We sometimes refer to the Lord’s Day gathering of the saints as a “worship service” wherein we serve the Lord by giving Him our worship. But what is worship exactly? The term gets a bit slippery.

Some will say that everything in your life is worship, and they have a distaste for any formalism in the Lord’s Day service. While there certainly is truth to this view, the folks that holds it are often lax in actual works of righteousness and holy living. It turns out that the distaste for formalism in one area turns into irreverence in others. The principle that we are to present our bodies as living sacrifices, that all our life and work should be presented to God as a sacrifice of thanksgiving is solid, but this flows from robust weekly worship; it is not in competition with it.

Another view limits “worship” to the 2-3 songs the guy with the guitar plays up front and which you close your eyes and sway to before the sermon. This also has a grain of truth, namely that the songs we sing to God are a potent means by which we render Him the honor due His name, but it fails both in scope and execution. Meaning that it is both too narrow and also really bad at living up to its own narrowly defined claims.

Here is a simple thought experiment: Worship is that which is given to God and to God alone. What is idolatry? It is the rendering of worship to anything which is not God. So there is this thing, which we call worship, which is for God alone. The comparison to a marriage is apt. A wife is always married to her husband, and her whole life is an act of love and devotion to him, but there are also particular expressions of this devotion which cannot be overlooked and which must not be given to anyone else.

So what is God owed? Of course, He rightly claims your whole self, but also He is owed your particular praise and adoration. When we gather here, we do so in response to His lovingkindness in calling us, in order to give to Him that which is owed to no other. And when we go out from here, we go with His blessing on our heads and hands, ready to render to Him our whole selves as we carry out the work of our vocation.

And finally, practically, God is owed our fear. What we fear is as good an indicator as any of what we worship. But fear is something we owe to God alone. It is worship. Too often we talk about what this doesn’t mean (“don’t be scared of God”) and fail to consider what it does mean: that when we continually fear something other than God, we are guilty of idolatry and should repent. And this is good news, supremely good news in that it frees us from bondage to cowardice and depression, but it also reminds us of our need to confess our sins.

Joshua Edgren – March 17, 2024

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Psalm 15:1 says “LORD, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? “He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart.”

Truth is paramount for Christians. All truth is rooted in God, Jesus is the Truth, and every word of God proves true.

We live in a world, though, that is saturated with lies. Lies in media, lies in politics, lies everywhere you look. And because God is truth, all of these lies are direct attacks on Him.

These attacks against God, though, all fall flat. Even though every man is a liar, God remains true. The lie, then, because it cannot touch God Himself, does its damage on us, God’s image bearers.

Man, created in the image of God, is to reflect God’s truth. But because our first parents believed the lies of the serpent, we are all born liars.

Jesus died and rose again to set us free from lies, to make us people who live truthfully and speak truth in our hearts. Yet, because we still must fight against our fallenness, we are not impervious to lies. This is why scripture is filled with warnings about being deceived.

Deceived by false doctrine, deceived by seducers and seductresses, and deceived by ourselves.

Many of the popular lies in our culture are easy enough for us to spot.

No, that bearded man with makeup in a dress is not a woman. No, those two men who claim to be married are actually just roommates. And no, abortion is not healthcare.

The lies that are less obvious to us, however, are the ones that we tell ourselves.

“I’m not lashing out at my child, I’m being stern. I’m not being hyper-critical of my wife, I’m leading. I’m not coveting my neighbor’s wife, or husband, I’m admiring their virtue. I’m not cutting corners on this deal, I’m being shrewd. It’s not gossip, it’s expressing concern.”

When you lie to yourself about your own sin, it’s as though you’re calling that bearded man in the dress, a she.

Speaking the truth in the heart means calling your sin what God calls it. So confess it to Him, plain and simple, no sugar coating. Christ was crucified for our sins and raised again for our justification, so speak the truth in your heart and be cleansed.

If you try to fool Him, you’re only fooling yourself. God is not mocked, but He is abundant in mercy.

Mike Niam – March 17, 2024

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This past weekend was our annual Missions Conference. I’d like to underscore why this event is on our church’s annual calendar. We’ve all got plenty to do, so it isn’t just another event to fill our schedule.

We believe that the church’s primary task is found in Christ’s commission to His disciples to go into all the world and preach the Gospel. This command hasn’t been rescinded. Therefore, it’s the task of the church in every age to obey our Lord and bring the glorious news of His suffering and exaltation on our behalf to all nations, tribes, and tongues.

In some quarters foreign missions has either become simply an opportunity for adventurous Christians to see far off parts of the world, or it’s contaminated with the postmodern sludge of “all cultures are equal” and have abandoned, almost entirely, the task of proclaiming the Gospel of Christ’s Kingdom. 

Nevertheless, the banner of Christ will be raised over every citadel of human society: church, state, and family. But keep in mind that when the Great Commission says, “Go” it literally translates to “as you are going.” Meaning, this task of evangelizing the nations isn’t to be done as if it’s a Hail Mary desperation pass at the end of a football game. Rather, we’re to courageously and diligently seek to know Christ and make Him known to all inhabitants of the earth.

All this will take awhile, but we must not twiddle our thumbs. Spurgeon gives a fantastic reminder on this front: “If from this day for the next 10,000 years not a single soul should be converted to God by foreign missions—it would [still] be [the Church’s] duty with increasing vigor to thrust her sons forward into the mission field because her duty is not measured by the result, but by the imperial authority of Christ!”

Ben Zornes – March 10, 2024

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In a broadly Christian world, Christian virtues tend to get weaponized. We have seen this with concepts like justice and love and empathy, or the condemnation of being judgmental. Only a broadly Christian world says that being judgmental is wrong or that justice or love or empathy are good. But of course everything depends on definitions. When a judge vindicates the innocent and condemns the guilty, he is being judgmental in a good way. When someone finds a lost wallet and decides not to return it to its owner because the owner is an enemy, that’s unrighteous judgment. The Bible requires God’s people to be judgmental, but we are to judge with the standard of God’s word and remember that the measure we use to judge others will be used to measure us. 

We are required to love everyone, but love is treating others lawfully from the heart. Love is not going along with what anyone says makes them happy or caving or compromising simply because they say what you’re doing makes them feel bad. Likewise, justice is not making everyone happy. Justice is enforcing God’s law, which primarily consists of punishing evildoers. And while God does require us to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn, we must also practice self-control, which means that we are not to be ruled by our feelings or the feelings of others but by God’s Word.

In one sense, the fact that everyone, even those who hate God, keep appealing to these Christian virtues tells you that we are not yet as far from our Christian roots as some would have you believe. Pure paganism doesn’t care about justice, love, or empathy. But of course, if we continue down this current dark path, apart from the grace of God, we will end up in a paganism that ceases to care about any virtue.

But all of this is why worship on the Lord’s Day is at the center of all that we do. In worship we renew covenant with our Lord. Romans 12:1 says that we accomplish this reasonable service as we offer our bodies as living sacrifices. And in the next verse, it says that we are not to be conformed to this world but transformed by the renewing of our minds. As we renew covenant in worship, God renews our minds, correcting, teaching, training, and changing us from glory to glory. 

Toby Sumpter – March 10, 2024

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