Okay, welcome to this fifth official Inquirer's Class video from Forest Hill Presbyterian Church as we continue to walk through what we believe as a church and how we function. And this time we're going to be dealing with worship, how we worship the way we do and why. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thank you for calling us to yourself. Thank you for giving us life through your Son, Jesus Christ. Thank you for calling us to worship you in spirit and in truth. We pray that we would worship you faithfully, and we pray that you would give us clear understanding of why we are called to worship the way we are, that we might be faithful and joyful and fruitful in our worship of you. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. All right, so worship in a Presbyterian church is different, right? You can go to a lot of different churches, and you can find different worship styles, and you can find different worship structures, you can find different worship philosophies. And so what makes the worship at Forest Hill distinct as Presbyterian worship, but then even more so sort of our own version of Presbyterian worship that we have at Forest Hill? Well, let's start by talking, first of all, about what worship is and what worship is not. What is the weekly Lord's Day morning worship service? What is going on? Well, this is, at its heart, a covenant renewal meeting. It's a meeting between God and His people to renew, to rehearse, to refresh our covenant relationship. We are in covenant with God. That is, we are in a committed relationship. Much like marriage is a committed, covenantal relationship, we, through the covenant of grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, we are in covenant relationship with God. And we gather together as God's people, who are also called to be in covenant with one another, For under the covenant relationship we have with God, God gives us a number of one another commands. Love one another, pray for one another, forgive one another, bear one another's burdens. Right? There's a number of one another commands that are given to us, and we keep those within the church, within the body of Christ. And so we gather together as the local body of Christ, as the people of God, to renew our covenant with God, and with one another and that's why gathering together for worship on the Lord's day is so crucially important because we are not in a covenant relationship with God as individuals. We have a personal relationship with God through our personal faith in Jesus Christ. We are individually loved, but we are not in a covenant relationship with God as individuals. We are in a covenant relationship with God as part of his church, as part of his body. We are called to be part of his church. Jesus made the promise to Peter saying, I will build my church. And so we are together as the people of God to renew our covenant with God and God calls us to himself to renew his covenant with us. So that means that this worship service is relational, and dialogical. That is, it is a relationship between God and his people, and it is a dialogue or a conversation between God and his people. You couldn't really have a covenant renewal without those two elements, without it being relational, about our relationship with God, and without it being a dialogue, God speaking to us and us speaking to God. And so that's what's going on on Sunday morning. It is not entertainment. We don't have a worship band to put on a show and then a pastor to give an inspiring talk, right? It's not a concert and a lecture. It's also not something that we invent or we create. It is something that God calls us to and that God gives us and that God orders by his word. Now there's not a particular chapter in the Bible where you can go and find an order of worship laid out, but still we believe that if it is a covenant renewal between God and his people, that we should not be coming to get a show We should not be coming to get entertained or to have a powerful experience. You know, we live in a sort of an experience-driven culture. So this is not about having a powerful experience, except to say, that anytime we truly meet with God, it should of course be a powerful experience. But that's not an emotionally manipulated, entertainment-driven experience. That is a real, personal, spiritual experience. As we meet with God as our covenant Lord, as we pray to him, as we sing praises to him, as we hear from his word, as he reassures us of his gospel promises, there is an experience, but it's a spiritual experience of a genuine heartfelt nature, not something that's manufactured or manipulated through lights and smoke and mirrors and entertainment value type thing that our culture is accustomed to. So what happens in this covenant dialogue? Well, very intentionally. The worship service at Forest Hill Presbyterian is structured to be a conversation between God and his people, a meeting between God and his people. We are there to meet with God. The elder who's leading the worship service and the pastor who's bringing the word are there to facilitate, as facilitators of this meeting between God and his people. We're not there as mediators. There's only one mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ. We're not there to be doing the worship service. It's not a performance. It is a relational encounter and the elders and the worship team and the pastor are there to facilitate that worship encounter between God and his people. So it begins when God calls us to worship. And it ends when God blesses us with the benediction. So you see, God has the first and last word in the meeting. He's the sovereign. He's the king. He's the Lord. We're his people. So he summons us and we come. We respond in praise to His summons. We praise His name. We ask God to meet with us and speak to us. He responds to our asking Him to meet with us and speak to us by speaking His word, which is very often His law. It's calling us to confess our sins, which we respond by confessing our sins. He assures us of the forgiveness of our sins through Jesus Christ and the gospel. We thank Him. For His mercy, we confess our faith in Him to one another before Him. We present our needs before Him in prayer. We praise Him and prepare our hearts to hear from Him. He speaks to us in His Word. We respond in prayer. We respond with tithes and offerings. We praise God and He blesses us. Now, this tithes and offerings on this outline is shown after the sermon. It can easily be done before the sermon, which is the way we do it at Forest Hill. But this basic pattern of worship has been used by God's people for hundreds of years as this dialogue, right? God calls, we praise. We ask God to meet with us, speak to us. He responds with His Word, His Law. We confess our sins. He assures us of forgiveness. We thank Him for His mercy. We confess our faith in Him. We present our needs before Him. We praise Him and prepare to hear from Him. He speaks to us in His Word and He speaks to us. He speaks to all of us. And as the pastor, if you listen when I pray, Before I preach, I'm praying that God would speak to all of us. I am hearing the sermon along with everyone else. That may seem strange since I wrote the sermon and I'm preaching the sermon, but if it is God's Word and it is guided by His Spirit, it is God's Word to all of us as His people. And I'm sitting under the preaching of the Word, even as I'm facilitating it by delivering that preaching of the Word. And so that is what's going on. It's a dialogue between God and his people. Where did we get this pattern? I told you God's people have been using this basic pattern for hundreds of years. Where in the world did we get it? Well, it kind of goes all the way back to Israel's worship in the tabernacle in the temple. in that there would be a call that would go out for God's people to gather together. And as God's people were coming to respond to that call, they would be praising and singing praises to God. So, you know, the particular call to worship comes in a law where God's people are together three times a year in Jerusalem at the temple or at the tabernacle before that. And as they were on their way, they would sing the songs of ascents. They would sing other Psalms, depending on what the festival was or what the gathering for worship was. And then they would come. They would hear God's word being read to them. They would respond. They would bring their offering, their sacrifice, which was which was their way of confessing their sin and bringing that sacrifice that was a picture of what Jesus would do. And then they'd be assured of forgiveness, which was by faith in the coming Messiah. There would often be more extended sermon or teaching time. in that tabernacle or temple. And then it would end with the priest giving the blessing, pronouncing the blessing on the people. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you peace. So this was the pattern, the basic pattern of tabernacle and temple worship, particularly as seen in the pilgrim feasts. And if you study the book of Psalms, which I've obviously done a lot. And we go through those Monday, Wednesday, Friday morning and devotional times online. But if you look in the Psalms, you'll see all of the elements of worship. There are calls to worship. There are praises to God. There are confessions of sin. There's the reading of the law. There's assurance of forgiveness. There's all these elements. There's teaching of wisdom. And so it's all there in the Psalms. And really the particular form of worship that the church has adopted grew out of synagogue worship patterns. And the synagogue became a reality during the Babylonian exile of the people of God after Jerusalem fell in 586. So 586 BC, an event described in Jeremiah, Ezekiel and other places the temple falls right the temple is destroyed in Jerusalem this temple that had stood for almost a thousand years as the tabernacle and then the temple the temple itself stood for a little over 400 years but it's destroyed and And God's people are sent into exile far from the land. So they had to think, how do we follow a faithful pattern of worship if we're not bringing a sacrifice and we're not gathering at the temple? It was 70 years that they were without a temple and they had to figure out how to do worship with no sacrifice and no temple gathering. Well, the church, of course, in the New Testament age after Jesus came and the temple was destroyed finally in A.D. 70, but the church stopped worshiping in the temple before that, the church had to answer the same question. How do we worship God in a way that's faithful to biblical patterns of worship, but doesn't have sacrifices because Jesus is the once for all sacrifice who has ended all sacrifices? And it doesn't have a temple because the church is the living temple. We are stones. in the living temple. And so the church learned from the synagogue worship patterns of the Jewish people of God. And that was an early pattern that was established for the church. Now, something happened along the way, and that is in the Middle Ages, particularly under the Roman Catholic Church, but also under the Eastern Orthodox Church, the relatively simple and biblical patterns of worship that were rooted in the old tabernacle and temple worship and were drawn from the book of Psalms, those simple spiritual biblical patterns of worship were replaced with the Mass as a sacrifice with pomp and circumstance and robes and incense and all sorts of things that aren't in the Bible. that are in some cases contrary to the gospel, and in some cases just aren't in the Bible. And so the Reformation comes after the Middle Ages, and Martin Luther says, well, we need to reform the worship of God by getting rid of those things that are clearly not biblical. So one thing that changes is Luther no longer believes in that the Mass is a sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ unto the Lord, which is what the Roman Catholic Church teaches. He also no longer believes that the physical elements of bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ for people to eat and drink. So he says those are unbiblical, but we're going to keep everything that the Catholic Church has been doing as long as it's not deliberately unbiblical. So they keep the seasons of the church calendar, like Advent and Lent, and they keep a priesthood, as it were, although the priest could get married. So again, not allowing priests to marry was unbiblical, but then they keep the priesthood. So this is Luther. We technically call that the normative principle of worship. the normative principle of worship, which says the Bible sets the norm for what is not allowed in worship. So anything that the Bible forbids, we're going to get rid of. We'll get rid of images as part of our worship. So we're not going to have statues and icons and things like that. We'll get rid of the sacrifice of the mass. We'll get rid of transubstantiation. We'll get rid of, you know, a lot of things. But they also kept a lot. Because they said, unless it's specifically forbidden by scripture, we're going to keep it. John Calvin comes along a little bit after Luther. Their ministries overlap for a couple of decades. But Calvin comes along after Luther and he says, well, it's not good enough to just get rid of the things that are unbiblical. We actually have to worship according to the Word. from beginning to end. We have to have not just a normative principle of worship that says scripture sets the norm and anything that's a violation of scripture has to go, but we have to have a regulative principle of worship. And that is that the scriptures regulate all the aspects of worship, all of the elements of worship. And so Calvin said we're only going to do what the Bible tells us to do. In our worship service and that is a regulative principle of worship and that becomes the reformed standard from Calvin's day in the 1530s and 40s particularly 1540s he establishes this in Strasburg all the way up to the present time we still follow the the regulative principle of worship now we have a couple of differences in terms of interpretation of this point or that point but we clearly and strongly believe that that all worship must be according to Scripture. All worship must be according to the Word. So we need to allow the Word of God to set the elements of worship. Although the circumstances of worship can be set according to wisdom. What does that mean? Well, we start worship at 10 o'clock right now. Before we started at 10.30. We're probably going to go back to 10.30 once we have Sunday school before worship. We use hymnals. Except during COVID, we've not been using hymnals. We've been printing all the words in the bulletins, right? We have bulletins. Some churches put the words up on a screen. All of these are circumstances. We have chairs, right? Or when we meet outdoors, you bring your own chair. All those are circumstances of worship, and those are not dictated by Scripture. Scripture doesn't say specifically those kinds of things, and so we We are free to order the circumstances according to wisdom, but we must order the elements according to the word. So when you think about the pattern of worship that we talked about here, these elements come from scripture. But the circumstances of exactly how we carry these out and those kinds of details, where we meet, when we meet, what we wear when we meet, whether we have a bulletin or not, what specific instruments we might use or not. Those things are not regulated according to Scripture. Those are circumstances and those we are free to decide based upon wisdom and the context of the culture that God has called us to. Here's how our Book of Church Order puts this in chapter 47. The Book of Church Order is our sort of manual for how we operate as a denomination. It's not our theological standard. Those are the Westminster standards, Westminster Confession of Faith, and the larger and shorter catechism. This is more of a practical manual for how we operate as a church. So chapter 47 of the Book of Church Order says, since the Holy Scriptures are the only infallible rule of faith and practice, the principles of public worship must be derived from the Bible and from no other source. We don't watch something on YouTube and think, oh, that looks like a really cool, clever idea. Let's start doing that in church because that'll get more people to come. No, it is the scriptures that are the infallible rule of faith and practice. And so the principles of public worship must be derived from the Bible and from no other source. And specifically the scriptures forbid the worshiping of God by images or in any other way, not appointed in his word. And the scriptures require the receiving, observing, and keeping pure and entire all such religious worship and ordinances as God hath appointed in his word, which comes from Westminster Shorter Catechism, questions 51 and 50. So that has to do with the Second Commandment. So there are places in scripture where we could go into a longer study on worship, but there are places in scripture where like Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, they were appointed as priests, but they thought they would offer their own form of incense before God. They thought they'd get creative with the formula for the incense and do their own thing. And God said no, and God said no so powerfully that he struck them dead because they were offering strange fire to the Lord. When the kingdom of Israel split after Solomon died and his son Rehoboam took over, and Rehoboam was a foolish young man, and God tore the kingdom in two, the northern 10 tribes, which were known as Israel, had a king named Jeroboam. And Jeroboam set up two golden calves. in Bethel and in Dan, and he called upon the people to worship the Lord, they were to worship Yahweh, by worshiping these golden calves through these images. And God said that was terrible, that was a sin, that was a grievous sin against His holiness. So God not only calls us to worship Him, but God makes it clear that we need to worship Him according to His Word. And so the Book of Church Order goes on in chapter 47 to describe the elements of worship. So the particular way we structure them, we have freedom in that. But what we don't have freedom is to add or subtract from the elements of worship that are proper and biblical. And these elements are the reading of Holy Scripture, the singing of psalms and hymns, the offering of prayer. the preaching of the word, the presentation of offerings, confessing the faith, observing the sacraments, and on special occasions taking oaths, such as when we welcome new members. You are asked to take five membership vows or five membership oaths that we talked about in the very first class. And then when officers are ordained, they are asked questions and they take oaths and vows. So those are special occasion kinds of things. But the regular pattern is read the scripture, sing psalms and hymns, offer up prayer, preach the scripture, present offerings, confess our faith, observe the sacraments. That's what the Bible calls us to do in scripture. You can look up every one of these in the New Testament and find a place where God commands these things to be done. in worship. So again, getting back to what we alluded to before in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the second commandment, right? The second commandment says you shall not make any graven image, any carved image, and you shall not bow down to it. So the Shorter Catechism helps us to understand what the second commandment means when it says don't make any carved image and don't bow down to it. When it asks what is required by the second commandment? And the answer is that the Second Commandment requires the receiving, observing, and keeping, pure and entire, all such religious worship and ordinances as God has appointed in His Word. And then question 51 asks, what is forbidden in the second commandment? And the second commandment forbids the worshiping of God by images or any other way not appointed in his word. So we have to worship God the way that he commands. And we can't worship God in ways that he has not commanded. God's told us how he wants to be worshipped. It would be rude, it would be selfish, it would be foolish, it would be disobedient for us to say, nah, you know, we like what you say in the Bible, Lord, but we think we have a more clever way of worshipping you. Like, we think you would really like this in worship. And that's just not what He wants, so we shouldn't do it, right? If you love someone, you don't give them something that you think they'll want, you give them what they actually want. And that's like the secret of being a good gift giver for someone's birthday is to know that person well enough that you give them what they actually want, not what you want, right? So many people approach worship as, I'm going to worship God according to what I want. Okay, but then you're worshipping yourself, sort of, right? You're doing your own preferences. I've done this a couple times. I've been married for almost 23 years, and my wife and I have been together for 26 years, 26 plus years. And over the years, I've given her some birthday presents or Christmas presents that were really presents for me. In other words, I gave her things that I would like. I did it again this past Christmas. I did. I gave her a book that I would like. It wasn't a book that she would necessarily like. You'd think I'd know that by now, right? So that's kind of how people act in worship when they come and they want to worship God according to their preferences. That's not what God said. God said, read my word, preach my word, sing my words, sing praises, pray to me, present your offerings, confess your faith. And I will hear you and I will meet with you. And that's what we need to be doing. And we are meeting with God. It helps to realize that we are actually meeting with God. Book of Church Order chapter 47 also says, a service of public worship is not merely a gathering of God's children with each other, but before all else, a meeting with the triune God a meeting of the triune God with his chosen people. So it's not just, oh, I can't wait to go to church and see all my friends. It's God has called me to worship him, and I want to go and worship him. That means if certain of your friends aren't there, well, you still go and worship God because that's why you're there. Right? And so God is present in divine worship, in public worship, not only by virtue of the divine omnipresence, but much more intimately as the faithful covenant savior. The Lord Jesus Christ said, where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am. in the midst of them, and that's a special promise for the gathering of God's people. Even if it's two or three, right? Or 40 or 50, or 80 or 90 or 100. Whatever it is, God says, you gather together in my name, and I'll meet with you. I'll meet with you. What's the goal of our meeting? The goal of our meeting, again, is not our own entertainment. We're not there primarily for us. We're there to glorify God. Now, I will say this. As we glorify God, we are able to enjoy him and he delights to reveal himself to us and we are satisfied and we benefit in a way that we never could if we were only focused on our own entertainment. You know, if I give my wife a really good gift that's really thoughtful, she's very thankful. And I get to experience the blessing and the benefit of having done well. Right. And so that's a so much better feeling than being selfish and foolish in my thought process. Right. So God does bless his people, but only when we go in with the attitude that we're there to glorify God. His people should engage in all its several parts of worship with an eye single to his glory. Public worship has as its aim the building of Christ's church by the perfecting of the saints. We looked at this when we looked at 1 Corinthians 14. Why are we there in worship? To glorify God and to build one another up. To build one another up all to the glory of God. Through public worship on the Lord's Day, Christians should learn to serve God all the days of the week in every activity, remembering, whether they eat or drink or whatever they do, to do all to the glory of God. Amen. That is why we are there. If we do that in worship, it then sends us out for our Monday through Saturday life of doing everything to the glory of God. But if we're not even going to glorify God in worship, you think about this, if we're not even going to glorify God in worship, How in the world do we expect that we're going to glorify God Monday through Saturday in our work, in our schoolwork, in our relationships, in our eating and drinking, whenever we do, right? It's as we learn to focus our hearts and minds on the glory of God and worship that we go out and do all things to his glory the rest of the week. All right. Chapter 46. I know the title says 47. It's actually, oh, it is chapter 47, part six. Sorry. My eyeballs are going this way on me. chapter 47 section 6 says that there are no fixed forms in worship. So this is another thing you'll notice if you come to a Presbyterian church as opposed to what are known as high church churches like Anglican, Episcopal, Catholic. They have fixed forms like they have a book of common prayer or a book of common worship and they have a lectionary and so you know on certain Sundays you're going to get certain forms you're going to get certain patterns, you're going to get certain scriptures that are read, you're going to get certain prayers that are prayed, you're going to get certain hymns that are sung. And we just believe again in following scripture. And if you look in scripture, the Lord Jesus Christ prescribed no fixed forms for public worship. There is no lectionary in the Bible. There is no church calendar in the Bible. There is no selection of these readings for these Sundays at this time of the year in the Bible. It's not in the Bible. So that means Jesus has given his church a large measure of liberty in this matter. Sometimes we might do things and sometimes we might not. We have the freedom to do that. But there is true liberty only where the rules of God's Word are observed and where the Spirit of the Lord is, so that all things must be done decently and in order. We had that at the end of 1 Corinthians 14 recently. All things must be done decently and in order. God's people should serve him with reverence and in the beauty of holiness from the beginning to its end. A service of public worship should be characterized by that simplicity, which is an evidence of sincerity. and by that beauty and dignity, which are a manifestation of holiness." That's a great sentence. I love that sentence. If you're sincere in a relationship with someone, you don't fake it up with all sorts of extra flowery language. You're very simple. You're very direct. You're very straightforward because you have a sincere love for that person. But God is God and not a mere man. And so we ought to have a beauty and a dignity to our service of worship that is in keeping with holiness. So you want to avoid the extremes. The extremes of having something that's overly ornate and overly complex so that it's not really sincere. But you also want to avoid something that's flippant or casual so that it's not beautiful and dignified as befits holiness. How do we tackle this at Forest Hill? Trying to keep that balance, right? Trying to walk that line of liberty, of simplicity and yet reverence. Well, we believe in being rooted and reaching in everything that we do. Rooted and reaching is kind of our buzzword phrase, right? We want to be deep in our own traditions and in the Word of God. and in the patterns of worship that God's people have been engaged in for hundreds of years, thousands of years, right? We sing old hymns, we sing psalms, but we also want to be reaching out. And so we also are trying to make the language plain and understandable. We don't use words like intercessory prayer or prayer of adoration or prayer of invocation. We simplify it in the bulletin. We say, we ask God to meet with us. We praise God in prayer. We prepare to hear from God's word. So we're saying it in ordinary language so that we can understand what it is we're doing and why we're doing it. We believe it's very important to be a multi-generational church, and we know the practicality of that is that we need to be both traditional and contemporary. We don't just sing old stuff, we don't just sing new stuff. And part of the reason why we do that is because we want to have a multi-generational church, but also part of the reason why we do that is that the old stuff is still good, right? The things that the Spirit of God inspired and led the people of God in, of course not inspired in the way that scripture's inspired, you understand what I mean. But the things that the Spirit of God blessed the church with 500 years ago, like a mighty fortress is our God, are still great hymns to sing. And yet God is still at work among his people, and there are still new songs and hymns that are being sung for Easter. this past Lord's Day, we sang a brand new hymn, 2021. It was finished upon that cross, but it was biblical and theologically rich and great and appropriately dignified in its structure. We use reformed covenantal structure, but we use understandable language. We try to be accessible. We want clear, Christ-centered expository preaching. Expository preaching means preaching the word. I don't come up with topical series and say, oh, I think it'd be great to preach a nine-part series on money management. No, because nobody wants to hear my ideas about money management. That's not why we're in worship. We're in worship to hear the Word of God. And so it's clear, Christ-centered, expository, unfolding the Word of God, preaching. It's a gospel-centered worship, the gospel of the covenant, the gospel of God meeting together with his people. So hopefully throughout the worship service, you're hearing and singing and praying and reciting gospel content in a covenantal way. And we also don't believe in being stiff or high church because we think that is not sincere or simple. But we also don't believe in being flippant or juvenile because we believe that that is not reverent. So we want to be reverent but relaxed. Right? Reverent but sincere. Reverent but not putting on a show. From the heart is how we want to worship. In spirit and in truth. In the beauty of holiness and in the simplicity of true love. That's how we want to worship at Forest Hill. And I hope you understand now why we worship the way that we do. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this time together. Thank you for leading us as a church. And thank you for giving us such rich resources, hymns and wise counsel and biblical patterns. advice from from previous generations who have wrestled with these issues that we can walk in the footsteps of those who have gone before. Thank you for making us a part of your universal church, even as we are a particular church body of that universal church. Would you help us to be faithful in how we worship you always? And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.