The call to worship at the start of our services is really the call to enter into something that has already been going on. It is an invitation to join our voices to the everlasting song, and to step into—even if for a moment—the wonders of the world to come.

Near the opening of his prophecy, Isaiah envisions a time when a multitude of people will come together at the house of the Lord:

It shall come to pass in the latter days
that the mountain of the house of the Lord
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be lifted up above the hills;
and all the nations shall flow to it. (Isa. 2:2)

The context is clearly that of worship. “The house of the Lord” was liturgical language for the Israelites, since worship was the primary activity that took place at God’s house. While normally “the house of the Lord” is a reference to the temple, Isaiah considers a day when the worshiping community is so large that the house expands beyond a physical structure—the house of God is the mountain.

The reference to a high mountain—indeed, a mountain that “shall be established as the highest of the mountains”—was liturgical language for pagans. In the heathen mind, the “high places” were both the dwelling places of gods and the sacred space where they were to be honored. Isaiah is saying that on this day the pagans will know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the living God is the one true God. Their high places will have shrunk to mere molehills; Zion will tower above all other worship centers just as the living Lord towers in magnificence, might, and majesty over all other supposed gods.

Next, a great call to worship goes out, with Jews and gentiles alike urging others to enter into the presence of the Lord: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths” (v. 3). The result is amazing, and supernatural: “All the nations shall flow to [the mountain of the house of the Lord]” (v. 2). Peoples from every tribe and nation come together and flow (like a river) up (very much not like a river) the mountain of God. It is an amazing magnetism at work that brings all sorts of people to worship the one true God. This is God’s plan for the end of the world.

Why does the church gather to worship? What are we doing on Sundays, and what is the point of it all? There are numerous ways to helpfully answer that question, but as Isaiah’s vision instructs us (and Micah’s, too, as it is repeated nearly verbatim in Micah 4), worship is best understood in the context of eschatology. Put another way, we understand what is happening in worship when we understand what will happen at the end of all things. Our future glorification informs our present exaltation. This is so for at least two reasons.

Worship: A Forerunner to Glory

The first is simply that worship is the primary activity in which we will be engaged in glory. The corporate worship of the church serves as something of a forerunner, or a prelude, to the worship of heaven. It is not without significance that outside the Psalms, Revelation is the book of the Bible with the most singing in it. When John is caught up into the highest heavens and given a glimpse of the end, he sees and hears worshipers.

In one sense, this should be no surprise. God created us to be worshipers, after all. He wove into our very DNA the impulse to serve, honor, and praise something bigger than ourselves. John Calvin wrote, “There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity.” This sense is what produces idolatry in the hearts of even the seemingly least religious people in the world. He notes that there is

no nation so barbarous, no people so savage, that they have not a deep-seated conviction that there is a God. And they who in other aspects of life seem least to differ from brutes still continue to retain some seed of religion….From the beginning of the world there has been no region, no city, in short, no household, that could do without religion, there lies in this a tacit confession of a sense of deity inscribed in the hearts of all. (Institutes, 1.3.1)

Calvin, of course, is taking his cue from the Apostle Paul and his observations in the opening chapter of Romans. All men know that there is a God and that worship is due Him. Once sin entered the world, our impulse to worship didn’t lessen; it was merely redirected. Paul writes that men by nature “suppress the truth…and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!” (Rom. 1:18, 25). The point is this: truth can be suppressed; worship cannot. It follows, then, that the perfected saints in glory will do what all image bearers of God have been designed to do: not just worship, but worship rightly. Therefore, heaven will be filled with the thunderous sound of heartfelt worship:

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