The Promises are Attached to the "Food" We Partake on Sundays

Understanding the Christian life as a pilgrimage and worship as manna in the wilderness reminds us who live in an industrial culture that our walk in faith and obedience is not mechanical. Believers are not robots whose batteries are recharged by ambitious church programs, devotional retreats, or spiritual awakenings. Rather, God has made us into new creatures who need regular sustenance. The means of grace, that is, “the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God,” are the food he has provided to feed the church.

This organic metaphor should instill more humility in our understanding of the Christian life as well as greater gratitude for the privileges we enjoy as God’s sons and daughters when we gather for worship. We are in warfare and constantly tempted to sin…

In many Christian circles today believers are tempted not to avail themselves of the “ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God.” They sometimes think that lots of church activities and parachurch organizations will provide the substances God’s people really need. But God has only promised to bless the ministry of the Word that constitutes Christian worship. Undoubtedly, many nonchurch activities may be beneficial. But God’s promises are not attached to them in the same way that they are to elements of worship. In sum, the manna of worship both gathers and perfects God’s people who are in the wilderness of this world. The oracles of God are essential to the health of God’s pilgrim people.

D.G. Hart and John R. Muether, With Reverence and Awe: Returning to the Basics of Reformed Worship (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 2002), p. 57-58