Tag Archives: Richard Baxter

Preparing for Worship

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“Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing,
but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
(Hebrews 10:25 (NIV)

Last Sunday it finally hit me about half way through the Prayer of Confession during our morning worship service – that feeling, that awareness – “I am here to worship.”  That’s right, it took me a good twenty minutes before I was really present and accounted for in the worship service.

Saturday had kind of gotten away from me.  It began with a nice long run (preparation for a marathon), then a funeral, followed by a birthday party for a young church member, topped off with pizza and a movie with the boys that evening.  When Sunday morning came around I found myself totally unprepared for worship – and I’m the Preacher.  Sure, I had put together the bulletin, planed the scripture readings and prayers, the sermon was all ready to go, but my heart was about a mile away.  Not good, not good at all.

In thinking about this, I realize that I’m probably not the only one who’s ever felt this way.  Hoping to help myself as much as I help you, here are a few things to consider to help you prepare your hearts and minds for worship.

  1. Worship through the week.  As mentioned a couple of weeks ago in church, when the church gathers for worship it ought to be merely the continuation of what the church had been doing already when scattered.  Your home is a micro-church.  Deuteronomy tells us that we are to be teaching our faith to our children “when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up” (Deut 6:7).  No children?  Then teach and share the Word of God with your spouse.  No spouse?  Then commit yourself to the daily study of the word of God and coming before Him in prayer and devotion.  Nothing nurtures the spirit of corporate worship than when members of the body are thriving in daily worship.  If worship seems dry and boring to you, ask yourself, “What is the state of my private devotion?”  I would bet the two are intimately connected.
  2. Get a good night’s sleep the night before church.  I know this sounds simple and pedantic – and it is.  But seriously, plan ahead.  If you desire to truly enjoy the close communion of God that is offered in worship each Sunday morning, you can’t expect to find it when you’re operating on only a couple hours of sleep.  I know that many work late on Saturday night and can’t help their schedule.  I know that some suffer from sleep conditions that prevent them from getting a good night’s rest.  But closing down the party on Saturday night doesn’t put your heart, mind, or body, in the right condition for worship on Sunday morning.  Plan ahead; lay out the kid’s clothes, make sure you know where your Bible is, get a good night’s sleep, and wake up early enough on Sunday morning so that you’re not rushing to church.
  3. Read the scripture lesson before coming to church.  Each week in this Midweek Message there is a section called, “Scripture for Sunday.”  There you will find the Scripture that will be read in Worship.  We give you this with the hopeful expectation that you will read it before coming to worship and begin to meditate upon the text yourself.  Other churches might use the Lectionary, and those calendars are available in numerous places, including online, so you can read ahead and be prepared.  Back in school, when you were given a reading assignment and wanted to have an informed part of the discussion, you read and prepared.  Why should worship be any different?  Read ahead.  Turn to a commentary or even the cross-reference notes in your Bible.  Start asking questions of the text; what’s being said, what does it mean, how does it shape me?  In doing these small steps, you will find that the sermons will take on much more meaning and significance for you.
  4. Come with a prayerful expectation of meeting God in worship.  What is your general attitude when coming to church?  Are you already dreading having to wrestle the kids in that small pew for an hour?  Worried that you might have to shake hands with that guy who really upset you last week?  Or do you come hoping for, and expecting, to have an encounter with the living and loving God?  If you were to take a snapshot of most people in worship on a Sunday morning, the best way to describe them would be: bored.  That doesn’t mean that we need to make worship more entertaining – worship is the service of God at the pleasure of God for the benefit of all men, entertainment is the service man at the pleasure of men for the benefit of the entertainer.  The answer to our attitude toward worship is not to change our worship, but to radically alter our expectations of worship.  When you gather on a Sunday morning, you are coming to meet the Living Christ.  You are in the presence of His life-giving Spirit, coming in His heart-searching Word.  You are worshiping God the Father Almighty.  Are you ready to meet your God?
  5. Actively participate in worship, singing, praying, and listening.  Worship is not a spectator sport.  You don’t get to sit back and watch it all happen.  It involved active participation.  You are invited to sing, and even if you don’t sing, you can thoughtfully read through the words of the hymns, hymns which teach our faith and instill hope and assurance in the promises of God.  You are invited to pray, through responsive prayers, and even as the Pastor is praying for the people, you can offer your own prayers, or even echo the prayer being said.  You are invited to meditate upon the Word.  When the scripture lesson has been read, don’t shut your Bible, but actively listen to the sermon, pray through the sermon, take notes on the sermon, and keep coming back to your open Bible and ask that the Spirit will continue to teach and guide you.
    Richard Baxter, in his “Directions for Profitably Hearing the Word Preached,” wrote:
    “Cast not all upon the minister, as those that will go no further than they are carried as by force… You have work to do as well as the preacher, and should all the time be as busy as he… you must open your mouths, and digest it, for another cannot digest it for you… therefore be all the while at work, and abhor an idle heart in hearing, as well as an idle minister.”

This list is by no means exhaustive, but it is a start.  If you have other suggestions for preparing for our corporate worship, I’d love to hear them.

Until we gather again in worship, Grace and Peace be with you,

SDG

A well deserved Hell…

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“For the wages of sin is death…”
(Romans 6:23 (ESV)

Rob Bell and Love Wins notwithstanding, there really is a place called Hell, there is a final judgment, and God is righteous in His anger and wrath against sin.  It’s not fun to talk about, but then neither would it be “fun” to ignore the subject altogether only to find yourself already there when it’s too late to do anything about it. 

Unfortunately, God’s judgment has gotten a bad rap by those who stand under it.  We hear God’s righteous decree to be holy, for He is holy (Lev. 19:2), but we know that’s impossible, so the call must be impractical.  We try to live a good life, we do our best anyway, and we look for whatever joy we can find – even if the Bible says it’s a sin.  We tell ourselves, “God really wouldn’t hold this against me, surely He will understand.”  When confronted with the truth of God’s Word, we kick against the goads.  We bristle under correction.  We despise discipline.  “Who died and made you god,” we complain.  In our arrogance, we think we are more compassionate, more just, more forgiving than God himself.  We’d prefer the toothless and tame god of our own creation who is kind and generous to all, giving everyone a hall pass through life.

Living under such a delusion will lead to our destruction.  We worship a holy God who cannot even look upon sin, how then can we presume to stand before Him in our sin?  Psalm 5:4–6, teaches us, “For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers.  You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.”  Habakkuk 1:13 says, “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong…” 

The fact of the matter is that we must deal with a Holy and Righteous God who has issued His decree on all of humanity.  We are called to live in holiness before Him, but “we have all sinned fallen short of His glory” (Rom 3:23), “none is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Rom 3:10-12).  Under this judgment of God we stand condemned, for the “wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23).  God is just in declaring that sinners are bound for Hell.

The preaching of judgment is not intended to scare you into believing or acting a certain way, but to tell you that you do indeed need a savior.  Luther called it one side of the gospel coin.  Unfortunately for many of us, it is a lesson we need to hear again and again.  We tend to insulate ourselves from the need for help.  I can manage just fine on my own.  I’ve got Jesus is in my life as a “spiritual insurance” policy – just in case things get bad, but hopefully I’ll never have to call upon him.

Friends this is not gospel living, this is not the gospel faith.  The truth of the gospel is this: you are in desperate need of a savior.  Things are bad, they are beyond repair.  Your life is not acceptable to God, in fact, our lives apart from Christ are offensive to God.  We owe to God a perfect life we cannot live, a tremendous debt we cannot pay, an offering we cannot make.  Only when you see your life as forfeit before God do you truly begin to appreciate the miracle of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  God is gracious in calling the redeemed to His side in glory!

It is true that “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” but the story does not end there.  Paul goes on to say we are “justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom 3:24).  It is true that “the wages of sin is death,” but it is equally true that “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:23).  To preach the judgment without the gospel would be cruel, but to preach the gospel without the judgment would be meaningless for us today.

We deserve Hell, but our loving God has seen to it that, by faith in Jesus Christ, we can be made fit to live in heaven.  We are covered by his righteousness, made alive by his spirit, redeemed by his blood, purchased with his life, given victory over death and hell by his empty tomb.  This is the free gift of God through faith in Jesus Christ.  There is nothing we could ever do to deserve this gift, to try would keep us from receiving as it was intended, as a gift.  We live by responding in joyful obedience; God equips us and sends us for the work He has prepared for us from before time (Eph 2:10), but these works are always in response.  God, from the beginning of time, has always been the one to act first in grace, we were created to respond and live in the joy and splendor of His grace and glory!

Richard Baxter, the 17th century Puritan preacher, wrote in his work The Saint’s Everlasting Rest, “So let ‘DESERVED’ be written on the door to Hell; but on the door to heaven and life, ‘THE FREE GIFT.’”

I’ll say “Amen” to that.