Jewish worship has always had Scripture at the center of its worship. This is seen in the development of synagogue worship, which probably had its beginning after the Exile. . . . It was perfectly natural, then, for this same practice of reading to be carried over to Christian worship. Paul makes this very clear when he says, “Attend to the public reading of scripture, to preaching, to teaching” (1 Tim. 4:13). . . . When Scripture is read and preached in worship, it should be done with a sense of its freshness and of our participation in the very meaning of the event.
-Robert Webber, Worship Is a Verb: Celebrating God’s Mighty Deeds of Salvation, Second Edition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1996), 72-73.