There are two scripture readings tonight. We turn in the first place to 1 Kings chapter 12 and then we'll turn in the New Testament to Colossians chapter 2. We're going to be considering tonight the order and discipline that should produce the right worship in the Church of God. So 1 Kings 12 beginning with verse 25 and here we have an example of worship instituted for the wrong reasons and in the wrong way. Then Jeroboam built Shechem in Mount Ephraim and dwelt therein and went out from thence and built Penuel. And Jeroboam said in his heart, now shall the kingdom return to the house of David. If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, Then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their Lord, even unto Rehoboam, king of Judah, and they shall kill me and go again to Rehoboam, king of Judah. Whereupon the king took counsel and made two calves of gold and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And he set the one in Bethel, and the other put he in Dan. And this thing became a sin, for the people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan. And he made a house of high places, and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi. And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month. On the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah, and he offered upon the altar. So did he in Bethel, sacrificing unto the calves that he had made. And he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made. So he offered upon the altar which he had made in Bethel the fifteenth day of the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart, and ordained a feast unto the children of Israel. And he offered upon the altar and burnt incense. Then let's turn to Colossians chapter 2. We start reading with verse 8 until the end of the chapter. Beware, lest any man spoil you, meaning plunder you, through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments or basic principles of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power, in whom also ye are circumcised, with the circumcision made without hands and putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God who has raised him from the dead. And you being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, has he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses. blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross. And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it. Let no man therefore judge you in food or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days, which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ. Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshiping of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding the head, from which all the body, by joints and bands having nourishment ministered and knit together, increases with the increase of God. Wherefore, if ye be dead with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, touch not, taste not, handle not, which all are to perish with the using, after the commandments and doctrines of men, which indeed have a show of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body, not in any honor, to the satisfying of the flesh. Based on these passages and others, we turn to article 32 on page 21, in the back of your psalter, article 32 of the Belgic Confession. I'm not convinced that the title put above this article is the best possible title, as I'll explain in the sermon. Order and discipline are mentioned, but actually more fundamental to this article is worship, and the order and discipline of the Church are to preserve the worship of the Church. In the meantime, we believe, though it is useful and beneficial that those who are rulers of the Church institute and establish certain ordinances among themselves for maintaining the body of the Church, yet they ought studiously to take care that they do not depart from those things which Christ, our only Master, has instituted. And therefore we reject all human inventions and all laws which man would introduce into the worship of God, thereby to bind and compel the conscience in any manner whatever. Therefore we admit only of that which tends to nourish and preserve concord and unity, and to keep all men in obedience to God. For this purpose, excommunication or church discipline is requisite, with the several circumstances belonging to it, according to the Word of God. Let us now confess our faith with the Church of all times and places, and then respond to Scripture reading and confession with 368. I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From there he shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit. I believe that there is one holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. you is to thy rest, O earth, which shalt be thine abode. Amen. For Zion's good the Lord has said, I will survive her if need be. you Let us pray. Our tender-hearted Father and heavenly King of Majesty, before whom angels tremble and saints bow, there is no greater majesty in heaven or on earth than that with which our Lord Jesus is clothed as He is seated on the throne of God. What a blessing that we do not come to worship an idol, the creation of human mythology or of human speculation, an imaginary friend, but we come to God our Maker, our Lawgiver, our Redeemer. our complete Savior. And we pray therefore, O God, that the glory of the Lord Jesus might shine in His church also tonight. We sang this beautiful promise that Messiah's glory shall be revealed and we pray that it might be our only ambition as a congregation to do everything according to the command of God that in this way, Messiah's glory might sparkle in all its magnificence. Fill our hearts, Lord, with great love toward Thee. Pour Thy own glory into us, that we might receive from out of Thy fullness. We just read again those beautiful words of Colossians, which says these remarkable words about believers. You are complete in Christ. That alone is blessing enough for a whole worship service, yes, for all of life. Because it means that not one question, not one struggle, not one sorrow, not one failure, not one difficulty can overcome us in which Christ will prove to be insufficient. But in Him there is such a fullness. that our greatest needs are answered by His beauty and His magnificence. Fill us with the Holy Spirit that we might have seeing eyes. We remember what the Lord Jesus said to the Pharisees in John 9, when they refused to see Him as Messiah, when He opened the eyes of a man born blind. And He pointed out to them that for judgment He was coming to the world. that those who think they see might be proved to be blind. Keep us from the blindness of human conceit, but rather show us ourselves and show us most of all the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray for His cause in this world. Lord, there are people all around us who need a Savior, who don't have one and who have never heard other than in cursing and swearing the precious name of the Lord Jesus Christ, who see no more value in Him than Pilate did, when he pointed to Him with a sneer while he was crowned with thorns. People who don't realize their brokenness. And there are so many other people in society too, whose lives is a mess. We think of the opioid crisis and of the great strain that is bringing on our society, of people we run into. painful to see people destroying themselves because they're without God and without hope in the world. For some of us that hits close to home, we have family members who have been ensnared to the bondage of addictions. We can't reach them. Sin has such a hold that our words fall empty. Lord, be pleased by mighty mercy and powerful grace to restore them. Give us as a congregation more of a missionary heart, not just to support missionaries far away, but to be missionaries this week. In how we live and what we say, may our words and our life drip with the fragrance of Christ, that He might be known among the nations. We pray the words of the psalmist, let the nations be glad, O God. Let them give glory to the Lord our God. We marvel at Thy mighty, powerful salvation that is mightier than the hardness of the human heart. Once many of us were dead, blind, hard, careless, but grace transformed our desires. And we pray, Lord, do the same to anyone listening who has never known that wonderful transformation. We pray for our seminary students, in particular Chris and Connie Mourick, and Ben and Ingrid Van Leer who have gone out from this congregation and the others as well, Jeff Auten, Mark Wagenar. We pray for Kenny Hutton as he considers the calls, the four calls he's received. Lord, please guide him and make it very plain to him and grant that soon he may be ordained and installed and able to minister to a congregation of Thy choosing. We pray for Thy blessing on our homes, that our stubborn wills would not rise in revolt against the words and directions of our God, but that our homes would be stamped with obedience to the Word, that they would be schools in which disciples of Christ live life to the glory of God, bringing maximum glory to God. Search our hearts, Lord, all those areas in our life where we are half-hearted, where we are not as committed as we could be or should be, where we are indifferent or careless, where there are patterns of sin, Lord, break those patterns, where there are habits of unbelief and disobedience. Arouse in us gospel repentance and reformation. As a church, too, we pray, Lord, those areas where we are blind, those areas where we have grown sluggish and dull, those areas in our heart and life where we have become foolish, have mercy on us and break through in our hearts that we might love the things that are right and good and pure. We come to humble ourselves again because of our sins. We confess that so quickly in the pride of our hearts, we can want others to agree to us, to honor us, to appreciate us. We can so quickly become worldly without any thought, doing it just because everyone else in our culture is doing it. Careless. And be like little children, not growing in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, when there is such fullness and treasure in Christ. We pray, Lord, that we may grow in grace and every fruit of the Spirit in love for one another, in fellowship with one another, in faithfulness to one another. May Thy blessings smile upon us as a congregation. May Thy name be glorified in our life. Be our hedge of protection. Shield us from harm and danger, but also from temptation. Shield us from the desires of our own heart that would rise to wage war against the beauty of holiness. Deliver us from the lies of the evil one who would have us believe that holiness is bondage and dull and boring when nothing could be further from the truth. Grant us gospel hearts, gospel homes, and gospel lives. For we prayed in the name of the prince of the kings of the earth, our Lord Jesus. Amen. preaching of God's Word, we sing Psalter 236. Beloved congregation of the Lord, during the 1920s, the United States made the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic drinks illegal. It was called prohibition. Some, many actually, unwilling to obey the law, made their own liquor. It was called bootlegging and the drinks that they manufactured in the woods or in hidden basements was called hooch. Prohibition did go one step too far. God has declared, you can read that in Psalm 104 and in other places, that alcohol when used in moderation is his gift. Perhaps some of us breathe a sigh of relief that we no longer live in such times, and perhaps others of us who've seen the damage of alcohol abused might long for days where society says, enough is enough. Article 32, as an echo of the Scriptures, is concerned to keep us as a congregation from bootlegging worship. That's not a small or imaginary danger. All of scripture, from the days of Cain's rejected sacrifice in Genesis 4, until the false worship of the beast and the false prophet in the last chapters of Revelation, show us that the human race loves bootleg religion. The Bible has a name for this, it's idolatry. Calvin used to speak of the human heart like this, as a factory of idols. If you've ever been to a factory where drinks are being bottled or cereals being put in boxes, you've seen the speed with which the machine just churns out one after the other after the other. Faster than your hand can move. The human heart manufactures idolatry with just as much unceasing vigor. we might want to respond to God's directions about worship with the same impatient revolt that the human race expressed in its bootleg hooch. Let's get rid of that. It's too restrictive. The modern church is doing that on many fronts. One of the books in my office I studied in the last couple of years by D.A. Carson and Tim Keller, men whom I respect in other areas, argues that it's too extreme, interestingly enough, without ever really engaging the classic Reformed biblical reasons for this view of worship. But God, in His Word, repeatedly condemns spiritual bootleg hooch, no matter how popular or appealing it is seen to be by humanity. This is not an imaginary danger. Our hearts are factories of idols. that will not change without constant attention to God's directions. Romans 1 says our problem is we worship and serve creation rather than the Creator. In everyday life, how much more when we brew up religion and worship? We love bootleg hoochah sinners. And that's just as true of us. This sermon is not going to be about people or two people who are not here. What a pointless waste that would be. We need to concentrate on ourselves. We need to seek from Scripture to make sure that we are, and here's our theme, worshipping God in obedience to Christ. We see three things, the foundation of such worship, the guidelines of such worship, and the fruits. of such worship. So worshiping God in obedience to Christ, the foundations of such worship, the guidelines of such worship, and the fruits of such worship. Perhaps someone's a little bit confused by the theme of worship, given that the title of Article 32 is Order and Discipline. And of course those topics do come up in the article, but there's actually an underlying concern with both of them, and that is to make sure of this. that we don't depart from what Christ our Master has instituted to keep us from introducing in human worship, or in the worship of God, human laws and traditions, and to keep us in obedience to God. What is church order? It's gathering biblical principles from the New Testament to make sure our churches are running the way God desires. and at the heart of church order is to worship with the office bearers God has instituted in the way He requires. What's church discipline? Using scripture to make sure our beliefs and our practice and our worship is obedient to the scriptures. And all of this is aimed at one thing. that we worship God rather than manufacturing an image of God that becomes an idol, that we aim for the glory of God first and foremost. The main business of the Church in this world is to worship God. Maybe you remember some weeks ago, even the word Church has to do with the assembling or the gathering of the congregation. Both those words refer to the being together of the Church. We're not, first of all, a fellowship club. Beautiful, wonderful, and essential as good fellowship is. And it's important for us to grow in this area. To speak more openly with one another and our children of what God is doing for your soul and what He means to you. Not just to give them doctrinally correct information, but to speak about your own communion with God. And yet, it's not the most important thing a church can do. We're not, first of all, a social agency to support others in their crises and needs. It's biblical to do this. We're not, first of all, an evangelism training institute, although admittedly, this is an area where we could grow in as a congregation. Is it not worthwhile to ask ourselves, should there not be many more Members of this congregation who never grew up in a church. And if that doesn't make up a growing percentage of our congregation, do we not then have some heart-searching to do? As to why not? And yet, even that is not the main purpose or main activity of a church. We're not even here, first of all, to love each other, beautiful as that is. No, the main reason for our being here is to glorify God. What does Christ gather and build up His church for? Why does He rule His church through pastors, elders, and deacons? Is it so that we'd feel good about ourselves, enjoy ourselves, enjoy spiritual experiences, and be satisfied with how we're doing? No, God seeks worshippers, John 4, 24. Jesus says it to the woman at the well. God is a spirit and he seeks those who worship him in spirit, that is with your whole heart, in the power of the Holy Spirit and in truth, according to and filled with his word. That's the only thing the Bible ever says God seeks for from us. Don't think this is just about those three hours of the week when we're all together here. What you receive in public worship, is to feed and motivate and direct you to do the same thing in all of life, to give God maximum glory in how you live your life. And Article 32 tells us that the mission statement of the church is simple. That's why we don't need to develop any additional mission statements. To take studious care that we do not depart from what Christ commanded. And that where we have We return to the commands of Christ to keep all men in obedience to God and to avoid compelling anyone to worship God in any way that's not commanded in His Word. Now, why did this article make it into our confession? Well, remember what Rome had done to the worship of God. Man-made customs. You can still hear so many of these in a Catholic cathedral. Praying to Mary, the recent Pope declared that she's the co-mediator with Christ. Praying to saints who have died. During the Lord's Supper celebration, which they call the Mass, when the priest elevates the host, as they call it, or the body of Christ, everyone's supposed to kneel and worship. Because the priest of bread is now literally the physical body of Christ, as they say. Not eating meat on Friday, as if that's a sin. If you're not interested in repenting and confess the same things every time you're there. Calling your New Testament leaders priests when the New Testament does not do so. Telling them they can't get married. And the list goes on and on. All of these things started with very good intentions. And slowly human tradition encrusted onto the simplicity of New Testament worship until scripture itself was buried beneath the weight of human tradition. And the Pope even said, you have to obey all these traditions or you're cut off from Christ. Then there was the book of Middle Ages, Church Law, they called it Canon Law. It was volumes big volumes, children, that thick, tall, wide, a whole library, debated endlessly, Church Father so and so said this, and Church Father so and so said that, and Scripture quotations were few and far between. It seems strange to us today, doesn't it? We live in times that are the very opposite. Today people say, we don't want any rules and regulation, we just want freedom, and they'll register complaints, pile ridicule, I once happened to be in a university building where a synod of another denomination was gathering and so, taking a break from my studies, I went and sat in the visitor's gallery and listened for a while and someone said, well, we're so happy to be rid of church order, we just want to do the Lord's work. What do you think church order is about in the first place? We all want liberty of conscience. We have the freedom of the spirit. Away with all forms of law and regulation. Church order, that's just man-made stuff. Usually that's said by people who've never even read it or bothered to ask why we have it in the first place. And the Reformers chose to start at ground zero, in the middle of their mess. Instead of trying to salvage and polish the mess dumped on them by Rome, they said, let's go back to the Scriptures. And rather than saying, well, we're free in the Spirit and we don't need any guidelines or policy or order in the church, they said, let's go back to the Scriptures. They model for us the very attitude, they call us to practice, to studiously take care, let's not depart from anything Christ commanded us, and let's therefore reject all man-made inventions and laws in the worship of God. Young people, you're reaching an age and a stage in life where you're wondering, why do we do what we do in a Reformed church? Why do we worship this way? Why don't we worship a different way? Young people, you're right to be asking those questions. In fact, Article 32 praises you when you studiously take care to know, notice, the emphasis studiously take care. Don't just say, well, I'd like something different, but go to the scriptures. You and people, you are right to be dissatisfied with the answers you get if they are based on no more than tradition. Some appeals to tradition, even in reformed circles, are little better than Roman Catholicism. That's how our fathers have done it. So what? Seriously. So what? The far more important question is this. This is what it means to be Reformed. That we ask ourselves in every generation again, what has Christ commanded? Has anything he commanded been eclipsed or been buried in our church culture? We can know what he wants. Article 7 already had said this, that God, the way of worship, is in detail spelled out in the Scriptures. Church history and church tradition are only useful insofar as we view them through the filter of Scripture and as they take us back to the Scriptures. That's what it means to be a Reformed church. And in Reformed theology, this is known very simply. as the regulative principle of worship. You give God what He commands plus nothing else. Anything He doesn't command is idolatry. Or to say it another way, it's spiritual bootleg hooch. I'm not going to defend the regulative principle as biblical in this sermon. I've done so in other sermons. I've done so often in the classes I teach in this congregation. And it's not just a principle you can defend with one or two texts if you kind of half close your eyes and squint and make a bunch of assumptions. There's a mountain of biblical evidence for it. But what we need to do tonight is ask ourselves, why should we be concerned with the order and discipline of the church as the foundation of preserving biblical worship? Let's turn to Colossians chapter 2. And let me demonstrate to you that this is clearly a New Testament preoccupation for pure, biblical worship. Let us begin chapter 2, verse 8. Notice these startling words. He's spent the first part of the letter praising and focusing on the glory and the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he says this, Beware, lest any man spoil, that means plunder you, through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the basic principles of the world, and not after or according to Christ. This is not an imaginary danger. Sometimes people respond to the warnings of the Scriptures in this and say, just relax, we have the Holy Spirit in the New Testament and it's safe to be led by the Spirit and we can experiment. with new elements of worship. And as long as you're passionate for God, Calvin says it somewhere, he says people labor under the delusion that as long as what they're doing displays zeal for God, or to use a modern cliche, as long as you're passionate for God, then it's gotta be good, right? Not if the traditions of men, whether ancient or new, are plundering you away from Christ. And after describing Christ's glory, the apostle goes on in verse 18, to condemn spiritual bootleg hooch. Notice what he says, let no man beguile or deceive you of your reward. By what? Well, our translation is a little bit challenging here, so let me translate it afresh for you from the Greek. Let no man deceive you of your reward by delighting in false humility and worshipping of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind." Paul, that is not very nice. These people are sincere. Are they? Probably. But that doesn't make you right. Notice how they'll say it, God gave me a vision. Paul said, wait a minute. Actually, it's not Paul, it's God. They're delighting in phony humility. Real humility is a beautiful thing. But fake humility and piety that's an act stinks like a fish that's been laying in the sun in 20-degree weather for three days. The Holy Spirit calls it being puffed up in your mind without reason. You might be humbled and say, well, I never thought God would do all this through all these new ideas I have about changing worship. That's not real humility. That's fake. Real humility is to say, I'm going to take studious care that I don't take one step unless it's clearly commanded by God saying, do it or by the principles and practice of the scriptures requiring it. And flowing from such visions, verse 21 and 22, are all kinds of man-made regulations. Most of all, a list of don'ts in verse 21. Don't eat this. Don't touch that. Why are these things not helpful? Because they perish with the using, meaning people who do them spiritually die through them. Yeah, but they're such nice people. They have good morals. Shouldn't we identify with them? Verse 23, these things indeed have an appearance of wisdom. That's what the word show means. They look good. But what are they really? will worship. That means worship that arises out of our wills rather than God's will. To say it another way again, this is spiritual man-made hoach. God says it'll make you drunk with phony humility and wisdom, but it won't glorify Him. And that's why verse 23 ends to translate again from the Greek Man-made will-worship is of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. Man-made worship doesn't renew your heart from living in sin to worship God. It just hides your sin under the veneer of fake piety of whatever kind it might be. Pharisees too, they usually flourish best in conservative churches. And you can summarize it all in a word. Man-made worship and commandments produce Christless Christianity. It's a shocking term. It's like saying, let's have a banquet, but there will be no food served. Let's have a wedding, but there's no bridegroom. Let's have a throne speech, but there's no king and no throne. Donald Barnhouse, a Presbyterian pastor some 60 years ago, offered a provocative example on his radio broadcast. Listen to this. He said, he was a pastor in Philadelphia. He says, imagine Satan took over the town of Philadelphia. What would it look like? He asks, listen to what he says. The bars would close. Pornography would be outlawed. Clean streets would be filled with tidy people who smile at each other. There'd be no swearing. All the children would say, yes sir, no ma'am. And the churches would be full every Sunday. What do you think of that? Really? But then here's the key last line. The churches would be filled where Christ is not preached. If you have all those other things without Christ being central, then it's Christless Christianity. When you measure everything by does it make me happy and does it make me feel spiritually fed, rather than by God's holiness and love and His commands, then the sense of our being sinners in need of a Savior becomes lost in the shuffle, or even offensive. Because if we're basically good people who've lost our way, but with the right instructions and motivation, can be coached to be better, then you need Christ as a life coach, not as a Savior. Then you need a pep rally every Sunday morning in which you leave feeling wonderful and pumped up and on fire. Oh, we're praising Christ! But if the Word of God is not a sharp sword that makes room for Him, and the wooing word that draws you to Christ, you've actually denied Him. Why do we have a church order? Ah, it's just something people came up with. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Remember, this is a Reformed church. There better be nothing in our practice that is just something people came up with. Do you know what the first article written in church order was? Let me quote it to you. Article 87. No one is to lord it over others. No pastor over other pastors, no elder over other elders, and no church over other churches. Oh. Why? Because Christ alone may do so. 1 Corinthians 14 verse 40. Let all things be done decently and in order. Why? Because God is not the author of confusion, but of order. Corinthians loved their chaotic worship services. People all wanted to take a turn. Yeah, I'm a prophet. The Holy Spirit spoke through me. I'm going to speak. Sit down. And they'd interrupt each other. But I want to sing this today. They were claiming the Spirit is speaking through me. And Paul says, that chaos is not the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Our church order is simply a fence to protect you from a pastor who thinks he's the CEO of the church and who has his own vision and direction. And who says to anyone who disagrees with him, now you're resisting God. God forbid, no. It's about keeping your pastor and your elders and all of us in obedience to Christ and His Word. You know, this is intensely practical. We all have our preferences and our wish list, do we not? I think probably every one of us could point out various things and say, you know, I'd really like it if our church were more this or more that or less that. Maybe the one says we should have a Bible translation in contemporary language. And the other says, well, we really should have individual cups at the Lord's table. Or the next says, no, it has to be the common cup. Actually, neither one is clearly spelled out in Scripture. And the one says, well, we should have a much more relaxed dress code. And the next says, well, we should have a stricter dress code. One of the saddest splits in Dutch Reformed Church history was about what ministers should wear in public. It should make us weep. One group said he has to wear a triangular black hat and pants going halfway up his calf. You know what we call them today? Caprice, women wear them. And one group said, if we go down that road, then everything's going to change in church life, and it's the first step to decay. And the other group said, but nobody dresses like that anymore. Why should we force pastors to? And so on and on it went. Now, does the church have to make decisions about a number of these matters just in terms of pure practicality? Yeah, we do. And Article 32 says, we may do so. as long as we are studious to make sure we do not depart from what Christ has commanded. Scripture protects us from endless debates about these things by saying to us, avoid all human laws introduced into the worship of God. The Word of God, the command of Christ, is the only foundation for decisions about the gathering of the congregation. Do you want to see things change in worship and the life of our church? If we believe that God can call us to reformation and repentance, then we should always be open to this. That's the way we've always done things, is the worst possible reason to continue to do things. But then show us as leaders. Show us from Scripture. The only thing you can say is, I want, I think, and I feel. Or tradition. That should not carry any weight in a Reformed church. Not even if your pastor or elders are the ones saying this. A Catholic bishop visited Guido de Bra in prison and wanted to convert him back to Rome. And de Bra answered like this, if even a child can show me a better way to believe, I would gladly do it. But he added, if only if you can show it from Scripture. Because that, he said, is the only proof I accept. Isn't that the way it should be? That combination of humility and saying, only the Word of God. If you want to see something change in church life, then you need to be able to demonstrate an answer to this question from the Scriptures. Where does Christ command it? How does Christ command it? What command or principle or pattern in the Scriptures calls us to do so? So then, how do we know what Christ wants us to do in worship? And that's our second point, the guidelines of such worship, and we'll move more quickly now. We could, of course, go to various Old and New Testament passages demonstrating this is what Christ wants in worship, and I've done so often in sermons and classes here, and rather repeat all that now. I want to do the opposite. I want to show you from the Scriptures what happens when we produce human ingenuity and invention in worship. What are the hard attitudes that can lead us astray? Let's turn to our other Scripture reading in 1 Kings chapter 12. 1 Kings chapter 12. Jeroboam, the first king of the northern tribes, has a problem. The temple's the one sacred building on earth. Means there are no New Testament sacred buildings. It's in Jerusalem. Israelites are supposed to go there for three feasts a year. And more often if they can. But what if the people do that and they say, you know what? The house of David rules in the city where the temple is. Maybe we should rejoin them." And Jeroboam is afraid of that, so he makes a solution. Golden calves, a new priesthood, and new feast days. Of course, we won't call it a new religion. No, we'll just say, these are the gods who brought you out of Egypt. Oh, Israel, verse 28, we're worshiping Jehovah. There's three marks here of going wrong in worship, and every one of us needs to search our heart and life in this regard. First of all this, security or the desire for security is the need for false religion. Look at verse 25, Jeroboam starts right, he builds two fortified cities, that's what kings should be doing. But then in verse 26 and 27, the Holy Spirit lets us eavesdrop on a conversation he's having in his own head. And his own heart suggests idolatry. What's he afraid of? Orthodoxy! His problem is not that orthodoxy is dull or boring, but that it's unsettling. Orthodoxy in the Old Testament centers around the house of David, picturing Christ, and the sacrifices, picturing Christ. See, it's about Christ. And the prophet Ahijah in chapter 11, 32 to 34 had given Jeroboam the northern kingdom by prophecy and had said, the split is not forever. The time will come when Israel has to return to the house of David. But this word of promise is not enough for Jeroboam. He wants something more secure than the word of God. So he doesn't reject orthodox worship because it's no longer true, but because it's no longer useful. He doesn't find it false, he finds it scary. He's got to hold on to his kingdom and he's got to make his kingdom secure. Because if you can't trust God, then you'll use religion instead of worshipping God. Jeroboam wants to secure his position rather than bring glory to God. How quickly we can be the disciples of Jeroboam. We need to make our worship more appealing to the youth. We need to keep our youth. Yes, we do. But not at the expense of worshiping God according to His Word. How easy it is in daily life, in the worship of all of life, as well as of the Lord's day, to walk by logic rather than by faith, by human calculation rather than commitment to the Word of God. Maybe if we have a worship team, we'll keep more young people. Show me from the Scriptures, from the New Testament, where the Church did this, and we'll have one next Sunday. But if you can't, then that's the wrong reasoning. Second, we see in verses 28 through 30, the appeal of the flesh as the subtlety of false bootleg religion. Jeroboam comes out of his strategy room. It's too much for you to go all the way to Jerusalem. You could also translate his words. That's enough of that. meaning you've chosen a new king, choose new places of worship. Why did he put the calves at Dan and Bethel in the north and south ends of his kingdom? For geography, maybe, probably for tradition. What was Bethel? Abraham and Jacob worshipped there. Dan in the north had a history of alternative worship. A grandson of Moses was a presiding priest. You can read about it in Exodus 18 and 19. You see, Jeroboam is not honest about his fears. He's a politician, and he deals with spin rather than fact. Notice the call to worship in verse 28. Behold your gods, O Israel, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt. This is a word-for-word quote of what Aaron said at Mount Sinai, when Israel pressured him to make the original golden calves. You see, Jeroboam is just picking up a quote-unquote different tradition. It was held in the past and sadly it's been buried from view for a while and Jeroboam is saying, I'm not a radical innovator. Israel's ignoring the richness and the diversity of her traditions. I'm quoting now word for word from some of the worship books I've read in the last few years. There was a time when Israel was much more inclusive and less narrow-minded. It's not forsaking God, it's diversity. It's part of the boundless creativity of God. You see how false worship thrives? Tradition? Just another way of doing it. You see why church leaders should have a theologically allergic reaction whenever people appeal to tradition rather than scripture. Whether hooch religion stinks or not depends on how you spin it in the 1930s. There was a horse medicine named Absorbine, and the sales were plummeting, and so a clever advertiser was tasked to rebound the company. And he had it tested, and he found out, hey, we can also use this for what was called back then ringworm of the foot on people. But who wants to admit to having ringworm of the foot? So the advertiser said, let's give that ailment a different name. Let's call it athlete's foot. Such positive associations, almost as if getting it makes you an athlete. Sales skyrocketed and the company was saved. Bootleg hooch in worship always tries to gain its appeal in this way. They'll use biblical words, love and redemption and inclusivity, all for positive emotional value, but without biblical content. Oh, beware the sins of Aaron and Israel in Dan and in Bethel gave Jeroboam the excuse years later to lead Israel astray. And God says in chapter 14 of 1 Kings, the number one reason he destroyed the northern kingdom was this foolish depending on sinful human tradition that they could have claimed was even recorded in the Scriptures. But they ignored the condemnation of the Scriptures over these very things. Let us be jealous to lose God's favor by spinning with sinful convenience pious sounding labels for sinful compromise. And third, we see in verses 31 through 33, invention, human invention as the foolishness of bootleg religion. Jeroboam sets up a whole new church here And verse 33 tells us exactly where he got it from. He had devised it in his own heart. That's the secret of idolatry. Religion for Jeroboam was not a given, not revealed by God, but based on human invention. The word made is used eight times in these verses in the Hebrew. The writer's dipped his pen in acid here. It's all man-made. No one should take man-made religion seriously, no matter how good it feels, no matter how successful it is, because Jeroboam was successful in the short term. Real worship must either rest on God's revelation or on the preferences of the human heart, but it can't be both. Our culture is not in love with gold bulls. Our culture is in love with its own religious idols. Probably the chief one is religious experience. If I feel it, it must be good and true. If I feel spiritual, if I have a wow experience, well, surely it's of God. One woman described her religion like this in an interview, and I quote, her name was Sheila. She described her Christianity as she called it like this. It's Sheila-ism, just my own little voice. God is a different word for that. It's bootleg religion, it's spiritual hooch, it's idolatry, and it's utterly foolish. Because if worship is about glorifying God, then our only and our number one concern must be again and again that we give God in worship no more and no less than what He asks for. See how man-made religion arises, seeking your security, in something other than God's Word, seeking subtle appeals to idolatry in history and tradition, seeking in your own heart the best way to do things. That's the call to self-examination and repentance to each of us tonight. How do you see worship? As designed to make you feel secure? As designed to excuse obedience by appealing to tradition? Jesus said it. In vain? Not this is another way of doing things. Jesus said, in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. Or do you ask your heart, what feels the most appealing? Rather than listening to God's Word. When you add up all these common spiritual motivations that lead to idolatry and false worship. Do you see that in that light, the wording of Article 32 becomes beautiful and safe because it honors Christ most of all. All of this to say again, quoting the three key sentences from Article 32, we should studiously take care not to depart from those things which Christ, our only master, has instituted and we reject therefore all man-made laws and inventions that would compel worship. When you do that, it bears spiritual fruit. Our last point. Doctrine is just people talking, right? Not biblical doctrine. It's truth that produces fruit. We'll start with the least important and build up to the most important. The first is it frees you from human compulsion. Imagine you're at a Roman Mass before the Reformation. People are forced to kneel when a piece of bread is raised in the air. Mary is prayed to out loud by all, and the priest will report you to the Inquisition if you say no. That view of worship only in obedience to Christ frees you from such spiritual tyranny. It frees you from me coming up with my own brand of hooch, because I'm quite capable of it. Human bootleg hooch leads to tyranny either the tyranny of man-made regulations In addition to scripture or the tyranny of idolatrous sinners being without the regulations of scriptures Our church loves to gather on Christmas and Good Friday and our Presbyterian brethren would say quoting Jeroboam You can't invent a feast day no more commanded in the scriptures And it's true. We have no right to bind people's conscience to them I'm not convinced feast day is the best word for it anyway, but that's a subject for another time. We must gather on the Lord's Day. We may gather on other days. In the Old Testament, too, there were extra days of prayer to commemorate great acts of God, great deliverances of God. But let us not compel those who disagree in principle. to do so. The church may not compel where God's Word does not. I love preaching on Christmas Day and on Good Friday. I have no desire to stop. But we have to guard ourselves against compelling anyone to do something Scripture doesn't require. The church has to decide what time the services start. Does God tell us a church service has to start at 10 in the morning? We have to apply biblical principle to such things. When can the most of us be gathered? But we need to take studious care, not to bind anyone to something God didn't command, so that we preserve the Christ-focused liberty of God's people. And second, the fruit of worshiping God and obedience to Christ is that it keeps unity. You see, obedience to Christ does keep unity. When I evaluate, and you evaluate, all your preferences, and I mine, based on Scripture alone, rather than insisting, my preferences are reason enough to do something, it keeps us in harmony. We don't all have to have the same opinion on secondary matters. As long as our real concern is simply this, and our only standard for worship is this, are we obeying Christ? We can live with each other in harmony as we worship God, rather than look down on each other by not following human tradition or living up to each other's preferences. And third and most important of all, the fruit of worshiping God and obedience to Christ is God gets his glory. Not every sermon is going to edify you the same way. The one might be more of a teaching sermon, the next might be very intensely practical about work or evangelism or other things, and that's okay. You might feel more blessed under one than the other, and that's okay. But the most important question is not if you felt blessed. Was there a disappointed God after the service? Did we give Him the highest glory possible by obeying His commands and adding nothing to worship, unless He requires it of us? If the church in North America gets back to asking this most important question of all when it comes to worship, it would lead to a new reformation. One worship scholar named Olds has said it best. In our evangelistic zeal, and I'm quoting now, we're looking for programs that will attract people. We think we have to put honey on the lip of the bitter cup of salvation. It's the story of the wedding of Cana all over again, but with this difference. At the crucial moment when the wine failed, we took matters into our own hands. and use those five stone jars to mix up a batch of Kool-Aid instead. It seemed like a good solution for our culture. Unfortunately, the guests soon discovered the fraud. Alas, what can we do now? How can we minister to those who thirst for the real thing? There's only one thing to do, as Mary, the mother of Jesus, understood so well. You remember how the story goes. She presented the problem to Jesus. And then Mary turned to the servants and said to them, you do whatever he tells you. And the servants did just that. And the water was turned into wine, wine rich and mellow beyond anything they'd ever tasted before. When you learn that lesson when it comes to worship, you tremble before God in reverence and in joy. For God makes himself known most gloriously where his church worships him as he asks for and trembles to go a step beyond that. And it becomes about God, God who saves, God who communes with his people, God who reveals his glory in soul-satisfying ways and in Christ-exalting ways. How we as sinners, who are idolaters by reflex, instinct and preference, need to remember this when it comes to worship. It's about God and God alone. That's what keeps giving you reason to worship in the gathering of His church. And then in that light to worship with everything you do, even whether you eat or drink, to do it to the glory of God. Amen.