Why do we worship the way we do? This isn't just a question I was asked this past week, it is a subject which has pervaded our churches for many years. I'm sure many of you know the difficulty for yourself. Perhaps it's through rela­tives, even close family, who worship in quite a different way. Maybe it is be­cause of a questioning you have in your­self as you struggle with your faith; couldn't the way we worship together be more meaningful, more free, more; well anything to help me more!

Or have you been hurt when other Christians, even famous so-called evan­gelists, ridicule the way we worship? One of them even tells the joke: "You know, I was in a traditional church the other day and a man in the church died. They had to clear five rows before they got to him!" It's a dig at the way we do things, or don't do things; it's an assumption that the way he does things is what worship is really about; and it's a lie, because he's never been in a traditional church, let alone in a church where someone actu­ally died!

But the question keeps coming back. Our young people get it at school; our working folk hear it at their places of employment; and we'll all get it to some degree as we mix in any way with those from other churches.

Why do we worship the way we do? It even comes closer to home. There are Reformed and Presbyterian churches who do things quite differently; even to the extent of hiring a rock band to give a concert for a so-called Youth Service. Another church doesn't have enough floor space for all the people being slain in the spirit.

Mind you – it's nothing new. Already one hundred years ago Abraham Kuyper gave this example of the differences happening in worship: "...there was a church in New York whose morning serv­ices were well attended, while the evening services were rather empty. The trustees, convinced that the evening services could be made more attractive, asked the preacher to shorten his sermons and fill in the time with all kinds of choir and solo singing, and also the showing of lantern slides. For some time this proved help­ful. But there was no end to these meth­ods, and finally, the trustees asked for such a show that the minister refused to cooperate any longer. He protested against the fact that the services were becoming a kind of Sunday entertain­ment, a kind of Sunday comedy, and courageously he started preaching again. But the trustees did not agree. He was dismissed." The dilemma we face is nothing new. But because it is precisely something that is not new, since it is a recurring difficulty within the life of the Church, God, in His Word, gives us the guidance we need. Now, here we need to understand that those who do things differently also use Scripture. The Bible itself is not the problem. The problem is the interpretation of Scripture. But, be­fore we delve into that in particular, let's see the framework for how we will follow this subject. Let me place before you the thesis that we worship the way we do because it is traditional, biblical and personal.

Perhaps, with this outline, the thought that struck you was how completely unre­lated these three titles appear. What has tradition got to do with being personal; or being biblical to do with tradition? These are good questions. So we start, quite on purpose, with the one which seems most out of place.

We Worship the Way We do Because it is Traditional⤒🔗

Ah, tradition; that almost dirty word in spiritual circles. Because, let's face it, there are lots of attacks on tradition. There are those among us who have been severely embarrassed, with such comments as, "You don't still do that, do you!" Then there's that seemingly harm­less question, "Well, what's your church doing that's different?" The impression is distinctly given that if we're still doing things the same way we're not really alive. It's an impression, however, that's not from the Bible. 2nd Thessalonians mentions several times about "tradition". In 2:15 Paul writes to them: "So then, brothers, stand firm and hold on to the traditions we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter." There it's not treated like something to be ashamed of. In fact, "tradition" has within the meaning of teachings that are passed on down. Psalm 78 tells the same as it speaks about "...things we have heard and known, things our fathers have told us." (v2) And the Psalmist goes on a few verses later: "...he decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel, which he commanded our forefathers to teach their children, so the next genera­tion would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children." The difficulty is not that what we're doing is so irrelevant in itself, but largely because we have failed to teach our children what it's all meant to mean! Perhaps we ourselves have never been taught why we worship the way we do. Actually, we should be proud that our public worship is traditional; because this is the way the LORD has kept it safe for us today. But we must also realise that we haven't really actually been tradi­tional enough; the teaching hasn't been passed on down to our children as to why we do things the way we do. And that's not only with public worship; there's also the way we should treat the Sunday as the Lord's Day; the respect we should have for those created in God's image; and so on.

Then it's a most pertinent point that often those who would have us change the way we worship are themselves fail­ing to treat with respect the Sunday, and with respect God's image in mankind. Here is one example of this, and that concerns the passing on of the teaching about the value of human life, whether by being against abortion or against the pornography that's splashed across our television screens. On two separate oc­casions, for these two separate areas, the biggest and most so-called progres­sive church for contemporary worship in Perth, was asked to allow these teach­ings, these traditions, to be passed on to its congregation. The Pastor refused. The people, he said, wouldn't like it! It was even conveyed that it didn't fit in with what they were about as a church! And since then there have also been letters from that church asking the Christian moral issue groups not to send any more of their material.

This is the "progressive" attitude the apostle John condemns in his second letter, as he warns against those who don't continue in the teaching of Christ. What? Should we be so strong about this? We must. As a Reformed church, we, like John Calvin at the time of the Reformation, believe that we are being consistent with New Testament public worship. But then move into our next aspect.

We Worship the Way We do Because it is Biblical←⤒🔗

Now, we did note earlier that other churches say the same about how they worship; they too state: "Of course we're based on the Bible; everything we do is from God's Word".

This is where we enter the difference in scriptural interpretation. And it's where we believe our understanding to be "the scriptural interpretation of Scripture". By this phrase we're not trying to be clever, but we do say that we don't just take texts out of the Bible. Every part of Scripture is exactly that; it's one part of Scripture. For example, Psalm 150 has been used as a justification for having lots of instruments in worship. And just reading that psalm you could well imagine that to be quite appropriate. But then when reading 2nd Chronicles 29 one notes that it were the priests and Levites who played those instruments in the actual temple worship. They were the ones who sang in temple worship as well. Thus, when we interpret a text such as Psalm 150, we need to see it in its context. And when we look at the whole context of worship in the Old Testament the people themselves did very little practically. Oh, yes, they certainly looked on. But right through from offering up the various sacrifices, to the singing and playing, to the incense, it was all priestly. Certainly in private worship, it was different. We know that from David himself; as he rejoiced in the LORD, playing his harp and showing his response by dancing. But it was not his calling to do that in temple worship; there were priests and Levites for that. With the coming of our Lord Jesus all this changed. He Himself explained this in John 4. Because of what Jesus Christ did, through his birth, suffering, death, burial and resurrection, the whole nature of our worship with the LORD has changed. No more do we need special people to mediate for us; there is no longer any value in the physical temple in Jerusalem; but there is now the temple of the Holy Spirit within each one of us. No longer do we pray and offer ourselves through an earthly priest; we go straight to the Heavenly High Priest, Jesus Him­self! This is why the synagogue form of public worship became the way the early church worshipped together because when the saints met together, they were altogether. There were no distinctions now because the divine was yet to come, for divinity had come and He had made them all distinctive! This is an important point when we speak about our public worship being biblical. As we study the New Testament there is no longer any more ministry of music as such. In fact, for three hundred years after Christ the early church is recorded as having no instrumentation at all. The only remain­ing ministry is the ministry of the Word.

John Calvin said the same when speak­ing about why the spectacular gifts of the early New Testament church had ceased. He says, "...those miraculous powers and manifest workings, which were dis­pensed by the laying on of hands, have ceased. They have rightly only lasted for a time. For it was fitting that the new preaching of the gospel, and the new Kingdom of Christ should be illumined and magnified by unheard of and extraordinary miracles. When the Lord ceased from these, he did not utterly forsake His church, but declared that the magnifi­cence of His Kingdom and the dignity of His Word had been excellently enough disclosed." With Calvin the preaching of the Word has the centre-stage in the worship of the church until Christ's com­ing again. Thus, it was in response to God's Word that the saints offered up their praises and confessions and offer­ings altogether. This cannot be empha­sised enough. The Church did it together. No distinctions; no differences. Each believer has the temple of the Holy Spirit within. Now to look at those so-called "progressive" churches you might well be drawn to the conclusion that some believers are missing that Spirit alto­gether, while others have it in super­abundance – and boy don't they let you know! They become wrapped up in them­selves, in what they say and do. This is why the word "truth" is in John 4:24, as Jesus speaks of believers worshipping "in spirit and in truth". The "spirit" there refers to the way they are able to come into the worship of the LORD; with the "truth" being that Word of God Himself.

Expository Preaching←⤒🔗

John MacArthur explained that he was committed to expository preaching be­cause God cannot be worshipped apart from an understanding of who He is as He is revealed in Scripture. God must be worshipped in truth. And he goes on to say, "Now I could give clever sermons that would move the emotions and the attitudes by filling them with lots of sto­ries. And I could make it all very interesting, fun and exciting. However, when all is said and done people might say, 'Boy, John MacArthur can sure preach!' but they wouldn't be worshipping God. It's a far greater challenge for me to teach the Word of God and let it command men to respond to God as God is revealed in His self-revelation." We need only to look at what the New Testament letters are re­ally about. You'll find that this is exactly what they're doing about the gospel message. Even the "psalms, hymns and spiritual songs" in Ephesians and Colossians are not about the psalms in and the Christian songs of today, as many have been led to believe; but that phrase is more likely about the way the Jews used to divide the psalms of scrip­ture, in three different parts. It meant having the "truth" alone and completely!

Being Biblical is the scriptural inter­pretation of Scripture, not how we might want it to sound to us. It is not doing as one of the foremost "progressive" preach­ers, Kenneth Hagin, says: "You just do what you want, and then find scripture to support you." And when it comes to why we worship the way we do Scripture has much to say. It's not a matter of having the freedom to do whatever we want, unless it's specifically banned in the Bible; rather we can only do something in worship if it's specifically stated in God's Word. So every part of our public worship is Biblical. If it's not expressly from Scripture we're not to do it.

We Worship the Way We do Because it is Personal←⤒🔗

Just think about if a friend were to write a letter to you, asking you to do something. But instead of actually fol­lowing that letter's instructions by the letter, you were told, by others, that as long as anything was not specifically banned in the letter, that was what your friend meant you to do. That's crazy, we would say, and rightly so. If our friend had meant us to read his letter that way he would have told us so; but even by the way that people normally write letters it would be something never done. So why does the church do it now? Why can't we simply take God's Word as His Word to us; the Word that has all the guidance in it that we'll ever need? Actually, if we take that other way of understanding as to what we're meant to do, don't we soon get into a stage of having those who can apparently understand it better than others? If what we’re ­meant to do isn't simply what we're told to do, then don't we start to have difficulty defining what exactly we can do? If the sky is the limit, isn't it the one who seems to fly the highest, whom we look to? This is exactly how heresy enters the church. It takes your eyes off Jesus. Instead of that personal growing with Him through hear­ing and meditating and digesting His Word, believers are distracted by the deeds of men. We worship the way we do because it is personal. This is why if you get bored in church, it's most likely not a reflection of the sermon – it's a reflection of your heart! Even if the sermon isn't particularly worth listening to, the oppor­tunity to pick up some truths about God that come through, and then to meditate on them, should be the most exhilarating time of your life. If you're not interested or are apathetic, it's not a comment on the sermon – it's a comment about you! If you go to church thinking, "I hope old Rev. so-and-so's got something to say to get me feeling like worship" you've missed it.

By the time Sunday rolls around, you should be so eager to worship with the assembly of saints that you can hardly wait to get into the place to get started. Someone who came back from Holland said that with one faithful Reformed church they went to, they had to get there nearly an hour before the service started just to get a seat! And it was an afternoon service! An afternoon service in a most traditional church! That's real revival – when you hunger and thirst for it because you've been eating it all week! It's this which is the worshipping in "spirit" that John 4:24 speaks of. Why we worship the way we do is personal is because as we study the Word of God, as we com­mune with him in prayer, as we discover truths about Him, and as we meditate on those truths, the joy of worship comes! Charles Spurgeon commented, "Why is it that some people are often in a place of worship and yet they're not holy? It's because they neglect their prayer. They love the wheat, but they don't grind it; they want the corn, but they won't go into the fields to gather it; the fruit hangs on the trees, but they won't pick it; the water flows at their feet, but they won't stoop to drink it."

Worship Not Passive←⤒🔗

Worship isn't passive - it's active! And here we must challenge those who say that this kind of revival is just intellectu­alism. They point to such a Reformed group as the Puritans, and they tell us how dead that was to society. They're trying to tell us that as Reformed worship is so limiting in terms of outward partici­pation, that's also how much it makes our lives a waste as well. Well, let them see the Puritans; let them be confronted by the golden age of English literature, music and art. From John Bunyan's 'Pil­grim's Progress', to Milton's 'Paradise Lost', to John Donne's epic prose, the music of Haydn, even to the King James Version of Scripture, could you name a more distinguished age in England? And for a group of believers who rarely used a musical instrument in public worship, you couldn't find a more talented society musically. Why? Because they sang! It was the LORD who filled their minds and their hearts, and out of Him came the rich fruits of English art and music and litera­ture that we know today. No wonder that as the writer to the Hebrews reflected on the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and how that makes us look for the heavenly city which is to come, that he bursts out, saying, "Through Jesus, there­fore, let's continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise – the fruit of lips that confess his name" (13:15). May we have offer up such sacrifice to Him – today, tomorrow and every day until we are in that place where the praises never cease, in His Heaven above!