What is the meaning of Sunday Worship? Rephrased one could ask: What is the point of coming to Church on a Sunday? Why bother to come to church on Sundays? What are we supposed to do when we come to church on a Sunday? 1 Chronicles 16 answers all those questions one way or another. The context in which the story is told is that David has decided to bring the ark toJerusalemin preparation for theTemplewhich was planned there. David had pitched a tent especially for the ark until the temple could be built. The ark referred to here is obviously not Noah’s ark. Rather it was the ark of the covenant to hold the tablets of the law. It wasportable and could be carried to war. See Joshua and the walls of Jericho. The ark did not hold God, it simply symbolisedthe presence of God amongst his people. In this passage which is part of telling of the story of the re-housing of the ark we can learn much about the art of worship. Some very basic questions are answered in this passage: For example: Why come to church? ·To seek out the presence of God ·To call on God’s name ·To make him known ·To praise him ·To remind ourselves of his wonderful acts ·To remember his deeds and miracles and judgements. Who is it that we worship? ·We worship God ·who is our covenant partner ·our faithful provider ·our protector ·our saviour What must we do when we gather in the presence of God? ·Sing to the Lord ·Proclaim his salvation ·Declare his glory ·Bring an offering of ourselves ·Worship him ·Cry out for salvation ·Ascribe honour to God Why should we do this? ·Because God is God and wholly other ·God is great and mysterious ·God is worthy and good ·God is true and loving ·God is our Creator The central thing that comes out of all this is that we come to Church, or we come as church into the presence of God to worship God. By that we mean, to honour the Lord of our lives. To acknowledge God and all his attributes. “Worship the Lord in the splendour of his holiness”. 16:29 We do this physically emotionally and spiritually. We do not come here seeking a blessing for we are blessed every day of our lives. We come here bringing an offering of our praise and worship to the king of the universe. The world is not a democracy you know, it is a theocracy! “Let them say among the nations: ‘The Lordreigns!”16:31 So we bring an offering of our very selves. In the process as always, God blesses us. But we do not come primarily to be blessed. We come to bring a worship offering of ourselves to God. Church is one venue for this holy purpose . At Church, the Sunday Service endeavours to facilitate this holy practice of offering our praise and worship to God. So we must be sure that we do this well and thoughtfully and intentionally and in ways that are meaningful to all of us. We can do this in two ways: ·We can change and modify what we do as church to help each other participate in this opportunity for praising God. And ·We can help each other understand what we do so that we can all praise God. We need to do both and in doing so we needto look at ·the things we do; ·the rituals and practices ; ·the songs we sing ·and the words we say. What I like about the Anglican Church is that it is a very thoughtful church that admittedly is flexible enough to be ever changing and growing but it is also ever reflective about it’spractices and traditions. Sometimes one just does things in life and one is not sure why one does them one just does them because they work. This is not true of the Anglican Church services. These services are carefully worked out according to a template of thoughtful structure and what we do is steeped in a time honoured holy tradition practiced by millions of believers at this very time and for hundreds of years. I would like to share that template with you tonight. Sunday Livemay seem like a very different service to you from the morning services but I would like to show you tonight that it is not and that its structure is a beautiful, God honouring structure that serves to place God at the heart of worship. The focus of a Sunday Service is not you nor me, nor the musicians nor the preacher nor the people sitting in the pews,but God. There is only one personhood in the audience at a Sunday service, and that is God. We are here to please an audience of One. ·We are here to give our attention to God; ·to speak with God ·to listen to God ·and most importantly to honour God with our worship and praise. What we dowithinthe structure changes andvaries but the actual structure is fairly constant
Posted on: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 07:30:43 +0000
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