Sunday, January 18, 2009

The Biblical Importance of the Regulative Principle of Worship

Over the past few weeks, I have taken up reading the book published by my father of the title Worship from Genesis to Revelation. The book has been a real inspiration, and has opened my eyes to several very key and important issues of church doctrine that seem to have gotten lost by the wayside with the passage of time. The most striking of these concepts is just how vitally important the practice of Biblical God-centered worship is.

To start, I was reminded of the passage from Exodus on the concept of building an altar.

Exodus 20:25
"And if you make Me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone; for if you use your tool on it, you have profaned it."

Now examine with me the underlying principle of this verse for a moment. All of Old Covenant worship pointed to the coming of Christ, God's chosen Lamb, and was a foreshadowing of elements pertaining to His incarnation. This verse then, clearly instructs the people of Israel to refrain from adding any artistic touch to what God has deemed fit for His worship. To paraphrase my dad: God wanted the stones that He made good to be used...not the ones that we attempted to make better.

There is no room for human creativity and artistry among the worship of God.

Along that note, I was also struck by that which my dad wrote about the Ark of the Covenant. I will quote the passage below, since he put it far better in a condensed paragraph than I would ever be able to summarize.

"The centerpiece of Israel's worship was the ark of the covenant, with two angelic beings facing inward toward an empty mercy seat. It was due to this peculiar feature of Israel's religion that the heathen nations chided them saying "where is their God?" How strange this must have looked to Israel's pagan neighbors! they had gods of wood, stone, and metal, but Israel's God was an empty throne. The truth, of course, was that Israel worshiped the One authentic God, who cannot be limited by any artist's skill, but who is transcendent over the universe which He created, displaying His wisdom, power and holiness through His mighty acts of providence while all of the gods of the nations are deaf, dumb, blind, lifeless, powerless statues."

Let that soak in for a moment...no artist, no matter how skillful, should ever be prideful enough to attempt to make an image of God the Lord. Old covenant worship was meant to point toward that God...toward that same deity whom no artist was considered worthy to enshrine, and new covenant worship is done in remembrance of the acts that that perfect God accomplished on the cross. There is not room for invention in that. No one should consider him or herself worthy to undertake that calling. Only the Lord Himself, Who provided all of the necessary instruments in his Word, including the God-breathed psalms, can do that.

Do you see the seriousness of this matter? Do you see the pride involved in trying to impliment new practices or improve upon old ones? Do you see where we have gone wrong over the centuries? And do you see what we need to do to correct our folly by the grace of God?

Look at the record of Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus for a moment.

Leviticus 10:1-7
"1 Then Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it, put incense on it, and offered profane fire before the LORD, which He had not commanded them. 2 So fire went out from the LORD and devoured them, and they died before the LORD. 3 And Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the LORD spoke, saying:

‘By those who come near Me
I must be regarded as holy;
And before all the people
I must be glorified.’”

So Aaron held his peace.
4 Then Moses called Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of Uzziel the uncle of Aaron, and said to them, “Come near, carry your brethren from before the sanctuary out of the camp.” 5 So they went near and carried them by their tunics out of the camp, as Moses had said.
6 And Moses said to Aaron, and to Elemazar and Ithamar, his sons, “Do not uncover your heads nor tear your clothes, lest you die, and wrath come upon all the people. But let your brethren, the whole house of Israel, bewail the burning which the LORD has kindled. 7 You shall not go out from the door of the tabernacle of meeting, lest you die, for the anointing oil of the LORD is upon you.” And they did according to the word of Moses."


Nadab and Abihu presumed to offer an innovation to God's worship and were utterly consumed by the wrathful fire of a holy God. This is not a matter that God regards lightly.

But there is one final and interesting fact about worship that I would like to observe from reading dad's book. I made an interesting observation about the Biblical account of Cain and Able. At the moment that Adam and Eve were confronted by God, one of the first things that occurred in the newly fallen world order was that God required that an animal's blood be shed to make skin coverings for Adam and Eve. This shedding of blood was to become the normal practice of God's people whenever a sacrifice needed be made. But when we look to Cain and Able, we see something different entirely.

Able, obeying God offered the fruit of the flock. But Cain instead attempted to offer the fruit of the ground. He tried to deviate from the proscribed worship of God and offer a bloodless alternative. Now the motives for this offering are never openly stated. Some have assumed that Cain, as a farmer rather than a shepherd, would have found it more difficult to offer a choice lamb as a sacrifice. But whatever the case, he sought to avoid the shedding of blood...he was hesitant to refrain from that reality. Was hesitant...until God rejected his offering. Then all of the sudden, the motives of Cain's heart changed, and the shedding of blood didn't matter any longer. Suddenly, it was perfectly okay to shed blood, even the blood of his own brother, because of his anger. Now the standard was gone.

Do you see how important worship is, and how easily twisted and marred it can become when men try to deviate from God's prescribed methods of performing it? Do you see how personal of an issue it is in our heart of hearts, as beings created for worship (reference the Westminster Shorter Catecism question number one)? Do you see how vitally important it is in God's eyes, when his creation disobeys its created purpose? Once again readers, do you see where we need to go with prayerful supplication?

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