Listen to this message:
Albert N. Martin
I believe that most of you, if not all of you, are aware that the subject announced for the ministry of this hour is Our Vision for These Days. In October of 1988 this was the subject announced for the Monday evening session in that particular pastors’ conference, and since then, five additional installments on that theme have been preached on the Monday night of the conference. One of the years we had visiting speakers for both of those evenings, and the series was temporarily interrupted. Each time I have begun by making several basic assertions. First, a word of explanation, and then, a word of disclaimer. Since we do have a number of new men in the conference, and perhaps people visiting with us who have not been present for the previous installments of this series entitled “Our Vision for These Days,” let me repeat that word of explanation and that word of disclaimer.
By the term “our vision for these days,” we are merely seeking to express what is our perception of some of the most critical areas of need for the people of God in the day in which we live and in the context in which these men present at the conference are called upon to carry out a ministry marked by biblical integrity. We are seeking, in a real sense, to apply the principles embodied in a text such as 1 Chronicles 12:32, where the sacred writer tells us, concerning the men of Issachar, that they had understanding of the times that Israel might know what she ought to do. Or a text in Ephesians 5, in which we are told to be not unwise but understanding what the will of the Lord is. So, none of us has had an angelic visitation and a vision in the strict sense of the term, but we use it in the looser sense of our perception with reference to the crucial issues that need to be addressed in our generation.
Then, by way of a word of disclaimer: we claim no extraordinary commission with respect to our vision for these days, nor do we claim an exclusive commission. In other words, these are matters that we trust are the concern of all who seek with spiritual discernment to give themselves to a ministry that answers to the needs of our day. We are thankful to God for the increasing number of men and churches of which we become aware where these concerns that we share and seek to convey are the burning concerns of their ministries, as well.
In the previous messages, I’ve sought to articulate our vision for these days in terms of a recovery of the biblical gospel, a renewal of biblical holiness, a return to biblical churchmanship, a restoration of biblical preaching, a recognition of the watchman identity and function of the pastoral office, and then, last October, a return to domestic piety or the reestablishment of godly family life. Now, these messages are all available on tape as a ministry of the church and available in the Trinity bookstore. Perhaps some of you may wish to obtain them and prayerfully consider these major areas of concern.
Today, our subject is Our Vision for These Days: A Recovery of Biblical Worship. Our vision for these days, in terms of a passionate concern to see a recovery of biblical worship. Now, in taking up so vast and crucial a subject as biblical worship, I am doing so with a very limited field of focus, namely, the public worship of the gathered people of God in their seasons of stated gathering for such worship. I state this fact that the outset, because I’m fully aware that the biblical doctrine of worship is both exceedingly broad and deep. In bypassing many other crucial aspects of the more comprehensive biblical doctrine of worship, I have no intention, in so doing, of demeaning those other aspects, nor do I consider the matters of little importance or unworthy of extensive and careful instruction from the Scriptures.
However, I do believe it is accurate to state that nothing will be more influential in shaping the other facets of our worship, than our understanding and experience of our public, social worship. Therefore, regarding it as the lynchpin or the primary molding influence upon all other facets of worship, it is this aspect that is the peculiar and almost exclusive focus of the ministry today.
As we attempt to think our way through this vital and vast subject of the recovery of biblical worship, I want you to consider with me the first heading. This heading will be proportionately longer than the subsequent headings. I state that, lest some of you get antsy, knowing that several more are to come. We consider, first of all, the manifestation of God’s concern for the nature and purity of His worship.
1) The manifestation of God’s concern for the nature and purity of His worship.
It is my purpose, under this heading, to guide you on a quick overview of some pivotal passages in the Old and New Testaments, which clearly manifest God’s great concern for the nature and purity of His worship. We can go further and say God’s great, jealous concern for the nature and purity of His worship.
In his well-known work on the biblical doctrine of the church, James Bannerman writes as follows—in the opening section in which he is dealing with the public worship of God—these very perceptive words:
“The sinner has no right to dictate, but must submissively learn from God both the conditions and the manner in which God will permit His approach for the purpose even of worshiping Him. The path and approach to God was shut and barred in consequence of man’s sin; it was impossible for man himself to renew the communion which had been so solemnly closed by the judicial sentence which excluded him from the presence and favour of his God. Could that path ever again be opened up, and the communion of God with man and of man with God ever again be renewed? This was a question for God alone to determine. If it could, on what terms was the renewal of communion to take place, and in what manner was the fellowship of the creature with his Creator again to be maintained? This, too, was a question no less than the former for God alone to resolve. The sinner could not, from the very nature of the case, presume to dictate to God either the conditions on which his intercourse with God ought to be once more allowed, or the manner in which it might rightly and properly be continued. These were questions which could only be determined by a regard to the principles of God’s moral government, and which none but God was competent to decide. Public worship is no other than the manner and the way in which sinners, associated together in a Church fellowship, are permitted in their collective capacity to hold communion with God, to maintain in a right and befitting way their fellowship with Him, and to approach Him day by day in acceptable communion. The manner of such intercourse, as well as the conditions on which it was possible to renew it at all, is a matter in regard to which it was the province of God, and not of man, to dictate (Bannerman).
Would God that those words were understood and taken seriously by the professing, Christian church in our generation. I want to demonstrate—by this brief overview of several passages in the Old and the New Testaments—what I am calling the manifestation of God’s concern for the nature and purity of His worship.
We begin in the first recorded act of social or public worship: in Genesis 4:1. And the man knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord. And again she bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering; but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.”
In the language of Paul Harvey, “You know the rest of the story.” Now, it’s very interesting that in this passage we see first of all, public, social worship in the form of offerings to God simply appearing in the narrative. There is no hint whatsoever in any of the previous material given to us in the book of Genesis, as to how or in what manner God made known to Adam and Eve and to these two sons that He would be worshiped in conjunction with the offering of substance from the field, either the animal or the vegetable kingdom, unto the Living God. It simply appears, but what is very obvious is that though we are given no information as to how it had its first appearance, God is deeply engaged in considering both the person and his offering in these acts of public worship, for we read as they brought their offerings in verse 4b, “The Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering.” God was engaged in beholding this act of public worship, this visible expression of approaching unto God.
With respect to the one it is said God had respect to the person and to the offering that was presented. The Lord had respect unto Abel, his person, and to his offering, but unto Cain and his offering He had not respect. God did not simply glance over His shoulder and say, “Well, the older one has brought an offering, and the kid brother has come with his offering. He brought something, and he brought it in some way. So, all is well.” No. He had respect to the one and his offering, and to the other He had not respect nor to his offering. The result is that God rejects the one man’s person and his offering, while accepting the other. The subsequent narrative tells us that the first violent division in the human race resulting in murder was precipitated by the differing attitudes and actions connected with the worship of God.
I’m aware of the New Testament commentary upon this event. One was a man of faith; one is called ‘a righteous man,’ but it’s interesting that in the context of the revelation of the faith and the righteousness of the one, and the unbelief and the wickedness of the other, the focal point is upon an act of public worship. Surely, God is telling us—from this first recorded instance of public or social, visible worship—that He has a deep concern for the nature and the purity of His worship.
Then we turn to the book of Leviticus to that incident with relationship to Nadab and Abihu, the two sons of Aaron, God’s appointed high priest. Leviticus 10:1-3, “And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took each of them his censer, and put fire therein, and laid incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them. And there came forth fire from before the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. Then Moses said unto Aaron, This is it that the Lord spoke, saying, ‘I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified.’”
According to Leviticus 9:24, after there had been this formal setting-apart of the place that was to be the central gathering for social worship, and there was the offering up of the offerings appointed by God, we read that, “There came forth fire from before the Lord, and consumed upon the altar the burnt-offering and the fat; and when all the people saw it, they shouted, and fell on their faces.”
In a marvelous work on gospel worship by Jeremiah Burroughs, Mr. Burroughs points out that, “There is no indication that God had given any explicit command that only the fire that He had sent should be the fire by which the offerings were to be consumed.” There is no record, but the record tells us that when they offered what is called ‘strange fire,’ that is fire that was in some way unauthorized, God showed once more, God manifested again His great concern for the nature and the purity of His worship by striking the two sons of Aaron dead. The rationale for that act is given in the words of Moses in verse 3, “This is it that the Lord spoke, saying, ‘I will be sanctified.’” “I will be set apart, and duly regarded for who and what I am, and before all the people I will be glorified.” God was concerned to preserve the sanctity of the activity of the priests and the glory of His own name, by making it abundantly clear that He was deeply concerned for the nature and the purity of His worship, even the source of the fire that would consume the sacrifices upon His altar.
A third passage, or large segment, of the portion of the Word of God that gives us the manifestation of God’s concern for the nature and purity of His worship are those large sections in Exodus and in the book of Leviticus, the whole Levitical system. When we pick up these chapters we find chapter after chapter, paragraph after paragraph, dealing with the specific details of the preparation of this sacrifice and the other sacrifice, this offering and another offering. The preparation of the priest, his purification, the garments he was to wear, the activities he was to engage in, whether it was in the ordinary course of priestly activity in the outer segment of the tabernacle, or whether the details of the activity of the high priest once a year when he entered the inner sanctuary, and that never without blood. When we read these things chapter after chapter, paragraph after paragraph, surely God is saying in language that cannot be misunderstood, “I am deeply concerned for the nature and the purity of My worship.”
Yes, I know that many of these things are rooted in His jealous concern that the contours that are being brought backward upon the Levitical system from the substantial realities in Christ of which these were the shadows. I know that God’s jealousy is in conjunction with Christ, and the once-for-all-sacrifice that He would make for sin, and for the activities of Christ as our great High Priest. I am not in any way negating that dimension of the great and meticulous concern that is shown in the whole Levitical system, but surely God is also saying to His people, “Approaching Me is serious business. You don’t have little caucasus in your tents in the tribe of Levi or in the tribe of Judah, and decide what you would like this month for a little novelty in My worship, and come with your consensus into My courts!” No. God had clearly prescribed all the details of how He would be reproached by His people in the place of His appointment.
There is a fourth line of evidence for the manifestation of God’s concern for the nature and purity of His worship. Namely, the strictures of the second commandment. In Exodus chapter 20, in the familiar words of the Decalogue, God—calling His people to Himself amidst unusual and arresting circumstances—speaks with His own voice and writes with His own finger this summary of moral duty and obligation. He announces in the first commandment, in Exodus 20:3, that He and He alone will be the object of worship and religious devotion. “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me or besides Me.” Then He says in other words, “In having Me as your God, you shall worship Me only in the words of My appointment.”
“You shall not make unto you a graven image, nor any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing lovingkindness unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.” (Exodus 20:4-6.)
With regard to God’s worship, men were not free to worship even the true God under the impulse of their own imaginations. As we saw them so quickly doing when they bowed down before the Golden Calf, and yet dared to say that that calf represented the God that brought them out of Egypt. God says, “No! I am exceedingly jealous or the nature and the purity of My worship.”
We add, in the fifth place, the witness of the prophets. As we saw in the ministry of the Word Sunday morning in the adult class from Isaiah 1, God is deeply concerned about the nature and the purity of His worship. That theme that we contemplated in the Lord’s day morning, throbs through the prophetic denunciations and calls to repentance. While the prophets announced the better days of the New Covenant, remember how often those ‘better days’ are described in terms of the cultic worship of the Old Testament coming to an expanded dimension, and to levels of purity never known before. Surely, God is saying throughout the witness of the prophets that He is deeply concerned for the nature and the purity of His worship. Is this the emphasis only of the Old Testament, or do we find it spilling over and flowering in the New Testament?
Well, I ask you to turn with me to John’s gospel in the second chapter, as we take this quick overview of these key passages that I am saying are the manifestation of God’s concern for the nature and purity of His worship. In John 2 we have the familiar account so often—and right that it should be so—read at weddings. The Lord Jesus was no social kill-joy. He was no first-century scrooge who when He saw people making their way up to a wedding feast, with its week-long festivities, said, “Bah humbug upon feasting and upon holy merriment.” No. We have the account of the Lord Jesus performing His first public miracle there in Cana of Galilee by turning water into wine. Gladdening the hearts of all who were present, leaving to their own responsibility before God if they abused His good gift of line, and He left the responsibility at their feet should they have done so.
What a picture of our gracious Lord, performing a miracle that had to do with people’s appetites and enjoyments, not for that which was a necessity for their existence, but for their joy, adding to their holy and sanctified merriment. Any thought that Christ is in any way a social kill-joy who would restrict expressions of holy merriment and the sanctified feasting, is far into the picture given to us by John.
Remember, he says, “Although the things that He did would take the whole world to fill books; but these selections of these specific things are written, that you might believe that Jesus is the Son of God; and that believing you might have life through His name.”
That first recorded miracle is that in which we see this side, this dimension of our Lord Jesus, but it is also interesting that the last half of the chapter, beginning with verse 13, contains the account of His cleansing of the temple. “As the Passover of the Jews was at hand, Jesus went up unto Jerusalem. And He found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting; and He made a scourge of cords, and cast out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the changers’ money and overthrew their tables. To them that sold the doves He said, ‘Take these things hence; make not My Father’s house a house of merchandise.’ His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for thy house shall eat me up.’” No man has seen God at any time. The only begotten who is in the bosom of the Father, He has revealed Him, He has exegeted Him! As our Lord is exegeting the heart of the Father, He exegetes Him as the God who is celebrated in Psalm 104, who has a delight and a concern over all of His creatures and all of His works. A magnificent, large-hearted God, who is not at all averse to holy merriment, but He is also revealed in this very chapter the God who has a burning jealousy for the nature and the purity of His worship.
There in that place, the temple, the very feet and center of the social, public worship of Jehovah, that place in which the appointed priesthood functioned, that place in which the mandated and warranted sacrifices were offered, when our Lord Jesus sees that the worship is being prostitutes by commercialism, what does He do? So often we become insensitive to the vigor of the language! When He saw what He saw, He made a whip of cords. Look at the vigorous language, “Cast out, poured out, overthrew, and said.” What He did on the front end of His ministry He did on the tail end of His ministry as well on that passion week when He came and cleansed the temple again. The language of the synoptic writers is even more vigorous where it says, “And He threw them out”!
That’s the picture of a magnificent Christ standing off in a corner at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, perceiving the supply of wine is dwindling. His mother, trying to precipitate something, “My time is not yet come.” At the appointed hour, He makes known His will to the servants, and the waterpots are filled. They’re turned into wine, and one can only imagine the Lord Jesus smiling as He overhears people whispering and nudging one another saying, “I don’t know what’s happened at this feast. They’ve saved the best wine till now? They usually start bringing out the cheaper stuff when our tastebuds are not as alert and fresh, and we’ve eaten and drunk to the full!” Can you imagine the magnificent Son of God standing off on the side with a smile playing off the corners of His mouth, delighting in the delight of the wholesome, sinless merriment at a wedding feast? You say, “Oh, that’s my Jesus. That’s the Jesus with whom I feel so comfortable!” The gentle, the magnificent, kind Jesus.
Look at the picture at the end of the chapter. You’re a visitor of Jerusalem. You know nothing of what is going on in those days, but as a visiting tourist you want to see this magnificent temple, and have some sense of what is going on. You happen to be there this very day when this man enters the temple, and you see someone with burning eyes, and I believe with rippling flesh, hardened there in the carpenter’s shop over thirty years. He has a scourge, of course, in His hands. He goes from one group of animals to another, and He whacks them upon the rump, and the hind legs go up, the animals snort, and they scurry hither and yond! He tucks His scourge under His arm, and finds the tables filled with various coinage that is exchanged for offerings to be purchased, and He turns them over! The coins clank upon the stone floor of the temple. You’d say, “A madman is let loose in this place!” That’s the Jesus of the Bible, who is reflecting the heart of His Father with His exceedingly jealous for the nature and the purity of His worship! “Zeal for thy house shall lift me up.”
Is God concerned under the New Covenant with the purity of His worship? Our Lord Jesus, on the threshold and at the conclusion of His public ministry, answers the question by His holy violence in cleansing the temple.
In that marvelous passage in John chapter 4 in which our Lord is evangelizing an immoral woman. In the course of evangelizing her the subject of public worship comes up, and the proper place for that public worship enters the discussion. You know the story. In the course of His interaction with her the woman says to our Lord in verse 20, “Our fathers worshipped in this mountain.” In other words, “In this mountain is where we, Samaritans, carry our stated public worship of God.” “And you say
What did He mean when He said that His worship would be in the realm of spirit and of truth? I have found the comments of Lenski most helpful in giving what to me is the most accurate distillation of the meaning of our Lord’s words. Lenski writes, “Moreover, if a genuine contact is to be made with the Father, if the genuine object of the worship is to be reached, does this not mean that these two, the worshipers own spirit and God’s own revealed truth joined together, must form the sphere. The preposition ‘an’ is used with spirit and truth joined by the coordinating conjunction ‘tie.’ Is it not in this sphere in which the worship takes place? All that forsakes this sphere is spurious worship. Omit the spirit, and though you have the truth, the worship becomes formalism, mere ritual observance. Omit the truth, and though the whole soul is thrown into the worship, it becomes an abomination. Thus spirit and truth form a unit, two halves that belong together in every act of worship.”
Among the many things we learn from these words of our Lord Jesus so pregnant with meaning, is that under the economy which He came to establish that would result in the utter, total, irreversible dismantling of the whole Levitical system and all of the significance of Jerusalem and its temple, central to all that He would effect by being the Mediator of the New Covenant, was this radical effect in the area of worship. But that our Lord is still speaking of worship in the context of the social, corporate worship of His people! There is no indication that He has moved into another realm! That was the issue that precipitated the discussion.
Now He says under the new economy, the Father is on a quest for worshipers. He is on a quest for worshipers whose worship of Him would be found within the parameters of the human spirit, quickened by the Holy Spirit, the engagement of the whole worshiper, and all of that in terms of the impact and impress of truth upon the mind and the heart of the worshiper, so that his worship is neither formalism on the one hand, nor will-worship on the other. God manifests again His great concern for the nature and the purity of His worship in the New Covenant.
The final witness I set before you is Philippians 3:3. The Philippian church was apparently threatened by the presence of Judaizers, who though—unlike the situation at Galatia—had not exerted any extensive influence. They were like wolves prowling about the flock. Paul, as a faithful watchman, warns the congregation in Philippians 3:2, “Beware..” not of the dogs. In the original there is an abruptness. “Beware the dogs.” “Beware the knife-wielders; for we are the circumcision.” We are the true people of God marked by that supernatural work that makes us His own true covenant people who worship by the Spirit of God, or who worship God by the Spirit. There is a debate as to the proper rendering, but you come out with the same thing.
The true circumcision are identified first of all, as worshipers. “They worship by the Spirit. They glory in Christ Jesus, and they have no confidence in the flesh.” Well, I trust that the overview of these eight representative texts, or whole blocks of biblical witnesses, in the case of my elusion to the emphasis of the prophets and the entire Levitical system as it is set forth, particularly in parts of Exodus and the book of Leviticus. I trust you hear them joining in one great and united proclamation, “God is concerned for the nature and the purity of His worship!”
2) The revelation of God’s will for the content and spirit of His worship.
Having established this foundational premise, consider with me in the second place and more briefly: the revelation of God’s will for the content and spirit of His worship.
We’ve seen the manifestation of His concern. Now, is there a revelation of His will for the content and spirit of His worship? I would like to address this, and I could only do it suggestively and leave to you preachers to work out the fuller, amplified version of each of these headings.
Three simple headings: it’s major boundaries, it’s specific elements, and it’s dominant disposition. God has revealed in His Word that with respect to the content and spirit of His worship there are major boundaries, specific elements, and a dominant disposition that is to mark His worship.
1- What are its major boundaries?
We’ve already considered them in a pivotal text. John 4:24. The Father is to be worshiped in spirit, in the realm of spirit and of truth. He is to be worshiped not mechanically, not routinely, but He is to be worshiped with the engagement of the entire being of the redeemed sinner who is involved in His worship! We often say with reference to one another’s activities, “Ah, he’s doing it, but his heart is not in it. His spirit is not in it. His body is making motions, but it’s obvious that there is an externalism, there’s not an engagement of the whole man.”
I am convinced along with a host of commentators that this reference to spirit is not a direct reference to the Holy Spirit, but to the human spirit. God will be worshiped in the realm of spirit! He is Spirit! He is not a God who can be manipulated and moved mechanically, because He has no physical parts or being. Therefore, if we are to come into the realm of true engagement and approach to and with the God, it must be in terms of the human spirit that engages Him. Now, granted, no human spirit will while it is dead in trespasses and sins. While that spirit is characterized by an aversion to God in the carnal mind that is enmity against Him. No, there must be the regenerating work of God the Holy Spirit, and the present energizing ministry of the Spirit upon the human spirit, but in the major boundaries of God’s revelation of His will for the content and spirit of His worship. It is to be worship in spirit.
It is not to be form without life, but it is to be in the realm of truth! It is not to be life without boundaries of God’s revealed will! It would seem that the history of the Church in many ways is the tragic account of worship which at times is all spirit, ignorant of and indifferent to the truth, or all truth ignorant of and indifferent to the necessity of the engagement of the human spirit.
In our day of subjectivism, a generation reared on the tyranny of its feelings, our practical danger is to think that there is some hieght of God-honoring worship to be attained in spirit, while there is indifference to truth! The Father has established the boundaries of His worship. He will be worshiped truly in spirit and in truth, as you see in the two specimen passages that contain a veritable minefield of helpful materials. I mean a field of gems, not explosive mines.
Let’s look at 1 Corinthians 11:14, where two chapters are given over to elements pertaining to the public gatherings of the church at Corinth. With reference to the Supper of Remembrance Paul says, “Because you are not coming to this act of social worship sober in your minds, some of you are coming drunk, some of you are coming so sated and bloated with gluttony that you are not even celebrating the Lord’s Supper. It is not possible for you to be remembering the Lord’s Supper. You’re not discerning His body.” You see, unless there is an enlightened and an engaged mind in the most sacred institutions connected with the social public of worship of God, they are negated by the absence of an enlightened and an engaged mind.
That’s the emphasis of chapter 14. When they came together they were having their charismatic orgies, and the prophets were all saying, “Thus saith the Lord,” and the tongue-speakers were speaking out their revelations. Paul said, a man who doesn’t know what’s going on would come in and say, “I’ve walked into a madhouse!” Isn’t that what he said? “The unbeliever uninstructed comes amongst you the way things are now he’ll say, ‘You’re all mad!’ Don’t you understand?” He says that if the worship of God then in that context the exercise of those gifts that were conferred are to accomplish their God-intended end, what must be joined?
Look at the echoes of John 4 in 1 Corinthians 14:14-15. “For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful.” That is, it bears no fruit in others, because my message, my revelation is untranslated. How can it be fruitful if untranslated? “What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also; I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also. Else if thou bless with the spirit, how shall he that filleth the place of the unlearned say the Amen at thy giving of thanks, seeing he knoweth not what you are saying?”
The great principle is, you see, that in the boundaries of God’s worship—spirit and truth—there must be engaged, enlightened minds! There must be sanctified understanding, and there must be, as well, holy decorum and order in giving directions as to what sex should exercise gifts of public ministry in this very chapter, and saying your women are to be silent in that setting; in giving a specific directive about how many prophets may speak and in what manner; how many tongue-speakers may speak in their languages if interpreters are present, and all of the rest.
Notice what Paul says at the end of this chapter. “But let all things be done decently, with holy decorum, and in order.” Now, you see, many in our day would say, “Ha! There’s Paul, one of those dead old people that knows nothing of the fire of the Holy Ghost. He knows nothing of being abandoned in the Spirit!” He comes along and says, “Now the prophet speaks, and then the other does.” When three have spoken and the fourth stands, you all should stuff your fingers in your ears. Let it be by the most three, and if a fourth stands, I don’t care if he’s trembling and saying, “Thus saith the Lord.” Stuff your ears and tell him to shut up and sit down! He’s out of order! If someone says, “Ooh, the Holy Ghost told me to make an exception.” Paul says, “If any man thinks himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge the things that I say unto you at the commandments of the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 14:37.)
Dear people, bypassing the moot question, what precisely was the prophecy? What precisely were the tongues? Do you see the principles? The principles are that God’s public worship is not to be mindless babbling! It is not to be mindless, orderless, unstructured infusions of spiritual light and insight and energy! There must be engaged, enlightened minds. There must be engaged and warm hearts. There must be sanctified decorum and order. Those are the major boundaries of the revelation of God’s will for the content and spirit of His worship. What about its specific elements?
2- What are its specific elements?
What are the elements? We read from Bannerman. Is he right that it’s up for God and God alone to say whether He’ll allow man into His presence to worship Him? If so, by what means that worship will be expressed to be acceptable to God? To me the most typical text—with reference to the specific elements of New Covenant worship—is 1 Peter 2:5.
After exhorting the believers to put away all wickedness and guile and hypocrisy, and with the yearning and longing of an infant for its mother’s breast to long for the spiritual milk that is without guile, that they may grow unto salvation, he describes the New Covenant community, in verse 5, as follows, “You also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
This is one of the most densely packed statements on worship in all of the New Testament. I can only point to the major contours of the text. God’s people, as living stones, made such by their contact with Christ, the chief cornerstone, are from one perspective being built up into a spiritual house! They are the naos of God. Though the word naos (temple) is not the word used here, it is the word used by Paul in Corinthians. “Do you not know that you Corinthians are a temple of the living God, and that the Spirit of God dwells among you? Or “in you.”
Peter says we have become, by incorporation into Christ, part of this spiritual house, but something more. If you have a temple, what is a temple without a priesthood to serve? You’ve not only become the living stones to constitute the temple, you’ve become the holy priesthood to function in that temple. What is a priest without offerings and sacrifices? You—as the New Covenant priesthood, who are this spiritual house—you are to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through the mediation of the Lord Jesus, your great and glorious High Priest, by whom your worship is offered unto God. What are those spiritual sacrifices? Well, if we search the Scriptures, God has not left us without an answer.
The first and foundational spiritual sacrifice under the New Covenant is the posture of repeated offering up of our entire redeemed humanity to God as an expression of gratitude for His mercy to us in Christ. Romans 12:1, “I beseech you therefore, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your rational [spiritual or reasonable] service.”
A New Covenant worship. Would to God that the reality of this would grip us! Every time we gather as His ecclesia—His called-out ones—to constitute afresh the visible expression of the living temple, the gathered priesthood, our foundational sacrifice is the presentation of ourselves unto God as an expression of gratitude for His saving mercies in the Lord Jesus. The offering up afresh again and again.
Some try to make a big deal and teach a second work of grace, because the aorist tense is used with respect to presenting your body. That’s where a little Greek can often mean theology! He’s using the aorist in the sense in which it is often used, to speak of a prevailing-all disposition of attitude. So, he says for you in whose hearts the mercies of God in Christ, all the mercies marvelously expounded in those first eleven chapter of Romans, to guilty, hell-deserving, Adamic sinners.
Those mercies kept fresh in the heart by meditation and prayer and reflection, and by biblical preaching and teaching, and all the other means, should find us gathering in the day of God’s appointment, in the place of His appointment, with His people, presenting ourselves in the entirety of a redeemed humanity, a humanity which body and soul ought to be cast into hell, but is now found part of a living temple. Part of a holy priesthood washed in the blood of Christ; set apart unto God in union with Christ; privileged to offer up something that is actually acceptable to God. Think of it. This, acceptable to God? Yes. Acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Added to that, there is to be the fervent offering of our praise. Hebrews 13:15, “By Him therefore let us offer up unto God continually the sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips which make confession to His name.” Through Him, through this same Christ, by whose mediation the offering of our person is accepted, now we are to offer a sacrifice of praise. We are to engage mind and heart and viscera and lungs and larynx, and offer unto God not the lame sacrifice of half-hearted, half-lunged, half-larynx praise. It’s stinks when you offer to God such lame sacrifices!
I can’t stand it to see people who hide behind, “Well, my temperament is not exuberant. I see those people when they’re out in the sidelines, cheering their kids at the soccer games of Trinity Christian School, and they’re all exuberance! Those same people get engaged in discussing a matter of business, and they’re all exuberance! They come into the house of God as part of the New Covenant priesthood, and throw at God’s feet the lame and the mangy sacrifice of half-lunged, half-larynx, half-mind engaged praise. God has very precise requirements for the sacrifices that He would accept. If that was true under a system of shadows, how much more is it so under the glorious fulfillment in the New Covenant?
The sacrifice of praise is offered by whom? Not by a man-appointed priesthood called ‘the choir’ that offers it on our behalf. I don’t want somebody to take away my priestly rights. They were bought too dearly. They were bought by the blood of my great High Priest, that I might be part of the priesthood that offers the sacrifice of praise unto God!
I’ve had some wonderful occasions when people have visited this place wanting a little tour, and I have happened to be in the building for one reason or another. As I’ve taken them around and come in here, they’ve come up. I’ve shown them the baptistry. We’re very modest about it, because we often have our Presbyterian friends, and I don’t like to rub things under people’s noses. But there is a baptistry back there. This pulpit gets moved, and that bench is not screwed down. That gets moved. That artificial greenery gets moved. They’ll say, “Pastor Martin, where is the choir loft?” I say, “It’s out there.” I said, “It gathers every Lord’s Day, and blends it’s voice in raising praise to our God.” Now, don’t anyone go out and say, “Pastor Martin castigated choirs!” I didn’t castigate choirs. I just explained to you what we regard from the Scriptures to be God’s choir, His New Covenant priesthood!
We ask the question, “God, have You revealed Your will for the contents and spirit of Your worship?” He says, “Yes, I have! It’s major boundaries are spirit and truth, an enlightened and engaged mind, sanctified decorum and order.” In its specific elements, the offering up of ourselves, the offering up of our praise, the frequent acknowledgement of sin and guilt with renewed repentance, the sacrifices of God, are a broken and a contrite heart. “A broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou will not despise.”
Dear people, that’s why our view of what happens when whoever is leading in the worship is so critical. He’s not up there performing. He’s not engaging in proxy worship. He is our mouthpiece at the throne of grace! Therefore, when he says, “O God, we acknowledge our coldness of heart. We acknowledge our tendencies so quickly to go whoring after other gods. O Lord, we acknowledge with shame our proneness to evil.” What is happening in that New Covenant priesthood? A sacrifice of a broken and a contrite heart is being offered up to God, and it is not despised.
The giving of our substance. Philippians 4:18. Paul says, “I precede the things that came from the hand of Epaphroditus.” How does he describe them in Old Testament ritual language? He said, “These things are an odor of a sweet smell, a sacrifice well-pleasing to God.” He wanted those Philippian Christians to see the sacred nature of their gifts for the spread of the gospel in the Cultic language of Old Testament worship. Those are the elements that God has required at our hand, and it’s our privilege to bring Him.
What is its dominant disposition? It’s not comprehensive, but I hope that it will at least stick in the passages on which I rested. I trust you’ll meditate upon them. The dominant disposition with respect to God’s will for the content and spirit of His worship in the New Covenant, is to be solemn joy, or exuberant solemnity. You might say, “Those are two oxymorons. Solemn joy? Exuberant solemnity?” No. It’s not an oxymoron. It’s an attempt to express what we find in a number of passages. Let me give you two specimen passages.
Psalm 2 is a Psalm that celebrates the Messiah’s reign, the accomplishment of redemptive purposes, breaking out of the bonds of Israel; the nations given to Him for His inheritance. In the light of God’s commitments and covenant engagements with His own Son celebrated in the first three stanzas of this Psalm; a word of exhortation comes in verse 10 in the light of these realities. “Now therefore be wise, O ye kings.” In other words, “You great ones of the earth, pay attention.” “Be wise, O ye kings. Be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.” “Rejoice with trembling!” There is joyful solemnity. There is solemn joy, and exuberant solemnity. “Rejoice!” It’s not with a giddiness that carries open to the realm of mindless psychological relation as so often marks the so-called worship of large segments of modern charismatic nonsense.
I have been in meetings where the slick manipulator began his oozy, smooth talk. “Isn’t Jesus wonderful? Do you think He’s wonderful? Just give the Lord a hand. Isn’t Jesus precious? Let’s just begin to thank Him. Thank you, Jesus.” I dare not go on anymore, for fear I may be guilty of blasphemy. I’ve been there, and I’ve seen the manipulation into a mindless, structureless, truth-devoid exuberance in which everyone was raising his hand, swaying, and praising Jesus! For what? No grand and glorious truth had been expounded. No facet of the glorious character of our great God had been opened up and set forth with authority and power. No great provision of New Covenant blessing purchased by the blood of Christ, justification, adoption, reconciliation, sanctification, glorification—none of these things had been expounded in a responsible handling of the Word of God, until the hearts of men enslaved with truth broke out into raised hands and exuberant praise. No. It was all manipulated, mindlessness, having a high without a hangover. Without having to pay your supplier. No. It is to be solemn, truth-precipitated, truth-bounded, truth-disciplined joy. It is to be exuberant solemnity.
The second passage is Hebrews chapter 12. As we consider the revelation of God’s will to the content and spirit of His worship, what is to be its dominant disposition? Hebrews 12 is a marvelous passage in many ways. It contrasts that to which we come under the New Covenant with that to which God’s people came under the Old. As a conclusion, we read in verse 28, “Wherefore, in the light of these things receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us have grace. Whereby we may offer service.” Some of you may have a Bible that says, “Whereby we may worship.” Others may say, “Whereby we may serve.” Why? Because the Greek verb latreuo in some contexts means ‘to worship,’ ‘to be engaged in specific acts of corporate, social worship.’ It speaks most frequently in Hebrews of the activity of priestly service. In other settings it means to serve God out of deep, religious conviction. “Thou shall worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shall thou [latreuo] serve.” This context is a context filled with the language of Old Covenant, Cultic worship. We, as the New Covenant community, this royal priesthood, these who come to God through our great High Priest, are to have grace, whereby we may offer service, whereby we may—as no little part of that service—worship well-pleasing to God. How? With reverence and awe for our God under the New Covenant.
In the full, blazing light of New Covenant privilege secured, revealed, and applied, our God is a consuming fire. You see, this notion that in the New Covenant, God’s revelation of Himself has been shunned is entirely contrary to the Scriptures. Christ has fully exegeted God, including His holiness likened to that of being a consuming fire. Was Sinai a revelation of God as a consuming fire? With thunder and lightening playing off its cragged edges with the threat that if a beast so much as touched the mountain it would die. Is that a revelation of God as a consuming fire? So much so that the people were exceedingly afraid. My friends, Sinai pales into insignificance before Golgotha. There, upon the cross, the sinless, incarnate God-man, exposing His bosom to the full, unleashed fury of Almighty God against human sin, is plunged in His soul into the felt pangs of abandonment and dereliction, until He cries, “My God, My God, why have you abandoned Me? There is no lightning that plays from craggy Sinai! There is no thunder heard beneath that Mount that can begin to match the revelation of God as a consuming fire. When He was both preached and offering, it’s consumed by that burning fire of God’s holiness and undiluted justice upon Golgotha.
When we sing with gratitude to this God, for redemption purchased at so great a price to Himself, surely our worship will be marked by exuberant solemnity and by solemn joy!
Having considered the manifestation of God’s concern for the nature of His worship, and the revelation of God’s will for the content of His worship, here I get more brief yet. I want you to consider briefly the identification of the major, current corruptions of His worship. Our vision for these days is a restoration of God’s worship in spirit and truth! If we are to move in that direction—as intelligent members of our churches, and my dear brethren in the ministry, as leaders in Christ’s church—we must be able to identify the major, current corruptions of His worship. I will point to just three of them, and give you the heads. How does Jesus feel about manmade traditions?
Read Matthew 15. Well-intentioned accommodations. We have a generation that doesn’t think deeply, therefore our worship must not make demands upon their minds. We have a generation where everything is informal. In fact, therefore we must get away with the idea that our dress and appearance has any connection with our worship. “God’s only concerned with the heart. He doesn’t care whether you’ve got a shirt and tie on. So, we’re going to accommodate to the laid-back, relaxed, Galitarian move.” Every place is the same. Every activity is the same. Well-intentioned accommodations. Men can’t follow the train of thought in the old hymns that began as the Bible does with a premise, and built upon it a conclusion, and from it drew a deduction. Hymns that have continuity that demand, “I will sing with the understanding. I will love God with all my mind!” We’ve got a television-numbed, mental generation, therefore let’s accommodate our worship with little ditties that wouldn’t strain the brain of a two-year old. Mindless repetitions! Well-intentioned accommodation is one of the great corruptions of God’s worship.
Thirdly, novel innovations. Men walk by our churches in the Lord’s Day. I try to pray for every jogger and every biker I pass every Lord’s Day. I say, “Lord, thank you that that guy, that gal, is not a couch potato and going to go to an early grave with cardiac arrest as far as they’re concerned, but O God, show them they’ve got a soul, and this is Your day! Show them to be concerned for their souls!” People say, “Well, they’ll keep jogging by the church and biking by the church until we’ve got something to offer that will get their attention. So, let’s make our worship services innovative and attractive. Get them in close enough, and then we can sneak in the gospel.” You see, God doesn’t need a lie in order to promote His truth, and innovative worship is a lie! It’s saying, “What you’re doing is pleasing to God.” When it isn’t if He hasn’t mandated it. When He says, “Who hath required this at Your hand?” You and I better be able to say, “O God, You require it, and that’s why I bring it.” If we can, don’t bring it. It’s will-worship.
1- Instruct your people in the biblical doctrine of worship.
Finally, some exhortations with regard to the restoration of the purity of God’s worship. My dear, precious fellow pastors, may I presume to exhort you as a brother in Christ: instruct your people in the biblical doctrine of worship. Instruct your people. Don’t assume they will pick it up along the way. Many of them have had no experience of biblical worship. They’ve grown up in churches where the Church was viewed from a total utilitarian perspective, and the concept that the Church is God’s living temple within which His blood-bought New Covenant priesthood is to have a primarily God-centered reference point! It’s not an, “I want to get, and I want to feel religion,” but, “I’ve come to give, and I’ve come to adore the Living God.”
Instruct your people in the biblical doctrine of worship. Instruct them on the demands of joyful solemnity in worship. Instruct them of how it is that God would have from them the whole sacrifice of engaged minds, the whole sacrifice of engaged lung and diaphragm and larynx in the singing of His praise. He would have the whole sacrifice of the engagement of concentrated, mental faculties in your seasons of corporate prayer. Instruct your people in the biblical doctrine of worship.
2- Give frequent exhortations to your people to be wholly engaged in all their acts of worship.
Secondly, give frequent exhortations to your people to be wholly engaged in all their acts of worship. This is an area in which we need constant reminders. We must not bang on our people, but lovingly, graciously exhort them. This is one of the reasons why we have found—I’m not pronouncing for others—but we have found this practice of the reading through the Psalms as our call to worship so beneficial, because you don’t get into a rut of sameness and the occasion to be stirred up to praise is so varied and so multi-faceted.
3- Be yourself filled with the Spirit as you lead your people in worship.
Thirdly, my fellow pastors, be yourself filled with the Spirit as you lead your people in worship. There are few things that will more quickly damn and grieve and quench the Holy Spirit in worship than a man seeking to lead in worship who himself is not filled with the Spirit. You may seek to affect the tones of intensity and you may seek to frame the words of penitence and praise, but if in the secret place—before you ever come to that pulpit—there has been no sacrifice of a broken spirit before God, no exuberance of praise and wonder and worship, no breastless prostration before God, you will not be able to carry you phony-acting into the pulpit and cut it with any discerning people.
Dear brethren, let us make it a matter of specific prayer as much as we pray. “Oh Lord, may I preach in the power and demonstration of the Spirit. May I be able to say when I am done preaching that my preaching came not in word only, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. Oh Lord, fill me with the Spirit, that I may lead Your people in worship.” Whoever is to be leading them: others in the assembly, fellow elders, or other men whom God has gifted with the necessary gifts and graces, may we be ourselves filled with the Spirit if we would lead others in worship.
4- Resist unto blood any efforts to profane God’s worship, even at the outer edges of its purity and its sanctity.
My fourth exhortation to you, my brethren, is resist unto blood. Here I call upon the people of God, as well. Resist unto blood any efforts to profane God’s worship, even at the outer edges of its purity and its sanctity.
Why do we run the risk of offending visitors who occasionally walk into this place and come down the front, ignoring the direction of the deacons, and sit with a kid that begins to squawk, and the moment the kid squawks a deacon is on the shoulder assuring them out? We’ve had people get mad at us, but it’s more important what God thinks about worship than what that visitor thinks about how we treat them. We may lose them if they’re offended because we’re going to guard God’s worship from the distraction of a crying baby, and they’ve got a very low view of God. The best way we can teach them they ought to have a higher view is to graciously usher them out. Now, the deacon doesn’t come and grab them by the scruff of the neck and say, “Follow me.” You see a rose, Paul by any other name is a rose still, and he ushers her instructed by their elders, “Get them out.” If they don’t have sense enough to take themselves out, get them out. Why? Is is because we’re irritated with little ones? No. We want nothing to erode the sanctity of God’s worship!
I’ve preached in churches all over this country where teenagers are allowed to sit separate from their families, out from under their scrutiny and watchcare, sit, giggle, and write notes, and preachers tolerated it for years! I had to be the visiting ogre to call them down in the name of God to stop their foolishness in the presence of the sovereign of Heaven.
Dear people of God, guard, guard, guard the sanctity and the purity of the worship of God, and resist all efforts to profane it, even at its outer edges. I see some of you who represent the next generation, should the Lord carry. I plead with you, pray that God would put these principles into your spiritual bloodstream. Fill up your spiritual backbone with the steel of commitment to these things, and when someone innocently suggests, “Well, if we’re going to reach more people, could we not this? Could we not that?” If it is not a matter of fresh light from the Word of God concerning that which God says He will have as part of His worship, resist it unto blood. Show the disposition of Your Saviour, not when He benignly stands off in the corner, and has a smile playing off His lips while they sip the better wine of His creation. May you reflect the Jesus of the burning eye, and the flashing scrouge towards anything that would profane the Father’s house!
You may sit here tonight as one who is an utter stranger to these great realities. We’ve spoken of the blessings of the New Covenant, of Christ as our Redeemer, of our response of gratitude to His grace and you may say, “What in the world is that preacher talking about?” My friend, I say lovingly, I’ve been talking about the things that are the common currency of the people that are on their way to Heaven. If you’re ever to be part of those people on their way to Heaven, you better start taking seriously your abysmal and inexcusable ignorance about such things as justification, adoption, sanctification, the blood of the New Covenant, and Jesus as a High Priest, because you see, those words represent the stuff of the only things that will keep you out of hell and land you safe in the presence of God for all eternity.
I urge you to take seriously the issues that are reflected and embodied in those words. They’re not religious gibberish. They reflect the great provisions of a gracious God for hell-deserving sinners, provisions most adequate and sincerely set before you in the gospel. May God grant that if you are not a worshiper remember that Jesus was talking to an immoral women while He evangelized her. In His evangelizing of her He’s telling her that is she ever comes to know the true God, she’ll know Him, in the way of becoming a worshiper, in spirit and in truth. Let us pray.
Our Father, we thank You with all of our hearts for Your holy Word. We thank You that You have given us this blessed Book as a revelation of Your mind and Your will. We pray that as we have reflected together on this great, massive issue of the sanctity, the purity of Your worship, that You would take Your Word and apply it to ever heart with power, and grant that in our day we may see an increasing return to that worship in spirit and in truth which You seek and which You delight to receive from Your people through Jesus Christ the Lord.
We ask for those who sit amongst us who see no beauty to captivate the eyes of their soul, who see nothing that elicits wonder and awe and mystery. O God, have mercy upon them in their poor, lost condition. Open their blinded eyes, and lovingly and powerfully draw them to the knowledge of Your Son. Seal Your Word to our hearts, O God, our Father, and accept this poor expression of our attempts to call upon Your name, to worship You, to magnify and exalt Your high and holy name. Hear us. Dismiss us with Your blessing resting upon us. We plead through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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