We'll be on page 157 in our confessions this morning. This is our fourth message now in our study through religious worship and the Sabbath day, which brings us to the appropriate locale of Christian worship, as Sam Waldron puts it here. The appropriate locale. In the Old Testament the appropriate locale of worship was primarily in the local synagogues and of course the temple in Jerusalem. The old covenant people. worshiped according to the ceremonial law, which bound their worship to certain traditions and even places of worship. And as we'll see today, according to the Confession, there's also a place of worship in the New Testament. And that's everywhere in the New Covenant. God is to be worshiped wherever we are, whether that's individually, or as a family, or as a church. The place doesn't matter. Instead, what matters is that we are worshiping in spirit and in truth. This paragraph might be called the where of Christian worship. Before we begin, though, I'd like to briefly remind us of where we've been so far, starting in paragraph one. As you might remember, paragraph one was what we called the regulative principle. This was our foundation. We saw that the general duty of worship is revealed by nature, and that the specific regulation of worship was revealed by scripture. The light of nature tells Jews and Gentiles alike to pray and to worship God as creator and Lord, And yet we can only find out how to properly do that by looking to the scriptures. The scriptures alone tell us who receives our worship, what worship is, how it should be done. where it's to be done, and when it's to be done, and even why it's to be done, to honor and glorify God as Lord and King and Savior. Then paragraph two was called the restricted presentation of worship. We saw that in regard to its worship, in regard to its object, we were to worship the triune God alone. The Trinity is the object of our worship, not the Father exclusively, apart from the Son and Spirit, and not the Son exclusively or the Holy Spirit exclusively, much less none of them at all. But we worship the Triune God. He is three persons and one Godhead, and so we worship God as one and yet three. We worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Trinity is the object of our worship, not angels or people or any other created thing. Just God as he's revealed in our Bibles. And we worship the triune God through the mediator, Jesus Christ. Sinners need a mediator in order to approach God, and Jesus is the one and only person fully God and fully man, who can bring the flesh and spirit together in the presence of God. He alone can bring us into communion with God, and he alone can bring our prayers to God in heaven. We must be in Christ. We must be born again, putting our hope and faith in him alone for our holiness and righteousness. And apart from his holiness and righteousness, we cannot see God or worship him appropriately. So we worship God as revealed in the Trinity, and we do it with Christ alone as our mediator. That's paragraph two. Then paragraphs three through five were what we studied last time. These were the constituent elements of Christian worship. Starting with its ordinary elements, we saw that prayer, reading and preaching of the word of God, singing psalms and hymns, and the Lord's Supper and baptism are all ordinary elements of worship. And we defined the phrase constituent elements as meaning individual elements together. Worship consists of these things as individual parts of worship, but they aren't done apart from one another. They're done together. Then there's worship's occasional elements, which consists of solemn humiliation with fasting and special occasions of thanksgiving. Worship occasionally consists of fasting and special occasions of thanksgiving. I didn't mention it last time, but this special occasion for thanksgiving might be used biblically to defend the celebration of the resurrection on Easter Sunday and even Christmas. Those are not given by God through the light of scripture. and specific times to worship, and yet they might be considered special occasions of thanksgiving. When Esther, as a special occasion of worship, fasted and prayed as she prepared to go to the king and ask for mercy to save the Jews, it actually resulted in the same kind of a special occasion for thanksgiving. Her fasting resulted in God's great blessing, which resulted in a new holiday for the Jews, right? The Jews still celebrate that biblical deliverance in the Feast of Purim. You might remember the right-hand man of King Xerxes was Haman, and after he rose to a very high level of influence, he convinced the king to put all of the Jews to death for not worshiping the king. This was just another genocidal ruler in world history who Satan tried to use to destroy the seed of David. But the seed of David wasn't destroyed thanks to God's deliverance of the Jewish people through the Jewish queen Esther. So the Jews made up this holiday and called it Purim. which is plural of the word meaning to cast lots in order to commemorate their deliverance after Haman cast lots to decide what day the Jews should be destroyed. The point being that the Jews created a holiday to celebrate a special occasion of God's deliverance that was extra biblical and yet it seems appropriate as an exception to the rule that we only worship God as a church on the Lord's Day. We don't worship outside of his will, we do only what he prescribed, but it is a special occasion for worship. So does this mean we can celebrate Christmas in the winter along with our unbelieving neighbors and the resurrection in the springtime as a special celebration of the death and resurrection of Christ? I personally think we can. I haven't always been so confident in that, but these are both events that happened once in all of redemptive history, and I think they're special occasions for worship among the saints of God. So when we're told that the regulative principle is the reason we shouldn't celebrate Christmas, that's a view I once held, this might be our argument. We celebrate it as a special occasion for Thanksgiving, something completely confessional as we reformed people like to be. Same with our American holiday of Thanksgiving. There's something quite Christian about Thanksgiving, especially in the context of a persecuted group of Christians who escaped their persecution, braved the seas, and survived their first winter in a new land, ultimately to be blessed with a bountiful fall harvest. We still celebrate that special occasion of Thanksgiving today. That's what they were doing on the first Thanksgiving. It was a special occasion for Thanksgiving, and it was done as worship to God. Okay, now we move to today's topic, which is the locale, or the location of our worship. The title of the paragraph is, It's Appropriate Locale. And we see it described first negatively, and then positively. Okay, paragraph six. Please follow along with me. This is found on page 157. Paragraph six. Neither prayer nor any other part of religious worship is now under the gospel tied unto or made more acceptable by any place in which it is performed, or towards which it is directed. But God is to be worshipped everywhere in spirit and in truth, as in private families daily, and in secret each one by himself, so more solemnly in the public assemblies, which are not carelessly nor willfully to be neglected or forsaken, when God by his word or providence calls thereunto. So that's paragraph six. Before we begin our study, I'd like to start by reading a quote from Waldron's commentary as our introduction. It's just a couple paragraphs, but I think it's worthy of our time. Sam Waldron writes, the phrase under the gospel reveals that there is an implied contrast with the situation under the law in this paragraph. Since this is so, we shall look first at the appropriate locale of worship under the law and then under the gospel. In the period of the Mosaic Covenant, worship was tied to a definite geographical location and physical structure. This connection of worship with a physical structure and geographical location was typical and ceremonial and thus was abolished in Christ. Worship must not be tied to nor sanctity be attributed to any particular locations or structures in the New Testament period. The historical rationale for this paragraph in our confession was Rome's attributing special sanctity to certain structures and places, i.e. cathedrals, Jerusalem, and Rome. The abolition of such geographical localization of the worship of God does not mean, however, that there is no appropriate locale for worship in the New Covenant. That locale is now not geographical, but spiritual. In a sense, there is an extension of the idea embodied in the temple and tabernacle. They were the place of worship because they were the place of God's special presence. There is still a place in which God is especially present, but according to the New Testament, the church is the new temple and its assemblies are the place of God's special presence. The assemblies of this new spiritual temple are to be prized by the people of God now just as much as the people of God in the Old Testament prized the worship at the physical temple. Both are the place of God's special presence. The public assemblies of the churches are not carelessly nor willfully to be neglected or forsaken. The principle that God's special presence is the place of worship also has its application, as the confession implies, to secret and family worship. This is the case because the believer himself is the temple of God, the place of God's special presence. So there is a difference between Old and New Covenant worship. The Old Covenant people worshiped God in the temple, The New Covenant people are the temple. So wherever we worship, it's an appropriate locale. Wherever the church is, it's an appropriate locale, whether that's one individual, a family, or a congregation. All right, with that introduction, let us pray as we begin. Oh Lord, we thank you once again that you've called us to this place, this special place of your of your presence as many temples gather together in one. We thank you, Lord, that we worship the same Savior, that we celebrate the same Lord's Supper and the same baptism, the same Holy Spirit that was gifted to us all. We thank you, O Lord, that we come in a common faith. We thank you, O Lord, that you've given us a common scripture, a common Bible, And we thank you, Lord, that you've set aside this time for us, each Lord's Day, to not only celebrate these things, but to study them, to join one another in fellowship, to learn from one another. And may our spiritual gifts edify one another today, all of us together as we worship together. We thank you for this time. We ask your blessing upon it in Christ's name. Amen. Okay, let's look at the paragraph again. First, negatively. What do we see about the locale of worship here, negatively? The paragraph begins with the words, neither nor. That's the negative statement. So none of the parts or elements of worship under the Gospel are tied to or made more acceptable by its locale or by its place. I won't spend a lot of time here, but the Confession is pointing us to a change in worship from the Old Testament era, and it's also pointing us to the errors of the Roman Catholic Church. First, the Old Testament. The Old Testament actually did emphasize its locale. Old Covenant people worshiped in synagogues, and the temple, and when they weren't there, they worshiped and prayed in the direction of the temple. Robert Shaw writes, under the gospel, all difference of places for religious worship is abolished. We are required to worship the Father now in spirit and in truth. So under the gospel, the regard for places of worship is abolished. In the Old Testament, there were places of worship. In the New Testament, there aren't. In the Old Testament, when a person wanted to worship God, he went to the synagogue or to the temple, especially for the yearly feasts as they were part of the worship and the ceremonial law. When it comes to the feasts, there was only one place they could make a sacrifice to God, and that was in the temple in Jerusalem. That's why there are no sacrifices in Judaism today, because there's no temple. God demands that the sacrifices of his old covenant people be made in his temple alone. King Solomon actually says this explicitly when he describes his reason for building the first temple. Listen to 2 Chronicles 2, starting in verse one. I'm going to read the first six verses, because I think this helps us to see the purpose of the temple, which is the reason for the Jews' regard for the temple and their worship. It says, then Solomon, determined to build a temple for the name of the Lord and a royal house for himself, Solomon selected 70,000 men to bear burdens, 80,000 to quarry stone in the mountains, and 3,600 to oversee them. Then Solomon sent to Hiram, king of Tyre, saying, as you have dealt with my father David and sent him cedars to build himself a house to dwell in, so deal with me. Behold, I am building a temple for the name of the Lord, my God, to dedicate it to him. Now for what purpose he's building. To burn before him sweet incense for the continual showbread, for the burnt offerings morning and evening, on the Sabbaths, on the new moons, and on the set feasts of the Lord our God. This is an ordinance forever to Israel. So Solomon knows that God can't be contained in the temple. That's not his purpose, though. Only ceremonial worship. is included in Solomon's words here. Ceremonial worship alone is the reason for the temple, not prayer or thanksgiving before a meal, just ceremonial old covenant worship. That's what the confession is contrasting when it says that no part of worship is tied to a special place. They're not implying here that prayer was ever tied to the temple. Instead, they're just saying, now neither prayer nor any other part of worship is tied to a place. There's no ceremonial worship anymore, and so there's no regard for a temple anymore. That's what this passage is revealing to us. Ceremonial worship was typological or typical of Christ, and so it was abolished with Christ's death, along with any regard for the temple. Christ fulfilled the ceremonial law, so if there's no more sacrifices, then there's no more need for a place for a sacrifice. I think that's why God allowed the temple to be destroyed just a few short years after the death of Christ. Makes sense, right? So the concept of worship being tied to a place is abolished. The Roman Catholic Church is another example of what New Covenant worship can be contrasted with. Robert Shaw, in his commentary on the Westminster Confession, says, Of course, he's quoting our proof text, which is 1 Timothy 2 and verse 8. Then he goes on to say regarding the Catholic Church, this condemns the practice of consecrating churches and ascribing holiness to them and also the superstitious opinion that religious services are more acceptable to God and beneficial to men in one place than another. So the confession is condemning, according to Shaw, the practice of consecrating churches and ascribing holiness to them. I grew up in a family where we called the local church the house of God or God's house. I'm quite sure no one meant anything by it, but it's definitely more of a human idea than a biblical one. Like Solomon says, no building can contain God. But at the same time, the Old Testament temple was special. It was a place God promised to meet his people in their ceremonial worship. It's the one place they could view all the types of shadows of the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ in all its blood and visibleness. It was a place where the gospel was actually seen and touched and smelled and tasted. That's what the ceremonial law was. That's what the temple was. It was a picture of God's people together celebrating the blood of their sacrifice in the presence of the Lord. The temple was definitely a special place. The Baptist Church in Center Sandwich, New Hampshire It wasn't like that though. It wasn't really God's house. It became a special place of God's presence, but only because it was a meeting place of God's people. It's a place where the people of God gather together to worship corporately, but what the Confession and Robert Shaw are both telling us here is that we shouldn't overemphasize the building. God's church can meet in a barn if that was the only place to meet. He wouldn't care. The place of God's worship is where the temple of the spiritual church just happens to be. Shah also points to what he calls the superstitious opinion that religious services are more acceptable to God and beneficial to men in one place than another. So we shouldn't consecrate a building or declare the building to be holy and we also shouldn't think that the building makes our worship more acceptable to God and beneficial to men. Buildings can't do either of those things. the color of the paint or the rug or the size of the pulpit or the height of the ceiling or the steeple have no impact on the acceptance of our worship to God or the benefit to us. After all, God is the object of our worship and we are the temple of God. We are the locale. Moving along, now let's see how the confession describes worship's appropriate locale positively. And notice how this locale has nothing to do with buildings or locations. It says, but God is to be worshipped everywhere in spirit and in truth, as in private families daily, and in secret each one by himself, so more solemnly in the public assemblies, which are not carelessly nor willfully to be neglected or forsaken when God by his word of providence calls thereunto." So negatively, location doesn't matter. Positively, God is to be worshipped first in spirit and in truth. in families alone and with the local church congregation. The church, meaning the people of God, are the temple and the church meets wherever they're together in spirit and in truth. We studied this concept of worshipping in spirit and truth already in our second paragraph. And what did we say that worshipping in spirit and truth actually means? Our proof text here is John 4 in verse 21. We read that this morning. I'm going to read from verse 19 to verse 24, though, again. This is the scene with the woman at the well, and Jesus tells her about new covenant worship here. We studied this from the angle of the object of our worship in paragraph 2. Now notice this passage from the angle of the location of our worship. The woman at the well says to Jesus, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our father is worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship. Jesus said to her, woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the father. You worship what you do not know. We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking such to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." Okay, so spirit and truth is our new covenant locale of worship. And it's contrasted with the old locale for worship. Worship will no longer be on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem. So worship isn't done in a physical place anymore. It's done in a spiritual place. And in a sense, when worship is done in spirit and truth, it's done by faith, and the location is actually where? in heaven. So in the most basic sense, worshiping in spirit just means that worship is no longer ceremonial, it's spiritual. We don't offer physical sacrifices, we offer a broken and contrite heart. We don't offer incense, we offer prayers. We offer ourselves, our hearts, our time, our money, our God-given gifts and talents, and yet we offer all of these things in Christ, in faith, in spiritual life, in and through the righteousness and holiness of Christ. That's what it means to worship in spirit. And of course, as I mentioned a couple weeks ago, we also offer our worship in the Holy Spirit. We worship in spirit by worshiping in full dependence on the Holy Spirit. So spiritual worship requires us to be born again. It requires us to believe by faith that we stand in the presence of God and the heavenlies. And it requires us to come in the spirit and through Jesus Christ. We also worship in the New Testament in truth. Truth can point to Christ as the truth. It can point to truth as opposed to hypocrisy or truth as opposed to error. I think in this context we could continue the contrast between the Samaritan religion and that of the Jews and say that Jesus was telling her that her religion actually wasn't true. Salvation isn't from worshipping the golden calves in Bethel and Dan. Salvation is found in the ceremonial law in Jerusalem, and not in the types and shadows there, but the substance of those types and shadows, which of course is the very prophet she was talking to. Christ is the source of truth and the source of salvation, and salvation is of the Jews, meaning that's where we find it. And yet, once we do find salvation, our worship isn't tied to any place anymore, is it? No, once we find salvation, God indwells us and we become the location. Malachi 1 and verse 11 says, for, from the rising of the sun, even to its going down, meaning throughout the entire globe, my name shall be great among the Gentiles. In every place, incense shall be offered to my name, and a pure offering, for my name shall be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts. So God will be worshipped everywhere, not just in Jerusalem. Paul says in 1 Timothy 2 and verse 8, I desire, therefore, that the men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting. Worship is appropriate everywhere that the saints are, because the saints are the temple of God. Okay, moving along. Next we see that worship should be done in private families daily. Again, negatively, location doesn't matter. And now positively, God is also to be worshipped in private families daily. Meaning worship is done in the home, right? The home is an appropriate location for the worship of God. One example of household or family worship would be Acts chapter 10 in verse 2. This is the passage about Peter and Cornelius the centurion. Starting in verse 1 it says, there was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian Regiment, a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, who gave alms generously to the people and prayed to God always. Okay, how is this an example of worship in the home? First, we see that all his household feared God. So what's this term, the fear of God, actually mean? We see it throughout the Bible. First, let's notice that this is in the context of whom. a devout man, a devout man. So it's godly fear, not fear of punishment or death or wrath. Not an untrusting fear, but godly fear. I like how John Gill defines this kind of godly fear in his commentary on Revelation 14 in verse 7. Here's John Gill on godly fear. He writes, godly fear has the goodness of God for its object. and springs from a sense of the love of God, and is a reverential affection for Him, and is attended with faith and spiritual joy, and includes, now listen to this, all worship of Him, both internally and external, acknowledging the power, goodness, and wisdom of God in all, and when they give thanks for all His mercies, temporal and spiritual, and especially for Jesus Christ. And when they exercise faith on him as their God in Christ and ascribe their salvation to him and to the lamb and not to the works of their hands. And when they attend his worship and the duties of religion, they glorify him with their bodies and spirits. So if John Gill is right, and I think he is, then the fear of God that Cornelius and his family had was simply saving faith, right? It was gospel grace and it was salvation. and no one can be born again without also worshiping God and loving him and serving both God and men, which is what we see Cornelius doing. He's a devout man, he feared God, he prayed always, and he gives alms generously to the people. He was a servant of God and men, and he was a doer of both tables of the moral law. Now, if Cornelius has the kind of heart religion, this kind of heart religion, then I think we can assume that what's implied is that he also takes his role to bring up his children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. No doubt about it. To understand the work of God means you undoubtedly pass it on. That's what's implied by the description of Cornelius as a devout man who fears God and serves the people. He's a man who worships God in spirit and truth, who prays to God always, which means he prays and worships with his believing family always, every day. Our next proof text is Matthew 6 in verse 11, where Jesus prays the Lord's Prayer for us. And he says to the Father, give us this day our daily bread. Worship is done wherever the family is. Jesus' family was his disciples, right? And he worshipped everywhere with them, and he worshipped every day. This is an example of family worship every day. And I listened to something I read from Robert Shaw. He just hits on so much good stuff here as he considers Jesus worshiping with his disciples. Here's Shaw again. He says, what an engaging example of family worship on record in scripture. Even the example of our Savior himself, who though he had no house of his own, yet he had a family. And now we find him retiring from the crowd that followed him. and praying with his own family. Luke 9 and verse 18 says, as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him. The practice of family worship tends to promote even the temporal prosperity of families. For it is the blessing of God that makes us rich and prosperous. And what more likely way to obtain that blessing than for a whole family to join in prayer and ask it daily of God. Now listen to this. Much more does family worship tend to promote the spiritual and eternal interests of families, while it is also the most effectual means to propagate religion from generation to generation. On the other hand, the neglect of this duty will bring the curse of God upon families, for the curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked, Proverbs 3 and verse 33 says. How awful is that text! Pour out thy fury upon the heathen that know thee not, and upon the families that call not upon thy name. Now let the head of every family then, says Shaw, adopt the excellent resolution of Joshua, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And that's Robert Shaw. So according to Proverbs 3, the family who worship is blessed with its daily bread when they worship as a family, and is blessed with spiritual and eternal blessings when they worship as a family. David, Psalm 55 and verse 17 says, evening and morning and at noon I will pray and cry aloud and he shall hear my voice." Just another example of how worship is done all day long in spirit and in truth and as a family no matter where we are or what time of day, we worship every day. So worship is something spiritual and it's something we do from a heart of godly fear as we love and serve both God and men, not in a temple but every day and everywhere we go, we are the temple. Okay, once more, negatively speaking, location doesn't matter, but positively, again, God is now to be worshiped in secret, in secret. And here's our proof text, which is Matthew 6 in verse 6, starting in verse 5, actually. Jesus says, and when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your father who is in the secret place, and your father who sees in secret will reward you openly. And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathens do, for they think they will be heard for their many words. So we pray in secret. and worship in secret. John Bunyan writes in his treatise called The Resurrection of the Dead and Eternal Judgment, he says, there is not now one act of faith in your soul, either upon Christ or against the devil and antichrist, but it shall be found out and praised, honored, and glorified in the face of heaven. There is not one groan to God in secret against your own lusts, and for more grace, light, spirit, sanctification, and strength to go through this world like a Christian, but it shall even at the coming of Christ be rewarded openly. There has not one tear dropped from your tender eye against your lusts, and the love of this world, or for more communion with Jesus Christ, but as it is now in the bottle of God, So then it shall bring forth such plenty of reward that it shall return upon you with abundance of increase. Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh. You tell of my wanderings, put my tears into your bottle. Are they not in your book? They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goes forth and weeps bearing precious seeds shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. I love bunion. Our secret worship is the most powerful indicator of our true hearts. If we lack this kind of secret worship, we should be questioning our faith altogether. Praying is like spiritual breathing. If we're not praying, if we're not breathing, we're dead. And yet our secret worship is a source of God's greatest promises of blessings, both now and in the life to come. Okay, continuing in our theme, we saw that negatively, again, location doesn't matter, positively, God is to be worshipped, now in corporate worship. Here's the last part of the paragraph. It says, so more solemnly in the public assemblies, which are not carelessly nor willfully to be neglected or forsaken, when God by his word or providence calls thereunto. Again, not in a specific place either. We're to gather together with other believers. That's definitely part of worship. But nowhere in the Bible are we commanded to worship in a particular building. It doesn't have to be painted white with a steeple and stained glass windows and with an organ. The place doesn't matter. But worshiping with the saints does matter. Our first proof text here is Hebrews 10 in verse 25. Starting in verse 24 is where I'll begin. It says, and let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assemblies of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the day approaching. For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and fiery indignation, which will devour the adversaries. Listen to Robert Shaw. Again, he writes in his commentary, Christians ought to assemble together as at stated seasons for public worship. Under the former dispensation, All the males of God's chosen people were enjoined to appear three times in the year before the Lord God. But all their worship of a public nature was not confined to the temple or to the celebration of the sacred feasts. They had synagogues erected throughout the land in which they assembled, at least on the Sabbath days, for the service of the Lord. Jesus Christ, while he was on earth, not only went up to Jerusalem at the celebration of the great feast, but also attended regularly to the service of the synagogue on the Sabbath days. He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day. That was Luke 4, verse 16. His example lays a strong obligation upon those who profess to be his followers to be regular and conscientious in their attendance upon the public worship of God. The primitive Christians did not satisfy themselves with worshiping God in secret and in their families, but whenever they had an opportunity, they assembled together for public worship. God is eminently honored by the social worship of his people, and he delights to honor the ordinances of his public worship by making them means of grace. Most commonly, it is by means of these ordinances that sinners are awakened and converted, and that saints are edified and comforted. Christians ought therefore to put a high value upon the public worship of God, diligently to improve their opportunities of going up to the house of the Lord, and to beware of forsaking the assembling of themselves together as the manner of some is." Okay, so God is honored and men are edified by public worship. I mentioned that last time about the elements of worship being means of grace. It's really true that as we put God at the forefront of our lives and as we set the world and our cares and worries aside for worship, God is glorified, and we're the beneficiaries. We benefit from worship. I don't remember who it was who said it, but I remember a Reformed pastor on Sermon Audio, I think it was Richard Barcello, saying once that, in the divine service, it is God who serves us, all of us. A little bit of a play on words there. In the divine service, it is God who serves us. God speaks to His people through the reading and preaching of the Word. It's our service to Him and yet He serves us. When we pray, we bring our needs and desires to Him and yet He is the one who's serving us. We sing praises to Him and yet it's us who are better for it. God isn't greater. for our praise and worship. He's infinitely glorious without our worship, but we are better for it. God serves us when we praise him. That's why worship is a means of grace. And we shouldn't neglect the public assembly of the saints for both reasons. We owe God our worship, that's first and foremost, and yet we need the benefits we receive from it. That's a real aspect of our worship. The word is spiritual food, and prayer is spiritual breath. We can't live without either of those things. Which is why those with spiritual life join with their ancestors in the faith in Acts 2 and verse 42, and they continue steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. Steadfastly, unwaveringly, week after week, without fail, they engage the means of grace. They gather with brothers and sisters, edifying one another just as iron sharpens iron. And that verse right there is one of the verses that churches use to determine what the worship service looks like. The Apostles' Doctrine, that's expository preaching and the reading of the word. Fellowship, that's our time together, including and surrounding the morning and afternoon services. The Breaking of Bread, that's the Lord's Supper. And prayers, obviously we pray. We pray before the service, and multiple times during the service, and then we pray before lunch, and then we pray together for our many needs and concerns and praises, and then we pray before communion, and then finally we pray to close our service. We pray and we sing, and we read and we preach, and we eat and we drink the body and blood of Christ together, and then we pray some more. We serve God as a family, and he serves us as a family. Such a beautiful thing. I think of people who claim that we're a bunch of superstitious weaklings who use religion as a crutch. We might be weak, we'd probably admit that, but not superstitious. What kind of superstitious person would fabricate this God that we worship, or this book that we study, or the concept of biblical prayer and worship? It's too complex, it's too perfect, and it's too all-encompassing. and it's too consistent to be anything but an invention of our sovereign God. Worship's complex consistency itself is reason enough to worship its author. And we don't worship in a place, we are the place. Wherever two or three gather, Wherever one saint bows his or her head before the Lord, Christ is there to fill his temple with his special presence, to meet his people and to dwell with them. That's what we have to look forward to when this world is done. Worship in the presence of God forever, face to face, and we'll enjoy that endless joy together as a church. All right, with that, let's pray. Dear Father, we thank you for this wonderful paragraph. We thank you, Lord, more importantly for the doctrine that you authored that stands behind it. Lord, we know that this confession is nothing more than men's attempts to put into writing the doctrines that are found in the Bible alone. So we pray that everything that is scriptural that was said today would be bound to our hearts forever, and everything that was not would be lost immediately by your Spirit's providence. Lord, we thank you for your Spirit's aid in preparing and preserving this document, both the Confession and also our wonderful Bibles. We thank you, Lord, that it is written by the hand of God. We thank you, O Lord, that it stood the test of time. And we thank you, Lord, that we find worship the proper worship and the proper locale for worship clearly written in the pages of scripture. So we just thank you, Lord, for all the ways that you provide for us, and we ask your blessing upon the rest of our day. In Christ's name, amen.