Gathering for Worship
In our journey of faith, gathering for worship is essential. As we come together, we experience God's grace and are reminded, 'Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!' This communal worship strengthens our identity as God's chosen people.
Watch the full sermonSpiritual Growth
Growing in faith is a journey that begins with a desire for spiritual nourishment. As 1 Peter 2:9-10 reminds us, we are called to be a royal priesthood, which means we are to actively seek God's word and grow from spiritual milk to the meat of His teachings. This growth is essential for our spiritual maturity and helps us to understand our identity in Christ. As we gather in worship, we are reminded to 'taste and see that the Lord is good,' experiencing His grace and mercy in our lives.
Plan a VisitCommunity Worship
Gathering for worship is a vital aspect of our faith. It allows us to come together as a community, supporting one another and participating in the sacraments. The importance of community in worship cannot be overstated; it is where we receive God's word and encouragement. As we join together, we proclaim our faith and share in the blessings of being part of God's chosen people. This communal experience strengthens our bonds and deepens our understanding of God's grace.
Identity in Christ
Understanding our identity in Christ is foundational to our faith. Being a chosen people means we are set apart to proclaim the excellencies of God who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. This identity shapes how we live and interact with others. As we embrace our role as a royal priesthood, we are empowered to share the message of hope and redemption with the world around us, reflecting the love and grace we have received.
You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.
Taste and see that the Lord is good!
Scripture Highlights
1 Peter 2:9-10: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Psalm 34:8: Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!
John 14:6: Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'
Frequently Asked Questions
What does it mean to be a chosen people?
Why is gathering for worship important?
How can we grow in our faith?
Content Transcript
Greetings in the name and love of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. May the meditations of our hearts and the words of our lips be pleasing, acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
So we greet you and welcome you into the experience of gathering places and the message we’re going to share about what we’re up to today, gathering for worship. You may be seated.
### Introduction
So as the scripture begins and it talks about how we should be like newborn babies desiring this pure spiritual milk of God’s word, it seems as if we’ve had quite an experience already this morning of hearing a few of those newborn babies. It seems as if the natives have been especially restless today for some reason, as I use that expression.
So you may remember that yearning, that desire, but more than likely you don’t remember what it was like to be that newborn baby that was thirsting for the milk that you might be provided. You know, of course, that as the scripture here that we’re sharing begins with such a word about desiring the pure spiritual milk of God’s word, that’s something we’ll always be desirous of, although the receiving of it might vary and differ over the course of time.
### Growth in Faith
As we’re thinking of receiving those pure spiritual milks of the early beginnings, a bottle perhaps, but you move from a bottle to a sippy cup more than likely, and from a sippy cup you move to a regular old cup. You are seeing your parents bring those pure spiritual nutritional milk to you.
Then as you grow in years, you realize you’re able to take care of feeding yourself somewhat from those pure spiritual milk sources. I would encourage us, of course, to be mindful of the fact that we also are told in scripture that we’re moving from the milk of God’s word to the meat of God’s word.
So yes, where at one moment in your life you had parents who brought you to church, they were the drivers of the vehicles, of course, that made it possible for you to come to church. But as time goes on, you yourself are the driver. You yourself are in the driver’s seat coming to the house of the Lord, as we see that happen even today. You and your families making your way to be here to receive what God has for you.
### The Desire to Receive
I find this passage of scripture from First Peter chapter 2 as it ends with these words for us today, leading us through a cycle of a worship experience in part. So you’re coming, we pray, with a desire to receive not only the milk but the meat of God’s word. You’re hungering, you’re thirsting, and you’re coming, and you are going to taste and see that the Lord is good.
Psalm 34, those words, you’re going to taste and see that the Lord is good. In fact, I love the fact that God brings in holy communion a multi-sensory experience for us, right? Not only do we have the taste, we have the other senses at work—touch, taste, see, hear. We have all five senses active in receiving the sacrament of the altar as God brings this blessing to us.
### Spiritual Discernment
I would carry it beyond. I know there are different ways of looking at the sixth and the seventh senses that might be there, but I would say the sixth sense for us is what we would tie to faith. That you have the spiritual discernment to understand that in the receiving of the bread and the wine, you are actually receiving Jesus’s true body and blood, and that that spiritual discernment, the Holy Spirit is moving in you for such an experience.
So you’re tasting and you’re seeing that the Lord is good. You come and you fall down before God. You fall down upon the rock, and you fall down upon the cornerstone that Jesus Christ is the capstone, the keystone. You fall down. The righteous fall down, the book of Proverbs says, and seven times they get up. More than seven, it’s a number of completion, perfection.
We keep falling down. Falling down is better than having the rock or the stone fall on you. That’s what Jesus declared in the parable, the rock of offense. Those who stumble over it, those who have that rock fall on them are crushed and destroyed. But those who fall upon the rock in humble repentance and contrition and sorrow, those who fall upon the rock are broken before him only to have him pick up the pieces and mend and reshape us.
### The Call to Repentance
We fall down and we are exalted and we are lifted by his grace and his mercy. Amen. So you come in true contrition and sorrow. So we invoke the Lord’s presence. He says, “Come unto me.” We come and we repent of our sins. We receive the word of absolution from God himself through his word, and we are confessing him to be who he is.
We know that he is the capstone, the cornerstone, the keystone that God has exalted him. The words of Isaiah, the words of the psalmist in Psalm 118 are coming to mind about this rock that Jesus Christ is.
### Proclamation of His Excellencies
So the next things that are happening as we’re going through this experience of worship and confession of who he is as our Lord and our Savior in our life, when we’re confessing and then we get into the proclamation of his excellencies that he has brought us out of the darkness of our sin into the light of his love. We are proclaiming that as we go forth, we live out our days.
These are tough times that those exiles, those elect exiles, those sojourners, those pilgrims were living their lives through in the day of the Apostle Peter. It’s not the mid-60s yet. They’re coming. They’re coming. And when Nero blames the Christians of Rome for the fires and the flames of Rome, and they themselves are accused of starting a fire in a depressed economic region of Rome that led to thousands dying, he had, you know, don’t let a good disaster go to waste.
He was the one who precipitated. He’s the one who lit the fire, more than likely, to burn that plighted region of the city and then find an excuse for blaming Christians. Then the gladiator ring, then the fires really intensified, for Peter’s words are for those undergoing intense fiery trials and persecution.
### Endurance in Trials
He makes it clear to them that your faith, of greater worth than gold, is going through the fires. And he also says at the end of Second Peter that there’s going to be fires that are going to consume this world. This world will not again by flood and deluge be destroyed; this world will be destroyed by fire, and a new heaven and a new earth are coming.
But between the words Peter speaks in chapter 1 and those in chapter 3 of Second Peter, we see the fire intensifying for those Christians in their persecution. They’re the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against Jesus’s church. Onward, Christian soldiers, we keep moving forward despite the persecution, despite what’s coming at us.
The church is God’s people gathered together around the word and sacraments and the word and means of grace being properly administered according to the gospel. That’s the church. We’re the gathered, we’re the called-out ones, and we come.
### The Essence of Worship
As we are coming together, this is when worship really happens. I’m sorry, K-Love. I’m sorry, Christian radio. I’m sorry to tell you that’s not Christian worship. This is Christian worship. I’m not saying you can’t worship driving your car; just remember, keep your eyes open and your hands on the steering wheel.
You can worship anywhere, at any time, any place, any person. Worship is certainly possible in private settings, but worship, real Christian worship, is when we gather together in the Lord’s house, and we are here worshiping. Public worship is around the means of grace and the word of God.
These sacraments that we share in lead to sacrifice, not like the Old Testament sacrifices, far different. But the sacraments put your praise on is not a bad expression. Put your praise on; it’s right in Isaiah’s gospel of the Old Testament. Put on the mantle of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Put it on, but recognize it’s what’s put in before it’s what’s to be put on, what God has done for us.
### Response to God
Worship begins with God. It begins with him working in our lives through the gospel. And when he works, when the sacraments and means of grace are working, then we start with our sacrifices of praise, the fruit of lips that confess his name. We respond with the sacrifice of prayer and the sacrifice of living out our lives personally as living sacrifices to God.
So the sacraments lead to sacrifice, and God working in us raises our worship of him. It’s a divine service, like we’ve always said, his service as the divine one in our lives, and then our response of love and praise and thanks and gratefulness that flows from us.
So sacraments are coming this way; sacrifices are going this way, right? The sacraments are God to us, and the sacrifices are us to God, praising him, worshiping, thanking him.
### Our Identity in Christ
So you are a chosen people. Say it with me: you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood. This is repeated twice by Peter in this chapter, First Peter chapter 2. That’s so important.
He is not the first pope; he is a pastor, a pouyet man, a shepherd under the shepherd. The use of terms are very important. We believe in the priesthood of all believers. We are all among the royal priesthood. He’s not a one and only priest among the people he’s writing to; he is among a priesthood of all believers.
It’s so important you understand your identity. This passage is giving you your identity as the church, and it’s giving us an understanding of what God in his grace and mercy has done for us and then our response to him, that we’re living our lives to the praise of his glorious grace, that we are understanding that we are brought out of darkness to declare the praises of him brought out of darkness into his wonderful light.
Gathering in worship, gathering for worship, that’s why we’re here.