May 11, 2023 Show with Hexon Maldonado on “In the King’s Presence: How Christ’s Royal Majesty Enriches Corporate Worship”

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Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 11th day of May, 2023.

I'm thrilled to have a first-time guest today speaking about a very important subject. Perhaps, well, I'm assuming that all of you know that very recently, everyone on the planet Earth, or at least the vast majority of people on the planet Earth who have television sets, were watching the coronation of Charles III, King of England, which took place on May 6th in Westminster Abbey.

Well, today we are going to be talking about a subject that is infinitely more important. A king is going to be the highlight of our discussion who makes Charles III pale into insignificance in comparison.

And this is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords we're going to be addressing today with our guest, Hexen Maldonado. He is founding pastor and pastor for preaching at Tapestry Community Church in Belton, Texas.

And we are addressing his book, In the King's Presence, How Christ's Royal Majesty Enriches Corporate Worship. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Hexen Maldonado.

Are you there, Hexen?

Yes, thank you very much.

Thought we got disconnected there.

Pleasure to be on. I appreciate the honor of being invited here to discuss my book and looking forward to the conversation.

I am as well. And I'm going to give our listeners our email address right away. If they have questions about corporate worship, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-S-E-N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside of the USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Let's say you have developed a completely different ideology when it comes to corporate worship than you previously held, and it has put you at odds with the elders of your church, perhaps the majority of the congregation where you are a member, or perhaps you're even the pastor yourself, and you have become at odds with your fellow elders, your worship leaders, your denomination over the issue of corporate worship.

We could understand that those things would compel you to remain anonymous if you have a question, but if you are just asking a general question about what the scriptures teach about corporate worship, about what our guest today, Hexen Maldonado, has written in his book, In the King's Presence, if it's a general question, please give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

Can you tell us, please, something about your church, which has a very interesting name, Tapestry Community Church of Belton, Texas?

Tapestry Community Church and Its Name

Yeah, we are a independent, reformed Baptist church. That's to say that we're not a part of any denomination. We started the church about 10 years ago with four families in a living room, and it has just grown from there.

And the name Tapestry really comes from the idea that if you look at a tapestry hanging on a wall, the front is the design, but when you look at the back, it's usually quite a mess. And I think that is just reflective of the church, that we look at our own lives, and we are all a mess.

We come from different backgrounds, and in Christianity, living out the gospel can be messy. And so we oftentimes see the back, and our lives often don't make any sense to us, but God sees the front, and he's weaving together a beautiful picture for his glory, and we just trust in that by faith.

And so that's where the name comes from. And so yeah, we are a small congregation, but we are plugging along and strive to be as biblical as we can.

Great, and if anybody wants to find out more about Tapestry Community Church, the website is tapestrycommunitychurch .org. Tapestrycommunitychurch .org, that's especially for those who may live in or near Belton, Texas, or you have family, friends, and loved one in Belton, Texas, or you're traveling through there, and you want a good place to visit.

That's Tapestry Community Church of Belton, Texas. We have a tradition here on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, whenever we have a first-time guest on, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony that would include the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which they were raised, what kind of providential circumstances our sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them.

And it's time now to hear a part of your story.

Hexon Maldonado's Salvation Testimony

Well, I grew up in, well, part of my, first half of my childhood in East Los Angeles, and then my teenage years in a suburb of East Los Angeles, not far outside of the city. I grew up in a nominal Catholic home, single-parent home.

My mom raised three children in a rough neighborhood. We went to Catholic church periodically, during the most important holidays, but I wouldn't say regularly. So that's the sort of background that I grew up in.

I came to know the Lord at an early age. My older brother, about five years older than I, came to know Christ through a high school ministry called Campus Crusade for Christ International. Many people are familiar with that organization.

And he shared the gospel with me when I was 12, and so made a profession of faith. It wasn't all smooth sailing after that. I got in a lot of trouble, sort of fell into a backslidden state for a while during my junior high and high school years, but recommitted my life to Christ at about age 18.

And then joined the Army, married my high school sweetheart. We met in ninth grade, started dating in 10th grade, got married right after high school, joined the Army. Army brought me to Texas, and so I got out in Texas, got out of the Army in Texas, stayed here, felt the calling of the Lord on my life while ministering in the church here in Texas, a nearby church.

And to make a long story short, from there, got out of the Army, went to college, went to seminary, and ended up starting our church about 10 years ago. So that's sort of the Reader's Digest version.

Ha!

Well, praise God for it. And I'm just dying to find out, as a 12-year-old convert to Christ out of a Roman Catholic family, how did your parents and other family members react to this? Did you let them know that you had come to a saving faith in Christ that was a different experience for you than the typical life and experience of those within Roman Catholicism?

I was also raised Roman Catholic, came to faith in Christ at a much later age, in my mid -20s. And my parents were actually thrilled that that happened to me, even though they were Roman Catholic, because I was an out-of-control drunkard and had repented of that.

So they were pleased that they didn't have to worry about me dying every single day. But tell us about that kind of reaction, what kind of reaction your own family gave to you as such a young boy.

Family Reactions to Conversion from Roman Catholicism

Yeah, it was a pretty mild reaction, friendly. I think that's one of the benefits of maybe coming from a nominal Roman Catholic background. My mom and most of our extended family, aunts and uncles, as my brother shared the gospel with the relatives, they didn't really see the difference.

They sort of viewed what we were doing as maybe just a different version of Roman Catholicism. We're still reading the same Bible, we're still praying the same God. But they were resistant as you began to share the gospel with them and you began to talk about the differences between the church in Rome and Protestantism and certainly putting away the idols, no longer praying to statues or to saints.

They struggled with that. That was difficult for them to wrap their mind around. But in time, in time, quite a few members of my family, my mom included, has made a profession of faith and has left the Roman Catholic Church years ago and began attending various Baptist churches of non-denominational types.

So thankfully, it was a pretty easy transition. They weren't that resistant, just more curious than anything and it just took some time and we are thankful that, again, many of my family members now have embraced the true gospel and are following Christ.

Praise God, I can rejoice with you that my very religious Roman Catholic mother, very superstitious and idolatrous, although a very wonderful, humble, selfless individual was steeped and enslaved to the idolatry and works righteousness of Roman Catholicism.

But thanks be to God, on her deathbed, weeks before the Lord called her home to himself, she made very clear and vivid and vibrant declarations of genuine biblical saving faith and trusting in the finished work of Christ alone.

She abandoned her idolatry of the saints and of statues and images and was just a gift-wrapped present from God that he gave me to witness that. So I am thrilled to share that celebration with you about your own family members.

And one thing that I have to say is you said your Catholic family's reaction was somewhat mild in that you read the same Bible. Well, one of the stark contrasts between born-again believers is usually that they're starting to read the Bible for the first time and never did it as a Catholic.

In fact, if anybody listening thinks I'm being mean about Roman Catholicism, even most Roman Catholic apologists will admit, in fact, I believe it was Patrick Madrid, who at a debate once announced during his opening statements in a crowd that was a mixture of Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants, how he said, look to your left and look to your right, and if the person sitting next to you on either side has a Bible open on their lap, I can guarantee you they are likely a evangelical Protestant.

That even came from a Roman Catholic apologist who was giving a chastisement of his own people that they did not typically, they're not known as a Bible-reading people.

That is true, that is true. I grew up, we never, we had a Bible, it sat on the coffee table, and it was there to look at, and it wasn't really until I became a born-again believer that started reading through it, and that was an amazing experience in and of itself.

Why the Book on Corporate Worship Was Written

Well, we are discussing, as I already announced, we are discussing your book, In the King's Presence, How Christ's Royal Majesty Enriches Corporate Worship. I want to read a plug for this book that was written by someone that we have had as a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Michael Horton of Westminster Seminary in California, and also host of the White Horse Inn.

Dr. Horton says, if all our churches followed the wisdom here, the fruit would be enormous. Quite a commendation. Tell us, first of all, because there are people who listen to this program who are sometimes new believers, and sometimes they're not even Christians, and sometimes we use vocabulary on this program that is foreign to them, and so when someone hears the term corporate worship, they might be thinking, oh, they must be thinking of people who are worshiping at their place of business, a corporation or something.

But explain this very important aspect of church life because this is where, and you may disagree with me, but this is where, in my experience, having especially been involved and employed in the Christian radio industry going back to the late 1980s, most of which, began in the early 1990s, 1991, for 15 years with an affiliate of Salem Media, the largest Christian radio network in the world, I saw, as I became acquainted with and friendly with, and even developing close friendships with people from a broad spectrum of evangelicalism, it seems that the heart of most of our infighting and wars and separation and even, sometimes, sadly, nastiness and cruelty, the corporate worship is at the heart of many of those disputes and divisions.

But tell us about what a good definition of that would be.

Yeah, corporate worship is distinguished from individual worship. We can obviously worship God anywhere we want, when we are by ourselves in our living room doing our morning Bible reading as we pray and read, we are engaging in worship.

And when I get together with my family, we do a family worship every morning, we are engaging in worship. In fact, per Romans 12, all of life is to be worship. Everything that we do, so long as we do it for the glory of God, is worship.

We are to live lives of worship. But when I talk about corporate worship, I'm talking about the coming together of the body of Christ, corpus, the body. And when believers come together, and we come together to worship, so I'm specifically talking about what we do, really, on the Lord's Day, the gathering of the saints on the Lord's Day for worship, and that's what I mean by that.

And I don't know whether or not you believe in the regulative principle of worship, as many, if not most, Reformed Baptists do, but typically, when someone is speaking of the regulative principle, they are almost exclusively speaking of corporate worship.

Not that they would say it's permissible for somebody in private worship to bow before an idol and pray to it, but there is more liberty involved in the kind of worship offered to God in somebody's home or at a casual gathering of fellowship for Christians.

You can incorporate different things that you would not want to incorporate into your corporate gathering on Sunday. Am I making sense there?

Yes, you are. And yeah, in fact, I mean, I do hold to the regulative principle. That is what I believe is what we practice at our church. And I talk about that in chapter eight. In fact, I go through that and I give a little brief discussion of the relative principle of worship and the regulative principle of worship.

And yeah, I think scripture should govern how we worship in church. I think that is clear and I offer multiple texts to support that. I mean, I think the clearest one, going back to the Old Testament is Deuteronomy chapter 12.

You look at verses 29 and following, just as the Israelites are preparing to go into the promised land, there Moses commands them, once they get into the promised land, don't look at the surrounding nations and don't try to borrow from them in terms of how you worship God.

He's very clear about that, that you don't wanna add or subtract from anything that God has commanded with regards to worship. And I do see that principle repeated as we go into the New Testament as well.

And you're correct in that a lot of division that takes place within evangelicalism surrounds corporate worship. What are we doing on Sunday morning and how should it be done and you can ask 10 different ministers and you're likely to get 10 different answers to that question.

So what I try to do in my book is to take people back to scripture beginning with the Old Testament and moving into the new because they are not disconnected. The New Testament grows out of the Old Testament.

And I think so many Christians make the mistake of thinking that the Old Testament is there just for historical reasons, but it really doesn't apply to 21st century evangelicalism and I just think that is just not true and it's a wrong way of approaching the interpretation of scripture.

And if you could, before we go to the first commercial break, what were the compelling factors that drove you to the point where you said to yourself, I've got to write a book on corporate worship. From what I have come to learn, discover, embrace, fall in love with, I really need to put this in print.

There are, as you know, a multitude of books on worship. I would guess that the likelihood is that most of them are heretical and garbage, but even within the Reformed faith there are many good books on worship.

What was it that you had come to learn, embrace, and love, and practice that you said, you know, I love a lot of these other books that are available already, but I want to include my own voice in this discussion in print.

What was some of those compelling factors?

Why Christ as King Shapes Worship

Sure, that's a great question. In fact, I was told multiple times by various publishers that there are already a plethora of books out there on worship. Why one more? And there are some good books. I, you know, obviously, if you look at my end notes, I did a lot of reading, read a lot of books on worship.

I've got a few that are my favorites, but one of them being one written by Michael Horton. And I agree with them. Don't think that there's anything, you know, that they fall short in any way. But I think what compelled me is that, at least to my knowledge, I couldn't come across a book that really drove the point home from the angle that I'm taking.

And most books on worship, you know, we're arguing the same thing. We end up at the same conclusion. I'll start there. We end up at the same conclusion, at least the books that I read that I agree with.

But they start at a slightly different starting place. And the starting place that most of them begin with is just the inerrancy of Scripture. What does God command, right? Let's look at what Scripture talks about in terms of worship and how we're to worship Him.

And that's a great place to start. That's a great place to start. But what got me is, it seemed to be very theologically driven and intellectually driven, which is fine and good. I mean, we certainly, God gave us a mind to use and to work with and we need to exegete the text properly.

But a lot of what we see out in evangelicalism is driven by emotions. You know, what makes me feel good? What, you know, and it's a lot of the worship we see is emotion driven. And I don't think that's entirely wrong.

I think it just depends on what is the object of our affections. And I talk a lot about that in the book. I think where a lot of evangelical churches go wrong is that the object of their affection is Christ, who is their pal, their buddy, their friend, their brother, which is all true.

He is our brother. He is our friend, absolutely. But when you view Christ primarily in those terms, it affects how you worship him. It affects how you understand the text. In other words, those become the rose colored glasses through which you interpret scripture.

And what I see in the Bible, beginning in the Old Testament and going into the new, is that we ought to first and foremost view Christ as our King.

Amen. In fact, this program, Iron Trip and Zion Radio, was first launched on WNYG Radio in Babylon, Ohio, in 2005. It was primarily a music station. And I'm not a bigot against all modern Christian recording artists, but it just so happened that this station, I think the majority of the music they played was something that made my skin crawl and fit within the category of Jesus is my boyfriend music.

You would hear women singing songs and if you removed the name of Christ, the woman could have been singing to her boyfriend, her fiance, her husband. In fact, some of those very songs didn't even have the name of Christ at all anyway.

And some of them are being used in corporate worship now.

Yes, and you can't help but wonder if these recording companies and the artists themselves, perhaps, were thinking, I'm gonna start off with creating worship music and if I really wanna go places in my career as a secular artist, I could use these same songs.

But I'm going to pick up with you where you left off because we have to go to our first commercial break right now. And once again, if you have a question for Hexen Maldonado on corporate worship, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Hexen Maldonado right after these messages from our sponsors.

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We are discussing his book, In the King's Presence, How Christ's Royal Majesty Enriches Corporate Worship. If you could, go into where you actually start in the book by explaining and describing God as king.

Now, that might not be some kind of startling news, not only to Christians, but even anyone with a brain, they would realize, well, if you believe that God exists, he should be viewed as your king, he should be viewed as your sovereign, somebody over whom you are, who deserves all of your praise, honor, and worship, and so on.

Even an atheist can acknowledge that if somebody believes in God, that, and it's a God that's the creator of all things, that he should be viewed as some kind of a king. And of course, you have your leftist heretics who would say queen.

But they would view royalty as being involved, even beyond the comprehension of a human understanding of royalty. But even though that may be the case, I'm sure you would agree that if you visit many churches across the United States, and I'm assuming in other parts of the world, you would enter into a place where God is not really being treated as a king.

There seems to be more, there seems to be more concerned about how the folks who are gathered there are enjoying themselves. And perhaps even unconsciously, the effort is being made to entertain those that are there.

And it is not as if they are approaching the throne of a king, a royal deity, that should invoke nothing but awe, honor, reverence, and et cetera. If you could go into that concept of God as king.

God as King in Old and New Testament Worship

Yeah, I mean, you're right. It shouldn't be startling to anyone to talk about God as king. But I started the book that way, not necessarily to teach something new, because as you said, most Christians should readily acknowledge that, but really as a way of just trying to remind Christians that God is still king.

And we too easily forget that, conveniently, for different reasons. I mean, I think part of the big problem, I talk about this in the book, part of the big problem is that there is this desire to wanna be seeker-friendly, seeker-sensitive, to wanna try to attract people into the church with the hopes that they will get saved.

There's this evangelistic zeal to wanna bring as many people into the church. And while on the one hand, I don't think the motives are wrong to wanna get the gospel to as many people as possible, but I think the approach is definitely wrong.

And I think it all starts with not understanding and not keeping at the forefront of our mind who God is. Who is God? God is king and Christ is king because Jesus is God. So I tried to make that connection between the Old and the New Testament.

And then there's also just this forgetting that, well, if God is king and Christ is king, then what is actually happening in corporate worship? And so I tried to really make that clear in the first half of the book, drawing the connection between Old Testament worship and New Testament worship, that the temple in the Old Testament was clearly viewed as the throne room of Israel's king.

God was their king, the tabernacle, the temple was his throne room. The Ark of the Covenant was his very throne. He would speak to the people from above the mercy seat. We see that talked about in places like Exodus chapter 25, that that was the throne of God.

And so the trouble is that when we get into the New Testament, I think Christians tend to think that all of that just goes away. The temple was destroyed in 70 AD, so we no longer have a temple. And God was the king of his people in the Old Testament, Israel, but not anymore.

And they may not articulate that, but that is the way they do worship. And so what I tried to remind the readers of is that God is still king. And I really, I forcefully tried to drive home that point because if God is king, which he is, and we recognize that, then we have to ask the question, does this king care about how we worship him?

Does he care about how we approach him? Does he care about what we do in his throne room? And I think I make the argument pretty clearly that he does care. The king cares how we approach him and what we do in his throne room.

And the corporate gathering of the church becomes the throne room of God. And so that's what I try to drive home in the first opening chapters of the book.