Worship by the Book #4 - "Does Style Matter?" Pt 2 (Selected Scriptures)

Psalm 100 and the Call to Thanksgiving

Psalm 100, psalm of thanksgiving, inspiration for a great number of hymns and songs that have been written down through the years. Psalm 100. And we're gonna read the entirety of the psalm. So, Psalm 100.

If you have one of the Harbat Bibles you give away, I believe that's on page 524. 524, Psalm 100. And if you're able to do so, can I invite you to stand with me out of reverence for God's Word. Psalm 100.

Brothers and sisters, these are God's very words. Let the whole earth shout triumphantly to Yahweh. Serve Yahweh with gladness. Come before him with joyful songs. Acknowledge that Yahweh is God. He made us and we are his, his people, the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and bless his name. For Yahweh is good and his faithful love endures forever. His faithfulness.

Through all.

Generations. The gospel is the flower fades, but this Word of our God will abide forever. Join with me as I pray, ask for the Spirit's help, and then we get to work in God's Word this afternoon. Well Heavenly Father, we thank you once again that we have this privilege to come and to hear you speak to us through your Word and to respond in prayer and in song and to partake of the Lord's table today.

Father, we pray that as we come to your Word that as always we ask you would shine light upon the Word, help us to understand, help us to see the things that are written in your Word clearly so that we may do them and ultimately be blessed by them.

Father, it's our habit to pray for other churches throughout our valley and this afternoon we take a moment to pray for our friends at Community Bible Church in Central Point. Thank you for Pastor Pete and Pastor Kevin and their entire leadership team there.

Pray that you would bless them and encourage them. Pray that their labors would be fruitful as you would be gracious to give and that Christ would be honored through that gathering of your people there.

We pray that for them and we pray that for us even now as we come to your Word. We ask it in Jesus name and for his sake. Amen. Please be seated. Well, we come to the final part of this series that we've been in for the month of January.

Review of the Regulative and Dialogical Principles

As you know, it's usually our habit here to work our way through books of the Bible and next week we will continue our journey through Genesis. But for the month of January we took a pause to deal with this subject of worship and in particular our corporate worship.

If I can give you a quick review of where we've been in our first week, we took a few moments to consider the idea of the regulative principle of worship. This idea that we only do in worship that which God explicitly commands us to do in His Word.

Sounds simple, but when you start to actually think about the implications you start to realize not everybody does that. Same thing with the principle we looked at in the second week. This idea of the what we call the dialogical principle.

This idea of a principle of renewal and communion. That when we come to worship, worship is not just our offering to God and potentially God doing something in light of that, but actually it's a dialogue.

That God comes to speak His gospel word over us, not just in the preaching of His Word, but in everything we do in our worship. And we respond to God speaking in our songs and in our prayers and in the faithful and attentive hearing of His Word.

And so we looked at that in week two. Now for the last couple of weeks, we've been thinking about style. We started to get more practical. So we started more on the theoretical end, and now we've moved to the practical end.

We started asking the question, what exactly should our worship look like when we gather together? I gave this couple of messages the title, Does Style Matter? Does style matter? And you can see from the subtitle there, it's a little wordy even for me.

But I wanted to not look at this in terms of just a style. But I wanted to ask some biblical and doctrinal questions. I wanted us to consider this more from the vantage point of what does the Bible say, and how does our theology inform the way in which we worship?

For those of you who were here last week, by the way, if you weren't, you can listen to that message on our YouTube channel. We looked at four principles. Four principles that should govern our worship.

I'll just review them quickly. They'll be up on screen. So first of all, we said that our worship should be God-centered, not man-centered. That it has God's desires, God's aims, and God's purposes at the forefront, not necessarily ours.

We also saw that it's word-driven, not preference-driven. So again, this is kind of a reiteration of week one, that when we gather for worship, we don't get to determine what we do in worship. And really, it's not driven by our preferences or what we want.

It ought to be ultimately driven by the Word of God. Thirdly, we said that it should be reverent and not flippant. And you remember that I said that reverence isn't so much a— again, it's not so much a style as it is an attitude.

An attitude that says, I'm coming into the presence of God. I should treat the presence of God with the respect, with—remember what I said? It carries this idea of caution, of restraint. And finally, we talked about the fact that worship is spiritual, not carnal.

It is empowered by the Holy Spirit. We cannot worship God as He ought to be worshipped, doing it in the flesh, doing it carnally. It is as the Spirit of God empowers our worship, driven by the means of grace, the Word of God, and as we surrender to the Spirit of God in not getting in the way by over-complicating worship.

It's in that way that worship becomes truly spiritual, not carnal. Well, I told you that I had like five or six. I managed to boil them down to just four, thankfully. So I've got four more principles that I want us to consider this week.

We'll finish the list and finish this series, and hopefully, as we conclude, you'll come away with a full understanding of what we attempt to do in our corporate worship. So I'm going to pick up the numbering where I left off.

So this would be number five. Principle number five. Worship ought to be participatory, not spectatory. Now, you can probably tell by that second word, I had to make up a word. As amazing as the English language is, we actually don't have a word for describing someone being a spectator, which baffles me.

Someone needs to work on that. So for now, I made up a word. Spectatory. But for a moment, turn back to the passage we kind of focused on last week. John chapter four. I want you to notice something there as we think about this idea of worship being participatory, not spectatory.

John chapter four. That's where we were last week. I want to draw your attention particularly to verses 23 and 24. So John chapter four, verses 23 and 24. This is what God's Word says. But an hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

Please note that language there of the true worshipers. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth. Did you catch in verses 23 and 24 that Jesus doesn't abdicate worship to a priestly class as it were.

He doesn't say there will be people who worship and people who don't. In the church, I'm not saying unbelievers worship. Of course they don't. But among God's people. He just has one category. The true worshipers.

Those who worship the Father. In this new age that he describes that's coming, there will be no priest or non-priest. No clerical class or laity class. I should pause for a moment. Sometimes we view ministers as though they are a set-apart group from the rest of the body of Christ.

They aren't. Simply remind you that the Bible says that every believer is a king and a priest before the Lord. The priesthood of all believers. Yes, there will be some who are tasked with leadership in the church, but they are not a special class of people above everybody else.

Jesus simply says that in new covenant worship, there are simply worshipers. It's very easy for folks who believe like I do to throw shots at your more seeker-sensitive churches. I mean, we've all done it at some point.

I've done it. You know, we kind of mock them for, you know, their lights and their fog machines and their big bands. We all like to poach. I mean, I've done it. I'm not gonna lie. I've done it more than once.

We've all poked fun at all of that at some level. And let's be clear, that is indeed a problem. Church is not a concert. We don't come to hear musicians. Musicians lead us in our corporate singing. I think sometimes we miss that in our modern age.

For those of you who are versed in church history, you'll know that the Reformation was quite a ruckus time. All sorts of things were being re-examined and tested and changed. But you know one of the things that we don't often talk about in relation to the Reformation?

Singing. In the Reformation, there was a recovery of participatory and congregational singing. The Reformers and those who followed them advocated for the singing of the psalms and later the singing of other hymns by all of God's people.

If you read the descriptions of medieval worship, it was a show. It was theater. In fact, some of them use that term to describe it. You came and you watched something happen. Yes, you may partake of the mass.

Actually, not that often. But you may partake of it. But by and large, it was a show. You went to go see something happen.

Well,.

The Reformers said, no, no, no, no, no. When we read the Bible, all God's people participate in worship. So you see Martin Luther, you know him as a theologian, as a preacher. He was also quite the hymn list.

We sing some of his hymns today. A Mighty Fortress is Our God, based on Psalm 46. From the depths of woe I raise to thee my song of lamentation. That's a Luther hymn. I believe it's, was it Psalm 130?

Yeah. Calvin, we don't think of him as a musician much, but Calvin oversaw the production of what became known as the Genevan Psalter. Some of those are still around with us today. I alluded last week to my late mentor, one of his favorites, All People That on Earth Do Dwell, based on Psalm 100.

That's from the Genevan Psalter. That set the standard for worship on the continent of Europe. One of the great blessings of the Reformation that we enjoy to this day is congregational singing. If you like singing in church, Luther, Martin Buetzer, and Calvin all would like to say, you're welcome.

But if I can be honest, again, I travel a lot. I see a lot of things. One of the things I see is that we're kind of rolling back, we're rolling back the Reformation a lot of ways unhealthily in our church, not our church, but the church at large.

But one of the ways I see this kind of roll back towards the Reformation is less of an emphasis on congregational singing. You know, some churches, they're explicit in saying, we try to avoid you hearing other people sing.

Some will say, it's because we don't want you to be self-conscious. Okay, I can respect that. But for some, it's just, listen, you're not that good. They are. Let them take care of it. Have you considered that this is the only place, if you're a Christian, we don't congregationally sing anywhere else.

Ever thought about that? Unless you're singing the national anthems at a game or something. By and large, we don't sing anywhere else but in church. And it's heartbreaking to me that more and more churches are trying to downplay, if not just eliminate, congregational singing altogether.

I'm very thankful for our worship team. And one of the reasons I'm thankful for our worship team is that there was a clear emphasis on congregational singing. I know this because I've talked to them about the songs they pick and why they pick them.

There's a clear emphasis on, we want songs that everybody can sing. And yes, not everybody can sing well. Not everybody should join the worship team. Please, some should not join the worship team. But by and large, we recognize that congregational singing is important.

And this is where I have to throw some stones at more contemporary forms of worship when it comes to the church, because when I read Ephesians 5 .19, which tells me that I'm to speak to one another—not me, not I—we are to speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

When Colossians 3 .16 says that we are to teach and admonish one another, have you ever thought about that? That in our singing, we're teaching one another and we're admonishing one another? If that's what we're called to do in our worship, then that requires all of us participating.

When we sing, when we are ministering to one another, we're teaching one another, we're admonishing one another. Yes, there is the vertical aspect of our worship, that we're singing to the Lord, but we're also singing to each other.

If I can make this practical for a moment, can I encourage you saints, when you come to church, sing. Sing. Sing out and sing well. Well, Kofi, I'm not good at singing. First of all, the church should be the one place in the world where we're not judging one another.

So, if somebody doesn't sound that great, show them some grace. It's okay. Well, Kofi, I don't know our songs as well as I should. Well, there's one reason we have an email list. If you're not on it, come see me.

I can add you to it. We send out our songs every week, so you can learn them and sing them with confidence when you get here. Sing them during the week. Sing them in your family worship. Sing them in the car.

It might eliminate road rage. I know it does that for me, but don't lose sight of the fact that when we come to worship, we come to participate together as God's people. So, there's a singing aspect of our worship as participatory, but allow me to touch on something that maybe you've not thought about, as much as it's easy for me to poke fun at the seeker-sensitive churches and some of the ridiculous antics they do.

I mean, they make it easy. I think it's also important for us to be self-critical when we look at our own camp, so to speak. We can criticize those churches for being non-participatory because they basically turn their worship into a show, but can we talk about our own camp for a moment and the ways in which sometimes we are not the most participatory?

I mean, think about it. Why do we criticize those churches for their worship not having an adequate amount of participation when we can be guilty of the very same thing in our circles? Kofi, what on earth do you mean?

How are we not participatory in our worship? I'm glad you asked. In fact, I'm not going to say anything. I'm going to borrow from someone. Dr. Sam Waldron, I've referenced his book a few times in this series, How Then Should We Worship.

This is what Dr. Waldron said in his book, quote, every form of monological or spectator worship is condemned by biblical gospel worship. This condemns the priestly worship of those churches that have turned worship into an act done by a priest in the presence of the congregation.

This condemns the contemporary worship of those churches which have turned worship into a performance by a great band and a message by a talented speaker. This even condemns, this is Dr. Waldron again, this even condemns the traditional worship of those churches that have turned worship into something done mainly by a minister praying and preaching in front of a mainly passive audience whose only duty is to pray quietly and listen even more quietly.

Gospel worship, again, this is how he concludes his little section, gospel worship is not about spectating. But I mean, now I think about it, maybe we could use the word spectating. There we are. Gospel worship is not about spectating.

It is about participating. I love reformed theology. Our church would claim to be reformed in its theology without question. But if that doesn't sound, that last description he gave, if that doesn't sound like a lot of reformed and evangelical churches, there's a reason why sometimes reformed churches have the nickname, the frozen chosen.

You've heard that phrase? This might sting, but here it goes. There's no verbal affirmation of readings of scripture, no verbal affirmations after prayers or pronouncements, like we have an assurance of pardon every week.

You might get the crowd murmur, if I say something funny, people might laugh. But by and large, we don't really participate as much as we should in our circle, should we? Now I'll tell you what, when I've brought this up in the past, I'll tell you what people have told me.

Kofi, you can't mandate that. After all, Kofi, it wasn't you who preached in week one the, if we understand the regulative principle, it guards our consciences. Well, I'm not comfortable in my conscience, okay?

I can't mandate that. You're 100 right. I can't, nobody can. But I don't have to because your Bible does. Let's take something simple. I'm not saying get wild and crazy. Let's just pick something simple like saying amen in church.

Can I show you in the Bible that that's actually mandated for all God's people to do? If you're taking notes, four points real quickly. Number one, saying amen was a part of Old Testament worship. So 1 Chronicles chapter 16, 1 Chronicles chapter 16, you see this happen where the people have got gathered for worship and, let me read it, 1 Chronicles 16, 36, blessed be Yahweh, God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting.

Then all the people said amen and praised the Lord. How about during the reading of the Word? Ezra chapter 8 and verse 6, Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and with their hands uplifted, all the people said amen, amen.

Bear in mind, this is while he is reading. He's not even teaching this. He's just reading it. Then they knelt low and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. You see it in calls to worship in the Old Testament.

Psalm 106 verse 48, blessed be Yahweh, God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Let all the people say amen, hallelujah. So the people in the Old Testament are explicitly commanded to say amen in their worship.

How about number two? Even in heaven, amens are mentioned. Revelation chapter 5 verse 14, the four living creatures said amen and the elders fell down and worshiped. Revelation chapter 7, 11 and 12, all the angels stood around the throne and along with the elders and the four living creatures, they fell face down before the throne and worshiped God saying, amen.

Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and strength be to our God forever and ever, amen. Revelation 19, 4, then the 24 elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who is seated on the throne saying, amen, hallelujah.

You get the picture. In the Old Testament, they're commanded to say amen. In heaven, they are saying amen in their worship. How about in the church? That's what I want you to see with me. Tell me the first Corinthians chapter 14.

First Corinthians chapter 14, the context of this is Paul is, funny enough, writing about corporate worship and the disorder that the Corinthians have brought to their corporate worship through their misuse of the spiritual gifts.

So he's writing this final section, really starts in chapter 12, but chapter 14 is the final section in this treatment of their use of spiritual gifts and as he's writing to correct their worship, pick it up with me in verse 13.

First Corinthians 14 and verse 13. The Bible says, therefore the person who prays in a tongue should pray that he can interpret. For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful.

What then? I will pray with the spirit and I will also pray with my understanding. I will sing praise with the spirit and I will also sing praise with my understanding. For if, verse 16, for otherwise, if you praise with the spirit, how will the outsider say amen at your giving of thanks, since he does not know what you are saying?

And just to be on the safe side, I read just about every commentary on First Corinthians I could this week when I came to this verse. They all agreed that it was a central part of the early church's worship, that when the giving of thanks was made, people responded with amens.

This passage makes it very clear that it was part of the worship of God's people, it was the norm, and it was expected. Once again, I want to quote Dr. Sam Waldron, and by the way, Sam Waldron is not a wild-eyed charismatic.

He's a Reformed Baptist. I love my Reformed Baptist brethren. I'm theologically very close to them. But they are not known for their exuberant and wild services. But listen to what he says. Quote, if you go back to the passages we have considered, some of which we just looked at, you will see that this covers pretty much everything.

There was either praise, petition, the reading of Scripture, or proclamation. How would that apply to us? Well, he says, in our context, we should appropriately sing the amen after praise. If you've been to some Reformed Baptist churches, they actually do this.

When they sing their hymns, they finish their hymns with an amen. We should say amen at the conclusion of the public reading of Scripture. It should be said occasionally during the preaching of the Word.

Again, not a wild-eyed charismatical Pentecostal, but even he's saying during the preaching of God's Word. Never mind, he's a local church pastor saying this. We should be saying amen. Interesting, he says, it should be said occasionally during the preaching of the Word and will be said if we are engaged as we should be.

The amen should be said at every appropriate place where people should be responding. There should be a responsiveness from all people expressed by a vocal amen. Now, some of you will probably say, that's just weird.

That's not what I do. Or culturally, that's not what we do. Dr. Waldron has some more words for you. He goes on, this is not only a temperamental thing. It was David who said, let all the people say amen.

Funny, don't we have a hymn that we always sing that says that? Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King. Doesn't it say, let the amen sound from his people again. Gladly for I, we adore him. I love this one, Dr. Waldron.

He goes on, would you be convinced to, this is a fascinating question. Would you be convinced to attempt an inquiry into the Christian religion by watching yourself worship? Would the unbeliever look at you and say, I don't believe a thing they are saying, but it is clear they do.

He's into this. His whole soul is involved in this worship. He goes on, this true public worship should manifest sacred development. No bystanders are allowed in public worship. Worship is not a spectator sport.

You are not here to watch. You are here to worship, and part of your worship involves saying the amen. Thank you, quick learner. I invite you to consider that because our worship ought to be participatory, not spectatory.

You're not watching somebody do something. You're actively participating. I would love to camp here, but I still have a ways to go, and I'm not trying to preach an hour and 15 like I did last week. So we'll keep it moving.

Worship as Particular and General

So our worship should be God-centered, not man-centered, word-driven, not preference-driven, reverence, not flippant, spiritual, not carnal, participatory, not spectatory. Number six, our worship should be particular and general.

Particular and general. True worship is both particular and general. Now this is where I need to address a common distinction. Chances are, as you've gone through this series, you've probably thought about it.

If you've been around church, you've probably heard this said. We typically say something along the lines of, worship is not just what we do on Sunday, it's all of life. How many of you have heard that before?

Now let me tell you up front, that's 100 true. I'm not here to actually delete that phrase from your vocabulary because it's 100 right. I do want to correct a misunderstanding of this, however, where it can end up sounding as though what we do in these 90-odd minutes on a Sunday aren't that important compared to what we do the rest of the week.

How many of you have heard people say something along those lines before? Maybe not so much in here, but I've heard it over the years. In its most extreme form, some people will say, well, I worship God on my job, I worship God when I'm out in nature.

I remember one guy was trying to—not here, this was back in the UK—I was trying to convince to come back to worship, and he was a—in the UK we call them anglers—fisherman. He liked fishing, recreationally.

He said, well, I can worship God with my rod in my boat. Now, some of you say, well, no, I'm not there. That's just not an excuse for disobedience, and you're right, it is an excuse. But sometimes I fear that because we want to emphasize worship in all of life, we do so by diminishing what we do in our corporate time together.

Well, allow me to give a few thoughts as to why our worship is both particular, what we do on the Lord's Day, as well as general. Well, first of all, like I said, we have to affirm, if we read our Bibles well, that there is a sense in which our whole lives are offered up to the Lord in worship.

So, the text, before we all know it, Romans chapter 12, one and two, you know, by the mercy of God, I urge you to present your bodies a living sacrifice to God, holy and pleasing. This is your—translations go different ways—CSB says, your true worship.

First Corinthians 10, 31, so whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God. That is true. In the words of one of my favorite preachers, Dr. Woody Barcom, amen, hallelujah, praise the Lord.

Nobody is arguing that. So, when you go to work, you work as unto the Lord, as husbands and fathers, wives and mothers, as friends, as anything we do in life. All that we do is in the shadow of the cross.

Everything in life is an act of worship, in the sense that it is all done for the glory of God. It's not like we—you've probably encountered Christians like this. I have. Christians who play by two sets of rules.

I've got my—when I'm in church, I have my rules for church people, and when I'm in church. But when I'm out in the world, you know, when in Rome, do as Romans do, so I play by the world's rules. I've worked for bosses over the years who say they were Christians and were no different to their non-Christian colleagues, and then I go to church on Sunday and see them and be like, which one am I dealing with today?

Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde? No, we don't play by two sets of rules, one for the world and one for when we're Christians. All of life is lived to the glory of God. But there's a second thought we need to, as it were, balance that, which is this, that there is a relationship that exists between what we do here in worship and what we do out there, metaphorically speaking, out in the world.

This is where I think sometimes the conversation about all of life being worshipped can go wrong, because what do we often say? Well, because I spend more time out there, what I do out there is of a higher priority than what I do when I come to church on Sunday.

Well, is that true? Do we focus too much on our corporate worship on Sundays? Well, for a moment, for a moment, let me get philosophical. I try not to be in the pulpit, but for this one, just bear with me.

Which is more important, the six or the one? What on earth, is he okay? I'm going somewhere with this. Which is more important, the six or the one? What am I asking? Which is more important? Is it how the six days of my week go determine what I do on Sunday?

Or is it what I do on Sunday sets the pace for the rest of the week? That's the question I'm asking, which is more important, the six or the one? Of course, you probably can guess if I give you that definition that I'm probably going to say that the one is a little more important, not by much, but a little more important in this sense.

If you let the six, the rest of the days of the week, determine how you view this time, you'd never participate in it, if you were honest. I know this because, you know me, I like to be transparent. Have there been seasons in my own life when I heard the alarm go off on Sunday morning and I just wanted to go back to sleep?

Yep. You're the preacher. Yes. There have been days where I've been like, not recently, thankfully. But have there been seasons where everything was going on in the week, so wore me down that I had to drag myself to church?

Yep. I have no shame in saying that because if you're honest, some of you have had moments just like that, where you've had to drag yourself. You didn't want to go, but you came anyway. I'm comforted when I read the Bible because when I read the Bible, I'm not the first person to have felt that way.

If you're taking notes, Psalm 73, if you don't know Psalm 73, you should read it. It's a great Psalm. Give you some great perspective in times of trial. It's written by Asaph. Asaph was a worship leader, if you want to use our modern parlance, but he was a worship leader.

He was having some trouble. You read Psalm 73, he's like, I'm looking at the wicked and they're prospering. I'm looking at the wicked and everything's going great for them. They don't have problems. Life is good.

At least it looks good on their side. And then there's me. Life doesn't look so good. Why does life look bad for me, but look great for them? Like, and you can see in the first half of the Psalm, he's having this internal dialogue with himself.

He's reminding, he's singing this for congregational worship, but he's telling this story of the dialogue that happens within him. Like, why is it the wicked are prospering and I'm not? But if you've read that Psalm, you know where the turning point in the Psalm is.

If you haven't, let me read it to you. Psalm 73, verse 15 through 17. This is what Asaph says. He said, if I had decided to say these things out loud, his internal resting, which eventually he does say out loud, but in that moment, he says, if I had decided to say these things out loud, I would have betrayed your people.

When I tried to understand this, it all seemed hopeless. Verse 17, until I entered God's sanctuary, then I understood their destiny. Essentially, the Psalmist says, it wasn't until I came to worship. By the way, imagine that.

He's the worship leader. He says, it wasn't until I came into God's sanctuary. Then he says, then I understood their destiny. Asaph couldn't make sense of the world. He was watching this, and it was wearisome to him, and then he came to worship.

I love Matthew. You all know I love Matthew Henry. Here's what he had to say on this section from Psalm 73. He says, there are many great things and things needful to be known, which will not be known otherwise, than by going into the sanctuary of God, where worship and prayer is.

The sanctuary must therefore be the—must therefore be the resort of the tempted soul. So, again, I ask you, Redeemer Bible Fellowship, which is more important, the six or the one? I put it to you, like the Puritans would have when they called the Lord's Day the market day of the soul, that what happens here, if we rightly engage it, it's not just by doing the stuff that what I'm talking about happens.

It's as your heart rightly engages with what God is doing in this time of worship. It's in that as our hearts unite with faith, and they engage in this time. This sets the tone for everything else. That's why, as I've gone on, I'm a little more emboldened to tell people to leave bad churches and find good ones.

I believe it was Dr. Owen Strand who tweeted and caused a firestorm on the internet when he said, life is too short to be in bad churches. And that's not to say, please hear me, I am not saying that your personal time in God's Word, your family worship, for those of you who do that, and you should, other midweek times of gathering, that those are unimportant.

That's not my focus at all. I am not one of those people who bash having a quiet time. I think everybody should. I am one of those, as some of you know, men, I took a Monday night to teach on family worship, because I think it's that important.

We have growth groups, come to them. I'm not saying they're unimportant. I'm simply recognizing what I think is a biblical reality, that this, this specific time of worship, this particular time, puts our general worship into proper perspective.

You might not agree with me, and that's fine, but at least consider it. At least consider it. God-centered, Word-driven, reverent, spiritual, participatory, particular, and general. Number seven, let's keep moving.

Timely Yet Timeless Worship

It should be timely, yet timeless. Timely, yet timeless. I told you in week one that I wasn't going to address the question of traditional contemporary till I got to week four. Well, we have finally come to that time.

Which one should we be? Which one should Redeemer be? Well, my answer is, the truth is somewhere in the middle. That's my short answer. Truth is somewhere in the middle. Before I give you my slightly longer answer, allow me to say a few words.

Human beings are not very good with the past. We just aren't. We're not good with history. On the one hand, we kind of fall into the era of basically worshiping the past. The people in the past could do no wrong.

That's not history. That's called hagiography. That's the technical term for that. Treating the people in the past like they were sacred? No. The people in the past were human. They got things wrong. They were people of their time, too.