Church and Worship

Church today is the place where Christians go on Sunday as an assembly of His people to hear a sermon about God’s Word, sing hymns and worship.

What does God tell us in His Word about worship? What is His purpose in these assemblies together on His day? He may have many but one purpose must be that His people learn more about Him and more about what He expects of them in this, His world. We learn these things through our personal study of that Word and through the instruction we receive from those of His people that He has given the gift of teacher (Eph. 4:11).

God’s purpose here is that we learn enough of His Word to be able to teach others so that they may teach yet others. The idea is to so increase the numbers of God’s people that they grow to such a great extent that the nations, the whole world, is taught to obey all God’s commandments (Matt. 28:18-20). In other words, God’s people are all to be messengers of His truth and are thereby to be His servants in this world-wide conversion activity, one that will surely come to pass:

And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.   (Rev. 11:15).

Clearly, to become teachers, God’s people must first learn and understand the subject matter they are to teach. The process of making teachers then has two parts: first coming to an understanding of the material to be taught and second, having the desire to teach. The first is intellectual, the second is emotional. To be a teacher, one must know what is to be taught and also must have a desire to teach.

If the purpose of the preacher should be to fulfil God’s purpose, to make teachers of the congregation. To do this he must seek to develop their ability as well as their desire to teach. He must not use his pulpit as a means of merely pumping up his audience to an emotional high, one that hopefully will bring them back next Sunday!

Yes, its important that they come back but the preacher must remember that the greater purpose is not to merely build a congregation that keeps coming back. It is to increase, to multiply! the number of teachers that go out and teach others.

It would appear that the great majority of church leaders have missed this point. This is a consequence of the widespread, long-term influence of an utterly false doctrine: dispensational theology. This doctrine teaches, contrary to God’s Word, that what Scripture says must happen will never happen!  It says that such teaching is wrong. It says that God loses, that the world as a whole will never be saved.