March 13, 2023 Show with Dr. Barry York on “Mercy: The Fruit of Biblical Worship”

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. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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 Monday on this 13th day of March 2023.

I am thrilled to have back as a returning guest today, Dr. Barry York, who is an author and co-host of the 3GT podcast, and he's also president of Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

We are going to be addressing the theme, Mercy, the Fruit of Biblical Worship. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Barry York.

Thank you, Chris, for having me on.

It's great to have you back on the program, brother. And why don't you tell our listeners more about 3GT, your podcast, which stands for Three Guys Theologizing.

That's right. For a number of years, I've podcasted weekly, sometimes biweekly with two of my friends. We call our podcast 3GT. It's a pastor, a parishioner, and professor talking about subjects that are interesting to the Christian life from a reformed perspective.

It's a casual kind of round-the-table type of podcast where we're just speaking on different subjects. Sometimes we have guests on that have written books or can speak to a particular topic. We have a lot of fun, just a fellowship and talking together and sharing some thoughts with our listeners.

Who are your co-hosts?

My co-hosts are Kyle Borg, who is a pastor of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Winchester, Kansas. And then a friend of mine, Scott Hunt, who's an elder in a church. It's actually a daughter work of a church that I used to pastor out in Indiana.

Scott is a lawyer. He actually just became the prosecutor of Grant County there in Indiana. So these guys bring some knowledge to the table, pastoral experience, ruling elder experience. And so we have a lot of fun together.

Well, I've got to get them on the program sometime as well. And if anybody wants to... Yeah, you go ahead.

I was just going to say you would enjoy that.

I'm sure I would. And if anybody wants to listen to three guys theologizing 3GT, go to 3GT .XYZ, 3GT .XYZ. Now tell us about the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who I have been very familiar with for many years.

In fact, I have, as you likely know already, have interviewed a number of the faculty members there, including you, obviously.

Yes.

So tell us about this fine institution.

Well, RPTS is the denominational seminary of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. It's the fourth oldest seminary in the United States. It was founded in 1810. And for about half of its existence, it has been located at its current spot, which is known as Rutherford Hall, there in Point Breeze in Pittsburgh.

We are a relatively small denomination. We have usually 80 to 90 students at a given time in our master's program, and probably another 25 or 30 in our doctoral program. But we also have lots of folks that audit classes on-site or online.

We have some programs for ruling elders and deacons that a number of churches subscribe to. So we do have that type of ministry going on. Our motto at RPTS is study under pastors, because all of our full-time professors are actually pastors.

They either serve significantly as pastors. Some of us are still doing so. And so we really seek to, in the seminary classroom and the community there at RPTS, really approach our studies and our approach of training.

I always promise incoming students and prospective students three things you'll get at RPTS. You're going to get academic rigor. We are a confessional seminary, and we're happy living within our confessional boundaries and teaching those to our students.

We also promise that you will experience devotional piety. It's a very worshipful place with chapel held every day and devotions and prayer taking place in the classroom and outside of it. And then very practical training.

So we want to really help prepare, particularly preparing men to go into pastoral ministry. That's our bread and butter, the heart of what we really seek to accomplish at RPTS. Although we do have laypeople, both men and women, studying with us, for instance, doing things like our counseling program.

So that's a short snapshot of RPTS.

And from what I know of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, which also has denominations globally, the primary differences of which I am aware from your other major conservative, evangelical, biblically-based Presbyterian denominations, including the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Presbyterian Church in America, et cetera, is that as a whole, the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America unanimously holds to exclusive psalmody and worship and also exclusive a cappella worship.

And I believe, if I'm not mistaken, at least here in the United States or in North America, there is a prohibition of alcohol consumption. Am I right on all of those?

Not quite on all of them. The last one, there was a time when I first became a minister that you had to vow not to use alcoholic beverages, but that has since been overturned. So we encourage a moderate lifestyle, not a prohibitionist type of lifestyle.

But with respect to our worship standards, yes, we sing the psalms exclusively. We do it via a cappella singing. It's a historic practice of the early church. Matter of fact, that's the way Jesus sang them.

And so we're thankful for that practice. It's been such a blessing. I did not grow up in this denomination and only came to it in my 20s as a young man, but that's been one of the blessings in my life, my family's life, the church's life, is just singing God's word back to him and meditating deeply on the scriptures as we worship.

It might interest my listeners to know that although I am not an exclusive psalmist, I am a believer in exclusive a cappella worship, as was the belief of Charles Spurgeon. He was also not an exclusive psalmist, but had no musical instruments in the Metropolitan Tabernacle, and he did not welcome them into the Tabernacle either.

In fact, the story goes that when, and I've never had this 100 confirmed, but every Spurgeon expert that I've asked this question, is this really something Spurgeon said? They all say, we don't know for sure, but it sounds like him.

But somebody approached Spurgeon and said, Pastor Spurgeon, is it appropriate to have an organ in a church building? And Spurgeon said, yes, it is very appropriate as long as the pipes are filled with cement.

But also my listeners may be interested in hearing a three-part interview I conducted on the theme of a cappella worship with Pastor John Price of Grace Baptist Church of Rochester, New York, which is a confessional Reformed Baptist church.

And I have to insert in here, this is a, today in the 21st century, a rare position for Reformed Baptists, but John holds to this position, and I interviewed him for three days on his book which is Old Light on New Worship, Musical Instruments, and the Worship of God, a theological, historical, and psychological study.

And there were at least, it was at least one brother from your denomination who endorsed the book, even though John does not hold to exclusive psalmody. And that was a dear brother, a giant of the faith who we just lost recently, who is now in eternity with Christ, Ted Donnelly, who pastored your church in Ireland, correct?

That's right. Actually, Ted was a close friend and mentor to me. I just wrote a tribute to him, so I felt this loss tremendously because he was a father. We spent a lot of time together. When I entered into our PTS as a student 35 years ago this summer, at that time they required a year's worth of Greek before you came in, and I didn't have that, so they had an intensive summer Greek class.

And I did not know who the man was, but when I came into this small class of just four students, Ted was teaching it. And walking into that classroom, I just realized I was in the presence of a master teacher as he not only opened up the Greek language to me, but did so with such a shepherding heart and pastoral ministry.

As a matter of fact, my father died in the midst of that class. And if it wasn't for Ted, I don't know if I would have continued on. So we've spent a lot of time together over the years, and so I'm very thankful for his ministry.

And regarding John Price's book, Ted actually introduced me to that book many years ago. And you and John might like to know that I used that book in a class at our PTS called Ministry of Worship when I'm defending the a cappella singing of the church.

Cool.

Well, I will definitely let John know that. And I don't know if I made this clear before, the church where I'm a member, Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, does not share that opinion with me, so I just want to make sure I said that, because there are many people in my audience who associate with me with Grace Baptist as Carlisle, much to their dismay, I'm sure.

But they do not practice a cappella worship or exclusive psalmody. And then, interestingly, you do have some churches that practice exclusive psalmody, but not a cappella, like Joel Beattie and those folks.

But anyway, if anybody wants to learn more about the Reformed Presbyterian Church, I'm sorry, the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, go to rpts .edu, rpts .edu. If you want to hear, at some point later on after this live program, my three interviews with John Price on exclusive a cappella worship defended, parts one, two, and three, which are based on his book, Old Light on New Worship, Musical Instruments and the Worship of God, a Theological, Historical, and Psychological Study, go to ironsharpensironradio .com and go to the search engine and type in a cappella, that's A, and then a new word, C-A-P-P-E-L-L-A, and you will get all of the interviews that I have conducted with John, or you could type in John Price as well, just like the Price is Right, and you will get those interviews, and I hope that you enjoy them, no matter what position to which you hold.

Mercy as the Fruit of Biblical Worship

Well, this is quite an interesting topic that you have chosen, Mercy, the Fruit of Biblical Worship. I have conducted many interviews on the subject of biblical worship, including one with one of your colleagues that is not at RPTS, but the former president of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Joey Piper, who I'm sure you know.

Yes.

He has conducted at least one interview with me on biblical worship, but I have never addressed it from the unique viewpoint of Mercy being the Fruit of Biblical Worship, so I am dying to find out what you had in mind when suggesting this theme.

Well, there's a good segue here, because as we talk about singing the Psalms or acapella practice in worship, part of the reason those practices arise is through our understanding of the regulative principle.

The regulative principle teaches that in matters of worship, we must take great care to do only what the Bible commands, and so a lot of Reformed Christians hold to the regulative principle, even though, as we're discussing here, we might have some different applications or understandings of how that might apply in a congregation or in a denomination.

And one of the things that I teach in my ministry of worship class, it's actually the last lecture I do, is that as we think about worship, and by this time in the class, we've talked about our Triune God whom we worship, the Sabbath day, the regulative principle, some of the elements of worship, all the elements of worship, including preaching and sacraments, ordinances, whatever you want to call them, of the Lord's Supper and baptism.

We've talked through all of those things, and toward the end, we start talking about the fact that God doesn't want us to come into worship and remain unchanged. Matter of fact, that He really is looking, as we come before Him, to be transformed, to be sanctified, and that there should be fruit emerging from our lives.

And so, sometimes the way that I approach this with the students is I say that there's another regulative principle of worship that you need to think about. Not only do you need to make sure that when we are conducting worship in the church that we are following the dictates of Holy Scripture, but that there's also a biblical principle that insists that our worship is to regulate us.

So, we think sometimes about regulating worship, but we need to remember that worship is to regulate us. And in particular, I believe the Lord is looking at us as we worship and making sure that we are calling us to a life of taking care of the poor, the needy, the widow, and the orphan, as we ought to do.

And there are a lot of scriptures that testify to that. You can think of there at the end of chapter 1 of James, Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their distress and keep oneself unstained by the world.

We are to show that we have a true faith in Jesus Christ, as James goes on to teach in chapter 2, by exhibiting a care and a heart for others. James chapter 2 starts off with James giving an anecdote about being in worship and a rich man comes in and everybody goes and pays favor to the rich man, and then a poor man comes in and they sort of just say, well, you just go sit over there and don't really give him the attention.

And he goes on to teach how important it is that our faith is exhibiting true Christian love and care for the poor and the needy in our midst. One of the other passages I would just point you, Chris, and our listeners to is in the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus talks about his return in glory, and it's the story he tells of separating the sheep and the goats.

And everyone will recall that, you know, Jesus said, I was lonely, and you visited or you didn't visit me. I was in prison. You did the same or you didn't do that. I was hungry. You fed me. And, of course, the response of the sheep is, when did we do those things to you?

And he said, when you did it to the least of these brothers of mine, you have done that unto me. And I remind the students that there's a great day of the Lord coming when he will return, and he's going to do this very thing.

He's going to separate the world into two groups. Yes, we can call those two groups the elect and the reprobate, but the way that it's going to be visible to those on Judgment Day of who the elect and reprobate are, are not only the fact that they've been justified by faith or have rejected the Gospel, but that they also will bear fruits in accordance with that true faith in Jesus Christ.

That's going to be clear on the Day of Judgment. And when we come into God's house every Lord's Day, I always tell my students or people when I'm leading them in worship, you know, we're one step closer.

We're one week closer than we were the last time we were together, and we need to be making sure that we're preparing ourselves as we worship the Lord for that great day of the Lord. And one of the ways that we are to be doing that is by heeding his voice to exhibit care for the lowly and the needy, and making sure that we're really bearing the fruit that we're called to bear as the Christian church.

So I'll pause there and see how you respond to that.

Well, I love everything you said, and I will respond, and perhaps our listeners will respond with questions when we return from our first commercial break right now. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Dr. Barry York, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

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That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. We'll be right back after these messages, so don't go away.

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We're discussing mercy, the fruit of biblical worship. We have a question from Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, and it's not quite on the heart of our discussion today. It has something to do with what we were discussing earlier.

She asks, I heard that you both say you believe exclusively in a cappella worship. Does that mean you believe that there is no place at all for musical instruments anytime, anywhere in the body of Christ?

Well, let me just quickly answer on my part, and then Dr. York will answer what he specifically believes. I love instrumental music. I love listening to it on the radio. I've purchased many CDs of instrumental Christian music.

I go to concerts on occasion. I have nothing against a church having a concert that includes musical instruments or a fellowship gathering outside the corporate scheduled Lord's Day worship where folks use instrumental music.

I am just speaking of the corporate gathering on the Lord's Day. But what do you have to say about that, Dr. York?

Yes, I would agree. I have daughters who play the piano wonderfully, or violin, and also enjoy music of all shapes and varieties. Our position has to do with just what we believe the Scriptures teach with respect to the instruments as they were used in the Old Testament really being associated with the sacrificial system and with the coming of Christ, that His death and resurrection, His atonement for our sins really fulfilled all that the sacrificial system was signifying.

In the Old Testament study, the instruments you'll see that in the tabernacle, then particularly in the temple, when the instruments were introduced, that they were to be performed by the Levites. And so we just see it as, and they accompanied the sacrifices.

And so that's why we don't practice them anymore in the Reformed Presbyterian Church. We believe that all those instruments signified, such as the trumpet signifying the presence of the King, or the harp, the peace that comes in a relationship with God, has all been granted to us in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so in the New Testament, when we're instructed to sing, such as in Colossians 3 .16 or Ephesians 5 .19, if you look at it very closely, it says that we're to make a melody, but it says to make a melody in our hearts to the Lord.

And actually the Greek word for making that melody is a word that means to play a stringed instrument. So the idea is that our redeemed hearts are the instrument, the joy of our redeemed hearts is the instrument that the Lord wants to hear as we worship as God's people.

But outside of the worship, we have a lot of freedom to enjoy the good gifts that God has given to us.

Yeah, I would even compare it to painting and drawing. I love, in fact, I'm an art major. I not only love observing and appreciating Christian artwork, and artwork of all kinds, as long as it's not displeasing to God, and as long as it does not break the second commandment, but I also enjoy, although I don't do it as nearly as much as I used to, drawing and painting myself, but I would not want that to be a part of a worship service.

So, I mean, I think that that is kind of a parallel because I'm not saying that all these different things in the arts are prohibited to Christians on all occasions at any time and place. But there are certain things that we should not do in a worship service.

Even the world-renowned Olympian athlete, Christian athlete, Eric Little, for whom Chariots of Fire, the book and film, classic film, were created. He ran for the glory of God. I wouldn't suggest or would, if I was in the leadership of a church, I would not permit somebody running around the congregation just because they were doing it for the glory of God.

So, that's my two cents anyway, but thank you for your answer as well. We have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who says, from my study of church history, I understand that the Reformed Presbyterians were among the very first Christians in the United States who opposed slavery.

Is that true? And I could chime in immediately by saying yes, because I interviewed a member of that denomination, Robert Copeland, on his book, A Candle Against the Dark, Reformed Presbyterians and the Struggle Against Slavery in the United States, which you can hear in the archive or from the archive of ironsharpensironradio .com.

If you type in Robert M, as in Michael Copeland, C-O-P-E-L-A-N-D, you will be able to hear that interview. But anything you have to say, Dr. York?

No, except that Robert's a good friend of mine, and we've had him teach this material at RPTS, and he knows how to tell a good story. So, it's not just the dry facts about the Reformed Presbyterian Church's involvement, but just some really good stories of how God worked through that movement, many ways that God saved lives in that anti-slavery movement.

So, I would commend that book to your listeners.

In fact, even though that would seem on its surface to be off-topic, it does involve mercy, obviously.

Yes.

If you could, tell us what are the elements that you believe are inherent to true biblical mercy. Some might just use it as a synonym for forgiveness. I know that forgiveness is certainly involved in mercy, but what else could you say about mercy?

Well, a number of things. So, just to show that this is part of our Reformed heritage, in my study on this topic, I went back to the old Westminster Directory of Public Worship and was fascinated to find a real attention there.

You know, we have a question in our Shorter Catechism on how the Sabbath is to be sanctified, and it talks about how we have the duty during that day to keep the day holy, to not engage in worldly employments and recreations, but spend the day in public and private worship.

And then it has that last clause on there. It says, except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy. And you can almost read that last phrase as a reluctance. Well, if you have to do something, it's necessary, then yeah, you can do that.

Or if you have to show some mercy, yeah, you can do that. But I don't really think that's the spirit of that. It's like these are important things that have to be done on the Sabbath day as well, the necessary things and merciful things.

And I think that's backed up by the Westminster Directory for Worship, because, for instance, in its section on celebrating communion, the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, it tells, it instructs the church that a collection for the poor is to be ordered so that no part of the public worship be thereby hindered.

And it's been a heritage of many Reformed churches that during times of communion, they would set an offering aside to take care of the poor in their community. And part of the reason for that is what better place than when you're remembering your own spiritual poverty before God and how the Lord gave his own lifeblood and broke his own body for you, you should then in turn to think about how he became poor so we could become rich spiritually.

You should turn around and think about others who are less fortunate than you are and care for them. In the Directory of Public Worship, it also has a section on how to sanctify the Lord's Day, much like the catechism instructs.

And it talks about all the things we can do on the Lord's Day that are spiritual exercises, going to public worship, meditating on sermons. It talks about repetition of sermons, which doesn't mean the preacher preaching them again, but people sitting around their tables, reflecting on what lessons they learned from the message.