The Regulative Principle of Worship

Alright, we are in week 14 on Wednesday nights. What is a

Reformed Baptist? We have taken somewhat of a break over Christmas and our prayer meeting and then tonight.

Let's just catch us back up for a second. You say, what is a Christian? And that's, you know, one thing.

But there's a lot of categories just for what is a Baptist, right? As far as like, think about all the labels of Baptists you have.

Free will Baptist, Independent Baptist, General Baptist, Particular Baptist, Southern Baptist, Missionary Baptist, and there's, you know,

BMA, ABA. Am I missing any? Primitive, no, it's a little different.

Primitive Baptist. You even have the self -proclaimed Backwoods Baptist.

So you have all these adjectives for Baptist and we're trying to consider tonight, what is a

Reformed Baptist? And I've told you from the beginning, I'm okay with the label.

I'm also okay, I also, I would prefer to say, hey, we're just, we're, this is a Christian church, right?

But the reason that you have to have labels is because we live in a fallen world and people mean different things when they say different things.

And so when we say Reformed Baptist, this is what we mean. And we've been walking through this series. And so tonight, the subject is the regulative principle of worship.

That's a mouthful. The regulative, what do you think that word means? Regulative. Yeah, being regulated, okay.

The regulative principle of worship. So the idea is, and by the way, we're not far from being done with the whole series, but just to jump ahead here, the idea of the regulative principle of worship is that there is something, there's some principle, if you will, that regulates the worship of God.

I mean, what do you think it is? That was kind of a clunky way to say it, but what is it that regulates the worship of God?

Yeah, the Bible and whatever makes you feel good, right? No, no, that's what we're going.

So Deuteronomy 12, 32 says, everything that I command you, you should be careful to do, you shall not add to it or take from it.

Now, I understand that's from the old covenant perspective, right? But my argument would be, the

Lord says, I, the Lord, do not change. So when it comes to the idea of worship, do you think that in the

Old Testament, he says, everything I command you, you should be careful to do, you should not add to it or take from it.

And then under the new covenant, you think God is like, it's a free for all, just have at it. Well, that's hopefully not irreverent, but that would be kind of silly, right?

I try to work through like a logical syllogism for the regular principle of worship.

This is what I came up with. Maybe you could punch some holes in it, but here's the deal, major premise, God alone has the authority to determine how he's to be worshipped, and he must be worshipped only according to his own prescribed standards.

So you see a problem with that? Hopefully not. God alone has the authority to determine how he's to be worshipped, and he must be worshipped only according to his own prescribed standards.

Minor premise, God has sufficiently revealed those standards in Scripture, any argument there?

So the conclusion, therefore, corporate worship must include only what is commanded, exemplified, or necessarily implied in Scripture, and nothing else.

Okay, hopefully, that's the major thing. I mean, people argue, can you imagine?

Christians argue about this. But at its just base level, that's what we're talking about.

We're talking about the Bible. Now, when I give you some examples, you might say, oh, okay,

I understand now. Ah, well, we've always done it that way, or whatever. Tom Hicks writes, the regular principle of worship stands over and against what theologians call the normative principle of worship.

The normative principle claims that the church has the authority to institute whatever elements of worship it deems wise, unless the

Word of God expressly forbids it. So these are the two driving... You probably, well,

I shouldn't say you probably, some of you in this room have probably never heard the words regulative principle and normative principles of worship.

That's okay. It's fine. You don't have to have ever heard that in your life. But you do need to understand that this is how primarily churches are functioning.

The regulative principle says only what God has commanded and nothing else must be in our worship, and all that He's commanded.

Can't leave out part of it. The other is normative. Whatever God has not forbidden, then you can worship that way, okay?

So let me give you some examples. You ready? What if next Sunday morning we find

Pastor Jacob and I, and there are these out there, by the way, we found a great skit. It does a good job of illustrating some biblical truth.

And we say, you know what? That skit is a powerful tool, maybe kind of like Jesus' parables, that illustrates a truth.

And we're going to use that on Sunday morning to illustrate a truth. Is that normative principle of worship or regulative principle of worship?

That's normative. Why? Does Scripture say you can't do skits in worship?

No, it doesn't say that. So if you're operating from the normative principle, you say, okay, we can do that because, you know, we think that's good.

What if next month we have a service, February? I don't know where I got this from, but we have a service that we put ash crosses on our foreheads.

Is that regulative principle or normative principle? It's normative.

Does the Bible anywhere say you can't put ash on your... Actually, it does, but anyway, yeah.

So anyway, that's like doubly wrong, but you understand the point. Oh, how about this one?

Infant baptism. Regulative or normative? There's a big argument that because our

Pado -Baptist brothers and sisters, they would argue they're Reformed, and of course they are. Not as Reformed as the

Reformed Baptists, but I would actually argue that baptizing an infant, is that commanded anywhere in the

Scripture? Yeah, it's normative, right? It's normative. So, okay.

So, the normative principle of worship gives a really broad license for things to come into worship that are man -made.

And you say, and there's probably no one here, but maybe you do, you say, yeah, but I love it when Sister Bertha's great -grandson plays the handbells.

Or I love it when the puppets show. It's so spectacular for the children. Okay, but listen to me.

Just a moment. What are we asking here? We are not asking, what is Alex like?

What's Jerry like? What's Liz like? That's not what we're asking. We're asking, we're not even asking what works, right?

Hey, every time we do handbells, we have a high attendance Sunday. So, let's do handbells, right?

We're saying, what does God desire in corporate work? That's what we're asking. Understand? What is it that God wants?

I want to interject something here in case. Sometimes I'm taking out of context, maybe.

Sometimes my own fault, probably. Oh, no, it is. I'm not saying that skits are evil. I'm not saying if there's ever a skit done, it's evil.

I'm not even saying handbells are evil. Puppets, maybe. No, they're really not evil. Maybe they have a place at some time, but I can tell you where they don't have a place.

Okay, where do they not have a place? In the corporate worship. So, we got to distinguish that, you understand?

So, if we're like, we do a VBS thing, and we have a VBS skit, and all of a sudden you're like, we can't do skits.

No, no. We're not saying you can't ever do a skit, ever, okay? But we're saying when the church gathers for corporate worship, she can only do what?

What the Bible commands. Okay, does that make sense? Okay, remember what

Jesus says in John 4, 23? The hour is coming, is now here, when true worshipers will worship the

Father in what? It's on your sheet, so even if you don't remember. In spirit and truth. For the

Father is seeking such people to worship Him. If the Lord wants worshipers to worship in spirit and in truth, does that not imply that He has revealed how

He should be worshiped? In other words, He says, I want you to worship me in spirit and in truth, and you got to go figure it out on your own.

Is that how the Lord is? No, I want you to worship me in spirit and truth, and guess what?

I've given you instructions. It really comes down to sola scriptura. This is all tied together.

That is, scripture alone. We believe scripture alone is our highest authority. Scripture alone is sufficient.

It goes to the sufficiency of scripture. Calvin says this on the second commandment, which, you know, thou shalt not make graven images, bow down to idols.

The purport of the commandment, therefore, is that He will not have

His legitimate worship profaned by superstitious rites. Wherefore, in general, He calls us entirely away from the carnal, frivolous observances, this is

Calvin, not Quatro, which our stupid minds are wont to devise after forming some gross idea of the divine nature, while at the same time,

He instructs us in the worship which is legitimate, namely, spiritual worship of His own appointment. Calvin's saying there that he takes the second commandment to understand that there is a way to worship the right

God in the what? In the wrong way. And so you have these ideas of God and you just run with them.

How does he say it? He says, the carnal, frivolous observances, which our stupid minds are wont to devise after forming some gross idea of the divine nature.

I can repeat it because it's Calvin saying it, right? Not me. But he's right, okay?

We do that. Hebrews 12, 28 and 29. Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken.

And thus let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.

A couple of things. The word for acceptable, I don't know if your translation may have something different, but it's the idea of pleasing.

There is such a thing as worship that is pleasing to God, right?

So if the author of Hebrews says we should offer God pleasing worship, acceptable worship, it implies, does it not, that there is also a type of worship that is unpleasing, unacceptable, okay?

Displeasing. With immature Christians and unregenerate people, what is pleasing to man and pleasing to God are so often not the same.

And you have to pick one. Please man, please God. And this is one reason why you have some of the practices going on in worship services that happen today.

We'll talk about this, I'll leave it for later so I don't double dip there. John Gill says this.

Now for an act of religious worship, there must be a command of God. God is a jealous

God, and will not suffer anything to be admitted into the worship of Him, but what is according to His word and will.

If not commanded by Him, He may justly say, Who hath required this at your hands?

Like, what are you doing? Like, you know what God? We've come up with a great way to worship

You. This morning, we're going to have our juggling ministry. It's going to come and they're going to juggle. I'm trying to be silly because I don't want to like...

Here in a minute I may hit an example that you're like, Wait, they do this down the road or something. I'm just trying to give broad examples.

But it's like, what are you doing? Who in their right mind came up with that?

Not the Lord, right? Now Hebrews 12, 29 ends with this. Our God is a what?

A consuming fire. And I've heard, I remember growing up and probably in youth ministry and messages,

I've heard people use that wrongly, right? They say, Our God is a... Hey, everybody, we're getting started to worship tonight.

And the Bible says, Our God is a consuming fire. Lord, set this place on fire, you know?

You're like, that's not what you want, right? Because what the author of Hebrews is talking about...

Anybody know? I think it's on your sheet, right? He's talking about Leviticus. He's quoting Leviticus, which is what?

It's on your sheet. Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took a censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the

Lord. We don't really know what this is, but basically they did something that they just thought, You know what would be great?

God said do it this way, but we got an idea. Let's do it this way, all right? Which He had commanded them.

He had not commanded them, right? By the way, not only that He did not say, don't do this.

That's not what it's saying. He didn't say, don't do this, and they did it anyway. He had just not commanded them to do it.

Does that make sense? Was that crazy what I just said? Hopefully that came through right. And so what's the

Lord do? Fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them and they died before the Lord. So when the author of Hebrews says,

Worship the Lord rightly, worship the Lord in a pleasing way, acceptable worship, for our

God is a consuming fire. He's not saying, hey, set the place on fire. He's saying, no,

God consumes false worshipers and He cares how He is worshiped.

I don't know where you guys are at in your Bible reading, but soon I've been through kind of the backside of Exodus right now.

And you know there's all those chapters, if you've read through Exodus before. Exodus is one of those books like everything's going really, really, you know, as far as reading, it's engaging and all that.

And then you kind of have to, if you're not careful, you'll feel like you just have to plow through chapter after chapter about all these little details with a tabernacle.

But I want to encourage you with something. Don't just plow through that. Don't skip over that. Why? Because it teaches us that God really cares about what?

Detail. He cares. God is worthy of our worship, and He's actually our highest good when we worship

Him. So, according to Scripture, what elements are required in corporate worship?

Now, obviously we're going to say this, there's a change between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Hopefully everybody understands that.

In the New Covenant, we are under the New Covenant, which is inaugurated by Christ's work. The old has passed away, the new has come.

So if you find a verse about, you know, wringing the dove's neck and pouring the blood on the altar, and you come and you say, we've got to do that Sunday.

We say, whoa, whoa. First of all, I commend you for reading, and commend you for finding that in your

Bible, but you need to understand that we're not under the Old Covenant. Christ is fulfilled.

Those were all types and shadows, and they've been fulfilled in Christ. We're not under that. We're under the

New Covenant, okay? Well, how ought a church to worship corporately? Under the New Covenant.

Let me mention this. Spurgeon and others call it will -worship, when you don't worship according to Scripture.

So Spurgeon said will -worship is any kind of worship which is not prescribed in God's own

Word. So he called it will -worship. And not just him, it's just a common phrase. Okay, so how do we regulate our worship by God's Word according to the

New Testament? Well, there's several. Let me walk through these, and then I'll kind of, I want to say some things when

I'm through with that. Okay, so here's some things. And I hope that you notice this pattern in our church.

Number one, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Ephesians 5 .19, the church is to address one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the

Lord with your heart. Singing is part of worship. This one's probably not even an argument, right?

The church ought to sing. I will say this, the songs that we sing, it does matter. They ought to be rich.

They ought to be full and deep. If you're only singing about songs about how great things that you do and not about what

God has done, that's a problem. They ought to be about God and His work. Focus on Him.

We ought to sing psalms. I grew up my whole life never really singing. I mean, every now and then, you know, there's an old song based on Psalm 119, 105.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet. Y 'all know that one? And a light unto my path.

Well, that's singing a psalm. Okay, I like that. But I really never really sing psalms, you know.

But it's hard to sing a psalm because of the translation, and it can be kind of weird just because you haven't done it before.

But, I mean, is it really? It's really not controversial, is it? Paul says sing psalms.

So psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, so we should sing. Secondly, Scripture reading. Why don't we read

Scripture at church? 1 Timothy 4 .13 Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.

Now you can read publicly, I guess, during the sermon, but it seems to me that the verse carries more weight than just I'm going to read a text and then preach on it.

But the idea of our service is under the authority of the reading of the Scriptures.

Thirdly, teaching and confessing the faith. So you have 1 Timothy 4 .13, I already said it. But until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.

And then 1 Timothy 3 .16 Great indeed we confess is the mystery of godliness. So the

Bible shows us it is right and good to teach sound doctrine to the church when we gather to confess truth together.

Again, I think that can be met in the sermon. But if you want to know why does Providence Baptist Church have a time where we read our confession together and our catechism each week?

Because we believe this is an element of teaching. It's being devoted to the public teaching and the teaching of sound doctrine and confessing the truths of God's Word together.

Fourth, shouldn't be controversial, prayer. Prayer should be part of our service. Colossians 4 .2,

continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. Matthew 21 .13,

Jesus says, It is written, My house will be called a house of prayer. You make the den of robbers.

So it's amazing sometimes how little, and you've been in service like this, I have too. We've all been in services before, when you go and you think back, you're like, there was so little prayer.

Maybe a prayer, maybe two prayers, maybe three prayers. So we've kind of stacked some things that, this is bad to say it, but force us to pray.

So what I'm saying is like, we do Scripture and prayer, prayer, Scripture and prayer, confession and catechism and prayer, the offering and prayer.

We typically have a prayer before the sermon and a prayer after the sermon, and then a closing prayer. I don't know how many prayers that is, and I'm not trying to say it's a competition.

Was that like six? But anyway, the point is, we should pray. Okay? I'm going to pause and give an application to the home.

These four elements, singing, Scripture reading, teaching and prayer. That ought to be part of our family worship, family devotion.

Genesis 18, 19, I've chosen him that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the

Lord. You say, again, that's Old Testament. Yes, it is. But do you think that under the Old Testament, God desired that fathers teach the truths of the faith to their children, but under the new covenant, it's like, no, don't do that.

Just do it at church. Well, no. Right? So this should be part of our home life.

Singing, Scripture reading, teaching, prayer should all be part. Now, some of these others can't be.

So number five, giving. And we've discussed this before, and I've had pushback and discussion, but I'll just defend it a little bit.

I think giving is a part of our corporate worship. So 1 Corinthians 16, 1 and 2 is a classic text.

Now, concerning the collection of the saints as I direct the churches of Galatia, so also you are to do, the first day of the week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up so you may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when

I come. So I think that Paul's idea there is that when the church gathers on the first day of the week, they set aside for this particular offering.

So I think it's right for the church to have giving as part of its worship. I'm not saying that a church, because there are some churches, they just have the box in the back.

I'm not saying they're wrong, but I have considered this. I consider when

Acts 2 seems to be public giving, Acts 5 seems to be public giving, and so I think that we're warranted from Scripture to have giving to the

Lord as part of our worship, and this is why we take up an offering during our worship.

I know some people say, yeah, but you're not supposed to show off. Well, okay, I think you can give in the offering without showing off.

You can put it discreetly in an envelope. If you're pulling out the $100 bill, and you're saying, okay, that's a problem, right?

But I think that you can still give discreetly during the worship, and that it can be,

I think it's right, okay? Sixthly, preaching. Okay, so we have

Scripture, singing, Scripture reading, teaching, prayer, giving, preaching. I'll just mention a passage that we're going to start covering this coming

Sunday, Acts 6 -2. There's so many passages we can look at, but in the 12, summon the full number of disciples and say it is not right that we should give up preaching the

Word of God to serve tables, and let me ask you this. Is serving tables like just a silly ministry that doesn't matter?

No, it matters. It's important. Because they're talking about serving the widows, if you know the context. So are the apostles saying, that's such a lame task that we're not doing it?

No. What is being communicated here? We could use the word priority, right?

They're saying we cannot stop the priority in order to do this other thing.

Kind of like Nehemiah. Remember Nehemiah? They say, Nehemiah, come down here. Come down here, we need to talk to you.

What were those guys' names? Tobias and... Is it Tobias? And what was the other guy? Sanballat.

Those just sound like bad guys' names, you know? Sanballat, right? Not a great name. I know you're looking for a name.

Don't go with Sanballat. So you have Tobias and Sanballat. Come down here, Nehemiah. Nehemiah, and we want to talk with you.

And he says what? I'm doing a good work. I can't come down. It's similar to the apostles. Look.

It's not that this stuff isn't important. It is important. But there's a priority. And what's the priority? Preaching.

So Tom Hicks says, the high point of public worship in the new covenant is the preached word of God. Every other element of worship depends on God's word.

I'll tell you a story real quick. I was at a deacon's. This was a long time ago. Not at this church. Oh, I don't mind telling you.

He's into it. Okay. So I was at a deacon's. This was so long ago now. It's way in the rear view. I was at a deacon's

Christmas party. And they serve steaks. So somebody write that down and just think on it.

Anyway, deacon's Christmas party. They serve steaks. We're eating steaks. And there's a deacon's wife comes up to me.

She says to me, I had just started pastoring. She said, you better not ever do what you did last

Sunday again. And I kind of thought she was joking, but like she was like real serious. Like, you know, and I'm like, what did

I do? Like, what did I do? Just thinking like, did I say a cuss word or something? You know?

She and I said, what did I do? She said, you preached after the cantata.

And I was like, I literally, I'm telling y 'all, I didn't do it to like, I'm going to show them. No, like I literally was like, oh, we're having a cantata today.

Okay, that's fine. I got my sermon ready. We did the cantata. I preached. And I think everybody's mind was just blown.

They're like, we don't do that. Right. We just do the cantata and we don't preach. Well, I would argue that our worship is not complete unless there's preaching of the word of God.

Okay. Um, more than we could talk about that. We could argue about expositional preaching. By the way, what is, what is expositional preaching?

Yeah, it's expounding scripture. So ordinarily, it's not always at our church and there's place for other types of preaching, but ordinarily in our church, you hear sermons that are sequential sermons through books of the

Bible or portions of the scripture. That's not on accident. That's not like, oh, we're just going to find this neat way to do it.

No, no. It's because God has given us his word, not in just words and verses, but in books.

We need to understand it together. And so that's what we do. So ordinarily, that's how we preach or nearly preaching takes up a considerable amount of our worship.

No comment from you on that. And, uh, but I do want to say this. Preaching is worship.

So some people get this idea. They think, uh, we got worship and now it's the preaching.

No, no, no. Preaching is worship. It's worship from the preacher, right, as to God.

It's worship from the listeners as they think about what God is saying to them from his word.

And there's just one audience, right, or an audience of what one, I should say, the triune

God, right, in the preaching. So consider that. All right. Seventhly, the ordinances.

Now here, of course, I'm referring to what? Baptism and the Lord's Supper. Both of these ordinances are to be done within the context of the local church.

I don't mean that we have to do them inside these walls. You can get baptized in a creek. You know, we've done

Lord's Supper. Remember, we've done Lord's Supper in a home before. There's nothing wrong with that so far as what?

The church is gathered. So it's not, no, now if Pastor Jacob and I just kind of went and we had our little pocket

Lord's Supper that we went and doled out to people, that would be inappropriate because these ordinances are for the gathered church.

Okay. So consider that. I don't think we have a command to observe the ordinances every service.

That's obvious for baptism. Okay. That'd be a problem. You know, it's like, all right, somebody's got to get baptized today.

Jacob, I know it's your 15th time, but we've got to do it. No, we baptize as God moves.

Because we believe that baptism follows conversion and it's a sign and symbol of what

God has already done. And it doesn't save you, but it is a command to follow the Lord and believers' baptism.

Lord's Supper, we could work through that. Where I'm at right now, I don't see that we have a command to do it every week.

I'm willing to think through that more, but as I've wrestled with it, talked with Jacob about it, studied, talked with faithful men,

I do like where we're setting aside once a month to do it. Let me read this and then I can offer up maybe a minute or two of questions.

This is from our confession. It says this, Chapter 22, Paragraph 1, the second half of it,

The acceptable way to worship the true God is instituted by Him and is delimited by His own revealed will.

Thus He may not be worshipped according to human imagination or inventions or the suggestions of Satan nor through any visible representations nor in any other way that is not prescribed in Scripture.

Actually, let me go ahead and just push through and then we can do questions at the end. That'd be better. Let me address that one line, by the way.

Did you catch that? Look at it on your sheet. He may not be worshipped by the suggestions of Satan.

Now think about that for just a minute. Like no one is openly doing that. Do you know anybody that's doing that?

So, hey guys, I was just going to tell you that Satan has suggested a way that we worship this Sunday and I thought we should try it out.

Okay, no one's doing that. Okay, so what does that mean? So just think for just a second. Satan does disguise himself as what?

An angel of light. So the idea is that you better be wary because you think it's just an innocent error.

It's no big deal and it's a satanic suggestion. One more thing and we'll move on.

I would argue that even within the regulative principle there can be room for grace and disagreement.

Okay, so for example, I think churches should sing the Psalms. You have our sister church at Trinity in Port Arthur and they do their whole service in two languages.

It makes it incredibly difficult to do a psalm and so right now they don't do a psalm. They've thought through that and tried to figure it out.

Do I think they're in violation? No, I do not. We understand that. Maybe there's a church they do a psalm every other week.

Do I think they're in violation? No, we can have some freedom there. We want to do a psalm every week. But you understand.

This church over here, they may not do the confession in catechism. Okay, this church may take up an offering at the end or they may have a box at the back or whatever.

I'm not worried about arguing any of that. Just the foundation of what the Word of God says we must include.

Alright, next thing we need to tackle for a moment is what I'm going to call circumstances or accidentals.

So the Confession 1 paragraph 6 says, We recognize that some circumstances concerning the worship of God and government of the church are common to human actions and organizations are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian wisdom following the general rules of the

Word which must always be observed. So let me explain this to you. Because if you say, yeah, we do the regular principle of worship.

Somebody may say to you, well, do you have air conditioning in your church? Yes, this church knows it better than anybody because it's too hot, too cold.

Well, actually, yes, we do. Maybe we should take it out. No, you say, well, that's not commanded in the Bible, so aha, you're inconsistent and you're in error.

No, listen. That's what you call a circumstance. You have the elements of worship and you have the circumstances surrounding the worship.

The elements of worship that we just went through, you can't change those. These are prescribed in God's Word.

The circumstances can change. You can meet, you don't have to meet in this building as a church. You gather.

You may gather in a barn. You may gather in a home. You may gather on Main Street in a rented building. Whatever.

You may have A .C. You may be in Mexico. You may not have A .C. You may have a stage. You may not have a stage. You may have a big pulpit.

You may have a little pulpit. You may have a cross back there over the Baptist. You may not. You may put your words on the screens.

You may use a hymnal. You may not. All of that. You understand the difference? All of that is what you call circumstances, accidentals.

It's not the elements of worship. Hopefully that makes sense. Pastor Jacob and I have talked about this before but Tom Hicks does a great job in his chapter.

When you truly understand the regulative principle of worship it's not constrictive. It's not a burden.

It's a blessing. It's so, it actually makes Pastor Jacob and my responsibility so free.

I don't have to wonder what we should do in worship. I don't have to entertain questions like can we do this or that?

Because we have a book. I don't have to be enslaved to my feelings. You know, does this feel right?

Well, guess what? Our feelings aren't the driver. It's God's word. It's what God has said. Yeah, yeah.

Okay, but Quatro. This crucifix, it just really helps me feel close to God.

It's just a tool. Or, this little figurine.

It's just an aid. No. I'll tell you what it is. If it's not commanded in Scripture, it's idolatry.

It's will worship. You've come up with something. It's not pleasing to the Lord. Well, it just seems like it's the way we need to do things.

It's just culture. It's just my good idea. Talk to Uzzah about that. You remember Uzzah in the

Bible, right? The ark is stumbling on a cart and it's about to fall in the mud.

And this scares me because what would you do? The ark is about to fall in the mud. So what are you going to do?

You're going to watch the ark of God fall in the mud? I mean, I'd be right there with Uzzah, I think.

I'm going to grab it so it doesn't fall in the mud. And what happens when Uzzah does that?

God kills him. So consider that. Now, God is so patient.

I'm not saying that we're going to write off every church that's not doing the regular principle worship. I'm not saying that. Please don't post that anywhere.

I'm saying there are certainly some things so far out there that we'd have to say, well, we can't partner with that.

But for others, hopefully we can lovingly persuade them that, look, this is the truth of God's word. You know, that every time

Sister Lily's granddaughter comes, we're not going to let her get up here and sing a special. Right?

For some of you, it's kind of funny because you've been in churches like that. But it's not going to do that. It's just easy. It's easy. It's free.

I'm free. I don't have to do that. Why? Because I have the book. The book says, I shouldn't do that.

I should just do this. OK. Hicks also notes how it's freeing from pagan worship.

So pagan worship. So we don't have to be driven by the way the world worships with feeling and emotion and just trying to, you know, conjure up that.

It's freeing. Hicks says that, you knew I was going to mention this. He says it's free from papal innovations.

So we don't have to do the dumb stuff, my words, not his, that Rome does because it's actually,

I would say, it is inventions of Satan. We're free from the government. You know, the government says, hey, you can't do this.

We're saying, actually, I can't. I have a permit. Right? Christ is king. Freedom from pragmatism, silliness, manipulation,

Hicks says. You notice how our church, for example, has announcements on Sunday and time of greeting.

So let me explain this to you in case you didn't understand this. We're trying to be very, very careful that at 1030, we give some announcements.

Hey, this is what's going on. This is what's coming up. We have a time to greet one another because sometimes at church, you come in and you leave.

You don't get to see everybody. So I'm okay with that. So we have announcements, we have to greet one another. But listen, that's not part of worship.

That's not when worship starts. When does worship start? When we have, what is it called? Yeah, a call to worship.

That's when worship starts. So this other stuff is like, hey, great. I'm glad you're here.

Fist bump. Germ X. Okay. Now, now we'll have worship, right?

Worship begins at the call to worship. But all of this is freeing, and to some of this,

I am going to say explicitly, but it's freeing from, we don't have to have wear a crazy hat day to church. Y 'all know what we're going to do next

Sunday? We're going to wear a crazy hat to church. That'd be great. No, it's not.

We're not going to have, I don't know, some popular, maybe participate. I don't care if you wear camo to church. I mean, you know, maybe we could talk about that.

But we're not going to have a wear camo to church day, right? Ride your horse into the sanctuary day.

I don't know if that's a real thing, but maybe. Let's have a clown on stage today. Let's jump on a trampoline and preach a sermon.

Let's show a movie. Let's forego preaching for a choir cantata, and on and on and on. We're free from that.

Free. That's biblical freedom. We don't have to be enslaved to any of that man -made, I think we should do it this way, jaunt.

We have a book. Man, I really wanted to get into this. I'll just summarize it.

And then we've got to be done. But all these elements, beautiful, I'm going to put my notes away so I'm not reading. All these elements beautifully surround and point to, flow from, in, around, all these things, the

Gospel. We read the Scriptures and they point us to Christ. We pray because we pray through the completed work of Christ.

We preach Christ and Him crucified. We give out of the grace that God has given us in Christ.

You understand? All these things, when you are committed to the regulative principle of worship, you are committed to the

Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. I'm not saying that if they don't do that they don't believe the Gospel. Please don't think that.

But I am saying there's a reason we do what we do. And it points us to what Jesus Christ has done for us.

By His perfect law keeping, by His death, for us and as us under the wrath of God, His resurrection from sin, or from the grave,

His victory over sin, and that we're trusting that message. And that's what our worship is to revolve around.