There are great departures from this. The Church of England holds synods and people get together and they decide what they will do. A few of them consult the word of God. They make up their mind, even on what is moral and what is not moral, and often will say something which the Scripture says is wrong, is right after all, and they will discuss and debate these things as if they had the right to do so, as if they had the brains to do so, as if they had the spiritual knowledge to determine God’s affairs for him. The word of God is the sole authority for spiritual matters (John 14:26; 16:13; Jude 1:3). So when somebody gets up today and says, God has inspired me to tell you this, he is deluded. He may seem to be earnest, a nice, kind person, but he is deluded, because the Scripture makes it quite plain that all authoritative truth is concluded, given, within the canon of Scripture.
There is great carelessness also in evangelical churches sometimes these days: people innovating, bringing in all kinds of gimmicks, and man’s ideas. We don't have that liberty. ‘That thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God.’ That isn't just about sitting still and listening and showing reverence during the service; it’s about the methods we employ, the way we worship, the way we organize things, how everything should be structured and done. It is God's church and the elders and the deacons are custodians of his truth. They are to keep the church absolutely loyal to the written word of God, to guard it, to defend it, and to see that its rules and requirements are carried out in all our lives. This is the foundation of all reformation, all conforming and ordering of churches to the standards of God’s word. But there is something that the pastor must have clearly in his mind before he begins. He needs a certain attitude, a certain realisation, a certain mind-set. That must be sorted out first. This is the church of the living God. It isn’t ours, to do as we please with, to shape as we think fit from our own human judgement and intellects. We have to conform to his pattern, his word. These words are very strong.
Sometimes you go into a church – and it may be reasonably conservative in some ways in its methods – but things are so trivial. There is no greatness, no grandness, no glory; everything is made informal and trivial. That is not the picture of a great temple with its elegant pillars. This is to be worthy, the things we do, and noble, and grand, and distinctive.
We must be careful with our language. Sometimes we say, this is our church. Well, let's say that, by all means – it gives us a strong sense of belonging – but let's be careful we don't mean too much by that expression. Actually it isn't our church to rule or to do as we please in. It is God's church, and Christ has purchased it with his precious blood, and God has built it and designed it, and he inhabits it. If we want the eternal God by his Spirit to come and inhabit us so that we feel his presence and his power, this had better be a house of God which is to his liking. This had better be a congregation which is fashioned and arranged exactly as he has commanded it to be.
‘How thou oughtest to behave thyself.’ He writes about things that are absolutely binding upon us as Christians. You may not adjust them, take away from them, add to them. If you do, it's a sin against the Spirit, a sin against the word. This is not just about external behaviour, this is about how you conduct yourself as Christians: how you witness, how you are organized, how you worship. There are rules and provisions, and it is obvious why there needs to be. There have been good people in the Church of England down the centuries, and even today there are some who believe the gospel and love the Lord. But as a church, it has gone far from the Scripture. Even the Thirty-Nine Articles give liberty to change all sorts of things, to change worship from time to time. As long as what you do is not ‘repugnant to the word of God’ (against it), you can do whatever seems good to you. Firstly, that's not the same as doing what the word of God tells you to do. You've handed yourself an awful lot of liberty. But secondly, those articles are ignored and Anglicans do no end of things that are against the word of God.
Even within Presbyterians there is a very curious basis for how the church is organized in that they say in their formulas that what is important is to go by the word of God in worship. So far, so good. But what about the other things? What about the way you conduct your witness? The way you govern your church? You can use common sense on all those things, they say. But that's not good enough.
Latimer was a bishop and on one occasion at Canterbury, it was announced that the king would be present at the service, and Latimer was to preach. And famously he started his sermon in a somewhat theatrical way. In a very loud stage whisper for all to hear, he said to himself, ‘Latimer, Latimer, be careful what you say; the King of England is here.’ And then after a pause, he said, ‘Latimer, be careful what you say; the King of kings is here’, and he preached, defending his position, no matter what the king thought.’
The church doesn’t make the truth. The Catholics say it does; they get this verse all wrong. They say, ‘The church is the pillar and ground of the truth, in the sense that the church came first, and from the church came the epistles and the word of God. So the church came first; the church is therefore more important than the word, and what the pope says, and the clergy say, has more weight than what the Bible says.’ That is not the implication of these verses, because the true foundation of the church is the word. But in a sense the church also is a base, because it is the defender of the word on earth.