pilgrim people

Thanksgiving is a civic holiday in America that nowadays is mainly about family, food, football, and fun. There is certainly nothing wrong with those good gifts of God: all four express his  kindness (though I might qualify “football” as it is more commonly known throughout the world: soccer!). Historically, though, Americans observe the Thanksgiving holiday because of the experience of those original pilgrims who came to the New World and offered thanks to God for his mercies amid the most trying of circumstances. 

In 1620, the Mayflower made its long and dangerous journey from Southampton, England to Plymouth, Massachusetts, carrying 102 Protestant passengers of Nonconformist and Separatist convictions. Arriving in November, they spent their first winter in what one Puritan was later to describe as “a howling wilderness.” William Bradford, the pilgrims’ leader, kept a journal in which he recorded this about that first winter: 

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Just today I was introduced to this excellent hymn by the eighteenth century English Nonconformist Isaac Watts. Although it is not in the blue Psalter-Hymnal nor the red Trinity Hymnal, I am amazed I have never heard it before. We will sing it this Sunday evening (HT: CURC intern Chris Stevens, aka "Redpooba").

The Law commands and makes us know

What duties to our God we owe;

But ’tis the Gospel must reveal

Where lies our strength to do His will.

The Law discovers guilt and sin

And shows how vile our hearts have been;

The Gospel only can express

Forgiving love and cleansing grace.

What curses doth the Law denounce

Against the man that fails but once!

But in the Gospel Christ appears,

Pard’ning the guilt of numerous years.

My soul, no more attempt to draw

Thy life and comfort from the Law.

Fly to the hope the Gospel gives;

The man that trusts the promise lives.

If the corporate worship service on the Lord's Day is the main spiritual meal God has ordained for his people (see the post, "Local Church, Local Restaurant"), then we might ask, How does this meal begin? This is not a fast food meal or trip to the vending machine in order to "grab a bite to eat" and wolf down some quick nourishment (nourishment?) for the body. Instead, this is a festive meal, a special event that possesses a deliberate order and structure.  Yes, God summons his children to a feast in Word and Sacrament in order to provide spiritual nourishment, but, because it is a feast and not a snack, he does it with all the care, civility, and beauty that we would expect when dining well with our family and friends on a memorable occassion.

This post will begin a series on the elements of the worship service: WHY we do WHAT we do in worship. We begin with the beginning of the sacred meal: the Call to Worship, Invocation, and Salutaion (i.e. God's Greeting).

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The following is a short article from Rev. Wes Bredenhof, pastor of the Langley Canadian Reformed Church in British Columbia, and is well worth reading:

Why Attend Twice?

The members of the Langley Canadian Reformed Church are called to worship twice each Sunday. In this pamphlet, let’s look at six good reasons why we should make regular church attendance (twice each Sunday) a priority in our lives.

Thankfulness

Our foremost reason for attending church twice is to give praise-filled thanks to God for our salvation in Christ. Two services enables members to dedicate more of the Lord’s Day to joyful praise for our wonderful Saviour. It discourages us from following our own pursuits which may often prevent us from setting aside the entire Lord’s Day as a day of rest and worship

Our Personal Well-being

The preaching of the gospel is a means of grace in the lives of believers (see 1 Cor.1:21 and 2:4). That means that the Holy Spirit works through preaching to direct us to Christ and consequently to bring about change and growth in our lives. When we worship together, we also have opportunities to encourage and be encouraged by our brothers and sisters, before, during and after the worship services. Therefore, it serves our personal well-being (especially spiritual well-being) to attend twice each Lord’s Day -- and God wants us to take care of ourselves!

The Well-being of Our Families

When we attend twice each Lord’s Day, we send a powerful and positive message to our children and grandchildren. We show them with our actions that we know that we are works in progress. We show them that we take God’s Word in 2 Peter 3:18 seriously: “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ...”

We teach our children and grandchildren that, no matter what age we are, we need to continually hear the preaching of the Word and to receive the encouragement provided by the sacraments. We need the Spirit to remind us of old truths and teach us new ones. We need the Spirit to encourage us through our brothers and sisters and we need the Spirit to help us in encouraging others.

In short, by attending twice each Sunday, we model humility and godliness to our families. We teach them that we love being with the Lord and his people. God will use such humility and godliness to build a healthy and strong church -- one that lives for his glory in everything.

The Unity of the Church

By attending twice each Lord’s Day, we participate in a deep expression of the unity of God’s people in this place. We confess that we are the body of Christ. If the body is gathered in worship, the entire body should be there. In 1 Cor.12:21 we read, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ and the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’” And then also 1 Cor.12:26, “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” By extension we could say, if one part is worshipping, every part should be worshipping with it. Since we are the body of Christ, we do things together, and that includes gathering for worship.

The Fifth Commandment

We confess in Lord’s Day 39 that as part of our thankfulness for the gospel, we are to show “all honour, love, and faithfulness” to all those in authority over us. We are to submit ourselves to their good instruction and discipline. The officebearers of the church are included with those in authority over us. Following what has been agreed upon in article 52 of the Church Order, the consistory calls the congregation to worship twice each Sunday. There can be legitimate reasons why one cannot come (i.e. illness, necessary work). But if we make a willful choice to do something else when we are called to be here, that is a sin against the fifth commandment.

Someone might say that the Bible does not directly tell us to worship twice, so we’re not obligated to listen to the authority of the consistory. But does the call to worship twice compel anyone to disobey Scripture? If anything, believers desire to worship as often as they are able. The Bible teaches that believers will obey those in authority, so long as they do not command us to do anything that goes against what Scripture teaches (see Acts 4:19 and 5:29).

Consideration for the Pastors

Imagine spending a lot of time and effort to prepare a special meal for someone you love. Now imagine that the object of your affection, upon hearing that this special meal has been prepared just for them, chooses to stay away from the dinner table. Preparing sermons for the congregation is a lot like preparing a special meal. Your pastors give careful thought to the needs of the congregation and endeavour to prepare nutritious spiritual meals for each Sunday. “Now we ask you, brothers, to respect those who work hard among you, who are over you in the Lord, and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work.” (1 Thess.5:12-13)

As fallen sinners, we are naturally curved in on ourselves in selfish introspection and idol worship. We love the gods we create in our corrupt hearts. We love to hear their word that comes from within ourselves. We love self-consumption, feeding on whatever the idol-gods of our heart serve us. This is why God ordained preaching: We desperately need an external Word that comes from outside of ourselves and intrudes the make-believe world we have erected. Preaching is an intrusive act whereby God pulls us away from our toxic self-feast and feeds us with a meal of life.

This is precisely what the Westminster Larger Catechism gets at when it describes how the Word is made effectual in the life of the believer:

The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the word, an effectual means of enlightening, convincing, and humbling sinners, of driving them out of themselves, and drawing them unto Christ, of conforming them to his image, and subduing them to his will; of strengthening them against temptations and corruptions; of building them up in grace, and establishing their hearts in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation. (Q.155, emphasis added)

In his infinite wisdom and fatherly love, God has ordained the act of preaching to accomplish this. A divinely appointed emissary is sent to the covenant people of God to proclaim the covenantal speech of God. The external Word renews us inwardly, redirecting our gaze from ourselves to Christ. As Horton points out in his excellent People and Place, "It is not only the message but also the method that drives us our of ourselves, which an 'inner word' cannot do. We cannot tell ourselves what is most important. We do not already know what is relevant." (P & P, 49). God has designed faith to come through hearing, and hearing by the preaching of Christ (Romans 10.14-17). It may seem strange to us that this (sometimes) rather dull event is THE thing God ordained to give us what we need most, but that is what he has revealed. And he knows what we need far better than we do.

The opposite of being fed by God through preaching is the toxic self-feast served by the idols of our sinful hearts. "The idol," says Horton, "as the prophets routinely point out, is the expression of teh inner self's felt needs. Idols do not come to us from the outside and address us; rather, they come from our own experience, longings, representation, and  delusions" (P & P, 60). Being a self-feeder doesn't work. While private Bible reading and mediation is HIGHLY important and benficial for the Christian life, it cannot replace the public meals God serves in his restaurants. As Kevin Vanhoozer puts it, "The sermon is the best frontal assault on imaginations held captive by secular stories that promise other ways to the good life." (The Drama of Doctrine, 456)