We assemble as God’s holy ones, as those who are called to be saints. We do not gather on one day simply to think certain thoughts about God, and that is the end of it. We come to present our bodies, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to Him. This means that we cannot detach what our bodies have been doing this last week from what we are about to do in worship, here and now.
Suppose you have sinned last Tuesday, to take a day at random. If you have confessed it to God already, well and good. If you have not, then you must confess it at the beginning of worship just a moment from now. Otherwise, you are trying to include that sin in your worship. You must either repudiate it in confession, or you are offering it up to God as Cain did with his vegetables.
At the conclusion of the service, you lift up your hands to God in the Gloria Patri. But what have those hands done? Whatever it is, it will be presented to God in worship – either in the guilt offering of confession, or in an impudent attempt to pass it off in the consecration offering. But one way or another, it comes up before God.
So what have those hands done? Have you used them to put on an immodest blouse or T-shirt – despite the careful teaching you have received at just this point? Have you used those hands to put your thumb on the scales in sharp business dealing? Have you used those hands to spank your children in an unjust anger? Have you used those hands to type an address of a web site where you had no business going?
I do not say these things to try to make sinners stay away from the worship of God. If you baptized, you must come. I say these things so that you would not be caught in the folly of offering Him yours sins in a way that pretends they are not sins.