Glad To Worship

I mentioned it very briefly this morning.
For those of you that weren't there, here's a recap.
Someone compiled the following list:

• I was forced to as a child.
• People who wash are hypocrites - they think they are cleaner than everybody else.
• I wash only on special occasions, like Christmas and Easter.
• I'll start washing when I get older and dirtier.
• I can't spare the time.
• People who make soap are only after your money.
• The last time I washed, someone was rude to me.
• What I do doesn't affect anybody but me.
• I don't believe in soap. I sat beside a whole case of it for an hour once, and nothing happened.
• Washing is for women and children.
• I will wash when I find the bathroom that is exactly right for me.
• There are lots of clean people who never wash.
• I feel as close to washing on the golf course as I do in the bathroom.
• I never wash when I have company.
• Washday is the only day I have to sleep in.
• My wife washes enough for the whole family
• Washing is the opiate of the masses.

I can tell you that as a pastor I hear every one of these lines, and then some. To the point where nothing much surprises me about peoples' reasons for staying away on "washday";
for not assembling with other saints for the great Christian act of worship.

Plenty of people would look up with a start, and a perplexed look of disbelief or complete lack of understanding if they would overhear their friend say,
"When someone said, 'Let's go to the house of God',
my heart leaped for joy."

Leaping for joy at the chance to go to God's house?
The list of excuses makes it seem that plenty don't leap too high.
And yet.....

Fact is that all across our free country, in gatherings large and small, there are gatherings of people -- people gathering because, as Eugene Peterson so simply notes, because they choose to.
They want to gather.
They're free to stay home, free to go skiing, golfing or put on the coffee.
But they want to come.
They're glad to come.
And they do.

YOU do!!
That's why you're here. Well, most of you. Perhaps a few of you were guilt tripped into coming, or you're here because mom or dad said so. But most of you came tonight because you wanted to come. You're glad to be here.
 

I hope and pray that you will resonate with tonight's bible reading:
 

This poem-song is one of a group known as the "psalms of ascent", songs sung by pilgrims on their way to the worship feasts in Jerusalem. One can visualize them as they travel together down the roads, little groups joining together and growing larger as they approach the city. Over the hills, around the bends - thrilled, filled with anticipation. Hurrying to get there!
And along the way they would sing what we now have as Psalms 120-134. Each with a special theme - including this one "I rejoiced with those who said to me, 'Let us go to the house of the Lord.'"
The great privilege of worship; the holy honour of entering the presence of God together with other believers - a covenant community.

That honour, that privilege - doing so together as a community - is something we share still today, thousands of years later. There's lots in life that changes. Fads that come and go, fascinate us and then bore us - hair length, hem length, car style, music tastes, hobbies.....
But worship - for thousands of years people streaming down roads and around corners, responding when others call them and say, "Hey, let's get together and worship God."
Psalm 122 is a celebration of that amazing event.

Listen to the song -
"Jerusalem is built like a city that is closely compacted together. This is where the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord."

Please understand that the celebration is not first of all preoccupied with the city itself, but with what the city represents. While Jerusalem was the political and economic centre of Israel, more than that it was the centre of faith. Here is where worship happened. Here is where people could meet God. This was the spiritual pivot point of their lives.
The physical was a bricks and mortar picture of the spiritual reality. A few of you have been there. Some of you have seen some wonderful documentary about Jerusalem in the Sunday Morning church education video series. It is a city filled with buildings jammed tightly one against the other - a lot of life densely packed within a small area.
Closely compacted. Or as another versions says:
Bound firmly together.

Sometimes in our lives we have moments when it seems as if everything is coming apart. We're juggling too many balls; have too many files open at the same time; stretched too thin. We feel scattered. Can't even keep track of everything anymore. So we put the answering machine on, step back and say -
"I've got to pull things together here."

Jerusalem is a "pulled-together" place. It's the place where Israel was reminded:
"God made you. God saved you. God provides for you. God loves you."

That God shapes your life, pulls away your guilt, gives you purpose for getting up in the morning --
As Eugene Peterson says in his book A Long Obedience, this takes all the scattered fragments of experience, and all the bits and pieces of truth and feeling and perception, and pulls them together into a single whole package.

"That is where the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord."
Ah - all those different tribes, twelve, each so unique:
Judah was preeminent in authority: "The seepter will never leave Judah.'' Issachar was the servant of others. Levi was a teacher, concerned with building up the Israelites with God's word; Zebulun, on the other hand, was a haven for ships. Gad was a tough, rugged warrior, while Naphtali was an artistic community. But they all came together, "bound firmly together.... closely compacted together...."
together in the great act of worship.
Diverse.... yet one before God.

Different levels of intelligence and wealth, background and language, rivalries and resentments - all that outward stuff -
and yet, God compacts us into one people through the act of worship.
[Peterson, p.48]

However different our tastes in music may be, however different our styles of dress may be, or occupation, or personalities -
far greater than those little differences is the overwhelmingly huge unifying bond of all coming from the one Nation - the one family of God.

True for Israel.
True for us.
We see the cross at the front. That unites us. Oh, how Satan would love us to become all preoccupied and bent out of shape about little differences. He'd love to have those things spin us out of the circle, away from that closely compacted group and into a corner alone - where we become easy prey for him to devour.
But worship, when entered with an open and receptive heart, draws us back. It brings us face to face with the essentials. It reminds us who we are, whose we are, the name that we carry.

Ah yes - "I rejoiced with those who said to me, 'Let us go to the house of the Lord.'"

Let's keep reading - v.4:
"That is where the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, to praise the name of the Lord according to the statute given to Israel."
 

To praise..... according to the statute, the command.
The command that God gave His people.

There are a lot of things in our lives that are optional. Lot's of added extras. How many bedrooms in your home? What colour sweater will you wear? What will go on your lunch sandwich? Which channel on TV are you going to watch? What CD will you listen to?
Options. Choices. Depending on what we feel like doing. What mood we're in.
And sometimes we get this silly idea in our lives that gathering to worship is such a feelings-driven, mood-directed optional extra. The psalm says, "I don't care whether you feel like it or not: according to the statute..... praise the name of the Lord."
Do it. Period.

"But I don't feel particularly spiritual. I've behaved rather badly and it would be somewhat hypocritical with the mood I'm in to go to church."
Since when do feelings drive the car?
It's like marriage, you know. Garry Smalley wrote a book that I have couples in premarital counselling go through. It's called "Love Is A Decision."
If marriages depended on the feelings of the moment between husband and wife, we simply wouldn't see 40th, 50th, or 60th anniversaries.

Feelings, says Eugene Peterson, are great liars. I love this quote from him -
"We can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting." [Long Obedience 50]

The act of worship, a command performance, rekindles the passions, stokes up the fires of faith, generates new spiritual heat. Cars that run around all week need to be tanked up with fuel on a regular basis. People who run around all week need to be spiritually replenished.
That's the act of worship - for the head, the heart, the soul, the emotions, the senses.

Worship - a commanded time to praise God. St.Augustine wrote, "A Christian should be an alleluia from head to foot."
We sin - and God forgives.
We have needs - and God provides.
We wander - and God restores.
We worry - and God assures.
We are weak - and God gives strength.
We are lonely - and God comes close.
How could we NOT praise?

Praise God and the relationship between the believer and heaven is refueled.
The harder your week, the more tired you are, the more out of touch with God you feel, the busier your life - the more time you need to spend in corporate worship giving focussed praise to God.
If you've got a hard week ahead, don't skimp on worship. Take your watch off when you walk in the door. Immerse yourself in praise.

"I rejoiced with those who said to me, 'Let us go to the house of the Lord.'..... There the thrones for judgement stand, the thrones of the house of David."
Judgement in Psalm 122 means "the decisive word by which God straightens things out and puts things right." [Peterson p.50]
For us it is encountering Jesus Christ, the Word became Flesh and His decisive claim on our lives - God's judgement declaring us innocent.
It is encountering the decisive claims, judgements, directions that Christ lays on how we should live - the guidance from Scripture. That's why the message, the sermon, is so central in worship. That's why we have dialogue in worship. There is the time to praise. And there is the time to hear from God - His Holy Will, His divine greeting and blessing, the scriptural light unto our feet.

Worship is the place and time where our attention is centred on these personal and decisive words of God.

"I rejoiced with those who said to me, 'Let us go to the house of the Lord.'"

Worship - an act unlike any other in the rest of our life. Something we can never experience to the same degree when we're by ourselves. It simply doesn't, and can't happen.

Worship - an act that fuels the rest of our week. It propels us out and into that week. Which is what happens also to the psalmist. "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem..." he writes. The word "pray" is different from the word used for the formal worship prayers. This is a word referring to casual, everyday asking. Meaning something that moves beyond the event of worship and back into the home. We take the contact that was rekindled with God in the holy place, and carry it back to our work place and our living place.
 

Worship doesn't satisfy our hunger for God. It only whets it. Gets us going. Makes us long for more. The act of worship deepens rather than diminishes our need for the Lord's presence in our lives.
Notice the worshipper.
Having been in Jerusalem, and rubbed shoulders with them, he now prays for them. And see what he prays?
For peace - shalom.
For security.
The two greatest elements of life - bigger than riches or fame or thrills. Shalom. Security. Two items that ultimately only The Creator of Heaven and Earth can give.

Shalom is one of the greatest words found in the Bible. It means "wholeness, put together right, ordered the way it was meant to be, complete."
As Peterson notes, whenever Jesus healed or forgave or taught He was restoring shalom among the people.

And then security - that's the word shalvah. When a Hebrew would use this word he wouldn't want your mind to begin thinking of large stockpiles of weapons, or locks on your doors, or bodyguards at your side. Rather, as shalvah came off his lips he'd want you to think about contentment, ease, being relaxed because you know that everything is all right and you don't have to worry.
Biblical shalvah, biblical security, comes from knowing that life is lived under the care of the Lord, that His hand holds us, that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ Jesus, that He is with us always - turning all things to our saving good, that more than He cares for the sparrow He deeply cares for us.

The act of worship in God's city, in Jerusalem, gives us a taste of shalom and security. It primes the pump, so to speak, for the rest of the week.

A great act - a huge moment.
Indeed - let us all rejoice when the call goes out to assemble. To worship.
 

Our Father, we rejoice at what you have made available to us in the realm of the heavenlies; the joy of gathering together, the joy of being at home and having a sense of community, a sense of excitement that you are involved in our lives. We praise you for this great gift. Thank you that you have made us members of your city. We pray that our excitement and enthusiasm would so spill over to others to draw them to the great city of God, so that they might come to see the great blessings that you have granted to us.
In Jesus' name. Amen.