Selected Scriptures

January 7, 2018

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

Download the bulletin.

Download the Kids’ Korner.

The sermon starts at 16:30 in the audio file.

Or, Liturgy That Embodies All That Christ Fulfilled

Except for the very first Sunday that we worshipped together as a church, we have followed the same pattern of liturgy every Lord’s Day morning service. The only thing that we did not do the first Sunday was celebrate communion. Otherwise, every morning service, whether in our living room, at the Lakewood facility, here in the MSDA building, and even the one Sunday out on the Weinbergs’ old basketball court, we’ve used the same liturgy.

That’s not to say that we have a complex liturgy, it’s not to say that there’s nothing that could be added or edited or tweaked, it’s not to say that it’s “high” (or “low”), but it is at least intentional and we’ve been consistent in it. It is also different than most of us were used to.

Most of us are from “the sermon is the most important part of the service” churches. Even these Sermon Saints are a diminishing group in our day. You can usually find them with their noses in a book with unpleasant typography, and probably not wading through the potpourri and Precious Moments figurines at the local Bible bookstore. These are mostly our kind of people. Yet the longer we’ve been worshipping with a liturgy that includes a sermon but does not worship the sermon, the more I’m thankful.

Sermon-as-dominating-liturgy teaches, without needing to say it (though many preachers will), that information is the most important thing about worship. The sermon is for venerating truth not for ventilating affections. Ironically, the way most liturgies prepare people’s “hearts” to listen for the truth is by…singing. But the Really Serious Christians, RSCs for short, recognize that songs are mostly filler, and probably heretical. If church is about truth, then get to it, man. Melody? Harmony? Multiple voices? What’s that all about? Preach the word.

Of course there are the love people, often teetering on the edge of the opposite ditch from the truth people. They have affection for affections, and what kills affection, they often argue, more than an information dump? If worship is about the heart, then of course we need to sing, and if the lights are off that’s probably better. These are also RSCs for short, Really Sing-y Christians. For them, sermons can’t help but be boring. Exegesis? Outlines? One voice announcing things to the group? Don’t quench the Spirit.

These are extremes, but they are not exaggerations. They also miss the point of worship, which does demand love for God and is based on His truth but is aimed at our fellowship with the Father by the Spirit in the Son. Our liturgy should be true to that form.

What is that form? And where do we learn about it? The place to start is not actually in the New Testament, though we’ll consider that next Lord’s day. We start in the Old Testament with the sacrificial system of various offerings that God gave to His people so that they, by faith, could be in covenant relationship. God forgives and transforms and provides, they believe and obey and receive.

Before we consider how the sacrifices provide a pattern for our liturgy, remember that God has not revealed a one-and-only order of service anywhere in the Bible. While we appreciate what can be learned in the history of the church it is the Bible we are most concerned about, and the Bible is not strict about service sequence. There is, therefore, a measure of freedom for what local churches do and in what order they do it. The only bulletin inserts in our Bibles are ones we put in there, not ones that God did.

Also remember that God has revealed some explicit priorities for corporate meetings, not only in the example of the early church but also in His explicit instructions to church l[...]