Why Do We Worship Together?
Today every one of us got out of bed and got ready and came to this church to spend our morning singing hymns and songs, to pray together, to listen to God’s word, and to share fellowship with one another. And this is happening right now at churches all across our province, our country, our continent, and our world. More people get together on Sundays to worship than to engage in any other activity.
At the same time we’ve all met people that, when invited to come to church, have all kinds of reasons for not going: “It’s my only day of the week to 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 on and on it goes. Counter one excuse and another will likely pop up to take its place. There’s not much a person can do to convince someone else to come to church.
Even more interesting, really, are the reasons people have for attending church. I mean, think about this for a minute. No one is forced to attend church and to come and worship! It’s completely voluntary. Nobody handcuffed any of us and drug us here this morning. Well, perhaps the occasional husband and the odd child are exceptions! 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 to do anything.
So let me ask: why are you here this morning? What led you to get ready this morning to come and walk through those doors? I mean, I get paid to be here! 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 challenge you to walk more faithfully in your relationship with Christ? Does it move you either through words or deeds to share your faith in Christ with your neighbours? What happens when you leave through those doors? What do you take with you?
Well, our next song for the road is Psalm 122 and it’s the song of someone who decides to go to church and worship God. Read Psalm 122. 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!’” Right off, the psalmist is positively 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 by asking about why some people decide to stay home from church—and then 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. And it also tells us what we take with us when we leave so that our worship of God on Sunday mornings spills over into the rest of the week.
Reason #1: Worship Gives Structure to Life
Verse three of Psalm 122 reads: “Jerusalem—built as a city that is bound firmly together.” The verse seems to be referring to the architecture of the city—how all the pieces of stone and masonry fit together. There are no loose stones, no leftover pieces, and no awkward gaps in the walls. All the pieces fit together compactly and with harmony, each doing what it was made to do.
But more is meant here than the architecture of the city. While Jerusalem is a geographical location it was also the center of Hebrew worship. For the ancient Hebrews being in Jerusalem reminded them of the foundational realities of faith. It reminded them that ultimately their lives and their stories were shaped 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 only through God would all the various pieces of their lives fit together—in other words, God is here with us and it is God who helps our lives make sense and helps us to make sense of our lives.
So what was true for the Hebrew people is also true for us. Just when nothing in life seems to hang together, when nothing during our week has made sense, or we feel like a loose stone ready to fall out rather than one that fits perfectly in its place in the wall, we come to worship. We come before God. We pray. We encourage one another. We hear God’s word. We are reminded that God saves us, that He heals and redeems. God fits the pieces together in ways we never can so that our lives are, as our passage says, “built as a city that is firmly bound together.”
God does this for us as a church too. Think again of that phrase “built as a city that is bound firmly together.” The word that we translate “bound” here is never used elsewhere of buildings but of human alliances. The New English Bible translation puts it this way: “where people come together in unity.” Here the people, not the city or its structures, are in view. It is not so much Jerusalem’s architecture that is being praised, but Jerusalem’s ability to bring people together. And ultimately it is 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 that emphasize how much we need one another to worship Him fully. There is a lot we can do together that we could never manage on our own.
Psalm 122 also says in verse 4 that “the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord” go up to Jerusalem. A tribe is a like a family or a bunch of families that are connected together. And that’s sort of like us as a church. We’re not all the same and when we come to church we come from a variety of backgrounds, circumstances, and situations to do one thing: worship. There is unity but there is also diversity. Listen to what it says in Revelation 7: 9: “After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.”
What a powerful image! God gathers people from all walks of life to worship together. He doesn’t make sure that we’re all alike enough to get along—it is the love of Christ through the Spirit that enables us to be unified and to work together, not our attempts at getting along. And even if we don’t always all get along, being in a church is a lesson in learning to love. In other words, we need God to help us be unified despite how different we all are, despite the fact that 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 ultimately wants the entire human community 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. 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 the tribes of the Lord go up to Jerusalem “as was decreed by the Lord.” The word “decreed” doesn’t give much attention to our feelings about worship and going to church. As writer Paul Scherer says, “The Bible wastes very little time on the way we feel.” Why is this? Well, as Eugene Peterson comments, “Feelings are great liars.” If we only ever did those things that we felt like, how much work, parenting, studying, shopping, housework, and yard work would ever get done? I’m not a big fan of mowing the lawn and yard work—but does not that mean I shouldn’t do it?
Scripture everywhere reminds us of the importance of gathering together. Hebrew 10: 25 warns about “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some.” 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 right for you 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. Usually once I start to mow the lawn, I gradually begin to enjoy the task more. Actually mowing the lawn changes my feeling about it. Peterson also says that “worship is an act which develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God which is expressed in an act of worship.” 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 going.
That’s why worship is a command or decree. That’s why the second reason the psalm gives us for worship is what it is: that worship nurtures our need to be in a relationship with God. Maybe you thought I said that worship nurtures our relationship with God—while that’s true, that’s not what I said. What I said was that worship nurtures our need to be in a relationship with God.
Sometimes we need to be reminded how much we need God. Worship nurtures that basic sense, our deep essential need to be in a relationship with God. If we neglect worship, if we neglect coming to church to worship together with God’s people, it won’t be long before our relationship with God begins to be affected. God gets pushed to the margins more and more as each day passes. The specific content of our Christian faith give way to vague feelings of being spiritual. And we start to live as though life depends on us more than on God. This is our natural, or sinful, inclination. Worshipping together as God’s people is one of the main ways to keep that inclination at bay.
I already mentioned a verse from Hebrews that talks about the importance of meeting together and the surrounding verses fill out why this is important: “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
As Christians we cannot hold fast to our faith, to the hope we have in Christ, on our own. We cannot love our neighbour without the help of our fellow Christians. We need one another, and we need mutual encouragement. Meeting together for corporate worship is how we support and encourage one another. Meeting together with fellow believers for the specific purpose of worship is how we are able to hold fast to 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 most definitely cannot live apart from God. Therefore, we shouldn’t neglect worshipping together.
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” is “the decisive word by which God straightens things out and puts things right.” In other words, God’s word is a word that does something. God’s word applies mercy to our lives, puts love in motion in our relationships, provides order to our lives, opens the way for forgiveness in our hearts, and makes room for grace in our midst.
We hear God’s word all throughout our time of worship together and not only during the sermon. We hear God’s word in our prayers together when we return God’s word to Him in praise and petition. The songs we sing remind us of God’s word and many of them are paraphrases of Bible passages. Whenever Scripture is read, we hear God’s word as given to the patriarchs, prophets and apostles; and when we hear the sermon we hear those words applied to our lives. Our entire service of worship is about centering our attention on God’s word and what it means for our lives.
There is a song that we heard quite a lot at Tulakadik. Sing a bit of “God’s Word is Powerful. We know from Scripture itself that this is true. God’s word accomplishes the purpose God has for it. Isaiah 55: 10, 11 says: “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth . . . so shall my word be that goes out of my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”
Ultimately when we think of 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, and who we are called to be as his people, as his body. Coming together is how we get reminded of the Author and Finisher of our faith.
“Let us go the house of the Lord!”
So there are the three reasons this psalm gives us for continuing to gather 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 to note that the word used here for pray or ask is an everyday word. “It is the word Hebrews would use to ask for a second helping of potatoes if still hungry or for 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 eating meals and going about chores. We’re called to do the same when it comes to praying about church and our time of worship together and when it comes to praying for each other. This is not a Sunday prayer so much as it is a between-Sundays prayer.
And this also means that our worship doesn’t stop on Sundays; Sundays is when our worship begins. This is the first day of the week, the one that gets us going, and the one that helps us with how to handle the days ahead before the next Sunday. Our time of corporate “worship does not satisfy our hunger for God—it whets our appetite.”
This hunger overflows into the week—it’s a hunger for peace and security. Peace—from the Hebrew word, shalom—has to do with completeness and being whole, with God’s will being completed in us and our world. Security has to do with being in a relaxed state because we know that everything is all right because God is with us.
This prayer for peace and security is also interesting because it was written at a time when Jerusalem was hardly secure. And as we all know Jerusalem is hardly ever a place of peace—peace always remains a prayer request, something we ask God for but never fully receive in this life. We know that this true of our lives too. The peace we have as followers of Jesus we have despite our circumstances. No wonder it is a peace that surpasses 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, 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 and difficult 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 go too. Let us to go to Jerusalem. Let us continue to go the house of the Lord, and when we go, let us go with gladness, knowing that the God we meet here also meets us between Sundays with a promise of peace and of security only possible through His Son, our Saviour and Lord, Jesus Christ.
