According To The Prescribed Manner

How’s your worship? Is it stale? Is it nonexistent? Do you even go to church to worship the Father and Jesus in corporate fellowship with other believers? Some believe they do not need to attend church to worship God and while that is partially true I return to my first question. How’s your worship? Is the manner is which you worship lacking something…oh I don’t know…credibility?

If you found yourself in a place where your worship was lacking something, where might be the best place to turn? The Bible? Good guess! That would always seem like the best place to go for information about the things of God. It was no different in Nehemiah’s time:

    “Now on the second day the heads of the fathers’ houses of all the people, with the priests and Levites, were gathered to Ezra the scribe, in order to understand the words of the Law. And they found written in the Law, which the LORD had commanded by Moses, that the children of Israel should dwell in booths during the feast of the seventh month, and that they should announce and proclaim in all their cities and in Jerusalem, saying, ‘Go out to the mountain, and bring olive branches, branches of oil trees, myrtle branches, palm branches, and branches of leafy trees, to make booths, as it is written.’”(Nehemiah 8:13-15)

That was some Bible study! You have all the leaders of the clans, the priests and Levites, and their Bible teacher is Ezra, trained as a scribe and a priest. And Ezra was teaching from the Bible. What a concept! And guess what they found? God had prescribed a manner in which they were to worship and with what to worship. When they discovered this marvelous worship in their Bible they immediately went out and made preparations to return to the practice of the Feast of Tabernacles.

    “Then the people went out and brought them and made themselves booths, each one on the roof of his house, or in their courtyards or the courts of the house of God, and in the open square of the Water Gate and in the open square of the Gate of Ephraim. So the whole assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths and sat under the booths; for since the days of Joshua the son of Nun until that day the children of Israel had not done so. And there was very great gladness. Also day by day, from the first day until the last day, he read from the Book of the Law of God. And they kept the feast seven days; and on the eighth day there was a sacred assembly, according to the prescribed manner.” (Nehemiah 8:16-18)

What would you say to someone who had not been to church in a long time or maybe ever and he or she was interested in attending church? Would you have somewhere to invite them? Do you have a church home, a sacred assembly where they worship according to the prescribed manner?

Maybe you do not have a church home today; perhaps you are a church trout swimming from one church to the next waiting to finally find the “perfect” church. If you find one whatever you do, don’t go in…you’ll ruin it for the others.

All joking aside, we are made to worship and without a corporate body of believers to fellowship with, a believer without a church home is an orphan in this world. Without a church home you are a stranger in this world and it should not be this way.

    “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:19-22)

Jesus designed His church as a place for which to worship; a corporate body where the cornerstone is Christ our Lord and the foundation is the Gospel.

Anything else is not according to the prescribed manner.

In Christ
Dave
Ps. 37:4

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