IS LISTENING WORSHIP?

It has been the boast of some that high churchmen go to their churches to pray and worship God, but that low churchmen merely assemble to hear sermons.

Our reply is this: that albeit there may be some professing Christians who are guilty of this evil, it is not true of the people of God among us, and these are the only persons who ever will, in any church, really enjoy devotion.

Moreover, if the observation be meant to imply that the hearing of sermons is not worshiping God, it is founded on a gross mistake, for rightly to listen to the gospel is one of the noblest parts of the adoration of the Most High. It is a mental exercise, when rightly performed, in which all the faculties of the spiritual man are called into devotional action.

Reverently hearing the Word exercises our humility, instructs our faith, irradiates us with joy, inflames us with love, inspires us with zeal, and lifts us up towards heaven.

Many a time a sermon has been a kind of Jacob’s ladder upon which we have seen angels of God ascending and descending, and the covenant God himself at the top thereof. We have often felt when God has spoken through his servants into our souls, “This is none other than the house of God, and the very gate of heaven.” We have magnified the name of the Lord and praised him with all our heart while he has spoken to us by his Spirit.

Hence there is not the wide distinction to be drawn between preaching and worship that some would suggest; for the one part of the service softly blends into the other, and the sermon frequently inspires the prayer and the hymn. True preaching is an acceptable adoration of God by the manifestation of his gracious attributes: the testimony of his gospel, which preeminently glorifies him, and the obedient hearing of revealed truth are an acceptable form of worship to the Most High and perhaps one of the most spiritual in which the human mind can be engaged.

-Charles Haddon Spurgeon

in Lectures to My Students