October 20, 2022 Show with Dr. John Currie on “God’s Gospel, God’s Gift, God’s Purpose, & God’s Choice” PLUS Dr. Jonathan Gibson on “Worship: On Earth As It Is In Heaven”

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Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27, verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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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 a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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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.

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

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 20th day of October 2022.

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I'm so thrilled to have two first -time guests today, one each hour.

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For the first hour, we have joining us Dr. John Curry, who is an ordained minister in the

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Orthodox Presbyterian Church and a professor of pastoral theology at Westminster Theological Seminary.

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He is going to be addressing God's gospel, God's gift, God's purpose, and God's choice, and will also be announcing the upcoming

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East Shore Reformed Conference in Chestertown, Maryland. During the second hour, we'll be joined by Dr.

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Jonathan Gibson, who received his PhD from Cambridge University, and he's a former associate minister at Cambridge Presbyterian Church in England.

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He's an author and currently associate professor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary.

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He is going to be addressing worship on Earth as it is in heaven, and will be announcing the upcoming

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Bold North Conference on Reformed Theology in St. Paul, Minnesota. But first of all, it is my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Dr.

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John Curry. Hi, Chris, great to be with you. It's great to have you on the program.

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Why don't you tell our listeners the likelihood that there be anyone in our audience that has never heard of Westminster Theological Seminary is probably slim, but you never know.

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I mean, I do have new believers who listen. I even have those from outside of not only

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Reformed Christianity listening, but outside of Christianity entirely. Sometimes we have

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Muslims and Orthodox Jews and atheists and so on listening. But why don't you tell our listeners about Westminster Theological Seminary?

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Well, thank you for the opportunity. Westminster Theological Seminary has a great heritage that the

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Lord has given to her. She started in 1929 under the leadership of a minister in the church that I serve in, the

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Orthodox Presbyterian Church. His name was J. Gresham Machen. And as the

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Presbyterian Church and its pastoral training institution at Princeton was moving moderate to liberal,

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Machen started to sound the alarm through what's a really definitive book, and so it's still so insightful today,

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Christianity and Liberalism. And in that book, he really outlined the fact that liberalism was not another form of Christianity.

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It was really a different religion. And so with strains of liberalism and modernism that were coming into the church,

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Machen started in 1929 Westminster Theological Seminary to be committed to the authority, sufficiency of the

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Word of God, and particularly as the teaching of the Word of God gets expressed in what we call

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Reformed Theology and the Reformed Confessions. And Westminster would hold to that and teach that, and that that would become the basis for the training of a new generation of pastors.

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And now, almost 100 years later, here we are, and the Lord has just been very faithful to us and has really given

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Westminster, through some great professors whose names your listeners would perhaps know, a reach that really goes beyond our—we've been called the little seminary that's got a big reach through the writings of our professors.

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A lot of people have been helped theologically. A lot of pastors have been equipped for the ministry.

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And so that's the institution in Glenside, Pennsylvania, that I have the inestimable privilege of serving in these days.

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Well, praise God. And what exactly would be a part of your courses there as a professor of pastoral theology?

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Well, pastoral theology takes what the students are learning in their other courses, their systematics courses, church history, apologetics, biblical studies, and applies it in the context of pastoral ministry.

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One way that I like to put it is that we stand on and build from what our students are getting in their other courses, and we teach them how it hits the pulpit and how it hits the street.

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And so in our area of pastoral theology, we focus on the areas of preaching and leadership, leading the church in evangelism and missions, and pastoral care and counseling.

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And some other institutions are sometimes called practical theology, but we go under the title pastoral theology because we really are taking theology in the pastorate for the service of the pastorate.

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So our job is to take the rest of the curriculum and really show how that works out in pastoral life and ministry.

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Well, if anybody wants more details on Westminster Theological Seminary here in Pennsylvania, the website is wts .edu.

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wts .edu. And also, Dr. Curry is going to be speaking at the

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East Shore Reformed Conference this weekend. It's actually starting tomorrow,

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Friday, October 21st through Saturday, October 22nd at Grace Community Church in Chestertown, Maryland.

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And it's on the theme, The Sovereignty of God and Salvation. If you want more details on that, go to alliancenet .org,

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alliancenet .org. And even to be more detailed on this specific conference, add forward slash the -sovereignty -of -god -in -salvation.

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And I'll be repeating that later on. We have a tradition here on Iron Shelf and Zion Radio, Dr.

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Curry, whenever we have a first -time guest on the program, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony that would include the kind of religious atmosphere in which they were raised, if any, and what kind of providential circumstances our

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Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them. And I'd love to hear your story.

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Well, thank you for asking that question. I'd love to tell it. Yeah, the

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Lord saved me out of, as you put it, a non -religious or non -Christian environment.

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I was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and my family emigrated to Canada just as I was turning a teenager.

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And we did not at that point have any exposures, of course, as I knew, to the gospel.

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And so you might say the way you would put it was I was raised in a non -Christian environment.

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But when I was in my early teens, I got connected to a church in northern

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Alberta where we were living, and the youth group in that church really loved me well.

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And while it was not a Reformed church, there was enough Bible and gospel that was coming off of the pulpit that my conscience was being provoked and I was being exposed to Christ.

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And then at a youth event in December of the year that I started to go to that church, at a youth event,

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I was really arrested by the fact that Jesus Christ was coming again and that if he was to return as a sinner,

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I would be condemned for all eternity. And so at that youth event, I responded to an invitation to believe in Jesus, and I'm convinced that it was at that event that I came to faith in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And then from there, because that little church was very committed to the scriptures, even although they weren't a

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Reformed church, they were deeply committed to the Bible as the word of God, I learned to love the

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Bible. I grew in my study of the Bible. And through that context, got called to the ministry.

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As I went off to Bible college and then went into the ministry,

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I had been trained in the discipline of expository preaching, and it was as I got into the need to preach the scriptures week to week that I actually began to ask questions of the text, and knowing that I needed to answer my questions from the text of scripture, that actually led me into Reformed theology.

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As I got exposure to good commentators and teachers who were handling the word of God with reverence, it was actually in the ministry that I became convinced of Reformed theology.

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Wow. Now, can you repeat what kind of a theological background that that ministry had since you discovered the

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Reformed faith in the midst of it? Yeah, I was serving in a denomination called the

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Christian and Missionary Alliance. Oh, yes. Yeah, in fact, I know, in fact, he's become a friend of mine.

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I don't know if you know him yet, a local CMA pastor who is theologically Reformed. Well, I don't know, but I would love to meet him.

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That's wonderful. Yeah, David Monreal of the Carlisle Alliance Church, and they extended the invitation to him knowing he was a five -point

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Calvinist and thoroughly Reformed. So they do exist. In fact, when I interviewed him,

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I was getting e -mails from other CMAs, several

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CMA pastors that were also Reformed. Well, you know, the thing about the

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CMA that I loved and was firmly thankful for was that they were committed to the authority of the scriptures, and so I was free to study and preach the word.

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The other thing that they were deeply committed to was the mission of the church and foreign missions and evangelism, and that has remained with me to this day.

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But there are a number of pastors and teachers within the

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Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada as well as in the United States who would own

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Reformed theology, or at least the soteriological Calvinism. So yeah, that's where I was, and it was through the preaching of the scriptures that I actually

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Reformed in my own theology. Praise God. Well, we are going to be discussing as our theme today a theme that is drawn from the sessions at your upcoming conference that I mentioned before, the

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Sovereignty of God and Salvation, starting tomorrow and continuing through Saturday at Grace Community Church of Chestertown, Maryland.

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And this is a conference, by the way, of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

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But we're going to be discussing God's gospel, God's gift, God's purpose, and God's choice, obviously in a very summary form.

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We could never, at great length and in detail, plumb to the depths of those issues in the time that we have awaiting us.

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But I thought this would be a good way to whet the appetites of anyone who wants to try to attend last minute to this conference.

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First of all, it is interesting that something that seems so basic and so clear in the inerrant scriptures and we who are

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Reformed, as do most Christians who claim to believe in the inerrancy of scripture, we also believe in the perpiscuity of scripture.

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It's interesting that the gospel that seems to be such a basic and clear teaching of the scriptures does evoke, somehow, differences of opinion on how we receive the blessings of that gospel.

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And you will have in -house debates and even arguments that bring to question whether some have violated important tenets of the gospel.

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And that has even happened within the spectrum of churches identifying themselves as Reformed.

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So, please provide for us what you think is a definition of God's gospel that is necessary for the salvation of sinners.

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Yeah, well thank you for the question. Well, it's interesting the way we framed this.

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You know, the conference was coming up on the weekend. I was asked to speak in terms of the sovereignty of God in salvation.

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And because of the way that the Lord convinced me of His sovereignty in salvation,

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I thought the best way to come about the conference would be to do a series of expositions in the

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Book of Romans, starting with Romans chapter 1. And the reason that we called the title of the first talk,

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God's Gospel, is because of the way Paul introduces his own gospel in the

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Book of Romans. In the Book of Romans, he tells us that it's the gospel of God, right?

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In Romans 1 .1, that he's been set apart to be a servant for the gospel of God.

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And what that means is it's the gospel that God came from God. It's His gospel.

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So, I think the first thing we need to recognize about the gospel is that the message comes from God.

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It's revealed by Him. It's by His design. It's delivered by Him through His servants.

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As those servants have written down His word in the scriptures for us.

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And I think as we look at God's gospel, you have a hard time, I think, finding a better kind of definition you've asked for,

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Chris, a better definition than what Paul gives to us in 1 Corinthians 15, when he tries to remind the

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Corinthians of what he first of all delivered to them, his gospel, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that He was raised from the dead on the third day according to the scriptures.

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And so the gospel centers on the person of Jesus Christ. It's the revelation of God's message that centers on the person of Jesus Christ and what

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He has done for the salvation of sinners. His death on the cross,

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His obedient life, His death on the cross, and then His resurrection from the dead on the third day.

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And then how does that, how does what He did become mine? Well, we're going to get to that when we talk about God's gift in Romans chapter 3.

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But the gospel becomes mine, Christ of the gospel becomes mine, not through anything that I do, not through any deeds of my own that I have done, will now do, or do in the future.

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Christ, in all that He is and did, becomes mine through faith, and faith alone.

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It's as I hear the revelation of Christ in scripture and say, that's true.

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As I hear the revelation of Christ in scripture and say, I need Him for my sin, and then

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I turn from my sin and trust Him alone to forgive my sin.

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So, you know, Chris, John Calvin said that the gospel is Christ clothed in His gospel.

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And the gospel is the message of Jesus Christ in His atoning death and in His life -giving resurrection as He is received by faith by sinners.

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Yes, and when we move on to the next aspect of God's gift, there has been, obviously, for centuries, a dispute between those of us who are

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Reformed and those that would be outside of the Reformed camp. Many Arminians would be included in that, and they would typically not identify with that word, or not identify using that word for themselves,

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Arminian. But many do, but I think the majority do not. But they will hear, if they believe in the inerrancy of scripture, they will hear

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Ephesians 2, verses 8 and 9, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

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And they will say, yes, I agree with that. But they will also say, a gift cannot be a gift unless you freely have the power to either accept it or reject it.

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And therefore, man does cooperate in that gift because he is the final arbiter of whether or not he accepts or rejects it.

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And I have responded to these well -meaning folks that, first of all, where do you get that definition of gift that you have to have the power to accept or reject it, because if I am lying unconscious in a hospital bed, and my friends and loved ones and even strangers donate blood or even donate a vital organ that needs to be transplanted within me,

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I have no awareness of this occurring, and therefore I'm not freely accepting it in order for it to be legitimately called a gift.

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It's a gift whether I accept it or not. But if you could pick up where I left off there. Yeah. Well, that's an interesting analogy.

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Perhaps you're familiar with a similar analogy that R .C. Sproul used to use where he pictured many people's view of salvation as though the sinner is as though they are in the middle of the ocean about to drown, and if we can simply throw them a life preserver, a lifesaver, and they can grab on to that, then we can drag them to safety, to salvation.

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And though Jesus is the one who keeps throwing out the life preserver, if the sinner who is sinking, drowning, and sinking about to drown will only grab it.

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Well, the biblical picture, as Sproul pointed out to us, is much more like we've actually already died, and we're at the bottom of the ocean and dead and decaying, and Jesus jumps into the water, breathes life into us so that we can look and say, oh, there's the

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Savior, and then we embrace Him. And the passage that you referred to,

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Chris, Ephesians chapter 2, before you get to the passage where it says, it's by grace you have been saved through faith.

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Before that, it tells us that we're dead in our trespasses and our sins. So, and then after in chapter 2, verse 10, it says that we are

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God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which

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God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. So the whole context of Ephesians chapter 2 pictures us as sinners, as those who are already dead to God.

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Later in chapter 4 of Ephesians, it'll tell us that we are darkened in our understanding and alienated from the life of God.

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So there's no life to receive the gift for the sinner. And in chapter 8, it'll tell us that we cannot, we don't love the law of God.

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We cannot respond to the law of God. We're not even able to do so. And so the problem with the analogy that we have to be able to receive the gift in order for it to be a gift is it's a gift that's given to dead people.

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We don't have the ability in sin, nor do we have the desire in sin to actually receive the gift were it held out to us.

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So God in his grace intervenes and gives us life and gives us a new heart.

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And the faith that is exercised is not a work that we add to the grace of salvation.

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Faith is the instrument by which we receive the gift of grace that he has given to us.

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And the faith that we exercise is faith that is the result of a new heart, a regeneration that God has by his grace given to us before we even have the ability to believe.

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So one of the problems with the view that says faith is our contribution or faith is our part is that it doesn't understand how dead in sin we actually are.

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It doesn't have a deep enough view of human depravity and therefore doesn't have a high enough view of God's grace by which he gives us the ability to even believe in him.

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Amen. And obviously as Reformed Christians, we have to make it clear to those outside of our theological camp that we do not believe that a person will continue to live on his life after being regenerated by the

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Holy Spirit of God, rejecting the gospel. We do believe that the elect consciously and willingly and lovingly and joyfully and gratefully embrace this gospel.

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But it is only because we have first been given new hearts. Am I right? That's right.

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That's right. So we have to be clear that it's not as though God does the believing for us.

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We do the believing. But we do the believing through the gift of a new heart that he has already given to us.

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It's like anything else in life. We have freedom within our nature. And the exercise of faith is outside of the ability of my nature as a sinner.

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When God gives me a new heart, then I am free to believe.

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So we do the believing, but we do the believing based out of the new heart that God has given to us.

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And we are going to our first station break. If you have a question that you would like to ask

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John Curry, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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We'll be right back with John Curry. It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world.

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royaldiadem .com. We are now back with our guest today, John Curry, who is professor of pastoral theology at Westminster Theological Seminary here in Pennsylvania.

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We are addressing God's gospel, God's gift, God's purpose, and God's choice, which are a part of the upcoming

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East Shore Reformed Conference being held tomorrow and Saturday on the sovereignty of God and salvation, and that's at Grace Community Church of Chesterton, Maryland.

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So judging from what you have said, Dr. Curry, there seems to be a problem on how those outside of the

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Reformed camp understand the nature of man and how far man's fall has taken him spiritually.

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He is not just spiritually sick or weakened, as those outside of the

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Reformed camp would claim. He's actually spiritually dead. Yeah, that's correct.

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I think that's what we get in the book of Ephesians, chapter 2, and I think that's what historically and classically

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Reformed theology has summarized the teaching of Scripture as total depravity, and it's not only that I can't,

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I don't want to, as a sinner, respond to God and his gracious invitation in Christ.

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As a matter of fact, as sinners, the very essence of being a sinner is

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I'm in rebellion against God, and I want to live autonomously from his law.

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There's no appeal there unless the Holy Spirit gives me eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart to respond to God's gracious invitation to come to Christ in the gospel.

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We have a questioner, and I usually only give the first name, city, and state or country of a listener who submits a question, but in this case it's a pastor

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I know, and since I would love to give or use this as an opportunity to promote the congregation where he serves,

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I will identify his full name. It's Pastor Jeremy Brandenburg, who is pastor of the

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Redeemer Orthodox Presbyterian Church here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. And by the way, his website, folks, is

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RedeemerOPC .org, RedeemerOPC .org. And Pastor Jeremy says,

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Dr. Curry, is it true that the esteemed Westminster Theological Seminary founding faculty member,

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Reverend Dr. John Murray, had a glass eye as a result of his military service in World War I?

38:17

And is it also true that students could reliability identify the glass eye by the glimmer of compassion which seemed to emanate from it and not his own natural eye?

38:29

Is this a joke, Jeremy? But if you could respond to that. Yeah, that's the legend.

38:39

That's one of the legends at Westminster. And Jeremy, as a Westminster alumnus, would be aware of it. What's true is that Professor Murray had served in the

38:50

British military, and he had lost an eye, and so he had a glass eye. And because he was a rather rigorous professor, one of the legends that has grown up around his very esteemed reputation at Westminster, one of the fun legends, is students could identify which eye was the glass one because it was the one that had the glimmer of mercy.

39:15

That's part of the legend. Yeah, and of course now rumors are going to start spreading that Westminster Theological Seminary is

39:24

Pentecostal. Yeah, that's right. Well, you've taught me a valuable lesson,

39:31

Pastor Brandenburg. I am going to begin to make sure I read questions in their completion before reading them on the air.

39:40

But thank you for submitting the question, Pastor Jeremy. And we also have an anonymous listener who says that,

39:52

I have been having disputes with some fellow Reformed brethren who claim that Arminianism is absolute heresy with a false gospel because of the differences we have with them.

40:06

While I agree that they have very serious problems with their theology and that areas of it are inerrant,

40:17

I don't think that where they are wrong leads their whole gospel to collapse into a false one, and therefore

40:24

I can still identify them as my brothers and sisters, although erring brethren.

40:31

I was wondering how you consider this situation. Yeah, well that's a very significant question, isn't it?

40:40

I think one of the things, a couple of things to keep in mind, that whenever you're having a dispute or a debate with another person, not least one who claims to be in Christ and claims to have faith in the

40:57

Christ that you have faith in, I think it's good to keep in mind that you're never just having a debate with their position.

41:06

You're having a debate with the person. And I think you want to address what this person actually believes, not just what you think their position must conclude, what conclusions it must lead them to.

41:19

One of the things I think we can do that lead Christians into unnecessary division, at times their divisions are necessary over the truth and over righteousness, but sometimes we can get ourselves into unnecessary division because what we actually do is impute to somebody conclusions that we think they must hold when they don't actually hold them.

41:43

Which is what anti -Calvinists do all the time to us. Yeah, sure.

41:48

So I think whenever we're debating with a professing believer, if they hold an

41:55

Arminian position, what we want to do is understand what they really believe. And happily, most

42:02

Christians who are in the Arminian position are inconsistent. And I mean,

42:08

I was an Arminian before I was a Calvinist, Chris. And I was committed to Christ.

42:17

I was committed to his word. And it's a little bit, you mentioned kind of jokingly earlier

42:22

Pentecostal, and I was actually saved in the Pentecostal church. That was the church

42:27

I was saved in. Amen. And if you're dealing with a believer who believes the

42:35

Bible is the word of God, and this is what I hope will happen at the conference this weekend, as we look at the

42:42

Scriptures together, genuine believers bring their lives under the authority of Scripture.

42:47

And often what those who are in a so -called Arminian camp are doing is there are categories and there are convictions that they are importing into the

42:57

Scripture or that they've been told are there in the Scriptures that are actually an obstacle to them seeing the glories of grace that are revealed in the

43:07

Scripture. So what I would want to say to the listener is, rather than trying to deal with an entire camp of so -called

43:16

Arminians, deal with the person who's in front of you. Find out what they believe and help to show them from the

43:24

Scriptures that the Bible they say they believe, the Bible that they, and the

43:29

Christ of the Bible that they say they believe in, actually teaches something different than what they've been taught.

43:36

Often, another way to put it is, there's Arminians and there's Arminians. Most Arminian believers that I know are carrying categories, are carrying baggage that they've been discipled in, and once we lovingly, patiently demonstrate from the

43:59

Scriptures what the Scriptures actually teach, a sincere Christian will embrace what the

44:06

Bible teaches. So that's the way I would address that question, Chris. In fact, could you just repeat the last few words of your final sentence, because for some reason you got a little garbled up.

44:17

I have no idea why. Yeah, I was just saying, I think when we take a sincere

44:25

Christian to the Scriptures and we show them from the Scriptures, and sometimes it's what they think is in there isn't in there, and what they didn't think was there is there, because the

44:38

Spirit of Christ dwells in them as He dwells in us, and He is the Teacher, it's the

44:43

Scriptures that do the convincing for us. So I'd say just take them to the Scripture, and don't impute to them positions they don't hold, and show them what the

44:53

Bible actually teaches. Amen. And as J .I. Packer, I believe it was

44:59

Packer, perhaps you can correct me if I'm wrong, but J .I. Packer once said that all

45:06

Christians are Calvinists on their knees in prayer, because even the Arminian will be praying for God to change hearts,

45:14

God to save their lost loved ones, and you're wondering why they're really doing that, if God has done all

45:22

He can do and the rest is up to them, it's interesting that they would pray that way, but I think it's the subconscious understanding of a regenerate heart and mind.

45:35

Yeah, I think you're right, it was J .I. Packer, I think he said that, I think he wrote that in Evangelism and the

45:41

Sovereignty of God, and I think it's a great illustration that shows that happily, we are very often inconsistent, that what we actually live theologically, happily, is inconsistent with mistakes we make that we confess.

45:59

And I think that's right, a lot of, any Christian that's on their knees praying for God to change somebody's heart is functionally a

46:09

Calvinist. Amen. And one last thing about that, I think that, and I'm not undermining or lessening or diminishing the seriousness of an

46:18

Arminian's error, but at the same time, I think what they mainly fail to see is the scriptural teaching of the invisible things that happen through the sovereignty of God that enable the sinner to believe, repent, and embrace this gospel.

46:39

And a lot of the disputes that we have are just because of the areas that are invisible to humans that involve

46:47

God's sovereignty in enabling the dead sinner to spiritually rise and see the truth and embrace it.

46:57

And I think that... Go ahead. Yeah, I think that's right, and I think you're right to point out, it doesn't mean it's not a serious debate and discussion, because to the degree that we don't give

47:09

God the honor he's due in what he has done in Christ, we're not giving him the glory he deserves.

47:15

So it's a serious debate, and we need to be earnest about it. But I think we need to not rule people outside the kingdom that Christ is brought into the kingdom.

47:26

Amen. And Harold Camping, who is now deceased, was teaching something,

47:32

I believe, very wrong. He would accuse Arminians of teaching a works gospel because if you require belief for someone to be born again, you are teaching a works gospel and equating believing with work.

47:48

Well, if that's the case, because I've heard Calvinists say that's a works gospel to insist on believing for the rebirth to occur.

47:55

You have to be very careful because sola fide, justification by faith alone, is one of the core principles of the

48:03

Reformation, and that does not mean justification by works alone. It's the opposite, justification by faith alone.

48:11

That's right, that's right. And we go on to now address briefly

48:17

God's purpose. What is God's purpose in the gospel? Yeah, I love this.

48:24

Where we're going to go at the conference, Chris, is to go to Romans chapter 8, and we have this very famous, familiar passage that Christians love to access in times of suffering, as they should, and it says,

48:42

And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

48:48

And we can kind of stop there and leave that purpose vague, but he doesn't leave it vague.

48:56

He says at the end, in the next verse, For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

49:08

And I think that gives us a glorious picture of the purpose of God, even as we talk about, as Reformed people in Ephesians, how

49:20

God has predestined us to adoption, and in love he has predestined us to holiness.

49:30

The purpose of God is to have a people for his possession, and those, as God said to his people,

49:38

Be holy, for I am holy. And so God's purpose is not just to save us, not just to convert us, but it's actually to conform us to the image of his son, to his holiness.

49:50

So what we want to flesh out from Romans chapter 8 is that he has, God has decreed and designed from all eternity that he would get glory in having a people who are conformed to his likeness in holiness.

50:05

And that's why when he predestines us and calls us, and he calls us, he justifies us, and stating it as though it is a done fact, he will glorify us, that we will, in glory, be conformed to his likeness.

50:25

So the purpose of God that we want to bring out is his purpose to have a people who look like his son, who is the revelation of himself.

50:35

Amen. And that's a missing element in the heresy of easy believism and cheap grace.

50:41

Those that would identify as evangelicals, who believe that all that is required for us to be promised heaven is to recite a prayer, to repeat the prayer of a preacher or a

50:56

Christian somewhere at Bible camp, even when you're five years old. If you've recited that prayer, it's a magical spell that promises you heaven.

51:05

But that is not the case, as many Christians, when they give their testimonies, they talk about after that having their decades of having abandoned the faith and being involved in all kinds of unrepentant monstrosities, and they will say that they were saved during those years, but later really just made

51:29

Christ the Lord of their life. But in reality, they were never saved until that point where they think they rededicated themselves.

51:37

Yeah. And last but not least, very briefly because we're nearly out of time, God's choice.

51:45

Well, I'm really looking forward to opening this up for the folks at the conference, Chris. We're going to go to that famous text,

51:51

Romans 9. And, you know, when a conference is on the sovereignty of God and salvation and we're in Romans, people are thinking, okay, we're going to spend our time in Romans 9, but we're actually going to go there last.

52:03

And I hope that by the time we get to Romans 9, it's almost like, well, of course.

52:09

And what you find in Romans 9 is that God has made the choice.

52:15

He tells us that as he deals with Jacob and Esau and other figures in the history of redemption, that the choice of those who would receive the mercy of God is not according to our will but according to God's will.

52:29

It's very overt there in Romans 9. And as the Lord says, I will have mercy on whom

52:35

I'll have mercy, and I'll have compassion on whom I'll have compassion. Paul says, so it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy.

52:43

You can have a more definitive statement. And so we want to flesh out how that is for God's glory and for the ultimate good of his people.

52:50

It's God's choice as to those who see Christ and those who believe in Christ and those who become conformed to Christ.

52:57

Amen. Well, I already know that I want to have you back again in the future. I hope that you share that opinion,

53:04

Dr. Curry. I'd love to have you on for the full two hours, as you can see how quickly an hour flies by.

53:11

If anybody wants more information on Westminster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, remember to go to wts .edu,

53:19

wts .edu. And if anybody wants to attend the East Shore Reformed Conference that is being held tomorrow and Saturday in Chestertown, Maryland, go to alliancenet .org,

53:31

alliancenet .org, and click on events. Thank you so much,

53:37

Dr. Curry. I look forward to your return soon and frequently to Iron Trumpets Iron Radio. Thank you,

53:43

Chris. Pleasure to be with you. God bless you, brother. And don't go away, folks, because we are going to be returning after this midway break with our second guest.

53:53

And I'm really looking forward to interviewing this guest as well for the first time ever,

53:58

Dr. Jonathan Gibson, on worship on earth as it is in heaven. If you have a question for Dr.

54:05

Gibson on worship, send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

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Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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That's ptlbiblerebinding .com. As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

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Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Hello, my name is

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01:09:26

Before I announce my second guest, Dr. Jonathan Gibson, who will be discussing worship on earth as it is in heaven, we just have a couple of important announcements to make.

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And now it's my honor to introduce to you more formally Dr. Jonathan Gibson, who received his

01:12:22

Ph .D. from Cambridge University. He's a former associate minister at Cambridge Presbyterian Church in England.

01:12:29

He's an author and currently associate professor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary here in Pennsylvania.

01:12:37

And he is going to be addressing worship on Earth as it is in Heaven, and will also be announcing the upcoming

01:12:44

Bold North Conference on Reformed Theology in St. Paul, Minnesota. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the first time ever to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Dr.

01:12:53

Johnny Gibson. Thanks very much, Chris, for having me on the radio program. It's a blessing, brother.

01:13:00

And before we even get into the heart of our discussion on worship on Earth as it is in Heaven, tell us about the

01:13:10

Bold North Conference on Reformed Theology where you will be preaching in St. Paul, Minnesota.

01:13:16

And that will be November 11th and 12th. Yes, I'm hoping to speak up in Minnesota on those dates, giving three talks on worship.

01:13:28

The overall title of the conference is Worship on Earth as it is in Heaven. Worship on Earth as it is in Heaven.

01:13:37

I'll do three talks. The first one will be under that title with the subtitle

01:13:42

A Biblical Theology of Worship. I'll be going through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

01:13:49

I'm looking for, is there a general liturgy, a general order of worship that the

01:13:56

Bible actually gives us as it unfolds? And I think there are different parts of the

01:14:02

Bible that help show us the order of liturgy in a general pattern with Adam on Mount Eden, as he's called to worship, with Israel on Mount Sinai, as they're called to worship in Exodus 19 and 20, with Israel on Mount Zion, with King Solomon called to worship there in 2

01:14:22

Chronicles 5 and 7, and then also with Jesus, the true Son of God, in the heavenly

01:14:29

Mount Jerusalem, and also then in the Book of Revelation. So that will be my first talk, will be

01:14:35

A Biblical Theology of Worship. The second one will be looking at the history of the

01:14:40

Reformation of worship during the 16th century, when the Reformation took place.

01:14:46

One of the things that has struck me is how each of the Reformers actually wrote their own liturgy.

01:14:53

One, they became Reformers preaching the true gospel and trying to reform the church. They all wrote the liturgy for their own church.

01:15:00

And I'll be doing an overview of the different key Reformers in different parts of Europe that wrote their own liturgy and what kind of liturgy they used and why they made various differences, changes to the liturgy.

01:15:15

And then third, I'll be looking at what, how shall we worship today? How then shall we worship is the title.

01:15:21

What should we do in the light of what we've seen in the Bible and how should we worship? And I'll be giving about ten principles of Christian worship in that third lecture.

01:15:33

So that's what the conference is going to be about. If people are free and able to come and join us, it would be great.

01:15:40

And we're hoping to have a really good turnout and some fun time looking at the

01:15:45

Scriptures and at history in regards to worshiping our triune God. Amen. And I know that we do have listeners in the

01:15:51

Minnesota area and in the Wisconsin area. And in those areas where it would be not too arduous to travel to St.

01:15:59

Paul. So I hope that anybody who is capable of getting to the Mission Orthodox Presbyterian Church of St.

01:16:06

Paul, Minnesota on November 11th and 12th will do so. And if you want more details on this conference, go to AllianceNet .org.

01:16:16

AllianceNet .org forward slash bold dash north.

01:16:21

That's AllianceNet .org forward slash bold B -O -L -D dash north.

01:16:28

And we'll be repeating that, God willing, before we go off the air. Well, we have a tradition here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:16:37

When we have a first time guest such as yourself and such as our first guest that we interviewed during the first hour,

01:16:46

John Curry. We have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony that would include the kind of religious atmosphere in which they were raised, if any, and the kind of providential circumstances our sovereign

01:16:59

Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them. And I'd love to hear your story,

01:17:05

Dr. Gibson. So I was raised in a Christian home in Africa, in East Africa, Tanzania.

01:17:12

Wow. My parents were missionaries with MAF, Mission Aviation Fellowship.

01:17:18

My father was an airplane engineer. He would fix the airplanes that would fly pastors and doctors out in the remote parts of the

01:17:26

Serengeti to minister medicine and also preach the gospel to the

01:17:31

Maasai out in remote parts of Africa. So that was my upbringing.

01:17:37

So I heard the gospel from a young age. And I think

01:17:42

I came to a saving faith by the grace of the Lord in my late primary school years.

01:17:48

So by the time I was eight, nine, ten years old, we had just returned from Africa when

01:17:54

I was seven years old after my parents serving ten years in Africa. And we settled in a good church that taught us the gospel.

01:18:01

Mrs. Gallagher was my Sunday school teacher who faithfully taught me the gospel each week. And I just remember believing it for myself.

01:18:09

I knew as I was growing up in the years before, I hadn't yet owned it for myself. But I remember distinctly during my time at this church coming to a place of knowing that I'm a sinner, knowing that Christ had died for me and risen again to give me new life, and knowing that I needed to repent of my sins and put my trust in the

01:18:29

Lord Jesus. So that's how I came to faith. It wasn't really a whirlwind. I don't really have a day or a date for that.

01:18:37

But I believe the Lord regenerated me at some time in my late primary school years.

01:18:46

And then by His grace, we were involved in a good church over the years. I was brought up under sound teaching and preaching of the gospel and edified and encouraged.

01:18:57

And it was a brethren assembly, so we didn't have a pastor.

01:19:02

So they would encourage the man, and I started preaching in that church and been sort of preaching regularly since then.

01:19:10

Yeah, my former pastor at Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, David Campbell, who is a native of Scotland, he was raised in the brethren faith as well, but later came to embrace

01:19:23

Reformed theology. How did you come to embrace the theology that we call Reformed and Calvinist and the doctrines of Sovereign Grace and other nicknames?

01:19:34

Yeah, I did a gap year in South Africa between school and university, so between high school and college, as you would say here in the state.

01:19:43

During that gap year in South Africa, I met a Baptist pastor who himself had been influenced by Al Martin, Trinity Baptist Church in New Jersey.

01:19:52

And this pastor in South Africa, Charles McKivitt, just faithfully preached the gospel each week, did

01:19:58

Lectio Continua preaching through books of the Bible. And I was just very struck by the depth of his preaching and the clarity of doctrine.

01:20:09

Over that year, he would hand me books by John Piper, by R .C. Sproul. I would devour them.

01:20:15

And then by the time I came back to study for my university degree in Northern Ireland, I started picking up Reformed books.

01:20:24

And when I read them, I didn't really have a problem with what was in them because this pastor had sort of taught me so well.

01:20:32

And so that was my journey into Reformed theology. And then over the years, I just kept studying and reading.

01:20:38

You know, you read one book and you see this author refers to this other author, so you go get his book. It sort of snowballs from there.

01:20:46

Well, praise God. Now let us enter into our subject, worship on earth as it is in heaven.

01:20:53

I have probably, I don't know this for certain, but I think there's a great likelihood the subject of worship has been discussed on my program more times than any other subject.

01:21:03

One of the reasons is that worship is so often tragically a topic of very heated debate that can bring great tension to the surface between brothers in Christ.

01:21:20

It has divided many churches, caused church splits, caused people to leave a church to attend another.

01:21:28

Even sometimes when you have somebody who has been convinced of the truths of Reformed theology, they will leave a faithful Reformed church to go to another church that has, quote, quote, better worship in their minds.

01:21:48

And they will sacrifice the teaching of the Reformed faith in order to be involved in worship that is more pleasing to them.

01:21:58

And why is it, do you think, that this issue, even amongst not only your mainstream evangelicals who may believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, but even amongst

01:22:10

Reformed Christians who disagree over all sorts of issues that involve worship, even those who believe in the regulative principle are not in lockstep agreement with each other.

01:22:24

You have those that claim that in order to embrace the regulative principle of worship, you must sing the

01:22:32

Psalms only, and some would even go farther and say you must sing the Psalms without the accompaniment of musical instruments.

01:22:40

So why is it that there's so much division, do you believe, in the body of Christ over this issue? Well, first of all, just to say,

01:22:47

I think it's quite sad that there is, because, you know, we are called as creatures on God's earth to worship him, and as you say, then we start fighting over how we ought to do it.

01:22:59

I think it comes down to interpretation and differing interpretations of how people interpret worship in the

01:23:06

Bible and how we ought to worship God. But I think sometimes there's maybe the ditches on both sides of the road.

01:23:14

The one ditch is that people don't realize that the Bible does give us a template for worship, to worship

01:23:20

God in a particular way, with certain principles. This is what I'll be dealing with in the conference and my third talk.

01:23:27

What principles of Christian worship can we, you know, apply today from the

01:23:33

Bible and from church history and the Reformation? And the ditch on the other side of the road is that we are too strict with those principles, that they themselves become sort of laws, that if we don't keep them, we're somehow not

01:23:47

Christian or we're not godly or we're not worshiping God the way he would want us to.

01:23:53

I think there's a balance somewhere. So I agree with the regulated principle, but it's how you interpret that and how you apply it, which is important.

01:24:03

So I think we should, as Luther said and Calvin and Cranmer said in regards to worship, there should be charity in all things.

01:24:14

And, you know, we should love the truth, but be charitable as well. Interestingly, Calvin and Cranmer, in their writing of their liturgy, said that, you know, each culture and country and context will express worship a little bit differently.

01:24:32

And what's interesting, when you compare the liturgies of the Reformation, and a friend and I, Mark Earnsley, put together a book called

01:24:38

Reformation Worship, Liturgies from the Past for the Present. When we put that together, what we saw was there's quite a diversity, even among the

01:24:48

Reformers, as to what element they use and in what order.

01:24:53

Now, of course, they generally have the same elements of prayer, Bible reading, offering, singing, etc.

01:25:01

But the order of the elements is quite varied. There wasn't one particular order of a liturgy that the

01:25:08

Reformers demanded or, you know, said everybody should follow. And I think that's helpful because, you know, there isn't one order of liturgy set down in the

01:25:18

Scriptures. There's some flexibility there. And so I think that's important to acknowledge that.

01:25:25

And when you study church history, it's one way to actually perhaps loosen some of the tightness that there has been in some quarters about vigorously holding to what some think is the only way to interpret the regulative principle.

01:25:39

So I think that's interesting. For example, John Calvin, they sang the

01:25:44

Apostles' Creed. So even though people say, well, Calvin, you know, only sang the

01:25:50

Psalms because he had the Genevan Psalter written. Well, actually, there's evidence that he sang the

01:25:57

Apostles' Creed. Wow, I did not know that. Yeah, yeah. And also, you know, there's the hymn,

01:26:03

I greet thee who my sure Redeemer arts, which people believe was written by Calvin. And so, you know, you study church history, you learn that things are sometimes more messy than you think.

01:26:14

But I think if we just go with general principles, God is holy, transcendent.

01:26:20

He is the creator worthy of our worship. We are creatures and we should give him reverent, joyful worship.

01:26:27

He calls us to hear from him in his word, to pray to him, to sing to him.

01:26:33

Then you can't go too far wrong if you keep those general principles. Well, you said you believe in the regulative principle.

01:26:39

Perhaps you could give us a definition for the sake of those who are unfamiliar with that term.

01:26:48

And it's basically, I understand that the Bible is to be, in fact, even more so, the

01:26:54

New Testament is to be our blueprint for all we do in worship.

01:27:00

Not that we don't incorporate some things from the Old Testament, like the singing of Psalms, of course.

01:27:05

But that is a command in the New Testament, Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs are to be sung.

01:27:13

But tell us a good working definition of the regulative principle and how you believe that this, when rightly practiced and rightly taught, could stop a lot of the divisions and problems within the church today in regard to worship.

01:27:31

Yeah, so there's two principles in church history, generally speaking. There's the normative principle, that you worship

01:27:39

God and you don't do anything that he does not, that he expressly commands.

01:27:45

That's called the normative principle. So you worship God and don't do anything that he expressly forbids,

01:27:50

I should say. The regulative principle is that you only do what he expressly commands.

01:27:57

So it's a little bit more narrow than the normative principle. This is the principle that Presbyterians and Reformed churches would adhere to, that you worship

01:28:06

God according to what he has commanded. So if he hasn't commanded it, you don't do it. And that's been the general principle.

01:28:16

Now the question then is, well, what has he commanded? And which parts of the

01:28:21

Bible do we use for what he has commanded? And that's where you get into different views. A variety of interpretations even within that school.

01:28:30

I believe the first use of the regulative principle as a phrase, as a term, was actually only 1946.

01:28:38

Wow. That the OPC, John Murray in the OPC, references it, or he used it.

01:28:46

And that is apparently in one article I read in the Confessional Presbyterian said that that is the earliest known use of the term the regulative principle.

01:28:54

Now, just because that was the only time the term was used doesn't mean the principle wasn't in play.

01:29:00

The Westminster Confession of Faith talks about only worshipping God according to how he is prescribed to be worshipped in the scriptures.

01:29:07

So the principle was there even from the Westminster divines and also from Calvin himself.

01:29:15

The classic text to support it is Leviticus chapter 10 with Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, who offer profane fire before the

01:29:28

Lord, unauthorized fire. And God strikes them down in death and says to Aaron, they offered fire that I did not command.

01:29:37

So the normative principle would say they offered fire that I expressly forbade.

01:29:44

But the regulative principle says they offered fire that he did not command.

01:29:50

And so there's more biblical basis, perhaps, for supporting the regulative principle than the normative principle.

01:29:56

A man called Richard Hooker in the Anglican Church advocated for the normative principle.

01:30:03

The Puritans were those who would have advocated for the regulative principle. I think, if I'm honest, one of the sad things about the discussion is often the regulative principle and even a biblical text like Nadab and Abihu, people fail to understand these texts and this principle in a biblical theological framework.

01:30:29

And what I mean by that is all of the scriptures point to Christ. The whole of the

01:30:35

Old Testament and the New Testament point to Christ. And so this principle, if it's present, which I believe it is in Leviticus 10 and other passages, it points to Christ.

01:30:45

The way I describe it is the regulative principle points to a regulative person. What the regulative principle is teaching us, ultimately, the essence of it, like Jesus condenses the essence of the law of Moses into two commandments, love

01:31:00

God with all your heart, love your neighbor as yourself. The essence of the regulative principle can be condensed down to you worship

01:31:08

God as he is prescribed in his book. Now, that ultimately, and you don't worship

01:31:14

God any other way, you can only approach God the way he has expressly described in his word.

01:31:22

And for the Old Testament scene in Israel, that way was through the tabernacle system and the institution of the temple, etc.

01:31:30

There were ways they were allowed to approach God. There were ways that they were not allowed to approach God. They had to approach

01:31:36

God through a sacrifice and a priest. And it had to be the sacrifice and the priest that God himself had ordained and not that man had invented.

01:31:45

And so when Nadav and Abihu approached God with profane fire, they're doing something God did not command. They're doing it their own way, not

01:31:52

God's way. And so that's what the principle is teaching us. God is to be worshipped as God himself says he's to be worshipped and not any other way.

01:32:02

Now, where does that find its telos? Where does that find its fulfillment?

01:32:08

That finds its fulfillment in Christ, who is the high priest, who is the perfect once -for -all sacrifice.

01:32:16

And what the regulative principle understood in a biblical theological framework is doing, is it's teaching us that the only way to worship

01:32:24

God is through Christ. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the

01:32:30

Father but by me. He said to the woman at the well that the Father is looking for a people to worship him in spirit and in truth.

01:32:38

I believe the spirit there is the Holy Spirit and the truth is himself, the way, the truth, the life. And so the regulative principle is teaching us that we can only worship

01:32:49

God through Christ, that he alone is the only way of salvation, that he's the only mediator between God and man.

01:32:56

Now, there are other principles that then come out from that, because Christ is the head of his church, he continues to rule his church through his word, and he is prescribed in his word how he is to be worshipped through various means of prayers, hymns, songs, psalms, the reading of scripture, the preaching of scripture, the

01:33:14

Lord's Supper, and the sacrament of baptism. But these are the ways the church functions in its worship of God.

01:33:21

When it meets together, it participates in these elements of worship. So there are those other aspects of the regulative principle, but often it bypasses

01:33:33

Christ and just goes from regulative principle in the Old Testament to regulative principle in the New Testament, and misses the regulative person of worship.

01:33:42

That is, Christ regulates our worship. Christ is the true worshipper in the heavenly places.

01:33:49

He has gone up to conduct worship as our prophet -priest in the presence of God. And so I think that's a helpful thing that can help us stay focused on what worship is all about.

01:34:00

It's worshipping God the Father through his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, in the grace and power of his

01:34:06

Word. Amen. We're going to take our final break right now, which will be much shorter than the last break.

01:34:11

If anybody has a question, please send it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

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01:43:07

We have a listener who's remaining anonymous who has a question for you,

01:43:14

Dr. Gibson. The anonymous listener says, I'm remaining anonymous because I am very disheartened by the rising up of entertainment even among Reformed Christian churches.

01:43:32

And I understand that we should try to beautifully worship our

01:43:38

Lord and try to be as gifted as possible in the way that we worship him.

01:43:43

But I cannot help but think that it has really been a downward spiral into what would be pure entertainment.

01:43:51

There seems to be a loss of an understanding of the gravity of what

01:43:58

Nadab and Abihu did. And it is viewed as something that would never be done by God today in the new covenant.

01:44:08

I understand that God is not going to devour and flame people who are worshiping him in an inappropriate way.

01:44:16

But at the same time, is not God's attitude towards man's innovations in worship just as wrathful as it was in the old covenant?

01:44:28

Sorry, Chris, can you just repeat the last part of it? Is not God's attitude towards the innovations of worship, the innovations of man in worship, just as wrathful as it was in the old covenant?

01:44:42

In other words, is God viewing us doing whatever we want to do in worship service with the same displeasure as he did in the old covenant?

01:44:52

And I'm assuming that the writer of the question would mean that obviously we're not going to have temple prostitutes in our worship or things like that that are overtly wicked.

01:45:06

But people think very often, and perhaps even the majority of Christians today, or professing

01:45:13

Christians, think that creativity and innovation and coming up with our own ways to worship

01:45:20

God, as long as those things are not in and of themselves sinful, that it's completely appropriate.

01:45:26

That's why you have things like liturgical dance, and you have other things going on in worship services, puppet theater, and I could go on and on.

01:45:35

So is there a difference between the way God views worship from the Old to the

01:45:41

New Testament? In attitude, no. He would not be happy or pleased with worship like that, that is not honoring to him and has not been prescribed by him.

01:45:55

So yes, the attitude of God in the Old Testament to worship that he did not prescribe is the same as it occurs today, with some of the more kinds of styles of worship that God would not be pleased with.

01:46:09

I think the difference would be, you know, does he strike people down in death like Nadav and Abihu?

01:46:16

And obviously I think the question is no, at least I haven't seen someone recently being struck down on the stage with a band.

01:46:25

And yet, you know, yes, I don't think that can be as pleasing to him, but the manifestation of his wrath would be different,

01:46:32

I think, under the New dispensation than it was under the Old. Under the

01:46:37

Old, there was a more immediate, direct judgment of God in the moment. You know,

01:46:42

Uzzah holds out his hand to stop the ark from falling and he gets struck down. Nadav and Abihu offer their profane fire, they get struck down.

01:46:51

I think the judgment of God maybe looks different today than it did then, but it's still a judgment of God.

01:46:59

It may be that he removes his blessing from the church, it may be that he leaves the church to itself rather than let his blessing rest on the congregation.

01:47:11

All of those things take place today, but the judgment, as I say, looks different. Now, how do you respond to those who will say that they are incorporating things in their worship service that have a biblical basis, even though they are not specifically commands in the

01:47:31

New Testament? And an example of that would be, I've been having a lot of conversations over the years with our brothers and sisters in the conservative, reformed, confessional

01:47:43

Anglican movement, and there is, as you may know, some heated debate even amongst those that are adherents to the 39

01:47:56

Articles of Religion, the older editions of the

01:48:02

Book of Common Prayer, and so on. And you have these brethren having very sharp disagreement over things like incense.

01:48:10

And you will have even Calvinistic, conservative, non -Anglo -Catholic congregations using incense, and they say, well, they did it in the

01:48:22

Old Testament. But isn't that trotting in dangerous territory, just like Nadab and Abihu, because they were using incense, but not exactly as they were commanded to?

01:48:30

Yeah, I think for me that would be one where I would be encouraging my Anglican brothers to consider how they've missed that type or symbol of fragrance in the

01:48:46

Old Testament, the real, actual, physical fragrance, was a type of Christ, was pointing to Christ that He is the fragrance of God, that He is the fragrance of the sacrifice to God, that He is pleasing to God, and that through Him we offer the fragrance of our sacrifice of praise.

01:49:09

And so I think I would be encouraging our Anglican brothers to consider that they've missed the point of the fragrance pointing to Christ.

01:49:19

I think Christ is the answer to a lot of these worship debates. As I mentioned earlier with the regulative principle, even people who hold to the regulative principle can do so in a very non -Christological way.

01:49:32

And I think that if we can keep Christ at the center of our worship, and Christ at the center of our hermeneutic of how we interpret these things, actually we can a.

01:49:41

worship God aright, and b. resolve a lot of our interpretive differences. That's what

01:49:46

I would do with that among our Anglican brothers. I would be gently encouraging them to consider how that isn't prescribed in the

01:49:56

New Testament precisely because it's been fulfilled in Christ. Amen. And in the time that we have left, why don't you go through some of those things that you believe are essential elements for the gathered body of Christ to include in their worship, for it actually to be correctly labeled as, or identified as, worship.

01:50:20

Yeah, so I think that worship should begin with a call to worship. I don't think worship should begin with prayer.

01:50:28

Even in many Reformed circles, I'm amazed how many church services begin with prayer. But what that communicates is that we initiate worship, not

01:50:35

God. But it's God who calls us to worship through his word. And so I think worship should always begin with a call to worship.

01:50:46

That is a reading of Scripture where we hear God call us to worship, something like Psalm 147.

01:50:51

Praise the Lord, for it is good to sing praises to our God, for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting.

01:50:58

So I think worship begins with Scripture, with God calling us to worship through his word. Then we respond in adoration.

01:51:06

That can either be a prayer of adoration or a hymn or a psalm, song of adoration.

01:51:12

I think the reading of the law should be present in worship. So either the Ten Commandments or the

01:51:19

First and the Great Second Commandment that Jesus spoke about, Love God, love your neighbor. Then following the reading of the law,

01:51:25

I think it's important to have a confession of sin. This can either be done by the minister or, in my view, it's better done as a congregation, as a whole, confessing sin together.

01:51:36

Again, one of the things that came out in the Reformation Liturgy Project I did, Reformation worship, liturgies from the past for the present.

01:51:44

One of the things that came out of that was that it was amazing how many of the reformers wrote prayers of confession that the congregation did.

01:51:53

So I think that's an important element of worship, confessing our sins. Then there's the assurance of pardon.

01:51:59

We hear the words of the gospel in response to having confessed our sins, that we're assured that if we're repentant that God has forgiven them in Christ.

01:52:09

I think we can see parts of the New Testament that speak about, that reveal that there were creeds of different forms, like Colossians 1, 15 -20, like the confession in 1

01:52:24

Timothy 3, God manifested in the flesh. These were short, succinct summaries of the gospel.

01:52:31

I think it's good to affirm some of those in the church service. Calvin, et cetera, always said the

01:52:37

Apostles' Creed. In fact, all the reformers, I think nearly all of them said a creed in their church service, the

01:52:44

Apostles' Creed. I think that would be a case of just saying that we're affirming the faith once we're all delivered to the same.

01:52:53

Then there are prayers, prayers for illumination as we hear God speak to us. There's praise elements where we sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

01:53:02

I think it's important to always sing a psalm, at least one psalm in a church service, but also sing hymns of the church from the early church through the

01:53:12

Reformation period, the Puritan period, the 19th century, and even contemporary hymns that are good quality hymns that exalt

01:53:22

God and are focused on Christ. Then there's the offerings.

01:53:28

There's giving our tithes and offerings to the Lord. I think it's an important element of a church service.

01:53:34

More prayers, intercessory prayers, also known as the pastoral prayer, present our requests before God, our supplications.

01:53:42

I think it's important to say the Lord's Prayer every Sunday, every Lord's Day. I think a time to do that is at the end of the intercessory prayers where there's a congregation.

01:53:52

Then there's an opportunity for a closing hymn for more praise. I should say the sermon, obviously, after the

01:54:00

Prayer of Illumination, you hear the Scriptures read and the Scriptures expounded.

01:54:06

Then after that, the Prayer of Intercession. That's the Lord's Prayer. Then it is followed by a benediction where either the

01:54:13

Aaronic benediction is given, the Lord bless you and keep you, or the New Testament benediction of the grace of our

01:54:19

Lord Jesus and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. I think those are the key elements of worship that should comprise it.

01:54:26

Do you think that one of the main problems with worship in the modern church, in fact, it may be a problem that has existed all along in some degree or another, is that there are

01:54:46

Christians who wrongly believe that the most important thing for a

01:54:57

Christian to do is to reach the lost with the gospel, and therefore we must tailor our worship services to be pleasing to the lost so that they will more likely enter into our presence and in great numbers in order for them to hear the gospel.

01:55:19

Now, obviously, bringing the lost or evangelizing the lost with the gospel is a very important duty of the faithful Christian, but isn't it lost to a great degree that bringing

01:55:37

God praise, honor, and glory is the first and foremost priority of the gathered people of God?

01:55:48

And even though evangelism does bring praise, honor, and glory to God, the evangelism and trying to appeal to the lost to be comfortable in our midst so that they will hear the gospel preached, that, as important as it is, is not the most important thing and should not dictate how we worship

01:56:13

God. Yes, I think the public gathering of God's people on the Lord's Day is for worship primarily.

01:56:22

It is for witness. We see that in 1 Corinthians 14 where Paul says, you know, if an unbeliever is among you, so he's assuming that unbelievers will sit in the church and be present at times, but the primary purpose of the gathering of God's people on the

01:56:38

Lord's Day is not evangelism but worship. I think evangelism is really best done during the week.

01:56:44

That said, I think the service can still be evangelistic because it's proclaiming the gospel, it's showing people that we're sinners, that we repent of our sins, it's teaching people of a

01:56:53

Savior who is willing to forgive sinners so they can hear the gospel, but I don't think the service should be adapted for the unbeliever.

01:57:01

I do think the service should be done in a way that's intelligible to the unbeliever. Paul makes that point in 1

01:57:07

Corinthians 14, that prophecies are being given and people are speaking in tongues, but an unbeliever's there and the prophecy or tongues is not interpreted, then the unbeliever doesn't know what they're talking about.

01:57:17

And so he wants the unbeliever to be able to understand the gospel, but we know that the gospel is an offense to those who are perishing.

01:57:26

It's the aroma of death to some but the aroma of life to others. And so, so long as we are worshiping

01:57:33

God in a way that's intelligible, understandable to the unbeliever, I don't think we need to do much more adaptation to facilitate them being present among us.

01:57:44

Can you repeat the title of the book that you were addressing about the liturgies in the church? Yes, it's called

01:57:51

Reformation Worship, liturgies from the past for the present.

01:57:56

The title Reformation Worship, the subtitle liturgies from the past for the present.

01:58:03

It was a friend and I, Mark R. and G. who did it together. He's an Anglican brother. I'm a

01:58:08

Presbyterian minister. And we decided to look at the Reformation period and look at liturgies.

01:58:15

We translated 26, not ourselves, but we got others to translate 26 liturgies from the

01:58:20

Reformation era by the reformers, Martin Luther, John Knox, John Calvin, Archbishop Cranmer.

01:58:29

But we also did people that you might not have heard of, John A. Lasko, Martin Acronius, the Strangers Church in London.

01:58:36

We had Johann Bugenhagen in Denmark, translated Myles Coverdale.

01:58:42

A number of people, John Ecola Padius and others in Europe, Martin Butzer, Diebold Schwarz.

01:58:52

We had their liturgies translated and put together. And it really is a fascinating study.

01:58:58

You can find the book on Amazon .com or wtsbooks .com,

01:59:04

Reformation Worship. It's a six, seven hundred page book, but well worth the money if you really want to get an insight into how the reformers worshipped.

01:59:13

Amen. Well, I want to get a hold of that. And I wanted to have you back on the program for a full two hour discussion because we are out of time, it went by far too quickly.

01:59:23

And remember folks, if you want to attend the conference, the Bold North Conference on Reform Theology, just go to alliancenet .org,

01:59:32

alliancenet .org, click on events and scroll down to Bold North Conference on Reform Theology, November 11th and the 12th.

01:59:39

Thank you so much for being such an extraordinary guest, Dr. Gibson, and I look forward to your return.

01:59:45

I want to thank everybody who listened. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater