Tag: D. Scott Meadows

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2022 True Righteousness -Meadows 2.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2022 True Righteousness – Meadows 1.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2016-09-11-God-Matters-God-Is-Love-and-Why-It-Matters.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

“God is love.” Scripture declares it in 1 John 4.8, 16. Grasping and appreciating it matters for your life here and hereafter.

In my three decades of preaching, I cannot recall ever being more challenged and intimidated by any subject in sermon preparation than this one. Its glory and grandeur, infinity and incomprehensibility, sweetness and delight, is far beyond the ability of the best preachers in the world to convey adequately, even with the Lord’s help. You cannot possibly think too highly of the subject of God’s love, but you could have unrealistic expectations for a sermon about it.

My aim in this one is modest. I only wish to proclaim something of what the assertion means when the Bible says, “God is love,” and then to suggest a few of the important practical applications to our lives. And whatever blessing the Lord may give to my ministry, it is just a fraction of how much you might be edified in studying these things.

Even my stated subject is far too broad to cover in one message. My narrower aim is to state a few things about the text, “God is love,” which are usually missed or misunderstood, things which were more generally known when the church had a firmer grasp upon orthodox theology proper. I also want to show how those tried and true points of sound teaching about God and His love tie directly to our daily thinking and relating to God. Our Lord Jesus Christ said that when a faithful Christian teaches others, he “brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Matt 13.52). I present old things to you today, and paradoxically, things that may be new to you.

In this message we will use the same two-part outline you have heard twice before: truth revealed and truth applied.

Truth Revealed
We must keep in mind everything we already know from Scripture and traditional orthodoxy as we think further about this statement that “God is love.” I remind you of things we heard in our first two messages, namely, that “God is,” and that “God is light.” The apostle John’s statement that God is love is not only compatible, but is one truth with those other statements. These are just different ways of apprehending the God we worship.

God’s love and His being

One of the first things I preached to you in the sermon entitled, “God Is,” about His being, is that we seriously err when we think of God as somewhat creaturely and as somewhat human. He is neither.

Divine and creaturely love. Any comparisons between God and His creatures in Scripture are examples of His gracious condescension for our understanding. For our benefit, He employs the figurative language of analogies. God is wholly other from His creatures. He and they are not in the same category of existence. God is being itself, and, therefore, necessary being. It is impossible that the true God could not exist. All other existing things only exist by virtue of His creating them in the beginning and sustaining them in perpetual existence through time, itself creaturely.

All of this has pressing relevance to love as it exists in God and in His creatures. Any and all love in the creation streams from God Himself as the source, and that same love is continually supplied by Him wherever it is found. Love is not inherent in us. We are utterly dependent upon God for love to be in us and to operate through us, just as we are dependent upon Him for all things we are and have and do. He is the vine and we are the branches. Without Him we can do nothing. We must abide in Him to bring forth much fruit, chiefly love. You will recognize this language from Jesus who claims this very same thing for Himself in His relationship with His disciples (John 15.5). He is God to them, the Fount of life and love. This is clearly Christ’s meaning.

And just as God’s being is absolute, so is His love. In creatures, love, where it exists, is an attribute of the one who has it, distinct from the essence of that one, and therefore not absolutely indispensable to the being of that creature. It is an “incidental property, . . . a reality which is conjoined to a thing and which can be withdrawn from the thing without substantial alteration” of the thing (Richard Muller, DLGTT, “accidens,” 19). Love in creatures is only a “part” of their complex beings. Love might be added to them, increased or diminished in them, and taken away altogether from them, and their essential identity would not change.

Not so with God. The apostle John, led by the Spirit to write infallibly on this subject, stated that “God is love”—not “God has love,” as if love were something outside of Him which He acquired within His being, or as if divine love were something other than God Himself. The orthodox tradition of Christianity has long insisted upon what is called “the simplicity of God,” the idea that He is radically and ontologically one without parts in any sense whatsoever. All creatures are composed of parts, materially or otherwise. Our parts exist before we do, and not all our parts are necessary to our essential being. We are “formed” and come together into our present state of being, and likewise we may fall to pieces, disintegrate, and degenerate. But all this is impossible with God and highlights one of His most important distinctions from His creatures. A memorable axiom to help us remember this profound reality goes like this, “All that is in God is God.” No less than this is implied in the holy name by which God has revealed Himself, “I am.”

This raises the matter of God’s attributes. To imagine that God is composed of His many attributes is a gross misconception. Do not for one moment entertain the thought that love is one part of God, like one section of an orange, along with other parts like justice, goodness, truth, holiness, and so forth, so that all His attributes put together make up a complex being called God. Not at all! The plurality of attributes revealed in Scripture are not so many parts of God, but another example of divine condescension so that we may begin to grasp something of His glory. He breaks the truth down in pieces for our understanding, but the divine reality is perfectly simple, with no parts whatsoever. God cannot be disassembled because He is one.

Divine and human love. This same exalted contrast between God and His creatures must also be appreciated more narrowly in the comparisons of God with human beings, and that, specifically, in the case of love. We do both scripturally and reasonably infer that the love of God is, like God Himself, categorically different than human love. In God, love is a perfection; in us, it is a passion.

Our love, such as it is or may be, is limited and changing. It begins in us and grows; it wanes and dies. As we pass through time, we love in ever-changing ways, with varying degrees. We love more and then less. We are fickle, loving first this person, then that one. Feelings of love may even be related to the volatile state of our bodies. It is more difficult for us to exercise love when we are in great pain, than otherwise. When provoked by injury or insult our tempers flare, endangering the relationship with one we had loved, perhaps for a long time, even in the case of married couples. We are creatures of ever-fluctuating passions, desires, and affections that come and go, subject to forces outside of us that act upon us most effectively, changing our internal state of mind and our disposition toward others.

John’s grand statement of praise that “God is love” is saying something which is true of Him alone. It would be blasphemy if applied to any mere creature. God’s love is so different from human love that it is barely comparable at all, and really far beyond our comprehension. Our love is passionate, and the tradition of orthodox theology rightly states that God is “without passions” (e.g., 2LCF II.1).

I know there are many biblical passages which speak of God as if He does have human passions, but these must not be read as literal statements of ontology, any more than the passages that speak of God’s changing His mind, or as having bodily members like hands and a face and bowels. Human traits predicated of God in the Bible are all examples of figurative language. They are true as they are intended, figuratively but not literally. This is no less true of human passions attributed to God than of any other human trait. The Puritan Stephen Charnock explains and summarizes so helpfully:

By [God’s] eyes, and ears, we understand his omniscience; by his face, the manifestation of his favor; by his mouth, the revelation of his will; by his nostrils, the acceptation of our prayers; by his bowels, the tenderness of his compassion; by his heart, the sincerity of his affections; by his hand, the strength of his power; by his feet, the ubiquity [everywhere-ness] of his presence (The Complete Works of Stephen Charnock, I.269).

But whatever is existentially perfect about human love does indeed pertain to God. This justifies the analogy with human love. Human love only provides us with the faintest glimmer of divine love, and yet is useful for us to form some conception of it in our minds. God uses the language of creation in revealing to us Himself the Creator. How else could it be done?

It is most important for us to receive the exalted truth about divine love. To quote again our confession of faith, it is, like God Himself, “immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, every way infinite, most holy, most wise, most free, most absolute” (2LCF II.1). God’s love does not wax and wane. It is set upon the very same objects eternally and infinitely. It is absolutely pure, powerful, and sovereign. God’s love is all that God is, because God is love!

But what of the biblical representations of God showing love at one time and not another, or toward some creatures and not others? What are we to make of biblical expressions that God was provoked to anger by the sin of His creatures (e.g., 2 Chron 28.25), and that we must be careful not to grieve the Holy Spirit (Eph 4.30)? The sound answer, in short, is that all these are describing changes in the creation and not in God Himself, who is eternal, perfect, and immutable (unchanging and incapable of any change whatsoever). The relations of creatures to God change, but not God Himself. Again, Charnock is helpful, though perhaps a bit challenging for us to follow, when he writes,

God is not changed, when of loving to any creatures he becomes angry with them, or of angry he becomes appeased. The change in these cases is in the creature; according to the alteration in the creature, it stands in a various relation to God; an innocent creature is the object of his kindness, an offending creature is the object of his anger; there is a change in the dispensation of God, as there is a change in the creature, making himself capable of such dispensations. God always acts according to the immutable nature of his holiness, and can no more change in his affections to good and evil, than he can in his essence. When the devils now fallen stood as glorious angels, they were the objects of God’s love, because holy. When they fell, they were the objects of God’s hatred, because impure; the same reason which made him love them while they were pure, made him hate them when they were criminal. The reason of his various dispensations to them was the same in both, as considered in God, his immutable holiness, but as respecting the creature different; the nature of the creature was changed, but the divine holy nature of God remained the same (ibid., I.404).

God’s love and His light

Our second message in this series is entitled, “God is light,” and this is extremely important to keep in mind as we think about His love. The metaphor of light with respect to God has many connotations, but perhaps the most important pertains to His holiness. Holiness is the dominant thought in John’s statement, “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 Jn 1.5).

God’s love is holy love. It is not sentimentality like human love often is. God’s love is not ontologically different from His ineffable holiness and perfect righteousness. God’s love is not of such a nature that it could possibly compromise His holy nature or countenance any violation of His holy law.

David Wells writes very perceptibly about this in his book, God in the Whirlwind. First John 4.10 says, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” The word “propitiation” means a sacrifice that turns away wrath, that appeases God’s righteous anger. Dr. Wells comments on this verse, saying,

John’s sentence defining love would have been completed quite differently in the West today. In this is love, many would say, that God is there for us when we need him. He is there for what we need from him. He is love in that he gives us inward comfort and makes us feel better about ourselves. He is love in that he makes us happy, that he gives us a sense of the fulfillment, that he gives us stuff, that he heals us, that he does everything to encourage us each and every day. That is the prevailing view of God today. The Bible’s view, by contrast, is quite different because its world is moral. . . . The Bible’s world is defined by God’s character of holiness (Kindle location 529).

The good theologian then tells us he will be writing about God’s “holy-love” to distinguish it from the psycho-therapeutic counterfeit so popular in Western culture.

God’s Trinitarian love

I must say something briefly about the fact that God’s love is Trinitarian. The Bible is consistently monotheistic, teaching that there is only one true and living God. This is the God who is love. Yet it also teaches that the Father is love, the Son is love, and the Spirit is love. These are the three Persons, not parts, of the simple divine Being. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God the Son, said, “my Father loves me” (John 10.17), and also, “I love the Father” (Jn 14.31). The Father spoke from heaven and said of Jesus, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt 3.17; 17.5). John’s gospel says twice, “The Father loveth the Son” (Jn 3.35; 5.20). The Holy Spirit, who is both personal and divine, is also love, exercising love towards the Father and the Son, and being loved by them both. Scripture speaks about “the love of the Spirit” (Rom 15.30) and of love as the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5.22). God Himself is the very essence of love, a love that is eternal and intra-Trinitarian. Another scholar observes,

Thus in John’s Gospel there is a profound sense in which the intra-Trinitarian love of God is not only temporally and logically prior to his love for his creatures, but is . . . the nature of God. Moreover, the cross-work of Jesus is first of all motivated by this intra-Trinitarian love of God, for the cross comes about, in John’s theology, precisely because the Father determines that all will honor the Son, and because the Son obeys so perfectly that he accomplishes his Father’s commission and goes to the cross (New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, “Love,” 648).

Only by the divine revelation of God as Trinity can we account for a love which is both personal and eternal, a love that is quite impossible for any monadic false god in Unitarianism and various cults, as well as in all non-Christian religions. Only the Triune God of Holy Scripture and Christian orthodoxy exercises eternal love within Himself without dependence upon creatures for a loving relationship.

Augustine even argued for the Trinity from the reality of eternal love in God. I am paraphrasing and quoting Herman Bavinck here, and he is relaying Augustine’s thought.

Starting with the biblical declaration that “God is love,” Augustine demonstrated that there is always a trinity present in love: one who loves, that which is loved, and love itself. In love there is always a subject, an object, and a bond between the two (Reformed Dogmatics, II.327, citing Of the Trinity, VIII, 8; IX 1, 2).

Why is this absolutely crucial to our doctrine of God’s love? Because some within the church today are arguing persistently for God’s love as a passion, denying what I have been asserting that it is perfect and infinite, unchanging and unchangeable. They allege that such a view of God makes Him inert and impersonal, and more like a force than our Father. But they are wrong. They do not have the support of Scripture, or of reason, or of orthodox tradition on their side. That human love is passionate, limited, and changeable only exhibits its gross inferiority to God’s love. One reason God’s love never changes is that it is perfectly, infinitely, and eternally active. He cannot love any more or any less than He does because “God is love.”

I hope you can see now that these perspectives on God’s love are not widely known and appreciated, even in the sounder churches, with relatively few exceptions.

Now for truth applied.

Truth Applied
My dear friends, in these three messages we have dipped into some of the most difficult and profound truths revealed in Scripture, inferred by reason, and prized in the tradition of Christ’s holy church. Deep sea divers recover the choicest treasures. These truths are important and practical. Scripture says, “The people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits” (Dan 11.32). In fact, nothing is more practical for us than a true and personal knowledge of God as He has genuinely revealed Himself to us.

Whereas it is true that there is great benefit for us in countless ways to study theology for our spiritual enrichment and real sanctification of heart and conduct, the converse is also true. Some of the Lord’s precious saints have suffered all kinds of spiritual maladies and darkness from ignorance or error about these things. I am pastorally concerned to comfort God’s people by helping them to experience a more accurate and intimate knowledge of Him. I am convinced that knowing God better would get to the root of many problems that plague us. And so I have three simple exhortations: trust, obey, and worship the God of love.

Trust the God of love

There are two kinds of people who need to trust God—those who don’t and those who do.

The first kind are unbelievers who are lost in their sins. You don’t trust God because you don’t know Him as you should. To know Him in the highest sense is to love Him. If only God would graciously open your eyes to correct your unworthy thoughts of God and to show you that, in truth, “God is love,” your soul would be ravished with His beauty and glory! In love He made you, in love He sustains you, in love He sends gospel preachers to you, and calls you to repent of your sins and believe in His Son. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (Jn 1.29)! There you have God’s holy-love on display, and how can you withhold your trust and love from such a Father, who so loved the world to give His only begotten Son, that whoever believes on Him should not perish but have eternal life (Jn 3.16)?

The second kind of people who need to trust God are those who already trust Him. We need to keep trusting Him, and to trust Him more than we do. John was getting at this when he wrote, “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God (1 Jn 5.13). That last part of the verse is often passed over without enough attention and appreciation. Believing on Christ is not a momentary decision but a lifelong calling. Assurance of our salvation comes by the further and greater exercise of faith, the same faith by which we came to Christ in the first place. You might be one who has thought that when you sin as a Christian, God’s love for you lessens, and He might even become so angry that your salvation is in jeopardy. You may be suffering from the misunderstanding that God is passionate like we are, and that you must behave well in order to solicit from God all the love you need to be saved at last. Well, then, no wonder you lack assurance! I say to you, “God is love”—perfect, infinite, immutable love. He loves you for the sake of His Son Jesus Christ, and not as you are in yourself apart from Christ. Take refuge in this! He says now to His church, “I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed” (Mal 3.6), and, “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not” (Lam 3.22). Hear His word to us.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8.35–39).

God is love. Trust Him, my dear Christian brother and sister! Trust Him more, and trust Him ever!

Obey the God of love

When we know the God of love truly and intimately, our character and conduct will be changed dramatically and permanently. The apostle John stresses this point in his first epistle, especially in 1 John 4:

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him (vv. 7–16).

And according to John, we practice love insofar as we keep God’s commandments, and no further. He wrote, “And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him” (1 Jn 2.3–5). Because God is love, we must obey Him implicitly, for this leads us toward God and toward love.

Worship the God of love

That God is love makes it obvious that He is worthy of our whole-souled, completely unbridled adoration both now and forever! We should yearn for nothing more than to be one with Him and to praise Him in front of His throne all our days. Let us draw near to Him who is love under the sound of a closing poem.

Jesus, Thy boundless love to me / No thought can reach, no tongue declare; / Unite my thankful heart to Thee, / And reign without a rival there! / Thine wholly, Thine alone, I am; / Be Thou alone my constant flame.

Oh, grant that nothing in my soul / May dwell, but Thy pure love alone; / Oh, may Thy love possess me whole, / My joy, my treasure, and my crown! / All coldness from my heart remove; / My every act, word, thought, be love.

This love unwearied I pursue / And dauntlessly to Thee aspire. / Oh, may Thy love my hope renew, / Burn in my soul like heavenly fire! / And day and night, be all my care / To guard this sacred treasure there.

In suffering be Thy love my peace, / In weakness be Thy love my power; / And when the storms of life shall cease, / O Jesus, in that final hour, / Be Thou my rod and staff and guide / And draw me safely to Thy side!

–Paul Gerhardt [1607–76], The Lutheran Hymnal

© Copyright | Derechos Reservados

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/PMeadows-AM.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

We have begun a series of messages entitled, “God Matters: Theology Proper Applied in Three Parts.” “Theology Proper” is the study of God Himself, as opposed to His works. I am pastorally concerned that the doctrine of God needs more attention and emphasis than it usually receives. Moreover, I believe that a great deal of what most modern Christians think about God is not true. I have also become aware that much of what actually is true about God sounds suspect to many Christians, and that unfamiliar truth desperately needs to be recovered in this generation.

As with all theology, we must make sure, above all else, that our beliefs about God are genuinely scriptural, either expressly set down or deduced by good and necessary consequence (WCF 1.6). If they are, they certainly will be consistent with what the orthodox have believed through the centuries of church history. I make that bold claim because the godly have always been receiving and deducing truth from the same Scripture which we still have today by the enabling of the same Holy Spirit who is still at work in us today. Why would we expect or desire doctrinal novelties?

There is such a thing as the tradition of true theology. That holy tradition is built upon the revelation of God in Scripture, and soundly expounds it. We are right to reject the apostate Roman Catholic Church’s claim that her “Sacred Tradition” is worthy of “equal sentiments of devotion and reverence” as Scripture (CCC #82), which means, in practice, that their tradition, where unscriptural, overrules Scripture. But let us not go to the other extreme and repudiate altogether the doctrinal tradition of Christ’s true Church, just because it is traditional. Nor should we fail to appreciate the genuine help that the best tradition affords. A dangerous biblicism that does this very thing is now ravaging the churches, attempting to interpret the Bible while deaf to predecessors, and even showing prejudice against creedal and confessional language. History shows that such individualistic modernity opens the floodgates for all kinds of cults and heretical movements. Our Protestant legacy illustrates a wiser course called sola Scriptura which did not “deny the value of tradition of the creeds, but . . . distinguished the singular authority of the Bible” (The Reformation Study Bible [2015 Edition], xi).

The Scripture supports this view of supreme biblical authority and subordinate church tradition as indispensable. I could demonstrate this in many ways, but one of the most pertinent passages is Ephesians 4. There it is the risen Christ who gives His church “pastors and teachers” for her spiritual edification until she becomes all He intends in her complete redemption (vv. 11ff.). Every generation has its own living pastors and teachers, and the sound ones do not despise previous generations of faithful pastors and teachers who have left behind their ministries of edification on the printed page, for example. It is the will of Christ that His people benefit from our rich theological tradition. Since many generations of Christians have already come and gone, and ours exists for such a brief time, it is obvious that most of the Church’s greatest theologians passed away a long time ago. One pastor alive today memorably said that we need to learn theology “from a bunch of dead guys” (Phil Johnson).

In no theological area, I believe, has the Church spoken with more doctrinal consensus and unity, than in this one of theology proper. Personally, I have come to appreciate this more in the last several years than ever before in my four and a half decades of Christian and pastoral experience.

In our first of three messages, we considered the subject, “God Is, and Why It Matters.” I preached to you that God is not at all like His creatures, nor at all like human beings, but that He is wholly other, self-existent, and incomprehensible. We can know Him truly but not exhaustively. This true understanding of God exposes the folly of atheists, requires our response of worship, and assures us that God is actually there at all times, even when He seems far away in our darkest trials.

Now let us proceed with the second message, called, “God Is Light, and Why It Matters.” We will keep to our simple two-part outline of truth revealed and truth applied.

Truth Revealed
The first part of my sermon title today is explicitly stated in Scripture, and it sums up everything I have to say. In 1 John 1.5, the Apostle John wrote,

This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

Here, John is asserting that his message did not originate in himself, but that he received it from the Lord Jesus Christ, mentioned in verse three, and that the message is therefore absolutely true and trustworthy. The apostles’ teaching is Christ’s teaching, and Christ said His teaching was not His own but had been received from His Father in heaven (Jn 7.16). We must conclude, therefore, that anyone who opposes the apostles’ teaching opposes Christ and God.

And what is that message? There is no mistaking it, for John says formulaically, “that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” One of the clearest and most definitive ways of making doctrinal assertions is to state them both positively and negatively, as John does here, using the opposites of light and darkness. The statement “God is light” is of the utmost profundity, impressive for its simplicity of expression, using only three elementary words. It is also impressive from its total lack of qualification. John would not back off in the slightest degree. In fact, he escalates our appreciation by the negation which immediately follows, a negation that is intensified by its last two-word phrase, “at all.” Using the word “and” to link the propositions, John wrote, “and in him [God] is no darkness at all.” He is light, all light, pure light, without the slightest darkness whatsoever, and that is a statement of absoluteness. It is not that something outside of God is light and He is comparable to it. Light in this supreme sense is just what God is. He Himself is spirit, light, love, goodness, truth, and everything worthy of ultimate praise, and yet He is absolutely simple, not made up of parts in any sense whatsoever.

God is light

Now let us meditate together on this. Notice that John says, “God is light,” not that God has light, or that light is an attribute or property of God’s which is something alongside His essence. Indeed, the Church’s orthodox teachers through the ages have noticed this and stressed it. John’s statement is ontological, having to do with God’s very being. It is comparable to his declarations that “God is spirit” in John 4.24 and “God is love” in 1 John 4.8, 16. John’s statement is also analogical, as all statements about God necessarily must be, describing God to us in terms of creaturely things with which we are familiar, namely, light and darkness.

In the second century there lived a man who, as a boy, had heard Polycarp, the famous martyr who was taught in person by the Apostle John. This man’s name was Irenaeus and he became the Bishop of Lyons in Gaul (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, “St. Irenaeus” and “St. Polycarp”). In his famous work Against Heresies, Irenaeus wrote that “God . . . is truly perfect in all things, Himself equal and similar to Himself, as He is all light, and all mind, and all substance, and the fount of all good” (4.11.2). Let that sink in. Very, very early in church history, long before some of the most important creeds were composed, Irenaeus, led by Scripture, spoke in these profound terms. In the third century, Augustine distinguished between “the Unchangeable Light” which is God and the light which is His creation (Confessions 7.10.16), implying an awareness of analogical language in 1 John 1.5.

Fifteen hundred years later, the Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck described the orthodox view of Christian theology from the start on these matters, when he wrote,

God is “simple,” that is, sublimely free from all composition, and that therefore one cannot make any real [i.e., ontological] distinction between his being and his attributes. Each attribute is identical with God’s being: he is what he possesses. . . . Whatever God is, he is that completely and simultaneously (Reformed Dogmatics, 2.118).

Listen, my dear friends. When the Apostle John said that “God is light,” it is surely implied that God is light in and of Himself, not by virtue of any relation to His creatures. In other words, it is not merely saying that He enlightens us. The light that is in God is God Himself. Furthermore, we can infer with all justification that whatever light of any kind there is in the creation is from God Himself as the Source. The sun, for example, has no inherent light of its own, but God continuously provides its light. The first speech of God in Scripture is called the fiat lux, “Let there be light, and there was light” (Gen 1.3), and He has never stopped sustaining that light from the first moment of creation until now.

And by saying that in God there is no darkness at all, John implies God’s infinite, absolute, ineffable purity, and that all the darkness with which we are familiar is not God, nor does it originate in God, or come from Him. God is not the blameworthy cause of any darkness.

I want to explain a little further within the limitations of a sermon what it means to say that God is light, but please understand that this one theme could occupy volumes. I have chosen to highlight four major biblical connotations of the statement, “God is light”—namely, glory, holiness, knowledge, and life.

His light is His glory

Scripture frequently associates light and glory. Moses said the Lord “shined forth” in His appearance to Israel (Deut 33.2). When Moses had come down from Mount Sinai, “his face shone because he had been talking with God” (Exod 34.29 ESV). God’s glorious presence with Israel was represented in a pillar of fire by night to give them light (Exod 13.21). Luke’s nativity story includes the phrase, “the glory of the Lord shone round about them” (Luke 2.9).

In prophecies of Christ’s advent, Isaiah said, “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined,” and Matthew interprets this prophecy as fulfilled in Jesus’ Galilean ministry (Isa 9.1–2; Matt 4.15–16). Isaiah summoned Israel’s attention to Christ in these words, “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee” (Isa 60.1–2). Jesus said plainly, “I am the light of the world” (Jn 8.12). Paul says that when Christ returns, He will show “who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto” (1 Tim 6.15–16). The book of Revelation says that the New Jerusalem does not need the light of the sun or the moon to shine in it, because the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb (i.e., Jesus Christ) is its light (Rev 21.23). The statement “God is light” connotes His glory.

His light is His holiness

Scripture is also filled with instances of light as a metaphor for holiness, while darkness stands for sin and evil. These are so many examples of this in the Bible that it is hard to know where to start. We can see it in the text of 1 John, where he especially had this connotation of holiness in mind when he wrote that “God is light.” We know this because John immediately applied it to the necessity of ethical behavior as a condition of fellowship with this holy God. John wrote about “walking in darkness” and “walking in the light,” and these phrases describe patterns of human activity with respect to God’s commandments, either violating or keeping them (1 Jn 1.5–7; 2.3–5, etc.). The OT prophet Malachi foretold the days when “the Sun of righteousness [shall] arise with healing in his wings” (Mal 4.2), another strong parallel between light and holiness. “God is light” also connotes divine holiness.

His light is His knowledge and truth

Further, light has a biblical connotation of knowledge and truth, and darkness is ignorance. The psalmist prayed, “O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me” (Psa 43.3). Paul wrote, “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Light is knowledge; light is truth.

God knows Himself like no one else knows or could know Him—infinitely and perfectly. This knowledge “is one with the divine essence [and] belongs to the very nature of God” (Richard Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, “scientia simplicis intelligentiae seu naturalis et indefinite,” 276). As such He is the Source and ground of all knowledge and truth.

John opens his gospel with an announcement of the eternal Word which became flesh. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn 1.1; cf. v. 14). The Greek term translated “word” is logos, which certainly has connotations of informational content, rationality, and an intelligent message (see D. A. Carson, in loc.). Our God and Savior Jesus Christ is “the Word” and the Light. And John wrote a few verses later, “and the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not” (Jn 1.5), illustrating the association of the word “light” with knowledge—specifically, the knowledge of God, whom Christ reveals in His first coming. Verse 18 says, “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (KJV) or “made him known” (ESV). To say that God is light, then, implies His infinite knowledge and truth and wisdom, that is, His reality and omniscience.

His light is His life

Finally, there is an association of “light” and “life.” Ordinarily in the created world, light makes life possible. By God’s wise design, we see the amazing results of photosynthesis in plants. They live and grow by means of light. And this connection of light and life is evident in Scripture. Before we leave John 1, look at this in verse 4, “In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” Psalm 36.9 says, “For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light.” The psalmist also speaks about walking before God “in the light of life” (Psa 56.13). As with light, God the Father has life in Himself, and so does the Son (Jn 5.26).

Truth Applied
Most people may think this is heady stuff with no practical bearing on real life, reserved for ivory tower theologians, but once again I would try to convince every single one of you that God matters, and that we absolutely must know Him as He has truly revealed Himself to us. This must be the ultimate priority of all our lives. Nothing supersedes knowing God aright. It is in knowing Him through Christ that we are saved and come to fulfill the very reason for our being, to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. Although there are many applications, let us consider one each for the four connotations of light—glory, holiness, knowledge, and life. I want to make the applications in reverse order.

His light is life for us: come to Christ and live

The epitome of perfect blessedness for mankind is captured in the biblical phrase, “eternal life,” a quality of life possessed only in communion with God and only fully experienced in the age to come. Because this life is in God alone, we must leave our dead idols, even if they are only “idols of the heart,” and return to the true and living God if we would ever experience eternal life. The alternative is to continue in spiritual death now, and then on Judgment Day to be confirmed in a state of eternal death, suffering God’s just wrath in alienation from Him.

The gospel announces that fallen sinners can only come back to God through believing on Christ His Son, receiving Him as Lord and Savior. He is “the Word of life, . . . [and] that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us,” John wrote. The apostles declared Him to us, the New Testament being their faithful testimony written, so that we also may have fellowship with them, whose fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ (1 Jn 1.1–4). We have His promise of eternal life (1 Jn 2.25). “And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. These things I have written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God” (1 Jn 5.11–13).

That is why everyone who hears the gospel ought to believe it immediately. For many people that will mean converting from some other religion to biblical Christianity. This may require you to endure severe persecution and the practical loss of everything you counted precious. But because God is light, His light is life, and His Son is the living Savior with power to give eternal life to whomever He pleases, this is worth more to you than all else besides. Without Christ you must perish, but in Him you have the greatest treasure of all—everlasting life.

His light is knowledge for us: trust God and understand

The most important knowledge of all is the knowledge of God, and this is foundational to a discerning perception of reality in His creation. The theologian Robert Reymond observes,

The entire history of philosophy up to more recent times may be summarized as precisely man’s rational effort, beginning with himself and accepting no outside help, to “examine” enough of certain chosen particularities of the universe . . . to find the universals which give to these particularities their meaning (Robert Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, 112).

In other words, the worldly philosophers have attempted an unbelieving approach to knowledge. And in the “more recent times,” they have persisted in unbelief, but with less rationality in a course of relativism and post-modernism. It is not that they advocate violating the notions of thesis and antithesis in logic, but have generally repudiated the validity of logic altogether.

Picking up on this spirit of the age without even realizing it, many typical unbelievers imagine they might consider becoming Christians if only they could be convinced it is reasonable. Many Christian apologists seem to accept the premise and attempt to make converts by the sheer force of argument.

I would go on record affirming the rationality of true theology and all true knowledge, but because God is light, and His light is knowledge, we must believe in order to understand, not vice versa. The psalmist prayed, “In thy light shall we see light” (Psa 36.9). Commenting on this verse, Spurgeon wrote,

Vain are they who look to learning and human wit, one ray from the throne of God is better than the noonday splendour of created wisdom. Lord, give me the sun, and let those who will delight in the wax candles of superstition and the phosphorescence of corrupt philosophy (Treasury of David, in loc.).

Jesus taught that holy obedience, the fruit of faith, leads to knowledge—first of all, knowledge of His credibility as the Prophet of God. Our Lord said, “If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority” (Jn 7.17 ESV). The problem with unbelievers is more moral than intellectual, more relational than philosophical. Anselm of Canterbury championed a reverent, believing approach to knowledge in his slogan, faith seeking understanding. That is a classic definition of theology and a doorway to further knowledge about God’s creation.

His light is holiness for us: walk in the light with God

A greater appreciation of God’s holiness will foster our growth in moral purity, that is, in godliness. Because God is holy, sinners naturally seek to get as far from Him as possible. But the true Christian, as one made new by the Spirit, draws ever nearer to God with whom he has an affinity by grace. John’s gospel says,

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God (Jn 3.19, 20).

Because this is so, those who are of God (that is, true Christians) are distinguishable by their lives from others not of God. As John wrote later,

God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin (1 Jn 1.5–7).

A common fantasy of unbelievers is that they can pursue all their carnal desires with gusto, of whatever sort they are, and still be in God’s favor. They hope to continue impenitent and then escape punishment for their sins. That is impossible because God is not like us. God is light, and His light is holiness. In a passage condemning men for their sins, the Lord explains that He was exercising merciful patience for a while, but judgment is certainly coming.

These things you have done, and I have been silent; you thought that I was one like yourself. But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you. “Mark this, then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart, and there be none to deliver!” (Psa 50.21, 22 ESV).

It is a common and very dangerous misconception to think that God is like us in moral apathy. Dear friends, when Christ the Light of the world finally appears, the true reality will become obvious to everyone. The radiant New Jerusalem and the burning lake of fire shall forevermore jointly testify of God’s delight in His saints and wrath toward the reprobates.

The new creation that will appear after Christ returns along with the lake of fire shall continue eternally as testimonies of His holiness—His gracious delight in the saints and His terrible wrath against the sinners.

His light is glory for us: seek the glory of God above all

What is your goal in life? There is only one worthy object, and that is God Himself. Only God is light, and His light is His glory. Whatever is truly glorious, splendid, magnificent, and worthwhile in all His creation is only so by virtue of its association with Him. Any beauty in creation is His beauty. Any goodness is His goodness. Any truth is His truth. Any love is His love.

Therefore, to strive toward any creature as if it were ultimately worthwhile is to make an idol of it. This is the great catastrophe and most stupendous error of mankind—to exchange the truth about God for a lie and to worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! (Rom 1.25). That broad way of sinners would lead to your utter ruin and eternal humiliation.

Against this, Scripture exhorts you, “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor 10.31 ESV). Ironically, only those who supremely seek His glory shall be finally glorified by Him! The sufferings true Christians must endure on account of our despised religion and unpopular lifestyle of devotion to God are not worthy to be compared with the blazing, brilliant glory that shall be revealed in us (Rom 8.18).

You see, God is light, and that matters more than all else. May He grant us the faith to receive and apply this truth. Amen.

© Copyright | Derechos Reservados

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2005-Imperative-Preaching-Meadows.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2007-05-24-9am-The-difficult-duties-left-to-the-minister.wav”]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2007-05-24-11pm-Contentment-and-meaning-in-ministry.wav”]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2007-05-23-0930am-Apostasy-and-a-right-leading-of-God’s-people.wav”]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2007-05-22 0945-am-The-IndispensableApplication-of Gospel-Doctrine.wav”]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2007-05-21 1020-am-The-Non-Negotiable-Centrality-of-Gospel-Doctrine.wav”]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2006-Papal-Antichrist-Contemporary-View-II-Meadows.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2006-Papal-Antichrist-Protestants-View-I-Meadows.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2006-The-Great-Exchange-Scott-Meadows.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2005-05-Discerning-Word-of-God-III-Scott-Meadows.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2005-05-Discerning-Word-of-God-ii-Scott-Meadows.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2005-05-Discerning-Word-of-God-i-Scott-Meadows.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2010-05-18-The-Adult-Oriented-Church-II-Scott-Meadows.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2010-05-17-The-Adult-Oriented-Church-Scott-Meadows.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2008-05-Titus-IV-Scott-Meadows.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2008-05-Titus-III-Scott-Meadows.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2008-05-Exposition-of-the-Epistle-to-Titus-II-Meadows.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2008-05-Exposition-of-the-Epistle-to-Titus-I-Meadows.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

In theology, we usually use the word “inspiration” to mean that process by which God produced the Scriptures, his very words, through men. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Tim 3.16). Now I would use it with reference to the phenomena of true worship as produced by God and as motivated in men. Both Holy Scripture and holy worship are inevitable because they are the effectual work of the Almighty Holy Spirit. “The Father seeketh true worshippers to worship him,” and so he sends his Spirit to quicken and transform the true worshippers he seeks. Without this Spirit, absolutely no true worship can possibly begin or continue. The Lord our Redeemer deserves all the credit for all true worship.

But God uses means to draw people to himself, to transform idolaters into his loyal servants, and to purify their worship while it still suffers some degree of corruption. The Spirit gave the Word written by inspiration and the Word Incarnate by virgin birth. That same Spirit uses men to proclaim Scripture and Christ. When the Spirit owns this human ministry of proclamation, then, by a miracle of grace, true worshippers are the result.

Acts 2 testifies that the Spirit came with saving power and the effect of this was that suddenly, in one day, the little band of 120 worshippers in Jerusalem, a tiny remnant found within apostate Israel, swelled to thousands of true worshippers constituting the New Israel, the Spirit-filled church. And yet this was the relatively small beginning of a massive spiritual avalanche, as tens and hundreds of thousands, and then millions, would appear throughout the world in subsequent centuries.

Further, the Spirit honored and used the preached Word through Peter to awaken the carnal sleepers, and to make alive the spiritually dead. Note also how that people’s response to the Spirit’s mighty work is described and summarized. They gladly received the Word, repented of sin, were baptized in water and formally added to the church, and as church members they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers (Acts 2.41-42). That is to say, they became deeply devoted to and faithful in true worship, pure worship, worship “in spirit and in truth,” such as the Father seeks. No images, no incense, no bells, no clerical garb, no holy water, no liturgical calendar, no concerts, no puppets, no plays, no dancing, no elaborate church programs. It was unadorned obedience to God’s revealed will—nothing added, nothing taken away. It was simple, spiritual, sublime! This is what happens when the Spirit inspires worship!

You see, God appeals to hearers of the gospel as the thinking, feeling, and choosing beings that we are. He instructs our minds, inflames our hearts, and induces our wills to give him his due: true and pure worship. In a broad way, we could say this is the purpose of the whole Bible—to quicken us from dead works and reform us into true worshippers. However, there is a particular passage I have in mind which is very conspicuously intended by God to summon his people to true and pure worship, and that passage is Deuteronomy 4. It was great the first time it was preached as it came from Moses’ lips to ancient Israel, but now it shines with an exceedingly bright luster for us when we understand it in the light of the NT.

Deuteronomy rehearses God’s will for the generation to enter Canaan and their descendants after them. Remember, the previous generation who first received the law forty years earlier had died in the wilderness, all who had been over 20 at the time except for Joshua and Caleb. Now Deuteronomy is presented as a covenant between God and his people, and it exhibits the structure of an ancient treaty, with its preamble in chapter 1, its historical prologue in chapters 1-4, its stipulations which make up the bulk of the book, chapters 5 through 26, its blessings and curses in chapters 27 and 28, its “document clause” or provision for periodic reading and relearning of the covenant through future generations in chapter 31, and the witnesses of the covenant in chapter 32. Ancient Hittite treaties exhibit a similar structure. On one level, Deuteronomy is a motivational sermon, a means God’s Spirit can still use to inspire pure worship in our hearts and lives and churches.

Now let us focus on the inspiration of worship in the sense of motivation. In other words, why must we and how can we render pure worship to God? We would draw eleven reasons from Deuteronomy four, particularly, verses one through 40. A thoughtful reading is a good start to appreciating it. Hear, therefore, the Word of the Lord.

1 Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments, which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers giveth you. 2 Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you. 3 Your eyes have seen what the Lord did because of Baalpeor: for all the men that followed Baalpeor, the Lord thy God hath destroyed them from among you. 4 But ye that did cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day. 5 Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it. 6 Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. 7 For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for? 8 And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day? 9 Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ sons; 10 Specially the day that thou stoodest before the Lord thy God in Horeb, when the Lord said unto me, Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children. 11 And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness. 12 And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard a voice. 13 And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone. 14 And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go over to possess it. 15 Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire: 16 Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female, 17 The likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air, 18 The likeness of any thing that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth: 19 And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven. 20 But the Lord hath taken you, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, even out of Egypt, to be unto him a people of inheritance, as ye are this day. 21 Furthermore the Lord was angry with me for your sakes, and sware that I should not go over Jordan, and that I should not go in unto that good land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance: 22 But I must die in this land, I must not go over Jordan: but ye shall go over, and possess that good land. 23 Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of the Lord your God, which he made with you, and make you a graven image, or the likeness of any thing, which the Lord thy God hath forbidden thee. 24 For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God. 25 When thou shalt beget children, and children’s children, and ye shall have remained long in the land, and shall corrupt yourselves, and make a graven image, or the likeness of any thing, and shall do evil in the sight of the Lord thy God, to provoke him to anger: 26 I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that ye shall soon utterly perish from off the land whereunto ye go over Jordan to possess it; ye shall not prolong your days upon it, but shall utterly be destroyed. 27 And the Lord shall scatter you among the nations, and ye shall be left few in number among the heathen, whither the Lord shall lead you. 28 And there ye shall serve gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell. 29 But if from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul. 30 When thou art in tribulation, and all these things are come upon thee, even in the latter days, if thou turn to the LORD thy God, and shalt be obedient unto his voice; 31 (For the Lord thy God is a merciful God;) he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers which he sware unto them. 32 For ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and ask from the one side of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it? 33 Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live? 34 Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? 35 Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest know that the Lord he is God; there is none else beside him. 36 Out of heaven he made thee to hear his voice, that he might instruct thee: and upon earth he shewed thee his great fire; and thou heardest his words out of the midst of the fire. 37 And because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose their seed after them, and brought thee out in his sight with his mighty power out of Egypt; 38 To drive out nations from before thee greater and mightier than thou art, to bring thee in, to give thee their land for an inheritance, as it is this day. 39 Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the Lord he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else. 40 Thou shalt keep therefore his statutes, and his commandments, which I command thee this day, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth, which the Lord thy God giveth thee, for ever.

Matthew Henry says of this passage that it is “a most earnest and pathetic exhortation to obedience, both in general, and in some particular instances, backed with a great variety of very pressing arguments, repeated again and again, and set before them in the most moving and affectionate manner imaginable,” and indeed it is.

My exposition is thematic rather than verse-by-verse. I will bring out some truths relevant to our theme, the inspiration of worship. Why must we, and how can we, worship purely? Consider these eleven reasons.

#1: GOD’S REDEEMING WORK

We can and should offer pure worship to God because of what he has already done to redeem his people. This is the great and weighty consideration prior to the exhortation per se of Deuteronomy 4. Notice how verse one connects what came before it with what follows: “Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments, which I teach you, for to do them.” “Therefore . . . hearken . . . to do.” “Therefore” is a conjunctive in this context that evokes the historical prologue just rehearsed by Moses in their ears up to this point in the sermon, that is, from Deuteronomy 1.6 to 4.1. The historical prologue is not just a journal or a travelogue, but a choice selection of events interpreted and presented to show God’s power, grace, and faithfulness toward this people. Moses presents God’s deeds of salvation throughout Israel’s history. He rehearses these to them solemnly before calling for their response of worship.

What had God already done for his people? Well, many of those things are not explicitly mentioned here because they were already generally known. They knew that God had created them, elected and called their forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, multiplied descendants in the land of Egypt, and then delivered them out of Egypt to be his holy people, giving them his covenant at Mount Sinai.

Basically, this is where the historical prologue of Deuteronomy starts. Moses rehearses how God called them to journey on (1.6-8), gave them more leaders (1.9-18), and encouraged them to go and possess Canaan, but they rebelled at Kadesh-barnea, so God judged them without totally casting them off (1.19-46). Then they traveled through the wilderness (2.1-15), overcoming powerful enemies, Sihon, King of Heshbon (2.16-37), and Og, King of Bashan (3.1-11), and taking land on the west side of Jordan (3.12-22). Finally, Moses learned he could not enter the Promised Land, but his successor Joshua would lead the people in (3.23-29).

This glorious redemptive history is foundational to exhortation, and it prompts and empowers exhortation. Faith and obedience in pure worship is the only valid response.

Brethren, we are God’s people today, one with his ancient people, and so, this is our history, and God’s redeeming acts on our behalf. Paul makes this point in 1 Corinthians 10.1-3. And God has done so much more to save his people since then. God preserved Old Covenant Israel as a people until our Lord came from heaven and was born the last in a long line of Hebrew kings, fulfilling ancient messianic promises. Jesus Christ, all that he is and all that he has done and continues to do—this is the highest inspiration for pure worship, the foundation of our highest moral obligation, and the assurance of our God-given ability to respond in obedience to him.

#2: GOD’S REVEALED WILL

We must and can worship purely also because this is what God commands. Deuteronomy 4 anticipates John 4.23, “The Father seeketh such to worship him,” and so he gave his Word. The law was given not just for doctrine and for reproof or conviction, but also for correction and for instruction or disciplined training in righteousness (2 Tim 3.16-17)—that is, for living unto God. God intends his Word to inspire true worship.

Note the heavy stress upon his command, stating the divine will in words, and upon the human obedience, carrying out his verbally-stated will.

Hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments, which I teach you, for to do them. . . . the word which I command you . . . keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you. . . . I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go. . . . Keep therefore and do them . . . And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments. . . . Thou shalt keep therefore his statutes, and his commandments, which I command you this day (verses 1, 2, 5, 6, 13, 40).

The will of God, known clearly, is a sufficient incentive to do it. It also powerfully motivates those who fear God. This revealed will is the ultimate vindication of our obedient actions, and also a great encouragement that we can, by grace, do whatever he commands.

So when we wonder why we should worship in the biblical way, we can remember that God wills it. And when we don’t feel like worshipping, we can overcome our sluggishness by preaching to ourselves, “God wills it.” When the ignorant ask us, “Why do you worship like that?,” we can say, “Because God wills it.” And when opponents criticize our simple, biblical manner of worship, we can respond, “God wills it.” Or if we are feel lonely in our commitment to sola Scriptura for worship, even over the course of many years we can persevere in our holy resolve, because God wills it!

#3: GOD’S GRACIOUS PROMISE

Another rationale and motivation for pure worship is the promise of eternal life. The Old Covenant often presented the promise of blessedness in the types and shadows of temporal blessings. You see it in verse one, “that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers giveth you.” To “live” means to survive in God’s favor and not be killed in God’s wrath, as verses three and four state: “Your eyes have seen what the Lord did because of Baalpeor: for all the men that followed Baalpeor, the Lord thy God hath destroyed them from among you. But ye that did cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day.” Verse one not only promises life, but also “going in,” which meant, in its historical context, entering Canaan in God’s favor. To “possess the land” was to enjoy the spoils of victory over their enemies. All this, Moses says, is that which the Lord “giveth” you—that is, freely, without your merit, and graciously, as you have many times before provoked his wrath, and faithfully, as he promised from ancient times in his covenant to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.

See God’s gracious promise as incentive also in verses 29-31.

29 But if from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul. 30 When thou art in tribulation, and all these things are come upon thee, even in the latter days, if thou turn to the Lord thy God, and shalt be obedient unto his voice; 31 (For the Lord thy God is a merciful God;) he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers which he sware unto them.

This emphasizes grace, as God anticipates their apostasy and promises beforehand to be gracious to them when they finally return to him. “From thence” in verse 29 means from banishment in pagan lands, from the practice of idolatry, and from the sanction of divine judgment, the subject of verses 27-28: “And the Lord shall scatter you among the nations, and ye shall be left few in number among the heathen, whither the Lord shall lead you. And there ye shall serve gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.”

Now what must they do to inherit these stupendous blessings? The condition is stated simply: “if thou shalt seek the Lord thy God,” and the possessive pronoun accentuates his covenant faithfulness despite their failure. “Seeking” is not meritorious; it just indicates desperation which craves deliverance. Yet this seeking must be earnest and sincere. You must “seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul,” Moses preaches.

These divinely-established terms, when fulfilled, lead to the great promise of God’s pure grace. “Thou shalt find him.” There is more bound up in that little phrase than we could ever comprehend. To find the Lord in this sense is to find deliverance from all ill, and to find the fullness of eternal blessedness. All this is promised despite their sin!

In this passage, verse 40 is the climax of the promise of future grace, for it says, “that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth, which the Lord thy God giveth thee, for ever.” In other words, worship God truly and purely because God promises to give you blessedness despite your demerits and without any merit at all on your part. Only a fool would pass up this offer!

You can hear this same promise in New Covenant terms throughout the New Testament, and for example, in John 3.16. The hope of eternal life to true worshippers, based on God gracious gospel promise, is a great incentive and encouragement to worship in the way he commands us.

#4: GOD’S HATRED OF IDOLATRY

Idolatry is one way of characterizing our basic sin problem, and the misery from which we most need to be delivered. To say that God hates idolatry is a truism, but this passage presses that truth upon us. Verse three says, “Your eyes have seen what the Lord did because of Baalpeor.” The Baalpeor incident is recorded in Numbers 25, how that Israel worshipped the idol of Moab, perhaps the one named Chemosh. God’s violent response to this was to order the immediate hanging of all the chiefs of the people and to send Israel’s judges on a death mission in their respective jurisdictions for the execution of all those men who had committed gross idolatry. Furthermore, the Lord highly praised Phinehas for thrusting a spear right through a couple while they were engaged in the very act of immorality associated with this syncretism. This heroic zeal for the Lord’s glory appeased his wrath and stopped a deadly plague already underway which had killed 24,000 Israelites. This is how God reacted to the people’s gross idolatry on this occasion.

You can also see God’s hatred of idolatry very clearly in verses 23 and 24. “Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of the Lord your God, which he made with you, and make you a graven image, or the likeness of any thing, which the Lord thy God hath forbidden thee. For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.” The original Hebrew word translated “jealous” includes the idea of “a desire for exclusivity in relationship” (Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains, #7862). Thus, this jealousy is related to the covenantal nature of God’s relationship with Israel.

In the beginning, God instituted human marriage between a man and a woman to illustrate the kind of relationship he desired and would bring about with his covenant people. That is why God considered idolatry to be spiritual adultery, because he was the husband of his people. The Lord is Israel’s husband in the Old Testament (Isa 54.5) as Christ is the church’s husband in the New (Eph 5.31-32). Think about it, men. You resist the temptation to adultery because you are in a covenantal relationship of exclusive devotion to your wife. Anticipating your wife’s potential reaction if you were to commit adultery can be a means of grace to preserve your fidelity to her. Likewise, you should remember your covenantal relationship with God and anticipate his negative reaction to corrupt worship, because this will help bind your heart to him.

#5: GOD’S PUBLIC GLORY

Verses six through eight contain this fifth reason and motive for the pure worship of God.

6 Keep therefore and do them [“statutes and judgments” “commanded” by the Lord God, verse five]; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. 7 For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for? 8 And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?

This reason for pure worship is clearly indicated here by the word “for” (v. 6) or “because.” A superficial reading may give the impression that the text supports national glory as the great priority. The truth is that this public honor is not to terminate on the people themselves, but on the God of the people, as verse 7 makes plain. Moses reasons with his hearers that it is their near association with God and their faithful stewardship of his righteous statutes and judgments that will become the occasion of adoring wonder among the nations.

We conclude that the true greatness of God’s people only appears when God is near to them and they are proclaiming and practicing the righteousness of his law. Therefore, the nearer God is and the more conformed our worship is to his law, the greater our apparent greatness. Recognition of greatness promotes admiration of greatness, and admiration comes before embracing God and his Word.

Compromises of biblical principle, though not acknowledged as such by their proponents, are often advocated on the grounds that they are necessary to “reach” others for the Lord, but this is to stand the biblical argument on its head. The most biblically-faithful worship can be expected to be the means of greatest blessing to outsiders. The holiness or “other-ness” of the church, where it is conspicuous, is most likely to arrest the attention of unbelievers and make them realize something of the church’s glory, not inherent but reflected, because of our close association with the God of glory.

Two New Testament passages come to mind. Matthew 5.16 says, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” To let your light shine is to be truly righteous and to live righteously, that is, when your heart and conduct are in accordance with God’s revealed will in Scripture. The Christian is to do this so that others may see his good works, which works are nothing more or less than obedience to God’s commandments. This actual carrying out of God’s will is the manifestation of true worship, and with God’s blessing it may become a means of conversion to unbelievers who behold it. For the witnesses of godly and obedient Christians to “glorify your Father” is tantamount to their joining with the church in its devotion to the true worship of God.

Another similar New Testament passage is 1 Corinthians 14.24-25, which reads,

24 But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all: 25 And thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth.

Here Paul advocates order in the church’s worship, and he favorably contrasts “prophecy,” proclaiming God’s Word, or preaching, with unintelligible utterances which would be undesirable (verse 23). Proclaiming God’s Word may become a means of conviction to the sinner. This is the idea behind the phrase, “the secrets of his heart are made manifest,” that is, brought out into the open before his own conscience. Following conviction of sin, Paul envisions a response of humble and sincere worship, and an open admission that the church congregation is a temple of the true and living God.

Do we want to reflect God’s glory in the world? These important passages teach us that we must worship God aright for the sake of his public glory. Corruptions of worship tend to obscure that glory, and even to lead unbelievers to dishonor the name of God on account of the sins of those who are supposed to be his people. This is the charge Paul lays at the feet of apostate Israel in his generation. “For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written. For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision” (Rom 2.24-25). We see this being fulfilled in the cases of those who identify with Jesus Christ and either fall into scandalous sin or truly ridiculous and unscriptural behavior in connection with worship.

#6: GOD’S COMPASSIONATE CONCERN FOR YOUR CHILDREN

The sixth reason for pure worship, drawn from Deuteronomy 4, is God’s compassionate concern for your children, and by implication, your descendants, even those yet unborn. The potential benefit of true worship extends beyond “the nations” of people who are alive to witness that worship.

In verse nine, one of the reasons given for the exhortation to “take heed to yourself” and “to keep your soul diligently,” and for the warning against forgetting these great spiritual verities, is that you might “teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ sons.” You must have a knowledge of God’s truth and possess true faith yourself, that is, you must be a true worshipper of God, before you could reasonably expect to become a means of inducing your children and grandchildren to worship God. In verse ten, God explains why he gathered Israel together and made them to hear his words, that is, brought them into his true worship. It was “that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children.” God intended the salvation and sanctification of people alive at the time, and also to impart the same spiritual blessings to their children after them. So this is also an incentive for us to trust and obey God in the way of pure worship. We should do that for the sake of compassionate concern about our posterity. Verse 40 states it explicitly. “Thou shalt keep therefore his statutes, and his commandments, which I command thee this day, [in order] that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee.” Since the blessing of God is promoted in our posterity by our own careful keeping of God’s statutes, this is another compelling reason to worship God his way.

#7: GOD’S HOLY AND SPIRITUAL NATURE

The proper manner of worship is necessarily and intimately related to the nature of God himself, and he reveals himself to be a most pure Spirit who exhibits an ineffable holiness. Thus his worship must be with reverence and awe, and such worship is scrupulously obedient to his revealed will. Consider what verses 11 and 12 say about this.

11 And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness. 12 And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard a voice.

These terrifying signs of fire, darkness, clouds, and thick darkness were a visible manifestation of God’s holiness. The voice heard from the invisible presence revealed his spirituality. Moses emphasizes that they “saw no similitude” or likeness of God, and the implication is that God is an invisible spirit, his essence possessing no shape or visible form. This passage stretches language to the breaking point for asserting this, because it says, further, that they “saw no manner of similitude” (verse 15) on that day when the Lord spoke to them. They did not see God, nor did they see a similitude of God, nor did they even see any manner of a similitude of God. The reason this absence of any likeness of God in his self-disclosure to them is stressed here is to strengthen them against the temptation of trying to represent God in any visible way, whether by images of human beings, or beasts or birds or creeping things or fish—all instances of icons made by the heathen. The implication of this approach to exhortation is that if they were to fall into image worship, it would be due to a failure of appreciating God’s invisible and holy nature.

In historic debate, the Roman Catholic Church argued for the use of images in worship on the grounds that so many people were illiterate that they could not gain spiritual knowledge in any other way. “Images are the books of the ignorant.” This was their slogan. Calvin did not dispute that the ignorant got ideas about God from the images, but he argued that those ideas were false, appealing to Jeremiah 10.8, “the stock is a doctrine of vanities,” and to Habakkuk 2.18, “the graven image, . . . the molten image” is “a teacher of lies.”

Because God is holy and spiritual, his worship must be holy and spiritual (John 4.24), not that commonly practiced by those who do not know God, nor that carnal service associated with idolatry (Acts 17.24-25). And the only sure guidance to holy and spiritual worship is God’s revealed will.

#8: GOD’S WARNING AGAINST YOUR BACKSLIDING

The warning in verses 25-28 anticipates that Israel will eventually backslide or apostatize from the good and the right way of biblical worship. Moses preaches that it is not “if” but “when” you “shall corrupt yourselves.” This corruption is manifested by their making an image, and precipitating severe judgments from God on account of it. Their liability to such a disaster in the spiritual realm is presented as an incentive to remain faithful to the divine directions for worship.

Our propensity to apostasy is a powerful incentive to strive for purity of worship now. If you were confined to the deck of a ship in a violent storm, it would be safest to hold onto the mast in the middle rather than to the edge nearest the water. As apostasy begins by degrees, we must strive against compromising in the little things, and in this way, nip it in the bud. Jesus praised the people in God’s kingdom who did and taught even the least of his commandments (Matt 5.19). Scrupulous conformity to God’s revealed will guards us against backsliding and leads to us to salvation.

We glean three more reasons or incentives for pure worship from this chapter.

#9: GOD’S GRANT OF INESTIMABLE PRIVILEGES

Moses conveys to the people a sense of their great spiritual privileges in several ways in verses 32-38. First, no other people, from the beginning of the world to that present time, nor any to be found anywhere else in the world, had been chosen to be God’s special people as the descendants of Israel were (verse 32). Also, the nation of Israel had survived the experience of hearing God’s audible voice (verse 33), and this was another indication of his favor. No other nation had been delivered by stupendous miracles out of a situation where they were held against their will in abject misery like Israel was delivered from Egypt (verse 34).

The next four verses explain why God blessed Israel so much. In an exercise of his sovereign grace, God had chosen Israel for these spiritual privileges so that they might know that he is uniquely God, and there is no other (verse 35), and to teach them (verse 36), and for the sake of his love to the patriarchs (verse 37), and to replace the wicked Canaanites in the Promised Land with his chosen people (verse 38).

All this is a type of the spiritual things to be realized in Christ and his New Testament church. For example, Paul wrote that Christians are “predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: that we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ” (Eph 1.11-12). And if we are predestinated to praise, this is a reason and an incentive to praise. How can we restrain our heart’s devotion and the songs which must break forth from our mouths to the glory of the one who has loved us so well and blessed us so greatly?

#10: GOD’S ELECTION OF YOU TO BE HIS HOLY PEOPLE

We must speak only very briefly about the last two reasons for pure worship which arise out of this rich chapter. Number ten is that God’s purpose toward his elect is that they should be his portion or inheritance, that is, his treasure.

But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own inheritance, as you are this day (Deut 4.20 ESV).

Peter interprets the significance of this sovereign election in these words:

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people [“a people for God’s own possession,” ASV]; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light (1 Pet 2.9).

The Lord has separated us out of the world and unto himself so that we would be distinctively devoted to his pure worship, not only in this life but throughout eternity. And God’s purpose is a great incentive and motivator.

#11: GOD’S SOLITARINESS AS OBJECT OF ULTIMATE DEVOTION

Finally, we must and may worship God purely, his righteous way, simply because he is the only God there really is to receive our worship. Note the connection between these ideas in the last two verses.

39 Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the Lord he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else. 40 Thou shalt keep therefore his statutes, and his commandments, which I command thee this day, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth, which the Lord thy God giveth thee, for ever (Deut 4.39-40).

At one point in Jesus’ earthly ministry, some false disciples were offended by some of the hard things he was saying, and subsequently left him. Our Lord then expressed concern about his inner circle of disciples, and Peter responded as spokesman for the rest.

67 Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? 68 Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life (John 6.67-68).

D. A. Carson comments, “The question is asked more for their sake than his. They need to articulate a response more than he needs to hear it” (in loc.). And so do we, brethren! Will you leave the Lord Jesus Christ and fall into the corrupt worship that is inevitable when we depart from Scripture alone as its standard? Let each one of us affirm in his own heart and to the Lord: “I could never, ever, do that, my precious Savior! You are my all, and without you I cannot live. By your powerful grace, I will be your loyal servant, pleasing you in absolutely everything, for the praise of your glory. Here’s my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.” Amen.

© Copyright | Derechos Reservados

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2011-Conferencia-Pastoral-A-Call-to-Pure-Worship-The-Standard-of-Worship-I.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

Let’s resume this short series of messages on “A Call to Pure Worship.” In our first message, “The Corruption of Worship,” we considered the absolutely greatest evil of all time, namely, that while God desires pure worship, man offers corrupt worship. God the Father seeks true worshippers who worship him in spirit and in truth. However, man the sinner will not and cannot worship as the Lord wishes, but instead corrupts his worship with all kinds of things which are offensive to God. The whole biblical history is littered with corrupt worship. During the Old Testament period, true worshippers were virtually nonexistent among the Gentiles, and were the exception to the rule, even among those identified as the people of God. One particularly glaring example of corrupt worship is the case of Jeroboam, first leader of the North in the divided kingdom period, and symptoms of his spiritual plague were seen in all his royal successors until the line of northern kings ended with the Assyrian captivity as an expression of God’s wrath. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son into the world to redeem a people from all nations for his praise, and the hour now is, when the true worshippers are worshipping the Father in spirit and in truth, thanks to the Savior who was crucified, buried, rose again, ascended to heaven, poured out his Spirit, and ever lives to make intercession for his people.

Now let us take up the first part of the second message of this series entitled, “The Standard of Worship.”

Having asserted pure worship as the ultimate priority, I earlier made three statements that follow biblically and logically. Please consider the first two once again. Number one, the devil wants nothing more than to corrupt our worship by introducing elements not contained in God’s Word or contrary to it, and we must be able to recognize this when it happens. This is blatantly illustrated in Jeroboam, a man prompted by the devil if there ever was one. Number two, indispensable for pure worship is an appreciation of its standard for judgment and for reformation, and that standard is God’s Word alone. That is our focus in this two-part message. The basic principle that true worship is biblical worship is implicit in the scriptural narrative of worship corruption, and that principle is explicit in the way I have stated point number one. However, I wish now to bring this truth into sharper relief, fleshing out some of its important details, and interacting with current controversies about it. My aim is to clarify our appreciation of Scripture alone as the standard for worship, and to deepen our conviction that we must keep striving to reform and purify our worship by this one and only standard we have from God himself.

CONFUSION IN THE HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF THIS TOPIC

Regrettably, there is much confusion about this topic, even in some of the better sort of churches and pastors. It is said, “A theologian is one that makes doctrine so complicated that no one can understand it,” and if that is the measure, I have recently read some great theologians! There is, in the literature on this, much talk about things commanded, things forbidden, and things neither commanded nor forbidden, considered indifferent, the so-called “adiaphora,” a term from ancient discussions of ethics, especially in Stoicism, according to The Encyclopedia of Christianity, but found nowhere in the Bible. I am not saying that this means it is an illegitimate term, but only that strictly speaking, it is not absolutely necessary for understanding the biblical teaching. Besides, it has great potential to confuse the discussion. I have also read about the elements and circumstances of worship, and about hermeneutics, and about worship as “all of life.” All these extra-biblical distinctions, at least as used by some, have cast a thick fog over the whole topic. I wonder whether you have ever read medieval scholastics like Thomas Aquinas with their endless distinctions and subtle fine points. The old joke is that they debated how many angels could stand on the head of a pin, though I suppose that is an exaggeration. In reading current treatments of this topic, I have almost felt as if such men had entered a time warp, and now live among us, and are deliberately trying to suppress the truth. If God’s will for worship were so very complicated and difficult to understand, we could have little hope of actually carrying it out in our local churches all over the world. God helping me, I promise to clarify these things, and not to obfuscate like so many.

As an introduction for the history of thought in this controversy, we could summarize two distinct points of view this way. Calvinists, also known in the most strict sense as Reformed, have believed that whatever God does not command in worship is forbidden, that is, we must worship God only as he directs us, and we are not at liberty to invent and add any new elements. On the other hand, Lutherans and Anglicans have essentially held that whatever God does not forbid in worship is allowed, that is, besides worshipping as God directs us, we may invent and add new elements, as long as they are not expressly condemned in Scripture.

What the best men with the best intentions were driving at was basically this—that we must look to God alone and his Word as the guide and standard of worship. Anything that comes from somewhere else (the Reformed point), and anything that violates this standard (the Lutheran point), is a corruption of worship.

Believe me, I am tempted to enter the labyrinth of debate, but a couple addresses like this would barely make it more than a few steps into the complicated maze. Even if we stayed on the right track, we could hardly hope to travel all the way through to the desired exit. But put me on public record as siding with the Calvinists on this. On the issue of worship, I am Reformed by deeply-held conviction, and I do very heartily repudiate the Lutheran view. The reason of course is that I am utterly convinced that the former is a faithful interpretation of the biblical teaching, while the latter seriously compromises it with disastrous consequences. Only the Reformed view of worship embraces the biblical doctrine that all true worship springs from and flows alongside God’s revealed will and nothing else.

The Lutheran-Anglican approach has polluted sacred service with a thousand manmade traditions, many of them inherited from the so-called Roman Catholic Church. Many Reformed people with good reason refer to all that disparagingly as “bells and smells.” These are the places where you will hear a bell rung at the elevation of the “host,” that is, the bread of their “Eucharistic sacrifice,” and where the pungent odor of incense wafts from swinging censers dangled on chains by so-called priests wearing their Eucharistic vestments, with a veritable vocabulary of curious words to describe the various pieces of their colorful religious outfits. Besides these you will see candles on a supposed altar, the sign of the cross, the mixing of sacramental wine with water, etc., etc., etc.! This list of unscriptural human inventions associated with such an ecclesiastical tradition would be quite long indeed, if it could even be completed.

We must realize that all this is the practical outworking of failure to apply Scripture rigorously as the quality control of all worship, and that is putting it mildly. In our modern religious environment, this same failure has also profaned God’s worship, but often in very different ways than that found in the Roman Catholic-Lutheran-Anglican tradition. Today, we see countless examples of churches, supposedly Evangelical, with drama, mime, puppetry, art, dance, comedy, and pop music performances, all without any real warrant whatsoever from the Word of God. In the interest of peace, some perhaps well-meaning people have tried to quell the alarm some of us have about these developments, but we are persuaded that these are the telltale signs of a prevailing apostasy from God and his truth, and that therefore we have plenty of justification for our alarm. When the house is burning down, it is not uncharitable to yell “fire!,” even loudly, to save those inside. Safety is more important than peace, and the glory of God than good feelings.

Thankfully, we are not the first generation to confront these problems by a sound interpretation and application of Holy Scripture. A classic statement of Reformed orthodoxy on this matter is found in our venerable London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689, and I would quote from XXII.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.

This excellent summary speaks about “the acceptable way of worshipping the true God,” as if there is fundamentally only one way. Of course that is true, as we read that the great prophet Samuel was committed to keep praying for Israel and to “teach [them] the good and the right way” (1 Sam 12.23), not one of the good and right ways. And our Lord Jesus Christ said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father [and that is to worship him], but by me” (John 14.6). Once two people arguing realized they had come to an impasse about the proper manner of worship, and one said to the other, “Alright, we are just going to have to agree to disagree. You worship God your way, and I will worship him his way.” The only acceptable way of worship is God’s way.

Our confession also says this way is “instituted by” God, that is, he has established and declared it openly, and the confession makes it clear that Holy Scripture is God’s revealed will. Thus the way of worship is to be “limited” by this, which is no undesirable limitation, since if we carry out all that God has told us he wants we will be pleasing to him. Guardrails on the highway “limit” you from driving your car off of a cliff. Other guides for worship competing for our adoption are “the imagination and devices of men,” and “the suggestions of Satan,” two very unreliable counselors which would drag us down to spiritual ruin. Our confession also says that the Scriptures explicitly forbid worshipping God “under any visible representations,” and our confession understands this also as an absolute prohibition of worshipping God in “any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures,” putting it in the negative, as Scripture often does. “Prescribed,” with an etymology related to the word “scribe,” has connotations of a written rule, and means “to state authoritatively that (something) should be done in a particular way” (Concise Oxford English Dictionary). This meaning of the word “prescribe” perfectly fits the context of its use in our confession. Essentially, the confession here is making a particular application to worship of the formal principle of the Protestant Reformation known as “sola Scriptura,” that Scripture alone is our ultimate religious authority, and that it is sufficient as a rule of faith and practice, including for guidance as to how God ought to be worshipped.

Sadly, many whom we might have expected to stand firm upon these great truths are embracing the winds of doctrine blowing through the churches and losing their grip on our great, historic and biblical stance. This is happening even with many Reformed churches and pastors, and yes, even with some Reformed Baptists. Some have openly declared that great change has come to their church and argued against the things that used to be taken for granted among us. In one church where this has happened, the discontinuity between what they are doing now and what they used to do in worship is dramatic. Elaborate efforts have also been made to suggest that our chapter 22 paragraph one is unscriptural and legalistic, and that the time has come for modifying it. Instead of being openly opposed to the “Regulative Principle of Worship” (henceforth RPW), which is the traditional label for the doctrine I am advocating, within Reformed circles it has become fashionable to redefine the RPW, not just in words but in substance, and then to champion their own disfigured caricature and maintain a claim to hold to the RPW.

As one who appreciates the glory of the historic Reformed doctrine of worship, this caricature makes me want to weep like the old men when they saw the second temple, the little and modest new one, which had only a faint, unimpressive resemblance to the almost-forgotten and stupendously glorious Temple of Solomon’s day (Ezra 3.12).

Our 1689 confession offers two proof texts for the second part of its statement in chapter 22 paragraph one: Deuteronomy 12.32 and Exodus 20.4-6. Let’s examine them one at a time, and then let us consider the contribution to our understanding made by the Nadab and Abihu incident in Leviticus 10.

DEUTERONOMY 12.29-32

Let us first read the text.

29 When the Lord thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their land; 30 Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise. 31 Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God: for every abomination to the Lord, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods. 32 What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.

General Interpretation

This passage is sometimes interpreted as a prohibition of gross idolatry, and as a further explanation of the First Commandment. This is the way E. H. Merrill treats it in work for the New American Commentary series. Also, the ESV translation has interspersed headings above its biblical passages, and the one here says, “Warning Against Idolatry.”

I believe that all this is significantly imprecise. This is not a warning against gross idolatry per se. Rather, it is a strong prohibition of corrupting the worship of Yahweh, the only true and living God, by incorporating idolatrous customs practiced by the heathen. This has been called syncretism, “the incorporation into religious faith and practice of elements from other religions, resulting in a loss of integrity and assimilation to the surrounding culture.” Both Testaments bear abundant witness to God’s displeasure with syncretism, and to the grave threat it poses to men’s souls. Because true religion is a matter of believing and obeying God, syncretism is bound to result when we look anywhere other than God for direction concerning how he ought to be worshipped.

Now please let me draw your attention to seven relevant features of this text, and then press these things more firmly upon our consciences.

1. The Specific Time for This Counsel

First, notice that this passage gives counsel for a specific time in Israel’s history, namely, “when the Lord thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their land” (verse 29). At the time they first heard these words through Moses, God’s spokesman, they were still in the wilderness and outside the Promised Land. Deuteronomy is the last instruction they will receive from Moses before he dies and they enter the land victoriously under Joshua’s new leadership. This counsel then concerns the time after Canaan’s conquest, when the Canaanites have been killed for the most part, and the Jews took possession of that good land.

Now it is important to remember that the outcome of this historic conflict was an illustration of God’s superiority over the gods of the Canaanites, just as the deliverance from bondage 40 years earlier was an exaltation of Jehovah over the false gods of Egypt, as the Lord said on the eve of their deliverance, “For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord” (Exod 12.12). It is well known that each of the ten plagues was directed against idol-deities of the Egyptians, and that the Pharaoh himself, drowned in the Red Sea, was worshipped as a god in Egypt. The Lord’s triumph over them all was a convincing demonstration of his cosmic superiority. And so it would be when he gave the victory to Joshua and the Israelites in the slaughter of the Canaanites, the capture of their walled cities, and the plunder of the spoils of war, vast treasures taken away from the Canaanites and freely given to the people of God.

In the wake of all this, it is passing strange that Yahweh’s victory over his idol-rivals left the Israelites so fickle. Their lack of firm commitment to worship God alone and to worship carefully in the way he revealed to them is a testimony to the miserable effects of man’s fallen nature within us!

2. Canaanites, Dead But Still Dangerous

Second, notice that this counsel is a warning against the Canaanites who, although dead, would still be dangerous. “Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee” (verse 30a). There is a real irony here. Although the time envisioned for the application of this counsel would be a time when the Canaanites had been “destroyed,” that is, when they had died through Joshua’s sword wielded as an instrument of God’s wrath against them, they still might posthumously “ensnare” the Jews spiritually, and this would be a calamity worse than death. The wretched idolatry of the wicked is like toxic waste that still remains a threat even after it is buried.

And how much greater is this threat while we Christians are now living among the wicked? We are daily exposed in many ways to the corrupt culture of people who hate God, and who would influence us to change the way we think about God and worship him, so that it accords more with their idolatrous imaginations and preferences. We do business with immoral idolaters, we work beside immoral idolaters, and some of us even live with immoral idolaters, and so we are in danger of being spiritually contaminated, and our approach to worship is also in danger of being corrupted.

The church of God will be completely safe from evil influences only when evil is wholly purged from the new heavens and the new earth and consigned to the eternal lake of fire. Of the New Jerusalem, Scripture says that “there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life” (Rev 22.17). Until then, the ways of worship which God hates are all around us, and we must be extremely vigilant and discerning to shed them, and to avoid all vestiges of them, so that we may be most pleasing to him.

3. Dangerous Curiosity and Research

Third, this passage exposes the way of danger. “Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee” (verse 30). The Lord warns his people about “following them,” that is, about imitating their ways. But, we may ask, if no Canaanites were around, then how could this possibly happen? The avenue of apostasy was curiosity and research. When he says, “enquire not,” God straightforwardly forbids a morbid curiosity and research for the purpose of guidance in the question of how worship ought to be done. The ESV translates the phrase, “Do not inquire about their gods.” There were dangerous sources of information, both from neighboring nations, or perhaps from artifacts left behind in the Promised Land. Why would God forbid research? Is this a divine requirement to remain ignorant about other peoples and cultures? Well, yes, if the inquiry was made for learning how to worship God. The ways that the Gentiles worshipped their idols was totally irrelevant to divine worship; the pagans had absolutely nothing to teach the Jews about how to worship God.

Let fools call this obscurantism if they will. Paul wrote, “I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil” (Rom 16.19). Research to refute is one thing, but research to consider and possibly to admire is another.

4. The Manner, Not the Object, of Worship

Fourth, notice that the issue is the manner of worship, not the object of worship. “Take heed . . . that thou enquire 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” (verses 30-31a). The ESV brings out the sense a little bit more clearly: “You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way,” that is, in the way that the heathen worshipped their idols. This is a much, much more subtle danger than gross idolatry, although it is in essence a form of idolatry, because it pays respect to the idols by looking to them for guidance, and it also tends toward gross idolatry in the issue. Imagine a large fair where there are all kinds of musical performers competing for the people to hear them. Many of the players and singers have only a few gathered around them, but look! Over there is a large crowd of many people listening intently, and dancing to one particular band. Those players are being honored by the appreciation shown to them. Dancers to any particular tune glorify the piper who is playing it. If we incorporate elements of Baal into worship, then some of the glory God deserves is being transferred away from the Lord to Baal. If Christians were, for example, to replace water baptism with a different ritual because water baptism is offensive to Muslims, and this has actually been proposed, brethren, then we rob Christ of honor for the glory of the false god “Allah.”

Today we apply this principle correctly by condemning “comparative religion” studies which suggest that the world’s religions are all valid to some degree in their shared quest for God, and that Christianity should borrow elements from the others. Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and even Christless Judaism, are dangers to be avoided, not darkened diamond mines where we might occasionally discover some precious things we could incorporate into biblical, Christian worship. If we follow that naïve view to its inevitable conclusion, we will be on the road to gross idolatry ourselves, and headed for eternal perdition.

The same basic error is made when churches go throughout their communities to poll the unchurched about what the church should be and do to get them to attend—an approach to “reaching the unchurched” that has been widely advocated and practiced. Unchurched Harry and Mary are not reliable guides for us, but rather, they need faithful believers who look to Scripture alone to teach all of us God’s will. Likewise, much of the impulse for what is called “contextualization” is to be censured for this very reason. We don’t need to inject the culture of the world—of rock and roll, Indie music, hip hop, rap music, or whatever has arisen from the muck and mire of unbelief and carnality—into the church’s worship so that we may “reach” people who like these things. We should beware of worldliness in all its forms. We must remain committed to keeping God’s worship holy and pure, and consistent with the high standards of Holy Scripture.

5. Abominable Will-worship

Fifth, please take note of the alarming reason given in this text to heed God’s warning: “for every abomination to the Lord, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods” (verse 31b). These heathen, being without God’s special revelation of how he would be worshipped, and left to the devices of their own depraved souls, had invented all kinds of sinful and atrocious customs and rituals in the worship of their false gods. When people are deprived of God’s Word and rely instead on their own thoughts and desires concerning worship, they fall into the most bizarre abominations. The particularly shocking example mentioned here is child sacrifice by fire. This is further described in Jeremiah, sadly, after Israel had fallen into the practice centuries later.

4 Because they have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and have burned incense in it unto other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents; 5 They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind: 6 Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that this place shall no more be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of slaughter (Jer 19.4-6).

Well, this is absolutely horrible! We can hardly imagine that any human beings could ever be brought to do such a thing. How did such abominations come to be practiced in Israel? Not overnight, but very gradually, over generations, as they became less and less regulated by God’s Word in their worship, and more and more influenced by the pagan practices of those around them. Recently I saw video footage of the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey in London, England, with the Archbishop of Canterbury conducting the wedding ceremony, and I noticed with dismay countless religious icons up front, human figures carved into the wall, and DaVinci’s famous Last Supper image with Jesus dishonored in flagrant and public violation of the Second Commandment. This is the same Anglicanism that is conflicted on homosexuality. Friends, this is the corruption and apostasy of a “church” that long ago rejected the RPW. These gross idolatries and immoralities began as much more subtle departures from Scripture in doctrine and practice.

The mention of child sacrifice in Deuteronomy 12 is intended to alarm and sensitize those Israelites who would be the first generation to live in the Promised Land, and us. Child sacrifice was not the only thing offensive to God in pagan worship customs, but it is mentioned as a particularly disturbing example to condemn all the other practices of pagan worship, the main evil of which was that they sprang from man’s sinful heart instead of God’s revealed truth. As sinful hearers we cannot really appreciate how disgusting a thing will-worship is to God, no matter what its particular expression, so he uses this shocking example to get our attention and help us appreciate how utterly vile and reprehensible all will-worship really is. On account of God’s strong disapproval, we should come to hate all will-worship also.

The last two points may be the most important ones I will draw from this Deuteronomy 12 text for the purposes of this message.

6. The Univocal Standard of Worship

The next to last point, the sixth, is that the divine standard of worship is univocal—the command of one voice that is clear, understandable, obvious, and plain—namely, the voice of God himself. And this is the same thing as saying that the only standard of worship is the Word of God. This comes out clearly in verse 32, “What thing soever I command you, observe to do it.” I do believe that this particular way of putting it stresses, above all other things, the pronoun “I,” much more than the verb “command.”

A sensitivity to the context requires us to understand the statement this way, for it presents two rival sources for guidance in the manner of worship. First, the way of the heathen, and second, the way that comes from God. The Lord is here presenting himself as the only legitimate Author of instructions or guidance for worship. Therefore we conclude that the word “command” is used as a figure of speech called metonymy, where one part of a thing stands for the whole. “Command” should not be narrowly constricted only to those parts of God’s Word that are in the imperative voice, as if prohibitions, promises, threats, historical examples, and other literary genres of divinely inspired literature were irrelevant to our guidance in the proper way of worshipping God. No, the word “command” is used because the imperative was the usual grammatical form God used to direct his people, and also because it has connotations of his supreme authority to tell them what to do. But in this context the word “command” represents the whole of the special revelation from God to man.

This special revelation was usually verbal, but occasionally it took other forms like prophetic vision, for example. Remember that the Lord said to Moses, “According to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it” (Exod 25.9). And, of course, the entirety of God’s special revelation to man, directing us to worship God and teaching us the way he desires to be worshipped, is now summarily comprehended for us, that is, completely contained for us, in one single Book known as the Holy Scriptures, period! The Bible is sufficient to teach us how to worship God his way.

That is essentially what I am trying to drive home with this point that the divine standard of worship is univocal. We have a thousand other voices clamoring for attention all around us, supposedly with something to contribute to our knowledge of God and religion. We also have inner thoughts and desires competing for our gratification and loyalty. But there is one and only one supremely sovereign voice we must hear above all the confusing and tempting din, and that is the voice of God.

7. Requirement and Justification of Scrupulosity

One more point, the seventh, and we’re done with this first part of the second message on the standard of worship. The passage before us absolutely requires, and urges upon us, a very, very scrupulous conformity to this standard of God’s Word. This is clear from three things about the text. First, the stated scope of God’s concern for our worship. “What thing soever I command you” (verse 32), a very literal, word-for-word translation of the Hebrew text. Young’s Literal Translation puts it this way, “The whole thing which I am commanding you.” A looser paraphrase has rendered it, “Be sure to do everything I command you.” It is as if God is pointing at the entire text of Scripture, from the beginning to end, as our direction concerning his worship. You cannot afford to do without any of it if you would be pleasing to God. Today, this does not revoke the New Testament teaching that the Old Testament ceremonial law has been fulfilled in Christ and should no longer be practiced, and that the civil law must not be applied exactly as it was within theocratic Israel under the Old Covenant, but it is to say that Genesis to Revelation must have our close attention as we seek to learn how to please God more and more in his worship. The Old Testament remains highly relevant and instructive for Christians today; it retains every bit of the divine authority it ever had, simply because it is just as much the Word of God as the New Testament.

The text also stresses scrupulous conformity to the Holy Scripture by its choice of the verb translated by the Spirit for the exhortation, that is, “observe.” This is a special term with a greater intensity than another word which simply means to do something. God is not just saying, “do what I command you,” but “observe” or as the ESV translates, “be careful to do” it. The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament says about this word that “the basic idea of the root is ‘to exercise great care over,’ [and that] it expresses the careful attention to be paid to the obligations of a covenant, to laws, statutes, etc.” (TWOT #2414g). Another lexicon says it means to “obey a command with diligence and in detail” (Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains, #2068). This also justifies my characterization of the obedience God wants from us as “scrupulous,” meaning “punctiliously exact: painstaking” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary), and “diligent, thorough, and attentive to details,” and “very concerned to avoid doing wrong” (Concise Oxford English Dictionary). The origin of the word “scrupulous” in the Middle English meant “troubled with doubts” (ibid.), and there is a sense in which we should always be anxious and concerned to compare the actual worship we offer God to the standard of his Word, so that we may reform whatever is amiss.

The third indication that scrupulosity is laid upon our consciences here is the last phrase of the verse. “Thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it,” that is, from God’s command. This protects us from any possible remaining doubt about whether God wants us to be scrupulous in our obedience to his commands. The phrase itself must be understood as a Hebraism to be fully appreciated. It mentions two extremes (adding to it, and diminishing or taking away from it) to encompass everything in between (twisting it, overemphasizing one part for de-emphasis of another, etc.). Along with the words “everything” and “observe,” this phrase drives home the point that there must be a very precise and exact correlation between God’s revealed will for his worship and the actual worship we offer to him. Ideally, our worship should be the written word of God on display in beings of flesh and blood! We are to become an “epistle . . . known and read of all men . . . manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ . . . , written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart” (2 Cor 3.2-3). Christ himself perfectly exemplified the righteous worship commanded and commended in the Scriptures, and he did it scrupulously in all its glorious detail! As God reforms us and our worship, we are becoming more and more like Christ.

Calvin wrote helpfully on a similar verse from Deuteronomy 4, and he said,

The main point is, that they should neither add to nor diminish from the pure doctrine of the Law; and this cannot be the case, unless men first renounce their own private feelings, and then shut their ears against all the imaginations of others. For none are to be accounted (true) disciples of the Law, but those who obtain their wisdom from it alone. It is, then, as if God commanded them to be content with His precepts; because in no other way would they keep His law, except by giving themselves wholly to its teaching. Hence it follows, that they only obey God who depend on His authority alone; and that they only pay the Law its rightful honor, who receive nothing which is opposed to its natural meaning. The passage is a remarkable one, openly condemning whatsoever man’s ingenuity may invent for the service of God (Calvin on Deut 4.2).

In closing, I would put it this way. Brethren, we cannot possibly be too scrupulously Scriptural. The more Scriptural, the better. Do not be intimidated by other pastors and Christians who will criticize you for being “legalistic” when you are only being biblical. Whether they realize it or not, the devil is using them to corrupt your worship away from the standard of the Word of God.

Bishop Kennet once remarked about the Puritan Richard Rogers, “that England hardly ever brought forth a man who walked more closely with God.” He was always notable for seriousness and gravity in all kinds of society; being once with a gentleman of respectability who said to him, “I like you and your company very well, only you are too precise.” “Oh sir,” replied he, “I serve a precise God.” Surely Deuteronomy 12.32 convinces us that God wants us all to be precisionists!

In this life, our worship is never all that it should be. We sinfully take somewhat away from his Word, even without meaning to do so. No doubt our worship includes things that it should not contain, and we sinfully if inadvertently add to his Word. Therefore we must be always reforming toward the Word. I heartily endorse the slogan, “Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei,” being translated, “The church reformed and always being reformed according to the word of God.”

I know what people will say. “Pastor Meadows, if everyone thought like this, it would introduce even more divisions in the churches and among the churches than there already are.” I disagree very, very strongly with this. Divisions arise from sloppiness in these things, brethren! It is the departures from Scripture that cause the tensions which are so regrettable and unnecessary and which would not exist if only we were better at observing everything God commands us in Scripture without adding or taking away anything. If all Christians and churches were more agreed on this basic truth, then worship everywhere would be becoming much more similar and pure, and the unity within and among churches would increase greatly from what it is now.

We must come to realize that there are two and only two sources for guidance in worship—God, not God. We must heartily embrace God as our guide, and repudiate all other would-be guides in worship.

I conclude with references to two other brief Scripture passages and one quick comment for each one.

Remember Jeremiah 10.1-2. “Learn not the way of the heathen . . . for the customs of the people are vain.” Do you think that “the heathen” is the only source of corrupting God’s worship? My friends, the only thing that distinguishes us from the heathen is the Word of God, so if we ignore that, we are practically just like the heathen!

Lastly, consider Romans 12.1-2. “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (ESV). We must cultivate a healthy self-distrust and be constantly vigilant against encroachments of sinful elements and forms into our worship, against letting the world influence the way we worship God. Our worship must be completely distinctive from that practiced by everyone else in its constant resort to a Scripture standard.

Now may the Lord give us ears to hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Amen.

© Copyright | Derechos Reservados

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2011-Conferencia-Pastoral-A-Call-to-Pure-Worship-The-Standard-of-Worship-II.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

In this series entitled, “A Call to Pure Worship,” the first message proclaimed that God desires pure worship. We proved this straight from Scripture in our simple exposition of John 4, with its testimony that God the Father desires worshippers who worship him in spirit and in truth. In the first message we also beheld from Scripture that sinful man offers corrupt worship. Jeroboam in 1 Kings 12 is a quintessential case of religious corruption, and I hope you are convinced it is practically a paradigm for all kinds of corruptions popular in the visible church today, and corruptions which we should abominate with all our hearts.

This second message, “The Standard of Worship,” has two parts. In the part one we thought about what has come to be called “The Regulative Principle of Worship” (henceforth RPW), formally set forth in our 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, chapter 22, paragraph one, especially the last part of that paragraph, which says,

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 stated here, this doctrine basically amounts to the advocacy of a very, very careful and scrupulous obedience to Scripture in worship, doing exactly what it says, adding nothing, and taking nothing away. This thorough commitment to Scripture alone for the direction of our worship has ample support from Scripture itself. We have already seen this in our study of the first proof text offered by our confession on this point, namely, Deuteronomy 12.32 in its context.

We now come to part two of “The Standard of Worship.” In this message, I would lead you through our confession’s second proof text, Exodus 20.4-6, which is the Second Commandment. Both its obvious sense along with its deep and penetrating implications for the conduct of God’s worship will also, like Deuteronomy 12, help us navigate through the fog of theological confusion on this.

Then, at the risk of departing somewhat from the glorious simplicity of the biblical teaching, I would also like to address some of the sophisticated but unhelpful language that has been used in theological writings either to attempt overthrow of the RPW, or at least a substantial modification of it.

Finally, I wish to take up a key expression from a biblical passage traditionally associated with this matter, Leviticus 10. I want to show how this also, along with Deuteronomy 12 and Exodus 20, recommends an extremely sensitive conscience about God’s worship. That done, all that will remain is our third and final message, “The Inspiration of Worship,” for our fourth and final pulpit session.

Now please give your earnest attention to what truly is the very Word of God.

EXODUS 20.4-6

4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: 5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; 6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

The most obvious meaning of this Second Commandment is that it is a prohibition of images in worship. Among the heathen, these were typically “graven,” that is, carved or cut images made of wood or stone, as mentioned in Leviticus 26.1. Sometimes they were not carved but “molten images” (2 Chron 34.3-7), that is, made by melting and casting some kind of precious metal. These had greater physical beauty than stone idols, and so were more desirable to their worshippers. Numbers 33.52 also mentions that “pictures” were used in heathen worship.

All these human innovations in worship, the Israelites were to destroy utterly when they came into Canaan (Exod 23.24; 34.13; Deut 7.5, 25-26; 12.3). These wicked icons were found everywhere, just like they were when Paul came into Athens, where “his spirit was stirred in him [alt., “his whole soul was revolted at the sight,” NJB], when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry” (Acts 17.16). Of course this is not a prohibition of the arts per se. Rather, the Second Commandment makes it perfectly plain that no such statues or pictures invented by man are to be a part of worship. The Israelites must never incorporate these abominations.

Less obviously, the Second Commandment, and the Ten Commandments generally, have much broader implications. Our Lord clarifies their true import in the Sermon on the Mount.

The first principle I would bring to your attention is this:

1. Prohibitions of a Gross Sin Condemn All Other Sins of the Same Kind

The passage is well-known where Jesus teaches that not only murder but even malice is a violation of the Sixth Commandment (Matt 5.21-22), and by the same token, not only adultery but lust violates the Seventh (Matt 5.27-28). Now murder and adultery are greater sins of the same essential kind as malice and lust, and so by implication these are also condemned. As Matthew Henry quipped on Leviticus 19.17, “malice is murder begun.” Likewise, lust is adultery begun.

By applying this principle to the Second Commandment, we can see that it is not limited to the prohibition of images in worship, but broadly encompasses any and all will-worship, for that is essentially what idolatry is. Will-worship is idolatry begun. “Dumb idols” (Hab 2.18; 1 Cor 12.2) are simply will-worship taken to an extreme. The most glaring sin is specifically mentioned, like murder and adultery, to help us appreciate how evil this kind of sin really is, and where it eventually leads, though its beginnings may be small.

Leviticus 19.27 confirms this principle. It reads, “Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.” God’s law here prohibits a practice that might seem innocent enough in itself but was probably condemned mainly for its association with pagan worship customs. The Israelites were in danger of adopting them in connection with their worship, also. Reading this divine prohibition someone might protest, “What is the harm in this?,” but that would be the wrong question. Rather, reverent souls ask, “Is this what God directs us to do in his worship?” The Lord is sensitizing his people not to add any religious customs beyond those he has ordained, even things that may seem morally indifferent.

Now idols are easily seen to dishonor our great God, since they are a singularly improper means of representing the invisible, eternal, and holy One. Worshipping idols is also beneath our dignity, since even we are superior to them. We possess intelligence, feeling, and volition, but venerated statues cannot even begin to think, will, or act. From all this it follows that, in a more subtle way, all will-worship deserves the very same censures obviously attaching to idolatry. Do we really think that anyone else could possibly improve on the substance and form of worship which God has set forth as that which pleases him best? And do we not impugn God’s wisdom if we are not content with rendering the worship that contents him? Further, what greater nobility is there for any people than to be faithful servants of this God Most High, carrying out his revealed will to the letter?

Jesus’ teaching on the Sixth and Seventh Commandments also shows that the their righteousness goes beyond mere externals to matters of the heart. Malice and lust are sins of the inner man, sins which none but God can see (1 Kgs 8.39). Therefore the Second Commandment forbids “idols of the heart” (Ezek 14.3; 1 John 5.21), as God sees them too. Though our external worship may appear ever so pure to human observers, without a deliberate intention to exalt God and God alone, he beholds our corruption. That is why he complains bitterly, “This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men” (Matt 15.8-9).

The second principle Jesus teaches us for interpreting the Ten Commandments is this:

2. Prohibitions of Any Sin Imply Commands to the Opposite Virtues and Duties

The Sixth Commandment against malice and murder also by implication requires us to promote our neighbor’s well-being as we have the means and opportunity. Paul said, “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith” (Gal 6.10). The Seventh Commandment against lust and adultery similarly requires chastity and fidelity to one’s spouse. “Treat younger women with all purity as you would your own sisters” (1 Tim 5.2). “Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well” (Prov 5.15).

From these valid inferences we can also know that the Second Commandment against will-worship positively requires our deliberate intention and earnest efforts to render that worship which conforms scrupulously to God’s revealed will as our only rule. It is as if God is asserting his claim to be the sole Conductor of a symphony, if you will allow the analogy. He wants all the players to follow his cues on purpose rather than playing to please anyone else, including themselves. This Godward intention is more important than hitting the right notes, because God rejects even the right notes of a renegade. On the other hand, he is ever so gracious to his well-intentioned followers even when we make mistakes.

On one occasion when the priests had failed to eat the sin offering in the holy place at the time appointed by God, they were forgiven this fault (Lev 10.12-20). “It appeared that Aaron sincerely aimed at God’s acceptance; and those that do so with an upright heart shall find he is not extreme to mark what they do amiss” (M. Henry, in loc.).

A definitive statement of the Reformed interpretation of the Second Commandment is found in the Westminster standards. For example, the Shorter Catechism says,

The second commandment requireth the receiving, observing, and keeping pure and entire, all such religious worship and ordinances as God hath appointed in his Word. . . . . The second commandment forbiddeth the worshipping of God by images, or any other way not appointed in his Word (WSC #50, 51, Scripture references omitted).

The Larger Catechism also has two questions on requirements and prohibitions of the Second Commandment, but we would share the requirements later. For now, consider its prohibitions, expanded very much beyond the Shorter Catechism:

The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counselling, commanding, using, and any wise approving, any religious worship not instituted by God himself; the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever; all worshipping of it, or God in it or by it; the making of any representation of feigned deities, and all worship of them, or service belonging to them, all superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretence whatsoever; simony; sacrilege; all neglect, contempt, hindering, and opposing the worship and ordinances which God hath appointed (WLC #109, Scripture references omitted).

It is important to note well that these statements express the consensus judgment of very learned and godly Reformed ministers, a form of sound words upon which they agreed.

And now I trust that in your judgment, I have just offered that which is nothing else but the traditional, Reformed interpretation of the Second Commandment, and that in this, I have set forth, essentially established, and amply proven that the RPW is a faithful expression of the true teaching of Holy Scripture.

Still, there are COMMON OBFUSCATIONS.

To “obfuscate” is to darken and make unclear. I would now turn your attention to some obfuscations found in the literature discussing the RPW in detail. First,

1. Is “Adiaphora” Legitimate As a Third Category of Direction?

It seems to me this entire issue is needlessly confused by proposing a third category of direction related to worship besides God-directed worship and man-directed worship. The sooner we realize that we are constantly choosing between these two, the better. We are always faced with an either-or proposition. Either we will worship God’s way, or not God’s way. Joshua’s challenge is, “If it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Josh 24.15). Joshua’s hearers understood perfectly well what he meant. “And the people answered and said, God forbid that we should forsake the Lord, to serve other gods” (verse 16). Worship is a watershed with only two possible directions and outcomes. “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt 6.24).

As an aside from our main point here, consider that this true worship—this self-denying, devil-defying, world-repudiating worship—can never be offered except by a miracle of regenerating grace in the worshipper. Unbelievers cannot possibly worship God the right way because they are still held as willing captives to their own desires and the fear of man.

A. W. Tozer pressed this matter with characteristic insight and vigor:

With this desire to please men so deeply implanted within us how can we uproot it and shift our life-drive from pleasing men to pleasing God? Well, no one can do it alone, nor can he do it with the help of others, nor by education nor by training nor by any other method known under the sun. What is required is a reversal of nature (that it is a fallen nature does not make it any the less powerful) and this reversal must be a supernatural act. That act the Spirit performs through the power of the gospel when it is received in living faith. Then He displaces the old with the new. Then He invades the life as sunlight invades a landscape and drives out the old motives as light drives away darkness from the sky.

The way it works in experience is something like this: The believing man is overwhelmed suddenly by a powerful feeling that only God matters; soon this works itself out into his mental life and conditions all his judgments and all his values. Now he finds himself free from slavery to man’s opinions. A mighty desire to please only God lays hold of him. Soon he learns to love above all else the assurance that he is well pleasing to the Father in heaven (The Divine Conquest, Barbour edition, pp. 41-42).

Brethren, this goes far toward explaining why simple, biblical worship is so difficult to find in most of today’s churches, and why it has so little appeal to nominal Christians. The gospel preached accurately and forcefully has been almost completely lost, and the Spirit has almost completely withdrawn from pulpits and congregations alike in our apostate age. The vast bulk of Christendom knows next to nothing experientially of divine grace. It is content with a form of godliness, while denying its power (2 Tim 3.5). So instead of true encounters with God, the nominalists delight in manmade rituals and entertainment in his house. Oh, how we need a mighty working of the Spirit for our recovery from all this! By itself, an intellectual persuasion of the RPW is inadequate.

I have come to conclude that as it relates to the substance of worship, the whole concept of “adiaphora,” that is, things neither commanded nor forbidden, is an insidious Trojan horse carrying inside all kinds of potential innovations never before considered by Reformed churches holding to the RPW. There really is no “middle way” between the historic Reformed position and the Roman Catholic-Lutheran-Anglican position. The end result of attempting some middle way must necessarily entail, in my opinion, an essential rejection of the biblical doctrine known as the RPW, even if the proponent of a middle way insists that he holds a slightly-modified Reformed view of worship. Second,

2. Is There a “Different Hermeneutic” for Worship?

Another confused notion has arisen in the discussion of these things. Some allege that the RPW presents a “different hermeneutic,” or “principle of interpretation,” for worship than for everything else, and therefore it is implausible on the face of it. Such critics argue that “all of life” is worship, and therefore, the Bible should not be applied any differently to the church’s worship than it is to our daily, mundane activities.

With the best of intentions, I am sure, even one advocate of the RPW asserts that “in point of fact, however, the regulative principle does provide a different hermeneutic,” but he adds, he finds “no cogency in this difficulty,” nor did he “find it a difficulty” to maintaining the RPW (T. David Gordon, “Some Answers About the Regulative Principle,” Westminster Theological Journal, 55:2 [Fall 1993]).

So one interprets the RPW as a “different hermeneutic” and rejects it, while the other allows that it is a “different hermeneutic” and accepts it. This “two hermeneutic theory” seems to me to fall short of a proper understanding both the Scriptures and the RPW as found in the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith XXII.1. A much simpler and biblically-defensible way to think about this is that a single, sound hermeneutic recognizes that God has given us much more specific direction about worship proper than he has about other spheres of life, which we admit, in a very broad sense, may also be thought of as worship.

First Corinthians 10.31 is the classic text to assert that we ought to do absolutely everything to the glory of God, including our eating and drinking. And yet we do not have nearly so specific direction from Scripture about ordinary eating and drinking as we do about those activities which are with sufficient justification more narrowly designated as worship. Eating and drinking at the Lord’s Supper are highly regulated, but not any other eating and drinking. We have broad principles under the New Covenant that there are no longer any clean and unclean food distinctions as under the Old Covenant (Lev 11). We are expressly assured that “every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer” (1 Tim 4.4-5). We are cautioned against the immoderate use of food and drink (Prov 23.21; Eph 5.18). Beyond these general principles though, the Word of God does not specify a particular diet which is more spiritual than any another. In ordinary eating, we may use something besides bread, and in ordinary drinking, we are not limited to the fruit of the vine. We can enjoy steak and potatoes as much as we can rice and beans, both with a clear conscience of complete fidelity to God’s revealed will. The church of Jesus Christ around the world, as it exists within many different cultures with their preferences and habits about different kinds of foods, displays a great culinary variety, and that is just fine!

Similar dynamics are operative in many issues pertaining to our manner of dress, our dwelling-places, modes of travel, vocations and trades, hobbies, and many other aspects of life in the real world. Just as with the matter of eating and drinking, I am not saying that there are no biblical principles which offer some moral guidance, and place some moral limitations upon these activities, but plainly God gives us a very wide berth. Outside of worship proper, in these mundane, common circumstances, he grants in a very large degree that we may choose according to our own personal preferences and judgments.

When it comes to worship proper, the Word is much more particular, even in the New Testament. The substance of worship we offer to God is not left to our imagination, but it is spelled out for us in various ways, not only by commandment, but also by inference and by example. There is no different hermeneutic for worship proper than for all of life. No, but I say simply that the Word is more particular about worship proper than it is about all of life. Furthermore, we must be just as particular in every area of human existence and activity as the Word is, neither insisting upon particulars where the Word leaves us free, nor omitting scrupulous conformity where the Word is specific. That means we will be much more particular about our manner of worship than we are about many other things. Once this realization came to me through meditation upon the relevant truths of Scripture, it is now hard for me to understand why so few seem to grasp and appreciate it.

To argue that worship proper is not to be distinguished from “all of life” lived to the glory of God is to miss the particularity of Scripture in its more specific regulation of worship proper. The “all of life is worship” argument against the RPW, destroying the classification of worship proper, strikes me as very similar to the “all days are alike holy” argument against the Lord’s Day Sabbath. Such opponents allege the implausibility of special biblical ethics for sanctifying the Lord’s Day, and therefore they say that the very idea of one holy day in seven for Christians is an error. But we do not adopt a different hermeneutic on the Lord’s Day. We merely recognize that the Word of God is more particular about the proper way of spending the Lord’s Day than it is about what we should and may do on the other six days of the week. Sadly, some who would never fall for this popular anti-Sabbatarian cavil are falling into the very same kind of irrationality against the RPW. Thirdly,

3. Is There a Confessional Allowance for the Light of Nature and Christian Prudence in Worship?

Some have attempted an artful dodge against the RPW by appealing to our confession in chapter one paragraph six. The relevant part of this paragraph says,

We acknowledge . . . that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and government of the Church common to human actions and societies; which are to be ordered by the light of nature, and Christian prudence according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed.

To interpret this statement as pertaining to “the worship of God” rather than, as it clearly states, to “some circumstances concerning the worship of God,” would be the beginning of a misunderstanding. Further, even this sphere of concern is further characterized as things “common to human actions and societies.” That would necessarily exclude the worship which God has ordained for the church.

The doctrine of the confession on worship proper is explicit in chapter 22. It is pernicious to make 1.6 and 22.1 effectively opposed to each other, and this is essentially what some have done, though they would not admit it, and say instead that we must “harmonize” them in the realm of worship proper. If I have not misunderstood them, I believe that some have without warrant loosened the semantic range of the word “prescribed” in 22.1 so that they might squeeze in “the light of nature and Christian prudence” as another avenue of judging what is allowable in worship proper, besides Holy Scripture, except for considering its “general rules.” If so, that would be a terrible mistake in the very foundation of a sound doctrine of worship.

Taking its cue from 1689 LBCF I.6, literature on the RPW often distinguishes the “circumstances” of worship from its “substance.” It typically says that the RPW only applies to the substance, and since these are extra-biblical categories, there have been endless debates among good men about what belongs to the circumstances and what to the substance. Would it not be better to say we should be as particular in everything as the Bible itself is, properly interpreted, and remain free where the Scriptures do not bind our consciences, not only in worship proper, but in all of life? I am not categorically rejecting as illegitimate all discussion of the circumstances and substance of worship, but I am proposing a more strictly biblical way of thinking about these things which may help us to greater clarity in our own minds. Fourth,

4. Is Applying the RPW Next to Impossible?

Another attempt to overthrow the historic RPW has been to assert that implementing it consistently among our churches is next to impossible anyway, so of what practical use could it be? And indeed, even among adherents we regret to admit that there is some apparent diversity of judgment about how it should be applied, with the result that there are noticeable differences in the way various congregations worship, even though they share deep convictions about the RPW. Some churches practice exclusive psalmody in worship, while others also sing hymns. Some will not use any musical instruments in worship, while in other places a piano or an organ may support congregational hymn singing. Some collect tithes and offerings in a box mounted on the wall, while others pass plates through the congregation during worship services.

Admittedly, not everyone can be right in their views about these things. Some are perhaps indulging unnecessary scruples of conscience beyond what Scripture requires, and others may be wrongly rationalizing their own traditions. However, instead of concluding that the RPW is essentially wrong, how can we deny that this diversity is what we should expect among the churches of this age, none of which have arrived at perfect sanctification, and all of which are in need of further reformation according to the standard of God’s Word? Our judgments about the specific applications of the Ten Commandments suffer some diversity, and yet we know the problem is not with them, but with us. To argue against the RPW because it is difficult to apply in every detail and because there is diversity of judgment in application among its adherents is insidious and completely unjustified.

Besides, a greater uniformity in worship is evident among Reformed churches serious about these things than what is seen among other churches, unless those other churches have an enforced conformity and common liturgy as found in the Roman Catholic Church, and there is certainly no biblical warrant for that.

Brethren, it is very important that we all begin with the same biblical convictions upon foundational matters like the RPW, even if we do not all come to exactly the same conclusions about the specifics of application. This will inhibit gross departures from the Scripture standard, and foster a continual resort to Scripture for true reformation.

Our Reformed forefathers, with their profound understanding of and deep commitment to the RPW, were able to attain much clarity and consensus about its application. That is obvious from documents they produced together. For example, the Westminster Larger Catechism states positively that,

The duties required in the second commandment are, the receiving, observing, and keeping pure and entire, all such religious worship and ordinances as God hath instituted in his word; particularly prayer and thanksgiving in the name of Christ; the reading, preaching, and hearing of the word; the administration and receiving of the sacraments; church government and discipline; the ministry and maintenance thereof; religious fasting; swearing by the name of God; and vowing unto him; as also the disapproving, detesting, opposing all false worship; and, according to each one’ s place and calling, removing it, and all monuments of idolatry (WLC #108, Scripture references omitted).

Our 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith is also very specific and definitive on the proper activities of the church at worship. After advocating prayer in 22.3-4, it says,

The reading of the Scriptures, preaching, and hearing the Word of God, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in our hearts to the Lord; as also the administration of baptism, and the Lord’s supper, are all parts of religious worship of God, to be performed in obedience to him, with understanding, faith, reverence, and godly fear; moreover, solemn humiliation, with fastings, and thanksgivings, upon special occasions, ought to be used in an holy and religious manner (1689 LBCF 22.5).

Commenting upon the similar paragraph from the Westminster Confession, one author has written,

Anything else or different from this, and especially anything borrowed from heathenism or the abolished temple-service—as pretended priests, altars, altar-cloths, incense, symbolical vestments, [etc.]—are entirely without divine warrant, and therefore unlawful. The same thing may be said of all man-pleasing, sensationalism, solo-singing, with any of the peculiarities of the theater transferred without divine warrant into the worship of the Christian Church (James Begg, Anarchy in Worship, p. 13).

Applying the RPW to worship is not next to impossible as claimed. Rather, it is most necessary for our preservation in biblical worship and our continued reformation. It will lead to a greater uniformity among us who so revere the standard of Scripture. And as the Lord of glory blesses us, he will progressively sanctify our service until he returns.

LEVITICUS 10.1-3

Any treatment of this topic would be incomplete without bringing Leviticus 10.1-3 to your attention. This passage illustrates and confirms the essential correctness of the things I have been preaching.

1 And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. 2 And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. 3 Then Moses said unto Aaron, This is it that the Lord spake, saying, I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace.

The exact sense of verse three is not easy to discern. It could be that the phrase, “I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me,” exposes what Nadab and Abihu had failed to do, that is, to set apart the Lord as God in their hearts while they engaged in his service. Or it may have the sense that God will show himself holy one way or another, either through obedient priests or by making disobedient ones examples of his holy justice. Alternative translations reflect this: “I will be holy in the eyes of all those who come near to me,” and, “I will show my holiness among those who come to me.”

There is also possible ambiguity in the second phrase. We may interpret it as God’s resolve to receive glory and honor, but it could also be taken to mean that he is committed to showing this glory and honor. In any case, the fundamental sin of Nadab and Abihu had to do with their irreverence of heart and conduct while engaged in worship. God prescribed his worship to be performed in a particular way, but the priests were careless. The manifestation of their irreverence is described in verse one.

This is the part of this text which is most salient to our topic. They “offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not.” Many commentators speculate about exactly what they did on that fateful day, but it is more important how it was characterized in this text inspired by the Spirit of God.

The Spirit emphasizes that the offense taken by God was due, first of all, to the offering of “strange fire.” In this context, the adjective in the original Hebrew phrase means “foreign, completely different, unlawful” (CHALOT). God did not recognize it as legitimate. It was, as the ESV translates, “unauthorized” fire, something the priests invented and not found anywhere in God’s directions to them.

The further characterization of their objectionable deed offers another indication of the reason for God’s taking offense. Note the negative: they did what “he commanded them not.” Now they may also have done something which God had forbidden, but that is not the way the narrative portrays their sin. Matthew Henry quotes Bishop Hall’s excellent and judicious comment on this passage:

It is a dangerous thing, in the service of God, to decline from his own institutions; we have to do with a God who is wise to prescribe his own worship, just to require what he has prescribed, and powerful to revenge what he has not prescribed (in loc.).

Years later, Jonathan Edwards explained the event this way:

It may be asked, What so great crime were Nadab and Abihu guilty of, that they paid so dear a price as to lose their lives by an immediate vengeance? But the answer is easy: the great end and purpose of the Mosaical dispensation was to separate unto God a chosen people, who should be careful to obey his voice indeed, and who, instead of being like other nations, following and practicing, as parts of their religion, what men might invent, set up, and think proper and reasonable, should diligently and strictly keep what God had enjoined, without turning therefrom to the right hand or to the left, or without adding to the word which was commanded them, or diminishing aught from it. But herein these young men greatly failed; God had as yet given no law for the offering incense in censers: all that had been commanded about it was that Aaron should burn it upon the altar of incense every morning and every evening. Afterwards he received further directions (Leviticus 16:1–12); so that these men took upon them to begin and introduce a service into religion which was not appointed, they offered what the Lord commanded them not; and this, if it had been suffered, would have opened a door to great irregularities, and the Jewish religion would in a little time have been, not what God had directed, but would have abounded in many human inventions added to it. Aaron and his sons were sanctified to minister in the priest’s office for this end, that they should remember the commandments (Miscellanies, #1088).

Deuteronomy 17.3 condemns gross idolatry in the same terms. Matthew Henry observed,

Of this [idolatry] it is said, That it is what God had not commanded. He had again and again forbidden it; but it is thus expressed to intimate that, if there had been no more against it, this had been enough (for in the worship of God his institution and appointment must be our rule and warrant).

Jeremiah 7.31 is similar. Of burning sons and daughters in the fire, that horrid pagan rite, the Lord says that his people were doing something that, and I quote, “I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart.” Compare Jeremiah 19.5, where the Lord says that child sacrifice is something “which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind.” Jeremiah 32.35 uses exactly the same language. This biblical emphasis underscores the soundness of the Reformed position, that is, the historic RPW.

My stressing these negative characterizations of corrupt worship may seem unnecessary to you, but other treatments of them have gone to great lengths to evade their obvious support for the RPW.

Brethren, I am not saying that the serious application of biblical truth to worship will be easy, or that all who are intent on pleasing God in pure worship will come to the very same conclusions in all respects about the manner of worship. However, we must clearly understand that the standard of worship is Scripture alone, and we must actually use the Bible as our functional guide and compass to navigate our way through the complex issues confronting us. If we all are headed in the same direction, no matter where we begin, our paths will finally converge, and we will all finally be found around the throne of Christ in heaven, worshiping him in perfect purity to the praise of his infinite and eternal glory! May he so lead us, and bless us. Amen.

© Copyright | Derechos Reservados

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2011-Conferencia-Pastoral-A-Call-to-Pure-Worship-God-Desires-Pure-Worship-D-Scott-Meadows.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

No topic is more important than pure worship, since God’s glory is the ultimate end of our being, and nothing therefore could eclipse this in our ministry before God. He calls us by his Word to serve him in this way, the way of pure worship, and by that I mean nothing more or less than worship that is completely according to God’s will. There is a fundamental conformity to God’s will which is required for worship to be true worship at all, but we wish to promote the reformation even of true worship so that it becomes more and more pure, growing ever greater in conformity to God’s revealed will, and so that in the particulars of what it is, what it contains, what it lacks, how it is conducted, and in everything about it, we are more and more pleasing to God himself, we glorify his name the most, and we become better prepared to assume our places in that worship of the age to come, already begun in this age by the grace of Christ and the gospel.

With pure worship as the ultimate priority, the following propositions follow from the biblical doctrine and from reason. First, the devil desires nothing more than to corrupt our worship by the introduction of elements not contained in God’s Word or contrary to it, and we must be able to recognize this when it happens. This concern occupies our first address on “The Corruption of Worship.” Second, indispensable for pure worship is an appreciation of its standard for judgment and for reformation, and that standard is God’s Word alone. This will be our focus in the second address on “The Standard of Worship,” to be delivered in two pulpit sessions. Third, the church must be moved by God’s call to reform what is amiss and to remain ever vigilant against even the slightest corruption of worship. This call will come to us especially in the third message, “The Inspiration of Worship.”

And so let us now begin to consider, “The Corruption of Worship.” My thesis is simple. God desires pure worship, but man offers corrupt worship.

First, GOD DESIRES PURE WORSHIP

God is transcendent, absolutely supreme over all his creatures. Before creation came into being, God and God alone always existed. By his sovereign fiat and potent Word he called into existence everything and everyone else. Both God’s work of creation and his continuing works of Providence, that is, his most holy, wise, and powerful preserving, and governing all his creatures, and all their actions, are realities because of his pleasure and for the sake of his own glory. God does not exist for his creatures, but we exist for him. His absolute supremacy exalts his will over ours. His desires are paramount, and his revealed will is far, far above our wishes, whatever they may be. What pleases him, and not necessarily what pleases ourselves or anyone else, must be the rule of our lives. Further, our submission to and delight in God’s revealed will must be most apparent and conspicuous whenever we engage in his sacred worship.

Indeed, this devotion to God, this whole-hearted deliberate intention to please God and to carry out his commandments to the letter, is the mark of true worshippers and the reason Christ died for his elect. “He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again” (2 Cor 5.15). Apart from redemption through Christ’s death, and on account of sin, all of us are found to be lawless ones and men-pleasers, ultimately because this is how we please ourselves ever since we became so depraved as to worship the one whose image we see in the mirror. This is how the apostle describes us all before conversion. But Christ died for us to raise us up out of this spiritual grave, and to make us walk again in spiritual life, that “henceforth,” that is, from now on, we should live “unto him who died for us, and rose again,” even our Lord Jesus Christ. To live to Christ is to worship him as supreme, even as our Lord and our God. This involves loving and trusting Christ so much and so sincerely, that pleasing him, and doing his will, while spurning all other lords, including our own tyrannical selves, really is, functionally, our ultimate priority.

This is tantamount to saying that God desires pure worship from us—worship that is clean, unmixed, free from what vitiates, weakens, and pollutes, worship that includes everything it should, and excludes anything and everything which does not properly belong to it. We have compelling biblical justification to make this astounding assertion: the entire divine redeeming work is directed toward the end of a great host of people who will render this pure worship to God for all eternity.

Once this idea grips your very soul, you can discover that this is the Bible’s grand theme—the glory of God, highlighted supremely in the redemption of his creatures, and most particularly of elect sinners, whom the Lord transforms into the church triumphant, to respond with grateful enthusiasm in eternal praises.

Surely the locus classicus of Scripture on true worship is found in John 4, verses 19-24. In this familiar dialogue between Jesus and a Samaritan woman at a well, we read:

19 The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. 21 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. 22 Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. 23 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. 24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

Here Jesus announces several very important spiritual truths.

1. True Worshippers

First, he sets forth the very idea of “true worshippers” (verse 23). The whole earth was populated with worshipers of various sorts, but the worship offered by nearly everyone was unacceptable to God because it was not what Jesus here calls “true.” The word in the original conveys the sense of pertaining to what something should be, genuine not phony, and sincere not superficial. The original word for “worshippers” has, first, a literal sense. It means to kiss the hand, to bow like one who falls upon his knees and touches the ground with his forehead as an expression of profound reverence. Then, figuratively and derivatively, it came to mean, simply, to revere. Jesus conveys the notion of people who possess a true and deep reverence for God, and whose conduct demonstrates it.

2. Their Presence and Growing Number

Second, Jesus announces that such true worshippers are already present during his earthly lifetime, and that the number of them would multiply dramatically. “The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship” (verse 23). For one thing, the Archetypal Worshipper was standing right in front of the woman at the well. Jesus testified of himself, “I do always those things that please” my heavenly Father (John 8.29). His whole soul, his every thought, word, and deed, and his entire life, was but the offering up of praise, thanksgiving, and a sacrifice to the glory of God. But he had more than that in mind when he said the hour now is when true worshippers shall worship. Already he was saving sinners and remaking them in his own image in their spiritual life. The number of his disciples was growing, those already changed into true worshippers, whose worship was becoming increasingly pure. That is because Jesus Christ had come into the world from heaven to become the Redeemer of countless immoral idolaters by his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, and then to pour out the Holy Spirit upon the day of Pentecost, powerfully calling into this sacred service of true worship many thousands of people from that day till this, until that host becomes a great multitude which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, standing before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palms in their hands, and crying with a loud voice, “Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb” (Rev 7.9-10). This is the glorious church Jesus had in mind when he announced, “The hour is coming, when the true worshippers shall worship.”

3. Worship of God the Father

Third, Jesus announces God the Father as the object of worship (verse 23). And note well that our Lord here emphasizes the Fatherhood of God. God will be worshipped as Father in his relationship to his Son, because true worship is Trinitarian. God will be worshipped as Father with appreciation of his gracious and faithful character, because true worship is not just trembling fear but grateful adoration. God will be worshipped as Father in relation to his people, because true worship is offered by God’s children who are especially beloved of him and have his image renewed in them, and thus they have an affinity for God’s excellent nature.

4. Worship in Spirit and in Truth

Fourth, Jesus announces that true worship is “in spirit and in truth,” a phrase that appears twice, in verses 23 and 24. This is an extremely rich expression of vast significance which includes the following ideas in my judgment. “In spirit” connotes worship that is offered in a spiritual manner, as opposed to the carnal, physical, and outward manner associated with the divinely-appointed Old Covenant worship with its elaborate tabernacle/temple and associated objects and rituals. The immediate context alludes to these, as the question of the proper location for worship was being discussed, whether it should be offered in “this mountain” or “in Jerusalem” (verse 20). We are not suggesting that no true worshippers lived before Jesus, for many before him had worshipped truly, even within Israel, but Israel as a whole had completely failed to prove herself a “true worshipper.” The New Covenant worship overspreading the world would be, in contrast with the Old Covenant, simple and unadorned, first arising from the heart of man by the internal operation of the Holy Spirit. This worship “in spirit” is also required by the reality that “God is Spirit” (verse 24); that is, his nature is wholly unlike idols, and he therefore must be worshipped differently than idols are worshipped. As Jesus’ servant Paul would preach years later,

24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; 25 Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things (Acts 17.24-25).

That true worship would be “in truth” raises a contrast with the corrupt and ignorant “will-worship” (Col 2.23) offered by their “fathers” in “this mountain” of Samaria. The term “will-worship” may have been coined by Paul, since no earlier examples have been found, and in context it probably means worship that was made up according to the pleasure of the worshippers, that is, invented by men (Calvin, in loc.). Worship that is “in truth” is rather in accord with God’s revelation in his Word and his Son Jesus Christ. Thus, true worship is that which arises from revelation-based knowledge, and it is corrupted and polluted by the intrusion of outside elements, no matter what their alternative source might be.

Still, the phrase “in spirit and in truth” is not setting forth two distinct traits but describing in tandem true Christian worship. D. A. Carson has written that this “in spirit and in truth” kind of worship is “essentially God-centered, made possible by the gift of the Holy Spirit, and in personal knowledge of and conformity to God’s Word-made-flesh, the one who is God’s truth, the faithful exposition and fulfillment of God and his saving purpose” (in loc.). So worship in spirit and in truth is, essentially, pure worship.

5. The Father’s Desire for True Worshippers

Fifth and finally, Jesus announces that “the Father seeks such [true worshippers] to worship him.” This testifies both to the initiating grace of God that seeks the lost sinners enslaved to false and corrupt worship, and to the inherent worthiness of God that wisely and justly desires his own glorification. God originally created man as true worshipper, but we corrupted his worship, and thereby corrupted ourselves. Now may his name be forever praised, because instead of repudiating man irrevocably, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit act in concert to recreate a host of true worshippers from the human wreckage caused by sin—all for the display of his glory, the ultimate worthy end of creation in the first place.

My brethren, who, upon reading this Bible, can doubt that God desires true and pure worship? When we evaluate worship in this world, our controlling considerations must be these. Is this what God desires, only what he desires, and all that he desires? We should not even begin to ask questions such as, “Do I like it?,” or “Do they like it?,” or “Will it draw a large crowd?,” or, “Will this expand our influence?,” or a thousand other typical considerations people are raising in the modern debates about the substance and form of worship. People driven by these questions are self-condemned, proving that they do not understand even the first principles of true worship revealed in Holy Scripture!

Unless and until pleasing God alone is our deep, foundational, unshakeable conviction that actually controls our approach to worship, we cannot possibly be expected to arrive at anything like pure worship in the outcome, because many and powerful forces, both within us, among us, and around us in the world, militate against pure worship. The world, the flesh, and the devil are against it, and from what I and many others have observed, this triple-threat has made deep inroads even among Christians and churches known as evangelical, Reformed, and Reformed Baptist, where worship is often and obviously corrupted grossly.

I remain utterly convinced that differences right here account for much, and perhaps most, of the current contention in the so-called worship wars. One side refuses to budge from pleasing God, and the other is fundamentally idolatrous. It finally resolves into a cosmic conflict over whom to worship—God, or the creature.

The second part of our simple thesis is,

MAN OFFERS CORRUPT WORSHIP

One way of looking at the whole sweep of the biblical drama is that it amounts to the loss of pure worship in Eden by man’s sin, and the progressive restoration of pure worship by God’s grace, to be fully realized in the eternal Paradise of the new creation. Ever since Adam’s sin, fallen man has offered corrupt worship. Biblical examples of corrupt worship are legion, but we would mention a few important ones.

The first example I would mention is found as early as Genesis 4, where the Lord gives his verdict that Cain did not “do well” in worship (Gen 4.7). When the New Testament speaks of this event in Hebrews 11.4, it says that God rejected Cain and his sacrifice as being inferior to Abel and his sacrifice which was offered by faith. We gather from this that Abel was a believer, and that Abel’s offering was the fruit of his obedient faith in what God had said, apparently, about how he wanted to be worshipped. Cain was not a believer like Abel and Cain did not trust God like Abel in the very act of worship. To go very much beyond this in our commentary would be to indulge unwarranted speculation, but this much is clear. Only believers like Abel can offer worship that is acceptable to God, and only worship that looks to his revealed will for direction is acceptable to God. Acceptable worship recognizes God’s trustworthy character and right to rule us in all we do.

Another especially noteworthy example of corrupt worship is found in the account of Israel at the base of Mount Sinai while Moses was receiving the law from God. These who had just been delivered from Egyptian bondage by God’s almighty power grew impatient waiting for Moses to come back down to them and to lead them in worship according to God’s direction, and so they worshipped a golden calf, fashioned with graving tool by Aaron, no less (Exod 32). God described the result in verses 7 and 8.

7 And the Lord said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves: 8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

In the phrase, they “have corrupted themselves,” the translators have added “themselves” which is indicated by italics print in the Authorized Version. A good alternative rendering is, “hath done corruptly” (YLT), or perhaps, “have corrupted the worship,” as the stress in verse eight is upon the unauthorized and man-made nature of their actions, how that they “turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them,” that is, the way of worship, and how that they “have made them a molten calf,” a fabrication according to man’s will with no direction whatsoever from the true and living God that such a thing should be made, or how it should be made, and so forth, as was about to be given concerning the worship associated with the tabernacle. This terrible example from Israel’s early history may have inspired Jeroboam centuries later, the first king of the Northern Kingdom, as we shall see.

The third example, hugely significant for this topic, and which I would only mention in passing here, leaving it for later, is the example of Nadab and Abihu found in Leviticus chapter ten. We read there that they “offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not” (verse 1), and that “there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord” (verse 2)—a most instructive act of Providence that serves as a timeless warning about the danger of corrupt worship in the presence of God Most Holy.

I would offer one more example of corrupt worship before addressing the primary one to receive our fullest attention. Remember for a moment the case of Micah the Ephraimite in Judges 17. Shockingly, within the land of Israel, in his house of gods, this man made one of his sons a priest during a time of great apostasy when “every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (verses 5-6). There was so much spiritually wrong with Micah and his practice of religion we hardly know where to begin, but it is most offensive to God because it was a corruption of his worship by one who was supposed to be in the holy covenant with him.

Now let us weigh well a particularly notorious Old Testament example of corrupt worship, that of Jeroboam, the North’s first king, found in 1 Kings 12.25-33. First we would read the biblical account, and then expound it with points of contact and application for today.

25 Then Jeroboam built Shechem in mount Ephraim, and dwelt therein; and went out from thence, and built Penuel. 26 And Jeroboam said in his heart, Now shall the kingdom return to the house of David: 27 If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill me, and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah. 28 Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. 29 And he set the one in Bethel, and the other put he in Dan. 30 And this thing became a sin: for the people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan. 31 And he made an house of high places, and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi. 32 And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah, and he offered upon the altar. So did he in Bethel, sacrificing unto the calves that he had made: and he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made. 33 So he offered upon the altar which he had made in Bethel the fifteenth day of the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart; and ordained a feast unto the children of Israel: and he offered upon the altar, and burnt incense.

I want to draw three weighty points about corrupt worship from this passage, and press them home upon your conscience. First . . .

1. Corrupt Worship Arises from Misplaced Priorities

Consider well how this is illustrated in verses 26 and 27:

26 And Jeroboam said in his heart, Now shall the kingdom return to the house of David: 27 If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill me, and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah.

The inspired text lets us into Jeroboam’s mind so we can see the motives behind what he was about to do. His priorities were selfish. His thinking about worship began in the wrong place. “How can this help me?,” he asked. His whole perspective was so obviously man-centered, and so his purpose was to influence others so that they would behave in a way that would be for his personal benefit, he believed, although he could have argued that he had in mind a larger and more noble agenda. The faithful narrative here exposes his natural desire for self-preservation, for he worries that “they shall kill me,” but even this cannot justify any deviation from God’s revealed will in worship. Jeroboam also subjugated worship to what he considered a more important goal to be realized, which was political. He reasoned this way: “If I let the people worship God’s way, then their political loyalties will return to Rehoboam king of Judah, and clearly that will not do.”

We should pay special attention to the fact that the chronicler under the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit writes pejoratively in stressing these features of Jeroboam’s thoughts. Without any further explanation, it should be perfectly obvious to the reader, just from the way it is told, that these worship innovations were evil in the eyes of the Lord.

And alas! Jeroboam’s policy of corrupt worship was so unnecessary, and only came because he failed to trust God’s promise of blessing upon a faithful and obedient royal administration. Earlier in this account, we read that the Lord had said to Jeroboam that he was destined to become king of ten tribes of Israel,

And it shall be, if thou wilt hearken unto all that I command thee, and wilt walk in my ways, and do that is right in my sight, to keep my statutes and my commandments, as David my servant did; that I will be with thee, and build thee a sure house, as I built for David, and will give Israel unto thee (1 Kgs 11.38).

Matthew Henry observes in his commentary, “A practical disbelief of God’s all-sufficiency is at the bottom of all our treacherous departures from him.” We add, there was no good reason whatsoever to depart from the ultimate priority of God’s glory, and there never is. Further, forsaking this great priority had the most disastrous consequences, and it always does. The irony of all this is that pragmatism doesn’t work.

My fellow pastors, we see essentially the same policy being practiced today, do we not? It is not hard at all to find self-promoting preachers who will do nearly anything to get attention, wealth, and fame. All the time we hear pleas that if we would see the churches blessed, we must pander to consumer demands for the form and style of church ministry. This is supposedly necessary and justified for reaching “unchurched Harry and Mary,” a phrase now common because of a best-selling book on church growth. Market trends and community surveys are supposed to be the sources of direction to church leaders. That would be fine if we were setting up a chain of restaurants or deciding where to build a shopping center, but this is God’s holy worship we are talking about! All attempts to apply a business model to this and to “market the church,” as they say without blushing, are utterly profane! Sacrilege, I say! This stinks to high heaven!

Surely you too have observed much talk about “your best life now” with concern about eternity and heaven and hell either ignored, ridiculed, or twisted into a call to be good stewards of the environment with a promise that eventually, we will all experience heaven anyway, because, after all, love wins. I don’t think I need to prove this with primary sources when I say that there have been widespread calls for ecumenical compromise, for example, with the so-called Roman Catholic “Church,” so that we will be able to act as “co-belligerents” for the social and political good of fighting abortion, pornography, the normalization of homosexuality, and other evils of our generation.

Now brethren, please listen to me. Of course we rejoice whenever preachers survive persecution, when good churches grow large without compromising truth and righteousness, when Christians enjoy earthly blessings, and when social evils recede, but these good things can never become more important to us than pure worship, or else it will be corrupted, and that is the greatest catastrophe of all! Corrupt worship, because it impugns God’s glory, is worse than martyrdom, worse than small churches, worse than poverty, and worse than unbelievers showing their true colors in public. The wise words of a famous old fundamentalist preacher come to mind: “Never sacrifice the permanent on the altar of the immediate.” Bob Jones, Sr., used to bellow this from the pulpit, and we offer a hearty, “Amen!” Never forget this. Corrupt worship arises from misplaced priorities.

Second, consider this . . .

2. Corrupt Worship Flourishes When Convenience Replaces Conviction

The next two verses show this, verses 28 and 29.

28 Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. 29 And he set the one in Bethel, and the other put he in Dan.

Jeroboam “took counsel” from ungodly men. We know this from the policy he put into action evidently as a result of this counsel. If Jeroboam had been like the blessed man of the first psalm, he would not have walked in the counsel of the ungodly, but rather he would have had his delight in the law of the Lord, meditating in it day and night, and then Jeroboam would have been like a flourishing tree, and whatsoever he did would have prospered (Psa 1.1-3). Godly people look to Scripture alone for direction in all things spiritual and moral. This does not preclude receiving counsel through others, but they must be godly ones through whom God’s counsel comes, always pointing us to the Scriptures for knowing God’s will.

Jeroboam “made two calves of gold,” expressly violating God’s law, for example, in the first and second of the Ten Commandments (Exod 20.1-6). Jeroboam lacked any intention to keep the law of Yahweh. Yet he associated these idols with Yahweh as having led Israel out of Egypt! Jeroboam’s religion was a parasite to pure worship, feeding off of it, borrowing from it here and there cafeteria-style for a veneer of legitimacy, all while destroying it in the process.

With his infernal plan in mind and shiny calf idols for show, Jeroboam then made his sales pitch to the people of the north. “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem.” It is too burdensome for you. It is irksome and completely unnecessary. I have provided for you a far cheaper and easier alternative to that expensive routine of annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem, bringing your tithes and offerings. What is this but to debase God as unworthy of our all? Cheap religion is a bad bargain because it is not worth the paper it is printed on; it is a worthless currency that leads to eternal bankruptcy. It is the rotting corpse of spiritual death all dressed up for church, and a stench in God’s nostrils.

Modern manifestations of “convenient Christianity” abound. We have read of drive-through prayer windows in church buildings, and the electronic church takes the place of real church for very many professing Christians, whether through radio or television or the Internet. Some have chosen spiritually weak churches mainly because they were only a few minutes’ drive from their home, even though a much better church was within their reach. King David condemns them by his testimony of refusing to offer “unto the Lord my God that which doth cost me nothing” (2 Sam 24.24).

There is a slightly different way in which the phrase about it being “too much for you to go up to Jerusalem” might be translated. The ESV renders it, “You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough,” and this seems to cast aspersions on the practice simply because of its antiquity. If that sense is correct, then Jeroboam is saying, in effect, “We have a new way to worship that improves the old. We believe in creativity in worship, and you are really going to like our fresh, up-to-date take on the old-time religion.” Do I need to cite evidence for this policy in action today? Churches unashamedly advertise “contemporary worship,” which, according to the dictionary, is just another way of saying modern worship. Now friends, the right way of worshipping God must be a very, very old way, because God’s people have long been worshipping him the right way. It is easy to make the case for historic and traditional worship. We are not the first generation to have the Bible with a serious, Spirit-led, earnest resolve to do things God’s way. Pure worship is ancient and, we might even say, timeless. We could just as easily have “contemporary water” as contemporary worship! Everyone worships in his own day and time, and the true worshippers stand in the old paths, where is the good way, and they walk in it, and find rest for their souls (Jer 6.16).

I admit I do not have very much first-hand experience with this corrupt, “contemporary worship,” so I have had to resort to reading about it being practiced in other places. One proponent speaking openly on his website says that he is “still a happy customer” of contemporary worship. Yes, that’s the way he puts it. He argues for it because it “reaches people faster” than traditional worship, and because it supposedly “reaches different people” than traditional worship does. He freely admits that “much of this has to do with music,” and admits that people’s “taste” in music is an important factor to be considered. Finally, as if this were the ultimate justification for it, he admits in a damning statement, “I just like contemporary worship” (www.joshhunt.com/contemp.html). The problem is not just that God may not like it, but that this counselor of how to worship God does not even seem to take God’s will into consideration at all! Has Jeroboam risen from the dead? It sure seems that he has, and somebody has even figured out a way to clone him, because I see Jeroboams everywhere! Corrupt worship flourishes when convenience replaces conviction.

Thirdly and finally . . .

3. Corrupt Worship Multiplies Manmade Religious Innovations

This truth is illustrated in the last four verses of our text.

30 And this thing became a sin: for the people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan. 31 And he made an house of high places, and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi. 32 And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah, and he offered upon the altar. So did he in Bethel, sacrificing unto the calves that he had made: and he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made. 33 So he offered upon the altar which he had made in Bethel the fifteenth day of the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart; and ordained a feast unto the children of Israel: and he offered upon the altar, and burnt incense.

We see from this that once Jeroboam forsook the anchor of Scripture from his ship of policy, he took liberty to sail into all kinds of unchartered waters, introducing new measures and religious innovations at his own whim. And the record here says “this thing became a sin”—a great sin indeed, a pervasive sin, and a sin that persisted through many generations. To a large degree his innovations displaced the remnants of pure worship, as the legitimate Levitical priests fled into the southern region of Judah (2 Chron 11.13-14). Future evil kings of the north were condemned by God because they walked in the infamous way of wicked Jeroboam, and in his sin wherewith he made Israel to sin (see 1 Kgs 15.34; 16.2, 19, 26; 21.22; 22.52; 2 Kgs 3.3; 10.29, and many similar passages). All this led to the utter disaster of the Assyrian captivity of 722 b.c., not to mention the fate of all these same corrupt worshippers now suffering eternal vengeance.

Consider some of the specific new measures made up by Jeroboam. “He . . . made temples on high places” (ESV), presumably at least at Dan and Bethel, but instead of praiseworthy zeal, these were many “altars to sin” (Hos 8.11). What many count as “success” under the policy of church growth pragmatism is just the multiplication and enlargement of offenses before God.

Jeroboam also “made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi,” who were the only ones God authorized to be priests. Corrupt worship always tramples biblical qualifications for leaders of worship. Today we have seen women pastors and homosexual bishops, but these egregious examples of flouting biblical qualifications is the same kind of sin practiced by those who ordain unqualified men to elderships, men who are not exemplary husbands and fathers, and men who lack the biblical and theological knowledge and the intellectual skills required to preach the gospel accurately and to refute the heretics. Better to have no pastors than men without a divine call who lack the necessary qualifications for doing the work of ministry!

Jeroboam also “ordained a feast in the eighth month . . . like unto the feast that is in Judah,” that is, the one which was ordained by God. Even so, corrupt worship ever since has invented many supposedly “holy days” not in Scripture, like Advent, Christmastide, Palm Sunday, Ash Wednesday, Holy Thursday, Easter Sunday, Pentecost, Ascension, many feasts of the saints—all without a shred of evidence that God commands these for his worship. The only holy day Scripture sets forth that binds our conscience today is the weekly Lord’s Day, also known as the Christian Sabbath, and yet this is under attack in many quarters, especially by professing Christians, who are often quite enthusiastic for the manmade “holy days.”

With his own hands, Jeroboam also “offered upon the altar.” This is mentioned three times in verses 32 and 33 for emphasis. This was a heinous presumption and an especially a bad example coming from a king without God’s command to do this. Even good King Uzziah was not spared an immediate judgment of leprosy when he dared to burn incense on the Lord’s altar (2 Chron 26.16-20).

The final nail in the coffin of Jeroboam’s corrupt worship appears in the comment here that the special time in his liturgical calendar was “even in the month which he had devised of his own heart.” This gets to the root of corrupt worship, because it lays bare Jeroboam’s self-idolatry. He did not look to God for guidance, because worshiping God was not his purpose. He did not aim to glorify God in his actions, because self-glory was first on the agenda. Pure worship is directed toward God alone and it is directed by God alone, because the very submission implicit in pure worship is in itself an essential part of that worship, and therefore absolutely essential in a proper relationship with God. The origin of a worship practice is a test of its legitimacy. We should always be asking, “Does this arise out of Scripture, or from mere human desire? Is this revealed by God, or fabricated by man? If any part of our worship exists just because of human desire and is crafted by human device, it is corrupting our worship. Everything we do in worship should be traceable to God’s revealed will.

Let me offer a closing word of more specific application. I hope you will agree with this statement from Affirmation 2010, a consensus document published last year in association with The Bible League Trust of Great Britain, which says we should reject the spirit prevailing in many churches, with its tendency to turn worship into nothing more than worldly entertainment. It [should] grieve us that, in God’s house, ministers so often choose to dress casually and conduct themselves in an undignified manner, as it also [should] grieve us that congregations are prone to follow their bad examples, becoming cavalier about God and his holiness and behaving in a most unworthy and unseemly manner. [We should grieve that] the reverence and awe of God have tragically all but disappeared in our day. . . . [We should] reject the introduction into solemn public worship of . . . drama, mime, puppetry, art, dance, comedy, [and] pop-music (with its music groups and instrumentalists). . . . We [should] deprecate so-called “Contemporary Christian worship,” believing its innovations to be dishonoring to God, contrary to Scripture (as “will worship”), and harmful to the testimony of Christ’s professing Church. . . . [We should deny that just] anyone may undertake public ministry in the church, even as we reject the idea that women may lead any part of divine worship or preach to the gathered church. [And we should recognize that] God has appointed preaching as the proper way to make known his truth to this needy world [end quote].

God desires pure worship, but man offers corrupt worship. Let us recognize any sin in us and resolve to reform toward pure worship for the glory of God. Amen.

© Copyright | Derechos Reservados

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2012-05-10-Pop-Gospel-False-Gospel-IV-D-Scott-Meadows.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2012-05-09-Pop-Gospel-False-Gospel-III-D-Scott-Meadows.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2012-05-09-Pop-Gospel-False-Gospel-II-D-Scott-Meadows.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2012-05-07-Pop-Gospel-False-Gospel-I-D-Scott-Meadows.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2013-05-08-A-Survey-of-Apostasy-IV-D-Scott-Meadows-926131116398.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2013-05-07-Apostasy-III-D-Scott-Meadows-926131115566.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2013-05-06-Apostasy-II-D-Scott-Meadows-926131115214.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2013-05-06-Apostasy-I-D-Scott-Meadows-926131114181.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2014-05-07-Biblical-Reflection-Social-Media-II-D-S-Meadows-61214130596.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]

[dlaudio link=”https://www.conferenciapastoral.org/wp-content/uploads/Sermones/2014-05-05-Biblical-Reflection-Social-Media-I-D-S-Meadows-61214118545.mp3″]Download Audio[/dlaudio]