Principles for Worship

We’ve been thinking about worship this week. And perhaps you know, if you’ve ever seen pictures of the Ligonier headquarters and Reformation Bible College, that they’re situated on a small lake called Shadow Lake. And across on the other side of the lake stands Saint Andrew’s Chapel, the church where Dr. Sproul was minister.

I’ve always loved worshiping with God’s people there for many reasons, but one of them is it’s the only church that I have ever attended where the congregation sings the Sanctus: “Holy, Holy, Holy. Holy is the Lord. Holy, Holy, Holy. Holy is the Lord. Holy is the Father, Holy is the Son, Holy is the Spirit. Blessed Three in One.”

Sometimes we speak about what’s called the regulative principle in our worship. Some people think that it’s just Presbyterians who have a regulative principle. Actually, all of us have a regulative principle. Sometimes it’s more obvious, and sometimes, alas, it’s a regulative principle that seems chaotic.

And we need a regulative principle, otherwise every single one of us would end up starting his or her own denomination. We need principles that guide and govern what we do in worship. And as we’ve been thinking, sometimes that principle is, “What do we like?” or “What will appeal to outsiders?” which rather suggests that our worship is going to be about us rather than about God.

No, our basic regulative principle for worship is, what does God tell us He likes? What does God tell us He wants? And what does God tell us will be most helpful to us to enable us to come into His presence and to praise Him? And there’s only one way to discover the answer to those questions. It’s by searching the Scriptures and reflecting on and applying their teaching to the churches to which we belong, so that ultimately our regulative principle is going to be the one that God gives to us.

If we seek out the Scriptures, I think we will find two things. First of all, we will see that there are certain constants in worship, what are sometimes called elements. And these are, or should be, in every service, no matter who we are, where we are, or how many or few of us there may be. There will be singing praise. There will be praying. There will be the exposition of Scripture. There will be baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These are constants. These are what we sometimes call elements.

And then there will be variables, and there are many variables. For example, the time of day when we gather for worship. For the first half of my life without fail, the morning worship service began at 11:00, and I think it traditionally began then because the farmers need time to milk their cows. So, even when no one in the congregation owns a cow, somehow or another, we have kept up the tradition and treated it as a constant although it’s a variable.

And there are other variables. The Scriptures don’t tell us what tunes we need to use to sing God’s praise. The Scriptures don’t tell us when we should stand and when we should sit. And so, as the Westminster Confession of Faith says, it’s legitimate and appropriate for these things to be, as the Westminster divines noted, “Ordered by the light of nature.” And so, these characteristics may differ from place to place, from culture to culture.

But as I said, there are aspects of our worship that should be fixed. And that’s where sometimes Christians tend to go adrift by saying: “If God has not given us clear instructions, then we can do whatever we want. We can do whatever we like.” You remember, there was one church in the New Testament that said that to the Apostle Paul, and Paul said: “It’s not like that. Even in areas of life and worship where God has not given specific instructions, we are called to apply general biblical principles to every one of these specific occasions.”

And in his first letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul tells us how to do that. He raises these two questions. “Is this really going to be edifying for the church?” And the second question, “Is this really going to be for the glory of God?” And that second question should always be the dominant question we ask, even when Scripture doesn’t give us specific directives about our worship. What is most going to tend to the glory of God? What is most going to enable us to sing, “Holy is the Father, Holy is the Son, Holy is the Spirit. Blessed Three in One”? When we ask, “What will tend to the glory of God?” we are likely to be able to worship Him in spirit and in truth.