how grateful you are to Him for what He has done for you, even in the midst of your problems and even in the midst of your hurts and your heartaches and your difficulties, you still can look beyond those things to your

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God and His grace, to your Savior and His saving grace and all He has done for you and the

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Holy Spirit in His teaching ministry and His convicting ministry and encouraging ministry, and you realize,

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I have so much to be thankful for even in the midst of my difficulty.

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Listen, if you are grateful in all things, then you can worship at all times with God's people and you can be benefited and you benefit.

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And God is pleased. Christ is honored. In other words, I think this giving thanks charge in verse 20 is a call for God's people to change our focus and think about what we have to be grateful for and to whom we offer that gratitude.

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And then finally, verse 21, the last participle says, submitting yourselves to one another in the fear of God.

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We need to participate submissively. And what I think Paul is getting at in his whole idea of submission in this next several verses, in this next couple of sections, is to submit to the responsibility that we have to one another.

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We'll flesh that out in the weeks ahead in terms of marriage and the family and the workplace.

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But I think in each of these contexts, there is a mutual submission, but it's a submission to the responsibility that we have to one another.

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So, for example, in this context of worship, participating together in worship, watch.

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Someone is responsible for selecting the songs that we sing when we gather in corporate worship and to lead in that worship.

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Someone is responsible. The congregation submits by joining in song.

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The worship leader, whoever that is, and in our church, it's the pastor. I believe that's the way it ought to be.

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But the worship leader submits to the congregation by fulfilling his duty and his responsibility to them to provide songs for corporate worship that will actually teach and admonish, that will be helpful and beneficial, and will be

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God -honoring. The congregation submits to the responsibility to speak to others, to one another, and listen to one another with a teachable spirit.

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And everyone in the congregation does so out of reverence for the

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Lord and aware of his will, submitting to one another in the fear of God.

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Now, I'm really grateful that we have been able to add to our ministry the ministry of live -streaming our services on Sunday morning.

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And there are some today that are benefiting from that ministry. They can't be here. And some, because of this virus thing, they've thought it prudent not to be here today.

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And so they're able to watch the service and participate in a limited way by that live -streaming.

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It's a great benefit. But there's one thing that the live -streaming cannot do.

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It cannot fulfill this call to submissive participation in spirit -filled corporate worship.

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I'm so grateful that we can be, as this service is going on right now, we can be a blessing to all who are watching in their homes.

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And I know that they are gaining, I trust, they're gaining some benefit from that ministry.

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But they can't be speaking and admonishing us and be singing together with us and worshiping together with us.

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It is by being here in this place with this group of people that you can participate in spirit -filled corporate worship.

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If you're Christ's, I encourage you, worship rightly together with God's people.

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Are you Christ's? Are you walking with Him? Are you trusting Him as your

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Savior? You need to worship together with His people. Our Father and our

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God, we are grateful today that this privilege that we have to worship is a gift from You.

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It helps us to grow in our walk with Christ. It helps us to be more like Christ.

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I pray that we would realize, each one of us, as a part of the body of Christ, the local church, would realize the role that we have to play in this aspect of the ministry.

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Help us, O Lord, to participate together in corporate worship, we pray.

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In Jesus' name, amen. Let's close singing a hymn.