Turn with me and your Bibles to 2nd, or to 1st Chronicles. Sorry, not 1st Chronicles Kings, my bad. 1st Kings 12, 1st Kings 12. And we're resuming this morning our Introduction to Reformation Bible Church Sunday School Class that we are doing for this unit of study so that it can be recorded for future use for prospective new members. And it gives me an opportunity to lay out a curriculum and to think through these things so that I can be better at communicating them to people who inquire and to people who want to join our church. So, 1 Kings 12. And what we're going to do today, last time we did this, that was three weeks ago, we talked about the theological distinctives of our church. And the way we did that was that we took in our mind a trip from Bel Air to Dublin, passing by every church along the way and thinking about what makes our church different from that church. And that helped us kind of think through some of the theological niches and distinctives of our assembly. It's not enough just to say we believe the Bible, right? We have to say, you know, what do we believe about the Bible? So make those distinctions and be clear. That's only fair to people. And so we did that three weeks ago. So today, and probably for a couple weeks here, we're going to discuss some ministry philosophy of our church. Those tend to be the types of things that are a part of a church's culture and the convictions that we have from scripture, why we do what we do. I can imagine this being two or three weeks that we're in this set of a discussion on ministry philosophy of our church. I've had us turn to 1 Kings chapter 12 and we'll read that after I lead us in prayer. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank thee for the Lord's day and for the sanctuary that we have to gather in. We thank thee for our brothers and sisters in Christ and for the encouragement that we derive from one another, how good it is to greet one another on the Lord's day and to fellowship and to sit together under the authority of your word. Please bless our day together and to strengthen us in our weakness and help us to respond to your word in a way that honors you, we pray in Jesus name. Amen. All right, so before I read from 1 Kings, I'll ask the question, if we're gonna talk about ministry philosophy, let's go ahead and talk, first of all, about the most fundamental activity that we engage in as a local church, and what would that be? The most fundamental activity that we engage in as a local church, and actually, your answer to this question reveals a lot about your ministry philosophy, doesn't it? What is it? It is our Lord's Day gatherings for worship, right? It is our worship. That is the most fundamental activity that we engage in together as a local church. And so, I want you to read from 1 Kings, chapter 12, beginning at verse 26, where we have a negative example of worship from the Old Testament account of Jeroboam. This is the word of God. Jeroboam said in his heart, now shall the kingdom return to the house of David. If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord of Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their Lord, even unto Rehoboam, king of Judah. And they shall kill me and go again to Rehoboam, king of Judah. Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. He set the one in Bethel, and the other put he in Dan. And this thing became a sin, for the people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan. And he made a house of high places, and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi. And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the 15th day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah. And he offered upon the altar. So did he in Bethel, sacrificing unto the calves which he had made. And he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made. So he offered upon the altar which he had made in Bethel the 15th day of the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart and ordained a feast under the children of Israel. And he offered upon the altar and burnt incense. And so there is a tragic account of a leader setting up convenient man-centered worship. How he has structured things so that it would appeal to the people. So that it would maximize their convenience and their comfort. He would give them what they wanted. And how the whole thing was devised of his own heart. It was not commanded by God. It did not proceed from scriptural precept. It was all from his own imagination, from his own heart, and the whole thing was an abomination unto the Lord. And so let's think about our philosophy of worship, our philosophy of our Lord's Day gatherings for worship. Let's begin with this precept that might seem simplistic and might seem non-debatable, but it actually is where a lot of places go wrong. It's that the church, of course, is not a building. The church is not a place. That the church is people who have been saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. And that Lord's Day gatherings are the gatherings of the body of Christ, so that the gatherings of believers for the purpose of worship. That's what we're doing today. We're a body of believers gathering together for worship. Now that sounds completely, you know, uncontrovertible. It just sounds like the most simplistic thing. But it's actually a concept that is lost in a lot of Christian ministries, that the Lord's Day Gathering is a gathering of the Lord's people for worship. There are plenty of ministries that view their fundamental activity as getting unsaved people in the doors. and of appealing to the masses and maximizing the amount of people to minister to, maximizing the amount of people to give the gospel to. And the gathering is not viewed primarily as a corporate worship done by believers. The gathering is viewed primarily as an opportunity to evangelize. An opportunity to bring in people under the sound of the gospel. And consequently, those ministries lose sight of who the audience is when we gather. If your purpose on Sunday mornings, your purpose in gathering on the Lord's day is evangelism, then the audience will inevitably become the people who come. And what you'll do, you'll do in order to appeal to the people who come. If the goal is getting unsaved people to come, then your goal is going to be to attract the average lost person. What do they want? What will get them into the doors? And what will keep them in the doors multiple times? If they want short sermons, you get them short sermons. If you give, if they want a certain style of music, you give them a certain style of music. You give them what they want, do a quick hit with the gospel at the end, and why do most churches do that? They do that because they've lost sight of the nature of the church, that the church is the body of Christ, a group of believers, and that when we come together, we assemble as believers in Jesus Christ. And the goal is never to see how many unbelievers we can get together. That's not the goal. The purpose of our gathering is to worship. Now, don't get me wrong. We invite lost people to join us in our assembly. We want them to come. We welcome them to attend. But our purpose is not to appeal to them. And our purpose is not to make people feel comfortable. Our purpose is to worship God. And that means that we have to constantly keep in mind who the audience is. Who is the audience when we gather together? The audience is God. He is the audience. And the only thing that really matters in our gatherings is whether God is pleased. We're not here to please Dublin or please Harford County. We're not here to please lost people. We're not here to make lost people feel comfortable. In fact, they often feel very uncomfortable if they gather with us. We are probably doing something wrong if they feel comfortable. This is the Lord's day, it's just supposed to be set apart from any other day. And what goes on in this sanctuary should be the most out of ordinary thing to a lost person they ever experienced in their life. It should be like coming into a different planet. It's completely foreign to them, what happens in this sanctuary. It's completely outside of their worldview, outside of their experience. It ought to be unsettling, actually. God has not left us without instruction about the kind of worship that he's pleased with. You look out there and all of the variety of worship styles and everything else that's going on in North American churches and you could be left with the impression that God has just left this up to the whims of people. and that he hasn't let his opinions, his instructions be made known, that he has just delegated this to the imaginations of men, but nothing could be further from the truth, actually. The Lord has been clear that When it comes to worship, that he alone sets the terms of what legitimate worship is. And the standard is not sincerity, like is the common perception in our day. That as long as there's sincerity, that's all that matters. Because man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. And this false dichotomy that people make on that text, that it's like an either or kind of a thing. The standard is not merely sincerity. The standard is scripture, what he has revealed. and he has not delegated to the imaginations of men how he is to be worshiped. What Jeroboam did here in 1 Kings was wrong. And the reason it was wrong, the bottom line fundamental reason why it was wrong is what the commentary says in verse 33, that when he did all these things, he had devised them of his own heart. That's the issue. It was his own imagination. He was just making it up as he goes. With the goal of making a convenient worship. We'll put a place in the south and a place in the north. That way nobody has to travel far. And no matter where they live in the northern kingdom, they're gonna be closer to either Dan or Bethel than they will to Jerusalem. And so they'll come to my worship rather than his. And they have an alternate feast schedule. And they've got alternate priests. And the whole thing is just made up in order to appeal to people and make things convenient to people. And the fundamental fact that God is the audience and the only thing that matters is whether he's pleased or not is completely forgotten by Jeroboam here. Can you think of all of the scriptural data that we have about that principle, that God alone sets the standard for what constitutes legitimate worship? I mean, all the way back to Cain and Abel, you have that principle in place. Cain's offering was deficient because it did not meet God's requirement. The first and second commandments talk about how important worship is to God. They're both about worship. The first commandment, who do you worship? The second commandment, how do you worship him? Right, so the first commandment, thou shalt have no other gods before me. All right, so all other gods are just swept off the table. Only one is left standing. It is Jehovah. All right, now, commandment number two, how do you worship him? Answer. No graven image. That's how you worship God, without a graven image. Right, and so just the first two commandments reveal the importance of this to God and that he alone sets the legitimate terms for worship. The golden calf incident that quickly followed the gifting of the law. We've talked about that recently in our study in Exodus and Numbers and how you have A situation where it's not as if Aaron is saying, let's forsake Jehovah and worship a new God. Let's call him the cow God. That's not it at all. He says, tomorrow is a feast to the Lord. But because he's using an image in his worship, and the worship is involving all of the idolatries of the world, the worship is illegitimate and abominable, and the people are judged for it. And when the New Testament talks about this in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, you remember, how it leaves out the actual making of the idolatry and it rather talks about the things that accompanied the worship, the dancing and the playing before the image. so that we learn that when we bring in the elements of our culture that are associated with the idolatry of our culture, that in and of itself corrupts the worship. So you've got Exodus 32 and 1 Corinthians 10, you have The continual refrain in Exodus, Leviticus, that when the tabernacle was to be built, it was to be built according to the pattern which was shown thee, dozens of times, dozens of times at the end of Exodus when all those instructions are given. It's supposed to be according to the pattern, according to the pattern. God rejected Saul's non-prescribed worship after his battle with the Amalekites. He said, I kept back some of the spoils so that I can make sacrifice. And Samuel says to obey is better than sacrifice. See, sincerity is not the issue. Is it scriptural? Scriptural and sincere, both, not just one or the other. You've got the King Jeroboam account here. You've got King Uzziah who offered incense and received leprosy because it was not commanded for him to offer incense. He was a king, not a priest. You have Jeremiah chapter seven where God condemned Judah's worship, calling it worship which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart. You have Jesus rejecting the Pharisaical worship, calling it the tradition of elders, not according to scripture. You have Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10 offering strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not, right? So God alone sets the standard for what legitimate worship is. And so the technical terminology for this is that we believe in what's been handed down to us as the regulative principle of worship. And the regulative principle of worship, simply put, is that the worship of God is founded upon specific directions of scripture. and they're not to be omitted or added unto, just the specific directions of scripture. That is the terms of our worship. Specific requirements are made when it comes to worship. We are not free to ignore them and we are not free to add unto them. And John Calvin classically formulates this principle when he said, God disapproves of all modes of worship not expressly sanctioned by his word. He disapproves of all elements of worship, not expressly sanctioned by his word. If you're going to do something in worship, you have to have a biblical command to do it. It's not enough just to say, well, it's not forbidden. There's a higher standard when it comes to worship. God alone sets the terms. And so you have to have a precept of scripture, a command of scripture for what you're going to do in worship. And so the elements of worship, what are they? Can you think of them? Can you tick them off with me? What are the scriptural elements of worship? There is the reading of the word. Paul tells Timothy, 1 Timothy 4, give attention unto the reading of the scriptures. There's the preaching of the word, 2 Timothy 4, preach the word, be instant, in season, out of season, reprove, exhort, rebuke of all longsuffering. There's the singing, which is Ephesians 5 or Colossians 3, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing grace in your hearts to the Lord. There's prayer. There's giving, 1 Corinthians 16, when you come together on the first day of the week, lay up your offering before the Lord. Those are the elements, reading of the word, preaching of the word, singing, prayer, and giving. And they're not to be added unto. They're not to be omitted. And so this principle safeguards against all kinds of novelties in worship. Dramas and images and religious gestures in worship. It ensures that the preaching of the word will not be forsaken and omitted in favor of something else that's more appealing to people like musical performances or intricate ceremonies or psychiatric self-help talks or group discussions. So let's think through then how this practically works when we come together in our typical order of worship. Okay, so our principles are. that when we gather together, we gather together as believers and our audience is not trying to get people to come and be comfortable and to remain here. Our audience is God and whether he is gonna be pleased or not. He's told us in his word what his requirements are when it comes to worship. And so we have these elements of worship that we incorporate into our worship service. Let's just kind of think about why we do what we do when it comes to our morning worship service that we're about to engage in. So the very first thing is that we get the announcements out of the way immediately. We're going to get them out of the way. So when it comes to exactly how this is ordered and where you put things in order, there's not a prescription for how this has to be done, but obviously I think we're doing it right because otherwise I'd change it. So the first thing we do is get the announcements out of the way. Any announcements that have to do with our life together as a body of believers and fellowships, things like that, prayer requests, get those out of the way first off. And then there is a call to worship from scripture because worship is always responsive. Worship is always responding to what God has said. He initiates. He is the one that begins things. He's the one that talks to us. He's the one that's revealed himself to us. And then I respond to his word. That's what worship is, it's responsive. So you show that in a worship service by the first thing out of the gate is God's word. He calls us to worship with his word. Then we respond to that with singing. because worship is supposed to be participatory. It's not a spectator sport. You don't watch other people worship. It's not like just the people on the platform are worshiping and everybody else is just kind of here to watch them worship, right? It is everyone is worshiping together. We're all worshiping. And so congregational singing is a large part of that. It's the participatory element of our worship. And so there's congregational singing. There's an invocation. An invocation is calling on God to receive our worship. So to invoke is the vocation, is the expression for calling. You know that, you've heard that, those words used interchangeably. So to invoke is to call on God. So we call on God to receive our worship as we offer it in Jesus' name, to be pleased to receive it, and that the blood of Jesus would sprinkle and purify all of our worship. There's that invocation. Then there's a scripture reading. Worship services have got to be infused with as much scripture as possible. That's all we've got. And worship is responsive to what he says in his word. So lots and lots of scripture. And I hope that that's something that you've come to appreciate, to recognize about our worship services, that there's a great deal of scripture, and it is driven by the word of God. So we have a long scripture reading. We have a whole chapter, many times, of a scripture reading. It's not just the sermon text, two or three verses or something like that. It's a whole chapter, usually a parallel passage to the sermon text because the sermon text will get read later on in the service. So it's a scripture reading that's read with reverence, read carefully, distinctly. There's a choral anthem and that choral anthem has a depth of content and it has an appropriate musical setting. And then very often what happens in our worship services is that pastoral prayer follows that choral anthem and I end up responding to the truth of that choral anthem in that pastoral prayer. That's what we want to be doing, right? We want to be always, that's what worship is, it's responding appropriately to God. And so there's the pastoral prayer, which is a response to the truth we've already received in scripture, and then a prayer for the well-being of the flock. and we don't usually skimp on the pastoral prayer. It's, you know, I don't know, five, seven, eight, 10 minutes, I don't know, something like that. So the pastoral prayer, there's another congregational singing, and then there is the preaching, and the preaching is the central act of worship. It's not that we worship, and that's the music part, and then we have, you know, the talk or whatever, It's preaching is the central act of worship, right? It is us posturing ourselves before the word of God in a very visible way. In fact, we're gonna talk about this tonight in 1 Corinthians chapter two, which is about God glorifying preaching, how that the very posture of preaching with extended monologue and people sitting and listening is the only appropriate posture in worship. We're receivers, right? So receiving God's word, and then we respond with a tender heart. We respond with willingness to obey and submissiveness, and that response to his word is worship on everyone's part. It's participatory. Everyone's worshiping as they submit to the word of God, as they submit to its authority, and as they receive it with tenderness. And then there is the prayerful response, the benediction at the end of our worship service. So that's kind of the thought behind our order of worship, why we do what we do, some of the principles behind it. So a lot more to say here. I've got Pastor McKnight's four phrases that he has taught us so well over the years. You know what those four phrases are? Can you think of them before we close out here? Joyful sobriety, reverent enthusiasm, And keep going, humble boldness, dignified simplicity. All right, those are the four. Joyful sobriety, reverent enthusiasm, dignified simplicity, humble boldness. That's what we desire our worship to be characterized by as we meet as a body of believers. to worship the audience who is God. Well, may the Lord help us to be faithful to those principles. Thank you for your attention. Let's prepare now for our worship service by prayer.