WORSHIP BEGINS IN THE HEART……NOT THE LIPS

By Pastor Mike Andrews

Steps to prepare for authentic worship…..

Internal preparation of heart:  Every child of God carries the responsibility for personal preparation of his/her heart. If God calls us to worship him “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24), then we must constantly ask questions about the state of our spirit and readiness of our hearts. We have an obligation to do a spiritual check list over our own lives. A great place to do that is found in (Gal 5:22-23). Where do I need to change in order to exemplify these fruits in my life and in the body of Christ? Self-examination is vital part of the Christian life: Psalm 139:23-24; Job13:23; 2 Cor 13:5; Luke 15:17-24; 1 Cor 11:27-31; Matt 7:5. God promises that if we are willing to admit that we have been walking our own way and ask for His forgiveness and cleansing, He will empower us through His Spirit to live above ourselves and live the abundant life for which He has created us. (I John 1:5-10)

Pre-arrival preparation:  We can learn from the Jews who believe the Sabbath begins at sundown the evening before. So our Saturday night and Sunday morning activities before we gather have a formative affect, positively or negatively, on our readiness for worship. What are you doing Saturday night to prepare your heart for worship? Is it! Listening to sermons, reading the passage we are studying next on Sunday. Memorizing your verses, praying for the church family and your pastor. Are you coming with a readiness of excitement to study the Scriptures? (Acts 17:11)

Pre-service preparation:  That short period of time between our arrival at church and the beginning of the worship service is also critical. How we interact with others reminds us that we are here as part of a body. Intentionally quieting our spirits before the service begins will also enable us to set distractions aside and again focus our corporate attention on God. For this one purpose! Rev 4:11; 1 Tim 1;17; Psalm 18:3; Rev 5:1-12 And since worship does not start when we enter the worship service, it should not stop when we leave. 

Post-service continuation:  Worship should continue as we leave the service. Rev 4:8; Heb 13:15; Acts 16:25-26. It can happen in our homes, and through our work. It can’t be contained in a single location, context, culture, style, artistic expression or vehicle of communication. So it doesn’t matter how good our worship is when we gather, it is incomplete until it continues when we scatter.

R  C Sproul said “The worship to which we are called in our renewed state is far too important to be left to personal preferences, whims, or marketing strategies. Pleasing God is at the heart of worship. Therefore, our worship must be informed at every point by the Word of God as we seek God’s own instructions for worship that is pleasing to Him.” 

“The best public worship is that which produces the best private Christianity. The best Church Services for the congregation are those which make its individual members most holy at home and alone. If we want to know whether our own public worship is doing us good, let us try it by these tests. Does it quicken our conscience? Does it send us to Christ? Does it add to our knowledge? Does it sanctify our life? If it does, we may depend on it, it is worship of which we have no cause to be ashamed.”

J.C. Ryle

 

 

Why Is the Substitutionary Atonement Essential?

by Nick Batzig

During the first decade of the twenty-first century, a number of prominent leaders in the emerging church movement asserted that the doctrine of substitutionary atonement is tantamount to “cosmic child abuse.” At a time when men and women were finally starting to see the need to condemn every form of abuse that had been tolerated in our culture, the allegation seemed to be a powerful argument with which to drive people away from the longstanding teaching of the Christian church on the sufferings of Christ. The question of the atonement is not, however, settled by aspersions cast by contemporary theologians but by biblical exegesis and theological coherence.

While Jesus frequently taught His disciples about the certainty and necessity of His death on the cross (Matt. 16:21; Mark 8:31; Luke 9:22; 17:25; 22:22), He only explicitly tied those aspects of His death on the cross to its meaning on three occasions—in Mark 10:45, in the Good Shepherd discourse (John 10), and at the institution of the Lord’s Supper (Luke 22:19–20). In these places, Jesus taught the substitutionary nature of His death for the forgiveness of the sins of His people.

When we move from the Gospels to the Epistles, an explicit articulation of the substitutionary nature of the death of Christ appears. When one considers the many instances in which the Apostles explain the death of Christ, it is incontrovertible that the doctrine of substitutionary atonement is the Apostolic doctrine of the atonement. In what is perhaps the clearest exposition of the death of Christ, the Apostle Paul teaches the vicarious sacrifice of the Savior when he declares, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Likewise, the Apostle Peter explained that Jesus “himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24).

Behind the Apostolic interpretation of the death of the Savior is the Old Testament teaching on the atonement. The prophet Isaiah, in speaking of the Suffering Servant, foretold of the sufferings that Jesus would undergo in the place of His people: “He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed” (Isa. 53:5). All of Israel’s prophets alluded to the substitutionary nature of the work of the Redeemer when they spoke of the work of redemption. This, of course, also has its foundation in the nature of Old Testament sacrifice.

The principal work of Jesus on the cross was atoning for the sins of His people by standing in their place and bearing the consequences and judgment of their sins. In his Reformed Dogmatics, Herman Bavinck explains the significance of the old covenant sacrificial system for seeking to understand the sacrifice of Christ:

The New Testament views Christ’s death as a sacrifice and the fulfillment of the Old Testament sacrificial cult. He is the true covenant sacrifice; just as the old covenant was confirmed by the covenant sacrifice (Ex. 24:3–11), so the blood of Christ is the blood of the new covenant (Matt. 26:28; Mark 14:24; Heb. 9:13f.). Christ is a sacrifice (θυσια, זֶבַח), the sacrificial victim for our sins (Eph. 5:2; Heb. 9:26; 10:12), an offering (προσφορα, δωρον; מִנְחָה קָרְבָּן; Eph. 5:2; Heb. 10:10, 14, 18); a ransom (λυτρον, ἀντιλυτρον; Matt. 20:28; Mark 10:45; 1 Tim. 2:6) and therefore denoting the price of release, a ransom to purchase someone’s freedom from prison, and hence a means of atonement, a sacrifice by which to cover other people’s sin and so to save them from death. He is a payment (τιμη, 1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23; 1 Peter 1:18–19), the price paid for the purchase of someone’s freedom; a sin offering that was made to be sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21; 1 John 2:2; 4:10); the paschal lamb that was slain for us (John 19:36; 1 Cor. 5:7), the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world and is slain to that end (John 1:29, 36; Acts 8:32; 1 Peter 1:19; Rev. 5:6; etc.). He is an expiation (ἱλαστηριον, Rom. 3:25), a sacrifice of atonement (θυμα), a curse (καταρα, Gal. 3:13) who took over from us the curse of the law, like the serpent in the wilderness lifted high on the cross (John 3:14; 8:28; 12:33) and like a grain of wheat dying in the earth in order thus to bear much fruit (John 12:24).1

WHAT’S IN A PREPOSITION?

When I was in seminary, I had a professor who would tell the students that the most important parts of speech when studying the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek are the pronouns, conjunctions, and prepositions. The doctrine of the substitutionary atonement is seen most clearly in the Scriptural use of the prepositions associated with the death of Christ. For instance, in Galatians 2:20, the Apostle Paul says, “The Son of God . . . loved me and gave Himself for me.” When Jesus teaches His disciples about His forthcoming death, He says, “The Son of Man did come not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Geerhardus Vos explains the importance of understanding these prepositions:

Besides ὑπέρ, ἀντί also appears, which always means “in the place of” (Matt. 20:28; Mark 10:45). Obviously, ἀντί in no way excludes ὑπέρ. That Christ gave Himself as a substitute for His own is not only well understandable along with the fact that He gave Himself for their benefit but also directly includes the latter consideration . . . in more than one place ὑπέρ itself has the full force of ἀντί (cf. 2 Cor. 5:20–21; Philem. 13; 2 Cor. 5:14). Here, too, we again have the same result: What Christ did as priest, He did as the substitutionary Surety of believers and, precisely for that reason, did before God and not toward man.2

A WILLING SACRIFICE

On one occasion, Jesus explained the nature of His death under the figure of the shepherd laying down his life for the sheep. In that discourse, Jesus taught that His forthcoming death was voluntary. He said: “I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 10:17–18). He went on to say that He had received the command to lay down His life for the sheep from His Father. However, the perfect harmony that He had with His Father was manifested in His laying down His life for His people of His own accord. It is for this reason that any insistence of divine child abuse must be rejected wholesale. The Son of God eternally loved His own and willingly laid down His life for His people in order to save them from the eternal wrath of God.

Whatever other dimensions belong to the work of Christ crucified, on this much we must be settled: The principal work of Jesus on the cross was atoning for the sins of His people by standing in their place and bearing the consequences and judgment of their sins. Jesus was constituted a sinner—though without any sin of His own—by the imputation of the sins of God’s people to His own person so that He might bear that sin in His body on the tree and receive the just punishment for those sins. In doing so, Jesus atones for the sins of all those for whom He died, removing their guilt and providing the basis of forgiveness for their sin. When we come to understand this in our hearts, we sing: “Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood. Sealed my pardon with his blood. Hallelujah! What a Savior!”

 Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series and was first published on June 8, 2018. Next post. 

  1. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 3, Sin and Salvation in Christ, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2006), 338–39. ↩︎
  2. Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 3, Christology, eds. and trans. Richard B. Gaffin, Jonathan Pater, Allan Janssen, Harry Boonstra, Roelof van Ijken (Bellingham, Wash.: Lexham, 2014), 100. ↩︎

Rev. Nicholas T. Batzig is senior pastor of Church Creek PCA in Charleston, S.C., and an associate editor for Ligonier Ministries.

 




Our ultimate desire at Calvary Baptist Church is first and foremost to bring glory and praise to the Sovereign LORD [Father, Son, & Holy Spirit] and to raise up mature believers so that we can fulfill the Great Commission. We will seek to achieve this by following the guidelines that God has put in place for prayer, worship, communion, Christian fellowship, Bible Study, and most of all the expository teaching of God’s Word.  We desire to provide the proper teaching of God’s Word so that fellow believers can grow together and edify one another with love and compassion.  

Please come, and join us,
as we look into how God has composed a unique storyfor each of our lives.CBC is a place to call home as we ......Magnify the Lord, Mature the Believers, Make prayer a priority, Meet the lost with Christ

Our Church Service Time @ 9:30am.

Adult Bible Study, Wednesday Nights @ 6:30pm

We now broadcast on 97.5FM in your car or home, for those who are unable to come in person. We do encourgage you to attend if possible first!

Our Good Friday Service @ 10am


We are located @
148 Queen Street,
Killaloe Ontario
613-757-1618