Three Thoughts After the Sermon

Three Thoughts After the Sermon 
By Vermon Pierre, Lead Pastor

Three things to highlight/remind you of from last Sunday’s sermon, “A God for Your Soul” (Ps 42-43):

1. This is a bit allegorical, but as I think of God calling us out of the dark corners of our soul and to his “holy hill” in worship (43:3), I can’t help but think of how Jesus died on a cross set up on the hill of Golgotha, a place known as “The Place of the Skull” according to Matthew 27:33. Because of what Jesus accomplished through his death and resurrection, this formerly cursed, morbid hill is now for the believer a place of worship, hope, and joy.

2. I made a point of emphasizing the special importance of the Sunday morning worship of the gathered church. I did so because I believe that, in our efforts to rightly point people to not think of church just as being a Sunday thing and to see every day as worship, we have ended up neglecting the unique significance of Sunday morning worship for our ongoing spiritual health and growth. Every Sunday is an opportunity for the believer to receive deep counseling and real comfort direct from the Lord. Fear and despair tend to shrivel up as light and truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ is mediated to your soul in worship.

3. That quote from Piper is so good that I’m going to post it again here:

“The basic movement of worship on Sunday morning is not to come with our hands full to give to God, as though he needed anything (Acts 17:25), but to come with our hands empty, to receive from God. And what we receive in worship is the fullness of God, not the feelings of entertainment. We ought to come hungry for God. We should come saying, “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Ps. 42:1–2). God is mightily honored when a people know that they will die of hunger and thirst unless they have God.

Nothing makes God more supreme and more central in worship than when a people are utterly persuaded that nothing—not money or prestige or leisure or family or job or health or sports or toys or friends—nothing is going to bring satisfaction to their sinful, guilty, aching hearts besides God. This conviction breeds a people who go hard after God on Sunday morning [and I would add here – “and also then go hard after God the rest of the week”].

They are not confused about why they are in a worship service. They do not view songs and prayers and sermons as mere traditions or mere duties. They see them as means of getting to God or God getting to them for more of his fullness—no matter how painful that may be for sinners in the short run.” (John Piper, God’s Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards)