Coming to worship?
Not so long ago, I preached on Psalm 95, which raises the topic of worship in verse 6. (Download the MP3.) In passing, I made the standard (well, ‘standard’ in our circles) point that the word ‘worship’ is never really applied to church gatherings in the New Testament; it's much broader.
This was a key insight in David Peterson's book on worship Engaging with God. He's a New Testament Lecturer and former Principal of Oak Hill College, London (and also once the Senior Minister of St Michael's where I serve).
For Christians, the ‘worship’ vocab belongs not to religious meetings, but to the whole of life—our hospitality, the use of our money, honouring marriage, our help of the needy and so on.
But it's fair to say that when Psalm 95 raises the topic of worship, it is talking about our corporate worship. Three times the Psalm invites us to “come”: verse 1: come to sing; verse 2: come before God with thanksgiving; verse 6: come to bow in worship. And it's plural all through the Psalm: ‘let us’ not ‘me’, and ‘you’ plural. (In Australia, we'd translate it as ‘youse’.)
So Psalm 95 is talking about our experience as the people of God when we gather. Of course, this applies not just to church, but to the conversations afterwards, and to the mid-week Bible study groups, and informal get-togethers for care and encouragement.
But it's no mistake that Psalm 95 was often used on Sabbath Day meetings in first-century Jewish synagogues and more recently, as a “call to worship” in Christian assemblies (for example, in the Anglican Prayer Book's Order of Morning Prayer).
My sermon went on to speak of the important place of
- exuberant praise and joy in the rock of our salvation (vv. 1-2), and
- deep reverence in our submission (which is our worship) to our shepherd king, God, and so
- the necessary centrality of the Word of God (and heeding it) in our Christian gatherings.
After the sermon, I was asked a good question about the psalm's language of coming to God: “Do we come into God's presence at church, or continue in his presence?” My answer was as follows: of course the Bible teaches that God is all-present (“omnipresent”—Jer 23:23-24; Psa 139:7-10). Being a spirit, he cannot be contained in particular physical places, as Solomon notes in his prayer dedicating the temple (1 Kgs 8:27; cf. Acts 7:48).
Nevertheless, the Bible speaks of God's presence dwelling in a special way—for example, among his people, the pillar of smoke and fire in the desert wanderings, and his presence filling the Old Testament temple (e.g. 1 Kgs 8:10-13; cf. Isa 6).
In the New Testament, this special presence of God to bless and comfort comes to each believer with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and also among his people when they gather (often as a solemn warning): e.g. see Matthew 18:19-20 and 1 Corinthians 3:16-17, 6:19-20. John 4:20 shows that this special presence is not attached to particular buildings or places in the New Testament!
Yet the Bible talks of approaching or drawing near to God when we gather as believers to praise him and hear his word—as in Psalm 95:1-2 or Hebrews 10:19-25. Because of our great high priest Jesus, the author says, “Let us draw near with confidence”!
All this is using the language of presence to indicate that God is present to act in a special way in these situations, not to make physical comments about God's whereabouts. So when we leave church, of course God is still present with us as individuals—especially in believers—by his Spirit. But Christianity is clearly a corporate faith. And there seems to be a special way in which God is among us corporately—such that the Bible says that when we gather together for church around his word (whether formally or informally), then we are drawing near to God in a special way. Solo Christianity would be an oddity!
