Worship God's Way

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to John chapter 4, and hold your place at verse 24.
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John chapter 4, verse 24, and the title of today's message is
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Worshiping God's Way, Worshiping God's Way. Why do we do what we do when we come together for worship?
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Why do we do the things that we do in the way that we do them? Over the past several weeks,
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I have been in a verse -by -verse study of John's Gospel, actually for the past several months, but over the past several weeks, we've been looking specifically at the story of the woman at the well.
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And in the narrative of the woman at the well, we see Jesus engaging with this woman, addressing her sin, correcting her misunderstandings, and through this conversation, she and Jesus end up having a discourse of the subject of worship.
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You remember I said there were two discourses. There's the living water discourse, and there's the living worship discourse, and it's in the midst of the living worship discourse that we are given one of the most important passages in the
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Bible on the subject of worship. The woman asks about the
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Jews worshiping in Jerusalem and the Samaritans worshiping on Mount Gerizim. And Jesus tells her there is coming a day when worship would not involve geography.
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There's coming a day when the temple itself would become obsolete, because the people of God would be indwelt by the
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Spirit of God, and the people would themselves be the temple. This is a prophecy of new covenant worship.
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Because new covenant worship would not be according to the
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Old Testament system of Levitical priesthoods and sacrifices and temple practices, rituals.
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But, rather, the worship of the New Testament, the worship of the new covenant, would be worship in spirit and in truth.
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So over the next few weeks, I'm going to take verse 24, and I'm going to use that to unpack the answer of why we do what we do in worship.
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I'm going to use this as an opportunity to preach on worshiping in spirit and in truth.
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And what does it look like to worship in spirit and truth? What does it look like practically? What does it look like to worship
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God's way? See here's the thing. You talk to a lot of people today, and they will say,
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I worship God my way. And that's not just the world, that's people in the church.
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I worship God my way. Well, beloved, the Bible never prescribes you to worship
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God your way. The Bible prescribes that you would worship God His way.
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And if we're going to worship God His way, then we ought to know what that way is. And if we are worshiping
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Him His way, we ought to know why. And how we do the things we do.
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So today, we are going to talk about worshiping God His way. Let's stand and read, and I'll pray for us, and then we will begin.
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One verse, of course, will be our text for this sermon and the next few sermons.
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John 4 .24 says, God is spirit, and those who worship
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Him must worship in spirit and truth.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word. I ask even now that as I begin to preach your word, that you would keep me from error.
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And you know why I ask this, Lord. I don't ask this simply to be repetitive or because I don't have anything better to say.
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I ask it, Lord, because you know I know my own proclivities for failure, selfishness, and pride.
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I know my problems in my mind and heart.
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And God, this is your hour, not my hour. This is your word, not my word.
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This is your pulpit, not my pulpit. And these are your people, not my people.
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So, Lord, as I bring your word to your people, I pray that you would keep me from error or shut my mouth, so that your people would not be deceived or led astray.
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And Father, I pray that as your word is preached, as my brother Mike has already prayed,
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Lord, that you would open the hearts of the unbeliever, if there be those here, and there certainly are those here who have not bowed the knee to the
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Lord Jesus Christ, that they would see today, as we look at the holiness of God, and worship, that you are a
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God who is not to be trifled with. You are not a
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God to be ignored. And I pray,
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Lord, if there are those who are here who are trifling with you or ignoring you, that, God, they would hear the word of the
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Lord and be saved. And for the believer who is seeking to be faithful,
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I pray that they would be edified. In Jesus' name, amen.
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The elders and I talk multiple times per week, but we have a regular weekly conversation that we have.
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And a few weeks ago, I told them that I wanted to take a short interlude in our study in John, because there are times when, even though we preach verse by verse, there are times when a certain subject is so important in a verse that it requires more than one or maybe even two or three
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Sundays. And so I told them I wanted to do this, and they agreed that taking the time to do a series on worship was a good thing.
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And I want to begin today by introducing you to a principle. Now, you may already know this principle, but you may not.
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We talk about it. I know I've heard Brother Mike say it. I think I've heard Brother Andy say it. I know
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I've said it. But for the sake of anyone who maybe hasn't heard it or for the sake of folks who are always coming to us who are new,
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I want to introduce you to what is called the regulative principle of worship. The regulative principle of worship.
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The regulative principle of worship teaches that we may worship
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God only in the ways that He has commanded us in Scripture, not according to our own preferences or human inventions.
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Let me say it again. And by the way, always remember, if you want my notes, just ask.
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I'll give you a PDF, so don't feel like you have to write everything I say, because some of what I say today is going to be long, and if I see everybody out there doing this, y 'all are going to wear your hands out, and I'm going to think you ain't listening.
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It's a lot to try to write today. I mean, write what you want, but just know it's going to be a lot.
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So again, the regulative principle of worship teaches that we may worship God only, notice this, only in the ways
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He has commanded in Scripture, not according to our own preferences or human inventions.
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You see, a lot of folks hear the phrase, God is spirit, and those who worship
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Him must worship in spirit and truth. A lot of people hear that, and what they hear is not what
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Jesus is saying. Because what they hear is that I get to worship according to my spirit's choices.
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Right? That's what it means to worship in spirit, is to worship God my way, to worship according to what moves my spirit.
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And this is why people become dictators of worship when they go to the house of God. They come in, and they sit, and they listen to the worship, and they listen to the message, and they listen to the reading, and they come back to the pastor at the end and say, you know, worship really didn't do it for me today.
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I didn't really get anything out of worship today.
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Well, praise the Lord, we weren't worshipping you. That's just the straight facts.
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We have become consumers in the church, rather than worshippers, who are seeking to be entertained, rather than beatified.
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Seeking to have our wants satisfied, rather than seeking to bless and minister to others.
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We're not worshipping in spirit and truth. We're worshipping in superficiality and selfishness.
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And that's a problem. So when
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I say, I want to teach you today the regulative principle of worship, that's what it's about.
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Because when Jesus says, worship in spirit and in truth, He is not saying that your personal internal spirit gets to dictate worship.
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He's not saying that your personal preferences, proclivities, and things that you enjoy get to dictate worship.
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No, He is saying that our worship is to be driven by, orchestrated by, and empowered by the
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Spirit, and it is to be in accord with God's truth. To worship by the
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Spirit is two -fold. I mentioned this a few weeks ago, but I want to remind you that when
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Jesus says, God is spirit, and those who worship must worship in spirit, one might think that He's saying that we must worship in our spirit, and I do think that that is true.
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He's saying that it's not geographical, it's not external, but it's internal. It's not just with the body, but with the heart and the spirit.
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That's the idea. But it is also empowered by the Holy Spirit of God.
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If our worship is not empowered by, driven by, and governed by the Spirit of God, then it's not true worship.
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Therefore, I will say this right now, if a man is not a Christian, and he is not filled with the Spirit of God, he has never worshipped
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God a day in his life. Because God accepts no other worship than that worship which is done by the
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Spirit, and the man who is spiritually dead cannot worship God in the way he deserves.
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Worship is in spirit. But it's also worship in truth.
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It is worship in truth. That means it's according to this.
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Jesus, when he is praying for his disciples, he said, Father, sanctify them by thy truth.
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Thy word is truth. People are always asking the question,
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What is truth? That question has been with us ever since the time of Jesus, and even before.
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But we all know when Jesus spoke to Pontius Pilate on the day of his crucifixion, and he was there having an audience with the governor, and the governor says to Jesus, What is truth?
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Because Jesus said, I came to testify of the truth. And Pontius Pilate scoffs,
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Truth! What is truth? Truth was standing right in front of him.
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I am the way, the truth, and the life.
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And he's standing right there. And Pontius Pilate, pompous
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Pontius Pilate, mocks the idea of truth. Oh beloved, he's not alone.
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Today, people always talk about their truth, my truth, my living out, my truth.
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Gag me with an entire place setting. What's the worst is it's in the church.
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I preached yesterday, I was in Tennessee, actually no, it was
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Friday, I'm sorry, I was in Tennessee Friday, and I was preaching on revival beginning in the church.
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I said there's five reasons that we don't see revival in the church. And one of them is errant theology, and in that section of the message
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I said, people are so convinced that it doesn't matter what they believe, it doesn't matter that they can just believe whatever they want, and they can have their truth, and you can have your truth, and everybody can have their truth.
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We have been so ruined by this idea of relative truth.
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It is so common in our day, that people don't even recognize it anymore.
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We are to worship in spirit and in truth. And neither one of those are our way.
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Spirit governs worship, the truth governs worship. Those are the things that govern worship.
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When Jesus said, God seeks those who worship Him, or those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth, when
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Jesus said that, He wasn't saying worship is going to be willy -nilly, He's saying worship is going to be spirit -inspired and truth -directed.
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That's what worship is. So how do we understand the direction of worship?
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How do we do it? How do we order it? What's the standard?
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1950's Baptist culture, that's our standard. No, it's not! It's like that Peanuts cartoon,
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I told you all about, I think in the past, where Lucy and Charlie Brown are talking, and she's writing a paper, and she said, what are you writing about?
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Lucy, I'm writing about church history. My pastor was born in 1935. That's church history!
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Later on in today's sermon, I'm going to introduce to you something our elders have been praying about for a little while, and that is something new we're going to do in worship here.
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So today is actually a pretty important message, because not only is this message going to start a series for us, but it's also going to introduce a new thing that we should be doing.
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We believe we should be doing it. It's something that's part of God's call to us to do, and something that we have done in the past, but not made it an element of worship.
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And today it will. Because the scripture regulates worship, not our desires.
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And when we do what we do, we should ask ourselves, is this commanded by Christ?
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Is this commanded in the word? That's what the regulative principle says. It says we are looking for a command from God.
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Some people argue. They say, well, God didn't command us to have air conditioning. So you're breaking the regulative principle.
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Listen, don't give in to stupid. I know how easy it is. I know how easy it is. But don't...
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Amen. And that's not wrong, and that's true. And I agree with you 100%, but we also talk about the difference between elements of worship and those things which are incidental to worship.
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The Bible also doesn't prescribe us to have chairs. Right? The Bible doesn't prescribe us to have a sound system.
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Those are incidental to worship. They are things that aid us in being able to do these things. That's not an element of worship.
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The elements of worship are to be governed by the scriptures. That's why we don't do interpretive dance.
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And somebody's going to come and say, well, David danced before the Lord. I know. If you want to argue for a dancing party,
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I'll just let you talk to Mike and Andy. No, I'm just saying the scripture tells us what we ought to be doing.
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And when we look at our worship service, we ought to govern it by what scripture commands, not by what we necessarily are moved by.
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We've been moved by a lot of things. We've been moved by puppet shows and movie scenes. But we need to be governed by the scripture.
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Now, I know we're not Presbyterian, but we're close. No, we're what you call deep water
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Presbyterians. We're right Presbyterians. That one will get me in trouble.
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No, but I do want to quote from the Westminster Confession. I know we're not
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Presbyterian, but the Westminster Confession, when it's talking about regulation in worship or the regulative principle, it gives a very good understanding.
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And while I've already given you a short sentence, I want to give you a little bit more of what
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I'm talking about. This is what it says in chapter 21.
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It says, "...the acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by God Himself, and so limited to His own revealed will that He may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan under any visible representations or any other way not prescribed in Holy Scripture.
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Simply stated, as I said before, we do it God's way. That's what worshipping in spirit and truth is.
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Worshipping God's way. See, there's another principle.
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We have the regulative principle and the normative principle. The regulative principle is what the Reformed Church is held to.
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The regulative principle says you only do and worship what God commands. Okay? The normative principle, which is held by my
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Lutheran brothers and friends, and I love them, but the normative principle is a little bit different.
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The normative principle says that we may do and worship whatever is not forbidden in Scripture so long as it is edifying and consistent with biblical teaching.
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So what's the difference? The regulative principle says for you to do it, you need a command to do it. And the normative principle says as long as there's not a command against it, then it's okay.
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But what happens when there's not a command against things? You use that as your metric or your rubric.
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Well, it's easy to allow things in when it's just, well, there's no command against it.
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There's no command that says we can't do that. So then we get into all kinds of lighting of candles and burning of incense and all of these other things that are not commanded of us to do, but we do them because, hey, it doesn't say we can't.
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And we find ourselves again worshiping according to the ways of men rather than the ways of God.
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If someone were to ask me why should we adopt and why should we stand on the regulative principle? I say because it's safe and I'm going to show you.
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I agree, whoever laughed, I agree. It's safe and I'm going to show you today two passages of Scripture that I hope will show you why we should, at least in our heart of hearts, want to do things
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God's way because when we begin to do things our own way, we open ourselves up to very dangerous ground.
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We're going to look at Leviticus chapter 10 and Acts chapter 5. So if you have your
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Bibles, turn with me to Leviticus chapter 10. Now, a lot of times when you're reading your
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Bible through the year, you know, you do your annual Bible reading, you'll start in Genesis, you'll get real excited through Exodus, and then you get in Leviticus and there's like it's a little harder to understand
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Leviticus. The narrative has moved down into prescriptive passages on the process of doing the sacrifices and governing the temple worship and things like that.
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Things are a little bit more difficult in the book of Leviticus. Leviticus outlines the laws given by God to the
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Israelites for holiness, worship, and the role of the priesthood. In chapter 8, Aaron and his sons, you'll remember that's
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Moses' brother, Aaron and his sons are consecrated and ordained for the priesthood.
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Their names are Nadab and Abihu. In chapter 9, they perform sin offerings and fire comes and consumes the offering.
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In fact, let's read that part. Go to chapter 9, since we're already in chapter 10, just look a few verses up and look at verse 22.
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It says, Then Aaron lifted up his hands towards the people and blessed them and he came down from offering the sin offering and the burnt offering and the peace offerings and Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting and they came out and they blessed the people and the glory of the
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Lord appeared to all the people. Just imagine, sorry I couldn't help it, but just imagine if the glory of the
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Lord appeared to us. It said it appeared to all the people and fire came out from the
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Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the pieces of fat on the altar and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces.
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And I don't think this is one of them woohoo Pentecostal shouts, I think this is ahhh! They've seen the glory of the
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Lord, they have seen the power of God and in a fire like lightning from heaven come and consume the offering.
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Now chapter 10. Two of Aaron's sons choose to make an offering and I want you to listen closely to what the text says.
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And Nadab and Abihu the sons of Aaron took either of them his censer and put fire therein.
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I'm reading from the King James this morning for a reason. Don't get too excited Mike. And put incense thereon and offered strange fire before the
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Lord which he commanded them not.
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That is the key. They offered a strange fire, your newer versions will say unauthorized fire or something like that, but notice what it says which he commanded them not.
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And there went out fire from the Lord and devoured them and they died before the
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Lord. Notice this, what had just happened to the offering has now happened to them.
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Because God had just after the blessing of the people sent down fire from heaven to consume the offering.
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But now that same fire has come and consumed these two men.
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For what purpose? According to the text. Because they did something
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God did not command. Because they did something that God did not command.
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Beloved, this passage has been cited by many as the foundation for the regulative principle.
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Because the regulative principle says what? We are only to do that which God commands.
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And why? Because when you do what God commandeth not, you plan with fire.
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When you do what God commandeth not, you're not worshiping him the way he said.
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You worship him the way you want to. And worship is not about your want. Worship is about what
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God wants. That's the simple thesis of today's message. Worship is not about what we want.
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Worship is about what our God wants. If God commands us to worship in a certain way, we need to do it his way.
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And Nadab and Abihu paid the price. We don't know what they did either. That's the thing.
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I don't have the time I want to dig into what happened here. And what happens after is heartbreaking.
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Because if you look at verse 3, Moses said to Aaron, this is what the Lord spake. I will be sanctified in them that come nigh unto me, and before all the people
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I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace. Aaron just watched his boys burn right in front of him.
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And yet he spoke not a word. In fact, let's read down to verse 7.
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And Moses called Meshael and Elzaphan the sons of Uziel, the uncle of Aaron, and said unto them, come near, carry your brethren from before the sanctuary out of the camp.
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So they went near and carried them in their coats out of the camp, as Moses had said. And Moses said unto
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Aaron and unto Eleazar and unto Ithamar the sons, uncover not your heads, neither rend your clothes, lest ye die, unless wrath come upon all the people.
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But let your brethren, the whole house of Israel, bewail the burning which the Lord hath kindled. And you shall not go out from the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, lest you die.
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For the anointing oil of the Lord is upon you. And they did according to the word of Moses.
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They took their bodies away. The people were allowed to grieve, but Aaron was not.
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This was a serious moment in the lives of the people of God.
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God was instituting a principle of worship. I will be worshiped my way, not your way.
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God is not to be trifled with. I say it too often.
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I do a monthly show where I talk about some of the foolishness that happens in churches, and it is sickening, the things that are happening in the name of Almighty God.
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And I wonder sometimes why the fire hasn't fallen. Turn to Acts 5.
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Now in Acts chapter 5, we have the narrative history of the birth and growth of the New Covenant community.
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One of the marks of the New Covenant community was a desire to care for one another. This was, Jesus said, they will know by this all men will know that you are my disciples, that you what?
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Love one another. So one of the marks of the early church was this abundant love that the people had for one another and a desire to care for one another, which often included believers selling their property simply so that they would be able to care for one another because of what was going on in that area at the time.
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At the end of chapter 4, Barnabas sold a piece of land and he gave the money to the church.
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A lot of people miss that part. Most of us know the story of Ananias and Sapphira, the one we're about to read, but most of us miss the fact that it's preceded by Barnabas selling property and giving the money to the church, which
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I think is not to be missed because while the text doesn't say he was commended for his giving,
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I can't imagine that he wasn't commended for his generosity. So along comes
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Ananias and Sapphira who want the commendation without the sacrifice.
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Wanting the commendation without the sacrifice. So we get to verse 1. But a certain man named
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Ananias with Sapphira, his wife, sold possession and kept back a part of the price, his wife also being privy to it and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles' feet.
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But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the price of the land?
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While it was yours, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your own power? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart?
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You have not lied unto men, but to God. And Ananias hearing these words, fell down, gave up his spirit, and great fear came on all of them that heard these things.
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And the young men arose, wound him up, and carried him out and buried him. And it was about a space of three hours after when his wife knowing not what had happened, came in, and Peter answered unto her,
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Tell me whether you sold the land for so much? And she said, Yes, for so much. Then Peter said unto her,
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How is that you have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, the feet of them who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.
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Then she fell down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost.
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And the young men came in and found her dead, and carrying her forth, buried her by her husband.
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Verse 11 is key. And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as had heard these things.
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Now I'm going to say, I understand in case any of you feel the need to correct me,
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I understand this is not in the context of corporate worship.
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And so one might say, well, how does this apply to the subject of the regulative principle?
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I could argue that giving is a part of corporate worship. But even to step back and say this, more than applying this to corporate worship,
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I'm trying to show you a pattern between the story of Nadab and Abihu and the story of Ananias and Sapphira.
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Consider the comparisons of the two narratives. Both brought an offering that was rejected.
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Both had two people struck down immediately. Both were each other's family members. Both recounted bodies having been carried out and away by the people of God.
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Both events startled the community and brought great fear. And both were a time of major change in the history of God's people.
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Thus with the establishment of the priesthood in the Old Testament with Nadab and Abihu, and the establishment of the New Covenant community in the early church in Acts.
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These stories are so similar. God is working among His people in a new way and He is reminding them that His holy character is at the center of worship.
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Worshiping God in spirit and truth means that we begin with this simple principle.
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God is holy and those who approach Him must approach Him in holiness.
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They must approach Him in reverence to His holiness. That's the point.
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When we approach God willy nilly, when we approach God our way instead of His way, we are dancing in the flames.
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We need to worship God's way. That's the point.
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Often in New Covenant thinking, there is an emphasis on the love of God.
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And I want to say, I love the love of God. Amen!
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I love the love of God. I spent three Sundays on John 3 .16 and one of those
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Sundays was just expressing the love of God. The love of God is deeper, far than tongue or pen can ever tell.
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It reaches far beyond the stars and even to the lowest hell. We know the love of God is immeasurable and cannot even begin to be explained.
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But, only one attribute of God is ever given to us in the superlative degree and it is not love.
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God is never called love, love, love. He's never called mercy, mercy, mercy. He's never called grace, grace, grace.
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But He is called holy, holy, holy. Therefore His love is a holy love because holiness is
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His foundational attribute and what flows out of Him is a holy love, a holy grace.
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All of those things are related to His holiness and therefore
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He says I am holy and the one who approaches me must approach me in reverence to my holiness.
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This is the key to worship. This is the foundation of worship.
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God says I am holy. I will be sanctified by those who draw near to me.
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In fact, I can imagine, I can imagine, I never would in my life put words in the mouth of the apostle but I can imagine when they were carrying
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Ananias and Sapphira's body to be buried, I can imagine the apostle
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Peter saying to his church, his people, among those who approach me,
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I will show myself holy. Because that's what
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God has done. God is holy and He will show Himself holy. The holiness of God should strike us.
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The holiness of God should humble us. The holiness of God should transform us.
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And the holiness of God should also comfort us. Say, how is this going to comfort?
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Pastor, I came in, I was already having kind of a rough week and you have laid upon me the weight of God's holiness.
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This is a kind of rough message. You know what the comforting thing in all this is?
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Is God doesn't do this every time. You realize all of us deserve to be where Ananias and Sapphira are.
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All of us deserve to be where Nadab and Abihu were. All of us have at times failed before the bar of Almighty God.
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All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And yet,
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God being rich in mercy has not killed us in our sleep last night. The fact that you woke up this morning and took a breath and looked around is an expression of God's grace and mercy to you.
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And to me. Because I didn't deserve it. God loves us even though we're unlovable.
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And that's the greatest truth in the world. While we were yet sinners, what?
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Christ died for us. He who was holy and completely so and lived a perfect life from birth to a cross, never sinning in thought, word or deed, took upon himself the wretchedness of my sin.
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He bore the weight and penalty of my transgression. Upon him the chastisement of God was placed and by his stripes
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I was healed. And if you were in him, so were you. That's the blessing is this holy
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God has not compromised his holiness but he has satisfied it in the person of his son.
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But in no way does that give us a license to be unconcerned.
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Because out of grace and salvation should flow what?
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A desire for obedience. Out of Christ's sacrifice and his forgiveness should flow out of us a desire of gratitude.
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Do you know what worship is? And I'm going to talk about this more in the weeks to come. You know what worship really is? Gratitude. It's gratitude upon gratitude.
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We sing and we thank God. We give and we thank
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God. We pray and we thank God. And we listen to his word and apply its principles to our lives and we thank
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God. Worship is thanksgiving because we don't deserve
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God's grace but he who is rich in mercy has given it to us. And so at this point
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I want to draw us to the portion
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I know you all have been waiting for. Because quite honestly when
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I told you this morning I was going to introduce a new element of worship you all looked really nervous.
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And you've probably been waiting this whole time worried about what's coming.
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Let me just say this. Worry not your heads. I promise it's a good thing.
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Because when we think about these stories that we've read today, the story of Nadab and Abihu, the story of Ananias and Sapphira often times our mind can go wander all kinds why did it happen?
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Why did they get the punishment and I didn't? There's all kinds of things we think of. We've done worse.
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Like I said there's churches today that are literally doing worse than Nadab and Abihu ever thought about doing. And they're not having fire called down from heaven.
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Why? Right? All those thoughts come to our head. And honestly what it should cause us to do is sing
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Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. That's what it is. It's grace. It's God's grace.
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Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that can pardon and cleanse within. Grace, grace, God's grace. Grace that's greater than all of our sin.
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That's all. By the way sovereign grace, most important word in that is grace. Yes it's sovereign.
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Yes it is. Yes. But grace. We live by grace. And in the weeks to come
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I'm going to talk about the elements of worship. I didn't really get to a lot of our elements of worship. But just remind yourself today.
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What do we do when we come into worship? Someone comes before the people of God and we read the word of God.
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And then we pray a prayer of invocation. We pray
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God we come to you now to worship you. Hear us worship. We invoke you to hear us worship.
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That's what we do. And then we sing. The Bible tells us to speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
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And through the singing of those songs we're actually reminding ourselves of the great attributes of God.
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God omniscient, God all knowing. Omnipresent. All those things.
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Or we're praying to God. Here I am to worship. Here I am to bow down.
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Songs have different uses and we're going to talk about those in one of my messages. I'm going to talk about why we sing different songs different ways.
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We give and it's worship. Giving is worship. It's not your membership fee to the
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Sovereign Grace Club. No, it's worship. And then one of the elders comes and reads more scripture because the word of God should drive our worship.
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And most of my preaching has been for the last couple of years in the New Testament. And because we don't want to neglect the
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Old Testament, Brother Mike will come and read to us from the Old Testament so we have in that moment a reminder that we're not a
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One Testament church. We have a New Testament based on the Old Testament and it's all pointing to Christ.
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And don't you ever feel bad about telling us about what Jeremiah's talking about. That's what that's for.
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That's why we do Old Testament. If I were preaching in Genesis, he'd be reading from the Epistles. We've talked about this.
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These things are there because we're commanded. Give yourselves to the public reading of the word of God.
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That's a command. So we do that. And you know for about 1800 years most people didn't have a
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Bible in their home so that was all they got was when they came together in corporate worship and got to hear the word of God.
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And then we pray the supplicating prayer. We call it the pastoral prayer. Supplicating sounds kind of funny.
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But it is the prayer of supplication where we come as one of the elders comes and we pray over you and for you for your needs.
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And as a congregation we pray for our needs. And then the word of God is opened and one of us preaches explaining, expounding hopefully under the power of the
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Spirit driving these truths into your heart so that you would be able to live them out throughout your lives.
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Preaching is not just filling your mind but hopefully filling your heart to live for Christ. And then when the sermon is over we gather around the table every week to be reminded of Christ's eternal sacrifice given for sin.
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I say eternal. It has eternal consequences. It was a once for all sacrifice with eternal consequences. Let me say it that way. His sacrifice that was given.
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We are called to remember it. And we do it every week. And you might ask yourself, what could we possibly add to that?
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That's great! It is. I look forward to every week. I don't like to miss church.
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I don't like to not be here. Other churches ain't as good as ours. Not for me.
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I mean, for me. This is my church. I get invited to go other places and sometimes
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I do. But I always miss being here. And I try to get back here as soon as I can.
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This is us. This is our church. This is, God's called us to be together here. So what could we be missing?
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You may remember a few weeks ago I was preaching and I just happened to mention in the sermon about the concept of confession of sin.
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And I said, one of the things that often is looked at with great suspicion in Roman Catholicism is when you have to go to a priest and speak in a box through a screen and confess your sins to a priest and the priest would offer you forgiveness of sin.
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And as I said in that sermon, that is something that I will never encourage us to do.
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But the Reformed tradition has always had in its time of worship what is known as corporate confession and assurance of forgiveness.
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Where we as the people of God recognize our sin and the only remedy for our sin which is the
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Lord Jesus Christ. And so, moving forward, we are going to begin a time in the service where there will be a corporate confession.
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Because has anyone here say you went this whole week and have not sinned against God? Anybody want to say they've gone this whole day without sinning against God and thought word and deed?
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The corporate confession is the time in the worship service where we are reminded that the scripture actually commands us to confess our sins.
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Does it not? Are we not commanded? Confess your sins. But we are also given a promise.
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Confess your sins and he is faithful and just to do what? To forgive us and cleanse us of all unrighteousness.
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So, today, we are going to do this as we make our way into communion.
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In the weeks ahead, as the elders begin to work our way through how we want to bring this into a regular portion of worship, we may move this up before the time of the sermon.
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We may move this up to the time of the pastoral prayer so that going into the worship, or excuse me, into the study of the word, we have confessed and been reminded of our forgiveness.
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Now, we study God's word. So, we're looking at where we want to have this element. But we do believe this is a command of scripture that we do this.
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This is not simply us. We wanted to do it, therefore we did it. No. As we are convicted by scripture, we move in a direction and we pray that you, as the people of God, would hear that and be willing to move with us.
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So, what we have done is we have written out four different responsive readings.
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That way, we don't do the exact same one every week. But we will rotate through these and maybe at some point we may add additional ones as we find or write new ones.
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But this first one is going to be our one for today. And I'm going to lead you in this and then
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I'm going to pray and the men will come forward for us to do communion.
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Brother, would you bring up the confession? So, as the people of God, we confess.
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Oh, Lord, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word and deed.
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We have loved the world and not you with all our heart. We have followed on our own ways and not walked in your truth.
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Forgive us, for we are poor and needy and apart from Christ we have no hope.
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Alright, now is the portion where I will lead us in. Hear the promise of God's word.
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If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
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In Christ, your sins are forgiven and you are clothed in his righteousness.
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And all God's people said amen. Let us pray. Father, we thank you for this opportunity to worship you and we pray that we have worshipped you in spirit and truth through the study of your word.
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And now as we continue our worship and the participation of communion, I pray, Lord, that we have heard the gospel today and that gospel would drive our worship, drive us to the table, drive us to our time to receive the reminder of your blessed body and blood.