Selected Scriptures

February 2, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts at 18:15 in the audio file.

Or, Unleashing God’s People One Week at a Time

If there was a title to all the annual messages I’ve preached on worship and liturgy, it would be “Boom!” That idea comes from Matthew 16:18 when Jesus said that the gates of hell could not prevail against the church. Gates, of course, are a defensive weapon, which means that it is the church on offense. When the assembly assembles and offers itself as an offering of worship, the gates of unbelief and of rebellion against God, the gates of hell, are battered. So for years we’ve talked about how each person has a handle on the battering ram of worship, and when we worship, we make a metaphorical, but spiritual Boom!.

This is a shaping word picture. It means that our worship is not retreat or respite from the spiritual battle, it is advancing the battle. We do damage to the forces of darkness when we worship, including the remnants of sin to be mortified within our own hearts. We remember that we serve the King of kings and Lord of lords; we declare that “all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens” (Psalm 96:4). We remember that He has died and rose again on the third day for the forgiveness of sins; we declare that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). We remember that He has called us and is working on us and through us; we are not enslaved to ennui or envy or escapism.

Our worship is a charge, in a couple of the usual meanings of the word. God assigns and entrusts us this delightful duty of dependence, He charges us to worship. And when we hear His Him and obey Him and praise Him, we rush forward. We charge.

We begin our worship charge with what’s called the votum. Whether you think about it every week, or once a long time ago when we started doing it, or never, it is the call of the minister and the response of the assembly. It is the only assignment of roles that we currently have printed on the order of service as such: Minister and Assembly.

This is different than performer and audience, even if those in the front look a different way than those not in front. Those who lead in our worship in song are not surrogate worshipers for the rest. They are going first, standing in front, and the rest of us follow. When one person is talking, exhorting, reading, praying, preaching, benedicting, it is representative to but not replacement of the whole assembly.

I’d like to take today and next Lord’s day to talk about a minister’s liturgical charge and the assembly’s liturgical charge. A minister should have certain expectations for his work in worship, as should the assembly. Today’s message will be a little minister meta, an insider’s look at what I’m thinking about what I’m trying to do when it is my charge to minister to the assembly, in a day when it is easy to mess it up, in a variety of directions.

Start with the word minister. Other words are fine: elder, overseer, pastor, shepherd, preacher, teacher. But there is a “ministry of the word” that the apostles devoted themselves to (Acts 6:4), a ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18), a ministry of service. A minister is a servant (διακονία), and his ministry starts with God’s Word, and includes the administration/ministry of the sacraments of baptism and communion.

A minister is a servant who leads worship. His reading and explaining and exhorting from God’s Word, combined with his prayers and his oversight of the ordinances make up the liturgy. The minister ministers the Word outside of the corporate worship service, but when it comes to the Boom!, he uses the whole counsel of God throughout the liturgy.

He does this as a servant of God and to the assembly. “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, [...]