All posts by Admin

The Creational Sabbath

The Lord's Day

Gordon Cook

Pastor Piñero and Pastor Martinez have asked me to bring four messages on the subject of the worship day. In the Old Testament it was called the “Sabbath.” We often call it the “Lord’s Day” from a New Testament perspective. That’s the subject I am going to address in these four meetings. Tonight we are going to look at it from the very beginning, the Creational Sabbath. So we go all the way back to Genesis chapter 2. And that’s where I would want you to turn in your Bibles please—Genesis chapter 2, beginning at verse 1:

Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

A few years ago I stood at the foot of Mt. Rushmore, one of the most memorable-historical sites in the United States of America. And as you probably know, carved into that massive granite mountain are the faces of four different presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. And it took approximately fourteen years before that project was finished. Now, apparently from time to time they have to power wash and clean the faces of those four presidents. If not, a significant disfiguration can result from the smog and the pollutants in the air. And I’m sure most Americans—I’m a Canadian by the way—would agree that that’s a very important monument to preserve. But now what would you think if someone came along and began to use chisels and hammers and removed the distinctive facial features of those four presidents? They decided to reshape their noses, their eyes and their chins, and so much so that you really couldn’t tell the difference between George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, or Jefferson (he looked very much like Roosevelt when they were finished). I’m sure that would bother you. I’m sure the American public would be in an uproar. People would be incensed. It would be viewed as vandalism. And in all likelihood those responsible for that would be put behind bars. Nobody has a right to deface or to radically change the distinctive features of your former presidents. How dare they? How could they? Well something very similar is happening today in churches across the land.

The face of worship is changing. We are losing the distinctive elements of worship.

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The Pastor’s Care of His Family

Pastors

Alan Dunn

Brethren, let’s begin together asking for God’s grace and help as we continue in our study of His word. Our gracious God and our Father, we pray now that you would give to us the Holy Spirit; we pray that we would be instructed from your word as to how to be men of God, men who are godly, men who are Christian men in our homes, that we might be instruments in your hand, that we might be servants in your household, that we might be ministers of the new covenant, that we might be effectual in our efforts to advance your kingdom, that we might be fruitful and bring glory and praise to Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, Amen.

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The Pastor’s Care of Himself

Pastors

Alan Dunn

Today in our first hour we’re going to consider the pastor’s care for himself, how we are to make a priority of our own spiritual life in particular. And then in our second hour, the pastor’s care for his family as we will consider our responsibilities to our wives and to our children. And then in our other meetings that I will be ministering in, we are going to look at the whole matter of biblically regulated worship. No doubt one of our priorities in the pastoral ministry is to guide the people of God into the presence of God in biblically regulated worship. And so we’ll consider that subject as well this week. Now, each of these priorities are so important and could be opened up to such an extent, that many sermons could be preached on each one of these subjects. So we’re only going to survey them, but we’re going to survey them with the realization that we have a very serious calling, that our ministries and our lives as pastors are very serious things in light of the coming judgment of Jesus Christ.

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The Centrality of Preaching in Worship

Worship

Dave Chanski

We’ll begin this morning by turning to 2 Timothy 4:1-4:

I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.

The preaching of God’s Word has slipped from its rightful, scriptural place of prominence. A group of Calvinistic evangelicals called “Together for the Gospel” have recognized this and have prepared a document entitled Affirmations and Denials. In this document they wrote: “We affirm the centrality of expository preaching in the Church and the urgent need for a recovery of biblical exposition and the public reading of Scripture in worship.” There’s their affirmation and then it’s followed by this denial: “We deny that God-honoring worship can marginalize or neglect the ministry of the Word as manifested through exposition and public reading. We further deny that a Church devoid of true biblical preaching can survive as a Gospel Church.” 1 I agree with this statement and with the observation concerning the present state of affairs that calls for such statements. And so my topic is “The Centrality of Preaching in Worship.”

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Reverence in Worship

Worship

Dave Chanski

Please turn to Hebrews 12:28-29.

The apostle writes:

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire.

Our text here tells us that our worship should be marked by reverence, or godly fear, and awe. We live in a day in which, generally speaking, Christian worship is not marked by these characteristics. In fact, we could say the trend is in the opposite direction. It’s a day in which people have talked about worship wars, that is, there is much discussion and even argumentation about how we should worship God. In the midst of these so-called worship wars it seems that this vital point of reverence and awe in worship is being lost.

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A Call to Pure Worship IV: The Inspiration of Worship

A Call to Pure Worship

D. Scott Meadows

In theology, we usually use the word “inspiration” to mean that process by which God produced the Scriptures, his very words, through men. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Tim 3.16). Now I would use it with reference to the phenomena of true worship as produced by God and as motivated in men. Both Holy Scripture and holy worship are inevitable because they are the effectual work of the Almighty Holy Spirit. “The Father seeketh true worshippers to worship him,” and so he sends his Spirit to quicken and transform the true worshippers he seeks. Without this Spirit, absolutely no true worship can possibly begin or continue. The Lord our Redeemer deserves all the credit for all true worship.

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A Call to Pure Worship III
The Standard of Worship Part II

A Call to Pure Worship

D. Scott Meadows

In this series entitled, “A Call to Pure Worship,” the first message proclaimed that God desires pure worship. We proved this straight from Scripture in our simple exposition of John 4, with its testimony that God the Father desires worshippers who worship him in spirit and in truth. In the first message we also beheld from Scripture that sinful man offers corrupt worship. Jeroboam in 1 Kings 12 is a quintessential case of religious corruption, and I hope you are convinced it is practically a paradigm for all kinds of corruptions popular in the visible church today, and corruptions which we should abominate with all our hearts.

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The Standard of Worship Part II →

A Call to Pure Worship II
The Standard of Worship Part I

A Call to Pure Worship

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.

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The Standard of Worship Part I →

A Call to Pure Worship I
The Corruption of Worship

A Call to Pure Worship

D. Scott Meadows

No topic is more important than pure worship, since God’s glory is the ultimate end of our being, and nothing therefore could eclipse this in our ministry before God. He calls us by his Word to serve him in this way, the way of pure worship, and by that I mean nothing more or less than worship that is completely according to God’s will. There is a fundamental conformity to God’s will which is required for worship to be true worship at all, but we wish to promote the reformation even of true worship so that it becomes more and more pure, growing ever greater in conformity to God’s revealed will, and so that in the particulars of what it is, what it contains, what it lacks, how it is conducted, and in everything about it, we are more and more pleasing to God himself, we glorify his name the most, and we become better prepared to assume our places in that worship of the age to come, already begun in this age by the grace of Christ and the gospel.

Continue reading A Call to Pure Worship I
The Corruption of Worship →

Effective Fatherhood Part I

Effective Fatherhood

Albert N. Martin

Please follow in your own Bibles, if you will, a passage from Paul’s first letter to the infant church of the Thessalonians. First Thessalonians, chapter two and the first twelve verses:

For yourselves, brethren, know our entering in unto you, that it hath not been found vain: but having suffered before and been shamefully treated, as you know, at Philippi, we waxed bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God in much conflict. For our exhortation is not of error, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile: but even as we have been approved of God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God who proves our hearts. For neither at any time were we found using words of flattery, as you know, nor a cloak of covetousness, God is witness; nor seeking glory of men, neither from you nor from others, when we might have claimed authority as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle in the midst of you, as when a nurse cherishes her own children: even so, being affectionately desirous of you, we were well pleased to impart unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because you were become very dear to us. For you remember, brethren, our labor and travail: working night and day, that we might not burden any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how holily and righteously and unblameably we behaved ourselves toward you that believe: as you know how we dealt with each one of you, as a father with his own children, exhorting you, and encouraging you, and testifying, to the end that you should walk worthily of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

Now, if you were giving any attention to the reading of this passage, you are already aware that it contains a biographical account of Paul’s ministry among the Thessalonians. And in the course of describing his and his companions’ labors among the Thessalonians, he uses analogies drawn from family relationships. You will notice the very striking one in verse seven: “we were gentle in the midst of you, as when a nurse cherishes her own children.” And then again in verse eleven: “as you know how we dealt with each one of you, as a father with his own children.” Now, obviously, the primary teaching of the passage has to do with Paul and his companions, as models for the gospel ministry.

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