Worship and the End of the World

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:

“Great and amazing are your deeds,
     O Lord God the Almighty!
Just and true are your ways,
     O King of the nations!
Who will not fear, O Lord,
     and glorify your name?
For you alone are holy.
     All nations will come
     and worship you,
for your righteous acts have been revealed.” (Rev. 15:3–4)

The worship in glory will also have the unmistakable theme of redemption (e.g., 5:9–10). God made us to worship, but He also redeemed us to worship. Jesus hints at that in His conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. In a dialogue that echoes some themes from Isaiah’s prophecy, Jesus says, “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him” (John 4:23). Jesus says that His earthly ministry fulfills, in part, Isaiah’s vision. He has come to abolish the earthly temple through His death and resurrection (2:19) so that all peoples everywhere can have access to worship the true God. This is why He was sent by the Father: because the Father is seeking genuine worshipers. This is precisely what Christ saves us to be (e.g., Rom. 6:17–18; 12:1; Titus 2:11–14). Redemption serves the goal of worship.

All this means that when we come to worship each Lord’s Day, we are preparing ourselves for eternity. Christians do for a few hours each week what they will do for endless hours in glory. In a sense, corporate worship prepares us for glory. This does not mean that we need worship like an athlete needs to practice a sport. There will not be saints in heaven who are stumbling their way through the worship of the triune God because they didn’t rehearse it well enough on earth. But the athletes who are out on the field practicing every day are not just doing it to get better at the game; they are doing it because they love the game. In fact, the more time they spend on the field, the more their love for the game grows. That’s the picture of the Christian. As we engage regularly in worship, our love for the world to come—which is to say, the world of worship—grows and grows. We want to be in corporate worship every Sunday not to get “better” at it but because we love it.

worship: a foretaste of glory

Worship has an eschatological, end-times significance also in that it’s a time and place in which, through the working of the Spirit and by faith, believers actually step into the next world. To continue our previous analogy, Sunday gatherings are not just like practicing for the big game; they are like playing in it for a little while. In public worship, we not only prepare for glory but participate in it as well. Consider what the author of Hebrews says when describing the wonder of new covenant worship:

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Heb. 12:22–24)

Mention is made again of Mount Zion, the mountain that Isaiah told us will be “established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it.” Hebrews sheds interpretive light on that prophecy by saying that we don’t need to wait for the consummation to experience worship on that mountain. We can be there right now. The privilege of those who are in Christ is that they are by definition with Christ. Since He has ascended on high, by His Holy Spirit we are there as well (see Col. 3:1–4)—and we enjoy that in a special way when we come together as a church to meet with God. As the Westminster Confession of Faith teaches, Christ blesses the elements of worship “by his own presence and Spirit” (25.3).

The great difficulty is that we so easily forget this. We are content to consider what we do on Sundays as nothing more than “going to church.” It is far truer to say that we are going to glory. We get to glimpse its splendor through ordinary means such as the reading and preaching of God’s Word, the administration of the sacraments, and the prayers and praises of God’s people. Christian worshipers are in two places at once: simultaneously sitting in the pew and also standing among the throng in a different dimension altogether.

Once you let the implications of this Hebrews passage sink in, you realize that it is hard to overstate what a remarkable privilege and experience it is to participate in Christian worship. Hebrews 12 underscores not only where we are but also who we are with. First, we come alongside “innumerable angels in festal gathering.” If anybody knows how to worship, it’s angels—and here we are permitted to do it right alongside them. A noted British author once told a story about feeling out of place in the green room at a fancy event. As he looked around the room, he noticed that all the other guests were extremely accomplished in their fields. An older gentleman also present confided in him the same feelings of inadequacy: “I just look at these people and think, what am I doing here?” The author was hardly comforted—the man speaking to him was Neil Armstrong. In Christian worship, we “look around” and recognize that we are privileged to join the ranks of the sinless angels who have constant access to the throne of God (see Rev. 7:11–12)—this should inspire our praise.

We also worship with “the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, . . . the spirits of the righteous made perfect.” The church shares a “mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won” (Samuel Stone, “The Church’s One Foundation”). Those who have lost loved ones in the Lord know best of all what a blessing this really is. Tragically, just this past year, two different pastor friends of mine lost young children in horrific accidents. I was amazed at how both were able to go to church on the Sundays after these losses. For most believers, church is a family affair, and every service can be an acute reminder of someone’s absence. But one friend said something that surprised me, though it is rooted in the theology we are considering. He told me that he actually looked forward to worship because he knew it was the one time each week when he gets to be with his son again. This is not mere sentimentalism; this is biblical truth about the reality of worship. It has a cosmic dimension, an eschatological scope. Corporate worship brings heavenly, seemingly far-off hopes right down into our hearts in the here and now.

The greatest privilege of all is that in Christian worship we come into the presence of Jesus Himself: “You have come . . . to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.” The writer is comparing the differences between worship under the old covenant and worship under the new covenant, and what makes all the difference, of course, is Christ. He is the One who has “hushed the law’s loud thunder” and “quenched Mount Sinai’s flame,” in the words of John Newton (“Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder”). Our worship is most glorious because it is more gracious. Under the law, worship was a continual reminder of one’s sin and failings. Under the gospel, worship is a continual reminder of God’s gracious provision in His Son. Mount Sinai casts a shadow of guilt over its worshipers. Zion, on the other hand, lifts us up on its dizzying heights where we see, at its peak, a slain-but-standing Lamb who takes all our guilt away (Eph. 1:7; Heb. 10:19; 1 John 1:9). For who Christ is, and for all that He has done, we worship: “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8).

We worship in part because we get a foretaste of the eternal blessings that we will one day know and experience fully. I heard a pastor once say that if we could blow the roof off the sanctuary and peer into the heavenlies to see what is actually taking place while we worship, we would never doze off in church. I am sure that’s true. We would also never skip it, arrive late, or leave early. We would want to enjoy every moment given to us in the new heavenly realities. Think on this as Sunday approaches: 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.