Let me begin with a question. I won’t ask you to raise your hand or answer out loud because my purpose is not to embarrass anyone. I just want to make us all think a little bit. Here’s my question:
Why are you here this morning? Just think about that for a moment and answer that question honestly to yourself. Why are you here this morning?
This week I read a really good article by David Fitch titled “6 Reasons Not To Go To Church”. Perhaps as I share this list, you would honestly have to say that you’re here today for one or more of those reasons. Let me go through them quickly:
1. Out of duty/obligation. While spiritual disciplines are important in our growth they too often become duties that are devoid of life.
2. This is what it means to be a Christian. Being a follower of Jesus is far more than what happens during this hour or so each week.
3. To get my needs met. As Fitch correctly points out, if you think some problem is going to be solved or some need met by “going to church”, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.
4. To feel good/to get inspired. While that may often be the result of our time together, our relationship with God needs to transcend our feelings and emotions.
5. To perform. This tendency isn’t necessarily limited to me or the worship team. Anything we do to get noticed or get accolades from others is really just a performance.
6. To get something from the expert. While I don’t consider myself to be an expert, am certain that God has called me to preach His Word and He has gifted me to be able to do that. However, real spiritual development comes from responding to and working out the implications of God’s Word within the body of Christ, not just from getting information from a sermon.
I would agree that those are some bad reasons to go to church. But the main point I want to make this morning is that you shouldn’t “go to church” at all. Now before you all agree with me and get up and leave, let me explain what I mean by that.
Church is not a place we go. Church is who we are.
As we explained in our New Members’ Class yesterday, the word church always refers to “called out” people, never to a building or and organization. So a church is really not a place you can go.
And I think that is the message that we’ve been exposed to in the book of Nehemiah for several weeks now. As I was thinking this week about our journey through that book so far, I was struck by the thought that even though the gathering of the community there in Jerusalem for the purpose of corporate worship was relatively short compared to the time required to rebuild the wall, Nehemiah devotes a disproportionately large part of his book to that gathering.
So I think it’s fair to conclude that the gathering of the people for the purpose of corporate worship was indeed significant. And as we read through that section I never get the feeling the people “went to church”. But I think I can make a good case that they were being the church.
This morning we’ll wrap up our study of that section that began back in chapter 8, by looking at chapters 11 and 12. Since this is another section with several long lists of names, I’m not going to attempt to read those 2 chapters in their entirety. But I’m going to ask you to have your Bibles handy and open to those 2 chapters so you can follow along as we focus on several passages in that section.
While you turn to Nehemiah 11, let’s briefly review what has occurred so far as the people gathered to worship.
• In chapter 8, Ezra read the Book of the Law of Moses. The people responded to God’s word with physical acts of worship like raising their hands, bowing down and shouting “amen”. When they became aware of God’s commands regarding the Feast of Booths, they immediately made preparations and celebrated the Feast.
• In chapter 9, the people began the process of repentance by confessing the sins that had been revealed to them in God’s Word.
• In chapter 10, the people completed the process of repentance by making a covenant to live their lives according to God’s Word.
In chapters 11 and 12 we’re going to look at six essential elements of corporate worship. My prayer is that we’ll be committed to making sure that both individually and as a body we do whatever we need to do to make sure our corporate worship is characterized by these elements.
6 ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF CORPORATE WORSHIP
1. Preparation
Although the city walls had been rebuilt, there was a problem. Jerusalem was a well-defended city now, but there were very few people living inside the walls. So in chapter 11, we see Nehemiah working to populate the city.
Now the leaders of the people lived in Jerusalem. And the rest of the people cast lots to bring one out of ten to live in Jerusalem the holy city, while nine out of ten remained in the other towns. And the people blessed all the men who willingly offered to live in Jerusalem.
(Nehemiah 11:1-2 ESV)
It’s not hard to understand why most of the people were reluctant to move into Jerusalem. They relied upon their land for their daily existence. Their lives revolved around planting, cultivating and harvesting their crops. So Nehemiah was calling them to move outside their comfort zone and live in a radically different environment.
Apparently a few families offered to live in Jerusalem and the people blessed them for their willingness to do that. But there still weren’t enough people to populate the city so the rest of the people cast lots to see who would give up their familiar way of life and move into the city. I need to point out here that the people were not relying on “luck” or “chance”. They were so committed to the sovereignty of God that they believed he would direct the outcome of the lots according to His divine will.
In the rest of chapter 11, we see that many of the people who moved into Jerusalem had significant roles in preparing for the ongoing worship of the people. Some of them, like the priests, the Levites, and the singers had a more public role in worship. But others, like the gatekeepers, worked more behind the scenes. But the important thing to note is that they were all equally important to the worship of the people.
We also need to note that the people expressed their gratitude to those who worked hard to make preparations for worship. We already saw in verse 2 that the people blessed those who chose to live in Jerusalem. And later in chapter 12, we see that the people rejoiced over those who had made preparations for worship and who led in corporate worship:
On that day men were appointed over the storerooms, the contributions, the firstfruits, and the tithes, to gather into them the portions required by the Law for the priests and for the Levites according to the fields of the towns, for Judah rejoiced over the priests and the Levites who ministered.
(Nehemiah 12:44 ESV)
There are two things I think we can take away from this first essential element of corporate worship:
1) We need to make sure that we consistently express our gratitude to those who do the necessary preparations so that we can worship together each week. Some of those people, like the worship team, have public roles so they are pretty easy to identify. And while we’re speaking of the worship team, let me just express my public appreciation and thanks for all the work they put in each week to be prepared for our time together on Sunday mornings. I can tell you that all of them spend a lot more time than most of you realize to be prepared each week.
Some of the other people whose preparation is indispensable are not quite as noticeable. Let me just mention a few of them at the risk of leaving someone out.
o Every week when you come to this place, you are greeted by our gatekeepers, who we call by a more appropriate name for our culture – greeters.
o Every week Jon and Dave sit in the booth at the back of the auditorium and run the sound system, the streaming and the PowerPoint.
o Every week you come into a clean building that has clean bathrooms because of the work Dave does here each week.
o For those of you who have kids, we have loving people who have prepared to teach and care for your children in the nursery, Children’s Church and during “Connections”. And they do that week in and week out regardless of whether or not the kids show up.
o When you’re done enjoying the refreshments after our gathering, there are people who clean up after you and wash out coffee pots and clean up the kitchen.
I encourage all of us to take notice of these people and regularly thank them for the preparations that they make so that we can worship together each week.
2) This first element also points out the need for us to come prepared personally and as a family to worship together. As we’ve talked about many times before, the quality of our corporate worship will never exceed our individual lives of worship. So do you prepare each week by reading God’s Word, praying for this gathering, and living the best you can according to God’s Word? Do you go to bed at a reasonable time on Saturday night so you’ll be rested and refreshed on Sunday morning? Do you get here on time on Sunday mornings and take care of all your personal stuff so you won’t be a distraction to others by coming in late or having to get up in the middle of the service?
2. Participation
As you read through these two chapters the overall impression you come away with is that worship was not a spectator sport for these people. I can’t find one verse in these two chapters that says anything like “most of the people watched the professional worshipers worship on their behalf”. And, as we have pointed out before this was indeed a family church:
And they offered great sacrifices that day and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women and children also rejoiced. And the joy of Jerusalem was heard far away.
(Nehemiah 12:43 ESV)
And in chapter 12, we see that when the two great choirs led the worship on top of the rebuilt walls, the people didn’t just watch them, they joined in the worship. One choir went to the south, led by Ezra and half the people followed them, singing and giving thanks to the Lord. The other choir went to the north, followed by the other half of the people and Nehemiah. And they, too, participated in the worship.
When it’s done right, with everyone participating, corporate worship is a profoundly unifying experience. But that can only occur if we all gather here each week with the idea that we’re going to be active participants and not just spectators. That participation may look different for each one of us. Some of you have physical limitations that make it difficult for you to stand, for instance. That’s OK. Just worship God wholeheartedly right where you are. Some of you are not the greatest singers in the world so you might be reluctant to sing out, but remember that you’re singing for God, and not for the rest of us. The main thing is that we all come here each week with the idea that we’re going to be active participants in worship and not just spectators.
3. Praise
It is important for us to note that praise actually comes quite late in the corporate worship experience in Nehemiah. It is not until people have first been exposed to God’s Word, confessed their sin and made a covenant to live according to God’s Word that praise occurs. That idea really got me to thinking a lot about our own corporate worship and wondering whether maybe we’re doing things backwards in our worship. To be real honest that is something I need to study a lot more before I can make any conclusions, but my initial attempts to answer that question led me to a blog post by Skip Moen that I think is valuable enough for us to spend some time on here.
Most of you are probably not familiar with Skip Moen, but I’ve come to use him a lot as a resource in an area where I am not particularly strong – the understanding of the Hebrew language. In March 2007, he wrote a blog post titled “The Equation of Worship” that contains these two paragraphs. Normally if I quote someone, I use a much shorter quote, but I think I need to share these two entire paragraphs in order for us to understand the point he is making.
It seems to me that worship has two related functions: First, it is about God. Worship is showing reverence to God. It is demonstrating, publicly or privately, that I know God is the proper focus of my homage, adoration and gratitude. I basically tell God that I know in the bottom of my heart that He is the King and Ruler and Lord and Master of my universe and of me – and He deserves my praise and love and respect. For me, this is a “down on my knees” expression. A physical demonstration of my humility before Him. A deep and quiet contemplation of His authority over me. I let God’s rule soak into my soul by mentally and physically bowing before Him. This action is for God.
But, the action is self-reflexive. It is an action that is directed outwardly but reflects back on the person performing the act. It turns back on itself. When I acknowledge God as Creator and Lord, my action turns back on myself. In worshipping God for who He is, I also deepen my relationship to Him. This is the second aspect of worship. This action is for me. When I worship God, I first experience His power. I am humbled before Him. But immediately I also experience His grace – His favor toward me. I acknowledge my humility before God by bowing before my Master, but I extol my gratitude before God by any number of actions – praise, singing, shouting, dancing, etc. Worship for God results in praise before God. Worship transitions me from humility to gratitude, from obeisance to exultation.
That seems to be exactly what we see here in Nehemiah. The people come before God and hear His Word. While His Word is being read they show reverence to God. As they stand and bow down and shout “amen” they are demonstrating in a physical manner that God is the proper focus of their worship. And then they humble themselves before God and confess their sins and make a covenant to live according to His Word.
But that action, which is directed outwardly toward God, reflects back on them. They recognize God’s grace toward them that has resulted in them being able to rebuild the walls and settle back in Jerusalem. So they extol their gratitude before God by praising, giving thanks and singing as they march on the top of those walls.
I’m still not sure exactly what implications that has for the order of how we do things each week as we gather, but what is clear here is that we need to approach corporate worship with a mindset in which we begin by coming to God with a reverent acknowledgment of His sovereign power and greatness. And then as we further reflect on what He has done in our lives, both individually and as a body, how He has showered us with His grace, then our praise and thanksgiving becomes our natural response. It is not something that we have to manufacture or work up on our own.
4. Purification
There are two separate references to the rites of purification that were performed by the priests and Levites, both for themselves and for the people as a whole.
And the priests and the Levites purified themselves, and they purified the people and the gates and the wall.
(Nehemiah 12:30 ESV)
And they performed the service of their God and the service of purification, as did the singers and the gatekeepers, according to the command of David and his son Solomon.
(Nehemiah 12:45 ESV)
The priests and Levites were undoubtedly following the detailed instructions that God had given concerning the need for purification before entering into the presence of a holy God. Those ceremonial washings were a tangible reminder of the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man.
Fortunately for us today, those rites have been replaced by faith in Jesus, which makes us positionally clean before God. As Paul reminds us:
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
(2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV)
It is impossible for us to come into the presence of a holy God and worship Him without first having been made righteous before God through faith in Jesus. So if you have never made that decision, we’re really glad you’re here and it is our prayer that your presence will be an effective testimony that will be an important part of the process of you placing your faith in Jesus. But the fact is that without that faith in Jesus it just isn’t possible for you to genuinely worship God this morning.
And for the rest of us who have placed our trust in Jesus and are positionally righteous before God, this element reminds us of the need to follow the example we’ve seen in Nehemiah and constantly engage in the process of repentance so that we can be clean as we come before God in worship.
5. Passion
While one verse can’t possibly capture the passion with which the people worshipped God, let’s go back to a verse that we’ve looked at previously this morning:
And they offered great sacrifices that day and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women and children also rejoiced. And the joy of Jerusalem was heard far away.
(Nehemiah 12:43 ESV)
Once again we’re reminded that all the people were engaged in passionate worship. They weren’t just going through the motions. Led by the two great choirs they marched on the walls, singing and playing instruments and rejoicing. Elsewhere in chapter 12 we see that the singing was accompanied by cymbals, harps and lyres and that some of the priests sons were playing trumpets. When I read that chapter in Nehemiah the picture I get is that the atmosphere was probably a lot closer to that in McKale Center when the U of A is playing basketball than that in our churches on Sunday morning.
I am certainly not suggesting that we have to take things to an extreme. Nor am I proposing that we should try to manufacture some kind of emotional experience. And don’t get me wrong, I am passionate about my Wildcats and my actions reflect that whether I’m there in person or just watching at home on TV. You can ask my wife about that.
But what God has done for me far exceeds anything a basketball team could ever do. And I ought to be passionate about that and my passion should be evident in my worship.
6. Permeation
We’ll look at verse 43 one last time, but this time let’s focus on the last part of the verse:
And they offered great sacrifices that day and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women and children also rejoiced. And the joy of Jerusalem was heard far away.
(Nehemiah 12:43 ESV)
The passion that the people had for God permeated the culture around them. The enthusiasm that the people had for their God overflowed into the surrounding communities and served as a tremendous witness to those people.
Today in our consumer culture here in the United States corporate worship has been greatly influenced by that culture. So many churches have developed what are commonly referred to as “seeker friendly” or “seeker sensitive” models of corporate worship in an attempt to draw in unbelievers and “win them to Jesus.” While some of those churches have been successful at growing their churches numerically and the goal of reaching unbelievers is certainly to be lauded, that approach doesn’t seem to me to be very Biblical.
In order not to risk offending the unbelievers who attend those churches, certain attributes of God – His love and mercy and patience – are overly emphasized and others – like His holiness and his righteousness and His justice and His wrath – are necessarily ignored for the most part. The consequences of sin are largely disregarded and the need for confession and repentance are usually completely missing from corporate worship so as not offend anyone.
The biggest problem with that approach is that genuine believers are being robbed of all or most of the essential elements of corporate worship we have covered this morning. And in the long run, I’m convinced that the more effective approach is to make sure we include all these Biblical elements in our worship and passionately worship God with all of our hearts, souls, minds and yes, even our bodies. That kind of worship will naturally permeate our culture and be attractive to others.
I opened the message this morning with a question. I asked all of you to think about why you came here this morning. And probably for most of us it wasn’t purely to engage in prepared, participatory, praising, pure, passionate permeating worship of God. So let’s use the fact that we’ve fallen short of God’s ideal for us to motivate us to make some changes in our mindset and in our actions.
Here’s how I want to encourage us to do that as we close. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine what our worship would be like right here at TFC next week if all of us were so excited about being together that we would use the entire week to prepare for that time. What if there was such great anticipation about what God was going to do that we couldn’t wait for our time together to start and we savored every moment?
Think about what our worship would be like if we all arrived next Sunday morning with the idea that we were going to be active participants and not just passive spectators.
Envision what worship would look like if we came before God, righteous through our faith in Jesus and cleansed from the sin in our lives through confession and repentance.
Imagine a time of worship in which we first come reverently before God to acknowledge his sovereignty and His greatness and then when our focus on His grace toward us naturally overflows into passionate praise. And that passionate worship is so appealing to any unbelievers who are present that they want to become part of our worshipping community.
I know I’d love to be part of that kind of corporate worship experience. Wouldn’t you? The good news is that we don’t just have to imagine it. We have the power to make it happen.
