Today is the second anniversary of the first Lord’s day service of Trinity Evangel Church. We started that day with a subject that has defined much of our time together and has taken up at least two series of sermons. We started with a study of worship.

We considered the heavenly worship of the Lamb worthy to open the scroll and break its seals in Revelation 5. By the time the chapter ends, every creature on heaven and on earth recognized His glory and cried out to exalt Him. It is striking that this celebration takes place prior to the battles and judgments in chapters 6-19. Rather than waiting until afterward, instead of making sure everything was finished, until every enemy was subdued and righteousness prevailed, worship set the tone for the battle.

The same is true for us every week. We gather on the first day of the week in the midst of difficulties and unfinished business and unresolved conflicts and a full schedule of work ahead of us, and we begin with worship. Worship orients our hearts and establishes the tone for our week. The culture of our congregation grows out of the soil of our corporate worship; we become what we behold.

In a message last January I said,

Getting away to worship is not getting away from the battle. We do not meet together in order to distract ourselves from the righteous fight; we assemble together as believers in worship of the Lord Christ as an act of war. Worship isn’t running away, it’s running toward the roar. It’s as if we said, We believe that things are so bad, we’re going to do something about it. We’re going to worship God.

That is easy to forget. Much of what we do is. I don’t remember all the points from my own sermon last Sunday, and I’m supposing that most of you don’t either. This is part of the reason that our business together involves so much more, though not less than, instruction. We are being refreshed in our corporate fellowship with God through the various elements in our service. We are also shining light in darkness. We don’t gather to collect statements, we gather to make a statement.

Like I say, this can be easy to forget. As began with some more liturgical pieces, one fear was that those externals would become rote. That we would come to go through the motions, however good the motions may or may not be, but not have our hearts into it. That is always a danger. It is a danger whether you kneel and raise your hands and take communion every week or if you only listen to a sermon. It is a real danger, a deep ditch that many stumble into.

We don’t want to do that. One recommendation we’ve received was to refresh our understanding of liturgy every so often. There may be new folks, kids may be at new levels of attentiveness or understanding, and the rest of us may be well stirred up by way of reminder.

Last year, at the beginning of the year, I worked through a nine part series titled “Boom!” As I remember, it caused quite a stir. Though we had been doing most of the parts anyway, pulling them out for a closer look-see raised some questions. Sort of like when something tastes really good until you find out what the ingredients are. Going through the recipe for worship is similar. We usually just eat the meal, but it’s good, every once in a while, to make sure that everyone at the table knows why the courses are in order and what health benefit they bring.

This time will, Lord willing, be a two-Sunday series. This morning, I’d like us to remember, from a different angle, what we should expect when we gather to worship. When we meet for corporate worship we should want 1) to lift up God and 2) to be lifted up by God.

1. To Lift Up God

We ought to want to get together and lift up God, His name, His glory.

This does not mean that He is low and needs our help. We are not making a big deal out of a little god. To lift up God means that we are praising Him, raising our awareness of His greatness, magnifying Him, exalting Him. From the moment that we agree that “our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth,” we are making a relentless effort to see Him honored.

Isaiah very literally saw the Lord “high and lifted up” (Isaiah 6). The Lord was, and is, on His throne. We are adjusting our perspective to make sure that we recognize Him as preeminent, as the One above us. Many of the psalms call men to lift up their eyes, lift up their hands, lift up their souls, lift up their songs to the Lord.

Oh, magnify the LORD with me,
and let us exalt his name together! (Psalm 34:3, ESV)

Take Psalm 100 as a case example. The ECS students learned the song Jubilate Deo, the Latin translation from the first line in verse 1.

Psa. 100:0 A PSALM FOR GIVING THANKS.

Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth!
Serve the LORD with gladness!
Come into his presence with singing!

Know that the LORD, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name!

For the LORD is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.
(Psalm 100:1-5, ESV)

The verb “lift up” isn’t found in the five verses, but many of the verbs make the same motion. Shout joyfully to the LORD all the earth . The Latin imperative, jubilate is uncommon and, depending on context, can include letting out whoops! It translates the original Hebrew word rua which means “shout in triumph,” shout in public worship with joy. Spurgeon commented, “The original word signifies a glad shout, such as loyal subjects give when their king appears among them.” It isn’t excited yelling about God but to God.

Serve the LORD with gladness . Serve is also word for the worship context, not merely a general call for obedience. Then Come into His presence with singing . In the first two verses, the tone is established. There is to be a joyful, glad, melodic, expressive and loud acknowledgment.

Verse three grounds the exaltation in deep realities. Yahweh, the covenant keeping LORD, is God . He is the Almighty, the King of creation. He rules over all the earth, not only the nation of Israel or, in our case, the church. The worship of God’s people is a time to know it to be so. Dwell on it. Meditate. Remember. Enjoy. He is being lifted up in our minds.

He made us . We are His. We are not isolated or abandoned. We are not autonomous. We have purpose and a defined place because of God, and God is our God. More personally, we are the sheep of his pasture . He tends to us and protects us and feeds us and leads us. As we dwell on these realities, He is lifted up in His office and His care.

Verse four returns to the lifting up activity, focusing on thanks and praise. We gather to thank Him! We want to lift Him up in our gratitude. We ought to want the opportunity to let the congregation know that we love what He has done.

And finally, verse five grounds our lifting up in His character. He is good . He is loving, He is faithful forever. He is a never-ending, unceasing doer of good for His people.

Now, none of you are discouraged by that, are you? What impression do you suppose the psalmist intends to create on us? How do we respond to God being lifted up?

The psalmist does not expect a soprano to raise her hand, stop the song, and ask if she can get our her pencil to write down the outline. “Could you repeat verse three again? What is the cross-reference for sheep?”

I’m not saying that instruction isn’t a part of worship. But education isn’t the same as exultation. Visitors aren’t impressed driving around our parking lot seeing that we all have the same bumper sticker: “He who dies with the most sermon notes wins.”

You should want to hear, and learn, and agree with all the truth that lifts up God. That’s how you participate in worship even during the sermon. The truth is like a trampoline that launches your vault. The truth is like snapping off a bite of bacon, not like filling your eye-dropper with the vinegar that cooked the spinach.

Again, this is not discouraging. Exalting God does not depress you. Just the opposite, which is why you should also expect something else.

2. To Be Lifted Up By Him

When we exalt the Lord, He lifts us up with Him. Praising Him does not deflate our hearts, it fills our hearts. We may be humbled, but God exalts the humbled. That doesn’t always refer to position, but often means perspective.

Take Psalm 100 again. If you are one of God’s sheep, do you get offended that you’re in His pasture? If you’ve tasted that the Lord is good, does hearing that the Lord is good make you bitter?

Shout joyfully to God is gripping, but not the sort of gripping that holds us back. Serve the Lord with gladness may be a challenge, but not because we’d rather serve Him with gloominess. Knowing that the Lord…is God expands the possibilities and increases our hope. Remembering that we are His people brings peace, not anxiousness. When we lift Him up our hearts are lifted up.

I’ve heard warnings that we don’t want to act triumphalistic in our worship. To do so would lead to steamrolling hurting people, the lonely, the angry, the heavy hearted.

What is the greatest need for sinners who come on Sunday morning? They do not need to hear that their sin doesn’t matter, to be soothed or distracted by entertaining music. They need God to be exalted, the God who abounds in mercy and forgiveness. If you come into the assembly having fought with your spouse all week long, you do not need others to be sensitive to you as much as you need to sing. It will lift you up. It might not make you feel better about you, but it will make you feel better than God can and is doing something about you.

It is HARD to shout joyfully. It is HARD to be glad in serving, to enter with thanksgiving, not just leave with it. It is a battle every week. But if we will not lift Him up, we will not be lifted up. We will leave as self-centric as when we arrived.

Both wants, to lift up God and to be lifted up by God, are fastened together by the gospel. The good news does not push us into despair, it pulls us out of the mud by raising His grace. God initiates and we respond. He leads and we follow. He gets exalted and pulls us along.

This is why our Sunday morning liturgy embodies the gospel from beginning to end. God saves sinners from first to last. God calls us for worship. We obey by gathering. He calls us to repent. We confess and He forgives and cleanses us based on Christ’s work on the cross. The sin offering has been made and God applies it to us. Then He continues to transform us, to wash us by the water of the word. He conforms us as living sacrifices by the two-edged sword. Then He meets us at the table of peace. He welcomes us to a meal of fellowship. He’s eager for our company. Then He charges us to go as His ambassadors, sending us off with His blessing.

Each week we celebrate the gospel as:

• God calls us to worship. He summons us to acknowledge Christ as Lord.
• God cleanses us for worship. He forgives us in Christ through confession of sin.
• God consecrates us by worship. He transforms us in Christ by the Word and prayer.
• God communes with us in worship. He fellowships with us in Christ at the Table.
• God commissions us from worship. He sends us for Christ into the world.

Our liturgy communicates the eternal aim of the Trinity. He calls us to worship, forgives us, changes us, communes with us, and blesses us for serving Him in dispersion-mode. Our liturgy embodies the potent progression of the gospel which itself is the fulfillment of God’s aim to draw men near. The form functions to communicate the goal. The evangel pattern shapes our expectation of what happens here.

All of this comes from His gladness with us in Christ. Apart from faith in the gospel, we could not shout joyfully. Think of the gods of the nations. They are angry gods, demanding gods, arbitrary gods, insatiable gods. Men cannot get a solid foot because there is no certain revelation, nor any expressions of love. We, on the other hand, can worship Him in gladness because we know that, in Christ, He is glad with us. Condemnation is done with. The down-payment of eternal inheritance resides within us in the Holy Spirit. He has given us His Word to light our path. This is all very good news.

Conclusion

What do you expect each Lord’s day morning? Do you have the priorities turned around? Do you think of church as a classroom rather than a meeting room? Are you collecting sentences or making a statement?

Those who gather to lift up God will be lifted up. The gospel is a FORCE. It changes the world. Forgiveness is a FORCE. Anyone who gets in its way will be softened. Scripture is a FORCE. It does not return back to God without accomplishing its purposes. Communion with God is a FORCE. You will find it hard to keep snatching when you keep receiving. Grace is a FORCE. It doesn’t stay idle. It multiples your obedience with fruit that you can’t count. Blessing is a FORCE. Oh imagine the places you’ll go when He gives you His favor.