LBCF Chap 22: Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day

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Okay, we're picking up our study of the Confession of Faith with Chapter 22, which is the second chapter in Part 3 of Christian Liberty and Christian Living, okay?

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So Chapter 22 is of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day. All right, now this chapter is divided into five parts, eight paragraphs, and this chapter is more consistent with the

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Savoy Declaration. There's a couple of differences, one with the

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Westminster, so this is most consistent with the Savoy. The Savoy made some minor revisions from the

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Westminster Confession, and the only change of note from the Savoy to the

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London Baptist Confession is in Chapter, Paragraph 5, this phrase, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

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It replaces the words of psalms from both the Westminster Confession and the

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Savoy, and it's presumed that the reason they did that was to distance themselves from some of the

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Presbyterians and the Congregationalists who believed in exclusive psalmody, but we'll look at that a little bit when we get to Chapter 5, but I just wanted to bring your attention to it up front.

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All right, so Part 1 of the chapter, Paragraph 1a, is the

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Regulative Principle of Worship, and everyone should know that this is what we hold to, is the

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Regulative Principle of Worship, and what we see, in fact, even before we get into this, let me just say that the two major views within Reformed or Conservative Evangelicalism would be categorized as the

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Regulative Principle or the Puritan form of worship as opposed to the Anglican form of worship, which also is held by the

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Lutherans, et cetera. Now, there is a third view that's practiced today that our confession doesn't even deal with, and that is that anything goes, okay?

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I mean, we see that in churches today, that anything goes, all right? That's not even addressed by the confession because it wasn't really practiced back then, but the

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Anglican view is that everything is permitted in worship service unless it is prohibited by Scripture, all right?

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The Regulative Principle, and you'll see this, which is what we hold to, is the only thing that is permissible is that which is expressly permitted or expressly set down in Scripture, so if you don't have a biblical reference for what we do in the worship service, if we don't have it in the

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Scripture, the Reformed churches are not going to practice that. They would view that as a violation of the

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Regulative Principle, all right? So, now, here's the first paragraph, and what we see here, this is the general duty of worship first revealed by nature, okay?

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The light of nature shows that there is a God who has lordship and sovereignty over all.

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Now, we've been through that numerous times, even under the doctrine of God and all. There is nobody who doesn't believe in God.

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You can't walk out into this universe without seeing that there is a God. He is just, good, and does good unto all, and is therefore to be feared, loved, praised, called upon, trusted, and served with all the heart and all the soul and with all the might.

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That's the general statement of, this should be obvious to people even from nature, okay?

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However, paragraph 1b says, the specific regulation of worship revealed in Scripture, all right?

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But the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by God himself, all right?

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And this is where we come down with the regulative principle. God sets the rules for how he should be worshipped, and is 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

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Holy Scriptures. That's pretty clear, is it not? In other words, you have a general revelation, all right?

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The general revelation basically tells you that you ought to know that you should be worshipping the

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God who created all of this. But specific revelation tells you how he should be worshipped.

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And this is why without special revelation, i .e., the Word of God, people left to themselves will never come to worship

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God in spirit and in truth because they don't have the specific revelation. It's revealed in his

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Word, okay? And then again, it gets very, very specific.

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Under any visible reputations or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures, Holy Scriptures is our guide and alone, okay?

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And again, this is very consistent, this paragraph with both the

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Savoy and the Westminster. Part two of this chapter is paragraph two -way in regard to its object, all right?

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Now, religious worship is to be given to God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and to him alone, okay?

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So, this is where you can start to see again, we haven't talked about this in a while, some of the wording of this confession, the

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London Baptist and the Westminster and the Savoy is in direct opposition to what?

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Yes, to Roman Catholicism, all right? Because we find Rome authorizing worship to Mary, to saints.

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Now, obviously, they do make a distinction. They claim it's not worship, it's veneration, but it boils down to be the same, any way you cut it, all right?

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Not to angels, saints, or any other creatures, and then it adds here in regard to its mediation, and since the fall, not without a mediator, all right?

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Nor in the mediation of any other but Christ alone, all right?

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And again, this paragraph in particular is directly in opposition to what the theology of Rome would teach.

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Yes? Yes, I noticed they said, not to angels, saints, they don't add Mary's name, they were careful not to, but putting in about the mediation, that's in reference to Mary.

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That would exclude the doctrine that Mary is another mediatrix. I do not know.

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I would think that just, it's general enough that it would include, nor in mediation of any other but Christ, all right?

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To him alone, any other creatures, she would be included in that, too. I don't think there was anything specific why they wanted to eliminate her.

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And then part three, its constituent elements, okay? Firstly, its ordinary elements, and it spends two paragraphs on prayer, all right?

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It's interesting that they spend so much time on prayer, but we should not be surprised by that, because what did

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Christ call his temple? Should be a house of, meant to be a house of prayer, all right?

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Prayer is so essential to our worship that they give actually two paragraphs.

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It says, prayer with thanksgiving, being one part of natural worship, is by God required of all men, okay?

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But that it may be accepted, it is to be made in the name of the Son, by the help of the

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Spirit according to his will, with understanding, reverence, humility, fervency, faith, love, perseverance, and when with others in a known tongue.

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All right, now let's back up just a little bit and go through some of these. All right, firstly, with understanding.

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What does that mean? Yeah, in other words, this part of the confession makes it very clear that it is a cessationist doctrine, a cessationist document, all right?

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In other words, the practice of speaking in an unknown tongue is not contained within the way they frame this.

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So that all prayer should be with understanding, all right? With reverence,

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I mean, it's a shame that this has to even be in there, but it is because there are,

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I don't know if you've ever seen some worship services that just go crazy, all right?

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And, I mean, my wife actually went to, there was a famous speaker who was going to speak on a topic of homeschooling.

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This is going back over 30 years ago, and the church was on Rustic Road in Center Ridge, so I don't know if you remember which church that was.

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But anyway, she went there to hear this famous speaker, and they had this whole service, and it went on for, she was there for two hours, and they still hadn't gotten to the speaker, and she actually got afraid at one point and left because of the things that were going on, you know, just nuts, crazy stuff, all right?

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Humility, all right? One of the things that we've seen frequently, especially on televangelism, have you seen them demanding

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God do things? That's not the way we're to come before God.

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We're to come before Him with reverence, with humility. Fervency, yes. When we are praying, it shouldn't be, you know, rote, monotone.

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I mean, you're pleading with God, especially with some of the requests that we're pleading with God before.

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There should be emotion, you know? And I mean real emotion, not worked up, phony emotion, but,

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I mean, if we really understand that we are communicating with our Heavenly Father who loves us and has promised to answer our prayers that are asked in His name according to His will, there should be a fervency, okay?

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Faith, obviously. What does James say? You know, the prayer that's not offered in faith, what's that going to accomplish?

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Let that man expect what? Nothing, all right? Love, obviously.

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Perseverance, keep on praying. You know, Matthew, what is it,

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Matthew chapter 7 or 8? You know, ask, ask, knock, and, right?

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But that's what it really says. Keep knocking, keep asking, okay?

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And when with others in a known tongue, okay? And again, that's just the caveat there that would eliminate so much of what's going on in today's churches.

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So, you're saying when with others in a known tongue, so if someone's by himself or herself, they can speak in a known tongue?

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They still have to speak in understanding. That would be, in other words, if we're going to be praying together here and you can speak

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Norwegian, the language of heaven, then you're going to have to refrain from that and speak and pray in a tongue that everybody here can understand, all right?

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Yes? Could I ask, I was in a position one time, I had gone to a retreat, and this is going back 35 years ago, and we started praying, and there was a group of us, and the woman next to me started praying to Mary, and it was one of those things where you're holding the person's hand, and I don't do that anymore, but what do you do in a case like that?

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I would let go of her hand and flee. I'm just being honest with you.

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I don't want the lightning to come down and hit me by mistake. No, that's idolatrous.

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It's heathen praying, and so therefore, you should have nothing to do with that, and shame on them for putting you in that position, okay?

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All right, still talking about its ordinary elements. Paragraph four is also about prayer. Prayer is to be made for things lawful and for all sorts of men living.

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Well, that covers almost everybody here because we do have some odd sorts of people here, all right?

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Or that shall live hereafter. Why do you think they put that in there, who would live hereafter?

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Well, that's coming up here, not for the dead, but how about for those who shall live hereafter?

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In other words, future. We're allowed to pray for the future. Yes. Why could you pray for somebody who hasn't been born yet?

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Can you give me an example of when you would? I've done this. Go ahead.

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Yes. Pray for your grandchildren that aren't born yet.

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Yeah. And also, one thing that we've done, my wife and I, for years when our children were small, started praying for the spouse that God would bring to them, and they were not necessarily born yet.

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Those are godly prayers. And that's how Christ prayed. He said, I pray for my disciples and those who will listen to their teachings.

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Yes. Yeah. Sure. Sure. So that's a good prayer. This is not, but not for the dead.

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All right. In fact, you could argue that some of the dead are praying for you. No. Yes.

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Like those who are in heaven. All right. All right.

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Nor for those of whom it may be known that they have sinned, the sin unto death. This can raise some great discussions, but I don't want to get into too much now.

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This comes, where do we find this, the basis for that? The unpardonable sin, 1

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John. In 1 John, John says, you know, we should pray, but I'm not saying to pray for those who have committed the sin unto death.

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The unpardonable sin and exactly what that is and whatnot is still open for somewhat of a discussion, even though we've come to pretty much an understanding here.

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But the point is, you're not obligated to pray for somebody who has committed the unpardonable sin.

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Okay. And then moving along, we're still under ordinary elements.

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And now we get into the other elements. What are the other elements of worship? We've covered prayer in two paragraphs.

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All right. The reading of scriptures, obviously. Preaching and hearing of the word of God.

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Teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. We'll come back to this.

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That's the phrase that was added that's not in the Savoy or the Westminster. Singing with grace in our hearts to the

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Lord, as also the administration of baptism and the

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Lord's Supper. All right. Now, again, I want to remind you, in this class, we're not here to defend what's in the confession and go into a big exposition, because we'd be here for a couple of years if we were going to take it that way.

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The whole purpose of this class is to let you know what it is that we believe, what does this church hold to, and ask some, you know, we can answer some questions, but not get into where is all of this found in scripture.

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If you have a copy of the 1689 or you get it online, all the scripture proofs are in there where these phrases come from.

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All right. So I just wanted to let you know that. These are all parts of religious worship and to be performed in obedience to him.

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All right. And, again, with understanding, faith, reverence, godly fear, pretty much the same thing as we're looking at with prayer.

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All right. Then we come to the added phrase. You like that?

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Want to see it again? You have no idea how long it took me to figure that out.

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All right. There's that phrase. Remember, in the Savoy and in the

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Westminster, all it says is, and with psalms or of psalms.

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All right. And, again, that's where you have some of the churches, especially Reformed Presbyterians today and some of the others, hold to what they call exclusive psalmity.

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And that is you can only sing psalms. They wouldn't sing any hymns written by. So our hymn book would be like three -quarters of it would be unavailable for worship.

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The Reformed Baptists have never held that position. All right. Or if you do find one, he's kind of departing from what the confession says.

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All right. So I just wanted to point that out. This is where that would come into play. And then the other elements, solemn humiliation with fastings.

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These are things we have called for these on occasions, you know, special occasions,

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Thanksgiving. All right. And upon special occasions ought to be used in a holy and religious manner.

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In other words, fasting, Thanksgivings, and those things are not to be done all the time, but when they are should be done again in a holy and a religious manner.

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And there should be reasons for fastings just as there are reasons for feasting. Okay. All right.

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Now, part four goes to its appropriate locale. And firstly, it's described negatively.

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Neither prayer nor any other part of religious worship is now under the gospel tied to or made more acceptable by any place in which it is performed or towards which it is directed.

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Okay. You follow? In other words, this is getting away under the law.

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The temple was the directed place for worship. Question? Oh, I thought

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I saw a hand. Oh, yes, I see that hand. Okay. Okay.

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All right. So, in other words, if we decided one

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Sunday to have our worship service here, it's no less effective or effectual because we're not in what we call the sanctuary, which kind of gives a wrong impression.

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I mean, it's not wrong to call it a sanctuary. But if we think that that place is somewhat more holy than this place or our rented facilities over in Medford, that's kind of a wrong idea to have.

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All right. It's not the physical location that makes it acceptable. All right.

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And then define positively. But God is to be worshipped everywhere in spirit and in truth.

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All right. Now, again, be careful when you go through this. They're trying to cover a lot of information here.

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But God is to be worshipped everywhere in spirit and truth. We can worship anywhere.

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All right. As in private families daily, in secret by oneself.

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It's perfectly acceptable to worship God in that way. So more solemnly in the public assemblies.

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All right. In other words, the confession is not saying that you can worship privately or with your family in place of the public assembly.

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It's just saying that private worship, if you do that in your own living room, that's fine.

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You do it with your family. If you want to worship privately in your own prayer closet, your own bedroom, you alone, that's fine.

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That's effective worship. But not to take the place of the more solemn public assembly, which are not carelessly nor willfully to be neglected or forsaken when

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God by his word or providence calls thereunto. All right.

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So where does the church meet?

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Where is the holy place for the church to meet? Wherever the church gathers.

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Because we, and also, remember, the Holy Spirit dwells in each of us individually so that we can say that we are the temple.

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But then when we gather together, all right, as a local church body, that becomes the temple for worship in the new covenant.

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All right. Well, I hope it matches.

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All right. That's what it's so, in other words, so it's not the physical locality such as quorum.

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There's no Mecca, so to speak, for Christian worship.

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But that doesn't mean that you should neglect it or that the site in which you're gathering doesn't become holy.

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So like when we gather for Sunday morning worship, that is a holy place, not because of the building, but because we are there.

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You follow? Because again, mystically, you know, that whole place is being lifted up.

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We're right in the very presence of God with angelic visitors watching. Does everybody realize that when we have our worship service, not only are we worshiping

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God and mystically brought into his throne room, but there are angelic watchers who are watching and they're concerned with what's going on in our worship service.

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All right. So that's what I mean. Worship is very, very serious business.

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Okay. In fact, the modern church or the contemporary church,

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I guess we're postmodern now, the contemporary church has a, in general, has a wrong view of what worship is.

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The contemporary church views it this way, that who's ever on the stage, whether it be the pastor preaching or some worship team, whatever, they're like the players on a stage.

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Okay. And the audience, the congregation is like an audience and God is like the director or the prompter.

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Right. That's the wrong view. In biblical worship, the audience is an audience of one.

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That's God. God is the audience. The congregation are the players on the stage.

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You are the ones who are worshiping. And the pastor is the prompter who is leading you into the word and prayer so that you will respond in acceptable worship to God.

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So if you want to use that example. So that's why people have an idea.

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Well, I'm just sitting in the pews. No, you're not. You are the ones who are engaged in active worship. And what you do is what's going to make the worship acceptable to God.

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Okay. It's appointed day. It's institution.

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All right. As it is the law of nature that in general proportion of time by God's appointment be set apart for the worship of God.

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All right. Now notice first it's talking about the law of nature. Nature itself teaches this.

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So by his word in a positive moral and perpetual commandment binding all men in all ages, this phrase right here that it is a positive moral and perpetual commandment is extremely important for us because we have reformed churches who are teaching that the

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Sabbath day is no longer binding on us. All right. And this phrase right here is one of the things that blows that out of the water.

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All right. So it's a positive moral perpetual command binding all men in all ages. He has particularly appointed one day and seven for a

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Sabbath to be kept holy unto him, which from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ was the last day of the week.

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Right. No argument there. All right. And from the resurrection of Christ was changed into the first day of the week, which is called the

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Lord's day and is to be continued to the end of the world as the Christian Sabbath, the observation of the last day being abolished.

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I don't like abolished again. You know, I didn't like that word, but that's what they use. One of the things that we see.

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All right. Is if it is a positive moral and perpetual commandment, you can't you can't just abolish it.

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Can't just say it's no longer binding. It just it doesn't make any sense. I just want to see if I can pull up a quotation.

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If I might. All right.

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This is from Sam Waldron. He says some like Seventh -day Adventists have concluded from this premise.

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All right. That the day has not been changed and that the appointed day of worship is still the seventh day of the week.

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Others have concluded that since the day has changed, the Sabbath could not possibly be a moral law. All right.

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But and that's why this this is so important that we see this the positive moral perpetual commandment.

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The fact that it is. How can how can a creation ordinance be changed?

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That's the question I want to get to, because we're saying and you will see, I mean, the confession does say that the day to worship was changed.

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How can a creation ordinance be changed? Yes. There's a new creation.

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We are this. The new covenant is a new creation. That's what Christ has told us.

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Paul has told us the same thing. And so with the new creation comes a new

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Sabbath. The principle is the same is still one day in seven, a positive moral and perpetual commandment.

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All right. But in the new creation, we enter into the rest. All right.

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After the Sabbath has been fulfilled. Then it's sanctification.

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The Sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord. When men, after a due preparing of their hearts and ordering their common affairs of forehand, do not only observe a holy rest all day from their own works, words and thoughts about their worldly employment and recreations, but also taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of his worship and in the duties of necessity and mercy.

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Okay. That's what our confession says. Now, one of the things that you've seen that we try to do here is we start early on the

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Sabbath. We have a fellowship time with bagels and coffee before the

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Sunday school hour. Then we have Sunday school. Then we have the worship service. Then we have a fellowship time.

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And we now things had changed because of COVID, but we will begin again to have some afternoon services as well as going out onto the streets and evangelism.

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And again, all of these things are designed to help you keep the entire day.

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Holy. That's why we do the things that we do. But in the long run, it's up to the individual, you know, to uphold the terms of the covenant and the confession of faith.

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Questions. Going back.

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It said that we are not to pray for the dead as the Catholics do. But did you,

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I didn't quite hear it. Did you say the dead pray for us? Yeah, I was. Yeah, it was in the book of the revelation.

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You know, it has the saints under the altar, you know, praying, you know, that they would, that the blood of Christ would be avenged, et cetera.

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So it was just a little off. Meant to be. Well, in one sense, they are praying.

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If, if they're, we don't know exactly what's happening in the intermediate state at this point, but if they make any requests, who knows?

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And that's why I said a kind of tongue in cheek. But yes, when you said that there are angelic beings that are kind of like in the church service.

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Is that why in revelations, when it goes through the seven churches, it starts out and it says like, and to the angel of the church and by a

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Tira, is that why? No, the, the, the word angle us in, in the

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Greek can have several meanings. And one of them is a messenger. That's presumably the pastor, the pastor of the church.

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All right. But you do find. First Corinthians chapter 11, where Paul talks about, you know,

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Paul is very controversial. He talked about head coverings and in that one of his defenses of what he is saying is because of the angels and we know that.

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And there's other verses of scripture also, which indicate that they are there watching what is, what is going on in the worship service.

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I mean, there's an angelic watchers all over the place. But especially in the worship service.

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What's that? Any other questions?