 In this session, we want to look at the propriety of worship. As we said, God deserves to be worshiped because He is our God, and He not only deserves our worship, but He demands it. I'm sorry, I started before I was ready. After we end on three, I am willing to stay and do a Q&A with you if you want that. But what I do ask is that you write your questions down and submit them, because usually if you give somebody the mic, their question becomes a ten-minute editorial, and then the question at the end is, would you agree with that? So, if you want, I mean, we can have a Q&A. You can have a Q, I can't promise an A, but I'll try, or I'll make something up. After that, after the last session, we'll go right into it after the last session, because I have a funny feeling there are some things that you may not have heard or didn't understand, or that you did understand, and then I confused you. So anyway, we'll do what we can to clear that up. All right, again, God deserves to be worshiped because He is our God, and He not only deserves our worship, but He demands it. It is the ultimate priority, the most noble thing that you and I are capable of ever doing. Worship is unacceptable when there's known sin, and great preparation must go into so important an act. Now, we sing this hymn, O worship the King all glorious above, and gratefully sing His power and His love, our shield and defender, the ancient of days, pavilioned in splendor and girded with praise. But really, how much of our worship is suitable to a King who is all glorious above, or is worthy of one who is pavilioned in splendor and girded with praise? Now remember, the essence of worship is to give unto the Lord the glory that is due unto His name, and anything less than that is irreverence, bad manners, and an insult to the deity. We call 1 Corinthians 13 the love chapter, and that chapter tells us that love has good manners. So if we say that we love God, won't we behave towards Him with good manners? But the nature of much of what passes for worship these days is such that we behave in the presence of God in the public worship, in His own house, in a way that would be an embarrassment to us if we were to act that way in front of other people. We treat God so often in ways we'd never treat anyone we really liked or respected. We come into God's house, and we talk about ourselves to each other. You invited me over for dinner, and I showed up, and I immediately started the conversation. Me, me, me, my, I, I, I, I, I did I, me, me, me, me, oh, I, you think, what a jerk. Well we do that to God every Sunday. We come late. We come unprepared. Who else would we treat in so slovenly a manner? William Beverage, to sanctify the Lord, is nothing else but to express our acknowledgement of his sanctity or holiness, that is, of his supreme excellence, power, and super-implant over us in all the world. But how can we possibly do this if we behave ourselves in his presence as if he were our fellow creature? Is this to worship him? Is this to celebrate his praise and glory? Is this to sanctify him when we draw near to him? How can that man be said to sanctify the Lord of hosts in praying to him who dares at the same time to sit as confidently before him and talk as impudently or boldly to him as if he was but his fellow worm? One of my favorite verses in the Old Testament, I think it's Psalm 59 verse 2, God says to the wicked, you thought I was just like you. God's not like us, but we treat him as if he were. Beverage continues, If ever you desire to manifest yourselves to be holy indeed, whenever you converse with the Most High God in his sacred ordinances, you must be sure to behave yourself with that shame-facedness and modesty, with that reverence and humility as becomes those who believe themselves to be in the special presence of the Supreme Being of the Lord. For otherwise, whatever pretenses you make to holiness, you may be confident that you are not holy as you have been commanded to be in all your manner of conversation. For you are not holy in your conversation towards God, and if you're not holy in that, be sure you're holy in nothing." So I ask the question, what is there about your worship that is worthy of one who is all glorious above, pavilioned in splendor, and girded with praise? I mentioned how Jonathan Edwards asked his congregation this, and it's actually at the end of his sermon centers in the hands of an angry God. And you think of any good reason why God has not opened the doors of hell and dropped you in simply for your slothful way of worshiping him this morning. So God demands that we treat him with respect. I quoted to you from Malachi 1, Where is my honor? Where is my respect? And sometimes we sing a hymn like, Give of your best to the master. But then we show that we lie, even in our hymn singing, when we do not give our best to the master. Like those in Malachi, we give God our disease, sacrifices, and our leftovers. Malachi 1.14, God says, I am a great king, and my name is reverenced among the nations. Why isn't reverenced in his own church? For Leviticus 10, By those who come near me, I will be treated as holy. You're probably familiar with that passage because of R. C. Sproul's classic series on the holiness of God. And in that passage, in that narrative, Nadab and Abaihu, who were sons of Aaron the priest, or as we call them today, PKs, preacher's kids, we're offering what the Bible calls strange fire in the temple, and God killed them for it. And what was God's reason for killing these two sons of a priest? It was because they were not treating God as holy in his house and in his worship. And we're likely to say, you mean that was all? Not to God, that's not all. That's a big deal to God. That was a key passage for the Puritans on what was called the Regulative Principle of Worship. There are basically two schools of thought regarding worship. One is called the Normative Principle, and it says, in essence, if God doesn't specifically forbid it, it must be okay. The other side of that is called the Regulative Principle. And it says, in essence, if God doesn't specifically command it, we're not going to do it. We're not going to assume or presume that it's okay unless we have a warrant from Scripture to do it. And the Puritans believe that when it came to spiritual matters, we need to have something from the Word of God. And so they followed the Regulative Principle. And when they looked at this passage, they saw God did not kill these two young men for doing something he had forbidden them to do. Rather, he killed them for doing something he had not commanded them to do. It was the presumption they showed in offering strange fire on the altar that he had not commanded them to do that cost them their lives. When I became a pastor, I did this terrible thing. I went over the order of worship, and I said, why are we doing this? What do you mean, why are we doing it? Well, we do this, we're in the Bible as to say we ought to do that. But what have I got to do with anything? For example, I said that because the Bible teaches that faith comes by hearing, the children ought to be in the worship service. And they ought to be taught to sit quietly, not just sit there and raise all kinds of curer. But the Bible says faith comes by hearing, and there's no age limit on that. And one of the elders objected strenuously that, why should they have to stay? They don't understand what you're talking about. And I said, neither do most of the adults, but they have to stay. And besides, we have two examples in the Bible, one Old Testament, one New Testament, of unborns who were converted. Is it what they understand up to God, not up to us? There's a young man here in Orlando at a Reformed Presbyterian church, one of the acapella psalm singing churches. I've known the kids since he was a rug rat. He and my daughter were close friends when they were both little toddlers. And his mother, Patty, did the most amazing thing. From the moment she had six children, from the moment she knew she had conceived, she began reading the Bible to her unborn child. She would take a half an hour a day, get in the rocking chair, rub her stomach, and read the Bible to them. What a waste of time. These kids don't understand the things she was saying, except for the fact that every single one of those six children made a credible profession of faith to the elders before the age of six. Probably a coincidence. Tongue firmly planted in cheek. Why do we do what we do in worship? Is it because God has told us? Doesn't he get to determine what we do in worship? I find it very interesting in Hebrews seven and eight. Early in Hebrews eight it refers to Jesus as a minister of the sanctuary in the heavens. So that's a very interesting use of that phrase because it's the only place it appears where it refers to Jesus. And the Greek word there is the word for worship leader. It's the Greek word liturgos from which we get liturgy. Basically in heaven, Christ is the worship leader. And all the worship in heaven will be corporate worship. And it will be based on how worthy Christ thinks God is. You think that'll kick it up a notch? To do anything else, the Puritans call this kind of thing will worship. Since the worshipper worshiped as he willed, not as God dictated. In Jeremiah 19, God says, you shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary. So he not only commands Lord's day observance, but in the same breath he calls for proper respect for the place of worship. In First Kings nine he says, I have consecrated this house by putting my name there forever. And my eyes and my heart will be there always. What house is he speaking of? The house of the Lord. How long is his name there forever? How long will his heart be there always? So are we still within the parameters of always and forever? And it's still going on. Genesis 28, 16, how awesome is this place? This is none other than the house of God, and it is the gate of heaven. That's my favorite phrase for the church, it's the gate of heaven. The late Harold Camping was among some who taught that there's no longer any such thing as the house of God. They contend that now that God dwells in human hearts, which is what it says in Acts 17, 24, not in buildings made with human hands. And they quote that verse from Acts as their biblical proof. However, Paul spends two entire chapters in 1st Timothy instructing Christians how they ought to conduct themselves, quote, in the house of God. There are numerous New Testament references to the place where God's people meet as a corporate body as his house. And so what are some ways that we misbehave in God's house? That we show him bad manners. First of all, it's just tardiness. Being late for church. I don't know, have you noticed that the planes don't wait? If you're not in your seat, they're gone. Have you noticed that CBS doesn't call and say, are you guys home yet? We don't want to start the show without you. One of my favorite stories to tell about tardiness is from the late great Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi. You young kids don't know who he is, you should. When he took over the Green Bay Packers, they were the worst team in football. And they were a slovenly bunch that had something to do with it. He came in as the offensive coordinator for the New York Giants and took over and called a team meeting for Tuesday morning at 10 o'clock. Most of the guys were in their seats at 5 to 10. Paul Horning and Max McGee walked in and sat down. He said, you're both $500 for being late for a team meeting. What? It's 5 to 10. We're five minutes early. The gentleman, you are now on Lombardi time. If you're five minutes early, you're already 10 minutes late. Any of you men who've served in the military know that. And yet we think God has to put up with stuff like this. We say, it's only God who cares? Charles Buck wrote this. We cannot help but take notice of the shameful and exceedingly improper practice of coming in late to public worship. It manifests a state of lukewarmness. It is a breach of order and decency. It is a disturbance to both ministers and people. It is a sliding of the ordinances that God has appointed for our good, and it is an affront to God himself. How can such be in a devotional frame themselves when they so often spoil the devotions of others, end quote? By the way, he wrote that in 1830. Here we are 200 years later, and it's worse. Now with regard to being late, there is nothing sacred about the 11 o'clock hour or the 10 o'clock hour or the 1030 hour. It doesn't say, it does say that the first day of the week is to be the Lord's day, but the Bible is silent on the time of worship. Basically, that time was set to accommodate the dairy farmers who had to milk the cows and do their chores before they could leave for church. So it doesn't matter if you have, where I pastored, the church did not have AC, and it was hot and humid up in central Pennsylvania. So I decided, let's do this. Let's have the worship service at 930 during the summer and Sunday school downstairs afterwards, where it's a little cool, we have fan. You thought I denied the trinity. You thought I said there's no resurrection from the dead. I dared to fool with the time of what has nothing to do with the Bible. That's preference. There's nothing wrong with 11 o'clock or 930. But there's an issue that needs to be dealt with. If the leadership of the church has set the time of worship at a certain hour, where there's 9 o'clock or 1030, 11, they are speaking authoritatively as ruling elders. So you church members have an obligation to be obedient and to start, be ready to start when the service does begin. It's no small matter to be late for church. The Bible's very clear that we're to submit to the elders. Now I was a parent myself, and I realized there are always going to be times when things happen we can't control. But I'm speaking to patterns that some people exhibit in a casual cavalier attitude towards being timely. One of my elders came in late for church one day and afterwards he came up and says, don't even say it. What happened? He says, I got a ticket for speeding. Why? Because of your idea that we ought to be here on time. And I said, my idea? How does it become my idea? I said, tell me what happened. Well, I woke up late and I slept through the alarm. What time did you go to bed last night? Well, I actually went to bed at 3 this morning. What were you doing rebuilding an engine in the garage on Saturday night before church? Yeah. And so what time did you wake up? 9.30. Our service started at 10.30. And so I still had chores to do, and so I was speeding to get here, and I got pulled over by a cop. And you're going to blame me for that? And then I went through all the things he could have done differently and not have gotten a ticket. But it was my idea. I was at fault for his being late for church. So tardiness is one way we do bad manners. Another one is the issue of silence. In so many churches I've attended, the noise level in the sanctuary just before the service is deafening because people are having distracting conversations before worship. And sometimes the music director will have to come out and ring bells to get people to quiet down so the service can get started. And they act like, sure got a lot of nerve interfering with my conversation, I'm just trying to have fellowship. Simply put, God expects good manners from those who say they love Him. Is that too much to ask or expect? It's a great sentence like God in His worship. Isaiah 29.13, these people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Lip worship is no worship at all. It's heart worship that counts. Now does that mean we ought not to honor God with our lips? Of course not. But we can never have one without the other if we would worship God rightly. One writer asked this question, how empty would our churches be if there were no more bodies present than minds and hearts? Simply having a living, breathing body in a pew is not worship, not by God's definition. There might be 50, 60, 100, 400 in attendance, maybe only two or three, they're actually worship. Jeremiah 7.29, they have done evil in my sight. They have defiled my Sabbaths. There's nothing wicked here, as we normally define wicked. All that people did was to defile the Sabbath, but God calls that doing evil in His sight. In Mark 11, He began to teach them saying, my house is a house of prayer. And even in this New Testament passage, Jesus refers to the tabernacle as His house. And He was referring to a specific place. The place designated to worship God even in the New Testament is considered to be the house of God. When Jesus drove out the money changers, He said, you make my father's house, a house of merchandise. So they use the house of God for any purpose other than the worship. And this means when it should be used for that purpose, not for having a church dinner Saturday or something, that's to misuse it. The house of prayer and worship. Now, the people of Jesus' time had no market on making the house of God a house of merchandise. We have so cheap and then denigrated holy things. I have here a full page ad from USA Today, November 10, 1787. This would really be a collector's item, wouldn't it? 1987, advertising Bible Belt. Kristen Sheik in 1987 is an elegant black skin eel belt with a matching detachable pouch and inside room for the essentials. Identification and credit cards, cash, and the Bible Belt's own guilt-edged King James version of the New Testament psalms. A glorious gesture of goodness and caring, the Bible Belt is the perfect His and Hers gift. Give that to your loved one and see how excited they get. Or a Christmas present to someone you love, including yourself. The flair of high fashion, the natural elegance of genuine eel, the look of layered gold, all this plus 2,000 years of wisdom for only $74.95. Boy, what a bargain that is. Let's see here. Eel skin is truly one of nature's miracles, often called the leather of the sea. Eel skin is strong enough to withstand a heavy pressure of deep water. Put the word by your side. The Bible Belt can be worn everywhere by everyone. You can dress for work or worship, pleasure or prayer, and know that you've kept sight of your Christian values. It's the fashion statement that makes you look good and feel good. A gift 2,000 years in the making. With each Bible Belt you purchase at 74.95. And that was 31 years ago. Who knows? I don't know if they're still in business or not. I hope not. You will receive absolutely free, a pocket-sized traditional King James Version of the New Testament in Psalms, beautifully bound and guilt-edged to use with or without the pouch. With the Bible Belt by your side, you'll have your hands free and your mind at ease. You'll feel lost without it. To me, that's just tacky. But my point was that to use the house of God for anything other than its intended use is to misuse it. This is to be a place for prayer and worship suitable to God's innate dignity. But what about Christian concerts? In my opinion, yes. If they are biblically and theologically sound and if God's honor is upheld, but not in place of worship. What about other activities? Yes, if they don't take the place of God's worship then they are consistent with God's truth and honor. When I pastor this church, I worked hard to getting the people to come together. There were riffs and rafts and, not riff-rath, but riffs and claps between some of the people. So I tried to think of things to do that will put them in a social setting. So if someone suggested instead of our regular Sunday evening service, we have a church dinner, a hot dog feed. That was an easy sell with me, I like hot dogs. I can't eat 74 of them in 10 minutes like that one guy did. Skinny guy, 74 hot dogs in 10 minutes. I'm getting nauseated just thinking about it. But we had a family in the church that was fairly wealthy and they had a pool and a changing house and a nice big barbecue. So we went out there and we had a good time of fellowship and some good hot dogs. And Monday morning I got a call from Dr. Gersner. The message was short and appointed and pointed. Really, Don? You gave up an opportunity to teach God's word to eat hot dogs? He wasn't saying that there was something wrong with a church dinner or a social function. What was wrong was having it in the place of, William Beverage said, "'Whenever you go into the house of the Lord, "'you must lay aside all other business "'and apply yourselves wholly, W-H-O-L-L-Y, "'to the duty of that holy place.'" Now the title of this particular session is the Propriety of Worship. So here's the question. How ought we to conduct ourselves in public worship? First, with reverential silence. Ecclesiastes 5.1, draw near to listen and let your words be few. The primary purpose of coming to Sunday morning church is not to fellowship or see everybody. It's to worship God. Draw near to listen, let your words be few. Or Habakkuk 2.20, the Lord is in his holy temple at all the earth, what? Keep quiet. And Acts 21.40, it says Paul would not preach until the people were silent. Why? Because he had too much respect for God's word to quote cast pearls before swine. So with reverential silence. Next, with reverential posture. In Nehemiah 8, when he read the word of God, the people stood in Judges 3. He said, I have a message from God and he rose from his seat. Three, with reverential responses. Psalm 95.6, let us worship and bow down. Exodus 4, the people bow down. Matthew 2, the wise men fell down in worship. Nehemiah 9, heavenly hosts bow down before thee. So does that mean that we need to get down our hands and knees and do this or it doesn't count? No. But that can be the attitude of our heart. Would there be anything wrong with that? Absolutely not. But it's not mandated. What is mandated is that in every way possible we show that we are inferior and he is superior. The Puritans taught that since God died to redeem both body and soul, he has a right to expect worship from us in both body and soul. And in various passages of scripture, almost every part of the body is used is a description of body worship. The eyes, the ears, the hands, the lips, the feet, the knees, on and on and on. All the words ever used to express our worshiping God in the Old Testament signify our outward deportment to him. And the three words the Holy Ghost uses, one signifies bending of our knees, two, bowing of our head, and three, prostrating ourselves on the ground with our hands spread out before him. That'd be a little tough to do anymore. There's not enough room between me and the pew in front of me for that to happen. In the second commandment, God expressly it forbids us from bowing or falling down before any image or idol, which he certainly never would have done if that hadn't been an essential part of his own worship. Number four, here's where I lose most, with reverential clothing. 1 Peter 5, clothe yourselves with humility. Now I understand he's not talking about actual pieces of clothing. But in 1 Timothy 2, Paul does, let the women adorn themselves in modest apparel with propriety and moderation with that which is proper for women professing godliness. By saying that, he's obviously saying there's something that's improper. Sundresses may be fine for a hot summer day when you're going to the beach or out to tears, but it's not proper for church necessarily. Now, I'm not suggesting there needs to be a fashion police. Uh-oh, showing too much skin, go on home. No. There was a Baptist church in New Jersey that used to have their overweight people away every Sunday morning. I'm not sure you could get away with that. I'm not sure I'd go there either. I walk in and they say, what's up? I say, my weight, my cholesterol, my, but the focus in worship is to be on God. Now, how good I look? That doesn't mean everybody ought to show up looking like a 1940s missionary. That's not what I'm saying. But ladies, you don't want to be a distraction to your Christian brothers and sisters. There is a professional basketball player named Steph Curry. Great, great basketball player, profess this Christ as does his wife. She's a very attractive, curvaceous woman and some of the other basketball wives said, honey, you got it, why don't you flaunt it? She says, no, no. Those are things only my husband gets to see. Now that's modesty. That's godliness. According to the apostle Peter, there's a peril that's modest, proper, and befitting godliness. The rule of thumb should always be, give of your best to the master. Give God your best, not leftovers. Now your best may not be the same as my best, but let it be your best. You may be better dressed up for church in a pair of jeans and a decent shirt than I am with a coat and a tie on. Cause this isn't my best, but that may be your best. And that's the ultimate issue. Are you giving God your best? Let it be worthy of God. We should come with referential hearts with hearts that are not far from him. We should come with referential attitudes towards holy things. I read in USA Today of a church in Brooklyn that did baptisms with fire hoses. There was a church in North Carolina that had a water slide into the baptismal. They said they could get more baptisms done that way on a given Sunday. You couldn't do that in a Presbyterian church because you couldn't slide those kids down into that little tank. And we should come with reverence and joy. Worship the Lord with reverence and rejoice with trembling. Thomas Adams said, it is God's house you enter. The house where the Lord is present. The place where his honor dwells. Let this teach us to come with reverence, with joy. He says we are not merry enough because we are not Christians enough. Like I said, no charismatic should ever be more celebratory than a person who knows God rightly. We should come with holiness. And in the final analysis, again, why should we worship God? Because as Revelation 19 tells us, on his robe and on his thigh, he has a name written, king of kings and Lord of lords. Why should we treat him this way solely because he is our God and our eternal king?