Worship by the Book #1 - Who Decides How to Worship God? The Regulative Principle of Worship

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This Sunday, we are beginning a sermon series for the month of January. We've actually been working our way verse by verse through Genesis, and for the month of January, it kind of just works out this way.
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Every January, for the last couple of years at least, January ends up being a time where we talk about some issue related to, you know, life in the local church.
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Last January, we did a series on the means of grace, and for the rest of this month, we're going to do a series on the subject of corporate worship.
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And as we begin, I've got just a few sort of preliminary remarks as we get started. First of all,
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I appreciate that this may not be everyone's favorite idea of a
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Good Sermon series. I readily appreciate that for some, the preference would be, well, get back to Genesis.
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I was enjoying that. Well, we will. But, as you know, there comes a need for times where we can tackle more topical issues from a biblical perspective.
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This is the kind of thing I ideally would love to do on a Wednesday night, and it's more of a Bible study class setting.
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We don't really have that option right now. So for now, this will do. We'll do this for four weeks, and then we will return to our regularly scheduled programming.
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But there are a couple of reasons why I felt the need to do this.
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First of all, this January will be a year—actually, it was the first Sunday of January last year—but it's been a year since our church made some changes to our—if you like this term—our liturgy, the way that we carry out our worship services.
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About a year ago—well, actually, about 15 months ago, started praying through and thinking through some changes, discussed them with my brother
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Eddie at the time, and we looked at various ways that other churches did this. And we kind of settled on some core elements that were like, okay, these we can clearly see in the
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Scriptures, they're core elements, and so we will keep these. And others were like, mm, we can do without, that's fine.
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But it was about a year ago since we made that change, and at the time, I wrote a document and gave it to everybody who came, basically saying, hey, we're making some changes, this is what these changes are going to look like, don't worry about it.
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And then I realized, okay, maybe a document wasn't the best way to do that. I mean, it had been done, so I just kind of left it.
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But I realized with January coming up, I was like, actually, some more teaching may have been helpful, because I will readily acknowledge—and we'll talk about this actually in our final week when we talk about why we do what we do, especially here at Redeemer—but I realized that actually some more teaching to put this in context might have been a good idea.
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So in one sense, this is me writing that wrong, as it were. But there's a second reason, and that deals more with our hearts than with our heads.
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You see, I want us to come out of this four -week study thinking about corporate worship, not just knowing why we do what we do, which
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I'll be honest, that's where my heart naturally goes. If you just tell me why we're doing something,
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I generally don't have many questions after that. It's like, okay, you've explained it, it makes sense, we're doing it.
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But corporate worship is the kind of thing, and I'll say more about this in week three, that it engages our hearts, not just our heads, that corporate worship is not just something we do to get done.
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We should actually love what we do in corporate worship.
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But you can't love what we do in corporate worship if you call the church your home, if you're visiting, great to have you with us.
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But if you call this church your home, then you can't love what we do if you don't understand why we do it.
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And so, like I said, we're going to take the rest of this month, and my expectations about this series are somewhat realistic.
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I don't think that one sermon series is going to make you fall in love with the way that we do worship here at Redeemer.
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I'm not that idealistic. But hopefully it begins a process, a process not just of understanding, but enjoyment.
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And not just enjoyment, but love for the things that we do. And not just love for the things we do, but passion for the things we do.
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So I invite you for the next four weeks, hear me out. You may hear me after the end of the four messages in this series and say, you know what?
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I don't agree with you at all. Okay, at least hear me out before you disagree. But I invite you to listen with an open mind, with an open heart, and more importantly, with an open
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Bible. Well, speaking of open Bibles, if you have a Bible, and I hope you do, turn with me to two passages, two passages,
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Colossians chapter two, Colossians chapter two. If you've got a piece of paper or a ribbon in your
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Bible, keep something there. And then also open to second Timothy three, we'll come to that passage in a second.
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Two texts I want us to read as we get started. Colossians chapter number two, from verse 20 through to 23.
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Colossians chapter two, 20 through 23. And second Timothy chapter three, verses 16 and 17.
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Colossians chapter two, from verse 20 through to 23. And second
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Timothy chapter three, verse 16 and 17.
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I'll read the Colossians passage first, and then second Timothy. If I can invite you to stand with me, if you're able to do so, out of respect for God's word as we read these texts.
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Colossians chapter two, beginning in verse 20.
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Brothers and sisters, these are God's words. If you died with Christ to the elements of this world, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world?
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Why do you submit to regulations? Don't handle, don't taste, don't touch. All these regulations refer to what is destined to perish by being used up.
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They are human commands and doctrines. Although these have a reputation for wisdom by promoting self -made religion, false humility, and severe treatment of the body, they are not of any value in curbing self -indulgence.
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Second Timothy chapter three. Second Timothy chapter three, those should be familiar verses to you if you've been here at Redeemer for any length of time.
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Second Timothy chapter three, and verses 16 and 17.
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Second Timothy chapter three, verses 16 and 17. All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
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The gospel is a flower of faith, but this word of our God will abide forever. Join with me as I pray, ask for the Spirit's help, and we get to work in this series.
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Well, Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your goodness and mercy to us. Thank you for this day that we're able to gather and to worship and to sit at your feet and to hear from your
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Word. Father, we pray that as we open your Word and we allow it to speak to us on this subject of corporate worship as we begin this series,
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I pray your Spirit would be at work helping us to understand what is being said, helping us to understand the scriptures, and ultimately helping us that we would grow in the grace and knowledge of our
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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Father, it's our custom to pray for other churches here in the
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Valley, and this afternoon I take a moment to pray for Applegate Community Church, where I had the privilege of filling the pulpit this morning.
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Thank you for them. Thank you for what you're doing in that congregation, how you are keeping that lampstand burning in your great providence.
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Thank you for their pastor, Pastor Will, and the clear and evident love he has for his people and that his people have for him.
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Pray for him as he is down in Southern California continuing his doctoral work this week.
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Pray for him and all the men who are down there, that their churches would be impacted and strengthened, and especially
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Pastor Will would come back with much to teach and to share and to help build up the body there.
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Pray for the ministry you've given them, pray that you would encourage them, pray that you would strengthen them, pray that you would add to their number as you would see fit.
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Father, we pray that you would be glorified, both in them and in us, even now. We ask it in Jesus' name and for his sake.
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Amen. Amen. Zoe, would you mind grabbing my phone for me on the front pew there?
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Thank you. Thank you. As we begin this sermon this afternoon,
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I want to share with you one of my observations about people in general. I don't have many.
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I don't claim to be the most observant when people are concerned, but one of my observations about people is this, that really there are two kinds of people in the world.
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There are those who read the instructions and those who like a good headache.
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Now, technically there's a third category, people who are just really good at that sort of thing, you know, people like Brad Thomas, who's an engineer.
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I'm not an engineer. I read books. So, if I want to assemble something, either you build it for me, and I have no shame in going into a store and say, yeah, can
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I have one of these display ones? Yeah, I'll pay less. I don't care if it's scratched up. I just don't want to have to do it. Or if I do have to do it, before I touch a single tool,
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I'm the type who I read the instructions two, three, four times. I want to know how to do this so that my time is not being wasted, because I think my time is kind of important.
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Like I said, there are some who, again, in the category, you're just naturally gifted in that way. You don't need instructions to do most things, but I think we can recognize that there are some people who purposely choose not to read the instructions, and then they wonder why the thing they put together or the thing they're trying to do just doesn't work.
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I have had the displeasure of having to work with such people. As you can tell, not a big fan, because the reality is, this is the way
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I think. Maybe I need to just lighten up and not care so much, but in my mind, if someone went through the time to tell me how to do something, and I don't have to expend the brainpower, not that I have that much of it, but the little that I have,
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I don't have to spend it trying to figure this out. Why would I not read the instructions?
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Well, you might get away with it if you're trying to build a grill or a birdhouse or put something up.
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You might get away with not having to read the instructions. You might be able to just figure out and that'd be okay.
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Does worship work the same way? Is it the case when we worship that it doesn't matter how we worship, we can just figure it out?
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Is it the case that God has not given us any sort of instructions where worship is concerned? Are we kind of just left on our own to figure this thing out?
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Well, no, I'm not convinced we are. That's why I've titled this sermon series for the next few weeks,
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Worship by the Book, because the reality is, God has actually given us some instructions for how to worship him.
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God in his kindness has not left us in the dark about who he is, what he has done, and important for today's message, he hasn't left us in the dark when it comes to how he wants to be worshipped.
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He's given us an instruction manual, if you will. And often I wonder when
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I look at the professing church, is it the case that many of us have read the instructions or did we know that there were some instructions, kind of stuffed them in the drawer with a bunch of other instructions we have for everything else and say, you know what,
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I can figure this out. If God has been gracious to us and he has given us a manual, and if we're going to engage in what
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I believe is one of the most fundamental purposes for which we are created, which
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I believe is to worship, if we're going to engage in this, then maybe we might be smart to consider the manual and to do only what the manual tells us to do.
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I've titled this message in our series, Who Decides How to Worship God?
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And we're going to talk about a concept that's to some considered old -fashioned, others just think it's outright unbiblical, but I think it's actually very valuable.
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We're going to talk about a concept called the regulative principle of worship. That sounds really fancy.
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It kind of does because it comes from the era when people spoke that kind of way, but in your study guide,
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I hope you grabbed one when you came in, in your study guide I've basically given you a definition that our fathers in the faith, you know
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I love quoting them not because I think they're equal to scripture, but they helped me to explain concepts in scripture better than I can.
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When you look at our fathers in the faith, this is what they had to say about this idea of a regulative principle of worship.
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They said this, The acceptable way to worship the true
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God is instituted by Him and it is delimited, restricted, by His own revealed will.
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Thus He may not be worshipped according to human imagination or inventions or the suggestions of Satan, nor through any visible representations, nor in any other way that is not prescribed in the
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Holy Scriptures. Long and sure, we only do in worship the things that God has explicitly commanded.
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Now for some of you may think, oh that makes sense, who would argue that? Oh you'd be surprised. Throughout church history this has actually been a bone of contention with all kinds of churches because some people will say, okay
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Kofi that's way too restrictive. No, no, no, no, no. Instead of saying we only do those things that the
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Bible explicitly commands, no, we can do whatever we want.
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Just don't do the things the Bible tells you not to do. In church history that was called the normative principle of worship.
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That as long as it's normative, as long as it's fine, we can do it unless God says explicitly not to.
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I think that's lacking for a number of reasons we'll see as we go through this message. I much rather prefer, and this is more with my preference,
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I see plainly in Scripture that we only do the things that God commands. Okay, Kofi, how do you get there?
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Well for the rest of our time I want to take that definition, I want to break it down some and see if I can help us from the
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Bible answer the question, who decides how to worship God? If you haven't guessed already, my answer is that God gets to decide how
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God is worshipped. So to help us do this, I've kind of broken this down into three parts.
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Consider would be first of all some Bible basics for true worship. Point number one there. Some Bible basics for true worship.
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I want to consider some truths from the Word of God. Some of them will be really basic, but my hope is that with each of these truths you'll also see that there are some implications for our worship.
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So I want to consider some Bible basics for true worship. I've got three of them in particular. First of all, let's start with the most basic thing of all,
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God is sovereign. God is sovereign. None of us should argue that, I hope. I am of that theological tradition that loves talking about the sovereignty of God.
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So Psalm 150, excuse me, verse three, our God is in heaven and does whatever he pleases.
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Psalm 135, six, the Lord does whatever he pleases in heaven and on earth, in the sea and all the depths.
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If you know me, you know one of my favorite verses, in fact, this one I want you to see because it is my favorite. Ephesians 1, 11. Ephesians chapter one and in verse 11,
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Paul is laying out the blessings that we enjoy because of our union with Christ and in verse 11 he says, in him, in Christ, we have also received an inheritance because we were predestined according to the plan of the one who works out everything in agreement with the purpose of his will.
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God works out everything that happens in agreement with his will. If I can put it in four very simple words,
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God is the boss. Any questions? Okay, coffee, why are we starting with the sovereignty of God?
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Here's the implication of that truth for worship. If God is indeed sovereign, if God is indeed in charge, if he is indeed the boss, then can
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I put it to you that it's God's prerogative alone to determine the terms on which we may approach him in worship.
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He's the only one who gets to say how he will be worshiped. We don't walk up to God and say, God, I want to do this for you.
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No, it's the other way around. He tells us what the terms are. If God, think about it, if God doesn't take cues from humanity on anything, why would it be different when we come to the matter of worship?
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And you actually see this explicitly laid out in the Bible. The classic example is when Israel in the wilderness is commanded by God to build a tabernacle.
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God tells Israel, build me a tent, basically. You all live in tents. So build me one so I can live among you.
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And there's a fascinating verse. I used to teach Sunday school to kids and one day I got asked to teach on the tabernacle, which is lots of fun because it's nice and visual and kids love that.
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And I remember the verse I had the kids remember was this one, Exodus chapter 25 and verse 40.
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Be careful to make everything according to the pattern you have been shown on the mountain.
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God didn't sit there and tell Moses, or Moses didn't go to God and say, hey God, I know you said you wanted a tent. I've been thinking about that.
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Here are some blueprints I came up with. You know, I think this color scheme would work great. It'll match all those red rocks in the desert.
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No. No. God told Moses exactly, you read it, Exodus 25 through 40.
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It's painstaking in its detail. And multiple times God tells him, make sure you build it exactly like I told you.
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Commenting on this, Matthew Henry, who you all know is my favorite commentator. He said this, nothing was left to Moses's own invention or the fancy of the workmen or the people's humor.
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But the will of God was to be religiously observed in every particular.
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So when it comes to worship, we have to start with the recognition that God is indeed sovereign. He gets to determine what we do in worship.
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But that leads us to a second Bible basic. And that basic, again, you should know this.
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We believe that God has revealed himself in the scriptures. So not only is
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God sovereign, not only does he get to determine the terms, he graciously tells us what those terms are.
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As Christians, we recognize that we serve a God who is more than capable of revealing himself.
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In Deuteronomy, when he is recounting his mercy to his people, in Deuteronomy chapter four, verse 33,
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God says, has a people, for instance, the nation of Israel, has a people heard God's voice speaking from the fire as you have?
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He says, you're different to all the peoples around. They all have gods, but your God actually speaks and you heard him.
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He reiterates that. Deuteronomy chapter five and verse 26, for who out of all humanity has heard the voice of the living
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God speaking from the fire as we have and lived? As Christians, we affirm the biblical truth that our
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God reveals himself. He makes himself known to his creatures.
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We are not deists. We don't believe that God created the world and then kind of shuffled off into the celestial background, as it were, never to be seen again.
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No, we actually believe in a God who speaks. And when we read the
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Bible, the Bible tells us he speaks in two books, as it were. So there's what we can call general revelation, or the book of creation.
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The fact that Psalm 19 says that the heavens declare the glory of God and that the expanse proclaims the work of his hands.
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It's what Paul says in Romans one and 20, that not only do we see in creation. In fact,
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Romans one 20, he says for his invisible attributes, that is his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made.
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In chapter two, he picks that theme up and says, you have a conscience, this inbuilt sense of right and wrong.
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That conscience testifies to you that there is a moral standard. That conscience tells you that there are some things you should do and some things you shouldn't do.
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One of my favorite songs is by a British songwriter, Stuart Townend. The first line of the song says, creation sings the father's song.
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And so you look at creation, you look at the book of general revelation, and it tells you that there is a
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God. And because he is powerful and because he was able to make all things, he is truly worthy of worship.
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That would be great all by itself. But God doesn't just vaguely tell us that he exists because you can look at the created order.
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You can look at yourself and recognize, wait a minute, someone had to have made me. No, no, no. There's a second book.
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And that book is a lot more comprehensive. There's the book of general revelation, as it were.
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But then there's the book of special revelation. Ultimately, if we can summarize there's so much more
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I'd love to say, but let me just boil it down. This book that we carry is
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God speaking to us. And it's more than him just telling us that he exists and telling us that he is worthy of worship.
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No, in this book, he speaks sufficiently. You see, nature gives you enough to know that there is a
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God. But I'm inclined to agree with David Platt, who says that, quote, there's enough revelation in general revelation to condemn, but not enough to save.
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If man would be saved, God needs to say a few more things than I'm the creator and I made all these things. And so the
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Bible makes us understand Hebrews chapter one, that he speaks to us in his son. If you're here at Christmas, that's the passage we looked at.
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He speaks to us in his son, but here's the beauty. Yes, he speaks to us in his son.
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And you know how we know he's spoken to us in his son? We pick this up.
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Sometimes you'll hear people try and say, well, I believe in Jesus, but I don't have to believe in the Bible.
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My simple response is, how would you know there even was a Jesus if you didn't read this? Actually, you can't make a distinction between Jesus and the
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Bible. Because like I said, you wouldn't know there was a person called Jesus without the Bible. And actually, if you read the
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Bible, the right way up and the right way across, it actually leads you to Jesus every time.
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Okay, Kofi, great. God speaks, he's spoken in creation, and he's spoken in the scriptures. Okay, that's great. What does that have to do with worship?
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Simple, two things. Number one, it is in the scriptures and in the scriptures alone that God tells us how he wants to be worshiped.
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And if that is true, second implication, the scriptures are sufficient for guiding our understanding of worship.
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If God has spoken, which we believe he does, and we believe that he has spoken clearly in his word, then we can trust that what he has to say in his word is all we need to worship him appropriately.
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And that kind of leads me to my third Bible basic. So God is sovereign. God has revealed himself in his word.
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But thirdly, if that's the case, then God's word is the only standard for our practice in worship.
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I want to make this point from the first text we read. Go back to Colossians chapter two with me for a moment. I want to show you something there. Colossians chapter two.
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Colossians chapter two, ladies, you're covering this in the ladies' Bible studies, if I remember right. And in Colossians, to give you some context for those of you who aren't in the ladies'
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Bible study, Paul is writing to the church at Colossae. This is a church that is holding firm to the gospel, but they're under assault from a false teaching.
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There's a false teaching that's kind of, as it were, beating the door down, trying to get in. It's kind of hard to define what this false teaching is.
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Different commentators and different writers go different places. I take the view it's kind of a folk religion. It's a mixture of things.
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So there's a philosophical element to it. There's a ascetic element, a mistreatment of the body.
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There's a legalistic element to this involving the Jewish law. And there's a mystical angel worship element to it.
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Easy way to remember those four. Palm, P -A -L -M. Philosophy, asceticism, legalism, and mysticism.
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Like I said, asceticism was one of these strains. This idea that abuse of the body is a means of godliness, and it's a way to experience the divine because your human body basically acts as a shield between you and the divine.
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So the more you mistreat and break down the body, the more you are able to experience the divine.
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This was the idea of this teaching. And Paul picks this up in the text that we read. So look with me at it again.
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Colossians 2 in verse 20. If you died with Christ to the elements of this world, why do you still live as if you still belong to the world?
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Why do you submit to regulations? If you're the marking type in your Bible, you might wanna circle that word regulations.
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And he defines what they are. Don't handle, don't taste, don't touch. All these regulations, the
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CSP adds the word regulations, literally just says all these. Refer to what is destined, excuse me, to perish by being used up.
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Now Paul defines for us what these regulations are. He says, they are human commands and doctrines.
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Notice that Paul makes a distinction between the kind of life that flows from being in Christ. Verse 20, he says, if you died with Christ, there's a kind of life that flows from our death with Christ.
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You see, for the Christian, the Christian doesn't live on the basis of self. The Christian lives on the basis of what
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Jesus has done for them. The Christian lives on the basis of Christ's righteous life,
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Christ's saving death, Christ's resurrection, Christ's intercession. If that reality is true, then we don't live like the world does.
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But notice verse 23, what he says about these regulations that come from man, these human commands and teachings.
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Verse 23, he says, although these, these regulations, these human commands and doctrines have a reputation for wisdom by promoting, here's another phrase
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I'd love you to circle in your Bibles if you may. My translation says self -made religion.
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Some of your Bibles may say self -imposed religion. I'm an old
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King James baby, as you know, the original King James version says will worship. They're all carrying the same kind of idea.
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It's a kind of worship that is self -imposed. It doesn't come from God and his revelation in Christ.
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It comes from self, it's self -imposed, it's self -chosen, it's self -determined.
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It's worship that originates with man and ignores God's own regulation, if you will, in his word.
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It's the kind of worship Leviticus chapter 10, kind of a classic text for this subject. The kind of worship that you hear about in Leviticus chapter 10 when
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Aaron's two sons, Nadab and Abihu offered, some translations say strange fire,
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CSB I think clarifies that some, unauthorized fire. The sense seems to be they pulled fire from the altar, not from the place where God said to get the fire.
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They thought, you know what, we can get any old fire, it will do the same thing. But that was self -imposed.
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That wasn't what God told them to do. There was a source in the tabernacle, that's where they were to get it from.
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And that's what this kind of worship is, it's unauthorized. It comes from man, not from God.
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Can I push it for a moment? I consider myself an evangelical in the historic sense.
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But I'll be honest, evangelicalism has all kinds of weird stuff that it does because that's what people do.
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We will multiply weird things to do, just who we are. And when it comes to worship, that's no exception.
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The previous Christmas season was a fascinating one because there was so many services happening and also you get to see all sorts of things, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
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As some of our regulars know, I'm kind of a Google wizard. Like I'm really good at finding the creepiest things on the internet.
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It's a totally unemployable skill, but it helps. Sometimes. Just in the last year, from Christmas of last year to Christmas of this year, allow me to share with you some examples.
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You can look all of these up. As God is my witness, I'm not making a single one up. Church is running
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Superhero Worship Sunday where folks, adults, not just kids, come dressed as their favorite superhero and the service, the songs, and everything revolves around the hero theme.
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A popular megachurch out in Florida opened its Christmas services just past Christmas, 2022. With a very irreverent improv comedy.
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I like comedy. Comedy's fun. Just not in my worship.
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It's kind of like raisins. I like raisins. I like oatmeal raisin cookies.
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Actually, I'm one of the few who actually do like those. You know why I don't want raisins?
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In my salad. I have a thing about fruit and salad. Don't do it. Time and place.
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Some of you maybe saw this. Pastors were videoed ziplining into the pulpit in their services.
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A pastor out in Texas was hoisted in the middle of his service to make a point about the second coming.
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Don't even start me on all the many, many, many pastors who use all kinds of ridiculous childish props as illustrations in their sermons.
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Let's not even talk about the churches that start their worship services with secular songs. I mean, just in the last year,
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I ended up finding clips of everything from Beyonce to Billie Eilish. How about churches where sermons are replaced with dramatic productions?
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Rather than the preaching of God's Word, people turn up on the Lord's Day and what they come and see is a basically a drama production.
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Those of you who know church history, you'll know that in the
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Reformation, one of the unusual things that happened often in the
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Reformation was this overrunning, as it were, of relics.
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It was the Dutch Reformer, Erasmus, who said that there were so many pieces of the cross floating around, allegedly in his day, that you could rebuild
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Noah's Ark with them. I believe it was Martin Luther, who we all know had a penchant for rather weird humor at times, who agreed with Erasmus and said, yes, and enough supposed milk from the
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Virgin Mary for the Ark to float on. That was the world before the Reformation.
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And I sometimes wonder if the Reformers were alive in 2023 and we gave them a
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YouTube account and let them just see what was going on out there, I wonder what they would have to say.
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And here's the funny thing. I'm getting to my point. I'm getting to my point. Isn't it funny that those sorts of oddities, those sorts of unusual things end up crowding out the things that God actually asked for?
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Here's my application of this third Bible basic. Here's my application. And I kind of started with it, so you've already heard it.
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We only do in worship what God has explicitly commanded. If God's word is the only standard for worship, then how about you do the things that the
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Bible tells you to do? You put those three things together, that God is sovereign, that he's revealed himself and that he has revealed himself clearly in his word and that his word is the only standard for worship and you come up with what some have called, and I agree with them, the regulative principle of worship.
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One of my favorite authors, Dr. Sam Waldron, actually says it should be called the regulative principle of the church because it's not just when we gather for worship, but anything we do as the church should have explicit biblical warrant.
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Those are the Bible basics for true worship. But I realized at this point, I need to make some distinctions.
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It can be very easy to kind of run a bit wild with this idea. So for a moment, point number two, let me make some critical clarifications for worship.
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Some critical clarifications. Let's make sure we get some stuff cleared up so that we don't take this idea to some absurd lengths because it is possible to do so.
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Two distinctions that you need to bear in mind. Number one, there's a difference between elements and forms of worship.
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The difference between elements and forms of worship. Let me explain.
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Elements in worship are the things that God explicitly commands us to do. So when
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I read the Bible, the Bible explicitly asks me to do certain things in worship.
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So for example, we publicly read the scripture in our worship because 1 Timothy 4, verse 13 says, we are not to neglect reading.
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And some translations clarify that well, the public reading of the scriptures. We preach the word in a biblical and doctrinal and the majority of the time in an expositional way.
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Why? Because in the great commission, we're commanded to teach. And in 2 Timothy chapter four, it's made explicit.
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We are to preach the word. And so there was a divine imperative that is laid on elders and leaders in the church to preach
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God's word. I can't come here and preach what I see in the newspaper, preach what I saw on TV. You all know that you've probably heard the church that do the at the movie sermons.
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Can't do that, sorry. The element of worship that I am told to bring when it comes to preaching is the word of God.
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We pray in our worship because 1 Timothy chapter two, verses one through seven commands public prayer and lots of it.
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Before our services, we have moments of preparation. Why? Because God commands us, Ecclesiastes chapter five, verses one through six, not to rush into his presence, not to just come in unprepared.
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You're supposed to come, as he says, wisely. He says in Ecclesiastes five, not to bring to him the offering of fools, the offering of the unwise.
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We sing because we're commanded to sing in Ephesians five and Colossians three and in the
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Psalms over and over and over again. God's people are commanded to sing to him in worship.
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We don't have a building that allows us to do this, but typically we would, if we did baptisms, we do them as part of our worship service.
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Why? Because the great commission commands us to. We practice the
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Lord's table here at Redeemer. We do it every week. Why? Because we're told to come as regularly as we come in 1
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Corinthians 11. Oh, by the way, that list is pretty much everything the Bible tells you to do in worship.
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In the words of Mark Dever, we pray the word, we read the word, we sing the word, we hear the word, we see the word in baptism and the
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Lord's table. Those are the elements of worship. The non -negotiables.
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So somebody can't walk in here and say, I don't like that we sing. We need to get rid of that. Sorry, that stays.
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Somebody can't come and say, you know what? I'm tired of you talking for an hour every Sunday. Can't we do something else with that time?
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No, not on my watch. And it's not because I like preaching.
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Anybody else can preach, but we preach the word of God in our worship because we're commanded to. We don't get to substitute that with something else.
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Somebody can't come in and say, no more Lord's table. Sorry, Bible says we're supposed to do it. Those are the elements.
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And the reality is there should be a sort of sanctified sameness to our worship because those elements are always going to be present in our worship.
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I think one of the great dangers of our society is that we love everything to be new and shiny and switched up every now and again. Some things don't need to be made new.
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I really do believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And the elements that God calls us to in our worship aren't broke.
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So maybe we shouldn't try fixing them. Now that's what we do in worship that we can't negotiate.
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But remember I said that there's a difference between elements and forms. Forms on the other hand are negotiable.
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They are how we perform the elements. So let me give you some examples.
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Should you use hymnals or a screen? My brother said, yes.
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And that's a good answer. Doesn't really matter which one you use. Which Bible translation should you read from?
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I know there was a whole movement in Christianity that says you should only read one Bible. Sorry, doesn't make sense. But for now, which one should we use?
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Is there a ecclesiastical authority out there that tells us which one to read? No, there isn't. That's a wisdom call.
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I preach from the CSB, so we kind of use that for everything. Pew Bibles or screens?
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As you notice, we put some of our readings on screen and some not. Is there a chapter and verse I can go to for that? No. How long should a sermon be?
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Don't answer that one. Where we do communion? Should we do communion at the start of a service?
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In the middle of a service? At the end? Bible doesn't explicitly say. Should our service meet in the morning?
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In the afternoon? In the evening? All the above? Bible doesn't say. So we meet in the afternoon because that's when this building is available for us.
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We have met in the morning in the past because that's when the building we had was available for us. Can you go to a text and answer any of those questions
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I just asked explicitly? I think we'd all agree, no, you can't. You may have an opinion, and I actually do have an opinion on all of those, but you know what?
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They're opinions. At the end of the day, I can't enforce that with the same measure of authority the
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Bible does. At this point, I'm going to borrow from our Presbyterian brothers and sisters.
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They don't get everything right, but I do think they get this right. In their confession of faith, they say this, that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God and government of the church common to human actions and societies which are to be ordered by the light of nature and by Christian prudence according to the general rules of the word which are always to be observed.
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So the Bible gives us rules as to what to do in worship, how we do them. Okay, we might have to apply what my pastor used to call sanctified common sense, that's what they mean by Christian prudence, and the light of nature.
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So let's think about this. In terms of the light of nature, would it make sense for us to have a worship service at three in the morning?
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For most of us, I kind of sleep weird hours, but for most of us, we're asleep at 3 a .m.
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Because human beings are nocturnal by nature. I mean, you can try waking someone up at 3 a .m.
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to go do, but generally speaking, anybody who's worked a night shift knows, it just doesn't feel right. Tiffany said amen, she knows.
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Why? The light of nature tells us it's probably good to do it during the day when everybody's awake. Other things, as they say, it's down to Christian prudence.
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So it might make logical sense for us to have the Lord's table after the preaching of God's word as a response to what we have heard.
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Is it a sin to do it at the beginning of a service? No. And there are some traditions where they do that.
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There are some where they have it in the middle of a service. Some where they have separate services for their communion. Here's the good thing about having this distinction between elements and forms.
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It protects us from legalism. You can't enforce on people, and I'll talk more about this in just a moment.
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You can't enforce on people what the Bible doesn't explicitly say. It gives us a means by which to have some sanctified leeway in how we apply the things the
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Bible explicitly tells us to do. But there's a second clarification we need to make.
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Because at this point, one of the big, this week as I was studying this, one of the big objections to this idea was it stifles creativity.
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So for a moment, let's talk about the difference between obedient creativity and disobedient creativity.
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Let me begin by saying that creativity is part of the image of God in man. And that means it's inherently a good thing. Even when
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God made all of us, I look around this room, no two of you look alike. You may have general resemblances here and there, but by and large, every human being is unique.
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Why? Because God is creative. And he created all of us in his image. Nonetheless, we all look different. Creativity is not a bad thing.
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And creativity in worship, contrary to some of my brethren who would agree with me on the regulative principle, but yet would have issues with too much creativity.
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Creativity is not a bad thing in its place, but there is such a thing as disobedient creativity.
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There is such a thing as a kind of creativity that goes too far. Let me show you an example.
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It's in your Bible, you know it. Turn with me to Exodus chapter 32. Exodus 32, you all know the story.
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It's the golden calf. Moses has been up on the mountain receiving the word of God for quite some time.
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The people start saying, we don't know what happened to him. And so they start basically saying, hey, let's make us something.
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Exodus chapter 32. I want to pick it up in verse four. So they go to Aaron.
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Aaron takes all their gold, verse four. It says, he took the gold from them, fashioned it with an engraving tool and made it into an image of a calf.
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Then they said, now some translations, including the one I love, the CSB, doesn't do a good job here. Some of your translations will say,
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Israel, these are your gods. I'm gonna have to side with the King James version on this one.
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Actually, in the original languages, Israel, this is your God who brought you up from the land of Egypt.
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We often think the golden calf was they were worshiping another God. Technically, it wasn't. Not in their minds. In their minds, they were worshiping the one true
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God just by making a calf. I'm sure it looks great.
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It's creative. How do we know they were worshiping the Lord? Verse five, when
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Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of it and made an announcement. There will be a festival to Yahweh tomorrow.
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Explicitly saying we're going to worship God with this calf that God didn't ask for.
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God didn't tell them to do that. Didn't stop them, no. Verse six, early the next morning, they arose, offered burnt offerings, which were only reserved for God, and presented fellowship offerings, only reserved for God.
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The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to party. God didn't tell them to do any of that.
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If I can be somewhat punchy for a moment, much like God doesn't tell half these churches to open shows of secular songs or to have flying drummers as One Mega Church did this past Christmas or superhero
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Sundays. It's creative, but God didn't ask for that. Now, let me be clear.
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I believe in excellence in our music. I love the best of our old music. I love the best of our new music.
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I think I personally love instruments. I think we should have more of them. I believe in giving
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God our best. The man who mentored me, I talked about him last week, for those of you who were here. He used to say, listen, if God can give most of us the strength to work 40 to 50 hours a week, we can give him 90 minutes, can't we?
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So I believe in creativity. I believe in doing our best in worship. But we give our best in worship, in obedience to what
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God has asked us for. It's a bit like Laura, Laura's saying, okay, look,
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I need to go out for a couple hours. Can you please look after Gareth for me? I say, yeah,
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I'll look after Gareth. But instead of looking after Gareth, I'll call someone in the church and be like, hey, would you mind looking after Gareth for me?
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And then I proceed, instead of looking after Gareth, like I was nicely asked, I proceed to go to my favorite tool in my house, my smoker, and I decide, you know what?
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Laura would really love some pulled pork. So I decide to go and get it all prepped and ready and go make some pulled pork.
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And I've just left poor Gareth. And then Laura comes home, sees someone else looking after Gareth while I'm tending to our smoker.
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I can imagine my wife saying, Kofi, that's really sweet. But I didn't ask you to do that. I asked you to look after Gareth.
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And I wonder how many believers on that great and final day where we stand before God, well, though they have eternal salvation, we'll suffer some loss of reward because they got creative in all the wrong ways.
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So those are a couple of clarifications we want to make. We don't want, we want to be strong on the elements of worship and flexible on forms of worship.
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We may have reasons why we do certain things. Save that for week four of our series. And we want to be creative, but we want to be creative in obedience to God's word, not in disobedience to it.
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But I don't want to end on a bad note. I'm almost done. For a moment, think about some of the precious privileges that come with true worship.
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Some of the precious privileges that come with true worship. You see, when we worship
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God in a way that respects his sovereignty, that respects his revelation of the scriptures, and that regulates itself by that standard alone, can
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I put it to you, there are just so many benefits to our worship when it's done that way. Let me share three of them with you and we'll be closed.
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First of all, God is honored as the true focus of our worship. God is honored as the true focus of our worship.
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So I alluded to the Leviticus 10, Nadab and Abihu incident. At the end of that, there's a phrase that often gets missed in that story, verse three.
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Moses said to Aaron, this is what Yahweh has spoken. I will demonstrate my holiness to those who are near me.
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I will reveal my glory before all the people. True worship ultimately isn't about us.
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And I put it to you that so much of, you've heard people talk about the worship wars, the endless fighting that goes on in churches.
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I like it traditional. I like it contemporary. I like this. I like this instrument. No, I don't like that instrument at all.
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Drums or no drums, all the things that people argue about. Well, I think this is a time and a place for that discussion.
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Sometimes I want to get in the midst of some of these people who argue and say, who said worship was about you? No, true worship is about God because true worship gives him all the glory.
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But secondly, God's people are protected from practices that grieve their conscience.
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God's people are protected from practices that grieve their conscience. Christian, God alone is
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Lord of your conscience. The Bible teaches that in so many places. And every time anybody asks you to do something in worship that his word doesn't explicitly prescribe, think about it like this.
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It's a violation, not just of God's word. It's a violation of your conscience. Your conscience should be reserved only for doing that which
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God commands you to do. Romans chapter 14, verse 23.
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Remember what Paul said? He said that everything that is not of, from faith is sin.
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I think sometimes we say, well, it's a sin because the Bible says not to be. Yeah, sometimes that's true. And sometimes it's a sin because you're going against your conscience.
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If we stick tenaciously to this word of God, here's one of the benefits for our worship.
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You'll have the confidence, you should anyway, have the confidence in your inner being that as we come to worship,
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God is pleased with the worship that we bring before him. Because we've not done anything in worship that he didn't ask.
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It might not always be to your preference, but we can safely say it is to God's preference.
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And finally, if we understand true worship correctly, if we understand this principle of regulated worship according to the word of God, then
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God gives us safe room to worship him with everything we have. It's kind of the flip.
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The first one was negative. I talked about your conscience. Well, this is the positive. If God is good, and he is,
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I mean, amen, God is good, right? Well, if God is good, and he is, and all his commands are good, his word explicitly says that, and we should only do in worship what he commands in his word, which we should, then can't we guarantee that what we are doing in worship then is to our greatest good?
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That we can worship with everything within us because we're not afraid that we've added something to God's word.
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Now, granted, some people might not care. That's a bigger problem. If it doesn't bother you, wait a minute, why do we do this?
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Is there a biblical warrant for this? If you've never asked that question, I'm gonna put it up to one of two things. Either you've just never been trained to ask the question, which
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I hope a sermon like this gets you thinking about that, or you might just not care.
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I've had people tell me explicitly when
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I've raised an objection to something they've done in worship that the Bible doesn't command us to do. But Kofi, what's the harm?
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This sounds legalistic. I'll put aside my grievance with the word legalism and the fact that most people couldn't define legalism if it tapped them on the shoulder and said, hi, my name is legalism.
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But putting that aside for one moment, when people say that, what
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I usually say is, but if I'm not convinced it comes from the
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Bible, I can't worship properly. I want to be able to worship with everything I have. I can't do that if I've got quibbles in the back of my mind, like, is this
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Bible? And I'm not talking about forms. Remember, we talked about elements and forms. I'm talking elements, things we do.
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If we're worshiping according to the word of God, beloved, this idea of a regulative principle isn't a legalistic straight jacket choking the life out of vibrant worship.
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I'll admit some people who would agree with me on this subject do kind of treat it that way. That's not the point.
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This isn't so much about what you can't do. Because if you understand it rightly, you realize that everything
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God has said we can do, we can do with every part of us.
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We can sing with joy. We can read his word with anticipation. We can hear his word in reverence and with a desire to do what he commands of us.
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We can partake of this table that we're going to partake of in just a moment. We can partake of it. Knowing that God uses it to the nourishment of our very souls.
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You can worship. I don't want to say reckless abandon because we'll talk about this, the principle of reverence in week three.
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But we can indeed worship with everything we are because we're doing it by the book.
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And our father and our God, we thank you so much that you have indeed given us your word. That we are not left in the dark to figure out how it is that we can worship you appropriately.
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You have given us a book not to be a legalistic policeman over us but to be the gracious self -disclosure of yourself to us so that as we worship, we would worship you in spirit and in truth.
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Lord, help us that as we come to worship, we would always seek to have our minds and our consciences trained by your word so that as we gather to worship, we can worship you with everything that we have and everything that we are.