D. Scott Meadows

Let’s resume this short series of messages on “A Call to Pure Worship.” In our first message, “The Corruption of Worship,” we considered the absolutely greatest evil of all time, namely, that while God desires pure worship, man offers corrupt worship. God the Father seeks true worshippers who worship him in spirit and in truth. However, man the sinner will not and cannot worship as the Lord wishes, but instead corrupts his worship with all kinds of things which are offensive to God. The whole biblical history is littered with corrupt worship. During the Old Testament period, true worshippers were virtually nonexistent among the Gentiles, and were the exception to the rule, even among those identified as the people of God. One particularly glaring example of corrupt worship is the case of Jeroboam, first leader of the North in the divided kingdom period, and symptoms of his spiritual plague were seen in all his royal successors until the line of northern kings ended with the Assyrian captivity as an expression of God’s wrath. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son into the world to redeem a people from all nations for his praise, and the hour now is, when the true worshippers are worshipping the Father in spirit and in truth, thanks to the Savior who was crucified, buried, rose again, ascended to heaven, poured out his Spirit, and ever lives to make intercession for his people.

Now let us take up the first part of the second message of this series entitled, “The Standard of Worship.”

Having asserted pure worship as the ultimate priority, I earlier made three statements that follow biblically and logically. Please consider the first two once again. Number one, the devil wants nothing more than to corrupt our worship by introducing elements not contained in God’s Word or contrary to it, and we must be able to recognize this when it happens. This is blatantly illustrated in Jeroboam, a man prompted by the devil if there ever was one. Number two, indispensable for pure worship is an appreciation of its standard for judgment and for reformation, and that standard is God’s Word alone. That is our focus in this two-part message. The basic principle that true worship is biblical worship is implicit in the scriptural narrative of worship corruption, and that principle is explicit in the way I have stated point number one. However, I wish now to bring this truth into sharper relief, fleshing out some of its important details, and interacting with current controversies about it. My aim is to clarify our appreciation of Scripture alone as the standard for worship, and to deepen our conviction that we must keep striving to reform and purify our worship by this one and only standard we have from God himself.

CONFUSION IN THE HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF THIS TOPIC

Regrettably, there is much confusion about this topic, even in some of the better sort of churches and pastors. It is said, “A theologian is one that makes doctrine so complicated that no one can understand it,” and if that is the measure, I have recently read some great theologians! There is, in the literature on this, much talk about things commanded, things forbidden, and things neither commanded nor forbidden, considered indifferent, the so-called “adiaphora,” a term from ancient discussions of ethics, especially in Stoicism, according to The Encyclopedia of Christianity, but found nowhere in the Bible. I am not saying that this means it is an illegitimate term, but only that strictly speaking, it is not absolutely necessary for understanding the biblical teaching. Besides, it has great potential to confuse the discussion. I have also read about the elements and circumstances of worship, and about hermeneutics, and about worship as “all of life.” All these extra-biblical distinctions, at least as used by some, have cast a thick fog over the whole topic. I wonder whether you have ever read medieval scholastics like Thomas Aquinas with their endless distinctions and subtle fine points. The old joke is that they debated how many angels could stand on the head of a pin, though I suppose that is an exaggeration. In reading current treatments of this topic, I have almost felt as if such men had entered a time warp, and now live among us, and are deliberately trying to suppress the truth. If God’s will for worship were so very complicated and difficult to understand, we could have little hope of actually carrying it out in our local churches all over the world. God helping me, I promise to clarify these things, and not to obfuscate like so many.

As an introduction for the history of thought in this controversy, we could summarize two distinct points of view this way. Calvinists, also known in the most strict sense as Reformed, have believed that whatever God does not command in worship is forbidden, that is, we must worship God only as he directs us, and we are not at liberty to invent and add any new elements. On the other hand, Lutherans and Anglicans have essentially held that whatever God does not forbid in worship is allowed, that is, besides worshipping as God directs us, we may invent and add new elements, as long as they are not expressly condemned in Scripture.

What the best men with the best intentions were driving at was basically this—that we must look to God alone and his Word as the guide and standard of worship. Anything that comes from somewhere else (the Reformed point), and anything that violates this standard (the Lutheran point), is a corruption of worship.

Believe me, I am tempted to enter the labyrinth of debate, but a couple addresses like this would barely make it more than a few steps into the complicated maze. Even if we stayed on the right track, we could hardly hope to travel all the way through to the desired exit. But put me on public record as siding with the Calvinists on this. On the issue of worship, I am Reformed by deeply-held conviction, and I do very heartily repudiate the Lutheran view. The reason of course is that I am utterly convinced that the former is a faithful interpretation of the biblical teaching, while the latter seriously compromises it with disastrous consequences. Only the Reformed view of worship embraces the biblical doctrine that all true worship springs from and flows alongside God’s revealed will and nothing else.

The Lutheran-Anglican approach has polluted sacred service with a thousand manmade traditions, many of them inherited from the so-called Roman Catholic Church. Many Reformed people with good reason refer to all that disparagingly as “bells and smells.” These are the places where you will hear a bell rung at the elevation of the “host,” that is, the bread of their “Eucharistic sacrifice,” and where the pungent odor of incense wafts from swinging censers dangled on chains by so-called priests wearing their Eucharistic vestments, with a veritable vocabulary of curious words to describe the various pieces of their colorful religious outfits. Besides these you will see candles on a supposed altar, the sign of the cross, the mixing of sacramental wine with water, etc., etc., etc.! This list of unscriptural human inventions associated with such an ecclesiastical tradition would be quite long indeed, if it could even be completed.

We must realize that all this is the practical outworking of failure to apply Scripture rigorously as the quality control of all worship, and that is putting it mildly. In our modern religious environment, this same failure has also profaned God’s worship, but often in very different ways than that found in the Roman Catholic-Lutheran-Anglican tradition. Today, we see countless examples of churches, supposedly Evangelical, with drama, mime, puppetry, art, dance, comedy, and pop music performances, all without any real warrant whatsoever from the Word of God. In the interest of peace, some perhaps well-meaning people have tried to quell the alarm some of us have about these developments, but we are persuaded that these are the telltale signs of a prevailing apostasy from God and his truth, and that therefore we have plenty of justification for our alarm. When the house is burning down, it is not uncharitable to yell “fire!,” even loudly, to save those inside. Safety is more important than peace, and the glory of God than good feelings.

Thankfully, we are not the first generation to confront these problems by a sound interpretation and application of Holy Scripture. A classic statement of Reformed orthodoxy on this matter is found in our venerable London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689, and I would quote from XXII.1:

The light of nature shews that there is a God, who hath lordship and sovereignty over all; is just, 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 all the soul, and with all the might. But the acceptable way of worshipping the true God, is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imagination and devices of men, nor the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representations, or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures.

This excellent summary speaks about “the acceptable way of worshipping the true God,” as if there is fundamentally only one way. Of course that is true, as we read that the great prophet Samuel was committed to keep praying for Israel and to “teach [them] the good and the right way” (1 Sam 12.23), not one of the good and right ways. And our Lord Jesus Christ said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father [and that is to worship him], but by me” (John 14.6). Once two people arguing realized they had come to an impasse about the proper manner of worship, and one said to the other, “Alright, we are just going to have to agree to disagree. You worship God your way, and I will worship him his way.” The only acceptable way of worship is God’s way.

Our confession also says this way is “instituted by” God, that is, he has established and declared it openly, and the confession makes it clear that Holy Scripture is God’s revealed will. Thus the way of worship is to be “limited” by this, which is no undesirable limitation, since if we carry out all that God has told us he wants we will be pleasing to him. Guardrails on the highway “limit” you from driving your car off of a cliff. Other guides for worship competing for our adoption are “the imagination and devices of men,” and “the suggestions of Satan,” two very unreliable counselors which would drag us down to spiritual ruin. Our confession also says that the Scriptures explicitly forbid worshipping God “under any visible representations,” and our confession understands this also as an absolute prohibition of worshipping God in “any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures,” putting it in the negative, as Scripture often does. “Prescribed,” with an etymology related to the word “scribe,” has connotations of a written rule, and means “to state authoritatively that (something) should be done in a particular way” (Concise Oxford English Dictionary). This meaning of the word “prescribe” perfectly fits the context of its use in our confession. Essentially, the confession here is making a particular application to worship of the formal principle of the Protestant Reformation known as “sola Scriptura,” that Scripture alone is our ultimate religious authority, and that it is sufficient as a rule of faith and practice, including for guidance as to how God ought to be worshipped.

Sadly, many whom we might have expected to stand firm upon these great truths are embracing the winds of doctrine blowing through the churches and losing their grip on our great, historic and biblical stance. This is happening even with many Reformed churches and pastors, and yes, even with some Reformed Baptists. Some have openly declared that great change has come to their church and argued against the things that used to be taken for granted among us. In one church where this has happened, the discontinuity between what they are doing now and what they used to do in worship is dramatic. Elaborate efforts have also been made to suggest that our chapter 22 paragraph one is unscriptural and legalistic, and that the time has come for modifying it. Instead of being openly opposed to the “Regulative Principle of Worship” (henceforth RPW), which is the traditional label for the doctrine I am advocating, within Reformed circles it has become fashionable to redefine the RPW, not just in words but in substance, and then to champion their own disfigured caricature and maintain a claim to hold to the RPW.

As one who appreciates the glory of the historic Reformed doctrine of worship, this caricature makes me want to weep like the old men when they saw the second temple, the little and modest new one, which had only a faint, unimpressive resemblance to the almost-forgotten and stupendously glorious Temple of Solomon’s day (Ezra 3.12).

Our 1689 confession offers two proof texts for the second part of its statement in chapter 22 paragraph one: Deuteronomy 12.32 and Exodus 20.4-6. Let’s examine them one at a time, and then let us consider the contribution to our understanding made by the Nadab and Abihu incident in Leviticus 10.

DEUTERONOMY 12.29-32

Let us first read the text.

29 When the Lord thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their land; 30 Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise. 31 Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God: for every abomination to the Lord, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods. 32 What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.

General Interpretation

This passage is sometimes interpreted as a prohibition of gross idolatry, and as a further explanation of the First Commandment. This is the way E. H. Merrill treats it in work for the New American Commentary series. Also, the ESV translation has interspersed headings above its biblical passages, and the one here says, “Warning Against Idolatry.”

I believe that all this is significantly imprecise. This is not a warning against gross idolatry per se. Rather, it is a strong prohibition of corrupting the worship of Yahweh, the only true and living God, by incorporating idolatrous customs practiced by the heathen. This has been called syncretism, “the incorporation into religious faith and practice of elements from other religions, resulting in a loss of integrity and assimilation to the surrounding culture.” Both Testaments bear abundant witness to God’s displeasure with syncretism, and to the grave threat it poses to men’s souls. Because true religion is a matter of believing and obeying God, syncretism is bound to result when we look anywhere other than God for direction concerning how he ought to be worshipped.

Now please let me draw your attention to seven relevant features of this text, and then press these things more firmly upon our consciences.

1. The Specific Time for This Counsel

First, notice that this passage gives counsel for a specific time in Israel’s history, namely, “when the Lord thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their land” (verse 29). At the time they first heard these words through Moses, God’s spokesman, they were still in the wilderness and outside the Promised Land. Deuteronomy is the last instruction they will receive from Moses before he dies and they enter the land victoriously under Joshua’s new leadership. This counsel then concerns the time after Canaan’s conquest, when the Canaanites have been killed for the most part, and the Jews took possession of that good land.

Now it is important to remember that the outcome of this historic conflict was an illustration of God’s superiority over the gods of the Canaanites, just as the deliverance from bondage 40 years earlier was an exaltation of Jehovah over the false gods of Egypt, as the Lord said on the eve of their deliverance, “For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord” (Exod 12.12). It is well known that each of the ten plagues was directed against idol-deities of the Egyptians, and that the Pharaoh himself, drowned in the Red Sea, was worshipped as a god in Egypt. The Lord’s triumph over them all was a convincing demonstration of his cosmic superiority. And so it would be when he gave the victory to Joshua and the Israelites in the slaughter of the Canaanites, the capture of their walled cities, and the plunder of the spoils of war, vast treasures taken away from the Canaanites and freely given to the people of God.

In the wake of all this, it is passing strange that Yahweh’s victory over his idol-rivals left the Israelites so fickle. Their lack of firm commitment to worship God alone and to worship carefully in the way he revealed to them is a testimony to the miserable effects of man’s fallen nature within us!

2. Canaanites, Dead But Still Dangerous

Second, notice that this counsel is a warning against the Canaanites who, although dead, would still be dangerous. “Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee” (verse 30a). There is a real irony here. Although the time envisioned for the application of this counsel would be a time when the Canaanites had been “destroyed,” that is, when they had died through Joshua’s sword wielded as an instrument of God’s wrath against them, they still might posthumously “ensnare” the Jews spiritually, and this would be a calamity worse than death. The wretched idolatry of the wicked is like toxic waste that still remains a threat even after it is buried.

And how much greater is this threat while we Christians are now living among the wicked? We are daily exposed in many ways to the corrupt culture of people who hate God, and who would influence us to change the way we think about God and worship him, so that it accords more with their idolatrous imaginations and preferences. We do business with immoral idolaters, we work beside immoral idolaters, and some of us even live with immoral idolaters, and so we are in danger of being spiritually contaminated, and our approach to worship is also in danger of being corrupted.

The church of God will be completely safe from evil influences only when evil is wholly purged from the new heavens and the new earth and consigned to the eternal lake of fire. Of the New Jerusalem, Scripture says that “there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life” (Rev 22.17). Until then, the ways of worship which God hates are all around us, and we must be extremely vigilant and discerning to shed them, and to avoid all vestiges of them, so that we may be most pleasing to him.

3. Dangerous Curiosity and Research

Third, this passage exposes the way of danger. “Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee” (verse 30). The Lord warns his people about “following them,” that is, about imitating their ways. But, we may ask, if no Canaanites were around, then how could this possibly happen? The avenue of apostasy was curiosity and research. When he says, “enquire not,” God straightforwardly forbids a morbid curiosity and research for the purpose of guidance in the question of how worship ought to be done. The ESV translates the phrase, “Do not inquire about their gods.” There were dangerous sources of information, both from neighboring nations, or perhaps from artifacts left behind in the Promised Land. Why would God forbid research? Is this a divine requirement to remain ignorant about other peoples and cultures? Well, yes, if the inquiry was made for learning how to worship God. The ways that the Gentiles worshipped their idols was totally irrelevant to divine worship; the pagans had absolutely nothing to teach the Jews about how to worship God.

Let fools call this obscurantism if they will. Paul wrote, “I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil” (Rom 16.19). Research to refute is one thing, but research to consider and possibly to admire is another.

4. The Manner, Not the Object, of Worship

Fourth, notice that the issue is the manner of worship, not the object of worship. “Take heed . . . that thou enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise. . . . Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God” (verses 30-31a). The ESV brings out the sense a little bit more clearly: “You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way,” that is, in the way that the heathen worshipped their idols. This is a much, much more subtle danger than gross idolatry, although it is in essence a form of idolatry, because it pays respect to the idols by looking to them for guidance, and it also tends toward gross idolatry in the issue. Imagine a large fair where there are all kinds of musical performers competing for the people to hear them. Many of the players and singers have only a few gathered around them, but look! Over there is a large crowd of many people listening intently, and dancing to one particular band. Those players are being honored by the appreciation shown to them. Dancers to any particular tune glorify the piper who is playing it. If we incorporate elements of Baal into worship, then some of the glory God deserves is being transferred away from the Lord to Baal. If Christians were, for example, to replace water baptism with a different ritual because water baptism is offensive to Muslims, and this has actually been proposed, brethren, then we rob Christ of honor for the glory of the false god “Allah.”

Today we apply this principle correctly by condemning “comparative religion” studies which suggest that the world’s religions are all valid to some degree in their shared quest for God, and that Christianity should borrow elements from the others. Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and even Christless Judaism, are dangers to be avoided, not darkened diamond mines where we might occasionally discover some precious things we could incorporate into biblical, Christian worship. If we follow that naïve view to its inevitable conclusion, we will be on the road to gross idolatry ourselves, and headed for eternal perdition.

The same basic error is made when churches go throughout their communities to poll the unchurched about what the church should be and do to get them to attend—an approach to “reaching the unchurched” that has been widely advocated and practiced. Unchurched Harry and Mary are not reliable guides for us, but rather, they need faithful believers who look to Scripture alone to teach all of us God’s will. Likewise, much of the impulse for what is called “contextualization” is to be censured for this very reason. We don’t need to inject the culture of the world—of rock and roll, Indie music, hip hop, rap music, or whatever has arisen from the muck and mire of unbelief and carnality—into the church’s worship so that we may “reach” people who like these things. We should beware of worldliness in all its forms. We must remain committed to keeping God’s worship holy and pure, and consistent with the high standards of Holy Scripture.

5. Abominable Will-worship

Fifth, please take note of the alarming reason given in this text to heed God’s warning: “for every abomination to the Lord, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods” (verse 31b). These heathen, being without God’s special revelation of how he would be worshipped, and left to the devices of their own depraved souls, had invented all kinds of sinful and atrocious customs and rituals in the worship of their false gods. When people are deprived of God’s Word and rely instead on their own thoughts and desires concerning worship, they fall into the most bizarre abominations. The particularly shocking example mentioned here is child sacrifice by fire. This is further described in Jeremiah, sadly, after Israel had fallen into the practice centuries later.

4 Because they have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and have burned incense in it unto other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents; 5 They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind: 6 Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that this place shall no more be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of slaughter (Jer 19.4-6).

Well, this is absolutely horrible! We can hardly imagine that any human beings could ever be brought to do such a thing. How did such abominations come to be practiced in Israel? Not overnight, but very gradually, over generations, as they became less and less regulated by God’s Word in their worship, and more and more influenced by the pagan practices of those around them. Recently I saw video footage of the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey in London, England, with the Archbishop of Canterbury conducting the wedding ceremony, and I noticed with dismay countless religious icons up front, human figures carved into the wall, and DaVinci’s famous Last Supper image with Jesus dishonored in flagrant and public violation of the Second Commandment. This is the same Anglicanism that is conflicted on homosexuality. Friends, this is the corruption and apostasy of a “church” that long ago rejected the RPW. These gross idolatries and immoralities began as much more subtle departures from Scripture in doctrine and practice.

The mention of child sacrifice in Deuteronomy 12 is intended to alarm and sensitize those Israelites who would be the first generation to live in the Promised Land, and us. Child sacrifice was not the only thing offensive to God in pagan worship customs, but it is mentioned as a particularly disturbing example to condemn all the other practices of pagan worship, the main evil of which was that they sprang from man’s sinful heart instead of God’s revealed truth. As sinful hearers we cannot really appreciate how disgusting a thing will-worship is to God, no matter what its particular expression, so he uses this shocking example to get our attention and help us appreciate how utterly vile and reprehensible all will-worship really is. On account of God’s strong disapproval, we should come to hate all will-worship also.

The last two points may be the most important ones I will draw from this Deuteronomy 12 text for the purposes of this message.

6. The Univocal Standard of Worship

The next to last point, the sixth, is that the divine standard of worship is univocal—the command of one voice that is clear, understandable, obvious, and plain—namely, the voice of God himself. And this is the same thing as saying that the only standard of worship is the Word of God. This comes out clearly in verse 32, “What thing soever I command you, observe to do it.” I do believe that this particular way of putting it stresses, above all other things, the pronoun “I,” much more than the verb “command.”

A sensitivity to the context requires us to understand the statement this way, for it presents two rival sources for guidance in the manner of worship. First, the way of the heathen, and second, the way that comes from God. The Lord is here presenting himself as the only legitimate Author of instructions or guidance for worship. Therefore we conclude that the word “command” is used as a figure of speech called metonymy, where one part of a thing stands for the whole. “Command” should not be narrowly constricted only to those parts of God’s Word that are in the imperative voice, as if prohibitions, promises, threats, historical examples, and other literary genres of divinely inspired literature were irrelevant to our guidance in the proper way of worshipping God. No, the word “command” is used because the imperative was the usual grammatical form God used to direct his people, and also because it has connotations of his supreme authority to tell them what to do. But in this context the word “command” represents the whole of the special revelation from God to man.

This special revelation was usually verbal, but occasionally it took other forms like prophetic vision, for example. Remember that the Lord said to Moses, “According to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it” (Exod 25.9). And, of course, the entirety of God’s special revelation to man, directing us to worship God and teaching us the way he desires to be worshipped, is now summarily comprehended for us, that is, completely contained for us, in one single Book known as the Holy Scriptures, period! The Bible is sufficient to teach us how to worship God his way.

That is essentially what I am trying to drive home with this point that the divine standard of worship is univocal. We have a thousand other voices clamoring for attention all around us, supposedly with something to contribute to our knowledge of God and religion. We also have inner thoughts and desires competing for our gratification and loyalty. But there is one and only one supremely sovereign voice we must hear above all the confusing and tempting din, and that is the voice of God.

7. Requirement and Justification of Scrupulosity

One more point, the seventh, and we’re done with this first part of the second message on the standard of worship. The passage before us absolutely requires, and urges upon us, a very, very scrupulous conformity to this standard of God’s Word. This is clear from three things about the text. First, the stated scope of God’s concern for our worship. “What thing soever I command you” (verse 32), a very literal, word-for-word translation of the Hebrew text. Young’s Literal Translation puts it this way, “The whole thing which I am commanding you.” A looser paraphrase has rendered it, “Be sure to do everything I command you.” It is as if God is pointing at the entire text of Scripture, from the beginning to end, as our direction concerning his worship. You cannot afford to do without any of it if you would be pleasing to God. Today, this does not revoke the New Testament teaching that the Old Testament ceremonial law has been fulfilled in Christ and should no longer be practiced, and that the civil law must not be applied exactly as it was within theocratic Israel under the Old Covenant, but it is to say that Genesis to Revelation must have our close attention as we seek to learn how to please God more and more in his worship. The Old Testament remains highly relevant and instructive for Christians today; it retains every bit of the divine authority it ever had, simply because it is just as much the Word of God as the New Testament.

The text also stresses scrupulous conformity to the Holy Scripture by its choice of the verb translated by the Spirit for the exhortation, that is, “observe.” This is a special term with a greater intensity than another word which simply means to do something. God is not just saying, “do what I command you,” but “observe” or as the ESV translates, “be careful to do” it. The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament says about this word that “the basic idea of the root is ‘to exercise great care over,’ [and that] it expresses the careful attention to be paid to the obligations of a covenant, to laws, statutes, etc.” (TWOT #2414g). Another lexicon says it means to “obey a command with diligence and in detail” (Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains, #2068). This also justifies my characterization of the obedience God wants from us as “scrupulous,” meaning “punctiliously exact: painstaking” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary), and “diligent, thorough, and attentive to details,” and “very concerned to avoid doing wrong” (Concise Oxford English Dictionary). The origin of the word “scrupulous” in the Middle English meant “troubled with doubts” (ibid.), and there is a sense in which we should always be anxious and concerned to compare the actual worship we offer God to the standard of his Word, so that we may reform whatever is amiss.

The third indication that scrupulosity is laid upon our consciences here is the last phrase of the verse. “Thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it,” that is, from God’s command. This protects us from any possible remaining doubt about whether God wants us to be scrupulous in our obedience to his commands. The phrase itself must be understood as a Hebraism to be fully appreciated. It mentions two extremes (adding to it, and diminishing or taking away from it) to encompass everything in between (twisting it, overemphasizing one part for de-emphasis of another, etc.). Along with the words “everything” and “observe,” this phrase drives home the point that there must be a very precise and exact correlation between God’s revealed will for his worship and the actual worship we offer to him. Ideally, our worship should be the written word of God on display in beings of flesh and blood! We are to become an “epistle . . . known and read of all men . . . manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ . . . , written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart” (2 Cor 3.2-3). Christ himself perfectly exemplified the righteous worship commanded and commended in the Scriptures, and he did it scrupulously in all its glorious detail! As God reforms us and our worship, we are becoming more and more like Christ.

Calvin wrote helpfully on a similar verse from Deuteronomy 4, and he said,

The main point is, that they should neither add to nor diminish from the pure doctrine of the Law; and this cannot be the case, unless men first renounce their own private feelings, and then shut their ears against all the imaginations of others. For none are to be accounted (true) disciples of the Law, but those who obtain their wisdom from it alone. It is, then, as if God commanded them to be content with His precepts; because in no other way would they keep His law, except by giving themselves wholly to its teaching. Hence it follows, that they only obey God who depend on His authority alone; and that they only pay the Law its rightful honor, who receive nothing which is opposed to its natural meaning. The passage is a remarkable one, openly condemning whatsoever man’s ingenuity may invent for the service of God (Calvin on Deut 4.2).

In closing, I would put it this way. Brethren, we cannot possibly be too scrupulously Scriptural. The more Scriptural, the better. Do not be intimidated by other pastors and Christians who will criticize you for being “legalistic” when you are only being biblical. Whether they realize it or not, the devil is using them to corrupt your worship away from the standard of the Word of God.

Bishop Kennet once remarked about the Puritan Richard Rogers, “that England hardly ever brought forth a man who walked more closely with God.” He was always notable for seriousness and gravity in all kinds of society; being once with a gentleman of respectability who said to him, “I like you and your company very well, only you are too precise.” “Oh sir,” replied he, “I serve a precise God.” Surely Deuteronomy 12.32 convinces us that God wants us all to be precisionists!

In this life, our worship is never all that it should be. We sinfully take somewhat away from his Word, even without meaning to do so. No doubt our worship includes things that it should not contain, and we sinfully if inadvertently add to his Word. Therefore we must be always reforming toward the Word. I heartily endorse the slogan, “Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei,” being translated, “The church reformed and always being reformed according to the word of God.”

I know what people will say. “Pastor Meadows, if everyone thought like this, it would introduce even more divisions in the churches and among the churches than there already are.” I disagree very, very strongly with this. Divisions arise from sloppiness in these things, brethren! It is the departures from Scripture that cause the tensions which are so regrettable and unnecessary and which would not exist if only we were better at observing everything God commands us in Scripture without adding or taking away anything. If all Christians and churches were more agreed on this basic truth, then worship everywhere would be becoming much more similar and pure, and the unity within and among churches would increase greatly from what it is now.

We must come to realize that there are two and only two sources for guidance in worship—God, not God. We must heartily embrace God as our guide, and repudiate all other would-be guides in worship.

I conclude with references to two other brief Scripture passages and one quick comment for each one.

Remember Jeremiah 10.1-2. “Learn not the way of the heathen . . . for the customs of the people are vain.” Do you think that “the heathen” is the only source of corrupting God’s worship? My friends, the only thing that distinguishes us from the heathen is the Word of God, so if we ignore that, we are practically just like the heathen!

Lastly, consider Romans 12.1-2. “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (ESV). We must cultivate a healthy self-distrust and be constantly vigilant against encroachments of sinful elements and forms into our worship, against letting the world influence the way we worship God. Our worship must be completely distinctive from that practiced by everyone else in its constant resort to a Scripture standard.

Now may the Lord give us ears to hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Amen.

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