Worthy of worship
October 15, 2009
Matthew Henry writes regarding Malachi 1:6-2:9, “Nothing profanes the name of God more than the misconduct of those whose business it is to do honor to it.” Malachi’s rebuke was primarily directed toward the spiritual leaders of Israel; but as Tim showed us last Sunday, it applies to us as well. We are those whose business it is to honor God with every breath. And we profane His name by our misconduct in the business of worshiping Him.
Worship is all of life, as I have written earlier. However, when we gather on Sundays, we gather for a special time of worship, namely corporate worship–worship as a body. We come together, as God’s people have for millennia, in His presence as He inhabits our praises and speaks through His word. He imparts special grace to us in our corporate gatherings, and in our corporate gatherings our worship is fuller and greater than it could ever be were we to only worship individually. Our Sunday gatherings are special times, and the way we approach them reflects our mindset about not only the gathering itself but, more significantly, the God to whom and for whom we gather.
If our God is worthy of highest praise and honor and glory, we should strive to engage in corporate worship of the highest order. We should wholly devote ourselves to worshiping God all the time, but we should place particular emphasis on our corporate worship.
With this in mind, I want to share with you some ways in which we can prepare for corporate worship so that we come ready to meet the Lord, both to hear from Him and to respond to Him in worship worthy of Him. (Most of the following is based on an article John Piper wrote several years back.)
Practical ways to prepare for corporate worship
1. Pray for the Lord’s help in preparing your heart. Pray to the Lord His promise from Jeremiah 24:7–”I will give them a heart to know Me.” Make it your constant, consistent prayer that He will give you a heart that humbly and honestly seeks after Him, a heart ready and eager to hear and believe and obey His word.
2. Make Saturday night a time devoted to worship preparation. You can do this in a few ways:
- Meditate on the Scriptures. Piper writes, “read some delicious portion of Scripture with a view to stirring up hunger for God. This is the appetizer for Sunday morning’s meal.” I would add to this that, since we are in the habit of preaching through books of the Bible, you can also begin to meditate on the next portion of the book we’re currently in. For instance, since we’re currently in Malachi, and Tim preached from 1:6-14 last week, you can focus on 2:1-9 this week, and add to that some great Gospel passage like Romans 5 or Ephesians 1, to whet your appetite for meeting God in corporate worship.
- Turn away from worldly entertainment. James 1:21 instructs us to “put way all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.” Your soul is at stake in how you listen to the word; so do your soul a favor by not filling it with worldliness on the eve of the weekly corporate worship gathering. This is an area that takes discipline; I find that Saturday evenings are a prime time for me to just sit down and relax with a movie or a television show. But better to sit down and renew my rest in the Gospel than to turn my eyes to the world for those last hours of the day.
- Have family worship. Even if every other night of the week is too hectic for you to get your whole family together for family worship, make it a priority on Saturday night. This will both help your own heart and teach your children the importance of corporate worship.
- Spend time in prayer for all that will take place on Sunday morning. Pray for your pastor as he is finishing his sermon preparation. Pray for the musicians as they lead the musical praises of God. Pray for those who will read Scripture and lead in prayer. And pray for those who will gather, that all might gather with whole heart and mind seeking the Lord.
- Go to bed on time. You know the weakness of your flesh, and how sitting still for an extended period of time (such as a sermon) can provide an excellent opportunity to doze off if you are not well-rested. So make it a priority to get plenty of sleep on Saturday night. Figure out how much sleep you need, what time you need to get up on Sunday morning, and then what time you need to go to bed to get the needful amount of sleep. Make this a priority in your family–parents of teenagers especially have the opportunity to teach their children the importance of corporate worship by exhorting them not to stay out late with friends on Saturdays. “It is a terrible thing to teach children that worship is so optional that it doesn’t matter if you are exhausted when you come.”
3. Make a special, concerted effort to show grace to your family on Sunday morning. How many times have we heard (or experienced!) the typical Sunday morning story of the family that wakes up quarreling, drives to church quarreling, and then gets out of the family van at church with the happiest, most pleasant demeanor imaginable–all the while still fuming at each other in their hearts. This is no condition to be in when it comes time to meet your God. Set a tone of love, grace, and forbearance in your home so that you are free from the distractions of grumbling and quarreling on Sunday morning.
4. Come with a meek, teachable spirit. As we saw in James 1:21, the proper way to receive the Word is with meekness. Skepticism, prideful self-assurance, and superiority have no place when it comes to approaching God. Humble yourself before God, and He will exalt you at the proper time; approach Him haughtily, and He will cut you down.
5. Enter the worship place with quiet, eager expectation. Even though there is nothing sacred about the place where we worship, our worship itself is sacred–so when you arrive at the place where corporate worship will happen, let it be a cue to you to quiet your heart before God and to “focus your mind’s attention and your heart’s affection on God.” And if you are worried about having the chance to fellowship with fellow believers, or to greet visitors, keep this in mind: “We will not be an unfriendly church if we are aggressive in our pursuit of God during the prelude and aggressive in our pursuit of visitors [and each other] during the postlude.”
6. Engage with your whole being. Many of us tend toward either emotion without truth or truth without emotion. Stated another way, this means that we are either “head” people or “heart” people. But when it comes to the worship of God, both head and heart must be involved. We must “think earnestly about what is prayed and sung and preached.” And we must feel deeply the significance of the same. We must not allow ourselves to sing or hear mindlessly or heartlessly. “I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also.” (1 Cor. 14:15) And in addition to all of this, we show with our bodies how engaged we are in our heads and hearts. Our facial expressions, our posture, our uplifted hands or bowed heads, and our full-throated singing–all of these show our whole-being engagement in worshiping God together.
So when it comes time to get ready for this Sunday’s gathering, I hope and pray your attitude will be that of eager expectation, of the sort that leads you to thoroughly prepare your mind and heart and body for worshiping God together with His people.