Directives for Ordering Public Worship #2

Recap of First Directive and Introduction to Second Directive

0:04 All right, brethren, in this second hour we will take up the second and third directives for ordering the corporate worship of God. We spent the previous hour on the first, in which I asserted that in the planning and leading of a worship service we must be controlled by a scrupulous concern to secure the great ends for which such worship was instituted of God. And then we looked at four strands of God's purpose in the institution of corporate worship. Now, we come to the second directive.

0:40 In the planning and leading of a worship service,

0:47 we must seek to arrange the God-ordained elements so as to secure a maximum measure of these God-ordained ends. In the planning and leading of a worship service, we must seek to arrange the God-ordained elements so as to secure a maximum measure of these God-ordained ends.

The Governing Text: Decency and Order (1 Corinthians 14:40)

1:27 And what I regard as the governing text in this aspect of concern is 1 Corinthians 14.40. We alluded to it briefly in the last hour. We now look at it more carefully.

1:44 Paul, having underscored the fact that edification was to regulate the exercise of gifts,

1:53 the desire that the unconverted who come among the assembled people of God would be confronted with the livingness and the reality of God, having given specific directives concerning the exercise of the gifts of tongues and prophecy, and then saying who may exercise those gifts as to gender,

2:16 and announces that as in all the churches of the saints, the women are to keep silence. And as you know from our studies, we reject all attempts to do away with the plain teaching of this passage that with reference to the matters that are being dealt with, that is, gifts of public utterance in the gathered assembly of God's people, the women are to keep silence. It is not permitted them to speak. Then, concluding the section by underscoring the fact that these are not culturally conditioned temporal directives of expediency, but the very commandments of the Lord in verse 37, giving a warning for any who would discount them. If any man is ignorant, let him be ignorant, or the possible alternate translation, if any man does not acknowledge, he is not acknowledged. He then comes around full circle to where he began, wherefore my brethren desire earnestly to prophesy and forbid not to speak with tongues, and now the great capstone over all of these, but let all things be done decently and in order. And the two words are uskemonos, his decency, and toxis, for order.

3:43 And of course, in these two words, there is embodied, what is to regulate the arrangement of these God-ordained elements in worship.

3:59 Uskemonos, from the verb uskemono, is used in Romans 13.13. I think it helps to give us a little bit of the flavor of it. Romans 13.13, let us walk, here it is, becomingly as in the day. Today, we are to walk becomingly, a becoming walk. 1 Thessalonians 4 and verse 12, another usage, gives us a feel for its significance. 1 Thessalonians 4.12, that you may walk becomingly toward them that are without and may have need of nothing. We are to behave with dignity or with a decorum that matches, our profession. So he says, let all things be done decently.

4:56 Uskemonos, with dignity and proper decorum and toxis, in an orderly manner. Colossians 2.5, Paul speaks of beholding their order and the steadfastness of their faith in Christ. It was the term you would use if you would be describing a military troop marching, marching in proper rank and in unison, you would say that they manifested good toxis, good order.

5:27 So you get a feel then for what Paul is saying. Things are to be done with dignity and proper decorum in an orderly, structured manner, the opposite of chaos and disorder. Now this means, brethren, that you must cultivate a sense of propriety, of fitness and cohesion. You must develop an ability to integrate the various elements of worship, to make meaningful transitions from one element to another.

Cultivating Propriety and Cohesion in Worship Arrangement

6:05 Just as you've been instructed in the matter of sermon construction that you must have distinct heads that are hung together by smooth transitions that move in a certain direction. You must move toward a meaningful conclusion and application while that sense of homiletical propriety and fitness and cohesion must enter into the whole realm of how you lead a worship service. And God has not given us a manual of some 600 pages with a complete index to tell us how to do that. So, to be specific, have the announcements of the general nature before the service of worship.

6:48 If there are legitimate dynamics, diaconal concerns, obviously it's not wrong to introduce them into the stated worship, for the assumption is that the letters of the apostles were read in the gathered assembly. And when one of the elders or readers was reading 2 Corinthians, the diaconal matters of the collection for the saints would have been introduced into the worship. But certainly it shows a sense of propriety and dignity and decorum and orderliness to state, now before we commence our worship, there are concerns of this body that need to be brought before us. And so you take care of those matters before you enter into the worship proper. Likewise, I've never understood how anyone thought there could be a sense of real oneness of heart in prayer if matters are introduced into the person's prayer who is the mouthpiece of the congregation. Where there is no knowledge of those concerns among the people of God. How can I enter in meaningfully to concerns that may as well be spoken in tongues unless the one who's praying has to turn part of his prayer into a little bit of information giving.

8:08 And that's very offensive when it's done. You've heard people do that. They know they should have announced something ahead of time and so they make the announcement in their prayer. And they're praying, Dear Lord, we thank you that since we heard that sister so-and-so thus-and-thus-and-thus-and-thus-and-thus and then they give the announcement while they're praying.

8:25 Well, that's to profane prayer. So in developing this sense of propriety, this sense of orderliness, of dignity and decorum, you must cultivate that art of giving proper information, what some of the old writers would call brief homilies, by which the various elements of the worship are brought together. There may be times when there's a, a crisis in the church and all of the passages of Scripture and the ministry of the Word and the hymns are being chosen with that crisis that is so weighty in the life of the congregation, central to congregational concern. The whole worship service may be structured around it. Well, how unthinkable that you would just plow into that and give out the hymn without stating at the outset, now we are all aware as a congregation that, such and such a tragedy has come upon us. And as we draw near to God this morning, the Scriptures that will be read, the hymns that will be sung, the prayers that will be prayed, are an effort in the midst of this to see that there is a word from God for us. So that by a little homily on the front end, you give the rationale that has governed the selection of the psalms and hymns and Scripture.

9:47 In the matter of the use of personnel, some people have very little sense of decorum, and of order. And it's everybody jumping up, doing his thing, and you can't keep track of the whole thing. It's sort of like fast clips hung together in a collage of activity. An absence of that sense of what is us caemonos, what is orderly.

10:13 If there is a variation in the normal order of the service, the presence of an honored guest, a peculiar congregational or national, or a national concern, all of these things, brethren, in the planning and leading of a worship service, we must seek to arrange the God-ordained elements so as to secure a maximum measure of these God-ordained ends. And I do trust that with all of our faults and failures and what I would call our sins of the sanctuary, that you men are learning how this is done by observation. That's why you're being trained in a church context, so that you learn by observation. And you hear things here, and you say, ah, yes, that's what was being done. That's why that was said. And you pick up, not by wooden imitation, but by assimilation of principles. These things that will then be expressed, smothered with your own fingerprints, and with the peculiarities of your own God-given identity.

Introduction to Third Directive: Climate of New Covenant Worship

11:17 Well, we come then to the third guideline for the ordering, of the corporate worship of God's people, and it is this. In the planning and leading of a worship service,

11:33 in the planning and leading of a worship service, we must seek to create and maintain, we must seek to create and maintain a climate consistent with the great realities of new covenant worship. In the planning and leading of a worship service, we must seek to create and maintain a climate consistent with the great realities of new covenant worship.

12:10 Remember, we spent some time on John 4 last week, in which our Lord clearly enunciates that in the coming of the new order, one of the radical differences will be in the area of worship. The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship in spirit and in truth. And the mark, of the true Israel, Philippians 3.3, we are the circumcision, who worship God in the spirit, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh.

12:45 Now, what are some of the great and dominant realities of new covenant worship, which ought to throb through the climate of our worship?

Characteristic 1: Pervasively Trinitarian Worship

12:57 Well, I want to give you, I believe I have four or five,

13:03 five of those dominant characteristics of new covenant worship. Number one, it ought to be pervasively Trinitarian. It ought to be pervasively Trinitarian.

13:20 God has always been Trinity in His being. But as Warfield has masterfully demonstrated in his essay in Biblical and Theological Studies, The Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of God as one in three and three in one, was brought to full light in the religious consciousness of the covenant community only after the coming of the incarnate God and the sending of the Holy Spirit as the life-creating,

14:06 indwelling dynamic of the new covenant community. Let me give you a little taste of Warfield, if you've not. Is this required reading in your systematics? You know, it is.

14:18 Well, then, you've already had a taste. Let me just give you an aftertaste, all right? Warfield writes on page 32, 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. What we meet with in its pages is a firmly established conception of God underlying and giving its tone to the whole fabric.

14:41 It is not 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. It is with a view to the cursoriness of the allusions to it in the New Testament that it has been remarked that the doctrine of the Trinity is not so much heard as overheard in the statements of Scripture.

15:16 End quote. 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 is already made. It takes its place in its pages, as one has phrased it, with an air almost of complaint already in full completeness leaving us with a sense of no trace of its growth.

15:43 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, to us so difficult, took its place without struggle and without controversy among accepted Christian truths. And then he goes on to demonstrate that. People like Peter, steeped in Judaic, monotheism, have no problem referring to the one that they walked with, slept with, ate with, as our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. No problem whatsoever.

16:25 And constantly, as Warfield demonstrates in another article, referring to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ or grace and peace to you from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, just as there is that easiness with which that doctrine, as it were, just appears full-blown on the pages of the New Testament and is not addressed formally or didactically, but is the very life of the New Covenant community, so then, the worship of the New Covenant community ought to be distinctly Trinitarian, pervasively Trinitarian. The pattern, some of our worship, as Owen uses this text in his masterful treatise on gospel worship, is Ephesians 2, 18 and 90. For through him, we both have our access in one spirit unto the Father. And there you have, in terms of our access to the Father, the distinct place of the Spirit and of the Son. And you find the same thing incorporated into what we would call the benediction, as given in 2 Corinthians 13, 14, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

17:53 The great hymn of praise in Ephesians 1 for that Trinitarian salvation that has come to us. Well, we must, in our planning of our worship services, in the structuring of our prayers, consciously seek to be pervasively pervasively, Trinitarian in the substance of our worship, in the selection of the hymns, in our preaching, in the language and terminology of worship. This ought to be evident. The general pattern should be evident that the general framework of new covenant worship is approaching the Father through the Son in the Spirit.

18:34 But that we might underscore in the language of the old Capris that the Son and the Spirit along with the Holy Spirit along with the Father are equally worthy of distinct and focused worship and petition. Occasionally, we ought to pray directly to the Son. We have records of that in the Scriptures, more of that later when we come to our lectures on our public prayers. And we ought to pray directly to the Holy Spirit.

Characteristic 2: Joyful Solemnity

19:01 We ought to direct praise and worship to the distinct persons of the Godhead while all the while realizing that any worship that is brought to any one person is a worship of the Triune God is brought to the entire Godhead. But we ought to be pervasively Trinitarian in our worship. Secondly, if we are to seek to create a climate consistent with the great realities of new covenant worship, it ought to be marked by joyful solemnity.

19:36 Joyful solemnity ought to mark our worship. Now I join these two words to say because of the biblical concepts forced upon us by such texts as Hebrews chapter 12 18 to 29. I won't take time since I don't have the time to read the entire passage but you remember there is a contrast. We are not come unto a mount that might be touched and the whole circumstance of Sinai is described.

20:09 But rather verse 22 you are come unto Mount Zion city of the living God etc. And the great climactic element in that to which we have come is Jesus mediator of a new covenant and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel. Then there follows the exhortation that in the light of the greater privileges of this new covenant and all of the circumstances that surround it we are warned not to refuse him who speaks. And then we are given this summary exhortation verse 28 Wherefore receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken let us have grace whereby we may offer service well pleasing to God with reverence and awe for our God is a consuming fire. God's self-revelation in the new covenant does not negate the reality of his being a consuming fire. It understands and underscores it.

21:17 The work of our Lord the horrible and the frightening events of Golgotha of Gethsemane underscore the reality bound up in the words our God is a consuming fire far more forcefully than the thunder and the lightning and the powerful voice from Sinai. And so if it is new covenant worship that is intelligent then it ought to be marked by joyful solemnity. We are come to Mount Zion. We are come to the blood that speaks better things than that of Abel.

21:54 We are come to Jesus mediator of a new covenant. But through him we come into the presence of the God who is a consuming fire. And therefore we need grace whereby to offer service that is well pleasing to God marked by reverence and awe. And Philippians 3.3 Here is the element of the joyful solemnity. We are the circumcision who worship God in the spirit who glory or exult in Christ Jesus and who put no confidence in the flesh. And then Romans 14.17 The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking but righteousness peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.

22:42 Or we could go back to the prophetic utterance of the second psalm Psalm. We are told to rejoice with what? With trembling. To kiss the son lest he be angry and we perish in the way.

22:57 So it is proper to bring together words that we do not often put in that close conjunction. Joyful solemnity or solemn joy. It is the living God whom we worship. Therefore there cannot be flippancy planned here humor relaxed informality.

23:20 The John who leaned his head upon the breast of his Savior in the days of his flesh when he had a vision of that same Savior in his exalted state Revelation 1.17 When I saw him I fell at his feet as one dead. And we worship the exalted Christ the God who is a consuming fire no flippancy no planned humor no relaxed laid back in the formality. We are in the presence of the living God.

23:51 But it is the living God who is our Father through the work of Jesus Christ and our great and exalted Savior is called our great God and Savior and Redeemer. And therefore there ought to be joy in the knowledge that we are sons of the Father who has brought us into his family and has adopted us on the basis of the work of his Son.

24:20 So in our hymns in our prayers in our preaching in the climate and I say it reverently in the climate we seek to create it ought to be marked by joyful solemnity.

24:35 If it is solemnity without joy it will smell too much of Sinai before Calvary. If it is an attempted joy without solemnity it wrenches Calvary loose from Sinai.

Characteristic 3: Suffused with Filial Liberty

24:53 But when the two things are held in proper conjunction there will be joyful solemnity. Then thirdly if it's new covenant worship it ought to be suffused with filial liberty. It ought to be suffused with filial liberty. Filial referring of course to relationships within the family according to Acts 236 and we don't have time to open up the passages but I believe as you look at them you'll be convinced it is not forced proof texting.

25:32 Acts 236 Galatians 3 13 and 14 and Galatians 4 4 to 6 these texts teach that the crowning gift of the new covenant is not the gift of forgiveness but it is the gift of the Spirit given to the forgiven.

25:51 These texts clearly establish that that the crowning gift of the new covenant is the gift of the Spirit. And the apex of the gift of the Spirit with reference to our relationship to God is His ministry attesting to our sonship and enabling us to enjoy the felt joy of that status. And that I base on Romans 8 15 and 16 and Galatians 4 6 because you are sons He hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying that is enabling us to cry Abba Father and because you are sons Romans 8 15 and 16 we have the same affirmation the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit soon martyreo that we are the sons of God. Therefore new covenant worship carried on by the power of the Spirit must be suffused with filial liberty. It must reflect that this is a company of the sons and daughters of God coming into the presence of their Heavenly Father. And William Taylor has a marvelous section on this in his book The Ministry of the Word pages 210 to 212.

27:15 Let me just give you some excerpts again to whet your appetite.

27:20 But the question which I now have to deal with is this how should we conduct the service that service which is generally adopted among us so as to secure that it should be most acceptable to God and most refreshing and stimulating to us and the congregation. Now here it is pertinent to remind you that the first grand indispensable qualification for the leading of public worship is a filial heart. The true worshipper is he that worships the Father. Sonship will attune the heart to spirituality.

27:57 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 would bid us pause a moment on the very threshold of our devotions that we may set definitely before our minds what God is to us before we go forward to present our petitions. And then he goes on to say he's convinced that much of the dullness in worship is to be attributed to an absence of the filial spirit either by people being devoid of that spirit and still unconverted or simply not entering into the glory and wonder of what it means to be the children of God. Here he says is the radical cure for dull devotion powerless prayer and uninteresting worship. We do not need splendid liturgy or gorgeous ritual. We need only a fresh baptism with the spirit of adoption.

29:06 We need only the hearts of sons glowing with love for our God and Father in Christ Jesus 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 and when the worship in our modern sanctuary shall realize their divine relationship their praises will be but the undertone of the angelic harmonies. Isn't that wonderful?

29:41 That's good stuff. And it's true. And you see that's what will be a mystery to the outsider. Here without any of the psychological trappings to whip people up people who have a spirit wrought present consciousness of their purchased liberties in Christ as the sons and daughters of God will be marked by a filial liberty and boldness that will cause them to sing with full throat and contracted diaphragm with nobody up there whipping up the troops.

Characteristic 4: Believing Expectancy

30:12 Nobody saying now sing it out let's ring now none of that baloney. Let's contrive and force for without. Let people come aware of what it is that the disinherited hell deserving rebels are sons and daughters and they're coming now to bring their sacrifice of praise and it has to be full hearted full throated enthusiastic praise marked by this sense of filial liberty and joy and yet at the same time it's that God who is a consuming fire and there never will be cheekiness with the heavenly father. He's the father but he's the father who's in the heavens and therefore it'll be a mystery to the outsider looking in he won't be able quite to figure it out until the day by grace he comes to know that God whom we've come to know through the Lord Jesus. Well I hasten on to characteristic number four it ought to be characterized by believing expectancy it ought to be characterized by believing expectancy we have the promise of Christ where two or three are gathered in my name there am I in the midst and that's why your prayers hopefully and eventually with your fellow elders before God going into a service of worship ought always to have some element of believing expectancy

Characteristic 5: Sensitive but Sanctified Flexibility

31:40 Lord as we anticipate going into your worship in a few moments we thank you that you've promised to be with us we thank you that you will be there that ought to be evident in somewhere particularly in the opening prayers that are brought in the congregation of God's people that there is an element of believing expectancy not only in the prayers that precede and stand on the threshold of your gathering in the Lord's special presence but in your whole disposition that you come really expecting that the Lord is going to be present new covenant worship ought to be characterized by that believing expectancy and fifthly and finally it ought to be regulated by a sensitive but sanctified flexibility new covenant worship ought to be regulated by a sensitive but sanctified flexibility one of the things we noted last week is that in contrast to the ritual worship of the old covenant God has left us relatively little in the way of specifics in terms of how we are to hold together those mandated activities

33:09 such as prayer praise preaching the giving of our substance those simple elements that come within the orbit of the regulative principle but how much prayer what relationship between prayer and praise how many expressions of praise in those things there is very little to give us authoritative directions in terms of a rubric of worship that we can impose all of our time upon our people let alone impose upon all of God's people in all places throughout all time but the word does command us quench not the spirit 1 Thessalonians 5 19 and as you know that verb would be the one you would use when you would say don't put out the fire don't quench the fire by throwing water upon it don't put out the fire of the spirit God has so made us that we are lulled to sleep by a metronome like regularity but we are uneasy and threatened by total unpredictability ever ask anyone how they feel who lives at the base of an active volcano they feel uneasy and threatened because there is total unpredictability with that volcano so we've got to steer a course between total unpredictability that will keep our people

34:38 uneasy and threatened some people think the only way to maintain the liberty of the spirit is to have no forethought of the service you just free wheel it and people never know what's coming they feel threatened thinking people do and uneasy if they don't know what's coming all of us are so made that predictability some semblance of structure and order is essential to feeling comfortable and unthreatened on the other hand if we were to put a metronome up here and wind it up tick tock tick tock tick tock after a while we would be we would be we'd have to make conscious efforts to keep from drifting into the land of naught so as we seek to do things decently and in order we must reflect the character of God who in many of his acts is predictable and yet he's never the God who's held captive by his own predictable laws and institutions but is free to suspend them so with regard to the order of our services don't get into a ironclad unwritten but very real liturgy of habit that is never broken like the laws of the Medes and the Persians in the substance and length of your prayers don't be completely predictable and even in the length of your sermons the most effective sermon you might preach when you're normally

Conclusion and Prayer

36:06 preaching 50-55 minutes is to get one out of your gut in 25 minutes and send the people home so in all of these things brethren we must recognize if it's not new covenant worship then it must be worship in which we exhibit what I have called a sensitive but sanctified flexibility with regard to the mandated elements of worship no flexibility with regard to the essential ingredients we dare not introduce anything for which we have no mandate in the word but in what order they are introduced and how much time is given to each that's where flexibility does indeed come in and where we need God-given wisdom in leading the worship of God's people so then brethren in conclusion I've taken five minutes more than I should have here are the three overarching directives for ordering the corporate worship of God we must be controlled by a scrupulous concern to secure the great ends for which such worship was instituted we must seek to arrange the God-ordained elements so as to secure a maximum measure of those God-ordained ends and we must seek to create and maintain a climate consistent with the great realities of new covenant worship

37:34 and beyond those principles the specifics in their application here you're a part of them week by week and I hope you're absorbing and learning but as we said last week it's a delight to me when I get out among the church of our graduates to see that because they are in a different set of circumstances I don't know that I've gone to one church of our graduates where there is a point for point rubric reproduction reproduction of the rubric of our worship here I don't think I've been in the one there are elements that are totally unique but I have not had to suffer through one situation where I could not enter in because there was an introduction of novelty not mandated by the word of God likewise as I've heard the men preach each man is his own man not a one of them is trying to be a little GGN or an ANM or an RPM each one is his own man but I can sit there and say ah that's what he got in his systematics under Pastor Nichols he picked up that thing sitting under Pastor Bob I think I see a little bit of me in there and it's wonderful to see they've absorbed the principles but now it's coming out smothered with their own fingerprints I've seen that and heard it and it's the great delight of our hearts because it tells us they've captured what we're giving ourselves for we're not here to hear ourselves talk we're committed that these biblical

39:03 principles become visceral convictions and then work themselves out in the particulars of the situation in which God is pleased to put each one of you well let's pray and ask God for grace that we may be wise and biblical as we seek to lead the worship of God people in days to come our Father we thank you that we have your word as a lamp unto our feet and a light to our pathway that we are not left at the mercy of our own whims and fancies or the opinions of the so-called experts that we need not put our ear to the ground and hear as it were the rumblings of our own current society to know how to order your worship we thank you you've given us your word and that you have said that you desire to be worshipped in spirit and in truth and our Father we pray as we give ourselves to seeking to lead the worship of your people that we may in your strength structure and order and lead that worship in such a way as to secure all of the ends for which you have instituted it we know we are not sufficient for these things that we need your spirit as much for this ministerial task as we do for preaching counseling and many other responsibilities

40:33 which you have laid upon us send your Holy Spirit then upon us in copious measures that by his enablement we may be made wise in cultivating that sense of decency and order which you have said must mark the assemblies of your people and then we thank you above all else for this precious promise of our Lord while we confess there is much that is yet a mystery to us we thank you for the precious promise that when we meet in his name he is present with us present to mediate his own grace to our needy and waiting hearts oh we ask that that sense of expectancy will grow in our hearts and in the hearts of our people and that the Lord Jesus Lord if we may express it without being irreverent that he will long for his appointments with his people oh make it so make it so hear our cry seal to our hearts these weighty matters we ask through our Lord Jesus Christ Amen