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COME LET US WORSHIP WITH APPROVAL

by Dr Robert Reymond

FROM SWORD & TROWEL 1999 No 2

This article is adapted and abridged by permission from Dr Robert Reymond’s superb volume - A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith - fully reviewed in the summer issue of the Tabernacle Bookshop Review List. This promises to become the standard systematic theology, replacing the much-loved but aging work by Louis Berkhof. Written in elegant, gracious style, Dr Reymond’s work includes treatment of important recent debates and discussions. It is highly recommended.

ANYONE WHO will take the time to study the matter will have to conclude that worship in evangelical churches in this generation is, speaking generally, approaching bankruptcy. There is neither rhyme nor reason, much less biblical warrant, for the order of and much that goes on in many evangelical church services today. The fact of the matter is, much evangelical ‘worship’ is simply not true worship at all.

Both the revivalistic service of a previous generation and the ‘seeker service’ of today are shaped by the same concern - appeal to the unchurched. Not surprisingly, in neither case does much that might be called worship by Christians occur. As a result, many evangelicals who have been sitting for years in such worship services are finding their souls drying up, and they have begun to long for something else. Some today who have been simply spectators for years in their worship services are getting caught up in the people-involving worship of charismatic services.

Some reformed pastors have seen the above defections as a call to imitate their ‘successful rivals’. So they have adopted the ‘winning formulae’ of these attracting churches. Consequently, when one walks into virtually any reformed church today in this country on the Lord’s Day, one can never know for sure whether he will be asked to worship in a ‘traditional’ or ‘contemporary’, liturgical or non-liturgical, formal or revivalistic fashion.

The Christian must never forget that in Christ the worshipper enjoys fellowship with the one living and true God Who, even for believers, according to the author of Hebrews, is a ‘consuming fire’. Consequently, while Christian worship should certainly be joyous and filled with gladness (Psalm 149.2), the author of Hebrews urges that it must be conducted ‘with reverence and godly fear’ (Hebrews 12.28-29).

The Triune God of the reformed faith is an awe-inspiring, absolutely sovereign, infinitely just, and infinitely gracious, incomprehensible Deity. He will not long be known as such or served as such by a people fed rote ritual or revivalistic preaching or emotional choruses and Gospel songs. Our God must be worshipped with the mind as well as the heart. Faith in Him requires understanding. And the understanding of Christian congregations grows primarily as it is nourished by the singing of hymns and psalms and by the prayers and preaching of the public worship services.

Because man, created in God’s image, is homo religiosus even before he is homo sapiens, the first obligation of every man is to worship and serve the Creator (Romans 1.18-25). The Westminster Confession of Faith reminds us of this when it declares:

‘The light of nature showeth that there is a God, who hath lordship and sovereignty over all; is good, and doeth good unto all; and is therefore to be feared, loved, praised, called upon, trusted in, and served with all the heart, and with all the soul, and with all the might’ (XXI/i).

If this is man’s first obligation simply because he is God’s creature, all the more, in view of the fact that the church has experienced God’s redeeming mercies, is it the church’s first obligation to worship and serve the Triune God (Romans 12.1). Peter declares that the church is ‘a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light’ (1 Peter 2.9; see Psalm 145.6; Isaiah 43.21). Paul informs us that everything that God has done for us soterically, He did ‘to the praise of the glory of his grace’ (Ephesians 1.6, 12, 14).

But if the church is duty-bound to worship and serve God as its first obligation, it is equally true that the church (as indeed is true of all men) must worship as God Himself directs.

This approach to Christian worship reflects and is governed by what has come to be known as the regulative principle,[1] which is stated by the Westminster Confession of Faith in this way:

‘ . . . 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 imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representations, or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scripture’ (XXI/i; see also Larger Catechism, questions 108-9; Shorter Catechism, questions 50-51).

According to the Reformation principle of worship . . . true worship may include only those matters which God has either expressly commanded in Scripture . . . while false worship is anything done in worship which God has not expressly prescribed.

Over against this Reformation principle of worship stands the Roman Catholic principle that argues that true worship may be conducted not only in the manner God has prescribed but in other ways as well as long as they are not expressly forbidden by God, while false worship is only that which is expressly condemned or forbidden in so many words by Him.

Thus in Roman Catholic worship many things are done which are not allowed by Scripture, such as the veneration of Mary and other saints who are invoked for help and intercession before God, and the use of pictures, images, and relics as aids in worship. But the Scriptures warn against worshipping God in ways which He has not expressly prescribed. Moses instructed Israel:

‘When the Lord thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee . . . take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou inquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise. Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God: for every abomination to the Lord, which he hateth, have they done . . . What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it ’(Deuteronomy 12.29-32, emphasis added).

Nadab and Abihu were consumed by the fire of the Lord because they ‘offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not’ (Leviticus 10.1-2).

Korah, Dathan, Abiram, and On were swallowed up in an earthquake because they had insisted on their right to burn incense before God without priestly mediation, after which judgement God instructed Eleazar to take the censers of the men who sinned and hammer them into sheets and overlay the bronze altar with them as a sign to Israel that ‘no stranger, which is not of the seed of Aaron, come near to offer incense before the Lord’ (Numbers 16.36-40).

King Uzziah was smitten with leprosy because he attempted to usurp the priestly privilege to burn incense in the Temple (2 Chronicles 26.16-19). Israel’s sin in building high places and offering her sons on them to Baal was that they were doing something ‘which [God says] I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind’ (Jeremiah 19.5).

Jesus Himself declared that when men lay aside ‘the commandment of God’ and hold ‘the tradition of men’ in their worship of God, their worship is ‘in vain’ (Mark 7.7-8). To the Samaritan woman, He spoke of the character of true worship:

‘Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth’ (John 4.22-24).

Paul admonishes the Colossians against self-willed asceticism in worship:

‘Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, (touch not; taste not; handle not; which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men? Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh’ (Colossians 2.20-23).

For its own spiritual health and well being, then, the church must continually bear in mind the importance of this regulative principle in all that it does in its worship of God. Accordingly, the reformed worship tradition has a number of things to say to this generation of Christians about the issue of worship.

First, the reformed worship tradition should remind every generation of Christians that the worship of God is the most important of all the Christian’s tasks. That is the primary reason why the Christian should go to church: to worship God. In today’s church climate this is a radical idea.

Second, reformed Christians must convince this generation that their tradition’s regulative principle regarding worship should be the governing principle of all Christian worship. That is to say, that Christians must do in worship only those things which God commands, clearly perceiving that what is not commanded is forbidden and just as self-consciously rejecting the dictum that what is not expressly forbidden is permissible.[2]

This approach will produce a worship that is biblical, spiritual, simple, weighty, and reverent. It will produce a worship centred upon God, substantial and life- transforming. It will prohibit a worship that is superficial in character, complicated by ritual, stimulated by props, and flippant in tone.

What then should reformed worship include? It will include theologically sound congregational singing. It will also include the much-neglected singing of the psalms, which express the full range of human emotions in worship.

Reformed worship will emphasise and feature biblically based, hermeneutically sound expository preaching of the Holy Scripture, the only infallible rule of faith and practice, as interpreted by the Westminster Confession of Faith and the two Westminster Catechisms.

Footnote [1]

Footnote [2]