Worship # 6

Worship: Its Priority, Principles, and Practice (continued)

Well says the twentieth article of the Church of England:

The Church hath power to decree rites and ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith. And yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything that is contrary to God's Word written.

Well says the thirty-fourth article:

Ceremonies at all times have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversities of countries, times, and men's manners, so that nothing be ordained against God's Word.

I say therefore that any man who tells us that there are seven sacraments, when the Bible only mentions two, or that any man-made ordinance is as binding on our consciences and as needful to salvation as an ordinance appointed by Christ, is telling us what he has no right to tell. We must not listen to him. He is committing no only a mistake, but a sin. Paul distinctly tells us that there is such a thing as "self-imposed religion", which has an "appearance of wisdom", but is in reality of no value because it only indulges the flesh (Col. 2:23).

4. For another thing, true public worship must be an "intelligent" worship. I mean by that expression that worshipers must know what they are doing. It is written plainly as a charge against the Samaritans, "You worship what you do not know? (John 4:22). It is written of the heathen Athenians, that they ignorantly worshiped an unknown god. It is utterly false that ignorance is the mother of devotion. The poor Spanish Roman Catholics, not knowing a chapter in the Bible, may appear extremely devout and sincere, as they kneel in crowds before the image of the Virgin Mary, or hear Latin prayers which they do not understand. But it is utterly preposterous to suppose that their worship is acceptable to God. He who made man at the beginning made him an intelligent being, with mind as well as body. A worship in which the mind takes no part is useless and unprofitable. It might suit a beast as well as a man.

5. For another thing, true public worship must be the worship of the heart. I mean by this, that the affections must be employed as well as our intellect, and our inward man must serve God as well as our body. It is written plainly in the Old Testament, and the saying is quoted by Jesus Christ himself: "These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me" (Isaiah 29:13; Matthew 15:8-9). It is written of the Jews in Ezekiel's time: "So they come to you as people do, they sit before you as My people, and they hear your words, but they do not do them: for with their mouth they show much love, but their hearts pursue their own gain" (Ezekiel 33:31). The heart is the principal thing that God asks man to bring in all his approaches to him, whether public or private. A church may be full of worshipers who may give God an immense amount of bodily service. There may be abundance of gestures, and postures, and turnings to the east, and bowings, and crossings, and prostrations, and grave countenances, and upturned eyes, and yet the hearts of the worshipers may be at the end of the earth. One may be thinking only of coming or past pleasures, another of coming or past business, and another of coming or past sins. Such worship, we may be very sure, is utterly worthless: it is abominable hypocrisy. God is Spirit, and He cares nothing for man's bodily service without man's heart. Bodily service profits little. "Man looks at the outward appearance; but the Lord looks at the heart." "A broken and a contrite heart - these, O God, You will not despise" ( 1 Samuel 16:7; Psalm 51:17).

~J. C. Ryle~

(continued with # 7)