The Reformation and the Worship of God

Starting a New Series on Public Thanksgiving in the Church

Good Morning!

Last week as we closed out our time in the Larger Catechism I said that we would be beginning this Thursday to walk through the other parts of the Westminster Standards, at least as they were adopted by our forefathers in the faith back in 1647. This will be partly a history lesson, partly to assist us think through why we do certain things and to expand on our understanding of the faith. 

It will be the goal of these Thursday confession helps that at the end we will not only grow in our love of the truth, but of Christ first and foremost. Everything that we do as a church, or at least should be, is to be in service of glorifying God and enjoying Him forever. We are sometimes in need of the reminder that we neither invented nor need to remake the body of Christ. The word inheritance plays a large role in every generation from Adam to Jesus from Jesus to us. We are stewards of the mysteries and as those granted the privilege to carry the flame of the gospel from one generation to the next we must be wise in how we receive and pass on the good news of salvation. 

The first document we are going to go through is the Directory of Public Worship. Sounds riveting I know. But I promise that as we move forward there is much to mine even from the preface, which is where we gain a word today. Below is our first bite at this blessed fruit:

In the beginning of the blessed Reformation, our wise and pious ancestors took care to set forth an order for redress of many things, which they then, by the word, discovered to be vain erroneous, superstitious, and idolatrous, in the publick worship of God. This occasioned many godly and learned men to rejoice much in the Book of Common Prayer, at that time set forth; because the mass, and the rest of the Latin service being removed, the publick worship was celebrated in our own tongue: many of the common people also receive benefit by hearing the scriptures read in their own language, which formerly were unto them as a book that is sealed. 

The men who put together this document were the same ones who wrote our Confession of Faith and Catechisms. Anything they put in these rules and regulations concerning worship we can rest assured do sweetly comply with the theology we believe and rest in as Associate Reformed Presbyterians. While this DPW is not the same as the DPW of the current day ARP, it is in effect of a similar mind and focus. When we gather together on the Lord’s Day to praise the name of our God and our Savior we should be at peace with the things that take place when the minister mounts the pulpit and proclaims the Call to Worship. That first step changes us, what we are thinking, and what we are doing. It guides our soul to look to Jesus and forget the world around us. Our reasons for doing so are born out of what we read in the introduction above. As much as we believe that the Protestant Reformation was about Justification By Faith Alone it was more so a return back to the teaching of the New Testament when it came to worship. 

As the paragraph opens it says a couple of things about our forefathers worth noting. First of all we read of the fact they were wise. What does that mean? To be wise according to the Bible means to not heed the wisdom of the world, but rest in the revelation of God. When it comes to worship this is marked by what has become known as the Regulative Principle. All that is saying is what Deuteronomy 12:32 says, “Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it.” Here is where that second word pious comes in. To be full of piety, which is a good thing, is to devoutly focus not on yourself but the Lord. Asking first not what God can do for you, but what God requires of you. The wisdom and the piety of those who came before led them to abandon any practice in the Sabbath (or otherwise) praise of Christ that could not be found in the Scriptures. This didn’t make them “Bible and me alone” people, for they did not rely on the arrogance of individualism, but looked at the whole of the witness of truth and quickly discovered that all the additions that Rome had made to the worship of God only served to hide His glory from their eyes. 

Colossians 2:23 helps us to understand this a little more. Paul notes, “These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.” The reason why it matters how we bring ourselves to the presence of Jehovah in worship is because the act is supposed to do something for us. When we rely on the ideas that pop into our heads to inform our actions we actually can do damage to our sanctification and walk with Christ. That’s why in the introduction cited above there is concern in the outflowing of one part of the Reformation to the next that advances have been made, bringing the believer from a state where the whole service was in an unintelligible language to where for the first time in a millenia he could hear the words of Jesus for himself. 

In closing, when I consider afresh this blessing it actually brings a tear to my eye. Imagine what it must have been like to be in those first Reformation-era services as Luther, Wycliffe, and Jacques Lefevre translated from the Greek and Hebrew into German and English and French. The only biblical comparison I can think of is when the temple was being rebuilt in the days after the Babylonian exile and they cried tears of joy mixed with lament as they remembered the glory of Solomon’s house of worship. It’s things like this gift of grace available to the hearer in the voice of the minister as he leads us in prayer, praise, and proclamation on the Lord’s Day, morning and evening. I pray this time of remembrance, renewal, and thinking through the mercies available in Protestant worship will be a blessing to you. 

Last word as is our custom:

https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/listening-to-gods-word

Blessings in Christ, 

Rev. Benjamin Glaser

Pastor, Bethany ARP Church