Worship # 4

Worship: Its Priority, Principles, and Practice" (continued)

I grant freely that public worship may become a mere act of formality. Thousands of so-called Christians, no doubt, are continually going to churches and chapels, and getting no benefit from their attendance. Like Pharaoh's lean cattle, they are nothing bettered, but rather worse, more impenitent, and more hardened. No wonder that the ignorant Sabbath-breaker defends himself by saying, "For anything I can see, those who go nowhere on Sundays are just as good people as church-goers and chapel-goers." But we must never forget that the misuse of a good thing is no argument against the use of it. Once begin to refuse everything that is misused in this sinful world, and thee is hardly anything left for you that is good. Take a broader view of the question before you. Look at any district you like in England, and divide people into two great parties, worshipers and non-worshipers. I will engage you will find that there is far more good among those that worship than among those that do not. It does make a difference, whatever men may say. It is not true that worshipers and non-worshipers are all alike.

We ought never to forget the solemn words of the letter to the Hebrews, "not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together, as is the manner of some; but exhorting one another" (Hebrews 10:25). Let us act upon that exhortation, as long as we live, and through evil report and good report continue regular attendants at public worship. Let us not care for the bad example of many around us who rob God of his day, and never go up to his house from one end of the year to the other. Let us go on worshiping in spite of every discouragement, and let us not doubt that in the long run of life it does us good. Let us prove our own meetness for heaven by our feelings toward the earthly assemblies of God's people. Happy is that man who can say with David, "I was glad when they said to me, Let us go into the house of the Lord;" "I would rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness" (Psalm 122:1; 84:10).

~J. C. Ryle~

(continued with # 5)