When the reformers endeavored to reform worship, they strove to turn the church back from the failings so common throughout history. They made the preaching of the word central to the role of the pastor. As Calvin wrote:
They would sing or mutter in the church, exhibit themselves in theatrical vestments, and go through numerous ceremonies, but they would seldom, if ever, teach. According to the precept of Christ, however, no man can claim for himself the office of bishop or pastor who does not feed his flock with the Word of the Lord.1
For worship to be returned to something God-honoring, the word had to be central. And, once the word, rightly taught and understood was returned, the participation of the congregation in worship could also be reinstated. Thus, in the reformation, after centuries of silence, congregations again sang the truths of the word of God. Christians again began to obey the command of God in Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”
Martin Luther saw the tremendous value of music both for the joy of the soul and for the training of the Christian mind. He designed worship services that returned singing to the congregation and he understood that singing was a glorious and godly way for people to learn true theology.
Eric Metaxas puts it this way:
Music was not to be banished from our lives as Karlstadt and Müntzer felt it must be, nor was it to be separated into “church music” that could only be sung by priests and monks and “secular music” that was sung by the people outside the churches. All that was good was of God, and to create walls where God has built none was far worse than a mere tragic mistake. So Luther, in creating the worship services for the new Reformation church, sought to bring every kind of good music into God’s service and sought to bring the “priesthood of all believers” into God’s choir in church. Because it is so ubiquitous today, including even in Catholic churches, it is hard to believe that before Luther introduced it, there was no congregational singing in churches. He knew the power of music and wanted to use it for God’s purposes.2
Luther said:
Music is a fair and lovely gift of God which has often wakened and moved me to the joy of preaching. St. Augustine was troubled in conscience whenever he caught himself delighting in music, which he took to be sinful. He was a choice spirit, and were he living today would agree with us. I have no use for cranks who despise music, because it is a gift of God. Music drives away the Devil and makes people gay; they forget thereby all wrath, unchastity, arrogance, and the like. Next after theology I give to music the highest place and the greatest honor. I would not exchange what little I know of music for something great. Experience proves that next to the Word of God only music deserves to be extolled as the mistress and governess of the feelings of the human heart. We know that to the devils music is distasteful and insufferable. My heart bubbles up and overflows in response to music, which has so often refreshed me and delivered me from dire plagues.3
1 John Calvin, On the Necessity of Reforming the Church (1543-44) [book on-line]; accessed 14 October 2017; available from https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/calvin_necessityreform.html; Internet.
2[1] Eric Metaxas, Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World (New York: Viking, 2017), Chapter 18.
3 Ibid.
Eric Metaxas on the Decline of Worship Before the Reformation
How bad was it really? Eric Metaxas, in his brand new biography on Luther that just appeared at the beginning of October, 2017, described one of Martin Luther’s experiences during his first journey to Rome as follows:
Another disturbing aspect of his time in Rome was the astonishing incompetence and cynicism of many of the priests there. Luther had never seen anything that began to approach it. It was one thing to have questions about God and the religious life, but what to make of these priests who seemed to go through the motions with a contemptuous indifference, or in some cases even a mocking blasphemy? It was positively diabolical. On the first score, Luther noted that Mass was said with such breathless speed that even he, who was exceedingly familiar with every word, found it utterly unintelligible. It was mystifying, as though the priests had secretly been replaced with fast-talking auctioneers. For Luther, who had revered the Mass to the point of awe and even terror, this cavalier attitude toward this holiest of privileges must have been a horror to behold. If ever one needed a picture of “dead religion” and “dead works,” here it was in all of its most legalistic ghastliness. Luther saw that these priests hadn’t the slightest reverence for the holy act in which they were participating but wished only to tick off the appropriate box and gallop off to something less demanding. The shortest time officially allowed in which a priest could hurry through the Mass was twelve minutes, but Luther recalled that at the basilica of St. Sebastian seven masses were said in an hour—in other words, in something less than nine minutes each. And when Luther himself said Mass, the next priest—fidgety with impatience—almost literally breathed down his neck. “Quick, quick!” he said to Luther, sarcastically adding, “And send our Lady back her Son!”—obviously a joke about the transubstantiated host. At St. Sebastian, Luther also recalled the freakish oddity of two masses being said simultaneously at the same altar, the priests merely separated by a painting.*
What Luther saw, and what many other reformers grasped, is that, by the time of the reformation, so much of what the church was doing was exactly in line with the failures in worship which have always been a part of human sinfulness. Worship was not about the word of god, but was rather filled with the vain imaginings of men who made up ceremonies and rules for themselves. Worship was not about the glory of God any longer, but was a tool for the religious elite to use to enrich themselves as they horded political power. Worship was not simple and congregational, but it was complicated, confusing, and only for the priests to perform on behalf of the people.
*[1]Eric Metaxas, Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World (New York: Viking, 2017), Chapter 3.
Sinclair Ferguson on the Deformation of Worship Before the Reformation
For many of us today, what passed for worship by the time of the late 15th and early 16th centuries would be completely unintelligible. We would not understand the language. We would not understand most of the actions. We would not grasp many of the symbols. And we would not be far removed from the common people of the day who, like us, would not have a clue what was going on.
In his excellent presentation called “The Priority of Worship” from the 2017 Ligonier National Conference, Sinclair Ferguson examined what had happened to worship by the time of the reformers.* Ferguson specifically highlighted three major deformations of worship by the time of Luther that were part of the landscape begging for reform.
First, Ferguson pointed out that worship had become visual and sensory, even sensual, rather than biblical and spiritual. Consider what New Testament authors often said about the spiritual component of worship in the New Covenant era as opposed to the physical ritual of the Old. Always, the New testament highlighted the superiority of the fact that we are not now performing physical rituals such as sacrifices, but we are instead looking in faith to the completed work of Christ that renders such physical performances obsolete. But by the end of the medieval period, worship was primarily physical and visual. The word of God was not at all central, Instead, symbols, vestments, and performances all took center stage. Sacramental bread had ceased to be a reminder of Christ’s work and had instead become a sacred talisman to cling to as a superstition.
Ferguson points out that the word of God was simply not at all a part of the common worship goer’s experience. He said, “You would not have asked someone leaving a service in the late middle ages, what did you hear? A) Because that person probably did not understand the Latin that he or she heard, and B) because all of the focus was on what we saw.” Instead of being fed by the word of God, worshippers would watch as a sort of performance was done in front of them.
Second, Ferguson points out that worship became vicarious rather than congregational. That is a natural outgrowth of the prior problem. If you, as a common man, could not understand the language being spoken, how could you participate? You also could not sing in worship, as all the singing was done by the formally trained choir. In fact, you could allow someone to say a mass on your behalf without your having to participate at all.
Thirdly, Ferguson points out that worship had become complex and lost its simplicity. The actions of the priests in the ceremonies were quite intricate. Move your hands this way. Speak the Latin at this point. Wear these particular vestments. Gesture just so. As Ferguson points out, “If there had been theological seminaries in the English speaking world, in those days most of the courses would have been on hand actions and vestments, and not on the action of God and the preaching of His Word and the understanding of that Word by God’s people in the sheer simplicity of biblical worship in the New Testament.”
* Sinclair Ferguson, “The Priority of Worship” The Next 500 Years: 2017 National Conference (Sanford, FL: Ligonier Ministries, 2017) [transcript and media on-line]; accessed 14 Oct 2017; available from http://www.ligonier.org/learn/conferences/next-500-years-2017-national-conference/priority-worship/?format=audio; Internet.
A Major, Sometimes Overlooked, Purpose of the Reformation
What was the reformation about? If you were asked that question by a church member, you would likely point to the five solas. You would say that the reformation was about recovering the right understanding of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. You would say that this is to the glory of God alone. And, of course, you and I would tell anyone who would listen to us that the authority of Scripture alone is at the center of the reformation cause.
But is there more? How would the reformers have spoken of the purpose behind the reformation? What would they have said was at the center of their work, a work that we now celebrate as vital to the preservation of the church and the true gospel?
In 1543, John Calvin wrote a work entitled, “On the Necessity of Reforming the Church.” In that beautiful defense of the need for reformation addressed to Emperor Charles V, Calvin points to more than the doctrines of Scripture and of salvation as key to the heart behind the reformation. Yes, he highlights a recovery of the doctrine of God’s grace. But he sets right beside that glorious doctrine the recovery of biblical, God-honoring worship. Calvin writes:
If it be inquired, then, by what things chiefly the Christian religion has a standing existence amongst us and maintains its truth, it will be found that the following two not only occupy the principal place, but comprehend under them all the other parts, and consequently the whole substance of Christianity, viz., a knowledge, first, of the mode in which God is duly worshipped; and, secondly of the source from which salvation is to be obtained.
If any one is desirous of a clearer and more familiar illustration, I would say, that rule in the Church, the pastoral office, and all other matters of order, resemble the body, whereas the doctrine which regulates the due worship of God, and points out the ground on which the consciences of men must rest their hope of salvation, is the soul which animates the body, renders it lively and active, and, in short, makes it not to be a dead and useless carcass.*
* John Calvin, On the Necessity of Reforming the Church (1543-44) [book on-line]; accessed 14 October 2017; available from https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/calvin_necessityreform.html; Internet.
A Good Reason to Care about the Bible
Sometimes we need to be reminded of the simple stuff. We need someone to show us how we ought to think about things we have not considered in a while.
With that, I pose the question, “Why care about Scripture?” There are hundreds of reasons, of course, but let’s see one. This reason should help us to think well as Christians. It should also cause those who are unsure about the faith to think twice.
Psalm 119:73 – Your hands have made and fashioned me; give me understanding that I may learn your commandments.
David, in a song devoted to the praise of God and his word, writes for us a reason that we may not always consider as to why the Bible matters. God made us. Because God made us, he can speak best about who we are, why we exist, and how we can have life and fulfillment.
Stop and consider. If you were playing the latest game on your gaming system of choice—Switch, X-Box, whatever—and you found yourself in a place where you were stuck, what would help you solve the problem? What if you had, sitting on your couch next to you, the person who programmed the game. The guy who wrote the code is right there. If he told you the sequence of moves to solve the puzzle or defeat the boss, might it not be a good idea to listen to him?
We have better than the video game programmer sitting next to us. We have the One who created us within reach. God has spoken to us. The very God who knit our bodies together and designed our souls has chosen to reveal himself to us. He has shown us how to live. He has shown us how to know him. He has shown us what will bring us ultimate joy. And he has put all of that information in his holy word, a book which he has declared perfect and sufficient and living.
So, we, like David, should recognize that, if God put us together, we should care about his word. And if you find yourself saying that you do not think God made you, I simply pose the question of where you came from. Is there anything that gives you meaning, hope, and help in life to actually guide you through this existence? God’s word is solid, revealing to us our true Creator. That is one reason to take it very seriously.
We are not Strong
How do you evaluate humanity? How do you and I evaluate our own goodness? By what standard do we measure ourselves? I fear that our measure of our goodness or badness, our strength or our weakness, is not the same as the measure of the Lord.
Isaiah wrote to the people of Israel, reminding them that they were not as strong as they thought themselves to be. His words are part of a prayer of confession as he asks for the mercy of the Lord.
Isaiah 64:5-6
5 You meet him who joyfully works righteousness,
those who remember you in your ways.
Behold, you were angry, and we sinned;
in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved?
6 We have all become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.
We all fade like a leaf,
and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
The word that is most terrifying in Isaiah’s prayer of confession is “righteous.” In verse 6, one line says, “and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.” We have to get this to see our great need for the mercy of the Lord. It is not our badness that looks like a filthy garment in the sight of the Lord. It is the best we can do that still amounts to something nasty in God’s sight.
Do not misunderstand me or the word of God here. The Lord is not saying that it is bad for people to do right things. When we donate to relieve those who have suffered an earthquake, a hurricane, or an evil attack, what we do is good. It is so wonderful to see cities come together, help the needy, and give of their time, their money, and even their blood to aid others. This is not a bad thing.
But, and this is vital for our souls to grasp, when compared to the absolute perfection of the Lord, we cannot let ourselves think that we have made ourselves good by our own strength. When held up against the holiness of God, even our best work, our most righteous deeds, still look dirty. The point is to convince us of our helplessness before the Lord. WE have never been good on our own. We can never be good on our own. We are too stained by the sin of the world and the evil in our own hearts. We must have a Savior.
This is where the gospel is good news. Whereas every other world religion tells us to do good in order to earn the favor of the deity, biblical Christianity says to us that there is no good that we can perform to earn God’s favor. But Christianity also tells us that Jesus has done the work, all of the work, necessary to cleanse us from our sin and to make us righteous in the sight of the Lord. Jesus has taken the punishment for sin we all deserve. Jesus has performed perfect acts of righteousness to actually be able to donate to us, to credit to our accounts, acts of righteousness that are not filthy garments in the sight of the Lord. Jesus has covered the negative and freely given the positive that is required for us to be forgiven our sin and welcomed into God’s family.
Friends, we are not good. We are not strong. We do not bring good to the table, even when we do great things in this world. Our only hope is that God-sized good and God-sized grace are given to us. And those God-sized things are done by the Son of god, the only one who really could do them in the first place. And this is wherein our hope lies. WE trust in the finished work of Jesus and ask him to apply it to us. We bow to him in humility, and we receive his mercy as a gift. We are strong, never in ourselves, but only in the almighty strength and perfect righteousness of the Son of God.
Acceptable Worship
How can you tell if a person is genuinely participating in worship? Be careful with your answer. I have known many who believe that the way to gage the worship of a believer is to look at their face for emotion. Are they weeping? Are they really into the music? Those things must be worship.
If you think that many do not measure worship by such a rule, consider how the churches you have attended shape the worship service. How many of them work to set a particular mood, to play on particular heart strings, in order to call you into their particular form of worship? How many utilize every ploy they can to heighten your emotions to encourage you to feel deeply? Obviously, the assumption is that the more moved you are by the experience, the more you have worshipped. These emotions might be strong joy as the band really cranks it up or they may be deep and touching emotion as the lighting switches, softer music plays, and the video screen reminds you of the depths of God’s love.
Now, before moving on, let me say that I do not oppose media, music, or emotion in worship. But, and this is important, I believe we need to grasp that our emotions are not the measure of whether or not our worship is true. You can be as into the music as anybody, and you can fail in worship. You can weep until you have no more tears to weep, and you may not at all have turned your tear-streaked face to the Lord.
Hebrews 12:28-29 – 28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, 29 for our God is a consuming fire.
Note that here, in Hebrews, there is a call for acceptable worship. What is it? It is not a call to offer acceptable worship, so you better get into the music even if it is not your style. Nor is it a call to get more emotional than your constitution is cut out for. Instead, the call is to respond to the Lord with reverence and awe. Revere the Lord. Bow before him as King. Speak, sing, hear, and believe true things about the Lord that make you honor him. This can be done with deep emotion, but the emotion is not at all central—it certainly is not as important as truth.
Look to the Lord in awe. Be amazed by God. Be stunned by his power, his perfections, and his grace. How do we do that? WE do not do this by manipulating emotions with the same kinds of things that happen here in Vegas when a showman wants to tweak the feelings of the audience. No, we bring about awe by communicating truth about who the Lord is. He is a consuming fire. He is the Holy One. God is our Creator, our King, our Savior, and this truth, if rightly understood, should lead us to reverence and awe.
No, I’m not here trying to rant against modern tech in worship. Nor am I pointing to any particular group. But what I want is for us as Christians to recognize that acceptable worship is not measured by the implicit standards that many are now using. Acceptable worship is about truth, about God, about revering him and being in aw of him. This is not something drummed up by our tech, our music, our drama, our poetry, or anything else. The only way to have genuine awe of the Lord is to know the Lord and to have his word, his revelation of himself, rightly proclaimed. So let our worship be more about the Lord and his word and the truth being spoken, sung, and received. That will be a worship that leads us to reverence and awe.
We Need More Heaven
When I was growing up, we sang about heaven in the church. I expected, on any given Sunday, to sing with a southern gospel twist, songs like “When We All Get to Heaven,” “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder,” or “Victory in Jesus.” And there was both a goodness and something not-so-good with the way that all went.
On the negative side, so many of the songs that we sang about heaven had a sadly misplaced focus. There was a fascination with golden streets and reunion with long lost relatives that, as I grew older, bothered me. It was as if the songs removed the focus from the presence of the Lord, the prime focus of heaven, and majored on the accoutrement’s of heaven. So, of course, as I grew, and while I was far too full of myself and my own wisdom, I found myself turning away from wanting to sing those kinds of songs.
But there is a problem. Singing about heaven is good. Focusing on the eternal life to come is, without question, a Christian salve to soothe our burdened souls in the here and now. Focusing on things above is a godly spiritual discipline. And my turning up my nose at the songs that made me think of heaven did not help.
Hebrews 11:13-16 – 13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
People who speak of their eternity being bound up in heaven please the Lord. People who sing of the joys to come when we are freed from this sin-cursed world to stand face-to-face with our Savior do him honor. People who recognize that we can let go of pleasures in this life for the sake of the pleasures of the life to come give the Lord an honor that the world around us cannot and will not understand.
So, my conclusion is that we need more heaven. We need more heaven in our thinking. We need more heaven in our singing. No, I’m not suggesting that we pick up weak songs that focus more on gold, jewels, and grandma than they do on Jesus. But there has to be something better than throwing out the baby with the bathwater. We need heaven in our songs. We need heaven in our hearts. WE need heaven on our lips. WE need heaven in our minds. WE need heaven in our motivation. We need heaven to give us comfort in our sorrow. We need heaven to drive us to obedience to the word of God. We need heaven to fill our lives so that people will know that we live, not for this world’s rewards, but for the rewards of the world to come when Jesus will make all things new.
So, we should sing of heaven. We should consider heaven. We should study heaven. We should dream of heaven. We should not remove the focus from the focus of heaven, the presence of the Lord in his glory. Nor should we ignore the other joys of heaven. But we, modern, thinking, growing, studying Christians should be sure that heaven is at the center of our hearts just as it was for those who pleased the Lord as the author of Hebrews showed us.
Daily Time in the Word: Legalism or Just a Right Idea
How do you handle the word of God on a daily basis? Obviously, I’m asking Christians here. What do you do with Scripture from day-to-day? Are you reading the word of God? Are you actually putting in work to understand it, to learn it, to apply it, to obey it?
Wait a minute. Nobody says that we have a biblical command to read the word every day. That is not written in Scripture. So we cannot give each other a guilt trip over daily quiet time. Besides, all of us have different schedules and different capacities.
Look at something that David said about his time in the word of God.
Psalm 119:15 – I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.
David, the man after God’s heart, when speaking of the word of God, overflows with love and praise. Here, in the longest of the Psalms, David says that he will meditate on God’s word. He is going to take time to really think, really mull over the word of God. David is not merely going to do a cursory reading and immediately walk back into his normal life. He is going to let the word of God have its impact on him.
No, I cannot and will not make a rule for any Christian regarding required Bible reading. I will not tell you how much you have to read or how long you have to spend reading. But I will say that, if King David saw that meditation on the word of God was a right and lovely thing, if God saw fit to inspire that love in David and to have it recorded in holy Scripture, then we should see that this is a good thing. Thus regular time in the word of God, meditating on and studying the Scripture, should be a part of a healthy Christian life. And if your life lacks in time in the Scripture, you should examine yourself carefully. You should ask the Lord to help you. And you should work to make time to do the life work of growing in the word of God.
Balancing Fear
As human beings, our fears are upside-down. Often we find ourselves skittish about the opinions of others. Often we let ourselves worry about what evil people might do to us. And somehow, we have forgotten that the God who made us is far more powerful and far more dangerous.
Isaiah 51:12-13
12 “I, I am he who comforts you;
who are you that you are afraid of man who dies,
of the son of man who is made like grass,
13 and have forgotten the Lord, your Maker,
who stretched out the heavens
and laid the foundations of the earth,
and you fear continually all the day
because of the wrath of the oppressor,
when he sets himself to destroy?
And where is the wrath of the oppressor?
God says that, for those who know him, he is the God who comforts us. God is right here with us to have mercy on us, to show us kindness, and to shape us into people who honor him. Yet, if we are honest, we often find ourselves afraid, not of disappointing our Savior, but instead of not being accepted by those who oppose the Lord. We find ourselves afraid of what people will think of us, of what our futures may hold, of what our health might do, of violent men, of what the government might do. But the Lord tells us that such a fear is misplaced.
Consider how Isaiah put it. We fear men, mortals, people who die. We forget the Lord, who by his own mighty hand stretched out the heavens above us. We worry about the actions of humans. We forget the eternal life and infinite power of the God who made us.
So, as I say, our fears are upside-down. God is almighty. God is Creator. God is righteous. God is our Judge. We must not assume that we can ignore him and be blameless. Instead, we should turn to him, seek his mercy, and trust him. We should run to him for eternal safety, even if we are worried about the here-and-now. May we set our priorities, our devotion, and our fears aright. May we focus ourselves on the God who is eternally God and not on the things that will fade like grass on a desert summer day.
Pastor Travis Peterson 