How much thought do you put into worship on Sunday—the songs we sing, the words we read, the prayers we pray, the things we do, and the sermons we hear? Are you relatively passive about it all, not giving much thought to anything? Are you slightly hostile to it—contrasting what we’re seeing, hearing, reading, doing, and singing with what you like? How often do you think things like, I don’t like this song? Why are we doing this song? I wish we were singing this other song? Why is the sermon about that? I wish he’d preach on this instead of that? And other things such as this…
There’s a sense in which all of the things above are only natural. We all tend to do this in one way or another. But we must remember that Sunday morning worship is not primarily about us, it’s about the Triune God and faithfulness to Him. However, worship each Lord’s Day with God’s people is incredibly important and beneficial for us, so it’s right for us to care about it. Yet, we must remember that because it is not primarily about us, it isn’t our preferences that make worship good or beneficial.
Children may not prefer what their mom made for dinner, but that doesn’t change the fact that their mother was very intentional about what ingredients she used to prepare the meal. No doubt, she sought to make sure the meal was nutritious and delicious. But no matter how broccoli is cooked it never seems to be as good as pizza. This is how worship can seem at times. For instance, you might like that new contemporary song on the radio, but God commands us to sing Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. And in His song book—the Psalms—we are not only given prescribed songs to sing, but we are given the types of material and subjects we should sing about when we sing hymns and spiritual songs as well. And sometimes those songs, the style of the songs, or the lyrics in those songs can seem more like broccoli than pizza to our contemporary taste buds, but we must remember that our taste buds are typically not a good guide for what is nutritious and good for us.
Every aspect of our worship together on Sunday morning is the way it is because of what God commands and prescribes in His Word. None of it is based merely on what we like, but on what God says is faithful to Him and good for us.
In Scripture we see a pattern of Covenant Renewal Worship. Whether it’s in Exodus, Leviticus, Hebrews, or Revelation, from beginning to end God’s people are called to worship God in a specific way, with a specific liturgy, and this liturgy has been the main way God’s people have worshipped Him throughout church history. The five points that make up this Covenant Renewal pattern of worship are 1) Call, 2) Confession, 3) Consecration, 4) Communion, and 5) Commission.
This historic liturgy of the church originated in the Old Testament as God’s people drew near to Him in and through the sacrificial system. God called His people to worship Him, but in order to do so rightly their sin had to be dealt with. And this is how it is for us today as well. After we have been called to worship we come to confession, consecration, and communion, and these are tied to the sacrifices we see in the Old Testament.
In the Old Testament we see three distinct sacrifices—the guilt offering, the ascension offering (often translated as whole burnt offering), and the peace offering. The guilt offering was intended to address a particular sin on the part of the worshipper. The ascension offering was an offering of “entire dedication.” The whole sacrificed animal ascended to God in the column of smoke as an offering to Him. The peace offering was one which the worshipper was privileged to partake of, as a covenant meal. So, you deal with the guilt first, you dedicate all to God, and then you have communion with God. This is why our Covenant Renewal services follow the structure they do, absent the sacrificed animals. Jesus Christ died once for all, in order to be the fulfillment of the entire sacrificial system—He was not just the guilt offering. This is the structure laid out again and again in the Old Testament and the New. Exodus and Leviticus lay this out clearly, but even Hebrews and Revelation take this approach as well, though in the New the sacrifices have been fulfilled by Christ and our faith in Him.
The way this works our practically now is beautiful. In Covenant Renewal Worship there is a back-and-forth with God and His people. We lift up our prayers and our praise to Him. We lift up our hearts, our hands, and our voices to Him, and He pours out His mercy and grace upon us, washing us with the water of the Word, consecrating us and equipping us, and then meeting us at His table to nourish us and gladden our hearts with His presence, gospel promises, bread and wine, and then He commissions us out with His blessing upon us to go and live for His glory, the good of His church, and the life of the world. As we seek to worship the Lord in line with His Word we bless the Lord and one another, but our primary focus is on the Lord. Everything we do on Sunday morning (and otherwise) is to be in obedience to Him and for His glory. No doubt, when we sing Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs we are singing and making melody to the Lord, but we are also addressing and building up one another, just as we are when we do corporate Bible reading, corporate prayer, and the Bible is taught and preached. It’s all for God’s glory and the good of God’s people, but again, God is the main point.
Because of the person and work of Christ, every Sunday we meet together and stir one another up to love and good works in and through our faithfulness, fellowship, and faithful worship. But we are drawing near with a true heart in full assurance of faith to where Christ is; we are entering, not merely into holy places made with hands, but into heaven itself. As pastor Doug Wilson once put it, “It’s like every church has a retractable roof that opens up to heaven when we worship together.” In other words, as we are worshipping together we are truly a heavenly embassy, because heaven is opened up to us and we worship with the heavenly hosts, experiencing the very culture of heaven together, and so we pray that God’s Kingdom would come and His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. We pray that the taste of heaven that we get in and through Covenant Renewal Worship would fill us, our church, our homes, our nation, and the earth.
When we humbly confess our sin to the Lord we are kneeling before the King (Psalm 95:6). When we stand for the reading of God’s Word and to praise the Lord we are rising in respect for the King (Nehemiah 9:3). When we loudly declare, “AMEN!” after we pray or sing, or say, “Praise be to God!” after God’s Word is read we are declaring our agreement with and submission to our God and King (Psalm 106:48, 2 Corinthians 1:20). When we lift our hands when we sing The Doxology or the Gloria Patri we are doing so in a posture of prayer and praise to God (Psalm 63:4, 1 Timothy 2:8), and when we sit to hear God’s Word preached and to take the Lord’s Supper it is as if we are hearing from God Himself and sitting at the Lord’s Table to feast and fellowship with our God, because we are kings and priests with Christ meant to be equipped by Him, counsel with Him, sit with Him, minister with Him, and reign with Him (Luke 22:30, Romans 8:16-17, 16:20, Ephesians 2:6). And we do all of this faithfully and reverently because Christ has opened heaven up to us, and in and through our worship together we draw near to the throne room of God to worship our God and King. By faith, each Lord’s Day we are in the heavenly places worshipping the One who has all authority in heaven and on earth.
With all of that in mind, here’s the basic structure of our worship with an explanation of each part.
1. Call to Worship
God gathers His people in the Holy Spirit and calls them to worship Him in Spirit and Truth. Our service begins with a call to worship, which includes a scripture reading and prayer, and an invitation to sing God’s praises. We encourage robust and enthusiastic congregational singing. Our worship music is a combination of Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs because this is what God has commanded us to sing in His Word, especially in Ephesians and Colossians. However, the emphasis in His command is on the Psalms, so we believe the Psalms themselves should not only be sung, but should shape the content of all the songs we sing together (the Psalms tend to be more realistic than modern hymns and spiritual songs about our enemies, suffering, and Christian warfare). And singing together is part of the emphasis as well. We are worshipping God and ministering to one another through song, so the main point is congregational singing, not instruments, a band, or a choir (though all are permissible). The congregation is joining the heavenly choir to sing God’s praises and minister to God’s people; and in so doing we are engaging in warfare against our enemies like an army singing songs of victory on the frontlines of battle, or Israel marching and worshipping until the walls of Jericho fell. Worship is warfare.
2. Confession of Sins and Faith
God is faithful and forgives His people. Each week we confess our sins and our faith through corporate prayer, Scripture readings, and readings from our creeds and confessions. Instead of offering sacrifices on an altar, we trust in the perfect sacrifice of Christ and offer ourselves as a living sacrifice by faith. We kneel before the Lord in humble dependance, trusting in Him alone as our Savior, and committing ourselves to serve Him alone as our Lord.
3. Consecration
God equips His people for works of service by the ministry of the Word and prayer. We believe God’s Word prepares us for life in this world and the world to come. In obedience to God’s Word we devote ourselves to the public reading of scripture and to preaching and teaching the Word of God in season and out of season (1 Tim 4:13; 2 Tim 4:1-5). The sermon is always based on a text from the Bible. The goal of the sermon is to feed God’s flock healthy doctrine that informs our minds, transforms our hearts, and reforms our lives according to God’s Word. We need all of God’s Word for all of life.
4. Communion
God nourishes His people at the Table. We take the Lord’s Supper every Sunday. Though Communion is a time of reflection, it is also a joyful time of fellowship, prayer, and encouragement. In Communion we are reminded of the gospel and God’s glorious gospel promises. Though a nutritious meal is bound to have things in it that don’t always taste as good as pizza or the like, in the Bible the best feasts always include the best bread and the best wine. After God’s people draw near to God in worship they commune with God and His people around His table in a feast. In the Old Covenant that was feasts like Passover and the like, but in the New Covenant it’s the Lord’s Supper, pointing us forward to the great Marriage Supper of the Lamb to come. We partake of good bread that reminds us of our good Lord and Savior who lived for us, died for us, rose again for us, and whose Kingdom and glory will leaven the whole world. We taste and see that the Lord is good remembering that He gave wine to gladden the heart of man (Psalm 104:15), even making and saving the best wine for those whom He calls to feast with Him.1 So, after being called, confessing our sin and our faith, and being consecrated by God’s Word, in joy do we feast and fellowship with the Lord around His table. This is the heart of our Covenant Renewal Worship.
5. Commission
God sends His people on mission with His blessing. A minister of the Word offers a benediction and charges us to go out into the world as sheep among wolves, light among darkness, to take the cross to the culture.
This is our weekly pattern that lays the foundation for us to build on each week for God’s glory. Covenant Renewal Worship does not mean that our covenant with God has a set amount of time on it, and that it might expire like a lease if we do not renew it. Our covenant with God is eternal and will not expire. But it is alive, and is designed to grow and flourish. As intimacy renews marriage, or as a meal renews the body, so also the worship of God renews our covenant with Him, and enables us to live for Him all the more.
Each Lord’s Day we come together as the Church Militant with the Church Triumphant to worship the Triune God. As we worship together heaven is opened up to us, and we worship with the heavenly hosts. We experience the very culture of heaven as we worship with heaven each Sunday. And through this we are equipped and commissioned to take the culture of heaven itself and our Lord’s Day liturgy out into the world. We go out with what we’ve received from the Lord in hopes that by God’s grace His will would be done and His Kingdom would come in us, in our homes, in our neighborhoods, in this city, and out to the ends of the earth.
We fight against a culture of death with the culture of life, with the very culture of Christ, the culture of heaven itself. And every area of our lives are part of this. There are no neutral areas. Everything we are, everything we think, say, and do matters. It all has great purpose. Which is why we are seeking to bring every area of life into joyful submission to the Lordship of Christ. And our worship is at the heart of this endeavor. Our Covenant Renewal Worship is the foundation upon which our entire lives are built. So, join us this Sunday and build your life on Christ the Solid Rock.
In Christ’s service and yours,
Nick Esch
1. Though unleavened bread or leavened bread is permissible in Communion, I believe leavened is more faithful to the Christ-focused point of the Lord’s Supper. It reminds us that Jesus is risen and that we have been raised to newness of life with Him, and will be raised fully and finally with Him on the last Day. It also reminds us of the leaven of the Kingdom that is spreading throughout the world. And it seems that the Lord’s Supper was done with a common loaf, which means it should be done with the type of bread we would usually use at dinner, which for us means leavened. You can read more about this by clicking HERE. Along with the bread, though grape juice is similar to wine, and therefore is likely permissible (especially for those who can’t drink alcohol), I believe wine is what is prescribed in Communion. Wine is what was used in all of the biblical feasts, and what will be at the final feast, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Wine is a good gift from God meant to gladden our hearts. It reminds us of God’s victory over His enemies, and the joy and delight that we have in Christ. And so, not only is it what was used by Christ and His disciples, but it illustrates the point of Communion in a way that grape juice cannot. Therefore, for all these reasons and more I believe that leavened bread and real wine is what should be used in Communion. You can read more about why we should use wine by clicking HERE.Again, certain substitutions are permissible, but not preferable; especially since the Bible stresses that eating the same bread and drinking the same drink is a sign of our unity together (see 1 Corinthians 10-11).