Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

A couple weeks back I was working through VA program approvals for our campus—we have to receive approval from the State Approving Agency every year to be able to receive GI Bill funds for our military students.

Every year the forms and processes are different, and we are working with a different official from the state.

If you’ve ever had to submit paperwork to the government for your job, you know what fun it is (It’s like doing your income taxes, except the forms and requirements completely change every year!)

Every year we have to wait until we get specific instructions from Harrisburg before we can submit our application; every campus messages back and forth with each other comparing our applications like kids comparing test scores after class: “What did you put for number 12?” Because if you get these things wrong, if you don’t follow their directions precisely, you can wind up with all kinds of headaches with VA funding for your students.

You can’t just put whatever you think looks good to you; you have to submit the documentation the way they want it, or risk all kinds of sanctions, fines or suspensions and uncomfortable meetings with your supervisor...

This is one of the reasons why it is so important for us to carefully consider the decisions we make about how to structure our worship when we gather as a church.

Consider the passage that we read earlier from Exodus 32, when Israel got impatient waiting for instructions and decided to come up with their own ideas about worship.

It’s a common understanding that this passage is describing the Israelites’ rejection of the LORD and embrace of pagan Egyptian gods, that the golden calf represented their turning to worship gods other than YHWH.

But I think (with good reason) that the people were calling on Aaron here to make them an image of the true God.

For one thing, the plural word “gods” in verse 1:

Exodus 32:1 (ESV)

“...Up, make us gods who shall go before us...

is the word “elohim”, which is one of the names for God in the Old Testament (a “plural of majesty”, as it were.)

So this verse can be read, “Up, make us Elohim”—make us the God who will go before us in the wilderness, as He went before us through the Red Sea...”

Add to this what we read in verses 4-5: Aaron specifically said that the image was meant to worship YHWH:

Exodus 32:4–5 (ESV)

...These are your gods, O Israel, [or, “this is your Elohim, O Israel”] who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it.

And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.”

And finally, scholars who study the religion of the ancient Egyptians tell us that their gods were commonly depicted as riding on calves.

So when Aaron made this image, he made a riderless calf; he made a representation of the invisible God, Elohim, YHWH Himself.

Put all this together and you see that Aaron and the people believed that they were worshipping YHWH appropriately; they were not creating an image of Him exactly, but were (as the writer of Judges would say) “doing what was right in their own eyes” in worship.

It is a terrible sin to turn away from the worship of the true God to idols—but it is also a terrible thing to worship the true God in the wrong way.

The Israelites’ attempt to worship God in their wisdom cost the lives of three thousand people (Exodus 32:27-28).

And before you dismiss this assertion by saying, “Well, that was the Old Testament; we live under grace now!”, don’t forget that Ananias and Sapphira—believers—were struck dead because they lied about the offering they brought to church (Acts 5:1-11), and the Apostle Paul warned the church in Corinth that if they did not stop coming to the corporate worship of the Lord’s Supper without the reverent repentance God required that more of their church members—believers—would sicken and die (1 Corinthians 11:29-30).

The Apostle John warned us a few weeks ago that a believer who refuses to repent of wilful, continuous sin may die under God’s chastening hand (1 John 5:16).

Yes, we live under the grace of God purchased for us through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ—there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ—we cannot be condemned for our sins, the horrors of the wrath of God in Hell can no longer terrify us.

But we cannot forget that it was a New Testament writer, writing to church members, who said

Hebrews 10:31 (ESV)

31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

It is not for nothing that Baalam says in Numbers 23:19

Numbers 23:19 (ESV)

19 God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind.

The same God who spent chapter after chapter in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy commanding every last detail of how the tabernacle was to be constructed and the priest was to be dressed and how the incense was to be blended—the same God who burned up Nadab and Abihu for kindling their censers apart from His instructions in Leviticus 10—is the same God who has assembled you here together to worship today!

And so how shall we then worship?

How shall we determine what activities we are to carry out, how we are to go about offering worship that is acceptable to this mighty and holy and righteous God?

Over time in a church with a long and faithful history like ours, we are apt to just presume that we know what sort of things we ought to do in our worship because we’ve pretty much always seen and done the same sorts of things as far back as we can remember.

(And for the record, I do not believe that our worship together on Sunday mornings is disobedient or sinful or making us liable to chastisement from God).

But I believe that it is good and prudent and wise for us to always evaluate ourselves in the life of our church, to continually come back to God’s Word to compare what we do in worship with what He has commanded.

What I want to work through with you this morning from the Scriptures is called

THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLE OF WORSHIP: The corporate worship of God by His church is to be founded on SPECIFIC DIRECTIONS of SCRIPTURE

Throughout the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament), God gave explicit and detailed instructions on how His people were to worship.

When Jesus came, he fulfilled all of those requirements by His active and passive obedience (Matthew 5:18).

But that does not mean that worship in the New Testament is left up to our own whims and wishes—God has still clearly spoken to us about how we are to carry out our gathered worship.

And so the way I want to say it this morning, and what I want you to see today is that

By His WORD , God GOVERNS what the local church should DO when it GATHERS

And the first thing that we see is that through His Word, God

I. DEFINES the ELEMENTS of our worship

We can identify five separate headings of things we are commanded to do when we worship together.

The Apostle Paul wrote his letters to churches across the Roman Empire, instructing, encouraging (sometimes rebuking) and guiding them in their corporate life together.

And as we read through his letters we see very specific commands of things to be done in gathered worship.

In 1 Timothy 4:13, churches are commanded to

READ the Word (1 Timothy 4:13)

1 Timothy 4:13 (ESV)

13 Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.

As we have noted before, this is a clear direction on what we are to do when we gather—we are to read the Word of God together.

We are to be devoted to it—not something that we occasionally do when the fancy strikes us; we are to be devoted to it, give our attention to it as some translations say.

Reading the Scriptures together (whether in unison or responsively or listening as the Scriptures are read) is a clearly defined element of our gathered worship.

Paul also says in that verse that we are to give attention to exhortation—another way to say this is that we are to

PREACH the Word (2 Timothy 4:2)

A few verses earlier in verse 2 of 2 Timothy 4 we read

2 Timothy 4:2–3 (ESV)

2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.

Again—this is a command we find in God’s Word—preach the Word!

He further defines what that means in the rest of the verse—reproving, rebuking, exhorting, patiently teaching and giving understanding of the Word that we have read together.

If we move over to the book of Ephesians, we see another essential element of worship: We are to

SING the Word (Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16)

Ephesians 5:19 (ESV)

19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart,

Singing isn’t just something that we do because we think it’s fun or an enjoyable way to pass the time.

We are singing because we are commanded to.

God has determined that when you come to worship on Sunday, He wants to hear you sing.

And He is omniscient, which means He knows everything, which means He knows what your singing sounds like, and He wants to hear it anyway!

As we have noted before, singing is the way that you instruct and teach your fellow members in worship:

Colossians 3:16 (ESV)

16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Singing—specifically, singing to each other—is an indispensable part of corporate worship.

As we move on we see that we are also commanded that when we gather for worship, we

PRAY the Word (1 Timothy 2:1-2)

1 Timothy 2:1–2 (ESV)

1 First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, 2 for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

Corporate prayer together on Sunday morning is an essential element of gathered worship.

And see again how the types of prayer that we are to offer is described here for us—intercessions (praying for the needs of others) thanksgivings (prayers of gratitude for His goodness to us).

We are ascribing to God the honor and glory and praise due His Name when we demonstrate our need for His work on our behalf by coming to Him in prayer—we show that He is our hope for our own needs, and that (as Paul demonstrates here) that He is the only source of peaceable and quiet lives lived in godly dignity.

And there is one other example that we are given in the New Testament that defines what we do in worship—we read the word, preach the word, sing the word, pray the word, and we are to

SEE the Word (Acts 2:41-42)

In Acts we read about the earliest days of the church, and in Acts 2:41-42 we read that

Acts 2:41–42 (ESV)

41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.

42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

There are two activities that we see took place from the earliest days of the church—baptism, and “the breaking of bread”—a reference to the Lord’s Supper.

Observing these two ordinances are an essential part of what a church must do when it gathers.

I call this “seeing” the Word because the Gospel is, in a very real sense, acted out for us in the observance of these two activities.

In baptism, we see a person acting out their death to sin, their death with Christ, as they go under the water, and we see them rising again with Christ as they come back up.

In the Lord’s Supper we see the bread and the cup that represent the body and blood of Jesus Christ, broken and shed for us.

God’s Word governs what we should do as we gather—it is not left up to us to decide what the elements of our worship should be.

We must read the Word, preach the Word, Sing the Word, pray the Word and see the Word.

So much, perhaps, we can see clearly.

But then the question comes—how do we carry out that preaching and reading and prayer and singing and showing?

What form should our worship take?