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Public Worship and the Reformed Faith
by Rev. Barry Gritters
Introduction
Strange fire is being offered on the altars of worship in many churches today. That fire is being offered on Reformed altars.
For one reason or another, worship is not the same as it used to be. Perhaps the leaders of the churches are trying to raise the attendance at the evening worship service. Perhaps, because the young people are not impressed with the worship anymore, pastors and consistories are trying to lure the young people (who have wandered off to more charismatic or enthusiastic worship services) back to the services of their church.
For some reason, perhaps because the people are not moved by the worship services of the church, dramatic presentations are offered, movies are shown, talented singing groups are asked to lead the worship, and even liturgical dances are offered as worship to God, many times in place of the preaching. All this is to make the services moving.
True to his Reformed heritage and, therefore, true to the Scriptures, the Reformed believer asks the question, "What is the worship required by my Lord?" He asks this question because he is a Reformed believer. With the Scriptures open before him, with an eye on the Reformed confessions, and a finger on the history book of the Church of Jesus Christ, the Reformed man or woman asks the question, "What is the true worship that I must give to God?"
When we frame this question, we are implying that God does command His church to worship Him. God calls His people to worship him individually. "Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice," the Psalmist says in Psalm 55. The people of God do not wait until Sunday to worship God.
True worship of God takes place in families, when father and mother lead the children in true worship in the living room or around the dinner table, reading and explaining the Bible, leading them in singing Psalms of praise, and offering prayers for the family and the church.
But all that comes to focus when the families gather together for public worship as a congregation. With that we are concerned now. The worship God requires of His people is that they gather collectively, as a body, and offer united homage to their Lord and Redeemer. The Old Testament abounds with proof. In Psalm 122 the believer sings, "I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD." He sings, "With joy and gladness in my soul, I hear the call to prayer. Let us go up to God's own house, and bow before Him there." This call to public worship was echoed in Psalm 95, "O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our Maker."
The New Testament church continued this tradition of corporate worship. Following the custom of our Lord, Who regularly went to the synagogue on the Sabbath (Luke 4:16), the early New Testament church regularly met together for public worship, as is evident from the entire book of Acts. So important was this that the writer to the Hebrews calls the church "not (to) forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is" (10:25).
The public worship of the church is vital for obedience to the will of our God who saved us. In eternity the church will be worshipping God. The seer of God, the apostle John, wrote in Revelation 14:6, 7, "And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters" (see also Rev 22:9).
The "everlasting gospel" is: Worship God.
We are concerned about this because worship is a Reformation subject. Not only is this an important subject because presently there is strange fire being offered in many places, but the remembrance of the Reformation brings us to this subject.
The fathers of the Reformation were concerned not only with the doctrinal aberrations of the Roman Catholic Church, but with the practice of that church in its public worship. For that reason, you will find an entire volume of Luther on the subject of public worship, and hundreds of references of Calvin on the subject. So important a place did public worship have in the life of Calvin, that his expulsion from the city of Geneva was rooted in differences on the question of how the church would worship God.
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