Dead Men Walking Podcast with Chris Huff: Normative & Regulative Principles of Worship

Opening Banter and Weather Complaints

Oh yes, I love that riff. Come on, baby, bring it home. That's the one, man. Oh, yeah. Oh, get you right in the cut. Oh, yeah. What's up, Jason? Yeah, what if I just kept on going with the Kool-Aid voice?

Yeah, oh, yeah.

Break it to the, oh, yeah. We have to get some new yeahs. I think we say that every week, though. I know. Hey, this is what we're known for now. I know. Just saying, yeah. How you doing, brother? I am really hot in this room.

I'm not going to lie. I'm sweating. We have one little tiny fan going.

I wish we could do a zoom in on the fan that we have over here.

It's the size of a half dollar little USB fan, and it's not doing anything.

At first, when I first got here, it was gray. But now I'm just like, where's that air?

Well, now that we started off the top of the show with just complaining, you know, complaining heathens, it is hot. We're going to get through it. If you see a sweat on the video, that's what's going on.

I mean, I'm all good. I'm not chubby, but I just don't sweat in room temperature. I'm chubby. It's a little warm. So yeah. Oh, no, I'm chubby. I'm just saying I'm not that chubby to where I sweat in room temperature.

It's warm in here. We'll get some AC going out here in the studio soon enough. Yeah, we'll figure it out. But yeah, man. Yeah. Doing good. It just came back from South Haven, Michigan. Yeah. Lake Michigan, camping with the family.

That was awesome. Dude, just every day, the glory of God, just sitting there at Lake Michigan, watching the waves come in, feet in the sand, just going, how awesome is it that God has created all these things for our enjoyment?

Right. You know? Seriously. The trails, the lake, the animals, right down to just camping in the campsite and our camper we just purchased. It was unbelievable. I just, the older I get, the more I love nature and how it reflects the glory of God.

So are you Post Mill, then? Are you leaning? Hey, no, easy.

A mill is still where I'm at. I might come over to Post Mill at some point. Optimistic A mill. Optimistic A mill. Okay, hold on. Before we get too far into that, let's introduce who we have on the line, waiting patiently here in studio.

He is the podcast host of Matter of Theology, which is just a killer theology on The Bar Network. We love The Bar Network. We love Dwayne. Dwayne's been on the podcast a few times. He's public relations manager for Just Thinking Podcast.

We love us some Daryl and Virgil, too. All around great guy, Mr. Chris Huff. Chris, how are you, sir? Brothers, I am fantastic. Thank you for having me. It was hard not to interject with that riff. As a musician myself, I appreciated that.

And then the fan comment, I'm like, I get that. All those fans do is just blow around the hot air. So it's, yeah. That's what this podcast is. It's me and Jason. So we needed a fan to model. Gotcha. We're gonna get into a little bit with Chris tonight on worship music, normative versus regulative worship, maybe get into Bethel and Hillsong and some of the modern stuff out there.

But first we want to do a little newsy news, bring you guys up to date on what's going on this week. Are we ready to do some newsy news there, Jason?

Let's do it. News, the news, the newsy, newsy news, the news, the news, the newsy, newsy, news, news. Come on, come on.

Let's do some news, baby. All right. So let's start here.

Olympic Controversies and the Depravity of Man

Let's start with the Olympics. Since the Olympics has been happening recently.

So the global celebration of the depravity of man. Yes. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. So they banned Shakiri, Shakari, I'm sorry, Richardson from the 2021 Olympics for testing positive for marijuana. But let a man take years plus worth of estrogen and female hormones just to compete in the women's division in the Olympics.

Wow.

Yeah. So I read that last week. Gold medalist.

Yeah. From where was he from? Was he from the Netherlands?

I'm pretty sure. I think so. But but yeah, someone will correct us on the key. Yeah, exactly.

He took away the gold medalist from two actual born females. So I'm still saddened.

I'm still upset. Not surprised anymore. Yeah. I mean, we have just flipped everything upside down and we see it too often on this podcast. In no way am I condoning smoking marijuana, but to think that you're expelled or you can't compete because that changes, I don't know, something in your body chemistry, but yet you're injecting hormones into your body to try to switch the created sex that the Lord has created you in.

I mean, that's just insane.

Like, what are we doing right now? Well, here's another tweet from WebMD now. They just tweeted out the other day. It's official. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. Okay, cool. Cool. Just checking. Here we go.

So sex should be removed as a legal designation on the public part of birth certificates. The American Medical Association said Monday and that was July 31st. So yeah, 2021.

So yeah, we're looking at that. So no more sex or gender, which when we were talking to Glenn Sunshine down at one of the Fight Laugh Feast and then I've heard multiple other historians say this, they just go look at if you study history, usually the last great hurrah before an empire falls is they make no distinction between sexes.

Yeah. They make no distinction between the differences between men and women. They try to get to this point of homogenous between the sexes. And these historians are going, looks like the United States might be in its last throes here.

Yeah. Because we're doing the exact same thing. This is insanity. But I did want to bring this up. It wasn't all bad at the Olympics. I did find this quote online from Sydney McLaughlin. She's a 2020 Olympic gold medalist, 400 meter hurdles and another world record.

And here's her quote. I don't deserve anything, but by grace through faith, Jesus has given me everything. Records may come and go. The glory of God is eternal. Come on. Come on. Amen. Right. I love it.

So what's going on in this world, Chris? I mean, why are we saying we have to raise sexes from what is it? Driver's licenses and birth certificates. Yeah. Just everything it sounds like. Yeah. I mean, when I hear that immediately, my mind goes to Romans 130 and three words that the apostle Paul penned at the end of Romans 1, inventors of evil.

And so that's exactly what we're seeing. We're seeing the wrath of God's abandonment and allowing this kind of nonsense to take place. So it's crazy.

It's crazy, man. What else we got, Jason? Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to shift gears just a little bit. I don't know if you guys heard about the Shake Shack founder. He is now requiring proof of vaccination for customers at companies, other restaurants.

You can dine somewhere else.

So he's requiring vaccinations to be able to go.

Requiring it for employees and for customers. And so. Bye. Yeah.

So yeah. So for me, if I'm jumping here, yeah, this is always touchy because I will defend to the hilt, a private business owner to do something that is crazy and stupid. That makes sense. So I do not agree at all with requiring that.

If I owned a business, I wouldn't do that, but he has the right to do that as a private business. The problem becomes is when private business and the federal government or the state become intertwined with one another to where monies are being passed back and forth, tax write-offs and exemptions are passed back and forth to where we now see the federal government using the private sector as an arm of tyranny, essentially.

So yeah, this guy's an idiot. Yeah. I think. I mean, I'm just going to say, can we say that? Yeah. Absolutely. Complete button out here. You know, where's the thing? But you know, he has the right to do it.

Right. I also think that private businesses should be able to deny service to Baking a cake. Any person they want. But I would hope that the free market sort that out. If I have a guy that goes, look it, I'm not serving any Jews.

I would go, you have the right to do that. Guess what? Me, my family, my friends, and everyone else, not going to that establishment. The free market should work that out. But we have ingrained the federal government at such a level now.

Yeah. You know, even starting with the Civil Rights Act, and there are good parts of that. There was a lot in there that is not good because it really infringed on private owners' rights. But it's just insane now that people are taking that step.

Yeah. And doing this. And some of it is almost for the applause and, you know, and for the Of the progressives. For the progressives. Yeah, yeah. Virtue signaling. Yeah, yeah. Virtue signaling. What's your thoughts on that, Chris?

Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, if you, as a private business owner, and I agree with you guys, if you want to make that a requirement, that's fine. Just don't come down on people when people also exercise their right and their freedom to say, okay, I'm not going to do business with that establishment.

You know, when it comes to the federal government mandating that stuff, we don't have enough time to talk about that. That's a whole other conversation. But they should not.

We'll put it that way. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. Jason, you got anything else for us? Yeah, yeah. I'm going to lighten it up just really quick. So I don't know if you guys have ever heard of this guy, but I remember seeing him on television.

Okay. Donald Gorski of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Okay. Already going to be a great story. Exactly. This guy's hair, man. It's insane. It's crazy. But anyway, he averages two Big Macs a day and he has counted them up.

So ever since 1972, he has a 32 ,340 Big Macs.

And I mean, this is like, you should see him though. He's skinny. Can you imagine what he's doing to his lower intestines? I don't know.

You should see him. Look him up. Donald Gorski, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. I feel like he's not married.

I think he is. The whole part of getting married is to have someone else in the house to tell you things you shouldn't be doing. Are you going outside now? What? You're going there to McDonald's? No, no, no, no.

You're not. Could you imagine how expensive that would get though? McDonald's is expensive now. Yeah, I have four people in my family now, and I'm just like $32. What?

Are you kidding me? He's just got to be holding a conversation with people like, yeah. So anyway, I was going to. Exactly. There it is right there. Gosh, that's disgusting. At this point, man, with 32, maybe the first 15 ,000, that was the probably case.

But I mean, he's probably good. Now it's seared, man, at that point. Yeah, his body's like, oh, we're doing this. Okay, let's adjust it. All right.

Is that everything? That's all we got. That's awesome. Thanks for hanging out with us in that.

Worship as a Whole-Life Response to God

So let's get into the real stuff here. The nitty gritty, right? Yeah. So Chris, we love your podcast. You do such a great job on there talking about theology. That's what we try to do here. We ended up talking about Big Macs and farts, though, sometimes.

But, hey, God loves us. We're doing our best. He's bringing us along. Sanctification. He creates all things. And invisible? Is that what that verse is about? Are you executing that to mean? Hey, there's a good hermeneutic right there, right?

There we go. Hermeneutic? Who's that guy? Herman who? Herman what? So we're all three musicians here, which that's why this is de-evolving so quickly for the listeners. You get musicians together. We're kind of like comics, man.

We just, I don't know. I've always said it. But, yeah, we want to talk about worship. We've touched on this a few times, right, Jason, on the podcast. We've talked about our disdain. It's hard not to.

It's hard not to. Yeah, it's hard not to in this day and age with Bethel and Elevate Music and Hillsong. And people think, well, you're just picking on them. Or I've had one guy say, well, you're just jealous because it's popular.

And it's like, well, I don't really want to have world popularity. As a Christian says, I'm going to be hated, scorned, and probably persecuted. But besides that, there's some people out there to where you, you know, I just talking to a 25 year Christian once a week in the church.

And I brought, and I just said something, you know, normative and he goes, what? And I go like normative or regulative or like what your worship style is. He goes, I don't know what you're talking about.

And that was part of the reason we started this podcast and even the shorts where we define things and just go, well, this is what this means because we found so many people. I'm sure Chris, you feel the same way or maybe not, but you come across these Christians who've been Christians for decades, man, long time in church involved.

And then you try to just go, okay, well, why do you believe what you believe? Or what's the theology behind this or this term? Or, and I'm not saying we all have to be scholars because Jason and I definitely aren't.

No, but no, no, no more.

I want to know more. Theology just means to know God. So why wouldn't I have a good, robust theology where I'm constantly learning who God is? So we wanted to bring Chris on here because I know he talks about this and he does a good job on it.

So maybe we can just start off with some definitions because we were formed. So we love definitions. We love definitions. We want to make sure we're all on the same page. So maybe for the listeners, Chris, just start off and maybe define normative and regulative worship for the listeners.

Normative and Regulative Principles of Worship

Yeah. Yeah. So the term normative principle of worship, where that actually started, and this is something that I just learned recently. It was actually a Lutheran and an Anglican idea. And basically, so what they said, normative principle of worship is doing everything expressed in scripture.

And if there's something that's not prohibited in scripture, it's okay. It's admissible. So obviously scripture doesn't speak to smoke machines, strobe lights. Scripture doesn't speak to whether you are using drums in a church, so on and so forth.

So there's a very simple and basic definition. So anything that's expressly, you're given permission in the scriptures to do, and then plus anything that's not expressly prohibited in the scripture. Now, regulative is more of the Puritan idea.

And the Puritan idea, the regulative idea is that we can and we must only stick to what is in the scripture when it comes to our worship of God. So just because it's not prohibited in scripture doesn't mean that we have license to bring it into the bride of Christ when it comes to corporate, and I would say personal or private worship.

Regulative, more regulated then. Correct. Right, right. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. And would you have any biblical references for if someone is, I don't know, someone's saying, well, I believe only regulative.

And they say, well, what's your scriptural references for that? Why would you believe that we can't do anything, everything that's not mentioned is prohibited under the normative? Do we have any go-to scriptures for both of those sides?

Sure. Or is it more of an overarching kind of, we look at the Bible as a whole and say, well, this is, I'm kind of basing it off of the whole book. Right. No, fantastic question. I would say, you know, for the normative, for scripture references, as far as why to stay away from normative, I think there are some fantastic examples in the Old Testament.

You've got Nadab and Abihu offering strange fire to the Lord and how the Lord responds to that. You've got what happened to Uzzah in 2 Samuel 6, when Uzzah, who was raised and trained to value the Ark of the Covenant.

He was trained to know the value and worth of the presence of God, yet he took it upon himself. Well, actually, really, if you want to get technical here, this is more David's fault, what happened to Uzzah than Uzzah's.

Because David was, he had, if you will, succumbed to pragmatism and put the Ark on a cart to bring it back. And when the Ark went to fall, Uzzah just went to reach out and grab it because he knew the value of the Ark, but the Ark should never been there.

And so David, of course, succumbing to that pragmatism and actually, well, I mean, he was going against what was regulated in scripture. That was one of the reasons that Uzzah, as it says here, that in 2 Samuel 6, verse 7, and the anger of the Lord burned against Uzzah and God struck him down there for his irreverence.

And he died there by the Ark of God. And so as Dr. R .C. Sproul has so famously said, Uzzah's big mistake is thinking that his hands were cleaner than the dirt. So yeah, yeah, right. Miss R .C., Miss Papa Sproul.

So you find multiple examples throughout the scripture of why normative and why a pragmatic approach to worship is not okay. Now, from the regulative side, if I had to pick one, I think one of the most succinct, if you will, and then just right to the point would be Colossians 3, 16.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with gratefulness in your hearts to God. And in our latest episode of Matter of Theology, I took an hour and 40 minutes of going through that one verse of scripture and tying it in Psalm 19, showing why through the sufficiency of scripture, there is freedom found in the regulative principle of worship.

And why that if we as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, if we want to be a worshiper, offering worship that is acceptable to God, we have to do so by being regulated by the word of God alone. You know, Isaiah 66 and verse 2 says, you know, thus all these things came into being declares Yahweh.

But the one, this one, I will look to him who's humble and contrite in spirit and who trembles at my word. And so if we want to, if we want to worship in a way that honors God, why would we look to anything else other than what is expressly commanded in the word of God?

Yeah, that's good. Now, would you make a, did you have something there, Jason? No, no, no. Yeah.

I have so many thoughts. I'm going to go all over the place. I know I'm going to. It's brother. I'm the same way, man. I'm kidding me.

Where's your brain even going? Yeah. So yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. I'm going to take us way off topic. So just a quick question, but you can go off topic. It's conversation. So would you make a, would you make a distinction between worship as the, as the assembly of believers on a Sunday, on the Sabbath and worship say in a private room or home with your family or by yourself and then say, well, those two, those two could be possibly different to where maybe if you're regulative and you say, look at, there has to be certain things said in an order to it because the Bible says that is, is there any is there any difference when you're doing it privately and maybe just between you and the Lord?

Yeah. Well, I mean, you know what we do on, when we gather on the Lord's day, it isn't, shouldn't be something that's done in a vacuum, right? What, what we do when we gather on the Lord's day should be just a continuation of what we've done privately the rest of the week.

We should. And I said this a couple of episodes ago, cause I've been dealing with this topic now for, for, for two episodes, but, but, you know, we shouldn't come to church to worship God. We should come to church worshiping.

It should be a continual all of life at its essence. Here's what I said. And then a couple episodes ago at its essence, all worship is all of life and thought word indeed done to the glory of God, according to the scriptures.

And so if, if you're seeking to live your life in everything that you do in the very next verse out of Colossians three, and whatever you do in word or indeed do all in the name of the Lord, Jesus giving thanks to God, the father through him.

So, so I would say that all of life is to be regulated by the scriptures. As we aim for holy living, as we, and we were joking around earlier about sanctification, of course, that being a process, but, but that's, that's the, the, the primary means of grace that the holy spirit uses in our salvation is the, is the herd that the gospel through the word of God, right?

So the primary means of grace in our sanctification is also the holy spirit's use of the word of God in and through our lives. And so what we do when we gather on the Lord's day, again, it's just, it, we're just adding in this corporate element where we're all gathered together with one another teaching admonishing one another as we're singing psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, and of course, listening to the priest's word.

Worship, Self-Centered Music, and the Glory of God

That's good. That's so good. Yeah, I, I, here I go. Go for it, man. Go for it. Come on. So I think as I, as I was studying this, I mean, the same thing just kind of kept coming back up. I mean, it was like, we, we realized the churches that are more man-centered, obviously.

Right. And unfortunately sending out, you know, different, different questionnaires saying, Hey, what would, what would help you come to our service? What, you know, so it's, it's more of an, yeah. What would you see?

How do you, how do you want to experience? How do you feel? Right.

And it's, and it's the worst F word in this culture.

Tell me how you feel about it. All about this entertainment side of, of, of, of where, you know, the churches has gotten off, you know, on base, you know, and I actually had a conversation with someone and they brought up Psalm 150 and they were just like, well, you know, praise him with trumpet sound, praise him with lute and harp, praise him with tambourine and dance, praise him with strings and pipe, praise him with sounding cymbals, praise him with loud clashing cymbals and everything that has breath.

Praise the Lord. Praise them. Right. And you know, and it's like, okay, so can, can we, can we put electric guitars in that? Can we put a bass? Can we put drums? No, but, but again, it's like, okay, well, what, what takes us away from that worship?

Like what you were just talking about, Chris, like, like what takes us outside of that? You know, when it, when it's something more of a me gospel type situation, does that make sense? I hope that makes perfect sense, brother.

No, no, no. And I appreciate the question and it's a good question. And I think, I think what takes us away from that. So just today, Daryl Harrison, of course, a lead host of Just Thinking, he texted Virgil and I a sermon, Martin Lloyd-Jones.

And, and, and, love Lloyd-Jones, right? Love Lloyd-Jones. And the name of this sermon is, it's a revival sermon entitled The Power of the Living God. Okay. And in this sermon, he's like, he's like, man, I'm on my third time listening to it.

And so I've actually started the second, my second time listening to it. But one of the things that, that Lloyd-Jones says in here is he, he, he reminds all of us, he says this, he says, quote, that is the curse of the Christian church today.

Self-reliance. Wow. Okay. So, so the problem is the, the problem I, and, and I agree with you that there's nothing wrong with electric guitars, bass drums. I've been doing that for over 15 years. So but, but, but here's, here, here's where the problem becomes, here's what becomes a problem is when it becomes more about what pleases me instead of what pleases God, according to the scriptures.

So if we, if our goal is entertainment, if our goal is youth, if our goal is our goats, the unbelievers, instead of God, then we've missed the mark. Yeah. We've missed the mark. So let me, let me pull up.

There's a quote by Vodie Bachum and he's all the good guys tonight. I know, man. Oh, bro.

We're going to have to get Chris on the show. Check this out. Great.

You've been reading my notes. Dude. Awesome, man. Hey, no, that, that, that's just, that's just, that's just provenance right there. But that's all that is. So, so this is what Vodie Bachum said. This is a sermon that he gave at the 2019 truth matters conference.

And the name of the sermon is entitled the pain and the peril of pragmatism. Okay. And here's what he said. And it's a little bit of a longer quote. Our worship must be offered in accordance with God's dictates.

Here's what you don't hear me saying. You don't hear me saying that our passion for God doesn't matter. You don't hear me saying that we should be wooden legalistic rule oriented. No, you don't hear me saying that, but what governs us is the word of God.

The word of God is sufficient. It's sufficient. That's where we start. And then Vodie goes on. He quotes Bruce leafblad's definition of worship quote, true worship happens when we set our mind's attention and our heart's affection on the Lord and praising him for who he is and for what he's done.

And then Vodie goes on to say, our worship is word oriented. It has to be word oriented. It must have, it must happen in accordance with his dictates. How, how do we know those dictates? We know those dictates from his sufficient word.

Remember then in worship. And here's the key. Remember that in worship, our goal is God period. Full stop. Our goal is God. Our goal is communion with God. Our goal in worship is God. And so if we're to measure the success of our worship, that's something else.

We see a lot of people doing today, right? They measure success by how, how things feel. There's that fourth letter word again. He says, he says how, if we were to measure the success of our worship, we measure whether or not we've communed with God in accordance with the word of God for the purpose of glorifying God, because he's God.

And for that, his word is sufficient. Very close quote. So you can have electric guitars. You can have bass guitars. You can have drums. But what is your worship word oriented is your goal in worship.

God period full stop to quote Vodie. If it's not, if it's not, you have built an idol, you've built a golden calf and you've tried to give it the name Yahweh, but it's really your own felt needs and own felt emotions.

Yeah. Gosh, I love it. And correct me if I'm wrong here, but I feel like a lot of modern churches treat worship differently than they treat the things that that the Lord has given us that have sharp edges and that can be dangerous, but it's been meant for our glory.

But because we're in a fallen world, you know, a bourbon or a cigar or these things are meant for enjoyment, but they're in moderation glory onto the glory of God. But they don't treat worship that way.

And I feel worship is not only can be used as a weapon, but it is a dangerous thing if not done correctly. But we say, oh, we're just singing a tune that sounds nice. And technically we're standing in church and maybe raising our hands.

Well, then we don't have to worry about all the things that Vodie just said in that or that that you've been saying. It doesn't have to be necessarily God-centered, but it becomes an idol. The entertainment aspect becomes an idol.

The self-gratification of playing it or listening to it becomes an idol. That's right. I just don't understand why we're not treating music that way when in fact, we know that Satan challenged the sovereignty of God based on knowing how beautiful his makeup of music is.

It is powerful and it's only relegated to God. And I just feel like a lot of modern churches are missing what you just said. They're just missing the fact that they will look at someone outside who maybe is an unbeliever, a new Christian smoking a cigarette and cast them into the pit of hell.

And I'm not advocating smoking cigarettes. Sure, sure, sure. Go inside and they will blaspheme the name of God with a self-centered unbiblical worship. Me so. Idolatry based worship. And I just... Why can't we talk about that, man?

I feel... Well, and here's the question that... Podcasting. Yeah, yeah. So here's the question I have for someone like that is who do you think God's wrath burns against more, right? The unbeliever, the unbeliever who doesn't know the truth or the professed, and I use that word carefully, the professed believer who proclaims to know the truth yet blasphemes his name by offering false worship to God.

Yeah. Look at what happened to Nadab and Abihu. Look at what happened to Uzzah. Look at what happened... Ananias and Sapphira. Thank you. I couldn't remember their names for right now. You know, look at what happened to them.

Do we not think that us blaspheming the name of God, taking the name of God in vain and worship angers him? I mean, that's something that so many churches don't understand. The goal of church... Again, going back to this Lloyd-Jones sermon I was listening to today, like he said in there, he said, the church is the place where the presence of God dwells.

And there are too many churches and too many pastors and church leaders and music leaders who have forgotten that. This isn't about what you get out of today. It's about what did God get out of today?

Not that he needs anything, but did your worship, did he find favor upon your offering today? Or did he look at that and say, that's a false idol? Yeah. That's a scary thing to think about. Yeah, absolutely.

Definitely.

Wow. Yeah. I was just going to bring up Exodus 23, 25. Worship the Lord, your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you. Also, when Paul and Silas in Acts 16, 25, about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God and the other prisoners were listening to them.

And that's something for me. I just think the word of God always cuts through. I really do think that whenever we are singing psalms at the Fight, Laugh, Feast Festival, Greg, something like that, those words, they are just amazing.

But we're missing that in certain songs these days in worship. And it doesn't seem to be all about Christ, all about... Right.

No. I had an experience, and I've said this before, I think, on the podcast, but just not very long ago. So I grew up in the 80s and 90s in a very legalistic church and then went to the other side and very charismatic Pentecostal type church with the whole Bill Johnson movement, things like that.

We're going to get into that in a minute. And I've been involved in music. I played piano and drum since I was in third grade. I've led worship before. And I realized just a few years ago, I was standing in a church and I just went, the only voice that I can hear right now is the lead singer, is the pastor, whatever you want to call him.

And I just went, how uncommunal is that? Then we go down to places like G3 and Fight, Laugh, Feast and you're singing in unison. I mean, at Fight, Laugh, Feast, he'll give you the note and then just back off and you just hear the body of Christ worshiping and you go, oh my gosh, the corporate worship, the way we were meant to.

And we've just kind of gotten to this thing to where the majority of churches kind of have that same scheme, whether

The American idol. Yeah. Like somebody's up there and everybody else is just kind of like, oh man.

Oh, brothers, look, I was a part of a church. I was contracted to lead worship for the students. And every Lord's Day, you would go to the main service and it was the same thing. It was like, all you could hear were the vocalists.

You couldn't hear the congregation singing. And then I'll never forget going to the Shepherds Conference in 2019 and being there in person and hearing 4 ,000 men bellowing at the top of their lungs, these theologically rich hymns.

And so before we jump into the Bethel thing, one of the things I wanted to say about this is going back to R .C., there was a quote. Let me see if I can remember it now from R .C. I think he said, God is never pleased with ignorant worship.

Worship must be grounded in the knowledge of God. And I mean, how true is that? And as we, Lloyd Jones, going back to Lloyd Jones again, he said, as we think of God, so we will worship. And when you stop and look at church history, one of the things that was never tolerated throughout church history, biblical church history, is ignorant worship.

You would find pastors and church leaders, if someone professed faith in Christ, they would spend time with them to ensure they saw the fruits of that profession. And if they didn't, they wouldn't admit them into membership in the church.

They couldn't partake of the Lord's Supper. They made sure, they did the work, they did the labors, the Apostle Paul said in Ephesians and Galatians, to make sure that ignorant worship, privately and corporately, did not happen.