Corporate Worship in the Life of the Church -- Psalm 100 (August 13, 2023)

Psalm 100 and the Meaning of Corporate Worship

Amen, well you can turn in your Bibles to Psalm 100. We just sang part of Psalm 100 just a moment ago. We sang about being the sheep of his pasture. So we're going to be in Psalm 100, we're going to begin there in just a moment, but like last week where we considered the topic of church membership and we did that from a wide selection of scriptures, we're going to do the same thing or a similar thing with our topic today which is corporate worship and the life of the church.

Last week we saw church membership and the life of the church. This week we're going to look at corporate worship and the life of the church. If you're new with us, we normally just go through books of the Bible, kind of picking up with the next chapter and verse wherever we left off the week before and we're going to do that again beginning on August the 27th when we begin our study through the book of.

Acts.

But here in August we're looking at a few different topics as it relates to the life of the church and today we consider the most foundational, the most habitual, and I would say the most significant thing that we as the church and that we as individual Christians do and that is corporate worship on the Lord's Day.

What we are doing right now, gathering before God as His people, this is the most significant thing that we do as a church and as we go through today we're going to ask what is corporate.

Worship?

What are we doing here? What should we be doing here and what do we actually do? And so those are the questions that we're going to consider as we go through and by necessity again we're going to turn to various passages in the scripture but I want to anchor us in Psalm 100 and so let me read from God's word which says in Psalm 100, Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth.

Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into His presence with singing. Know that the Lord He is God. It is He who made us and we are His. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise.

Give thanks to Him. Bless His name for the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever and His faithfulness to all generations.

Amen.

This is the word of the Lord to us today and I want you to notice first that there's this call to worship in verses 1 and 2 that all the earth is commanded and invited and called to worship God and to serve the Lord.

Have you ever thought about why we call it a worship service? Why do we call it a worship service? That's because service and worship are two concepts, two ideas, two words that go together. We see here there's a call to worship and then a call to service that go together.

We see it in Psalm 100. We see it in Romans chapter 12 verse 1 where some translations will translate the word worship this is your reasonable act or spiritual act of worship and other translations will translate that same word as this is your reasonable or spiritual act of service and the reason they do that is because those words are intertwined, those words are closely related.

Service and worship go together and in worship God first serves us. He gives us grace and strength. He renews covenant with us in worship and our souls are then nourished. As we are reminded of what we read about in verse 3 in Psalm 100 that He is God, He is our God and we are His people.

We are the sheep of His pasture. We are fed His word which is living and active and it's at work within our hearts and this is God's service to us. He strengthens us in this way. If you think about the metaphor here in Psalm 100 of being sheep, sheep don't first serve the shepherd, right?

The shepherd first serves the sheep. He feeds the sheep. He cares for the sheep. He provides for the sheep. He keeps the wolves away and then later the sheep return service to the shepherd with wool or meat or whatever it is.

We do not first come to church to give to God but to receive from God. Now this sounds backwards, doesn't it? We thought about it the other way around a lot and it doesn't really sit well with us. We've been taught the other way around and I understand why.

God is the glorious one. He is the one that deserves all praise, all blessing, all honor. We owe Him praise, thanksgiving and service and yes, yes, yes. And we will get there. But first we receive. First we receive from God.

We love God because God first loved us, right? And we serve God because He first serves us. But often when we think about that, we're like Peter. When Jesus was going to come and wash his feet and Peter says, no, no, no, no, no.

You'll never wash my feet. And we want to say, no, you'll never serve me. We want to be the ones who give. The one who gives is the one who's in charge, right? But first we must receive. For it's like what Jesus told Peter.

He says, if I do not wash you, you have no share in me. If I do not wash you, you have no share in me. And this reminds us that grace is everything. And everything is grace. Grace is everything and everything is grace.

We receive as this great act of grace from God. And having received service from God, then we return service to God. And Psalm 100 tells us how. It says, serve the Lord with gladness. We are to serve.

We are to give praise. We are to give thanksgiving. We are to give honor and glory. It's always in response to what God does. And notice the last part of the instructions here in Psalm 100. Serve the Lord with what?

Gladness.

And also see what it says in verse 1. Make a what kind of noise? A joyful noise. And come into his presence how? With singing. Christian worship is joyful. Christian worship is joyful. We are full of joy and gladness and singing because our sins are forgiven.

We have been cleansed.

We've been made new. The yoke of sin is lifted.

The chains of sin, the slavery chains of sin broken. And we are free.

And so we sing.

And so we serve the Lord with gladness and joy. And we do this because of what verse 5 says. The Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever. And his faithfulness to all generations. See, there will never be a generation in the history of the world where the faithfulness of God does not extend.

The faithfulness of God is never out of reach. And so we praise Him and we serve Him with joy and gladness.

And so be glad.

God is good.

Be glad.

God is faithful.

Be glad.

God is yours and you are His. You are the sheep of His pasture. Now we're going to return to a big theme here in Psalm 100 in just a minute. But to get there, I want to ask you a question. What are we doing here?

We come to church on Sundays.

What are we doing?

We gather as God's people on the Lord's Day.

What are we doing?

People give various answers to that question. Some people might say that the worship service is a religious duty. That is, we come to church because we're supposed to. That's what we've always done.

And that's true.

God does command us to gather together. Hebrews 10 .25. Don't neglect meeting together. Now some people might say that the worship service is education. That we come to learn more about God. In this view, the emphasis is on the sermon and the intellectual aspect.

And it's true. We do want to learn as we open God's Word together. Some people might say that the worship service is a religious pep talk. And so this is kind of the same idea as education, but instead of learning, the focus is inspiration.

We need fuel to get through another week. And it's true. We do want to be inspired. Others might say that the worship service is religious experience. And the focus here is often on the music. And the important thing in this view is the emotional experience of the worshiper.

And that becomes the barometer of what is authentic or acceptable worship.

And it's true.

The music is important. Others might say that the worship service is for evangelism. And that the worship service should be tailored for the unbelievers who may be in attendance. Most of the attention is given there.

And it's true. We do want to be hospitable to non-Christian visitors. So there's an element of truth in all of those statements about the worship service. But none of them tell us what corporate worship is, first and foremost.

And so what is it? When we as God's people gather for corporate worship on the Lord's Day, first and foremost, we are appearing before God. We are appearing before God. We are, what verse 2 says, coming into His presence.

We are, what verse 4 says, entering His gates. Entering His courts. We are spiritually ascending into the throne room of God Almighty. That is what we are doing here. We, the redeemed, who have been made sons of God, when we gather, we do so as God's holy assembly, as God's called out holy ones, whom He welcomes into His courts to bless us, to receive our worship, to hear our requests.

Often we think about, we'll even pray in this way, that God would come and meet us. That He would be with us. But the opposite is actually the case. He calls us to appear before Him. So think about it.

If you're a staffer in the White House, does the president come to your cubicle or does he summon you to the Oval Office? Worship is like that. We're being summoned to the Oval Office, except for it's the throne room of God.

The higher office and the president. Hebrews 12 tells us, Hebrews 12 tells us that we have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God and the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

So as we've come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and then Hebrews 12, you flip back a couple of chapters, excuse me, Hebrews 10, tells us that we have confidence to enter into the holy places by the blood of Jesus.

And if you put these two ideas together, we can say that when we come to worship, we are taking a spiritual trip to heaven, to appear before God. In a very real sense, though not physically, but a real sense, we are scaling the heights of the heavenly Mount Zion, and we are entering into the holy of holies in heaven, to appear before God.

That's what we're doing here. And so that being the case, the next question then is, how then should we appear before God? How should we appear before God? How shall we enter into His court? Psalm 100 tells us.

It says, with a joyful noise,.

With gladness,.

With singing,.

With thanksgiving,.

With praise.

Notice none of those things are sour and dour. It is a joyful thing to enter into the presence of the living God. Also notice that none of those things are passive. You see, worship is participatory. It is not something that you can come and watch.

It is something that you come and do. Something you come and join. Something you come and participate in. Passive worshipers make passive Christians. And so we come into His presence with singing. So actually sing and sing with gusto.

That worship is participatory is why congregational singing is so important. And the work that Pastor Gary does to put words of praise on our lips so we can all join and sing is so important. You see, the Bible never says to come into God's presence and listen to someone else sing.

It says come into His presence with singing. It says to come and address one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, Ephesians 5 .19. It says teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, Colossians 3 .16.

And so come with singing.

Come with joy.

Come with gladness.

Come with thanksgiving and praise. For this is how God says we should come. Hebrews 12 then goes on to instruct us in the type of worship that God desires. In verse 28 of Hebrews 12,.

It says,.

Let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and with awe. Let us worship God, offer to God acceptable worship. I want you to notice that phrase acceptable worship. What that means is that there is some worship that is not acceptable.

That means not all worship is acceptable to God. And so we can say that worshiping God is not a Burger King have it your way endeavor where we can worship God however we please. No, God tells us how to worship.

And that is with what? It says with reverence and with awe. We're to fear God and tremble before Him, before His holiness. Hallowed be Thy name. And why? Because of verse 29. For our God is a consuming fire.

For our God is a consuming fire. Do you ever think about the holiness of God before worship? Do you remember that He is a consuming fire? Do you remember and think about that God is altogether righteous and holy?

Now I'm not suggesting that we need to walk on eggshells when we come to church. But I am proclaiming to you that when we come together for Lord's Day worship, flippantness has no place in the house of God.

What we are doing is not trivial. What we are doing is not perfunctory. We are gathered before God. We are standing on holy ground. In the presence of God, the maker of heaven and earth. And so you put these two passages together, Psalm 100 and Hebrews 12.

And we get a picture of how God wants us to worship Him with gladness and joy. With reverence and awe. And the best way I know to explain this. The best way I know to describe this as a metaphor. And that is, worship is a lot like a traditional wedding.

That is, corporate worship is an occasion. A wedding is an occasion. It's not something that you miss. It's something that you schedule everything else around to be there for. And it's a very joyful occasion.

Weddings are a very joyful occasion. You're celebrating something great. Then there's a party afterwards.

We're celebrating something great.

Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. Our sins are forgiven. We've got a party down in the fellowship hall afterwards. Summer fellowship.

Or, like last week.

We entered the service.

How?

At the Lord's table.

Eating the Lord's supper. It's a party.

It's a celebration.

But it's also serious. Weddings are also serious, right? And weddings mesh these two concepts of seriousness and joy. In a really good way. And so should our worship services. So now with this conception of worship in our minds.

That worship is entering the courts of God with serious joy. What should we do in worship? Can we do almost anything we please in worship? So long as it's mostly Christian. As long as we mean well. And the answer to that is, no.

What should we do in worship? We should do what the Bible says to do. We should do what the Bible authorizes us to do. And so there's danger in stepping outside of that. I want you to consider Cain.

You remember the story of Cain and Abel?

Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. And Genesis 4 tells us, and the Lord did not regard it. The Lord did not accept his offering.

Now why?

It doesn't say explicitly in that account. I think at the very least we can say that it was because his heart was not right. And I think it's possible, though I can't prove it. But it's possible that it was because he did not follow the pattern that God set in the garden when he sacrificed an animal.

And instead, Cain brought fruit. Or consider Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10. They offered, quote, unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them. And Leviticus 10 goes on to say,.

And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them. Remember Hebrews 12 .29,. God is a consuming fire. And they died before the Lord. Our God is a consuming fire. They offered unauthorized fire before the Lord.

Or consider Uzzah and the Ark of the Covenant. Stories found in 2 Samuel 6. God had given instructions for how they were to transport the Ark of the Covenant. They would use poles, and they were never to touch the Ark of the Covenant.

It was holy, it was sacred, and they were not to touch it. And so they were to use poles in order to carry it. This is one of the most sacred objects in Israel. It is to be placed in the Holy of Holies, in the temple.

And so they're moving the Ark into Jerusalem, and they're worshiping the Lord. And David had 30 ,000 chosen men, and all the house of Israel was there celebrating with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and cymbals.

It was a worship service like no other. But, David's men carried, transported the Ark on a cart, after the fashion of the Philistines. Not on poles, as God had told them to do. And the story goes on in 2 Samuel.

It says,.

And God struck him down on the spot for his irreverence. And he died beside the Ark of God. Now does that sound harsh? Like maybe God overreacted a little bit? I mean, he was just trying to help the Ark, he didn't want the Ark to fall to the ground.

The oxen stumbled, he was just trying to help. Well if that's the case, he should have listened to God in the first place. And he shouldn't have been transporting it in the way God said not to. You see, it's a dangerous thing to mess with holy things.

And remember, we have entered into the holy place. Spiritually, we have come into the heavenly Jerusalem. We have entered into the courts of God, to the throne room of God. And we are standing on holy ground when we gather together.

And so what should we do in worship? We should do what God and His word has told us to do.

What is that?

We see in 1 Timothy 2, we are to pray. We're to pray, offering prayer supplications and thanksgivings. We're to pray for those in authority over us, that we might live quiet and dignified lives. We should sing, we saw it in Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5, that we should sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

We should preach, we see that in 2 Timothy chapter 4. We should read the scriptures aloud, we see that in 1 Timothy chapter 4. We should give cheerfully, 2 Corinthians chapter 9. We should take the Lord's Supper, 1 Corinthians chapter 11.

This is what God has authorized us to do, this is what He said He would accept. That's what we should do then.

The Five C's of Approaching God

Now with all that in mind,.

With all of that in mind, I want to walk you through what we do here at First Baptist Travelers Rest. I want to walk you through our order of service, and I want to show you what we do and why we do it the way that we do it.

And the reason I want us to do that is so that you can thoughtfully engage each Sunday with what we're doing in each portion of the service. I think understanding the underlying logic will help us as we worship, and I want you to know there is an underlying logic to what we do and why we do it and when we do it.

So let's begin where we started. Psalm 100, we see this call to worship, and we see that we are appearing before God there in verses 1 and 2. And so, does the Bible give us any instruction or any clues about how to approach God?

Now we've seen some specific instructions about what we're to do when we approach God. We're to pray, preach, sing, for example. And how we're to do those things with joy, with gladness, with reverence and awe.

If you go to Jesus in either John chapter 4 or 5, it's spirit and truth. Beyond that, I think we can pick up on a pattern in Scripture that can guide us in approaching God. So, it would be too tedious this morning to kind of show all my work on this.

I know I preached long last week. I'm trying not to preach long this week. And so, I'm just going to summarize it. But then on Wednesday, when I send out my weekly letter, I'll show my work there in more detail.

And so, if you want in on that weekly letter email, you can let me know. Give me your email address, and we can get you on that. And by showing my work, I mean my work interacting with the work of a pastor named Jeff Myers in his book, The Lord's Service.

And his summary is a pattern. It's a pattern that we see with Abraham. It's a pattern that we see with Moses. In Leviticus, we see it with the priests and the sacrificial system. We see it in Isaiah. We see it in the gospel itself.

And the pattern is this. First, God calls. God, the sovereign king, graciously calls and takes hold of his subjects. And then, God cleanses. God breaks down the old and restructures it into something new.

Three, God consecrates. He graciously tells us how to live our new life. Four, God communes. That is, He confirms His promises, and He warns against curses by oaths, memorials, and other signs. And then fifth, God commissions.

God sends His people out to do His holy will, blesses them, ensuring their future protection. And so you can remember this pattern for approaching God. We have five C's. Call, cleansing, consecration, communion, commission.

And I'll show you in the weekly letter on Wednesday that pattern throughout the scriptures in various ways. And this is the pattern that guides our order of service. It guides our worship service every single week.

You'll notice we come in, welcome. We get announcements out of the way pretty quickly. It's not because announcements are unimportant. It's because announcements aren't part of the Lord's worship service proper.

The worship service proper begins when either I or Pastor Gary say something like, And now the Lord calls us to worship. Because again, who is it that calls us? It's God who calls us. And because it is God who calls us to worship, and as His ministers, we speak that call to the congregation.

So the very first thing we want to do when we come to worship is we want to hear from God. That's why the very first thing Pastor Gary does is he comes up and he reads God's word. So we hear from God first.

Because you don't need to hear from Rhett. And you don't need to hear from Gary. You need to hear from God. And in so doing, we begin to establish this rhythm in the worship service of God speaking and us responding.

God speaks and His people respond. And in this way, worship is like a conversation between God and His people. God speaks, we respond. God speaks, we respond. And so after hearing God call us to worship from His word, Pastor Gary would then lead us in a prayer.

This is our response. And then we all join our voices in that response, and we do it with singing. We come into His presence with singing. Psalm 100 verse 2 tells us to do. And then, after that, we have a time in our service.

If you're looking at it in the bulletin, we call it the gospel focus. This is a time where we explicitly take time to fix our minds and our hearts on the good news of King Jesus. And during this time, we confess our sins.

We hear the good news explicitly from the Bible. And on behalf of Jesus as His minister, I assure you of your forgiveness in Christ, telling you you are freely and fully forgiven in Him. This is the cleansing part of that pattern.

It's the cleansing part of approaching God. When we confess our sins to God, what does 1 John 1 verse 9 say? It says He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

And so we're called, we respond, we're cleansed. Next is consecration, where God washes us with His word and teaches us how to live. And so right before that, in response to God's cleansing, we sing back to Him.

So we see that pattern of God speaking assurance and us responding in song. And then we come to consecration where God teaches us how to live. Now, the sermon portion here is pretty obvious, right? We open up God's word and I preach God's word to you.

And God instructs us through His minister preaching the word. But I've noticed one thing where we're lacking in this area just a bit. You see, in 1 Timothy 4, Paul tells Timothy to devote himself to the public reading of Scripture.

To devote himself to the public reading of Scripture. And so in older eras of the church, it was commonplace to have a portion of the service that was just devoted to Bible reading. They'd read straight Scripture, no comment, just God's word.

I believe it would be good for us to bring that back. And so beginning on September 3rd, we're going to tweak our order of service just slightly. Now, I know that in a church when you tweak things, change things a little bit, it can be a little bit difficult.

I'm giving you three weeks warning for that very reason. But Gary and I met last week. We planned it out and we're going to break up the songs just a little bit differently so that we can make place for the public reading of Scripture.

So we can have God's word wash over us. And we're going to have men in our church, beginning with our deacons, on a rotation to read a short Old Testament and a short New Testament passage each week. These readings will often correspond with the season of the year, Christmas, Easter, Ascension Day, things like that.

And over a period of several years, we're going to read through most of the Bible together in our worship service. Through short passages each Sunday. See, the important thing here in the consecration portion of the service is that we hear God speak to us through His word.

His word read, His word sung, and His word preached. And it's God's word that does the work of sanctifying us. And His Spirit, through His word, convicts us of sin and righteousness. And conforms us into the image of His Son, Jesus.

And then the next part of this pattern is communion. Now, we take communion not every week. But I want to go ahead and mention it here because it's a pattern that we see in the Bible. Where God confirms His promises and He warns for disobedience through oaths, memorials, and other signs.

And often that's in the form of a covenant meal in the Scriptures. And so, when we do take the Lord's Supper, which our current practice is the first Sunday of every other month. When we do take the Lord's Supper, we do it after the sermon, after that consecration portion of the service.

You can think of it like climbing a mountain. Like climbing the mountain of God. So, think about Moses at Mount Sinai. If you go back and you read Exodus 19 -24, you're going to see Moses going up the mountain.

I'll put something about this in the weekly letter on Wednesday. But what we see in Exodus 19 is God calls to Moses from the mountain. It's the call. Now, the people, they can't come near God and approach without washing.

You see this washing of the people in Exodus 19. And then you see Moses go up and God gives Moses the Ten Commandments. And He gives him the law telling Israel how to live. This is the consecration. And then eventually in Exodus 24, Moses and the elders eat with God on the mountain.

And so, it's a steady ascent from Exodus 19 -24. It's a steady ascent up the mountain of God. And corporate worship is like that. We're moving up the mountain into God's presence. Where we eat with God in covenant fellowship and in union with Christ.

And then lastly, we end with a benediction. Every week after we sing our last song, we come and sing again in response to God's word. See that conversation again. And then I stand down front and I read a blessing from Scripture to you.

So that you leave with the blessing of God upon your heads. Sent out from the sanctuary to do God's holy will. And you'll notice that my final words every Sunday are this. Amen, you are dismissed and sent.

Amen, you are dismissed and sent. Sent. We're not just leaving.

We're sent.

You're sent out on purpose for a purpose. You see, Jesus in John 20 -21 said, Peace be with you. That's the benediction.

That's the blessing.

May the peace of God be upon you. And then he says, I am sending you.

That's the sending.

Having met with God and been served by Him. Strengthened by His word and by His spirit and by His people. Jesus sends you out from here to go do His holy will. Jesus sends you out from here to go obey His word.

From here to go love and serve and to conquer in His name. From here to go out and win glory for King Jesus. That we'll bring back next week.

Next Lord's Day.

And then offer it to Jesus as our worship. This is how the world is changed. And this is how the world is won. Let's pray. Our Father in Heaven, I pray that we would be a people who would come into Your presence with singing.

That we'd hear the call of the Lord to us. And we would appear before You. We would prioritize the worship of Your people on the Lord's Day. That we'd enter with singing. We'd enter with thanksgiving.

We would enter with joy. We would remember that we are Yours. That You are our God. We are Your people. We are the sheep of Your pasture. We would come before You with praise. Giving thanks to You and blessing Your name.

And we do that because You call us. We do that because You initiate. For You are good and Your steadfast love endures forever. Your faithfulness to all generations. We're reminded that everything's of grace.

And that grace is everything. Lord, may our worship together on the Lord's Day be in response to Your greatness and Your goodness to us. And Your grace to us. And then may our lives, as we leave from here, as we set out from here, may we offer our lives as living sacrifices.

Which is a reasonable act of worship. We ask all of this in the name of Jesus.

Amen.