March 17, 2022 Show with D. Scott Meadows on “A Call to Pure Worship”

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Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday, a happy St.

Patrick's Day on this seventh day of March 2022. And I am finally interviewing today somebody that I've been trying to interview for quite some time and I'm delighted that I have the opportunity.

In fact, other listeners in the audience have urged me to get this brother on the air and I'm so glad that by God's sovereign providence, he is with us today.

His name is Dee Scott Meadows. He is the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church Reformed in Exeter, New Hampshire, and today we are going to be addressing his book,

A Call to Pure Worship, probably one of the most controversial issues in Christendom, although it's a tragedy that it is controversial, but this subject has probably divided more congregations than nearly any other subject in existence.

But it's my honor and privilege to finally welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dee Scott Meadows.

Good afternoon, Chris. It's a privilege and a pleasure to be on with you today. Well, first of all, before we go into a summary of your salvation testimony, which we have every first -time guest do on this program, tell us about Calvary Baptist Church Reformed in Exeter, New Hampshire.

Okay, I'd be glad to, Chris. The church started as a Bible study in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1962.

The year I was born. Yeah, it's two years after I was born, and it has,

I guess this year makes our 60th anniversary as a church. And, I'm sorry?

No, no, go ahead. So, the church grew and it was able to buy some property in town, and then a few years later they sold that and bought the plot that we now have with a good -sized church building and a parking lot, and I am the fourth pastor out of four.

I've always only had one pastor, never a plural eldership, although we desire that and believe that's ideal, so may

God provide us with plural elders, but I've been serving as a pastor at the church for 30 -plus years now.

So half of the history of the church, I guess, I've been their pastor. Wow, and that is a rare thing for a pastor to remain in one congregation that long.

Yes. Well, I had pastors who were tenacious in my young adulthood and childhood, and I always admired that, and one of them said,

I made a vow to the Lord that I would never leave the church to run away from trouble. When there's trouble,

I can't leave, and when there's not trouble, I don't want to leave, so that accounts for why he stayed so long. Get out of Dodge is not in your vocabulary.

No, not really. And perhaps, thanks be to God, you've never had a

Dodge going on at Calvary Baptist in Exeter anyway. I'm content and happy to serve the

Lord in the pastoral role where I am right now. Amen. Well, if anybody wants to find out more about Calvary Baptist Church Reformed in Exeter, New Hampshire, they have a

Facebook page, and it's Calvary Baptist Church in parentheses or dash

Reformed in Exeter, New Hampshire, that's E -X -E -T -E -R, and you can find out more details.

Yeah. So as I hinted in the beginning of the program, we have a custom here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, whenever we interview a

Christian, there are rare occasions when we interview non -Christians for one reason or another, maybe a person who is not a

Christian that has nonetheless written a book that is of great value to the body of Christ or something like that.

But when we have a Christian guest, the vast majority of the time, we always have them, when they are a first -time guest, give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, they were raised in, and what kind of providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to Himself and saved them, and I'd love to hear your story.

I'd be happy to share that with you, Chris. So, I was born in Chicago, and my mother was

Polish Roman Catholic, raised in South Chicago, and my father, they're both still alive, my father was raised in the

Appalachian Mountains of southern West Virginia, and had a supposed conversion experience in his teenage years in a

Bible fundamentalist, dispensational kind of church, and after about three years, he walked away from Christianity.

So he had gone to Chicago, that's where he met my mother in the 50s, they married in 59, and I was born in 1960 at South Shore Hospital in Cook County, Illinois.

And there, I was raised by them, until I would say they were loving parents, but not

Christians, not evangelical, Bible -believing type born -again

Christians. So we didn't go to church, and we really didn't pray together, we didn't read the

Bible, it was more or less a secular household, and that was my experience until I was about nine, when we moved to my dad's roots back in West Virginia.

And interestingly, you know, I had no basic religion whatsoever as a part of my life,

I remember seeing a statue of the Virgin Mary, and thinking in the churchyard, I thought, well that must be

God, and that's how dark I was in my spiritual ignorance.

So anyway, we moved to West Virginia when I was nine, and interestingly,

I started attending the same Bible church that my father had attended as a teenager. And that's where I really became confronted with the

Gospel, and made my first profession of faith when I was ten years old, I think. Well praise

God, and what led you, of course it was a calling of God, but what led you to realize that you were being called of God into the ministry, and also, how did you come to discover and embrace the doctrines of sovereign grace, also nicknamed

Reformed Theology and Calvinism? Well, I don't think

I was truly converted when I was ten. I think I made a shallow profession of faith, and there was a twisting of the

Christians and all that in the church I was attending, and it wasn't until I was in college studying for electrical engineering that God worked in my heart to save me.

So, I don't think I was truly regenerated until I was about twenty years old.

So, once I was truly saved, you know, my heart became alive to the

Bible. I couldn't get enough of it. Before that, it was sort of like, reading the

Bible was like taking an unpleasant medicine to me, but I didn't like it.

I did it sometimes, especially in church attendance, but not on my own. But once I was saved in college,

I couldn't get enough of Scripture, and it was the first thing I remember

I came across that helped me to believe in the sovereignty of God in the election of some people to eternal life was a little booklet by C .D.

Cole called The Bible Doctrine of Election. I've actually read that. Yeah, and it was simple and biblical, and it said that God chooses some people, but not everyone, and it's unconditional, and proof texts were in that little booklet, and I didn't resist it.

I thought, well, this is true! And I found out that it's not embraced by all

Christians, so I started my journey toward, you know, more thoroughgoing, consistent

Calvinism then. And how did you realize that the Lord was calling you into the ministry?

Right, so when I was studying in the engineering college, I was attending a

Baptist church that had a gymnasium where the college students could play volleyball together for fun, but the condition of using the auditorium was someone has to give a devotional message.

So I volunteered to do that, and my five -minute devotional message started becoming 20 -minute sermonettes, and I just loved teaching the

Bible. So then I started thinking, hey, you know what? Maybe I've missed my calling. Maybe I shouldn't be an electrical engineer.

Maybe I should be a pastor. And God put that in my heart with a deep desire and commitment to pursue that.

So I finished my engineering degree, worked in that for seven years almost, and then during that time

I went back to Bible college and got my master's degree in Christian theology and started looking for a call to serve as a pastor.

Well, praise God for that, and I am very thankful to the body to God for blessing the body of Christ in Exeter, New Hampshire, with such a fine man of God as an under -shepherd over the people there.

And today, as I announced in the beginning of the program, we're going to be discussing D. Scott Meadows' book,

A Call to Pure Worship, and I want to read a couple of the commendations for this book.

First of all, a name that is very well -known to Reformed Baptists all over the world,

Richard C. Barcelos, Dr. Richard C. Barcelos, who is pastor of Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Palmdale, California.

He writes of this book, "...public worship is an important subject in the

Bible and therefore it ought to be important to us. Meadows' book aims to bring readers into the realm of pure worship according to the word of God, our only infallible rule for doctrine and practice."

He also interacts with the meaning of the regulative principle of worship, as formulated by some

Reformed creedal statements, offering a corrective to some in our day who have misunderstood this important doctrine.

It is an important book, touching upon an issue that exhibits much confusion in our day, even by some who claim to be upholding a

Reformed view of public worship. Take up and read, which is obviously a reference to the phrase that St.

Augustine heard repeated by little children in Latin, tolle lege, take up and read, which influenced him to pick up the

Bible, read it, and be saved by the grace of God. Also, Dr.

Derek Thomas, a world -renowned Presbyterian minister and author, who I am going to be having the privilege of hearing again preach next week.

He's going to be on the roster of the Ligonier National Conference in Orlando, Florida, among others, including another one of my favorite preachers,

Sinclair Ferguson. But Dr. Thomas says, among the plethora of voices addressing the issue of worship,

Scott Meadows is a sensible and savvy voice that rises above the often -heeded exchanges, suggesting clarity and conviction, principle and persuasion.

If you have time to read only a few books on this topic, this should be one of them.

But come prepared to have your convictions challenged by solid biblical arguments and an evangelist's zeal for conversion.

A masterful and important contribution. That is quite the commendation from somebody of the high caliber of Derek Thomas, one of the greatest minds in modern -day

Christianity, and I don't think I'm exaggerating...well, I know I'm not exaggerating that description of him at all.

Well, one of the beauties of your book here is the way that you have it so clearly laid out, and the concern of the topic,

Equality to Pure Worship, you have laid out in major categories, such as the corruption of worship, and also the standard of worship, and the inspiration of worship.

And I am looking forward to first, as you have started this way, delving into the corruption of worship, but first of all, can you tell us what was the most compelling factor in your life that made you say,

I've got to start preaching sermons on the issue of the regulative principle of worship, and the sermons that you preached,

I know, eventually became this book. What were the most compelling factors that you were observing?

Well, for a long time I've had, Chris, a deep commitment to the principle of sola scriptura, for the doctrine and practice of the

Christian faith, scripture as the ultimate authority for the resolution of all religious controversy.

And so as a pastor, with that commitment, and my congregation is also committed to that principle, we're always studying the

Bible, and reflecting on the Bible, and seeking to reform our thinking and our lives and our worship to more nearly approximate and conform to God's revealed will in scripture.

And so that's true not just for individual Christians, but for the corporate life of the Church, both in its form of worship and its ministry as a

Church. So that's been a pursuit for a long time. But I think the first time

I really was introduced to the regulative principle, and had a good explanation of what it is and how it's biblically grounded, was when

I read my dear friend Dr. Sam Waldron's little booklet on that subject, which was,

I believe, the content of a couple of sermons he preached in South Africa to pastors there.

And that really, I think, my first recollection of really thinking about the regulative principle and applying those ideas to the life of the

Church. Well, let's start where you started in the way you've outlined your book, about the corruption of worship, and there are people who, no doubt, will be highly insulted by having their own approach to worship being viewed and considered and identified as a corruption, but we have to be more fearful of God than of men, and we have to be more concerned about men being obedient to God than hurting their feelings.

So start with the corruption of worship. Yes, well,

I would say that there's some allegedly Christian worship that is so bad, it's really false worship.

It is corrupt worship. But my book is meant not only to really expose that, but also to exhort my beloved brethren who worship

God truly, and according to His Word in general, to purify that worship more and more by the standard of Holy Scripture.

So all of our worship is flawed, and you could say if it's not completely pure, and it's not, it is corrupt to that extent.

So this is not necessarily some kind of judgmental evaluation of everybody else as if we have it right.

It's more of a general caution about purifying true worship so that it is less corrupt than it would otherwise be,

Chris. Yes, of course, and as you even state later in your book, in which I definitely know from experience, having a wide variety of friendships not only spanning denominational and theological lines in the body of Christ, but even amongst

Reformed Christians, there are differences of opinion on what is pure worship according to the regulative principle of worship.

So we're not all in lockstep with each other. In fact, I've had, I don't know if you know Brother John Price, I've interviewed him on this program on a multiple edition program,

I think we did three interviews or four on his book on Old Light on New Worship, which he was advocating strictly a cappella worship in the church in our day, not exclusive psalmody, but exclusive a cappella worship.

And I thought he made a compelling case for it myself, but just to let our listeners know, we're not thinking that we have totally arrived at perfection as Reformed Christians, right?

Not at all, not at all. The body of Christ is vast and varied, and there is lots of differences of opinion about things, but my book is not meant to, by any means, to settle many of these controversies on issues like instruments and psalms.

It's really meant more to, as a broad presentation of the plea that all

Christians in all churches ought to be seeking to be biblical, truly biblical in their worship.

And that could hardly be an embarrassment to me, I think, no matter what denomination you speak of.

Now we have incidences in the Old Testament such as Nadab and Abihu and others, when people even

Christians, scoff at the idea that God is desirous of a certain kind of pure worship, they very often will mock us for trying to be meticulous about these things, and it seems that they have forgotten the story of Nadab and Abihu, who may have even had some kind of correct motive in what they were doing, but they worshipped in a way with false incense that was not prescribed by God, and God consumed them in flames.

But when we talk about this issue in the New Covenant where there are even

Christians who think that those kinds of rules don't apply anymore, now of course we don't, as New Covenant believers, we don't import the ceremonial law into our worship, in fact we would think that that would be wrong, because the regulative principle is actually worshipping according to New Testament command and example, right?

Well, you take the whole counsel of God in Scripture, and of course the New Testament is part of the latter revelation of God's truth, and we still need the

Old Testament to understand how to worship God, but as the New Testament plainly says, the types and shadows and forms of Old Covenant Judaism have passed away, and the

New Covenant forms are different in some respects. So you're right, we especially look to the

New Testament for churches today, and we should. And what do you consider in our day to be corruptions of worship that are not necessarily the offering of false incense, but it's interesting though that there are more and more churches who are importing even incense into their worship, trying to be more resembling

Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic worship. But tell us about what you think about the corruption of modern worship.

Right, so one of the most basic, and I think absolutely compelling points that I bring out in the book is that worship by its very nature is an attempt to please

God according to what He tells us He wants, the revealed will of God.

And that the direction of worship is really supposed to be univocal.

That is, God knows how He would have us worship Him, and that is not a secret.

He describes that and commands Biblical worship in the Scriptures, and so we ought to be constantly looking to God to understand

His will, and then put that into practice in the worship of the Church. So one of the tell -tale signs of corruptions of worship is when we introduce into the substance of worship things that do not derive from God, or from the direction

God gives us in Holy Scripture. In fact we're going to pick up right where you left off there after we return from our first break.

If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for D. Scott Meadows, our email address is

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Let's say you are asking a question about something that your own congregation is doing as a part of their worship that you believe to be aberrant, makes you uncomfortable, you don't think it's biblical.

Something like that, obviously we wouldn't want you to identify your church in cases like that, or who you are, so people could put two and two together and know what church you're talking about.

So if it's a personal and private matter, we understand and we will grant your request to remain anonymous, but if it's a broad and general biblical question about worship, please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

USA. We'll be right back with D. Scott Meadows in a call to pure worship, right after these messages from our sponsors.

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If you just tuned into the program, our guest today for the full two hours is D. Scott Meadows, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church Reformed in Exeter, New Hampshire.

We are addressing his book, A Call to Pure Worship. If you have a question of your own, submit it to chrisarnsen at gmail .com

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -S -E -N at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least. Your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question is personal and private. We actually have a listener in Eldoret, the city of champions in Kenya, Africa.

Moses he asks, please request

Pastor Meadows to explain further what he means by corruption of worship. Does he imply man -centered worship?

Charismatics of a form of worship that is more of a public show, does that imply corruption in worship?

Yes, good question. Moses is a friend of mine actually. Oh, great.

We see every week on video and chat together, so I appreciate him sending in a question.

Look, the corruption of worship starts in the heart when the worshipers do not have an intention to please

God above all other considerations in their worship. So it's first of all a heart matter.

Jesus said that the time is coming when those the

Father seeks who worship Him in spirit and truth will do so. And this is a prophecy of the proliferation of true worshipers throughout the world known as Christians.

And one of the spiritual distinctives of a Christian is they actually trust in the

Lord and love God and love their neighbor and when they worship their main intention, the ultimate priority is to please

God in their worship. So that's the beginning of true worship and in that desire to please

God we conform worship to the standards of Holy Scripture. So when we talk about the corruption of worship we especially have in mind the intrusion of foreign elements then into the substance of worship.

This is a corruption of worship and that can take many different forms.

I was just going to say quickly, when I have these discussions with people who have a very open approach to worship, nearly anything that would not be offensive to God outside of worship in their minds should be allowed inside of worship.

And one of the things that will come up is dancing and they will say, David danced in the

Old Covenant when he was worshiping. So perhaps if you could start with that one because that seems to be, in my experience, the very first thing that people say when we're having a conversation on things like this.

Alright Chris, do you mind if I preface that topic with a statement from the 1689

London Baptist Confession of Faith? That would be fine. Really helpful to us to think more clearly and biblically about the subject in general.

This is from chapter 22 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.

This is the doctrinal standard our church publicly confesses and subscribes to.

It says this, the light of nature shows that there is a God who has lordship and sovereignty over all, is just, good, and doth good unto all, and is therefore to be feared, loved, praised, called upon, trusted in, and served with all the heart and all the soul and with all the might.

But the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by himself and so limited by his own revealed will that he may not be worshipped according to the imagination and devices of men nor the suggestions of Satan under any visible representations or any other way not prescribed in the

Holy Scriptures. So that's the classic statement in our confession of what is called the regulative principle of worship.

Now, in church history and theological history, from the

Protestant Reformation onward, there has been a dispute among Protestants about this very topic, and very broadly speaking you have the

Calvinists and the Reformed that have adhered to the regulative principle and then you have

Lutherans and after them Anglicans, also Protestants, that reject it.

And if I could make it very simple, the Calvinists and the Reformed essentially think this way, let us look to the

Bible and just do what the Bible directs us to do in worship and not add anything else, even if it might seem to be innocent in and of itself.

If it's not derived out of God's positive direction to us in Scripture it doesn't have a fitting place or a proper place in Christian worship.

Now the others, the Lutherans and Anglicans, they thought otherwise.

In their tradition, which rejects the regulative principle, they have sought to expunge from Christian worship traditional elements that had crept into Roman Catholicism except for those that aren't expressly condemned by Scripture.

So that's a more broad and encompassing approach to considering what's proper in worship.

Would you say that one of the major differences between the regulative and the normative principles is that a different view of the silence of Scripture is taken?

The regulative principle adherents view silence as a prohibition to be involved and the normative principle advocates view silence as a permission, since there is no open clear prohibition of it.

That's not an unfair characterization, Chris. Okay, and if you'd like to continue,

I interrupt you there. Oh, that's alright. So, look, to say that David danced and therefore

Christian churches in this age should have dancing, or at least may have dancing as part of their worship, is a facile argument.

And the reason is, there is a simplicity and spirituality to New Testament worship that is the redemptive historical realization of something greater

God is doing for His covenant people in this age that is the reality typified by the types and shadows of the

Old Testament age. So, you know, David also offered lambs on an altar, but this is by itself no justification whatsoever that Christians should do so today.

So, by the way, I want to thank our listener in Kenya for submitting such an excellent question.

If you could please start listening regularly, if you don't already, to Ion Sharpen's Ion Radio and please spread the word about the show in Kenya and beyond.

Can you list some more things that you either have observed or you just know exist in the modern church worship service that are typical that you would view as corruptions?

I already mentioned one, dancing. I could throw in another one, which might even be under the category of dancing, but there are a lot of churches at least in the 80s when

I got saved, I noticed that there were churches that weren't even necessarily charismatic that waved flags, they had a flag performance, if you will, that was supposed to be an act of worship.

Anything else that you can think of? Well, Chris, you're talking a little bit like a provocateur here.

But let me put it this way. In the Reformed tradition, which in the main we adhere to, you know, because it's scriptural,

Christian worship is simple and biblical, so that in the same chapter of our confession, the substance of the worship that Christians offer to God when we come together in the church is described as prayer, the reading of the scriptures, preaching, hearing the word of God, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in our hearts to the

Lord, also the administration of baptism and the Lord's Supper, these are all parts of religious worship to God to be performed in obedience to Him with understanding, faith, reverence, and godly fear.

And so that's all we do at Calvary Baptist Church essentially in our worship services.

We do what God tells us we ought to be doing when we come together as a church and conduct

Christian worship as a church. That's it. We have another listener who asks a question about something

I'm not 100 % sure of what my guest's familiarity is with contemporary musical groups, but Mike from Monroe, New York says, can the pastor comment on the kind of worship we see in Hillsong and what objections can be offered against it?

Now if you're not familiar with Hillsong, maybe you could pick out, even if you don't name the groups, elements of contemporary worship that you find prominent and yet prohibited by scripture, obviously not because of specific prohibitions, but because they're including things in their songs that would not conform with what you believe pure worship to be.

Yes, you know, what I would say is theology and the way

Christians worship God necessarily go together. And so that the music, for example, of any particular group that they use in alleged

Christian worship is a window into their theology. And likewise the theology that is taught has implications for the form of worship.

When we look at Calvin as a great Bible teacher and reformer, you know, it wasn't just doctrines that he was out to set forth for the edification of the church.

The doctrine is subservient to pure worship. The ultimate agenda and objective for the

Christians in the church with reference to God is to offer him pure worship. And so pure doctrine is an instrument of the reforming of the church's worship to be more in conformity with God's revealed will.

Now when you come to Hillsong music, it's a little superficial to just try to evaluate it as music, but to realize that the group that produces that represents a certain theology of beliefs about God and righteousness and Christian experience, and that is, you know, like any group that produces

Christian music, it comes out in the music. So I object.

I am familiar with that group and their music and their theology to some extent, and I do not subscribe to a lot of the doctrines that they propagate, and so why would

I ever use their music if I think the theology is unscriptural at many points? Yes, I agree.

And thank you, Mike, from Monroe, New York. Please give us your full mailing address, because you've won a free copy of A Call to Pure Worship.

Thanks to the publishers of Pillar and Ground Publications in North Bergen, New Jersey, and also thanks to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

We'll be shipping that out to you. We offer our apologies to our Kenyan listener, because we cannot have these books of which we are provided a limited number of copies.

We can't provide them for those overseas or in Canada or in Mexico and South America because of the exorbitant shipping costs that would be imposed upon Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who are shipping them out.

So we ask of your forgiveness for that, and perhaps one day in the future we'll be able to ship books anywhere in the world, but we can't do that at this point.

But thank you, Mike. Excellent question. We have an anonymous listener who says,

I have friends who are Reformed Baptist pastors who do not even announce public announcements before the worship begins, because that is not included in a biblical worship blueprint.

Do you think that that is going to the extreme? Well, rather than comment on that particular arrangement, let me tell the listeners what we do.

We do make announcements just before the worship service begins, but it's purposefully separate from the worship, which begins with an apostolic greeting and a call to worship.

So what I do grieve a little over is when announcements become one of the elements of worship, as if there's a certain time in a worship service where you're speaking about such things.

So we do it just before the service, and then we have a few moments of silence and prayer, and then

I typically am the one who stands and raises my hands and says, grace and peace to you from God our

Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, and we are off and running in our worship then.

Well, thank you, Anonymous, and if you give us your full name by email and your mailing address, you will also receive a call to pure worship.

And you can look out for that in the mail, as long as we get your full name and mailing address, of course, that will not be announced on the air.

This topic, as we already stated initially, not only in my own opening, but in some of what

Richard Barcellos, Dr. Richard Barcellos, said about your book, these are fighting words.

This is a worship war going on, and how do we approach this subject without unnecessarily importing things into our speech and behavior that are throwing gasoline on fire without, at the same time, being timid and compromising in our views of this?

Because, you know, this is an extremely important issue. It was obviously important enough to God that He provided us with examples in the

Old Testament like Nadab and Abihu, who were consumed with fire for false worship, and in a sense, we can even say in the

New Testament when we have Ananias and Sapphira, I mean, giving is an act of worship, and they were lying about what percentage of their gifts to the

Church they were actually providing, and they were killed by God for this.

Obviously, it's important, but any pastoral counsel on how we approach these things?

Sure, I'd offer some thoughts. One thing is indispensable, and that is love to all of our

Christian brethren, no matter what communion or denomination they might belong to.

I call to mind the last verse of Ephesians, where Paul says,

Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity.

So, that's a large group of people, and they're not all Reformed or Reformed Baptists by any means.

They love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, and they have some different judgments and practices in some ways than what

I or my closest colleagues will have, but they're the Lord's people, and when we recognize that Christ loves them, just like He loves us, then we love them, too, for Christ's sake, and in our counsel to them our genuine respect for them as Christians and affection for them as brothers and sisters will go a long way to temper our counsels to them and come across in a loving manner.

So that's one thing. In fact, could you bring up the other things when we come back from our midway break?

Because we have to enter into our midway break right now. If you could just make a mental note of where you left off.

And folks, please be patient with us because as you may know, if you listen to this show regularly, the midway break in the show is longer than the other breaks because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, who airs this program twice a day in a pre -recorded format, they are required by the

FCC to use our middle break to air their own public service announcements and other local things that geographically localize

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and all of their programs to Lake City, Florida. And while they do that, we air our globally heard commercials.

So please use this time wisely. Not only write down questions for our guest

D. Scott Meadows on A Call to Pure Worship, but also write down the information provided by our advertisers so that you can more frequently contact them and reply to them either by buying their products, using their services, visiting their churches, or supporting their parachurch organizations.

But when you can't do any of that, please, at the very least, do something that anybody can do. Reply to the advertisers and just say thank you so much for sponsoring

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So please respond to our advertisers and also write a question to D.

Scott Meadows on A Call to Pure Worship. The email address again is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

We'll be right back with D. Scott Meadows right after these messages. It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience have been sticking with or switching to the

NASB. I'm Dr. Joseph Piper, President and Professor of Systematic and Homiletical Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Taylor, South Carolina.

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O hail the Lord Jesus This is

Pastor Bill Sasso, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio financially. Grace Church at Franklin is an independent autonomous body of believers, which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in Scripture through the person and work of our

Lord Jesus Christ. And of course the end for which we strive is the glory of God.

If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

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This is Pastor Bill Sasso wishing you all the richest blessings of our

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Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor. Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio has had a long time partnership with our friends at CVBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

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Strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshiped and how he shall be represented in the world.

They believe churches need to turn to the Bible to discover what to include in worship and how to worship

God in spirit and truth. Grace Covenant Baptist Church endeavors to maintain a

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Or call them at 908 -996 -7654. That's 908 -996 -7654.

Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Getting a driver's license, running a cash register, flipping burgers, passing sixth grade.

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John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnzen and the

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I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide. This is a day of great spiritual compromise, and yet God has raised

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I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would. All the details can be found at IronSharpensIronRadio .com

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It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Corham who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word and to enthusiastically proclaim

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I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love as I have.

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That's solid -ground -books .com. Before we return to D. Scott Meadows, we just have a couple more announcements to make.

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Last but not least, if you are a man in ministry leadership, whether you are a pastor, an elder, and by the way,

I believe that's the same office, a deacon, a parachurch leader, whatever ministry position you hold as a leader, if you are a man, you are invited to the next

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon to be held Thursday, April 7th, 11 a .m.

to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, just about 20 minutes from Carlisle in Perry County.

Our guest speaker will be Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law. You've been hearing his ads every day on this program for the

Historical Bible Society. He's going to be giving a lecture on how we receive the Bible in the

English language. It's a fascinating lecture that I have seen probably at least six times, and I'm always riveted to it.

Not only will you be getting fed for free and hearing Dan's lecture for free and fellowshipping for free, you're going to be receiving a heavy sack of brand new books donated by publishers all over the

United States and the United Kingdom, including Pillar and Ground Publications, who are providing free copies of A Call to Pure Worship.

You're going to be receiving these books absolutely free. Everything at this Pastors Luncheon is free and this was the insistence of my late precious wife,

Julie, back in the 1990s when she urged me to begin these luncheons. She made sure that I never sold anything or had anything for sale on the premises during these luncheons and that the admission always be free, and I have continued, after her entering into glory for eternity with Christ, I have continued to make sure that her specific rules are adhered by, and I do these luncheons,

I conduct them in her loving memory, in her honor and in tribute to her. So if you'd like to attend, that's

Thursday, April 7th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. in Loisville, Pennsylvania.

Send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put Pastors Luncheon in the subject line, and I'll get you all the details you need to attend.

That's also the email address where you can send in questions for 2 D. Scott Meadows on his book,

A Call to Pure Worship, that's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and right before the midway break,

Scott, you may recall why I had to interrupt you, because we were going into a midway break, but if you could pick up where you left off there.

Right, so I think the subject we were talking about was how we help other

Christians to appreciate the truths of God's Word for reforming

Christian worship to be more pure. And so the first thing I thought of is, you know, we need to love all of our

Christian brethren, even those with whom we have some disagreements, and that will show in the way we talk to them, if we do truly love them, and that will help to facilitate productive dialogue.

You know, your show is called Iron Sharpens Iron, quoting a verse in Proverbs, and that has been understood properly,

I think, to talk about the mutual edification that Christians have in godly conference or conversation with each other.

And so that should happen in a subject like this too. My mind was next taken to 2

Timothy, where Paul tells Timothy to flee youthful lusts, but pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace with those who call on the

Lord out of a pure heart, avoid foolish and ignorant disputes, knowing that they generate strife, and a servant of the

Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient in humility, correcting those who are in opposition.

So our disposition in the conduct of such conversation is critically important, and it's a matter of ethics,

Christian ethics and morality, that we would be humble in our advocacy of the truth, and avoid arguing about stupid things that don't matter, and try to avoid any kind of quarreling, and instead keep the conversation and the sometimes writing debate on a very high level of meaningful exchange of ideas.

One of the ways we show humility in talking about things like this with our brethren is to listen to them, and consider whether they may have something to teach you that is actually scriptural, and you can be edified by their thoughts that they express to you.

And then the third passage that comes to mind on this is Paul saying he was free from the blood of all men because he hasn't shunned to declare the whole counsel of God to his hearers.

So we need to, while we're humble, we also need to be bold in teaching the whole

Bible and its whole doctrine, even though it may not be in some parts widely understood or appreciated by some in the

Christian community. I'm hopeful in dialogue with Christians with whom

I disagree because all Christians, real Christians, believe the Bible, and all

Christians are new creatures in Christ by the work of the Spirit. They are those in whom the

Spirit dwells. So if my doctrine is actually true and scriptural, then

I know that I've got an unfair advantage because God will work in the hearts of the hearers to help them appreciate that the truth is being preached.

So those are some things that come to mind for me, Chris. Yeah, excellent things. And we do have

Ronald in eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who has a question.

And this is a question that is definitely going to get, I'm sure, some of our listeners very angry, who may even have agreed with much of what you have said up until now.

Would you consider the altar call or the inviting forward of sinners to accept

Christ in the front of the Church as an aberration and an intrusion on what would otherwise possibly be pure Biblical worship?

We don't follow that modern innovation that was introduced by Revivalism in the last couple of hundred years in our

Church. Remember, Chris, I was telling you that the Church's form of worship is intricately related to its theology, and likewise the theology will govern the form of worship.

So I am a sovereign grace kind of guy, and I would say

I'm a Calvinist as long as people understand what that means. And so this innovation or new measure that was popularized by people like Charles Finney, I think is without Biblical warrant, and therefore why should we keep it up?

And it implicitly advocates a certain kind of thinking about evangelism and conversion and so forth, which falls short in my judgment of the

Biblical standard. Well, thank you, Ronald, and you have also won a call to pure worship, so please provide us with your full name and your mailing address in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service can have that shipped out to you as soon as possible.

And we want to thank our friends at Pillar & Ground Publications in North Bergen, New Jersey, once again, for providing these copies that we can give away to you, and it is always a joy to be sharing excellent literature with our listeners.

I know that we could go on and on and on with things that are aberrations and those things that are not under the umbrella of what would be considered proper in the framework of the regulative principle of worship, but let's move on right now for the standard of worship.

Okay. Yes, tell us exactly what you mean by that. Well, in the book called

The Pure Worship, it was really three sermons, but the middle one was delivered in two pulpit sessions.

That's the two chapters that are called The Standard of Worship, Part 1 and Part 2. So I deal with that paragraph in the 1689

Confession that I read earlier in the program. That is

Chapter 22, Paragraph 1, which is a classic statement of the regulative principle, and it is

I think word for word identical with the Westminster Confession on the same subject.

And then I found a couple of particularly important biblical passages in support of that doctrine.

Deuteronomy 12, 29 -32 and Leviticus 10, 1 -3 about Nadab and Abihu.

And essentially it's just a scrupulously obedient to God and his word approach to what worship is.

I offered an opinion earlier in the book that much of the contention in the so -called worship wars would cease if only all the parties involved would be deeply committed to being scriptural in their worship.

But we contend, of course, with our own carnal desires, with expectations of the world, with unbiblical traditions, and these things encroach upon a fair -minded attempt to please

God in our worship by the standard of Holy Scripture alone. So that goes to the root of the controversy,

I think. I may make another remark that some people think that if you are determined to be very scriptural in your worship as a church, this will create divisions among Christians.

And I say, no, no. This will help to foster unity among the churches, because the worship of the churches will be a lot more similar, being biblical, than they are today.

It is the introduction of innovations and men's opinions that tend to fragment the true

Church of Jesus Christ into all these different contending groups. So, Scripture should be you know,

Chris, I once went to go see the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and I noticed before the concert started that the piano struck a note for all the other instruments to tune to.

And then when all the instruments were tuned to that standard on the piano, when they played together, there was beautiful harmony.

And if all of us as Christians would really trust in the whole counsel of God in Scripture, and prayerfully, earnestly, receive that counsel and put it into practice, you know, we would be more harmoniously worshiping

God together as churches. Let me give you an analogy that I have given, and maybe you'll agree with the analogy or maybe you'll think it's ridiculous,

I don't know. But when having conversations about this, when people are really starting to resist what

I am saying, they think that there should be more freedom involved than just sticking to a biblical blueprint as long as nothing that's occurring is overtly offensive to God or offensive outside of worship at all.

They think it should be open game to be involved in a worship service. I tell these people, imagine you are throwing a birthday party for the person that you love more than anybody on the face of the

Earth. And you want this event to be very special, it might be a landmark birthday like a 60th birthday party, a 60th birthday.

I just turned 60, that's why that popped into my head, although nobody threw me a party. But imagine that you tell people bring any kind of food and drink that pops into your head, and people start bringing things like sardines and they bring oxtail and they bring there's actually a

Chinese dish made with jellyfish tentacles. They bring all these kinds of things, not even being concerned with what the guest of honor, the birthday boy or birthday girl, not even concerning themselves with what that person really enjoys and desires.

And without even investigating as to the person's taste in music, they start blaring heavy metal music and maybe the person is a classical music buff and perhaps even only likes that kind of music.

I mean, we could go on and on and on where we're just doing things that we might enjoy being involved in and eating and listening to, but we're offending the guest of honor.

And when it comes to God, obviously all analogies that we come up with in our heads are not perfect, but when it comes to God it's infinitely more important.

It's a trillion times quadrillion times more important than what

I've just said. Did I make sense in any way, and do you agree with my analogy? I do, very much.

And it comes down to this, Chris. If pleasing God is not in our hearts as the number one priority, then what we're involved in is not true worship at all, but idolatry.

Yes. And we're more concerned with... sometimes people have in their head, whatever

I like and enjoy is good enough for God.

Whatever I enjoy doing and whatever I have a talent to do, that's good enough for God.

Perhaps they're getting their theology from the little drummer boy. Well, we've discussed the corruption of worship and the standard of worship.

If you could now delve into the inspiration of worship. Alright, that's good.

That's the last chapter of the book, The Inspiration of Worship, and what I do in that chapter is...

and by the way, let me just say this. Almost the entirety of my book is just a straightforward exposition of a number of passages of Holy Scripture.

My conscience is held captive to the Word of God, as Luther said. And I've got nothing else of value to say than what the

Bible says, and expounding what's in there, really. So I do this consistently.

It's just to read the text, explain the text, and apply the text. So in this passage on Inspiration of Worship, the text for special consideration is

Deuteronomy 4, and it's an extended passage of, let's see, 40 verses.

And what I do in this exposition is draw 11 principles or truths out of that chapter that are pertinent to the inspiration of true and pure worship.

And so if I might rehearse them, God's redeeming work is fundamental to our inspiration to aspire and practice true and pure worship,

God's revealed will, God's gracious promise, God's hatred of idolatry,

God's public glory, God's compassion and concern for your children,

God's holy and spiritual nature, God's warning against backsliding,

God's grant of inestimable privileges, God's election of you to be

His holy people, and God's solitariness as object of ultimate devotion.

So all of these ideas are implicit in Deuteronomy 4, and we're bound to receive them because they are the teaching of God's Word.

We have another anonymous listener who says,

I am a member of a church that I love, and I agree with the vast majority of things that they teach, believe, and practice, but one thing that makes me uncomfortable on occasion that does not occur every single

Lord's Day, but it does occur from time to time. They will have a soloist either singing or performing an instrument, or a choir singing a song.

I cannot help but think, as beautiful as these things sound, I cannot help but think that they are entertainment.

Can your guest comment on this, because I know of no such practices in the New Testament worship.

Right. So all the churches are in some state or process of Reformation toward more pure worship.

There's no church on earth that offers worship without any sin or fault whatsoever.

And in the Protestant tradition, which I identify with, the marks of a true church have been stated to be the true preaching of the

Word of God, the faithful observance of the sacraments, that is, baptism in the Lord's Supper, and the exercise of church discipline.

Now, I would say, frankly, that I am in agreement with the concern of the caller.

However, I would say that we need to be careful in our

American Christian environment that we don't become sort of consumers of church ministry and worship so that we jump from church to church based on our own opinions about many different matters where sincere

Christians would disagree. So if a person like that is in the church like that, I don't think it's her calling to lead the church in Reformation.

That would be the calling, especially the elders of the church. I would counsel her to speak with them about her concern, and be meek and patient as well as she has a conversation with her elders, and hopefully the

Lord will use her as an instrument to the improvement that is the more scriptural practice of the church in that place.

But there's no perfect church, as they say, and if you find one, don't join it because you'd ruin it.

Yeah, I think that was Groucho Marx who said, I would never join any club that would have me as a member.

The true churches where Christ is loved and the Gospel is preached, all of them have all kinds of problems and issues in them.

But you know, we live in the United States of America, most of us probably listening here, and anybody can pop up a shingle and start a so -called church, and we tend to view the churches with way too little respect.

In other times and places, if you lived in a town, basically, you were part of that church, and that wasn't a selection like a menu that you could just go from church to church.

So it's really important to be committed to your own local church and love the brethren and be patient and long -suffering and endeavor to keep the unity of the

Spirit and the bond of peace and such. By the way, Anonymous, if you provide your full name and mailing address through an email, we will not announce those details.

We will have a copy of A Call to Pure Worship shipped to you, compliments of Pillar and Ground Publications, and also compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

We have, I was just looking at a question and it somehow has escaped my vision.

Oh, we have RJ in White Plains, New York, who says what have you done in the past when you are in the worship service who are doing things that are not according to your own understanding of the regulative principle?

If a song is being sung that makes you uncomfortable, or if music is being played and everyone else is standing and worshiping, what do you do?

And other kinds of things that may be going on, and you don't necessarily want people to think that you are following along with these things because it's violating your conscience.

Yes, that's difficult. This is one of the compelling reasons why churches should be careful to obey

Scripture in their worship and everything, because it's only when the

Christian community can see that what is preached and what is done has divine authority and sanction for it that everybody can say amen with all their hearts to the things that are being said and done.

If you can't in good conscience say amen or stand to participate, that's a difficult thing.

I wouldn't encourage you to throw your conscience out the window, but it's a difficult thing.

I remember being at a worship service at an Orthodox Presbyterian church.

It was probably in the 90s, and I'm not going to mention the name of the guest speaker, because I don't know how comfortable he would be by me mentioning this.

I'm not saying this as if he was doing anything wrong, but it was unusual. I noticed that the guest speaker, who no doubt 99 .999

% of our Reformed listeners would know who he is, but I noticed that when everyone was singing the hymns during the worship service, his mouth was very clearly seen behind the pastor before he ascended into the pulpit himself to preach.

He was behind the pastor, very clearly visible, and his mouth was moving in a completely different way than the words of the hymns, and it dawned on me,

I'll bet you he's an exclusive psalmist. And after the service was over, I said, Brother, I just got to ask you a question.

Are you an exclusive psalmist? He said, Yes, brother, I am. So I was right.

Do you think that that's a permissible way of getting around that kind of thing?

Because if you believe that non -canonical songs of praise are being sung in a worship service are illegitimate, as exclusive psalm singers do, would that be an appropriate way to get around that situation?

I think it's probably very commendable behavior. I have been attending for many years a pastor's conference that includes

Reformed Baptists and Presbyterians, and some in attendance, in fact, one of the preachers, regular preachers, has been an adherent to exclusive psalmody.

And this dear man, who's a teacher and mentor to me, just doesn't sing when there are hymns that aren't psalms.

And you know what? He's showing tolerance for brethren that have a different point of view, and no one

I know of would censure him for not singing, because he has a conscience as well.

He made the remark at one of our conferences where he was outnumbered by Baptists, saying he'd seen the book by T.

David Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Sing Hymns. I've interviewed

Dr. Gordon on that book. Yes, yes. He said, I'd like to call

Johnny and congratulate him. You know something?

In fact, when I introduced Dr. Gordon many years ago on my show to discuss that book,

I said, I want to let our exclusive psalm -singing audience know that this is not a book promoting your point of view.

Right, and this was, I'll tell you who it was that said this, Pastor Ted Donnelly from Northern Iowa.

Oh yeah, I've heard him preach at that very same church that I was talking about.

And the remark was made in front of everybody at the Pastors Conference at the Trinity Baptist Church of Montville, New Jersey.

Well, there are differences of opinion about these things among godly ministers, but there is a warmth of fellowship and mutual respect that allows for such differences to exist without dividing us.

By the way, and I don't mean any disrespect to our exclusive psalm -singing brothers and sisters, but the best argument

I have heard against it is that it prohibits you from singing praise to Jesus Christ by name.

Obviously, the psalms in reality before the incarnation of Christ were singing praise to Christ, but I'm speaking of specifically by name it prohibits you from singing praise to Christ.

So, I just thought I'd throw that in there. I thought that was a good argument against that practice. I was speaking with someone earlier today about this very subject, and some of your listeners may not know that Isaac Watts, the great hymnist, was rather controversial and scandalous in some ways in his day, because what he did was he took the psalms and paraphrased them to such an extent that he would include the name of Jesus in a psalter selection, but not a strict psalter rendering like they were accustomed to in the

Reformed tradition. And so, you know, it was a controversy because some objected to it, and others thought, well, if the psalm really is about Jesus, is it wrong to sing it as about Jesus?

Amen, and I agree with that position. We're going to our final break.

It's going to be more brief than the other breaks. If indeed you do have a question that you'd like to ask D. Scott Meadows on a call to pure worship, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

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Thank you. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen and we have had as our guest for the entire program today,

D. Scott Meadows to discuss his book, A Call to Pure Worship. And we have his friend in Kenya writing back.

I'm Moses from Eldoret City of Champions, Kenya. Thank you for answering my previous question.

Do you have any idea where the division in worship started?

Where people say it's time of praise, meaning singing quickly, then it's time of worship where people sing slowly.

Is this biblical in any way? I've never even heard of such a distinction or division.

Perhaps you have. Scott, I'm not familiar with this, because I know that even in the most conservative of Reformed churches, there will be some songs that are sung quicker and some that are sung slower.

But do you know what our guest, or should I say our listener in Kenya is referring to? No idea.

He's in a very different cultural situation, and even

I'm sure the Christian subculture there is different than the Christian subculture in the

United States. Well, one of the things that I have noticed, in fact

I have been at churches where my dear friend Dr. James R. White has preached at conferences, and one thing that makes him uncomfortable, just as much or if not more than it makes me uncomfortable, is that you will often hear, after the singing is completed, or at least the initial singing, or when the praise band is finished singing and playing their instruments, the pastor or someone else will get up to the podium and say that, now that the worship has concluded, we will hear from our guest speaker as if the preaching of the

Word is not worship. Isn't that a very wrong way of looking at worship?

Not only worship, but preaching? I believe it is. You know, in the biblical model of the

Church coming together to worship, the pinnacles of worship are the preaching of the

Word and the Lord's Supper. So they're not excluded from worship.

Those are great moments of worship in the Church and great means of grace to the hearers and partakers of the elements.

Well, Scott, I'd like you to summarize now what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners about a call to pure worship before we leave this program today.

I appreciate that, Chris. My goal in writing the book was not to adjudicate all disputes in the practical application of the regular principle at all, but rather to teach those unfamiliar with the idea of strictly biblical worship, what it is, and attempt to persuade them to be going to their

Bibles and seeking to know God's will for how He would be worshipped, and being content to do what

God directs us to do in His Word for His worship. Yes, and obviously we have to, whatever position we hold to, we have to prayerfully seek to be biblical, and we have to be prayerfully humble in our attitudes and not act as if we have reached perfection, and we shouldn't overreact to some of the differences either.

Obviously there are some things that are absolutely abhorrent and circus -like where we have to speak up even very sternly, but many times our disagreements over the elements of worship can be conducted with a lot more grace and a lot more patience and humility.

Absolutely. And you know, I take seriously that I have a special charge to lead the

Saints of Calvary Baptist Church of Exeter in public worship that is not my responsibility for all the other churches.

There are godly pastors in Christ's churches, and who am I to micromanage by any attempt of unnecessary particularity exactly what they do and how they do it.

So that's my spirit toward my fellow pastors is, I'm offering you broad counsel, but your church where you serve is not my charge particularly.

Our church is, so I can't avoid grappling with every practical matter when it comes to leading the church in worship there.

Amen. And if anybody wants to purchase this book, go to TrinityBookService .com

TrinityBookService .com and type in a call to pure worship in the search engine at the top left corner of the screen, or type in D .ScottMeadows

in the search engine, and this book will come up. Also, you can order all the books that we discuss on Iron Trip and Zion Radio from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com,

that's C for Cumberland V for Valley, BBS for Bible Book Service .com

CVBBS .com. Since they sponsor this program I always urge you to try to order through them as well.

I want to thank you so much, Scott, for doing such a remarkable, superb job stating your case today from your book,

A Call to Pure Worship. I look forward to your return to the program. I'm humbled and grateful,

Chris. I want to thank everybody who listened today and I want to thank especially those who took the time to write.

Make a note on your calendar that tomorrow we have Gary DeMar, President of American Vision on the program to discuss whether or not

Russia is actually a key player in Bible prophecy. You may be surprised to hear the answer.

But I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater