Today, we continue our sermon about the liturgy, our order of worship. We come here each Lord’s Day to gather with the saints and worship God. Many in the reformed tradition have realized that Sundays are for worshipping God. They are not to be seeker friendly entertainment hours that feed the self-esteem but do not reveal the glory of God. And I completely agree. We have drifted into times when we are so introspective that everything that goes on around us must somehow feed our own personal self-worth. And if it doesn’t, not only is it unhelpful, the talking heads tell us that it may even be evil.
But we are trying to find out who God is, what He desires, how we can be acceptable to Him, what pleases Him, and how our Sunday worship relates to all of this. So, the seeker sensitive mindset should not be ours. We should have a God sensitive mindset that governs what we do here and how we do it.
That being said, I do not want to disparage the humanistic aspect of corporate worship. We call our service, “The Lord’s Service.” The service belongs to Him, that is, our worship. And in that service, the Lord of Heaven and Earth, also serves us. He does not worship us but He does come to us and fulfill all of our needs. Not our ‘felt’ needs but our real and deep needs. And in this, we find that while we are not primarily seeking out our own desires, needs, and wishes here on the Lord’s Day, that they are all met anyway.
Furthermore, the more we pursue this course of seeking God first, the more we will find ourselves. This is a good picture of the life of the Christian paradox.
Seek ye first His kingdom, take up the cross and follow me, He who loses his life for my sake will find it.
So, while our paradigm in not one of seeker sensitivity, asking what they want and giving it to them, in our God-sensitivity, we find that God knows what we need and He gives it to us. In seeking His glory, we find our ultimate good.
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