Geoffrey R. Kirkland
Christ Fellowship Bible Church
The heart of the believer years for fellowship with Christ and with His people. Each week we gather to worship God. We gather to exalt God, to edify one another, to refocus our hearts, and to praise and thank our glorious God and Savior, Jesus Christ. We worship the one, True God — God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit — with joy-filled hearts. We as protestant Christians affirm that the high point of the Christian’s week is the corporate worship of the saints where we gather for fellowship, praise, prayer, the ordinances, and the hearing of the preached Word.
1. The HIGH POINT
The gathering of the redeemed constitutes the pinnacle of the week. The crowning jewel of our week is the coming together to hear from God through His preached Word. All the activities, work functions, personal responsibilities and entertainments take a pause and we joyously and eagerly reconnect with the saints to sit under God’s Word as it is read, heralded, applied and savored. To this end, we gather to sing, we gather to praise, we gather to fellowship, we gather to encourage, we gather to re-focus. Corporate worship is the best event of your entire week.
2. The HOLY MAJESTY
The reason corporate worship is the high point is because we gather in the presence of the awesome majesty of our Holy God. He is the Holy One of Israel. He is thrice-Holy and infinitely exalted. He is high and exalted, sovereign and transcendent, and yet awesomely near and immanent to us. We love reading the Bible on our own and we do this each day to know God more, enjoy Christ deeper, and walk with Him more closely. But in the corporate gathering, God manifests Himself to us in awesome majesty through the authoritative and bold proclamation of the Word of God.
3. The HONORED ACCESS
Corporate worship amazingly reminds us of the honor it is to approach God in worship. The fact that God allows His creatures to enter into His most magnificent presence is wonderfully humbling. This access only comes through Jesus Christ. No other way exists for a person to approach the Throne of God. Christ is the Bridge and the Way and our introduction to the Father’s presence. So when we gather, we set aside our preferences and our opinions and we focus on God and on His Truth as it is sufficiently and clearly revealed in the Word. We submit to Him and gather together with humble hearts. What an honor to have access to this King!
4. The HOPE PROCLAIMED
Corporate worship weekly reminds believers that we are people of hope. Every true Bible preacher proclaims the Word of God and he thus makes it his ambition to explain the meaning of the text clearly, to magnify God’s glory preeminently, and to proclaim Jesus Christ as the only hope and mediator for sinners. This hope is proclaimed through the singing of hymns. We proclaim this hope in prayer. We unite together around this hope in the ordinances of the Lord’s Supper and baptism. And we proclaim this hope (and are reminded of this hope) through the faithful reading and the bold preaching of the Word of God.
5. The HEAVENLY FOCUS
Corporate worship is a grace-gift from God to wean us off of this world and reorient our hearts and refocus our minds on heaven. The joys and bliss of glory hastens and will soon welcome us into this sinless world of perfect love and joy. When we gather with the saints, we get a bit of a foretaste of this togetherness among the redeemed that will characterize the saints in glory as we focus on Christ, savor His salvation, and enjoy His glory.
