Worship # 9

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

To assemble in God's house on the Christian Sabbath has been the custom of all professing Christians for almost two millennia. The best and holiest of God's saints have always pressed on others most strongly the value of Sabbath worship, and born witness of its usefulness. It sounds very fine and spiritual, no doubt, to say that every day should be a Sabbath to a Christian, and that one day should not be kept more holy than another. But facts are stronger than theories. Experience proves that human nature requires such helps as fixed days, and hours, and seasons for carrying on spiritual business, and that public worship never prospers unless we observe God's order. "The Sabbath was made for man" by him who made man at the beginning, and knew what flesh and blood is. As a general rule, it will always be found that were there is no Sabbath there is no public worship.

10. In complete public worship there should be a ministry. I do not for a moment say that it is of absolute necessity that it must be an episcopal ministry. I am not so narrow-minded and uncharitable as to deny the validity of Presbyterian or Congregational orders. I only maintain that it is the mind of god that ministers of some kind should conduct the worship of Christian congregations, and be responsible for its decent and orderly conduct in approaching God. I am at a loss to understand how any one can read the Acts of the Apostles, and the epistles to the Corinthians, Ephesians, Timothy, and Titus, and deny that the ministry is an appointment of God. I say this with every feeling of respect for the Quakers and Plymouth Brethren, who have no ordained ministers: I simply say that I cannot understand their views on this subject. Reason itself appears to me to tell us that business which is left to nobody in particular to attend to, is a business which is soon entirely neglected. Order is said to be heaven's first law. Once let a people begin with no Sabbath and no ministry, and it would never surprise me if they ended with no public worship, no religion, and no God.

11. In complete public worship there should be the preaching of God's Word. I can find no record of church assemblies in the New Testament in which preaching and teaching orally does not occupy a most prominent position. It appears to me to be the chief instrument by which the Holy Spirit not only awakens sinners, but also leads on and establishes saints. I observe that in the very last words that Paul wrote to Timothy, as a young minister, he especially enjoins on him to "preach the word" (2 Timothy 4:2). I cannot, therefore, believe that any system of worship in which the sermon is made little of, or thrust into a corner, can be a scriptural system, or one likely to have the blessing of God. I have no faith in the general utility of services composed entirely of prayer-reading, hymn-singing, sacrament-receiving, and walking in procession. I hold firmly that Bishop Latimer, that it is one of satan's great aims to exalt ceremonies and put down preaching. There is a deep meaning in the words, "Despise not prophesying" (1 Thess. 5:20). A contempt for sermons is a pretty sure mark of a decline in spiritual religion.

~J. C. Ryle~

(continued with # 10)