Aiming to Please

A Guide to Reformed Worship

Wes Bredenhof

• Publisher: The Study
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780886661236
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

In Aiming to Please, Wes Bredenhof explains in his unique, readable style, how Reformed worship aims to help us please God more and more. All aspects of the service come under scrutiny: Is singing hymns biblical? Should the congregation say the votum? Why collection bags? Lord's Supper in the pews? And what about the role of organists, drums, the celebration of Christmas, and the use of projectors? Does covenant theology make a difference to how we worship? These topics and many more are addressed from the stance that we are not to worship God in any other manner than he has commanded in his Word.

Part 1 -- Principles

CHAPTER1
SETTING THE STAGE:
THE COVENANT OF GRACE

It may seem unusual, but I am going to begin this book on Reformed worship with a pair of Lutherans. True, technically they might not be regarded as Lutherans, but for practical purposes many would consider them as such. One of the pair was a remarkable woman named Katharina. A run-away nun, spirited away in a herring barrel, she found herself getting married to an ex-monk in 1525. She became Mrs. Martin Luther. He is the other figure in this pair. Individually, they were remarkable Christians, but together they were even more so. To understand how they together blessed so many lives, you would need to not only look at them individually, but also study the dynamics of their marriage. You would need to understand the Christian institution of marriage that bound them together. Together they sang praise to God, but it was the Christian institution of holy matrimony that gave them the lyrics and the music.

This parallels the relationship between public worship and the covenant of grace. Just as Christian marriage enabled the Luthers to be a blessing to so many people, so the covenant of grace sets the stage for God’s people to meet him in the worship service. Just as you would need to understand biblical marriage to understand the power of the Luthers’ relationship, so you need to understand biblical covenant theology to understand worship.

The importance of sound covenant theology cannot be over-estimated. As Reformed believers, we believe God engages his people by way of covenant. Any and all interactions between God and his church take place within a covenantal context. Any time God has anything to do with us there is somehow, some way, a covenant connection. Since public worship is an encounter between God and his people, it necessarily follows that covenant theology is going to have a bearing on how we think about and practice worship. In this chapter, I am going to introduce the doctrine of the covenant of grace and explain, in broad terms, the relevance this doctrine has for our worship.

I do want to keep this as simple as possible. When it comes to covenant theology, it is remarkably easy for a theologian to make things complicated quickly. Instead, I want to do the hard thing and present it in such a way that you can easily grasp it. As a result, there are some things I will pass by. I will leave aside such things as the covenant of works, various covenant administrations in history, the relationship between covenant and election, and so on. My focus here is primarily on the covenant of grace as Christians experience it today – and then the application of that to what we do when we meet our God as his people.

The Essence of the Covenant of Grace

I have already used the word “covenant” several times and before we go any further, we need to be clear about its definition. What is the covenant of grace? If we were to boil it down to its essence, what are we looking at?

This chapter began with a marriage and that was intentional, for the Bible leads us to think along those lines when it comes to the covenant of grace. At a wedding ceremony, there is an exchange of vows. Bride and groom make promises and commitments to each other. All of that is part of the legal foundation of the marriage. The other part involves signing documents from the relevant government authorities. The vows and the documents are important, but you would be wrong to say the marriage consists of those things. They do not constitute the essence of the marriage. The heart and soul of a marriage is a relationship. While marriages are legally established by vows and documents, the essence is the living connection between the two people involved. The same is true of the covenant. In its heart and soul, the covenant of grace is a relationship between God and his people.

You can see this analogy between marriage and the covenant in a number of places in Scripture, but perhaps nowhere so clearly as in Hosea. Hosea prophesied in a sad time. God’s people were unfaithful to him in unprecedented ways. To illustrate this broken relationship in a shocking way, Hosea was commanded to marry an unfaithful woman. God directly compared his relationship with Israel to such a marriage as Hosea experienced. The amazing thing is that, in spite of his people’s lack of love and faithfulness, God continued to go after his bride. He graciously promised that a day would come when he would again say, “You are my people” and they would say, “You are my God” (Hosea 2:23).

We therefore say that the relationship between God and his people takes the form of a covenant.² The covenant of grace is all about the manner in which God is going to interact with and engage his people. This covenant relationship was established already in the Old Testament, it went through different administrations, and it then carries on into the New Testament era, even to today. Thus, in Galatians 3, the apostle Paul draws a direct line between Abraham and believers today. Those who have faith are “the sons of Abraham,” he writes in Gal. 3:7. Moreover, in Gal. 3:29, he says that those who belong to Christ through faith “are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” The “promise” in that verse is the covenant promise made to Abraham: “I will be God to you and to your offspring after you” (Gen. 17:7).

The Origins of the Covenant of Grace

Also important to consider is where this covenant of grace comes from. An unbelieving biblical scholar would argue that covenant thinking in the Bible is merely a product of its human context. After all, the Ancient Near East used covenants in political life. Two kings might enter into a covenant with one another. The more powerful king would impose his will on the less powerful. There would be mutual promises and expectations. This type of covenant is sometimes called a vassal or suzerainty treaty. There certainly are remarkable parallels between Hittite suzerainty treaties and especially the passages establishing the Mosaic administration of the covenant in Deuteronomy.³ However, those parallels should not lead believing Bible readers to the conclusion that the covenant of grace is, at its roots, a human invention.

After the fall into sin, it was God who pursued Adam and Eve to restore his relationship with them. God took the initiative to create man, but God also took the initiative to redeem man and restore his relationship with him. We therefore insist that the origins of the covenant of grace are from above, from the sovereign God. This has been evident in every administration of the covenant of grace – with Adam, with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and right down the line to us. No matter how we have come into the covenant relationship with God, no credit for it ever goes to us. God has taken the initiative to pursue us and bring us into this people who have a unique bond with him.

The origins vividly reveal why we call it the covenant of grace. Adam did not deserve to have God pursue him in the garden. Adam had slapped God in the face with his distrust and disobedience. Therefore, God was under no obligation to do anything other than destroy this rebellious creature. Was Abraham any better? Before God approached him, he was worshipping idols in Ur of the Chaldeans (Josh. 24:2). There was no outside compulsion for God to set his love upon Abraham and call him out of his sin. Abraham was undeserving. Similarly, none of us deserve a covenant relationship with God. We do not have a right to it and he does not owe it to us. Once we realize this we can understand why it is called the covenant of grace. It comes from God. We have not deserved it. In fact, we have done everything to forfeit it. Yet he sets his love on us and says, “I am your God and you are my people. We have an everlasting bond.” That is grace and that should always astound us to the core of our being.

The Parties in the Covenant of Grace

Since it has that relational nature, it only follows that the covenant features parties in relationship. The identity of these parties should be obvious from what I have already written above. On the one side there is God. He begins and establishes the covenant of grace. Then there is us, the people of God.

But more must be said. In both the Old and New covenant administrations, the children of believers are included on the human side. This is evident in Genesis 17 and Acts 2:39. As another example, we see that the child of even one believing parent is regarded as covenantally holy in 1 Corinthians 7:14.⁴ The covenant of grace includes believers and their children. As we will see at the end of this chapter, that has implications for worship as well.

There is also someone else involved in the covenant of grace, a Mediator. By nature, we are at war with God. In ourselves, apart from the Holy Spirit, we hate our Maker and we wage war against him. That makes it impossible for a holy God to have fellowship with us. We need a Mediator, someone who will bring the parties together in peace.

That is what Jesus Christ does for us. Hebrews 8 reminds us that he is the Mediator of the covenant administration we experience and live under today. Christ came with the sacrifice that could turn away God’s wrath from us. He makes propitiation on our behalf – that means God’s wrath is turned away and his favour is restored. With Christ’s redemptive work, we are reconciled to God. That word “reconciled” speaks of a friendly relationship – a covenant relationship. Without Christ the Mediator, there would be no covenant of grace. There would be no relationship of peace with our Creator. Christ is in the centre of this relationship and, as we will see momentarily, this too factors into how we think about and implement Reformed worship.

Covenant and Worship – Four Starting Points

From the summary of covenant theology above, we can already observe four important points that must guide our thinking about Reformed worship. Most of these will be worked out further in subsequent chapters.

First, we must observe that God is sovereign in the covenant relationship. In his grace, he initiates the covenant relationship and maintains it. It is vitally important to realize that the covenant relationship is not between equals. God is infinitely greater than us in every way. In the covenant relationship, he is our Father and as such he carries sovereign power and authority. Therefore, when we meet with him and fellowship with him, he alone has the right to determine the terms by which such encounters will occur. I will explain this further in the next chapter.

Next, let us always remember the central place of Christ in the covenant of grace. Without him, we cannot have a relationship with God. Without him, we could not possibly meet with the Holy One of Israel without being destroyed. Since Christ is central in the covenant relationship, any time we meet with God and fellowship with him, Christ ought also to be central. The work of Christ as our Mediator must be the focal point of our worship. This will be worked out in more detail in Chapter 3.

Third, God relates to his people within the context of the covenant of grace. This is a real relationship, much like the relationships we experience amongst ourselves as human beings. Healthy, normal relationships have real communication back and forth. This is true in Scripture for the covenant relationship between God and his people as well. Therefore, the covenant relationship fundamentally shapes how God will meet with his people and fellowship with them in public worship. I will also explain this at more length in Chapter 3.

Finally, we noted above that the children of believers are included in the covenant of grace. This has implications for worship as well. Let me say something about this in more detail here, since there will not really be an opportunity elsewhere.

Since they are included in the covenant of grace, our children are also m...