We were dead (not just sick, not just dying) in our sins. We were helpless apart from the saving work of Christ. He came not to save the righteous, but to save sinners – even the chief of sinners. So why do we bristle so much at this notion? The short answer is that we probably have more of the world in ourselves than we care to admit. The world resists the simple message of the gospel, and these objections manage to trickle their way into the church, to our shame.

In his book The Gospel-Driven Life, Michael Horton makes this vivid observation:
“Picking up on a phrase from Augustine, the Protestant Reformers said that as fallen sinners we are all ‘curved in on ourselves.’ Born with a severe case of spiritual scoliosis, our spines are twisted so that all we can see are our own immediate felt needs, desires, wants, and momentary gratifications. But the gospel makes us stand erect, looking up to God in faith and out to the world and our neighbors in love and service. Not every piece of news can do that, but the gospel can.”
But do we really believe this? Perhaps the Reformers, et al, have made too much of this. Perhaps we are a little fallen, like wobbly toddlers, but not that fallen. Perhaps we have just enough life to pick ourselves up by our spiritual bootstraps and blaze our own spiritual trail unto salvation.
But then, on the other hand, the Apostle Paul makes the following statements:
“And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.”(Ephesians 2:1)
“For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. (Romans 5:6)
“It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all.” (1 Timothy 1:15)
We were dead (not just sick, not just dying) in our sins.
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While the ministry of John the Baptist may not seem like it is important eschatologically, it contributes much to our understanding and to world history. First, his coming begins the cataclysmic and seismic shift from the old world of Judaism to the new world of the Kingdom of God. His coming signaled the end of the Old Covenant order and heralded the beginning of the Kingdom of God. What a monumental life and role that the Lord allowed this humble servant to have.

Hurry Up and Wait
It’s a rare occasion when only four words can summarize a major chapter of your life or the organization to which you belonged. But, “hurry up and wait” certainly fits that bill. From my earliest moments of hurrying up to wait at MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station); to the chaotic screams of drill sergeants prodding us urgently off busses, leaving us standing there for hours in an empty parking lot, leaving us wondering what was going to happen next and when would we get new orders; to the meticulous packing and shipping of all of our gear, thousands of miles away to Iraq, so we could sit in empty bedrooms waiting for the orders to come down. The military is a hurry up and wait kind of place.
Perhaps, this is how John the baptist felt as he was sitting in prison, soon to be executed. The LORD had called him to preach fiery, desperate, sermons to the apostate Jewish nation. Like the prophets of old, the Spirit of God had stirred up incendiary words within the vagabond prophet’s mouth, which did not make him any friends, but did bring him plenty of foes. To John, the warnings God told him to declare felt grave, pressing, and imminently dire and he certainly was urgent in speaking them. But now, sitting in a dank Jewish prison, John must have wondered when were all of these cascading judgments to come about.
Think about it this way. John was like a traveling geologist who was sent to warn a small mountain village of coming destruction. He had noticed that the rock structures above were unstable and that a deadly rockslide would soon destroy the town. So, he entered the city urgently, warning them, “flee from the disaster that is to come”, but few would listen to him. In fact, they became so annoyed by him, that they arrested him and threw him into the local prison. To add insult to injury, they viciously mocked the poor man, discrediting his “expert” opinion, leaving him to rot in the dampened cell alone. Before long they executed the man, believing his quackery had been disproven, as the city was lulled into a false sense of security and hope. For just a few months later, the deadly landslide consumed them all and there wasn’t a single survivor. This was the kind of ministry John the Baptist was called to. He was called to hurry up and wait.
John and the Prophet of Doom
As we learned last week, Malachi is often called the prophet of doom because of the calamitous prophecy he proclaimed against the belligerent people of God. He warned them that God was going to send a sudden devastation by fire that would overtake the nation (Malachi 3:3). This fire, according to Malachi, would coincide with the appearance of YHWH’s messenger, whom Malachi called “Elijah” (Malachi 3:1). That coming messenger, Jesus tells us, was none other than John the Baptist (Matthew 11:14). This means that John the Baptist would not only prepare the way for the Lord, who would save His people from their sins, but would also warn the rebels of the awful judgment that Christ was going to bring against them. John’s appearing as end-time prophet coincides with Malachi’s imminent eschatological judgment against the Jews.
Why is this so important? Because we tend to think of John the Baptist as Jesus’ eccentric first cousin, who shows up eating grasshoppers, dressed in camel skinned robes, with the role of introducing Jesus to the world. That is kind of true, but it misses the entire theme of imminent judgment that is so carefully woven into the narrative. When John steps onto the scene in Judea, his goal is to warn the people that the Christ has come. For those who repent, they will be saved. For those who resist, they will experience a kind of hell on earth.
John and the End of Apostate Judah
While we don’t have a panoply of quotations from John, we have more than enough information to validate what Malachi says about him, that he is the prophet who will precede imminent judgment. For instance, his father Zechariah (through the Holy Spirit) fully anticipated his boy would grow up to become “the messenger” of destruction foretold by Malachi (Luke 1:76-79). John, himself, believed he was the forerunner of the light-bearing Christ (Malachi 4:2; John 1:6-8, 23), who would bring healing to some and disaster unto others.
We know this was John’s focus, because the tone of his ministry is all about repentance (Luke 3:3; Matthew 3:1).
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The regulative principle of worship suggests and bolsters a regulative principle of everything for the church. Doctrine, order, and doxology are a three-legged stool. When present and sturdy, these legs will bear great weight; when any are missing or compromised, collapse is imminent.

Thesis: No confessional Presbyterian church will long remain confessional or presbyterian if it loses Reformed worship.
First, some definitions:

Confessional: orthodox soteriology and doctrine (especially of God) according to the Reformed confessions
-Presbyterian: government by ordained male (per scripture) elders organized in accountable, graded courts
-Reformed worship: scripturally regulated (RPW), simple, ordinary means of grace worship—a Reformed bucket to carry Reformed water.

Why will unscriptural, man-centered, culturally conditioned, over-contextualized worship undermine confessional orthodoxy? Because worship by its very form (which ought to be according to spirit—uppercase and lowercase— and truth) communicates certain things about the nature of God and man, thus theology proper and anthropology can’t help but be warped by unbiblical worship. Theology proper and biblical anthropology are the foundations of soteriology, which will also be warped by unbiblical (e.g., revivalist or sacerdotal) worship.
Why will unscriptural, man-centered, culturally conditioned, over-contextualized worship undermine biblical, Presbyterian church government? Because free-form, optional, variable worship forms suggest free-form, optional, variable ecclesial forms…or little form at all. And when worship is no longer led by ordained elders, government by ordained elders seems less plausible. Presbyterian order is not hierarchical, but neither is it excessively horizontal. Rolling it out too thin leads to its disintegration.
The regulative principle of worship suggests and bolsters a regulative principle of everything for the church. Doctrine, order, and doxology are a three-legged stool. When present and sturdy, these legs will bear great weight; when any are missing or compromised, collapse is imminent.
Calvin would seem to agree with this thesis according to his famous statement about worship and soteriology in “The Necessity of Reforming the Church” (admittedly written before Presbyterian government was fully developed):
“If it be inquired, then, by what things chiefly the Christian religion has a standing existence amongst us, and maintains its truth, it will be found that the following two not only occupy the principal place, but comprehend under them all the other parts, and consequently the whole substance of Christianity: that is, a knowledge, first, of the mode in which God is duly worshipped; and, secondly, of the source from which salvation is to be obtained. When these are kept out of view, though we may glory in the name of Christians, our profession is empty and vain. After these come the sacraments* and the government of the church, which, as they were instituted for the preservation of these branches of doctrine, ought not to be employed for any other purpose; and, indeed, the only means of ascertaining whether they are administered purely and in due form, or otherwise, is to bring them to this test. If anyone is desirous of a clearer and more familiar illustration, I would say, that rule in the church, the pastoral office, and all other matters of order, resemble the body, whereas the doctrine which regulates the due worship of God, and points out the ground on which the consciences of men must rest their hope of salvation, is the soul which animates the body, renders it lively and active, and, in short, makes it not to be a dead and useless carcass.”
Ultimately, worship is simply more important than we often assume it to be, and we undervalue or modify it into something else to our own peril. Calvin was right to place it first (at least once) and before doctrine/soteriology. He understood its essential, stabilizing role. He also was a true conservative who opposed most change (including change of worship) on principle, unlike evangelicals and even some among the Presbyterian and Reformed of our own day. On his deathbed, Calvin exhorted his fellow pastors in Geneva in 1564:
“I beg you also to change nothing and to avoid innovation, not because I am ambitious to preserve my own (reforming) work…but because all changes are dangerous, and sometimes even harmful.”**
Calvin’s conservative program for worship and the church might be a poor strategy to move books and CDs or sell out a conference, but it may be (since biblical reforms of the 16th and 17th centuries) the best way to preserve biblical order and doctrine.
Brad Isbell is a ruling elder at Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Oak Ridge, TN, co-host of the Presbycast podcast, board member of MORE in the PCA and the Heidelberg Reformation Association, and a co-editor of the Nicotine Theological Journal.
* The sacraments properly figure in both the ecclesiology/order and doxology categories.** Quoted in Scott Manetsch, Calvins’s Company of Pastors, Oxford University Press, p. 1
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