Regulative Principle

What if our Sunday morning worship consisted of Scripture? I don’t just mean expository preaching (there’s a few of us still doing that), but I mean the entire service; a worship service where God speaks (through His Word) and then we respond. In other words a service where we read, preach, sing, and pray Scripture. Why wouldn’t we do that? Don’t we want to hear from the Lord?

The presupposition is that the Scripture is God’s Word; that it is divinely inspired (2 Timothy 3:16), food for the soul (1 Peter 2:2), and light in the darkness (2 Peter 1:19). But it’s even more. It’s a devouring flame (Jeremiah 5:14), a crushing hammer (Jeremiah 23:29), and a probing instrument (Hebrews 4:12)—those are some powerful metaphors (actually, the hammer one is a simile ). It gives us hope (Romans 15:4), knowledge of eternal life (1 John 5:13), and is the means by which God calls us to saving faith (Romans 1:16). It is absolutely trustworthy (Luke 21:33), profitable for teaching (Isaiah 2:3), and to be ignorant of it puts us in great peril (Matthew 22:29).

We could keep going but hasn’t the point been made? God speaks; things happen. So let’s put it everywhere in our worship service! He speaks; and then we respond. He speaks with the call to worship, the reading and preaching of the Word, the words of institution for the sacraments, and the benediction. We respond by praying (confessing and petitioning), praising and thanking (via song), participating in the sacraments, and bringing tithes and offerings. We actually have a dialogue with God; a dialogue in which He leads and we respond—the entire worship service antiphonal.

A worship service saturated with the Word of God would be a worship service where He is honored and His people are fed. It sure wouldn’t be superficial, either.

But if you don’t buy the above presupposition regarding Scripture, go ahead with a service that keeps the masses happy. It’s not that hard; some choruses, a pep-talk, and an offering will do.

The case has been made that God, not us, gets to regulate His worship; after all, He is the One being worshiped (see previous posts). John Knox, the Scottish reformer, understood this: “All worshiping, honoring, or service invented by the brain of man in the religion of God, without His own express commandment, is idolatry” (Works, Vol. III). John Calvin called our brain an “idol factory” (Institutes, I.xi.8). If these two John’s got it right; lots of little evangelical brains have been forging away on Sunday morning for some time now.

So if God gets to regulate His worship, how has He done so? “And I want chapter and verse,” I hear someone scream. Here are six basic elements difficult to disagree with: Preaching of God’s Word (Acts 2:2:42, 20:7-12, 1 Corinthians 14:26, and 2 Timothy 4:2); Reading of God’s Word (1 Corinthians 14:37, Colossians 4:16, 2 Thessalonians 3:14, 1 Timothy 4:13, and 2 Peter 3:15); Prayer (Acts 2:42, Ephesians 5:20, Philippians 4:6, 1 Thessalonians 5:17, and 1 Timothy 2:1); Singing (Exodus 15:1, Psalm 7:17, 96:1, Ephesians 5:19, and Colossians 3:16); Administering the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper (Matthew 28:19, Luke 22:14-20, Acts 2:42, and 1 Corinthians 11:17-34); and Giving Tithes and Offerings (1 Corinthians 9:3-12, 1 Corinthians 16:1-2, and 2 Corinthians 8-9).

A case can easily be made for a seventh and eighth element, too; a Call to Worship and a Benediction (Numbers 6:22-26, Romans 1:7, 15:33, 1 Corinthians 1:3, 16:23-24, and 2 Corinthians 13:14).

I know it would be nice if we had a bulletin left over from the First Church of Corinth, but we don’t. But, when we start snooping around the Scriptures, we can start piecing their worship service together. And when we start typing what we find into our bulletin; we are well on our way to a very nice Order of Worship—one that has biblical warrant, too.

There is more to say about these worship elements and how they work together. We will do that next time in our continuing series, “Some Choruses, a Pep-talk, and an Offering”.

It’s called the “regulative principle”. In short, it means God says how He is to be worshiped; that He has said so in His Word; and that if it’s not found there, we don’t do it. It’s classically defined in the Westminster Confession. It reads:

The light of nature showeth that there is a God, who hath lordship and sovereignty over all, is good, and doth good unto all, and is therefore to be feared, loved, praised, called upon, trusted in, and served, with all the heart, and with all the soul, and with all the might. But the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by Himself, and so limited by His own revealed will, that He may not be worshiped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scripture. (Chapter 21, paragraph 1)

I know there are some “haths” and “doths” in there but for something written nearly 400 years ago, those “stuffy” Puritans sure got it right. But if being more biblical means being more “stuffy,” I want some more “stuffy”!

Why is the “regulative principle” viewed by most evangelicals as oppressive, constrictive, and “frozen-chosen-ish”? Could it be because we live in a very self-oriented culture where Sunday morning resembles more and more the drive-up window at Burger King? That you really can “have it your way”?

I can hear the pastor now, “I’m ready to take your order.” And the parishioner starts talking, “I’ll take some thump-in music—the kind I work out to in aerobics class. Let’s see, I’d like a dynamic, relevant, and entertaining message that will fix my problems—O, could you mix in some movie clips with that? And it is in power-point, isn’t it? You do have power-point, don’t you? A little ditty from the drama team would be nice, too. And I need all of this in an hour, please.”

Years ago, singer Helen Reddy bemoaned, “You’re so vain; you probably think this song is about you, don’t you?” Sadly, in sanctuaries across the land, her song has become descriptive: “You’re so vain; you probably think this worship service is about you, don’t you?” And the parishioner, who is surprised you’ve even asked, inquires back, “Your Starbuck’s cart is open during the service, isn’t it?”

We’ve got some regulating to do.

obtain a copy of the Westminster Confession in PDF here

Anyone disagree that it is appropriate and right that the house of God be ordered by God’s rules? How can any disagree with that? But when it comes to corporate worship, at least in practice, many actually do. The impression given in many sanctuaries is that God hasn’t regulated His worship; that He has left it to man’s ingenuity instead. But we saw last time (Some Choruses, a Pep-talk, and an Offering, Part 4) that worship according to “rules taught by men” (Matthew 15:9) is no worship at all. It is frightening to consider we may be worshiping God in vain.

If that doesn’t stir reaction, maybe this will. There was a problem in the church at Colossae. And it was a big one: Christ wasn’t enough. That is, false teaching infiltrated the church calling for additional worship practices that promised to make one less vulnerable to sin and one more spiritual and therefore more pleasing to God.

The Apostle Paul says otherwise; calling their additions “human commands and teachings” (Colossians 2:22). He goes further and labels their additions “self-imposed worship” (2:23). The ESV and NASB translate the phrase as “self-made religion”. Paul isn’t giving out “brownie points” for the creative worship going on at Colossae. He’s calling it out for what it is: “self-imposed worship” and “self-made religion”.

And any worship practice that begins with the word “self” can’t be good—and it isn’t. Paul connects their new worship ideas to its real author—the self. And when the self dictates, the self has exchanged places with God. That isn’t good; for who’s really being worshiped? It isn’t God anymore.

It is stunning what passes off as the worship of God today. More may be stunned one day to hear it was all in vain.

These articles have attempted to lay a foundation for God’s regulated worship. Next time we will begin suggesting what we believe that looks like.



Thus far, the case for God’s regulated worship has been made from the Old Testament. Can one be made from the New? Most certainly; we’ll look at one this time and another one the next.

In Matthew 15, Jesus is having another run-in with Israel’s “worship experts”—the Pharisees. After their confrontation, Jesus gives them a less-than-complimentary title; calling them “blind guides”. The full indictment goes this way: “Leave them [the Pharisees]; they are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit” (15:14). In what way were they blind? Jesus had said a few verses earlier: “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. They worship Me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men” (15:7-9). What’s Jesus saying? He is saying it is possible to think one is rightly worshiping God but in all actuality he is not worshiping at all. Jesus is saying that worship isn’t acceptable to God when it’s done according to “rules taught by men.” That must mean there is such a thing as “rules taught by God.”

Now the Pharisees had a major “Jesus problem”—they didn’t believe in Him. Gratefully, that isn’t the evangelical’s problem. He has a problem, however, thinking that he isn’t ordered by God’s rules of worship. In most cases, even the concept of God having rules for worship is a foreign one.

But isn’t it God’s prerogative to dictate the way we are to approach Him? After all, we are the ones who messed up our relationship with Him. He not only gets to decide if there will be a relationship; He also gets to decide how He will be worshiped if there is one.

When we understand that, we will be less concerned how we want to worship God and more concerned about how He has told us to. But if we are still convinced God lets us decide, we actually may be in danger of worshiping ourselves. That’s our tease for next time and the lead in to the other New Testament verse we will look at.

 There is another guy with a funny name in our Bibles who paid dearly for his “worship mistake”. His name was Uzzah. King David was excited about moving the ark of God (2 Samuel 6:2) to Jerusalem. Sounded like a good idea; it was the embodiment of the presence of God. Thirty-thousand soldiers and the masses lined the way to usher the ark to the holy city—it’s quite the worship celebration, too, music and everything.

Two men, Ahio and Uzzah, were selected to escort the cart carrying the ark. Ahio was in front, Uzzah was in back. Then there’s trouble. “Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God, because the oxen stumbled. The Lord’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down and he died there beside the ark of God” (2 Samuel 6:6-7). What is up with that? The ark was going to fall into the mud. Uzzah was just helping out. Shouldn’t he be commended instead of struck down? Why was his action described as an “irreverent act”?

We don’t need to wonder. In Numbers 4:15, God said “you must not touch the holy things or [you] will die.” I believe it was Jonathan Edwards who astutely pointed out that Uzzah made the mistake of thinking mud was dirtier than he was; Edward’s point that we are quite good at underestimating our un-holiness.

After this incident, everybody takes a three month time-out to figure out what happened. David will figure it out, explaining in 1 Chronicles 15:13: “We did not inquire of Him how to do it in the prescribed way.” God had told them how to move the ark in Exodus 25:12-15. But they didn’t follow His directions. They would the second time. “And the Levites carried the ark of God with the poles on their shoulders, as Moses had commanded in accordance with the Word of the Lord” (1 Chronicles 15:15).

There was a “prescribed way” that was “in accordance with the Word of the Lord” and every other way was an “irreverent act”. Apparently, all those tedious worship instructions God gave Moses were important. God regulated how He was to be worshiped in the Old Covenant. Did He stop doing that in the New? If you think so; you better be sure. Can’t we do better than “Some Choruses, a Pep-talk, and an Offering”? Still establishing here why we must.

Can we go back to Nadab and Abihu for a minute (see previous article)? What is it they did that cost them their life? They offered “unauthorized fire” (Leviticus 10:1). One commentator said he thought that meant they were drunk. Not sure how you arrive at that one, though. What we do know is that when they did, “fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them” (10:2).

These guys weren’t “worship novices”, either. As Aaron’s sons, they had been exposed to all of God’s worship instructions. Their father had been set apart, so had they (Exodus 28:1-2). In fact, in Exodus 24 we read they even got to go up Mt. Sinai with Uncle Moses. There, they “saw the God of Israel. Under His feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself” (24:10). Who gets to see that? So they were exposed to His holiness and His worship instructions.

Why then, did they offer “unauthorized fire”? Only conjecture here, but I offer four possibilities: (1) They thought it no big deal to “change things up a bit”; (2) They were younger and had some “fresh ideas” they wanted to try out; (3) They thought the “old way” a bit stale and was no longer relevant; (4) They knew they were sincere and isn’t that all God wants in our worship, anyway? Again, we don’t know why they did what they did. But they should have known better. At least God thought so; He holds them responsible.

How many times have these four reasons been used in church staff or elder meetings to justify changing Sunday morning worship? Though I admit I haven’t read in Worship Leader Magazine anyone getting consumed by fire recently; at least not yet.

This series of articles is entitled: “Some Choruses, a Pep-talk, and an Offering”. We can do better than that. We haven’t said how. Just establishing first why we must.



Therein describes the majority of Sunday morning (O, and now Saturday night) evangelical worship services. Is that a bad “order of worship”? I don’t know but it certainly is inadequate. We can do much better than what passes as typical worship today. Isn’t our life regulated by Scripture? It is. Certainly the worship of God is regulated, too. The First and Second Commandment do this. And when you start adding up the instances where God rejected man’s worship because it was based upon man’s ideas and values—every hot-shot worship leader and creative pastor should break into a cold sweat.

Cain thought he got to decide (Genesis 4:3-8); so did Aaron and the Israelites when Moses was gone those 40 days (Exodus 32). Nadab and Abihu thought they could tweak worship but they did so “contrary to His command” (Leviticus 10:1-3) and got lit up for it (literally). Afterward, God explained Himself through Moses: “Among those who approach Me I will show myself holy; in the sight of all the people I will be honored” (v. 3). God was disrespected and dishonored by two sons (Aaron’s) who had great lineage but no authority to make changes. Things did not work out real well for Saul, either, when he thought he could take it upon himself to lead God’s people in worship (1 Samuel 15). He lost his throne when he did. The point is that God takes His worship seriously. And so should we. Sunday morning worship isn’t our “play-thing”. “Some Choruses, a Pep-talk, and an Offering”—is a generalized description of evangelical worship today. We can do better. We’ll talk next time how.