Directives On How We Should Behave
During Public Worship (I)

Directive 1

Prepare for public worship with quietness and prayer. Come early (not late) and begin the Lord's Day by praying alone, and/or with your family. Do not rush to church with a carnal heart. The man who does not seek God before worship is in danger of possessing a carnal heart. Do not think that God is only to be worshipped in church and not at home.

God may be merciful to meet with a person who comes to church with an unprepared heart. God may open his eyes and heart and save him. But God did not make any specific promise that He will do this. Those who worship God in Church but despise Him in his heart may expect God also to despise him.

Consider how short your life is, redeem time to serve God. And join the servants of God to worship him and pray for the salvation of your loved ones. Hear what God has to say about your soul through His appointed ministers. Do not despise the preaching of the word by God's anointed servants.

Directive 2

Do not enter into worship with a superstitious or indifferent attitude or a lack of reverence. Do not think that by bending your knees and saying a few prayers in a careless and ignorant way is worship. Similarly, do not think that just being in church for an hour will save your soul. Do not think that by being in a sacred building or being related to the people in Church will give you a special honour before God.

Although God is everywhere present, yet it does not mean that everything we do is related to God. In fact, in a culture where people wear very little clothing, reverence may even be expressed by having more clothing on! Be properly attired for worship every Lord's day. My point is that those things that appear most holy may even be carried out in an unholy attitude.

God is the God of both the soul and the body. And God must be worshipped by both in spirit and in truth, and in the beauty of holiness. The body and soul must be united in worship in spirit and truth.

Directive 3

If you come to church, come early. When we come early, we do show that worship of God is important to us. We must prefer public worship more than our own private worship or leisure or other activities. And we must never allow any other business to keep us away from sabbath worship, not work or move or vacation or children's play or any worldly activity.

Directive 4

Thank God for the preacher who explains the word clearly to us. Do not be uninterested about whom you hear, as if you only want to listen to the best preachers, but listen with humility and attentiveness and not sleeping in the pews. And do not be choosy about those with whom you worship together with. But when the best is not within your means, do not refuse to attend simpler forms of worship. If we are always choosy about worship, we will join no one in worship!

Directive 5

Do not be lazy and be less attentive when you are listening to a minister that may be seemed lacking in abilities. Sleeping or reading anything other than God's word during worship is an act of irreverence to God. Pay careful attention to the word of God that is read or preached to you. Receive it with love and reverence for God. It was the reading and the meditating of the law that David said the godly delights in. The sacred Scriptures can convert a soul. It has the power to make us wise to salvation. Even Jesus Christ went into the synagogues every Sabbath despite the fact that the law was read by some scribes. There are thousands of people who cannot read and must depend on the hearing of the word. Every sentence of Scripture is to be attended to, for it has God's power and meaning. And even if we have nothing more in worship than the reading of the Scriptures; and that is being done by a weak man, a holy soul will certainly gain much from it.

(To Be Continued....)

Jack Sin, Adapted and edited from Richard Baxter (1615-91),
Christian Directory, Chap IX - Christian Ecclesiastics.