Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand (Psalm 95:6-7).
And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers (Acts 2:42-47).
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near (Hebrews 10:24-25).
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Revelation 7:9-10).
Our family dog is a bird dog named Gus. Gus leads a happy, rather ordinary life. Like most family canines, he goes about his daily work of protecting our property from air assaults by Robins and ground invasions by squirrels. It’s not a bad life, but for a bird dog, mere security work can be a grind. When humdrumness sets in, he looks for excitement, usually resulting in destruction to our home and yard. However, from October to March, Gus’s life gets reordered. At least once a month, he goes searching for game birds. When Gus hits the field, he remembers who he is. For a few hours per month, Gus does what he was born to do–sniff out the wily North American Bobwhite. And when he locates the bird, he rigidly transforms into an arrow from the tip of his nose to the point of his tail and announces, “That bird is right here!”
Many years ago, a friend of mine prayed on a Sunday morning just before we entered the sanctuary, “Holy Father, we thank thee for what we shall soon experience. For we feel most ourselves when we are worshiping thee.” Our first passage says worship is not merely what we are commanded to do; it’s what we were created to do (Psalm 95:6-7; 100:1-3). We were wired in the womb to worship our eternal God as instinctively as a sheep pursues her shepherd (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Not only that, God designed creation for a rhythm of work, play, and worship. Every seven days, God gives every human being a day to devote to worship and rest (Exodus 20:8-11). In it they can say “no” to the exhausting demands of others (Mark 2:27), as well as “yes” to the Father’s promise to provide seven days of supply for six days of labor (Exodus 16:29-30).
Gus’s “sabbath worship” in the field is a wonder to behold. There is so much mystery–smelling, sensing, desiring to please, knowing what to do when–it reminds there is world that cannot be seen. The more we hunt together, the more enjoyable it is. The more we practice the liturgy of putting on his collar, getting in the truck, working methodically through a field, pointing the bird, waiting for me, and retrieving to hand, the more enjoyable it is. When we serve each other, we enjoy it much more.
Likewise, we feel most ourselves when the liturgy of the world, which trains us all week to think first of ourselves, is counteracted by the liturgy of the gospel. Worship trains us to lose our lives for Christ’s sake and the gospel’s sake so we can ultimately find ourselves (Mark 8:35). Our second passage shows the Old Testament strategy for spiritual formation through liturgical worship continued in the New Testament (Acts 2:42-47). Weekly, God’s people met in a common place, listened to the apostles teach Scripture, took the Lord’s Supper together, and repeated “the prayers.” Liturgical structure, creeds, corporate prayers, repeated Scripture passages, hymns, and physical posture cut grooves of hope in believers’ hearts (Acts 2:26-28). In corporate liturgical worship, the Father’s love pours lavishly over us as a family, dispelling the loneliness and despair produced by the culture’s creeds (Psalm 103:13-14).
Our third passage assures that by ordering our lives around weekly corporate worship, we encourage one another to persevere in good deeds until Christ returns (Hebrews 10:24-25). Worshiping week after week creates an assuring spiritual muscle memory that eternal rest is coming (Acts 4:1-11). Worshiping morning and evening instills belief that resurrection morning (Psalm 5:3, 7) will follow death’s evening (Psalm 4:8). Weekly centering us on the cross of Jesus affirms the expanse of a holy God’s love for unworthy sinners, liberating us from the delusion and exhaustion of self-worship (Hebrews 12:1-3).
Two other dynamics make for a wonder-filled experience with Gus. One is the unity between hunter and hunting dog. Though appearing to be irreconcilably different, the human and animal become as coordinated as a new being. Another spell-binding dynamic is to see Gus hunt with another hunting dog. One of his partners is a different breed, different age, and has been trained differently. It’s always a little rocky at first and occasionally there are some flareups. But mostly they defer enough to one another to create something even more beautiful than a solo hunt.
Crafting us as he did in his image, we only experience being “most ourselves” in corporate worship because it is that experience unlike any other that publicly displays the glorious and mysterious unity in diversity of the Triune God (Revelation 5:9-14). The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinctly different and yet so in love with each other that they create an indistinguishable unity (2 Corinthians 13:14). God created distinct genders united in marriage and distinct ethnicities united in worship to prove to the world the good news of Jesus is mysteriously powerful (Genesis 2:27; Ephesians 5:31-32). Wherever the Christian gospel spreads rapidly, it is because unifying love across gender, social, and ethnic boundaries objectively expressed in worship provides proof of the gospel so beautiful it cannot be resisted (John 17:20-23; Ephesians 4:3-6). Though never perfect, it testifies to a coming glory. We feel most ourselves in such worship because we remember God created the world so that through the Church his manifold wisdom could be displayed (Ephesians 3:9-12). It also makes us long to be fully ourselves when we will be perfectly conformed to the image of Jesus and as a diverse but unified humanity gloriously reflective of the image of God (Revelation 7:9-10).
For all of these reasons...
We pray to be a church growing in number and ethnic diversity, joyfully ordering our lives around the means of grace—God’s Word, prayer, and corporate worship.