Remember God Together

This past week we began a short new series entitled Remember. The first installment was regarding God, remember who he is, his holiness, his kingship, and his bigness. The passage that we looked at was the first portion of Isaiah 6 in which the prophet Isaiah has a grand vision of God when he goes to the temple. Part of that vision was the seeing of the seraphim who stand above God and worship him continually as they cry out, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!" As far as we can tell, these massive beings are created and engineered solely for the purpose of worshiping YHWH.

Anobservation that I didn't get time to comment on this past week, however, is that there are two of them. There isn't just one. Perhaps this seems too obvious to comment on, but I do think it has implications. We can certainly worship God by ourselves. Indeed, we ought to. Being alone is no excuse to not worship. However, corporate worship is always sweeter. Having another being who is tapping into the reality of who God is, who is worshiping him as a result, and who, in themselves, reflects God's glory in a unique and profound way adds to our affections in very real and significant ways.

Adam was made to worship through his stewardship in the Garden. He was made to worship by bearing God's image in the created order. Yet God deemed it inappropriate for him to do it alone. It couldn't be done! Again, it's not that Adam couldn't and shouldn't worship by himself if he happened to take a stroll through the Garden or was on a search for a lost monkey. Rather, it's an issue of the primary mode of worship. The primary mode of worship, where we see worship done at its best in Scripture, is corporate in nature.  From Genesis to Revelation, God desires a people for worship, not a person here and a person there.

Jonathan Edwards makes some great points about worship in general regarding our affections expressing themselves through bodily things such as a lively voice, a lifted hand, and other such acts of worship. He says that to stifle the physical manifestations of inner affections puts out the flame of the affections themselves, much like trying to cover a flame robs it of the oxygen it needs to continue burning. He goes further to say that corporate affections are stifled by our individual stifling. If I decide to thwart my affections from showing themselves bodily, I not only quench my own flame but also that of my brother who is beside me. Conversely, for him to see my heart come out in my worship is to fan the flames of his own affections which would then necessarily give rise to his bodily expression thereof. You can see how this quickly becomes a domino effect for the glory of God. Here's some quotes from a selected reading (you can read the larger part here):

Now there is an indissoluble, unavoidable association, in the minds of the most rational and spiritual, between things spiritual and things bodily. Thus when we are joyful and express our joy, 'tis natural to do it with a lively voice; and when we express sorrow, to do it with what we call a mournful voice...

Therefore if, when we come to praise God or confess our sins, we resolved not in any measure to alter our manner of expression for sorrow or joy, we must restrain that which is strongly associated with the joy and sorrow; and thereby shall unavoidably, in some measure, forever restrain the spiritual affections themselves, till we quite dissolve the association...

Thereby there grows a strong association, so that if one be restrained the other will unavoidably be restrained too. So that some bodily worship is necessary to give liberty to our own devotion; yea though in secret, so more when with others. For we having associated the idea of reverence and other habitudes of mind to such and such gestures of body, it would restrain our notion or apprehension of another's reverence, etc., if we should see those gestures which we have associated to contrary dispositions; so that our own devotion would not be so much assisted by theirs but restrained, and the communion in the duty in some measure destroyed...

'Tis necessary that there should be something bodily and visible in the worship of a congregation; otherwise, there can be no communion at all.

So, let's worship like we mean it, like we truly serve this God who is high and lifted up. It should naturally overflow and then should spill over to one another as we beckon each other to enjoy our great God, calling to each other like the seraphim: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!"