57a) Directives for Ordering Public Worship #2

The Governing Principle: Decency and Order in Worship

0:03 And as you will notice on page 136 of your notes, I've stated it as follows, that in the planning and leading of a worship service, you must seek to arrange the God-ordained elements so as to secure a maximum measure of these God-ordained ends. And you see how this follows very naturally from the first principle, that if in the planning and leading we are controlled by a scrupulous concern to secure the great ends, well then we must seek to arrange the God-ordained elements as to secure a maximum measure of these God-ordained ends.

0:45 And the epitomizing and governing text in this regard is 1 Corinthians 14.40. I mentioned it briefly under the previous heading, but now I want us to come back and park on it for a few minutes. The Apostle in his summarizing statement dealing with the exercise, of various gifts within the gathered assembly of God's people, gives as the overarching directive, but let all things in that setting be done decently and in order.

1:18 And the two words are uskemonos, from the verb uskemono, and the word toxis.

1:28 And the uskemonos is used in two other places that I think are helpful, in giving us a feel for its significance. In Romans 13 and verse 13, with respect to the ordinary walk, the patterns of behavior that a believer is to manifest, we are told, let us walk, here's our word, uskemonos, let us walk becomingly, in a manner that is fitting for what we are, as in the day, not in reveling in drunkenness, not in chambering, in wantonness, not in strife and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof.

2:13 Our walk is to befit our position as sons and daughters of the light and not of the night. We are to be in our manifest patterns of life what we are in our standing in grace. Similar use in 1 Thessalonians 4 and verse 12. 1 Thessalonians 4 and verse 12, that you may walk becomingly, in a seemly, in a fitting manner toward them that are without and that you may have need of nothing.

2:51 As he reminds them of their responsibility to be diligent workers, that they do their own business, that they not be busybodies, mind their own business, do their own business, all of this is part of a seemly, a becoming walk to those that are without. A manner of life that commends the gospel. And then we are told that the things in the worship of God are not only to be done decently, with dignity, with decorum, with befittingness, with seemliness, but in order, taxes. That orderly manner, which brings within its scope

3:35 the concepts of a military usage. Colossians 2.5, Paul beholds the order of the church at Colossae, that each one is in his rank, in his right place, in lockstep with his brethren, so that the God-ordained elements, and here I've listed in your notes, see London Baptist Confession, chapter 22, paragraph 5, what are the elements, what are the God-ordained elements? The reading of the scriptures, preaching and hearing of the word, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, the administration of baptism and the Lord's Supper

4:18 are all parts of religious worship of God to be performed in obedience to Him with understanding, faith, reverence and godly fear. And I would add to that what I believe scripture, scripture warrants the public gathering of the gifts and offerings of the people of God as one of those divinely ordained spiritual sacrifices. But those God-ordained elements are to be so arranged as to secure a maximum measure of those four ends for which public worship has been instituted by God. Now this means that for you brethren and for those of us who are in the church,

Cultivating Propriety and Aesthetic Beauty in Worship

5:02 for those of us in this place of planning and leadership in public worship, that we must cultivate a sense of propriety, of fitness, of cohesion in a worship service. How to integrate the various elements. How to make smooth and comfortable transitions. How to make, if I may say it in a manner in which I'll not be misunderstood, how to make our worship services aesthetic, aesthetically beautiful.

5:36 For example, have the announcements of a general nature given before the service of worship begins. Diaconal concerns, special services. So that when you say as we now begin our worship, before our worship, we have several announcements. It may be necessary for the general order of the life of the church to have some announcements on the Lord's Day.

6:01 But make it plain that they are part of the general administration of the household of God, not an essential part of the worship itself. Make sure that announcements that will be more appropriate to draw out the hearts of God's people in prayer, that they can be reserved to the season prior to your corporate pastoral prayer or some other special season of prayer. And it would be better, perhaps, to leave that matter to say as we come to prayer, we ought to be aware that several of our churches down there in the Mid-South, where you have heard that there are floods, some of them have been deeply affected,

6:45 and let us remember our brethren. That's an announcement, but you see, and it's an announcement made in such a way as to draw out the hearts of God's people in prayer and to accomplish one of the God-ordained ends for the institution of public worship. And throughout the entire, the entirety of the planning and leading of a worship service from the order, the selection of psalms and hymns, the use of personnel, any variation in that order, the presence of an honored guest, peculiar congregational or national concerns, the awareness of an unusual number of uninstructed, unconverted people. You see, if you have that fourth end in view

7:29 that God instituted public worship to confront unconverted people, unconverted and ignorant sinners with the reality of His presence, that will greatly influence the way you may plan a given service where you have an unusually, an unusual number of unconverted people present. And to simply just run through your ordinary rubric without taking that into concern is to run it cross-purposes with God. He's instituted public worship for, among other things, that confrontation of the unbeliever with the reality of His own life, livingness and His presence in the midst of His people. So in this matter of planning and leading the worship service,

8:13 you must seek under God to arrange the God-ordained elements so as to secure a maximum measure of these four God-ordained ends. And that is a kind of spiritual artistry to be cultivated to the end of your days as surely as preaching is, another form of spiritual artistry. Never feel you've attained, as you remember old Ellie Maxwell said when warning me about getting in a rut, brother, you know what a rut is? No, sir, it's nothing but a grave with the ends kicked out.

8:48 And I've never forgotten it. That's what a rut is. It's a grave with the ends kicked out. And the grave holds dead people, and dead people lie in ruts.

8:57 Living people don't. Well, we need to beware of getting into ruts of even forms and, and, and unofficial liturgy that is never altered. We treat it like the law of the Medes and the Persians. We must constantly seek to be arranging these God-ordained elements to secure a maximum measure of these God-ordained ends.

Creating a Climate Consistent with New Covenant Worship

9:21 Then we come to number three, which will take up the bulk of our time this morning. In the planning and leading of a worship service, you must seek to create and maintain a climate consistent with the great realities of New Covenant worship. Now, remember our four, two pivotal texts to which we made reference last week. Jesus said in the economy that he has come to introduce that the preoccupation will no longer be with being in the right place.

9:59 The hour is coming, and now is, when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall true worship be. The place is not the crucial issue, but this is the crucial issue. Verse 23, The Father, the true worshipper, shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For such does the Father seek to be his worshippers.

10:23 God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth. And then Philippians 3 and verse 3, the mark of the true spirit, the mark of the true spirit, is circumcision, is this. They worship in the spirit of God, or they worship God by the spirit. They glory, they exult in Christ Jesus, and they put no confidence in the flesh.

10:51 And as Paul goes on to exegete what he means, confidence in the flesh, he means confidence in external rites, ceremonies, standing, privilege. If any man would have confidence in the flesh, I more. And then he speaks of privileges, rites, ceremonies, activities. So that as we think of planning and leading worship services, we must seek to create and maintain a climate consistent with new covenant worship, dominant in its concern for spirit and for truth, dominant with worship in the spirit, exulting in Christ, his person and work, no confidence,

11:35 in mere external forms or rituals. Now, what will that mean in concrete and specific terms? Well, I have listed for you five things. This may not be entirely comprehensive, but surely no one of these can be omitted and still have our worship, worship that is consistent with the great realities of the New Covenant.

Pervasively Trinitarian Worship

12:00 The first is this. Worship ought to be pervasively Trinitarian. God has always existed in the Trinity of His being. He has always been the one in three and the three in one.

12:17 But as Warfield has masterfully demonstrated in his treatise on the Trinity, that only in redemptive history has the reality of who God is as the three in one, and the one in three, been brought to full light and into the deep religious consciousness and faith of the people of God.

12:43 And therefore, if we are worshipping God as He has revealed Himself in the New Covenant, that worship will be worship of the God who is revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Let me give several extensive quotes from Warfield before, turning to some of these specific texts. On page 32 and following of Biblical and Theological Studies, where I have that article on the Trinity. It is clear, in other words, that as we read the New Testament, we are not witnessing the birth of a new conception of God.

13:21 What we meet with in its pages is a firmly established conception of God underlying and giving its tone to the whole fabric. It is not, in a text here and there, that the New Testament bears its testimony to the doctrine of the Trinity. The whole book is Trinitarian to the core. All its teaching is built on the assumption of the Trinity, and its allusions to the Trinity are frequent, cursory, easy, and confident.

13:53 It is with a view to the cursoriness of the allusions to it in the New Testament that it has been remarked, quote, the doctrine of the Trinity is not so much heard as overheard in the statements of Scripture. It would be more exact to say it is not so much inculcated as presupposed. The doctrine of the Trinity does not appear in the New Testament in the making, but as already made. It takes its place in its pages, as Gunkel phrases it, with an air almost of complaint already in, quote,

14:33 There is nothing more wonderful in the history of human thought, says Sandé, with his eye on the appearance of the doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament, than the silent and imperceptible way in which this doctrine, without struggle and without controversy among accepted,

15:06 cited from infancy, the Shema. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. Were found calling upon their Lord, Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, worshiping Him as God, with His approbation while He was still here. Not according to liberal so-called theologians that people's devotion elevated Him to Godhead after He was off the scene and couldn't correct their enthusiasm.

15:35 When Thomas cries, Ha-kuri-os-mu-kai, Ha-fe-os-mu, My Lord and my God, Jesus didn't say, Thomas, Thomas, that enthusiasm is unbounded. Blessed are you that having seen you believe, believe me to be who I am. Blessed rather are those who not having seen, yet believe. And then in the New Testament, we just find amongst that core of those who became the womb out of which the church spread to the ends of the earth, strict monotheists who are unashamedly relating to Jesus Christ as God and acknowledging the presence of the Spirit as God and yet are not, not tritheists,

16:19 but are strict monotheists worshipping the God who is the three in one and the one in three. The explanation of this remarkable phenomenon is however simple. Our New Testament is not a record of the development of the doctrine or of its assimilation. It everywhere presupposes the doctrine as the fixed possession of the Christian community and the process by which it became the possession of the Christian community lies behind the New Testament.

16:52 He goes on to say, the revelation itself was made not in word, but in deed. It was made in the incarnation of God the Son and the outpouring of God the Holy Spirit. The relation of the two testaments to this revelation is in the one case that of preparation for it and in the other that of the product of it. The revelation itself is embodied just in Christ, and in the Holy Spirit.

17:20 This is as much to say that the revelation of the Trinity was incidental too, and the inevitable effect of the accomplishment of redemption. It was in the coming of the Son of God in the likeness of sinful flesh to offer Himself a sacrifice for sin, and in the coming of the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin, of righteousness in judgment, that the Trinity of persons in the unity of the Godhead was once again once for all revealed to men. Those who knew God the Father, who loved them and gave His own Son to die for them, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who loved them and delivered Himself up in offering and a sacrifice for them, and the Spirit of grace who loved them

18:04 and dwelt within them, a power not themselves making for righteousness, they knew that the triune God could not think or speak. They knew that, I'm sorry, and they, such people, who had experienced this, could not think or speak of God otherwise than as triune. The doctrine of the Trinity, in other words, is simply the modification wrought in the conception of the one only God by His complete revelation of Himself in the redemptive process. It necessarily waited, therefore, upon the completion of the redemptive process for its revelation, and its revelation as necessary,

18:48 lay complete in that redemptive tremendous full article. I think it's required reading in your Doctrine of God, is it not? I think it is. Now, therefore, if the God revealed to us in the history of redemption, in the accomplishment of new covenant privilege, and all that goes with that, if He is the three in one and the one in three, and we are worshipping now in spirit and in truth, in truth, then our worship of necessity will be pervasively Trinitarian.

19:28 Therefore, in Owen's treatise on Gospel Worship, Volume 9, a marvelous treatise, on pages 56 and 57, he makes the following observation focusing on the first of those texts listed, Ephesians 2.18, for in Him we both have our access, or through Him we both have our access in one spirit, unto the Father. Through Christ, in the Spirit, unto the Father. The first thing in general observable from these words is that in the spiritual worship of the Gospel, the whole blessed Trinity and each person therein distinctly do in that economy and dispensation

20:11 wherein they act severally and peculiarly in the work of our redemption, afford distinct communion with themselves unto the soul, souls of the worshipers. So, they are all here distinctly mentioned. Through Him, that is Christ Jesus, the Son of God, we have access by one spirit, that good and holy spirit, the Holy Ghost, unto God, that is, the Father. For so is that name to be taken when it is mentioned in distinction from the Son and the Spirit.

20:44 There is no act, part, or duty of Gospel worship wherein the worshipper, have not this distinct communion with each person of the blessed Trinity. The particulars shall be afterwards spoken of. This is the general order of Gospel worship, the great rubric of our service. Here in general lieth its decency that it respects the mediation of the Son, through whom we have access, and the supplies and assistance of the Spirit, and a regard unto God as a Father.

21:21 He that fails in any one of these, he breaks all order in Gospel worship. Owen says, if that Trinitarian consciousness does not pervade our worship, we break all order in Gospel worship. If either we do not come unto it by Jesus Christ, or perform it not in the strength of the Holy Ghost, or in it go not unto God as a Father, we, we transgress all the rules of worship. That's strong language from the good old doctor.

21:58 This is the great canon, the great rule, which if it be neglected, there is no decency in whatever else is done in this way. Strong language, so that my language seems rather mild, that in the planning and leading of a worship service, we must seek to create a climate consistent with the great realities of the new covenant worship. Therefore, our worship ought to, to be pervasively Trinitarian. Think then in the light of these three texts that are subsequently listed.

22:30 On the threshold, all coming into the new covenant community is predicated upon someone cognitively embracing his covenantal saving relationship to God as God in Trinity. And he bears witness to it in his baptism. Make disciples of the nations, baptizing them into the name, the one name, not the names, but into the name of that God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So at the outset, whatever ongoing, necessary opening up of the doctrine of the Trinity with its mind-boggling mystery and all of the rest, it is not something to be reserved

23:15 for advanced disciples. No, it meets the disciple on the threshold. He is baptized into the name, the name of that God who is essentially and unchangeably, ontologically, in himself, the one in three and the three in one. And for a professed disciple to be embracing any other God is to be embracing an idol, not the true and living God.

23:41 So he's met with the Trinity on the threshold of claiming desire to be identified with the new covenant community. Now he's in the community and he begins to be taught all things that Christ has commanded and revealed to him. And he begins to be taught all things that Christ has commanded and revealed to him. And he begins to be taught all things that Christ has commanded and revealed to him.

23:54 And he begins to be taught all things that Christ has commanded and revealed to him. And as he asks, how did I come upon this salvation? The best way to help that young convert is to take him to Ephesians 1, 3-14 and show him that he's been blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ and what will he encounter in that marvelous peonic praise that is such a dense seedbed of theological precision he'll find a Trinitarian salvation in which the Father chooses, in which the Son redeems, in which the Spirit seals. And he is pointed in the most elementary awareness of his salvation possessed as a member of the new covenant to the God who is three in one and one in three

24:38 in the conferral of redemptive blessing. And then when we turn to the benediction of 2 Corinthians 13-14 as he contemplates how he is to live his life in all of the privileges and responsibilities of a new covenant disciple as a member of that new covenant community, how is he to perceive of the God whose he is and whom he serves the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all not as three gods but as the one God with whom he holds distinct communion in the various

25:22 persons of that Godhead, as Owen Hagen has so masterfully demonstrated in his treatise in volume 2 on the distinct communion that we hold with each of the members of the Godhead in opening up this very text. And so I say then, the worship that we plan and lead, if it is to be one consistent with the great realities of new covenant worship will be pervasively Trinitarian. Now, in the hymns we select, in the prayers we pray, in the sermons we preach, it should be patent to any who come among us that these people are Trinitarian monotheists. They worship one God,

26:06 but they believe that God exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now it doesn't mean that in every prayer you pray, every hymn you select, every sermon you preach must be dominant with precise Trinitarian substance and formulations. Any more than that's found in the New Testament.

26:30 But you can't read a chapter or two without Trinitarian consciousness coming to the surface here or there or by associations. So I am bold enough to assert that anyone who comes in an assembly where you have anything to do with the planning and the leading of the public worship, coming for more than two or three services and half awake for those services, ought to be unable to escape the fact that the worship that you are planning and leading is indeed pervasively Trinitarian. That though the ordinary pattern of your prayers will be approaching the Father through the Son in dependence

27:13 upon the Spirit, you will not scruple at times in the devotional parts of your prayer to direct praise and gratitude directly to the Lord Jesus. Or supplications directly to the Holy Spirit, as well as general expressions of praise. In the selection of your hymns, you will be careful to make sure that there are hymns that reflect the deity, not only of the Father, but of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And this takes thought and planning and backing off periodically and asking yourself, if I were a total stranger, would I have the conviction that God the Holy Spirit is, in the language of the old creeds, who with the Father

27:57 and with the Son is to be worshipped and to be served? Ask yourself those questions because we can all get into ruts and we have our predispositions to a preoccupation with one or another of the persons of the Godhead. And we ought to seek to be in the leading of the worship, pervasively Trinitarian. Then secondly,

Joyful, Faithful Solemnity in Worship

28:21 our worship ought to, the worship that we plan and lead, ought to be marked by joyful, faithful solemnity. Now I join these two words which many would believe are utterly incompatible. But I join them because such a passage as Hebrews 12 demands that we join them. Hebrews 12, setting forth by way of contrast, old covenant ritual and associations with new covenant associations and realities. You are not

28:55 come, verse 18, but you are come, verse 22. And when the writer to Hebrews opens up all of the privileges to which we are presently come in new covenant blessing, notice the conclusion that he draws in verse 28. Wherefore, receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us have grace. For, as the old 1901 has in the marginal rendering, could be rendered, let us have thankfulness, let us manifest gratefulness, whereby we may offer service well pleasing to God with reverence

29:39 and all. An awareness of our privileges under the new covenant cannot help but elicit gratitude, wonderment, thankfulness, joy. But the fact that we are serving the one true and living God who was and is, according to verse 29, a consuming fire in the very essence of his unsullied holiness, there will be solemnity in approaching this God even in the midst of the joyful awareness of all of our new covenant privileges, so that we do not stand before a mount that thunders and off which play the fire and the lightning, with nothing

30:22 but a human mediator there representing us. But we know that in Christ we have a mediator of the new covenant whose blood speaks better things than that of Abel. This one in all the glory of new covenant privilege surely there is to be joyfulness, but in the new covenant he has not changed the essence of God from one of a consuming fire to a little crackling bit of embers. He is nonetheless a consuming fire, and joyful solemnity will mark then our worship.

30:59 And again, the synthesis of joy and solemnity is seen in the following passages that I listed. Philippians 3.3 We are the circumcision who worship God in the Spirit, or worship by the Spirit of God, who exult in Christ Jesus. We don't think of Christ Jesus with bland unemotional response.

31:21 We exult, we glory in Christ Jesus, as well as put no confidence in the flesh. Romans 14. 17. The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Joy in the

31:39 Holy Ghost is given as one of the distinguishing characteristic traits of those who are the true heirs of the kingdom. The kingdom of God is not comprised of eating and drinking, the issues that he's been dealing with in this chapter on Christian liberty, but righteousness peace, joy in the Holy Ghost. Psalm 2.11 In the light of God's accomplishment of his purposes to exalt his Son, to messianic rule and messianic inheritance, what are we told to do?

32:15 We're told to serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Rejoice with trembling. Joyful solemnity. Now, if the goal of apostolic witness to the person and work of Christ is fellowship and joy, I've listed 1 John 1, 3 and 4, it is these things we write unto you that you may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

32:50 These things we write unto you that your joy may be full. If the end for which apostolic witness to accomplished redemption in Christ is that we may have fellowship with this God, with one another, and joy founded upon those realities, then surely our worship ought to be marked by joyful solemnity. The God who would terrify us out of Christ is the God who is now our Savior. 1 Timothy 1 and verse 1.

33:25 And yet he is the God before whom those who have no mediator, when they begin to discover who he is, and that he knows them, and that they are accountable to him, and he is the living God, what are they to do? In a covenant, in a community of new covenant worshipers, fall down upon his face saying, God is of a truth among you. Why? Because the concept of God conveyed was not a God who sends people into gales of mindless laughter in order to get blessed. If there were one

33:58 text that forever would nail as spurious, the so called Toronto Blessing, it's that 1 Corinthians 14 text. When these people confront God, they don't get a gale of giggles. They fall upon their faces, prostrate before him. So our worship ought to be marked by joyful solemnity.

Suffused with Filial Liberty

34:20 But then I follow that with the third characteristic. It ought to be suffused with filial liberty.

34:29 According to such passages as Acts 2.36, Galatians 3.13 and 14, 4, 4 to 6, the crowning gift of new covenant privilege is the gift of the Holy Spirit. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law. To what end?

34:48 That upon the Gentiles might come the blessing of Abraham that we might receive the promise of the Spirit by faith. Because you are sons, he has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba Father. Now the apex of the privileges imparted by the Spirit in his ministry to us is that of attesting to our sonship and enabling us to enjoy the status purchased by Christ. Because you are sons, based upon the accomplished redemption of the Son in the fullness of the time God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that we might receive the

35:32 adoption of sons and because you are sons, he has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, enabling us to cry, Abba Father. Surely then, if God has said that the apex of new covenant privilege is not the mere status of sonship, but the experiential ability to enjoy that status in our approach to God,

35:58 then our worship under the new covenant must be carried on. If it's worship in the Spirit, it must be carried on, suffused with filial liberty. Will the Spirit create a form of worship that is the antithesis or falls short of the very ministry he came to accomplish as a crowning blessing under the new covenant? It's unthinkable.

36:24 It's unthinkable. If he has come to attest to our sonship and to enable us to approach with liberty, filial liberty, and say Abba, that word of intimacy, I'm not prepared to say Daddy, because it has too many connotations that take in the direction I don't want to, but neither am I going to bleed that word of its significance. That Aramaic word was not the Son coming in his Sunday go-to-meet-and-best with a previous appointment to his austere Victorian father and coming into his drawing room and saying, Father, may I speak to you? It was Dad.

37:01 There was filial liberty and intimacy, and the Spirit has been given that we might know the blessedness of that kind of filial approach to God, and therefore the worship that we both plan and lead ought to be not only pervasively Trinitarian, marked by joyful solemnity, but suffused with filial liberty. People coming among us in a sense should have to scratch their heads and say, there's no foolishness around here. There's no laid-back, jocular hilarity. There's no living room 10.30

37:41 or 11.30 at night night show clowns around here. This is serious stuff, but it's not morose stuff. It's serious, but there's an element of joy and liberty and enthusiasm, and there's a sense in which people ought to be baffled as we worship with a commitment to the regulative principle, bringing God nothing but what He has required, seeking to bring Him everything that He has required in all of its stark simplicity according to the world's standards, yet suffused with filial liberty.

38:21 Listen to William Taylor's comments in his classic work on the Christian ministry called The Ministry of the Word, pages 2, 10, and 11. And I quote this because many of you don't have that book, and this is so critical at this very point. It's in the section on the conducting of public worship. But the question with which I now have to deal is this.

38:45 How shall we conduct the service which is generally adopted among us so as to secure that it shall be most acceptable to God and most refreshing and stimulating to us and to the congregation? You see his concern? How shall it please God, refresh and stimulate us and our people? Now, here it is pertinent to remind you that the first grand, indispensable qualification for the leading of public worship is a filial heart. He says

39:22 the first indispensable qualification. And then he quotes our Lord. The true worshiper is he who worships the Father. Jesus didn't say. He

39:34 says God is spirit. They who worship must worship in spirit in two, while God seeks, he says, for the Father seeks such to worship him. Lord, teach us to pray. When ye say, O Holy One, O Righteous One. No,

39:52 even Jesus addressed him as Righteous Father. But he said when ye pray, say, Our Father, who art in the heavens. Sonship will attune the heart to spirituality. It is not without great significance in this regard that the prayer, so simple in its terms, so wide in its comprehensiveness, which Jesus taught his disciples, should begin with these words, Our Father. Thus the Savior

40:20 would bid us pause for a moment on the threshold of our devotions, that is, in the public place, that we may set definitely before our minds what God is to us ere we go forward to present our petitions. Well has the good Layton said here, quote, this is one great cause of our wandering, that we do not at our entrance into prayer compose ourselves to do thoughts of God and set ourselves in his presence. This would do much to ballast our minds, that they tumble not to and fro, as is their custom, end quote. Even if he stood in a less endearing relation to us, that is, our God,

41:04 it would still be proper for us when we pray to him to put clearly before our minds what he is to us and what we are to him. But since he has revealed himself in Christ as our Father, it is of the highest moment if our supplications are to be either natural or sincere that we realize that all that such a declaration implies. If, for example, we lose consciousness of his fatherhood, think of him only as the judge who shall render to every man according to his works, we'll come to the throne of grace as if it were the throne of judgment. And fear and trembling will get hold upon us. Again,

41:42 if we allow the thought that he is a king to take exclusive possession of our souls, our minds will be so occupied about the manner of our coming to him that we shall be apt to forget the matter for which we come, and our services may be a pompous ritual like the ceremonials connected with the court of an earthly prince, but they will be like these also in a large degree, mere empty forms. And then he goes on to say that he's convinced that one of the great problems of the devotional aspects of public worship that he observed in his day was a grieving of the spirit of adoption. The spirit of adoption and the spirit of supplication is one.

42:27 What liberty is that which a son enjoys? How he comes bounding into our room, no matter how we may be engaged, calculating that we'll welcome him, and knowing he's laid hold of our fatherhood, he has laid hold of our strength. When his appealed daddy gets to our heart, he's got our ear. How little is there of the artificial or insincere in such an approach as a child makes to his father. But is it not

42:53 otherwise in our applications to God? It's easy to be sincere in offering all the petitions of the Lord's Prayer when we've been able to appropriate the first two words and to call God our Father, and all unnatural and unreal formalism will disappear when we enter fully into the enjoyment of the glorious liberty of the children of God. And then he applies it to our praise, and then he says, here is the radical cure for dull devotion, powerless prayer, and uninteresting worship. We need no splendid liturgy or gorgeous ritual. And if you were living

43:31 today, he'd say, we need no mine, we need no rock groups, we need only a fresh baptism with the spirit of adoption. We need only the hearts of sons glowing with love for our God and Father in Jesus Christ, and then filial happiness filling our souls. Hosannas will no longer languish on our tongues, nor prayer come faltering feebly from our lips. The first song of the morning stars was accompanied with the joyful shouting of the sons of God.

44:02 And when the worshippers in our modern sanctuary shall realize their divine relationship, their praises will be but the undertone of the angelic harmonies. Isn't that beautiful? What does he say we need? Not new forms, not something to perk things up, just a coming to grips with what it means to say our Father. And under

Believing Expectancy in Worship

44:23 the power and influence of the spirit of adoption to draw near to God in our assembly. So then the worship that we plan and the worship that we lead ought to be characterized by that which I have called filial liberty. But then, quickly, number four. Our worship ought to be characterized by believing expectancy.

44:48 The promise of our Lord is both clear and worthy of our trust. But you see, it needs fresh actings of faith each time it is applicable. Where two or three are gathered together in my name implies also when they gather in my name, there am I in the midst of them. And we need, as those who plan, and lead the services of worship, to do so in such a way that it's clear to us and to those who we lead that there is this believing expectancy.

45:24 The activity of God in redemptive grace is clearly affirmed. We are built together to be a habitation of God by the Spirit. He's not gone to all the trouble to build us together, put forth His sovereign grace and power in all the manifold ways that He has done to bring any assembly of His people together and then cease in doing what He says He does. He builds us together to be a habitation of His own presence by the Spirit.

45:56 And Paul can say to that Corinthian bunch with all their problems, since they were still a true church, know you not that you, Corinthians, with your divisions, with the immoral man you have dealt with, with your charismatic nonsense going on, with some among you even denying bodily resurrection. He said, you, Corinthians, are a naos of God. You are a sanctuary of the living God. He did not unchurch them. Worship

46:26 ought to be characterized then by believing expectancy. And much of this is contagious, brethren. You must have it in your own heart so that as you become the mouthpiece at the throne of grace on the front end of the gathering of God's people, over a period of time it becomes evidently evident to your people that our pastor really expects that Christ is going to keep His word. He's going to be present when we gather today.

46:52 Your prayers and praise, the part that you have, should reflect this believing expectancy of the Lord Jesus present, present to minister grace to His people as prophet, priest, and king, to bring consolations as they pray, to bring instruction, conviction, to put forth as it were His guiding hand through the ministry of the Word, to put forth His rod and His pruning hook, reproving, rebuking, exhorting, so that when we sing, Lord Jesus Christ be present now, our hearts in true devotion bow, that there's an expectancy. Or when we sing, lo, God is here, let us

47:36 adore and own how dreadful is the place, that that will be a blessed, present reality to you and to your people. But then, fifthly and finally, our worship, if it is to be new covenant worship, it ought to be regulated by a sensitive and place a comma there, a sensitive, sanctified flexibility. Now what do I mean by those words? Well, we are not given the detailed prescriptions which characterize old covenant worship.

Sensitive, Sanctified Flexibility in Worship

48:10 There are specific essentials which are mandated. And I remind you that our confession identifies them in chapter 22, paragraph 5. However, in 1 Thessalonians 5.19 we are commanded, quench not the Spirit. Literally,

48:27 do not extinguish the fire of the Spirit. And what's the context in some of those miscellaneous concluding admonitions and exhortations and apostolic directions?

48:41 Quench not the Spirit, despise not prophesying, prove all things, hold fast to that which is good. There's some warrant to believe that that injunction, don't put out the fire of the Spirit, has connection with the exercise of gifts which would normally be exercised to corporate edification, since they are given for that end, in the corporate setting of God's people. But whether that's true or not, there is this principle embedded in the text, do not put out the fire of the Spirit. The picture is the Spirit of God, leaping up in a living flame in a given area, and someone taking water to quench it, to put it out. He said, don't quench

49:26 the Spirit. Don't put out the fire of the Spirit. We are the circumcision of worship in the Spirit. The Father seeks worshippers to worship Him in Spirit and in truth. The Holy Spirit

49:40 is the animating power and presence giving life and reality to our worship. Therefore, in our determination to avoid fanaticism, we need to be careful that we don't move into a cold and calculating rationalism. We are all so constituted that the regular tick of the metronome lulls us to sleep. And if there is a predictableness in all of the elements of our worship, regardless of what we and our people may be passing through week in, week out, year in, year out, if our prayer becomes unwritten liturgical prayers, where certain

50:24 phrases our people can expect, oh, right about now we're going to get this, sure enough, we've got to begin. Could it be that we are quenching, stifling the living flames of the Spirit who at times would draw us out in ways unexpected to us and enlarge us and give us utterance in our prayers, words of exhortation to praise. You'll notice that I've cited as one of the texts, I think I've put it in your notes, Acts 20 and verse 7.

50:57 At first sight you may wonder how this fits. Well, we read in Acts 20 and verse 7, and upon the first day of the week we were gathered together to break bread. Now, I doubt that every time they gathered to break bread, they had an all-night service, but these were unusual circumstances. The Apostle was with them, he wanted to be with them again for a long time, if ever, and so there was a sanctified flexibility.

51:21 Paul discoursed with them, intending to depart in the morrow, and prolonged his speech until midnight. As he began to discourse, apparently he got great enlargement, the people got enlargement, and sleep left their eyes except poor Eutychus who fell down and knocked himself dead down on the sidewalk and had to be raised up, but the rest of the people, Paul was certainly not a boor who would have preached on and said, well, God's told me to preach, and if you all want to take a nap, fine. No, there were unusual dynamics. And Paul and the people present did not put out the fire of the Spirit. While there

52:00 ought to be regular, normal, ordinary structures, because again, decency and order do things according to the scheme of things, that they are seemly. So on the one hand, we don't want that kind of wooden, inflexible rigidity that moves toward a kind of cold rationalism. On the other hand, if you're like me, I'm in intimidated and threatened by the total unpredictability of an active volcano. I'm not going to pitch my tent at the base of an active volcano whose eruptions cannot be predicted. Nor

52:36 do I feel comfortable in the room with a madman who one moment can seem as rational as any one of you guys, and the next minute is going berserk. I mean, I'm going to sit there rather antsy with my feet ready to hit the floor and split. Well, you don't want people coming into services that are like an active volcano. They never know when and how or what's going to erupt, or in the presence of a madman.

52:58 I mean, that's off on the other hand. I mean, some people, that's the mark of spirituality.

53:03 But on the other hand, the text is still there. Don't put out the fire of the spirit. Don't leave yourself in such a posture that you don't expect some holy surprises. And though, as I try to instruct my fellow elders, in our situation, with the number of children we have, the fact that we've already had an hour of instruction, in the Sunday school hour, generally speaking, unless we have an unusual unction as we lead in prayer, I've found that to pray longer than six to seven minutes is just taxing our people beyond what is edifying.

53:40 But if on a given time God comes and gives you your conscious of unusual enlargement, don't say, well, I think I've used up my six minutes. I'd better stop. No, no. No, don't quench the fire of the spirit.

53:53 I didn't intend to pray in a fulsome way. That I did for those five that we received in the membership last Sunday night. But I was very conscious, and others had spoken to me, unsolicited from me, that God gave me an unusual enlargement of heart, praying for those people. And for me to have said, well, that's going to take a few minutes, that would have been putting out the fire of the spirit. So this is what

54:17 I'm pleading for. That because it is new covenant worship, and we do not have the specifics that a priest had with every single detail, there was very little room for discretion when you were on service there in that tabernacle. You better be careful. If you hadn't quite memorized all the rubrics, and you were the new guy on the block serving for the first time, you better strap to your arm all the details, because God had some pretty strong things to say about those that didn't mind all the details. But God's given us a

54:44 marvelous flexibility and liberty in the way we weave together the elements of God instituted worship under the new covenant. And therefore, if we are planning and leading services of new covenant worship, it ought to be regulated by a sensitive, sanctified flexibility. And that applies to everything from the order, to the nature and number of the hymns and psalms, the length of sermon, etc., etc.

55:13 Well, I've gotten through the material in the time allotted, and I commit to you, brethren, these principles that I trust you will find helpful, and we're not going to go into any greater details because one of the benefits, of having this training in this setting, is we hope, with all our failures and all of our need to grow, that at least in some measure, you're seeing these principles exemplified as you worship here and in other assemblies, and some of you in your own congregations, can draw out clear examples of these principles as you've seen them fleshed out in the life of those congregations.