From one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, all mankind will come to worship before Me," says the LORD. Sermons
I. IN MEETING TOGETHER FOR PUBLIC WORSHIP WE FOLLOW THE NATURAL IMPULSE OF OUR OWN HEARTS, AS WELL AS OBEY THE COMMANDMENTS OF OUR GOD. To look up and pray is one of the most original and essential impulses of humanity, one of the commonest characteristics of the race. Prayer is properly associated with the whole circle of our relations with God. As spirits we are God's children, and God's erring, wilful children; we must find expression for our conscious need of spiritual blessings. Our bodies are the Divine creation, the care of Divine Providence, and out of the sense of the relation of our bodily life to God we are impelled to pray for temporal blessings. We are set in close associations one with another, as families; and as those having similar preferences and convictions; out of such relations come our united family and sanctuary worship. There are even larger associations into which we enter as fellow-citizens, fellow-countrymen, fellow-men. Our welfare in all these relationships directly depends on him who is Lord of natural laws, Lord of storms, Lord of pestilences, Lord of harvests, Lord of sunshine, Lord of the wrath of men, and Lord of their wealth. So far as we feel this aright we shall be impelled to say to every fellow-creature, made in the image of God, and made for God even as we are, "O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our Maker." We have not to seek for reasons that may prove persuasions to worship. What men have to seek for is excuse for their neglect of the universal worship. It is not sufficiently recognized that God deals with us collectively here on earth. We have no reason for assuming that there are separate churches in heaven; or organized families; or towns with local interests; or nations with national interests and national characteristics. These are all earthly conditions; and in these conditions is laid the basis for collective prayer, for public and united worship. The man that refuses to unite in public worship is breaking away from the claims of his common humanity; refusing to recognize the conditions under which God has placed him; and withholding the sympathy which his fellow-creatures have a right to demand from him. Further, it may be shown that in meeting for public or universal worship, we do but follow the indications that have been given us of the Divine will. In Jewish history great importance attached to large national gatherings for acts of worship. From the time of the great meeting between the Mounts Ebal and Gerizim down to the times of Messiah, there were three great religious meetings of the people every year, besides occasional special gatherings. The Jewish service included praise and prayer, in which the whole people might unite. The best men, such as David, turned from the joys of private devotion to the yet higher joys of God's house and worship. Our Lord set the example of private prayer, but the evangelists are careful to remind us that "he went, as he was wont, into the synagogue on the sabbath day." And the apostles urge the early Christians "not to forsake the assembling of themselves together." II. IN NEGLECTING PUBLIC WORSHIP WE HAVE TO DELUDE OURSELVES BY MAKING VERY UNWORTHY EXCUSES. TO put our reasons out into the light, to get them fairly expressed, is to make us feel ashamed of them. Some incline to say, "Your worship is not intended for us; it is meant only for those whom you call specially Christians, and we do not call ourselves by that name." Our worshipping arrangements have certainly been made on this principle; but the worship of God is for men, all men, everywhere. Whether men agree with our ideas or not, let them come and worship the God that made them, clothes them, feeds them, cares for them, loves them, and would save them from their sins. Perhaps most of those who stay away from worship do so in sheer heedlessness; they yield to the indifference which settles down on men who are simply living to self and sin. The real evil is that sinful man is indisposed to worship; the only shrine be cares for is the shrine of ease and self-indulgence. We must try to make God more real to men, and so get the persuasion of his love as the constraint, urging men to offer to him their "gold, frankincense, and myrrh." We must try to make the services of our sanctuaries more suitable for the expression of the universal dependence and the universal praise. Christian worship should be the best possible medium for lifting up the hearts of men, as men, unto God; the best utterance of the universal sense of the Divine Creator-hood. It should be man's acknowledgment of God, our God, the one God, the holy God, the redeeming God. It is "he that hath made us, and not we ourselves." It is he that "redeemeth our life from destruction." It is even he "that sent his Son into the world, that we might live through him." "Let us kneels" let us all kneel together, "before the Lord our Maker." - R.T.
For as the new heavens and the new earth. The bulk of the heathen world and also of Israel perish, but Israel's name and seed, i.e. Israel as a nation with the same ancestors and an independent name, remains for ever (cf. Jeremiah 31:35 f.; 33:20-26), as the new heaven and the new earth. And just because Israel's calling in regard to the heathen world is now fulfilled and all things are made new, the old fencing off of Israel from the heathen now comes to an end; and what qualifies for priestly and Levitical service in God's temple is no longer mere natural descent, but inner nobility The prophet thus represents to himself the Church of the future on a new earth and under a new heaven; but he is unable to represent the eternal in the form of eternity; he represents it to himself merely as an unending continuation of temporal history (ver. 23).(F. Delitzch, D. D.) (Prof. S. R. Driver, D. D.) (T. D. Woolsey.) The permanence of the Christian Church in the world, if it be a fact, is unlike all facts of history. Everything human decays and passes away. All institutions, forms of government, civilizations, have their day and decline. No one doubts that the old religions of India and its castes are doomed to perish. We cannot, therefore, be assured from history that Christianity may not perish also. Still when you look at its origin, its power of growth, its vitality, when everything around was dead; its changes of form joined to unchangeableness of principle; its power to correct evils within its pale; its predominance among the influences that act on mankind; its universal character, and its consciousness — so to speak — that the world is its own, you cannot feel it to be otherwise than quite probable that it is to be man's guide to the end of time.(T. D. Woolsey.) Though history is not prophecy, though it cannot with authority predict the universal and final sway of Christ's Gospel and of Christian institutions, it reveals, at the least, a working power, a tenacity of life, a hopefulness, a benevolent energy which are not inconsistent with stability and with continuance until the end of time.(T. D. Woolsey.) I. WE SHALL LOOK AT SEVERAL CAUSES TO WHICH IT IS NOT DUE: but to which, on a superficial view, it might be ascribed.1. It is not owing to strength borrowed from governments, the Church grew without help from the government; it grew also in spite of long efforts of the government to destroy it. 2. For is the stability of the Church due to the stability of its forms of discipline and order. These have passed through a great variety of changes, from the times of the nascent Church, when there was little of established order, down through the ages of hierarchy, to our times, when the Church thrives in a great variety of forms, and with varied theories of government. 3. Nor yet is the stability of the Church owing to the stability of theological systems. It grew, it almost reigned, before any received dogmatic statements of its sacred truth were current. It has outlived theories and expositions innumerable, and indeed nothing connected with Christianity has been more changing than the scientific arrangements of its truths. 4. Nor can the stability of the Church be explained by saying that it got the control of opinion and kept thought in leading strings, so that when science was emancipated, new conditions full of danger to the Church began. It arose in spite of a reigning heathen opinion and philosophy, which it overthrew and put another in the place. It has in its healthiest state favoured all knowledge in the confidence of being itself together with every other true thing from God. 5. Nor can the stability of the Church be attributed to the condescending patronage of large-minded men, who saw in its justice and humanity a help for the world to be found nowhere else, but yet did not believe in it themselves. II. TO WHAT, THEN, IS THE STABILITY OF THE CHURCH DUE? To this question it is no sufficient answer that the Holy Spirit is ever in and with the Church. For the Spirit's office is to act on men according to the laws of character by Divine realities. It is due — 1. To this: that the Gospel, on which the Church is built, works out some of the great problems which lie on the heart of man, in a way to give lasting peace and satisfaction to the soul. I refer to practical rather than to intellectual problems, although even the restless questionings of the mind either meet with an answer from the Divine oracles, or are carried up into a higher realm of truth. The power inherent in Christianity itself, as a way of reconciling God and man, and of raising man above sin by great truths and great hopes, is a real and permanent power. It is suited to all natures and capacities, to all races and times. 2. To those permanent features of the Gospel, which bind men together in a brotherhood pervaded by the spirit of love and fellowship. 3. To its self-reforming capacity. The human and the Divine have ever mingled and will ever mingle in the historical progress of Christianity, as they mingle in the development of a Christian life. There are unavoidable sources of corruption in the revolutions of society, in the growth of wealth, in the love of self-gratification, in the increase of worldly comforts. There are other sources in the ignorance of untrained Christians, in the ambition of the clergy and their love of dominion, in the rewards offered within the Church to the aspiring, in formalism, in a dead orthodoxy. At the lowest ebb of Christian life and knowledge there remain within the reach of the Church the sources of a better spiritual state, so that it can reform itself as it has done more than once.(1) As long as the Bible is acknowledged as an authority, there is an appeal to it from all other authorities, from popes, and councils, and philosophers, and the current opinion of the time.(2) There are at the times of greatest declension men who arc somehow led, .as we believe, by the Divine Spirit concurring with the Word, into a deeper experience; they rise above their times, they reach convictions which are irrepressible, they must proclaim to the world at any cost what they found out as the resting-places of their souls; they become the starting-points of a reform which sweeps over all Christian nations. 4. The stability of the Church is ensured by the stability of Christ. "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day and for ever." Doubt is of to day, but He is of all time. He is a permanent possession for the soul. He does not wear out in a lifetime. He is the permanent possession of the Church in all its ages and changes He does not wear out while there are men to long for redemption. (T. D. Woolsey.) People Isaiah, Israelites, Javan, Levites, Lud, Lydians, Meshech, Pul, Rosh, Tarshish, TubalPlaces Javan, Jerusalem, Lud, Pul, Tarshish, Tubal, ZionTopics Bow, Flesh, Mankind, Month, Moon, Pass, Sabbath, Says, Themselves, WorshipOutline 1. The glorious God will be served in humble sincerity5. He comforts the humble by showing the confusion of their enemies 7. With the marvelous growth 10. And the gracious benefits of the church 15. God's severe judgments against the wicked 18. The Gentiles shall have an holy church 24. And see the damnation of the wicked Dictionary of Bible Themes Isaiah 66:23 4251 moon 1355 providence Library A New Order of Priests and LevitesThink for a minute of the compass of this great promise. Evidently a high honor is here conferred. The connection leads us to see that not only a great promise but likewise a great privilege is herein implied. What is this privilege? It is that we shall be priests and Levites. Now, the priests or Levites were persons set apart to be God's peculiar property. When the firstborn were spared in Egypt, God claimed the firstborn to be his own, and he took the tribe of Levi to represent the firstborn; they … Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 17: 1871 Travailing for Souls "All Our Righteousnesses are as Filthy Rags, and we all do Fade as a Leaf, and Our Iniquities, Like the Wind, have Taken us Away. " And what Members of the Holy Body, which is the Church... The Universal Church. --Isa. Lxvi. 12, 23 Synagogues: their Origin, Structure and Outward Arrangements Peace Here Some one Will Say, this is Now not to Write of virginity... Fifth Sunday in Lent In the Dungeon of Giant Discourager How the Humble and the Haughty are to be Admonished. The Knowledge that God Is, Combined with the Knowledge that He is to be Worshipped. "To what Purpose is the Multitude of Your Sacrifices unto Me? Saith the Lord," Bunyan's Last Sermon --Preached July 1688. The Knowledge of God Mr. Bunyan's Last Sermon: "So Then they that are in the Flesh Cannot Please God. " Union and Communion with God the End and Design of the Gospel False Ambition Versus Childlikeness. Necessity of Contemplating the Judgment-Seat of God, in Order to be Seriously Convinced of the Doctrine of Gratuitous Justification. The Great Teacher The Necessity of Regeneration, Argued from the Immutable Constitution of God. How Christ is to be Made Use of as Our Life, in Case of Heartlessness and Fainting through Discouragements. Epistle xviii. To John, Bishop. 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