When Christians think about growing in the Christian life, we often think in terms of doing something new. We want a new book, a new program, a new devotional method, or perhaps a new experience. But God’s way of growth is remarkably ordinary. He gives us his Word. He calls us to prayer. He gathers us for worship. He feeds us in the sacraments. He puts his praise in our mouths. And then he says, “Now do it again.”
There is something freeing about that.
Our fifth membership vow in the Reformed Presbyterian Church asks: “To the end that you may grow in the Christian life, do you promise that you will diligently read the Bible, engage in private prayer, keep the Lord’s Day, regularly attend the worship services, observe the appointed sacraments, and give to the Lord’s work as He shall prosper you?”
The purpose is that you may grow in the Christian life. And notice the word diligently. Christian growth ordinarily comes through diligently using the means God has appointed. This is especially important when we think about worship.
People sometimes approach choosing a church by asking, “What am I looking for in worship?” One wants something culturally relevant. Another wants worship that engages the children. Anthor wants a sophisticated, high-church atmosphere. Another wants exactly the opposite. We can easily begin with our preferences and then look for a church that satisfies them. But the Christian ought to begin with a different question: What does God want in worship?
Paul tells Timothy that Scripture is able to thoroughly equip the man of God for every good work. If Scripture is sufficient to teach you what we are to believe and how we are to live, surely it is sufficient to teach you how God desires to be worshiped. As the Shorter Catechism reminds us, the Word of God is “the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him.”
And worship is the highest way in which we glorify and enjoy God. This is why Deuteronomy 12:32 gives an important principle: “Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to observe; you shall not add to it nor take away from it.”
God wants careful worshipers.
Calvin, commenting on this verse, said that “obedience is the mother of piety.” That is a beautiful way of thinking about worship. True piety does not begin with creativity. It begins with listening to God, with obedience.
This is also at the heart of the Second Commandment. The First Commandment teaches us that we must not worship false gods. The Second teaches us that we must not worship the true God in a false way. The golden calf is the obvious example. Aaron was not simply introducing a different deity. He presented the calf to Israel as an object connected with their worship of the God who had delivered them. Yet God rejected that worship.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism therefore says that the Second Commandment forbids “the worshiping of God by images, or any other way not appointed in his Word.”
Reformed Christians have traditionally called this the regulative principle of worship.
The word “regulative” can sound cold or legalistic, but regulation is not necessarily a bad thing. Parents regulate how many desserts their children eat. Employers regulate how employees use their time. Governments regulate the use of property. The potter regulates what happens to the clay. Regulation simply recognizes that someone has the authority to determine how something should be done.
And in worship, that someone is God.
But we should not miss what stands behind God’s regulation of worship: God loves His people.
God loves us enough to tell us how he desires to be worshiped. We do not have to spend our lives wondering, “What can I invent that might please God?” He has told us. His jealousy for worship is the jealousy of covenant love. He wants the hearts of His people directed toward him rather than toward the inventions of men.
This also protects us from both overzealous and underzealous worship. Human beings can imagine that extravagant religious activity must necessarily please God. Scripture shows otherwise. God does not ask us to invent increasingly dramatic demonstrations of devotion. Nor does he want cold and careless hearts. Our will in worship is to be lovingly submitted to His will.
Under the New Testament, this regulated worship takes on a striking simplicity.
Jesus explained this to the Samaritan woman in John 4. She wanted to debate the proper mountain on which God should be worshiped. Jesus told her that an hour was coming when true worshipers would worship the Father “in spirit and truth.”
The temple, sacrifices, priesthood, incense, altars, and other ceremonies of the old covenant passed away with the coming of Christ. But God had not suddenly changed his principle of worship. Instead, New Testament worship would possess a beautiful spiritual simplicity.
Calvin described it as removing “the covering of the ancient ceremonies” and retaining what is spiritual in worship.
That helps us understand what we call the ordinary means of grace.
Elements of Worship
The Westminster Confession identifies these ordinary elements: prayer, the reading of Scripture, the preaching and hearing of the Word, singing Psalms with grace in the heart, and the administration and receiving of the sacraments. There are also occasional acts—fasting, thanksgiving, vows, and oaths—which may be appropriate in particular seasons. But the ordinary Christian life is built around very ordinary things.
Week after week, we come to worship:
We hear the Bible read.
We hear Christ preached.
We pray.
We sing the Psalms.
We receive the sacraments.
Then we come back and do it again.
There is no need for the church to reinvent worship every Lord’s Day. We do not need to wonder what creative idea the pastor or worship team developed this week. God has graciously freed us from the tyranny of novelty.
And over time, something extraordinary happens through these ordinary things.
We grow.
Most mature Christians can look back and see it. There was a sermon God used to change us. There was a season of prayer in which He drew especially near. There is a Psalm that we cannot sing without remembering some particular providence of God. There were Lord’s Days that seemed perfectly ordinary at the time, but together God used them to shape us into different people.
That is the beauty of the ordinary means of grace.
The Christian life is usually not lived by chasing the new or extraordinary. It is lived by plodding along in the things Christ has appointed.
We read.
We pray.
We gather.
We hear.
We sing.
We eat and drink at Christ’s table.
Then, by his grace, we do it again.
And as we go from Lord’s Day to Lord’s Day, year after year, we discover that the ordinary means appointed by God are the instruments of an extraordinary grace.
Written By Dr. Nathan Eshelman