The Real Conflict

I was struck this week by the contrast between our perception of conflict and the reality of spiritual warfare. It is not that we make mountains out of molehills… actually, we regularly do. It is easy to become wrapped around the Presbyterian axle on questions so nuanced the apostle Paul would not even recognize them. (I can’t wait to ask Moses where he stands on the republication of the Covenant of Works in the Sinaitic economy and whether he takes a more or less Klinean view of covenant history.) Given the lack of real persecution in our present American context, we can easily become like toddlers in the backseat of the car complaining that “he’s looking at me!”

This year has been one of controversy for our congregation, and to the extent that I have pointed it out and responded to it in various ways, I may have been like one of those children, whining that a little brother keeps looking at me and tapping his car seat. It is usually better simply to ignore bullies, disdaining their silly opinions and refraining from even giving them the credibility of a response. But it seemed necessary to say something, at least for the sake of those who were unsettled by uncharitable rumors. At the Synod of Dort in the early 17th century, one theologian challenged another to settle their disagreement with a duel. Paul says a bishop must not be a striker, but I don’t see any prohibition on chokeholds, armbars, and foot locks. A grappling match seems more godly than a gossip campaign.

It is easy to imagine these controversies and questions are the real conflict we face as the people of God, but that is a silly opinion, worthy of our contempt. Counseling young men who are in complete bondage to porn and cannot imagine why they can’t get girls to talk to them; watching young people become trapped in the madness of gender fluidity, sexual ambiguity, and recreational drugs; meeting with families who are being torn apart by pride, selfishness, and uncharitableness because each one knows they are right; trying, and failing, to meet with the rebellious and disobedient who seem hellbent on destroying their faith, relationships, and future: this is a typical week for me as a pastor. Who has time to gossip about a brother or respond to silly allegations? If we’re not careful, the Lord may send us some real persecution to settle us down and to help us focus on what is really important.

I generally believe the assessment of my ministry on the last day will reveal it to be one of wood, hay, and straw. There won’t be much lasting fruit from my labors, and no one beyond my own generation will know my name. That is as it should be. We should not aspire to great things but be glad to associate with the lowly. Tend the sheep in your own pasture, and don’t waste time wishing for a larger flock. Shepherding the sheep God has given us is already more than a full-time job. Marriages, children, and souls hang in the balance. We don’t have time to waste on pointless controversy. I do not worry what others may say or think about me, but I care very much what my own children will say when I am dead and gone. I have seen too many men neglect their own families while being eager to fix everyone else’s problems, too many pastors who knew all the answers but whose children do not walk with Christ, too many “experts” who are glad to tell you how to fix your life but whose wife and children can’t stand them. Which battles are we really interested in fighting? The souls and love of your family and the brethren God placed in your life is far more important than anyone who has anything to say from afar.

The Lord’s Day is a time to reset, remember what is important, and renew our covenant with God. We become distracted far too easily, and insofar as the Devil preoccupies us with what is unimportant, our lives and family and work will suffer the consequences. Much of what demands our attention from day to day is not real, only deception, a facade of importance erected to obscure what really matters. The Lord’s Day is a time to pull back the curtain, strip away the mask, and confront reality clearly, face to face. We are made for God, made for eternity, not made to waste our time on triviality and the foolishness of this world. We have been baptized as warrior priests and kings, remade to exercise lordship and extend the dominion of Christ’s kingdom and God’s grace to the uttermost parts of the world. Who cares what someone said on Facegram or TwitTok? (This is not to say online engagement is pointless, only that it is often done in a way that is intended to distract and neutralize godly labor rather than advance it.)

Your family needs to be in church tomorrow—they need to come before the Lord to be cleansed and further consecrated by his Spirit—and they need you to lead them there and then lead by example in humble, grateful, joyful worship. There is nothing more important for you to do this week than to come before the Lord and worship him, to encourage your brothers and sisters in Christ, and if you have a family, to lead them in that exercise, praying that God will mercifully bless each one and cause your children to excel you in his service. The Maker of heaven and earth is calling. O come, let us adore him. --JME

Getting Saved Again in Corporate Worship

Tomorrow is the Lord’s Day. I made a comment in last week’s sermon—it was not in the manuscript but was an extemporaneous remark—that there is a sense in which every week you are being re-converted, regenerated, and saved again as you participate in the liturgy. I thought the point was sufficiently clear in the context of what I was describing, but I received a couple of questions about it, so let me take this opportunity to clarify my comment… and double-down on it.

First, let me offer the necessary qualifications. No one is literally, actually, or salvifically being regenerated in Lord’s Day worship who had already been regenerated by God. Regeneration, in that sense, is an act, a singular event, a work performed by the Holy Spirit once and for all time. It does not fade over time. Its benefits do not expire. It cannot be lost, and it is not on a subscription that has to be renewed. If you have been regenerated, you are regenerate forever. If you have been saved, you are saved forever. We are Calvinists, after all, and we believe in the eternal security and divine preservation of the elect.

Second, let me clarify what I meant by what I said. The weekly worship of the Church, if it is structured in the pattern of covenant renewal that we find throughout the Bible, is an enacted ritual and experience of the gospel and salvation. God calls us out of the world. He cleanses us of our sins. He consecrates us by his Word and Spirit. He communes with us at the Table. He commissions us to go into all the world to fill it with his glory by subduing it to the authority of Christ. These movements correspond, broadly speaking, to effectual calling, justification, sanctification, adoption and glorification (in that the Eucharist is a proleptic experience of the marriage Supper of the Lamb to which we are bound), and Christian service as we await the coming of the King. It is as if we are being saved again. Every Lord’s Day should be like eating Frosted Flakes in which we taste the gospel again for the first time. It feels like a renewal of our salvation because, in a meaningful though accommodative sense, it is a renewal of our salvation. God is renewing covenant with us, and in the process he is restoring our soul, nourishing our faith, and re-establishing our hope and joy in Christ.

Third, let me double-down on what I said. This is true, and we should embrace, cherish, and proclaim it loudly. How many Christians do not value weekly worship because they do not understand what is happening in it? How many churches are languishing under worldly or traditional or cultural rather than biblical forms of liturgy that do not reflect the richly gospel-centered narrative of covenant renewal? If we understand what is happening in worship, we will better understand and more gladly embrace the duty of corporate worship every Lord’s Day. I am not here defending the structure of covenant renewal as the biblical model for worship—I have done that elsewhere (HERE), and there are good books on the subject (cf. Jeffrey Meyers, The Lord’s Service and Jonathan Landry Cruse, What Happens When We Worship?). If someone is not convinced worship should be structured in this way, then they should carefully study the issue. But why wouldn’t we want to experience the gospel in this way, week after week? Even if the Lord did not reveal and require this pattern of us, who would not find it more satisfying than the worldly and superficial worship found in many churches today?

I hope this clarifies what was meant in last week’s sermon and eases any concerns that may have existed by my saying we get saved again every Lord’s Day. I think it is an important point to grasp, and I commend it to you as we prepare for another Lord’s Day together. How often do you feel like you do need to “renew your salvation” or “get saved again”? You know your salvation is secure in Christ, but sometimes you wish you could start all over. And you can, every Lord’s Day, as God summons you to receive his grace in Christ again. Come, taste and see the goodness of the Lord. --JME

Trinity Sunday 2024

Tomorrow is the Lord’s Day. After Pentecost the Church enters into an ordinary season organized around the revelation of the Trinity. Traces of the Trinity are found throughout the entire Bible, beginning in Genesis 1, and the fingerprints of tri-unity are ubiquitous throughout creation. But it was after the resurrection and ascension of Christ and outpouring of the Holy Spirit that the Triune nature of God began to be clearly and consistently proclaimed.

God is One in Three and Three in One. As the Church confesses in the Athanasian Creed:

Now this is the catholic faith: that we worship one God in Trinity and the Trinity in unity, neither confounding their persons nor dividing the essence. For the person of the Father is a distinct person, the person of the Son is another, and that of the Holy Spirit still another. But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son and such is the Holy Spirit. The Father is uncreated, the Son is uncreated, the Holy Spirit is uncreated. The Father is immeasurable, the Son is immeasurable, the Holy Spirit is immeasurable. The Father is eternal, the Son is eternal, the Holy Spirit is eternal. And yet there are not three eternal beings; there is but one eternal being. So too there are not three uncreated or immeasurable beings; there is but one uncreated and immeasurable being. (3-12)

This confession of God’s Triunity sets Christianity apart from every other religion and defines the difference between orthodox Christianity and sub-Christian, adjacent traditions (such as Mormonism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses/Watchtower Society). We worship one God, and that one God exists eternally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in simultaneous and co-equal glory, power, and substance.

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is the solution to the philosopher’s problem of the one and the many, debated since ancient times. Which is most basic? Which serves as the foundation of all reality? Is it one or many; monism, dualism, or pluralism? The answer is: none of the above. The Triune God is the foundation of all reality, and his Triunity establishes and explains the relationship of the one and the many observable throughout creation and human history.

The doctrine of the Trinity is a great mystery, but it is not irrational. We do not close our eyes and leap into the dark, hoping the Christian faith is true. It is by means of this truth that we are able to recognize and understand all other truth. We do not establish Christian truth by means of neutral science. We establish scientific truths and the process by which we discover it through the order and rationality of a Triune Creator who has made us in his image.

When the celestial creatures in heaven and translated saints surrounding the divine throne sing praise to God, they do so in a triune way. Holy! Holy! Holy! Yahweh is the holiest of all. The Father is holy, the Son is holy, and the Spirit is holy; these Three are One, the holy God over all! So tomorrow the Church will sing the trisagion with our brethren and non-human fellow worshipers above. The Bride of Christ will be lifted into the heavenlies to join the chorus that sings God’s praise day and night. Worship is an encounter with the living God, an experience of the noumenal. It is participation in the living communion of redeemed creation, the new heavens and earth that is growing until this present, sin-cursed world is fully eclipsed. O come, let us adore Him! --JME

Pentecost Sunday 2024

Tomorrow is the Lord’s Day. Pentecost, an OT feast that was resurrected and transformed by Christ’s death and resurrection. The celebration of harvest began the harvest of the nations, bringing people from the ancient world to the Savior, uniting them with one voice in the worship of the Triune God. The Church is to be truly Pentecostal, though that name has come to be associated with a particular church tradition and a particular view of the charismatic gifts that our congregation (and the historical Church) does not affirm. Nevertheless, there is a real sense in which we are, and ought to be, pentecostal in our identity, worship, and witness to all the nations.

When Christ sent the Spirit to indwell and empower his Church on earth, the curse of Babel began to be reversed. Confusion became confession. Separation became reconciliation. Rebellion became repentance and reverence. That is what we celebrate on Pentecost: the coming of the Spirit, the blessing of the Spirit, and the in-gathering of the nations.

As we meet together for worship tomorrow, we come as people from very different places, backgrounds, and experiences. Yet that diversity is transcended by a greater unity we have found in Christ, a unity of faith, forgiveness, and filial love to the God who has redeemed and reconciled us by the blood of his Son. We have been taught the language of Zion that we may share together in prayer and praise. We have been adopted into God’s family, being formerly orphans and strangers. We have been given a place to sit on Mt. Zion when we once tried to build a tower and climb into heaven by our own efforts. Babel was a place of judgment, but Pentecost has brought salvation to those who had been scattered far and wide.

Now that we are able to understand one another’s speech and relate to one another, what are we to talk about? Like the apostles, God has loosed our tongues that we might proclaim the wonderful works of God! We are to be stewards of the gift of language by speaking of heavenly things, praising God for his goodness and calling one another to faith and obedience to the true King, God’s own Son.

May the Lord bless us with joy as we enter into his courts tomorrow. Come with thanksgiving and praise. The Lord is gathering the strangers from all nations into glory. He has poured out his Spirit upon us all. Let us come together and shout his praise! --JME

The Lord Who Flew to Heaven

Photo courtesy pexels.com

Tomorrow is the Lord’s Day. Thursday was Ascension Day when the Church has historically remembered and given thanks that the Savior returned to his Father and assumed his throne to rule over all creation. Tomorrow our Scripture readings in the morning service as well as the sermon will focus on the theme of Christ’s ascension. If someone objects that the Scriptures do not command us to take any special notice of the Lord’s ascension and question whether this liturgical acknowledgement is a violation of the Regulative Principle, I would point out that we have the same authority to meditate and celebrate Christ’s ascension tomorrow as we do to have Scripture readings and a sermon on the Regulative Principle instead. It is never wrong to give thanks for our Savior’s redemptive work.

Christ ascended to the Father’s right hand, but of course, the Father doesn’t have a “right hand.” God is a spirit, without “body, parts, or passions.” The language of “right hand” is metaphorical, symbolic of the position of authority which Christ has been given because of his victory through death and resurrection. But if the “right hand of God” is figurative, the place Jesus has gone and currently resides is not. Though his divine nature is omnipresent, his human body (and nature) is not. Unlike Lutherans, the Reformed do not believe the humanity of Christ has been “divinized” and achieved ubiquity. The God-Man still has location, and since the ascension, his location is in heaven.

Heaven is a real place, not just an idea. It is a created place, not an eternal domain. God made heaven, just as he made hell (also a real place), the earth, the sky, and the rock we call Mars (in reference to the demon associated with it). Heaven is as real as the grocery store just up the road from my house, but I have it on good authority that heaven is considerably nicer. (I expect their free sample day is better, and the bananas are always perfectly ripe.) Heaven is not imaginary, it is not fairy-land (that is another place), and it is not a metaphorical device. It is a place. Christ is there. The Father’s presence resides there. The saints in their disembodied form are there (having arrived two thousand years ago after Christ’s resurrection and ascension, cf. Psa. 68:18; Heb. 11:39-40). At least two saints are there who are not disembodied. Enoch and Elijah were taken to heaven without surrendering their body and breath to Death. Like Christ, they have a human body in heaven right now, though unlike Christ, their bodies are not yet resurrected and glorified.

Heaven’s current location and configuration is not permanent. At the end of this present world, heaven will come down, and heaven and earth will be one (Rev. 21-22). There will not be some Christians in heaven and others on earth in the eternal state, as the (false) Witnesses of Jehovah claim. Heaven will be united to earth in the consummated new heavens and earth. The new creation that began at Christ’s resurrection will be completed. The earth and its present wickedness will die under judgment and then be made new (2Pet. 3). The universe will be delivered from bondage and resurrected (Rom. 8:18-25), just like the saints. If you think the Grand Canyon, the Rocky Mountains, and the Pacific Ocean are impressive now, wait until you see what they look like in their glorified state.

Men have long dreamed of flying. They tell stories about it, they build machines to try it, and they literally dream about it at night. Why would such dreams be so pervasive in the human race? I think it is an aspect of general revelation, a rarely identified or understood connection to Christ’s ascension when the Last Adam, the true Man, the King of creation, flew up into the heavens to receive his reward and fulfill his destiny of life with God. The first Adam disobeyed God and failed to complete his mission. Rather than flying into the sky, he fell down dead and returned to dust. But where the first Adam failed, Christ has succeeded. The Church does not marvel at, imitate, or worship Superman. We worship the true Man, the One who flew into the sky, the Lord Jesus Christ, not a make-believe comic book hero but the Lord and Savior of the world. O come, and let us adore him! --JME

Preparing for Death Every Sunday

Tomorrow is the Lord’s Day. We do not know from one day to the next what lies in store for us. Proverbs teaches us to remember that: A man’s heart plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps (16:9), and there are many plans in a man’s heart, nevertheless the LORD’s counsel—that will stand (19:21). Our life is but a vapor that appears for a time and then vanishes away (Jas. 4:14). Moreover, the LORD knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust (Ps. 103:14).

You might expect that our inescapable frailty and and certain mortality would be regularly at the forefront of our minds, but for most people this is not so. Many people never think of their own death or the likelihood that any number of factors—whether pleasant or painful—may intrude to change the plans we made for our future. While this knowledge perhaps should be common to all men, it is a particular mark of God’s saints. If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that (Jas. 4:15). Whereas worldlings will say: Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die! The believer sees the same inevitability as a reason for piety and obedience rather than self-indulgence. “You only live once” means very different things to those who serve Christ as opposed to those who live to serve only themselves.

If the Lord’s Day is a regular part of our spiritual discipline, then we will never be far removed from thinking about the end of our lives, the salvation of our souls, and standing before the Lord in judgment. There are friends I have not seen in-person for many years, some I have not even spoken to in more than a decade. But when I take my last breath in this world and open my eyes for the first time in heaven, I want the next thing I see to be very familiar to me, even if I am looking at it for the very first time. As Lewis says in the passages we recently quoted from The Problem of Pain, Christ will look like our first love because he is our first love. The first time we look upon his face, it will be as if his face is the one we’ve known best all along.

You do not have to fear standing before God in judgment if you have made a practice of confessing your sins and standing before the judgment seat of Christ every Lord’s Day: hearing his pardon, receiving his absolution, and being comforted by the knowledge of his love and grace. You will not be idolatrously wed to this present world if you have made it a habit to wholeheartedly give yourself to the Lord’s kingdom on the Lord’s Day week after week. You will not feel out of place singing and praising God in heaven above if you have made a regular practice of it here below. The Lord’s Day is God’s gift and preparation for our eternal destiny, whatever may lie between now and then.

Sometimes illness, injury, or an inconvenient providence will intervene, but we should know with certainty our plans for the Lord’s Day each and every week. I was glad when they said to me, let us go into the house of the LORD (Ps. 122:1). We still must say, “If the Lord wills, we will meet with the church tomorrow morning.” But may the Lord will it, may he give us the grace and strength to do so. We need it. The Lord’s Day is the ministry of God to us. We are not merely serving him in worship; the worship is God’s service of mercy to us, miserable sinners, but not miserable in Christ. --JME

Sabbath and Work

Tomorrow is the Lord’s Day. There is a rhythm to our lives. Man was created at the end of the creation week so that he might begin life enjoying God’s Sabbath rest. That experience was disrupted in the Fall, and for centuries God’s people worked all week in view of the rest that lay before them on the seventh day, at the end of the week. But with the coming of Christ, the covenant was fulfilled, the curse broken, and the day of rest once again became the beginning and not the end of the week for God’s saints.

In one sense, of course, rest still lies before us. Hebrews 3-4 speak about that. There remains an eschatological Sabbath that we have not yet entered into. There is a sense in which even now we look ahead to Sunday, and it drives us forward with hope in our work during the week. But it is important to also see the week the other way around, as Adam began it. Our lives begin with Sabbath, our work flows from Sabbath, we do not work toward Sabbath, we work out of God’s Sabbath of rest and rejoicing.

This is hard for me as a pastor to keep in mind since most of my labor every week is oriented by the coming Sunday. Lessons must be prepared, classes taught, visitation completed, but it is always with an awareness of the looming responsibilities on the Lord’s Day and the many hours of preparation for it. But the joy of that labor is to be found in looking backwards also at the Sabbath that began the week. God met with us, was gracious to us, spoke comfort and peace to us, and commissioned us to go forth and labor. We are not scrambling frantically in order to be ready on-time—okay, that last part isn’t always true, sometimes I am scrambling—we are marching forward steadily as those who know they are at peace with God and safely in his employ and care in all their worldly vocations.

Many people spend their lives never really experiencing work or sabbath as God intended it. They do as little work as they can, just well enough to get by, all the time resenting it and looking forward to when work is over so that they can enjoy the refreshment of… mindlessly scrolling social media, losing brain cells as they are sucked into YouTube, becoming dumber in front of the television but spending most of the time channel surfing, all while malnourishing themselves with fast food, junk food, and too much booze. That’s not how God made us to live, but it is how far too many people live their entire lives.

Let me suggest an alternative: give yourself wholly to the Lord’s Day. Rest, rejoice, and revel in God and his good gifts, preeminently the gift of his Son and the redemption you have in him. Look away from the world and look to Jesus. Spend the day enjoying him and your family, both in the Church and in your household. Then, when Monday comes, climb into the harness and pull, hard, all the way to Saturday. Work as one who knows he serves the Lord Christ and that everything you do is significant, every thing, from filing reports, to splitting logs, to changing the oil, to doing laundry, to preparing a meal without a drive-through, to changing diapers and rocking colicky babies to sleep. You will sleep better at night. You will enjoy each of your meals more. Your days will be far richer and more satisfying when you start with real, godly, substantive sabbath and then live your life as God meant it to be lived: by worshiping God in and through the work he has given you to do each day. --JME

Stepping Out of Time into Eternity

Tomorrow is the Lord’s Day. Actually, tomorrow is Friday as I am writing this on Thursday, but when you read this, tomorrow will be the Lord’s Day. The act of writing this little devotional—that few will read and even fewer will remember—is forward-looking. It is not prophecy such as we find in Scripture, but there is a prophetic aspect to it. You should not print these words out and paste them into the back of your Bible. They are neither inspired nor infallible. But prophecy was not only an act of foretelling the future but also forthtelling the word of God to those in the future. In the case of Isaiah, Malachi, and Paul, they were telling God’s word for all future generations. In my case, I am writing about God’s word to people that will read it about fifty hours from now.

There is always a forward-looking orientation to any presentation of the word of God, even when what is said is a reflection backward to something God said at an earlier time. We are moving forward in history, but we do so by orienting ourselves to what God said earlier in history. We hear today the word that God spoke yesterday in anticipation of when we will stand before God tomorrow. We live today in view of that day when we stand before the Lord on the last day, and one day, today will be that day. Scripture draws us backward in time, connecting us to God’s mighty acts in the past and to his promises to his people, and it drives us forward in time, carrying the gospel of salvation to the world which is destined to be filled with the knowledge of his glory and to turn in faith to his King, the resurrected Son.

The Lord’s Day is the primary, though not exclusive, time and way in which we enter into this past, present, and future reality of union and communion with God. As the Church on earth gathers, she is caught up into the heavenly places to join the chorus of praise and thanksgiving that goes on continually there. Our prayers ascend like incense into the throne room of God. We worship with the saints, sing with them, pray with them, and adore our Lord together. We join Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah (wait a second, why isn’t he disembodied like the rest of the saints?!), Peter, James, John, and Paul. We are with Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas (the Lord really will let anyone in here), and our fathers in the era of the Reformation and since. The Church in history right now is worshiping with the Church of history of prior generations, and together we are praising God in hope of the final gathering of all the elect, the full harvest of the earth’s redemption, and the resurrection of the last day.

Our worship on the Lord’s Day has a past, present, and future aspect. (Have you noticed how everything in creation has a threefold aspect? It’s probably just a coincidence.) We look back, we look within and around, and we look ahead. The historical work of redemption orients our present experience of sanctification and calls us into the future hope of glory. We sing the psalms that saints have been singing for thousands of years. When we pray Psalm 90, we are praying words that Moses taught the Church to say 3,500 years ago. It’s not ancient history. It is our present reality. It is our future destiny. God is redeeming his people in time and through time for all time.

Not everyone recognizes this aspect of the Lord’s Day, but once you see it you can never unsee it or think about it the way you did before. Stepping into the Lord’s Day is like stepping out of the stream of time and into eternity. It is a day of rest and rejoicing. Not just the two hours of morning worship with the Church, but the entire day is devoted to God and given by God to his people. The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. God does not need a weekly sabbath. He dwells in continuous sabbath glory. We need the Sabbath to remember who we are, where we are from, to whom we belong, and where we are bound. Every other day on our calendar may be time-blocked and driven by appointments and deadlines. But the Lord’s Day transcends time. It reminds us that though we are temporal creatures, and will always experience time, even in eternity, we belong to the reality that is timeless. Elect from the foundation of the world, redeemed long ago by the blood of God’s Son, called to life by God’s Spirit, led through wilderness and conquest to victory in holiness, and destined for resurrection and to live forever in glory. The Lord’s Day testifies that Jesus is Lord of the clock and calendar just as surely as he is Lord of the Church and of all creation. So come, join with God’s saints in heaven and on earth, and let us delight ourselves in him. --JME

Worship as Thanksgiving

The Christian life is an experience and expression of gratitude. That is the basic theme of the Heidelberg Catechism’s discussion of the believer’s duty, and if it is not the only thing that ought to be said about our lives, it is certainly a significant part. Everything that we have, we have by grace. Even what we worked hard to accomplish and obtain was only possible by the grace of God. We are recipients of pervasive, abundant, and undeserved grace, and therefore we ought to be grateful.

Creation is gracious; the Lord did not need to create or anyone to love; he is self-existent, dwelling in perfect love and communion as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Covenant is gracious; God condescends to enter into relationship with Man, sealing his promise by oath and blood. Our election unto salvation is gracious; Yahweh did not choose us because we were better in any way than our neighbors; he chose us because he is good, not because we are. Our redemption is gracious; we are bought with the lifeblood of God’s Son, cleansed of our guilt, clothed with the righteousness of God so that our shame is covered, and accounted as law-keepers through the obedience of our Representative. Our adoption is gracious; we were by nature the sons of Adam and children of wrath, destined for judgment and condemnation, but in Christ by the Spirit of adoption we have been made heirs in the family of God. Our perseverance is gracious; we will not be saved unless we endure; we must continue to believe in and obey God, else we will be lost, but we do endure and shall because salvation is of the Lord, and he keeps his people. Our entire life is an experience of divine providence and grace; God works all things together for the good of those who love him, so we may boldly say the Lord is our Helper and we do not fear anything.

The Christian life is an experience and expression of gratitude, but Christian worship is an engagement in the corporate expression of thanksgiving. A person can be grateful without giving thanks. He may feel gratitude in his heart, but if it is not expressed, it does not glorify God. We may safely assume all ten lepers whom Jesus healed were happy to be delivered, but only one gave thanks to God. Worship is not about what you feel but what we say to God in response to his glory, goodness, and grace.

Many people measure the success of a Sunday by their experience of it. If the singing was good, the saints were friendly, or the sermon was helpful and strong, then worship was “good.” If the experience was less than satisfying, then we can only hope it will be better next time. But when we approach worship as a service of thanksgiving, we are enabled to worship no matter how the experience feels or seems to us. We are receiving God’s blessing and help through the means of grace, even when it seems otherwise, but we are not looking to the experience as the measure of our satisfaction. In this context, we are not coming to get but to give thanks for all the Lord has already given us, an abundance of good gifts which we daily enjoy.

As we prepare for the Lord’s Day, it is appropriate and helpful to meditate on how many reasons we have to give thanks to God. Every good thing we have ever received, experienced, or possessed came from his hand. Moreover, every unpleasant experience, every sin and shame, every failure and loss, every disappointment and sorrow, occurred under the supervision of a loving, faithful Father who works all things together for our good. Meditating on our blessedness will make us more humble, more content, and more grateful people, and only humble, content, and grateful people can rightly worship God. --JME