March 13, 2025 Show with Matthew Everhard on “Worshiptainment: The Modern Church’s Golden Calf”

Introduction to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and the Day’s Guest

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 13th day of March 2025.

And I am thrilled to have a first-time guest on with me today. His name is Matthew Everhart. He is an author and the pastor of Gospel Fellowship Presbyterian Church, which is a congregation in the Presbyterian Church in America, PCA denomination in Valencia, Pennsylvania.

Today, we're going to be addressing Matthew's new book, Worshiptainment, the Modern Church's Golden Calf. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Matthew Everhart.

Well, thank you so much for having me. You know, I was looking at your website today, and I noticed how many amazing guests you've had in the past. And I realized that either I finally made it, or else you're scraping the bottom of the barrel today.

Either way, I'm very glad to be with you today. It's a real honor to be on your show. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Well, there have been members of the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience who have urged me to invite you on the program. And I looked into who you are and was very impressed, and so, therefore, that is why you are here.

And I'm glad to have the honor to interview you today. Why don't you tell our listeners something about the church where you pastor, Gospel Fellowship Presbyterian Church in Valencia, Pennsylvania?

Yeah, well, it's a wonderful church. The sweetest people in the whole world, for sure. We are a Reformed Bible-believing church. Obviously, as you mentioned, we're part of the PCA, and we are in here Ascension Presbytery.

That'd be the presbytery of which we are participants in the larger denomination, the PCA. We're a faithful church, I think. The preaching here is okay. Just okay. But we have two worship services on the Lord's Day.

We have 830, and then we have 11 o 'clock in the morning, so two services in the morning. We have Sunday school. We're still doing that. We still believe in that Sunday school hour of extra instruction.

And then we have midweeks, too. So it's a great, wonderful church. And if you're anywhere north of Pittsburgh, we're about 30 minutes due north of Pittsburgh. So we'd love to see you in real life at some point if you want to come visit us.

Well, I would love to see if I can convince one day, by God's mercy, to have my nephew who lives in Greensburg, or Greenberg, Pennsylvania—I can't remember which it is. Do you know? It's near Pittsburgh.

Is it Greens with an S or Greenberg?

You know, my Pittsburgh geography fails me at this point. I should know that, and everybody's going to punish me hard for not knowing this. But, you know, I'm actually from Northeast Ohio. So I grew up in the Akron area of Northeast Ohio, and then we lived in Florida for 10 years as well.

So Pittsburgh is not my hometown. So there's a bunch of little boroughs and counties and all kinds of little cities and hamlets. Somebody's going to hammer me for not knowing this, but I'm sorry, I don't know.

Well, I'm going to keep urging my nephew, Michael, who lives in that area, to visit your church. He's not a believer, so it would take a miracle for him to even visit the church to begin with. He's a wonderful guy, a wonderful—I was going to say young man, he's only five years younger than me, but he's a brilliant man and a published author and a professor at Seton Hill University.

Okay, well, that sounds great. Love to have him. If he likes expository preaching and as an unbeliever, maybe he wouldn't have a taste for that, but as an intellectual, maybe he would. You know, you never know what's going to catch the mind of people and trigger their curiosity about the things of the Lord.

Sometimes it's something we say about church history or something of philosophy or something of the scriptures that the Lord might use just as a hook to get people interested. So it'd be great to have him if he ever came.

By the way, Ted in Moundville, Alabama said it's Greensburg. I don't know how Ted in Alabama knows that, but he seemed to know.

He probably Googled it, maybe.

I don't know. Yeah.

And if anybody wants to find out more about this congregation, go to gospelfellowshippca .org. Gospelfellowshippca .org, and we will, God willing, repeat that later on in the broadcast. Well, we have a tradition here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio whenever we have a first-time guest.

We have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony that would include the religious atmosphere, if any, in which they were raised and the kinds of providential circumstances our sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you.

So I'd love to hear a summary of your story.

Yeah, thank you so much for asking. That's a very wonderful question, and I'd love to answer it because the Lord has been gracious in my life. I was raised in the church. I was raised in a liberal, though mainline, Lutheran church, interestingly enough.

And I was doing my catechism, as Lutheran young people want to do as they're preparing to come to the Lord's table for the first time. And I remember in those days—we're talking middle school days—that I learned quite a bit about the true and living God.

We had to memorize the Ten Commandments, and we had to learn the creeds of the faith, the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed.

I'm assuming this was not an Elka church.

It was, actually.

Really?

It was, yes. But, you know, back in those days—we're talking like the 80s—so they were probably a little bit more solid than they are—probably considerably more solid than they are now. The kinds of wokeism that we see today would, you know, culturally had not emerged.

It was in seminal form, but it had not emerged in full Marxist bloom at that point. So, yeah, we still learned our creeds and our Ten Commandments and the Apostles' Creed, and we had to go before the Lutheran pastor and share something of our faith.

But interestingly enough, as much as I learned about the Lord—and I did have a weighty respect and reverence for the Lord—I never heard, and maybe it was because my heart was so hard, I did not hear the gospel in all of this.

And so one day in eighth grade, I was invited to go to a friend's church—a very different church from the church that I had grown up in. The church that I grew up in had stained glass and statues of the saints and hundred-foot ceilings.

I mean, it was a Gothic cathedral in downtown Akron, Trinity Church, a famous church. And I went to a church where they had basketball hoops in the gym and folding chairs, and I didn't even know you could do that.

I didn't know that was allowed in church. And the youth pastor there preached a fiery gospel message of repent and believe. And I remember this day, Chris, like it was yesterday. He handed out note cards and he told us, you write down the names of the people that you know that aren't saved.

And I didn't even know what he was talking about, because we didn't talk like that in the Lutheran church. And he took those note cards, he gathered them up, and he threw them in a fire. And the Lord used that to terrify me by his judgments.

And yet, very much in sort of a Jonathan Edwards, sinners in the hands of an angry God style, that's what converted my heart. And he told me to repent and believe, and you better believe I repented and believed that night.

And I had a rather dramatic conversion experience because of that terror. And then I went home and I preached my first sermon by telling my sister about the gospel that I just heard. And I made every effort to lead her to the Lord.

So that was my conversion experience in eighth grade. And then after that, I actually got in a pretty decent church for a while, a larger church, evangelical, broadly speaking, non-denominational. And I had some good pastors that were Bible preaching pastors, expository preachers.

They cared about me. They showed up at some of my wrestling matches and put a little time in me as a young man. And before I knew it, the Lord was calling me to ministry. And by the time I was a sophomore in high school, I knew there was only one thing I wanted to do with my life, and that was to be either a preacher or a missionary.

And so that was kind of my first existential dilemma is whether I should be a preacher or a missionary.

Sovereign Grace, Ecclesiology, and the Call to Ministry

Wow.

Well, where in your journey or how in your journey did you come to discover the doctrines of sovereign grace, embrace them, love them? And how did you know you received a call from God to enter into pastoral ministry?

Yeah, great question. Well, let's talk about the doctrines of grace first. So at about that time that I was wrangling with this call to be either a pastor or a missionary, I started my first degree at a Christian school called Malone College.

It's not necessarily a Reformed school. In fact, it's actually a modern-day Quaker school by traditional heritage. But I was listening to really good stuff. I had some good professors. I had one Reformed professor who was teaching at Malone College.

He was excellent. And I was listening on my drives, I was a commuter to college, listening to Sproul and Alistair Begg and John MacArthur on the radio constantly. And so Reformed theology started to get into my bloodstream.

And I didn't exactly even know what it was. It just seemed like the right truth to me. It just seemed like the gospel. And so first I came to a conviction of, let's say, the Ordo Salutis and salvation by grace, understanding better doctrines like predestination, justification, sanctification, things like that.

Later, some ecclesiology began to make sense to me as I entered into, next, a Presbyterian church for one of my first jobs, an early youth pastor job. So ecclesiology made sense to me then. And then I started studying further things, the Lord's Supper, baptism, etc., eventually some eschatology as well.

And so I came to pretty hard and fast conclusions through all of the study, reading some of the great ones, reading Calvin firsthand, reading Spurgeon, reading a lot of things like Louis Burkhoff's Systematic Theology.

And the doctrines of grace just intrinsically made sense to me. So that's sort of how it came into my heart and my life. And I love those doctrines and believe them and preach them with all my heart today.

And when did you discover and how did you discover that you had received a call from God to enter pastoral ministry?

Yeah, so that happened really early on. I'd say I was a freshman or a sophomore, as I recall the chronology there. And again, it was through the tender care and true Bible teaching of some of my pastors that I was inspired.

And I remember one of my pastors used a phrase that stuck with me, kind of cut me to the.

Quick.

He said that we should live lives that matter for time and eternity. And that phrase, time and eternity, really resonated with me. And I knew that some kind of ministerial vocation was what the Lord was calling me to.

But then, you know, Chris, as we talk about what calling is in reformed circles, we often talk about the internal call, which is our sense, our feeling that the Lord is calling us to do something. But then there's the external approbation of that call where others around you begin to articulate too, even verbally, that this makes sense for you.

This is something that the Lord has for you. You seem to be manifesting some gifts in this area. And so I was entrusted to start teaching some Bible studies and things like that. And I never looked back.

I'm not a guy that had a different career first. Right out of college, I went to the mission field to Africa for six months. And so I've been doing full-time ministry since I was 22 years old, and I'm 48 now, almost 50.

So I'm sorry, 25 some years of full-time ministry. But I love it. I was ordained in 2007 as a Presbyterian minister, and now I continue on laboring day by day to preach, teach, love, counsel, visit, exhort, and serve in any way that I can.

It's the best career and a wonderful life, and I'm truly thankful to God for calling me into ministry.

Amen. And I believe you do have content on YouTube?

Yes. Yes, sir. I have a YouTube channel, and some of your listeners may be aware of that. I do a lot of 15 or 10-minute pieces on theology or church history or sometimes practical ministry techniques and things like that.

Some of my videos are more broad for a general Christian audience, just about how to study your Bible, note-taking techniques, Bible study techniques. Some of my content is more pastorally specific, like preaching videos and things like that, even preaching technique videos.

And then I do a lot of videos to try to introduce people to Reformed theology. I have one playlist called The Reformed View, where I talk about what is the Reformed perspective on various iterations of questions related to theology, life, philosophy, meaning, significance, etc.

And believe it or not, it's been an amazing way to reach people with the gospel. And I would say almost every Lord's Day, we have somebody that comes into the doors of Gospel Fellowship, and they say that they heard about us through that YouTube channel.

So I don't do a lot of controversy stuff, and I don't get on there and rant about politics very often or people that I don't like, or I don't do any of that nasty stuff. I just try to teach the Bible and explain the Reformed faith.

And it's a really, really nice way to introduce people to some of the doctrines of grace that you asked about earlier.

Now, forgive me if I'm holding back a chuckle, because you said you don't get involved in controversy stuff, and yet you wrote a book called Worshiptainment, The Modern Church's Golden Calf.

Well, I don't think the regulative principle is controversial. For me, that's like a building block, foundational point. But you're right. Yes, that is. And, you know, there's some kind of—in each chapter in Worshiptainment, and we'll talk about the book, I'm sure, as we go, there's a little example of something that's, I think, ridiculous and really presses the boundaries of the pale of acceptability even within broadly evangelical circles.

So there's a little bit of rib-tickling there as far as like, come on, people, you're not really doing this in your churches, right? But yeah, it's a book to try to call people back to a more biblical—and I would say a serious form of high reverence view of the worship of the true and living God.

So yeah, you're right. You got me with that one.

The Regulative Principle, Psalms, Hymns, and A Cappella Worship

True. True.

And you mentioned the regulative principle of worship. Not everybody who claims that ideology is in agreement with each other. We have different views. We have those among us who are exclusive psalmists.

We have those among us who are exclusive a cappella, and we have those that are neither one of those who sing hymns in addition to the God-breathed psalms and who either use musical instruments, which most Reformed Christians do, but there are those that are even exclusive a cappella who are not exclusive psalmists.

I have been greatly edified by my brother John D. Price, who wrote an excellent book defending exclusive a cappella worship in his book Old Light on New Worship, and that is actually the position that Spurgeon took.

He was a hymn singer, but it was exclusively a cappella. But where would you land in that orbit of the regulative principle of worship?

Yeah, great question. So I have my feet in both worlds, to be honest, because our church, Gospel Fellowship PCA, we do use instruments, especially the organ or the piano, and we do sing hymns, but we do sing psalms pretty much every Lord's Day.

So on one hand, I guess you could define my position as an inclusive psalm-lity position, meaning that we always sing the psalms, but we do hymns as well. But on the other hand, I have my foot in the RPCNA denomination because I'm an adjunct professor at RPTS, which is the official seminary of the RPCNA denomination, the Covenanter Presbyterians who do exclusive psalm-lity.

And so I try to be very careful as I articulate my views on this. Now everybody knows that we sing hymns at Gospel Fellowship, but I have a very strong affinity for and respect for my exclusive psalm-lity brothers.

So in one place in my book, I do talk about psalm-lity. I think it's something that should be recovered by the Church. It does make my heart somewhat sad to know that there are churches that never sing the psalms at all.

And I do think that there's a real dearth and a lack of depth and profundity if you're not going to sing the psalms. But at the same time, I try to respect my EP brothers. And whenever I'm at the seminary teaching as an adjunct faculty person, I would always defend the positions of the seminary, because I think that those positions hold integrity.

Even if that's not the practice of our own church, we're reducing the hymns as well.

Yes. I know that the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America that you mentioned, they are also exclusive a cappella.

That's correct.

Yeah.

And if you've never been to a service where they sing the psalms a cappella, it is amazing. They are some of the best singers. And to be in the presence of true Covenanter psalm singers that have been singing three-part harmonies and know the psalms from heart generations, passing them on to their children, it is truly a wonder to behold.

And again, I feel almost bad for people that haven't at least had the experience of hearing the psalms sung a cappella, because it's truly a wonderful way to worship the true and living God.

Yes. I have had the honor and privilege to worship with the saints in Durham, North Carolina, at First Reformed Presbyterian Church, where Kent Butterfield is the pastor. He happens to be the husband of Rosaria Butterfield, the former lesbian and Marxist college professor who was saved by the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, and was introduced to Kent.

And they have been married for quite some time and had the privilege of having breakfast in their home several years ago, and then from there going to the Sunday morning worship service with them. And it was really beautiful to hear the a cappella psalmody.

And she is a wonderful person too, by the way, a person who I highly, highly respect. I teach a class called Evangelism at RPTS at the seminary. It's a core required class that every MDiv student needs to take.

And in one of my lectures, I go through her autobiography as an example of one of the ways that churches can reach people who are lost with the gospel. And if you have not read that book, it is definitely one to be commended.

It's an excellent, not only is it just a moving experience to read of the Lord rescuing a person like that, who we might think is part of the unreachable people. I mean, you know, the LGBTQ plus movements at a secular university, a literature professor, no doubt.

And yet the Lord saved her. And it wasn't through any sort of extraordinary dynamic thing like some movie or TV, Christian TV show or something like that. But rather it was the love of average, ordinary saints in the church who cared enough to have her over for dinner multiple times, corresponding, writing back and forth with her, answering questions, being with her through grief and disappointments of life.

And the Lord used that. And so I'm privileged to know her. And just a humble brag, she texts me from time to time, just encouraging little notes of just appreciation for each other's ministry. And if she happens to be out there today, so thankful, so thankful for her faithful witness to the Lord.

Yeah.

Very sweet, dear sister in the Lord. And Kent is a wonderful brother. Well, we're going to our first commercial break. And when we return, we are going to delve into the book that I just mentioned, Worship Chainment, The Modern Church's Golden Calf.

If you have a question, our email address is chrisarenson at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and country of residence, if you live outside the USA.

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's say you're a member of a church and you are troubled by the worship services, you're troubled by the music, you're troubled by something else going on.

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I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Originally from Cork, Ireland, the Lord and his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.

At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession. We embrace congregational church government, and we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's word for the edification of believers, the salvation of the lost, and the glory of our triune God.

We are also devoted to living out the one another commands of scripture, loving, encouraging and serving each other as the body of Christ. In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith, and we gather around the Lord's table every Sunday.

We would love for you to visit and worship with us. You can find our details at TRBCCarlisle .org. That's TRBCCarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.

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We can be reached at Secure Calm Group dot com. That's Secure Calm Group dot com. But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.

Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur. In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt God's pleasure when he ran.

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We're now back with Matthew Everhart, and we are discussing his book, Worship Tainment, The Modern Church's Golden Calf. And once again, if you'd like to join us with a question, there are some folks waiting to have their questions asked and answered.

But if you want to get in line, our email address is ChrisArnsen at Gmail dot com. And give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence. In fact, one more issue I'd like to address with you before we move on to the book is I know that you are a Jonathan Edwards scholar.

You've taught on Edwards. You've written on Edwards. Tell us something about what you have written. I do already know I want you to be a guest on the program again as soon as possible, perhaps more than once to address Edwards.

But tell us about your discovery of Edwards, your love for him and what you have to offer the body of Christ about Edwards.

Yeah, thank you so much for asking that. I love talking about Edwards. So I teach an Edwards class at RPTS, which, by the way, is a great place to get a seminary education if you're looking for an education that's distinctly reformed and adheres to the Westminster standards and is faithful to the Lord and Scripture.

Is Barry York a president? Yes, he is. He's a good friend of mine. I love Barry. He's a wonderful man and a godly leader. So I'm thankful for him.

Tell him I said hello.

I will definitely do that. Yes, sir. So I came to know Edwards in a very deep way when I was doing my doctoral research. I was at RTS Orlando, not to be confused, and I was doing my dissertation project.

And we were told when we were thinking about a dissertation project to make sure that you pick something that will capture your heart and mind for at least four years of work. And so it should be something.

And the advice that they gave was it should be something that when somebody preaches your funeral years from now, they will say that this legitimately changed his life when he started thinking about X or whatever it is.

And I was looking at my own life and I was really stressed about pastoral ministry at that time, maybe a little bit of a burnout phase. I was stressed at home thinking about work. I was stressed at work thinking about home.

And I wanted something that would give me the joy that I just felt that I was lacking in that particular season of life. And so I turned to the theologian of joy, and I call Edwards the theologian of joy because everything that Edwards writes has joy as a theme in it somewhere.

Even sinners in the hands of an angry God has joy at the end as he offers the hope of this. There's this image of the doors of hope bursting open. So I started working through Edwards's major treatises and his personal writings and his minor treatises in his sermons, looking for the theme of joy or happiness and just circling it with a big red pen every time I found words like glad, joy, happiness.

And so what I did is I put together my dissertation on Edwards's theology of joy, which is published today. You can get that online if you want to read it. I sort of rewrote it for the common reader, stripped out all the dissertation formalities and things like that and just turned it into a book.

So the book is called A Theology of Joy, Eternal Happiness, Jonathan Edwards and Eternal Happiness in the Holy Trinity is the name of it. So just search for A Theology of Joy. And then I wrote another book on his resolutions.

It's called Holy Living, the 70 Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards and a few other things besides. I'm working on a Jonathan Edwards study Bible right now with Thomas Nelson, which is supposed to come out next year if we can get this done.

But it'll be similar to like the Charles Spurgeon study Bible that came out maybe five, six, seven years ago in that all the study notes and the content are from Edwards's own firsthand writings. And then we'll source it back to the official editions of Edwards's works so that readers can go and find the original sources and read more about Jonathan Edwards.

So we're working on that project right now. So, you know, Edwards is like he's the dead mentor that I always wanted. And he critiques me sometimes, but he has weaknesses, too. Most of the time, I find him to be a faithful, faithful servant of the word of God,.

Though. Amen, and when you mentioned your book on Edwards in regard to joy, that seems to be something missing in a lot of Reformed folks' hearts and minds, and they seem to have forgotten that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Yes, that's right. And Edwards roots his theology of joy in the persons of the Trinity. Edwards begins his philosophy of human happiness starting with divine happiness, first of all, that the Father is pleased in the Son and the Son is pleased in the Father to serve him.

And Edwards even conceives of the Holy Spirit as something of joy, the person of joy within the Godhead. And so for Edwards, the very purpose of human existence, God created the world so that we would rejoice in him, even as God rejoices in his own self and within and among the persons of the Trinity.

So it's a deeply Trinitarian thought, and Edwards just talks about it everywhere, all over the place. We see his theology of joy seeping into his theology of everything else.

Why Worshiptainment Was Written

Well, let's move on to your book, and as you know, there have been quite a number of books written about worship, written about music in worship, written about the regulative principle of worship. What was it that compelled you to add another volume to that discussion where you thought perhaps something was understated that needed to be compensated for, you needed to fill a void somewhere, or you just perhaps wanted to introduce this topic in your own unique style of writing?

But what was it that compelled you to write this book?

Yeah, probably the latter. So, you know, in Reformed theology and in my world of Presbyterianism, all the good books are already written on pretty much every topic. You know, it's not like—honestly, it's not like I'm going to discover something new and say something that hasn't been said before.

And if I do, it's probably heresy. You know, anything new in theology is to be suspect. So in some sense, though, we are responsible to rearticulate the ancient truths in our own time and place and culture.

And so for me, you know, I felt, Chris, like the Apostle Paul in Acts 17, you know, when he shows up in Athens and he looks left and looks right and there's idols everywhere. And the scripture says that he's provoked in his spirit, right?