TiL- Regulative Principle- part 2

Welcome to the Truth in Love podcast. Thank you for joining us tonight. We have Dan back with us from part of his pastoral ordination exam. We're looking forward to hear a little bit from that, and we're going to continue part two of what we started a while back on part of his examination on the regulative principle.

That one's hard to say. Stick with us, we'll be.

Right back. Welcome back. The comment section, the comment line is open. If.

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We're not trying to build our kingdom. We're trying to build Christ's kingdom, so that's not what we're about, but we like partnering with you to build God's kingdom and to share the gospel. Dan, I'm looking for a promo video for the conference because I wanted to let everybody know and remind everybody that we have a conference coming up at the end of April, April 26th through the 28th in Knoxville, Tennessee at Rep Ramada Baptist Church.

Do we? We do, we do, we do, we do. I better.

Take a few days off work. I hope you have already. I have not. I need to do that. You can register. Guess how much it is, Dan? The low, low price of $3 .99? You are.

Exactly right, and where I can find a promo video, I am unsure. Well, let's.

Play this one. We'll see what it is. Brother Tyler, no, we put that.

Thing together. It looks good. Yeah, if you go to the website, there is information, and you don't have to stay at one of these places, but there's information about hotels that you can look into things to do.

You don't have to do those things. They're just there for your interest and to give you a head start on things to do while you're there. In Knoxville, Tennessee, it's not far from Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg.

We actually visited up there. And Buc-ee's. And Buc-ee's. It's close to Buc-ee's, so you can visit Buc-ee's, Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, Cades Cove. Just take a week off. Go do all those fun things and come to the conference over the weekend.

We'd love to see you there, but there's information on the website about things you can do, places you can stay, register for free. There's limited space, but we do have plenty of space still available for you.

So come out and see us. Excuse me. I want to hear from you, brother. Dan, the man, my brother, my friend. Dan is going through the pastoral ordination process in the, I was gonna say CREC, but the RPCNA.

Right. Presbyterian branch, branch of the Presbyterian Church. And I'm proud of you, and I'm not envious. It seems like a ton of work, hard work that you have to do. So let us know what you did last weekend, all the exams, what it was like.

Yeah, well, I mean.

Some people may not even know how a Presbyterian meeting goes. Like what's the purpose of it? So Presbyterian, at least in our Presbytery, and a lot of them are the same way, it's basically a gathering of delegates, which are all elders in the church, either ruling elders or teaching elders.

They get together to do the work of the church. So they get together to talk about church planning, or different missions opportunities, get together to talk about, for instance, we have a joint camp that we work with another Presbytery, and we're talking about certain policies that would be put in place there.

Also, one of the bigger things that they do is the examination of men towards ordination to hold office, to be ministers of the gospel. So I think there was, let me count it up, I had two, the other fellow had two other guys, so there were seven exams that took place over the course of the weekend.

We met from Friday, I think 3 p .m. we started, three till, we ran until about nine, then we're there the next day from 8 a .m. to about 2 .30 or so. You know, I had lunch, meal, a little bit of breaks and stuff.

So I was examined once on Friday night in Bible Knowledge, and once on Saturday morning for Systematic Theology and Reformed Presbyterian Distinctive Principles. So Bible Knowledge, if you've ever heard of a Bible trivia game where they just quiz you on different Bible trivia stuff, that's exactly what that was, only imagine it being high stakes, high stakes, you know, tons of pressure, everybody's watching you, and then they're gonna vote on you to see how you did afterwards.

There's the way that different delegates, so different elders in our presbytery will give different exams at certain times. This one fellow from the church we were at in Rhode Island, Pastor Howe, he's given this exam, I've watched him give it to one other person than he gave it to me, it's slightly different, but he goes rapid-fire and asks all sorts of different questions about the Bible.

And the exam itself that he put together is designed to show as much of the Bible, puts you in front of as much of the Bible as possible and show how familiar you are with it, while at the same time showing you what your weaknesses may be, so that way you can see maybe what you need to go back and read more, what you need to pay attention to more.

And let's just say that when you're finding out your weaknesses while trying to pass an exam in front of, you know, all the presbytery, people who are watching, you know, visitors, there's children and wives and everything else there, it's nerve-wracking.

Oh man, so if you didn't know one, you just said pass, and so I don't know, I felt like I passed on like three quarters of my, it wasn't anywhere close to that number, but I felt beat up and abused and it was rough.

So was one of your weaknesses doing a podcast with a Baptist?

No, they encouraged me to keep on working on you, maybe we'll bring you along someday. So we got to the end of it, and I don't know, about 20 minutes, because it was a 30-minute exam, 30 or 35 minutes of just non-stop Bible trivia questions.

Yeah, about, I don't know, I was about two-thirds of the way through and I was just, I was second-guessing my life choices. I didn't know, I was like, oh man, like am I cut out for this? Is this, I was just, I was defeated.

Got through, and they always ask, they do a roll call vote, so they call on the different pastors and they asked the exam giver, you know, what, yeah, Rob, the Presbyterian does have a nice ring to it.

You know what, I usually post those comments up on the screen. I don't know if I can do that one, Brother Reap.

Yes, you can.

Come on now, come on now.

Yeah, so they asked the examiner first, and you either sustain or you do not sustain, and he said that, he sustained me. He said, you know, what I was trying to do in the exam, you showed what I wanted to know, you know, you've got some stuff to work on, but you've done well enough to where I can pass off on this, and I was like, whew, one.

Now, how about these other, you know, 20 or so delegates over there, and so they went through, and I didn't hear a single one not sustain me. Now, it did go back, somebody either didn't vote or something, I forget what it was, so it wasn't unanimous, but it was close to it, about as close, yes, sustain is good, so it's about as close as you could, I don't know, I don't know exactly what happened, but it was overwhelmingly positive feedback, and then the next morning, I had systematic theology and reformed Presbyterian distinctives, and it was basically questions that you would find in the shorter catechism.

He would poke and prod in different areas, the justification, adoption, sanctification, probe a little bit deeper, make sure that wasn't just memorizing the catechism and giving him the answers, which I did.

The first question he asked was, what is God? And I just like, from memory, rattled it off. He's like, let's do these in our own words, and so I went through, and he poked and prodded, and I got to the end, I felt much more comfortable with that, and got to the end, and he even asked me some questions.

Some of my guys were saying that's probably some second level exam stuff, which I did all right on, so I went through, and everybody who voted, voted affirmative, they passed me on that one, so overall, it was a good experience talking to the pastors from the different churches around the Northeast, and encouraging each other, and praying with one another, eating with one another, and seeing how the ministry is going around the way, and we had one, this is a funny story, real quick, because we're getting in on some time or whatever, but they were talking about the students under care, and that would be myself, people who are going to be examined, and the guy said that when the students are called on to preach in the different churches, they need to make sure to make an effort to make it there to those churches, so they can get opportunities in the pulpit.

I was like, no, I'm bouncing all over the place, preaching all over the place, so that's great, so after that session, we had a 15-minute break, and I was coming back for my exam, so I wanted a little time to myself, so I moseyed downstairs, and off in a corner, found a restroom, and I was using the facilities, and in walks that pastor, and says, hey, how you doing?

I'm doing good. Talk for the week. He's like, so you're coming to preach for me soon, right? I was like, I guess I can't say no. He chased me all the way down here, so I'm gonna go. It was the 14th of April.

I'm gonna head down to Pennsylvania and spend some time with the saints down there for a little bit. It should be a good time. Fantastic. It's a good time. Let's see. I don't know if I have it right here.

Is it close to the chocolate area? No, kind of. It's on the way there, but we gather together. We always end by singing Psalm 133. What a joyful thing it is for brothers to join together in unity. We sing that Psalm at the end of Presbytery to remind ourselves of the brotherhood of the saints as we are gathered together with one God who's called us into his church and gifted us in various ways.

It's a really good time. Wow, fantastic. I don't know.

If I'm brave enough to ask you for any softball questions that you could throw to this Baptist. Maybe it's something we'll have to do offline so I don't embarrass myself.

Here's one that I got. Are children of believers proper subjects of baptism? I would probably fail at that point. The correct answer is yes. Yes, they are. Then they asked me why, so I gave the answer, but we're not going there.

We're talking about...

Yeah. Well, just one question on that. That particular question, you said you had Friday questions and Saturday two different categories. Which category did.

That question fall under? That was from Systematic Theology.

Oh, okay. So that wasn't under Presbyterian distinctions.

No. That would be a Presbyterian distinctive, but it's not a Reformed Presbyterian distinctive.

The Reformed Presbyterian being our denomination. Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. That makes sense.

I got it. I'm following you. I'm following you. There's so many terms. Just hold on. If you got questions, ask them. We'll be fine. We'll get through it together.

Yeah. Yes. By the way, send us your questions on the comments. We'd love to hear from you. So probably about two weeks ago now, we started this to help. You sent me questions to help you study for your exam, but it also helps me, and I appreciate I had this conversation.

It's a good conversation to have. We need to look at how we worship God when we gather together collectively, and one of the views is the regulative principle of worship. We talked about last time in part one, the exclusivity of psalms, exclusive psalmody.

We talked about that and the psalms and your defense. You took us to Deuteronomy 12, 1 Chronicles 25, a biblical defense for the exclusivity of psalms in the regulative principle of worship. Before we get started in the second half of your list,.

Define for us again the regulative principle. The regulative principle of worship says that God is able to regulate how he is to be worshipped, which means that we don't do anything other. We strive to not do anything in worship other than what God has expressly commanded in Scripture.

Now that goes over against the normative principle of worship, which states that whatever God has not forbidden is acceptable in worship. Right, right. I'll say this. Inside of the regulative principle camp, there are people who do not hold to exclusive psalmody.

They would sing hymns or even modern worship songs. There's also folks who use instruments in worship who also would say that they hold to the regulative principle. But we distinguish it in the Reformed Presbyterian Church because we believe that these things are spoken to and that we should only sing the psalms and that we should not use instruments while we are worshiping.

Right. That leads us into, drumroll, the second half of your list that you sent me.

Which was actually one of my questions. It was. It was one of my questions I got during my systematic theology exam. I was glad that I prepared for it, even if we didn't get to go live with it before Presbytery because everything that we're about to talk about, I had to come up with in a minute and a half off the top of my head.

It was fun.

Yeah. Well, and I really not fought you against. Sometimes in these conversations when we practice different things in our churches, we have disagreements and discrepancies, contentions, different ways to describe our differences.

But I really not, and I'll call it pushback. I'm not giving you much pushback if I didn't in the first one. Mainly because I didn't have much. And second, I wanted to hear your defense and your denomination's defense on the regulative principle.

I really don't have, what defense really can there be, even if I don't hold to the regulative principle. Somebody else doesn't hold to a regular principle. Like you were talking about, some people hold to a partial regulative principle or not partial, but different.

I don't even know how to.

They believe what's been regulated is slightly different than what we believe has been regulated.

Right, right. I don't see how anybody could give too much pushback, give anybody a hard time for holding the regulative principle. Only from self selfishness, really, could you argue against it? Because you're just wanting to do what you want to do.

And you're mad that you can't do it in the service. To me, that's kind of how I see it. But the regulative principles is, if it's what you say, worshiping according to how God desires to be worshiped.

And by his means, you can't argue with that. I guess where the argument would come in is, like you said, where does he regulate? How much does he regulate?

Right. Has God said that he, has God limited it to everything that he's said explicitly, or does he allow us some freedom? And that's really where the distinction between normative and regulative principle is.

Are we restricted to what God has explicitly said, or does God give us some freedom within some parameters where he said, well, don't go over here and don't do that, but figure it out amongst yourselves in the middle.

That's really where the discussion lies.

Yeah. And once we get to the end, if we can get through it, Dan, I think this question was brought up. I don't know if you answered it or not, but when we have our conference in April, I think when you and I talked about that, and for somebody who holds a regular principle and you're going to a conference and you're participating in the conference, that's not going to be a regular principle style of worship.

How do you handle that? I guess we can save that towards the end, I guess, if that's okay.

We'll see. Let me think through that one, because there's actually a case of that going through, somewhat similar going through our Synod right now. I'll answer it carefully.

Thankfully. Yeah. Well, and we can put it on pause. So where do you get the subject of the second half of the regulative principle that Dan wanted to talk about was about no instruments in worship. So the regulative principle here is stating that God is, in how He's regulating worship, that it be done without instruments.

Where do you get that from, and what is the biblical argument?

Well, that's just the thing. It comes from the Bible. At least we think it comes from the Bible. That's what we derive our argument from, is from the Bible. We look back to Old Testament worship, and then we look forward through how God has determined that He should be worshiped through time.

And we arrive at the position that we do because we see through the Old Testament worship to the New Testament worship, the instruments are no longer necessary. And to go ahead and give away where we're headed, because instrumentation was a foreshadowing or a symbol of the coming Holy Spirit that we as the church now have been given from Christ.

So that's jumping the whole thing. We start at the beginning. We get to where instruments are a foreshadowing of the Holy Spirit. Now, there's a lot in the middle that I need to fill in to make that case, and I understand that.

But I kind of wanted to give the overview before we got started. That's where we're headed. I'm not going to... Here's my cards, we'll lay them out for you. I'm not going to hold them close and make you guess.

So we start off by looking at how God has asked us to worship Him throughout church history. Especially from a Presbyterian perspective, that means Old Testament church straight on through till today.

How has He determined that we should worship Him? So in the book of Numbers, start in the book of Numbers. As far as instruments go, we see this in Numbers 10 verses 1 and 2. We see where it says, Yahweh spoke further to Moses saying, make yourself two trumpets of silver of hammered work and you shall make them and you shall use them for the summoning of the congregation and for having the camp set out.

So there's two purposes. First, there was instruments. There were silver trumpets. They were to blow them and it would say, hey, congregation, come or hey, gather up your camp. We're getting ready to leave.

So there was instrumentation that was used in Israel. Now that didn't really have anything to do with worship, but if you go on into a few verses later, it talks about how it should be blown this time, at that time, when you're convening the assembly, do this and that.

And then it goes down to verse 10. Also in the day of your gladness and in your appointed feast and on the first days of the months, you shall blow the trumpets over your burnt offerings and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings.

And they shall be a remembrance of you before your God. I am Yahweh your God. So we see that use of instruments is linked to worship. It's linked to specifically the sacrifice. So as a sacrifice is going to be offered, the trumpets are blowing, calling the people to come worship, blowing over the sacrifice itself and the sacrifice is presented.

Now we'll look into what trumpets symbolize in a little bit, but it has to do with preaching or proclaiming or calling out. It's an announcement is what the trumpets are. You see that in Isaiah where it calls Isaiah preaching a trumpeting.

You also see that in Revelation where it talks about different warnings of God's wrath, the trumpets that are blown there, their announcements. It's a prophetic calling from God to mankind.

Let me pause you right there. I chuckled just a little bit when you were talking about God having them make trumpets, hammer trumpets, and then blow them to call the people into worship. At that moment, I was just imagining our Sunday school director growing up, going to the office and pushing the button and then hearing that bell ring all across the church.

Sunday school's over. Wrap it up. It's time to come to service.

Well, same basic principle. It's the same basic principle. Hey, guys, come on. Sunday school teacher blowing, ringing the bell. Come on, guys. It's time. God has called us. The sacrifice is here. Let's do this.

One thing to note there, though, is that there wasn't singing at that point. Not only wasn't there singing, there was no instrumentation during singing. Obviously, there's no singing, there's no instrumentation during your singing.

Now, that changes. The way that God had asked the people of Israel to worship Him changed, and it changed at the time of David. Now, what's significant about that is that at the time of Moses, you have the Mosaic covenant, God calling the people to worship Him in a certain way.

He's covenanting with them, and then giving them ways that they should approach Him or worship Him. You see that kind of splits up the book of Exodus. I think it's chapters 1 through 24, 25 constitutes a covenant in people with God, and the rest of the book is on how that people is to worship God, the different feasts and festivals and how they're to approach and live among a holy God.

When you get to David, you have the divinic covenant, the promise of the coming Messiah, the one who's going to sit on David's throne forever. That's the next time that you see a change in worship. You want to go to Chronicles?

You have questions before we move?

No, I'm good.

I'm talking a lot. I want to make sure I'm not missing anything.

You go right ahead. I'm following along.

All right. You end up in 1 Chronicles, and David changes some things. 1 Chronicles 6 verses 31 and 32 says,. Now these are those whom David caused to stand over the service of the song in the house of Yahweh after the ark rested there.

So there was the tabernacle, the ark rested in its place in the tabernacle. It was kind of set up in one spot. They weren't really moving it around a whole bunch. David said, All right, we're going to have songs here, and this is how it's going to work.

Verse 32,. And they ministered with song before the tabernacle of the tent of meeting, until Solomon had built the house of Yahweh in Jerusalem, and they stood for their service according to their customs.

So they did that from the tabernacle. Then when Solomon had built the temple, they moved their services from the tabernacle into the temple, and they did the same thing. So there was music going on that says song.

So David had made a change. Now, why did David make a change? I mean, if we're arguing for the regulative principle that God regulates things, then how is David able to introduce this? I was wondering about that, and the Bible has a great way of answering its own questions.

If you go over to 2 Chronicles, it recounts this whole thing again. It tells us the whole story again in 2 Chronicles, kind of as a sum up. Verse 25, 2 Chronicles 29 -25,. He then caused the Levites to stand in the house of Yahweh with cymbals, with harps, with lyres, according to the commandment of David, and of Gad the king seer, and of Nathan the prophet, because the command was from Yahweh by the hand of his prophets.

So while in 1 Chronicles it just says David did it, we see in 2 Chronicles it explains that he had two prophets who spoke from the Lord to him that this is what I want you to do. I want you to change how worship is done by adding in song and instrumentation.

But the instrumentation and the song were still tied to the temple, still tied to the ark, still tied to that sacrifice, which is key. So if you pop over to 1 Chronicles, back over to 1 Chronicles, you actually see this in action.

In chapter 15, verse 16, it says,. Then David said to the chiefs of the Levites to appoint the relatives, the singers, with instruments of music, harps, lyres, loud-sounding cymbals, to raise a sound of gladness.

So what he's doing there is he's saying, I want you to go out and I want you to make music because I want you to draw the people in with emotion. I want you to change their emotion to a thing of gladness.

You're here at the temple, the sacrifices are being made, your God is among you, and you are to be glad and happy and hear some music to help you along to do that. Like he said, to raise a sound, to make a joyful noise before the Lord.

If you go into the next chapter, into chapter 16, and it talks about what this kind of looked like. Chapter 16, verse 4,. And he made some of the Levites ministers before the ark of Yahweh, even to bring remembrance and to thank and praise Yahweh, the God of Israel.

So there was Asaph. So we heard Psalms from Asaph. These were the, oh, my mind went blank. I've got to do this early in the day so my mind doesn't stop. There's a family that was in charge, their whole job was music.

Levites, part of the Levitical priesthood, their job was to make music with instruments there. So looking on into that same chapter a little bit further, you go to verse 42, and it says,. And with them were Heman and Juduthan with trumpets and cymbals for those who should sound aloud, with instruments for the songs of God and the sons of Juduthan for the gate.

And then all the people went each to his house and David returned to bless his household. So they entered into the temple or the tabernacle at that point. They worshiped God by blowing the trumpets and clanging the cymbals over the sacrifice, by singing while the sacrifice was taking place.

And that singing was accompanied with instruments. I told you my brain is fried. It's accompanied with instruments. Now, here's the part that you're going to find.

Interesting. Well, you've already hinted at it earlier and I've been on pins and needles here.

Waiting on you to get to it. I'm going to jump ahead and I'm going to jump further ahead and I'm going to jump back. Oh my goodness, I got to wait longer? No, but I'm getting there quick. All right. Now, in the book of Revelation, because who goes from first Chronicles to Revelation?

I do. And so did the early church, but we'll get to that in a little bit too. If you go into book of Revelation verses eight and nine, it's describing the scene in heaven. It describes the people who were there, the elders.

And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb, which is Jesus. Also, if you remember, a lamb was a sacrifice, which is part of the symbolism from the Old Testament.

Each one having a harp, so an instrument in the New Testament, and golden bowls full of incense. Now, what are the golden bowls full of incense? Which are the prayers of the saints. So, the things that they're holding in their hands are holding a golden bowl, which is a prayer of the saints, and they're holding a harp, which is music.

Now, if the golden bowl is symbolic of prayer, the harp is symbolic of music. Now, here's the part where I think you're going to find it interesting. You have the Old Testament law as a schoolmaster to teach the Old Testament people how to live and worship among God.

You have the different sacrifices that are set up in order to point to Christ, who is coming to be the sacrifice of sacrifices, the once-for-all sacrifice perfected for the saints for all time. You have the Levitical priesthood, which is to pass away and be replaced with the Melchizedekian priesthood, or the priesthood of Melchizedek, which is Christ serving as the office of high priest.

So, was there a set of events that took place in which God shut down Old Testament worship, destroyed the temple, and put away the Old Testament Levitical system? And you, the partial preterist that you are, and me as well, we know that the answer to that is, yeah, in 70 AD, God visited the nation of Israel in judgment.

He saw the temple destroyed, the Levitical priesthood put down, as we know from the book of Hebrews, that Christ was then, Christ was exalted, but Christ was shown to be, proven to be, not that He wasn't already, but proven to be the sacrifice from the Old Testament.

Not only was He the sacrifice from the Old Testament, but He put away the Levitical priesthood, which all of the instrumentation that went along with the singing, which was accompanied with the sacrifice, the Levitical priesthood was put away.

So, since the Levitical priesthood was put away in favor of Christ, since the sacrifice was put away in favor of Christ, what we are left with is the New Testament saints worshiping in spirit and in truth, on the truth of Christ, who's come and become the sacrifice once and for all, for saints, for all time, and the Spirit, which is the Holy Spirit, who is, I believe, foreshadowed in the use of the instruments.

Remember, they were there to make a noise, a sound of gladness? Now, we don't need musical instruments to produce gladness because we are all worshiping with joy in our hearts, placed there by the Holy Spirit, which means that those saints in Revelation who were holding the prayers of the saints in a golden bowl in one hand, were holding the songs of the saints in the other hand, which is the harp, which is the instrument who is actually giving the praise, which is us.

We are the instruments that praise God, not a harp or a trumpet or a guitar, but we are the instruments of praise empowered by the Holy Spirit.

I really would like you to dive deeper into how the instruments are a topology of the Holy Spirit, but what you just said about how the instruments were used to bring gladness, that hit me like a sledgehammer because I want to think about worship, quote, worship in quote churches today, how music is abused to manipulate emotions, to manipulate responses.

If you don't have that, then you're eliminating a lot of the abuses that you're seeing in quote churches today. It's documented. You can find the videos where these worship leaders are intentionally creating the songs, the atmosphere, and the whole set is what they call it, to bring about a certain response.

When I was in Bible college, we had a whole program that was about music and worship leading. I got in a conversation with a guy one day who asked me, he says, since music and music can't help but draw out emotion, how do you feel about emotionally manipulating people?

Because that's what we're doing during the worship service. I hadn't thought everything all the way through like I have now. I wouldn't say I've thought everything all the way through, but I hadn't thought through things nearly as well or as much as I have now.

I said, well, I guess since instruments and music automatically evoke emotion that we ought to try to help people emote in the right direction, but that's not our job. That's the job of the Holy Spirit.

That's right. I'm trying not to pin myself into a corner and get in trouble, but by agreeing with you too much, but no, I do agree with you and there's dangers in it. I'm not ready to condemn instruments and music, but the argument here for what music does to us, well, you're totally right.

I'm tracking with you through scripture.

Yeah. Look at Luke 4 for a second. Luke 4 in verse 18, it's where Jesus was in the synagogue and he was handed the scroll of Isaiah and he read, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. The Holy Spirit is upon Christ because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, to proclaim, to trumpet the gospel to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives or sacrifice or for the sacrifice that would set them free from their sins and recovery of the sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, the healing of the nations, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.

The thing that God has been working on all along is now come and has been fulfilled in me is what he's saying, which is incredible. Oh, I don't know how the Jews didn't, they either got goosebumps or wanted to stone him.

It's like, oh, is this it? He's here. That would be, oh, it's great. Unless you thought he was lying to you, but he clearly wasn't. Otherwise we would be Jewish. But then if you follow along over into 1 Corinthians, I know I'm gotta have your running fingers on today, I guess.

1 Corinthians 2, verse four. Let me back up a second. It's the middle of a sentence, starting verse three. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my word and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power.

So what Paul was saying there is, I came to you and I preached and you received the Holy Spirit. You were saved by Christ, your sacrifice, not because I was whipping you up into an emotional frenzy, but because the Spirit of God was there in the preaching.

The Spirit of God has come among you. And so you see Jesus saying the Spirit of God is among you. It is upon him. The Spirit of God has come upon the church through the preaching of Christ. And now look ahead into a book of Ephesians, verse 18 and 19, where he says, and do not get drunk with wine for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit.

So be filled with the Spirit, the one who is upon Christ and saving people in the church. And what do we do when we're filled with the Spirit? It says, speaking to one another in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord.

The instruments are nowhere to be found because the Holy Spirit is there guiding us along the whole way. So what does it look like to be filled with the Spirit? It's singing Psalms with joy and the melody comes from your heart, not from an instrument.

It's something that's produced in us by God, not hoisted on us by external forces. And I've noticed a difference.

And this is before I even knew the regulative principle even existed. But I've noticed a difference and sensed the difference, recognized the difference when singing a cappella with a group, whether it be a group of four, or whether it be a choir, or whether it be a congregation.

I recognize the difference in that versus singing with instruments, singing with music. Now, the instrumentation and the voices put together, it's a beautiful thing. I mean, God created those things. They're beautiful.