Why Do We Worship Together? Psalms 122:1-122:9
Today every one of us got out of bed and got ready and came to this church
• We did this with the intention of spending our morning singing hymns and songs,
• We came to pray together, to listen to God’s word,
• And we also came to share fellowship with one another.
• And the really cool things is that this is happening right now in churches all across the country, its happening all across the continent,
• And its happening all across the world.
• More people get together on Sundays to worship
• Than to engage in any other activity.
But At the same time we’ve all met people that,
• When they’re invited to come to church,
• Have a whole laundry list of reasons why they cant go
• “It’s the only day of the week I can sleep in.”
• “I don’t have to go to church to worship God.”
• “I have to work on Sunday mornings and there’s no way I can get out of it.”
• “I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious.”
• “Everyone who goes to that church is a hypocrite. There’s no way I would go there.”
And the list of excuses goes on and on it
• If you try and Counter one excuse
• They come at you with another
• There’s not much a person can do to convince someone else to come to church.
But maybe even more interesting,
• Are the reasons people have for attending church.
• I mean, think about this for a minute.
• No one is forced to attend church / to come / worship!
• It’s completely voluntary.
• To the best of my knowledge nobody handcuffed any of us and drug us here today
• But they say that a good test of someone’s values
• Is what they do with their spare time,
• What they do when they don’t have anything to do.
So let me ask you this: why are you here this morning?
• What inspired you to get up, get dressed and walk through those doors?
• I mean, I get paid to be here! But What’s your reason?
• But seriously, is there any other place that you would rather be right now?
When you come here on Sunday morning, is the time you spend here inspiring?
• Are you truly glad to be here?
• Does your heart leap with joy at the thought of being able to go to church?
• Does it encourage you in your walk with Christ?
• Does it move you to share your faith in Christ with your neighbours?
• What happens when youwalk back out these doors?
• What do you take with you?
Today we are going to look atPsalm 122
• And this is the song of someone who decides to go to church
• They decided to go to church and worship God.
Ps 122:1 I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the LORD.”
Ps 122:2 And now we are standing here inside your gates, O Jerusalem.
Ps 122:3 Jerusalem is a well-built city, knit together as a single unit.
Ps 122:4 All the people of Israel—the LORD’s people— make their pilgrimage here.
They come to give thanks to the name of the LORD as the law requires.
Ps 122:5 Here stand the thrones where judgment is given, the thrones of the dynasty of David. Ps 122:6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May all who love this city prosper.
Ps 122:7 O Jerusalem, may there be peace within your walls and prosperity in your palaces. Ps 122:8 For the sake of my family and friends, I will say, “Peace be with you.”
Ps 122:9 For the sake of the house of the LORD our God, I will seek what is best for you, O Jerusalem.
I love how this psalm begins.
• Verse one begins with an invitation to worship:
• I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’”
• From the very beginning the psalmist is excited
• He’s excited about getting together with his people to worship God.
When was the last time you invited someone to church and they had that reaction!
When was the last time you were that excited to go to church?
I began today by asking why some people decide to stay home from church
• Then I went on to ask, why would someone go to church?
• Psalm 122 gives us at least three reasons to go to church and worship God together as a congregation.
• It also tells us what we take with us when we leave
• What we take from our worship of God on Sunday mornings
• That spills over into the rest of the week.
Reason #1: Worship Gives Structure to Life
Verse three of Psalm 122 reads: Jerusalem is a well-built city, knit together as a single unit.
This verse seems to be referring to the architecture of the city
• About how all the pieces of stone and masonry fit together.
• There aren’t any loose stones, no leftover pieces, no awkward gaps in the walls.
• All the pieces fit together perfectly and each one is doing what it was made to do.
• But here we are talking about more than the architecture of the city.
• Jerusalem is more than just a city on a map
• It was also the center of Hebrew worship.
• For the ancient Hebrews
• Just being in Jerusalem reminded them of the foundation of thier faith.
• It reminded them that their lives and their stories were influenced by God.
• Jerusalem is the symbol and sign of God’s presence in our world.
• And just like the structures of the city itself,
• The Hebrews knew that God was the One responsible for making all the pieces of our lives fit together
• They knew That God is here with us
• And it’s God Who helps us to make sense of our lives.
So what was true for the Hebrew people is also true for us.
• When nothing during our week has made sense,
• Or we feel like a loose stone ready to fall out
• Instead of one that fits perfectly in its place in the wall,
• We come here today to worship.
We come before God.
• We pray.
• We encourage one another.
• We hear God’s word.
• And We are reminded that God saved us,
• God fits all the pieces together in ways
• We never could
• Sso that our lives are, as our passage says,
• “Is a well-built city, knit together as a single unit.
God does this for us as a church too
• The New English Bible translation this verse as “where people come together in unity.”
• Here the people, not the city or its structures, are in view.
• It’s not so much Jerusalem’s architecture that is being praised,
• It’s Jerusalem’s ability to bring people together.
• And even though Jerusalem maybe what is bringing the people together
• It’s God who makes binds us together, makes us one, who unites us.
• Only He can do this.
He binds us together and gives us gifts and ways of serving
• And though this He shows us how much we need one another to worship Him.
• There is a lot we can do together that we could never manage on our own.
We’re not all the same
• And when we come to church
• We come from a variety of backgrounds, / circumstances, / situations
• And our main goal the one thing that we have in common
• Is that we are hgere to do one thing: worship.
There is unity but there is also diversity.
• Listen to what it says in Revelation 7: 9
Rev 7:9 After this I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white and held palm branches in their hands.
What a powerful image!
• God gathers people from all walks of life to worship together.
• He doesn’t segrigate people into their own groups so that they get along
• It’s the love of Christ through the Spirit
• That enables us to be unified and to work together,
• And even if we don’t always all get along,
• Being in a church is a lesson in learning to love.
• We need God to help us be unified even though we are all different,
• We need God to help us be unified even though we all come from different tribes, families, and circumstances.
• If Jerusalem is a symbol of God’s presence in the world,
• Then the church is a symbol of what God really wants the entire human race to be:
• All kinds of people working and worshipping together.
Reason #2: Worship Nurtures Our Need to be in Relationship With God
• I’ve already mentioned some reasons people give for not going to church.
• But here’s another one:
• “It wouldn’t be honest for me to go to church to worship and praise God when I don’t feel very worshipful. That would make me a hypocrite.”
Psalm 122 already has an answer for that excuse.
Look at what verse 4 tells us that All the people of Israel—the LORD’s people— make their pilgrimage here.
• They come to give thanks to the name of the LORD
• Scripture everywhere reminds us of the importance of gathering together.
• Heb 10:25 And let us not neglect our meeting together,
• Psalm 122 tells us instead: “I don’t care if you feel like it or not.
• This is a command.
• This is what’s good and the right thing to do.
• This is something God requires of you
• . It’s not about your feelings, but about God.”
The fact is that it’s a lot easier to act our way into a new way of feeling
• Than to feel our way into a new way of acting.
• Once I actually start to mow my lawn,
• I gradually begin to enjoy the job more.
• The more I mow the lawn changes my feeling about mowing it.
• The same is true when it comes to worship
• The more we worship the more we will want to worship
• Worship is an act that develops feelings for God,
• I don’t mow the lawn because I love it,
• But once I start I certainly don’t dislike it as much as I did before I started.
• Sometimes it’s all about getting Started
That’s why worship is a command
• That’s why the second reason the psalm gives us for worship is just that
• Worship fuels our need to be in a relationship with God.
• Maybe you thought I said that worship fuels our relationship with God
• Even though that may be true, it’s not what I said.
• What I said was that worship fuels our need to be in a relationship with God.
Sometimes we need to be reminded about just how much we need God.
• Worship fuels that basic sense,
• Our deep need to be in a relationship with God.
• If we neglect worship,
• If we neglect coming to church to worship with God’s people,
• It won’t be long before our relationship with God begins to be affected.
• And when this happens God gets pushed off to the side more and more
• Then we start to live as though life depends on us more than it depends on God.
• This is our natural, sinful, inclination.
• One of the main ways that we can avoid this is to Worship together
• I’ve already mentioned a verse from Hebrews that talks about the importance of meeting together
• And the surrounding verses fill out why this is important:
Heb 10:23 Without wavering, let us hold tightly to the hope we say we have, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. Heb 10:24 Think of ways to encourage one another to outbursts of love and good deeds.
• As Christians we cannot hold fast to our faith,
• We cant hold on to the hope we have in Christ, on our own.
• We can’t love our neighbour without the help of our fellow Christians.
• We need one another,
• And we need mutual encouragement.
• Meeting together for worship is how we support and encourage one another.
• Meeting together with fellow believers for the purpose of worship
• Is how we stay strong in our confession in Jesus.
• It reminds us that we can’t be Christians on our own
• We can’t live without fellow Christians
• And we definitely can’tlive seperated from God.
Reason #3: Worship Centers Our Attention on the Word of God
• In verse 5 Psalm 122 mentions judgment.
• One of the meanings for the biblical word “judgment”
• This is the word that God uses to straighten things out and make things right.”
• In other words, God’s word is a word that does something.
• God’s word applies mercy to our lives,
• Gods word puts love in motion in our relationships,
• God’s word provides order to our lives,
• And opens the way for forgiveness in our hearts,
• It makes room for grace in our midst.
We hear God’s word all the time when worship together
• It’s not only during the sermon.
• We hear God’s word in our prayers
• We hear god’s word in The songs we sing
• Whenever Scripture is read, we hear God’s word as it was given to the patriarchs, the prophets and the apostles;
• When we hear the sermon we hear those words being applied to our lives.
• Our entire service is about centering our attention on God’s word
• And what it means for our lives. God’s word accomplishes the purpose that God has for it.
Isaiah 55: 10, 11
Isa 55:10 “The rain and snow come down from the heavens and stay on the ground to water the earth. They cause the grain to grow, producing seed for the farmer and bread for the hungry. Isa 55:11 It is the same with my word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it.
When we think about God’s word, we think of Jesus,
• “the Word made flesh.”
• Worship centers our attention on Christ
• On who He is, on what He has done for us,
• Who we are as a result of what He has done,
• And who we are called to be as His people
“Let us go the house of the Lord!”
• So there are the three reasons
• The psalmist gives us for gathering together for worship.
• But what do we take with us when we leave?
• When we walk through those doors,
• What difference has this worship made to our lives?
• Psalm 122 closes with a prayer for Jerusalem and asks God
• That there might be peace and security within its walls.
• It’s interesting that the word used here for pray or ask is an everyday word.
• “It is the same word the Hebrews would use to ask for a second helping of potatoes
• If they were still hungry or for asking directions if lost.”
• In other words, this prayer is not a formal one.
• It’s an ordinary prayer, using ordinary words.
• To ask that God would bless and bring peace to Jerusalem
• Is something the Hebrews worked into every day life
• While they were eating their meals and going about their chores.
• We’re called to do the same thing when it comes to praying about church
• Whenit comes to our time of worship together
• And when it comes to praying for each other.
• This is not a Sunday prayer
• It’s more like a between-Sundays prayer.
And this also means that our worship doesn’t stop on Sundays;
• Sunday is when our worship begins.
• It’s the first day of the week,
• The one that gets us going,
• The one that helps us get ready to handle the days ahead
• The days that sep[erate us till next Sunday.
• Our worship does not satisfy our hunger for God—it whets our appetite.”
• This hunger is a hunger for peace and security.
• Peace—has to do with completeness and being whole,
• Security has to do with being in a relaxed state
• Because we know that everything is all right because God is with us.
The peace we have as followers of Jesus
• We have that peace despite our circumstances.
• No wonder it is a peace that surpasses our understanding!
Coming together to worship reminds us that God is at work
• And that God will ultimately bring peace and security to us and to His world,
• The kind of security that assures us that “God is over us, with us, and for us in Jesus Christ.”
• We come here every week because to enter Jerusalem is to enter a new world.
• The joy we have in Christ is real.
• We still go through the same hard times,
• But these things no longer determine how we live, and how we see our future.
There’s an old U2 song called “With a Shout”
and some of its lyrics go like this:
“Oh, where do we go? Where do we go from here? Where to go?
I want to go to the foot of Mount Zion, to the foot of He who made me see,
To the side of a hill blood was spilt, we were filled with a love
And we’re going to be there again, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, with a shout.”
Let us to go to Jerusalem.
• Let us continue to go to the house of the Lord,
• And when we do, let us go with gladness,
• Letr us go Knowing that the God we meet here
• Also meets us between Sundays
• And He meets us with a promise of peace and security
• That’s only possible through His Son.
