Mission: How Does The Church Worship God?

Well, good morning again, everyone. As we mentioned earlier, this won't be our last Saturday morning service as a church. But I was, I'll tell you, as I began preparing for this sermon at the beginning of the week, I was so excited to be able to say that I was going to be preaching the final Saturday morning service in the young life of the Shepherds Church.

But nevertheless, although that won't be the case, it's one of the last ones. So I have that to keep in my pocket. And we can still rejoice that even though we're meeting on a Saturday morning, and this won't be the last one, that God's here with us anyways, right?

Because we come, we don't come, God's not here with us because we come on Sunday morning, right? He's here with us because we come in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, amen. Last week, Pastor Kendall, in our sort of two-week little mini-exposition of the Shepherds Church mission statement, gave us a high-level overview of the biblical imperative for man to glorify the glorious God of all creation.

He mentioned the first question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which I think is a great question and a great place for us to start. It summarily answers the question, what is the chief end of man?

What is man's purpose in life? With a statement based on the entire witness of the scripture, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. And again, this distinct question and answer, it's a fair summary of all that we know about God, that He is glorious, that He's perfect in all of His attributes.

And therefore, because He is glorious and perfect, He is worthy of our worship and of our praise and of our glorifying of Him. But how do we do that? How do we glorify God as a church? How do we give glory to Him when this God is already glorious, just by the virtue of His attributes?

And again, how do we do this together as a church? Well, first of all, again, as Kendall covered last week, we do it together. The word translated as church in the New Testament is the word ekklesia, which literally means an assembly, a gathering, a community.

And so in order to be the church of God, we are quite literally required to assemble with one another. We can't be a church that gives glory to God unless we're a church in the first place, unless we're an assembly, a gathering with one another.

But today, we're going to take that a step further. We know that that's our purpose, is to glorify God and to do it together as the church. But how do we, as an assembly, as a church, how do we practically glorify God?

Again, that's what we're going to dig into this morning. But before we can answer that question, I think that we must understand something first about God, that God requires worship of Him to be done in a certain way.

And I want to show this by going to what's going to be our base text for this morning. It's going to be Leviticus chapter 9, verse 1, through chapter 10, verse 3. I'll read these verses this morning. It's about 27 verses or so, so if you want to read along, it might be helpful.

But again, I will read the whole chapter and then the first three verses of chapter 10. Hear the word of the Lord this morning. Now it came about on the eighth day that Moses called Aaron and his sons and the elders of Israel.

And he said to Aaron, take for yourself a calf, a bull for a sin offering, and a ram for a burnt offering, both without defect, and offer them before the Lord. Then to the sons of Israel you shall speak, saying, take a male goat for a sin offering, and a calf and a lamb, both one year old, without defect, for a burnt offering, and an ox and a ram for peace offerings to sacrifice before the Lord, and a grain offering mixed with oil, for today the Lord will appear to you.

So they took what Moses had commanded to the front of the tent of meeting, and the whole congregation came near and stood before the Lord. Moses said, this is the thing which the Lord has commanded you to do, that the glory of the Lord may appear to you.

Moses then said to Aaron, come near to the altar and offer your sin offering and your burnt offering, that you may make atonement for yourself and for the people. Then make the offering for the people, that you may make atonement for them, just as the Lord has commanded.

And so Aaron came near to the altar and slaughtered the calf of the sin offering, which was for himself. Aaron's sons presented the blood to him, and he dipped his finger in the blood and put some on the horns of the altar, and poured out the rest of the blood at the base of the altar.

The fat in the kidneys and the lobe of the liver of the sin offering, he then offered up in smoke on the altar, just as the Lord had commanded Moses. The flesh in the skin, however, he burned with fire outside the camp.

Then he slaughtered the burnt offering, and Aaron's sons handed the blood to him, and he sprinkled it around on the altar. They handed the burnt offering to him in pieces with the head, and he offered them up in smoke on the altar.

He also washed the entrails and the legs, and offered them up in smoke with the burnt offering on the altar. Then he presented the people's offering, and took the goat of the sin offering, which was for the people, and slaughtered it and offered it for sin like the first.

He also presented the burnt offering and offered it according to the ordinance. Next, he presented the grain offering and filled his hand with some of it and offered it up in smoke on the altar, besides the burnt offering of the morning.

Then he slaughtered the ox and the ram, the sacrifice of peace offerings, which was for the people. And Aaron's sons handed the blood to him, and he sprinkled it around on the altar. As for the portions of fat from the ox and from the ram, the fat tail and the fat covering, and the kidneys and the lobe of the liver, they now place the portions of fat on the breasts, and he offered them up in smoke on the altar.

But the breasts and the right thigh, Aaron presented as a wave offering before the Lord, just as Moses had commanded. Then Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them, and he stepped down after making the sin offering and the burnt offering and the peace offerings.

Moses and Aaron went into the tents of meeting. When they came out and blessed the people, the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people. Then fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the portions of fat on the altar.

And when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces. Chapter 10, verse 1, now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans, and after putting fire in them, placed incense on it, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them.

And fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. And Moses said to Aaron, it is what the Lord spoke, saying, by those who come near me, I will be treated as holy, and before all the people, I will be honored.

So Aaron, therefore, kept silent. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for its instruction to us as a church and as individuals, Lord, that though these stories that we read, this history of Israel that we read, may be difficult for us to take in, just with the context being so far removed from our time, where we thank you that, nevertheless, you have given to us in Christ an explanation of these things, Lord.

In the law that Moses gave, Lord, we have pictures and shadows of who you are, but in Christ, you have the Father who no one has ever seen has been explained, has been made known, Lord, and so we thank you for your written word and for the word made flesh, Lord, that gives us understanding.

We pray that your spirit, as we consider this text this morning and the things that we're thinking and talking through right now as a church, Lord, that you would help us to understand, Lord, to be encouraged and challenged, strengthened for the work ahead.

Lord, help to rid us of any distractions that might prevent us from, or that might seek to take away from what you would teach us this morning. Lord, help us to be focused on you, our eyes fixated on heaven in our time together today.

We pray in Christ's name, amen. Excuse me. All right, so, Leviticus chapter 9 through chapter 10, verse 3, what we see here at play is God's regulation of how he will be worshipped. You know, as Christians, we know foundationally already that God the Father will only be worshipped through the Son, Jesus Christ, all right?

By no other name under heaven can man know or worship or glorify God, and yet we see here that there is even more still required to rightly worship and to glorify this holy God. You know, in the Old Testament age, in Leviticus, as we just read, God had set apart Israel as his people to worship him, and they did so through the ministry of the temple and the tabernacle and the sacrificial system, and these things serve as the pre-incarnation, the pre-coming of Christ, shadows of him.

You know, the temple and the tabernacle and the sacrifices are Old Testament forms of the Son through which God must be worshipped, and yet in this text, we see Nadab and Abihu offer sacrifices on the altar, and this is exactly the right place to offer sacrifices, the exact right thing to do at that place, and yet they do not offer the right type of sacrifice and what happens to them?

God rejects their sacrifice, right? He rejects their worship as counterfeit. They offered strange fire, the text calls it, which God had not commanded them to offer, and fire comes out from the presence of the Lord and consumes them and kills them, and now we may be sitting here thinking that this, you know, this seems a bit extreme.

You know, perhaps this is how God related to his people in the age of Israel, right, but in the age of grace, in the age of the New Testament, which we live in, that surely God does not think that, think this way about our worship, and this is a common position in the Christian church today.

I'd say it's predominant. Churches and pastors will often point to passages in the New Testament like 1 Corinthians chapters 9 and 10. You know, they'll highlight statements like being all things to all men or in chapter 10 verse 31 of 1 Corinthians that whether then you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

And this is done as a means of stretching, right, what is a true statement, that God no longer requires worship of him to be done in the hyper-specific ceremonial ways prescribed in the Old Testament, right?

This is a true statement, but it is stretched into what I would say is a biblically uncorroborated inference, right? That God, because we are no longer under the sacrificial system of Israel, that God now allows for us to worship him however we deem to be fitting.

That as long as it's done in the belief of the name of Jesus and doesn't violate anything that's expressly forbidden in the Bible, then it should be okay. And this approach that I'm describing is called the normative principle of worship.

And again, I'd say it's the predominant view of worship in most churches, particularly in America today. But I want to take a moment to tell you why I think that that's wrong. While I agree, of course, that it's true that the ceremonial law of the Old Testament has been fulfilled in Christ, and therefore we're not required, right, as we saw Aaron and his sons had to do, you know, to make sacrifices on our own behalf and then on the people's behalf in order to approach God.

I remember we read Hebrews 10, 14 already. It's for by one offering, Christ's death, that we're perfected for all time. God has perfected us for all time. So while that is true, I do not believe, right, that the requirement that we see in Leviticus chapter 9, that as we approach God, we have to honor him in the ways that he has commanded.

I do not believe that that has been voided, as a normative principle might say. Do you see the distinction there? It might be subtle, but to say it another way is that while we have unmitigated access to the Father through the Son here in this New Testament age, we do not have free reign in his presence.

And this is called the regulative principle of worship compared to the normative, where the church in its worship and in its glorification of God cannot choose its means of worship, but rather must worship God in the ways that he has commanded them to worship, or the ways that he has regulated the worship to be.

And again, I think we see this revealed about God's character in this passage from Leviticus, that while Nadab and Abihu are Israelites, they're Levites, they're sons of Aaron, they are welcomed in the presence of God by sacrifice.

They are supposed to be there. But in his presence, they offered strange fire, something which the Lord did not command them to do. And this is the wording of the text. It says the Lord did not command them to bring this.

It doesn't say that the Lord said that they can't bring this. It's just that he didn't command them to bring it. We see that even if someone is welcomed into God's presence, they're not permitted to do that which they have not been commanded to do.

Even if he doesn't say don't do it, we don't get to do it unless he tells us to do it. A lot of short words there. And I do not believe, again, and I certainly don't see a biblical merit to the idea that God has changed his position on this from the time of Nadab and Abihu.

With Christ, we don't see the abolishing of the law. We see its fulfillment, right? God does not cease to regulate how he's worshiped by sending Christ. He is given further explanation of it through Christ.

God is to be worshiped in spirit and in truth. God hasn't changed at all. Our understanding of him has grown. John tells us in chapter 1 of his gospel that no one has seen God at any time. The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, he, Christ, has explained him.

He has made him known. So we have greater understanding of who God is. We don't have an abolishment of these characteristics of God that we see in the Old Testament. And so then if it's true that God still requires of us a regulated worship of him, what does that good and faithful worship look like?

And again, we've said already that all faithful worship must begin with the truth that there is one mediator between God and man, it's Jesus Christ. We cannot worship God truly if we do not do so in the name of his Son.

Any worship, even purely faithful to the rest of what we're going to talk about here this morning, that does not begin with Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, the Son of God, it cannot be faithful worship.

But again, in the practical sense, what are the regulations that God has set forth for the church to walk in as we worship him? Now, most of you are familiar with, again, the basis of our study of these past two weeks with our mission statement.

You already know what these points are going to be, but I'm going to say them anyways just to kind of prepare us. It's that we exist to glorify God together through the preaching, singing, hearing, and doing of his word.

The Preaching of the Gospel as the Church's First Act of Worship

The first one, I think, is an obvious one. The church exists to glorify God through the preaching of his word. There are few things as important to the faithful church as the pure preaching of the gospel, because its impact is felt in numerous ways, each of which bring great glory to God.

First of all, the preaching of the gospel saves the called, saves the elect. Romans 1, verse 16 says, the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. Men and women, as they hear and understand the gospel, are saved from their sin and brought into right relationship with God.

And this salvation, of course, glorifies God, not the repentant sinner for the decision that they made. It glorifies God, because as we look at verse 17, the next verse in Romans 1, it says, in it, in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.

The righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel when someone responds in faith, because in the gospel, this righteousness of God is imputed or given by faith to the sinner. God is glorified when someone is saved by the gospel, because it's the ultimate display that man could never accomplish the righteousness required.

But it must be given to him by the righteous and merciful God. And so the gospel is the power of God to save. And the preaching of the gospel is the means. Looking at Romans chapter 10, verse 14, how then will they call on him who they have not believed?

How will they believe in him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? God uses the preaching of men to reveal the great power of the cross to those who would hear and believe.

And so this is an essential, essential ministry of the church. And it is God glorifying. And a second way that pure gospel preaching is used in the church to glorify God is the edification of believers.

If the preaching of the gospel were only effectual for unbelievers, people yet to be saved, then there would be no need for it in the life of the church. It would just be an evangelistic tool. But we know that the gospel, and thereby the preaching of the gospel, is vital to the Christian life.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 that God has chosen to use the foolishness of preaching, specifically the foolishness of preaching the word of the cross, because to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

In the Spirit's ongoing salvific ministry within each of us, he is using the preaching of the word of the cross to build us up and to set us apart from the world. Jesus says in John 17 as he prays to the Father that God would sanctify us in the truth.

Your word is a truth. And so the preaching of the word, God uses to set apart, to continue to set apart his church. And we see in Ephesians chapter 4, another great example here that Paul writes of the ministry of the word in the life of the church.

He talks about pastors, teachers given to the church. And he says that it's for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

As a result, we're no longer children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

A word of God builds up the church of God in love. This is the ministry of the word and the preaching of the word within the church. And this gives great glory to God. And so God saves the called with the preaching of the gospel, and he edifies and grows and strengthens them with it as well.

And so by committing ourselves to the preaching of God's word as a church, we are committing ourselves to glorifying him and to him and him alone, so long as we preach Christ crucified. For he is the power of God.

He is the wisdom of God, even if the world would mock the message of the gospel because they think it's foolish. It's our reliance upon the truth and our reliance upon the power of God revealed in preaching the gospel that gives glory to him.

So preaching has a very important role in the church. It is a vital ministry that God has commanded us to do to give glory to him. And moving on, we have our second point of emphasis here as the church gives glory to God.

Paul says a little later in Ephesians 4 that we're to let no unwholesome word proceed from our mouths, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment so that it would give grace to those who hear.

And we, of course, can apply this to preaching, right? We can apply it to our interactions with one another. Then there's another important moment in each of our gatherings when we open our mouths and words pour out, hopefully, is when we sing, right?

This is a vital moment in the life of the church as it gathers because we're commanded, again, to commit ourselves to glorifying God in this way, even if we aren't always so sure that our singing is gonna give grace to those who might hear it.

You know, we are still commanded to do it. Now, music and music ministry, music ministry is, you know, there's something that a lot of churches spend a lot of time focusing on. There's a lot of money invested and money made by churches in an effort to produce new music across, you know, many genres to be played on the radio, to be played in other churches, in their gatherings, and to grow fan bases for concerts and tours, all that sort of stuff.

And what I wanna be clear about as we talk about singing is, and we don't have too much time to go too deeply into each of these topics here this morning because we're covering all four, but I wanna be clear about a distinction here between the music we may hear on Christian radio or that, you know, might be more popular today and singing in the church.

These are two separate things. Again, difference between kind of Christian music as an entity and singing within the congregation as an activity that is important to Christian ministry. You know, the music we hear on Christian radio, it's, again, it's often overproduced, you know, very emotional, unnecessarily sometimes repetitive, I think personally, maybe that's just me, but awfully similar in style and in sound to the modern sort of top 40, to pop music.

And church bands and Christian musicians, they do this for a number of reasons, you know. It could range from, you know, the more honorable kind of means of reaching more people to maybe the less honorable, you know, this is just the sound that people like and so that's why we do it.

But again, singing in the church is to be a very different thing than what, you know, what I just described as far as the music industry. Singing in the church, like the preaching, it ought to be entirely reliant upon the foolishness of God, not the wisdom of men.

The world does not decide if the music we sing in the church is good enough or worth coming back for, you know, or if it gives off the right feelings or emotions. Rather, the adherence of the music to the pure gospel is the determining factor, all right.

And this is not to say that singing in the church shouldn't be good, that it's not allowed to be good according to outsider standards, but only that that standard is not only less relevant, it's not really relevant at all, right, to whether or not we do it.

It has no bearing in advising a church on how it should approach, you know, the singing portions of its gathering. The church of God worships him in spirit and in truth, right, not in feelings or in skill.

You know, therefore, the singing that occurs within the context of the local church must begin with a mind that is focused on the spiritual things of God, not emotive responses to guitar riffs or to dim lighting.

Right, so we are only able to worship what we know. Jesus tells us this, tells us the woman at the well in John chapter four. It's not driven by our feelings, it's driven by what we know. Now, that is really, that point is really true for all forms of worship, so I don't wanna get too bogged down in it, right, that all worship must be done in spirit and truth.

It's not exclusive to music and to singing, so I do digress a little, but when it comes to singing, again, we are commanded to do this in scripture in the ways that God has, in the ways that God prescribes, which is why, you know, why we and most any other church will have singing as an important part of a gathering, and nowhere really do we see quite as many examples of not only the admonition to sing to God, but even instances and examples of that singing to God actually happening than in the book of Psalms.

So I wanna read Psalm 100 again. We read it as we started this morning, but verses one and two, with it being Thanksgiving week, we probably have all read these verses several times over the last few days.

This is a Psalm of Thanksgiving, but it says, Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before him with joyful singing. Know that the Lord himself is God. It is he who has made us, and not we ourselves.

I'm gonna read the whole Psalm. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him. Bless his name, for the Lord is good. His love and kindness is everlasting, and his faithfulness to all generations.

God commands us to sing as we come before him, because it is a loud, observable expression of our thanksgiving to him. When we sing, what we're doing is inviting everyone with an earshot to hear the joy that we have to be counted as a sheep in the pasture of God.

Verse three, we are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving. We are to be thankful, and people should know that we are thankful by the ways that we sing to be a sheep in the pasture of God, the creator of all the world.

And this isn't just for the band, right? This is for all the people to sing, to rejoice. And when we sing, like in preaching, we're growing, right? Colossians 3 .16 says to let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Music sticks with us, right? We don't all walk out of here every week repeating the same punchline that Kendall, a pithy punchline that Kendall had, but maybe we do walk out singing the songs that we sang that day, repeating that refrain.

And so let the word of Christ richly dwell within you. Music helps to do this. And so we grow when we sing together. We have the opportunity to have faithful, Christ-centered music dwell within our hearts all the time.

And so singing is a vital ministry within the church in our obedience to the commands that God has given to us, to come before him with a joyful noise. If we're going to be obedient to that command, if we're going to do, when we go into God's presence, do what he commanded us to do, we're gonna be a singing church.

Because it brings glory to God. So we glorify God with our preaching, we glorify God with our singing, but we don't only glorify God in our gathering time with our mouths, we also do it with our ears.

Hearing the Words of Christ as an Act of Faith

So as we hear, we are also glorifying God as a church. You know, there are a lot of voices in the world that we could choose to listen to, choose to follow, but for the Christian, only the words of eternal life will do.

Like Peter, when he testifies to Jesus being the Christ, you know, we say, to whom shall we go, Lord? You have words of eternal life. By listening and submitting ourselves to the words of Christ, we're collectively saying that we don't look to anything that this world has to offer us.

We look to the eternal Christ. And even though the teaching may be difficult at times, we know that he is the Holy One of God. Where else would we go? And Jesus tells us in John chapter 10, verse 27, that my sheep hear my voice and they follow me.

At the true church, the true Christian is marked by his or her distinct inclination towards the words of Christ. Nothing else will do. And there's something profound about submitting to the words of someone else, especially as independent adults, right?

Something very profound to submit ourselves to other people. Because when we do it, we give a great deal of authority to the one that we're listening to, right? Whether it's children listening to parents or students listening to teachers, when one is the hearer in an interaction, the other one is kind of in charge, right?

They're controlling the situation. And the hearer is allowing that, that is submitting to that. And this idea is incredibly important to the Christian life because the Christian life is one of being a follower of Christ, being his disciple.

And disciple literally means a student. We're coming under the discipline, we're coming under the teaching of our great teacher. And so Christians, first and foremost, I think must be hearers from the very outset of our faith.

We know that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. Christians hear from God in his word through its preaching, through its singing. And then through our hearing, our faith grows as we're being saved, that we can live in the confidence and in the assurance of the promises of the gospel, right?

And so our listening is not just some passive thing that we do as the pastor preaches and the band sings while we all sit in the pews, right? Rather, our listening is an active display of faith. And it's a faith that says that I believe that it's only the word of God that can save me and give me everything that I need for life and godliness.

God is greatly glorified when we listen to him. We set aside the things of this life and the many lies that the world would tell us and we sit at the feet of Jesus Christ and just hear what he has for us.

God is glorified in this when the church is a church that hears, that listens. Now having said that, that we're hearers first and foremost, there is a step that follows that, right? We have to keep in mind that the Christian life and the life of the church doesn't stop at hearing, but as James tells us, prove yourselves doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves.

The true church of Christ doesn't just gather around each other to preach a sermon and sing some songs and listen closely to whoever's speaking and then just go on about our lives afterwards as if nothing really happened.

The church of Christ, when it gathers, gathers around the life-giving word of God and so that as we go, we go edified. We go encouraged and challenged and we go strengthened to do the work of the ministry.

And ministry in the church isn't the job of the pastor and of the band and for us while we go to Sunday service or Saturday morning service. Ministry in the church goes beyond the four walls of this building and every one of us is called to participate in it.

Now if you listen to this, a portion of a parable Jesus tells the Pharisees in Matthew 21 beginning in verse 28. He says, but what do you think? A man had two sons and he came to the first and said, son, go work today in the vineyard and he answered, I will not.

But afterward he regretted it and went. The man came to the second and said the same thing and he answered, I will, sir, but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father? And it was the first, of course, right, in this parable.

The point is that we don't truly hear the word of the Father unless we heed it, right? We can listen to a lot of sermons, a lot of music, but if it's not changing our lives, it's not causing us to do something about it, are we really understanding it, are we really comprehending it?

And so this doing of the word, right, this last of our four kind of points here, it happens in a few ways. And I'm gonna briefly go through some of these, but I won't labor on each of these points too much just because they do deserve a lot of consideration.

But first of all, in the church, right, when we gather together and as a church family, we do the word when we adhere to God's commands and how we're to worship him as we're discussing today, right, when we do what God has told us to do as a church, then we are doing the word.

But we also do the word when we observe the sacraments, biblical sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. And we do these in biblical ways, right? There are a lot of churches that do these things, but they don't do them in necessarily biblical ways.

So when we do them in biblical ways, we are doing the word. And further in the church, when we exercise faithful forms of church discipline, they're abounding in grace and love and mercy. Now, these are incredibly, incredibly important ministries and aspects of church life that it's the God's word, the Bible requires us to do as a church.

And each one, again, each of those deserve considerable examination, I think. I mean, I wish that we could do a week on each one, and maybe one day Kendall will want to do that, but for now. We have only so much time in the day.

But in the world also, so beyond the church and church life in the world, we do the word as we live our lives, right, in a manner that's worthy of the gospel, Philippians chapter one. As a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God, Romans 12, we go into all the world preaching the gospel.