“Make a joyful shout to the LORD, all you lands! Serve the LORD with gladness; come before His presence with singing. Know that the LORD, He is God; it is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name. For the LORD is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations” (Psalm 100).
A mark of a true believer is that he delights in the worship of God. What about you? Do you wake up on Sunday morning rejoicing to gather with the church to praise your blessed Redeemer, or is it a burden to you? Would you rather stay home and sleep or go to the ballgame on Sunday morning? What about you young people? What do you think when Mom or Dad wakes you up and says, “Get up and get ready for worship”? Would you rather be at the shopping mall or home watching TV? Do you rejoice or do you mumble and groan when you hear the word church?
You see, how we respond to worship on the Lord’s Day reveals what is truly going on in our soul. And if we would rather be some other place when the church gathers together for public worship then we reveal, at worst, an unbelieving heart, and at best, a heart of a spiritual infant. Every Sunday morning, we ought to sing these words: “Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands. Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing.” We ought to delight to “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.”
By God’s grace, Word, and Spirit, believers are those being conformed into the image of Jesus Christ. Was Jesus ever burdened by worship? Was He ever burdened to hear the Word of God? NEVER! Therefore, as believers, we ought to delight in the worship of God by hearing the reading, teaching, and preaching of His Word on the Lord’s Day. Parents, you must teach this to your children. They must learn at an early age what a great joy and wonderful privilege it is to worship with a church that faithfully stands on the truth of Scripture. However, if parents don’t rejoice to gather for God’s worship on the Lord’s Day then neither will their children. Parents, you must teach your children to cultivate a spirit of worship for the true and living God because everything in our culture, and even in the child’s own heart, will fight against it. Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” “And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up” (Deut. 6:6-7). Fathers, this is your covenantal duty and therefore you must be sure the children of your household, whom the Lord has entrusted into your care, are properly nurtured in the straight ways of the Lord.
Today, however, there is such a famine for the preaching of God’s Word and a famine for the hearing of God’s Word. Too many preachers don’t preach the Word of God, and too many church members don’t desire to hear the Word of God preached. And yet they call themselves followers of Christ? The duty of a follower of Christ is to obey God’s Word. Jesus said in John 10: “My sheep hear my voice and they follow Me.” And they hear Christ’s voice on Sunday morning when the preacher faithfully proclaims God’s Word. Therefore, every believer has a responsibility to be in a place of worship on the Lord’s Day where the Word of God is faithfully, diligently, accurately, plainly, and zealously preached and taught in order that the sheep of Christ’s pasture, the people of His hand, might bow their necks in faithful obedience to the God who has saved their soul from the Devil, darkness, death, and damnation.
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