Please turn with me in your Bibles to 2 Chronicles chapter 8. 2 Chronicles chapter 8 beginning in verse 12. Then Solomon offered burnt offerings unto the LORD on the altar of the LORD, which he had built before the porch, even a certain rate every day. offering according to the commandment of Moses on the Sabbaths and on the new moons and on the solemn feasts three times in the year, even in the Feast of Unleavened Bread and in the Feast of Weeks and in the Feast of Tabernacles. And he appointed according to the order of David his father the courses of the priests to their service, and the Levites to their charges, to praise and minister before the priests as the duty of every day required, the porters also by their courses at every gate. For so had David the man of God commanded, And they departed not from the commandment of the king unto the priests and Levites concerning any matter or concerning the treasures. This is the word of the Lord. Over the past few weeks, I have been presenting something of an apology for a sermon series through First and Second Chronicles. I'm not apologizing in the sense that I regret working our way through it, but rather I'm presenting a defense of the study of this much-neglected book and its study at this present hour. So we spent some time clearing the ground clearing the ground of objections to the study of this book. It can seem very much like the Book of Kings, and indeed it is the same history, but as we have already seen, it has been written for some very different reasons. Kings describes in large part how they ended up in their Babylonian captivity. The sins of the nation are portrayed in unsparing and bold relief. But Chronicles is written for the restoration community. The Jews have been given leave by the Persian Empire to return from Babylonian captivity. They have rebuilt the temple, its service of worship has begun again, and so Chronicles is more positive in the sense that it is providing direction for them, principles of good government for the king, and principles for administration in the house of God itself. And in all of this, the kingship of the Most High And of his anointed prince, our Lord Jesus Christ is brought into the foreground. So we spent some time talking about the kingship of Christ in a general way. All Christians profess, is there any more common Christian profession than Jesus is Lord? And yet, as we saw, as we began to look at details, there's not a lot of kingship left, is there? If we profess that we have a king, but our Bibles are closed, How is our king going to provide direction, government, oversight, orders for us? So we say that we have a king, but then we neglect his word. And when you add to that the antinomianism of the day, Christians, when they do study the Bible, tend to think that it is not applicable to them morally. They don't tend to use it as instruction on how they are to live. So we have a king, but a king who provides no government, no direction, no orders. Then we turned our attention more narrowly to Christ's kingship over the church, which is certainly a precious jewel in his mediatorial crown. Again, I started there because I do believe that almost all Christians would acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the King of Saints and that he is king in the church. But when it comes to her government, once again, that that kingship is being practically denied. The Roman Catholic Church, for a thousand years before the Reformation, made the claim that they could alter the form of government as they saw it practically expedient to do so. The Reformation, for the most part, challenged that idea. But almost all of the Protestant churches have retreated to Rome in this regard. And if you look around, almost all of the evangelical churches have their government set up either at the pleasure of the officers, their pastors, their elders, their deacons, what have you, or at the pleasure of the people, but not at the pleasure of Jesus Christ. we have retreated to the Roman position. When we turn to the Old Testament, as we did last week, we see that God gave his people of old a government in the church. So you had a body of elders from ancient times, later Priests with their duties and qualifications and Levites with their duties and qualifications are added so God has provided Offices he has provided people to fill those offices according to the qualifications. So he's actually given the officers He's also provided courts for administration within the church, and so on. And this is a big concern of the chronicler. We'll begin to see that as early as his genealogies. And then when we looked into the Chronicles as well, you might think in 2 Chronicles chapter 26, the case of Uzziah, we see a striking example that God's people are not free to change his government. So God had given priests. He had commanded the priests and the priests alone to offer incense during the incense service. Uzziah, the king of Judah, and for the most part, a pious king, makes bold to exercise the priest's office, contrary to the form of government that God himself had given. Would God suffer this? The answer of the text is a resounding no. Uzziah is stricken with leprosy. Eighty priests drive him from the building. People of God are not free to change it. And we even looked into the New Testament as well and saw that that really has not changed. The Lord Jesus Christ has given a form of government everywhere. You see elders and deacons. You see principal functions that the deacons provide for the poor and the eldership provide teaching and government. These are the functions of the church in all places in all ages. It is a fully adequate government and yet it is now set aside as even evangelicals invent offices and governmental functions at pleasure. So we say that we have a king, but is this kingship being acknowledged? So today we come to our new material, The king has provided not only a government, but he has also provided worship and a form of worship. Interestingly enough, the complaint at this point is really quite similar. The Roman church down through the ages has felt free to alter the ordinances of the Lord at at pleasure, as they feel that they have seen reason to do so. Again, at the time of the Reformation, this was largely challenged, but now almost all Protestant churches have returned to Rome with respect to principle. The worship of God in almost all evangelical churches is performed for the pleasure of the people. Is that too provocative a statement? You will have to judge for yourself, but it seems to me that evangelicalism, not content with the amount of time we spend entertaining ourselves the rest of our lives, evangelicalism, not content with that, would entertain themselves as well in the worship of God. But this ought not to be so. Fundamentally, worship is communion with God. He is a living spiritual being. He has created us. We are creatures, but living spiritual beings as well. And we have been fashioned so that we might relate to him. But when we commune with him, it is necessary that we commune with him on his terms. If I might make bold, I think the higher, more exalted his kingship appears to us, the more obvious this becomes. If a lowly peasant has been received into the hall of the king, Is it not the king who is going to dictate the terms and the manner of the relationship? The higher he seems to us and the lower we seem to ourselves, the more obvious this becomes. But in the very nature of the case, if there's going to be relationship, and there are several ways of approaching this, but let me try to present at least one almost self-evident facet of this. How is it that living spirits commune except by speech? They talk, they communicate. So let me ask you something. When you speak to God in your prayers, does God learn anything from you that helps him in his relationship with you? The question is no sooner asked than answered, right? We haven't contributed one bit of information. As a matter of fact, if we are honest about our prayers, even when our intentions are very best, we frequently misrepresent things and ourselves. The sinful heart is dark. Deceptive. Wicked. And as Jeremiah says, who can know it? We scarcely know ourselves, but God knows us. He searches our hearts and our brains, our kidneys. His penetrating gaze searches us to the very bottom. He knows us. And so when we pray, he doesn't learn anything from us. As a matter of fact, according to his goodness, grace, and mercy, he frequently looks past the many errors in our prayers and forgives them for Jesus' sake and relates to us not on terms of what we said but according to truth and right and thanks be to God that it is so. Now let's look at it from the other direction. If God be not pleased to speak, can you know Him? He has revealed some things in nature, it's true. We can know that there is a God. We can know that he is powerful as we look at the universe around us, as we see the movements of the ocean or the grandness of the stars. In all of these things, we can see power. In the careful balancing of means and ends and the order that is established, we could say that we see God as wise. And inasmuch as he provides good things for us, we can say that he is good. But there are other truths that are more troubling. When we look inwardly as creatures of God, we have a law written in our hearts, and we all know We're not the kind of creature that we ought to be. There's the trouble of conscience. And it raises the question, if my own fallen heart condemns me, what if God, who is greater than my heart, perfect in holiness and in apprehension, what is going to happen to me? Now, whether or not God will provide a method of cleansing and salvation, what the end of the matter is going to be for me, well, I can't learn that from looking at the stars or trees or sticks or rocks. I desperately need God to speak. And indeed, I can't even know if I'm going to be received into communion apart from his speech, when I consider my own fallenness and the evident tokens of God's displeasure around me. Because we do see his goodness, it's true, but we also see a world that is in many ways inhospitable to us. We might very much doubt that he will receive us into communion. What is to become of us? And we see that if we're going to have a relationship, we need Him to speak. And isn't this the way that He has designed worship? He speaks to us in the reading and preaching of His Word, and in visible words, the sacraments that have been adjoined to the Word read and preached, He speaks to us in these things, does he not? And so we start to see the structure of the relationship. He initiates the relationship. He speaks in his word, read and preached and in sacrament. And we respond in prayers and in praises. He speaks and we respond. He speaks and we respond. And he even in his speaking teaches us the form of how we're supposed to respond, prayers and praises, and also gives us matter. So he'll teach us that when we hear threats, that we ought to tremble. When we hear promises, we ought to receive with faith and with a holy rejoicing. When we hear commandments, we ought to obey. When we are reproved, we ought to repent and so on. So he teaches us by his words, the fitting way of responding. And so in this way, there is relationship. But you can also see, because everything is dependent upon his self-revelation to get things started and to keep the relationship on track, he has to control the forms of worship. So if I might say this, and again, is it too provocative to say it this way? Worship is about God's self-revelation largely. It is not about our creativity. As a matter of fact, as we look at evangelicalism around, isn't it true that the expression of the people of God is beginning to drown out God's self-expression or his self-revelation? And if you understood the very first premise of this little piece, God doesn't need us to speak, but we need him to speak. It is pivotally important that his self-revelation, that his word be preserved whole and entire in this communication and that this form of worship be not disturbed. And as he controls the forms of worship, we find that that worship is most glorified to him. And it's also best for us. We listen, we get to hear of him the way that he really is, not the way that our idolatrous minds and hearts might imagine, and then we're instructed on how to relate to him, how to respond to him, and so on. When you come to the Scripture, you find this very thing. In the Old Testament, God gave a form of worship, and I think almost all evangelicals would acknowledge this. And in giving that, heavenly spiritual realities were being revealed. So this is not a time for their creativity. This is a time for God's self-revelation. You might think about the tabernacle itself. The tabernacle, Moses is told twice in Exodus chapter 25 to make it exactly as God had shown him while they were on the mount. Paul makes it very clear in the epistle to the Hebrews that heavenly spiritual realities were opened to Moses. The earthly tabernacle was meant to reflect these and teach concerning them. And so in the construction of the tabernacle, as great and grand and beautiful as it was, this was not a time for the creativity of the artisans, because this is not about their self-expression. This is about God's expression, which is absolutely necessary if there is to be any relationship with him. And we find this codified in Deuteronomy chapter 12. So turn with me in your Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 12. and a little about the structure of Deuteronomy as you're turning. Interestingly enough, in Deuteronomy chapters 1 through 4, and just a word about the setting, you will remember these are Moses' final speeches to the people of God. as they are on the plains of Moab getting ready to cross the Jordan and enter the promised land. Moses is not going to be going with them, but these are These are the final deliverances of the great prophet of the Old Testament Church. In chapters 1 through 4 in Deuteronomy, he reviews the covenant history. And then in chapter 5, he gives the Ten Commandments again, which are very important for the structuring of the rest of the book. In Deuteronomy chapters 6 to 26, Moses basically goes commandment by commandment, teaching the people of God how to apply the Ten Commandments in the new context of the Promised Land. And context for application of commandments matters. To keep the second commandment, for example, thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images, that has one set of applications while you are largely alone as a people in a wilderness. But you can imagine the questions that would be raised when you invade Canaan, which is filled with houses of idolatry and the idols themselves and the groves of the hills. Imagine the questions. What do we do with these things? Do we appropriate them? Do we establish museums of these places so that we have a historical remembrance of how these people worshipped from antiquity? Do we try to learn lessons? I mean, some of it might be attractive to them, like The temples communicate, you know, a sense of the profound, the awesome. They might feel attracted to the fertility rites. There might be pretty music. There's a lot of things that might attract them. And so raises question, what do we do with these things? What would God have us to do with them? Deuteronomy chapter 12 is in the midst of his discussion of that, the prohibition of idolatry, the second commandment. And just a quick word, there is a distinction between the first and the second commandment. The first commandment is thou shalt have no other gods. That deals with the object of our worship. We are to worship the true God and the true God alone. Now the second commandment can sound very much like it, thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, no idols. But that is actually a different commandment that deals with the means of worship. You are not going to try to worship God, not even the true God, by means of a statue. or any other object of human invention. God has to reveal himself. We can't make it up. Again, it's about God's self-revelation and not about our creativity. So look with me at the beginning of Deuteronomy chapter 12. These are the statutes and judgments which ye shall observe to do in the land which the Lord God of thy fathers giveth thee to possess it, all the days that ye live upon the earth. Ye shall utterly destroy all the places wherein the nations which ye shall possess serve their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree. And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire. And ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place. Ye shall not do so unto the Lord your God. So if the Israelites have any questions about what they are to do with the monuments and relics of idolatry, God expresses his own mind in no uncertain terms. These things are to be wiped from the land, as it were. And in verse 4 in particular, you see that Of course he doesn't want them to worship the indigenous Baal and Baalim and the Ashtoreth and so on, but that's not his primary concern here. He doesn't want them taking the forms of Canaanite worship and appropriating and introducing them into the worship of the true God. He doesn't want those things introduced into his worship. So notice here he says these things that the people have done in the worship of their gods, ye shall not do so unto the Lord your God." In the middle of the chapter here, Moses' expression becomes more positive. Basically, you get a review of everything that he had been teaching them since Exodus, about true and faithful worship, the worship that he himself had commanded them, right? So chapter begins negatively. Do not import forms of worship from the Canaanites. Then you get a positive statement. Do what I told you to do with respect to worship. And then at the end of the chapter, beginning in verse 28, he expresses himself again negatively. Verse 28. Observe and hear all these words which I command thee, that it may go well with thee and with thy children after thee forever, when thou doest that which is good and right in the sight of the Lord thy God. When the Lord thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them and dwellest in their land, Take heed to thyself, that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee, and that thou inquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? Even so will I do likewise. Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God. For every abomination to the Lord which he hateth have they done unto their gods. For even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods. What thingsoever I command you, observe to do it. Thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it. So once again, and this statement is actually not too different from what you had at the very beginning. He warns them again that they are not to follow the people of the land in worship practices. And you see again in verse 31, the very specific Second Commandment concern. He doesn't want Canaanite forms of worship introduced into his worship. Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God. Now, the second half of verse 31, we might think, well, maybe it's just the grosser abominations. They've offered their sons and their daughters and burned them in fire to their gods. And of course, such atrocities are far from the mind of the true and living God. But verse 32 provides a summary and context that it's not just the grosser things, although worship of human invention tends toward the grosser things. But verse 32 is the summary statement. So if I were to paraphrase this, it's as if God is saying to us, what I commanded with respect to worship, Do it and exactly that. If I have given you an ordinance, don't diminish it or diminish from it. But you are not free to add to my ordinances either. Do what I've told you to do. Do that exactly and don't add to it. This has come to be known as the regulative principle, and Deuteronomy 12.32 is the Mosaic statement of it. Later theology, it's the same logic, different words, say, with respect to God's worship, if he has not commanded it, then it is forbidden. So when God gives commands, of course, those things are to be done. They can't be omitted. But we are not free to add other things. And if we understand the points already made concerning the nature of worship and what it is, that makes a lot of sense, right? If this is primarily about God's self-revelation, then he needs to control the means of worship to make sure that his image is preserved, as it were. Let me give you an illustration. It's not unusual for me to bring this up at some point in my Old Testament classes at the university. I had a student leave the class. I'm not always sure what they're taking in and what they're not, but this was a very striking occasion. I had a student leave the class, and that Sunday when that student went to church, She just kept track of the time, how much time was spent on each thing. And she came back with a report, which was surprising. And so she said we worshiped for just a few minutes over an hour. So, you know, you're looking at an hour five, maybe something like that. And she said the first 40 minutes were taken with Music. She said there were some interspersed prayers, there was an announcement, there was the fellowship time, the time of the shaking of hands, right? Good game, good game, good game. All right. And then when it came time for the word of God, she said that other than a couple of verses that were read within the context of the sermon, there was no reading of the word of God. And so I was really curious, I was like, how long was the sermon? And she said, 12 minutes. And then there was another prayer, another couple of songs, another prayer, and it was over. And so then I asked her, I said, well, what what do you think of this? How do you evaluate it? And she said, that's messed up. And I thought that that was very well said. We're spending all of this time expressing ourselves and entertaining ourselves. And the voice of God, which more than anything is needed, is almost completely drowned out. And what happened to the reading of God in Christian worship anyway? It is commanded, you know. God does command the reading of the scriptures and the church in its faithfulness. Read the scriptures for ages and ages, as James is able to say in Acts chapter 15 at that council in Jerusalem. Moses has been read of old every Sabbath day. And yet, God's Word is not being read to God's people. And I think if we're honest, and I'm involved in ministerial education, so I get to hear the honest stuff sometimes, and pastors are concerned. In this age of internet and cell phones and having things on demand, people find reading, especially somebody reading to them, boring. And since they want the pews to be filled, they fill the services with music that the people like. They cut out what they feel like the people won't like, which includes the reading of God's word and even long sermons. And pretty soon, worship becomes an echo chamber. Rather than listening to God's voice and responding to him, we just go on expressing ourselves and talking to ourselves about ourselves. And we frequently become, when we lose God's self-expression, the native idolatry of our fallen hearts has free reign to rework the image of God. All right, so let me return to the main thread here. Deuteronomy 12 and Moses' expression, God tells us to do what he's told us to do in worship and not to change it. And we find the same concern in Chronicles, don't we? It's where we began. If you can just remember the verses, you don't have to turn there, but in 2 Chronicles 8, listen to the language. Expressing Solomon's faithfulness, then Solomon offered burnt offerings unto the Lord on the altar of the Lord, which he had built before the porch, even after a certain rate every day, offering according to the commandment of Moses on the Sabbaths and on the new moons and on the solemn feasts and so on. Right. So part of Solomon's faithfulness is that Worship is being conducted according to God's Word. And next time we're together, I'm going to turn my attention very specifically to the service of song. What is it that God commanded with respect to song, with respect to music? This is a huge issue in the present day. Might even say as far as our contemporary worship is presenting problems, it is the issue, probably the great issue, is the lack of the reading of God's word and weakness in preaching. Those two things give rise to everything else, but the way that the problems present is what's happening in the service of song. We'll put a pin in that and come back to that next week. As I mentioned earlier, I think most evangelical Christians would grant or allow that in the Old Testament, yes, God did insist that worship be performed exactly as he commanded. But then the question comes up again, well, aren't we more free in the New Testament? Now, rather than assuming this to be the case, we should really look to the scriptures. It is true that God has changed his worship. You read the epistle to the Hebrews, and we learned that the temple and its worship, which had been instituted to teach the people about the coming Christ, with the coming of Christ and the accomplishment of his work, that old temple and its worship has been fulfilled and thus taken away or removed. As Paul says in the epistle to the Colossians, those shadowy things preaching Christ to come have been fulfilled because now the body or the substance has come. Jesus himself has come. When we look at the nature of worship I think we would have to confess we would be very surprised at the underlying principle that God has to control the means of worship. We would be very surprised if that has changed, right? Because I am every bit as much in need of God's self-revelation in order to relate to him as the ancient Israelite, right? It's built into the nature of the case. But when we turn to the scriptures of the New Testament, that is what we find. We do have a greater freedom in the sense that we don't have the burden of those very particular and expensive ceremonies of the Old Testament, but the underlying principle that God controls the means of worship has not changed. Turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 15. Here we are on the eve of the change. Even as Jesus is walking the earth, the temple is seeing its final days. Its worship is getting ready to pass from the scene. and the worship is going to be reformed. Those old grand external ordinances are going to give way to those designed more specifically toward spirituality and ordinances that can be done all over planet Earth. The reading, preaching, and conscionable hearing of God's Word, baptism, and the Lord's Supper, Prayer, the singing of God's praise, and a few other extraordinary things. But worship is going to be simplified. It can be done in a mud hut in Africa. It can be done in a king's palace. It can be done in any place. Look at Matthew chapter 15. We see Jesus affirming the principle that God must control the means of worship. Beginning in verse 1, Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees which were of Jerusalem, saying, Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they wash not their hands when they eat bread. Let me just pause to observe. I know for us in the Western world, it's a matter of hygiene to wash your hands before you eat, and that's fine. That's not what's being discussed here. This is not a matter of hygiene. This is a piece of religious practice that they don't even pretend comes from the scriptures. The scribes and Pharisees admit that it comes from the tradition of the elders, but basically the idea was when you were out at market, perhaps you unknowingly came into contact with something or someone that was unclean. And so when you would come back before you would eat, you would ceremonially baptize your hands. So this is a ritual purification, not a hygienic purification. But it's grounded not in the scriptures, but on the tradition of the elders. So here you have a bit of household ceremony that's in view, a household ceremony of merely human invention. What saith our Lord, verse three, but he answered and said unto them, why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? For God commanded, saying, Honor thy father and mother, and he that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me, and honor not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. Ye hypocrites, well did Isaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth an eye unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. The intervening discussion can be a little bit more difficult and is actually not necessary for our purpose because in verse 9 he really gives the summary of the whole thing. So for the sake of simplicity, I'm going to set aside the intervening argumentation and simply look at the Lord's conclusion. Basically, Ordinances of worship that are merely of human invention are called vain here, right? They're the commandments of men and they are vain. That means that they are empty. That's an extraordinary statement. We can believe that we are communing with God. We can feel like we are basking in his presence. But when those ordinances are of merely human invention, Jesus says they're empty. So to try to personalize it, the Jew that was baptizing his hands might have felt like he was pleasing God. He might have felt as if he had the good pleasure of God. He might have felt as if he were communing with God in those things. And Jesus says, it was empty, not indeed filled with all of that goodness that was imagined. is empty. And I want you to notice that Jesus refused to impose ordinances, worship ordinances of human invention upon his disciples. He wasn't doing it before, which led to the complaint at the beginning of the chapter, and in his argument, He implicitly communicates he's not going to start. Ordinances of human invention are empty. And so he doesn't apply them. One other text to look at. Colossians 2, beginning in verse 16, if you will turn there with me. Paul's epistle to the Colossians 2, beginning in verse 16. Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink or in respective and 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 me just pause. At Colossae, there are at least two different kinds of false teachers that are attempting to seduce the Colossian Christians. You have a kind of Judaizing teacher who is trying to get the Colossian Gentile Christians to observe the Mosaic Law in order to be good Christians, or maybe to be Christians and saved people at all. But you also have a kind of philosopher, pagan kind of false teacher who is trying to blend Christianity with the indigenous paganism. Paul's general thrust in the epistle is, you have all of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge in Christ Jesus already, as it has been delivered to you in the scriptures and in apostolic preaching and teaching. If you have all of the fullness of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge in Christ, then you don't have to go to these other pretended sources of wisdom in order to be complete. You're already complete in Christ. So in verses 16 and 17, he first addresses the Old Testament forms of worship. And you already see their changed status. For the people of God of old, these things were binding upon them. They were obligated to do them. God had commanded them to do them. During this period of time, in principle, they had already been taken away. The Jews were given about a generation to let go. It's a long story. But you see their changed status. Under the Old Testament, if you did not obey with respect to these things, you could be judged with respect to them, both in church and state. Here, Paul says, don't let anybody judge you with respect to these. So that their status has gone from commandment to morally indifferent in and of themselves. And you can see a like approach in Romans chapter 14. So Paul says, let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink or in respect of an 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. Now, if Paul is saying God's ordinances of old have been removed by the Lord and are no longer binding and are passing from the stage of history, even during this very season, you can imagine what he's going to say about ordinances of mere human invention, ordinances of worship that have their source or their genesis in the fallen mind, heart, and imagination. Verse 18, Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath 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, increaseth with the increase of God. Wherefore, if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments 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 things have indeed a show of wisdom in will-worship and humility, and neglecting of the body, not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh." Now I want you to notice here how frequently you get language that's indicating that the source for these ordinances are the fallen mind, heart, and imagination. So it's a voluntary humility. It's not a humbling that the Lord requires where he might tell you, for example, tear your heart and not your garment or to fast upon these. But this is a self-humiliation. This is a humiliation that's arising merely out of the human will. When they would begin to use angels as mediators, which can appear humble, right? For the pagan mind, to make an immediate approach to the Most High is overly bold. Perhaps these teachers were saying a direct approach to Christ is overly bold. We're going to use angelic mediators. Paul says you're imagining things about angels that have not been revealed, and you are just puffed up in your fleshly mind. You're inventing ordinances of worship, but you don't know what you're doing. This is not a time for your imagination. This is time for God's self-revelation. Positively, he commends in ordinance of worship, holding fast to the head. And as the body does this, it is nourished by him. But notice also at the end, he complains of what he calls here, will worship. These things might have a certain show of wisdom. They might be attractive to the mind of man. But it's worship that has its origin not in the commandment of God and in his self-revelation. It has its origin in man's will. And to the extent that we do these things, we're not holding fast to the head. And to the extent we're not holding fast to the head, we are losing nourishment. So you might say, well, what's at stake and how important is this to me? God's self-revelation is absolutely necessary for the manifestation of his glory, which is the chief end of all things. But I also might respond, how important are you to you? Your spiritual nourishment and well-being is dependent upon holding fast to the head in Worship, not inventing your own stuff, but looking for Him to reveal Himself and even to teach us how to respond. I think that that is probably adequate in order to demonstrate that the underlying principle of Old and New Testament worship is the same. That God commands. and that we're not free to diminish from His commandment nor add to it, that we're to worship exactly as He has commanded us. And like I said, next time we're together, we will look specifically at song, because the Chronicler is very interested in song. Interestingly enough, the whole Christian world is interested in song, in Christian song at the moment, but almost nobody's reading Chronicle. You start to see some of the reason of the timeliness for this. So just by way of practical application, I think that our waywardness in worship is another reason that we have lost the sense of dwelling in the presence of the King. If I can take you back to the throne room imagery, if government And the Church of the Living God is being practiced exactly as the King has commanded. We have this wonderful sense that we're living in the presence of the King. And so there's this awe, there's this reverence, but there's also this joy and delight. Our King, our good King, our King whose throne is established upon mercy is reigning and ruling in our midst. And then as we're in the hall of the king and we are communing with him, again, if we're just doing whatever we want, we lose the sense that the king is present. But when all things in his court are conducted according to his mind and at his bidding and command, we have that wonderful sense. that dreadful and glorious sense that the king is there and that he's not silent, but he's ruling in our midst. It is wonderful. And I hope that all of this is useful, just whetting your appetite for the coming studies in Chronicles.