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The Regulative Principle Of Worship 1

Exodus 20:4-6 and Various Texts

Grace Fellowship Church

June 15, 2008

Series 4 Sermon 1

⁴ “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or 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. ⁵ You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, ⁶ but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Introduction

Throughout the history of mankind God has had a principle of worship by which mankind who have been redeemed have both the privilege and the command to come before Him and worship Him. We saw last week in Genesis 4 and Hebrews 11:4 that God had previously set forth a standard of worship and sacrifice for His people to come near Him. Abel was commended as righteous because he brought what God required and Cain was rejected because he brought what he thought should be acceptable. Cain learned and we also learned that we only bring before God that which is required by the Lord and nothing else. No less, no more.

Throughout the whole of the Old Testament God gave commands about sanctioned worship. All of this worship pointed ultimately to Christ as redeemer but there was an orderliness to it that no one can refute. The original sacrifices were blood sacrifices. Then came the children of Israel out of Egypt and God gave them very specific instructions on how He was to be worshipped. Remember they tried things their own way with a Golden Calf and the Lord killed many of the Israelites that day. This was before the second commandment was even read to them.

Many people today believe that God is not very specific when it comes to worship. They believe that there is great freedom in the New Covenant community and basically we can worship God any way we see fit because as some have said, we have a sanctified imagination. They will say that there is no set pattern in Scripture regarding New Testament or New Covenant worship.

Let me give a word of testimony here. I once thought the same thing. I walked into a seminary class and was hit right in the face by a term that I introduced some of you to last week. It is the regulative principle of worship. I did not know such a term existed. The truth is I always had this knot in my stomach when I would talk to people of a more charismatic persuasion because they really ridiculed how we worshiped. They told us we needed the Holy Spirit in our churches to liven things up. I was thinking for a while that they may be right. I had never been taught that there was a guiding principle of worship that Christians have known about for centuries and that for the most part had been lost in our day.

Much of what is done in the name of worship today in most churches is by tradition. The churches may indeed deny that but that is what is happening. They have traditionally organized their worship around a liturgy of some sort. Maybe it’s traditional or contemporary or charismatic or liturgical. Most have no biblical reason why they do what they do and for the most part have not considered what Scripture teaches.

I do not want that to be the case for us here at Grace Fellowship. We do not need to make the mistake of coming before the Lord in an improper manner because we have either ignored what Scripture teaches or have not diligently studied enough to understand what God requires. We want to be like Abel, not like Cain.

We should desire to come before the Lord in a way that brings glory to Him as His redeemed people. We also want to establish the biblical pattern for our children so that when we are gone and they are coming before the Lord and bringing their children they can establish those same patterns of worship not based on tradition but on a clear understanding of Scripture.

Let me warn you here. You can find many people in the church today who are in total opposition to the Regulative Principle of worship. They will make the argument that only what God forbids is not allowed in worship. The term for this is the Normative Principle of worship. This position sounds good on the surface but the biblical record does not bear that out. Take the story of Nadab and Abihu. When did God ever say that they could not offer a different kind of fire on the alter? God did not give a negative command about the fire He simply said that this was to be done from a certain fire. There was only a positive command. Cain was not told that he could not bring something he grew from the ground as an offering. He had no law against that but he also had the command to bring a blood sacrifice. So when Nadab and Abihu violated the positive command God killed them and when Cain did not bring what was acceptable before the Lord he was rejected. Nadab and Abihu tried to offer worship to God their way. Cain tried to offer worship before God his way. All were rejected.

Is it possible that much of what is passed off as worship in our day is in reality detestable to the Lord? Is it possible that there are thousands upon thousands of people in churches this very morning who think they are worshipping when in reality they are participating in apostasy?

Those are questions that in my heart I really do not want to have to answer because when we do answer them from a biblical perspective it causes us to see the further and further apostasy that the 21^st century church is getting involved in. It is like a creeping death taking over churches until true worship is strangled out and replaced by pure self absorbed self willed so called worship that only serves as a mere distraction.

By the way, the fastest way this comes in to a church is through the music. Churches have more arguments over music than any other thing. There is a saying that goes around among pastors and it goes like this. “When Satan fell from heaven he fell into the choir loft.”

This morning as I introduce this much needed concept of worship I want to show you various Scripture that deal with the Regulative Principle of worship. I want you to see that God indeed just like in the Old Testament established a pattern of worship that is both acceptable and glorifying to Him and sanctifying for us.

Before we start let me say a couple of things about culture. There is such an emphasis on culture in the church in our day and many pastors believe it is their duty to be involved in the culture in order to try to win people to Christ and to even allow the culture to dictate the worship services. However you will not find this taught in Scripture anywhere. When the apostles went to a new place in a new culture they established churches with a set order. So the Lord who is omniscient has established His worship that knows no cultural bounds. Revelation 7:9-12 says,

⁹ After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; ¹⁰ and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, "Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb." ¹¹ And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures; and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, ¹² saying, "Amen, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might, be to our God forever and ever. Amen."

This multilingual, multicultural, multiethnic group of redeemed people are all standing before the throne of God and in response to their worship the angels fall on their faces before God and worship Him.

So for us to mingle cultural preference with biblical worship is very, very dangerous. I am going to show you that personal preference has very little to do and is usually in opposition to biblical worship. There are some cultural influences that are fine and acceptable but our worship should be informed and limited by Scripture and not overly influenced by our culture.

In many ways our culture does influence our worship. For instance we meet in a building. If we were in another part of the world we may be meeting outdoors or in a hut. We have electricity for lights. Other societies do not have those. We have hymnals while others use a power point projector or handouts for music while others sing from memory. We are wearing clothes according to our societal norms but if we were in the jungles of South America or Africa we may be wearing very little.

The regulative principle is not going to deal with whether or not it is Scriptural to have electric lights or to meet inside or outside. It will deal with the very specific elements of worship and what we can participate in while worshipping the one true and living God.

So why have a regulative principle of worship? The reason is three fold.

1. First, God has told us that He is to be worshipped. The very first commandment states that we are to have no other god before the One God who has redeemed us. All men of all times are called to bow the knee before the Lord of the Universe.

2. The second reason we need a regulative principle is because this God who has commanded us to worship Him also knows exactly how He is to be worshipped. And anything other than sanctioned worship is not acceptable.

3. The third reason we need a regulative principle is because we can not be trusted with instituting or maintaining biblical worship. We are going to see this in the Second Commandment. Look with me at Exodus 20:4-6.

⁴ “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or 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.

The second commandment is in essence a prohibition of the tangible. As humans we like the tangible. We see this played out in the saying, “If I can’t see it, taste it, touch it, feel it I will not and can not believe it.” Understand this. When the Israelites left Egypt they left a nation that was overrun with idols. Pharaoh was worshipped as a god. There were images of gods everywhere. They were as accustomed to seeing idols as we are to seeing billboard signs on Highway 49.

Now God had called them out of the bondage of Egyptian slavery and they were His covenant people and they now had the magnificent privilege of worshipping and serving the One True God, the redeemer and creator of the universe. And so the Lord sets down some commands.

Look at verse 4 again.

⁴ “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or 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.

Why does the Lord do that? Why doesn’t He just allow His redeemed people to worship in freedom? I told you there was a threefold reason for the Regulative Principle of worship. The third reason answers this question. Totally depraved men and women and children can no more be allowed to dictate proper worship to God than a thief should be left to guard a bank vault.

People will degenerate into idolatry as fast as that guard will fill his pockets and walk out the door. I told you that we like the tangible. Because of the damage of sin in our hearts and lives we can not trust our own imaginations. We can not trust our own wills. We can not trust our own hearts. It scares me to death when people tell me follow my heart. The Bible just says that it is desperately wicked so yeah, I will follow it to my undoing and destruction.

Folks this is why the Bible is our only rule for faith and life. We can not be trusted. I am sorry if you came to church this morning for help with your self esteem. We can talk about that later but what I need for you to see this morning is that I can’t be trusted and you can’t be trusted with dictating proper worship from mine or your own mind and heart no more than we need to allow Cain or Nadab and Abihu to be our worship leaders today.

The second command was a prohibition on all idols including what we think the true God might look like. It was not merely a command against idols of the Caananite and Egyptian gods but also against any form of the true God that we might come up with in our own imagination.

Did you ever wonder why there was no physical description of Jesus in the New Testament? We don’t even know how tall he was or anything. The reason we don’t have any physical descriptions of the Lord is because people would make statues and pictures and before you know it they would incorporate those pictures and statues in the worship service and people would pay homage to the statues and the pictures by bowing and kissing them but they would be sophisticated in this violation of the second commandment and call these objects icons that help them focus their worship. Wait. You are right. There are people that do just that and are breaking the second commandment probably in blind ignorance or out of mere tradition.

Do you see and understand that man contrived worship will always lead to idolatry. Someone might say, “Surely the people of God would not form idols and refer to them by the name of the One true God.” It happed at Mt. Sinai. Listen to Exodus 32:1-6.

¹ Now when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people assembled about Aaron and said to him, "Come, make us a god who will go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him." ² Aaron said to them, "Tear off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me." ³ Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. ⁴ He took this from their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf; and they said, "This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt." ⁵ Now when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made a proclamation and said, "Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD." ⁶ So the next day they rose early and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.

Now I don’t think any of you would get involved in anything like that. I would be shocked if any of you had idols at home that you bowed down to and worshipped. If you do that is probably something I need to know about so I can help you break those.

But let me tell you where the danger comes in for us. The idol of personal preference will rear its ugly head and before you know it we have created a god who likes what we like, is from our culture, has our tastes, and he even hates and detests what we hate even though all of those things are not in the Bible. You have heard people say this and maybe you have said it yourself. “I like or dislike that church because the music is too ________. And you fill it in. It’s too traditional. Or it’s too contemporary. Or it’s too soft or too loud. Why do we not hear people say that the reason they do not attend a church is because the worship is not biblical enough? It is because the thrill of the emotions can and will soon become an image that you have set up and if that idol is pleased you think you have worshiped.

Most people would dismiss this at this point and say that what I am saying really is not a big deal. But can we really be that dismissive? Remember the first commandment?

³ “You shall have no other gods before me.” Not even the god of personal preference.

Look at verse 5.

⁵ You shall not bow down to them or serve them, (No idol is to be served not even the idol of our emotional experience or our personal preference. Why? Look at the rest of verse 5.) for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me,

I want you to let this sink in this morning and feel the weightiness of the statement in verse 5. Let me read it again.

for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me,

To offer false worship, whether it be a false god or false worship to the true and living God, brings down a curse. This is not a temporary curse but one that can last for four generations. That means if God decides that He is going to curse you for false worship then He may and has warned you that He might just curse your generations all the way to your great, great, great grandchildren. Let me put that another way so you can feel the importance, so you can feel the imperative of proper biblical worship. Your posterity may go to hell because of your sin of idolatry against the one true and living God. If we were not so spiritually cold this morning we would be trembling this morning. Not out of emotionalism but out of fear.

Many would simply dismiss the warning in verse 5. “Surely God will not operate like that anymore?” “Certainly God appreciates all of our efforts to worship Him even when we contradict His Word.” Maybe those statements are a signal that the curse is upon the modern European and American churches.

The church once struck fear in lost people because there was within her a taste of the holiness and majesty of God. Now there is a flavor but it is a worldly flavor. At one time the children of Christians after they became adults remained in the faith and now they leave the faith by the time they are in college for the most part. Could it be the spiritual draught that we live in has been brought on because of the fact that men love darkness rather than light and even those who claim to be redeemed could not care less about what God has commanded for worship? I believe the modern church is under the curse of the second commandment. This is why the church is crumbling and the society around the church further degenerates into decay and ruin because if the church is rotten surely the culture is going to be rotten. If the church is salt and light and it is only adding to the decay and the darkness then you can expect the culture to lead the way to destruction.

God is to be worshipped but He is only to be worshipped His way. It just so happens that God has mercifully allowed us to participate in that worship. He did not have to. He did not need to. God derives no self fulfillment from our worship. He is glorified by it precisely because He has decided to allow that to glorify Himself and for no other reason. And still there are those who would dismiss the warning of verse 5.

Those same people who would be dismissive of the warning of verse 5 would heartily accept the blessing of verse 6. Look at verse 6.

⁶ but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

So let’s put a bow on this. In true Biblical worship there is reward. The steadfast love of God is on those that love the Lord and keep His commandments. But on the idolater of every stripe there is a curse.

So there has to be a standard by which we can rightly discern what is real worship and what is humanly contrived. And this is where the regulative principle comes in and is very helpful. Let me again point you to our confession. It is very informative in solidifying our understanding of what God desires and has commanded in worship.

Let me read it to you.

1._____ The light of nature shews that there is a God, who hath lordship and sovereignty over all; is just, good and doth good unto all; and is therefore to be feared, loved, praised, called upon, trusted in, and served, with all the heart and all the soul, and with all the might. But the acceptable way of worshipping the true God, is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imagination and devices of men, nor the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representations, or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures.
( Jeremiah 10:7; Mark 12:33; Deuteronomy 12:32; Exodus 20:4-6 )

Unless we have a guide, and that guide is Scripture alone, for worship then we can easily degenerate into false worship. The confession gives us a few warnings based on Scripture.

The first warning is against the imaginations and devices of men. This is in essence what the Puritans called will worship. It was the succumbing to the very ideas of our own mind about how God is to be worshipped. We see this played out in churches today. The whole seeker model is based on the idea that we need to provide in worship to God for those who do not know God and so we change the worship to make the unsaved more comfortable. We do things that will “help” them. The purveyors of the seeker movement seek to make church not feel like church. This is but one example of the imaginations and devices of men that bring upon themselves God’s curse.

There is a biblical example of this as well. It takes place in John 4 when Jesus encounters the woman at the well. The Samaritans were enemies of the Jews. They were half breeds who were outcasts of Jewish society. So the Samaritans built their own temple, had their own priests, and carried out their own worship. So when Jesus begins to talk to this Samaritan woman about her soul she deflects the conversation to the challenge between Jew and Samaritan. Listen as I read the conversation found in John 4:19-24.

¹⁹ The woman said* to Him, "Sir , I perceive that You are a prophet. ²⁰ "Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." ²¹ Jesus said* to her, "Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. ²² "You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ "But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. ²⁴ "God is spirit , and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."

The charge that Jesus levied against the Samaritans was true. They worshipped what they did not know in contradiction to what the Scripture taught. Yes it was inconvenient to go to Jerusalem. But that is what was commanded. Remember all the mention of the high places in the Old Testament? Remember the mention of families having their own Levitical Priests? These were of the devices and imaginations of man and therefore an abomination to the Lord who set down the pattern for worship.

How about the false prophets that scurried around the wicked kings of Judah and Israel?

The second warning is against worshipping the true and living God according to the suggestion of Satan. Listen, the greatest suggestion that Satan will ever make to you as a believer is the same suggestion that He made to Adam and Eve in the Garden. “Did God really say….?” The greatest attack of the enemy has come upon the sufficiency of Scripture for all things. Not only should be we understand that the Bible is inerrant we should also understand that it is sufficient for us in all matters of life and faith.

When people question the sufficiency of the Bible we should understand that they perhaps are under the suggestion of Satan.

The third warning is that God must not be worshipped under any visible representation. If you have a picture of a blond haired blue eyed Jesus somewhere and that is your mental image when you think about Christ then it is very possible that you are worshipping under a visible representation thus violating the second commandment.

The last statement in the confession is the kicker. Let me read it to you again.

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

Prescribed means by express command or example. If God did not tell us to do something or give us the example of it then we should not try to incorporate that into worship. To try and add to the worship of God is tantamount to sinning the same sin that Cain sinned and was rejected for.

So what are the benefits of the regulative principle? Can it be said that this principle puts bonds on Christians so they can not worship freely? Or can it be said that the Regulative principle is one of the most freeing principles when it comes to worship? Let me give you some of the freeing benefits of the regulative principle.

1. The regulative principle brings worship under the authority of God.

In human society you are going to have two polar extremes usually. There is going to be those churches that exercise an ecclesiastical hierarchy that sets the terms and conditions for worship and that is all that there is. You do not find that too often. The other pole which is found almost on every corner is the anything goes crowd. That boils down to this; whatever we want in worship is what we do and God will be pleased with all of it. Folks, there is not freedom in any of these models. Both are unbiblical and both ultimately are guided by the depraved will of mankind and neither is going to be pleasing to God.

2. The regulative principle removes the idol of the will of man and replaces that with the true object of our worship, the Lord Himself. But we have to ask the question this morning; why is there a problem with people worshipping the way they want to? There are a plethora of problems with that but let me provide you with three. The first one is pride. Cain demonstrated that one for us. “I will bring what I want to worship and God will accept it.” Lucifer fell because of pride. If worship is planned by us, initiated by us, and guided by us it will not take long before there is a golden calf sitting right here.

The second problem of the idol of the human will is self sufficiency. This is a fruit of pride and we will basically say that what we do is sufficient for the worship of God as long as what we do pleases our flesh. We have to be very careful here. There is a possibility that we can get so caught up in emotional experience that the thrill of that becomes what we look for and call worship. But the other edge of that sword is that we become so stoic that our emotions are not moved at all in worship. In worship we should be focused on God and in that focus we are moved emotionally. But to be moved emotionally by anything or anyone other than God is not true worship.

We can be moved emotionally by the talent of a musician. We can be emotionally moved by the content of a song. “Facing the Giants” was a great movie and an emotional roller coaster but it was not a worship experience. Isaiah was moved emotionally when he was ushered into the presence of God but it was not a happy clappy emotion. John the Apostle when he saw the glorified Lord Jesus Christ fell on his face like a dead man. Fear was the emotion. But there are also other emotions. We can through biblical worship become enthralled with the person and work of our triune God. When we are taken in worship by the overwhelming glory and majesty of our Creator to new heights that is wonderful because that is focused Godward and not on mere emotional satisfaction.

The third problem of the idol of the human will is that by nature, by birth, we are children of wrath. Our flesh goes after what pleases us and so if God left worship up to us and our imaginations it would always be fatally flawed.

So we have seen that the Regulative Principle brings worship under the authority of God and it removes the cancer of human will worship.

3. The regulative principle aids us in the further pursuit of our sanctification or our being molded to the image of Christ. This means that we will not add unnecessary commandments to worship. The Lord levied a charge against the Pharisees in Matthew 15:1-14 that had to do with them adding to the worship of God. They said it was unlawful to eat bread without ritually washing your hands. I think that is a law in our house as well.

¹ Then some Pharisees and scribes came* to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, ² "Why do Your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread." ³ And He answered and said to them, "Why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? ⁴ "For God said, 'HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER,' and, 'HE WHO SPEAKS EVIL OF FATHER OR MOTHER IS TO BE PUT TO DEATH.' ⁵ "But you say, 'Whoever says to his father or mother, "Whatever I have that would help you has been given to God," ⁶ he is not to honor his father or his mother .' And by this you invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition. ⁷ "You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you: ⁸ 'THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME. ⁹ 'BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME, TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN.' " ¹⁰ After Jesus called the crowd to Him, He said to them, "Hear and understand. ¹¹ "It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man."
¹² Then the disciples came* and said* to Him, "Do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this statement?" ¹³ But He answered and said, "Every plant which My heavenly Father did not plant shall be uprooted. ¹⁴ "Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit."

If you went and sat down with the Pharisees they would tell you that their greatest concern was with being holy before God. They would tell you that their whole lives are a walking worship service to the Lord. They would confess to you the authority of Scripture and would tell you everything that the Law commanded and inferred. They would give you an exposition of the Decalogue or the Ten Commandments and you would be thoroughly impressed. But they had a fatal flaw. In the pursuit of holiness they became detestable to God precisely because in practice they did not see the Scripture as sufficient. So they added to it. “Eleventh Commandment: Wash your hands before every meal.” And then they point their fingers at the Lord of Glory and accuse Him of being unholy because He did not teach Peter to scrub under his fingernails before he ate.

Today these extra-biblical commandments of men manifests itself in a culture that is ruled by in large by the entertainment industry. We have a multitude of actors and comedians and musicians and artists so that if needed we can have round the clock entertainment. So that cultural abnormality has bled over into the church and many think that the best churches are where they are the most entertained.

But God is far more concerned with our sanctification than He is with our comfort, our enjoyment, our entertainment, or even our temporal happiness or our emotional happiness.

Let me finish this by providing a few things to remember about worship as we prepare to flesh out the regulative principle next week.

God is holy. Therefore as sinful creatures privileged to approach Him in worship we should do so in fear. God is holy and we are not so we should seek what He desires in worship and that should become our desire. This in turn causes the further mortification of our flesh because we die a little more to our wills each time we approach God in worship. This is turn causes us to search deeper in His Word to find out what He desires in worship so that we can like Christ live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. This is going to birth satisfaction in God in us so that as we are more satisfied in Him He is more glorified in us.

That is worship. And that is what we should seek when we gather together corporately or in your private time or your family time or any other time that you worship. And remember, in doing this there is a blessing. Exodus 20:6.

⁶ but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Next week I will begin to unpack the elements of biblical worship.

Let’s pray.