Worship Service

The call to worship is not simply a starting point of the service; it is a tone-setter for the service. The call to worship tells the church a few things. First, it tells the church that they are a people who have been created and made by the call of the Gospel (Romans 1:7). God's Word (call) made us His people (1 Corinthians 1:2). That same powerful word that made us is the one that regularly summons us to worship. It is because God calls us that we are able to come; God's call graciously enables us to come to Him. Second, the call to worship tells us that God is the one who calls the worship service and that the whole service is about Him and His glory. God calling us to worship means that worship is on His terms and in His way. Third, the call to worship sets the worship service apart from all that occurs before and after (Exodus 19:1-15). The rest of the world and common affairs are set aside when God calls the church to worship. The call to worship takes the church into a unique and sacred space to commune with God and set aside common/earthly matters.

After God calls us to worship, we then begin with a celebration of who God is in His glory (Psalm 100:1-4). God calls us to Himself to make much of who He is (Psalm 115:1). Reformed worship is a dialogue between God and His covenant people where He speaks to us and we in response speak back to Him (Colossians 3:16). He calls us to worship and we respond with worship. The first song does not start with us and our redemption but it begins with God and who He is in Himself in eternity John 17:5). Before creation and redemption, God existed in His self contained, all-sufficient glory (Acts 17:24-25). So it is that we begin with God and who He is in worship. Songs are not merely to prepare us for preaching; songs are the means by which we are edified by God and enjoy and exult Him (Colossians 3:16). God calls us to move from His call to worship to speaking about His attributes and actions in their splendor.

As we consider our sins and God's grace in song, we then recite it together with a Psalm of confession. The Psalms were made for God's covenant people to gather in worship (1 Chronicles 16:1-36). So it is that we speak the Psalms together and remind ourselves of our sinfulness, God's grace, and His word of pardon (Psalms 51). The worship service is not a performance of impressive people who are impressing God; it is a place where God performs His work of grace on His unimpressive people (1 John 1:5-9). The Psalms give us words from God to help us rehearse the Gospel in our present and constant need. The Psalm of confession is another part of the service that connects us to the Gospel to where we actually are in our brokenness and need. As God calls us to praise Him and we then sing of God's redeeming grace, we then confess our need for Christ and His provision for our need with the language of the Psalms.

As we consider God's glory, our sin and the Lord's grace, we then move into thanksgiving (1 Timothy 1:14-16). In the doxology, the gratitude we experience in rehearsing the Gospel as sinners is verbally re-experienced. We thank all three persons of the Trinity for Their work of redemption (Ephesians 1:3-11). This part of the service reminds us that the Christian life is a life of gratitude that is fueled by God's ongoing redeeming grace re-invading our lives (Colossians 3:17). God's glory leads us to God's grace and God's grace leads us to gratitude. God's call leads us to praise and praise leads us to sing of our need for grace and to confess it with a Psalm. As we consider God's word of grace and pardon in the Psalm we then respond with resounding gratitude (Psalms 103:2-3). The doxology shows us that experiencing the gospel anew as sinners leads us to the powerful response of gratitude.

God's people have been called by God to exult Him and in so doing have been made aware of our need to sing of His grace and be assured of His pardon as sinners. This then leads us to doxological gratitude which in turn leads us to respond to God in prayer. In the pastoral prayer, God's people come before God in the assurance of sons to confess their rights as sons (Matthew 6.9). As we experience God's forgiveness and grace, we are made aware of our rights as sons to ask Him for the things we need (Ephesians 2:15-18). The pastoral prayer is the part in the service where grace and gratitude prompt us to respond to God in childlike boldness. Experiencing salvation anew leads us to express our dependence and need for God in all of life through prayer (Acts 2:42). Sinners in need of grace find themselves as children who need to pray for their Father's sustaining grace (Luke 11:13). It is at this point in the service where grace and gratitude lead us to ask our Father for the things He has promised to give us for His Kingdom and glory (Matthew 6:9-13). The pastoral prayer is also an opportunity for us to confess our need for the Holy Spirit to empower us to proclaim, receive, and respond to God throughout the rest of the service. The petitions in the pastoral prayer remind us that the whole service is enabled by supernatural grace.

This is the point in the service where God's people who have re-encountered God's glory and have re-experienced the Gospel and its forgiveness can now receive instruction as to how they live a redeemed life (Matthew 28:20). The reason that this is done with historic creeds and confessions is due to the fact that Pinelands Presbyterian reads the Scriptures with the universal, transcendent Church and not just by itself (Hebrews 11). It is in this part of the service that we learn about God and how to trust and live unto Him with the historic church that spans the ages. Creeds and Confessions are how the truths of our faith have been preserved and passed down over the centuries for us to also preserve and pass down Jude 3). So it is that Pinelands is a small part of a much larger church that spans across many continents, nations, and generations (Revelation 5). In this part of the service, we in the present begin to be instructed with the ancient church of the past. Pinelands' present engagement with the word is connected with how the Holy Spirit has been preserving His Word in His Church throughout the centuries.

It is at this point in the service where God's people are uniquely edified and instructed in the word of the Gospel. Up to this point, we have experienced God's glory, our need, God's pardon, and the corresponding gratitude. In preaching and proclamation, we learn how to apply the Gospel and live unto God through unpacking and applying the whole counsel of the Gospel of God in the Scriptures (2 Timothy 3:16). Preaching and proclamation are the most important parts of the service as it is the means by which God has chosen to distinctly speak of His glory in the Gospel of Christ with the most content and the most clarity (Acts 20:32). It is here where God's speech from His grand narrative (Genesis to Revelation) uniquely brings conversion, illumination, transformation, and edification (1 Corinthians 1:18; 21; 2:4; 2 Timothy 3:16). At this point of the service, we do not pick and choose Bible verses that suit our preferences, but rather unpack the whole gospel conversation in various books of the Bible. It is at this point of the service where God's people re-experience the Gospel and its implications primarily as listeners and receivers of God's life-giving voice (Philippians 2:16).

God always makes His Gospel Word visible and more tangible through His appointed signs (Romans 4:11). The Gospel is to be regularly experienced in the hearing and also in the senses of tasting, seeing, and touching (Acts 2:42). God not only speaks the word of the Gospel to His people but He also communes with them in a gospel feast (1 Corinthians 10:16). God is not merely giving the gospel truth to our minds but also to our mouths. The reason that this gracious meal follows instruction is to remind us that we need to be strengthened and nourished by grace in order to apply the Gospel just received in preaching. The table is not a place where God converts us, but it is a place where He meets His people and gives them powerful and present assurance of His favor through signs (Matthew 26:27-28). God is not carnally nor physically present in this meal; nor is He absent as some bare memorial. God is present in His signs of grace through the power of the Spirit and the word of the Gospel (1 Corinthians 10:16). In this meal, we encounter God and receive Christ through the Spirit mystically using these gospel signs (1 Corinthians 11:27-32). This is another part of the service where God wants to strengthen His people in the power of the Gospel yet one more time. God concludes the preaching of the Word not with an altar call to demand service and surrender, but with a sign that spiritually and actually reconnects us with the altar where Christ finished the work by His service and surrender. It is here that God re-covenants with His people by signs of saving grace in a fellowship meal (Luke 22:20). It is here that we are reminded tangibly that the grace that saves us regularly feeds our souls and keeps us.

The benediction has multiple purposes. One of those purposes is that God is concluding the service with a word of covenant blessing. As God's people are sent out into the world, the Lord wants to remind them that they leave as an already blessed people for the sake of Christ (Ephesians 1:3). Christ had earned the blessedness that God's people hear pronounced in the benediction. In the benediction, God's people are reminded that they do not need to seek to obtain blessing by their behavior or situational providence because they already have God's blessing (Matthew 5:2-10). In the benediction, God's people are reminded that they are defined by the word of the Gospel that God sovereignly pronounces over them and that they are not defined by any other word by any other person (Romans 8:33). In a sense, the benediction is to connect God's people to the priestly intercessory blessing of Christ (Hebrews 7:25). In the benediction, God's people are sent out to live for Him in the power of God's covenant blessing (Numbers 6:22-27). They are reminded that they are not alone in living unto God and that God is with them in blessing as they live to and for Him (Matthew 28:20). Lastly, the benediction closes and concludes the sacred assembly's uniqueness. After the benediction, the church is free to return to common everyday matters and affairs.