21 Praise be to the Lord,
for he showed me the wonders of his love
when I was in a city under siege.
22 In my alarm I said,
“I am cut off from your sight!”
Yet you heard my cry for mercy
when I called to you for help.
23 Love the Lord, all his faithful people!
The Lord preserves those who are true to him,
but the proud he pays back in full.
24 Be strong and take heart,
all you who hope in the Lord.
The sanctuary itself, the place of our worship, is holy. That’s not to say that it has some kind of spiritual energy about it that changes us when we walk in. It just means that we have set it apart for the particular purpose of worshiping Christ.
When God’s word is read and preached, it is necessary for the congregation to actively listen, to receive it, and to respond and act upon it.
The Lord’s Supper is a visible word. It speaks and preaches to us but in a different way than the Scripture does. The Lord has prohibited the use of images of himself in worship, but these images he has commanded. The image of bread as his body, and the fruit of the vine (wine or juice) as his blood.
My understanding is that one of the common changes in architecture during and after the Reformation in Protestant churches, was to put the pulpit in the center of the sanctuary. This represents the centrality of God’s Word in our worship. We do not live on bread alone but on the words that come from God on high.
The seats sit behind the pulpit because it is the role of the session to guard the pulpit. They decide who is to preach and teach in the church. They protect the flock from false teaching and teachers. They watch over the preaching to see to it that the word of truth is being rightly divided.
When you walk into the sanctuary of our church building, the first thing that draws your eyes is the large cross up at the front. It towers over everything else, going from floor to ceiling. It dominates the visible space by its sheer magnitude. That’s because it represents the dominating place the Lord Jesus plays in our life and worship.
We may not always have a building, but as long as we do we should use it the best we can to learn more about the kingdom of God. The simplicity of our building’s architecture is helpful at this point. Much of what we believe about the church can really be seen in our architecture if you have the eyes to see it.