When you worship with a bunch of other believers, you can look around and connect to all kinds of stimuli.
It might be a stage and screen, lighting sometimes bright sometimes dim often colorful, hearing each other singing and clapping and Amen-ing. It might be an ornate altar, stained glass windows and the sounds of a pipe organ echoing through the sanctuary.
Or maybe the water of baptism or the bread and wine of holy communion, a big cross, a choir or vocalist, a pastor in vestments or V-neck shirt.
These are the horizontal components of worship. Good things!
When you worship with a bunch of other believers, you can look up and connect to Jesus your Savior.
The divine grace and guidance of Jesus speak through the Spirit’s Word into your soul. The Father’s love in the sacrifice of his Son forgives your sins.
Prayers deeply embedded in the longings, the hopes and fears, the delights and joys of your heart ascend to the throne of the living Lord Jesus.
The death, burial and resurrection of Jesus unite you with him by the promise of baptism. The real presence of Jesus fills you to the brim as you eat and drink, with no room in your righteous standing for any sin or guilt.
Praise and glory that is not fitting for anything or anyone other than Jesus emits from your lips and hands and entire being upward, upward, beyond this world to where holy angels worship Him, too.
This is the vertical component of worship. Better things!
Looking around is good. Looking up is better. We worship Jesus. Not screens or pipe organs. We worship Jesus. Not sacred traditions or powerful preachers. We worship Jesus. Not the voice of the congregation or upbeat worship songs. We worship Jesus.
So the question is: how do the horizontal blessings of worship relate to the greater vertical blessing? They must be servants and not masters. When they become masters, then God includes us in his complaint issued through Isaiah, “Stop bringing meaningless offerings … I cannot bear your worthless assemblies … your appointed festivals I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them” (Isaiah 1:13-14).
Worship practices and sacrifices and the temple itself became bigger than God himself in the hearts of people he loved.
So how do we keep them in their place? God leads the way. He started with Isaiah himself who saw “the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple” (Isaiah 6:1). No room for any greater glory in that temple. It belonged to the Lord, and Isaiah saw it.
Holy angels bowed before him. Doorposts and thresholds shook and glorified him. Smoke and a burning coal and an angel’s word glorified God in horizontal worship that made vertical worship the bigger, better thing.
Worship Jesus more. Explore and enjoy more vertical worship.
PRAYER: Thank you, Jesus, for worship with other believers that glorifies you and is blessed by your amazing grace. Help me understand and appreciate the role of horizontal worship elements, to heighten my joy of vertical worship expressions. And worship you more. Amen.
SPIRITUAL NEXT STEP: Read Psalm 95:1-7 and Psalm 96:1-5 and verse by verse identify each line as vertical or horizontal worship. Discuss in your group why you answered the way you did. Give some examples of vertical and horizontal worship in your church.