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What does the Lord require of us, when it comes to worship? Why do we come to church? Why do we pray? Why do we read the Word? All these activities make up what might be called the life of piety. This sort of worship, though, is only external. The Lord has told us several times that vain repetitions, extravagant ritual and external worship in general is not what He is chiefly concerned with. External worship is merely a representative of-and support for-real worship.

Internal, true worship is a life of charity. It is repenting, shunning evil, being useful, and doing good works for our neighbors. This doesn’t mean external ritual doesn’t matter. External worship is like clothing: we need it, but it can be changed. The only requirement is that it serve internal worship. Proper external worship is whatever ritual we choose that inspires, instructs and prepares us so that we may make our daily lives into continual, true worship, which is the life of charity.

The lessons read beforehand were Micah 6:6-8, Matthew 6:5-8, and Secrets of Heaven 10143:3-5, 6.

Click here to listen to the sermon.

I'm including the full text of the lessons and sermon below, although the sermon as preached came out differently than originally written. This is the second sermon I have converted from full text to extemporaneous outline.

For those interested in homiletics (and who isn't!?), I could include the actual outline I preached from at the end. I probably won't do that with future sermons, but if it's something you want me to do with this one, let me know.

This sermon was originally titled "True Worship", but that's a bit abstract, so I retitled it before preaching it here in Pittsburgh, at Pittsburgh New Church.

How to Worship with Your Life (Micah 6:8)

Micah 6:6-8

“With what shall I come before Jehovah, And bow myself before the High God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, With calves a year old?

Will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams,
Ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

“He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does Jehovah require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God?”

Matthew 6:5-8

“And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words. Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.”

Secrets of Heaven 10143:3-5, 6

…In particular sacrifices and burnt offerings have meant purification from evils and falsities, and at the same time implantation of goodness and truth, also the joining together of the two, thus regeneration…. With the person in whom these things have been accomplished true worship exists. It does so because purification from evils and falsities consists in refraining from them, steering clear of them, and loathing them; the implantation of goodness and truth consists in thinking and willing what is good and what is true, and in speaking and doing them; and the joining together of the two consists in leading a life composed of them. For when the good and truth residing with a person have been joined together his will is new and his understanding is new, consequently his life is new. When this is how a person is, Divine worship is present in every deed he performs; for at every point the person now has what is Divine in view, respects and loves it, and in so doing worships it.

The fact that this is the true worship of God is unknown to those who think that all worship consists in acts of adoration and prayer, thus in such things as belong to the mouth and thought, and not in such as belong to deeds flowing from the good of charity and the good of faith. Yet the reality is that in a person offering adoration and prayer the Lord pays attention solely to his heart, that is, to what he is like inwardly so far as love and consequently faith are concerned. If therefore the adoration and prayer do not have these two within them they have no soul and life in them; they are an outward show, like that of toadies and pretenders, who, as is well known, do not even please anyone in this world who is wise.

In short, acting in accord with the Lord's commandments constitutes true worship of Him, indeed constitutes true love and true faith, as may also become clear to anyone who stops to consider the matter. For there is nothing that a person who loves another, and who believes in another, would rather do than to will and to do what that other wills and thinks; his only desire is to know his will and thought, and so what is pleasing to him. It is different in the case of one who has no such love or belief. The situation is similar with love to God….

…[T]he outward performance of worship without this inner devotion is not worship….

Worship of the Lord consists first and foremost in a charitable life, and not in a religious life without it….

“With what shall I come before Jehovah, / And bow myself before the High God?

…He has shown you, O man, what is good; / And what does Jehovah require of you….”

What Does the Lord Require?

What’s it all about? What does He want? What are we doing here, now? Is this it? Is this what the Lord requires of us, what we’re doing right now, in this room, on this day? We know we are to worship the Lord, because He tells us to over and over again in His Word. But what is worship?

External Worship, the Life of Piety

Before the Lord came down to our world, worship in the world consisted mostly of elaborate rituals surrounding sacrifices of various kinds. The Israelitish worship of Jehovah was no exception. Following the laws and ordinances given down by the Lord through Moses, the Israelitish church followed a rather complex system of washings, burnt offerings, “heave offerings”, “wave offerings”, grain offerings, and other forms of sacrifice. We are told that every detail of this ritual form of worship with them was mandated by the Lord so that there could be a connection between His kingdom on earth—the Church—and His kingdom in heaven. Each external act was representative of something internal to the Church. The acts themselves were mostly meaningless, apart from their internals, but for the most part the members of that church had little idea that there was more to their worship than those externals.

With the coming of the Lord, the Christian church ceased to perform the Old Testament sacrifices; in their stead the Lord instituted Baptism and the Holy Supper, and also taught people how to pray. Furthermore, He did so in a manner that hinted that there was more to worship than just external acts. He called the bread and wine his flesh and blood, and He was said to baptise with spirit and with fire. Still, the early Christian had little idea of correspondences and representatives, and so had no solid idea of the true significance of these new rituals of worship. As the church grew over the centuries, other rituals were added, including fastings, elaborate ceremonies, and other practices.

Today, we worship as New Christians, and strive to live as members of the New Church. What does our worship look like? Well, we read the Word, we attend worship services on Sundays where we sing and hear sermons. We partake of the sacraments of Holy Supper and Baptism. And we pray. It doesn’t look, on the surface, very different from what the old Christian church has been doing for centuries, does it? Sure, we have some details that we have made our own, but the general sketch of things is pretty much the same—in externals.

But there’s more to worship than the life of piety. What we’ve looked at so far is merely external worship. So what else is there? What does the Lord really require of us?

Internal Worship, the Life of Charity

We are taught that the sacrifices performed by the church of Israel were only symbols of real worship. Our reading from Arcana Caelestia specifically notes that sacrifices and burnt offerings were representative of the process of regeneration. At first this may seem strange, but when you think about it it makes sense. The process of burning something is one that basically seperates out some components from others. There is smoke and an aroma that wafts upward into the sky, and then there is the char and ash that would fall downward through the grate of the altar of burnt offering. Likewise, when we do the work of repentence, the Lord performs a similar work within us. Animals in the Word correspond with various affections, and so the Israelitish burnt offering signifies the separation of evil from good within our own affections. But it’s not just the separating out of evils and falsities that these sacrifices represented, but also the joining together of goods and truths. We can perhaps see this in the oxidation process that is at the heart of all burning, and also perhaps in the way proteins create new bonds in cooked meat.

So we can see, now, how the external worship of the Israelitish church was merely representative of what true internal worship really is, and in one way the same can be said of worship in the New Church today. The life of piety—attending Sunday services, partaking of the sacraments, and such—makes up an external worship, while it is a life of charity—shunning evils and doing good in obedience to the Lord—that is internal, true worship.

Something that is interesting to consider is that the Lord has always told people this truth, in one way or another—at least to those who listen for it. While on earth, the Lord repeatedly let people know that vain repetitions were no good, and that to love Him was to keep his commandments. Even before then, though, the Lord gave the Israelitish church a number of indications that it was the life of good, and not merely a faithful following of ritual, that He desired most from them, and our reading from the prophet Micah is one outstanding example. It spells it right out. What the Lord requires of us, translated plainly, is to act wisely, to love goodness, and to live a life in accordance with the Lord’s will.

Externals Must Serve Internals

So are we to forget piety? Are externals of worship useles? Hardly. We need externals as well as internals. Externals serve us as clothing: they may be washed, mended, changed—but we ought to have them in at least some form, because they serve our internals.

We live the life of piety in order to be able to better live the life of charity. Arcana Caelestia 1618 says the following:

Worship in the internal sense means all conjunction by means of love and charity. A person is worshipping all the time if love and charity abide in him, external worship being only the outward expression of it. Such is the worship of angels, and therefore with them the sabbath never comes to an end….

This reaffirms what we have been looking at so far. The paragraph goes on, though, to say this:

While a person is in the world however he ought certainly to participate in external worship as well….

Why? Well, reading further, we are taught several reasons:

…[F]or it is by external worship that internal things are aroused, and by means of external worship external things are kept holy so as to enable internal to flow in. Furthermore a person is endowed with cognitions by this means, and is made ready to receive celestial things, and also has states of holiness conferred on him, though he is not conscious of this. These states of holiness are preserved by the Lord for his use in eternal life; in fact all the states of his life reappear in the next life.

In other words, true worship is the life of charity. We can only do what is good when we shun what is evil. While in this life, though, we are in externals, and so to live the life of charity we need to do things which order our externals so that good internals can flow in. This makes sense. In order to live the life of charity we need inspiration, instruction, and preparation, all of which we get from the life of piety—from external worship.

Does it matter what forms our external worship take? Yes and no. Certainly, good internals cannot flow into just any externals. And external worship that neither stirs our internals nor endows us with knowledges from the Word cannot possibly perform the intended use of serving internal worship.

At the same time, many externals can support similar internals. We are taught that the internals of the Ancient Church and the Christian Church were, in their pristine states, identical, yet in external form the two Churches were quite distinct. So we need both internal and external worship, but our focus should be on the internal. Arcana Caelestia 1098 puts this nicely:

The member of the internal Church makes worship of the Lord from charity—and especially internal worship—the essential, and external worship not so essential. The member of the external Church makes external worship the essential. He does not know what internal worship is, even though he has it. Consequently the member of the internal Church believes that he is acting contrary to conscience if he does not worship the Lord from what is internal, whereas the member of the external Church believes he is acting contrary to conscience if he does not reverently observe external rites.

True Worship = Wisdom, Love, Innocence

So what does the Lord require of us? What does he say we must do? Three things: we must act wisely from an understanding of the truths we find in His Word; we must love the Lord and all the good that flows from Him; and we must live in obedience to the Lord and all that He teaches in His Word. Why are we here today? Why are we doing what we are doing, in this time, in this place? This is external worship. We are here to find inspiration, to learn, and to have instilled in us states of holiness that can be infilled with love and innocence. The real worship begins when we walk out those doors and live what we have learned. So let us all go out today with a renewed desire to go before the Lord as He has taught us, to repent of our sins and to compel ourselves to follow His commandments.

“And what does the Lord require of you / But to do justly, / To love mercy, / And to walk humbly with your God?”

Amen.