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Psalm 84 says, “How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts.” The words “dwelling place” refer to God’s tabernacle. The tabernacle was the place that God had chosen to come down and meet with his people in the wilderness. The God of heaven and earth had descended to meet with his people that they might call upon his name and worship him in the beauty of his holiness.
Notice the fervency of the psalmist; he is describing his love to come to worship. Deep within his being he longs, even faints, to think about the worship of God.
Worship in the Old Testament was filled with joy!
We often think of Old Testament worship as full of requirements, laws, and sacrifices so that there must have been no joy in coming to worship. But here the psalmist is rebuking the idea that the worship of God was some sort of chore, or some hard demand God put upon his people. That is not what it was at all.
The psalmist is describing that he found coming to the Lord’s house as the exact opposite, it’s lovely. How lovely is your tabernacle! It’s as if he says, “The worship of the Lord thrills my soul; it is my greatest passion, to be where God dwells. The worship of you, O Lord, is the most satisfying thing I have ever done with my life.”
This isn’t the only place such a description of worship is given. Psalm 27 states,
One thing have I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
and to inquire in his temple. (Ps. 27:4)
The worship of the Lord for these saints was the ultimate blessing.
The psalmist is speaking about the spiritual blessings that flow from God’s presence.
Why is worship so important? The Psalmist is not putting emphasis on places of stone or wood nor the physical structure of the tabernacle. He is speaking about the spiritual blessings that flow from God’s presence as he had chosen to come down and tabernacle among them. There is an understanding presented to us in this psalm that when God’s people gathered corporately for worship on the Sabbath, there was something happening that you couldn’t get anywhere else.
You will notice in Psalm 84 that the psalmist’s heart and his flesh are crying out for the living God:
My soul longs, yes, faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and flesh sing for joy
to the living God. (Ps. 84:2)
God himself had chosen to come and dwell among them in that place.
The Lord always wanted his people to call the Sabbath a delight.
For the Old Testament saints, it wasn’t a question of how often they had to come to worship. Forcing worship would be the most unnatural thing to do in light of what they understood. The Lord always wanted his people to call the Sabbath a delight (Isa. 58:13). Whenever it became a duty of forced servitude, you ended up with people drawing near with their mouths while their hearts were far from him. They went through the forms, devoid of sincerity of heart, and they missed the intention of the Sabbath.
For the Old Testament saints, the whole Sabbath was a day of rest and gladness. They gathered morning and evening for corporate worship. We see this in the only designated psalm for the Sabbath, Psalm 92. As the worshippers would come to the LORD’s house on the Sabbath, they would sing,
It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
to sing praises to your name, O Most High;
to declare your steadfast love in the morning,
and your faithfulness by night. (Ps. 92:1-2)
This is remarkable. The only psalm with a superscription expressly designating this as a psalm for the Sabbath presents a pattern of God’s people gathering for worship morning and evening.
People are spiritually languishing because of a disregard for the Sabbath.
It’s sad in our day that there is so much ignorance not only as to what worship is, but why this is needed. Today, people love to quote Jesus who said that we no longer worship on this mountain or on that mountain but in spirit and in truth, and they have taken this as license to say that they no longer need the church because we have the Spirit. This may have a sound of wisdom, but it has led to something very wrong.
There is a reason God had to give a commandment in the New Testament to let no one neglect the assembling together of God’s people as is the manner of some (Heb. 10:24-25). The Scriptures warned that there would be a problem of people saying they don’t need to come to church. We live in those times. And I suggest that people are spiritually languishing because of this disregard.
Is it too much to come one day out of our week to worship the Lord?
It is a great tragedy that people today treat the worship of the Lord as a burden to their already busy lives. Can you imagine what God is hearing from someone who asks, “Do I have to worship the Lord?” Has the Lord burdened us? Is it too much to come one day out of our week to sing to him, enjoy him, acknowledge his goodness, and receive his grace to us in our struggle as sinners?
In this light, the excuse of someone who says that they don’t need to come and worship the Lord has nothing to do with being pushed or pulled, but it has everything to do with what Jesus said about men loving the darkness more than the light. Coming to the light is only welcomed by those who are assured that the Lord has been gracious in making his face to shine upon them.
There is a power in worship that cannot be experienced elsewhere.
When the child of God knows the smiling countenance of the Lord, worship is the most splendid blessing of his life. Here a power is given that cannot be found anywhere else. Christ calls us to him that he might give us the food and drink of eternal life. Christ stoops down and washes our feet. This is where gospel is announced, that Christ died for our sins, that he rose for our justification, and that he is coming again to take us to be with him. There is a power in worship that cannot be experienced elsewhere.
Pastor and theologian James Boice once stated,
There is something to be experienced of God in church that is not quite so easy to experience elsewhere. Otherwise, why have churches? If it is only instruction we need, we can get that as well by an audio tape or a book. If it is only fellowship, we can find that equally well, perhaps better, in a small home gathering. There is something to be said for the sheer physical singing of the hymns, the sitting in the pews, the actual looking to the pulpit and gazing on the pulpit Bible as it is expounded, the tasting of the sacrament and the very atmosphere of the place set apart for the worship of God that is spiritually beneficial.
Here, in worship, we are set upon a rock. Here God looks upon the face of his anointed and blesses us. Come to the waters and be refreshed. Come, put your foot into the hands of the Savior and he will cleanse you from all your sins. Come, worship the Lord!
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What Is the Church? (Volume 17) (Crucial Questions) by R. C. Sproul
This article is adapted from “Why You Should Go to Church” at agradio.org.
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