Three Minutes in Theology How Should We Worship

The Regulative Principle of Worship

Today's subject is How Should God Be Worshipped, and in this brief time I'll defend the regulative principle of worship. I taught on this at our church from an interesting passage from Exodus 19 and verse 12 where God set limits for how the people could approach Him when He's getting ready to come down and meet with Moses and give the Ten Commandments.

But the idea here is in the modern mindset, the idea that God would have limit the way that people approach Him, it almost blows our mind. We tend to think that we can approach God however we want as long as we have a sincere heart.

As long as we really mean it, it doesn't matter what we do in worship. We can do skits, we can show videos of Jesus, it really doesn't matter as long as we mean.

Well.

Scripture’s Authority Over Worship Practices

In reality, the regulative principle of worship is the biblical teaching that God knows how He wants to be worshipped and that He has set limits in His word. He has regulated in the scriptures how the church is to worship God.

This touches on the sufficiency and authority of scripture. That is, the Bible is enough for us to know how we are to worship God. We don't have to go to some other source. We don't have to trust our feelings.

Actually, it makes it easy for us, doesn't it? We worship how God says to worship and we don't do other things. This is set over against the normative principle. The normative principle says that whatever is not expressly forbidden in the scripture, you can do.

Whereas the regulative principle says only what is regulated by scripture, only what is expressly commanded in the scripture, not only may be done in worship, but must be done in worship. And so the reality is that we believe what the Bible teaches about how God would be worshipped.

I know people bring up a lot of strange things like, what about air condition? What about the layout of the room? What about chairs versus pews or standing versus sitting and all those sorts of things?

Well, the reality is there are some incidentals in our worship. Whether or not a church has AC is an incidental. Whether or not a church uses a piano or guitar, that's an incidental. In certain portions of worship, whether a person's sitting or standing, that's not what we're talking about.

We're talking about the actual fundamental elements of worship. These are regulated by the scriptures and we must do them. We must believe that God has the authority and knows how he wants to be worshipped and loves his church enough to tell them.

We don't have to guess. He has told us how we ought to worship him. So search the scriptures. Only those things that are regulated by God in the scriptures can and must be done in a New Testament worship service.

Thanks for joining us on this episode of Three Minutes of Faith.