Government - Part 6: Ecclesiastical Government - Worship
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[00:00:00] Please turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 20
We're gonna read Acts chapter 20. We're gonna start in verse 17, and we're gonna read to verse 32. And what I want you to see as we read this verse, and we will revisit it in the sermon, but what I want you to see is the passion in Paul's voice. I want you to hear the words that Paul uses. Paul takes his job very seriously, so serious that he wants to be innocent before God.
So Acts chapter 20 verse 17, and we'll be reading to verse 32. If you're able, please stand for the reading of God's Word. And I would ask that you hear this for what it truly is, the words of the living God. Acts chapter 20, beginning in verse 17 From Miletus, Paul sent to Ephesus and called to him the elders of the church.
And when they had come to him, [00:01:00] he said to them, "You yourselves know from the first day that I set foot in Asia how I was with you the whole time, serving the Lord with humility and with tears and which, and with trials which came upon me through the plots of the Jews, how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you publicly and from house to house, solemnly testifying to both Jews and Greeks of repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
And now behold, bound in spirit, I'm on my way to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit solemnly testifies to me in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions await me. But I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course and the ministry which I have received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of [00:02:00] the gospel of the grace of God.
And now, behold, I know that all of you, I know that all of you among whom I went about preaching the kingdom will no longer see my face. Therefore I testify to you this day, I am innocent. I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God. Be on guard.
Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And a-- for, and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.
Therefore be on the alert. Remember that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonage, a-admonish [00:03:00] each one with tears. And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified." May God add a blessing to the reading, the hearing, and most importantly, obedience to his Word.
Please be seated
So this is gonna be our last Sunday on ecclesiastical government. If you're visiting, we've been doing a series on governments and the different governments that God has established: self-government, family government, church or ecclesiastical government. And beginning next week for a couple of weeks, we'll look at civil government and what the Christian's role is in civil government.
But today we're gonna finish ecclesiastical government, and I wanna focus in on worship, specifically our liturgy. And I want you to be asking this question, and if you haven't asked this question, you should. And if you're visiting [00:04:00] today, you should ask this question: Why do we do what we do here? Why do we worship the way that we worship?
I've preached on this before. In fact, I counted there's about eight sermons that I've done in the past on various elements of our liturgy, and I will send them out in the newsletter tomorrow in case you want to go back and take a deeper look. But right now, I just want to do an overview, and what I want you to do is in your bulletin, you can kind of follow along 'cause we'll be going through the parts, and there's also a fill-in-the-blank sermon outline that's front and back that you can fill out as we're, we're going.
But why is this important? Why take another week to talk about our liturgy, about what we do on a Sunday morning? And I just want to set in your minds, I guess, I, I, I want you to come to a realization that this is extremely important. What we do on Sunday morning is extremely important. Are we doing it right?
Now, the simple answer is none of us do it right. [00:05:00] We're all-- We fall short somewhere, but, but are we striving to do it right? Are we striving to worship God in a way that pleases Him? Because the Old Testament, as well as the New, give plenty examples of false worship, give plenty of examples of people worshiping God in a way that He never called for.
Listen to the words of Psalm 51. Psalm 51:16-17: For You
do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it. You are not pleased with burnt offerings. And if you know your Old Testament, you know that God established the sacrifices, that God established the offerings. So what's going on here? Why would God not be pleased with these things? Verse 17: The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit.
A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise. So our worship begins in our heart, and if our heart is wrong and we come Sunday morning and [00:06:00] we have a hard heart, we have a bad heart, then our worship is nothing before God. That is one of many forms of false worship. So you need to examine yourself when you come to church.
But there are other kinds of false worship. In Genesis 4, Cain and Abel. Abel brought his best. Cain just brought the leftovers, and it was rejected by God. In Exodus 32, the golden calf. And if you remember the story, when the Israelites made the golden calf, they said it was Yahweh. They proclaimed to be worshiping the same God, but they were doing it in a wrong manner.
They were doing it in a manner that God said don't And thousands were killed. In Leviticus 10, Nadab and Abihu, Aaron's oldest sons, were literally burnt from heaven. Literally fire came from heaven and consumed them because they were practicing a false worship. God [00:07:00] said to do it this way, they did it their own way.
And then lastly, and this is just the last example I'm giving, but King Saul in 1 Samuel 13. Saul offered sacrifice, and the prophet made it very clear, "You're not allowed to offer sacrifice. You're not a priest. Do not offer sacrifice." It cost Saul his kingdom. And if there's anything I can impress upon you right now is Sunday morning worship is serious stuff, and there is a right way and there is a wrong way to do it So again, how do we properly worship God?
How do we know that we're doing it right? Are we allowed to do anything we want? And Reformed churches have always answered no to that question. Reformed churches and others, we'll see, uh, have always recognized what theologians have called the regulative principle, and you might want to jot that down.
And let me give you a definition of the regulat- regulative principle, and it can [00:08:00] be defined in a number of ways, but simply put, the regulative principle says this: God instructs us about worship. God sets the rules. God tells us how we are to worship Him, and anything that falls outside of God's instruction is considered false worship, is considered worldly and carnal worship.
However, even Reformed churches and others who agree to the regulative principle, they don't all understand it the same way. So there's two different versions. Uh, this, this version is found often in Lutheran and Episcopal churches, but it goes like this: We can do anything in worship except for what God forbids.
We can do anything we want in worship except for what God forbids. So if I wanted to do an interpretive dance, I could do that because I don't know of anywhere in the Scriptures where God would forbid that. So that's one version of the regulative principle. We reject that here. The [00:09:00] second version of the regulative principle simply says that whatever Scripture does not command is forbidden.
So we believe here that we can only do what Scripture commands. However, there are still questions to be asked. So our Confession of Faith, the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 1 is on the Holy Scriptures, but in Chapter 1 of the Westminster Confession of Faith, Paragraph 6, it says this, "There are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and the government of the Church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature, and of Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed."
In other words, there's still freedom. So for instance, we're to sing in worship. That is clearly commanded in Scripture. We're to sing. How many songs? Where do we put the songs? [00:10:00] What do the songs function of? I'll try to explain that today. But there is freedom there. We sing about five songs every Sunday morning.
We space them out throughout the service for a very significant and important reason. We could sing more What about the order of our worship? And most Reformed churches follow a, a pretty, uh, general order, but there's not 100% agreement. In fact, Bryan Chapell, and this is a really good book, but Bryan Chapell wrote a book, it's called Christ-Centered Worship: Letting the Gospel Shape Our Practice, and he goes over five different historic liturgies.
One of them is the Roman Catholic liturgy, and for some of us right away, "Oh, that must be wrong." No, Rome didn't get everything wrong, and there's a lot of elements in their liturgy that are good. But he compares the Roman Catholic liturgy to Luther's. Luther had a specific liturgy. Calvin had a specific liturgy.
The Westminster Confession of Faith had a specific [00:11:00] liturgy, and there are modern people that I could present with a specific liturgy. Again, there's general agreement, but they don't agree 100% in everything we do or the order that we do. So it would be arrogant, naive, or just plain ignorant for us to think that we do it right, and if anybody else doesn't do it the way we do it, they're automatically wrong.
I think God gives us some freedom, little freedom
But hopefully, the Spirit of God directs us. Number one on your outline, on your fill in the blank. And what we're doing here, kids, and kids, this is on your page, and you're supposed to fill in the blank, and you wanna write these down on your, uh, handout. But what I wanna do is I wanna go over the parts of our worship.
And if you open your bulletin, and you open it up to the first page, you'll see the Lord's Day. There's a date, and then we start preparing for worship. I wanna make the distinction. We start preparing for worship with a prelude. [00:12:00] This is something new we've started, because we want, we want you to come and be seated when the minister comes forward, when one of the elders come forward.
And yes, we'll start with announcements after that. But the music is to... It's, it's for you to know that we're getting ready to enter the presence of God. And so you can see on your bulletin, I'll just read it to you. "To prepare for worship, please be seated when the pla- prelude music begins, approximately five minutes prior to the start of the worship service."
And then the next two things that we do to prepare for worship is we have a Bible reading. We have somebody come up, they read the scriptures, and they pray. And technically, this still falls outside of the service proper. But there's some important things about the Bible reading. It always relates to the sermon, so it is important to listen to.
It is important to mark. Typically, if I'm preaching on a New Testament passage, we try to do an Old Testament reading. If we're preaching on an Old Testament passage, we [00:13:00] try to do a New Testament reading. But it always, in some form, shape, or form, relates to the sermon. And then we pray. And then the service begins properly.
And the first part of our service, and again, you can follow along, uh, in the bulletin, God summons us. The first part of our worship service is the call to worship. And what I wanna m- make clear right now, and I think this is really important, God initiates. God... Here's the rule. God initiates, we respond. And I would argue that God initiates throughout the Sunday morning service.
And we're used to talking about things like God responds to our singing, or God responds to our prayers. God initiates, we respond Now there's something else that we need to know about God that takes place during our service, and this is where I think the confusion comes in, and it's because so often we're uncomfortable with it because we're not [00:14:00] used to hearing this language.
God serves us in worship. He doesn't respond. He serves us, and He initiates that service. That's why He's put into place the different parts of worship, the different parts of the liturgy. And so God calls us because He initiates. He initiated at creation. He entered into covenant with Adam and Eve. They fell.
He re-enters into covenant with Adam and Eve because He is always the starter. And hopefully you remember this. Unfortunately, it's debated in the modern church, but God called this meeting. All the way back in Genesis chapter two, God blessed and sanctified and set aside the Sabbath day. And even from the beginning, it was set aside for rest.
And if you read the passage carefully, and if you read everything else Scripture says about it, it was restful worship. It was to rest in God. It was a day devoted to God to show that we have faith in Him, and that true rest only [00:15:00] comes from Him. And this same calling is again stated in Exodus 20. In Heb-- Uh, I'm sorry, Deuteronomy chapter five.
And in Hebrews chapter four, verse nine, we're reminded in the New Testament, the author of Hebrews says this, "So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God." Now we also refer to the Sabbath day, the first day of the week, as the Lord's Day. We find that in the Scriptures as well. So we gather on the Sabbath because God has set that day aside.
We gather on the Lord's Day because it corresponds to the Sabbath, and it is the day that Jesus rose from the dead God called the meeting. Listen to the words of Hebrews 10:25. And hopefully you remember that we covered this in some detail when we were going over the book. But we are commanded to not forsake our own assembling together.
And we looked at that in context, and we saw that that was a Sunday morning assembling. That was the day of worship assembling. That [00:16:00] wasn't a Bible study. It wasn't a small group. It was coming before God on a Sunday morning, on the Lord's Day, on the Sabbath, on the first day of the week to worship Him.
And we are not to forsake our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day draw near. And so I just want to repeat our call to worship today. Our call to worship, and kids, this is in your outline, it's a fill in the blank, but our call to worship came from Psalm 100 verses four and five I'm gonna read it, and then I'm gonna go back and just discuss it real briefly.
"Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him. Bless His name. For the Lord is good." Yahweh is good. "His loving kindness is everlasting. His faithfulness to all generations." And this is a call to worship. This is a call to come before God and worship. But understand it's not an option, it's a command.
To enter His gates is a command. It's what I like [00:17:00] about the Hebrew and the Greek language, they're very specific. You know when it's a command, and this is a command. We are commanded to give Him praise. We are commanded to give Him thanks. We are commanded to bless His name. And what are all these commands based on?
And you find this in, in the various calls to worship. They're based on remembering who God is. We're reminded that Yahweh is good, that His loving kindness, His hesed, His covenant faithfulness, His covenant mercy is everlasting. Do you understand that? Do you come to church on a Sunday morning understanding that the God of the universe who does not need you, the God of the universe who doesn't need us, He's not like Allah, dependent on what He creates.
He is independent, and He doesn't need us, and yet His loving kindness, His love for you is everlasting. His love for you is so big that you cannot grasp it. And this is the [00:18:00] God that calls you to worship. This is a question that I want ringing in your ears this entire sermon. This is a question that I pray you discuss throughout the week.
I pray you meditate upon this question. And it's a simple question, and yet it is a hard question, and I struggle with it as much as anybody else. But the question is this: When you come to church on Sunday, do you really believe that you're meeting with God? When you come to church Sunday morning, are you really convinced that I am encountering God in a special way, in a way that I don't encounter Him through the week, that I am entering the very presence of God because He has asked me to do that?
Or maybe a better way of asking the question, do you really think that God is meeting with you? Do you really believe that? And would it change the way you come to church? You see, modern American evangelicals, we are so [00:19:00] casual. We are so casual. Going to church is just one more thing we do during the week Are you ever f- afraid of coming to church?
I've had a bad week, I've sinned a lot, and God is calling me into His presence. Do you really believe that you're meeting with God? Let's look at a few examples. Isaiah chapter 6, Isaiah encountered God. Isaiah encountered Yahweh on His throne, and look at how Isaiah responded. In Isaiah chapter 6 verse 5, "Then I said, 'Woe is me!'"
For I am ruined because I am a man of unclean lips. You see, in Hebrew that word woe can sometimes be used of something good, but usually it's always used of something foreboding. And Isaiah says, "Woe is me." And literally he says, "I'm a dead man. I am undone. I am cut off." Why? Because of my [00:20:00] sin. That was Isaiah's attitude in encountering God.
And I know you don't see a vision on Sunday morning, but our encounter with God is no less real than Isaiah's In the New Testament, in the book of Revelation, chapter one, verse 17, the Apostle John, he wrote the gospel. He was the disciple beloved of Jesus, and he encounters a vision of Jesus in heaven.
And John says, "When I saw Him," and literally you can translate it, "I fell at His feet like a corpse." See, this is how men of God in the past felt when they encountered God. Do you come close to that feeling? And we're gonna come back, we're gonna talk about that in a little more detail in just a minute. But how do you feel on a Sunday morning?
Do you really believe that you're encountering God? And so the worship service begins with a call to worship. God calls us into His presence. God initiates. But this call is also [00:21:00] instruction for our lives. It's instructions for how we live our daily lives. There is a correspondence between what we do in worship and what we've done coming to Christ.
And the call is a reminder of our initial conversion. You see, none of us would believe in Jesus Christ if He had not first called you. And theologians make a distinction between what they call a general call, the gospel being proclaimed, and the internal call, the call where God changes your heart, the call where God gives you the gift of faith and repentance, the ga- the call that b- brings you back to new life.
And when you're called like that, when you're changed by the Spirit of God, you respond to that call and you're converted. Listen to the words of Romans chapter 8, and it, it actually begins in verse 29, and in verse 29 we read that, "Those whom God foreknew He predestined." And we so often misinterpret that word foreknew.
Literally it means those whom God foreloved, those whom God chose to enter into a love relationship with. [00:22:00] Those whom God
foreknew He predestined. And then in verse 30, "And these whom He predestined He also called." And these whom He called, He also justified, and these whom He justified, He also glorified. Theologians refer to this verse, Romans 8:29-30, as the golden chain of redemption. And the, the grammar is very specific in this text.
It cannot be broken. One leads to the other. So if God loves you in eternity past, if God predestined you in eternity past, then sometime in time, He is gonna call you and He is gonna justify you, and then in the future, in glory, He will glorify you. We read the same thing in 2 Timothy 1:9. Paul is speaking of the Father who saved us and called us, called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, [00:23:00] but according to His own purpose, His will, His plan, His desire And His grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity.
You see, God called us out of darkness, and it should be humbling, and He repeats this call to remind us on a weekly basis, "It is only because I call you that you have the right to come into My presence. And when you come into My presence, you need to do it My way, in faith, in submission." And how do we respond to this?
And I think this is important, and this is where I don't think we've been clear, but I, I hope this will help. God initiates, He calls. How do we respond? Singing. If you look at your bulletin, right after the call, we sing two different songs, and that's why one of the things we do when we sing here is at the end of the song, we say the amen because it, the song and the amen is the response to what God has done.
God calls us, we respond in song. [00:24:00] We respond with amen. We haven't been doing really well at the amen, so Matt and I have been talking about it, and I think what we're gonna do for now on is between the first two songs, there won't be an amen. So the first two songs go together. We're just gonna sing them, and then before the second song ends, either Matt or I will come back up here, and we will introduce the amen.
"All of God's people said," and you'll say amen. But understand the song, the singing, the amen is a response to what God does. Number two on your outline, and kids, number two to fill in, God sanctifies us. God sanctifies us. The next thing we move into in our service is a confession and an assurance of pardon.
Turn in your Bibles to 1 John Chapter 1, 1 John Chapter 1
You see, when we encounter God, and we already saw this with Isaiah and the Apostle John, but when we encounter God, even as Christians, it is natural and right to feel a sense of overwhelming. [00:25:00] It is natural and right when you're called into the presence of God to remember, "I am a sinner. I am undone. I have not lived this week in a way that brings honor to God.
I have sinned." And our statement of faith says that very thing. In the Westminster Confession of Faith 6:5, we read these words, "The corruption of nature during this life doth remain in those who are regenerated; and although it be through Christ pardoned and mortified, yet both itself and the motions thereof are truly and properly sin."
When we're born again, we're given a new nature, but there is a residual, there's a, a residue of our old nature that hangs on. It's called sin, and so we continue to sin. And so we need to deal with our sin on a regular basis, and the whole concept of sanctification is to battle with that sin. Sin has been mortified, the Confession says.
Jesus has given it the death blow, but for whatever reason, He [00:26:00] allows us to struggle with it throughout this life until glory. The psalmist says in Psalm 66, "If I regard wickedness in my heart, the Lord will not hear." But certainly God has heard. You see, something happens between verse 18 and 19. If there is sin in my heart, if there's wickedness in my heart, God is not gonna hear me.
But the psalmist says He does hear me. What happened? Confession, repentance, turning from sin If you've turned to 1 John chapter 1, we're gonna start... We're gonna look at verses eight and 10, but verses six and seven are interesting because verses six and seven, verse six talks about willful disobedience, verse seven talks about, uh, willful obedience, and then verses eight through 10 talk about the problem, and the problem is sin.
And I want you to listen to these words and listen to the pronouns. It's very important. In John, 1 John 1:8, "If we say that we have no [00:27:00] sin." And what's really important here is John includes himself. John is including himself. If we say. You see, I don't know if you've run into this, but I've run into a movement up here.
There's all kinds of wonderful things in Bonners Ferry, and there's all kinds of oddities. And one of the things that I've run into up here is what some have called a holiness movement. I have met Christians who believe that you reach a point in this life where you stop sinning, and yet John says, "No, if we say we have no sin, we're deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us."
Literally, if we say we have no sin, we're wandering. We're wandering from the truth. And even the Apostle John recognized that he still had to battle with sin. I've had people tell me, uh, uh, when they've visited this church or whatever, that when we get to the, the moment of confession, they don't know what to confess.
"I can't think of anything." [00:28:00] I told somebody once, "Let me spend a week with you. I'll, I'll make a list." We continue to sin, and we need to deal with that sin. And if we say we don't have sin, we as believers, we including the Apostle John, we are deceiving ourselves. We're wandering from the truth. So what's the proper response?
Look at verse 9, "If we confess our sin, then God is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." And it's important to understand this word confession because it is the exact opposite of what Adam and Eve did. When Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, basically what that stood for, what that represented is they wanted to decide right and wrong for themselves.
They didn't want to submit to God. They wanted to be the decision-makers. But this word confess literally means to say the same thing. If we say the same thing that God says about our sin, then He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us [00:29:00] from all unrighteousness. All of your sin was dealt with at the cross, but because we battle it, because we fight it, God offers ongoing forgiveness, ongoing, uh, restoration of fellowship, and that's what happens when we confess our sins, when we say the same thing.
That was wrong. That was a sin. I often say this in, in counseling, especially with couples. There's a time to apologize, and there's a time to confess, and when sin is involved, apologies don't cut it. You need to confess that sin. You need to name that sin, and you need to repent from that sin, and that's what John is telling us.
Look at verse 10, "If we," John's including himself, "if we say we have not sinned, we make God a liar. We make God a liar, and His Word is not in us." And so every week, we come to a period in our service where we confess our sins, a corporate confession and then a personal [00:30:00] and private confession. And then we come to what's called the assurance of pardon, and I want to be really careful here because I am not a priest, and I am not offering absolution.
I cannot forgive your sins, but what I can do and what my job is on a Sunday morning is to be a spokesman for God Almighty, and what I can do and what we do every week is to remind those of you who are in Christ Jesus, it is simply to remind you of God's promises, and if you're in Christ Jesus and you've confessed that sin and it's heart- heartfelt, then God in Jesus Christ has taken it away, and God in the Holy Spirit is working in your life to take it away in the here and now as well.
And so we offer you assurance of salvation. It's simply a belief in the promises of God. But just like the call, confession of sin reminds us of what we do on a regular basis. And I think one of the things that confession of [00:31:00] sin reminds us of is our need to love God. Because if we understand what Jesus did on that cross, how do you not love Him?
If we understand that Jesus took our sin, our sin was imputed to Him, it was given to Him, and He took that sin to the cross, and He suffered on the cross for an eternity. That's why it took a God-man, because no mere human could do it. But the God-man could. And for an eternity, He suffered on that cross, and He bore in His human flesh the wrath of God the Father, an eternal punishment for our sin.
And in exchange, He gives us His righteousness. He imputes His righteousness to us. If we understand confession of sin, if we understand assurance of pardon, how can we not love God more? And the second thing that I think this confession reminds us of is loving one another. If I recognize that I am a sinner in need of the blood of Christ, how can I [00:32:00] not love you?
We're all sinners. We're all gonna offend. That's why we need to be quick to hear, slow to get angry. That's why we need to be quick to repent, quick to ask for forgiveness, quick to ask for clarification, and that's something that so rarely happens in the church. Somebody says something, does something And oftentimes it's just They didn't mean it.
Sometimes they did, sometimes they weren't thinking, but so often it was misunderstood, and we don't ask for clarity. But as we confess our sin on a weekly basis, we're reminded to love God and to love others. And how do we respond to confession? Thanksgiving and praise. We again sing, and we again conclude the song with an amen.
Let it be an acknowledgement that God the Father has done something in our lives, that God the Son, God the Holy Spirit has done something in our lives. So we confess our sin, God gives us the assurance of pardon, and then we [00:33:00] respond with song and thanksgiving and amen. Number three, as you're following along in your bull- bulletin, God speaks to us, kids.
That's, again, you need to fill that out. God speaks to us. And when God speaks to us, it begins with a responsive reading. We read the Word of God to one another. We stand up and we proclaim to one another the Word of God. And then there's the sermon
And a couple of things about the sermon. It, it... Okay, my sermons are not gonna get any shorter. Let me just preface what I'm about to say with that. But it's always troubled me that that seems to be the center point of our worship. And oftentimes in, in various churches, I know it's not happening here, but in various churches, the pastor becomes the center point, and that's wrong.
And, and you all need to remember that everything we've done up to the sermon, we're involved in, and it should be meaningful. If you come and you're like, "I just wanna get to the sermon," that's a wrong attitude We'll talk about [00:34:00] how to listen to a sermon in a minute, but a sermon is not just teaching. A sermon is a kind of teaching, but listen to what a sermon is.
Listen to 2 Timothy chapter 4 verse 2. Paul commands Timothy, "Preach the word." And literally it is to make public proclamation of the word. Timothy is not to stand up there and tell stories. Nothing wrong with a good illustration, but the sermon is, uh, not about story time. The sermon is not meant to make you feel good.
It might
Preach the word. Make public declarat- declaration. Be ready in season and out of season. Here's what the sermon does. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction. And to reprove is to correct. To reprove is to voice disapproval. [00:35:00] And so you will hear that often. The church does X, Y, and Z, we shouldn't do it.
We do, and I know we do 'cause I do X, Y, and Z, and we need to stop. Rebuke is again to, to voice disapproval, to voice censure. Exhort, now it gets to the positive side. To exhort is to encourage, is to attempt to motivate you to a certain behavior with great patience, and then we have the word teaching. There is teaching in preaching, but it's more than just mere teaching.
It's a different kind of teaching. It involves exhortation and reproof. It isn't always comfortable. And here's the most important part, it is directed to the believer, not the unbeliever. And again, that doesn't mean we don't want unbelievers in service, doesn't mean I don't want you to invite your unbelieving neighbors.
But my job on Sunday morning is to shepherd the sheep, and if God so wills, He will bring that [00:36:00] unbeliever into this flock We already read the words of Acts 20. I'm not gonna reread it, but hopefully you remember, and hopefully you'll go home and you'll read those words that Paul was serious about what he did.
And I think the most fascinating line, I'll read you one verse, the most fascinating line to me is in verse 26, "Therefore I testify to you this day, I am innocent of the blood of all men." And I wonder If it is the motive of most pastors when they're done preaching a sermon to walk down with a feeling of innocence.
Have I done my job? Have I explained the text to the best of my ability? It may not have entertained you. In fact, it may have been boring. But if you listened intently, would you have learned something? Would you have learned something about the Word of God? Would you have learned something about God wants you to do in your life and to live in a way that is glorifying and God-honoring?
You see, [00:37:00] the sermon is the first stage of church discipline. I'm not gonna be able to cover church discipline in this series. If you're a member or if you've gone to a, a members class, we talk about it in our membership class, but the sermon is the first stage of church discipline. Listen to the words of 2 Timothy 3.
This first half is very familiar, but I'll tell you where most of us stop. 2 Timothy 3:16-17, "All scripture is God-breathed. All scripture is God-breathed and profitable," and that's usually where we stop. Okay? Scripture is the very words of God. Scripture comes from God. Yes, God used people, but He uses them in a way that Peter describes.
The Spirit of God picks them up, bears them along, and although their personality comes out, they end up writing exactly what God wanted. All scripture is God-breathed and profitable. Well, what's it profitable for? For teaching, for instruction. You see, if you come for the [00:38:00] stories, and I'm not saying stories can't teach, but you should be coming to learn Okay, kids, this is school.
Church is school. Church is just another class you come to learn. It is profitable for teaching, for reproof. There's the correction again. There's the negative side. Again, for correction, but this, this word translated correction is not so much pointing out the negative, but restoration. Here's how you get it right.
Here's how you fix it. For training, and this is the word that's used of parents training their children, because the job of the elder is to shepherd the sheep training in righteousness. Now sometimes this verse is misunderstood because Paul is applying all of this to Timothy. All of this, all that we get from scripture, why, why do we get this?
So that the man of God, so that the pastor, the elder may be adequate, functional, working [00:39:00] properly, equipped for every good work. But if the word of God has that effect on the elder, on the pastor, and the pastor and the elder is standing up here and doing what they're supposed to do, it's gonna have the same effect on you.
It's going to equip you. It's going to prepare you. But before we get to number four on our outline, I want to ask a question, and that is: How do we listen to a sermon? And if you're taking notes, if you're doing that fill in the blank, if you flip the page, there's eight different fill in the blanks on how to listen to a sermon.
I still wanna do a, an actual sermon on this, so this will be rather quick, but this is important. If you don't take any notes today, fill in these blanks. How do we listen to a sermon? And, uh, they're not necessarily in an order. In fact, I'm gonna go out of order here in just a minute, but number one really is number one.
Come rested. Come rested. Do you, do you make a concerted effort on Saturday night to go to bed on [00:40:00] time, to get rest? We, we believe here, I've already mentioned it, we believe that Sunday is the Sabbath. We believe that Sunday is the Lord's Day. That is the day of worship. That's also the day of rest. It should look different than other days of the week.
And there are a number of Christians that I know that practice it in a more Jewish-like fashion, and they begin their Sabbath on Saturday night, and their Sabbath goes from Saturday night until Sunday night. And I don't believe that Scripture commands us to do that, but the more I think it through, the more wisdom I see in that.
Because it would help us prepare for Sunday morning. If Saturday night looked different, it would help us prepare for Sunday morning. We might go to bed a little earlier. We might prepare the kids. We could set things out. We could avoid some of those Sunday morning disputes that we have, 'cause we're planning Saturday night.
Maybe a special meal with friends or just with family
Do you come to church rested? Number two, follow [00:41:00] along in your Bible. You need to follow along in your Bible. Now, I know today's sermon is almost impossible to follow along in your Bible 'cause I'm jumping around. But most of the time, we preach book by book, verse by verse, word by word, and it's very easy to follow along in your Bible.
And in light of following along with your Bible, I wanna jump down to number five. So this is number five. If possible, read the text before Sunday. If possible, read the text before Sunday. Again, we're in a topical series right now, but the absolute majority of the time, we're going through books, and it's easy to know what's coming next.
It's easy to reread whatever book we're in, to... I give you outlines for the books that we're covering. Reread that section in the outline But read the text prior to coming. Back up to number three: listen carefully and take notes. Listen carefully and take notes. Now, I've heard some people tell me, um, and I do, I recognize we learn differently, and some people say they hate to take notes because [00:42:00] they can't concentrate on where I'm at.
But I would tell you to do at least this much: fill out the outline. Because the outline, the various points on the outline are, are meant to illustrate the main points of the sermon. And if you don't like taking notes at church, when you go home, jot some things down. What did you learn? What do you need to work on?
Take notes at home. But studies have demonstrated, uh, thoroughly that to listen, to read, to take notes, all, all help us learn, help us learn better. Back up to number four, and this kind of is tied to it. Follow the outline. Because again, the outline brings out the main points of the sermon. Number six: be willing to re-listen to the sermon.
Be willing to re-listen. It's easy for you to miss something. I've been told I talk too fast. I've been told I go too long. Don't believe any of that But be willing to re-listen to the sermon. Number seven: create [00:43:00] questions. When you go home, what didn't you understand? What sparked, "Well, if this is true, then what about this?
How does it fit with the rest of Scripture?" Create questions. Meditate on those qu- questions. Search for the answers to those questions. Ask those questions. And then last but not least, number eight: pray for the Holy Spirit to teach you. Pray that the Holy Spirit would teach and convict you. What actions are called for, and what attitudes do I need to work on?
Number four, the last part of our service, God strengthens us. God strengthens and sends us, and kids, you need to fill that out. But the next part of our service is the Lord's Supper, communion, when we go to the table. And the Westminster Confession of Faith describes communion as a sacrament. And so often, especially Protestants, get hung up on the word sacrament because it sounds so Catholic.
Okay? But understand where sacrament comes from, and there's two [00:44:00] possible sources for sacrament, and I think they both play into this. But a Roman soldier had to take an oath to his commander, and it was called a sacrament. He would take a sacrament. He would take an oath. Okay? We take an oath to Jesus. And then in the Vulgate, in the Latin translation, any time the New Testament used the word mystery, they would translate it as sacrament.
And often the Lord's Table is described as a mystery because it is mysterious. There is so much to understand about the table. It, it does have its mysteries. We truly partake of Jesus Christ in the table. When we go and we eat the bread, and we drink the wine, and we consume it, and it feeds us physically, that action, Christ is feeding us spiritually.
That action, we are communing with Christ, and that is mysterious. At times, it's hard to wrap our heads around. And sadly, even though we consider this to be very important, even though I think it's easy to [00:45:00] demonstrate in the New Testament that every Lord's Day they had communion, and so we do it every Lord's Day, and yet we still don't agree on what it means.
The Reformed Church is not in agreement. Luther had his view of communion, and I know that Lutherans, some Lutheran churches is, have, have kind of strayed, but originally Luther had a view of communion. It was arguable for. Zwingli had a view of communion. Rome has a view of communion, and Calvin has a view of communion.
And our church and most Reformed churches have adopted Calvin's view of communion. But know this: Calvin begins his discussion with, "This is mysterious." So turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 11
I just want to cover one aspect of communion. We've talked about it before, but I think this is an aspect that we get confused, and if we don't get it right, we miss out on the meaning of communion. So 1 Corinthians chapter 11, [00:46:00] and I want to read verses 24 and 25 In 1 Corinthians 11:24, "And when He had given thanks, He," Jesus, "broke it and said, 'This is My body, which is for you.
Do this in remembrance of Me.'" And then in verse 25, He uses the exact same words in the original. "In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in My blood. Do this, as often as you drink of it, in remembrance of Me.'" And so often we go to the table and we treat it as if all it's supposed to do is remind us of Jesus.
And yes, when you go to the table, you cannot help but remember Jesus. His body and blood and broken body and shed blood is on display, but that is not what these words mean. And I will walk anyone through the original if you want. The translation, "In remembrance of Me," in the original, me is not an object.
In the original, me is a [00:47:00] possessive pronoun. This is my remembrance. This is Jesus' remembrance. And a better way to translate that word is memorial. And what Jesus is saying, "Do this as my memorial." Why am I so convinced? Grammar, translation, but this is something that was very common in the Old Testament.
You might be shocked, but all of the sacrifices were considered memorials to God in the Old Testament. If you're taking notes, I won't cover all these, but Exodus 3:15, chapter 12, verse 14, Leviticus chapter 2, verse 2 and 16. I'll include these in tomorrow's email as well. Chapter 6, verse 15, chapter 24, verse 7, and Numbers 10:10.
So if Jesus says, "This is my memorial," how do we understand it? Well, we go to the Old Testament. How were memorials used in the Old Testament? And I'm just gonna look at, at, at [00:48:00] one because of time, but Numbers 10:10 says this "Also in the day of your gladness, and in your appointed feasts, and the first day of the month," all the festivals, all the feasts, all the sacrifices is what Moses is saying.
"You shall blow the trumpet over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings: and they shall be as a memorial for you." Same... It's a Hebrew word that's translated by the same word we see in the New Testament. "They shall be as a memorial of you before God: I am the Lord your God."
And literally what it says, "It will be a memorial of you before the face of your God." And this, I know it freaks us out, but what a memorial was meant to do is it was meant to remind God. And we freak out because we know that God is omniscient. We know that God doesn't need to be reminded, but we need to be reminded that God remembers.
And that is how a memorial functioned throughout the Old [00:49:00] Testament. It was a reminder to God. He would remember His covenant. And when we celebrate the table, in a real sense, what we're doing is reminding God that Jesus died for me, that Jesus shed His blood for me, and we are praying to God and asking God to be faithful to His covenant.
We're not doing it simply so that we remember. Yes, we're going to remember, but it is a memorial. Listen to the words of Genesis 9, and you're all familiar with this. "I will set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign... It shall be for a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come about when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud."
Stop. And what do we think? Oh, we'll see the rainbow. Oh, we'll see the, the bow. That is not what God is saying. Listen to what God says. Genesis 9:14, "It shall come about when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen [00:50:00] in the cloud," verse 15, "and I will remember." God is the one who sees the bow, and I've explained it to you.
It's a war bow and the arrow is pointing up, and it is a reminder to God to be faithful to His covenant. And He gives us these signs. He gives us these sacraments. He gives us these re- memorials so that we will know that He remembers. And so when we go to the table, we celebrate what Christ did. And once again, God is serving us in the table.
If you look in your bulletins, there's one more handout. It's Psalm 100. And if you would take that handout out, I want to close the service this way And just so you know, after communion, we receive a benediction. After the benediction, we again respond in song and the amen, and then we're commissioned to leave.
But I would ask you to stand. I would ask you to take Psalm 100, and I could not think of a better way to end the service today. [00:51:00] But I think we need to do another responsive reading. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna read the first line of every verse, and then I want you to respond with however many lines are left.
And note that in verse one, there's only one line, so there's no response. So you won't respond until verse two. But I just felt this was a fitting way to end our worship service today. So hear this for what it is, and speak boldly, for it is the Word of God given to us. It is His promise given to us. Shout joyfully to Yahweh, all the earth.
Serve Yahweh with gladness.
Know that Yahweh himself is God
Enter his gates with thanksgiving
For Yahweh is good[00:52:00]
Let's pray. Father in heaven, thank you that you have given us instruction on how to properly worship you. May we continue to get better. May we make adjustments where we need to make adjustments. And may, may we as a congregation learn and understand and embrace and participate in what we do and why we do it.
And Father, we pray that you will be glorified in our humble worship. Thank you that you love us so much, that you desire relationship with us. And all of God's people said? Amen. Amen.
