Hey! Christian have you ever really missed gathering with other believers?
Sickness has prevented me from being regularly at church and I have felt this to be a loss.
Initially this caused me to wonder whether my faith was too dependent on the experience of being with others but since I have learnt from the Psalms of Ascension (Psalms 120 to 134).
These Psalms, amongst many other wonderful concepts reflect the desire of the traveller to be in the temple of Jerusalem with fellow worshippers.
The Psalms seemingly capture the thoughts of the pilgrim, as travel ends, on the final climb up the Temple Mount.
From these Psalms I learn that God’s people being together is in fact an act of worship.
We read in Psalm 133
1 Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
for brethren to dwell together in unity!
2 It is like the precious ointment upon the head,
that ran down upon the beard,
even Aaron’s beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments;
So the gathering of God’s people brings to the Lord the adoration associated with the anointing of chief priest Aaron.
Amidst these Psalms in fact the next one on from the above, we have two commands for the people of God to gather for the purpose of worship.
1 Behold, bless ye the Lord, all ye servants of the Lord,
which by night stand in the house of the Lord.
2 Lift up your hands in the sanctuary,
and bless the Lord.
All of God’s servants are to bless the Lord, as we stand together in His sanctuary.
1 Peter 2:9 records an instruction to all believers when it says
But 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 wonderful light. 10 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.
We need also to note the second command, which supplements the instruction for us together to bless our great God. The Psalm simply puts this as lift up.
Together we are encouraged by the actions of the gathered throng to raise our praise to God. Obviously this is not meant to be with dead panned expression but rather in a lively manner. The instruction in this Old Testament passage is to lift your hands. Whatever our New Testament alternative the idea is that we praise together with life sparked by the experience of being able to do this as a gathering.
So as I miss the gathering to praise God I challenge myself that this should be a response to the need we all have to praise God with others.
Of course there is the encouragement in this to visit the sick, so we are able, well and unwell, to lift together God’s praises.
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