Loving the Lord Through the Liturgy
The Call to Worship (#3)
© 2006 Daniel R. Hyde

In worship we stand on holy ground in the presence of The Holy. This is communicated to us in the opening words of our worship, the baptismal words of Jesus in Matthew 28:19. These words set the tone of our worship as we are gathered as a baptized, set apart, holy community under the name and authority of our Triune God. It is as this baptized community of faith, then, that we are summoned by Christ himself, through his minister, to worship our all-glorious God in the call to worship.

A Sovereign, Covenant God
The first thing we need to know about the call to worship is that it makes clear to us that God is a sovereign, covenant-making God. In the beginning God created, Adam sinned, then God rescued. God in his sovereign, irresistible grace made a covenant of grace with his people beginning in Genesis 3:15, which was brought to fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Having a call to worship right at the beginning of worship emphasizes these biblical teachings that God is sovereign, we are horribly blinded by sin, and that God takes the initiative to condescend to us in grace and mercy. When you hear the minister’s voice exclaim the call to worship you are hearing the voice of Christ say to you, “Now that I have rescued you and despite your ongoing sin, I am now going to do my work of re-creating you by calling you into my presence.”

The Role of the Holy Spirit
The call to worship also makes it clear that God the Holy Spirit is the initiator of worship. Christ calls us to worship using the very words the Holy Spirit inspired. As well, since it was the Holy Spirit who called us from death to life in regeneration, faith, and conversion, it is he who continues to call us out of our sins and spiritual slumber to worship the Father through the Son in the Spirit. We must never forget as a people that because we are still tainted by original and actual sins we still need to be called out from the world and from ourselves, to worship the Lord. As we hear the call to worship we ought to be thankful that the Holy Spirit has called us because left to ourselves we would worship our own “gods” in our way.

Transcendence in Worship
Finally, the call to worship makes it clear that our worship transcends all times, places, and cultures. Our worship is shockingly different than most churches. This should be no surprise to you. Most services today open with an extended time of “worship” in which we initiate worship. This type/style of worship is by nature focused upon the worshipper and his/her problems. The opening words of Jesus and the call to worship transform our thoughts of worship as it is God who first speaks, calling us to be a spiritual kingdom, which is “not of this world” (John 18:36). From the very outset of our worship Scripture is set before us, whether from the Old (e.g., Ps. 95, 100) or New Testament (e.g., Heb. 10:19-22), focusing our minds and hearts upon the glory of God in Christ, while taking our minds off of ourselves; taking our focus off of this world and onto the hope of the next. This is why D.G. Hart and John Muether, in their book With Reverence and Awe, say,

Worship is a subversive and counter-cultural act of an alien people who, forsaking the world, listen to the voice of her master saying, “follow me.” True worship, then, will be odd and perhaps even weird to the watching world. This oddness is not lamentable but essential to the church’s faithfulness and witness…when the church assembles for worship she is not at all like the world (p. 34).

The call to worship, then, is God’s summoning of his church, his “called out ones” (Greek, ekklesia), from the world and into his presence to participate in the worship of heaven. Having a biblical call to worship impresses upon us the God whom we worship, the One who has called us out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, out of the darkness of our sins (Ex. 20:1; 1 Peter 2:9) and who continues to call us out of the world and our sinful, selfishness selves (Rom. 3:10ff; 7) to participate in something larger than ourselves. This is what worship is, a coming-out-of-the-world and into the presence of God. This is why our worship must be counter-cultural, transcendent, and different than the entertainment and consumerism of the world. So hear the Lord’s call and respond joyfully!

Loving the Lord through the Liturgy
In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (#2)
© 2006 Daniel R. Hyde

What is the first impression we want to give to the world when they worship with us? All too often, we ask, “What is the first thing a visitor will think about us?” Yet, what if we asked, “What is the first impression people get of God?”

Christian Worship
The first impression the baptismal words of Jesus give is that our worship is Christian. The church is told whom they worship and the world is told whom they must worship – the one true, Triune God. Jesus commanded his apostles to baptize the nations “in the name” (singular) of God. The great confession of the people of God in the Old Testament what that “the LORD is one” (Deut. 6:4). In baptism “the honorable name” of God is invoked upon us (James 2:7), yet Jesus says that this name is the name “of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” The one is three, and the three are one. Our worship is Christian, which means it is Trinitarian. This means that from the very outset of worship we are distinguishing our worship of the Triune God from every other type of false worship of false gods, for we worship God the Father, through the Son, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Jesus, the Son, said that the Father was to be worshipped “in spirit,” that is, in the Holy Spirit (John 4:22-24), while Paul describes the new society of the church as having access to the Father, through Christ, in the Spirit (Eph. 2:18). In this way, our Triune God is declared to be the very heart of our worship service. As the Athanasian Creed says so poetically in article 3, “And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity.” Also, in article 27, “So that in all things, as aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped.”

Holy Ground
The opening words also communicate reverence and holiness. When Jesus originally spoke these words, he was commissioning his apostles to preach and baptize. He did this, reminding them that “all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18). When these words are pronounced, our risen and ascended Savior claims the
day, time, space, and people for his own. In biblical terms, he is “placing his name ‘there’” (Deut. 12:5, 11, 21, 14:23, 24, 16:2, 6, 11, 26:2). Since we are “the temple of the living God” (2 Cor. 6:16), the Lord places his name upon us, constituting us as his kingdom. This is why our worship makes unbelievers uncomfortable in worship – they are not able to stand before our holy and majestic Savior. Nevertheless, it is precisely because our worship emphasizes the holiness and authority of Christ that some may fall on their faces and glorify God with us (1 Cor. 14).

A Daily Baptism
In baptism, God dramatically shows us that he has made us alive by putting us to death and has taken off our worn and filthy clothes of self-righteousness and has clothed us in the pure white robe of Christ’s righteousness (Rom 6:3-4; Gal. 3:27). The baptismal words of Jesus teach us that the Christian life is a continual learning of this. The Christian life, then, never gets beyond our baptism. This is what Paul tells us in Romans 6 when he says that since we have died and risen with Christ in baptism, we must continue to die to self and rise by serving God in the Spirit. Baptism is a lifelong call to “forsake the world, crucify our old nature, and walk in a godly life” since “this life…is nothing but a constant death” (Baptism of Infants, Form Number 1).

So what is the first impression we want the world to get of God when they worship with us? That God is Triune, that God is holy, and that we must come to him on his terms, that is, through Christ alone and in the power of the Spirit. And may we continue all our life to respond to the opening words with the corporate “amen,” as we ask our Triune God to graciously lead us in the lifelong learning and living out of our baptism.

Loving the Lord through the Liturgy
Silent Prayer (#1)
© 2006 Daniel R. Hyde

As you have noticed, when we assemble for the service on the Lord’s Day, we begin by entering the presence of God in silence. Worship is a dramatic event in which the Creator meets with his creatures, the Redeemer with the redeemed. The moment of silence is the anticipation of God’s opening the curtain and welcoming us into his heavenly presence.

Beginning in silence, then, is an acknowledgment of God’s grandeur as well as our meekness. In Scripture to be in the presence of a holy God is to keep silence: “the LORD is in His holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before Him” (Hab. 2:14); to be in the presence of God is to stand on “holy ground” (Ex. 3:5).

Admittedly, this is a bit awkward – good, it is meant to be. Although we were created for the purpose of worship, our sinful condition means that it is not “natural” to approach the great King. The moment of silence should cause in both believers and unbelievers a sense of our own sin before God so that we will seek forgiveness in Jesus Christ. We have become way too accustomed in our churches with the culture’s methods of entertainment, in which worship is informal and only upbeat, and the culture’s methods of therapy, in which worship only emphasizes the love of God. What we as image bearers of God need to recapture is a healthy balance between reverence for God’s holiness and transcendence with celebration for God’s grace and immanence. Silence helps us do that.

Practically speaking, the opening silence gives us a point in our worship to gather our thoughts and to set ourselves aside for worship. Set aside your anxieties, your worries, and your stresses and give yourself wholly to God, “as living sacrifices” (Rom. 12:1), “casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).

So as we gather as the church, let us do so in humility, with “reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:28-29).