The following sermon was delivered on Sunday morning, May 11, 2008, at Trinity Baptist Church in Montfield, New Jersey. I shall simply read one verse of scripture, and then we will pray, and then I will seek to deliver my soul to you this morning. In speaking to the church at Thyatira, the risen Christ says, Nevertheless, that which you have, hold fast till I come. Nevertheless, that which you have, hold fast until I come." Revelation 2 and verse 25. Let's pray. Holy Father, We come again into your presence because we know that unless you are pleased to send your Holy Spirit in His very special ministry of illumination, His ministry of understanding, His ministry of conviction, His ministry of comfort, that all that I attempt to do will be in vain. So together we plead With you, our loving Father, who delights to give the Spirit to those who ask, send your Spirit upon this congregation with an overwhelming sense of the authority and the power of the Word of God. Come to the heart of your servant. Restrain his passions, that nothing of carnal passion would in any way Taint Your Word as He seeks to preach and to apply it to those gathered before Him. Father, I need Your help. We need Your help. Come to us, O God. Come to us, we plead. In Jesus' name, Amen. God willing, On June the 15th, that's next month, the third Lord's Day, I will preach my final sermon to you as one of your pastors. After 46 years of laboring among you as one of your under-shepherds, I will on that day relinquish that role and function. I'm grateful that I come to this, the close of my labors among you. with no disruption in our mutual affections for one another. I'm even more grateful that I do not leave under a cloud of moral or doctrinal defection. Rather, convinced that your good as a people can be better promoted by younger, stronger, more physically and emotionally resilient men than I. Men committed to spend and be spent for your well-being, I am persuaded that the time has come for me to seek another, less demanding avenue of service to Christ and to His Church. I will not give you the litany of physical and emotional things that have brought me to that persuasion, but rest assured, they're not in my head. And in the light of these facts, I have chosen to use my remaining preaching opportunities to set before you what I have chosen to call my parting words of counsel to the members and friends of Trinity Baptist Church. And I remind you that I said in the first message, I said in the second, and I say in this the third. In these sermons, I am not establishing the burden of my heart by careful, painstaking exposition of the Word of God. Concerning all of these things, the years of my ministry have been marked by many seasons in which painstaking, careful exposition has addressed these particular issues. My first word of counsel to you That word which is foundational and gives life to all the rest was a two-pronged word of counsel, and it was this, by faith and love, cling tenaciously to the person and to the work of Christ. And then the other prong was, out of faith and love, obey resolutely the word and the will of Christ. And then I highlighted three particular areas in which this is a crucial matter. Obey resolutely the call of Christ to a life of universal holiness, the call of Christ to radical separation from the world, and the call of Christ to live in absolute dependence upon Christ for your acceptance with God and constantly drawing strength from Christ to live a life well-pleasing to God. Then, last Lord's Day, I began to address the first of a series of counsels based on these words of Christ to the Church of Thyatira, which I quoted at the beginning of my message this morning, Hold fast that which you have until I come. And the first word of counsel growing out of that motif was this, hold fast to your biblical churchmanship. And to give you some understanding as to why this came so high in the list of my counsels, I took about ten minutes to give you something of your history as a church. When from the very outset, before you were even constituted as a church, Biblical churchmanship was the passion of the people of God who constituted the initial membership of this assembly and of my ministry as one recognized first as a teacher and then as a pastor and preacher among you. And then I set before you the first three of seven specific aspects of biblical churchmanship. I exhorted you, I counseled you, I entreated you. First, hold fast to your convictions and practice regarding the unique place of the church in the saving purposes of God. The church is not just one institution or organization among many to advance the kingdom. It is called in Scripture the pillar and ground of the truth. Christ committed himself to build one organization, one organism. I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And so I counsel you, I entreat you, hold fast both to your conviction and practice regarding the unique place of the church in the saving purpose of God. I counsel you to hold fast to your convictions and practice, maintaining doctrinal purity and unity in both the life and ministry of this church. We are unashamedly a confessional church. A church which adopts a historic confession, which has running into its streams going way back to the third and fourth centuries of the Christian church in which God's people have wrestled with His truth, articulated it clearly, have embodied it in a confession, and to maintain doctrinal purity and unity means we take that confession not as a divinely inspired document, but as an accurate expression of what the divinely inspired scriptures teach. And while there may be issues that our forefathers did not face, that we need to hammer out as an addendum, as a supplement to our confession, that may well be. As things now stand, that confession expresses the understanding of the people of God in this place concerning God's truth. Hold fast both to your convictions and practice to maintain that doctrinal purity and unity in the life and ministry of this church. Thirdly, hold fast to your convictions and practice regarding membership in the church what must be true to enter the membership, what is expected of those who thus enter, and what must be true if they are to remain in the membership of the church. Once the church is careless regarding the standards of membership, She has begun to give over the church to become eventually a synagogue of Satan, where unregenerate, unholy, unspiritually discerning people begin to make their way into the church and dictate its policy and its worship, and it's all over. And so I counsel you, I entreat you, hold fast to your convictions and practice regarding membership in the church. Now, this morning, I'm going to take up the fourth strand of this exhortation to the maintenance of biblical churchmanship, and it is this. Hold fast to your convictions and practice regarding the worship of the Church, holds fast to your convictions and practice regarding the worship of the Church. For the past twenty-five years or so, there has been much writing, discussion, debate, conferences, etc., in evangelical churches concerning the issue of worship. Some of the discussion, some of the rhetoric has become so heated, there is a term that floats around in evangelical circles called the worship wars. It's a tragedy, but it's true. People speak of the worship wars. So that, right now, today, as we sit here, there's an evangelical church in the area that unashamedly advertises, you want a traditional service? You come such and such a time. You want a blended service? You come at such and such a time. You want a full-blown contemporary service? You come at such and such a time. Take your menu. Take your pick. Traditional, blended, contemporary, as though there were nothing in the Word of God to dictate what kind of worship is acceptable to God. But everything is what kind of worship is pleasing to you, traditional, contemporary, or blended. And in much of this discussion, I've read reams of writing on the subject, books are written on the subject. It seems to me that a simple principle is overlooked again and again. And if I get nothing else through to you this morning than this principle, And you become persuaded it's a valid principle with which you must wrestle. My work will not have been in vain. In all of this discussion, there is a foundational principle to all right thinking and right practice. A very simple principle, and it is this. The one true and living God, who is to be the sole object of our worship, is the only one who has the right to tell us how he is to be worshipped. That's the principle. The one true and living God who is to be the sole object of our worship is the only one who has the right to tell us how he is to be worshipped. that God himself is to be the sole object of worship. The whole issue is resolved in one text of scripture. Jesus quoted it to the devil in the wilderness, out of the book of Deuteronomy, when the devil said, foul down and worship me and I'll give you the kingdoms of the world. Jesus said, it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only. shall you serve. There is one legitimate object of worship, and that is God himself. And when we open our Bibles from Genesis to Revelation, God makes it clear that he who is the one, the sole legitimate object of worship, is the only one who has the right to say, and in your worship, do this and it will please me, do this, it will not please me. And that began all the way in Genesis chapter 4, where we read these words. And in the process of time, Genesis 4, 3, it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and his offering, but unto Cain and to his offering he had no respect. Cain thought, I'll bring God what I think I'd like to bring to God. God had somehow revealed how we do not know that since the fall of Adam, men who would approach him in worship must approach him on the basis of an innocent sacrifice having shed its blood and for some reason unrevealed, but this much is clear. This guy has the audacity to think he can spin the stuff of his worship out of his own head, and that God will accept it. And God says, no respect came to your offering nor to your person. Plain and simple. The first description of anything approaching formal worship, God is stating this principle in Spain. I, the God who alone am to be worshipped, I dictate how men are to worship me. And when you read through the Scriptures, and I'm only giving you a quick sampling, what are the first two commandments? You shall have no other God beside me. I am to be the sole object of your worship. What's the second commandment? You don't worship me like the heathen around you. They are image-oriented. There is to be no image of me. You do not worship me by image. I am pure spirit, and you worship me in the way of my revelation. You shall not make unto you any grave in image, nor bow down thereunto. And then it isn't long after God gives a revelation of how the priesthood is to function there in the wilderness, in the tabernacle. And you have an incident recorded in chapter 10 of Leviticus. Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took each of them his censer and put fire therein and laid incense thereon and offered strange fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them. God had given explicit directives through Moses concerning all the details of the Levitical worship, even how the fire was to be found upon the altar. But these two dudes figure, oh, well, fire's fire, and certainly God won't be persnickety about how we offered a fire. They offered strange fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them. And how did God respond to it and say, well, you know, boys will be boys, and once in a while people take some liberties they shouldn't know. Verse 2, And there came forth fire from before Jehovah, and devoured them. and they died before the Lord. Right at the outset, God is saying to his people, not only am I to be the exclusive object of your worship, you worship me according to my directives. Right in the text, all the way through into the New Testament where we read in 1 Peter 2 and verse 5, Peter takes rich Old Testament language and he says, now it's fulfilled in the New Covenant community. You are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. We are constituted a new covenant priesthood, and in that function as new covenant priests, we are to offer up spiritual sacrifices. Who defines what sacrifices are well-pleasing to God? God himself does. And as we search the scriptures, we pull together from this instant, and that, and this example, and this text, and we begin to see what God Himself has commanded His people to bring Him in their worship. It's beautifully stated in our confession, I quote it, the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by Himself and so limited by his own revealed will that he may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, nor the suggestions of Satan under any visible representation or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures." There's the principle. As God is the only proper object of worship, God is the only one to tell us how He wishes to be worshipped, and we do not spin the stuff of our worship out of our imaginations or the suggestions of Satan. Where did they get that notion? I think they got it out of 1 Timothy, where Paul says, in the latter times, people give heed to seducing spirits. and they will think they render more acceptable worship in the celibate state, forbidding to marry. If they come with their bellies playing a tune on their backbones and they're being ascetic and commanding to abstain from certain foods and the rest, they'll be more holy to worship God. Paul says these are doctrines of demons. Doctrines of demons! And yet men can be so perverted that they think they are enhancing the worship of God. Now, if there's anyone sitting here whose attitude is, I don't buy it, my friend, I pity you. I pity you. Because you're flying into the face of a principle that is found, I said, from Genesis to Revelation. And if we grasp that principle, then we can begin to think clearly and biblically about what Bible-shaped, Scripture-contoured worship will look like. Now hear me very carefully. While giving all due allowance for flexibility in many details of the order, the arrangement, the time, the length of our worship services, the circumstances of our gathering, whether we meet with padded chairs or benches, in a circle, in a semi-circle, in a mud hut, yet wherever people are serious about saying, Oh God, what would you have me bring to you in worship? I'm prepared to say there are four characteristics that will be patent in that worship. The prophet Isaiah asked a very searching question in the first chapter of his prophecy. And this is the question. God, speaking through the prophet, asked this question. When you come to appear before me, Who has required this at your hand? And that's the question every worshiper ought to ask himself when he comes to worship. When you come to appear before God in seasons of stated public worship, and God says to you, Who has required this at your hand? You ought to be able to say, You have required it at my hand, and in loving obedience, I render it to you through Christ in the power of the Spirit. Accept my worship for Jesus' sake. And the Father will smile and say, Yes, my child, I have required this at your hand. And through my beloved Son and the perfection of His righteousness and His present intercession, I receive that worship, and it makes me glad. What are the four things, then, that will characterize Bible-shaped, Scripture-contoured worship? among the people of God. Number one, it will be unmistakably God-centered worship. You won't be long in any service of worship framed by the Bible before you become convinced this gathering is all about God. Whatever else it is, God is central. to what's going on in this place. If ever Romans 11.36 was an appropriate text, it is when we worship. Of Him, through Him, and unto Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever and forever. It's to be God-centered worship By that I mean God in His being as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The New Testament is clear that the pattern of the worshiping community is that described in Ephesians 2.18, for through Christ In one Spirit, we have access unto the Father. God-centered worship will be Trinitarian worship. It will not be Jesus-only worship. It will not be preoccupation with feelings supposedly generated by the Holy Spirit and Spirit-focused worship. It will be pervasively Christ-centered Trinitarian worship. God in His being as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God in His redemptive acts as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God in the sum total of all His attributes. The God who is worshipped will be worshipped for His exalted, intimidating majesty and holiness. He will be worshipped by His, for His welcoming winsomeness and His grace. And there'll be no contradiction. When God is being worshipped for His exalted, intimidating majesty and holiness, the prophet Isaiah, I saw the Lord high, lifted up. He's undone. Woe is me. I'm unclean. He wasn't shouting happy. He was weeping broken before his God. When John sees the risen Christ, he said, I fell at his feet as one dead. Worship that has as its primary goal to get everyone tapping their feet, raising their hands and saying hallelujah is not biblical worship. It's distorted, truncated, grotesque, God-centered worship. God is worshiped in His being as Father, Son, and Spirit, in the sum total of His attributes, His exalted, intimidating majesty and holiness, His welcoming winsomeness in His grace and His tenderness. For the God that we worship is the God who makes His final revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ. God, who spoke in times past unto the fathers by the prophets Hebrews 1, has spoken unto us in these days through a Son. And our worship will have that Christ-centered, Trinitarian flavor. Because that's who God is, and that's how God has revealed himself, and our response in worship and praise, in penitence, in joy, in all the emotional responses of a sanctified heart engages God for who He is, not for whom we would like to make Him. That's why Jesus could say, the Father seeks worshippers. John 4, 23 and 24. God is spirit. Those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in what? In truth. According to reality. The final reality coming to us in Jesus Christ. And this should be so patent that when Paul is writing to the Corinthians, sorting out their charismatic free-for-all, and telling them, no, back when there were real tongue speakers and real prophets, he's sorting out how they are to function while those gifts were still given by the Spirit of God. He sorts all those things out. And here's one of his burdens. He said, if there come among you an unbeliever, or someone uninstructed, if you follow my directions for God-centered, truth-centered worship, the unbeliever's heart will be laid bare. And then what does he say the result will be? Look at it in your own Bible, 1 Corinthians 14, 25. He falling down on his face will cry out, God is of a truth among you. God! What kind of a God? A nice huggy bear God? No, a God that intimidates the unconverted, exposes his heart, reveals his sin, and yet he doesn't run out the back door. He says there's something about this God that's attractive, and I want to know Him like these people in this place know Him. Worship that is shaped by the Word of God will not be man-centered. personality-centered, entertainment-centered, feel-good-centered, it will be God-centered. And the day that ceases to be true in this place, may God have mercy upon those who produced it. Secondly, Bible-shaped, Bible-contoured worship will not only be God-centered worship. It will be Bible-dominated worship. Bible-dominated worship. We worship in the realm of truth. And Jesus defines where the truth is. John 17, 17, sanctify them in the truth. Thy word is truth. And I shall never forget the day when, sitting in my reading chair, I was reading a book on worship. And I came across one particular essay in which the author said, when we talk about the regulative principle in worship, I'm waiting for the attention of some who, for some reason, choose not to fix their eyes on me when I'm preaching. I'm not talking to myself. Folks, this is life and death stuff. I'm sitting in my reading chair, and this particular author said, well, at the end of the day, when we talk about the regulative principle, worship that God requires, all we're really saying is that in such worship, we read the Bible, we pray the Bible, we sing the Bible, and we preach the Bible. I got so blessed, I started shouting out loud, you don't know what got on in my study between me and the Lord. Then I got on the phone and tracked down this man's phone number and called him. I said, brother, you've just given me a glory fit in my study. And we talked and fellowshiped together. And ever since then, I said, that's it. That's it. Go back over those four things. I've said Biblical worship will be Bible-dominated worship. We read the Bible. Not just a verse here or there once in a while, but the first thing you hear when you gather to worship is the Bible's call to your worship. God from heaven, speaking through His Word, speaks to you and tells you to worship Him. Then we read consecutively through the Old and New Testament. Why do we do that? Paul writing to Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 4 said this to Timothy, who's there in the Ephesian church to carry on ongoing reformation. 1 Timothy 4.13, Timothy, give attention to the reading. The definite article is there. What's he talking about? The reading, the public reading of the Scriptures. To exhortation, to teaching. Colossians 4 in verse 16, as the new covenant communities began to get the new covenant documents the apostles were concerned that they be circulated and so in Colossians chapter 4 and verse 16 and when this epistle has been read among you cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans and that you also read the epistle from Laodicea The leaders of the churches had no alternative but when those letters came to their hands to read them to the people of God. Now the book of Colossians is filled with mind-stretching, mind-boggling, mind-demanding concepts of Christ and His glory and His preeminence. And in those churches you had ordinary people. You had masters and slaves and moms and dads and kids. Read the Bible! That's what the command was. You find the same thing in 1 Thessalonians 5 in verse 27. I adjure you by the Lord. That's strong language. I charge you by the authority of Jesus Christ that this epistle be read to all the brethren. So if you're an elder trying to please God, what do you do? You stand up and say, folks, we have an apostolic command. Gotta read this letter, all five chapters. Now we're going to split it up. Of course, there were no chapters, no verses. How they did it, I don't know. But this was the mandate. And then the promise of blessedness upon those who hear and those who read the book of the Revelation, Revelation 1-3. That's the worship God demands, one that is Bible-dominated, where the Scriptures are continually read. Not a bit here and a bit there, but large portions of the Word of God. And so in my 46 years, we've gone through from Genesis to Malachi, best I could figure out three times. Eight or nine times from Matthew to Revelation. We want our life and our worship and all that we are to be regulated by the Word of the living God. Then we sing the Bible. This is very interesting, but all this talk about music and contemporary and non-contemporary. New Testament says very little about the praise of God's people, but what it says is very significant. Look at Colossians 3, Colossians chapter 3, verse 16. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts unto God. Let the Word of Christ not obliquely drop down into a thought here and a line here and the rest is all my experience and my feelings. Let the Word of Christ dwell in your richly. And all of Scripture is the Word of Christ, for it was the Spirit of Christ speaking in the prophets, Peter said. And so we sing the Bible. That's why I stopped to show you how much Bible was in that hymn number 300. But we've sung nothing but psalms and hymns, the Word of Christ dwelling richly in our hymnody, in our psalmody. Why? Because that's what God commands. That's what He wants. So when I bring him songs that are the word of Christ dwelling in the composer richly, so that there is valid teaching and admonishing and encouraging one another, and God says, Who required this at your hand? I can say, Father, you've required it. I joyfully offer it to you. So we read the Bible. We sing the Bible. We pray the Bible. We pray the Bible? The only time I know my prayers are heard when I pray according to the will of God, 1 John 5, 14 and 15. This is the confidence we have that if we ask anything according to His will, we know that He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, we know we have the petitions we desired of Him. I read it again this morning, John 15, 7, in my own devotions. Jesus said, If my word abides in you, ask what you will and it shall be done unto you. Do you think the prayers we pray in this place just come off the top of our heads? No, they're framed by the word that's been read. My opening prayer after the call to worship, I write out in longhand almost every word. to draw all of my petitions out of what God has said He wants to bring to Him in His worship. Praying, now, God help me to do so. And when we had our pastoral prayer, worshiping God for that majestic picture of Christ upon His horse, and then praying for kings and rulers, because the Bible says, I will first of all, that prayers, intercession, supplication, giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and for rulers in authority. Dear people, our worship must be Bible-saturated. Not only reading the Bible, singing the Bible, praying the Bible, but then preaching and teaching the Bible. What is Paul's word to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4 verse 2? Preach the word. Be urgent, in season, out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure the sound teaching, but turning away from the truth and unto fables, they will heap to themselves teachers having itching ears. I'll tell you one thing. You don't read long in the Bible and realize it's not there to just pickle ears. It's there to stretch the mind and pierce the heart and rectify the will and change the affections. Biblical preaching is the high point of biblical worship. For in that act of the Word of God being delivered by appointed servant of God, in the power of the Spirit of God, God comes to His people on the wings of His Word to teach them, to comfort them, to encourage them, to strengthen them, to nudge them, to whack them, to pierce them, to pour in the oil of gladness, to pour in the healing balm of His grace. So we preach the Word. No higher act of worship than sitting humbly, teachably, meekly before the God of the universe and saying with young Samuel, Speak, Lord, for your servant hears. Now do you see why the Bible dominates these worship services? That didn't just happen. That is not what I inherited when I came to North Caldwell in 1962. And it isn't what has been established without constant wrestling with the scriptures. Lord, how would you have us worship you? And if you were to take the order of service from a service at Trinity Church in 1970 and compare it with the order of service that I have before you this morning, A lot of differences, but no difference here. God-centered worship, Bible-dominated worship. Thirdly, it will be prayer-saturated worship. Prayer-saturated worship. You remember when Paul wrote to Timothy, 1 Timothy chapter 3, he was concerned about behavior in God's house, God's family, God's people. And he says, if I tarry long, I've written to you that you may know how men ought to behave themselves in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. Well, starting in chapter 2, he gives those specific directions. Chapter 1 was a directive to Timothy about dealing with certain errors and heresies that were floating around the church at Ephesus. Now in chapter 2 and verse 1, he begins to address that subject of behavior in God's house, the public gatherings of the people of God. And notice what he says, I exhort therefore, first of all, that is primacy of importance, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all men, for kings and those that are in high place, that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God, our Savior, who would have all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. There's one God, one mediator, etc. Paul says, Timothy, Timothy, listen to me. In order of primacy of importance, The assembly at Ephesus must be a prayer-saturated assembly. You remember what God said through the prophet Isaiah? In Isaiah 56-7, beautiful prophecies of the days of the new covenant, when strangers will be welcomed into the family of God. God says, and my house, my new covenant house, shall be called a house of prayer for all people. Prayer is not to be oblique. A little, good morning, Lord. Good to be with you, Lord. Good to be with all you nice, lovely people. And then, Lord, bless this one, bless that one, and let us get on with more important things. No, you see, prayer. Prayer is essentially the conscious posture of a dependent sinner in the presence of a holy and gracious God. In our prayers, we confess our need of His grace. We confess our sins and our need for cleansing and pardon. In our prayers, in our worship service here, what's the first prayer? It invokes the presence of God and the help of the Holy Spirit to do what Almighty God, through His Word, has called us to do in the call to worship. God comes to us, his poor, pathetically weak, often mentally distressed and torn and emotionally battered people, and he says, worship me, praise me, speak of my works, talk of my ways. And so we come to him and say, God, you have every right to ask that, but we have no power to give it. Oh, God. Come upon our worship. Fall upon us by the Holy Spirit. Enlarge our hearts. Enable us to do what you've called us to do. We invoke His presence. Praise Him and thank Him. Often the psalm will lead us into areas of specific needs of our hearts. When we come to our pastoral congregational prayer, we seek to pray specifically for kings and rulers. and for the Holy Spirit to be given in the act of preaching. In our evening service, we pray for our suffering brethren, because God says, remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. We pray for our missionaries. Dear people of God, this didn't just happen. And that's what grieves my heart, that some of you who don't know you can't even repeat the books of the Bible, think you know more about how we should worship in this place than we who are assigned with the task of ordering the worship know, and it's grievous. that you strut about in your ignorance and find others who agree with you in your ignorance, and you'd like this changed and that changed and this imported and that imported, not because you know your Bible, not because you've discovered light from your Bible, but because it would please you. Well, I've got news for you. I may preach my last sermon here on the 15th of June, but there sits in this place two men, for the third man soon coming that are ready to spill their blood to maintain worship that is not only God-centered, Bible-dominated, but that is prayer-saturated. Some of you in your unconverted state, you don't like it. Of course you don't. The Bible says, by natures there's none that seeks after God. They call not upon God, neither were they thankful. You don't have a praying heart. But oh, how comfortable you feel when you go to places where the worship is entertainment-centered and you've got this group and that group and this praise band and this praise chorus and all the rest. You're very much at home. Why? Because all of that stuff panders to your unregenerate appetites and desires. worship that God asks and God receives is God-centered, Bible-dominated, prayer-saturated, and fourthly, it will be spirit-animated worship. And here I ask you to turn with me. I could quote the text, but I want you to see it with your own eyes. Philippians chapter 3. Philippians chapter 3 and verse 3. Here were people trying to tell these Gentile Christians, unless they got circumcised and kept the law of Moses, they weren't full-blown Christians. Paul says, no. We are the circumcision, that is the true people of God. And what's the first characteristic of such people? Who worship by the Spirit of God. who worship could be rendered God in the Spirit, or who worship by the Spirit of God. Either way, it's the same thing. The characteristic of our worship is this. It is not buttressed and held up and conditioned by ceremony and ritual of the old covenant, but by the presence of the powerful Spirit, the crowning gift of the new covenant. He who makes Christ precious to us and gives us hearts to praise Him. He who brings us to feel our utter dependence upon God and works in us as the spirit of grace and of supplication so that prayer-dominated worship suits us fine because we are helpless, needy creatures who need to come again and again to the throne of grace to obtain mercy and find grace to help in our time of need. And then when we look at Ephesians chapter 5, and this is critical in this whole worship war and music question, Paul says in verse 18, look at it. Do not be drunk with wine wherein is riot, but be being filled with the Spirit. speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father. Paul says there's true worship praise where men and women are filled with the Holy Spirit. Colossians 3, the passage that is parallel, says, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. No one is filled with the Spirit who is not filled with the Word of Christ. Being filled with the Spirit is not a tingle up your spine. Being filled with the Spirit is being rightly related to God in Jesus Christ at the most practical, ethical level. You are not grieving the Holy Spirit. As Paul says in the fourth chapter of Ephesians, by anger and bitterness and wrath and clamor and railing, you're not grieving the Holy Spirit. By corrupt speech proceeding out of your mouth, you are walking in the Spirit. Be filled with the Spirit, praising, giving thanks, Spirit-animated worship, And possibly John 4, 24, the hour is coming and now is when true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit that can be the human spirit activated and quickened and empowered by the Holy Spirit. There is no definite article, but certainly my spirit is dead and dull and lifeless until quickened by the Holy Spirit and it becomes alive to the worship of God. And then that's what makes preaching so glorious when preachers can say with the apostle, my speech and my preaching were not with enticing words of men's wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power. And what is preaching in the Spirit? It is the Spirit of God coming upon the preacher, giving him, as Paul says, utterance, and giving to the word that comes from his lips that sense of divine authority and power, so that you know you're not dealing with some fellow human being sharing his own nonsense with yours. Spirit-animated worship. Lovely, wonderful thing. Time, in a sense, becomes irrelevant. Preacher gets cold-scolded when he quits because time is irrelevant. The heart is warm. The heart is broken. And that's when you wonder, in the midst of that, when you've got people falling asleep. I'm going to share an incident. I don't talk a lot about history, but I gave you some history last week. Let me give you a little history about this. Worship is spirit animated. I don't think there's anyone here except possibly Mr. Dixon, possibly Miss Hiller, Miss Karunia. Way early in our experience, I can't remember exactly when it was, sometime in the late 60s, there was a Lord's Day. When I stood up to lead the worship, I think we were meeting in the school at the time, Jefferson Street School. And when I opened the worship, I was conscious of like a cloud of heaviness over the congregation. When I tried to pray, my prayers bounced off the ceiling, mocked me. My hearing my own voice was mockery to me. When the people sang, it was lifeless. barren. Nobody with a tear in the eye, nobody with a smile on the face. And then when I preached, I felt like Pharaoh's chariot wheel stuck in the mud of the Red Sea. I couldn't get on track for Lubna money. It was horrible. Our people panicked. They all sensed it. They all felt it. And that Wednesday, after that Sunday, you should have heard the people Oh God, where have we grieved the Spirit? Oh God, what have we done? Lord, You weren't with us. Lord, come back. Don't leave us. And I believe I can testify from that day till now, there's never been a Lord's Day when we've not known some good measure of Spirit animated worship. And I have personally known some measure of spirit endowment and power and help in the preaching of the Word. Now, dear people, hear me very carefully. When congregations grieve the Spirit or God sovereignly withdraws to teach them lessons and they ignore this, you know what happens? People say, well, you know, there wasn't much going on last Sunday. We've got to find some way to spruce up the worship. We've got to inject some life. We need to have a little more foot tapping in our music. Got to have a little bit more to jive it up. A little shorter sermons. Got to have some testimonies. And what happens? The worship is prostituted by man-made gimmicks. Instead of going to God and saying, Lord, these are the things you require at our hands, we're bringing them. But they're lifeless. They're dry. They're dead. Oh, God, where have we grieved your spirit? Where have we wounded the heart of our Savior? Show us our sin. Humble us. Revive us. Come, Holy Spirit, come. Spirit-animated worship, absolutely essential. And there's a world of difference between carnally produced, gushy feelings and happy clubs and all the rest. And that joy which is the fruit of the Spirit, the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, who always works in conjunction with truth in the midst of the context of worship that God requires of His people. Well, I told you earlier that I'd say some things that I'm fully conscious some of you have not appreciated. I trust every member in this church not only appreciates, but is ready with your leaders in days to come to spill blood to maintain. Does that mean we've arrived? No, I told you what we did in 1970 in the particulars, many things have changed. But those four things have not changed until God rewrites His Word or you abandon the Word. They will never change in the life of Trinity Church. So long as you are tethered to your Bibles, worship in this place will be God-centered Bible-dominated, prayer-saturated, Spirit-animated. And you know what the result will be? There's a commemorative stone out in the front, on the left of the last door to the left. Have you ever looked at it? When it came time to put in a commemorative stone, sometimes they called it a cornerstone, my fellow elders and the deacons said, We're going to let you determine what goes on there. You have carte blanche. Go read it sometime. And there's some text printed there, and an appeal to everyone who enters to read them. But then there's a text that is written out, and here's the text in the This I Please, Ephesians chapter 3 and verse 21. Unto him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus. unto all generations forever and ever. And God will be glorified in this church generation after generation after generation so long as the worship is characterized by these four things—God-centered, Bible-dominated, prayer-saturated, spirit-animated. I know a number of people write me off as someone who just isn't with it, who's not going with the flow, who's stuck in the mud. And my challenge is, bring this book and show me where I need to change. And by the grace of God, I'll run in the way of God's commandments. But the changes in society that are dictating how the church functions mean nothing to this old man. Not one whit. I could care less what society says. and what the experts say of what we must do to adjust to a visual generation and what we must do to adjust to a music-obsessed generation. I don't care what they say. My Bible is regulating my thought. And I'm determined that when I stand before my Lord, I can say, Lord Jesus, I did my best to be tethered to your book. Forgive my failures. Accept me. for your righteousness sake. Let's pray. Father, we've sought to wrestle with weighty matters that touch on your glory, your honor, your praise. And to the extent that your servant has rightly handled the word, seal it with power to every heart. Where I have misspoken, or distorted in any way, blow upon the chaff and bring it to naught. But, Father, would it not glorify you that until the return of the Lord Jesus this congregation will hold fast that which they have until he comes? Give grace to my precious brothers, Pastor Carlson, Pastor Smith, Pastor Chansky, Thank you that these men share this vision and burden with every fiber of their being. Give them wisdom to know how to implement. Give them grace to stand against all of the crosswinds that would seek to blow them into another path. Give your people discernment. Lord, give your people discernment. Help them to see and to understand the issues. Give grace and all that is needed that for the praise of the glory of your grace, your name, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will be known and loved and exalted in this place until Christ returns. Amen.