The Importance of a Sacred Place
A third current undermining worship is a prevailing misconstruction of the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. Worship under the Old Covenant operated under types and shadows —many of the practices and duties foreshadowed the redemption which came forth in our Lord (Colossians 2: 16—17; Hebrews 10:1). Worship under the Old Covenant reflected a time of immaturity, whereas under the New Covenant God's people have been able to “grow up”, graduating from the schoolroom of the ceremonial law to the reality in Christ (Galatians 3: 24—25).
Moreover, worship under the Old Covenant was geographically centric—revolving around the land of Israel in general and Jerusalem in particular, where God established His presence and Name. In the New Covenant, the land of promise has expanded to encompass the entire world: therefore, there is no one central location of worship any longer. Our Lord clearly and explicitly announced that this was to be the case (John 4: 21—24; Matthew 18:20).
Thus, the types and shadows which pointed to Christ's coming and redemption have been dismantled in the New Covenant. Moreover, the rules and regulations and institutions of worship centred around the temple have been transformed into universal application and are to be carried out everywhere and in every place where believers gather.
It is vitally important to grasp that the movement from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant was thus not a progress from the outward to the inward, but an intensification of both the outward and the inward aspects of holy living and worship. Thus, the deep inner longings for God revealed in the lives of the psalmists under the Old Covenant are to be intensified and universalised in the New Covenant. When the Sons of Korah declare in Psalm 84, for example, “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts. My soul longs, yes faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the Living God.” (Psalm 84: 1—2), in the New Covenant, these expressions and longings are made more full and intense and complete (including the involvement of the entirety of personality—soul, heart, flesh, as in the text) and the dwelling place of God where He meets with His people is in every place where they gather in His Name to worship. For that place and that gathering we are to long and yearn.
One of the most egregious trivialisations of public worship in our day is manifested in the loss of a sense of a holy place. The holiness of the place derives from the public worship which takes place there, not from the place in itself. Thus, when Paul and Silas went to the riverbank outside Philippi when Jewish people gathered regularly for worship, that open air venue was a holy place. When people gather in house churches, or lease school halls, or classrooms the same applies. Thus, we believe it to be a spiritual and holy practice formally to consecrate the space so to be used for public worship. The fact that for the remaining six days it will be used for common or profane activities matters not at all. The appropriate liturgical forms and prayer for such a service of consecration would be the consecration of the first temple by Solomon, as recorded in II Chronicles 6 and 7.
It is when God's people understand the import of this service and this consecration and use these prayers of consecration as they sanctify their house churches or the school buildings or commercial premises in which they gather for worship, that they will take great strides in recovering the central importance and holiness and glory, and greatness, and power of public worship.
When the congregation gathers for worship believing in the holiness of the place in which they gather—that God has established His Name and presence there, and that He promises to hear and respond to His people as they gather there in a way more profoundly and powerfully than at any other time or place, then public worship will rise rapidly up the priority list to the very top.
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