Ron Man

WORSHIP AS A GATHERINGThe New Testament clearly speaks to the importance of our corporate worship gatherings (Acts 2:42; Hebrews 10:23–25; 1 Peter 2:5, 9). Above all of the church’s other activities, the corporate gathering for worship is what defines a local body of believers. The identity of a local church is most obvious and most compelling when we are gathered for corporate worship.We come together, and then we scatter into the world, but then we come back together again. It’s been compared to breathing: we must bring air into our lungs, but then we need to let it out. So too, a healthy local church must come together but must also scatter into the world between its corporate gatherings. WORSHIP AS A LIFESTYLEBut the New Testament makes it very clear that worship for the Christian is much more than what takes place in the corporate gathering. In the gospels Jesus asserts that the time and place of worship is no longer of paramount importance. Instead, he says, “A time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem” and when “true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth” (John 4:21, 23). Building on this foundation, Paul writes, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship (Romans 12:1). If, as Jesus said, worship is not limited to a time and place, it must mean that it can and should take place at every time and in every place—that is, in all of life we present to God our bodies as living sacrifices. This, Paul says, is the appropriate response to all of God’s mercies that Paul wrote about in the first eleven chapters of Romans. Because of all that God has done for us and in us through Christ, it is only right that we should present our bodies—that is, our whole lives, our whole selves—to God as an act of worship.This goes hand in hand with Jesus’ summary of the Law: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself”” (Luke 10:27). Devoting ourselves to God as living sacrifices is our first and highest priority, as Jesus made clear when he said, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33). Paul addresses this total devotion of the self in worship elsewhere in his writings too. In 1 Corinthians he says, “You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). A few chapters later he adds, “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).Jesus and Paul make clear that our lives can never be separated into the sacred and the secular. It all belongs to God, who bought us with the death of his Son. This does not mean that there are no longer any sacred times or places, but rather that every time and every place is sacred to the Lord. It all belongs to God.John Piper puts it this way:The root of Christian living and the root of congregational praise are the same, which is why for Paul worship simply cannot be merely or even mainly thought of in terms of Sunday services but of all of life. His is an absolutely God-saturated vision of Christian existence. When our whole life is consumed with pursuing satisfaction in God, everything we do highlights the value and worth of God, which simply means that everything becomes worship (Piper, 254). This is the New Testament understanding of worship. Worship is much more than what we do in church on Sunday morning. Worship is not wholly dependent upon the worship leader or the worship team or the pastor. It’s to be part of our everyday life: a lifestyle of worship where we live, where we work, where we play. We dare not put the entire burden for our worship on our church staff or on what goes on in the Sunday morning service. A Symbiotic RelationshipBut should our corporate worship, our “weekend worship,” prepare us for our “weekday worship,” our weeklong walk of worship? Or should our weekday worship prepare us for our corporate weekend worship? The answer is both. Worship as a church and worship as a lifestyle are in a mutually enriching relationship. In nature, this is called “symbiosis.” Flowers provide food for bees; bees help the flowers reproduce by carrying pollen to other blossoms. Some birds will keep larger animals insect-free by feasting on the bugs that like to bite the bigger beast. “Weekend worship” and “weekday worship” have a symbiotic relationship. Let Us Draw Near: Biblical Foundations of Worship To go deeper in your examination of what scripture has to say about worship, see Ron Man’s Let Us Draw Near: Biblical Foundations of Worship  © 2023, Cascade Books.  “This book is not only the result of careful study of what the Bible teaches about worship. It is also a field-tested guide for a variety of effective ways to teach that material to others. . . . Ron Man has been doing this work for many years, and the fruit of this learning is reflected here. It is of great value that Ron began this work as a deeply curious, pastoral musician who realized early on that to prepare and lead God’s people in worship is a formidable priestly, pastoral, and prophetic task, one that invites us into lifelong prayerful engagement with the Bible and theological reflection.” —John D. Witvliet, Director, Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Weekend Worship Enriches Weekday Worship Joining together in corporate worship can strengthen us, motivate us, and prepare us to walk a lifestyle of worship during the week. We come to church out of a week in which we have been bombarded by forces that deny the reality and primacy of God, and we need the encouragement from coming together and reminding ourselves of who we are: “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession” (1 Peter 2:9).Listen to how the writer of Hebrews encourages us to harvest all the benefits of our corporate gatherings:“Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water” (Hebrews 10:22). We are invited to come into the Lord’s presence together through Christ.“Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful” (Hebrews 10:23). We are invited to grow in hope by reaffirming the truths we hold in common.“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:24–25). We draw strength for doing good by building one another up as we come together.All this and more is ours as we gather as a congregation to offer our hearts and voices to God in harmonious praise, to bask in God’s grace and goodness, and to hear and respond to God speaking to us through his Word.Thus, we are fortified to go out into the world and represent him. King David was fortified in this way, as we see in Psalm 63. There it tells us that David is in the wilderness of Judah, fleeing for his life after his son Absalom rebelled against him. In this desperate time David cried out: You, God, are my God,      earnestly I seek you;I thirst for you,      my whole being longs for you,in a dry and parched land      where there is no water.—Psalm 63:1David was in the most desperate situation he had ever faced. His very life was in danger. Yet this psalm is one of pure praise; there is not one petition or complaint in the entire psalm. In fact, David is far from Jerusalem and the tabernacle, so he can’t fulfill any of the external rituals or requirements of the old covenant system, but he instinctively knows that he can come to God in worship because he recognizes that “You, God, are my God.”In his desperation, David draws upon his memories: “I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory” (Psalm 63:2). His past worship experiences help to sustain him in this time of crisis. So even though his very life is in danger, David can declare: “Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you” (Psalm 63:3). David’s previous weekend worship empowered and deepened his weekday worship—even in the desert. Our weekend worship can do that for the deserts we go through as well. But in this symbiotic relationship, a life of worship during the week has a tremendous effect on what happens as we gather on Sunday too. It’s a two-way street. References Alexander, Eric. “Preparation for Worship.” Acceptable Worship sermon series.  tapesfromscotland.org/Audio5/5533.mp3. Piper, John. Let the Nations Be Glad. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010.  Weekday Worship Profoundly Influences Our Weekend WorshipThere are times in all of our lives when we will come to church empty, and God will meet us and fill us again. But a healthier pattern for a growing Christian is to come to the service out of a week of walking with and worshiping God, with a heart already full of gratitude and love for God. Then we join our hearts and voices together in something that’s so much more than the sum of its parts.Our weekday worship helps to strengthen and deepen what we experience in the corporate gathering. Both our lifestyle of worship and our times of private worship feed into what happens on Sunday. As we “eat or drink or whatever [we] do” to the glory of God in our daily lives, it helps to enrich what happens in worship on Sunday (1 Corinthians 10:31).Eric Alexander speaks powerfully to the importance of private worship as a foundational preparation for corporate worship:Public worship, you see, is impossible except against a background of private worship. And in so many ways the quality of our worship when we are together will be a reflection of the quality of our worship when we are alone . . . because the public ministry of the Word, vital as it is, is never a substitute for the private reading of it. Public waiting upon God together as His people . . . is never a substitute for private waiting upon God in the secret of our own soul. . . . And if you do not regularly bow before God in private worship and adoration, you will find it a strange thing to do with other people on the Lord’s Day. . . . This is why . . . faithful attendance on the private means of grace is of the very essence of preparing ourselves for worship (Alexander, 11:31–13:12).The folktale “Stone Soup” provides a powerful illustration of this symbiosis.This is the story. Three soldiers coming home from war are tired and hungry. They see a village in the distance and say to one another, “Let’s go into the village and ask for some food.” But the villagers see them coming, and seeing how they don’t have a whole lot of food for themselves, they conspire together to hide the food that they do have. When the soldiers come asking for food, the villagers say, “Sorry, we don’t have any.” But the soldiers are not fooled, and in their shrewdness they say, “That’s all right—if you’ll just give us a big pot full of water and some smooth, round stones, we’ll make stone soup.”The villagers wonder about this, so they comply with the soldiers’ request and provide them with the pot and the stones. The soldiers set the water and stones to cooking. After a while they taste it, and one of them says, “This is really good, but if we just had a few potatoes it would be so much better.” One of the villagers sheepishly says, “I think I might have a couple of potatoes” and runs and fetches them. The soldiers cut up the potatoes and add them to the soup. After a while they taste the soup again, and one says, “This is really good, but if we just had a little bit of cabbage, it would be so much better.” And another villager says, “I think I might have a cabbage or two.” The cabbages are brought and added to the soup. The same thing happens with celery and carrots and all kinds of other good things. Finally this marvelous soup is ready. The soldiers invite the whole village to join them, and they feast together, and the villagers marvel at these soldiers who could make such a wonderful soup out of stones and water.The basic elements of our worship services are in one sense like those stones—they’re just the beginning. Those who are able toss into this “pot” of worship their abundance—the love and gratitude—that comes from walking with God and worshiping God during the week. But others come with hearts to be mended, with questions or laments. They are equally welcome. It is this coming together to contribute what we have that makes worship in the congregation really special, a feast to be celebrated and a fragrant aroma to our God.FOR DISCUSSION How can worship leaders and pastors design corporate weekend worship services that acknowledge the reality of weeklong worship for members of their congregation? How can they encourage a lifestyle of worship during corporate worship?  

God’s Work, God’s Rest, Our Rest God created over six days, and on the seventh day “he rested from all his work” precisely because “God had finished the work he had been doing” (Genesis 2:2). Dietrich Bonhoeffer maintains, “In the Bible ‘rest’ really means more than ‘having a rest.’ It means rest after the work is accomplished, it means completion, it means the perfection and peace in which the world rests” (Creation and Fall, 40). Similarly, Adolph Saphir states, “The rest of God is the consummation and crown of the creation. Without it the creation would not have been complete” (Epistle to the Hebrews, 221). The idea of sabbath rest hence begins with God. Jiri Moskala builds on this: God is entering into His rest, and He makes it possible for humans to rest. . . . When we pause, we participate in divine rest; we rest in Him. . . . Karl Barth explains it precisely by pointing out that God’s rest day is man’s first day, that man rests before he works—man’s life therefore begins with the gospel, grace and not the law, in freedom to celebrate with joy the seventh day and not with an obligation to work (“The Sabbath in the First Creation Accounts,” 13). In Barth’s own words: It is only by participation in God’s celebrating that he [man] can and may and shall also celebrate on this seventh day, which is his first day. But this is just what he is commanded to do. Hence his history under the command of God really begins with the Gospel and not with the Law, with an accorded celebration and not a required task, with a prepared rejoicing and not with care and toil, with a freedom given to him and not an imposed obligation, with a rest and not with an activity (Church Dogmatics, III.4:52). Or, as James Torrance has observed, “The indicatives of grace are always prior to the imperatives of law and human obligation” (“Covenant or Contract?” 56). Christ’s Work and Our Rest Christ himself came to do the work of God: “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:34). Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working” (John 5:17). “I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to finish—the very works that I am doing—testify that the Father has sent me” (John 5:36). That work culminated (was “accomplished,” “finished”), of course, in Christ’s atoning death on the cross: “But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!” (Luke 12:50). “Go tell that fox, ‘I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’ In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!” (Luke 13:32–33). “Jesus took the Twelve aside and told them, ‘We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled’” (Luke 18:31). “Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, ‘I am thirsty’” (John 19:28). “When he had received the drink, Jesus said, ‘It is finished’” (John 19:30). Because Christ came and finished the great work, everything necessary for our salvation (“I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do” (John 17:4)), he is able to extend us grace and give us rest and release from our spiritual burdens and strivings: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30). We . . . know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law (Galatians 2:16). In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace (Ephesians 1:7). For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8–9). He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5). Worship Is Not a Work! Because Christ’s death has granted us free access into the very presence of God, we are able to come confidently and boldly into God’s presence in worship: Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water (Hebrews 10:19–22). According to these verses, we can come with assurance both because of Christ’s past, finished work (vs. 19–20) and because of his present, interceding work at God’s right hand on our behalf (v. 21). In addition, we read in Christ’s words to God in Hebrews 2:12 that Christ has committed himself to being present in our midst through the Spirit whenever we gather for worship: “I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters; in the assembly I will sing your praises.” Not only does Christ show us the way to God; he takes us with him! John Calvin, in his commentary on this verse, calls Christ “the Chief Conductor of our hymns” gathering our imperfect expressions of worship and offering them as part of his own perfect praise of God. As James Torrance put it: Here lies the mystery, the wonder, the glory of the Gospel, that He who is God, the Creator of all things, and worthy of the worship and praises of all creation, should become man and as a man worship God, and as a man lead us in our worship of God, that we might become the sons of God we are meant to be (“The Place of Jesus Christ in Worship,” 351). Gregory Nelson’s statement about God’s rest and ours after creation applies equally well to our present state of rest in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: “God does the work, human beings enjoy the results” (A Touch of Heaven, 30). This, then, is God’s grace for our worship: “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his (Hebrews 4:9–10).” We do not need to worry about whether our worship is good enough; when we come in and through and, indeed, with Christ, God is always pleased with our worship because God is always pleased with God’s Son. Hence worship is not a work, not something by which we strive to make ourselves somehow acceptable to God. Torrance reminds us: We are accepted by God, not because we have offered worthy worship, but in spite of our unworthiness, because he has provided for us a Worship, a Way, a Sacrifice, a Forerunner in Christ our Leader and Representative, and our worship is our joyful Amen to that Worship. This is the heart of all true Christian worship. It is our response of faith to God’s grace. So we worship God “through Jesus Christ our Lord,” and pray “in the name of Jesus Christ” (“The Place of Jesus Christ in Worship,” 352). Worship is always and only a response—a grateful response because of God’s merciful self-revelation and gracious initiative in providing for us, and bringing us to, eternal salvation. The great work has been done! We rest and bask in the light of God’s unmerited favor, and we offer God our thanksgiving and praise with wonder, joy, freedom, and assurance. Works Cited Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics. London: T & T Clark, 2009. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Creation and Fall; Temptation: Two Biblical Studies. New York: MacMillan, 1959. Moskala, Jiri. “The Sabbath in the First Creation Accounts.” Digital Commons @ Andrews University. Accessed November 24, 2020. digitalcommons.andrews.edu/old-testament-pubs/14/. Nelson, Gregory P. A Touch of Heaven: Finding New Meaning in Sabbath Rest. Nampa, ID: Pacific Press, 1999. Saphir, Adolph. Epistle to the Hebrews. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1983. Torrance, James. “The Place of Jesus Christ in Worship.” In Theological Foundations for Ministry. Michigan: Eerdmans, 1979. Torrance, James. “Covenant or Contract? A Study in the Theological Background of Worship in Seventeenth-Century Scotland.” Scottish Journal of Theology, no. 23 (February 1970): 56.

Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

“Why did Christ come? Why was he conceived? Why was he born? Why was he crucified? Why did he rise again? Why is he now at the right hand of the Father? The answer to all these questions is, “in order that he might make worshipers out of rebels; in order that he might restore us again to the place of worship we knew when we were first created.” —A.W. Tozer, Worship: the Missing Jewel

This is the second of three letters from Tapescrew to his nephew Woodworm, in which he delights in the human tendency to resist dependence on “the Enemy.”My dear Woodworm,

C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters consists of an imagined correspondence between the senior demon Screwtape and his young nephew Wormwood. Screwtape gives advice on tempting and leading humans astray. Lewis uses this correspondence to make some insightful and often biting observations about the human condition, and how easily we are deceived by the forces of evil.

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther posted ninety-five theses on the church door at Wittenberg—an action that helped to spark the Protestant Reformation. Protestants of various backgrounds commemorate this act on the Sunday closest to Reformation Day (October 31) each year. In fact, all believers are indebted to the Reformers’ courageous stand for the purity of the gospel over against virtually all the civil and ecclesiastical forces of their day, armed only with an unshakable confidence in God and his Word. Many were persecuted; some paid with their lives.

Robert Nordling (see his article on p. 32) tells a story about taking his five-year-old son, Jackson, to a young friend’s birthday party: All dressed up, brimming with enthusiasm, Jackson rushes into his friend’s house to join the festivities. But when his father arrives to pick him up after the party, Jackson looks dejected. “What’s the matter, Jackson?” asks his father. “Didn’t you enjoy the party?” The answer is a terse no. “But you were looking forward to this party so much!