How can we most glorify God on the earth? How can we experience most of his presence? How can we see him most clearly revealed? How can we get the maximum possible spiritual benefits from the Lord? How can we do the most good to our fellow believers? What is the best antidote to backsliding and apostasy? Where can we experience the Lord doing his greatest works on earth? What is the closest experience to heaven we can get in this world?

What do you think? What would you suggest?

They’re not trivial questions, are they? Surely every true child of God should been keenly interested in the answers to these questions. But I wonder how many of us would be surprised at the answer. For the answer is the same to each of them, at least according to the Puritan pastor David Clarkson who ministered in London in the 1680s, first as the great John Owen’s assistant, and then as his successor. The answer, says Clarkson, is the public worship services of your church.

Was that your answer? I wonder how many Christians today would say that going to church is the best way to accomplish all those things.

Clarkson’s thesis is based on Psalm 87.2: The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob. His point was that the Lord delights in the public worship of his gathered people (in Jerusalem) even more than their private worship as individuals or families (in the dwelling places of Jacob). Since the death and resurrection of Christ, in the New Testament the people of God are the living stones comprising the temple of God, built upon Christ as the chief cornerstone (1Cor 3.16; Eph 2.21f; 1Pt 2.5). So the gates of Zion today are found wherever a true church gathers to worship the Triune God in spirit and in truth. And the Lord delights in that worship even more than all our personal devotions.

This doesn’t mean that the Lord doesn’t love it when we read the Bible and pray to him on our own—simply that he loves our public gathering for worship even more. Clarkson gives twelve biblical arguments for why public worship should be even more pleasing to God than private (I’ll list them at the end).

His challenge is clear, simple and even more relevant today than in the 17^th century. As it is with the Lord, so it should be with his people. If the Lord delights most in public worship, so should his people. Do you?

If public worship is the most spiritually significant, momentous thing we can do on earth, is it any wonder that the Devil attacks it more than anything else. We are constantly tempted to devalue the public worship services of our church, for all kinds of reasons.

· Perhaps through individualism: what really matters is what I do on my own, what God says to me personally.

· Perhaps through pride: ‘I can look after myself spiritually; I don’t need pastors, elders, deacons, and other Christians.

· For some the temptation might lie in self-preservation: maybe you’ve been badly hurt by other Christians and you want to protect yourself by withdrawing from church life.

· For others it could be arrogance: you don’t like being challenged about your sins; your itching ears want to hear only nice, pleasant, encouraging things.

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