Please take your Bible and turn tonight with me to Mark chapter 11, Mark 11. There's a nice little mnemonic device I learned in university about chapter content and how to remember what's in Mark 11. Mark 11, at least the first half, is about the Lord's triumphal entry on the donkey. The teacher said, remember those two front legs of a donkey. 11. I have never forgotten that. That was over 45 years ago. Mark 11. You'll always remember that now. Mark 11 is triumphal entry. We're going to break in at verse 11. The Lord has entered the city and the children have been shouting, Hosanna, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Verse 11, let's hear God's word. And Jesus entered into Jerusalem and into the temple. And when he had looked round about upon all things, and now the eventide was come, he went out unto Bethany with the 12. And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if happily he might find anything thereon. And when he came to it, he found it nothing but leaves. For the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto him, no man eat fruit of thee hereafter forever. And his disciples heard it. And they come to Jerusalem, and Jesus went into the temple and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, and would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple. And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? But ye have made it a den of thieves. And the scribes and chief priests heard it, and sought how they might destroy him. For they feared him, because all the people was astonished at his doctrine. And when even was come, he went out of the city." Amen. The Lord bless the public reading of this holy word. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Let's seek the Lord together. Our God and our Father in heaven, we I turn once more to Thee to ask for Thy help ere we begin the preaching and hearing of Thy Word. Thou hast promised the blessed Holy Ghost to help, both in preaching and in understanding it. We claim that promise now in Jesus' name. We cannot do this without Thee, but with Thee, O God. We know, Lord, it will be a profitable time in Thy Word tonight. Get much glory to thyself and give much grace to thy people. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. One of the things that God brought back to light again through the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century was that he is very particular about how he is worshiped. The church at Rome had moved far away from the spiritual and simplistic worship of the early church to a form of worship that was obsessed with anything and everything that elevated the Pope, the priesthood, and the Roman Catholic Church. and made the worshiper fear them much more than they feared God. The worship service in the early church consisted of simply a service around the Lord's word and a service around the Lord's table. That was your typical Lord's Day, around His Word and around the table. There was the reading of the scriptures, the preaching of the Word of God, and then a time of prayer. After that time of prayer, it was followed by a time around the Lord's table, which involved a presentation of the bread and the cup, a prayer of thanksgiving, and then a partaking of that communion feast. But just prior to the communion feast in the early church, there was what was known as a dismissal, a time when all unbelievers were dismissed from the church service, since only Christians were allowed to partake of the Lord's Supper in the early church. The Latin word for dismissal is the root word for what would eventually come to be known as the mass. Instead of the reading and preaching of the scriptures being the focal point in worship, it was the communion feast that came to be central. The pulpit was set off to the side. And the table was put in the center of the church, and therefore the center of worship in the church of Rome. But when the Holy Spirit began to move through the Protestant Reformation, not only did he bring the gospel of justifying grace to light, He also opened the eyes of the reformers to see how unbiblical and how unholy the worship of Rome had become. So the images of Mary. and the saints and the relics and the crucifixes and the vestments, the burning of votive candles were all swept away where the great truths of biblical worship took hold. As John Knox put it, mighty reformer of Scotland, he said that the reformers were laboring and calling for a return to, I quote him now, the grave and godly face of the primitive church, unquote. Quite a statement. The grave and godly face of the primitive church. But this was not the first time that that God had shown how much he cares about how particular he is about just how he's worshipped. You can go to Genesis 4 and find the first example of how he dictates how he is to be worshipped. Recall that Cain attempted to worship God It was an attempt to worship, but on his own terms, in his own way, he brought the fruit of the ground, unlike his brother Abel, who brought the sacrifice. We know what happened eventually. Exodus 32, you find another example of that. Israel, of course, is at the base of Mount Sinai and there's Moses up there for who knows how long and they compel Aaron to make them a golden calf that they can worship. We don't know when Moses is going to come down. It'd be forever. So you make us a golden calf. And he took their golden earrings and he forged this calf and he called for what he called, they had to bring burn offerings and peace offerings to this feast to the Lord. Well, that was another attempt to worship God in man's way. You remember God's response to that attempt. About 3,000 people were slain by the sword. He wasn't playing around. God was not playing around. He never does play around. God had made it clear that he was not to be worshipped with any graven image. He had made it clear that he and he alone is to be worshipped and he alone determines how he is to be worshipped since he's God. That's his sole prerogative. I'm God. I am to be worshiped, and I tell you how that's to take place. While there are numerous incidents in the Old Testament that rehearse that same truth many times over, the most notable illustration in the New Testament is found in what we read tonight. The Lord Jesus Christ cleansing the temple, not once, but twice during his earthly ministry. At the beginning and at the end. Twice he did it. The one who was meek and lowly of heart when it came to receiving fallen sinners was the one who overturned the tables of the money changers and drove the money-grubbing shopkeepers out of the temple area. I can't imagine what that must have looked like. He just walks in, upends every money table, and makes a whip, and drives them out of the temple area. Yes, He's God. And He alone determines what is acceptable and unacceptable worship. His father's house, he says, to be called a house of prayer, but they had made it a den of thieves. Of course, when Christ cleansed the temple, he was not engaging in an act of reformation. It was one of condemnation. Judaism had become apostate. And hear me out when I say that the only thing left for apostate religion and apostate worship is God's curse. Get that settled in your mind. That's the only thing left for apostate religion and apostate worship. It is God's curse. That was the great point the Lord was making when he cursed the fig tree outside of the temple area. Yet there is much that we can learn about true worship when we see how the Lord dealt with false worship. And if we are all agreed that the church is in need right now of a fresh reformation, then we are agreeing that there is a need for a fresh reformation in our worship. What goes for one goes for the other. Yes, we call our worship Reformed worship because it grew out of the changes that took place during the Reformation. But because there is this perpetual tendency among God's people to wander away from the scriptures, to go astray from his truth, there will always be those times in the church when she needs to see her worship reformed again. That grave face that Knox talked about they were striving for. This is what I want to speak on this last, what's known as Reformation Sunday. Not about the 16th century, it's about this century. Reforming our worship is my theme. reforming our worship. Two simple thoughts. First is the worship that God is seeking. If worship is going to be reformed, wherever it needs reforming and however it needs reforming, then we need to find out the worship that God is seeking. So what Christ saw taking place by way of worship on the Temple Mount that day was anything, anything but the worship that pleased the Lord. And he made that fact known. He didn't hesitate. It was bold what he did, but it had to be done. What should have been found among the Jews' religion and the Jews' worship? After all, they had the word of God. They had the scriptures. What should have been found among them in their worship? It wasn't what he saw. Remember Christ told that Samaritan, that woman, by the well, who was boasting upon how the Samaritans worship, but you don't know what you're worshiping. He was saying, in essence, you Samaritans, your worship is not acceptable. God does not accept it. He told her that God is looking for true worshipers, those that will worship him in spirit and in truth. How many times have you heard that text? But what does it mean? In fact, he said, it's necessary. Let God be worshiped in spirit and in truth. We'll look at what it means to worship God in spirit in a moment, but I want us to think just now what it means to worship God in truth. In truth. The worship that God accepts, the worship that God is still seeking, that he's still looking for, is true worship. So what is true worship? What does it look like? How are you and I to find out what true worship looks like? Because how else can we go about reforming any worship if we don't know what true worship is? It's a no-brainer. That means that it is worship that is according to, in line with the word of God in its basic sense, truth. It is worship that must be regulated by scripture. In Protestantism, it's called the regulative principle of worship. That means the Bible must tell us this is how we are to worship. It's got to be regulated by scripture. And if it's not, we don't do it. It's not the normative principle of worship, which is if it's not forbidden, it's okay. It's always regulated by scripture. No matter what excuses you may think that makes something okay, We'll see in a moment, there's no doubt these money changers, it was okay, it's not forbidden. But that wasn't the point. There was no regulation to do that in the temple, in worship. It's got to be worship that is true, real. sincere, genuine. Whether looking at the Old Testament Hebrew word or the New Testament Greek word, this word translated worship in our Bibles, they both carry the idea of falling upon our knees before someone in order to show them reverence. honor. It's given that if it's done sincerely, it's because you really believe that the one you are worshiping is worthy of such reverence, is worthy of such honor, that you would fall on your face before him Our English word, worship, comes from an old English word, worth-ship, worth-ship. It speaks of ascribing, of acknowledging the worth of something. Me, there's a modern expression. It was used one time. I'd only been married a couple of weeks, and one of the guys in the church, my wife and I were attending, he said, she worships the ground you walk on. Well, that was a bit of an exaggeration. She didn't do that. And certainly, a year later, that wasn't the case at all, you know. What did he mean? He meant that her actions, how she talked about me, how she acted around me and others, that she valued me. I was worth something to her. How much she esteemed me. It was shown in her actions. Lift that into the spiritual realm. In our worship of God, we are supposed to be engaged in behavior that declares the worth of Almighty God, that shows how valuable He is to us, how worthy He is to receive our worship, We declare how much we esteem Him, how highly we esteem Him, and how precious He actually is to us. That's to be done in our worship. How we act in the house of God. How we sing. How we pray. How we preach. How we teach. How we respond to others. and the place of worship, how we talk to each other. When you come to the book of Revelation, as we did this evening, you see how the heavenly host worship God. You find that they, I quote from Revelation 4, the end of that chapter, they fall down before Him, that's worship now, they fall down before Him that sat on the throne and worship Him that liveth forever and ever and cast their crowns before the throne saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are, and they were created." That was the whole point of creation. Created to worship Him. You were created by Almighty God to worship Him. That's a reason for your existence in this world. To glorify Him, to declare His worth. and to enjoy him in the worship, how great he is, how glorious he is, how good he is. One day, I don't know how soon, But we will be singing that new song in heaven. How does it go? Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and honor and glory and blessing. With ten thousand times ten thousands and thousands of thousands, then we'll know Then we'll know how great God is. Don't you want to get a little closer to that here on earth? Therefore, in order to worship God aright, we need to have a right estimation of who and what God is. How can you worship a rite someone you don't know? How can you hold Him in high esteem if you don't know why you should hold Him in high esteem? If you don't know anything about His glories, His attributes, His greatness. Fundamental to biblical worship is this awareness of God. An awareness of God. It makes all the difference in the world, brothers and sisters, in a worship service as to whether or not you're aware of God. Sing to him, we must. Listen to his servants preach, we must. Read his word, we must. But in all of our singing and our preaching and our praying, our minds need to be filled and our hearts need to be moved by a sight of the Lord and his glory. Every time It's not a one-off. There was a survey done some time ago that reported that the two main reasons people quit going to church are these. Number one, it's boring. Number two, it's irrelevant. Boring and irrelevant. That is one of the main reasons that many, many churches have abandoned biblical worship and adopted human inventions in contemporary worship. They've seen the survey. It's boring and it's irrelevant. Well, what can we do to make it not boring, but exciting? And what can we do to make it relevant to this culture? If we don't do that, we're going to lose everything. It kind of sounds like the Pharisees does. And if we don't kill this one Jesus, we're going to lose our place. The thinking is we've got to make, we've got to make church something that people want to come to. make it relevant to today. But biblical worship, whatever high and lofty motives they might have, biblical worship that does not have God as its focus, that doesn't make the Lord both the object and the subject of worship, has missed the mark entirely. Because when you have worship that has God as the object and as the subject, where He's the focus, it is anything but boring and anything but irrelevant. Wouldn't you agree? There are three fundamental elements to all true worship. the kind of worship that God is seeking, the kind that pleases the Lord. First, there's praise. Praise. It's significant, I'm convinced, that the longest book in the Bible is the book of Psalms, the song book of the church. This is the hymn book of the church. You read them, but the early church sang those hymns. This was the worship for the Old Testament saints. This was their hymn book. And it grew over time. What does that tell you? That the longest book in the Bible is a hymn book. Songs of praise, worship. It tells me something that God has put an emphasis upon praise to him in all public worship. Because he's the focus. It's all about him. And he's to be the focus of our singing. The theme of our singing. Therefore, what we sing, what we sing, and the way that we sing it must be in harmony with the nature of the one we're singing about. Our hymns are to focus, for instance, on His sovereignty. You find that again and again in the Psalms. The emphasis upon God upon His throne and God ruling and walking upon the waves and the wind is all His rule. And our praise and song should reflect that. They are to declare the glory of His holiness. His holiness. Separate, separate from sin. The Holy Other, as the old theologian called Him. The Holy Other. So distinct. So separate from sin. They are to be hymns that rejoice in the greatness of His grace. of the slain Lamb, of the suffering Savior, of the cross that is the greatest declaration of the attributes of God the world has ever seen in display. His wisdom, His holiness, His justice, His mercy, It's all on display. And therefore, God expects that the hymns that are used to praise him are to reflect that. And if they are not, they are to be reformed. So much of church music in the last 50 or so years You find an emphasis, a focus on man and his feelings. I'm not saying there's no place. There's glorious hymns that deal with, it is well with my soul. Good, great. But now it's, it's, God has been lost sight of. It's all about making me feel good. You see, all of this will determine just how we praise God, the music that we use to glorify him. One thing is certain, our praise is to be distinguished by holiness, since it is being offered to the one we esteem as holy above all. Mark that, brothers and sisters, our singing is to reflect our belief that He is thrice holy. What we sing and how we sing it is to reflect that truth. Second element is prayer. Worship. Not only must involve praise, but prayer. Christ said His Father's house is what? A house of prayer. should be noted for that, a house of prayer. Worship, to be real worship that God is seeking and that pleases Him, must be marked by prominence in praying. My point just now is to note the connection between worship and prayer. Public worship is to be marked by public praying. That means public prayer meetings. That means assembling together for public prayer meetings. That's part of worshiping God. We can't say that our worship is really biblical and truly reformed if we are not coming together to worship God in public prayer meetings. You tell me how you figure that one. Got to answer this one. It is not surprising to me that along with the decline in praise, true worship, there's been a decline in church prayer meetings. People just don't come to prayer meetings. Churches now have home Bible studies. I'm not knocking home Bible studies. Don't go there. But there's no prayer meeting. There's no time when the Lord's people come and they call upon the Lord collectively for his work. My house shall be called a house of prayer. How can it be a house of prayer if God's people aren't coming together in the house to pray? How? How? Not just prayer meetings, but pastoral praying. You know, folks, the old men of God in their pastoral prayer, it was part of every service, a pastoral prayer. They're praying for at least 15 minutes. It's not, let's just try, Lord, help us today, bless this, bless this, bless that one, bless Uncle Joe, bless Aunt Sally, yes, yes, amen. As I go on sermon audio, you might not agree with what I'm about to say, and that's fine. We'll agree to disagree. I'm finding more and more as I go on to sermon audio and listen to live services that these pastors are reading their prayers. I know that's been the history in the Anglican Church for centuries. but I just don't get it. The pastoral prayer should be full of God and full of scripture and full of passion. I've never seen one of these men passionate when they've been reading their prayers. I've never seen it. It's very nice. It's very orderly. The things they're reading are good, biblical. But I have to wonder, where's the heart that's being led and stirred by the Holy Ghost to pray for things that he puts upon the mind right then and there? that you didn't sit down in a study and think about this and that is going to go into my prayer, but it's just, you're being led by God. This is live worship of God. Isn't that part of making him central? Prayer that's full of reverence, boldness. Yes. Confidence. Yes. But it's not brashness. Reverence, you realize to some little degree, at least as much as we can in this flesh, the one you are talking to is great and holy. And the last thing you want to do is to offend him in prayer by irreverence. full of faith and full of humility. Years ago I read, I was reading a book on worship, different authors. I liked what the minister, he had an acronym for prayer. Acts, A-C-T-S, Acts was the acronym. Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. Those four areas are crucial to all praying, public praying. Third element is praise, is prayer. And there's preaching that lies at the heart of biblical worship. Preaching that not only instructs the mind, you must do that as a preacher. You must instruct from the word of God, the mind, but it also must instruct the mind to move the heart and to move the heart in order to change the life. That's always the goal. Instruct the mind, give the truth. to change the thinking so the heart will be affected by that and moved so that life will be changed so that the Lord's people, little by little, begin to change how they talk and how they look and how they think and how they behave and how they respond, all those things, that's all part of, isn't it something wonderful that something God has made Him, He's the center of it, He's the focus of it all, how in doing that it actually affects us and changes us Preaching that feeds the sheep. He has an awesome responsibility. He's an under-shepherd. He must give an account as to whether or not he's really fed the sheep. And if he takes worship seriously, he will take this responsibility very seriously. They stand in constant need of feeding, of shepherding, Preaching that expounds, explains, and applies the law of God. The thou shalt and the thou shalt nots. Because after all, folks, is it not a matter of, listen, I want to know, don't you, what is it that God likes and what does He hate? What does He love and what does He disdain? What does He want me to do and what does He not want me to do? Because if my aim is to worship Him, that's what I want to know. And the more I know of what pleases God and this pleases Him, the better off I'm going to be at worshiping Him. You lose sight of that? It won't be worship that He accepts. Preaching that lifts up the wonders of God's free grace, in spite of how fallen we are, in spite of all the failures that are brought to light by His Word. Grace is always, always, always free. That must be done. It's not just the law. It's not just grace. It's both and. Here's the law. Here's what God requires. You haven't done it. But there's grace, abounding grace for abounding sin. You can never get below the arms of the Almighty. Underneath are the everlasting arms. When you fall, he'll pick you up. When you transgress, he'll forgive. This is the preaching that's central of true worship. Second and final point, in reforming worship, We must consider the worship that God rejects and that must be performed wherever it's found. What kind of worship does God reject? First, God rejects worship that has man as its focal point. Since, after all, it's about him, he rejects worship that has man at its focal point. That's what had become of worship in the Temple Mount in Christ's day. The Pharisees were running, to use modern-day jargon, a seeker-sensitive church. Oh, they thought it'd be a good idea to set up these stalls where these Israelites who are coming once a year for the Feast of the Passover, so they wouldn't have to drag their animals that long distance with them. We'll set up little booths and we'll sell them to these worshipers that are way off. By the way, they stuck it to them. Exorbitant prices. For a dove! You know what a dove was, right? That dove was because you couldn't afford anything else. Oh, they were a seeker sensitive, all right. They were seeking to have their pockets lined. You tell me that does not describe so much of televangelism? I said so much, not all of it. They're looking to line their pockets. That's what they're seeking. It wasn't being truly sensitive to the needs of these worshipers. They were just sensitive to maintaining their own little empire. You see, worship today has become, I am convinced by and large, whether it's the U S or Canada, it's, it's all about me. It's all about making me feel good. It's about meeting my needs and serving my interests. And since worship now is all about man, then you try to make your church as marketable as you can. After all, people are shopping, right? They're shopping for a church. looking for a church that will meet their needs, that allows them to worship the way that they want to worship. And if they don't like a particular church where they're worshiping that's not their way, then they'll go shopping somewhere else. Whether or not men want to hear it, The fact of the matter is, idol worship is alive and well. Contrary to the second commandment, there is another God being put before God, and that God is man. It's man. He's the focal point. The Bible teaches that man's chief end is to worship, to glorify God, and to enjoy him. But man has turned that on its head, and it's turned worship into something where God should be the one being worshipped and enjoyed. Now they want the one to be worshipped, and it's about their joy. Make me feel good. And if you make me feel uncomfortable, preacher, I'm not coming by. I've seen it. I'm not saying there is no subjective element in worship. There is. God is to be experienced in worship. We are not mere spectators. You're not a spectator here tonight warming a church pew. You are to be a participant It's worship. I'm not the only one worshiping and preaching. You're worshiping God and hearing and how you respond to what you're hearing, what's going on in your heart while you're hearing the word being preached. That's part of worship. You must participate. If all you do is sit down and go to sleep, God help you. You've just checked out. You're not worshiping. And I'll tell you right now, God is not pleased. All true worship will affect us. It will affect our desires. It will affect our emotions. It will affect our spiritual interests. But we are not to base or evaluate, listen carefully please, we are not to base or evaluate our worship of God on how it makes us feel. or what responses it evokes from men. Once we go down that road, worship becomes man-centered, because all we're playing for is the crowd. The truth is, because worship has become so man-centered, it has become a form of entertainment. and dare I say in some places a form of amusement. The primacy of preaching has long since been abandoned for the primacy of contemporary music, of sacred drama, and sacred dance. Standard fare. entertainment. It would have been 15, 20 years ago that I saw Reformed magazine where one of the authors was reviewing an R-rated movie. This was 20 years ago in Columbia, South Carolina. He was reviewing and it wasn't a bad review, folks. I mean by that, he wasn't giving it a thumbs down. For all the talk about this contemporary approach, about being a form of worshiping God, it's really all about Worshipping man. Entertaining man. Putting man in the spotlight. You know, got the microphone. The spotlight's on. Look at me. Listen to my voice. You tell me that is not entertainment? The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, this goes back to 1996. Keep that date in mind, 1996. They issued a statement called the Cambridge Declaration. I just want to read two brief paragraphs from it. This is their assessment in 1996 of the state of worship in the U.S. The loss of God's centrality in the life of today's church is common and lamentable. It is this loss that allows us to transform worship into entertainment, gospel preaching into marketing, believing into technique, being good into feeling good about ourselves, and faithfulness into being successful. As a result, God, Christ, and the Bible have come to mean too little to us and rest too inconsequentially upon us. God does not exist to satisfy human ambitions, cravings, the appetite for consumption, or our own private spiritual interests. We must focus on God in our worship rather than the satisfaction of our personal needs. God is sovereign in worship. We are not. Our concern must be for God's kingdom, not our own empire's popularity or success. 1996, where do you think we are now? So God rejects worship that has man as its focal point. Secondly, God rejects worship that is marked by irreverence, since worship is about revering God. He rejects worship that is marked by irreverence. True worship, remember, is all about showing your reverence to God because of who he is. When you assemble to worship, it's to be reflected in how we behave. The angels in heaven show it. The saints in heaven show it. Perfect heavenly worship is reverent. Don't equate reverence with deadness because it's not. True reverence to God and worship is anything but dead. But what Christ saw going on in the temple What was going on in that place that had been designated for the worship of God, it was anything but reverent. Reverence is an attitude, a hard attitude of deep respect, of love, of all for something that is sacred. It seems that we are living in a day when there's a complete loss of really understanding what the word sacred means. Sacred. Irreverence is just the opposite, an attitude that is disrespectful, it is lacking in love, and it is void of the sense of all for anything that is sacred. Here's what the Spirit of God says in Psalm 89 verse 7, God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of his saints, and to be had in reverence of all them that are about him, greatly to be feared. and had in reverence. This reverence and worship of which the scripture speaks is not deadness. It's not about having a face that is so stern that makes for reverence in the house of God because all does not equal austerity. Make that difference in your thinking. Worship is about joy. It's about rejoicing. You know, you can be in a place of worshiping God and you can be crying and laughing at the same time. It's not lighthearted laughter. It's holy laughter combined with holy tears. It's about standing in awe of this great and good and glorious God. Worship must never, ever be divorced from happiness. Granted, I get it why so many would leave the churches they're attending. It has nothing to do with true worship. I would leave too. But never forget that worship, while it's always connected with happiness, always remember that happiness is never divorced from holiness. Always. If it's a happiness that's not connected to holiness, then it's not real happiness in worship. J.C. Ryle, Church of England, 19th century, commenting on this passage in Mark 11. He says, there is surely a decent reference which is due to a place where Christ and his people regularly meet together and public prayer is offered up. There is a certain feeling of sanctity and solemnity which ought to belong to all places where Christ is preached and souls are born again, a feeling which does not depend on any consecration of man and ought to be encouraged rather than checked. At all events the mind of the Lord Jesus in this passage seems very plain. He takes notice of men's behavior in places of worship and all irreverence or profanity is an offense in his sight. Knox said, we're looking for a return to the grave and godly face of the primitive church. The grave and godly face of the primitive church. Amen, Brother Knox. Those words need to be sounded again today. Nowhere is this more clearly seen, this need for reverence and this irreverence in modern-day churches than in the music that they use in their worship. Next to the forsaking of the God-centered, Christ-centered preaching of Scripture, There is no greater danger being faced by the Church of Jesus Christ than this area of music. Young people by their thousands upon thousands have left their churches where traditional biblical music has been used. And the thing more often than not, that's drawing them is the style of music they're finding in other churches. It's the style of music. The thinking is that, and this all comes back to being man-centered, the thinking is that you must reach people through using the elements of their culture, and Christian worship music is a great way to do that, so it's said. church attendance across the nation, according to all the polling data, is in a tremendous decline. People have just stopped going to church. And Christian worship music has been brought into so many churches in order to excite the people, to get them worked up. Folks, I attended rock and roll concerts at one time in my life, and I have seen online Christian worship What do they call them? It's a concert, Christian worship. I can't tell the difference. As far as the music and what's going on, the lights, flashing, strobe lights, same old band up on stage, different name. Hard to make out the words. So you want to excite them, get them stirred up, as well as it'll bring in the outsiders who would be more open to coming to church if there wasn't this old-fashioned fuddy-duddy outdated music. It's argued that the Bible says nothing about music styles being good or bad. The argument is that music is amoral. That's flat out wrong. The fact of the matter is, and any trained musician will tell you this, no matter what side of the fence he's on, Music is a universal language. And language that has tremendous power to communicate. That's what a language does, it communicates. And it communicates feelings and attitudes and moods. Feelings and attitudes and moods are not things that are amoral. They're good or they're evil. Why in the world do you think Satan has chosen the medium and all different kinds of rock music to communicate his message? Why has he chosen it? He didn't use classical music to convince people that sex and drugs is great. Can you imagine putting Beethoven's fifth to something like that? It would just go like a lead balloon. There are certain musical elements. I'm not a trained musician, but I know enough about music to know that there are certain elements about rock music that make it the ideal venue for his message. The backbeat, you know, we would go, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Backbeat, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. That's rock. Heavy bass. The dissonant chords, et cetera, et cetera. But you don't have to have Listen, you don't have to have a course in music appreciation to discern the music of the world. Most of you folks know I was out in the life for three years of my life, awfully backslidden. Didn't claim to be a Christian when I was there, but I was. The Lord kept me. But three years, I was in this world, rock and roll, drugs, all. Well, the Lord brought me back. Out of all that, I was in my apartment. Cleaning it all up. You know, you're a slob when you're living like the world. But I wanted everything to be clean and neat. And I was listening to a Christian radio station where I was living in Maryland. And it was preaching. And then I'm cleaning, and the music comes on. And I just stopped. That's what I've just left. I recognized it immediately. That is rock and roll. I had never heard about contemporary Christian music in my life. First time I'd ever heard it. But I recognized it immediately and I had never had one course in music appreciation. Why in the world would I, why would we want to use that style of music to worship the holy God of heaven? Where's the reverence? We're standing in awe of him, totally separate from the world. They all fall down before him. Today, have you seen him? They're just jumping up and down. You tell me that's reverence. Not if the Bible is our standard, it's not. The music we use to worship Him must be beautiful, holy, separate from the world, separate from the world, governed by the attributes of God, You see, we don't need to try to make use of the culture. We need to get out of the culture. That's what's needful. Get out of the culture. We're called to get out of the culture, to be distinct. That's reforming worship. My time's long gone, and you understand this is a series. But this is my last Sunday, so it'll have to end here. There's so much more involving worship, but we'll stop. And hopefully, that'll be some help to you. And when you're asked by your young children or your young grandchildren, what's wrong with this? Well, here's what's wrong. Here's what's wrong. Let me show you in God's Word what He's looking for in worship. God, write this Word on our hearts for His name's sake. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Let's seek the Lord together. Father in heaven, in Jesus Christ's name, we thank Thee that Thou didst step into our lives one day when we were so hardened to Thee, wanted nothing to do with Thy Word or with worship at all. Thou hast come in and made such a difference. And Lord, we still need to be changed. We realize that our worship still needs reforming, just like we still need reforming. And so we pray that Thou would patiently bear with us, show us, O Lord, how we can better worship Thee according to Thy Word. Deliver us from that which displeases Thee, that which Thou dost reject, and make our worship in church fuller and fuller of the worship that delights Thee. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.