I'm going to go to the next slide. Worshippers are given the impression that worship is primarily about them rather than it being about God. How do we know how God wants us to worship Him? The only way God wants us to worship Him is in accordance with what He's commanded in the Bible, period. If I believe that I can do anything that the Word of God doesn't permit or doesn't forbid, then I'm faced with bringing anything into the church that I want to bring in, as long as I don't find it to be grotesquely sinful.

The regulative Principle is basically a product of a generation that was forced to think hard about the worship of God. Welcome back to the family that worships together. In this session, we're going to examine how God wants to be worshipped. We've established that God is the center of all worship and that our task as fathers and church leaders is to bring our families and our churches before the throne of God. But now, since God created us to worship, then it follows that we should pay attention if He has given us any direction for how He wants to be worshipped.

Here's an illustration. It's really helpful to go back to some of the historic writings on worship. You could go to the Westminster Confession, you could go to the Baptist Confession. Many of the great historical confessions address this matter of worship in great detail because there's so much confusion about it. Well, one example is John Owen's catechism on the worship of God.

And he asks this question, What doth God require of us in our dependence on him, that he may be glorified by us and we be accepted with Him? Answer, that we worship Him in and by the ways of His own appointment. And then he asks another question. He asks, how then are these ways and means of the worship of God made known unto us? Answer in and by the written word only, which contains a full and perfect revelation of the will of God.

Here's the point. If it's not that way, our worship may not be worship at all, but actually just the inventions of our own minds and actually dishonor. So the only way to know how God wants to be worshipped is to learn from him through the scriptures to find out what he's given us in terms of specific instruction on how to worship Him. This is the belief that the Word of God regulates how we are to worship Him, and it has been called the Regulative Principle. Now this really is a life-giving principle because it exalts God and His Word.

It exalts what He has said about worship over and above what the heart of man might actually create. And so we have to ask, is sincerity enough in my worship? Is it enough if my heart is right? Does it matter what I do if just my heart is right? And what we want to suggest here in this session is that there's more to consider than just your heart.

You've got to consider your heart. But at the same time, God commands us to worship in particular ways. And this is exactly why Jesus said, this people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. In vain they do worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. And that is the heart of the principle we want to communicate.

That God has communicated the ways that He desires to be worshipped. And it's wrong for us to invent worship on our own. The Regative Principle is basically a product of a generation that was forced to think hard about the worship of God. You will appreciate the fact that prior to the Reformation the Catholic Church and primarily here we think in terms of the Roman Catholic Church had brought into the worship of God a lot of activities, They had a lot of ordinances, what they would call sacraments. They had different vestments.

They had and so on and so forth. When the Reformers came on the scene, there was need for them to answer the question, what should we keep in terms of worship and what should we not allow in the place of worship? So that they needed a principle to use because the Bible is not an encyclopedia. You don't find just a list of things. The Bible was written in the midst of life.

It was relating to real situations. But the Reformers recognized that they were in a dead age when there were no inspired prophets. So they had to go back to the Bible and seek some principle. It boiled down to two things. One was, do we allow everything that the Bible forbids, or do we only allow what the Bible says we should allow?

And So the reformers basically divided into two camps and those to whom the vast majority of Protestantism aligned itself went for what is called the Regulative Principle, Principle, which was basically saying that you only allow the elements of worship that God himself has prescribed, because it's about worshiping him. So surely he should tell us how he wants us to worship him. So that became the Regulative Principle and it was almost like a fork that was used therefore to comb through the many things that at that stage were making up worship. And consequently they were able to say this should not be and this ought to be. The Regulative Principle of worship means that everything you do in the worship service must be regulated by this principle that it harmonizes with what the New Testament scripture says should be in worship.

That's why you have a vodum, that's why you have greetings, you have a scripture reading, prayer, singing, and of course the central item of the sermon. Because all of those things are found in New Testament worship. And the word regulative means we regulate our whole worship around us so the whole of worship is word centered, word based, and Anything else that's added to that is forbidden. Now the debate comes in, what is incidental to worship that helps the worship? For example, can you have a musical instrument?

In my own particular denomination, we allow an organ, but an organ is not considered part of the actual worship service. It's just incidental to help the people sing better so that we can worship God more purely. So that's tolerated. So there are questions of conscience here that aren't always so easy to solve. What is an incidental and what is actually the worship itself?

But certainly the worship itself should have nothing that's not totally prescribed in the New Testament. As soon as you move from there, you move into grey areas, and then it's a slippery slope. But the incidentals, you know, there's room for discussion on those. But the principle is everything about the worship service must be strictly scriptural. The regulative principle, um, applying to worship applies to absolutely everything in the Christian life.

What has God commanded? Is there a better way or is are the scriptures sufficient? And in the Regulative Principle, you bring ten people who believe in the Regulative Principle and you set them down, they'll still have ten different ideas. There will be different nuances. And that's okay, Because what we've got is ten people who are at least serious about drawing everything they do in the church out of the Scriptures.

As long as I can sit down with a man who sincerely holds to that principle, We can have differences in our nuances, but I know as a believer in Christ, he is seeking to follow the scriptures with all his heart. In modern day evangelicalism, no one even goes to the scriptures to determine what should be done in the church. I will oftentimes preach in places where they do not even know what the regulative principle is. And so I'll talk to worship leaders because I believe worship is very important and I believe that a lot of people who are involved in it are sincere. But I'll ask them, I'll say, have you ever, as the worship leader, opened the Bible and studied, read through the entire scripture from Genesis to Revelation, to seek to determine what kind of worship God desires and what type of worship He condemns.

And in every case the answer has been, I've never thought of that. I've never thought to do that. And then, with a twinkle in my eye, because I want to be helpful and I want to be loving to them, I'll say, you know, God's hardly ever killed a preacher for a bad sermon, but in Leviticus he killed two worship leaders. Maybe you ought to look at that. Indeed the Scriptures teach, as far as I can understand them, that we are to worship God only in the ways that Scripture reveals to us.

That was not restricting to me. I thought it was wonderful. I thought it was delightful that the Most High God would love us enough to say, in your fallen condition, you really don't know how to worship me. But worship me this way. There's certainly plenty of latitude in the way we understand the regulative principle, but those ideas that make that principle what it is certainly is held by all those that lay hold or profess to believe that particular way of worshiping God.

There should always be music that exalts God, there should always be prayer, and there certainly should always be the faithful preaching of God's Word. It's a pretty stripped-down model compared to most of the things that we see today. However, having arrived at the basic elements of worship and there would have been about five or six of them all together issues of singing the word sacraments etc or as we would refer to them ordinances with beyond that they then came to recognize that there were modes that these elements would take. And the modes would be, Let me use a typical example here. For instance, when it comes to singing, you had those that insisted it should be only psalms, and then you had others that said that you could have psalms, hymns and spiritual songs and consequently had a number of modes that the singing would be expressed in.

That's just one easy example I could use. And then finally, you had the circumstances. And the circumstances had to do with, for instance, should you only meet once on the Lord's day? Should you meet twice? If it's twice, what time?

And so forth. So those became circumstances that were related to the modes that were consequently upholding the basic elements. And that's how the Regulative Principle therefore is to be understood and carried out in the churches. It's sad that today's church has generally lost this principle so that it's more an issue of just coping one another. You know This was very nice at that church.

Why don't we import it into our church as well so that we can enjoy ourselves, when really a former generation had a better way of addressing this matter. One of the reasons that we see what we would call aberrations from those who hold our view is because many people believe that if they just offer up something to God with an honest heart, he should receive it. And we don't believe that's what the scriptures teach. So that's where you see the vast differences. If I believe that I can do anything that the word of God doesn't permit or doesn't forbid, then I'm faced with bringing anything into the church that I want to bring in, as long as I don't find it to be grotesquely sinful.

That is why you would, perhaps in a church that held the normative view, whether they understood that or not, would be having plays or dances during the worship, whereas those who hold the regulative principle are doing what they can to honestly worship God according to Scripture, would view that as offensive, view it as even highly insulting to God and His Holiness. Worshipers are given the impression that worship is primarily about them rather than it being about God. And so they go to church for instance thinking primarily about having a nice time, enjoying themselves, when really worship ought to be about describing something of the worth of God. It's to do with bringing out something of who God is and consequently although it's true that as godly men and women engage in that act they find out of fulfillment and blessing but it's really not primary about them it's primary about God. It seems to me that's been the major era of worship in evangelicalism today and there's a great need to reverse that trend.

Otherwise we're ending up with people having the mentality of going to, say, a football stadium in order to go and have fun when really that's not the issue. You are going to a place where you are primarily thinking in terms of God and describing something of his worth. Worship is not fashion. We don't come up with a new fashion every year. Unfortunately, we see a lot of churches, a lot of missionaries come with new ideas, new fashion, a worship style.

I think we need to go back to the scriptures and look at David. We need to look at Daniel. We need to look at Apostle Paul. We need to look at Christ himself. Look at John when he wrote Revelation.

I call the book of Revelation the Gospel of Revelation. You know, the message in the book of Revelation is it's about the church. It's your history. You will be singing these hymns. You will be glorifying God in heaven.

If in all eternity we are going to glorify God the way God wants us to glorify Him, then why not do it while we're here and do it to please Him? We will please Him as He commands. We obey His command. How do we know how God wants us to worship Him. The only way God wants us to worship Him is in accordance with what He has commanded in the Bible, period.

I mean it is not that hard to understand. We don't believe in situational ethics as evangelicals. We don't believe that it all depends upon the situation as to whether something is right or wrong. I mean we know there are moral absolutes in the Bible like the Ten Commandments for instance. But we all, not we, but most evangelical Christians they practice situational worship.

What makes me feel good? What makes me feel close to God? What I feel like we ought to do in a worship service has become the regulating principle of worship. What the preacher feels like the congregation needs. Now, how can you use as the principle that regulates worship my feelings when the ultimate focus of worship is the lordship of Almighty God?

I mean we are to confess the lordship of God in every area of life, but in worship is the prime moment when we are saying we confess before the living God that we are His creatures and that we are saved by His grace. But God here is how we are going to do it. Here is the way we feel you ought to be worshiped. You see the big contradiction in it as well as blasphemy. That God wants to be worshiped according to the way He has commanded in the Bible period.

And everything we need to worship God, God has commanded. We don't need to add to, that's why the Bible says, and I'll put this in Southern, God says don't add to, don't take away from, just do what I tell you. Because you don't need to add to it. You don't need to subtract from it. Everything that God wants us to know to worship Him He has commanded in the Scriptures.

Either by express statement, thou shalt pray, or by some inescapable deduction from scripture. But God is the standard, not only for ethics, but for worship. And it is God's Word that is the regulating principle of worship. How does God want us to worship Him? According to His command in the Bible, period.

If He has not commanded it in the Bible, we may not do it because that is adding to the Word of God. There are basically three sentences. If you remember these three sentences, your whole worship will change. Home, self, public, congregational. One, whatever God says is forbidden in worship is prohibited.

Now, most of all the evangelicals I trust agree with that. If God says you can't do it, you can't do it. Secondly, whatever God says must be done is required. So there are certain things we do in worship. We sing, we pray, we take up offerings, we preach the Word of God, we confess our faith, We have the sacraments, all those various things.

Why? God commanded them. Now, if there is something that we are doing that God has not commanded, the average American says, well it is permitted. God did say it couldn't. I mean God did say I shouldn't jinnuflect.

God didn't say that I should take off my shoes. That whatever God has not commanded is forbidden because it's adding to the Word of God. So if God hadn't commanded it, we may not do it no matter how close to God it makes us feel. Now the important thing to bear in mind is, if God hasn't commanded us to do something, and we do it, it may make us feel close to God, but it does not bring us into closeness to God, because only obedience to God in worship brings us into close contact with Him, not our feelings. When one preacher said to me, well there's no book of Leviticus in the New Testament that has all the detailed commands as to how God should be worshiped.

And my answer to them, no, there may not be a book of Leviticus in the New Testament, but there is a book of Leviticus in the Bible. So that in the New Testament, we have liberty in Christ not to disobey the law of God, not to run by our own rules, but liberty or freedom in the Bible is the ability to do what God wants us to do from the heart. That's what Galatians 5 talks about. Stand fast in that liberty with which Christ has made you free and don't come under bondage to the rules and regulations and traditions, innovations and suggestions of men. So liberty in Christ means the freedom, the ability to do what God wants us to do now that we are saved, now that our hearts are changed and we are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

So, in the New Testament, and this is important, in the New Testament a Christian has no more freedom and no less freedom in his worship of God than the child of God in the Old Testament. That is, he may not add to nor take away from. But all of those various embellishments in the Old Testament that were ceremonial rites and rituals like the sacrifice of animals, or the priestly garb of the Levitical priests. All those things had as their purpose to point toward Christ. The ceremonial laws of the Old Testament were to Old Testament believers what preaching of the Gospel is today.

They preached the gospel. And now that we have Christ, all of those rites and rituals, though the underlying principles are still true, are no longer demanded of us. There is a simplicity to New Testament worship that there was not in Old Testament temple worship. Not because the law is less, but because there were certain laws that were meant to pass off the same ceremonial rituals when the real thing came, when the Lord Jesus Christ came. And now that we have Him, those basic principles of worship that have always governed the worship of God are still in place, except for those ceremonial rituals of the Old Testament that pointed toward Christ.

Now we have Christ. But the underlying principles of those old rituals still stand. You have to have a sacrifice to get to God. But it's not lambs, and goats, and bulls, it's Christ. You have to have a priest to get to God.

But it's not a Levitical priest, it's the Lord Jesus Christ. So even those old ceremonial rituals, the underlying gospel principle that they were meant to illustrate still stand, though the old rites and rituals themselves have passed off the scene. And that's why there is a simplicity to, in New Testament worship that you don't see in temple worship, and that is because Christ has come and the symbols are gone. I think the root of it all, in all its manifestations, is simply that people today and the church today often thinks that it can regulate worship according to its desires rather than to according to what the New Testament prescribes. And once you move in that direction There's no end to where you can go because then you can say, whatever man wants, whatever the people in my church want is what we'll do as long as it doesn't offend too many people's consciences.

So then the church becomes the conscience of what's allowed in worship rather than letting the scriptures be the guide. In the 16th century, there was a debate, extensive debate about worship, also between the Anglicans and the Puritans in England and the term adiaphora, things indifferent, came into play. The Puritans tended to side with those who said there are very, very few things that are indifferent when it comes to worship because the New Testament is clear what's commanded and therefore everything else is forbidden. The Anglicans said, well, yes, we should go by New Testament worship, but they were more relaxed and said there are more things that are indifferent that we can add because, well, it's a custom or it edifies the church. We don't need to find it exactly in the New Testament scriptures in such a precise way.

So their definition of Adiaphora would include various liturgical things that weren't found in the New Testament, but they felt just added to scripture, or not added to scripture, but added to worship. So the Anglican church was saying, we have more things than you Puritans do in our category that we call adiaphora, particularly in the area of liturgy. So they could do various liturgical elements in worship that are not found directly in the New Testament scripture. They could do that with a clear conscience saying, This is not an essential of worship, this is a thing indifferent, so we add it to worship to edify the people. But the Puritans were stricter in keeping their worship in accord with the New Testament scriptures.

That principle of the Puritans has proven to be a very good one today because today we see churches going in all kinds of directions and including all kinds of things under the Adiaphora, the indifferent things, where it's far better to treat it the way the Puritans did, that you only have a few incidentals in worship that help you worship, but you're careful not to bring too many things into the Adiaphora. As we consider how we ought to worship, the most important quality is humility. It's the humility that says what true sons always say in their hearts, not my will, but thine be done. This is what our Lord Jesus Christ said to his Father. And it is a representation of the contented happiness in God that says, I delight to do your will.

It's the humility that says, Lord, I want to do what you want me to do. Your ways are the best ways. It's the heart that says, Lord, I want to replace my ways with your ways. And this means that the highest value in worship is not our creativity, but our humility that brings about obedience. Not innovation of new things, but veneration of timeless things.

Here's an illustration of this. When the children of Israel made the golden calf, they did it in order to do something super fantastic to worship God. With Nadab and Abihu, when they offered strange fire, They were wanting to do something unusual, something amazing, because they intended to worship God in a new way, in a better way, in a way that seemed exciting to their senses. And in doing so, they had turned away from the sweet waters of life that God had provided for them by defining how they ought to worship. Inventions in worship are the opposite of how God wants us to worship Him.

Therefore, we ought to be content with the ways that God has given us to worship Him. This is the path of life when it comes to worshiping. You