Often Christians can mistakenly think that the church is only guided in its worship by the New Testament. However, God has given all of his Word for our instruction and direction. If we believe that God has given all of his Word as the only sufficient and infallible guide for life and worship then we must turn to the pages of the Old Testament. We need to look at the Old Testament's teaching on worship, through the lens of the New Covenant and the revelation of Christ, and see what God requires of his people when they gather to worship him.

Well, my first two sessions have been topical than historical, so it's a delight to me to learn about worship from the Old Testament. John chapter 4 and verse 24. John 4 and verse 24. Where we read, God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. Before we begin, let's pray.

Father we thank you that you promise your people from Jesus Christ the spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and strength, knowledge and the fear of the Lord and we ask that you would draw near now to us in this hour of instruction, enlighten our minds, bend our wills, inform our hearts and our consciences of what you would have us to do and to know. Teach us out of this your word we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Now in my general and breakout sessions I've emphasized that it's the unique identity of the church as holy and as the place of God's special presence, which gives rise to or necessitates the distinctive duty of the church, which we call the Regulative Principle. This hour we're going to come to consider what I think is a related subject, and that is, what do we learn about worship from the Old Testament?

And maybe to be completely truthful, it might have been more accurately entitled, what do we not learn about worship from the Old Testament, but we'll see what you think about that when I'm done. There are three matters of introduction I must mention before I come to the three main points from my text. The first is the question addressed in this hour. What is the main question I'm addressing in this session? Well the question is, what weight should the teaching of the Old Testament be given in determining what kind of worship has divine warrant for us today in the New Testament church?

My reading and experience make clear to me that this is one of the great issues being debated today with regard to the Regulative Principle. There are some who giving lip service to the Regulative Principle still find in the Bible and specifically the Old Testament warrant for big bands, great choirs, liturgical dancing, and religious drama in worship. If they had looked further, they might have discovered the warrant for other things like ceremonial processions, religious parades, and even wearing swords to church. That's the question addressed. The truth assumed.

I do not intend to address in detail any of these issues in this message. What I want to address, I'm not addressing religious parades or big bands or great choirs or those kind of things specifically. But what I intend to address is the question of how the Old Testament should be used when it comes to discerning how the New Testament should worship. What should the Old Testament's effect on the New Testament Church be? Here I must begin by pointing out to you something that directly follows from the principles which I laid down this morning.

If the regulative principle is the regulative principle of the church, and it is, And if the nature of the Church has changed drastically from the Old Testament to the New, and it has, then we must be very careful how we apply the Old Testament instructions about worship in the church. Now don't misunderstand what I'm saying. Reform Christians believe that the Old Testament does contain foundational principles for worship. But we also recognize that the Christian church is very different from the Old Testament church. We recognize that the New Israel is very different than the Old Israel.

Since the regulative principle is the regulative principle of the Church, it necessarily follows, see the logic, that the worship of the Church is constructed in the New Testament will be significantly different than the worship of the Church is constructed in the Old Testament. So to put this in other words, it's both reasonable and necessary for us to presuppose that much of what is taught in the Old Testament about worship was appropriate to the Old Testament character of the church, but may not be appropriate to the worship of the New Testament Church. Now to place all this on a biblical foundation, turn just for a moment again to 1 Timothy 3.15. 1 Timothy 3.15. I'm writing these things to you, verse 14 says, hoping to come to you before long, but in case I am delayed, I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth." There are two striking things in this text.

First, there are the forceful descriptions of the church's identity, the Church's house of God, the Church's church of the living God, the Church's pillar and support of the truth. But then there's a clear deduction from this identity of the Church with regard to the Church's identity. Timothy is to regulate his conduct in the church and his ordering of the church in light of the church's identity. The church's identity determines Timothy and the church's duty. Now what is the point?

Simply this, the Church's nature and identity changed drastically from the Old to the New Testament, and therefore it's reasonable to think that its worship, at least in its external appointments, would also change from Old to New Testament. And we must be very careful how we use the Old Testament in ordering the worship of the New Testament Church. But then in the third place by way of introduction I have the text introduced so turn back to John 4 please. John 4 24. The classic text in all the New Testament with regard to worship is probably this one.

This is the classic text on the necessity of worshiping God, not according to the fleshly types and shadows of the Old Testament, but worshiping God in accordance with the fulfillment of these types and shadows in Christ and in the New Covenant. It's crucial then that we understand the teaching of this text to the effect that we must worship God according to the light of the Gospel and not according to the shadows of the Old Covenant. Now a hendiades is found in John 4-24 in the phrase in spirit and truth. That sounds like a really big and sophisticated and complicated word. Actually, it's not.

It's composed of three little Greek words, hendiades, one through two. That's an hendiades. In other words, an hendiades is a concept conveyed by two words connected by and. They are two words, but they convey one idea. And the phrase in our text, in spirit and truth, is a grammatical hendieties.

It's a grammatical construction in which one concept is conveyed through two words. And so, in this hendieties, John 4.24 says that we are to worship God in spirit and truth, and these two words are combined by one article and therefore convey one concept. Now one of the things about John's writings in the New Testament is that they are characterized by a deceptive simplicity. That is to say, if you read Greek, John's Greek is the easiest Greek to read in the entire New Testament. And if you read John, it seems like he's really simple until you start thinking about it.

And then you realize that in his simple language there are very profound and sometimes rich concepts brought together in a few words. So here, spirit truth worship, maybe that's the best way for us to do it in English, spirit dash truth worship has at least, I think, three shades of meaning. Now it's a third of these shades of meaning that I'm really interested in, but to do justice to the text and to be faithful to the Word of God, I have to mention the first two at least. So we'll come to the first two of these shades of meaning and then the third. The first thing that worshiping in spirit truth means is that Worship in spirit and truth is therefore the opposite of ignorant worship.

Now there's an emphasis on this in the context. Look at verse 22 where Jesus says to the Samaritan woman, you worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. It was a bad thing. It was not a good thing that the Samaritans worshiped what they did not know.

Remember that the Lord Himself emphasizes this problem in quoting Isaiah the prophet. He says in Matthew 15, 8, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men." So the application of this to us is that truth must always regulate the worship of God's church. God is spirit, and as such, he is interested in our minds. Worship devoid of proper mental content is not acceptable to God.

Now there are applications we can make of this to ourselves briefly. One is this condemns all mere emotionalism in worship. Emotion is necessary, but it must be emotion kingled on the logs of truth, in the fireplace of Scripture and on the logs of truth. The emotion of the Bible is the emotion of the amen. Did you know that you're supposed to say amen in worship?

You are. I think it's one of the parts of worship taught by the Bible in fact. And amen is by definition emotional. It's an emotional response, but it is an emotional response to truth. A second application we can make of this is that the proclamation of the truth must have a place of honor in the worship of the Church.

It is primarily by the preaching and teaching of God's Word that the Church is led to give worship in truth. And additionally, in prayer and singing, truth must be central in corporate worship. We must pray the truth, we must sing the truth, we must worship in truth. A third application we can make of this first dimension of what it means to worship in spirit and truth is this. This condemns all worship that is not carefully guided and guarded by the claims of truth.

Corporate worship must be regulated not by human traditions or unrevealed elements of worship that people have thought up, but by the blueprint of the word of God. This is why we're not ashamed to say that we believe in what the old Puritans called the Regulative Principle of the Church. But there's a second strand or dimension of meaning in John's simple language of worshiping in spirit and truth, and it's this. Worship in Spirit and truth is worship that corresponds to God's nature as spirit. It is therefore the opposite of dead worship.

Now why do I say that we have to emphasize this? Well again, verse 24 itself guides us. Verse 24 makes clear that worship in spirit and truth is worship that corresponds to God's nature as spirit. God is spirit And those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth. Ah, but what does the Bible mean by spirit?

What do we think of in English? What's the word association in English when we think of spirit? We think of, well, it was Halloween yesterday, We think of ghost, don't we? And what's a ghost? It's kind of a semi intangible something or other that doesn't have a lot of actual substance.

And here's the problem with that word association of spirit with ghost in English. That is absolutely not what it means in the Bible. Has nothing to do with it in the Bible. In the Bible, the spirit meets us first in Genesis 1, 2, when the spirit of God, and the imagery is of a bird of some kind, hovers on the face of the old deep and brings forth life and light into the original chaos of creation. This is what the Spirit does.

We see the Spirit of God moving over the face of the formless, void, and dark world as one who at the command of God will create the world order of life and light. In the Gospel of John, the Spirit of God is set before us as the agent of new life in John 3, where men must be born of the Spirit to see and to enter the kingdom of God. And our text, and after our text, the next occurrence of the word spirit in the Gospel of John is in John 663. Look at that passage for a moment, John 663. It is the spirit who gives life.

The flesh profits nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life." There in that text, the Spirit is the author of life. Rather than something dead, the Spirit is the very author of life. Might, power, and life, and energy are the word associations that we should have biblically with the idea of spirit. Another biblical word association for spirit is emotion.

Emotion. John 11, 33. When Jesus therefore saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her also weeping. He reacted. There was a sympathetic emotional reaction to their weeping and we are told he was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled.

He had an emotional reaction to their emotional reaction. John 13, 21, when Jesus had said this, he became troubled in spirit and testified and said, truly, truly, I say to you that one of you will betray me. God's spirit nature is what separates him from dead idols. God is spirit. He's alive.

He's not a dead idol. God is not dead, inert, lifeless matter like idols. He is spirit, alive, creating, moving, doing, speaking, mighty, and emotional. So what do we learn from the fact that the great and absorbing interest of Gospel worship must be to render appropriate worship to a God who is spirit? Well, first, we learn that the worship of God's church must be lively and emotional.

Not recommending charismatic churches. I'm just saying that when you're there, you should be engaged and there should be life and there should be emotion in your worship. Two, we learned that we must make sure that our spirits are prepared to worship God in a lively and emotional fashion. You probably won't have lively and appropriately emotional worship if you're up to 2 o'clock the previous Saturday night watching a movie. Three, we also learn that we must so conduct ourselves in the house of God so as not to be a distraction to others.

We want them to be able to worship in spirit, focus on the truth, focus on God, and not on whatever strange thing we might be doing that's distracting them. Fourthly, we also learn one reason why God gave us the second commandment. In Deuteronomy 4, we read that they saw no form, only heard the voice speaking. One reason why God gave us the second commandment is that life cannot be adequately pictured by any dead picture or lifeless idol. Well, so worship in spirit and truth means worship that is opposed to ignorant worship.

It means worship that is opposed to dead worship. But I told you that what I'm really interested in here and what I think is really the heart of what John is saying here is in the third strand of thought. And here it is. Worship in spirit and truth is worship in terms of Gospel realities brought by the coming of Messiah. Worship in spirit and truth is the opposite of the shadow worship of the Old Testament.

Now I've said I think this is the main point of the passage. I think it's the main point of this rich text. The entire passage focuses on the transition from the Old Testament to the New Testament. Did you see that in the context? Look at verse of John chapter 4.

Jesus said to her, woman believe me an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father." See, Jesus has in mind in this context the great transition from the shadow worship on Mount Zion in Jerusalem to the worship of the new covenant. Look at verse 23. But an hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For such people the Father seeks to be his worshipers. The great goal of the redeeming work of Jesus Christ, God's great purpose in sending his Son into the world, was to seek worshipers who would worship him in spirit and truth.

And all of this has to do with the new situation brought about by this hour that is coming and now is. And then verse 25. Following our text, the woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming. He who is called Christ, when that one comes, he will declare all things to us. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you, am he.

So you see, the emphasis of the entire text here is on this movement of redemptive history out of the shadows of the Old Testament into the spirit and truth of the New Testament. The whole emphasis of the context is the movement away from the worship centered in the temple in Jerusalem to this worship that is not tied to any geographical location. This is the whole emphasis of the context. And so in John 4.24, it's natural for us to see. It's important for us to see.

It's necessary for us to see. And it's the main thing we should see, that worship in spirit and truth is worship contrary to the types and shadows and that kind of worship in the Old Testament. Now this kind of language is used from the beginning of the Gospel of John to emphasize this new state of things that came with the coming of Jesus Christ. Look at John 1.17. John 1.17.

For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. Now, of course, this text is not saying, do I need to tell you this, that there was no grace and no truth in the Old Testament, of course there was. What it's saying is that the great center of the Old Testament revelation of the Mosaic covenant was the revelation of the law of God. And what it's saying as well is what the writer of the Hebrews says when he says, the law had a shadow of good things to come.

Now in contrast to the law that had for its heart and center the revelation of God's moral law And in contrast to the law which had only a shadow of good things to come, Jesus comes bringing grace and truth. And now, and now it's our responsibility to worship in spirit and truth. You see the contrast and how John 4.24 fits back with John 1.17. And so what you have to understand is when we ask, in the Bible, what is the opposite of truth? The answer is not just falsehood.

In the Bible, the opposite of truth is also shadow. Shadow as opposed to truth, and truth not just as opposed to falsehood. John 17 is clear about this. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. It's the saying there was no truth in the old covenant.

Of course not. What it's saying is that there was shadow, that the dominant characteristic of the Old Testament revelation was moral law and shadow of good things to come, and now we have truth as opposed to that shadow. Truth is opposed not just to falsehood in the Bible, but opposed to shadow. At this point, listen to the words of John Kelvin. And here again it must be observed that truth is not compared with falsehood, but with the outward addition of the figures of the law, so that, to use a common expression, it is the pure and simple substance of spiritual worship." Well we learned two things from this.

One, we learned that Gospel worship should be characterized by holy simplicity. Well, they had all these gorgeous garments and places to worship and other things that were attractive in the Old Testament temple, why can't we do the same thing? Well, because there's a problem here. Worship in the Gospel is to be simple as opposed to the shadows of the Old Testament. And secondly, gospel worship must be carried on.

We must carry on our gospel worship. We must go to church on Sunday morning intent on carrying on our gospel worship in light of the glorious spiritual realities of the new covenant. And that is what should lift our hearts and souls to give God worship in spirit and truth. Now, what are some practical conclusions we can draw from all this? Well, here's the first one.

We learn that the focus of our attention In determining what has divine warrant for a worship must not be on the types and shadows of the Old Testament. And therefore great caution and interpretive care must be used before introducing anything into New Covenant worship merely on the basis of the Old Testament. Now, as I said before, and as I'll say again, right now some Old Testament laws about worship carry over. Just as with ethics in general, so with worship it is clear that the laws for worship say implied by the Ten Commandments, especially by the first table of the law, are permanent and not part of the shadows and ceremonies of the Old Testament. They are God's permanent moral law and those first four have to do with our duty to God and therefore have everything to do with worship.

Thus the first four commandments of the ten should be, should particularly be seen as governing our worship. I am convinced that the principle of the tithe, for instance, carries over as well, and certainly other principles that are taught in the Old Testament. But before we introduce the ceremonial priest, processions, bands, choirs, and other accouterments of Old Testament worship into the church, we've got to put these things through the hermeneutical test of John 4-24. Just because they were parts of Old Testament worship does not mean that they're parts of New Testament worship. Are they worship in the Spirit and truth?

Are they Gospel worship? Or do they constitute an illicit introduction of the types and shadows of the Old Testament into the worship of the New Testament church. Our Puritan forefathers recognized historically that there is and ought to be simplicity about gospel worship. This simplicity sets it apart both from the shadowy worship of the temple and the perverse imitation of that shadowy worship by Rome. And it also, I think, sets it apart from a lot of kinds of worship we see around us in evangelicalism today.

Now, let me go on to say then that before we're moved by those who quote statements out of the Psalms, don't you believe in the Psalms? Don't you believe in the Psalms? Before we are moved by those who quote statements out of the Psalms and elsewhere in the Old Testament to justify their novel practices, we must remind ourselves that it is not the Old Testament which is the focus in determining the regulative principle of the New Testament church. We start down this road, we must follow wherever it takes us and we may not like where it finally goes. Let me illustrate this from Psalm 149.

You might want to turn there. Psalm 149. Psalm 149, one to three, is often quoted by those in favor of contemporary worship. Praise the Lord, sing to the Lord a new song and his praise in the congregation of the godly ones. Let Israel be glad in his Maker.

Let the sons of Zion rejoice in their King. Let them praise his name with dancing. Let them sing praises to him with timbrel and lyre." But why does such people want to introduce timbrel, lyre, and dancing into the practices of the church's worship but refuse to follow what comes next in the text? For the Lord takes pleasure in his people. He will beautify the afflicted ones with salvation.

Let the godly ones exalt in glory. Let them sing for joy on their beds. Let's have beds in worship. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth and let's bring two-edged swords to worship and a two-edged sword in their hand to execute vengeance on the nation. Let's go on vengeance parties in the name of Christ and punishment on the people to bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron, to execute on them the judgment written, this is an honor for all his godly ones, praise the Lord.

You see, if we're going to take the first part and we're not going to put it through the hermeneutical test of types and shadows becoming spirit and truth, we've got to do the same thing with the second part of the text as well. Maybe some of you men take your revolver to church, But this is not a text to prove that. That's something else entirely. What this is reflecting here is that Israel in the Old Testament was a political nation. Did you know that there's such a thing in the Old Testament as war churches?

There are. Assemblies translated in the Greek Old Testament churches met for the purpose of war. We don't have one war church in Judges 20 where 400, 000 men who bore the sword gathered to make war on somebody. And this was, according to the literal language of the Greek Old Testament used by the disciples of Christ, a war church. Now this is what the text is talking about.

This is the background of Psalms like this, that the people of God were a nation, a political state. Before we take everything about that and try to somehow pour it into worship, it's gotta come to the hermeneutical grid of spirit and truth and not types and shadows. The fact is that Psalms like this one must be cautiously and carefully brought through the interpretive grid that separates the Old Testament church from the New Testament church before we accept the application of these things to our worship. The Old Testament was written for the people of God when they were a nation state with an outward temple worship utterly unlike the character and the worship of the church today. It is simply foolish willy-nilly to apply text intended for the people of God in that day to the church in our day without asking some very serious questions.

But here's the second thing we learn. We learn that the focus of our attention in determining what is proper in the worship of the New Testament church must be the teaching of the scriptures of the New Covenant. I think this means that normally we have a right to insist on New Testament evidence for any part of Gospel worship. All right, you have all these possibilities from the Old Testament. Show me this in the New Testament.

That may sound dispensational or something to you, but when it comes to worship, we're at a place where there's the most drastic difference between Old Israel and New Israel, Old Church and New Church. And so I think it's right here to ask that question. Of course, I've already insisted on the fact that the moral core of the Old Testament law found in the Ten Commandments has abiding authority. It's also true to say that the New Testament evidence can certainly be strengthened and amplified in light of the Old Testament evidence. But in this matter of the corporate worship of the New Testament church, the focus must be on what the New Testament teaches.

Now, this is more true in this matter than, Ethan, with regard to ethics in general. Why? Because here we are dealing with a matter that is intimately tied to the very nature of the Church. The regulative principle is the regulative principle of the Church, and the nature of the Church has changed drastically and been transformed by the new covenant. Thus, obviously, I think, it is the New Testament and not the Old Testament which must control the outward form of the church.

The New Testament is not the oldest primary in determining the government of the Church, the New Testament, not the Old, is primary in determining the task of the Church, and the New Testament, not the Old, must also be primary in the focus in determining the nature of the Church's worship. All of that follows, I think. Thirdly and lastly, we learn that The focus of our attention in New Testament worship must be on the great realities of the Gospel of Christ. Of course, there are external matters in New Testament worship. We still have the water of baptism and the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper.

We still have an appointed day of worship that we must observe, but nonetheless we must make sure that we focus on the great realities of the Gospel of Christ in our worship. Our text warns us against a heartless externalism in our worship. We must not make the regulative principle an excuse for being satisfied just to go through the emotions of worship heartlessly. That will contradict the major text in the New Testament, which tells us in no uncertain terms the worship in spirit and truth. We must not be satisfied simply to go through the right motions doing the right things in our worship.

I think this is a danger in our day for those who take seriously the regulative principle. It's too easy to react against the mindless emotionalism and the proud pragmatism of our day and withdraw into a shell of heartless and unemotional worship. If we do that in our churches, We will be the chief culprits in destroying the regulative principle by the odor we bring upon it by our actions. Worship in the spirit and truth of the new covenant and of the gospel calls us away from the ceremonialism and externalism of the Old Testament to the great spiritual realities of Gospel worship. Our corporate worship should resound with loud and hearty congregational singing, fervent and energetic praying, emotional and affirming amens, faithful and urgent preaching, and through all of this, clear and glorious views of the great realities of the Gospel of Christ.

It should aim to bring something of the worship of heaven to earth." I liked Joel Markraff's title last night. You can go to heaven before you die or something like that, right? Revelation 5 gives us a glimpse of what the worship of heaven is like. I'll close with it. And they sang a new song saying, Worthy are you to take the book and to break its seals, for you were slain and purchased for God with your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

You have made them to be a kingdom and priest to our God and they will reign upon the earth." Here John lays out The great doctrinal heart of the worship of heaven, of the particular redemption of a great multitude whom no man can number by the Lamb and the fact of the blessings of the fact that they've been made a royal priesthood and they have the prospect of reigning with God forever on the redeemed earth. And the response to this is then this, verse 11, that I looked and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders and the number of them was myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands sang with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing and every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea and all things in them, I heard saying, To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever.

And the four living creatures kept saying, Amen. And the elders fell down and worshiped." This is what it means. This is what it's going to mean to worship in spirit and truth. Let's pray. Father we're thankful for the plain teaching of your word, for the reality that you have come in the person of your son and an indescribably great and unable to be predicted wonder has come to pass in the God-man dying for our sins and living a life of perfect righteousness and giving us the great blessings not only of being made a royal priesthood, being given access to you now, but also the great blessing of the prospect of reigning with you on the earth.

We thank you for these things. Grant that your truth might sink down in your people's ears we pray in Jesus' name. Thank you. To find family integrated churches in your area, log on to our website, ncfic.org. You