June 21, 2022 Show with Dr. Scott Aniol on “Worship: Aberrant Movements in History that Removed the Bible as its God-Breathed Blueprint”

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 21st day of June 2022.

I'm thrilled to have a first -time guest today at the very enthusiastic recommendations of Josh Bice, who is founder of G3 Ministries, and also

Virgil Walker, who is involved very much in the orchestration of the

G3 Ministry conferences. And his name is Dr. Scott Anial, and he is an author, he is the executive vice president and editor -in -chief of G3 Ministries, and a professor of pastoral theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas.

Today, we are going to be addressing worship, aberrant movements in history that remove the

Bible as its God -breathed blueprint. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

Scott Anial. Yeah, thanks so much, Chris. So glad to be with you.

Am I pronouncing your last name correctly? Yeah, close. It's Anial. I tell people it's like Daniel without a

D. Okay. Or like the annual G3 conferences.

Exactly. There you go. Whatever it takes to remember the pronunciation. I've heard all sorts of pronunciations, so nothing surprises me.

Well, tell our listeners, for those of them that are unfamiliar with G3 Ministries, and if that's the case, they must be new listeners to this program because they are regularly featured on this program through interviews and through advertisements.

But in case we do have some new listeners, tell our listeners about G3 Ministries. Sure. Well, G3 Ministries started as G3 Conference about ten years ago here at Praise Mill Baptist Church in Douglasville, Georgia.

You mentioned Josh Bice a moment ago, he's the pastor here, and started the conference just out of a desire to have a solid theology conference that focused on the

Word of God, intended for it just to be really for the local community, but very quickly realized that there was a need and a thirst for a conference like this, so the first year sold out, filled the church, the next several years filled the church, and the conference continued to grow, moved to a large convention center in Atlanta, and just this past October, end of September, beginning of October, the conference had 6 ,500 people, and so it's really grown, focused on the sufficiency of Scripture and sound theology, and then about a year ago, about a year and a half ago,

Josh decided to expand the conference to be a full -blown ministry, to continue doing conferences, but also to start being a content -producing ministry as well, and so formed

G3 Ministries as a nonprofit, brought on Virgil Walker to be

Executive Director of Operations, basically to run all of the events, the conferences, the workshops, and those sorts of things, and then brought me on, just this past fall, to sort of help with the administrative aspects of the ministry going forward, and then also to really spearhead a lot of the content production, so now at G3Amen .org,

there's regular blog content that goes up every day, podcast audio, videos, we're publishing free curricula for churches to download that can be a help, and then we also launched

G3 Press, we're publishing books on various theological and practical

Christian topics, we launched a theological journal just last month, and so we're really starting to ramp up a lot of resources that we hope will be helpful for local churches and Christian families, certainly in this country and around the world.

Great, and if anybody wants more information about G3 Ministries, you can go to G3Min .org,

G -3 -M -I -N .org. Now tell us about the upcoming

G3 Regional Conference in Washington, D .C., it's the first regional conference

I will be attending, and I have been to at least six

G3 conferences, I believe this is my seventh, if I'm not mistaken, but this is the first regional conference, every conference

I've ever been to has been in Atlanta, and this is interesting because not only is this my first regional conference, it is the first G3 conference ever outside of Washington, D .C.

I mean, outside of Georgia, I understand. Right, that's right, yeah. So for the first nine years of the conference, it was an annual conference here in Georgia, and then when

Josh and the team decided to expand the ministry, they moved to making the national conference just an every -other -year event, so our last one was this past October, and the next national conference will be a year from this fall, here in Atlanta, and on the off years, we're doing two regional conferences, so just this past February, we had our first regional conference, although it was here in Douglasville at Praise Mill Baptist Church, it was the 10 -year anniversary, so it was fitting to sort of bring it back home to where it all began, and so this second regional conference now in the fall will be the first, as you mentioned, outside of Atlanta, and it will be in Washington, D .C.,

that area, on September 15 -17. It's being called

Just Thinking About the Bible, G3 Ministries, and the Just Thinking podcast with Daryl Harrison and, of course,

Virgil Walker. We have a very close relationship, our two ministries together, and so they're sort of operating with us on this conference,

Just Thinking About the Bible. It's a conference on the subject of biblical sufficiency, so Daryl and Virgil will both be speaking,

Josh Bice and I will both be speaking, and then also we have Steve Lawson and James White coming to speak as well on topics related to the authority and sufficiency of Scripture.

So it's September 15 -17. The first two days of the conference are at Emanuel Bible Church in Springfield, Virginia, just outside of D .C.,

and then the final day, Saturday, will be at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D .C.

A ticket for the museum is included in the conference registration. We'll have one presentation by a speaker at the

Museum of the Bible and then opportunities to see the museum, which is really a wealth of exhibits about the

Scriptures. And so this will be a wonderful conference. We're really looking forward to it and would love for as many as possible to attend to really focus our attention on this important doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture.

And once again, go to g3min .org for more details on the conference as well.

And you're going to have to excuse the radio commercials for the

G3 regional conference because it does not include my guest,

Scott Anuel, in the ad because the ad was recorded before Scott was added to the speaking roster.

So just so you know, when you're hearing the ads, you're going to hear all of the other speakers mentioned except for Scott has nothing to do with us thinking less of Scott than the other speakers.

It just happened to be according to the timing, I did not know that Scott was going to be added and I don't think anybody else knew for certain either until more recently.

And what are you specifically speaking on there? So I'm going to speak on the issue of the sufficiency of Scripture and the role of the

Holy Spirit. We're going to talk about worship today, that's really kind of my primary area of focus, it's what

I write a lot on, I taught for 10 years at Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth, courses on history and theology of worship.

And the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is one in which, I think especially in our day and age among broad evangelicalism and specifically

Baptists, we have a little bit of errant theology that has crept into our doctrine of the

Holy Spirit. We might claim to be cessationist, to believe that, for instance, the miraculous sign gifts have ceased and the

Word is sufficient, and yet we've been influenced in subtle ways by various outside theologies that have in some ways,

I think, shifted our thinking. And so I want to address the issue of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and really demonstrate from Scripture that the

Spirit works through the Word that He inspired. We want the Holy Spirit to work, we believe in the

Holy Spirit, we believe that He is active in the lives of believers and in converting unbelievers, but I think

Scripture is clear that in this age, the way that the Holy Spirit works is through the Word that He inspired.

And so I'm going to make that case, Lord willing, in my presentation. Great, I'm looking forward to it.

And as you know, on this program we have a tradition where every time we have a first -time guest, that guest gives a summary of his or her salvation story.

That would include the kind of religious atmosphere you were raised in, if any, and the providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to Himself and saved you.

So let's hear your story. Yeah, absolutely. So I grew up in Michigan, grew up in a strong Christian home, went to a

Christian day school, was in church literally a week after I was born, every

Sunday, every Wednesday, that sort of thing, and then being in a Christian school was literally at the church every day of the week almost.

So I had a lot of strong Christian influence on me, for which I am very thankful, protected me from a lot of negative influences that certainly could have impacted me.

But as is often the case with children who grow up in Christian homes, I had a very early profession of faith at a very young age, but looking back, it was clearly the sort of thing where I knew what was expected of me,

I knew what would please my parents, you know, I didn't want to go to hell, I wanted to escape that. And so I prayed a prayer and made that profession and was very quickly baptized, but it was not a true conversion, there was no true repentance of sin, it was simply sort of a cultural thing to do.

And again, being in a good Christian home and being in a Christian environment in school and regularly in church, you know,

I didn't get into a lot of trouble, I conformed externally from the outside.

Anyone looking at my life would have thought, this is a good young Christian man. But into my teenage years, my true spiritual condition began to evidence itself, which really was a grace.

You know, we talk about those teenage years as being years of rebellion and pushback against authority, and that's certainly true, and it's sort of natural as young people grow.

And for me, that was a blessing, because it began to reveal some things about the true condition of my heart, and my parents began to challenge me about where I was with the

Lord. And when I was about 13 years old, after a big confrontation with my parents in which they really pressed me about my walk with the

Lord and my conversion, I recognized that I hadn't truly repented of my sins. And so I came under conviction of the

Holy Spirit and believed that that's when He really did that work within my heart to awaken me to my need of salvation.

And so, you know, from that point on, externally, not a lot really changed, because I was already sort of living in kind of a

Christian environment and conforming to a standard. But certainly, I recognized internally that my motivation for things changed, my desire to battle sin, and I didn't become perfect by any stretch, but I began to hate my sin and want to please the

Lord and those sorts of things. And so in those remaining years at home and growing up in the environment there,

I began to really sense the sanctifying work of the Spirit through the Word, as well as giving me a desire to be involved in the study of the

Scripture and communicating Scripture to others in the context of local church ministry. And so those were some ways that the

Lord showed me the fruit of a change that had absolutely occurred internally because of that time of conversion.

So I'm really thankful for that, the way the Lord worked in my life during those years. Praise God, and when did you come to discover and embrace the doctrines of Sovereign Grace, also called

Reformed Theology, and nicknamed Calvinism? Yeah, so the church that we were in in sort of my middle school and high school years, our pastor, he was attending

Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, which is a Calvinistic seminary, and he himself was becoming more

Calvinistic. And so really during my most formative years, I watched him grow theologically and began to communicate these things.

And even, I mentioned I was in a Christian school, and the Bible teacher that I had in my high school years was also at the same seminary, so he taught the doctrines of grace.

And so I distinctly remember first encountering the doctrine of election in a class there, maybe in ninth, tenth grade, and at first bristling, but very quickly, within a day or two, just recognizing the truth of it.

And so I came to be really convinced of these things in my high school years, which again

I'm also thankful for, that I was formed in that way theologically at an early age, and it wasn't like many stories that you hear of people coming to the doctrines of grace later in life.

I came to embrace these truths very early, and so I'm thankful for that as well. Praise God.

Well, we have a theme ahead of us that I've already announced, but I'll repeat it.

I think it's a very important theme. Worship aberrant movements in history that remove the

Bible as its God -breathed blueprint. There has never been a period of history where the church was pristine.

The church has always been comprised of sinners, and we see even in the scriptures themselves the earliest disciples sinning and making errors and doing things the wrong way and having to be corrected.

But as far as a worship that has been dominated by using the

Bible as a God -breathed blueprint, where you see from the hymnody and even the orders of worship that have been revealed in the writings of various Christians throughout the centuries, where do you see a decline beginning from what some have called the regulative principle, where we as Christians only are involved in things that are commanded in the

New Testament or are provided by way of example?

And of course, some of those things that involve worship in the New Testament include old covenant things like the singing of psalms, but obviously some of those things have been completely fulfilled in Christ, and it would actually be wrong as the

Judaizers attempted to insist upon circumcision and so on, which made their gospel null and void according to the

Apostle Paul. But as far as the regulative principle, as far as the obvious meticulous and strict adherence to the scriptures as a blueprint for worship, when do you see this begin to decline?

Yeah, I mean, I think as you mentioned, it's sort of natural in the heart of man to move away from under the authority and sufficiency of the

Word. I often think of Calvin's famous statement that our hearts are idle factories.

We tend toward, because of our own depravity, to not want to trust in the sufficiency of the

Word. So this kind of thing does occur over and over and over again through the course of biblical history and then church history.

If we're talking about post -New Testament church history, I think there are two broad periods in which there is a drastic shift away from worship being regulated by the

Word to the degree that there needs to be a reformation of that biblical emphasis.

And the first would be during the Middle Ages. We think of the Middle Ages as a time in which theology became aberrant, what we now would call

Roman Catholic theology began to be developed, obviously leading up to the need for reformation in the 15th and 16th centuries.

And certainly the gospel was, the doctrine of justification was lost and so many other things.

But we often forget that it really all stems toward a distrust in the sufficient

Word. There's a reason that all of these heresies and aberrant theological positions crept into the church, and that is because of a lack of trust in the authority and sufficiency of the

Word. And this includes in worship. What you find happening in this period is the introduction of lots of creative, inventive practices in the context of worship that either don't have any biblical warrant whatsoever, or, as you mentioned a moment ago, there might have been an attempt to look to the

Old Testament as support for various practices that were introduced into the church without recognizing the ways that those things had been fulfilled in Christ and therefore had passed away.

And so it doesn't happen overnight. Very gradually during the Middle Ages, a lot of things began to enter into corporate worship that I would suggest, and the

Reformers, when they reacted against them, argued, were not commanded in the

Scriptures. So everything from some things that might look less offensive, like the lighting of incense or the lighting of candles or the crossing of oneself or some of these rituals and ceremonies, the processions, the priestly vestments, those might not seem so theologically aberrant, but they, again, were not to be found prescribed, for sure, for the

New Testament church. And then, of course, the extreme things that were clearly theologically aberrant, like the adding on of additional sacraments, and not only that, but ascribing gracious effects to them to the degree that it became meritorious.

Your activities in these worship elements would actually merit you grace from the

Lord and those sorts of things. Prayers to the saints, prayer to Mary, veneration of icons, all of these sorts of things.

So all of those are errors that crept in that the Reformers responded to, but, again, they all stem from not trusting in the sufficiency of the

Word to regulate how we worship. And so the Reformers came along, and they responded with the battle cry of sola scriptura, and at least in the

Reformed wing of the Reformation, maybe we can talk about this a little bit more in a moment, but this emphasis on what we now call the regulative principle, although it is interesting, even with someone like Luther, especially in the early years, he articulated things very similarly to how we would describe the regulative principle as well.

Maybe we can talk about that in a moment, but then the second big shift after the Reformation and a really strong recovery of the sufficiency of Scripture and the authority of Scripture in what we would call

Protestant circles now today, the second big shift away from the sufficiency of Scripture, I would suggest, occurred during 19th century

Revivalism and then on into the Holiness movement and then eventually

Pentecostalism. Really beginning a little bit in the rural camp meeting revivals in America, but becoming even more significantly problematic in the teaching and practice of Charles Finney, there was a distinct and purposeful move away from the trust in the sufficiency of the

Word as to what we do in corporate worship. Rather, Finney and then those after him, because of their theological belief that each person has within him or her dormant moral powers,

Finney called them, belief that we have within ourselves a spark of divinity that just needs to be waken up,

Finney argued that in order to wake up those dormant moral powers, we can't just do the same old things we've always done.

We can't just practice these things that the Church has always done because Scripture tells us to do these things.

No, we need to introduce into our worship what Finney called new measures because by introducing new things, we can shake people up, we can awaken those dormant moral powers, and we can move them to conversion and to spiritual revival.

And so that began another significant shift in the history of the Church in which churches began to purposely introduce creative, inventive measures in their corporate worship practices that go beyond what

Scripture has prescribed. So I would say those are the two big shifts that have occurred in Church history, both of which required a reformation.

One of those reformations happened, and the second one, in some circles, is in the process of happening, and that's,

I think, something that definitely needs to continue, especially among Reformed Christians, that we need to recover this doctrine, not just the doctrines of grace, as important as they are, but also this doctrine of the sufficiency of the

Word, regulating everything about what we do in our churches, including our worship practices.

Well, we have to go to our first commercial break right now, and if you would like to send in a question to Scott Anuel, send it to chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. As always, 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 in a church where you are uncomfortable because you are witnessing things happening that you believe violate the

Word of God that are coming into the worship of Christ during those services, and you don't want to identify yourself because you don't want everybody in your church to begin to attack you in some way.

Or perhaps you're even a pastor, and you're rethinking the way that worship is conducted in your own congregation, or you're having disagreements with your own fellow elders, or whatever the case is that would compel you to remain anonymous.

Please only remain anonymous if it is something that is indeed personal and private, and you don't want to identify yourself.

If it's a general question, please provide your first name, city and state, and country of residence, and don't go away.

We're going to be right back with Scott Anuel and our discussion on worship right after these messages from our sponsors.

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This is Chris Sorensen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the entire program is

Scott Annual, who is an author, executive vice president, and editor -in -chief of G3 Ministries and professor of pastoral theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas.

In fact, I should mention before I forget to that the founder and president of that fine institution is going to be on my program this week.

In fact, he's going to be on tomorrow. Jeff Johnson. So that will be

Wednesday, June 22nd. Make sure that you listen in to Jeff Johnson on the program.

And in fact, we have to settle on a topic because I don't think Jeff and I picked one yet. But we are addressing, as I said earlier, worship, aberrant movements in history that remove the

Bible as its God -breathed blueprint. And our email address is chrissorensen at gmail .com,

chrissorensen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state and country of residence. And before I go to any listener questions,

I want to go back to something that you said before the break. You said that you wanted to address some of Luther's comments on worship because it is interesting, out of the reformers, he seemed to be, according to my knowledge, the least committed and faithful to the regulative principle, if at all.

He seemed to want to carry on some things that the

Church of Rome is famous for, such as the icons and the statues.

Not that he would believe in venerating them, but he didn't seem to. He was very opposed to the iconoclast movement, the group that was seeking to destroy all those things and remove them from houses of worship.

But if you could continue with your greater level of expertise on Luther than I have.

What's interesting, Luther, you can sort of hear him thinking out loud through the course of his writings.

Calvin sort of came fully theologically formed. At a very young age, he knew what he believed, he wrote it down, and he revises the

Institutes over time, but very little. Luther, you really see a progression of thought.

What I think is fascinating is, from about 1517 to 1524 or so, those early years of the

Reformation, he writes a number of treatises about worship. One of them is called the

Babylonian Captivity of the Church, another one is called the Misuse of the Mass, and he really sounds like Calvin.

He's saying things like, we ought to only do and worship what has been prescribed for us in the

Holy Scriptures, and language like that, which sounds like Zwingli, it sounds like Luther, it sounds like Calvin, it sounds like those who would later be much more well -known for what we call the

Regulative Principle. But over time, Luther does begin to shift, he does begin to soften his perspective on that.

What's interesting is, you mentioned correctly that he certainly is not in favor of the veneration of icons or those sorts of things that the

Roman Catholic Church had introduced that were clearly in contradiction to the

Scriptures. But for things that had come into practice for which there was neither a prohibition nor a prescription, over time

Luther begins to soften his perspective. He calls those things adiaphora, which is simply a

Greek word that means indifferent things. He says these practices are not, like the

Roman Catholic Church argues, meritorious, they don't give us any special grace, they're indifferent.

And Calvin agrees with Luther that they're indifferent. He says, yes, they are adiaphora.

Where they differ is what we ought to do with adiaphora. Calvin says, if it's adiaphora, meaning it's indifferent because it's not been prescribed in Scripture, then we ought not to do it because we need to trust that God has given us the sufficient word and God has the prerogative to determine how he wants to be worshipped, and so we ought not add any additional practices.

Over time, Luther, and it's really a pastoral spirit that leads him to this,

I still think in error, but I understand his heart, he would later, after about 1525 or so, he would start to say things like, if this particular practice has not been prescribed, but it would be hard for the congregation to get rid of it, for their sake, you can continue to do it if you'd like to.

He would say, you don't have to, because it's not been prescribed, and we certainly don't want to do the things that are contrary to the

Scriptures, that are actually heretical, but things like priestly vestments, or the lighting of candles, or some level of icons just for teaching purposes, not for veneration,

Luther began to, over time, allow them. And it really was

Lutheran theologians and leaders after Luther who really then pressed that point.

He kind of waffles really through the entirety of his life, but Philip Melanchthon and others who come after him, who begin to sort of formulate some of the confessional statements for the

Orthodox Lutheranism, they then put in writing, these things are the opera, you can continue to do them if you'd like, and so now we look back at what happened during that period, and we sort of describe that as the normative principle of worship in contrast to a regulative principle.

Now, unless you want to continue the thread of the 16th century, or even the 17th,

I will leap forward 300 years to Finney, who you also mentioned.

And one of the glaring additions to a worship service that I believe was the product of Finney were what has been called the altar calls.

I believe they were originally called the anxious bench, but became known as the altar calls.

It's quite fascinating that the vast majority of my very dear friends in the independent fundamentalist

Baptist movement have altar calls, but they don't have an altar. So this has become one of the reasons, it's one of the most disturbing of the innovations into the worship service that are not in the

Scripture, is that they have become treated like a third ordinance in the church.

If you do not conduct these altar calls, you are considered a liberal, you are considered someone who does not care about the lost, you don't believe in the need of evangelizing.

I can recall having quite a number of conversations with non -Reformed friends or acquaintances who have visited the churches where I have been a member over the years, and they'll say to me afterwards,

I can't believe your pastor blew it. He preached a great sermon, and right at that point, at the end, he should have made that altar call because he would have had them in the palm of their hands, and he blew it.

He didn't do the altar call. I can't believe it. You hear these reactions, and you can understand, if someone has had this as a part of their church life, sometimes from infancy or as long as they've been a born -again believer, you can see how that would immediately jump out as being alarmingly absent.

But if you could pick up where I left off there. Yeah, no, absolutely. Finney didn't invent the altar call.

They began to appear during the camp meeting revivals a little earlier, but he certainly popularized them.

And he had theological reasons for doing so, and this is what

I want to communicate to people like you were talking about who demand we've got to have this, and who even use that kind of language.

You reach this emotional moment, and you've got to take advantage of that, and if you lose that, then you lose the power of the moment.

Really, that encapsulates the underlying theology that Finney had himself and was perpetuating through these practices, these new measures that he was introducing, including the altar call.

I mentioned earlier, Finney did not believe in human depravity. He believed that every person had within them natural abilities, that they needed in order to obey

God perfectly, in order to come to Christ. And what he argued is all the sinner needs, he said, is to be induced to use these powers and attributes as he ought.

So that was his underlying theology. We just have to do things in order to get people to the point where they can exercise their own powers and attributes.

And that led him to this really sort of pragmatic philosophy of ministry.

We need to use the appropriate means in order to awaken that excitement, in order to move people emotionally so that they will be awakened to use their natural abilities.

And that's reflected in some of the responses, like you mentioned, when people are upset that churches don't use the altar call.

They use that language. And it really betrays a theology in which we, again, are not trusting the sufficiency of the word.

We're really not even trusting the sufficiency of the Spirit of God to do the work that he's promised to do through the preached word and through the regular means of grace.

It's really, I think, a burden upon the preacher, that it's up to the preacher to get people down the aisle, to get people to make a decision.

And I've been in services, like you were talking about, where you can tell the preacher feels that weight.

And if people are not walking down the aisle, if there's not a lot of things happening, the preacher feels guilty.

He feels like he's failed. He feels like he's not achieved what he was supposed to do, when really it is very liberating to know that God has commanded us to preach the word.

We preach it with urgency. We call people to repentance. We call people to decision.

Absolutely, whenever the word is preached, people ought to respond in some way.

But it's not the preacher's job then to do the actual moving of hearts.

That's the work of the Holy Spirit. We must urgently preach the word and then trust that his word will not return void.

And that doesn't mean that there will always be some sort of exciting or observable movement of the

Holy Spirit in a service. Sometimes the Holy Spirit of God moves quietly and in slow, progressive ways of sanctification in a person's heart.

We simply need to be faithful. And I think that's liberating to know that if we do what God has commanded us to do as preachers, and all of us as believers, if we faithfully share the sufficient word, if we faithfully share the gospel, and then we hand it over to the

Lord to do the actual work of conversion and sanctification, that's the proper biblical place for our role and then

God's role in all of this. And again, it really comes back to trusting what

God has given us. And Finney was very quick to say that he really didn't trust in what

God had given us. He preached a sermon called The Tradition of the Elders in which he talked about the fact that we need to get rid of all this tradition that we've inherited from Scripture, and we need to introduce these new things.

He was even so bold to say things like, you know, Jesus and his apostles had miracles to awaken people's dormant moral powers.

And so we need to do things, you know, in our day and age, in our cultural context, that will awaken people as well.

But they were all, you know, things that went beyond Scripture, including what's probably the most well -known new measure, and that is the altar call.

Well, we have to go to our midway break now. If anybody has a question for Scott Anuel, please email us at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name, at least your city and state, and your country of residence.

I hope that those who have submitted questions already will be patient with us. We'll get to as many of your questions as we possibly can before the end of the program.

Please also be patient with us as we take the longer -than -normal break in the middle of the show, as we always do, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle because the FCC requires of them to localize

Iron Trump and Zion Radio geographically to Lake City, Florida, and they do that with their public service announcements and other local things.

We simultaneously air our globally heard commercials, so use this time wisely.

Please respond to as many of our advertisers as you can. At the very least, respond to them by thanking them for sponsoring this program because we absolutely need our advertisers to exist, and if you love this show, thank them for sponsoring this show and keeping us on the air.

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Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages with more of Scott Annual. Attention all men in ministry leadership.

You're all invited to my friend Chris Arnson's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon, Thursday, September 22nd, 11 a .m.

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scroll down to support, click that, and donate instantly with a debit or credit card. If you are not a member of a biblically faithful Christ -honoring church, no matter where on the planet

Earth you live, I may be able to help you find a church, just as I have done today with a listener in India, Indira, who is moving to Munich, Germany.

I found her two churches that are biblically faithful churches from which she may choose in Munich, Germany, and I hope that she visits either or both of them.

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Earth, send me an e -mail to chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the e -mail address where you can send in a question to Scott Anuel in our discussion today on biblical worship.

And we do have a very faithful listener in our audience. In fact, I see him at every

G3 conference, Scott. His name is Grady from Asheboro, North Carolina.

And he says, Greetings, brothers. I know some fellowships that have communion every

Sunday and some a lot less. How should our elders decide the frequency of communion?

Very good question. And I know that there seems to be, and I happen to be personally happy about this, very happy, that there seems to be on the rise more and more

Reformed people who want to have a weekly observance of the Lord's Supper.

But give us your thoughts on this. Yeah, excellent, excellent question. And let me just put a plug here to both

Josh Bice and I have blogged on this very topic recently at g3men .org.

So I would encourage you to check out those articles. If you just go there and use the search box and search for the

Lord's Table, you'll find those articles. Because actually Praise Mill Baptist Church here in Douglasville just started observing the table weekly in January.

Praise God. Yeah, we're a part of this church as well. I would say it is not biblically mandated that a church practice it.

A church is not in sin if a church does not practice it weekly. However, a couple things.

Number one, it seems very clear that the early church in the New Testament period and shortly thereafter did practice it every time they gathered.

It was the central element, or actually the climactic element of the service.

Every element of worship is important. The preaching is sort of the central element of the service. But the climax, what everything is moving toward, is the table.

And unfortunately, because of the abuses theologically of the Lord's Table that occurred during the

Middle Ages, which I talked about earlier, Protestant churches after the

Reformation and beyond, I think overreacted in some cases by minimizing the table because of the abuses.

We can correct the errors without minimizing the table. The table was prescribed by Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Paul reiterated that prescription in 1 Corinthians chapter 11. And if we understand the nature of what we're doing in our corporate worship each week on the

Lord's Day, we are renewing ourselves in our covenant relationship with God through Christ in the gospel.

That's what we're doing when we gather. And the way that God has given us to picture that beautifully is in the

Lord's Supper. And so there are many reasons. There are many benefits to observing the

Lord's Supper weekly. There are many sanctifying benefits. There are many evangelistic benefits.

There are so many benefits to celebrating the table weekly, which both Josh and I have recently blogged about, that I would strongly encourage elders to consider it.

One of the objections I often hear is that if we observe the table weekly, it will become sort of routine.

And actually, that was the topic of my blog post a couple weeks ago. And what I argue is that's actually a good thing.

We want it to become so routine that it shapes and forms who we are as Christians redeemed by the shed blood and broken body of our

Savior. And so it's a good thing. We would never say that preaching weekly becomes routine or singing weekly becomes routine, and that's a bad thing.

No, that's a good thing, that it becomes ingrained in us to the degree that if we miss it, then it's significant.

It's like eating around your family table. You take it for granted, but if you're away from home and you miss your family meal, then that's something significant, and that should be the same when it comes to the

Lord's Supper. So, again, I wouldn't say a church is in sin if they don't observe it weekly, but I would urge churches to consider doing it because that seems to be the biblical model, and there are many spiritual benefits that come when a church observes the table weekly.

And it's interesting that there are some primitive Baptists who only worship once a month, that is, in regard to their corporate worship.

Not all of them, but there are some that do that, and I don't know if it's because they're trying to make the worship service more special or not, but if you want to continue that logic, you would do something like that, wouldn't you?

Yeah, you would. But the point I make in my piece is that it's a good thing when something becomes so routine that many of the things that we really value most are the things that we give our attention to, we do them over and over again, and to a certain degree, they become routine, but in becoming routine, they form habits within us that affect our lives in ways that sometimes we don't even recognize.

And I think that does happen in the table. I've recognized that being here at Praise Mill where we celebrate the table weekly, and if I'm away at another church or for whatever reason, if I'm not able to be here,

I miss it. It's significant because it has become so centrally important to what we do each week on the

Lord's Day. Now, you mentioned that there was an overreaction by some during and after the

Reformation to downplay the Lord's Supper because of the sacerdotalism that existed and exists even now in Rome.

Right. But wasn't it true that Calvin actually was pushing for a weekly observance, if not even more frequently, because Rome at the time, was not

Rome only having their Mass once a year or something as infrequent as that?

Yeah, so Rome celebrated the Mass regularly, even daily, but they didn't allow the people to partake except for once a year.

The priests really would, and this is the sacerdotalism that you spoke of, the priests really would worship on behalf of the people.

The people were just mere spectators, and maybe once a year they would allow the people to partake, and even then they would only allow them to eat the bread, and the priests would sort of carefully put it in the mouth of the worshippers so that the dirty, rotten sinner wouldn't get his filthy hands on the body of Christ.

And they wouldn't, they withheld the cup because they were afraid that some of the blood of Jesus might accidentally sprinkle on the beard of this filthy sinner.

And so all of the Reformers reacted against that for sure, and said, no, we ought to welcome all the people to the table, all believers to the table, and we cannot withhold the cup from the laity.

But Zwingli was the most reactionary. He advocated for only observing the table once a year in reaction against the

Roman Catholic Church. And what we have to remember is that Geneva, where John Calvin pastored for most of his ministry, was already

Reformed as part of the Swiss Reformation of Zwingli by the time that he got there.

And another emphasis of Zwingli is he advocated really for the union of church and state in those

Swiss cities, like Zwingli was in Zurich. He argued that the state ought to enforce the

Reforms. And so by the time Calvin got to Geneva, the city council of Geneva was not only very much influenced by Zwingli, but also had a lot of control over the church in Geneva.

So you're exactly right. In Geneva, the city council would not allow

Calvin to celebrate the table weekly. But Calvin, for the entirety of his ministry, argued that the table should be celebrated weekly.

And what's interesting, something that we often forget or maybe don't even know, Calvin wasn't even allowed to be a citizen of Geneva until toward the end of his life.

He really battled against the city council for most of his ministry, trying to push forward some of these

Reforms. And he, of course, was very successful in a lot of things. But one of the things he never was able to implement was weekly communion, even though he absolutely wanted to.

Great. We have an anonymous listener who asks a question also about the

Lord's table. The anonymous listener says, Some of my friends who are pastors are moving from grape juice as the element in the

Lord's Supper to fermented wine. I am wondering if this is problematic for members who might have had in the past drinking problems, and if this might spark a return to habitual drunkenness and addiction to this substance.

What are your thoughts on the use of fermented wine? Does the New Testament demand either the fermented wine or the unfermented grape juice?

Yeah, this is a very good and, I think, practical question. What we need to ask about the issue of the fruit of the vine in the

Lord's table is what elements of that beverage are necessary for the symbolism.

I would argue that the fact that it's red, obviously, helping to symbolize the blood, and even that it is the fruit of the vine, that it is the juice from grapes, would be part of what has been commanded for us.

Is there something about the fermentation, about the intoxicating qualities of fermented wine, that are necessary for the symbolism of the wine in the

Lord's table? I would argue no, there's nothing about the fermentation that is necessary in the symbolism of the cup.

So I would suggest no, there is no prescription, there is no mandate that we have to use fermented wine in the

Lord's Supper. I would also note that grape juice, although our modern grape juice,

Welch's grape juice, did not exist in the first century, right? However, that doesn't mean that the beverage, the wine that Jesus and his apostles drank at the

Last Supper, was a heavily intoxicated beverage.

It almost certainly did not have anywhere near the alcoholic content of modern wines, which require modern winemaking techniques in order to get that level of intoxication.

And even in the first century, although there certainly wasn't Welch's grape juice, there were ways to bring down the intoxicating properties of wine so that it wouldn't be a problem for people drinking the beverage.

And because of the warnings in Scripture, and even the prohibition in Proverbs, do not look upon the cup when it is red, it seems to me clear that Jesus and his apostles and Christians in the first century would have done whatever they could in that cultural context to diminish the negative effects of the wine that would have caused drunkenness, which is clearly forbidden in the

New Testament. And so I am of the personal opinion that it is a service to weaker brethren within the congregation, to those for whom it would be a challenge, who may fall into drunkenness, who maybe have a history or a problem.

It is a service to them not to have intoxicating beverages, lest it be a stumbling block to them.

Again, I think this is a sticky issue, and it's not real clear in black and white, but I think wisdom would lead to that position.

And at very least, I don't think we can say, you have to have intoxicating fermented wine in order to be biblical.

I don't think that's the case, biblically speaking. And therefore, if you know of people in your congregation who have had drinking problems, never allow them to have seconds, thirds, and fourths during the

Lord's supper. I can say in regard to that, just from personal experience, and my personal experience does not dictate how other people react to these things, but I had a very serious drinking problem, one that even required church discipline over a decade ago.

And I have never had a drop of alcohol for recreational purposes since leaving a

Christian rehabilitation ministry in North Carolina, Hebron Colony Ministries, which

I sing the praises about this ministry every time I get the opportunity. But I've never had a recreational drop of alcohol since leaving there over a decade ago.

But on a couple of occasions, I've been at churches where they have had fermented wine in their

Lord's Supper, and the amount is so small, first of all. It never triggered anything in me personally, and I think some of it has to do with not only the tiny amount that you're drinking, but it's also the purpose in your mind why you are drinking it.

You're not sitting down to have a recreational beverage with friends and so on.

You're specifically doing it because you're partaking in the symbol for the blood of Christ.

So that's just my two cents. But you know what is interesting to me? I'm wondering why the churches or many churches that have switched to fermented wine are not using unleavened bread in the

Lord's Table. To me, it seems that the unleavened aspect of the bread, which was used at the

Last Supper because it was a Passover meal, that would seem to have great significance.

Am I off base here? Yeah, no, I think you're right. You'd have to be consistent in that.

When it comes to the leaven, certainly the unleavened bread was necessary for the symbolism of Passover.

I don't see a necessity of unleavened bread as a symbolism for the

Lord's Supper, which is, although it was, obviously there's a relationship between the two, it is a new ordinance for the

Church. I mean, you can see symbolism of leaven and sin and things.

You could maybe stretch that. But in terms of representing the body of Christ for the

Lord's Supper, I wouldn't see a necessity of bread being unleavened.

But I think you're right. If someone's going to press the point that, well, Jesus drank intoxicating fermented wine, therefore we must, then they also should say the same about the unleavened bread.

Yeah, just one more comment, too. You joked about seconds or thirds. What's interesting, we talked a moment ago about the medieval practice of withholding the cup from the laity, and that led to a lot of drunkenness among Roman Catholic priests because they ended up having to drink the whole thing themselves because the people didn't drink it.

And they didn't want to waste any of the blood of Christ, which they believed had actually transubstantiated into the literal blood of Christ.

And so that caused a lot of problems for Roman Catholic priests. Well, I was an altar boy because I was

Roman Catholic before converting, and I have witnessed at least one priest who was habitually, at least at some level, intoxicated during the

Masses where I served as an altar boy because he had more than one Mass he was officiating at and drinking,

I think, quite a lot of wine because of that. But I don't want to, even though I think the

Mass is an idolatrous blasphemy, I don't want to try to insinuate that most priests are becoming intoxicated at that idolatrous ritual.

Well, let's move forward to other aspects of worship that trouble you.

One of the greatest issues that divides churches, that even has become a litmus test as to where a person worships, the church that they choose to become a member, it often has involved how professional and beautiful the music is, how much the music appeals to their personal tastes, and so on and so on.

And you have very often churches falling into the sin of entertainment with the music they are using rather than worshiping

God, even if they may think that they are worshiping God in purity.

Very often entertainment is taking place. If you could, give us your position on how music, in what ways music or people's choice of how music is conducted in a worship service have failed the regulative principle litmus test.

Yeah, absolutely. So what is interesting, and I think instructive, is that these same two eras that we've been talking about in which the sufficiency and authority of the word have been minimized in favor of new inventive sorts of worship practices, in both of those cases we see a lot of similarities in the kinds of errors that then spiral off when people don't trust the sufficiency of the word.

So in other words, in both the medieval Roman Catholic problems that developed as well as in 19th century revivalism, which moved then later in the 20th century into Pentecostalism, is this sort of experience of the senses being the center of what happens in a worship service.

So if you think about medieval Roman Catholic worship, and certainly even Roman Catholic worship to this day, you think about the ceremony and the pomp and the smells and the bells and all of these things that were meant to give the worshipers a very tangible physical sense of the presence of God, which is exactly theologically how they interpreted what was happening.

And they would explain it either in terms of heaven is coming down to us as we worship, or through these sacramental experiences we are being ushered into the presence of God in the heavenlies.

And they would even have icons and various paintings and decorations within the sanctuary that were meant to conjure up images of heavenly worship because they literally believed, and again

Roman Catholic worship to this day literally teaches that these sacramental experiences are giving us the presence of God in a sort of tangible sense.

Well, what happens later, especially in the Pentecostal movement of the 20th century, is a very similar thing taking place.

We don't often associate worship during the Middle Ages with worship of Pentecostalism, but really they're falling into the same sorts of errors.

Pentecostalism has the same theology where the goal of the worship service is to usher us into the manifest presence of God.

And they use the same sort of language, either heaven is coming down to us, or we are being ushered into the heavenly worship.

But instead of the sacramental practices of the

Eucharist or some of these Roman Catholic errors that crept in the Middle Ages, what

Pentecostalism ties the experience to is a certain kind of emotional music.

And they even call it a sacrament. They say that music is a sacrament through which we come to tangibly experience the presence of God.

Wow, I never heard that. The presence of God is this sort of emotional feeling that we have that they then interpret to be

God's manifest presence. You know, it's interesting that you say that because when

I first began exploring churches outside of Roman Catholicism where I was raised,

I think that the majority of churches that I visited were

Charismatic and Pentecostal, other than the Church of Christ was a fairly regular visit.

But I was also visiting Charismatic and Pentecostal churches. And back in the 80s when this was happening, one thing that you could count on with a

Pentecostal church, especially if it was a denominational Pentecostal church rather than a

Charismatic church, you could count on them being very opposed to Roman Catholicism, viewing the church as false and warning those in the pews not to visit

Roman Catholic churches and so on. Today, I think that's almost vanished.

I have known even personally Pentecostal and Charismatic ministers who have totally adopted the modern ecumenical movement with Roman Catholic priests being involved in certain celebrations and ceremonies and very baffling.

Yeah, absolutely. It really stems from very similar errors, and that is tying spiritual experience necessarily to something physical and tangible.

And interestingly, what has come to happen in modern contemporary worship, and by the way, modern contemporary worship is at its core rooted in Charismatic theology, what has happened is sort of a new sacerdotalism.

Right, so sacerdotalism is the idea that a priest up in front worships on behalf of the people, the people just are spectators, but they glean benefits from the worship that's taking place up front.

In fact, could you pick up on sacerdotalism when we return from our final break, which is a lot more brief? It's going to be a lot more brief.

The break is going to be a lot more brief, folks. So if you have a question, send it in immediately to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Welcome back. And Scott Anuel, you were talking about sacerdotalism before the break, and if you could continue that thread.

Yeah, absolutely. So the era of sacerdotalism that grew in the

Middle Ages where the priest is worshiping on behalf of the people, the people are just spectators sort of getting some of the grace ironically has repeated itself in much of contemporary worship where the worship is happening on the stage with the musicians the people are kind of maybe singing along, basically observing as spectators and hoping to get some of the benefits and experiencing the sort of sacramental presence of God in the service.

And so really a lot of the same errors have occurred and again the solution is trust in the sufficient word and a recognition that yes, we are when we worship we are joining with the angels in heaven we are ascending into the heavenly temple through Christ but that is a spiritual experience right now that is not a physical reality until Christ comes again and so while we will have physical feelings and we do physical things that's all good where the body is not bad and emotions not bad none of these things define the essence of what we're doing and certainly none of these things are the essence of the presence of God.

We have another anonymous listener who says I've become more and more uncomfortable with the inclusion of choirs and special praise bands providing the music at worship services where I am and I was wondering if this in your opinion is a violation of what the

New Testament commands in regard to worship. I do love attending concerts and other things that are not a part of the corporate gathered worship services but when they are existing in a worship service

I always feel very uncomfortable as if a scripture teaching is being violated on worship.

Yeah, that's a good question and it's really related to what I was just talking about. I think that this individual is correct that in many cases the musical performance that's taking place on the stage is really in place of the active participation of the congregation it really becomes performance, it becomes entertainment or it becomes the worship, quote unquote, worship leaders who are actually doing the worship on behalf of the people.

So I think that that is definitely something to be aware of and to be concerned about.

Having said that, there is a way for gifted musicians to use their gifts to support the active participation of the congregation.

So I'm a musician myself, I appreciate those who are well trained in music but there's a fine line between using musical giftedness to support congregational singing, to support the active participation of the congregation on the one hand or flipping into a performance mentality and that's what we need to be careful of.

Even something like a choir can be used to help to support congregational singing, to even teach the congregation new hymns.

That can be done in such a way that will actually aid the active participation of the congregation but when the choir becomes simply a performance for its own sake then we're moving into that sacerdotalism that I spoke of a moment ago.

Well, I'd like you to have several minutes of uninterrupted time where you can summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today about this subject before we go off the air.

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate having the opportunity to talk about this. I'm very burdened about a need for a modern

Reformation in worship particularly among churches that consider themselves

Reformed. I think we've seen a lot of progress in terms of reforming the doctrines of grace and recovering those important doctrines in emphasizing the centrality of the glory of God and the sovereignty of God.

We've even seen a wonderful Reformation in ecclesiology returning to biblical practices when it comes to many aspects of how we govern churches.

But it seems to me like worship is kind of one of those last areas that has yet to be

Reformed in many respects where we sort of have fallen into the trap of thinking that how we worship is neutral.

As long as we are worshiping the right God and we're doing so with a sincere heart then it really doesn't matter how we worship.

When in matter of fact, the Scriptures teach something entirely different. Yes, absolutely, our hearts are central.

We must have sincere hearts and we must have a focus on God and His glory. But God also places a high premium on how

He is to be worshipped. And we see examples in both the Old and New Testaments of God rejecting worship, even worship done with the right motivation if it is not relying on what

God has prescribed. And so recovering this emphasis on the authority and sufficiency of the

Word not just in our theology and not just in terms of obedience in holy living but also in our worship is something that I believe desperately needs to be recovered.

And it's an uphill battle because of the many, many years of influence upon the evangelical church today by so many things that we've talked about including revivalism and Pentecostalism but even just our modern post -enlightenment secular society has impacted and influenced the way that we think about so many things that we might not even recognize.

And so a lot of my burden and a lot of things that I write and books that I write and podcasts and blog posts and all of that is to try to help to return us to the

Scriptures. What does the Bible say? How should we be thinking about the nature of our relationship with God through Christ and the nature of our worship daily and on the

Lord's Day corporately as churches? Let's return to the Bible. Let's return to the simplicity of the

Word and let's trust that the Holy Spirit is going to use the Word that He has inspired to form and to shape us and to guide us in our worship.

That's really my burden and that's what I pray will happen in many of our churches as we seek to be more reliant on Scripture.

Now there are some, I've heard folks, Roman Catholics, some

Anglicans who will actually use

Scripture to give a seal of approval on things that they do in a worship service that we would find abhorrent.

They will say, well, look, there was incense in the Old Testament, so what are you so upset about using incense in a

New Testament church? And I have pointed out to them Nadab and Abihu.

I mean, when these people try to import Old Testament ideas and just because it was something that occurred in the

Bible, they think it is approved by God, even in the

Old Covenant, they had to do things exactly according to a specific design and purpose.

They couldn't just take any incense and burn it in any way and other things that even involved music.

And, of course, everybody who likes dancing in a worship service will always bring up the fact that David danced.

But what are your thoughts on that? You only have about a minute, I'm sorry. Okay, yeah, well, two real quick things.

Number one, the book of Hebrews is so important on this topic because the book of Hebrews emphasizes the discontinuities between Old Covenant worship and New Covenant worship that I would argue these

Roman Catholic and Anglican apologists aren't grasping, and they need to look at that.

We don't have time to get into that anymore, but I would urge people to look at the book of Hebrews. And on the issue of dance, it's interesting.

Everybody points to David. There's one example. It's not a corporate worship service. You don't find any examples of dancing in corporate worship in Scripture.

There was folk dance in Israel, and folk dance is a good and wholesome thing, but it wasn't part of the solemn assemblies of worship of God's people.

So, again, it's not just finding a chapter and verse proof text. It's actually looking at the context, looking at the underlying theology, and drawing correct biblical interpretations and applications of biblical texts.

Well, we're out of time, and thank you so much for being such an outstanding guest, Scott. I look forward to having you return to the show frequently.

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

Don't forget about Jeff Johnson, the founder and president of Grace Bible Theological Seminary, where Scott Anuel serves in the faculty.

Jeff Johnson is our guest tomorrow. And I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater