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We can all agree that when we gather for worship, it is directed to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Beyond there, Christians have differed and sometimes fought tooth-and-nail. What should we do in worship? Is it really up to us to decide? Who’s being worshiped, anyway?
The Confession continues, Prayer, with thanksgiving, being one part of natural worship, is by God required of all men. But that it may be accepted, it is to be made in the name of the Son, by the help of the Spirit, according to his will; with understanding, reverence, humility, fervency, faith, love, and perseverance; and when with others, in a known tongue. This introduces to us what is called “the Regulative Principle.” IE, Scripture regulates what is done in God’s worship. Otherwise, we are left to the whims of man. God tells us what is acceptable worship; we do not know what God accepts apart from revelation. First, we’re told that prayer is a natural part of worship. But not all prayer is heard by God. Paul tells us in Romans 14:23 that anything not done in faith is sin, and this includes prayer. God requires prayer of all people, but he requires it be done in faith. Therefore, God does not hear the prayers of unbelievers since they are by definition not praying in faith. When we pray in corporate worship, we pray to the Father, but not without an intermediary. The only mediator between God and man is Christ Jesus. That is why we pray in the name of the Son in the power of the Spirit. We do not pray to Daddy God or anything irreverent such as that. That is a mockery of his name. We pray according to his word, and he has said he is our Father. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 14:13-19 about the importance of worship being orderly, especially when it concerns prayer. We do not pray to edify ourselves alone but all of those who hear. Apart from a frank discussion about the cessation of the apostolic gifts, praying aloud in public in foreign languages (which is the dictionary definition of “tongues”) requires three conditions be met for it to be lawful: they must be translated (vv.16-17), only two or three people may do it to keep it from getting out of hand (v.27), and women may not participate in speaking in tongues (vv.34-35). What then do we pray for? The Confession continues, Prayer is to be made for things lawful, and for all sorts of men living, or that shall live hereafter; but not for the dead, nor for those of whom it may be known that they have sinned the sin unto death. Prayer must be done in faith, which includes praying for things which God has determined, hence “things lawful”. Where do we find what is lawful? In the Scriptures. One example is 1 Timothy 2:1-2, “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, or kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.” We pray for the living, as Paul writes, not the dead. Two passages come to mind to support such an assertion. King David mourns the death of his son born from Bathsheba (2 Samuel 12:15-23). He prays that his son will survive, but once the son dies, he stops praying for his son and begins to worship. And Hebrews 9:27 reminds us that judgment immediately proceeds death. There is no praying for the state of the dead after judgment has been pronounced. But there is one thing for which we are told not to pray: the sin that leads to the death. The relevant Scripture passage would be 1 John 5:16, which says, “If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that.” This is most likely a devotion to biblical fidelity and saying what Scripture says. Two other passages speak to this matter to help us make sense of the sin that leads to death. Matthew 12:31-32, “Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.” Hebrews 6:4-6, “For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.” The Holy Spirit witnesses to the gospel being true. To reject the gospel to which the Spirit attests is the sin that leads to death. It is not possible to reject the gospel once it is received, but there are those who receive the external call of the gospel and never believe the Spirit’s witness about Christ. Rejection is fatal. In the time of the apostles, there were those who performed miracles as signs and witnesses to the veracity of the gospel. These took place before the apostolic witness of Scripture. The apostle Peter tells us that today, “we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:19). Scripture is that prophetic word. Since those signs are not performed today, the sin that leads to death is rejection of the gospel to which Scripture witnesses. Next time we will turn to the preaching of the word and its place in Scripture.
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God’s people are a worshipping people. It is a serious error when God’s people do not take worship seriously—we do not prepare our schedules ahead of time, we show up late, we nod off, etc. It is not only the church officers who must be prepared for worship. God will not be mocked.
There are many faithful congregations who do take worship seriously, but unfortunately, when we think of Lord’s Day worship, what comes to mind are the congregations who have gone off the rails. They would rather entertain the goats than feed the sheep, which is the definition of throwing your pearls before swine. Speaking of Christian worship, the Confession begins, The light of nature shows that there is a God, who has lordship and sovereignty over all; is just, good and does good to 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. As Paul writes in Romans 1:19-20, “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” Regardless of intellectual arguments (which are often emotional arguments cloaked in $10 words), every human being knows that God exists. That means Christians, but that also means Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Bahai, etc. What god are we talking about? Who are we worshiping? The light of nature, meaning natural evidence, shows us that there is a transcendent reality. So what? We can know by nature that God exists and that we should worship him. But exactly how we should worship him is unknown until he reveals himself to us. As that ultimate, transcendent, holy reality, he determines how he is to be worshipped, not his creatures. Deuteronomy 12 is full of laws concerning the right worship of God for the Israelites. The chapter ends with the command, “Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it” (v.32). God’s law includes right worship. It is not up to us to decide how to honor and glorify him. Scripture regulates how God is worshiped among his people. When creativity in worship is a common goal for many churches today, we should rather strive for faithfulness to the revealed word of God. Watching or participating in worship in some of these churches makes clear that imagination is lord, not God. The tickling of the ears in these late days is not just about doctrine; it includes worship that seeks to be enjoyable rather than faithful. Many worship services of today would be unrecognizable to the authors of this confession of faith. The type of worship services to which they were referring had to do with the Roman Catholic mass. The mass consisted of many things unfamiliar to the Scriptures. This did not only have to do with the content of the mass but the very ideas of an “unbloody sacrifice” and a priesthood as mediator between God and man. Scripture regulates worship, and there is one mediator between God and man, the God-man Christ Jesus. Speaking of the God-man, the Confession continues, Religious worship is to be given to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and to him alone; not to angels, saints, or any other creatures; and since the fall, not without a mediator, nor in the mediation of any other but Christ alone. The Trinity is the Christian doctrine of God. It is the first fact that sets the one, true God apart from all false gods. To come into worship without a knowledge of God is to send your worship out into the ether. In Matthew 4, Satan tempted Jesus with all the kingdoms of this world under one condition: fall to your knees and worship Satan. Such an atrocious, blasphemous idea should never be uttered. Since the fall of man in Genesis 3, Satan has been tempting man to worship anything or anyone but God alone. The ruse has worked ever since. Paul tells us, “they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen” (Romans 1:25). Again, the original context of the Confession’s article on worship was a refutation of the mass. But the worship of angels was a problem for the apostles, as well. Paul writes, “Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind” (Colossians 2:18). We can become so infatuated with the spiritual realm that it becomes a distraction to the truth, and that’s all that it is. Neither should we worship any man. Saints here refers to those on whom the Roman Catholic Church has bestowed sainthood. They are a different class of Christian who have so many merits that we can benefit from them, as well—we just have to ask. They justify praying to saints by calling them “the great cloud of witnesses.” Now surely, all believers from all ages are among that great cloud, but supposed saints have no more merits or prayers to offer than you do. For every believer, past, present, and future, the only merit any of us have is Christ’s. Beginning after the fall, there was a sacrificial system. Cain and Abel, the first children born after the fall, knew to offer sacrifices. That’s why Cain killed Able, after all—one was accepted and the other was not. There has been a mediator between God and man. God established the priestly role, first among the familial patriarchs (Job, for example, offered sacrifices and prayers on behalf of his children) and then formally among the Levites of Israel. Because no one has ever been saved by the law, being a priest, or offering an animal sacrifice, the only true mediator has only been and ever will be Christ alone. The elect of the old covenant trusted in the promise of God that he would strike the enemy’s head, which was fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. The elect of the new covenant have the benefit of looking back in faith that what was promised was accomplished. Next time, we’ll start to look at which components of worship are determined for us in Scripture. It cannot be overstated that in Christ, we are truly free. But what are we free from? We are free from the effects of sin and death and free to love our Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and our neighbor as ourself. Christian freedom is not license to live as we think best.
We are free from bondage to sin and are free to serve our king and sovereign with a glad and generous heart. We must never return to the sit from which we were freed by the blood of Christ. The Confession makes clear, They who upon pretense of Christian liberty do practice any sin, or cherish any sinful lust, as they do thereby pervert the main design of the grace of the gospel to their own destruction, so they wholly destroy the end of Christian liberty, which is, that being delivered out of the hands of all our enemies, we might serve the Lord without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him, all the days of our lives. As Paul writes in Romans 6:1-2, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” When you design a garage, you expect to be able to store some larger items and your vehicles. What you don’t expect to do is park your car in your kitchen. That’s an insurance claim. You design different rooms in your house to meet certain needs. The “design of the grace of the gospel” is not for feeding earthly appetites but spiritual. The gospel is not that you’re free to live without fear of sin, and therefore you commit as much as you want. The gospel is that you’re free to live without fear of sin, because Christ paid the debt. Imagine a wealthy grandfather gave a grandson a million dollars. Every time the grandson ran out of money, he went back to his grandfather for another million. The grandson can have one of two perspectives. First, he could believe that his grandfather is a generous man who is willing to forgive bad investments and teach his grandson to do better. Or, he could believe that his grandfather is willing to act like an ATM and isn’t worth any of his respect. How often do we treat the grace of God as if we deserve it and he’s going to give it to us anyway? We were slaves to sin, and our freedom was purchased at a high price. Only someone who does not yet understand that price continues to revel in his or her sin at the expense of the mercy of God. Paul also writes, “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 5:13-14). Freedom is good! And goodness and righteousness does not seek the welfare of the self at the expense of another. This is wildly countercultural. Westerners often define freedom as the ability to do what we want and to be free from any sort of limitations. But Christian freedom is totally backward from earthly wisdom. Be weary of those who make too much of their claim on Christian liberty. More often than not, true liberty is lived out quietly in reverence before the Lord and in service of our fellow man. If liberty excuses sin, it is not liberty; it is license. Christian liberty reveals itself in the pursuit of holiness. Next time, we’ll take a look at how Christians observe one of the commandments for which Jesus gave the Pharisees a lot of grief–the Sabbath. |
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