| Beloved, After a few weeks of random pastoral ramblings, we return to considering our five core principles as a congregation. To refresh your memory, those are: God-centered Theology God-ordered Worship God-delighting Piety God-exalting Government God-dependent Mission We had just begun looking at the second a few weeks back, seeing how the knowledge of the true God (i.e. theology) propels us into worship. Here is how I put it in that email: God-centered theology saturating the intellect and the affections will impel the will to wield the whole of the person in the exaltation of God. And so having properly transitioned from the first core principle to the second, we now must ask two questions. First, what is worship? And second, what does it mean for our worship to be ordered by God? I hope upon hearing the first question that you jumped up and exclaimed, “Oh, oh, I know the answer!” For the question, “What is worship?” is the first question of our catechism on reformed worship that we have been working through in adult Sunday school. Do you remember the answer? Worship is the affectionate, whole-person exaltation of our infinitely valuable God. In God’s providence, we will be grappling with the second question in Sunday school this coming Lord’s Day as we think together about the regulative principle of worship. Simply put, the regulative principle asserts that we must only do in God’s worship would He has expressly commanded in His word. Our worship is to be regulated by His word. To put it another way, our worship must be God-ordered. We aren’t free to exalt Him through whatever means we deem appropriate, but only the means He has ordained. That is actually the essence of what it means for our worship to be reformed. It is worship aligned to the revealed will of God in Scripture. It is worship devoted to the elements of worship He has instituted and nothing besides. As I hope to show you this Sunday, the regulative principle isn’t something a narrow-minded bore in Geneva concocted (that is often how John Calvin is portrayed!); the regulative principle is the plain teaching of Scripture and is even enshrined in the Decalogue. God doesn’t just care about who we worship (the first commandment), but He also cares about how we worship (the second commandment). To worship the true God in a wrong way is idolatry. For men like Nadab and Abihu (see Leviticus 10), it resulted in them being struck dead. You don’t approach the living God in whatever way suits your fancy. The Lord whom we worship is the Lord of His worship! And He delights in those who reckon with that and who devote their whole persons to affectionately exalting Him in the ways He has prescribed. May we be such people, Cornerstone! Yours in Christ, Pastor Nick |
