Can we sing Mylie Cyrus in church?

So I noped this Superbowl -themed church service in which Miley Cyrus and Garth Brooks songs were sung.

People think I'm lying, but I still don't know who Garth Brooks is, and I don't care. Some country singer, whatever. In this service, what appears to be a

Bible, which in reality is a Bible cover, an empty Bible cover, I believe, is kicked off the stage.

Hmm. Now, most people watching this feel in their guts and their very souls that this isn't good.

Something's wrong. This shouldn't be happening in a church. And if you don't feel something like that watching this video,

God help you. So I figured this would be a good opportunity to briefly discuss the corporate worship of the church.

Historically, people have generally fallen into one of two camps. Either people hold to what is called the normative principle of worship, whether they realize it or not, or they hold to the regulative principle of worship.

To define these very simply at the outset, we will say that the normative principle says we should worship

God according to his commandments, and we are free to practice anything that is not forbidden in God's word concerning worship.

So Mr. Normative says, yeah, we should have the public reading of scripture and corporate prayer and the preaching of the word, but the

Bible doesn't say that we can't have the pastor enter on a zip line. The Bible doesn't explicitly forbid

Super Bowl themed halftime shows in the middle of service, fog machines, singing secular songs.

Therefore, we are free to do that. On the other hand, the regulative principle states that true worship is according only to what

God has commanded in scripture, either in imperative form or by imperative force.

By imperative form, we mean an explicit command, and by imperative force, we mean an example given us in scripture, like an apostolic example that isn't necessarily an explicit command.

Sam Waldron puts it this way. The difference between the normative principle and the regulative principle is illustrated by two builders building the temple.

Mr. Normative uses both biblical and other materials, but has no blueprint, while Mr.

Regulative has a blueprint and uses only biblical materials. The two temples will be very different.

I am personally, confessionally and pastorally convicted of the regulative principle of worship, and I would like to offer a brief argument in its favor from the scripture.

I hope you would agree that God determines how he is to be worshipped and not man. We don't get to decide that.

It is the sovereign prerogative of God to set the terms for how the church may approach him in corporate worship.

We see a violation of the set terms as early as Genesis 4, when Cain's offering is unacceptable.

The Lord had no regard for it. Jude lists Cain as a man of rebellion. In submitting an offering not commanded,

Cain is rebelling against the revealed will of God. Cain and Abel weren't guessing. They knew what was required of them.

The normative principle suggests that we are free to offer in worship to God what is not explicitly forbidden, but the

Bible explicitly condemns all worship that is not commanded by God. Consider the case of Nadab and Abihu.

They place incense on their firepans and offer strange fire. Then fire comes out from the presence of the

Lord and consumes them, and they died. Then Moses said to Aaron, It is what the

Lord spoke, saying, By those who come near me I will be treated as holy, and before all the people

I will be honored. Now what was the sin of Nadab and Abihu? Did they offer that which the

Lord forbade? No, the Lord did not explicitly forbid the incense they offered. The judgment in this text is they offered strange fire before the

Lord which he had not commanded them. They took unauthorized liberty in the worship of God.

This principle is carried over to the New Testament in texts like Colossians 2 20 -23, wherein worship devised by man is clearly forbidden.

And so to state the regulative principle in another way, what is not commanded is forbidden.

And this refers to the elements of worship which may adapt to differing circumstances without violating the principle.

The elements of worship include reading the scriptures, preaching and hearing the word of God, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in our hearts to the

Lord, as well as the administration of baptism in the Lord's Supper. Inevitably, when we allow extra -biblical elements into our public worship, what

God has clearly commanded will suffer neglect and distortion or complete removal.

It might even lead to a pastor dressed as a referee swinging on a wrecking ball singing Miley Cyrus. While these elements are central to worship and regulated by the word, they are distinct from the circumstances of worship which are to be determined by the light of nature,

Christian prudence, and the general rules of scripture. So an example of this distinction would be that God has appointed the

Lord's Day, the first day of the week on which the church is to gather for worship. That's the element. But what time the church gathers on the

Lord's Day to worship may vary according to circumstance. The element is that there is congregational singing.

The circumstance may be that such singing is accompanied by a guitar, or an organ, or a piano.

There is much more that could be said, but I hope this serves as a helpful starting point if you're not familiar with the regulative principle, and I would recommend to you this resource by Sam Waldron, The Regulative Principle of the

Church, in which he writes, The regulative principle of worship is often seen as repressive and negative.

In actuality, it is positive and liberating. It requires that the great and spiritually invigorating elements of gospel worship ordained in the word of God have central place in the worship of the church.

Some feel that their worship is dull, lifeless, and traditional, and search everywhere for some new ceremony, program, or innovation to liven things up.

How sad. The way to life, power, and reality in the worship of God is not the way of innovation and novelty.

It is the way back to a zealous and believing practice of the great central requirements of biblical gospel worship.

Is this biblical gospel worship? It's not an exaggeration.

This concept that God actually cares about how he is worshipped, and more so that he has actually told his people in which way he is to be worshipped, is totally foreign to the majority of modern western

Christianity. It is an anything goes mentality when it comes to the worship of our blessed

God. Worship is worship. That's what they say.

Worship is worship is simply the Christianized equivalent to love is love.