John Samson on Reformed Worship

The Importance of Local Church Membership and Gospel Partnership

Hey everybody, I'm Pastor Jeff Durbin with Apologia Church. I want to thank you all so much for watching the content right here on Apologia Studios channel. What you're about to watch is a sermon, a message from Apologia Church's worship service.

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Worship, Liturgy, and the Ancient Paths

It's always a privilege and honor to speak here. I love this church. I love Jeff and Luke and their families and so many of you. And it's always a joy, privilege to see what God is doing with this church, to have a local influence and a global one.

And many people look to you guys learning what the gospel is, who our God truly is, and learning how to defend their faith. And it's a real privilege to be here. I'm going to speak on something that I believe is near to the heart of God, and that is the subject of worship.

It's kind of a long journey for me in the sense that what I'm about to talk about, I never in a million years thought I ever would because in theological terms, it comes under the heading of liturgy. And I thought I'd never speak on that subject, avoid it like the plague.

I remember one of the first cassette tapes I ever heard, which dates me, was of a man who said, really boasting about the fact that they did not have an order of service because they were able now to fool the devil because he didn't know where to interrupt.

And I was raised on that thinking to be spontaneous is to be led by the Holy Spirit. And yet, they did have an order of service, they just didn't write it down.

You know what I mean?

They had their four or five songs, then someone did this, then they did that, then they did this, then they had a word, then they had a song, then they closed. They had a liturgy. They had an order of worship.

And that's what the word liturgy means. It's really a word that means worship, but in theological terms, refers to the order of service that a church would ordinarily have. So that's what we're going to talk about.

And I want to tell you why we should be excited about it. If you were a Levitical priest, you were very interested in the book of Leviticus because it's a manual on how to stay alive. Many people start reading their Bibles in January.

They've got a real goal to read through the Bible in a year, and they get through Genesis pretty easily. A lot of stories, a lot of great things happening. How can you not get through Exodus with plagues and locusts and all kinds of amazing supernatural events taking place?

There's some intricate details about the tabernacle, but you can get through it. But Leviticus is where it becomes like dreary, like walking through treacle as you just have a hard time dealing with all of the intricate details of what the priest should wear, what offering should be made when, what kind of offering should be made, how is it to be made.

The details are where we really run into the yawn of reading. But if you're a Levitical priest, you better get this right or else you're dead. Let's read in Leviticus chapter 10. And before we do that, let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for your wonderful saviorhood. Our Father God, we thank you for your rule, your authority. We would come under it. We would ask that the Holy Spirit who has inspired the Word of God would now help us worship aright.

And we would ask that you'd be glorified in all that's said and done, especially what goes on in our hearts and in our minds. May we glorify you in Jesus' name, amen. So Leviticus chapter 10. And ladies and gentlemen, this is the Word of God.

Now Nadab and Habihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans and after putting fire in them, placed incense on it and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them.

And they died before the Lord. Then Moses said to Aaron, it is what the Lord spoke saying, by those who come near me, I will be treated as holy. And before all the people, I will be honored. So Aaron therefore kept silent.

Moses called also to Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of Aaron's uncle Uzziel, and said to them, come forward, carry your relatives away from the front of the sanctuary to the outside of the camp. So they came forward and carried them still in their tunics to the outside of the camp, as Moses had said.

Then Moses said to Aaron and to his sons, Eliezer and Ithamar, do not uncover your heads nor tear your clothes so that you will not die and that he will not become wrathful against all the congregation.

But your kinsmen, the whole house of Israel, shall bewail the burning which the Lord has brought about. You shall not even go out from the doorway of the tent of meeting or you will die for the Lord's anointing oil is upon you.

So they did according to the word of Moses. The Lord then spoke to Aaron saying, do not drink wine or strong drink, neither you nor your sons with you when you come into the tent of meeting so that you will not die.

It is a perpetual statute throughout your generations. And so as to make a distinction between the holy and the profane and between the unclean and the clean. And so as to teach the sons of Israel all the statutes which the Lord has spoken to them through Moses.

The War Over Worship and the Ancient Paths

So we understand our Bibles from the time of the Garden of Eden, there's been a war over worship, a war. The enemy would have false worship occur. He would be worshipped, but not the true God. He would do all in his power to rob God of glory.

Wasn't long before two brothers, Cain and Abel, brought offerings before the Lord. One was accepted and one was not. Never have the mistaken idea that God accepts all worship. Worship is always on his terms, his way.

When God set up the tabernacle in Israel, he said to Moses, see that you make all according to the pattern shown you on the mountain. There was to be no deviation. If something was to be a certain length, it had to be that length.

If it was to be made of a certain material, it was to be made of that material. Whether we're talking about rods or curtains or the tabernacle altar, all had to be done under the specifications of God.

And only then, when everything was finished according to the pattern, did God come amongst the people. It's always been this way. It's always been this way. And that hasn't changed in the New Testament.

God has a way for us to worship. And it should be scary because we have a holy God to deal with. So our task as the people of God is to find out what is true worship? How does God wish it and will it to function?

What is acceptable to him? And let there be no deviation. Nadab and Abihu became creative. They would get 10 out of 10 for creativity. But in terms of what God accepted, they were totally rejected. Hear this from the book of Jeremiah.

No need to turn to it. Jeremiah 6. Thus says the Lord, stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths where the good way is and walk in it and you shall find rest for your souls. But they said, we will not walk in it.

And I set watchmen over you saying, listen to the sound of the trumpet. But they said, we will not listen. The ancient paths are the tried and proven truths of God, who he is and what he's done in the person and the work of the Lord Jesus.

We're not to come up with something new. We're to follow the ancient paths. It was C .H. Spurgeon who said, I cannot agree with those who say they have new truth to teach. The two words seem to me to contradict each other.

That which is new is not true. It is the old that is true. For truth is as old as God. Now he's using colorful language. God does not have an age. He did not have a beginning. But you get the point. If something is true, it's true because it's always been true.

And my desire is not to come up with something new because if God was revealing something new in our day, it would mean that the old is not true or wasn't enough. But the promise of Jesus to the people of God is that the Holy Spirit will be with you and will lead and guide you, the people of God, into all truth.

And so it is. I've found as I've become a student of the Protestant Reformation that certain fences were put up, certain things were erected, certain things were put in place. And we do well to find out why the fences were put up before we take them down.

There's a story I read about of a couple that bought a farm without having gone there before. They just saw some pictures, some photographs, and that was enough for them to part with the millions it took to buy the farm.

And on coming to the farm on a Friday, the wife of the couple said to her husband, you know, I don't like those fences. They kind of block the view. Would you take them down? And as a husband, he thought long and hard and said, let me make this decision.

Yes, we will do that. And so a construction crew came in and took the fences down and over a few days that occurred and everything was going swimmingly well. The view was wonderful. They could see the lush mountain pastures nearby with nothing to stand in their way.

The problem came the next morning when looking out of the window of their house on the farm, they saw this massive bull who was tearing up the yard with a vengeance and was huffing and puffing and making his will known that he didn't want to ever move and he wanted the occupants of the house either for lunch or a midday snack of some sort.

And immediately worried about this, as you can imagine, they were terrified. They thought they could go outside and then they realized they could not. This bull would not let them out the front door, the back door, any door.

This bull was in charge. And what they realized was that the fences were put up to stop things like this from happening, to stop bulls in further fields coming nearby to the house. So we'd do well to find out why the reformers did what they did before we removed some of their fences.

And as I've come to study some of these things, I've realized they weren't making things up on a whim. These were people who were rigorous in studying the word of God. They desired that the truth of the gospel would be heard.

It'd been heard throughout church history in various different pockets, but to a large degree had been obscured by religious falsehood. But the reformers brought that back. But their chief desire beyond that, even of the gospel was that God would be rightly worshiped.

God would be seen to be holy. God would be seen to be all that he is in scripture. And it was the reformation of the church that took place under men like Luther and Calvin and others, men and women from various different nations, whether it's England or Germany or France or Switzerland.

God raised up men who did not care if they died, they were gonna do what God said and reform the church and its worship. And there's a growing sense that we needed to come back to what the word of God says and not be creative in that sense.

It seems like a novel idea, but it is not. We're going back to the ancient paths, back to the book of John, back to Peter, back to Paul and back to Jesus, back to the Bible. The reformation was a back to the Bible movement and searching through the scriptures, discovering the truth there, certain things needed to be established.

And so it was. They put stakes in the ground, said this has to be seen in the church. In the bulletin, there's a quote I've made and I'd like to just read it at this point. When we think of the Protestant Reformation, we immediately think of the act of biblical preaching as the means whereby the gospel was established in the life of the church.

Well, a very true statement, it's not a complete one. It was when not only idolatry and falsehood were removed from the worship service, but when in its place, biblical gospel truth shaped the week by week liturgy, that's the order of worship of the church that the people truly got the message.

Before that time, the service took place in a language that the people didn't understand, usually in Latin. And nothing was understood by the people. They did not sing. They watched and observed others who worship, the priests who actually brought sacrifice on an altar.

Such was the reformation that was needed. Each time the people gathered to continue the quote to worship God with on purpose thought behind it, each element of the reformed worship service was intentionally devised to reveal both law and gospel, the law that slays us, the law that says thou shalt not.

And yet we have. Or thou shalt, and we have not. Law and gospel, we're sinners and we need a savior. And that's where the gospel of Jesus Christ comes in. So they devised the service so that the preaching would include law and gospel, the reality and consequences of our sin and the perfect work of the perfect savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

As a result, the common people were able to gain a fuller and growing comprehension of the greatness of their salvation and even more importantly, the greatness of their savior God. In the power of the Holy Spirit, the two together, preaching and liturgy, preaching and liturgy.

That's the order of worship. That's what brought reformation to the church. There was a third element taking place in the homes that of all age, catechisms. Catechism, training. Adults as well as children, which grounded the people in the truth of the gospel.

So there was preaching, there was liturgy, and there was catechism. And those final two are really alien to most of those who are in the professing church in our day. They have no idea about liturgy or catechism.

You guys do. Let's pray that more churches rise up with a similar interest in this because this is about the worship of God and about getting his truth between our ears. In the order of service, as I say, the technical word is liturgy.

We don't need new movements. We need people that are interested in the ordinary. The ordinary means of grace as it's called. Where God by the means of the gospel is raising dead sinners to life. Because it's not about us, it's about him.

And the worship service is to be about him. Our task, once again, it's not to be creative, but to find out what does God want? And that flows out of the Bible being the word of God. We don't say if the Bible is the word of God, then certain consequences occur.

No, since the Bible is the word of God, we go to the Bible to find out how does God say he is to be worshiped? Scripture is the product of the Holy Spirit moving upon human authors to produce his words in written form.

Martin Luther said this, from the beginning of my reformation, I've asked God to send me neither dreams nor visions nor angels, but to give me the right understanding of his word, the Holy Scriptures.

For as long as I have God's word, I know that I'm walking in his way and that I will not fall into any error or delusion. So our worship is to be shaped by the word, shaped by the gospel. And then we ask, why do we do what we do?

And why do we do it in the order in which we do it? The idea of a church being designed for non-believers is foreign to both Old and New Testament, really it is. You never see Moses being asked by God, would you take a pole of the Amalekites, knock on their tents and ask them what kind of worship service they'll come to?

No, worship was designed for the people of God. And God says, this is how it will be. This is what will be read when you assemble. This is the way it will be. And we ought to say, yes, sir, not argue.

If God is pleased, it doesn't matter who's displeased. And if God is displeased, it doesn't matter who is pleased. I believe in seeker sensitive worship, except there's only one seeker. And that's God.

God seeks those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth. Outside of regeneration, coming alive spiritually, no man seeks after God. Why build a service for people who don't exist? Our seeking begins when we're born again.

Our seeking begins when God gives us a new heart. We run from God. We have a nature like Adam after the fall who hid from the presence of God. And religion is like putting leaves over our nakedness. We know there's a need.

We just don't want God. We want the blessing of God without God. With liturgy, you might say, well, I've never heard the word. It's okay. But everyone has one. Every church has one. It's not always written down.

Worship as Response to the Triune God

Now, as we think about worship, John MacArthur said this, Worship is our innermost being responding with praise for all that God is through our attitudes, actions, thoughts, and words based on the truth of God as He has revealed Himself.

It is all that we are reacting rightly to all that He is. Jonathan Gibson, who wrote a book I thoroughly recommend called Reformation Worship, he described worship in this way, Worship is the right, fitting, and delightful response of moral beings, angelic and human, to God the Creator, Redeemer, and Consummator for who He is as one eternal God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and for what He's done in creation and redemption, and for what He will do in the coming consummation to whom be all praise and glory now and forever, world without end.

Amen.

So we've defined worship. One of the things we read in 1 Corinthians 14 when we see what God said through the Apostle Paul there is that all things must be done decently and in order, or properly and in an orderly manner.

There should be some thought to our worship. There's no listing or order for a service found in the New Testament, but to be biblical means that we think through why we do what we do on purpose, every element of the worship service.

Liturgy can mean all of life, but technically we're talking about the order of worship in a service. What I'm about to describe to you is what I believe the Reformed worship service looked like, whether we were going to churches in England, Scotland, some parts of France, Switzerland, Germany.

At the time of the Reformation, there would be a similarity. In fact, many of the Reformers borrowed from each other. They didn't swap things of material value. They swapped liturgies when they met. How are you doing it?

What are you finding in the Scriptures? What do you see as you read God's Word? And people would say, that's a great idea. I can see that in the book of Deuteronomy. I can see that in the Psalms. I'm going to incorporate that liturgy in my church.

And so it was. I believe the foundational issues are things like this. Worship should be directed vertically from the people to God, and then God to the people, rather than on a horizontal level of men speaking to men.

We meet together on the Lord's day to exalt Him. We speak and sing of His worth and why He's worthy of praise, thanksgiving, and glory. We meet on the Lord's day because God calls us to. We thrill over His mercies and graces.

We worship His magnificence out loud, visibly, publicly, together. And as we do, our desire is to read the Word, preach the Word, pray the Word, sing the Word, and see the Word in baptism and the Lord's supper.

As I've studied this, one thing that has been new to me is a concept I want to share with you. And it's called the call to worship. This is the start of the Reformed worship service. You'll see it in some bulletins where they say, the call to summon solemn, S-O-L-E-M-N, to solemn assembly.

And this is God calling His people to gather. And what they would do is to read the scriptures that speak of God saying, come, come into His presence with singing. Come into His presence with thanksgiving.

Let all the nations bow before Him. The call to worship. And it's interesting, the service began and ended with God addressing people. In the call to worship, the scriptures are read. And in the benediction, the scripture is read.

And God pronouncing His blessing on all those who've received His Word in the gospel. It's a beautiful thought. God initiates worship. That's the point of this. The triune God, and I love the songs we've already sung that emphasize that.

The triune God is calling us to worship Him. Calling us to gather to Him. And He summons us like a subpoena to come worship Him in spirit and truth. He's the initiator, not us. And it's on His terms, on the terms of the gospel.

We gather because the invitation and summons of the King. We're invited guests, summoned to appear before Him. The call to worship announces, this is a God-centered, Christ-centered, thoroughly Trinitarian worship service.

If you've got an idea of God in your head, other than that, you probably need to leave. Because this is the God who's gonna be worshiped here. One God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth.

Serve the Lord with gladness, Psalm 100 says. So it is. I believe that the central aspect of life in the church revolves around the Lord's Day worship, especially Sunday mornings as we gather. And the Bible says, don't be neglectful.

Make this a habit. In fact, the only time we see the word habit in the New Testament, at least in Old Testament, is don't be like some who are not in the habit of coming. But all the more, be in the habit of coming as the day approaches.

Make it a habit.

I'd say this, settle it now.

Make it a habit.

Build your calendar around it. There are times when we're what we would call providentially hindered. I know, you lose your leg in a car accident. It's hard to hop to church.

I get that.

But ordinarily, if you could get to work, would you get to work in that condition? Well, get to church. Be under the sound of God's word. There's a man in my congregation who worked from 10 at night on a Saturday till 8 in the morning on a Sunday morning.

He slept for an hour and came to church. I thought, whoa, that man understands something. And since I was a lad, since I was a boy, I understood. I needed to be in church. And God says this because He's solemnly calling us to worship.

And He says, I'll feed you there. Oh, but I have such great private times with the Lord. If you see the emphasis of the New Testament, it's on the corporate gathering.

It really is.

I'm glad you and Jesus are close. You need to be. But God says, come and assemble yourselves, and there I'll speak to you. The word would be read. The word would be rightly interpreted. You will be rebuked if you need it, encouraged if you need it, corrected if you need it, transformed by the power of God's word, preached.

Decide now. It's the first thing on my calendar. That's why it's called the first day of the week. Start your week right. Nothing comes in the way of this. It's the most important 19 minutes of your life, of your week.

I really believe that. First thing on the calendar. And it starts the night before by our preparation. Because to understand what reformed worship is, biblical worship, what this means is God's gonna be addressing my soul in the morning.

I need to prepare my heart. That means I'll get, as much as it depends on me, a good night of sleep. I'll not be up till 4 in the morning, if it depends on me. I might have neighbors who keep me up with their noise till 4 in the morning, but that's out of my hands.

I'm gonna do what I can do to get a good night of sleep, as much as it depends on me. And then we come into His courts with praise. It's the heavenly protocol. God doesn't say, get this particular fruit from an Amazon jungle area that's hard to.

Get to.

No, He just says anyone can come if you come joyfully. Joyfully, that's it. Enter His presence with thanksgiving. Enter His courts with praise. Come joyfully, because of the sovereign rule of God. We would sing a hymn.

We would sing a song. And it, I believe, should be theologically rich. Not, Jesus is my girlfriend. You know what those kind of songs are? You can insert either Jesus or Mildred or Savannah or some other name, and the song would be equally as good, you know?

I feel good when I'm next to you, God. You do me good.

I like you.

I feel good when I'm around you. No, the theological history of the church is men and women who were greatly gifted have written songs that endure. There were songs that you could live for and songs that you could die to.

A mighty fortress is our God is a hymn that Martin Luther wrote, which really is great when you're on the way to be martyred. Try singing I feel good around you at that time. No, it's not going to work.

Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also. The body they may kill, God's truth abideth still. His kingdom is forever. Oh, that'll put some meat on the bone. And men and women who went to death in the center of the cities.

I've been to some of these places. In the crowds, there would be Protestant sympathizers. And while they thought the backs of the governmental authorities were not observing them, they'd shout out to encourage those on the way to death.

Sing the 46th. What they meant was Martin Luther's hymn. That's a song you can die to. Praise God. If it's not true, we shouldn't be singing it. It should be dripping either with Scripture or Scripture-based truth.

Church history didn't begin in 1994. God has been with His people throughout the centuries. I love getting out of hymn that was first sung in the 10th century.

You do what?

Yep, I'm a strange fellow. And I believe our song should be congregational rather than performance-based. Do you know what I mean by that? It's the whole people of God singing, not merely someone singing and we observe worship.

That actually is a retreat back to Rome. We watch worship. We observe worship.

No, no, no.

We participate. Let all the people of God sing. Come, you people of the Lord. Colossians 3, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Ephesians 5, speaking to one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. It speaks of proclamation in song. And it is an encouragement when brothers and sisters alongside us are singing these songs.

Psalm 149 verse 1, His praise in the congregation of the godly ones. Let Israel be glad in His Maker. Let the sons of Zion rejoice in their King. There's a place for individual singing. Paul and Silas did that in the prison, if you remember.

They sang hymns of praise to God, Acts chapter 16 verse 25, and the prisoners were listening to them. So there's a time when we ought to sing privately. But the emphasis in the New Testament is congregational rather than individual.

Performance type of singing. You read Revelation 5, it's not someone singing a song by themselves. It's creatures of all kinds singing to God. Sinclair Ferguson said this, worship is deformed when it becomes vicarious performance rather than congregational and participational.

The reformers knew this. So what is worship? What is our singing? The King of Kings has issued a summons for us to appear before Him on the Lord's day to enter His courts with praise. And unless I'm providentially hindered, I'm there.

All believers are to attend. And worship doesn't end after the singing. It's a worship service where the whole service is worship. I was in a church not too long ago and they said, well, we finished our worship time.

Now we're gonna open up the Scriptures. No, you better be worshiping God as you're preaching and worshiping God as you're listening to the preaching. Then there was the reciting of creeds. Evidence of this is not only in the early writings of the church but in Scripture itself.

I've already made the comment, but everyone's got a creed. It's either written down or it's not. Who's Jesus? Well, when you start answering that question, that's a form of a creed. In Deuteronomy 6 -4, we have the most famous verse in the Old Testament to the Jew.

You know it as the Shema. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And did you know that Jesus quotes the Shema in Mark chapter 12, verse 29? He was aware of that creed and he quoted it. In Romans 10 -9, we have the earliest creed of the Christian church.

Jesus is Lord. And to say that, there was a background where you were required by the empire to say, Caesar is Lord. But on penalty of death, not only did they keep their mouth shut when demanded to say those little words in English, in the original, it's Caeser Curios.

They wouldn't say it. They said, no, Jesus. Yesus Hoc Curios. They said Jesus is Lord and they often paid for their lives by that testimony, by that creed, the earliest creed. That's why in 1 Corinthians 12, verse 3, it says no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.

Understanding the background, I think you know why. Because you could die for it. 1 Corinthians 8 -6, it's something of a creed where the apostle Paul speaks of God the Father through whom we exist and one Lord Jesus Christ.

He brought Christ to the level of the Father in that early statement. Ephesians 4, 4 and 5 says there's one body and one spirit and it's a confession to say that there's just one hope to which you are called.

One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who's over all and through.

All and in all.

1 Corinthians 3 -16, by common confession. Hear that. This is what we agree as Christians. We common, we hold this in common together. By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness. And so it goes on.

For the sake of time, we're going to move on. But creeds are wonderful. And the reformers recited in public assembly four different things. The Apostles' Creed, I've just spent two Sundays, this morning being the second of the two, on the Apostles' Creed.

Again, something I thought I'd never do. But just seeing the richness of the creed and how it is a biblical, biblical creed. It was actually designed as a form of initiation for the new convert before they're baptized.

They would either be required to recite the creed or else the creed was said in front of them. And you'll see the creed on the back of the handout you've received. The Apostles' Creed. There was a legend that said that it was each of the apostles that contributed a line of the creed, but that was just a legend.