Amen. All right, we are starting a new chapter this morning. We're starting chapter 22, which is on page 44 of your booklets. And it has to do with religious worship and the Sabbath day. And, well, as we get into it, we'll feel more the rhythm of it, but I think we've made allusions in other sections as we've worked through the confession. What we're about to cover in this chapter is something that if you'd go back and talk to your grandparents or your great-grandparents or your great-great-grandparents, they would have just known this. But the Lord's Day Sabbath and the nature of Lord's Day assembled worship and what gets constituted in Lord's Day worship has changed radically in the Christian world. So even let's say in the relatively conservative evangelical world, This church and others like it being an exception, but I don't think our great-grandparents would even recognize an evangelical church service to a large degree in a lot of what is passing in North America. This is a timely chapter. Some of this was not a point of disagreement with Roman Catholicism. Some of it was. Roman Catholics and Protestants both agreed that Sunday, the first day of the week, is the new Lord's Day Sabbath. There was disagreement on what all gets included on Lord's Day worship, but we'll work that out as we get through it. But this is a timely chapter. As we try to recover classical Christianity, this is a good chapter. So, why don't we read through it and then we will break it in pieces as always. Chapter 22, section 1. The light of nature demonstrates that there is a God who has lordship and sovereignty over all. He is just and good and does good to everyone. Therefore, he should be feared, loved, praised, called on, trusted in, and served with all the heart and all the soul and all the strength. But the acceptable way to worship the true God is instituted by Him, and it is delimited by His own revealed will. Thus, he may not be worshiped according to human imagination or inventions or the suggestions of Satan, nor through any visible representations, nor in any other way that is not prescribed in the holy scriptures. So this, in short, is explaining what is sometimes called the regulative principle of worship. There's two basic approaches to worship, to constructing a Lord's Day worship service. What is being defended here is called the regulative principle, which is simply, as you saw here, it's simply this. God is the one being worshipped, therefore the only things we worship God with are the things he has told us he wants worship with. Okay, does that make sense? We're not free to add elements to a Lord's Day worship service that the Lord has not explicitly commanded us to include. That is in contrast to a different view which is called the normative view of worship. And in the normative view of worship, everything is permissible unless it is explicitly denied in scripture. Okay, so you see the two views. In the one view, everything is fair game, except if scripture explicitly forbids it, then you can't do it. In the regulative view, the only things that we should put in a worship service are those things which God has commanded. Can you see the difference between the two views? Okay, yep, Ron? that. Right, so that's kind of, okay, so you're kind of bringing this to like, Sola Scriptura versus Biblicism, right? Yeah, and so Biblicism, I think, the way I understand Biblicism, or the way I define it, other people use it in a more positive way, but the way I define and understand Biblicism is simply to just reduce the Bible to, unless there's chapter and verse for exactly this thing, I'm allowed to do anything, right? The Bible says nothing about internet pornography. Which is true. The Bible says absolutely nothing about internet pornography. The reductionist, the minimalist, biblicist approach would say, the Bible is silent on this issue. And the sola scriptura person, the biblical absolutist would say, no, the Bible says a ton about internet pornography in different words. Sexual immorality, lust, so forth, right? So in that view, the normative principle would be somewhat reductionistic. That way, right? Kind of minimalistic. Everything's permitted. If there's something explicitly sinful, that we can't include. They would say that, of course. But I think the regulative principle is much more robust. because the question here is, and this is what put Alistair Begg on my map at a Ligonier conference, was one time he was talking about a friend who had come to visit their church, Parkside Church in Ohio, and this person had said, yeah, no, the preaching was really good, it was biblical, the people were friendly, but I just, I didn't get anything out of the worship time, which to most minds, worship means music, but actually everything is worship. Hearing God's Word being read and preached is worship. Offering is worship. Prayer is worship. But the worship was kind of dry. And to which Elister Bake said, okay, well that's no problem, because we weren't actually here to worship you. So don't sweat that, okay? But the emotive approach to corporate worship, I don't think is helpful. Who are we here to worship? When we gather, who are we worshiping? Okay, so who gets to set the terms for what we do? God. And if we have no hint in scripture that God would be glorified with something in a corporate worship service, doesn't mean it's sinful, doesn't mean it's wrong, doesn't mean we can't do it Tuesday morning or Sunday night or Saturday afternoon. We're free to do lots of things. It just means it's not part of the corporate worship of God's people. Okay, and so, you know, an obvious example would be, well, it's gonna go into here, to artistic representations of things using icons and visible things in worship, which is common in some branches of Christianity. In evangelical circles, we've probably all seen this, there's a missionary report, so we're ditching the sermon today, right? We've got a missionary to report, so no sermon, or maybe like a seven minute sermon, so that the missionary has time to report. Would you get that idea in scripture? Or is that the invention of man's imagination? So missionary, so Matt, you hate missionary reports? No. They're great. Let's do them in Sunday school. Let's do them Sunday night. It's great, it just belongs in a certain place, okay? Dramas or skits, we've all seen that probably too, right? We're gonna have a skit or a drama team, okay? Is drama bad? No, it's good. And it just simply does not belong in a Sunday morning worship service. If there's a drama team coming, do it Sunday night. Do it Saturday afternoon. These are lawful things. We just don't have warrant from God to believe that they belong in the corporate worship of God's people. But let's get to this piece by piece here. So let's start here, up to footnote one. It says, the light of nature demonstrates that there is a God who has lordship and sovereignty over all. He is just and good and does good to everyone. Therefore, he should be feared, loved, praised, called on, trusted in, and served with all the heart and all the soul and all the strength. And in support of that, who wants to read Jeremiah 10, verse seven? Ray has got that, and then also Mark 12, 33. Who wants to read that? Mark 12, Tyson. Okay, go ahead Brie, Jeremiah 10 verse 7. Okay. Okay, so we're separating God as supreme here in this passage, okay? And this points us back, and this will become more evident as we work through this chapter. The Ten Commandments, the moral law of God, did not start with the Ten Commandments. The moral law of God is eternal. And because all people are made in the image of God, they know the Ten Commandments in their heart without it being on tablets of stone. Children know not to murder and lie. before anyone teaches them that, because they're made in the image of God. It's God's moral law. We sometimes suppress that truth, but we do actually know it, and that's going to become important as we work through some of this. What this is setting it up for here is that all people know Commandments 1 to 3 are true. which is why all people, including atheists, are very religious people. We can't help but worship. We're worshiping creatures, okay? And if you think, well, people, well, what, you know, non-Christians don't worship on Sunday. Well, yeah, have you ever seen Sunday Night Football? People worship on Sunday, okay? Have you ever seen someone at a rock concert? People worship. You cannot not worship. Everybody is a worshiping person. We all worship something because we all know that there is a true God and he will not have any other gods before him. We all clear our schedule for certain things that are important to us. Okay? Everybody practices Sabbath because we all make time for the things that are important. Okay? We do. It's just that simple. Everyone has time and money for what's important. Okay? So this is a witch, not a weather. We are worshiping people. We all worship our God. We all set aside time and tithes and offerings for the God that we actually believe in. And of course, as Christians, we want that to be the true and living God. Mark 1233. Tyson, you had that. Okay. Thank you. Okay, so again, worship is owed to God, and we know that we're to worship in spirit and in truth, okay, so with everything. So we worship God with our mind as we engage with scripture and as we think true thoughts about God. We worship with our heart as that knowledge of the Lord flames a fire of joy and of service to the Lord, okay, so head and heart need to be commanded, and then with our strength, body, the way we spend our time, the way we approach our work, the whole person is involved in the worship of God. The mind is involved, the heart is involved, the hands are involved. The whole man needs to be captured by Christ and then live accordingly. Okay, which means God again has lordship over us as we worship him, whether it's private worship during the week, or whether it's when he calls us together as a large body on the Lord's Day morning. So that's setting it up here. That's the very widest end of the funnel. Discussion on this before we keep moving. Can we see that because we're made in the image of God, is it obvious that all people worship? Okay? Everyone you know worships. Okay? Does that make sense? Does it also make sense that we all leave blocks of time aside for the most important things in our lives? And there's a line item in our budget for the most important things in our lives. Those are both true, okay? Again, because we're made in the image of God. So after note one here, But the acceptable way to worship the true God is instituted by him. And for that, let's go to Deuteronomy 12. Who wants to take that? Deuteronomy 12, 32. Howard. Okay, very good. We all know that verse, right? We don't add or subtract. None of us has the permission to be more biblical than the Bible. So we can't invent things. We can draw out the inferences from scripture, of course we have to obey scripture, and the good and necessary consequence of ideas that come from scripture, but we may not just invent things or create things from our imagination. There's a story I'm thinking of. like to know if you guys are thinking of this story too. There is a story in the Old Testament of an innovative worship service that ends poorly. Does anyone remember that? Yep, Aaron's son's offering strange fire. We all know that story, right? Nadab and Abihu, right? They're tired of their grandpa's old boring religious service. They're gonna spice things up. They're gonna have new fire drop and breathe some fresh life into the worship service of God's people. And it says that they offer strange fire. And it doesn't actually tell us specifically what that strange fire is. It doesn't. Maybe it's probably very literally a fire that they're using at the altar that they did in a way that's not consistent with God's purposes. And how does that story end? How does the story end? It's lights out for Nadab and Abihu. God takes his worship very seriously. But Matt, that's the God of the... We got God on his meds. God's cheerful in the New Testament, guys. He's happy, clappy. He just loves everything, because everything is awesome in the New Testament. Right? You can lie about your tithes and offerings to the apostles and God will just kind of... Oh no, that didn't actually work very good, did it? Okay. You can be Herod and say, look at this kingdom I built. Post-Jesus, post-cross, post-resurrection, what happens? He dies just as drastically as Lot's wife in the Old Testament. Same God. Same reverence for worship. Worshiping God is serious business, and it grieves me, and it should grieve you too, the laxity and the casualness with which people treat the worship of the living God. It's remarkable that these creatures from the dirt think that we can just march up to God on our terms and do whatever we want and God's okay with that. Where would we get that idea from? It's truly remarkable that we have such a lax attitude towards God's holiness. And there are solemn reminders. This is serious business. That doesn't mean it's joyless or it's dour. There can be heavy joy, but it needs to be joy directed in God's purposes, God's way. We are not free to invent worship. Don. Right. That's right, so Don's even mentioning, so Israel's priest goes up the mountain, or their prophet goes up the mountain to get words from the Lord, but the congregation down below is supposed to be preparing themselves because they're about to get a word from the Lord, right? It's serious business, not just for the priests and the prophets, it's serious business for the congregation. Because everyone is part of making this work, right? The assembled people of God, the church, all have a responsibility to make it work. And sometimes, because we're all sinners, this can get misdirected in multiple ways. In that case that Don is mentioning, the priest, the prophet, was taking his job very seriously. Moses took his job seriously, and it was the congregation that said, no, we're gonna dance around a golden calf instead. But it also happens, where the assembled people of God, and I'm trying to think of a biblical example, maybe you can help me think of one. I'm thinking more now contemporary. What I hear a lot of is the congregants are desperate for a word from God, and their shepherds refuse to give it to them. Yeah, I've had lots of those conversations where there's an appetite, and the congregation's not on a hunger strike. The ministers just are refusing to cook anything up in the kitchen, and it's just casual and lax and complacent. I've heard lots of people struggle with that. There's more appetite than there is, you know. The demand is higher than the supply, which would be the opposite problem of what we had at Sinai, but both can be a problem. And that's maybe a good, I'm gonna put it back here now. I'm not thinking off the top of my head of any stories like that in the Bible, but can we think of any like that? Where the people are more faithful than the leaders? Surely there are some, they're just not coming to me right now. Oh, yeah, why don't we go there? You wanna read it, Dawn, if you've got it? Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, and I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor of thirst for water, but a fury of birth Yeah. Boy, that almost makes a guy cry, doesn't it? People are desperate for a word from God, and the prophets refuse to give it. Yeah. Can you see even contemporarily how we have examples of both? Can we see we're prone to both sins? even in a contemporary setting. It's pretty quiet here. That's fine. Oh, Evangeline. Yeah. Right, so Evangeline is pointing out the dynamic where maybe the church isn't particularly cohesive and the minister is scared of kind of alienating a group of people or whatever. And so he'll dial it back just for the sake of not rocking the boat. Yeah, that's probably the most common way that this actually happens would be my guess. It's fear. Right. form of refusal. But yeah, I think that's a real thing that you want to keep the church together, which is a good instinct, right? And that is a genuinely good instinct. But there's a fear of man that comes in, and then you just kind of dial it back, right? But that becomes a self-perpetuating thing, because you're making the whole church shallower that way. which means your opportunities to say anything actually diminish. You keep making it shallower and shallower that way rather than trying to bring people up with you, right? Yeah, so that's a great example of how that might work. Anyone else? Ron? The fear of man is greater than the fear of God. In those cases. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and we have to be careful for that. And this church, and so again, if we're gonna make this practical and pastoral for this church, who is responsible to make sure that this church stays on mission? Whose job is that? Yeah, yeah. Rob and Don are right. Everyone in this room, it's your job to make this church healthy. Your elders can't do it for you, and the members can't do it without the support of the elders, but the whole church has the responsibility to create and maintain a healthy church. That is absolutely every member's responsibility. Yes. Yeah, I was talking to, I forget who, someone last week, Don's just saying preparation on Saturday is part of this for all of us, okay, not just for people who are teaching Sunday school, musicians, and the preacher to go over notes one last time Saturday night, that's important too, but it's on all of us to be ready on Saturday. I was, oh, it was actually with Dave Neufeld, who we're buying this place from, we were talking about This is already kind of two generations ahead of me, it's a low German saying, but our grandmothers, many of us in the Mennonite tradition, they would talk about like, zinnevent haule, right? Like, you're holding Saturday. Like, Saturday was a production. Saturday, all the clothes got ironed, the shoes got polished, the car got washed, the food got made. Like, Saturday in my grandma's house was, organized catastrophe, okay. She kept it going good but everything but and all of it is in service of Sunday. so that by Sunday, if there's visitors at church, they can be invited over. And everyone's ready, and it sometimes, to me as a kid, looked like mayhem on Saturday, but that was the custom of that time, because Saturday is a day to get ready for the Lord's Day worship. And I'm sure that sometimes got to unhealthy levels, but The principle of saying Saturday is a day that's dedicated to preparing for the Lord's day, that instinct, I think, is good. It's healthy. Howard, you had your hand up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so Howard's just bringing up the example of Jonah. God gave him a message. He didn't want to say it. And clearly, the Ninevites were receptive. Right? He was scared. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So Howard is just saying, if I'm understanding you correctly, you've had a few Jonah moments in your life where you had something to say, and maybe because of fear of man or fear of conflict, you didn't say it. And that's been worse than the times where you've said more than you maybe should have. It's worse inside of me. Right. Outside of me, no one has anything worse. It's always worse when you say something. Everybody knows me. I say too much sometimes. But of all the times I've said too much, I would be far more regretful when I haven't said what I was going to say. Right, yeah, that's a sober warning for all of us. There was another hand somewhere, Tim. Yeah, that's, is that King Hezekiah? No, it's not. Yeah, so Tim is mentioning the passage in Jeremiah where they uncover these old scrolls, right, the scriptures, and they start... right and they're they're reading it and he's so disregards the Word of God that he cuts it with his knife and he keeps or am I or you're telling a different story okay yes Right, yes. So there's an example of the people receptive and the king refusing to be righteous. Yep, the leader is refusing to be righteous. Okay, yes, I was confusing it with the paring knife where he keeps cutting it. It is that same story? Okay, but the king does it and the people are receptive, yes. I was conflating several in my... Okay. Okay, yeah, so there's a good example. The people are ready, the leaders are not. The people are well ahead of their leaders. Yep. Yep. More discussion on this. Pete. You know, when Christ was on the Ark of the Covenant, and he was going around and preaching the Gospels, and the people were very hungry for what Peter called a more pagan moral feeding. But the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the people that were supposed to teach were not doing their job. They were doing their own man-made work. Right, yeah, so Pete's just sharing, and this is an obvious one, of course, Jesus had a crowd. People were hungry, and their religious leaders were from Jesus. Which, for the record, that's not good. But yeah, that's an obvious example, right? The shepherds are pushing people away from the great shepherd. That's very twisted. Yeah, Rob. whole thing was put in place, kind of our second coming of Christ, our care for that. And that's kind of where we can tie this whole scenario into that. The whole teaching of the scripture is that we are prepared, we are, you know, pre-worked out for that. Yeah, so Rob is pointing out too, and I agree, and this, we'll zoom it back out again. The way God does things with symbols and with time is not random and arbitrary. Because really, every week is a mini creation story. Right? Every week, and even you reduce it to every day. Here's a weird question for you. Why do you sleep? Why did God make us to need sleep? If you actually stop and think about that, that's super bizarre. Why did God make us to sleep? Because every 24 hour period is a history of the cosmos. Okay, there's death and resurrection. daytime and nighttime are creation stories. They're cosmic stories, okay? God does stuff like that with time, and so a 24-hour day is a creation story, but so is a seven-day week, right? And we'll get more into that as we go on, but even the Sabbath going from the seventh day Kind of as a crowning jewel at the end of it to a first day Lord's Day means we're in a new creation The eighth day has become the first day, right? The the old covenant said work for your rest and the new covenant says rest so you may work. I Right? The old law says, you know, run John run, but gives me neither feet nor hands, right? And then we are in the new covenant and now God first, the first thing we do in the new covenant is gather for worship so that we have the power to go work. Because the gospel isn't work for your salvation, the gospel is work out your salvation. God works it in first, we work it out second. A first day Sabbath makes total sense on this side of the cross. They were being prepared in the old system, and now we have the reality in the new. We rest in Christ and then we go and work. And for that, so the customs, and again, this can slip into legalism, and this is what people were fearful of, I think, in our grandparents' generation. But there was a time, until very recently, when we still understood that the laws of a nation cannot convert people, but they must make it easy to be a Christian. And that's the laws of North America and of Western Europe were created to make it easy to be a Christian. Like, sword tip conversions? No, that's impossible. No one can be converted by a sword or by a state. But everything that the state does is to follow Romans 13 and to make it easy to be a Christian. Which means there used to be laws, like actual laws that were enforced with policing that said, you can't go shopping on Sunday. Because we knew better than to shop on Sunday, because people should be in church on Sunday. And the more circuses and distractions we have competing with that, the less obvious it seems that people should be in church and we're going to drop the morality of a nation by having Sunday shopping. Oh, you're a legalist, that's slippery slope. No, look what's happened. It's hard to be in church on Sunday because there's hockey games, and there's football games, and there's baseball practice, and there's soccer, and there's Costco, and there's a whole host of things that should be put somewhere else. The laws have gone from making it easy to be a Christian to making it hard to be a Christian, and that should not be the case. That's not about forced conversions by the state. It's just about the state making Christianity, prioritizing and preferring Christianity over false religions, as it must do, and making it easier and more credible and more obvious for us to follow God in our daily lives. And the laws that we still have, they serve the exact same function. Laws against theft cannot actually make anyone a Christian. But what they can do is have a sanctifying effect that says, here, we don't have a custom of taking stuff from other people. We're going to make it easier for you to honor God. Every law does that. Every law is a religious law, and every law is enforcing someone's morality somewhere. Is it God's morality or is it man's morality? So this is tied in with the role of the church and also the role of the state and the role of the individual believer all need to be pushing in the same direction. So we're living in an era of time. I think it was in 1985 that the Sabbath laws were struck down by the newly minted Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which people, Christians at that time were saying was the worst document to ever be enforced in Canadian history, and now for some reason Christians love it. They hated it in the 80s for good reason, I'd say, and there go our Sabbath laws, okay? But that's a novelty, and I know for you young people, that's all you've ever known is Sunday shopping. It wasn't that case. I'm not that old, and when I was a kid, even in Winnipeg, you couldn't go shopping. It just didn't exist, and it shouldn't exist, and by God's grace, it will again one day not exist. But we are where we are, and so we have to pick up the pieces and work where we are. But again, this is all in the service of the Lord, worshiping Him. There was another hand, Lisa. Yeah, so I think that's kind of what Lisa just said is kind of reinforcing what Rob just said. If we understand why we're doing this, That's what prevents the legalism. If the reason you wax your floors on Saturday is because your mom did, well, why do you do it, mom? Well, because grandma did. Well, why did you do it, grandma? I have no idea. Well, legalism sets in pretty quick that way. But if we don't know it, so we can be freed on the Lord's day to not work and to show hospitality and to have people over in our house. And that's not legalism. That's just thinking through how you're gonna manage your time, and that's that's not a bad thing Right, but the the lifeless legalism of course is a bad thing But thinking through our actions and then preparing and planning accordingly is a I'd say it's a good thing Okay, okay So is that the one in Colossians or is that the one in Romans 14? I think it's in Colossians. Yeah, one man keeps the Sabbath to the Lord. One man doesn't. Let each one be convinced in his own mind. That one? I think. Somebody find it. Maybe it is in Romans 14. Romans 14, five and six. Okay. Let's go there. There we go, okay. Romans 14, thanks Andrew. Romans 14, five and six. Each person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind, for the one who observes the day observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. Okay, I think two things here. There is another passage that I'm not thinking of right now that is like a pair to this one, that talks about Sabbaths in a plural sense. If someone can find that one, then let me know. But let's start here. The Jews had many Sabbaths. We think of the one day a week, the six in one Sabbath, but there was many Sabbaths, special holy days that were put throughout their calendar as well. So there was Sabbath days before the Sabbath, right? Jesus, historically, was killed at the preparation for the Sabbath, okay? And actually, that's not as easy to figure out as we might think it was, because that particular week in Passover, Wednesday and Thursday were also a Sabbath, okay? There were Sabbaths, okay? The one I'm thinking of has to do with new moons and festivals, Colossians 2 16. Okay, let's go there too. And then let's put these two together. Let's smoosh them together Colossians 2 16 There we go, thanks Tim Okay, therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food or drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Okay, so again, this undergirds that point that the Jews had many Sabbaths. some of which were the six-in-one Sabbath that's actually established in creation, but many of them are festivals that we no longer observe today. Christians don't observe Yom Kippur. We don't observe Rosh Hashanah. We don't observe the Feast of Weeks.