At the last Men to Men we talked about the wartime mentality and about the militant language we employ. As a church we talk about battle, we talk about fighting, we talk about spiritual war and spiritual enemies and spiritual weapons. These are all biblical metaphors, so we are not wrong to use them, though that doesn’t guarantee that we aren’t using them wrongly.

I mentioned that I believe we use the military language like a son walks in his father’s boots: we can move around but we don’t yet fill them out. The fit is not right, though the aspiration is. Or, we are learning to do combat like the 4 year old boy with a water pistol in fierce conflict with the family schnoodle; it’s all fun until someone gets bit.

One area of battle we’ve attempted to learn more about is corporate worship on the Lord’s Day. You may remember a message titled, “Boom!” To this day, Ryan Hall texts a group on Sunday mornings that includes this one word charge.

What does Boom! refer to? What is making this sound? The idea comes from two passages: Matthew 16 and 2 Corinthians 10. In Matthew, Jesus told Peter that “the gates of hell shall not prevail” against the church. Gates are defensive, gates protect, they don’t attack. In the analogy, we could say that the gates of hell guard rebellion and idolatry and unbelief. Those three things define spiritual death and result in eternal death. These are the virtues of hell, but the church batters down the walls. Our worship of the true, Triune God, our submission to His Word, our praise of His glory, and our trust in Him batter down the gates.

Doug Wilson extends the metaphor to the gathered worship of the church as a battering ram.

As we gather in the presence of the living God on the Lord’s Day, He is pleased to use our right worship of Him as a battering ram to bring down all the citadels of unbelief in our communities. Just as the walls of Jericho fell before the worship and service of God, so unbelievers tremble when Christians gather in their communities to worship the living God rightly. (A Primer on Worship and Reformation, 32

Each week we grab a handle and take a swing at the gates. Worship… boom! This is a powerful picture, a spiritual battle that is much bigger than scribbling a new page of truth clauses for our sermon notebook to set with the others on the shelf at home.

Paul referred to “the weapons of our warfare” that “have divine power to destroy strongholds” in 2 Corinthians 10. “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Our weapons are more than sentences, we have lyrics of praise. We fight arguments with adoration. We don’t knock down lofty opinions from above, we strike at the base in humble confession and dependence and thankfulness.

Whether you feel like it or not, you are not an audience. We are an assembly of worshippers. Any given Sunday, you may feel that you don’t have anything to give, but when you join together with the body, you do make a statement against individualism, against self-righteousness, against many of the things our enemy prizes.

We all accomplish more than we consciously realize. Parents teach not only in what they say but how they talk and when they talk and also by what they don’t say. Wise parents think about what they’re saying, wiser parents will also think about the bigger, even unspoken lessons. Consumers support not only a company or brand purchased, but an entire economy. Wise shoppers will evaluate where their dollars go to some level, but there are many hidden (to us) cogs in the market we cause to turn.

So also, spiritual warfare occurs when the assembly worships. Some things we see, or think we see, some we don’t. A wise worshipper will grow in his understanding of what is happening.

Which leads me to an effort to increase your understanding of the personal benefits and the personal battle that happens in worshippers as well. I’ve mostly emphasized the corporate battering ram against the gates of hell. Worship transforms and unites and directs the church. But worship also works to mortify sin and unbelief in your own heart. When you grab your handle on the battering ram, you are becoming a less fearful soldier.

You are in the war against the seed of the serpent and while we knock against cultural defenses as an assembly swings against remaining sin and unbelief happen in your own soul. Corporate worship is part of your fight for individual sanctification.

Peter urged his readers in their own difficult days:

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. (1 Peter 2:11)

These passions of the flesh are part of your fallen being that is being redeemed. One day you will be completely delivered from them, now you must put them off, put them to death (see Colossians 3:5-8; Galatians 5:16-24), abstain from them. Such behavior fits those whose spiritual home is with the Lord who we do not see now, but who we believe in. We are God’s people now, we’ve received His mercy (verse 10) so we wage war back.

Peter does not explicitly tie the war in the soul to corporate worship. The flesh and the soul are both parts of the same person, though that doesn’t make it an exclusively private fight. Based on the following verse, the resulting spiritual lifestyle as opposed to a fleshly lifestyle should be honorable among unbelievers. That said, the previous verses include our being built together as living stones into a “spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (2:5). To “long for the pure spiritual milk” of the word (verse 1) couldn’t happen at home for those who didn’t have their own copy of the Scripture. Even so, I wouldn’t press verse 11 into direct liturgical duty, but our liturgy does help us in the duty.

How? How does the gathering of the church to worship the Father in the Son by the Spirit help our souls do battle? How are we growing up into the mature, militant body we should be? Here are three ways, assuming a certain sort of worship. If rebellion, idolatry, and unbelief are found in our hearts, worship batters them down.

1. Worship informs our conscience.

Hell would prefer us hostile to God’s authority, or at least confused or ignorant about His standards. The spiritual forces that we fight against are not in favor of the reading of God’s Word—the truth might get in-or our repentance in response to God’s Word. “Whatever you do, don’t listen to Him!” Our submission is a weapon against the ideology of Eden: you will be like God knowing/determining good and evil for yourself.

When we gather for worship. we discipline the unruly, rebellious, hostile passions in our flesh. We are not merely acknowledging the judgment mechanism inside of us, we are purposefully calibrating it according to divine revelation. This will enable us to discern between truth and lies, to call evil and good according to reality, maybe even to tell boys and girls apart. Obedience begins with knowing who to obey and what He wants. Worship batters down walls of willful/passionate ignorance in our flesh.

2. Worship inflames our affections.

Hell hates God. The evil one loves himself, and his followers inevitably reflect their father. If full-fleshed self-adoration seems to far-fetched, then at least offer a substitute, a rival, an idol. It doesn’t need to have the name “god” as long as it takes up heart space and doesn’t make too many demands.

Our worship begins with praise, considering some of God’s infinitely excellent attributes. That we can pray to Him, that we receive His mercy in forgiveness, that we rehearse stories of His faithfulness, and that He prepares a Table of communion for us to enjoy with Him, these all give us reasons to love Him. But worship is an expression of love and enjoyment of fellowship, not a gathering of facts to be used for love and fellowship later.

I know you may be tired. I know you may be busy in your row caring for little wiggly ones. I know that I do not always do justice to justice or speak with beauty that beauty deserves. I know you may not be moved by certain songs. But remember that ease and comfort and personal preferences can become little gods. Passions of the flesh don’t always line up across from you on the battlefield with cannons, sometimes the battle is to get off the couch. Sometimes the passions of the flesh make you want to stay home from the fight even if it’s the time for kings to go out to battle. A well-known king lost the battle in the palace because he didn’t go with his troops. Let God’s glory batter down your flesh and inflame your affections.

3. Worship increases our faith.

Hell will not submit to, love, or believe God. The demons believe that God exists, but they do not trust Him. And if it’s too late to stop him, if a man must follow God, the evil one wants him to follow with no confidence. “Don’t make a ruckus about it. You could be wrong. Probably are.” How many of us have enough fears and doubts to build gates keeping us out of heaven? Our flesh does not approve of faith.

It isn’t just because we’ve hit faith highlights in Genesis that this comes up. Abram is “the father of all who believe” (Romans 4:11), but his stories are illustrations rather than the motivation for my understanding of the warfare happening here.

Hypocrites, posers, and almost-Christians exist. You can believe many things in the Bible and not be a saved believer. Christin fruit still grows in a cultural way, and you can enjoy the fruit without being a Christian. It is a real danger to refuse examination and to indulge fakers with false assurance.

But worship should not aim the flaming darts of the evil one at believers for him. You need the shield of faith, not to have your shield knocked down. So much preaching—I have done it—stimulates doubt instead of faith. This type of preaching in worship is warfare by one against the many, but the assembly is not the enemy! This is warfare by questioning again if you are even on the right side. It’s as if we said, “You can have the shield of faith when you prove that you have enough faith to hold it.” That is putting the hand before the shield. Show your faith by using the shield, not by proving you’re genuine without a shield.

Our service is here to help those of little faith. We are not naive or triumphalist, but we do know that “everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith!” (1 John 5:4)

Beloved, you are going to need faith. It is a gift of God by the Spirit, and one way that faith grows is by being used and built up in worship. You will not always need faith in worship. But now,

for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1:6–9)

Faith identifies you a sojourner and exile. Faith is opposite to the passions of the flesh. Flesh attacks faith, as does the world and the devil. Fight back. Do battle for your soul by hearing the promises, singing about His faithfulness, casting your anxieties on Him, and receiving His blessing as you go out.

Conclusion

John Donne, the pastor-poet who wrote “No man is an island” and “Don’t ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee,” also wrote this in one of his sonnets:

Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

Boom! Our hearts know well the treasures of hell. Our hearts are being redeemed, but rebellion, idolatry, and unbelief still resonate. As we pull down idealogical strongholds, we pull down surviving outposts in our souls. In worship God batters down the passions of the flesh in our hearts.

I’ve always appreciated this comment from Nehemiah, “so we built the wall. And the wall was joined together to half its height, for the people had a mind to work.” A mind to work is good, and I pray that God will also give us much faith that works.

Understand (and thank God for) what He is doing in us and through us as we worship Him. May He make us strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places, and against the passions of our flesh. Fight back, equipped with the armor of God, that we might be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.