These exhortations are explorations of what are we doing on Sundays. My goal is to go through every dimension of our liturgy and give a basic biblical foundation for each. This morning, however, I would like to take a step back and define something that we generally take for granted. I would like to define the idea of liturgy. You may have experienced that when you mention the word liturgy people who are not familiar with the idea may take a step back and wonder what has happened to you. They may think that you have embraced Romanism or Orthodoxy. Generally, they rarely consider that the Protestant reformation was a recovery of true biblical liturgy. Further, they never consider that the word liturgy is a biblical word. In Roman 12 we are called to offer our bodies to God, which is our “reasonable service.” This latter phrase “reasonable service” is the familiar Greek word “latreia,” which is translated as “liturgy” or “service” in the English language. This Greek word appears throughout the New Testament in various ways. Usually it can be translated as “serving or ministering.” Our liturgy is God’s service unto us and our active service rendered unto the Lord. The word should not frighten any of us; our Reformation forefather used it frequently. Peter says that we are all priests and kings who offer our services unto God. The priests offered sacrifices unto God. These sacrifices weren’t offered as they pleased. They didn’t say, “…today, our liturgy will be done the way we want to. We are going to sacrifice an animal in a different way than before.” This was never the way they thought. They knew the consequences of their action. To put it simply, “liturgy is a way of offering our service unto God in the way that He has commanded His people in His word.” The truth is everyone has a liturgy. The reality, however, is that very few in our modern day has thought about how the Bible speaks to this issue. Our desire at Providence is to be intentionally liturgical realizing that no longer do we sacrifice animals unto God as our reasonable liturgy, but that we are the living sacrifices to God, and this is the beginning of understanding biblical liturgy.
Prayer: Teach us, O Christ, to render our service unto You even as you serve us this morning.
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