And turn in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 20. Our text will be the same as it was this morning. The first six verses, which is the first two commandments, rightly dividing the commandments. Hear the word of the Lord. And God spoke all these words saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in the heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I the Lord your God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me. but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Let's pray. Again, we thank you for the reading and the hearing of your word, which is a powerful means of grace to edify your people. Just the hearing of your word read. Holy Spirit, we pray that Your anointing would go to our ears as we've heard Your Word, that You would illumine Your Word to our hearts. We believe every word of the canon of Scripture comes from Your mouth and is authoritative for faith and life. Now, Lord, grant strength again to your servant and the preaching of your word. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. As those who are here regularly know, I began a sermon series just a short time back of some sermons about the doctrine of the church. If before God's face we're seeking the planet church because we believe he wants us to do that, it's important for us to know what the church is. And so we looked at a number of different texts. We looked at Christ as the builder of his church from Matthew 16. We looked at the marks of the vibrant church from Acts chapter 2. We looked at the warfare of the church from Ephesians chapter 6. And then we looked at the glory of the church from Psalm 87. Those were the sermons up until today. Well, this morning I told you I'm narrowing the focus. We're not only convinced that the Lord wants us to plant a church, but a particular kind of church, and that is a Presbyterian church. And not because we were born and raised Presbyterian. Some of us were, some of us weren't. Not because of tradition, but because we are convinced that Presbyterian distinctions are in the Bible. It's what the Bible teaches. Now, we know that we have brothers and sisters in Christ that don't share all of those distinctions with us, and that's perfectly fine. We have sweet fellowship with our brothers and sisters who don't all agree with us. So we're going to narrow our focus, beginning today, upon what I'm calling distinctive Presbyterian doctrines, at the same time recognizing that not only Presbyterians hold these different doctrines. Now, it's when you hold them all that you might be a Presbyterian. You've got to hold them all. Some of these doctrines are held by much of the Church, some by some of the Church beyond Presbyterianism. But when you put them all together, this is why a Presbyterian Church is what it is. It's because of what the Presbyterian Church believes that the Bible teaches. So we need to know that and to be able to winsomely defend that and communicate that with our brothers and sisters in Christ and say, well, I don't understand why you believe this or why you do this. And so we're starting. that series today, the narrowing of that series. Now, my plan is, I don't know what the sermons are going to be yet, in two weeks when I'm supposed to be back here, to look at incarnational themes. People are thinking about these things in December, and it's been my practice for many years, typically in December, to take at least a couple of Sundays to look at and to preach themes that the world is thinking about with the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but I haven't decided yet which text I'm going to employ for that. I would remind those who are here this morning, but those who weren't here, I will not be here the first Sunday in January because I'm going to be preaching in one of our churches that's going through some severe trials. They've asked me to come and preach and the Commission has said Go, we will supply the pulpit here. But Lord willing, the third week in January, I'll be back and then we will start this series up again. So the first question then in terms of distinctive Presbyterian doctrines is, what do we see as the first duty of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ? And like I said this morning, you might expect the regional missionary would say, well, the Great Commission, evangelism. That's the first duty of the church. And I said, no, that's the wrong answer. The first duty of the church is worship. The Great Commission is our commission to take the gospel to the nations. Why? So that more and more people will be reconciled to God and come together and glorify his name in worship. And when the church gets this backwards, things fall apart. Our evangelism is unto our first duty, which is worship. So this morning what we did is we focused upon the two principles that have guided the church throughout the centuries in terms of, well, what do we do in the public assembly when we come together? And these two principles are not consistent with each other. I mean, they are in one sense, and in another sense, they're not. The one is called the normative principle of worship. And it can be defined this way. We will not do in the public assembly anything that God forbids in his word. And that's the principle. That's the guiding principle. That's the majority opinion. It has historically been the majority opinion. The normative principle is the principle of the Roman Catholic Church. The time of the Protestant Reformation, we talked about this this morning, the time of the Protestant Reformation, it was really the Reformed branch of the Reformation that took to reforming the worship of God. Zwingli, Ecclempadius, I think, was really standing behind and underneath Zwingli in the developing of a liturgy that is found from mining the scriptures. Whereas Lutheranism, Luther did not. Now, he brought us much in terms of the Reformation. Same thing with the Church of England coming out of the Roman tradition, and then Methodism that came out of The Anglican tradition continued the normative principle. And that is, by far and away, the majority report in our day. But historically, it was the Reformed branch of the Reformation that adopted the second principle. And that second principle is called the regulative principle of worship. They didn't define it that way. The reformers didn't. It's not defined with those terms, even in the Westminster Confession of Faith and another generation later. John Murray is probably the one. He either coined the term or certainly popularized the term beginning in the 1940s. And that principle can be stated this way. We will only perform in the public assembly what God prescribes as word and nothing beside it. will only perform in the public assembly what God prescribes in his word and nothing beside it. And then we ask the question, does the Bible support one or the other of these principles? And we went to the second commandment as the foundation for what's called the regulative principle. We know who God is by his revelation, We worship him according to his revelation. We looked at the second commandment. It's forbidding the making of images to bow down and worship them. We interpreted that in light of Exodus 32. where you have the event of Aaron fashioning the golden calf, and demonstrated from a careful exegesis of that text that the golden calf was not an Egyptian god, but rather an image that Aaron fashioned of Jehovah God, of Yahweh. It's clear in the text when you read Exodus 32. After fashioning the golden calf, what did Aaron say? Tomorrow will be a feast unto Yahweh. And they met together and they offered offerings that are prescribed later in the Levitical legislation in that covenant that's given to Moses on top of the mountain. While Moses was on the mountain, this was going on the bottom of the mountain. They offered whole burnt offerings, offered peace offerings. These are legitimate and rightful offerings, but then they rose up to play. Because what did the image tell them about the moral character of God? They wanted something visible, something tangible that they could wrap their minds around while they waited for Moses to come down from the mountain. And so Aaron fashioned an image that might depict Yahweh as being strong and virile and mighty. That's what a bull calf is. But what of his moral character? This is why we are forbidden to make images and to worship them of Yahweh. That grounds, I believe, what we call the regulative principle of worship. Well, if that's established, and I'm not saying I convince everybody, although I think I'm pretty much singing to the choir here in this congregation, the question comes in, how do we apply it? And here's where the difficulties lie. Those who agree in principle disagree in application. And this is where we have to be charitable. And this is where in the Church of Jesus Christ Reformed tradition people often aren't charitable and become quite legalistic in their opinions about what the Bible actually says to do in worship. You need to recognize it's not easy to mind the scriptures and see precisely what God tells us to do. And there are reasons for that. One is, there's a difference in genre between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. The Old Covenant, the Mosaic Covenant, comes to us in law. That's a genre, where God gives commandments, and in His commandments, He gives express description of this is what you do in my worship. Feasts, festivals, all kinds of different sacrifices, circumcision, all of the ceremony is expressly and clearly laid out. The regulative principle is easy to follow under the old covenant because it's laid out in law. The New Testament comes to us in a different genre, gospel and epistles. Now, that's not to say there's not law in the New Testament. Of course there is. You have application in Scripture, and that's law. But the genre is not the same as that under the old, where it comes codified in law. And so, mining, what does God approve of in New Covenant worship is more difficult. Then you add the question, What from the old is abrogated and what's not, that's even more reason to be charitable. Because it's hard to know. And that's why, yes, we hold to the principle, but the application of it is more difficult. And we need to recognize that. That's why we need to be charitable. We even had one of our members at one time that was committed to singing only the song. So what did I do? Did you notice what I did every Sunday night? Because I love singing the psalms too. I picked only psalms to accommodate the conscience of our brother who can sing the psalms of the Lamb now and we're thankful for that. But we have to be charitable with each other in terms of the application and oftentimes the church is not. So I'm going to move from preaching more to a more didactic or teaching approach to try and help us with application. And there are three terms that have been coined that aren't in the Bible. You can't go to Concordance and find this in the Bible. So there are theological constructs that help us understand and maneuver our way through the scriptures. But they're very important, and you need to understand the difference between them. Those three terms are elements, forms, and circumstances. Now, sometimes elements are called parts of worship. In fact, that's what you see in the Directory of Public Worship in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. But I prefer the word element because elements are things that are basic. They're things that are foundational. Now, what is an element? An element is whatever God tells us to do in worship. That's what an element is. Whatever God says, do. Now, I'm not going to take the time, because I don't have the time, although I've taught a course a number of times on reformed worship at the college, and I've taken the time to mine the scriptures there, but we don't have time to do that now. But just to suggest to you what it looks like in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and in some of our other sister denominations in terms of the elements of worship. What are they? The singing of praise, prayer, the preaching of the word, sacraments. These are all elements that you can find that the Bible says we are to do either by command or by what is approved in the worship of God in Scripture. These are elements of worship. There are also occasional elements of worship. like oaths and vows. What happens when someone makes a profession of faith? What happens at an ordination? What happens when we present our children for covenant baptism? They're oaths and vows. Why are they occasional? Because they're occasioned by having a lawful candidate. Baptism is an occasional element. We don't have a baptism because we're a church. We have baptism because somebody needs to be baptized, a lawful candidate. We preach, why? Because we're a church. We preach because it's the assembly. That's a regular element. And if someone comes along and says, we had a wonderful service Sunday night. The Holy Spirit fell during the worship. I'm quoting what somebody told me one time. And he meant by worship, the singing part up front. The Holy Spirit fell so much in the singing, people started to testify. And the Holy Spirit blessed so much, the preacher didn't even get to preach. I said, you didn't have worship. He said, what do you mean we don't have worship? I said, the Bible prescribes the preaching of his word. I don't care if you have to be there three hours. The preacher needs to get up and preach for it to be public worship. We worship by listening to the word of God proclaimed, you see. These are elements of worship. You can even break down. In some ways, although sometimes these can be forms, but what about confessions of faith? You find them in the Bible, and so we utilize them in the public assembly. Elements are the things that God tells us to do. Okay, they're non-negotiable. But we have to be charitable. Why do we have to be charitable? Because they're difficult to mine in Scripture. Is the offering an element of worship? I think so. I got brothers and sisters in Christ who have the same principle who don't think so at all. That one's harder to establish than you might think. Quite frankly, if you're looking at the New Testament, so is singing praise. People talk about speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Neither of those are in the context of public worship. of those statements. And yet, I'm convinced we're to sing praises. I think this is one of the things that continues from old to new as well. An element is what God says do. So what do we do? Under the principle before God, we do our best to mind what the scripture says to do, and then we seek to do those things and seek to be faithful, knowing we might not get it all right. But we're doing our best. And our brothers and sisters who might differ with us on whether this is an element or not, we don't get bent out of shape with them. Because they're zealous to do the same thing we are. Worship as God prescribes His Word. That's where charity needs to come in. But the elements are non-negotiable. I said baptism is an occasional element. What about the Lord's Supper? Let me open up a can of worms. What in the element itself, what in the supper itself tells you it's occasional rather than regular? Why do we baptize? We have a lawful candidate, therefore it's occasional. Why do we celebrate the Lord's Supper? Because Jesus told us to. So you know my position. I think every Sunday we should be having the Lord's Supper. That's my position, and I don't impose it upon our mission works. It's not even the majority position in the OPC, but it's a growing position in the OPC. But these are questions that we ask, and these are places where we're charitable with each other as well. An element. What does God tell us to do? Now, what is a form? Well, the form is the content of a particular element of worship. We have a great deal of liberty regarding forms. For instance, what psalm are we going to sing? Are we going to sing 98A, which is everybody's favorite? Are we going to sing Jesus, lover of my soul, a hymn? which we believe in the OPC is lawful to sing because it's a doctrinally faithful, God-glorifying, gospel-centered hymn to sing. When we don't sing 98A every Sunday, we might want to. It'd be good to sing it quite often. Now, we have liberty to pick. But we can't pick, well, let's sing Psalm 98a, and for our second hymn, let's sing Mary Has a Little Lamb. Understand? We have a liberty to pick, but that liberty has boundaries around it. Only psalms and hymns, of course all the psalms are faithful because they're inspired by God, but only hymns that are faithful and are edifying to the people of God and glorify God in our singing. We can't do that, you see. Another form, what's Scripture? What's the text of the sermon? What's the content of the sermon? These are formal considerations. The text happens to be the same tonight as it was this morning, but next time I'm here, it's going to be a different text. I have the liberty as a minister, I got 66 whole books to pick from and have liberty to pick any of them, but I can't pick the Quran. You understand? These are formal considerations. What prayers? What's the content of the prayers? Do we use the Lord's Prayer, which I wish we did more liturgically. We have liberty in terms of forms, but we don't have liberty in terms of elements. Why? Because God sets the protocol when his people come before him. And we want to obey him and follow his protocol. But there is much liberty in terms of forms. The particular content of a particular element on a particular Sunday. These are formal considerations. And in my view, the arrangement of the liturgy is a formal consideration. We're not like the Church of England. We're not like the Roman Catholic Church where the church sets the liturgy. No. The session has liberty. That's why you can go from one Orthodox Christian church to another. And while there's a lot of similarity in the liturgies and worship, oftentimes there are nuanced differences. And here in this mission work, you have different men to come and preach. Sometimes they will develop a different liturgy that they prefer. That's okay. As long as the elements are all properly performed. Now, it's important, I think, for us to think in terms of, use our common sense and logic in the ordering of the elements. We don't begin the service with the benediction and end it with the greeting and salutation. We begin it with a greeting and salutation and call to worship. We end with benediction. That makes sense, you say. We find benedictions in the Bible. We find salutations and greetings in the Bible. And therefore, they find their way into our liturgies. We find call to worships in the Bible. Therefore, we find them in our liturgies. And so there's some logic and common sense that's used in the ordering of the elements. I think it's important to think in terms of a dialogical approach. where God speaks and the people respond and God speaks the people respond between the elements working through in terms of putting together a liturgy but once I have that liturgy and I think this is the perfect biological approach all the elements are here that I don't thereby say you have to use this liturgy because we have liberty you can't go to the concordance and look up liturgy and find, OK, here's the liturgy for worship. It's not there in the scriptures. These are formal considerations. And there's a great deal of latitude and liberty in terms of formal considerations. So an element, what does God say do? Form the specific content of a particular element in a particular service. The third word is circumstance. We get that from the Westminster Confession of Faith. Chapter 1, where it says there are some circumstances. Chapter 1 is about Scripture and how Scripture regulates everything that we're to believe and everything we're to do. That's what Chapter 1's about. But it recognizes there are some circumstances, there are some things regarding in particular worship and polity that aren't expressly set down in scripture. And so what do we do? We look around and see what do other human societies do in these kinds of things to make these sorts of decisions. There's a great deal of latitude when it comes to circumstances. Great deal. What time's the service? God says we're to worship him on the Lord's Day. We know that. But what time? Well, our service here is at 930 in the morning, at 6 o'clock in the afternoon. I know another one of our churches, their morning worship is at 10 o'clock in the morning, and their afternoon worship, at least for now, is 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I remember at Reformation, our mother church, when we worshiped only one service, on sunday at three o'clock in the afternoon why because the bible surely says it has to started eleven not now it's certainly says we have to end at twelve it's got to say that somewhere it doesn't now what do we use use common sense what if the commission meets tuesday and says We're going to set the morning worship service at three o'clock in the morning. Does it have the liberty to do that? It does. But it doesn't say what time. If it did, what would you be required to do? Be here at three o'clock in the morning, unless you go to another church in the morning and then come here at the normal time for Sunday evening. The session's not going to do that. For one thing, it would be foolish. It would be foolish, because people would struggle to listen, to participate in the worship of God. But that is a circumstantial consideration. Should we amplify the voice of the preacher? Can we go to the concordance and look up electrical amplification didn't even exist. If someone wants to apply the regular principle that says you can only do what the Bible says, it doesn't say anything about electricity, so all preachers have to shout, no matter how big the auditorium is. There are preachers that could be heard for two miles. That's what they said about Whitefield. And his voice could be heard clearly for great distances. God gave him that instrument. He didn't give it to me. Now, we're intimate enough and small enough here that we don't amplify the voice, but if we were in a bigger auditorium, would it be necessary? Would it be required? No, but it's a circumstance that's wise. It enhances the worship. Circumstances are not unimportant. They help and abet us. They surround the circumstances. They surround the worship. They're common sense decisions that are made that help us in worshipping our God. Now here's something important about circumstances and how they differ from elements and forms. They have absolutely no spiritual content in them. None. And it has to be kept that way. You might say, well, what do you mean by that? If you say we ought or we must do something, you've elevated it to the place of element. But if God didn't say do it, you can't do that. Let me give an illustration. I have a friend who will be unnamed because I'm going to be critical of him. He's one of my closest friends, so I kind of delight in doing this. But I'm still not going to call his name. OPC minister. In his very first congregation, he was in the mainline church at that time. He had two churches and one of them had a split chancel. You know what a split chancel is? Split chancel is where you have the pulpit on one side and where you have a lectern for the reading of scripture on another and where the table is elevated in center. And he told me, I'll never preach the split chancel church again. Why? Because of the theological implications. Now think about it. There actually is a theology that surrounds that arrangement of furniture. Split chancel. Scripture is important, the preaching, the reading. But what is central? What is the focal point? What is most important in the worship of God? It's sacrament. That's why the Roman church has split chancels. And those who have followed in that tradition have split chancels. And they do it for theological reasons. He says, I'm only going to preach when the pulpit is centered, the communion table is centered, and the pulpit is elevated. That's the theology. That's Reformation theology. He's right. It's Reformation theology. That both sacrament and the preaching and reading of the word are central to worship But sacrament depends upon preaching. Preaching is elevated over sacrament. That is Reformed theology. Here's the problem. If you say, we must or ought to arrange the furnishings this way, show me chapter and verse in the Bible that tells you where you're to put the pulpit. You can't even find the word pulpit in the Bible. Now, the arrangement of the furnishings of the Old Covenant are codified. They are laid out there. They are precise. You have the westward direction of Tabernacles it's set up as they go from place to place the Holy the Holy of Holies is always on the western end of it all the furnishings are Expressly set down in scripture and told where there to be but there are no furnishings that are given to us in New Covenant worship Now does it hurt my feelings? to preach in a church where the arrangement is consistent with the theology, it doesn't. But I'm not going to say we ought or we must make it elemental. We don't do it here at the communion tables over here. It's over here. Why? Because of our circumstances that we have in terms of how we must arrange for the furniture that we have. I'm thankful for the furniture, although this pulpit makes it very difficult to read. I've never seen one quite at this sharp an angle, and I worry all the time that my notes are going to fall off or my Bible, but it's what we have, and so we're thankful to God for it. But we don't have to have a pulpit. Go to any modern evangelical church. None of them have pulpits anymore. The preacher just walks around. I'd rather have a pulpit. What I'm saying is we need to recognize what's the difference between an element, a form, and a circumstance. It's not that circumstances are unimportant. They are very, very important. The setting of the time is important. And in our culture, the setting of an ending time is pretty important to some. Application of the voice is important. And here's where you have certain things where principle does kick in. What if you have X number of dollars and you have a lot of people that want an organ? which Dabney called the devil's instrument. I don't think Dabney was right about that. He was right about a lot of things. They want an organ, but lightning has struck and the PA system is down and it's a big auditorium and it's going to cost, let's say fix the organ because buying an organ would cost way more. To fix the organ, should you fix the organ or should you fix The amplification of the voice. Here's where principle kicks in. What's more important? The organ playing for the singing or that the Word of God be heard? You fix the amplification system first. And then pray that the Lord would make provision to be able to fix the organ if you're not Dabney. Actually, I don't like singing to a pipe organ. I like hearing a pipe organ played on a Saturday. It tends to dominate and drown out. I think that's Dabney's point. I prefer piano. Why? You can hear the parts. It's a good instrument to accompany. But these are preferences. They're preferences. They're not principle. We cannot make our preferences Principle or we've elevated it to the place of element and God alone Reserves the right to say these are the things that you do in worship, and that's why we delight in it Rather than being restricted, but we can't do slam-dunking for Jesus you had to be here this morning We can't do slam-dunking for Jesus. That's too restrictive and That's tying my hands behind my back in the worship of God. No. Our joy is, I want to please my God, which means he sets the protocol, and I want to do what he wants me to do. And even if I get something wrong, maybe not as bad as David did with the ox cart. We don't want any of us falling over in the middle of the service. But even if we get something wrong, Our motivation in our heart is to please the God who calls us into his presence. We need to recognize something about our worship. I said it this morning. Our worship is not only regulated by what God says do. Our worship is also regulated and our approach to God in worship by who God says he is. who God says He is. Our theology. And some people come to our churches, our worship service, they think, well, boy, that's dull. We don't think so at all. Why do I want to sing a trite little chorus of I love Jesus repeated a hundred times when I can sing Jesus' love for my soul or Psalm 98a? Understand? And the thing is, we need to be understanding of people who come from other traditions, who have never asked any of these questions, who have never experienced anything like what we're doing. They come and they say, why do you have order in your worship like you do? Why do you have to have a bulletin to come to your church? Why don't you, all you have to do is bring your Bible? Why do you have to have a program to follow? And you say, well, God says let everything be done decently and in order. Paul said that when he's regulating the worship of the church in Corinth. And you can explain to them in a non-condemning way what we thought about this question. Does God have any opinions about what we do in worship? I heard it put this way to me one time that I thought was pretty clear. Let's say you're on a worship committee in a church. God forbid your church has a worship committee. Your session needs to be the worship. But there are a lot of churches that have a worship committee where people decide what you're going to do in worship. You're on the worship committee and you're in there together and you're all deciding about, should we do some changes? You wouldn't call it liturgy, but it is. Liturgy just means an order or a list. And somebody speaks up and says, well, you know, I'm getting tired of these old hymns that we sing all the time, when most of the time they're not even old hymns. We sing old hymns. But I'm getting tired of these, and the kids can't stand them. I think that we should sing some more contemporary choruses. And then somebody else speaks up and says, ah, we got the light bill to pay, we got the preacher to pay, and the kids don't put money on their offering plate. We better not make mom and dad upset, certainly not grandpa and grandma. I think we need to stick to some of these historic traditional hymns and the worship. And someone else says, well, I think the preacher preaches too long. Talking about me, probably. I think the preacher preaches too long. I get tired. Why didn't the preacher have a shorter sermon, and then let's let the young people do a drama? Well, that's a way to communicate. You find that in the Bible, okay, in terms of worship. And so the discussion goes, and finally somebody raises their hand and says, I have a question. I hear what Sally thinks, and I hear what Tommy thinks, and I hear what Joe thinks we ought to do. I wonder if God has an opinion about what we should do. God has anything to say. And sadly, most of the church have never asked that question. It's never been asked. And when we ask it and we go to see, we see He has much to say. Because in the end, He's the King of kings and Lord of lords. He's the one that has invited us into His presence. And if you would dress a certain way, and if you would bow a certain way, if the Queen of England were to come in to visit, even though she's not your queen, because that's protocol, and you recognize that stature, how much more do we look to God himself to set the protocol? I often think of Moses before the burning bush. What did God say to him? Take your sandals from off your feet. And I don't want to talk about other churches, I don't want to do it, but I have been to church services where you get the sense that it's as if God said to Moses, kick off your shoes, let's chill for a while. When I think Moses didn't know what to do, Do I look at the bush? No, I can't. Do I even lift my eyes as He slowly undoes the sandals from His feet, knowing He's on holy ground? You see, that's when your theology informs your worship. This is who God is. And we're coming into His presence. And were it not for His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, His death on the cross in our place, He died in our place, if we're not united with Him and completely robed in His righteousness instead of our filthy rags of unrighteousness, we would be cast from His presence. Instead, because of Jesus, God says, come, folks. And we come in the Son into His presence. And it is a delight when you know you've done everything you can do to work your way through the Scriptures to see what pleases God. This is the best that we can understand it. And this is what we're going to do with everything that is within us. Because this is the God that we love and that we serve. This is the God who has saved us in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And the worship is not tall. It's why our little churches are robust in their singing. And what you can do when people criticize is don't condemn them. They don't understand. Just explain to them. I wouldn't have it any other way. Do you realize who's here? Do you realize the Triune God is here? It is liberating and exhilarating. Emotions should be the caboose, not the engine. There's nothing wrong when I see men this morning with tears running down their face during the preaching of the word. I saw it on the back row. I saw it right there. But I saw it on the back row. With the Gerstner illustration in particular. Emotions are not bad. Sing with gusto. Listen to the Word of God. Weep! I often do. But emotions are not the goal of worship. It's to honor God and to honor the Lord Jesus Christ. So remember elements, forms, and circumstances that will help you and help you understand why we do what we do in this church. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ. We know that we would have no place with you apart from him. Indeed, our end would be outer darkness, a place of weeping and gnashing and teeth and a lake of fire. And that's what we deserve. But because of Jesus, we are reconciled to You, and our end will be the new heavens and the new earth, the vision of God, a heightened communion that we cannot even imagine for eternity. And between now and every Sunday, to get a foretaste in this assembly. Oh, the wonder of this gospel. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's turn in our hymn list to number 172. Let us love and sing and wonder. 172. Let's stand together and sing. Let us love and sing and wonder. Let us praise the Savior's name. He has hushed the law's loud thunder, He has quenched Mount Sinai's flame, He has washed us with His blood, He has brought us nigh to God. Let us love the Lord who bought us, Pity'd us when enemies called us by His grace and taught us, gave us ears and gave us eyes. He has washed us with His blood. He presents our souls to God. Let us sing, though fierce temptation threaten hard to bear us down. For the Lord, our strong salvation, holds in view the conqueror's crown. He who washed us with his blood soon will bring us home to God. Let us wonder grace and justice, join and point to mercy's store. when through grace in Christ our trust is just as fast and ask no more. He who washed us with his blood has secured our way to God. Let us praise and join the chorus of the saints enthroned on high. Here they trusted Him before us. Now their praises fill the sky. You have washed us with Your blood. You are worthy Lamb of God. And God's people said, Amen. Receive the benediction blessing by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. The love of God the Father and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen. They waited to fall out until after the sermon. The stuff just hit the floor. when I'm too old and decrepit to get down and get them. There you go, sir. Thank you very much. Thanks for your hard work there. Thank you. Thank you, brother. You're more than always. I've always enjoyed being with you. learn a lot. I love this congregation. I'm glad.