Indeed, in this paragraph, from v. 4 to v. 10, the reference to our being made a holy priesthood in order to offer worship to God, is what rhetoricians refer to as an "inclusio." An inclusio is a statement made at the beginning and the end of a passage by which an author identifies his theme. In Ecclesiastes, for example, you have an inclusio, an identical statement at the beginning of the book and almost at the end, and in this way the author indicates that the entire book is about this theme: "Meaningless, Meaningless, all is meaningless." Here the statements are not precisely identical, but they are close enough clearly to bracket the paragraph and to serve to identify Peter's theme, his subject, his emphasis here. We were saved by Christ to worship God!

In this grand account of what it means to be a Christian Peter says, twice over, that God's purpose is choosing us, in redeeming us through Christ, and in calling us to faith in him is that we might worship God. In the one case it is offering sacrifices to God -- the language of the OT (this passage is full of that OT language and imagery) -- and in the other it is declaring the praises of God. But in both cases the idea is that of worship. Perhaps especially corporate worship, for, as we said last time, the Christian here from first to last is viewed as part of a community of faith and his or her actions as the actions of an entire household, people, priesthood, and nation.

Now we are perhaps inclined to make too little of this because we are so familiar with this language. But stop and consider. Why should it be that our great purpose in life, still more God's great purpose in our salvation, should be that we would become a worshipping people? Why doesn't Peter say that he saved us that we might live forever, as the Scripture elsewhere says, or that we might do good works, as Paul writes in Titus? He could have said any number of things that would have been true. But in this great summary, Peter, and the Holy Spirit behind Peter, said that we were saved to praise and worship God.

In a famous passage in his Reflections on the Psalms CS Lewis confessed to having had for a time some real trouble over this. Was God vain? Did he save us because he wanted to have some people around him always singing his praises? That seemed to him unworthy of God. We despise people who are always seeking praise and we despise the people who know what such people want and give it to them nevertheless. It was a stumbling block to him to notice, so often in the Psalms especially, that God seems to demand praise from his people, and even seems to require it as a condition of his blessing them, as in Psalm 50:23: 'He who sacrifices thank offerings honors me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God." Sometimes it is turned around and the psalm writer seems to be saying that if God would do this or that for him, he would give him praise in return as in Psalm 54: "Save me, O God...[and] I will sacrifice a freewill offering to you, I will praise your name, O Lord..."

He came eventually to see that it was right for men to praise God for he is truly praiseworthy, admirable, and deserving. And he came to understand that God certain did not "need" our praise or crave it in any selfish or vain way. The Scripture makes that very clear. As God himself tells his people who imagined that they might ingratiate themselves with Him by such praises, "If I were hungry, I would not tell YOU!" (Ps. 50:12)

But, in particular, his problem with this concentration on the obligation of worshipping God dissolved when he noticed that the world rings with praise, that praise and worship is really the overflow of enjoyment and appreciation. People praise their lovers, their sports heroes, their favorite authors, actors, movies, plays, books, food, weather, even politicians. Why, he thought, should he deny to God's people, in regard to what is supremely wonderful and valuable, what they and all other men delight to do about everything else that they value and prize? And, he said, he further noticed that the crankiest and most small-minded people were the people who praised least and the most balanced, happy, large-hearted people praised the most. Indeed, he thought, praise, when you think about it, is only inner health made audible. [p. 94]

Lewis concluded, "I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation." [p. 95]

That is wonderfully insightful and helpful, though I think more could be said. I don't think the first and foremost explanation for this concentration on praise, either in the Bible or in human life, is precisely the one that Lewis has given. I think it is rather that praise is the most perfect and complete expression of love. Indeed, it is not too much to say, according to the Bible, that praise is love. We rightly measure the love a husband has for his wife by the words of praise and appreciation he speaks to her and about her. We measure the love a father has for his children by the words that he speaks to them communicating in one way or another his affection, his gratitude for them, his delight in them, the honor he pays to them. We all want to believe that we can love our children just as much in other ways, because we find it so easy to fail at this most important form and manner and method of love. Silent husbands defensively point to other things they do for their wives or children, but we know better and the wives and children themselves know better. There is little love if there are few words of praise and appreciation and delight. The voice is connected most directly to the heart and out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

Praise looms so large in the Bible, worship is the greatest purpose of the Christian life, because love looms so large and love is the great purpose of our redemption -- that we might love God and enjoy his love, that we might live in love. To say that God saved us to praise him is to say that he saved us to love him -- it is as simple as that. And that love is not for him as though it made up a need he had -- he lived for eternity without us! -- but because it was his will that we should know his love and live lives of love for him and others ourselves. Love delights God. And is it not absolutely right and good that it should?

This, I think, is why so few people stumble at this concentration on worship that we find in the Bible. There is an instinctive recognition that it is a good thing, a right thing, because praise and love go together and we all know, in the depths of our hearts, because we are made in the image of God, that love is the very best thing, the rightest thing, the purest thing, in all the world.

But there is something more here, of course. There is something wonderfully and practically important about this concentration on worship as the end and purpose and fulfillment and completion of our Christian lives. For, if this is what God has saved us for, then, obviously it is what we ought to be giving ourselves to, devoting ourselves to, making something of supreme importance in our lives.

And we struggle to do that, don't we. I do, you do, every Christian does to one degree or another. The struggles of life and life's pleasures alike press in upon us and draw our attention away from God and his praise and worship to this earth and the particularities of our lives, whether happy or sad.

I had a long walk up and down our Colorado mountain valley a few weeks ago with the faithful pastor of a church in Cripple Creek. And as we walked we talked, especially about the challenges of his ministry in that small town now given over to casino gambling. And do you know what his great question was, faithful pastor that he is? It was this: how should he deal with people in his church for whom the "Godward" part of their lives was but merely one among the many interests to which they gave themselves, and was, frankly, at some times and in some ways hardly even the most important of those interests? How should he deal with people who want this or that to be done in the church, or who complain about this or that, but who themselves will attend the Lord's house only fitfully in the summer because they love to camp and who have little time for the Lord's work because they are so consumed with worldly things? It is a common problem, is it not? It is a problem any faithful minister faces constantly in his work.

But, then, we all know that, because we know it is our problem too, always and in every way it is our problem, yours and mine. We know we have been saved to do all to the glory of God, we know we have been made -- above all else -- members of this kingdom of priests that we might declare the praises of the One who called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light. But, when we look within ourselves, we are ashamed to admit that that holy purpose for our lives does not dominate our thought or action in anything like the way it should.

We are too busy with the press of daily life to give much thought to the glory of God. We are too concerned with our reputations to speak openly before many people about God's wonderful light and the hope that lies within us. We are too bowed down by the weariness and disappointments of life to raise our eyes to heaven and praise the redeemer who there intercedes for us. Or, we are so beguiled by the pleasures of life, dazzled by its attractions that, God forgive us, the praises of the Holy and Triune God seem rather paltry in comparison.

Now, every faithful Christian here this morning knows this to be true of his or her life. That is not the problem. We listen in guilty silence to our own indictment. So I do not want to spend my time convincing you and me of our fault. Nor do I want to spend time this morning arguing that the praises of our Redeeming God ought to be more the center and the core of our lives as Christians. I think we know that full well. Love teaches us that, gratitude teaches us that, honor teaches us that.

I want rather, this morning, to leave you with this one thought. That, as is true of all of God's purposes in our lives, and all of his commandments, and all of our duties as Christians, there is more goodness for us in what God wills than there is for him.

Over the summer, I have been reading a little collection of the "sayings" of John Duncan, the famous "Rabbi" Duncan of 19th century Presbyterian Scotland. He was a man of the keenest insight and often said very profound and thought provoking things in very few words. For example, one that I have written now into my Bible, concerns the misery of Christians who find themselves still so much under the thumb of their sins, as Paul in Romans 7:14-25. Concerning which Rabbi Duncan simply remarked: "A prisoner of war is not a deserter!" Many statements like that in this most interesting book, entitled Just a Talker, edited by John Brentnall and published by the Banner of Truth.

But I came across this seemingly so simple statement while I was thinking about this sermon. "As long as I am thinking of Christ, I am happy." It hit me that this is really so, and more so than I often realize or stop to consider. "As long as I am thinking of Christ, I am happy."

That is right: the more Christ is before our mind's eye, the happier we are, in every way, the happier we are. Let me explain further.

We've also been reading, for our family devotions this summer, Andrew Bonar's "Memoir" of Robert Murray McCheyne. And we have come to the days of revival in McCheyne's church in Dundee. And I have been reminded again how it is that when God's people come face to face with him everything else recedes into the background.

Not in a bad way, but in a very good way. People who live in times when the Spirit of God is mightily astir in the church, people who walk in the sunshine of that wonderful light of divine grace, think long and deeply and deliciously about God and Christ and his redemption, rejoice with a joy we rarely experience in the forgiveness of their sins, mourn with a heartfelt sorrow we rarely feel over all the sin that remains within them, they contemplate heaven, consider hell, devote themselves to holiness with a passion that we can only long for. They are, in other words, preoccupied with divine things. They are, in that moment, in other words what Peter here says we all ought to be, all of the time, given over to the praise of God and to offering those spiritual sacrifices to God that are pleasing to him.

But that never had the effect of weakening their marriages or their families, or of making them less effective at work, or making other people less interesting to them. Quite the contrary! The more deeply and the more often they thought of Christ and the cross, the better they loved their husbands or wives, the more affectionately they raised their children, the more faithfully they served their employers or customers, the more sacrificially they invested themselves in the lives of others, and the more appreciation they had for all that is good and beautiful in this world. We can sometimes foolishly suppose that a person can be too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good. But the fact is, the more heavenly minded a person is, truly heavenly minded, the more his or her life becomes what a human life ought to be.

And I should add this: the more a Christian's life becomes devoted to the sight of God and the praise of God, the more lightly he or she carries the burdens and the sorrows of life. When God calls on us to give ourselves to his worship -- the corporate worship of the church and the life of corporate prayer in the first place (for that is what we are doing here Wednesday nights: offering sacrifices that are pleasing to God), then worship alone before him and in our families, worship with a small "w", that is the life in which we seek in all things to give glory to God, to obey and serve him for love's sake -- I say when God tells us that this is what he is after in our lives, he is not setting us some burden to bear, he is telling us how to walk with lightest step and with cheeriest heart in this world of sin and death.

For, you see, when God looms before us, when Christ and redemption, and heaven are in our sight, when we are thinking about such things seriously and pondering the wonder of them, everything else recedes into the background and takes its proper place. Things that otherwise loom too large, take their rightful place at the feet of these gigantic and eternal things, the things for which we give glory to God.

Over this past year or two, we have been treated to a succession of disaster epics in the movie theaters: aliens blowing up New York City and Washington D.C., the titanic sinking, meteors striking the earth and creating tidal waves that destroy New York City and Washington D.C. And one of the interesting features of such imaginary disasters -- though not elaborated in the movies in nearly the way it could be -- is the way in which, in the face of such cataclysm, all the ordinary issues of life simply disappear. John Jacob Astor no longer cared how the stock market was faring as he said goodbye to his loved ones and prepared to meet his end. In the face of ultimate reality the stock market doesn't amount to a hill of beans.

Robert Louis Stevenson has a character whom he describes as the sort of fellow who would be "doctoring a toothache on the judgment day." He meant to describe the impossibly absurd detachment from reality that characterized that man. For on the judgment day, all toothaches will be forgotten. In a moment, in an instant, drunk up in an infinitely greater doom.

I get headaches from time to time. Not, I know, as some of you get them, but still often enough and painful enough to know how terribly distracting they can be, how hard it is to do anything else or think about anything else when suffering that pain. I remember reading that General Ulysses S. Grant was lying in his tent on a Sunday afternoon suffering from a vicious headache when the news came that General Lee was proposing to meet to discuss surrender. Grant's headache was gone in that instant he received the news. Certain things are so great they overwhelm all other things, put all other things in a completely different perspective, put all other things in their place.

And so it is in the kingdom of God. Joshua may have had his worries about attacking the walled city of Jericho, but Jericho instantly disappeared from his mind when he found himself face to face with the angel of the Lord! John may have been, for all we know, weary or depressed or frustrated or confused there in exile on Patmos, but when the Lord Christ in his divine glory appeared to him in a vision there, all his troubles were immediately forgotten as he was swept up into a world, into sights that threw everything in this world into the shade.

And it is as true for distractions that come with pleasure and prosperity as from woe. Florence and I are, by the generosity of this congregation, to enjoy two weeks in Europe later this month. And we are very much looking forward to this trip, as you can imagine. But, I know that there are things in the gospel so mighty as to make us forget all about these weeks away in such entrancing parts of the world. Not to destroy those pleasures -- not at all -- indeed perhaps increase them -- but render them insignificant in comparison.

And I tell you, this morning: if you could, for a moment, see the Lord Christ on his throne in heaven, the glory of his godhead upon him, yet still visible the five wounds suffered at the cross, if you could see the glorified saints in heaven, if you could see the fiery furnace of the glory of God, such sights would drink up all of your other pleasures and all of your sorrows up into themselves. These are the only things in all of the universe that have the power to do that, no matter what the circumstances of human life -- even as the godly have proved through countless generations, even in the very face of death. My sister, as you remember, apparently had the sight of such things as she was dying, and death lost its sting as soon as she saw them.

No, no, brethren, we are not speaking here about merely another duty. Surely we ought to praise God. He deserves our praises forever and ever. Love and gratitude want him to have them. But the worship of God, the uttering of his praises, the giving of sacrifices of love and devotion to him -- whether in worship, per se, or in obedience and service offered in his name --, the preoccupation of loving hearts with divine things (that is the key idea, I think), is nothing less than the path to the fullness of life. Heaven will be purest joy and triumphant life precisely because there we will worship God without interruption and with all our hearts.

If we all but realized God's heart of love. He has told us how to be happy and how to make the most of life. And it happens that the way to that is the way of love and love expressing itself, as it always does, in worship.