The Fourth Commandment, Corporate Worship, and the Strength of Culture

Corporate worship services at our church begin with a call to worship. A passage of Scripture, usually taken from the Psalms, is read aloud reminding the congregation of God’s invitation to worship and give thanks. We come before the Lord responsively, not presumptively.

What’s interesting about those invitations to worship is they sound more like commands than requests. In fact, understood properly, they are commands. They remind us that worship, especially gathered, corporate worship, is an act of obedience. It is God’s divine right to receive worship from all men.

The Fourth Commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8), keeps this obligation before us. In Christian life, the Sabbath Day is like a divine down marker, reminding us what play to run on the first day of the week. It’s illegal to punt on the Lord’s Day. You must observe it.

Think about the example Chick-Fil-A sets. They don’t just close to let their employees have a day off. They close to obey the Fourth Commandment. Even if you want to violate the Sabbath, employ a restaurant worker, and eat delicious chicken, Chick-Fil-A says, “It’s not my pleasure.”

Today, many professing Christians have adopted the idea they can worship from home as well as with the gathered body. Some of these folks actually consider themselves to be “spiritual giants.” From their perspective, authentic Christians “break free” from these expectations and live by their spiritual “intuition.” Contrary to what they say, God gave us the Sabbath Day and gathered corporate worship as a gift to strengthen our weakness and improve our culture. The spiritually strong go to church.

Elton Trueblood observes,“It is the common human experience to need to be reminded of what we know to be true. To provide the needed reminders is one of the chief functions of the glorious rhythm of the week, which the Sabbath makes possible, and the services of public worship, which the institution of the Sabbath facilitates.” Weekly Christian worship functions like the stud walls in a home. It provides the forms of the Christian life. Together, we sing the songs of Zion, profess what is true, listen to the Scriptures read and explained, and hear our great God pronounce his covenant love upon us.

What?! You can do without all this? You’re just fine without God’s people, God’s Word, and reminders of his faithful love? Exactly what sort of Christian are you? Certainly not a native of the Zion where Christ dwells and to whose blessed shores we travel.

By nature, we are weak and frail (1 Corinthians 1:20ff.). We need all the support we can get. We are not slaves in God’s kingdom, driven to bake bricks in the hot sun. No! We are citizens of his kingdom. Therefore, he ordains our rest once per week.  And, he heightens our joy in that rest by ordaining gathered corporate worship (Psalm 100).

For Christian culture to grow and remain strong, we need the Sabbath Day and corporate worship. It is this institution alone “in our civilization whose primary purpose is to keep alive the moral and spiritual principles without which a decent world is impossible.”