Once more I am going to quote from the ninth chapter of Michael Horton’s Or-di-nar-y: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World (Zondervan, 2014). That chapter, from which I have quoted thrice already, is titled, you may remember, “God’s ecosystem.”
In that chapter Horton is stressing the organic idea of the church – the saints’ spiritual life together in Christ, which is ever being sustained and growing in God’s garden through the “ordinary” means of grace, especially the preaching of the gospel and the sacraments.
Toward the end of this ninth chapter, Horton stresses the vital importance of ensuring that the young people of the church (recall that last time we quoted something about the importance of having the children of the church in the worship services) not only have their times of fellowship and activity together, but that they also are taught well the doctrines of their faith, so that they are grounded in Christ and His truth. In that connection he makes some closing points about their life in the church too, which is applicable for them but for all of us who are members of Christ’s body in its visible form on earth.
Listen carefully to these words also:
But it’s not only a matter of the right content and method of instruction. [He is referring to good catechism teaching by the pastor.] We also grow more and more in our union with Christ and his body through intentional and structured social practices ordained by Christ. Recall the ordinary [There’s that key word again!] weekly ministry in Acts 2: ‘So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers’ (2:41-42).
What place does my baptism have even now in daily life? What does this tell me about who my closest relatives are? Even more than husband and wife, we are brother and sister in Christ. Even more than children in a natural family, we are coheirs and adopted children together with the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit. Am I the beneficiary of and submissive ‘to the teaching and the fellowship’ of Christ’s undershepherds? What is being given to me, done for me and to me, in the Lord’s Supper, as I am drawn out of my self-enclosed cocoon to cling to Christ in faith and to my brothers and sisters in love?
How do ‘the prayers’ shape my own participation in Christ and his body, so that even when I pray in private or with my family, I am still doing so with Christ and his church? Some of the prayers are sung as well. Do these songs make ‘the word of Christ dwell in you richly’ (Col 3:16)? Are youth group trips planned in sync with the wider church activities, or do they regularly draw the young people away from the church, even on occasion the ordinary public service on the Lord’s Day?
And then Horton closes this chapter with these inspiring words about our life together in the church in light of our glorious hope:
Yet it is especially in Christ’s body that the new world – the real world – comes alive to us. Observing the health, wealth, and happiness of the wicked, Asaph confesses, ‘My feet almost stumbled’ (Ps 73:2). But then he entered the sanctuary and everything began to fall into place (73: 16-28). Similarly, every time we hear God’s Word, witness a baptism, receive the Supper, and join in common confession, prayer, and praise, the familiar world of the work week seems like a passing shadow. Its siren songs become faint as we hear the strains of a stirring symphony approaching. We begin to taste morsels of the wedding feast that is being prepared. Even through these ordinary means, something extraordinary has arrived, is arriving, will arrive. But we wait for it patiently [pp.187-89].
Does that not fill you with longing for the morrow, and another day in God’s house with His saints?! There is no greater privilege, no higher blessing than this. Do you “hear the strains of a stirring symphony approaching”?
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