CHAPTER FIVE

WHY WORSHIP WITH THE CHURCH?

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Accustomed as we are to criticizing the church,
we need to remind ourselves that God's people
are precious to Him and that He delights in their
corporate worship. As important as our private
worship is, it must be balanced by corporate worship.

Warren W. Wiersbe

I can worship God outdoors as well as I can at church.”

Have you heard that line? I've heard it countless times. Just two days ago someone called and said she had been trying to talk about the things of God with a co-worker. She wasn't sure how to answer her fellow employee, who had protested, “Why do I have to go to church? I can worship God as well at home as I can there.”

All my life I've heard arguments about the acceptability of worship at the golf course, the lake, in the woods, and other places. For many it's not a matter of worshiping God as well in nature, but better. Others have private “worship services” with a Bible and a tape of worship choruses, and they find such worship more satisfying than worship in the church. Perhaps you've often thought the same thing yourself. If this is true, then why worship with the church?

It is not the purpose of this chapter to contend for the general necessity and value of worshiping God. That we must worship God is plain by scriptural demand and spiritual desire. Jesus reiterated the Old Testament decree, “You shall worship the Lord your God” (Matthew 4:10). One of the last commands in the Bible is simply “Worship God” (Revelation 22:9). And surely the spirit of each one who truly knows his Maker resonates with the invitation of Psalm 95:6, “Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.” How could anyone know the God of the Bible without worshiping Him?

Instead, this chapter is concerned with the importance and worth of worshiping God with His people—the church—when and where they gather to worship Him.

GOD REVEALS HIMSELF MORE CLEARLY IN CONGREGATIONAL WORSHIP THAN IN NATURE

I do not deny that we can worship God in a cathedral of sky that's bursting with light and the smells of the earth, accompanied by a chorus of sparrows. In fact, I affirm it. The skies above and the whole world around us overflow with the glory of God (Psalm 19:1; Isaiah 6:3). I agree with C. H. Spurgeon: “All places are places of worship to a Christian.”1 Wherever we go, everything in nature should prompt us to worship God, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead” (Romans 1:20). God has powerfully revealed Himself to us through His creation, and our spiritual eyes are shut whenever we cannot see God in His world in a way that fills us with wonder and worship.

Although God does reveal Himself in nature, He does so in a limited way. Creation, as clearly and beautifully as it reveals the Creator, is not the clearest revelation of God. God has revealed Himself most completely in Jesus Christ and in Scripture—much more than through creation.

So what is God like? Look at Jesus. Jesus is God, and His life and words declare the nature and will of God. As one of Jesus' closest disciples put it, “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (John 1:18).

We also know what God is like from what He has said to us. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God,” wrote the apostle Paul to Timothy, “and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). The word inspiration means “God-breathed.” The words of Scripture are out of the mouth of God. These words are “profitable for doctrine,” including the doctrine of God, that is, the nature and will and ways of God.

Here's the point: You won't hear about Christ and you won't hear the God-breathed words when you worship God in nature, but you will when you worship with the church. There is a much more conspicuous and perceptible proclamation of God in congregational worship than in nature. For example, creation reveals God as Creator, but not as Savior. And the Bible says that God's work as Savior—an action whereby He makes a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17)—is more glorious than creation itself.

So it just isn't true that you can consistently worship God as well on the golf course, at the lake, in a stadium, on a hike or bike through the woods, or in the privacy of your own home or backyard as you can with His people at church. If you really want to worship God, you can never do better than worshiping Him where His Word is preached and Christ is proclaimed.

GOD IS GLORIFIED MORE IN CONGREGATIONAL WORSHIP THAN IN PRIVATE WORSHIP

When a football team wins the national championship, it gets more glory if the game is shown to millions throughout the country than if no one but you were to see it individually on closed-circuit TV. An author gets more glory if many others acclaim his book than if you alone were to read the words and praise his work. Public glory obviously brings more glory than does private glory. Likewise, God gets more glory when you worship Him with the church than when you worship Him alone.

The Lord is most glorified when His glory is most declared, not when it is hidden or private. Never will Christ be more glorified than “when He comes, in that Day, to be glorified in His saints and to be admired among all those who believe,” and when “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (2 Thessalonians 1:10 and Philippians 2:10–11, italics added). Despite its deficiencies, worship in the church is more like this than is private worship, and thus it brings more glory to God.

If I tell you what a wonderful wife Caffy is, and write it for all who read this book to see, that public praise brings her more glory than if I tell her privately This is not to minimize the importance of telling her the same when we're alone, for if I don't tell her privately, it won't mean very much to her if I say great things about her to others. That's the way it is with the public worship of God too. “There is no way,” says Welsh pastor Geoffrey Thomas, “that those who neglect secret worship can know communion with God in the public services of the Lord's Day.”2 It is right to worship God both alone and with the church, but worshiping God with the church brings Him more glory.

It is very simple: greater glory is given to God when many people sincerely sing together,

Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me!

than when one person sings this testimony in private. God delights in the devotion of every individual and in each moment of private worship, but we ascribe greater glory to Him when we join our hearts and voices together in a symphony of worship.

CONGREGATIONAL WORSHIP IS MORE EDIFYING THAN PRIVATE WORSHIP

Congregational worship is more edifying for the Christian than private worship, whether that worship takes place under the stars or on a couch with an open Bible, because we receive from spiritual resources that are unavailable when alone. In the public worship of God we can experience the preaching of His Word, the spiritual gifts of Christians, the prayers of our brothers and sisters in Christ, congregational praise, fellowship, and many other things that we cannot receive in private worship.

I recognize that many Christians are in churches where the congregational worship experience often lacks depth and substance. If this describes your situation, you may wish you could say to me—perhaps through tears, perhaps through clenched teeth—“The worship at my church usually isn't edifying at all. And it is rarely more meaningful to me than when I worship God privately.”

Still, the potential is always present in congregational worship for greater edification than you could receive from private worship. Even in those churches where the Sunday morning ministry is of the flippant/entertainment variety or the dry/stiff sort, there are many opportunities for unanticipated breakthroughs by the Holy Spirit. Something from the sermon may be surprisingly nourishing to your soul. The words of a hymn, solo, or choral piece may strike you with unusual force. Someone may pray for you, or you may hear a prayer that conveys to God something in your own heart that has been longing for expression. The preacher, or a friend, or someone leading in worship, may be God's mouthpiece to say a word of encouragement or direction just for you. These are blessings you forfeit by absence from church.

Others Are Edified

Also, your participation in congregational worship is more edifying to others than if you were to worship God only by yourself. You can minister to people in ways you certainly cannot if you are not with them. We are urged in Hebrews 10:24, “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works.” There is a “stirring up” to “love and good works” and an opportunity for “exhorting one another” that comes from assembling for worship with other believers that cannot happen individually.

Your faithful and wholehearted involvement in the worship of God at church can influence people in ways you would never imagine. Children learn from your example. Teenagers observe Christian maturity in action. Backsliders are admonished to return to biblical priorities. Hypocrites are reproved by sincere commitment and worship.

Even the unconverted may be convicted by your involvement in public worship. The apostle Paul described such a scenario for the Corinthian church: “But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or an uninformed person comes in, he is convinced by all, he is convicted by all. And thus the secrets of his heart are revealed; and so, falling down on his face, he will worship God and report that God is truly among you” (1 Corinthians 14:24–25).

Unbelievers Can Perceive God's Presence

Similar experiences happen throughout the world every Sunday. Before we married, Caffy was in a worship service one Lord's Day when a woman in her twenties came in as the people were singing praise to God. She was the daughter of a New York streetwalker and had for years been a drug-addicted prostitute there herself. Hooking and hitchhiking her way across the country, she had come to Fayette-ville, Arkansas, and was walking past the church. She had never been in a church before but decided to go in.

Later she told Caffy that she immediately sensed what seemed to be the presence of God among the people. Falling on her face, she crawled to the front of the church, sobbing uncontrollably. People gathered around her and began to pray for her, and as she heard the gospel of Jesus she repented and believed in Him for the forgiveness of her sins. Would that have happened if she had walked past someone worshiping God privately? Countless times when I was a pastor, visitors told me that they became aware that “God was in this place” as they walked into our worship service. Never have I heard anyone say that as they watched people worship on a golf course or a lake.

Maybe you are still convinced that in your situation you get a great deal more out of private worship than public. Ask yourself, Where can I do the most good? Worshiping God with others ministers not only to yourself but to those around you as well. This is considering others as more important than yourself (Philippians 2:3–4), and that is like Christ.

GOD CAN BE EXPERIENCED IN UNIQUE WAYS IN CONGREGATIONAL WORSHIP

The Bible says that each believer in Christ is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). This means that the Spirit of God Himself has come to live within you and made you, as a temple, a place of worship. You don't have to go to a temple to worship God; you are His temple. That's why private worship—true worship—can happen wherever you are, and why it can be so blessed.

Therefore let me affirm again that the Christian can worship God anywhere and without the assistance or presence of anyone else. You can exult in God under the stars, or at sunset, or in the mountains, or under some other canopy of creation. Christian, since your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, the experience of worshiping God in the intimacy of privacy with Him can result in divine encounters that might never be duplicated in a congregational setting.

Conversely, it's also true that God will manifest His presence to you in congregational worship in ways you can never know even in the most glorious secret worship. That's because you are not only a temple of God as an individual, but the Bible also says (and far more often) that Christians collectively are God's temple. Notice the following verses that teach that the temple of God consists of the gathered people of God. That these references mean the collected church is made more clear in the Greek of the original text, because each time the word you is used here it is in the plural (as in “you all”), referring to the entire church in that locality.

In the days of the Old Testament, God ordained that people build a stone-and-mortar building where He was to be worshiped. But that structure was destroyed within two generations after Jesus' ascension into heaven because God had made His own temple in the flesh and blood of His people. Today we may rightly point to each individual Christian and say “the temple of the Holy Spirit.” But we must also look at our local community of believers and declare with equal conviction “the temple of the Holy Spirit.” And there are experiences with God that can be known only when you worship within that “spiritual house.”

God manifests His presence in different ways to the “living stones” of His temple when they are gathered than He does to them when they are apart.

JESUS REGULARLY PARTICIPATED IN CONGREGATIONAL WORSHIP

Jesus Christ is not only our Lord, but our example. What was His example in this matter? He faithfully participated in the congregational worship of God as practiced in His day. Luke tells us of Jesus' public worship habit: “So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read” (Luke 4:16, italics added).

How can anyone claim to follow Jesus who won't worship God as Jesus did? As Jesus customarily worshiped with God's people, so should we.

CONGREGATIONAL WORSHIP IS MORE LIKE HEAVEN

Nothing you do on a consistent basis is more like the activity of heaven than worshiping God with His people. In congregational worship we express our unity with all true Christians of all time everywhere.

Observe the description in Hebrews 12:22–24 of the unity between Christians on earth with the angels and people of God in heaven: “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant.” Through the work of Christ, we Christians on earth have spiritual access into heaven itself and to “God the Judge of all.”

Like worshipers in the same room, yet divided by a veil, when we worship God there is a real sense in which we are participating in the unseen heavenly worship already occurring. Think of that. The point is that the worship in heaven, both that which is currently in process and that which will continue throughout eternity, is congregational worship. Thus our congregational worship is more like heaven than individual worship. Moreover, the Bible gives no indication of private worship in heaven. If you want heaven to be your eternal home, don't you want to frequently experience that which is the “nearest resemblance of heaven” on earth?

“So then,” says the best-known Bible commentator, Matthew Henry, “let every saint praise him, but especially the congregation of saints; when they come together, let them join in praising God. The more the better; it is the more like heaven” (italics added).3

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LEARNING TO WORSHIP WITH THE CHURCH

What if congregational worship has usually seemed inferior to private worship in your experience, even though the Bible is preached and hymns are sung in your church?

Earlier I addressed the difficulty of many Christians who believe that they are in churches that are so shallow that their private worship is consistently superior to their experience in congregational worship. But what about those Christians who have difficulties with public worship even though they are in churches where both the preaching and music are clearly biblically based?

You should evaluate your experience by the Word of God, not vice versa.

If the Bible says that these things are true about congregational worship:

then by faith you should affirm that they are true even if they contradict your experience. With many scriptural declarations, you must believe them before you can experience them. Will you believe in the priority of congregational worship over private worship and commit to attending public worship?

You may sometimes experience the enjoyment of God more in private worship than congregational worship.

I haven't intended to imply that every church worship service will seem more filled with God than any time of private worship. That will not be true.

One of my most memorable encounters with God occurred in September of 1985. A group from our church was part of a larger team of Americans invited by Swedish Baptists to do evangelistic work in their country. A couple of hours before I was to preach one night, I walked half a mile to a football-field-sized lake. The leaves were heavy on the trees that stood on guard all around the shore. Autumn had burnished them to russet and gold. Wispy fingers of clouds nudged the sun toward its westerly resting place, and it responded by tinting them with deep, restful shades of orange, violet, and mauve.

Not a ripple disturbed the lake. When a leaf fell from its twig and twirled slowly toward the water it rested—flat, sodden, and still—exactly where it fell. The surface was absolutely placid. The liquid mirror below reflected the iridescence of the glowing sunset and the leafy gold. The air was even calmer than the water, and yet it was so cool and clear that no breeze was needed. The motionless silence of the scene was mesmerizing. Everything I could see testified to the creativity of God, the glory of God, and the peace of God.

How astonishing heaven must be if it is more glorious than this, I thought.

Praise You, Father, for making such a beautiful world.

In heaven I will experience this kind of serenity forever.

Thank You, Lord Jesus, for giving me peace with God, which means infinitely more to me than temporary tranquillity.

Such unforgettable moments alone with God are more precious than many group worship experiences, but in treasuring them we must not minimize the priority of enjoying God in congregational worship.

You have not been thoughtful or wholehearted in congregational worship if this inability to worship publicly is typical.

If the Bible is preached and the music is doctrinally sound at your church, and yet you consistently find yourself unable to enjoy God there, either you have not been thoughtful or you have not been wholehearted about what you have heard and sung. You cannot be mentally passive in church and expect to meet God. If the Word of God is proclaimed from the pulpit and the truth of God is declared in the music, then the banquet of worship is set. But you must think about what you hear and engage your heart if you are going to be nourished by the spiritual food.

Recently I heard a pastor of a church in a very conservative denomination tell of a difficulty he was experiencing because he taught the deity of Christ. Although this is a foundational belief in that denomination, somehow this church was an anomaly. An old deacon, who was one of the people angry about the doctrine, had told the pastor that in eighty years of attending the church he had never heard it taught that Jesus is God.

Well, I must admit to some skepticism about the deacon's claim. But even if the church has had a succession of liberal pastors who denied Jesus' deity, surely “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” has been part of their worship at Christmas, and therefore he has almost certainly sung the words “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;/ Hail the incarnate Deity!” So it's probably not that the doctrine of Jesus' deity has never been taught there, but rather that this man hadn't been thinking about what he has heard and sung.

However, it's just as easy for believers with orthodox doctrine to be singing, “I love You, Lord” while thinking, I wonder how much longer the service will last, or, Who is that sitting with the Smiths today? We may miss much in worship—including the presence of God—if we aren't mindful of what we do so that we can do it with all our hearts. We must be aware of what we are saying and doing if we want to avoid taking the Lord's name in vain (that is, addressing Him in prayer or song without thinking of Him) and if we want actual worship in our acts of worship.

Most often you must seek God in public worship in order to find Him. You enjoy God more in private worship because the nature of private worship requires that you take initiative. In meaningful daily worship you have to consider the words of Scripture as your eyes pass over them, prayer requires thought and summons emotions, and so forth. But in congregational worship it is easy to sit back and simply observe, waiting for a spiritual jolt.

Realize that you must take the same initiative in congregational worship that you do in private worship if you expect to recognize the presence of God there. For if the Bible is being preached and the music is doctrinally sound at your church, more than enough is there to stir your heart if you are paying attention.

Congregational worship surpasses private worship, but it does not replace it.

Although I have primarily addressed those who think public worship is virtually optional (especially if they have an enriching daily devotional life), my experience indicates that there are many more people who have almost no private worship at all even though they attend church every Sunday. If you fall into this category, it would be easy for you to think that your faithfulness in corporate worship attendance is sufficient for Christian maturity. Remember, God manifests Himself through private worship in ways you will never experience in church. As Matthew Henry put it, “Public worship will not excuse us from secret worship.”4

If you love God, how can you neglect worship in the church?

Congregational worship is ordained by God. He has chosen worship in the church as a place of special communion between Him and His people. He takes pleasure in meeting you there. He wants you to enjoy Him there. How can your conscience—and your heart—allow you to refuse? Believe these closing words about congregational worship from David Clarks on:

Here is the sweetest enjoyment of God, the clearest discoveries of his glory, the powerful workings of the Spirit, the precious blood of Christ in its force and efficacy, the exceeding great and precious promises in their sweetest influences, spiritual life and strength, soul comforts and refreshments, the conversion of sinners, the edification of the body of Christ, the salvation of souls. ... Here the Lord, if anywhere in the world, receives the glory due unto his name, Ps. xxix. 1,2. To worship God in public is the way to give him the glory due to his name; and is not this of highest value? It is your glory too.5