Six Lessons about Worship from The Golden Calf Incident

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I have been reading through Ligon Duncan's book Does God Care How We Worship? in which Duncan makes a case for the regulative principle in worship. The regulative principle, simply stated, is "the corporate worship of God is to be founded upon the specific directions of Scripture" (Derek Thomas, https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/regulative-principle-worship/). I'll likely have more on the regulative principle later, but let it suffice it to say that I believe in the principle as at a fundamental level I believe it is an outworking of the doctrine of sola scriptura, that the Bible is the sole inspired and infallible source of authority for Christian faith and practice.

Six Lessons about Worship

Duncan walks through some key scriptural passages that speak to lessons we learn about God's desires and commands for our worship. In the passage on the golden calf (Exodus 32-34, particularly Exodus 32:1-6) he notes that six applications:

  1. Impatience with God's timing is an enemy of faith.
  2. We cannot choose our own mediator. [God chose Moses; the people chose the golden calf.]
  3. We cannot picture the true God as we wish or will. [Duncan further writes, "The people's request seems to be not a request for a different god, a god other than Yahweh, but rather a representation of him (or of the mediator)."
  4. We cannot worship the true God and something else.
  5. We cannot worship the true God except in the way he commands.
  6. False worship leads to false living and immorality.
These observations bear directly on how we join in corporate worship together and what we do and don't do as a church in our worship services. They may helpfully explain why we are careful not to have representations of God in our worship. There is spiritual danger in doing this, and since our deep and sincere longing is to worship the one true God, we are careful to worship God as He has revealed Himself not as we wish or imagine Him to be.

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