Bonus Content from June 20th (Psalm 122)
PSALM 122 - Bonus Content
Below are some reflections that had to be cut from Sunday’s sermon.
What exactly happens in gathered worship that can’t happen during solitary Bible study and prayer?
First, we can’t obey the biblical commands to gather for worship (e.g. Heb. 10:24-25) if we remain alone. We also miss a prime opportunity to practice all of the 100 New Testament “one anothers,” many of which are impossible without being in regular community with other believers.
But God’s presence seems to visit the local assembly in a way that isn’t necessarily the case in our private worship. Reflecting on 1 Cor. 3:16-17 and Matt. 18:20, Pastor Bill Kynes comments:
When we as a church gather together for worship, we are not just individuals who happen to be in the same room, each pursuing his or her own communion with God. We become the body of Christ. And it is as church—as that gathered people of God—that we become a special place, a place in which an outsider might say, “God is really among you!” (1 Cor 14:25).
Here is a sermon from last summer that spells out the importance of gathered worship.
Here is some good advice when speaking to friends who would say they are Christian but don’t attend church.
Here is an idea of how you can respond to your kids when they ask why we go to church.
What’s a church supposed to do in an era when so many professing believers seem content to attempt the Christian life privately (i.e. not as part of a local church)? How can we cultivate the sort of joy in corporate worship that we see in 122:1-2?
Some churches have bought LED screens and crafted immersive 4K experiences behind bands of paid professionals. They put a little higher quality coffee in the coffee pots, a little more ear tickling in their sermons, and only invite to the stage the young and especially attractive.
But what that path has demonstrated is that what you win people with (e.g. “an epic experience”), you win them to. In other words, we chase whatever it is that “hooked” us originally.
So when the local Cycle Bar starts playing 8K music videos while church is stuck on 4K… and the Cycle Bar offers mimosas at the end of the Sunday morning ride… now the Cycle Bar looks like the trampoline, and even the hip church looks like a bounce house again. Over time, a church like this only looks like a trampoline compared to other churches that aren’t as hip... because the world will always do “hip” better than the church can.
Now, I’m not sure anybody has ever accused North Sub of being an especially hip church. And it’s not that we’re anti things being up-to-date; we’d never want to take some kind of twisted pride in being stuck in another era. Why would it be more virtuous to be stuck on what was cool in the 90s than it is to be stuck on what’s cool in 2021?
But we’re also not trying to keep up with the never-ending rat race, because from our perspective, it’s not a long-term win if people find joy here because of our epic light displays and the pastors’ cool hairstyles. Instead, we’re trying to help each other find joy here because we’re encountering the living God in the context of the community of imperfect saints in which He lives and makes Himself known.
What do those who “come back home” to church need from us who have been here all along?
It’s a tragedy when people who have strayed from the church “come back home” only to find cold shoulders from Christians who want to preserve their comfortable, insular Christian communities without disruption.
To those in his own day who were slow to embrace the schismatic Donatists, Augustine said:
“Let them, then, have a bitter sorrow for their former detestable wrongdoing, as Peter had for his cowardly lie, and let them come to the true church, that is, their catholic mother, and let them be clerics or bishops in it with as much service for it as they formerly used against it. We do not begrudge it to them; on the contrary, we embrace them, we beg them, we exhort them, we compel them to come in when we find them in the highways and hedges.”
May our approach be the same.
Are there other benefits of participating in corporate worship?
Eugene Peterson names two more in his chapter on Psalm 122 in A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. I paraphrase:
Corporate worship is the “frame” that provides structure and unity to the “painting” of our lives.
Attending corporate worship is like taking some time to sharpening the dull blade of your lawn mower before going out to mow.
How much trust ought we to have in the prescripts to these psalms (e.g. can we really trust that David was the author of this one)?
Unlike the verse numbers in our Bibles, which were not original but rather later additions, the prescripts were original and inspired. In fact, in Matthew 22:41-46, Jesus makes an entire theological argument based on the prescript to Psalm 110!
Why plural “thrones” in 122:5? Didn’t just one Davidic king rule at a time?
The original readers of this psalm would probably have thought of royal officials appointed by the Davidic kings to administer justice. But in light of later revelation, we discover another layer to this language.
Though Jesus is the Davidic king ruling over the church today, he (astoundingly) suggested while he was on earth that we would reign with him! It’s even possible that He alludes to this very psalm when he tells his disciples: “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Mt. 19:28). What a privilege that we get to reign with Christ.