Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

So a few weeks back our family had appointments with Joe’s Tux Shop to get outfits tailored (slips my mind at the moment why…) Going to a tailor is not the kind of thing we do every day, but there are certain events for which it’s really important to look your absolute best!

(And sometimes there is a distressing amount of measuring and altering and “letting out” a tailor has to do to make you look your best…) Tailors have an eye for not only what fits, but what looks good; the kind of cut, style, color and so forth that suits an individual.

So that when you look in the mirror, your outfit not only compliments your build but expresses your style.

We are beginning a series on the topic of “The Worshipping Church” this morning.

A lot has been said about “worship styles”—what kind of music to use, what Bible to read from, what the architecture should be, and so on.

As a result of the pandemic we have even seen churches re-thinking their worship on even more fundamental levels: Online church services and “streaming worship” that many churches turned to during COVID have become popular in their own right, with many churches making them a permanent part of their services.

For the most part, discussions about the gathered worship of the church—how a congregation goes about its activities on a Sunday morning—has been relegated to a discussion of personal tastes and preferences.

Some people prefer worship that features passionate communion with Jesus, that real worship is found in those times when the Holy Spirit brings us into the presence of God in deeply personal and emotional encounters.

Others insist on historic, doctrinal worship, focusing on the rich heritage of the ancient creeds and old hymns.

Then there are those who say that the most important thing is outreach-driven worship that appeals to people outside the church, that the goal is attracting unbelievers so that they can come and hear the Gospel.

Unfortunately most discussions about the gathered worship of the church tends to be dominated by our culture’s consumer-driven attitude: Churches tend to look at what will make them relevant or attractive to people (both Christians and non-Christians alike).

And that can be a good thing, when it comes from a sincere desire to see people come to hear the Gospel and be saved.

But all too often this pragmatic, “do-whatever-it-takes-to-get-people-here” approach has tended to weaken any understanding of what a church is even supposed to do in worship.

As one author put it, in an effort to “church the unchurched”, our modern attempts at reinventing worship wind up “unchurching the church” (Merker, M., & Duncan, L. (2021).

Corporate Worship: How the Church Gathers as God’s People (9Marks: Building Healthy Churches) [E-book].

Crossway.

p. 14)

And this is why I think that the corporate worship that a church conducts on Sunday morning is a lot like a trip to the tailor to get an outfit—because there is a deep and foundational connection between how a congregation sees itself as a church and the way it worships as a church.

I believe that when we approach the Sunday service with a biblical view of the church body, it transforms the way we engage in gathered worship (ibid., p. 25).

Like going to the tailor and looking into the mirror to see what fits and is appropriate,

The WAY a church worships flows from what it SEES itself to BE

My plan is for us to spend the next several weeks examining what the Bible says about the nature of the church with the end that we will have a Biblical perspective on the nature of worship.

A couple of quick stops on the way to our first point: The first thing that we must do is define what we mean by worship:

WORSHIP: The act of ASCRIBING to God the HONOR and GLORY and PRAISE that is due His NAME.

The Scriptures remind us that we were created to worship God—

The Christian life is a WORSHIPPING life

It is our rightful and fitting purpose.

In Ephesians 1:12 the Apostle Paul writes that Christians tells us:

Ephesians 1:12 (ESV)

12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.

We were destined and appointed to live to the praise of God’s glory—as the old Westminster Confession of Faith puts it, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

We are created to worship, and Jesus’ death on the Cross has freed us from the death-penalty of our sins so that we are fit to carry out our purpose of worshipping God.

The Christian life is a worshipping life, and the second thing to understand is that

The Christian life is a CORPORATE life.

Throughout the Bible, God’s people are always a community of believers.

Even though it is clear that each individual is ultimately responsible for their own standing before God in salvation, it is nevertheless true that everything about the life of a child of God—Old Testament and New Testament—is written of in terms of a congregation:

Exodus 19:6 (ESV)

6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation...

Psalm 35:18 (ESV)

18 I will thank you in the great congregation; in the mighty throng I will praise you.

Jesus speaks clearly about the corporate nature of faith in the Gospels:

Matthew 16:18 (ESV)

18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Matthew 18:20 (ESV)

20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

And the rest of the New Testament bears this out as well.

The passage that we read earlier in Ephesians reminds us that when we were saved, we were saved to be part of a community:

Ephesians 2:19 (ESV)

19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God,

1 Peter 2:10 (ESV)

10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

This description of the community of faith culminates in Revelation where the redeemed are described as

Revelation 7:9 (ESV)

9 ...a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb...

I hope you can see how this understanding of the corporate nature of faith is a vital part of our understanding of what our worship must be—we will spend eternity together as a congregation in worship!

And so corporate worship here on earth must be a priority, since we will be doing it forever!

Being a Christian—being a worshipper of God—entails identifying with God’s worshipping people… Since salvation is corporate, then worship is corporate (ibid, 34).

So let’s spend the remaining time we have looking briefly at three portraits of the Church in the New Testament.

A church’s worship flows from what it sees itself to be—and in Philippians 3, we see that the Church is

I.

A COLONY of the KINGDOM of God (Philippians 3:20, p. 982)

Philippians 3:20 (ESV)

20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,

The city of Philippi (where the recipients of Paul’s letter lived) was founded as a Roman colony after Caesar Augustus defeated the assassins of Julius Caesar at a battle there in 42 B.C.

He allowed some of his generals to retire there to Philippi and form a Roman colony.

Now, the thing about a colony is that it is an outpost of the kingdom it represents—when Paul says that we are “citizens of heaven”, what he means by that is that we represent the country we come from!

Back in March the girls went down to Washington D.C. for a field trip.

There is a street in Washington D.C., Massachusetts Avenue NW, that is called “Embassy Row” because of all of the foreign offices for diplomats and ambassadors in that part of town.

When you step inside one of those embassies, you are legally stepping onto foreign soil.

You walk into the Canadian Embassy, for instance, you are actually in Canada.

That’s what a church is supposed to be!

When someone walks into these doors, they should feel like they have crossed the border into the Kingdom of God!

So this means that we must not think of ourselves as consumers when we come to worship—we must remember that we are ambassadors!

And as ambassadors,

We don’t MAKE our own RULES

about what we do here, do we?

Our activities here within these embassy walls, within the bounds of this colony, are done in submission to the charter of the Kingdom we represent!

Whatever we do in worship, we must submit to what the Bible says.

Just as an embassy orders its operations, its staff, its architecture and decor according to the country it represents, so a church orders everything it does and says around the Kingdom we represent!

In the same way, since we are colonists of the Kingdom of God,

We don’t DECLARE our own MESSAGE

An ambassador does not get to declare his own personal opinions on a matter, he declares the words of his Sovereign.

We speak on behalf of the Kingdom that we represent; we declare Heaven’s judgments, and we must declare them the way our King does.

So worship is not ultimately up to us—we are not the final say as to what worship looks like according to what we think the world around us wants it to be.

We are presenting what God wants the world to see—an “object lesson of the Gospel”, an imperfect (but accurate!)

glimpse of what the world will look like when the dominion of Christ has taken over, and His colonization of this world is complete!

The way a church worships flows from what it sees itself to be—we are a colony of the Kingdom, and we are

II.

A Holy TEMPLE (1 Corinthians 3:16, p. 953)

In 1 Corinthians 3:16, the Apostle Paul writes,

1 Corinthians 3:16 (ESV)

16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

The Scriptures teach that God is omnipresent—He is everywhere at all times, and there is no place where He is not.

As Solomon said after he built the Temple in Jerusalem:

1 Kings 8:27 (ESV)

27 “But will God indeed dwell on the earth?

Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!

And yet, throughout the Bible, we see that God is always dwelling specially among His people.

In the Garden with Adam and Eve, in the Tabernacle in the wilderness, in the Temple in Jerusalem, in His own Son, Jesus Christ, and finally in the Body of Christ, the Church.