Peine Ridge Church Plant Team Meeting #5 on 02.07.10
Nathan Smith
Peine Ridge Church Value- WORSHIP
Text: Philippians 3:3- For we are the real circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh—
Worship on God’s Terms
God takes worship very seriously. Just a quick glance at the history of the people of Israel, as they turn time after time from the one true God, Yahweh, to worship the same idols that their neighbors do makes it abundantly clear that God is never impressed by their compromised worship. In fact, because of it, He brings judgment on them time after time, and only stops short of destroying them completely for the sake of His own glory, promises, and faithfulness. But, there are still consequences for their sin. The same consequences that Adam and Eve felt in the Garden, and those consequences are pain and death and broken communion, away from the presence of God, as you can see with painful clarity throughout the Old Testament. God does not take culturally influenced, compromised worship lightly and it results in death. Whether that is physical death, as it was for some of the Israelites or spiritual death, as it has proved to be for so many churches, worship- even worship that has been labeled God-worship, or Christian-worship- any form of worship that is not according to God’s instructions will bring death. And it cannot truly be called the worship of God. As the Reformer Martin Bucer said, “Only the worship that God asks of us really serves Him”. And so, in the words of Hebrews 12, we must “offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, 29 for our God is a consuming fire”. We are not given the option of worshiping God in the way that is most comfortable for us, or seems most normal in comparison to the culture around us, or fits in best with what we personally like the most. When we worship God, we worship on His terms, or we don’t worship at all. So, in light of that, it is incredibly, vitally important as a church that we understand 3 things about worship: 1) What we are to do in worship, 2) How we are to worship, and 3) Why we are to worship. Our key Scripture text for this value is Philippians 3:3, and we’ll spend most of our time focused there.
Congregational or Gathered Worship
Let me clarify for you that in the “worship value” of Peine Ridge Church, and in our time here today, our focus is on what we will call “gathered worship” or “corporate worship”. This is from the Peine Ridge Church Worship Value statement:
“By “Worship” we mean the narrow use of the term as referring to the local body of believers who seek to worship the Lord in the midst of their gathering.”
The New Testament makes it clear in familiar passages like Romans 12:2 and 1 Corinthians 10:31 that under the new covenant, and because the Holy Spirit indwells us so that we are the temple of God, all of life is now truly worship, not merely the times that we gather together. But, under that overarching idea of life as worship, we have this narrower sense of the word that use to refer to what we do when we gather together for the purpose of worshiping God. So with all of this in mind,let’s look at Philippians 3:3 and see how it comes to bear on corporate worship.
Philippians 3:3 For we are the real circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh-
1) “What” of Worship: What do we do in worship?
Now I’m going to take this verse in sections to look at how at applies to worship and first answer the question: “What do we do in worship?” The answer to that question has been in debate for centuries, and is debated still, as we can easily see as we look around at the thousands of different denominations, worship styles, and liturgies in the Christian church today. And to answer that question in specifics is far beyond what we have time for today. So instead, I’m going to give you the principles by which we will answer that question. Asking that question in light of Philippians 3:3 gives us the answer in the negative. We “put no confidence in the flesh”. What do we do in worship if we want to please God? Well, here’s what we don’t do. We don’t put confidence in the flesh. And as Paul goes on to explain following this verse, this means that we don’t put confidence in religious activities, good works, righteous acts, being kind to our neighbors, or being good church attenders. As Paul says, all of those things are to be considered dung, they’re trash, they’re worthless. And why not put confidence in the flesh? Because our flesh is corrupt. Our flesh will make up an imaginary God or imagine that God is not particular about how He is to be worshiped, just like the Adam and Eve and the Israelites did. And we are often so immersed in our culture that we have enormous spiritual blind spots. When we look back through history, we see that every culture has it’s own characteristic sins, and they are reflected in the worship of the Church in that age when the Church becomes so immersed in the culture that it no longer recognizes them as sin. As you hear this quote, listen to see if you recognize an echo of these sins, not only in the worship of the American church, but in your own life of worship.
“If we know the characteristic sins of the age, we can guess its foolish and fashionable assumptions- that morality is simply a matter of personal taste, that all silences need to be filled up with human chatter or background music, that 760 percent of the American people are victims, that it is better to feel than to think, that rights are more important than responsibilities, that even for children the right to choose supercedes all other rights, that real liberty can be enjoyed without virtue, that self-reproach is for fogies, that God is a chum or even a gofer whose job is to make us rich or happy or religiously excited, that it is more satisfying to be envied than respected, that it is better for politicians and preachers to be cheerful than truthful, that Christian worship fails unless it is fun.”- Plantinga
And I would add to this list the fact that we believe that if something isn’t entertaining, it’s not useful. We are all immersed in this culture and we all have blind spots. So we can only be confident that we are pleasing God in what we do when we gather to worship if we have an objective standard. One that stands outside of our culture, that judges our culture, that tells us how we are to worship. Scripture is that objective standard. And I could leave it at that.
The “Superlative Principle”
But I won’t, because there are thousands of churches who would, in word at least, agree with that statement, and yet we have drastically differing views on what that means, and how we ought to put that broad principle into practice. So let’s look at another verse in Philippians to help us narrow that overarching principle down.
Philippians 1:9-11 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment,10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
This prayer expresses Paul’s heart for this church, His plea for what he longs for God to accomplish in them, and I believe that as Paul wrote this letter with these things on his heart, God used him, by the writing of this letter, as a means of answering this prayer. So it is helpful for us as we look at Philippians 3:3 to see what Paul had in mind in his prayer back in chapter 1. So then if we are to know how to place no confidence in the flesh, I believe Paul would say, according to Philippians 1:9, that we must be filled with knowledge and all discernment. The word used here for “knowledge” is always used by Paul in the sense of knowing God, in Christ Jesus. A knowledge which comes to us through His word, as it is made clear to us by the Holy Spirit. This knowledge of God, His character, His nature, and what delights Him will then bring us discernment and enable us to approve what is excellent.
This word “excellent” is a superlative in Greek. And we lose the force of this word, because in our culture most of us abuse and overuse superlatives. We say that cheeseburgers are amazing, new shoes are awesome, and new phones are incredible! What we end up with is having no words left when something that is truly worthy of those words comes along. But there is a time and place to use superlatives and, for Paul, this is one of them. He says that, as Christians, we must be constantly approving what it is amazing, incredible, awesome, over the top, above par. That which is excellent! Not just what is good, but what is best!
I like the way one commentator put it when he said that, “Approving what is excellent not only distinguishes right from wrong, but also the best from second best.”- Hughes. Here’s how this applies to corporate worship. We can do a lot of things. We are no longer bound to the strict rituals of the Old Testament. We have incredible freedom in Christ. Because of this, even among those churches who do agree that Scripture is foundational, and that sincerely try to bring themselves under the authority of Scripture, there are enormous differences and disagreements about what we should do in worship. So this idea of approving what is excellent is extremely helpful as we decide what to approve and what to disapprove.
We will typically have, on a Sunday morning, about 1.5 to 2 hours together for corporate worship. That’s not much time, in comparison to the 166 hrs. in a week that we’re not together. So our time together is precious and we have to ask the question, “What are the most excellent things that we can do with this time?” Because there are many things that are “OK” to do. We could come in on a Sunday morning and set up for a Christian square dance, or we could bob for Bible verses, or play pin the tail on Baalam’s donkey! Those things may OK. Maybe. But are they excellent? Probably not.
Things of that nature are obvious, because they’re pretty silly. But then there is a whole category of things that may not just be “OK”, but may actually be good, while still lacking excellence. These would include things like dramas, light shows, interpretive dance, and long instrumental solos. There may be times when we do those things, and they may have a place, but on a consistent basis, are those things excellent? Are these not just good things to do, but are they the best things to do? These are the questions we must be asking. And to answer those questions, here are the guidelines that we’ve come up with as we’ve searched Scripture. This is another portion of our worship value statement.
In our corporate gatherings the ministry of the Word is carried out with our reverent reading and passionate preaching of the Word, purposeful praying and satisfied singing in accordance with the Word, privileged participation in tasting of the visible Word (sacrament of the Lord’s Supper/Communion), and glad giving to the ministry of the Word.
In our corporate gatherings we seek to…
i. Read the Word (Public Reading of Scripture)
ii. Preach the Word (Expositional Sermons)
iii. Pray the Word (Prayers in Accordance with Scripture)
iv. Sing the Word (Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs)
v. See the Word (The Sacraments of the Lord’s Supper and Baptism)
vi. Respond to the Word (By Believing, Rejoicing, Giving, and Obeying)
Scripture is foundational. We place our confidence in what it has revealed, and we place no confidence in the flesh. So when we ask the question, “What do we do in worship?”, this is our answer; “What we do in worship is decided on the basis of whether or not it is the most excellent way to carry out the ministry of the word”.
2) The “How” of Worship:
Now we know the “what” of worship, but “how” are we to worship? And I raise this question because by the time of Jesus the Pharisees had perfected the “what” of worship, and Jesus, knowing this, still pronounced curses over them, calling them whitewashed tombs, a pile of dirty dishes, clean on the outside but filthy on the inside, and He proclaimed that their worship of God was in vain. And the same is true for us when we attempt to worship God simply by following a list of rules and regulations for worship, even when that list has come from God’s word. Listen to Jesus’ words in John 4:24; “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” So YES to truth. And YES to spirit. This is not either or. It is both. We must worship in Spirit and truth. As we see here in our text in Philippians 3:3,
“For we are the real circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God”.
True worship is not a human work, but is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is by the Spirit that we pray (Romans 8:15-27), that we sing (Eph. 5:19), and we preach (1 Cor. 12:8). Our worship is inspired by the Spirit, empowered by the Spirit, directed by the Spirit, purified by the Spirit, and bears the fruit of the Spirit. Christian worship is Spirit-filled. We cannot worship apart from the Spirit. Jesus, in John 6:63 says, It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is of no avail. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. What we see here is that as the Gospel word of Christ is preached, the Spirit gives life, and the Spirit enables and empowers us to worship in spirit and in truth. Dead, lifeless, ritualistic worship does not please God because He doesn’t need our worship. And to worship in a cold, ritualistic way is to either indicate that God needs our worship, or that we must perform these rituals together in order to earn His favor, which is a flat-out denial of the Gospel. So we must worship by the Spirit of God.
3) “Why” of Worship:
Here’s the difficulty that we have with that. We can’t control the Spirit. We can’t make Spirit-filled worship happen. We try, for sure, with lights, and emotional music, and crescendos and decrescendos in the music, with stories that drip with emotion, and so on… And not all of those are bad things, but they don’t create Spirit-filled worship. We can’t do it.
Jesus tells Nicodemus in John 3:8 that the Spirit is like the wind, in that we can’t control or direct His movements. How then do we worship by the Spirit of God? We worship by the Spirit of God when we join in the work that the Holy Spirit was sent to do, when, as our text says, “we glory in Christ Jesus”. When Jesus explains the work of the Holy Spirit in John 16:14 he says, “He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” So we see that the what, the how, and the why of worship are tightly and inseparably connected, because the “why” of worship is that “we glory in Christ Jesus”. The work of the Holy Spirit is to glorify Christ through the ministry of the Word. So we truly worship by the Spirit of God only when we glory in Christ Jesus.
For the Glory of Christ Jesus
And this means that we worship both for, and because of, the glory of Christ Jesus.
Let me break that down:
We worship for the glory of Christ Jesus, meaning that we must worship in a way that puts the glory of Christ on display. This means that we must worship in a way that clearly displays our trust, dependence, and joy in Christ alone and nothing else. And this, again, means that we must clearly show by the way that we worship that we place no confidence in the flesh, no confidence in anything but Christ. That we don’t place our confidence in a good communicator, in a great sound system, in cool lights, in videos, or in good music. All of those things, when not put into their proper place in the service of the ministry of the Word, easily begin to diminish our display of Christ’s glory. Then we become dissatisfied with Christ and we begin to make idols of our buildings, our music, and our programs. We put the people who lead us in the place of Christ. And this is a particularly dangerous one. Let me point out one way that we do this: Have you ever said one of the following phrases to a “worship leader”? “Thank you for leading us to the throne of God today” or “You really led us into the presence of God through your music”. Don’t raise your hand, because those are bad! This is one of the reasons why it may be foolish and unhelpful to call someone who plays music a “worship leader”. In truth, anyone who preaches, sings, or reads a Scripture in front of a congregation is a worship leader. To apply this only to the musical portion of worship creates an elevated, distorted picture of what we do, and probably puts us in danger of our heads exploding because they are generally big enough as it is. We musicians are no less sinful than you, and so we are more likely to lead you into the presence of pride and arrogance and enormous ego than we are to lead you into the presence of God. There is one great High Priest, and that is Christ Jesus. He is the one who stands before the throne of God, and He petitions on our behalf. If we are not led by Jesus into the presence of God, we better not go. So let’s not diminish the glory of Christ Jesus by trying to put men in His place. We all, those who lead, and those who follow, come to God with nothing to claim but the blood of Jesus. Because we have idolatrous hearts we have to constantly fight to glory only in Christ Jesus, to worship for His glory, to worship in a way that puts our absolute dependence on Him for all things, especially our salvation, on display. And this must be true not only in what we say, but in all that we do when we gather together to worship.
Because of the Glory of Christ Jesus
We worship for the glory of Christ Jesus, and we also worship because of the glory of Christ Jesus. This may well be the most important thing I will say today because we have forgotten and confused this so badly in so many of our churches. We have lost the ability to discern between what is law and what is Gospel. So far today, I have given you mainly law. Law is what God requires of us in our worship. It is necessary, and good, and right, but it is not everything. But this is where we so often stop short, in our preaching and in our lives and in our worship, because we think that only lost people need the gospel. But Christians need the gospel every bit as much as lost people! When we abandon the gospel once we’re saved, and then try to move forward in our Christian life based on fulfilling the law, I picture it like a man who is stranded in the middle of the ocean. He’s been there for days, just treading water, and he’s getting weak. He can no longer keep his head above water, and he begins to go under. He struggles back to the surface a few times, but it is a losing battle, and he eventually resigns himself to his death. He slips beneath the waves and ceases to struggle. Water fills his lungs, and his heart ceases its beating. He has drowned. His life is over.
But unbeknownst to him, while he was still able to keep himself above the surface, someone had spotted him, the Coast Guard had been alerted, and they had been racing to save him. In fact, they actually see him go under, they arrive just moments after he sinks beneath the waves, they pull him out of the water, successfully administer CPR, bringing him back from the dead!
Which, by the way, is a picture of how we are saved. The Holy Spirit rescues our dead, cold, lifeless hearts from the watery grave of sin and condemnation by the law, and miraculously brings them to life!
And this man, being brought back from the dead after drowning, begins to rejoice, to shout, to hug everyone on the boat, to dance around, to shout out loud, to thank them for saving his life! But then… picture this… he turns to the crew after thanking them profusely, he then tells them that he’s got it from here, and he deliberately steps right off the edge of the boat, drops back down into the middle of the ocean, and begins treading water again!
No one in their right mind would do that, right!? It would be like committing suicide, wouldn’t it? It’s ridiculous, right? But that is exactly the picture of what we do when we abandon the Gospel after salvation and try to live, as Christians, by the Law only.
Because when we hear, “you must worship God in spirit and in truth” -which is law, by the way. Jesus said we must do this. There is law in the New Testament and gospel in the Old. They are not exclusive categories that are contingent upon which testament you’re in- when we hear statements like that, we say “OK, if I am to worship God properly, here’s what I must do”,and then we try our hardest to do it. And we fail. We always fail. And that is the point of the law. To point out our inability. To point out our failure. To point us to the one who is The Anti-failure. To point us to Christ. That’s the Gospel! And we need to hear it constantly. Not just at the point of conversion, but over and over and over! And so we worship because we have failed but Christ has succeeded, because He has made the perfect sacrifice of worship to God, because He is glorified already, and because we worship as the body of Christ, united with Him in the Spirit. So even though we do not perfectly offer acceptable worship with reverence and awe as Hebrews 12 says we must do, we can be confident of offering worship that is acceptable to God because Christ has perfectly offered his worship to God with reverence and awe. Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in His holy place? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false. Do you have clean hands and a pure heart? NO! But Christ does. He alone is worthy to ascend the hill of the Lord, and He has ascended! We worship God on the basis of Christ’s righteousness, not our own.
Now, the law has more than one function, and in addition to pointing out our absolute inability to obey it perfectly, the law also serves as a guide to direct us in our progressive sanctification, meaning it directs us into more and more Christ-likeness in our worship, which is what we’ve been talking about today; offering worship that is ever-increasingly like the worship that Christ offered to God. But our ability to adhere to that guideline does not determine our righteousness before God. Our level of sanctification does not determine the acceptance of our worship by God. Our worship is accepted by God on the basis of our union with Christ, or it is not accepted at all. To think that we have to somehow clean up before we come to worship is like the guy drowning in the middle of the ocean saying to the Coast Guard as they are imploring him to get back in the boat, “You know, I appreciate the offer, but I’m really wet. I don’t want to get your seats all wet. I know I’m treading water here, but I’m gonna try to figure out a way to dry off before I get back in the boat.” Absurd, right? But many Christians do this.
This is why we will receive the Lord’s Supper together weekly at Peine Ridge. Not because it will give us a chance every week to “clear the slate” and confess and repent of all of the sins that we’ve committed over the past week- although that is a good, sanctifying thing- but because as we partake of the elements in faith, they serve to unite us by faith with Christ, to glorify Him by displaying our dependence on Him, to be reminded of our inability to offer worship perfectly and to be reminded that He has offered Himself as the supreme act of perfect worship so that we can come and worship without fear of judgment. He is our great high priest, He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, He is our holiness, He is our righteousness. And so as we come together to corporately worship God each week, we come to Him in the same way that we came to Him the first time. With nothing. God is not honored when we come to worship Him with our hands full of something to give to Him, as if He needed anything. God is honored when we come spiritually starving, and we ask Him to fill us with Christ, who is the Bread of Life. When we come guilty ashamed and accused, and we ask for the defense of our Advocate, Jesus. Not when we come boasting in our knowledge of Him, but when we come confessing our ignorance of Him, and ask to be taught by the one who knows Him perfectly, our Rabbi, our Teacher, Jesus. Not when we come with a clean slate, but when we come acknowledging and confessing our sin, knowing that we are in need of forgiveness and we ask to be covered by the one perfect atoning sacrifice for our sins, Jesus Christ, the perfect Lamb of God.
-Use this material as you wish, but please don’t charge for it or alter the content in any way without permission from Nathan Smith (2010)-Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: By Nathan Smith. © Captive By Grace. Website: captivebygrace
