Worship # 8

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

I proceed, in the third place, to show the essential parts of Christian public worship.

I will suppose the case of a man who has never given the subject of religion any sincere attention, and has never gone to any place of worship at all. I will suppose such a man to be awakened to a sense of the value of his soul, and to be desirous of information about things in religion. He is puzzled by finding that all Christians do not worship God in the same way, and that one neighbor worships God in one fashion, and another in another. He hears one man saying that there is no road to heaven except through his Church, and another replying that all will go to hell who do not join his Chapel. Now what is he to think? Are there not certain things which are essential parts of Christian worship? I answer without hesitation that there are. It shall be my next business to exhibit them in order.

I freely grant that there is little said on the nature of public worship in the New Testament. There is a wide difference in this respect between the law of Moses and the law of Christ. The Jew's religion was full of strict and minute directions about worship: the Christian's contains very few directions, and those of the simplest and most general description. The Jew's religion was full of types, emblems, and figures: the Christian's only contains two: viz. Baptism and the Lord's Supper. The Jew's religion approached the worshiper chiefly through the eye: the New Testament religion appeals directly to the heart and conscience. The Jew's religion was confined to one particular nation: the Christian's was meant for the whole world. The Jew could turn t the writings of Moses, and see at a glance every item of his worship: the Christian can only point to a few isolated texts and passages, which are to be applied by every church according to circumstances. In a word, there is nothing answering to Exodus or Leviticus in the New Testament. Yet a careful reader of the Christian Scriptures can hardly fail to pick out of them the essential parts and principles of Christian worship. Where these essential parts are present, there is Christian worship. Where they are absent, the worship is, to say the least, defective, imperfect, and incomplete.

9. In complete public worship the Sabbath should always be honored. That blessed day was appointed for this very purpose, among others, to give men an opportunity of meeting together in God's service. A Sabbath was given to man even in Paradise. The observance of a Sabbath was made part of the Ten Commandments. The worship of God on the Sabbath was observed by our Lord Jesus Christ himself. To meet together on one day in the week at least was a practice of the early Christians, though they met on the first day instead of the seventh (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2).

~J. C. Ryle~

(continued with # 9)