Let's turn in sacred scripture tonight to Psalm 95. Psalm 95, regarded as a call to worship. We'll read the entire psalm. The text is verses 1 through the first sentence of verse 7. Psalm 95. O come, let us sing unto the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving and make a joyful noise unto Him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods. In His hand are the deep places of the earth. The strength of the hills is His also. The sea is His and He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker, for He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your heart as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness, when your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work. Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said it is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways. Unto whom I swear in my wrath that they shall not enter into my rest." That far we read God's Word. Since it's a short psalm, let's read the text over again. Verse 7, O come, let us sing unto the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving and make a joyful noise unto Him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods. In His hand are the deep places of the earth. The strength of the hills is His also. The sea is His, and He made it. And His hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker, for He is our God. And we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. There are very few more controversial subjects in the church today than worship. People talk often today about worship wars. In the same church, often you will have a service called a traditional service to appeal to the older element of the congregation. And then later you'll have a contemporary service to appeal to the younger crowd, revealing that often the driving force in worship is what a person wants. That can be a danger for us as well, beloved, but I believe the preeminent danger for us in our church is that we do not understand exactly what we are doing in worship and why we are doing it. God does not desire that His people simply go through the motions in the worship of His name. The Westminster Shorter Catechism rightly says that the chief end of man is to glorify God. And since that is so, we must understand what we are doing when we come to worship Jehovah God. We bring God little if no glory if we don't understand what we are doing in the public worship of His name. And we ourselves miss out on the edification and experience of worship if we do not understand. Therefore, this evening, I begin a series of sermons on worship. The title for this series is, O Come, Let Us Worship, and that's taken from the psalm we read this evening, Psalm 95, verse 6. In this series, what we are concerned with is the public corporate worship of the church. There is a personal worship that each of us is called to bring before God in our own personal reading of his word, prayer, devotion to Jehovah God. There is family worship. We're gathered together as families. We exalt, magnify his name. And then there is corporate worship, worship that's performed officially by the congregation gathered together on the Sabbath. In the series, we focus on the scriptures teaching concerning that aspect of worship, the public corporate worship of the church. The series, the Lord willing, will go this way. The first three sermons will be on broad general principles regarding public worship. The first tonight, is on the fact that public corporate worship is a covenantal assembly meeting face to face with the living God. The second next week, the Lord willing, will be the dialogical principle of worship. And then the third would be the regulative principle of worship. After that, we're going to go through each aspect of the worship service and show how it is biblical and expound each aspect of worship. Therefore, this is a topical series. Nonetheless, I will expound scripture and attempt to center each sermon on a specific portion of the Word of God. Tonight, that portion of the Word of God is Psalm 95, a psalm that, as I said, has been recognized as a call to worship all throughout the history of the church. The Christian church has always understood this as a call to worship. But even beyond that, going all the way back to the ancient Jewish church, this was understood as a call to the public worship of Jehovah's name. It's a stirring passage. It's a passage that calls the covenantal assembly to join, come together and praise, exalt and magnify the name of our great God. The sermon this evening is the Covenantal Assembly. The Covenantal Assembly. Let's notice first what that means. Second, the motive for the Covenantal Assembly. And third, the implications. The meaning, the motive, and the implications. Fundamental to the nature of Reformed biblical corporate worship is that those who gather to worship their God, or an official assembly. It is not a haphazard collection of individuals who get together in a rented building as they gather on Sunday. Coming together for Sunday worship is something different from, for example, gathering together for a lecture. Or coming together, even if it's the same people, for a Christmas program for the children of school. It's even different from gathering together with the same people to have a Bible study together. When a congregation gathers for public corporate worship, she gathers as the officially constituted body of Jesus Christ in a place. She is lawfully gathered together as she assembles herself, constituted for the public worship of Jehovah's name. She is a body that's overseen by a council, elders, deacons, and minister that represent the offices of Jesus Christ Himself. She is officially called to assemble by that governing body. That governing body speaks with the authority of Jesus Christ Himself, for they hold the offices of prophet, priest, and king. So that really, it is God Himself who officially calls this assembly to come together and to gather before His face. That's why we have a call to worship before the service. A couple of years ago, the council of our church made that decision to have a call to worship. The minister reads a passage or a verse. This evening I read Song of Solomon 4, 7, and 8. It's a call to come and gather together as the official body of Jesus Christ. It shows that God Himself is the one that calls the assembly together. That's a unique thing for Sunday worship, do you see? There's no call to worship before a Bible study. There's no call to worship before a program or before lectures. God Himself officially constitutes this meeting as He gathers the body to assemble Before him, the assembly officially gathers for worship as the body of Jesus Christ. She gathers as a redeemed body, a body that is covered by the blood of the Lord Jesus himself. Christ has died for her. Christ covers her with his righteousness and Christ has united her together. She comes, therefore, in the name of Christ. She comes proclaiming Christ's name. And she comes as an extension of Christ, who is her head. Christ, her head, is seated in heaven. And having entered the most holy place, not made with hands, as Hebrews calls it, the real holy of holies, He gathers there does Jesus Christ, His body, as an extension of Himself upon the earth, to worship before Jehovah God, so that when we are gathered here, it is Jesus Christ as the head of the body who really leads us into the Holy of Holies before the face of God to worship. We are His body, an extension of Him upon the earth. The Old Testament emphasized this corporate nature of official worship. For example, in Leviticus 23, where the law of God records the Old Testament feasts that were to take place. It records all the different feasts, the Feast of Tabernacles, the Passover, etc. But if you read through that, the phrase that is repeated is that you are a holy convocation. The Scriptures say, you're a holy convocation. You're a holy assembly of people that are called together before God at this public worship in the feast. Psalm 25, which is our text, says the same thing. When it says, O come, let us sing unto the Lord. Let us come before His presence. O come, let us worship and bow down. There's this conscious understanding that this is the assembled body of Jesus Christ gathered together. Not just individuals, but a body. Corporate assembly. The New Testament speaks of this as well in Hebrews 10, verse 25. Hebrews 10, 25 is the outstanding passage of the New Testament that speaks of public corporate worship. And there, The passage does not even call public worship an official worship assembly or something like that. It doesn't say, don't forsake the official worship of the church. But it says, don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together. This is what worship is. Coming together as an official body before the face of Jehovah God. That's why, too, the salutation at the beginning of the service which is God Himself. The minister speaks that on behalf of God. It's God Himself greeting His body. It does not say, beloved individuals in our Lord Jesus Christ, but beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ. You are a gathered body, assembled. It's important for us to remember, beloved, in a culture where the individual And an individual's desires are valued above the collective. We must keep this in mind. In a culture where people don't seem to hesitate to forsake the corporate public worship of Jehovah God and who say that they can worship God just fine by themselves in their room. We must keep this in mind. We are gathered different here. God calls us together as an assembly to publicly worship his name. We certainly come as individuals, of course, and bring our personal worship to God here. But we come as individuals gathered into a body. We are one publicly assembled. We come, therefore, for each other also. We assemble because we love each other and we desire to be before the face of God together as brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. When we participate in public worship, we don't just stand as an individual singing or praying, but we join our voices to the body of Jesus Christ here gathered together. We become one as we lift our voices in worship to Jehovah God. And that's a wonderful experience, isn't it? We are together as one body. We are part of a whole before God. The reason why we are officially called together as a body to meet with our God. Rather, let me say it this way. The reason why we are officially called together as a body is to meet face to face with our God. This is a covenantal assembly that God gathers. We are called together by God to meet with Him. That's the purpose, to fellowship before His face in covenant love. All throughout the Old Testament, that was what worship was. In the Old Testament, the tabernacle was a place where God met with His people. The tabernacle in the Old Testament was called the tent of meeting. The KJV is translated the tent of the congregation. For example, Exodus 39 verse 32. Thus was all the work of the tabernacle of the tent of the congregation finished. Better would probably be the tent of meeting. The idea is that it was the tent, it was the place where God actually came down and met with His people so that when they gathered there for the feasts and for worship, God was with them. They met before the face of the Almighty. The temple was that also, of course, in the Old Testament. The people of God gathered together in the courts of the temple and God dwelled and the Most Holy Place there upon the Ark of the Covenant. It was an assembly gathered to meet with their God face to face. Psalm 95 reflects that as well in verse 2. It makes it very explicit when the psalmist says, O come before His presence. That's what worship is. Oh, come gather before his presence. The most literal translation of that would be, oh, come, let us meet his face. That's what the psalmist is saying. Come, let us meet His face. That is what worship is. The assembly gathers to meet the face of Jehovah God. He turns the light of His countenance upon His people. That's what we are doing when we gather here. All throughout the Old Testament, that was true, but in the New Testament as well. And in the New Testament, that experience is richer, beloved. In the Old Testament, there was still a distance between God and His people. The High Priest was the only one that could go into the Holy of Holies. But now, now, according to the Lord Jesus, we don't have to go to Jerusalem. We don't have to go gather in that temple there and have a High Priest go into the Holy of Holies for us. But Jesus says, where two or three are gathered, where an assembly is gathered, notice He doesn't just say one, but where two or three are gathered, no matter how small or how great, I am with them. I come to meet them face to face. That is the glory of public worship. The Spirit is the one who accomplishes this, of course. The Spirit brings God to us and brings us to God in worship. He does that by His Word. As we sing the words, as we pray, as we read the Word, and as we hear the Word proclaimed, the Spirit works so that we experience the fact that we are in fact in the presence of Jehovah God. God really comes to meet with His people in the Covenantal Assembly. So that this meeting is the experience of the covenant of grace, God with us. We come to church, brothers and sisters, in Jesus Christ, not just to hear about the covenant. We come to church to experience the covenant of grace. It is here, it is here primarily, where we come to meet with our God. where he condescends to us, gathers before us. Church is more than just hearing a sermon. That's certainly part of the worship service, and it's a central part. It's an essential part of the service, but the service as a whole, as we'll see later throughout this series, is designed to lead us into the presence of the Almighty God so that as we are taken up in the words of the songs that sink into our hearts as we pay attention to them, as they capture our minds, as they enliven our affections toward Jehovah God, as the prayers that we pray recognize that we are in the presence of the mighty, great God of heaven and earth and lift us before Him. The Gospel is read and proclaimed by which God Himself unrolls His blessings and love upon us and gives us His callings for our life. We meet with the living God. If you don't experience that, beloved, it's either because you don't believe it Or it's because you're so distracted in the service, you're just going through the motions, not paying attention to the words or to what's taking place. As we give ourselves, mind and heart, to the words and to the aspects of worship, the Spirit takes us into the presence of the living God. That's what we are doing when we come here. We are seeking the presence of the Almighty and God condescends to us to meet with us by his Holy Spirit. That means, children of God, that the worship service is the fundamental expression of the antithesis. The antithesis is our spiritual separation from the world and our spiritual separation unto God. In public corporate worship, God calls us out of the world and calls us unto himself. He calls out to us and says, you are mine. Come out from among them and be separate. Come out and come close to me in the worship of the church. During the week, of course, we are called to live a life That's different from the world. We're called to live holy, live in communion with God, and we seek to do that, to serve Jehovah God in our life. But often we are so distracted. Often we're so filled with thoughts about what's going on in our life, with work, with people, with things that we are dealing with, with whether or not a mosque is going to be built in lower Manhattan. that we have a hard time actually giving ourselves in concentration upon the worship of Jehovah God's name. We're not often captivated by our God. We've been in the world, and often our souls are pulled towards the things of this world in this life. We have felt ourselves being tempted throughout the week. At times, we have resisted temptation. At times, we have not. Sometimes we are almost even enveloped by the world throughout the week so that when we come back here and separate ourselves from the world and look back, we think about how influenced we were in a certain area or how tempted we were. And we can't believe it was like that because we were acting like the world. Our minds and souls were influenced in certain ways. Perhaps we're even considering making decisions that were worldly. Then God calls us out. He calls us to come together. He calls us to the public service of the church. And that should be our experience, beloved, that we are called out of the world here. This should be a respite for you and for me. We are in the battle all week long, spiritually fighting temptation, fighting the devil, the world in our own flesh that pulls us away from Christ. This should be a break! This should be an oasis in the desert where God calls us out to come to Himself and rest for a while. As He called Israel out of Egypt. He called Israel not only out of Egypt, but unto Himself at the base of Mount Sinai. Separated from all the world around, God had His people there by Himself at the base of the mountain. So, every single worship service of the church, this is what God is doing. He is calling us out and calling us to Himself. God sends out His call like a man to his lover. to put everything down and to come be a part with Him for a while in covenant love. That's why I read Song of Solomon 4, verses 7-8 this evening for the call to worship. Read that again and think about what the bridegroom is saying to the bride. Thou art all fair, my love. There is no spot in thee. Come with me. Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon. And he goes on, come apart, come be with me for a while. It's a calling to a place of safety, a place of spiritual security, a place of enjoyment, as we come to meet with our God in love. It's as we are called apart, called unto our God in this covenantal meeting, that we worship Him. We come to adore His Majesty, to exalt His greatness, to lift up His name, to celebrate His worth, to ascribe to Him glory and praise, to thank Him for things He has done and gifts He has given. It's in the worship service of the church that we are finally set totally apart from the things of our life so that we can finally come and adore Him and Him alone. During the week, we have personal and family worship, of course, and this is very important and it's lovely and it must be meaningful and it must be worshipful. But for most of us, is it not the case that really? It's not until we get here. It's not until we're called here in the assembly of the saints before God's face that we really worship that we really worship with all our heart and mind and soul fixed upon Him and Him alone. It's here that we really put aside everything. And with God's people around us, we exalt His name. We say to God here in the Covenantal Assembly, God, it may have looked like at times in this week that I didn't even love you. I have sinned. I wasn't consecrated to you. But here now I repent of those sins. And here in the public assembly, I tell you that I do love you above all else. And there is nothing in this world I desire more than Thee and Thee alone. At times, O Lord, I have been selfish in this week. But here I can set aside all, all that appeals to me and simply exalt Thy name for who Thou art. Here I express That though the devil, the world, and my own flesh get the better of me at times, I adore my God and Him alone. Nothing else matters for an hour and a half in the service of the church. The service calls us out, calls us unto our God and His kingdom and His grace. That's what worship is. Worship is giving oneself and one's all to God. It's setting ourselves before Him and adoring Him. The word worship itself means to bow down. It means that we decrease and He increases before us. His matchless worth is set before us. We exalt Him and that happens, beloved, in the public assembly as God meets with us face to face. The motivation for this covenantal worship comes from knowing this God who comes to meet with us face to face. It comes from knowing who He is. Understanding who He is is the motivation to gather us together to exalt Him. Psalm 95 points that out. And it points out that God, as both Creator and Redeemer, is what calls us to worship. Both of those are the motive for worship in Psalm 95. First of all, it's in knowing God as Creator that is the motive for coming to worship. That's verse 3 and following. Verse 3, O come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker, God is worthy of our worship because He is the Creator God. He is the one that made us. He has the right to my worship. Therefore, He has formed me. He is worthy of me gathering with the assembly to exalt His majestic name. And not only is He worthy, but it's the fact that He is this Creator God and is so majestic and powerful that draws me into the public worship of His name. Verses 3, 4, and 5 carry on the thought For the Lord is a great God, verse 3, and a great King above all gods. In His hand are the deep places of the earth. The strength of the hills is His also. The sea is His, and He made it. And His hands formed the dry land. This is a God who is able, beloved. This is a powerful God. This is not a God that we made up. We don't worship a puny God. We don't worship an idol made with hands. No supposed God is this God's rival. All the earth is His possession. He made it all with His hands. Even the vast, remote depths of the oceans, the impenetrable rocks of the mountains are His, and He knows them. This God, therefore, is able to take care of the people that He loves when He gives us promises. Because He is this powerful, creating God, He is able to keep those promises. He is able to work all things for the good of His church. He is the King of kings and Lord of lords. This draws me to come into His presence and to adore Him. This draws me to take his attributes upon my lips and the songs that are sung as we pray to exalt his name, to ascribe to him the glory that is due this great God. Secondly, the motivation is that this mighty, creating God is his people's shepherd. He is a shepherd who cares for his people and loves them and who saves them. Verses 6 and 7. O come, let us worship and bow down. He begins again with another call to worship because he's giving us another reason to worship. O come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker. Verse 7. For this is why He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. As a shepherd, this God saves His people, cares for them, redeems them, as verse 1 tells us. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. As a shepherd, He is the rock of our salvation. And of course, you know that rock points us forward to the Lord Jesus Christ. The psalmist has in mind here the people of Israel on the exodus at Rephidim, when Moses struck the rock and water came gushing out of it to save their life. That water was, from an earthly point of view, their salvation. The Apostle Paul tells us in the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 10, verse 4, that that rock that Moses struck was a type of Jesus Christ. that as the Israelites drink of that rock, so we drink of that spiritual rock, Jesus Christ, who gives us His life-giving water, who has us to feed off of His salvation, who pays the price for our sins. Our God is a Shepherd, a Shepherd who saves us, who shepherds us away from the death of sin and of hell. He saves us with the rock of Christ. Do you see what the psalmist is doing here? He is defining your God to you as a motive for worship. Worship him simply because he is who he is, says the psalmist. You have a shepherd for a God, people. He has sent His Son for your salvation. In Christ as a shepherd, He leads and guides and cares for us every step of our lives so that there is no fear, but only rest and peace and hope. That's why we come to worship. That's why we come to adore Him and His name and meet with Him face to face. The psalmist and defining our God to us also defines us to ourselves. He does that too as motive for worship. He says to God's people, who you are, are sheep in the hands of this God. This is who you are. You are sheep that God holds protectingly in His hands. It is that too that calls us to worship Him. In this world, we are so many things, aren't we? There are so many things that identify us. We are farmers. We are college students. We're engineers. We're fishermen, hunters, whatever it is. Here in the text, the psalmist says, You, Christian, at the fundamental level, this is who you are. You are a sheep. that has a shepherd for a God. This is who you are. You are a sheep held in the hands of the Almighty, and He protects you, He nourishes you, and He loves you. That's why we gather here to exalt Him for this and to be convinced of this again, to regain this identity again. We need to regain that identity every week. And it is especially here in the public worship of God's name that I experience this, that I know this again, that God is this for me and that I am sheep in His powerful hands. So the picture, beloved, of the covenantal assembly gathered before covenant keeping God becomes even richer here in the text. Not only is this assembly gathered before God to meet with Him face to face, but in the public worship, in the adoring of His name, in the singing of songs, in the prayer, and in the Word, God scoops us up into His powerful hands. He tells us, you are my sheep that I love and that I protect. And I am your God, your shepherd who will lead and who will guide you. Oh, come, let us worship, because this is who our God is. And in Christ, this is who we are, says the psalmist. Come meet with Him in the covenantal assembly, adore Him, sing to Him, pray to Him, love Him, give yourself to Him in humble submission and love. That worship is a covenantal assembly whereby the spirit we meet with our mighty shepherding God implies at least five principles about public worship. First of all, the implication is that biblical worship will be worship that is centered upon the word of God. The primary means by which we meet with our God is through His Word. It's His Word that brings us to Him, and it's His Word that brings Him to us. God's Word is a living Word. God's Word is a breathing Word. Its truth, its power, and even its emotion brings us face to face with the Almighty in the public assembly. Thus, the biblical worship service will take up the Word of God at every point. It will be a singing of the Word of God. It will be a praying, even, of the Word of God. It will be a reading and an expounding of the Word of God. In God's Word, we have God. Through His Word, we meet Him face to face. It will be a Word-centered worship. Secondly, the implication is that it will be simple, and this is tied closely to the first. It will be a simple worship service. The goal, after all, is to be taken mind and soul by the word of God and therefore to be lifted into the presence of the almighty. All must therefore shine a spotlight on God in his word, and anything that is a distraction from his word must be removed. That's what led the reformers to have a very simple order of worship where the content and not the accoutrements or the power of the worship service. That's why you will find the same thing today in a true reformed worship service. There is a simplicity and there is a sobriety about it. The liturgy is simple because the content is the power, not the ingenuity of the person that puts the service together. That's why there's not paintings and statues and all kinds of things upon the wall. That's why the focus is not upon a person or their gifts. That's why there's not dramas and skits in a Reformed worship service. The spotlight is to shine upon God. It's to lead us to God. And the way we're brought to God is by His Word that takes the focus. So it's a simple worship service. Third, the implication of the fact that public corporate worship is A meeting with the Almighty God means that it's going to be profoundly experiential. We come to the worship service with such an understanding, with a believing heart, taken up by the words that are sung, prayed, read and proclaimed. This will be a profoundly experiential worship service for us. After all, we're meeting face to face with Jehovah God. That's going to be an experience. It's not going to be an experience if you simply come here and go through the motions and pay no attention. And it's going to be a very different experience if you come with sin that you're holding on to that you refuse to let go of. Then your experience before the Almighty God is going to be that you will writhe as Jehovah breathes down your neck in the worship service of the church. But when we come to let go of our sin with repentant hearts, to hold on to God and His Word, to adore His name, to exalt His matchless worth, This will be a profound experience of comfort and adoration of Jehovah God. Fourthly, the worship service will be characterized by an attitude of joyful reverence. The combination of those two, joyful reverence, It's instructive that Psalm 95 talks about both joy and reverence in the passage. In verses 1 and 2, it repeats, make a joyful noise to the Lord. And then in verse 6, it says, bow down, bow down so that the psalmist combines joy and reverence. And this ought to be the characterization of a biblical reformed worship service. There's the combination of joy, of course, in the fact that God is our shepherding God that loves us and that holds us in His hands. That's a joyful thing. Then there is also the reverence, because we know that in and of ourselves we are the last people on earth that deserve a God like this. Joyful reverence. First of all, reverence. Reverence because we're coming to meet with the God of heaven and earth. Someone once said that if we really had any idea what we are doing in the public corporate worship of the church, and if we really understood who it was that we are coming to meet with face to face, then the way we would come to worship is with football gear on. We put on shoulder pads, we put on a helmet and we take some rope and we tie ourselves to the chair. For we are coming into the presence of sheer holiness. Creatures and sinners, as we are. Something right about that. Knowing what worship is and the God that we worship is going to affect every aspect of the worship service. When one comes in to a biblical worship service, they ought to see that this is not a game. We haven't come here for a show, but that we're gathered before the living, majestic God of heaven and earth. That's going to be manifest in that the worship is orderly. It's not haphazard. That's going to be manifest in the way we behave ourselves in worship. There's going to be respect and reverence. We will show that we are here for God and the praise of His glory. That's going to show, even in the way that a person dresses himself for worship. Congregation, let's understand what we are doing here as we gather for worship before the Almighty God. And let's think about how to appropriately present ourselves before the God of heaven and earth. If we understand what the worship service is, that won't allow us to dress slovenly or unkempt. This won't allow us to come to church as though we're going to the grocery store. that won't allow us to do things like sleep in church or not pay attention. We're coming before the presence of the Almighty God of heaven and earth. It's going to be a reverent service, but it's also going to be joyful. Joyful. Psalm 95 speaks of that too in verse 1. And the verbs of verse 1 are even more intense than what comes out in the English there. It can be read more like this. Let us give a ringing cry unto the Lord. Let us raise joyful shouts. A ringing cry and joyful shouts. There ought to be joy. There ought to be joy coming into the presence of this God. After all, He is our shepherding God. He is the God who has redeemed us in the blood of Jesus Christ. There ought to be ringing cries of thanksgiving and joy. That ought to be the way we sing paying attention to the words with joy in our hearts. If we put forth no effort, of course, to think about what's going on, it's not going to be that way. But as we are taken up and given over to the truths and to the words that we are singing, as that's planted into our heart, there will be joy as we come to adore the God of grace. Finally, beloved, the principle implied here, and I would venture to say the most fundamental principle implied in the fact that public worship is an assembly gathered to meet Jehovah God face to face, is that the audience in worship is God. The audience is God. Many come to worship as though they were the audience. And the minister and the worship team, the band leaders, whatever it is, they are the show. And they're putting on a show for you, the audience, sitting there in the pews. But that is not the way it is at all. It's the exact opposite. And this is what is unique about the Covenantal Assembly gathered before Jehovah God. This is what is unique compared to any other assembly of people that are gathered. The audience is not sitting in the pew. The audience is Jehovah God. And we have come, if you want to put it that way, to give a show for Him, to exalt Him, to magnify His name, to lift Him high. Worship is not for me, first of all. I am here to give to Him, to adore Him. I end up being blessed by it, of course. God works that way so that I am blessed in the giving of myself to Him. But it's not about me. It's not about you. Worship is for the adoration of our mighty shepherding God. Congregation worship is the most important thing. that a Christian does. Public, corporate worship is the most important thing that a Christian does. God loves public, corporate worship. While personal worship to the praise of the glory of His grace is very important, and the regular worship of His glory by families Devotion time especially is vitally important. And while those two things are to be a wonderful expression, or they ought to flow out of the public corporate worship of the church, it is the public worship of the Covenantal Assembly that God loves the most. Psalm 87, verse 2. The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. And be assured, congregation, that God loves the dwellings of Jacob. God loves the dwellings of His church where families worship and adore His name in their homes. He loves that. But what He loves more is the gates of Zion where the people of God publicly assemble in front of the whole world, adore and exalt the matchless name of Jehovah God together, where together they meet with Him in adoration and praise. And because God loves the gates of Zion most, we ought to love the gates of Zion most as well. For the irony is that when it's all about Him, we end up ourselves receiving untold benefits, don't we? It's not our experience that of Luther's. Quote, at home in my house, there is no warmth or vigor in me. But in the church, When the multitude is gathered together, a fire is kindled in my heart and it breaks its way through." Beloved may it be, the thought of and the experience of the Covenantal Assembly will lead us to cry out with the psalmist, In Psalm 84, verses 1 and 2, how amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God. For it is in the assembly that we meet with our God face to face. Amen. Let us pray. Father in Heaven, we glorify Thy Name. Meet with us as we gather before Thee at Thy beck and call to worship Thy glorious Name, for Thou art worthy. Amen.