Exodus chapter 20, and we'll read verses 1-6. And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which hath brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them. For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments." Thus ends the reading of God's holy Now, we have been looking at the moral law, the Ten Commandments, for a number of weeks. This week we come to the seventh lecture in this series, and we've already covered the duty of man, as we've looked at Micah 6-8. We've considered the great commandment found in Matthew 22, 37 and following, that great commandment, and then the second that's like unto it, that really are a summary of the Ten Commandments. And then for a number of weeks, we've been looking at Exodus chapter 20. We looked at the preface in verse 1 for a week, and then we looked at the object of worship found in the first commandment for two weeks. And then last Lord's Day morning, we looked at the beginning of the second commandment, the manner of worship as it's found in the second commandment in verses 4 through 6. Now, last Lord's Day, I mentioned that not only does the Second Commandment explicitly teach that we're not to make images nor to worship them, we're not to bow down to them nor serve them, but we also said that it implies that we're not only to not make or worship God in those ways, but we're not to worship God in ways of our own making, because images are of our own making, and that's one form of worship that God is not pleased with. I think as we consider worship, we need to consider what is acceptable worship. What is God pleased with? What does He accept and is pleased with? And I think if we think about that, I think we have to think about Isaiah verse 12 of chapter 1. There we read these words, When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your end? God asks us a question. As you come before Me to worship Me, who's required what you've brought? Now if that's a question that God asks His people, isn't that a question we ought to ask ourselves? To make sure we have the right answer when God asks us, what are you bringing before Me? So we need to ask, what is appropriate or what is approved in corporate worship? And I would say that there are three things, three types, or parts or elements of worship that we could include in worship. Notice I said could, not should, but could. Some people include in corporate worship things that God has explicitly forbidden. They can be placed in worship. They shouldn't be, but they are. There are other elements of worship that are those things that God has commanded, either explicitly or through approved examples or by good and necessary consequence or by logical deduction. We realize those things should be, and we should have those in worship. Nobody debates that. Really, nobody debates the fact that the things that are forbidden we shouldn't have in corporate worship. The great debate is amongst this third category, and that is things that are neither commanded nor forbidden. The Scripture doesn't give everything that It doesn't forbid everything that could be done in corporate worship is the point. So there are things that could be done in corporate worship that are not forbidden and yet they are not commanded. They fall in this middle category and this is the category we need to talk about today. The thesis of the regulative principle which we'll look at is that only that first category, those things that are commanded, they and they alone are to be elements or parts of corporate worship. I want us to look at this principle of what's called the regulative principle. I want to look at it stated, illustrated, and applied. And I want to see that this principle is imperative if we want to be able to answer this question What or who has required this at your hand? Who told you to do this? And we have to be able to say, God, you've told me to do this. Everything that we do in corporate worship, we ought to be able to say, God has directed us. And out of love for Him, we're worshipping Him the way He has directed us to, as He has prescribed us to. Let's consider the regulative principle stated, and I want to do that by turning to Mark chapter 7. Mark 7, let us read verses 1 through 13, then we'll draw some principles from this text. Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes which came from Jerusalem. And when they saw some of his disciples, they bred with the filed, that is to say, with unwashing hands they found fault. For the Pharisees and all the Jews except they wash their hands off, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders. And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be which they have received to hold as the washing of cups and pots, brazen vessels, and of tables. Then the Pharisees and the scribes asked Him, Why walk not Thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders? But he bred with unwashing hands. He answered and said unto them, Well hath Isaiah prophesied of you, hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God, behold the tradition of men. as the washing of pots and cups, and many other such like things ye do. He said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. For Moses said, Honor thy father and thy mother, and whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corbin, that is to say, a gift, By whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me, he shall be free. And ye suffer him no more to do aught for his father or his mother, making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered. And many such like things do ye." Thus ends the reading of that passage. But I want us to see a few principles, a few observations that we need to make concerning this text. The first is we learn in this text something about the nature of worship. Look in verse 6b. This people honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Particular corporate worship involves honoring God with one's lips. Now here, In verse 6b, it's speaking of someone that worships in vain. It doesn't say they're not worshipping, but it says their worship is of no value. It's no good. It's not true worship as Jesus describes it in John 4. You see, you can participate in worship by honouring God with your lips, but if your heart is far from Him, then you're not worshipping Him truly. Your worship is vain. In Hebrews 13-15, Paul speaks of the sacrifice of praise, and he says it's the fruit of the lips giving thanks. You see, as new covenant priests, we still offer sacrifices of praise. We do it by the fruit of our lips. We give thanks with our lips. So we learn something about the nature of worship in general. But we also learn something, don't we, in particular about the nature of vain worship or hypocritical worship. You see, you can honour God with your lips, you can be going through the motions externally, and yet your heart can be far from God. And that is false worship or vain worship. Jesus speaks about it a little bit, how it demonstrates itself. Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. You see, when people's hearts begin to depart from the living God, it's not long before traditions of men begin to be imposed incorporation. Instead of us seeking God with our hearts, the tendency of the wicked heart, the heart that's sinful and deceitful, is to try to manufacture some kind of feeling in the worship, instead of recognizing that it's heart that God wants. So, we also see, I think, clearly the nature of true worship deduced. It is worshipping God with our lips and with our hearts. It's coming before Him, praising His name, but giving Him all of our heart. And so, hypocritical worship can be identified It is tradition. It is adding tradition to the Word of God. And you see also this fourth principle I think we ought to look at just briefly, and that is that when you add to Scripture of necessity, you subtract from Scripture. Whether it's in worship, and whether we're talking about corporate worship, or any aspect of the Christian life, If you begin to believe the doctrines of men, it's not long before the doctrines of men become more important than the doctrines of God. And here we have a case, don't we, of how a tradition, a doctrine of men, actually causes God's doctrine, God's teaching to be jettisoned. We see it in verse 8, For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men. And then in verse 13, I think we have the actual order specified more clearly. Making the Word of God of none effect through your tradition. You start holding traditions and then all of a sudden, God's Word is of no effect. God's Word doesn't grip your conscience anymore because now men's traditions have come to grip your conscience. And you're making a choice between men's commandments and God's commandments, and guess who wins? Men start winning. As soon as you start putting them on an even par, men's commands start winning. And God's Word gets subtracted. So that's why the adding and subtracting of God's Word in the Scriptures are always intimately bound. You start subtracting, you start adding. You start adding, you start subtracting. The point is, there's to be no additions or subtractions. That's why in the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 21, at the end of paragraph 1, the men that wrote the confession say this regarding worship, basically deducing this from these passages from the second commandment as well as Mark 7 and the parallel passage, Matthew 15. And they say the acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by Himself. and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the Scripture." You notice that last word, they don't say, or any other way forbidden in the Holy Scriptures, that's assumed. But they go on and say, or any other way not prescribed. Everything that's not prescribed is forbidden, but there's also a category of things that's not prescribed that God has never said explicitly is forbidden. But we deduce from a passage like Mark 7 that it is in fact forbidden. But there are other passages of Scripture we could turn to I won't turn to Deuteronomy 12, but throughout that chapter, God speaks through Moses to the people of God as they're about to go into the Promised Land. And He warns them throughout that chapter, don't begin to change your worship to match the worship practices of the heathen in Canaan. Don't be impressed with how they worship their false gods and begin to modify your worship of Me to be more consistent with them. Don't let your mind be conformed to that thinking. And then, God wraps it up in verse 32 with these words, What thing soever I command you, observe to do it. Thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it. I've told you how to worship Me. Don't take any of that away, but also don't add to it. Don't innovate and make up some new ways to worship Me. Because to obey is better than sacrifice. So sacrificing to God, worshipping God the way we want to, is not obedience and God is not pleased with it. In Jeremiah 7.31, we read these words, speaks against the people of God because they are making high places in Tophat and sacrificing their children. They've looked at the false. They haven't taken heed to the warning of God through Moses. And they are, in fact, seeking to worship the true God like the heathen worship some of their false gods. But God goes on through Jeremiah as he condemns them for this practice. And he says of that practice, which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart. Do you want to know why I'm displeased with it? Because I didn't command it. That's what God says. He never says, I forbid it. You see, for God to say, I never commanded it, is the same as saying, I forbid it, and I'm not happy with it. He goes on to say, it never came into my heart. I never thought about having you worship me like that, is what he's saying. He's kind of condescending to us, isn't he? He's speaking in somewhat anthropomorphic language. I never even contemplated that. Much less told you to do it. And so that ought to be enough for us to see that we are called to worship God the way He has directed. John Knox said this, all worship invented by the brain of man without His express command is idolatry. And we mentioned last Lord that there are two kinds of idolatry. There's worshipping false gods and there's also worshipping the true God in ways that He's not commanded. Now, obviously, Knox here, by saying that all man-made traditions are, in fact, idolatry, is not saying that every addition in corporate worship is as heinous a sin as others. He's not taking away the doctrine that there are sins of greater magnitude than others, but what he's saying is they all fit into violations of the second commandment at the heart. If it's an addition, it fits in this category. It's a second commandment violation. It's not worshipping God the way He has directed. So we've seen the regulative principle stated, at least through this text, but consider it illustrated as we look at Leviticus chapter 10. Leviticus chapter 10. Now, there are many examples where individuals have not worshipped God according to His explicit direction and they have been severely chastised, some even to death, for it. And here is just one example. Leviticus 10, 1 and 2, and there went out fire from the Lord and devoured them, and they died before the Lord." They made incense. They made their own incense apparently and offered it before God, not consistent with the Levitical law. And so God says they offered strange fire before the Lord. They were seeking to worship. They were doing it unto God. But in verse 1 we see, "...he which God commanded not." God had never told them to do this. They're innovating. They're saying to themselves, wouldn't God be pleased if we try something new? It's not an issue of whether they were sincere or not. They may have been very sincere. It's likely they were. But they had forgot to recognize God's infinite wisdom. But God has told them how to worship and they usurp His authority as they think, well, we can make up how we want to worship. The sad fact is, in the visible church, there are many that are seeking to invent ways to worship God, to please God. They're also inventing ways to run the church that God has not ordained. They're also seeking to invent new Gospels that are not the Gospel that God in His wisdom has set as the power of God unto salvation. And when we do that, we diminish God's wisdom. We really don't believe that God really knows what's best for us in His church. The incense was their own recipe. Scripture had not forbidden them. The Word says they weren't commanded. And so what happened? There went out fire from the Lord and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. And then, listen on, then Moses said unto Aaron, This is that which the Lord spake, saying, I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified. Moses says, I want you to understand what's just happened here. God's told us that He'll be sanctified in them that come near Him. They tried to come near God and they weren't set apart because they were seeking to bring their own innovations before God. And so God is glorified in chastening them to death because they usurped God's authority and took it to themselves, thought themselves wiser than God, He thought that God really didn't know all that would please him, and maybe they'd find something else in addition to what he told him he'd accept. Maybe he would accept something else. And can you imagine Aaron? He's just lost two of his four sons to the priests. And it says, and Aaron held his peace. He acquiesced. Definitive statement by Moses, the prophet of God, regarding what's just taken place. He acquiesced to God's will in the matter. It must have been a struggle for him to lose two of his sons, and yet that's his response. And it ought to be ours to passages like this in the Scripture. God's given them for our admonition. They're for us, as well as God's people throughout the age. John Calvin in his book called The Necessity of Reforming the Church said this, he says, We may not adopt any device which seems to fit to ourselves, but look to the injunctions of Him who alone is entitled to prescribe. God disapproves of all modes of worship not expressly sanctioned by His Word. God disapproves of everything that He hasn't approved. That's the point. There are many illustrations of this in the Scriptures. I'll just refer to some. Cain in Genesis 4, 3-8. Saul in 1 Samuel 13, 8-14. And then in 15, 15-23. Again, compromises this principle. He's waiting for Samuel in chapter 13 to get there. He can't wait any longer. He takes to Himself priestly functions. Then in chapter 15, God has told him to kill Agag and kill all the Amalekites and all the animals. He keeps back Agag and some of the animals. Samuel arrives. He hears the bleeding of the sheep. He says to Saul, I think I hear the bleeding of the sheep. Saul says, well, I'm going to offer those to God. I'm going to outsmart God. God's told me what to do, but maybe I can do something above and beyond what He's asked me. Maybe He'll really be impressed with this." And then we have those famous words from Samuel, to obey is better than sacrifice. We also have the example of Uzzah in 2 Samuel 6, 1 through 7. And in the parallel section in the Chronicles, David makes a conclusion later on as they take the ark back up to Jerusalem when they had failed to take it up properly. And he says, you know, we didn't do it according to God's prescription. So, I mean, he recognizes he didn't die, but he was responsible as the king to be thorough to make sure that was handled properly, and it wasn't. We also see this example of Jeroboam in 1 Kings 12, 25 through 13, 5, and then if you remember, throughout the book of Kings and 2 Kings, You have all these kings of the northern tribes and how often it says they continued in the sin of Jeroboam. They continued to authorize false worship. Worship of the true God but in a way not prescribed through the calves both in two different worship locations. But there's also a new covenant example that's pretty potent and that is the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 11. 30. Those that came to the Lord's table in an unworthy manner, and Paul says some of them are asleep. Some of them aren't alive anymore. Now, Thomas Manton commenting on this says this, Though the judgments be not so rife and visible now upon our unhallowed approaches to God, yet He smiteth us with deadness where He does not smite us with death. For a man is punished otherwise than a boy, and judgments are now spiritual which in the infancy of the church were temporal and bodily. Certainly, we have all cause to tremble when we come before the Lord." You see, some might argue, well, I haven't seen anybody die because they've come to the table in an unworthy manner. They've come and they've wanted to drink of the wine enough to get drunk, Now, Manton is arguing to those that would say, well, I haven't seen it, therefore it doesn't happen. Well, the first question is, how do you know it doesn't happen? How do you know that some people haven't gotten sick and died early and the reason is their irreverent worship? How do you know that that's not the case? Now, we certainly haven't seen people swallowed up by the ground and those kind of things that are all all clearly rebelling against God's Word or what have you. But I think Manton does bring out an interesting point, and oftentimes that is true, that there is certainly in the Old Testament more explicit judgment, temporal judgments, and it does seem to be more spiritualized in general in the New Testament. But what Manton is saying is, just because it's more spiritual, don't think it's any less serious. To be chastened with deadness Spiritually, his is a serious chastisement of God. We shouldn't take it lightly. Just because we haven't been struck down doesn't mean that God's happy with our worship. Just because many segments of the visible church have not been struck down dead does not mean that God's pleased with their worship. We can't draw that conclusion. They may be chastened with deadness for it. Or their deadness, as we looked at Mark, may have led to their adding, to God's worship, because their spiritual deadness has left them dry, and so they're seeking innovations to spice up the event of corporate worship in their lives. So, we've looked at the regulative principle stated, we've looked at it illustrated, let's consider it applied. Turn with me to John chapter 4. And my focus this morning is focusing on the regulative principle and not necessarily all the deductions of the regulative principle. That would be something that should be more fully covered if we were considering the topic of corporate worship. And someday we will get to that and we'll look at all the various elements of worship and their biblical basis in Scripture. But I want us this morning just to grasp the principle. but God prescribes to us how to worship and then we ought to follow His prescription. Here we have the woman at the well in John 4. And let's pick it up at 4.19-24. And the woman said unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. He's just told her that she has five husbands and the man that she now has isn't even her husband, her real husband. And so she apparently seems to be diverting him. I perceive you're a prophet. Well, I've got a good theological question for you. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what. We know what we worship. for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." She asks the question, our fathers worship in this mountain, the Jews worship in Jerusalem. The Samaritans have not taken hold of all of God's revelation and they believe themselves to be worshiping God. He begins with telling this woman about what's coming in verse 21. "'Woman, believe Me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet in Jerusalem worship the Father.'" He says, in other words, something's about to change. And then people will be worshipping all over the place. Then he goes on in verse 22, "...Ye worship ye know not what we know what we worship for salvation of the Jews." Here he's making it black and white. Your religion is false. The Jews' religion is true. He's not arguing the fact that there are many hypocritical Jews. What he's saying is God is speaking through all the Old Testament Scriptures. They're worshipping who they know. God reveals Himself in the full Old Testament canon. But then He returns. The hour is coming when true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. Isn't that a comfort? That God seeks out and finds and makes us worshippers. We don't make ourselves worshippers, but when we become a new creature, we are worshippers now. True worshippers. We worship in spirit and in truth. God's a spirit, so therefore He says from that deduction we must worship Him in spirit and in truth. I think we have to see that there's two aspects of our worship. The first is spiritual or internal, that of the heart. And then we are to worship in truth, which in some ways I think we could describe as external. It is that we are to worship God in the elements, the ways that He's told us to worship Him, and we're to worship Him in those elements with His truth subfusing those elements. So if He's told us to pray, then we're to pray, and we're to pray the truth. The Word is to influence how we pray. We're to pray in worship because God's told us, but we're also to pray in accordance with His Word. is words to inform us about how we should pray. What we should pray, but also how we should pray. The Word says something about the gestures, the postures that are appropriate for prayer. It says something about the externals. It also says much about the internal disposition that we're to have in prayer. So the Word tells us about the element itself, prayer. And then it also tells us of all those characteristics of acceptable corporate prayer. And so we're called to pray corporately in that way. Some of them external, some of them invisible and internal. We have to recognize that difference. Notice this difference, I think, in these two verses. One regarding the King Asa in 1 Kings 15-14. There it says, the high places were not removed. Nevertheless, Asa's heart was perfect with the Lord. all his days. Asa was a man of God, and yet he didn't completely get it in the externals and deal with those high places. He didn't totally get it as a magistrate, getting rid of those places, but he should have. He should have gotten rid of them. It was wrong for people under his rule to be worshipping God falsely. He should have done something about it. He worshipped with a perfect heart. Then we have Amaziah in 2 Chronicles 25.2. It says, Amaziah did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, but not with a perfect heart. You see, you can go through the motions externally and still be far from God. You can want to impress people that you are the thorough Reformer and make all kinds of reforms externally and yet really be lacking internally. The point is, these elements have characteristics that people can see and they have characteristics that people can't see. And we've got to be serious about both of those types of characteristics of these elements that God has commanded. That's why I think we should still apply to ourselves Malachi 1.13. There God, through prophet Malachi, says to the people of God, ye brought that which was torn and lame and sick. Thus, he brought an offering. Should I accept this of your hand, Seth, the Lord? God had told them to bring the best, and they bring the torn, the lame, the sick. Remember when David wanted to buy the threshing floor of Onan so he could have that threshing floor for where apparently the temple was eventually built. It was offered that it be given to him. And he says, no, how can I worship God with that which doesn't cost? Worship costs. God wants our best. And if we give Him something second best, He's not happy. It applies to the external and to the internal. We could go on to those elements of corporate worship I will just highlight them briefly. If you look at Acts 2, 41 and 42, you pick up many of them right there. The ordinary elements of corporate worship. Baptism. Reading, preaching, hearing of God's Word. The Lord's Supper is spoken of breaking of bread there. Prayers are spoken of there. Many believe that psalms or singing of praise are just another way of praying. The psalms were prayers. put down in writing so that people could sing them. And certainly Colossians 3.16 and Ephesians 5.19 tell us we're to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God's praise. So we have those ordinary elements. We also have what are called extraordinary elements that God's Word prescribes. God's Word says that we are occasionally to swear by God's name and we're to take vows to Him. That doesn't happen every Lord's Day. But there are occasions when people come into membership that they do, and many view the Lord's Supper, and I do as well, as an implicit vow of commitment, again, every time we come to the table to our God. The Scriptures also promote religious fasting. There are times when God's people should fast as a corporate body. We also see certain elements of church government and discipline that may occasionally be brought into a worship service. Sometimes there are ordinations that take place or installations of officers. Sometimes there's also a proclamation regarding someone's discipline, and that would be appropriate in corporate worship. We also see that there are some general duties regarding corporate worship. We're to seek to maintain corporate worship. We're also to seek to reform false worship. And we're to seek to do that in our place and station. We're to seek to reform God's worship where it's deformed based on where we're at. Whether we're in the pew, whether we're a minister or an elder, whether we're civil magistrates, there's an appropriate place for us. We see that reform in Asa, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Josiah. I think it's part of what we're going to look at in worship today as we look at Jude verse 3. And that's part of contending earnestly for the faith. The faith is once for all given, and when it's tampered with in the church, we ought to try to do what we can to see it resolved. Let me, in closing, just mention four wrong reasons to add elements to public worship. Some people would want to add certain elements, whether it be drama, or the like by its fashionables. Everybody's doing it mentality. Deuteronomy 12.30, take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them. Don't try to bring the world into the church. Don't try to make the church like the world so the world will be attracted to it. You're polluting the gospel. You're adulterating the gospel. And when you begin to adulterate God's powerful Gospel, it's not powerful any longer. And the world comes into the church in droves. It comes in like a flood. Secondly, people look to tradition. Well, we've been doing that way for years and years and years. Mark 7 speaks to that very clearly. In Matthew 15, the parallel, Jesus talks about your traditions. They're not just the Pharisees' traditions. They're your traditions. You've imbibed them. And you like them. That's why you want to do them. It's not just because somebody in the past did it. It's because you want it. It's no different than somebody that's trying to bring something new in. It's all about what you want. Not what God wants. Then there's also what's called pragmatism. In the parallel passage to that Mark 7 passage we looked at in Matthew 15, verse 12, when Jesus gets done speaking about this, Peter tells Jesus that the Pharisees were offended at Your Word. You upset them, Jesus! Jesus didn't care. We can't worry about upsetting somebody. Jude 3 is clear. We have to contend earnestly for the faith. In Genesis 4, 3-8, we see Cain and Abel. And in Hebrews 11, 4, we have an inspired commentary regarding that. That one offered a pure sacrifice, one didn't. God wanted animals slain. It was easy for one of them. He was the keeper of animals. The other one was a farmer. He was working with grain. It was convenient for him to offer God something he had instead of making a deal with his brother to get what he needed. It took a little bit more work for him. But he wasn't willing to do it. It wasn't convenient. And God wasn't pleased with him. We also have, fourthly, one more argument to add. And that is what I would call the pseudo-spiritual argument. That this element gives the appearance Worshipping God this way gives the appearance that it's really wise. It seems wise to do this. Paul says in Colossians 2.23 of those things, which things have indeed a show of wisdom. There are certain things that look like they're wise, he says, but they're in will-worship. Compound word. Worshipping according to your will. They're really will-worship. They look impressive, but it's will-worship. It's not God-prescribed worship. It's you-prescribed worship. And humility and the neglecting of the body, not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh. It gives you an appearance of wisdom. It gives an appearance of humility. It seems to be neglecting the body. Paul says it doesn't help anything. All these added traditions, whether they're in the broad spectrum of the Christian life, Do's and don'ts, or additional do's and don'ts in worship, they have no profit. They don't profit. Doing what God prescribes is what's best for us, His creatures, created in His image, to worship Him the way He has told us to.