Last week we considered the call to worship, which signals the beginning of worship, being God’s call from his Word to his people to gather together and worship him. It is the beginning of a dialogue between God and his people that continues throughout the service.

Before we move on, it is important to consider the real effect of the call to worship. In a very real way it ushers us into the presence of God spiritually. Now, being modern or even postmodern in our grasp of reality, we have a tendency to think in terms of real things being physical things. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The spiritual is just as real as the physical. And when the call to worship is issued, the people of God are gathered spiritually around the throne of God in a way that is simply not true the rest of the week when we are by ourselves or in our homes with family. Having gathered around his throne, at All Saints, we hear from him once more before we respond.

We read a Psalm (or part of one, or perhaps more than one, depending on the length of the Psalms) as part of a three year cycle of reading all the way through the Psalms. The Psalms, taken as a whole, express the full range of Christian emotion. In so doing, they teach us how to pray to God and how to respond to the various circumstances of the Christian life, whether suffering of any sort, sin and guilt, lament, joy, thanksgiving, etc. We also find, upon careful meditation, that the Psalms speak of Christ in his person or work or at times are even, with surprisingly clarity, written in the voice of Christ.

God calling us together to worship him by his Word and speaking to us in the Psalms, we respond with song. We will find in the coming weeks that while song is not our only response, it is perhaps our most frequent response to God’s Word. In this first song we typically sing praise to God as we enter into his presence together. At All Saints, we are what some would call an “inclusive psalmody” congregation. That is, we sing both hymns and the Psalms. Some sing only hymns; some only Psalms. We sing both. Scripture is filled with examples of God’s people responding to him with songs of praise, and we rejoice to add our voices to theirs as the song of God’s praise echoes throughout the history of redemption. And because our song is a response to his grace and mercy and love in Christ it is only right that we should lift our voices with strong singing, letting our praise ring out.

Next week we will consider the Prayer of Invocation, which brings the first part of our service, God Calls His People to Worship, to its conclusion.

I hope to see you Sunday!
Pastor Matt