Informed Worship — Part II

January 24, 1999
Rev. Steve Schlissel
  

Now, I’m not going to repeat the various things that we see around today, or try to denigrate this or that particular.  But we began a consideration of how such a problem can best be fixed if you expect to proceed with that today in suggesting how we can improve the situation by sound doctrine and a consideration of the Bible.  How should the churches of Jesus Christ be worshipping God?  This is not a minor question when you consider that our principle function as a church is the worship of God.  Some people think that the principle function of the church is evangelism.  That is not correct.  Evangelism is in order to bringing people to the worship of God.  That is to say that God would be honored in their service to him.  So we reach out for the sake of God, and for the sake of man, as well, but in order to bring people into a worship with their whole lives in service to the true God, and particularly on the Lord’s Day.  But in considering how we might seek to repair the current mess, today I’m going to have to offer some criticism of at least one other method that has been put forth and that is gaining in popularity, and that, of course, is the regulative principle of worship as it’s called.  I’ll talk more about that in a moment. 

But in order to set our critique we must first understand the pendulum phenomenon that’s characteristic of mankind in general.  When the pendulum gets stuck on one side, it common for people, in recognizing that it needs to be moved, to yank on it so hard that when it finally dislodges they find themselves thrown to the other side, and they get stuck on this side of the clock box.  And then somebody has to come along and pull, and they usually end up on the direction.  And this phenomenon is very important to understand in order to see the problem that we have today in coming to grips with the difficulties determining what is biblical worship. So, first let me give you a couple of examples.

Now, I’m going to be merciful and I’m not going to draw any figures, I’m just going to scribble a little bit.  So, over here on this side we have an issue, let’s say, women and makeup or adornment.  And we want to know what is God’s will concerning this?  And you open the Bible and you read some things addressed to this particular topic.  It says, for example, in one of the pastoral epistles that God wants women to dress modestly with decency and propriety, not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or expensive clothes, but with good deeds appropriate for women who profess to worship God.  Well, there you go.  You’ve got it, the regulative principle of dress.  And, furthermore, we read in 1Pe 3, “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment such as braided hair, and the wearing of gold jewelry, and fine clothes.  Instead it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.  And so, you take these verses into an environment where you find women dressing and fussing up like a bunch of hussies.  You go into this particular environment and they are pouring on the makeup.  You need a shovel to get it off at night, it’s so thick.  And they are just messing with their hair; they take hours dealing with their hair.  They take hours separating each eyelash.  They take hours at night to make sure they don’t have sheet marks on their nails in the morning.  Everything so that their lives are dedicated to this sort of thing.  And what do we say is the response to this?  Well, one response would be that women should not wear any makeup at all.  And this is an answer that’s been given in church history, and still is today by some particular groups.  And women should not fuss with their hair.  There’s only one hairstyle that’s permissible—you let it grow, and you may brush it if you like, but the Bible doesn’t say that you have to. 

Alright, so what you have here is a problem where you come into a culture and you find that women are over-adorning themselves.  And the suggested answer to this over-adornment, this obvious defect in behavior, is to come over here (we’ll call this “Y”) where there is no adornment at all.  Now, that’s a way to deal with the problem, that because God has made women beautiful anyway, you could live like that.  Pentecostal holiness women are not ugly for not wearing makeup, and they get married just like everybody else, and they have children just like everybody else.  It’s not that you can’t live like that; you can live like that. 

Another problem that you might find in life, for example, is drunkenness.  Now, the Bible is very clear in several places.  Drunks will not go to heaven.  Drunkards will not inherit the Kingdom of God.  You can’t get around that, just as you can’t get around that women shouldn’t have braided hair, I suppose.  I mean, it says it right there.  And so what’s the answer to this?  Well, one answer that has been given in church history, and one answer that is still very popular today, in fact, you may not believe this, but one guy actually financed a Bible (I don’t know what it’s called, The Grape Bible or something) where the whole raison d'être of that Bible was to eliminate all references to alcohol where people might think that God approves it in some fashion.  So he’s gone diligently through and removed every possible reference to the approval of alcohol in any shape, manner, or form.  And so there is, then, teetotalism, or abstinence, that you don’t participate in alcoholic beverages at all whatsoever.  Now, I want to ask you something.  Which problem is better?  Drunkenness or teetotalism?  Well, teetotalism certainly has all the advantages.  You can’t list many advantages if you’re going to have a problem to drunkenness.  You don’t get a lot of work done.  You don’t have very happy homes.  You don’t have very happy children.  You don’t have very productive society.  You have chaos if everybody’s getting drunk.  Whereas everybody could abstain from alcohol and do well.  So you could do well that way.  So if you’re going to look for an answer, it’s a radical answer, but it works.

Another problem that you might find is sexual immorality.  You come into a culture such as ours, and you find that what’s on the brain, sex is on the brain.  That’s all they know.  That’s all they breathe.  That’s all they eat. That’s all they drink.  Sex, sex, sex—everywhere you look.  They can’t sell a car without sex.  You can’t sell a bike without sex.  Everything is sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex.  So you say, This is a real problem.  This culture is stuck on one aspect of life.  And therefore, we as Christians, knowing that those who are sexually immoral will not inherit the Kingdom of God (it says that too, very clear), we have to help them overcome this problem, and we’re going to do it by advocating celibacy.  Everybody must remain celibate.  That’s a pretty radical solution, but you have to admit it would cut down on STD’s, for example.  It would improve the mental health, perhaps, of a particular generation for awhile, maybe.  It would certainly contribute to people’s ability to practice self-control.  So there are some upsides to celibacy.  But it, like the other solutions, falls short of Scripture’s solution to the problem. 

In each of these cases, I think, that this side is better than this side.  If you have to choose, which do you want?  Sexual profligacy, and drunkenness, and hussies running around, over against this where you have women who are very modest in their adornments with none at all, and they don’t drink, and nobody has sex.  Of course, that’s a one generation solution, isn’t it?  Except if you get Dolly the sheep, you know, from Scotland, and you clone yourself into a new generation.  In each of these cases the radical solution is to be preferred to the original problem, I would say.  The last one is debatable, but the last one highlights more clearly that there has to be another way, you see.  The fact is that these are not our only alternatives, and in the question of worship—this is the first thing I’d like all of us to have in our minds, is that the question is usually framed in a way that’s a set-up.  It’s a set-up, it’s a false dilemma.  The question is put to us that the principle of worship can only be one of two things.  That is to say, What’s God’s will for us in determining what is a part of worship, how should it be conducted, etc., etc.?  It’s either what is not forbidden is permitted, or, what is not commanded is forbidden.  Now, just as these other questions, we required a view of the whole Bible in order to come to some sort of answer.  The proposed solutions that we mentioned on the first page, while superior to the problems, are inferior to the Bible’s actual teaching.  For example, in the question of women’s adornment, you have to read certain passages with a blind eye to come to the conclusion that God is making an absolute dictum of women’s adornment in 1Ti 2 and in 1Pe 3.  We can have a much more moderate understanding when we read the whole Bible, for example, Gen 24:53, when Abraham’s servant came to Rebekah, the servant brought out gold and silver jewelry and articles of clothing, and gave them to Rebekah.  Now, what are we to conclude?  That Rebekah said, I’m sorry, I can’t accept these things.  Well, you know what?  Let’s start a museum over here in Mesopotamia so I can put them on display in a case.  Noooo!  Rebekah put on the jewelry, and she loved it, because women have always loved jewelry, that’s the way God made women.  And furthermore, you read in Isa 61:10 that adornment is a native quality of a godly woman.  “I delight greatly in the Lord,” says Isaiah, “my soul rejoices in my God, for he has clothed me with garments of salvation, and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.”  So, at least we could say that there are occasions where that adornment is appropriate.  And in Jer 2:32 we read, “Does a maiden forget her jewelry?”  Every maiden knows what’s on the first floor of Macy’s.  Does a maiden forget her jewelry?  No.  This is proverbial; this is axiomatic.  God understands that women have an instinct to adorn; he has given them that instinct.  What Paul is doing, then, is controlling the instinct so that it doesn’t get out of hand and take over their lives, so that their time is consumed with the rather extensive process of braiding, whatever it may have been. It took a very long time, and they would be proud of it, and walk about like peacocks (I know that they’re male, but you get the idea that they’re strutting their stuff and showing off.).  He’s saying this is inappropriate.  What’s the answer then?  The balance is to say adornment is fine, but it has to be in moderation.  It can’t take over your life.  Similarly….  By the way, Rev 21:2 also, “As a bride adorned for her husband,” the idea of adornment for the opposite sex.  A woman adorning herself to please her husband is a fundamental part of the biblical view of women. 

Now, the other idea of drinking.  You can say that drunkards will not inherit the Kingdom, and that wine is a mocker, and strong drink raising.  It’s true, the Bible says it.  But what about Deu 14 where God says in his law for his people, “Exchange your tithes with silver, and take the silver with you, and go to the place your Lord your God will choose, and use the silver to buy whatever you like—cattle, sheep, wine, or other strong drink.”  Hey, hey!  A Reformed Bible we have here!  Now, does it countenance or advocate drunkenness?  No!  But is the answer to drunkenness to say that teetotaling is the only possible Christian alternative?  It’s not the case.  Psa 104 praises God for creating the wine that does what?  Gladdens the heart of man.  Now, grape juice makes me happy, but grape juice does not gladden my heart.  So it doesn’t mean grape juice; it means wine.  And in Joh 2 you see that our Lord did not adopt this solution of teetotalism when he went to this wedding and he turned huge amounts of water into huge amounts of delicious Merlot. 

And, of course, you could say that the answer to sexual immorality is celibacy, as the Roman Church does for its priestly class.  It says, We’re going to deal with this problem by forbidding marriage, and that’s your consecration to the Lord.  But actually the apostle says, “Since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.”  So, God’s solution to these problems is not to run to the other side and get the pendulum stuck over there, but to say, I’ve created an order that allows for a normal use of adornment, a normal moderate use of alcohol, and certainly sex in a certain situation, i.e., within the confines of marriage, between one man and one woman. 

Now, I ask you to remember that the radical solutions offered, at least in my book, are to be preferred to the original problems, but the solutions in these cases pull up short of the Bible.  Some would say that you go in the streets over here in Brooklyn and what do you hear coming blasting out the cars as they go down the street?  It’s rap anti-music; it’s not music, it’s anti-music.  Okay?  So you hear this, and it becomes the dominant form of music in our culture, so what do we say the solution is?  No music.  You may not listen to music at all.  It’s evil.  Or, you can be more moderate and say, The only music that I permit is Gregorian Chant.  So we all get together and go to Gregorian Chant concerts, and we all invite each other over to the house, and sing, *** sings a parody of a Gregorian Chant ***.  I say, Didn’t you play that same thing last week when I was here?  No, it’s very different.  Didn’t you hear?  Last week was, *** another parody of Gregorian Chant ***.  No, there’s a very subtle difference.  Some would say that’s the answer.  But those sorts of things are extreme; they pull you back the other way.  Gregorian Chants may be preferred to rap music, absolutely!  But is it the only thing that God allows?  No it is not.  There are other solutions. 

So too do we find this motif operative in the matter of worship.  It’s a false dilemma to say that it’s either the regulative principle, or what is the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran principle of worship.  Those are not the only choice on the board (well, they are so far, but they’re not going to be the only ones). 

At the time of the Reformation, similar to today, but it was much worse—I mean it was clearer then—the sinful excesses of Romish services and superstitions appeared to require a radical solution.  That solution was the so-called regulative principle of worship.  The principle that what God has not commanded to be done in worship is forbidden.  Or, another way to put it is, Only that which God has commanded is permitted.  Now, there is little doubt that this principle certainly served to cleanse the worship services of the Reformed church as radically and as thoroughly, in some cases, as the decision not to drink anything ever with alcohol in it would solve the problem of drunkenness.  And so, for this we should be grateful.  That principle helped bring back the churches to sanity in regard to these things.  By using this as a filter, as a grid, to say, Hey, we got to have some sort of method to determine what is allowed in the service of God, and what is not allowed.  And they said, Well, here’s one:  If it’s not specifically commanded, it’s forbidden.  And then they found that they got rid of the idols and the statues, and they got rid of Mariolotry, and they got rid of the superstitious Mass, and they got rid of Novenas, and they got rid of Purgatory prayers and all these other things.  It was a great principle.  Relics, indulgences, saint worship. 

But in time the principle seemed to take on a life of its own, as sometimes happens in history.  And so now we’re told that….  Well, I got a letter….  I asked this fellow in Scotland, he prays for us every week, and I asked him, Will you pray for me as I speak of the informed principle of worship as opposed to the regulative principle of worship?  And he writes back, “You have our prayers for this.  And I must have a copy of your tape on the subject.  I suspect that we are in very close agreement on this subject.  The trouble with the RPW as it is practiced in Scotland’s smaller Presbyterian Kirks is that they narrow down the RP beyond what Scripture actually requires.  For example, They sing only psalms, but practice extempore prayer.  That is to say, they are allowed to pray spontaneously, but not allowed to sing anything that a man composed.  I remember Greg Bahnsen telling me that he worked on the basis of, ‘If you can say it, you can sing it.’  And he says, Amen.  May the Lord uphold you in your preaching and give you…, etc., etc.” 

And this is what I usually get when I discuss this problem, but I’m afraid I don’t make myself clear.  It’s not that I’m telling you that the regulative principle is correct, and it’s been misapplied.  What I’m suggesting to you is that the regulative principle is not the biblical principle at all.  You see, so there’s disagreement between Reformed people.  They say, Well, my view of the regulative principle is that you can sing hymns, or that you can have organ music, or that you can have an orchestra, that you can have this, or you can have that.  And then they argue whether these things fit the principle.  But what I’m going to suggest to you today is that principle itself is not a biblical principle, and there needs to be something else in order for us to understand what is acceptable in worship.  Because this principle has, as I said, taken on a life of its own, and those who advocate it today sometimes forget the historical context of its birth, and it’s believed by many to be the last word, the biblical word, God’s own Word regarding worship.  And so, many did what men are prone to do, they kept applying this principle more rigorously to the point where they’d strained out virtually all the gnats and have become almost unconcerned about the camels that are running around their churches.  Anything that couldn’t meet the somewhat contrived test—although it was helpful, I remind you—anything that couldn’t meet this contrived test for commanded was viewed with grave suspicion as being the very thing that would lead us back to Rome.  I could give you silly examples.  Roman Catholics wear red; therefore we may not wear red.  You can’t really understand any particular religious expression of people that have lived near each other, whether it’s Jews vs. Christians, Christians vs. Jews, or Protestants vs. Catholics unless you understand some of their history.  Much of what we do is in order not to be them.  So we don’t drink because those people get drunk.  We don’t wear any makeup at all because they’re all floozies.  You see?  We don’t have sex because they’re perverts.  We’ll show them.  Problems. 

Among some today in this rigorous application of the principle, forgetting its historical birth, the regulative principle is not only no Christmas celebration, because God has not commanded that Christmas be observed.  You may not observe Easter.  But also you may not have any musical instruments, because God has not commanded them in the NT, except in heaven.  And no singing except psalms.  And there are those who take it…, now, you may find this strange, because you’ve not been exposed to this, many of you, but they say even a Scripture song like Zecharias’ song, or the Song of Mary, Miriam Luke, none of these are permitted—only the psalms.  It doesn’t matter that it’s a song in the Bible; you may not sing it; only the psalms may be sung in the worship of God, and anything else is an abomination. 

And I’ve heard it said….  Again, you won’t…, there’s no room for some of us to absorb this, and I’m with you.  One man said, who holds to this principle as the last word on worship that to sing scripture choruses (we’re not big fans of that; we said the 7-Eleven—same seven choruses, eleven times each), but he said to sing a scripture ditty is equal to abortion in the sight of God.  And then he goes and pulls a verse out of the Bible and says, There, I’ve proved it.  Because these Israelites were sacrificing their children, and God’s Word to them through Ezekiel was, Nothing like this ever entered my mind.  Okay?  To accept this kind of worship of aborted children, of child sacrifice, which in modern days is abortion.  So because it never entered God’s mind, therefore anything that never entered God’s mind concerning worship is morally equivalent.  So because God didn’t tell you to sing a chorus eleven times, if you do it, you might as well kill your kid on an altar.  That’s how unacceptable it is to God. 

Now, when people say such things, those who hold to the regulative principle should rebuke that man for being so far out of line.  But I’m afraid that he’s a more consistent applicant of this principle in some ways.  And the reason, by the way, I have to tell you, that they say only psalms is because in the NT you read, Sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.  Well those were headings in the Jewish Bible in the psalter, that some were called psalms, some were called hymns, some were called spiritual songs, so they say, Paul really obviously meant only psalms, and because we can always do what we’re commanded, we can only sing psalms and nothing else is acceptable.  You see also that regulativists hold to a principle, some of them, where no creeds are permitted in worship.  Some even say you may not recite the Lord’s Prayer together.  I’m not joking.  Where does God command us to say this prayer together?  Therefore you may not do it.  Where does God, in the Bible, have the Apostle’s Creed?  You may not recite it.  And you see, then, you have a principle that helps at a certain time in history.  Rescue us.  It’s a radical principle, but it rescues us from going over the deep end.  It helps us to be separate and distinct from these mishuguna kopf, these Roman Catholics who do crazy, crazy things.  So now we’re separate and set apart.  And then people take that principle that was useful, they absolutize it, and they make it a standard that is not necessarily from the Bible.

And here are their arguments.  It’s nine lines of argument in favor of the regulative principle.  One is an argument from the limits of church power.  And this particular argument I find very appealing.  It basically says this:  the church, as a ministering agent of Christ, does not have authority to require of worshippers something other than what they find in the Bible.  So how can we, how can the session get together and we decide today Marla is going to open every service with some kind of flitting around the altar up here.  She’s going to dance away.  And we’ll say this is worship.  And we tell you that’s it.  And so this first principle says the people of God are protected from that by the limitations set by this principle.  And I think that’s true, and we should make sure that we try to uphold that idea, at least, that the church is not free to do whatever it wants.  But to say it’s not free to do whatever it wants doesn’t mean that the regulative principle is the only one that’ll keep us from doing that.

The second argument is liberty of conscience.   This is rather poor.  A brief description of the argument.  To induce people to act contrary to what they believe is right is sinful.  And then it goes on to use texts:  Rom 14 and 1Co 8 which I would maintain have to do with Gentiles not offending Jews, because they’ve been grafted into the Jewish stock, and therefore they shouldn’t eat pork in front of their faces, or meat sacrificed to idols.  It has nothing to do with the regulative principle of worship; it’s an illegitimate extension of the text.

The argument from faith—that where God has not revealed himself, not faithful response is possible.  Without faith it’s impossible to please God, therefore God cannot be pleased by worship that is unfaithful, i.e., worship which is not an obedient response to his revelation.  Well, this is sort of sideways Platonism, and it’s very hard to criticize, but all I can tell you is it’s not a biblical argument.  Worship is the proper response to God’s revelation, but it doesn’t answer any of the questions we have about what worship consists in. 

Another argument is from the distance between the Creator and the creature.  I don’t see what that has to do with this. 

The argument from the character of God is jealous.  Well, that’s true—God requires that he be worshipped alone—nobody else.  But that doesn’t tell us how to worship him. 

Another argument is from those passages where piety is described as being exclusively what God wishes.  This is what you call begging the question.  What is it that God wishes? 

The argument from the severity of the temporal punishments inflicted upon those who offer to God worship other than what he has prescribed.  Okay.  Now they use a text that we have to look at in order to deal with this quickly, because the favorite text of regulativists in regard to you may not bring into worship anything else than God required is Lev 10.  Right?  The favorite one.  And what happens there?  “Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, took their censors, put fire in them, and added incense, and they offered unauthorized (or outside, or strange) fire before the Lord contrary to his command.  So fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them.”  And they say, You see!  This is not an adequate rule—what is not forbidden is permitted—because all they did, the argument goes, is offer something of their own imagination.  But this is absolutely false to the use of the Bible, because in Exo 30:9 it says, “Do no offer on this altar any other incense, or any burnt offering, or grain offering, and do not pour a drink offering on it.”  So by doing what they did it wasn’t what you call will worship merely, it was going contrary to what God commanded.  In other words, he forbade what they did, explicitly.  So this principle was adequate to deal with their problem.  Now, I know this is somewhat…, seems like it’s up there in the air, but we have to learn how to use the Bible properly.  And if we learn how to use it properly on this question, it will help us on many other questions as well.  The argument from the severity of temporal punishments upon those who violated his law of worship?  Yeah.  Fine.  But not who violated the regulative principle.  Everybody understand?  That Nadab, Abihu thing?  Okay.  Good.

Argument from the sinful tendency toward idolatry.  This is a good warning, but it’s covered by principles other than the regulative principle.  Don’t do what God forbids.  God forbids you to worship other gods.  You’re safe if you follow his law.

The argument from church history.  Well, we’re back to where we started, which is the pendulum. 

Alright, you look at these two principles, and let’s just modify one to see how we can get a third way.  The Roman Catholics, the Lutherans, the Anglicans, some Methodists say, What is not forbidden is permitted.  The Reformed and Presbyterian historically have said, What is not commanded is forbidden.  Well, I want to suggest that there’s a third way that’s more biblical.  What is not forbidden may be permitted—it might me, or it might not be.  In other words, who said that this is the only filter you’re allowed?  Where did that come from?  Show me in the Bible where this is the only filter that’s permitted acting as a grid to keep out of worship that which is offensive to God?  No.  I’m afraid that these arguments of regulativists, as upon closer examination, really amount to just so much smoke and mirrors, and the strength of it is because it’s done such a wonderful job historically, just as teetotalism will abolish drunkenness.  It will do it.  And so you have a lot to boast about.  You say, Among us we don’t have a drunken problem, because none of us drink.  Among us we don’t have a pretty women problem; all our women are ugly, they don’t do anything to improve their looks.  And among us we have not sexually transmitted diseases whatsoever.  The Shakers were famous for that.  Not one case of syphilis in all the Shaker world.  Of course, they never had sex, and there’s only one Shaker left. 

No, there are huge holes in the regulative principle of worship, and we’re going to take the balance of this message to examine them.

The first one, and the most difficult for me in reading their literature, is that, at best, they twist the Bible and, out if ineptness, wrongly interpret it.  At worst, they’re actually deceiving people with their exegesis of texts and passages.  And they do this principally by ignoring the context of many of their favorite passages. 

Example:  Deu 12:32 which says, “See that you do all I command you. Do not add to it, or take away from it.”  And what they forget to tell you is that the context of this command was God regulating the worship of the temple, of the tabernacle, rather, in Jerusalem.  I’m going to bring you to a place.  Before this you were able to sacrifice in any different place that you wanted, but now when I bring you into the land you have to sacrifice in a particular way.  This is a temple requirement, and it is a rigorous temple requirement, and, as we’ll see in a moment, it has a reason. 

In Isa 1, often cited by regulativists.  How can you prove to me the regulative principle?  Well, look in Isa, they say, and you’ll see that God is fed up with Israel.  He tells them, “Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom.  The multitude of your sacrifices, what are they to me?  I have more than enough of burnt offerings and rams, and the fat of fattened lambs.  I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls, and lambs, and goats.  When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts.  Stop brining meaningless offerings.  Your incense is detestable to me.  New moons, convocations, and Sabbaths, I cannot bear your evil assemblies. Your New Moon festivals, and your appointed feasts my soul hates.  They have become a burden to me.”  Now, what do the regulativists do?  They take one portion of that and they say, Who has asked this of your hand?  Who has required this of you?  And they say, because God did not require this of them, therefore you can only do what he commands.  But hey!  He’s listing things they’re doing that he commanded!  He told them to bring those offerings.  He told them to have the Sabbaths.  He told them to have the New Moon feasts.  That’s the regulativists don’t tell you.  They play a shell game.  They take the little portion, the itsy bitsy little piece, and then they hide the big stuff and keep it out of your view.  No.  Isaiah is condemning Israel because they were having bloody hands outside the temple, and then coming to God with their bloody hands, and offering things to him.  And God says, Who wants your stinking offerings?  That’s what he says.  Because your filthy lives outside the temple don’t comport with what I require, and then you think you’re buying me off by giving me this stuff.  I don’t want it.  It’s an offense to me.  It’s hypocrisy.  It’s not the regulative principle, it’s hypocrisy God is rejecting.  You go out and live like hell, and then you come and think you’re buying heaven by giving me something.  I don’t need it.  Is this sort of dishonest handling of the Bible that’s very upsetting in their literature. And I guarantee you, you read any one of their books and you’ll see these verses referenced all the time, but never the context.  They don’t let the camera pull back.  They always focus on what they want you to see.  If you pull back, you say, Ohhh!  Maybe it’s not such a good case after all. 

Jer 32:35, I told you, was used as an equation of singing Scripture ditties. 

One of their leading advocates, who happens to be a friend of mine (we may not send him this tape, okay?  Don’t send it to him!), he does the same typical thing.  To prove the regulative principle of worship, here’s how we prove it:  Deu 12:32, “Whatever I command you, observe to do it.”  That’s all there is to it.  Don’t add, don’t take away.  Gen 4:5, “Cain decided to worship God according to his own will, rather than the will of God.  But God will not be worshipped except as he commanded.”  Well, God instructed them, we presume, beforehand.  They violated the instruction that you must begin the worship of God with a blood sacrifice.  You must die in order to worship God.  Cain didn’t want that.  So he violated what he was told.  Then God tried to reason with him, and he still was willful against it.  This is not the regulative principle, per se; this is violating the word of God.  Nadab and Abihu we see.  Isa 1:12 we see.  Jer 7:24—here’s a doozey.  Look at this one.  Jer 7:24 proves the regulative principle.  What does it say?  It says, “They did not listen or pay attention. Instead they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts.  They went backward and not forward.”  They followed the stubborn inclination of their own hearts means that, see, they invented ways to worship God, and he hated it.  But wait a minute!  What does it say in vs. 21-23?  “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says, ‘Go ahead, add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices, and eat the meat yourselves.  When I brought your forefathers out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, but I gave them this command—obey  me and I will be your God, and you will be my people.  Walk in all the way I command you, that it may go well with you.’ But they did not listen or pay attention.  Instead they had their own evil inclinations.”  You see?  Just pull the camera back, take a look at the context, and the argument for the RPW vanishes.  God is condemning hypocrisy.  He’s condemning formalism.  He does not say, Because you brought something to worship that I didn’t ask…. 

At this point, I just want to say quickly that another regulativist of note (this one is in the PCA), and he’s written on this in booklets, has admitted that virtually all the Romish problems of excess would have been dealt with if they followed their own principle of what is not forbidden is permitted, because most of what they do that’s wrong is forbidden, for pity sake!  They’re not allowed to worship statues.  They’re not allowed to rub Pope toes.  They’re not allowed do obeisance to man that belongs God alone.  When John fell down and tried to give that sort of worship to an angel, he was rebuked.  They’re forbidden to do the things they do.  That principle is very powerful.  They don’t abide by it.  So they invent another one—no alcohol, no makeup, no sex, Gregorian Chants alone.  #1.

#2, the RPW misses the purpose of the RPW in the Bible, and that is to say there was a place for this command that you may not add or take away, and that place was temple worship.  And the reason that God….  Well, let me ask you.  Think about it for a minute.  In the OT administration, Christ had not yet come to earth incarnate.  He did not yet do his work.  How is he made manifest among the Israelites, the covenant people?  His atoning work—how is it made manifest?  It’s made manifest at the temple, in glorious particularity, in a diverse number of ways.  And so God says, Listen, what you’re dealing with here in the temple is  my Son.  There is no other way to me but through my Son.  I’ve given you a thousand different ways to see his work.  Don’t mess with it.  Don’t add to it.  Don’t take away from it.  Because in this temple system you have Jesus Christ doing his work before he becomes incarnate.  That’s why it’s so rigorous.  That’s why if you even make incense and use it for another purpose, God says, I’ll kill you.  That’s why if touch something you’re not authorized to touch, God says, I will kill you.  Why?  Because he’s guarding the exclusivity of the gospel, that there is no other way to him but through his Son, Jesus Christ.  And when Jesus Christ comes, all this particularity is in him.

It doesn’t tell you whether you could sing a song, or play a trumpet, or a trombone.  That question has to be answered in other places.  The principle itself is Christ-centered, and so all the people on earth (listen, now) who believe in Jesus Christ and trust that only in him can they find any hope in the approach to God—all of these people are fulfilling the regulative principle.  Even our Baptist brothers who have their display services, as long as they hold that Jesus is the only way, they are fulfilling the scriptural regulative principle, because the Bible tells us in Heb 10, just for example, “When Christ came into the world he said, ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased.’  And Christ said, ‘Here I am, it is written about me in the scrolls, I have come to do  your will, O God.’”  He is the regulative principle, and oh man, how we miss it!  And how we miss fellowship with other Christians!  And how we miss the opportunity to build one another up when we separate ourselves by walls that are the inventions of men!  However useful they were in history, they fall short of Scripture’s own principle.

#3:  One of the ways they mishandle Scripture, my regulativist brethren, is by forcing things such as Eph 5:19.  This is another one that you’ll read.  Where do you get authorized to sing psalms in church? they say.   Well, “Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.  Sing and make music in your hearts to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  But what they don’t tell you in using that verse is that why do you think that’s instruction for a worship service?  Where does Paul in Ephesians give us the idea that he’s giving you instruction for a worship service?  Let me tell you why this is important.  Because all of the regulativists, most strict regulativists, today admit that some human compositions may be sung outside of worship, that all they’re advocating is that you may not do in worship what is this human composition, as if David was some sort of elephant or something.  I know what they mean, but they don’t allow other inspired compositions, so it’s very, very arbitrary.  Okay.  But they use this passage to prove it.  But where does this passage say this is how I want you to conduct yourself in the house of God?  It doesn’t.  Furthermore, it says, Sing to one another.  Actually it says, “Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.”  So, is worship directed toward each other, or is it directed toward God?  So, so far we don’t have a command to sing psalms to God at all.  In fact, when you go a little further, it says, “Sing in your heart.”  And there was one guy in church history at the Reformation time who picked up on this, and he said, There should be no singing in the church service, because the only singing commanded here is that you sing in your heart.  So the regulative principle means don’t sing at all out loud.  And he also gave a very full exposition as to why that’s biblical, or preferred.  Well, they won’t go that far. 

But these are arbitrary uses of Scripture.  This is the sort of thing where you find your principle.  You say, Hey, that’s a happy principle.  I like that principle.  I could run with that.  Let me go to the Bible and find a way to prove it.  That’s not honest.  It doesn’t come from Scripture; it’s imposed on Scripture. 

A fourth reason:  That is it is inconsistent.  Man-made songs are an abomination, they say.  But somehow one would think a reverse lyrical occurs that man-made prayers are not an abomination.  Ho, Nelly!  Save me from this!  You mean to tell me that God is so strict in the material that will be sung to him, that he has absolutely forbidden anything but the precise wording of the psalms.  Well, first of all, sing them in Hebrew, will you please?  Because in any good orthodox Jewish congregation they’ll know the 150 psalms by heart, and they could rip them off in short order.  So learn them in Hebrew like they do, and then come and sing together.  But you don’t want to do that?  You want to use English.  So translation’s a problem.  Well, let’s get over that.  Prayer is allowed extemporaneously from the heart.  Why doesn’t God say you prayer is an abomination to me; you’re not using the words that I’ve given to you?  How dare you make reference to contemporary people?  I heard you mention Clinton.  You won’t find Clinton in the Bible.  Clinton’s not in the Bible; you can’t pray to me like that.  Sorry.  Go back and say Ahasuerus or something. 

We do it, the same thing, with sermons.  And I want to tell you that the RP’s (I’m not the first), RP’s have been shot at with this from the beginning, and they have never answered it adequately.  They do say that there is a special place for singing in the service, and I agree.  But there is a more special place for the sermon.  That’s where you have your didactic line-up-line instruction.  And if that’s allowed to be deducted from the Scripture, then certainly sound songs should be allowed.  You see, the problem is not man making a psalm, or hymn, rather, the problem is whether it’s in conformity with the truth as it is in Jesus.  And I want to tell you another problem with exclusive psalmody.  If you rigorously apply it you will end up with this most peculiar of all possible situations, that the church of Jesus Christ on earth would never sing praise to his name, because his name is not in the psalms.  You do not find the name Jesus Christ in any of the 150 psalms.  I know that we say, Psa 72, Christ shall have dominion.  But open up your Bible.  Where does it say that?  That’s an interpretation; that’s an application.  It happens to be correct, but man did it.  Ohhhh!  Man did it!   Yes, and thank God he did.  And thank God that God lifted up all these wonderful beautiful hymns to Christ, to the Lord Jesus Christ.  That is name is expressly praised.  Now, we should definitely sing psalms in churches.  They should be the dominant portion of our singing.  But to say that we can have no songs other than psalms is to say that if your consistent you will not mention Jesus Christ in song in a Christian church.  And you say, Oh, well, I don’t know if I’m ready to live with that.  Why?  Because you’re not ready to live with the regulative principle.  And I’ll tell you why.  Because it’s not from the Bible.

The fifth reason:  The regulative principle ignores the implicit endorsement of tradition, both by Christ and in other places in Scripture.  In other words, tradition is sort of the big curse for a regulativist, never realizing that he’s speaking out of the tradition of the RPW.  But we’ll overlook that for a second.  He hates tradition.  That’s a tradition!  You use a tradition!  We got to get over this knee-jerk reaction to tradition as if it equals evil.  Let me just give you one example to prove this point from the Bible.  “After supper he took the cup saying, ‘This is the new covenant in my blood.  Drink ye all of it.  Do this in remembrance of me.’”  Is there a more solemn act in Christian worship than that?  Is there?  No, there is not.  That’s the heart.  We revolve around that in our service, that we’re united through Christ’s covenant blood, set forth in a cup.  Now, let me see if I have this right.  God commands Israel to observe the Passover.  The regulativist says, You may not do anything else, only what God commands.  1500 years after God commands this, Jesus Christ picks up a cup in celebration of the Passover.  Humm?  Where did God command that that cup be used in the worship of him?  What’s that you say?  You can’t find it?  Oh!  Sorry to crush your principle, but I guess you better bid it goodbye.  It evolved through tradition.  It evolved without a commandment of God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, rather than being a good regulativist, throwing the cup in the faces of those presumptuous apostles, took it and absorbed it in himself, and infused it with meaning that gave birth, at that point, to the most sacred rite that the church would enjoy throughout the world and throughout the rest of history.  Did he hate tradition?  Did he scorn it?  No.  He scorned tradition that contradicted the Word of God.  He scorned tradition that obscured the Word of God.  He scorned tradition that overturned the Word of God.  But he never scorned tradition per se.  Or, else you’ll have to explain to me why he used the cup, not to mention every other thing in that sadir that is not commanded in Exo 12-14 or anyplace else.  Why did Jesus Christ participate in such tradition?  Why?  Maybe tradition is not as bad as we think.  And maybe we’d get a lot further if we just admit it that we have a tradition, and we should argue like this:  My tradition can beat up your tradition.  Instead of saying, We have no tradition.  Let’s say, Whose tradition is better and more faithful? 

#6:  The regulative principle in its hatred of man-created days based upon passages like Gal….  I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Paul says.  You’re observing days, and weeks, and months.  And so they say, You see!  If you start to have a holiday, you go back to Rome!  You and Angus both; you’re going to go be those Catholics, I tell you now.  This hatred of man-created days does not look at the Bible.  In the Bible, in the Book of Esther, in chap. 9:27, it says, “The Jews took it upon themselves to establish the custom that they and their descendents and all who joined them should, without fail, observe these two days every year in the way prescribed and at the appointed time.”  A regulativist looks at that and he just says, Well, that was a civil holiday.  Oh, yeah.  Right.  This was a commemoration of the mighty acts of God in history, precisely analogous to his imposing on Israel the Passover celebration.  Remember what I did for you in history; do this every year.  And so the Israelites were greatly delivered from annihilation, and they took it upon themselves to celebrate it.  Man, what is wrong with that?  If God delivers The Netherlands from a crushing blow from a dark pagan nation, and just at the point of seeming extinction he sends a deliverance, and they’re set free—you say it’s sinful for them to celebrate that every year in a church?!!!  What do you say?  You can celebrate it, but don’t get God involved in this.  Are you crazy?!  Where else should you celebrate it but in the church?  You’re giving specific direct glory to God for his redeeming acts in history.  And the same thing happened with Chanukah.  You say, Well, I don’t see Purim celebrated in the NT.  Well, not the same thing about Chanukah.  Here it is, Chanukah, between the testaments.  No revelation, no prophets.  Nothing.  Nothing going on except covenant people and a covenant God, and God giving them deliverance through the Maccabees.  And it says, “Now Maccabeus and his followers, the Lord leading them on, recovered the temple in the city.  They tore down the altars that had been built in the public square by the foreigners, and also destroyed the sacred precincts.  They purified the sanctuary and made another altar sacrifice.  Then striking fire out of flint they offered sacrifices after a lapse of two years, and they offered incense and lighted lamps, and set out the bread of the presence.  When they had done this they fell prostrate and implored the Lord that they might never again fall into such misfortune, but that if they should ever sin they might be disciplined by him with forbearance and not be handed over to blasphemous and barbarous nations.  It happened that on the same day on which the sanctuary had been profaned by the foreigners the purification of the sanctuary took place, that is, on the 25th day of the same month which was Hislev.  They celebrated it for eight days with rejoicing in the manner of the Festival of Booths, remembering not long before, during the Festival of Booths, they had been wandering in the mountains and caves like wild animals.”  Heb 11.  This is almost a quote.  “Therefore carrying ivy wreath, wands, and beautiful branches, and also fronds of palm, they offered hymns of thanksgiving to him (him?) who had given success to the purifying of his own holy place.”  Now listen.  “they decreed by public edict, ratified by vote, that the whole nation of the Jews should observe these days every year.”  Now, open up you Bibles to Joh 10: 22, and what do you read?  “When came the Feast of Dedication at Jerusalem, it was winter and Jesus was in the temple area walking in Solomon’s Colonnade.”  Not overturning the Chanukah celebration, but there in the center of things for it.  Now, I don’t think he spun a dreidel and said, Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, I made it out of clay, but neither did he disdain the recognition of God’s mighty acts of deliverance in history.  These are appointed days that came from man to commemorate magnificent deliverances on the part of God. 

#7:  The regulative principle of worship ignores…, its fatal flaw, perhaps, is that it ignores the synagogue which they admit was the model for the church, but they pretend this fact doesn’t exist—that the synagogue arose and was ordered by men completely apart from biblical revelation.   There is not a single commandment in the Bible concerning what the synagogue is supposed to be.  God’s orders to Israel when they came into the land concerned the temple and the tabernacle, the center of sacrifice.  In Lev 23:3 he says, Every Saturday, every Sabbath, you’re to have sacred assemblies wherever you live.  Now, that’s it.  If you are not (follow this please, because we’re close to the end here), if you are only allowed to do what God commands, and if all he has commanded is that you are to have sacred assemblies, then the only thing you could have done in synagogues was get together, because he didn’t command anything else.  You follow?  So you say, What are you doing here, Schlemy?  I’m here for the sacred assembly.  Yeah?  When’s it going to start?  It’s started!  It’s been going on for an hour.  Really?  Well, what do you do?  We don’t do nothing, but we assemble, you know.  A very sacred assembly here.  Assembly, I really love this.  I really love it.  Well, almost time to end it.  How do you know?!!!   You don’t know anything, because God didn’t tell them, I want you to have prayer, I want you to sing hymns or psalms, or whatever.  Remember, this went on before the psalms were written, so it’d be tough to be exclusive psalmodists at that period of history.  It would, wouldn’t it?  Where is the psalm book?  Not written yet.  Not here yet.  Got to wait a few hundred years, we’ll get it, don’t worry.  I’ve got to wait a few hundred years?  I don’t know if I’ll be around.  And I really want to worship.  Well, tough nuggies.  You can’t worship—no psalm book. 

No, the whole thing makes the Bible into a preposterous book, because you start with an abstracted principle, and then you separate it from the historical context.  Remember, we say, Praise God for what the RPW did in history.  You must always thank God for what it did.  It was useful, but at some point you have to say, Is that the last word?  Is that really the biblical testimony?  Is that all there is?  And the answer is, No, that’s not all there is.  Because when we examine it closely we find that it’s seriously flawed, for the seven reasons that I submitted to you, and particularly the synagogue, because we all recognize that the synagogue is the antecedent of the church’s organization, and the synagogue arose entirely out of the will of men who were seeking to honor Jehovah, and who gathered together to attain unto a consensus of a liturgy that was God-centered, and God-honoring.  And they achieved it to a magnificent degree.  If you read the liturgy of the synagogue, I tell you, you can be a regulativist, it doesn’t matter, if you are Reformed you will be quite comfortable with most of it.  It is spectacularly beautiful, and the words are effusive in their praise and love for God.  They don’t know the Lord properly, of course, they reject his Messiah, so we don’t say let’s adopt this.  My point is only that, today, it’s only that the regulative principle doesn’t account for these things.  And if it doesn’t account for them, and it cannot account for them, has never, does not now, and will never, because it’s not biblical, well then we ought to find another principle. 

Now, the beginning of that principle is a modification here by introducing a conditional.  And that is to say, What is not forbidden, might be permitted, or might be forbidden.  Now, what do we bring?  We’ll talk about that next week—what we bring to act as a further filter.  For today, let us just say that the strict limitations of the regulativists, they’re well intended, they’re God-honoring in history, and very helpful.  And I really need to add this personal note, and I hope to repeat it next week so there’s no misunderstanding.  If I have to choose in a town with several different churches, and I know that one follows the RPW, that’s where I’m going to worship.  But I’m going to worship there because the worship that they practice, the conclusion of it, happens to be biblical; they just got there on a wrong road.  In other words, it is biblical, but it may not be the only way that’s biblical.  But it’s safe, so I don’t disdain the worship, but the method of getting there is clearly not from the Bible.  They’re well-intended.  Applied to Scripture, if you applied these same strictures to Scripture, you would render the Scriptures virtually sterile. 

This is my conclusion, so just please try to follow this one second, and we’ll be praising the Lord and then dismissed.  The Scriptures abound with self-disclosures by God that are promiscuous in form.  God can’t find enough words to tell us about himself.  Okay?  God says things that if we were to say them about him, we would be embarrassed.  He talks about his nostrils.  He talks about his bowels.  He talks about his fingers.  He talks about his hair.  Does he have these things?  No.  Do we say, Well, it’s in the Bible?  Yes, it’s in the Bible, but it’s because everything that God created is employed by God to communicate God.  It’s said that he forgets, that he thinks, that he remembers, that he speaks, that he calls, that he commands, that he rebukes, that he answers, that he witnesses, that he rests, that he works, that he sees, that he hears, that he smells and tastes.  Scripture doesn’t give up.  It talks about out his scepter, his weapons, his bow, his arrows, his sword, his shield, his wagon, his banner, his book, his seal, his treasure, his inheritance.  And it goes even further.  It says God is a lion, he’s an eagle, he’s a lamb, he’s a hen, he’s the sun, he’s the morning star, he’s a light, he’s a torch, he’s a fire, he’s a fountain, the fountain of living waters.  He’s food, bread, water, drink, ointment.  He’s a rock and a hiding place, a tower, a refuge, a shadow, a shield, a way, a temple.  And many, many other things besides.  Now, why do I bring that up?  Because it’s the promiscuity of these words that God employs, it sets the pace for us.  It says, Look, are you looking for a clue in how to worship me?  Well, go out and find everything and anything and bring it into my service.  Okay?  That doesn’t mean that you have a blessing of the animals at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  My only point is that there’s a promiscuity of words that God employs, because the worship of God is also promiscuous in its employment of various means.  And this is what you find in the Bible. 

The greatest irony for the regulativist is that those who say it’s exclusive psalmody, etc., etc., the very principle that they use is taken from the temple worship system.  And then they say you may not use musical instruments, because they’re associated with the temple.  But if they’re going to be consistent, they would reject their principle, because their principle applied to the temple.  Is that unclear?  They got this principle, only what is commanded is permitted, from the temple system.  But then you say, Why can’t we use instruments?  They say, Because that belonged to the temple system.  You say, Wait a minute, now!  You got your principle from the temple system, it belonged to no other system, only the sacrificial system.  And now that the temple system has been elevated to heaven, you say that principle is still active, but the instruments are gone.  That’s right.  And how do you know that?  I just know it.  I know it because I say so.  And therefore I submit to you it is arbitrary.  And then the great irony occurs when they sing Psa 150 in their exclusively psalm-filled worship services.  “Praise Jehovah.  Praise God in the sanctuary.  Praise him in his mighty heavens.  Praise him for his acts of power.  Praise him for his surpassing greatness.  Praise him with the sounding of the trumpets (but not now).  Praise him with the harp and lyre (at least in your memory).  Praise him with tambourine and dancing (but don’t you dare bring that into church).  Praise him with the strings and flute (I don’t really mean it).  Praise him with the clash of cymbals (too noisy).  Praise him with resounding cymbals (even worse).  Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.  Praise the Lord.”  This is the promiscuity of worship that’s appropriate for our God.  To limit it, and to say only this in all circumstances, in all manner of living, in all cultures, in all times, only this, is the most obnoxious imposition of a cultural bias that you will find today in the Reformed and Presbyterian world, and completely counter to the universality and genius of the gospel.  You’re going to find God praised in a lot of different ways.  Not all of them will be faithful.  Not all of them will be profitable.  But there will be diversity of ways.  And D.V. we’ll speak about that next Lord’s Day.  Amen.