Daily devotion – Why we do what we do each Sunday
1Ti 4:13 Till I come, give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.
Each Sunday as we gather as Christ’s Church there are a number of things we do with regularity – we always open the service with the public reading of God’s Word – we pray as one body – we worship the Lord in song – we teach from God’s Word.
Is this a ritual or just a routine that really is not that important! Why we do we them each week? Is there a purpose behind all this?
The teaching of God’s Word and worship belong indissolubly to each other. All worship is an intelligent and loving response to the revelation of God, because it is the adoration of His Name. When the term “Name” is used in the bible it represents the character of God – who He is!
Therefore preaching is making known the Name of the Lord, and worship is praising the Name of the Lord made known. Far from being an alien intrusion into worship, the reading and preaching of the Word are actually indispensable to it. The two cannot be divorced. Indeed, it is their unnatural divorce which accounts for the low level of so much of today’s ‘contemporary’ worship.
Our worship is poor when our knowledge of God is poor, and our knowledge of God is poor, when our preaching is poor!
But when the Word of God is expounded in its fulness, and the congregation begin to glimpse the glory of the living God, they bow down in solemn awe and joyful wonder before His throne.
It is preaching which accomplishes this, the proclamation of the Word of God in the power of the Spirit of God.
That is why preaching is unique and irreplaceable and why each Sunday everything we do has a divine purpose – to glorify God!
Psa 95:6 Come, let us worship and fall down before him; and weep before the Lord that made us.