Word-Centered Worship

What do we do in our corporate worship services? We read the Word, we preach the Word, we pray the Word, we sing the Word, we confess the Word, and then we see the Word in the sacraments.

How did you decide to join your local church? For some Christians, it was a matter of whether or not they enjoyed the worship. But what is worship, and are we free to worship God according to our own preferences?

Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and thanks for joining us for Renewing Your Mind. The topic of worship can be controversial, but since Christians have been recreated for worship of the one true and living God, we should take this subject seriously to ensure that we're worshipping God according to His Word. Jason Holopoulos taught an 11-message series on worship at Ligonier, and you'll be hearing select messages over the next few days on Renewing Your Mind. He begins today by establishing the fundamental truth that our worship is to be Word-centered. Here's Rev.

Holopoulos. All of life is to be a life lived in worship, and yet what we see in Scripture is what I like to call spheres. There are these different spheres of worship within our lives, and I want to walk through those over our next sessions together. The three spheres that I would see in our life lived in worship to God are corporate worship, and we're going to start there in this session, family worship, and then private worship or secret worship.

But I want to talk about corporate worship here during our time together over these next minutes. There's an interesting treatise that John Calvin wrote to Charles V, who was the Holy Roman Emperor at the time, and he is arguing for Reformation theology and for Reformation principles as he's writing to the Holy Roman Emperor. And as he writes to him, he writes this treatise that is called On the Necessity of Reforming the Church, and I want you to listen to what Calvin speaks about what needs to be reformed in the church. What is his focus?

What does he see as important? He says this, if it be inquired then by what things chiefly the Christian religion has a standing existence among us and maintains its truth, it will be found that the following two not only occupy the principal place, but comprehend under them all other parts and consequently the whole substance of Christianity. It's these two things, the whole substance of Christianity.

What are they? These are a knowledge first of the mode which God has duly worshiped and secondly of the source from which salvation is to be obtained. Isn't it interesting that Calvin puts first worship?

He puts first the corporate worship of God's people as of chief concern. The Reformation has rightfully been called a reform movement that was reestablishing the truths of the gospel. We often do that by referring to the five solas of the Reformation and especially justification by grace alone through faith alone.

But it could equally be argued that the Reformation was also a liturgical renewal is what it was. They were reforming the church's liturgy and what it looked like for the church to gather together in worship and what should dominate its worship and what that worship should look like. How we worship when we gather together is of extreme importance to God. As we said, our purpose and salvation, we were created to be worshipers and we are those who are called out to worship.

So I want to look at corporate worship together. Maybe a way to start would be to think about the Ten Commandments together. You think about this fact that we were created to be worshipers, recreated to be worshipers. You see that in the giving of the Ten Commandments. We often start with the First Commandment, but that's not where the Ten Commandments start. They start with the preface to the Ten Commandments. And what does God say in the preface to the Ten Commandments?

He says, I'm the Lord your God who brought you out of the house of slavery, brought you forth from the land of Egypt. I've saved you. I've given you my grace. You have been saved.

Now what's the response? It's worship. The whole first table of the law. It's often how we distinguish the two tables of law, the first four commandments, the first table of law, the last six commandments, the second table of law, the first four commandments, the first table of law. It's all worship.

I've saved you. What is to be your response? Worship. And what does he do? In the First Commandment, you shall have no other gods before me. He's telling you the who of worship. This is who you are to worship. You're to worship me. In the Second Commandment, you're not to make any graven images.

What is he doing? He's communicating the means of worship. You're not to use props. You're not to use idols. You're not to do all of these things that you see the nations doing. Your worship of me is to be simple. Second Commandment. Third Commandment, you shall not use the name of the Lord your God in vain. That is, there is to be sincerity in our worship. It's not just formally going through it.

There's to be sincerity. Fourth Commandment is the win of worship. You are to remember the Sabbath day and to keep it holy. I've set aside one in seven days for you to do what? To rest?

Yes, because I care for you and know that you are bodily and you need rest. And also so you might devote yourself to worship. We rest from our works so that we rest in God and give him glory.

The first table of the law is all the response. You've been saved. You've been recreated. If we could use our language in Christianity, and now you are to worship me. This is the response to being a recipient of grace. Now, when we gather together in corporate worship, and we'll do more of this in our next session together, what that actually means and what that looks like. But I want to think with you here in our time right now is what's actually happening in corporate worship? When we gather together with God's people on the Lord's day, what's actually happening? There will be some that will say, well, what is happening is we are giving to God.

And that's very true. We're giving to God. We're giving praise to him. We're giving adoration to him. We're giving thanksgiving to him. We're giving our tithes and our offerings to him.

It's very true. We're giving to God. But I'd argue that's not the essence of worship. Some will say, well, we're actually receiving. That's what corporate worship is all about. We're receiving.

That's also very true. We are receiving the word. We're receiving assurance of pardoning grace.

We're receiving his forgiveness, right? We're receiving his grace mediated to us by the word as it is preached and read. But that's also not the essence of worship. If I could say it this way, corporate worship is not so much about giving and not so much about receiving as it is about being.

Just being. The giving and receiving flow from the being. What's happening in corporate worship? We are meeting with God. Or a better way of saying it is he's meeting with us. And because he is meeting with us, there is giving and receiving that is occurring.

That's all there. But the essence of worship is that we are meeting with God and God is meeting with us. That's what was lost in the garden. That intimate fellowship and just being with God. Just dwelling with him. And you and I get a measure of that as we're gathered together with God's people on the Lord's day in worship. You say, well, God's always with us.

Right? He's always with us. There's always being. He's always with us.

It's true. He's omnipresent. There's a theologian once that I thought illustrated it well. He said it would be like living in a land where there is an all authoritative king. And he said that king kind of has an omnipresence about him whether you're in the field or whether you're in your shop or whether you're in your home. This all authoritative king, he is everywhere in one sense. But it's quite another when you're invited into the king's palace. What was implicit is now very explicit as you're there. But then there's even something greater when you come to fellowship at his table and he says, you know what? Don't just come into my palace, but sit down and eat with me.

There's a difference. When you and I are gathered together in corporate worship, as the elders have called us to gather together and to meet, as we gather together with our brothers and sisters in Christ, as we gather together under the word of God, the Spirit attends to that word and we are meeting with God. And he is meeting with us. There is an intimate communion that happens as we gather together in corporate worship. Thomas Watson, the great Puritan preacher said this, he said, a sign of God's children is to delight, to delight to be much in God's presence. And that is very true. The Christian lives their life from Lord's Day to Lord's Day.

That's what we do. It all centers upon that. In Psalm 42, the psalmist will speak about, he says, like a deer panteth for water, so my soul longs for you. We often use that in referencing some kind of personal devotional life or something, but that's not what he's speaking about there. The psalmist is speaking about corporate worship.

And he's saying, like a deer needs water to survive, needs it. So I would shrivel up and die without being amidst God's people as God meets with his people in corporate worship. The psalmist will say in Psalm 84, my soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord.

A day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere, he will say. To be in the presence of our God is the great heart cry of the Christian. We want to be with him. That means that for the Christian, corporate worship is something we are constantly looking forward to and constantly affording ourselves. And so we're showing up on Sunday morning. It should be that if there's an evening service, we desire to go back and be with God and God's people at an evening service at our church.

But there's just this constant longing to be in the midst. And if that's true, if worship is being with God, there's two things that I think can never be said about worship that you often hear. And that is that it's casual and that it's boring.

It doesn't work. I understand what churches mean when they say casual worship. They will put it on their marquees, you know, casual worship service at this time, traditional service at this time.

I understand what they mean. They want to communicate that, look, you don't have to wear a tuxedo to walk into this place. You can come as you are. Understand that. Then let's just put that on the sign. This is not a formal tuxedo wearing church.

Come on in. But casual doesn't work. Words matter and words have an effect. There's a reason McDonald's doesn't say the extra value meal doesn't cost the extra thousand calorie option. It has an effect. There's a reason that when you and I go to a store to buy something that's refurbished, it isn't once broken and now we fixed it and trying to sell it to you afresh and anew.

It's refurbished. Words matter. Casual matters. Worship of God is never casual.

Never. You're meeting with the living holy God of the universe. There's nothing casual about it.

The writer of Hebrews says that we are to approach Him with reverence and awe, and rightfully so. That also means it's never boring. You can't be bored in the presence of God.

That doesn't work. Isaiah in Isaiah 6, when he is in the very presence of God, he is not bored. He is far from bored. John, though he has laid his head upon Christ's chest when he sees the Lord Jesus Christ in Revelation 1, has that vision. He is far from bored and he far from sees it as casual.

He falls on his face. When we meet with God, there is nothing that is boring about it. There is nothing that is casual about it. Casual worship of the living, true, holy, sovereign God of the universe just does not exist.

That's an impossibility. If worship is being in God's presence and we're with God, then we would expect that God would give us some kind of understanding of what it should look like as we're gathering together in worship with Him. So, how should we worship God? How should we worship Him? There are many that think, well, the Scriptures speak about a lot of things. They tell us about God, but they don't tell us about how to worship God.

Well, listen, this is the most important thing that you and I do. As we've already seen from the Ten Commandments, He is clear. He is telling us how to worship Him. There are many churches that are concerned about being seeker-sensitive churches.

We need less seeker-sensitive churches and more God-sensitive churches. What He has told us, that's what we want to do, because that is right. The most clear text is John 4, where Jesus is meeting the woman there at the well. And as He is speaking to this woman, He makes the statement that God is seeking worshippers, which is fascinating. And He says this, as He is speaking about worship, He says, Those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth, because there are two qualifiers. If you are going to worship God, this is what it must be.

It must be in spirit and it must be in truth. And what does He mean? There's some disagreement about what does He mean by spirit. Some will say, well, He's referencing the Holy Spirit, that you must be filled with the Holy Spirit to worship rightly. I don't think that's what Jesus is speaking of here. Rather, He's speaking to this woman, that Samaritan woman that has a very different view of worship, and she believes that being at the right place and at the right time and doing the right thing, checking that box is the right way to worship God.

And what Jesus is telling her is that, no, it's not mere formalism. It's rather your spirit has to be engaged. You have to be engaged in this. You have to worship in spirit.

Now, here's the reality. You can't be engaged by your spirit unless the Holy Spirit has renewed you, and that Holy Spirit is active in you. And so both are true. It is by the work of the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit has renewed our hearts and our minds, and as we are cooperating with the Spirit and the grace that is given to us to offer holy worship to God. It's bringing it forth in us. But the second thing is also true, that it can't just be worship in spirit, but also worship in truth. That is, we are to worship according to how God has told us to worship what He desires, what He's told us by His revelation.

Not what we find the most encouraging, not what we find the most emotionally stimulating, not what we think will draw the most people. This is not what is to define our worship. No, when we gather together with God's people on the Lord's day, our corporate worship is to be defined by God's truth. Our will worship is a façade of worship.

It's not real worship. It's to be according to truth. Nadab and Abihu there in Leviticus 10, they offered fire to God, a sacrifice to God, and they did it with sincerity. Their spirit was engaged, and yet God will call it a strange fire because it was not according to truth. Uzzah, as you remember that count that is often hard for people to understand in the Old Testament, where the Ark of the Covenant is being brought in on that cart, and Uzzah who is standing next to it sees the Ark of the Covenant beginning to fall, and it is going to hit the mud and the dirt below, and so he reaches out to touch it and to grab it and stop it, to brace its fall. And God strikes him dead.

Why? Because it wasn't according to truth. He wanted to touch the Ark. Sproul just read it the other day, wonderfully said, he said, Uzzah actually thought his heart was more clean than the mud.

No, it's not. What you and I make up by our imaginations and what we think God would like is not the way we are to worship. We worship according to His truth. Maybe the easiest way to articulate that is to say, what do we do in our corporate worship services? We read the Word, we preach the Word, we pray the Word, we sing the Word, we confess the Word, and then we see the Word in the sacraments.

That's what we do. Our worship dictated and suffused with the Word of God. We now have a liturgy. There's order in all of our services, and we want it to be by the Word of God.

In Reformed theology, this is often being called the Regulative Principle. We think about regulating our services according to the Word of God so that it's according to spirit and to truth. There are three different ways that we thought about this historically as we think about what's happening in worship. There are elements, our forms, and our circumstances. The elements are the things that have to be there and can only be there if God has told us to do it. So that's reading the Word and preaching the Word and praying the Word and singing the Word and confessing the Word and seeing the Word because He has told us that in worship.

Those are the elements. This prevents us from doing crazy things like dancing zebras on the platform. I was at a church once where I was a very young Christian, was at a church, and they said, everybody stand up, so we all stood up, and they said, we want everybody to walk down front and you are all to lay on the platform and then we're all going to roll around. Well, that's not in Scripture. And so what the regular principle allows you and I to do is not bind one another's consciences. That we only worship according to how God has told us to worship so that you don't have some pastor come to you and say, you need to do this in worship and it violates your conscience in worship. So that there is freedom for us in worship and we're not bound.

So that we can, with our whole heart and whole mind and whole soul and whole strength of worship to Him. That needs to be the elements are fixed by God. The forms, though, they may differ. They're not inconsequential because the forms can't do injustice to the elements themselves or violate the elements, but the forms may look different. So it may be that you think, well, yes, we're to pray the Word in service, but I think all prayers should be written out.

Anybody who prays in services should be written out. Well, that would be a form. And someone else says, no, I think they should all be extemporaneous. Well, that's a form. And that the forms are not inconsequential. They need to be thought through. But they may vary in services. And then there are the circumstances. These are the things that we will often call adiaphora in Reformed circles.

That is that they really don't affect the thing. So circumstances where what time does your church meet on Sunday morning to worship? Do you stand when the Word of God is read or do you sit?

Are you in pews or are you in chairs? That is all simply just the circumstances. And so it doesn't need to be dictated by the Word of God. But if we have been created as worshippers and recreated as worshippers, truly that great moment for all of us recreated to be worshippers is that when we come together on Sundays and our sovereign, holy, saving God chooses to meet with us, that's the high point of the Christian's week. And where it's not, God continue to work on us and enliven our joy for us.

And we'll talk about it more in our next lesson. That was Jason Holopoulos from his brand new teaching series Created for Worship. And I love his point that as Christians, you and I have been recreated for worship.

You're listening to the Wednesday edition of Renewing Your Mind and I'm glad that you're with us. This series is actually 11 messages and Reverend Holopoulos goes deeper into not only what the Bible says about corporate worship, but the why and how of family worship and a message on private worship. We'll send you Created for Worship on DVD for your donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org.

You'll be able to stream the messages in the free Ligonier app while you wait for the DVD to arrive and you'll get access to the digital study guide as well. So call us at 800 435 4343 or visit renewingyourmind.org today. Christians gather together every week for worship. We learn today that it should be word-centered. But how should we think about these gatherings and how should we prepare for them? That's our topic tomorrow here on Renewing Your Mind. .