The Covenant Renewed (Pt 2)

The Puritan Matthew Henry wrote, serious godliness is a continual feast and joy in God always.

Serious godliness is a continual feast and it is joy in God always.

Some years later, A .W. Pink would write a similar statement where he says, there is no greater privilege enjoyed on earth than for God's saints to be gathered together in festive assembly around himself.

We have just completed a time of year, gone through a time of year together where one of the main ideas, the main themes that continues to be thrown around, not in just the

Christian world, but in the world in general, is the theme or concept of joy.

For most of the world, that term simply means happiness. It means this temporary, ephemeral thing that they find in a fleeting moment and that passes just as quickly.

For believers, however, when we think of the idea or the theme or the term joy, there is a much deeper truth to be found.

You see, the world sees joy as something that is fleeting, a mere emotion because it is being based on things that are temporary, things that don't last.

Whereas for believers, our joy finds its foundation in the work and the eternal redemptive plan of God to reconcile his people to himself.

In the book, The Valley of Vision, the editor Arthur Bennett pulls together the writings of various Puritans into different prayers and poems.

And you should be by now familiar with them because often we have used the prayers in A Valley of Vision as the foundation for some of the prayers that we have prayed as a congregation.

This morning, however, I wanna share with you a writing directly out of the book.

The writing is entitled A Calliloquy on Rejoicing.

Now, if you're unfamiliar with that term, calliloquy, it's okay, I was too. I had to look it up and see exactly what in the world a calliloquy was.

And a calliloquy, according to the dictionary, is a conversation or a serious conference.

If you were to reference the Oxford Dictionary, it actually adds a gathering for discussion of theological questions.

And so this writing is written in the manner of an individual having a conversation with themselves, with their own soul.

And it is a soul, an individual that is dealing with many of the things that we deal with in our everyday life.

This is how it reads. Remember, oh my soul, it is thy duty and privilege to rejoice in God.

He requires it of thee for all his favors of grace. Rejoice then in the giver and his goodness.

Be happy in him, oh my heart, and in nothing but God for whatever a man trusts in, from that he expects happiness.

He who is the ground of thy faith should be the substance of thy joy.

Whence then comes heaviness and dejection when sown into thee, promised by the

Father, bestowed by the Son, enwrapped by the Holy Spirit, thine by grace, thy birthright in believing is joy.

Art thou seeking to rejoice in thyself from an evil motive of pride and self -reputation?

Thou hast nothing of thine own but sin, nothing to move

God to be gracious or to continue his grace towards thee. If thou forget this, thou wilt lose thy joy.

Art thou grieving under a sense of indwelling sin? Let godly sorrow work repentance as the true spirit which the

Lord blesses and which creates fullest joy. Sorrow for self opens rejoicing in God.

Self -loathing draws down divine delights. Hast thou sought joys in some creature comfort?

Look not below God for happiness. Fall not asleep in Delilah's lap.

Let God be all in all to thee and joy in the fountain that is always full.

The reason that I wanted to share that particular writing with you is because it reminds me of the place where Israel stands now before God.

If you'll recall the covenant that they had made with God just month and a half earlier has been shattered by their sin, broken, and as a result, their joy suffers.

But God, but God is infinite in his goodness and his mercy provides just like Israel.

When you and I are not living in accordance with the word of God, in accordance with his commands, our joy can suffer as well unless, unless we remember that our joy is not based off of what we have done, nor is it based off of what we are doing, but what

God has done, what he has accomplished, what he has ordained, what the son completed on the cross and the

Holy Spirit is doing and sustaining in you even today. That is the foundation of your joy.

A few weeks ago, when we first looked at this particular passage, we saw that Israel's recollection with God was not achieved by their repentance, by their obedience or by their resolve.

It was completed by nothing less than the sovereign grace of God alone.

That it was only by his hand, the covenant that was shattered by sin, he renewed in mercy.

A people deserving judgment were restored, not because they acted, but because God acted.

Moses stood on Sinai not as a negotiator, but as a mediator for a people who could not reconcile themselves to God.

We saw that God alone cuts the covenant. God alone is the performer of the wondrous works.

God alone writes his law. And then we began to see that from that reconciliation flows a necessary response.

And we talked about how that same reconciliation that occurred between Israel and God occurs in Christ as he draws his people to himself.

And that in our lives, as we live reconciled, we should be experiencing and seeing the same fruit that Israel saw and God expected from them.

We should see obedience as a marker in our life, not the end goal, but what we are doing along the way.

We should see holiness as a marker in our life.

Again, not our end goal because God is working for the end, but he is bringing us along.

And these are the things that as a changed person, we should be witnessing. Ultimately, right worship.

Right worship marks the life of a person who has been truly reconciled.

The question that was asked by Israel or asked by God of Israel, the question that is asked of us by God and really should be asked of us by ourselves is how then as reconciled people, how then shall we live?

So we come to the second part of this, where God continues to answer that question.

If you recall, we looked at obedience and we looked at holiness. And this week, we will turn our attention to worship.

As we do so, we need to be well reminded that God did not leave his people without instruction.

He did not leave us to make this up as we go. He did not leave this to perform at our whim.

He left us with instructions. He left us as a people who by grace obedience has been established.

Oftentimes we hear that we no longer have to be obedient because we're believers.

We're no longer under any kind of obligation. The truth is you and I are all still debtors.

We are debtors to God. And as debtors to God, we live for him because of what he has done.

In our text, the Lord sets before Israel the rhythms of an obedient life, the boundaries of a holy life, but he also goes on to define what right worship looks like in that life.

And as you'll see, as we work through the remainder of our passage, holiness and obedience play into right worship.

They're necessary components, but we need to be clear that these commands do not earn the favor of God.

Your obedience, your holiness, your right worship is not an effort to earn his favor.

It is a response from what he has already done. It is what covenant life looks like when a holy

God dwells with his redeemed people. And as believers, the

Holy Spirit dwells within you. As the

Holy Spirit dwells within you, God dwells with you and you have to be transformed.

This takes us to our text for today. And today, as we return once again to Exodus chapter 34, this morning we will read verses 10 down through 28, but our focus will be from verse 17 through verse 26, the rest of the text being covered in our previous message.

So if you will, turn with me in your copy of God's word to Exodus chapter 34, and having found your place, please stand in reverence for the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, complete, authoritative, sufficient, and certain word.

As we read from the word of God in Exodus chapter 34, beginning in the 10th verse, we read thus.

Then God said, behold, I am going to cut a covenant. Before all your people,

I will do wondrous deeds which have not been created in all the earth nor among any of the nations, and all the people among whom you live will see the working of Yahweh, for it is a fearful thing that I am going to do with you.

Be sure to keep what I am commanding you this day. Behold, I am going to drive out the

Amorite before you and the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the

Hivite, and the Jebusite. Beware, lest you cut a covenant with the inhabitants of the land into which you are going, lest it become a snare in your midst.

But rather, you are to tear down their altars and shatter their sacred pillars and cut down their ashram.

For you shall not worship any other God. For Yahweh, whose name is

Jealous, is a jealous God. Lest you cut a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they play the harlot with their gods and sacrifice to their gods, and one of them invite you to eat of his sacrifice.

And you take some of his daughters for your sons, and his daughters play the harlot with their gods, and cause your sons also to play the harlot with their gods.

You shall make for yourself no molten gods. You shall keep the feast of unleavened bread.

For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, which I commanded you at the appointed time in the month of Abib.

For in the month of Abib, it came out of Egypt. The first offspring from every womb belongs to me.

Even of all your male livestock, the first offspring from cattle and sheep.

And you shall redeem with a lamb, the first offspring from a donkey.

And if you do not redeem it, then you shall break its neck. You shall redeem all the firstborn of your sons.

None shall appear before me empty -handed. You shall work six days, but on the seventh day, you shall rest, even during plowing time, and harvest you shall rest.

You shall celebrate the feast of weeks, that is the first fruits of the wheat harvest, and the feast of in -gathering at the turn of the year.

Three times a year, all your males are to appear before the Lord Yahweh, the

God of Israel. For I will dispossess nations before you and enlarge your borders, and no man shall covet your land when you go up three times a year to appear before Yahweh, your

God. You shall not offer the blood of sacrifice with leavened bread, and the sacrifice of the feast of Passover shall not be left over until morning.

You shall bring the very first fruits of the ground into the house of Yahweh, your

God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk. Then Yahweh said to Moses, write down these words.

For in accordance with these words, I have cut a covenant with you and with Israel.

So he was there with Yahweh 40 days and 40 nights. He did not eat bread or drink water, and he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the 10 commandments.

Our prayer this morning is adapted from a prayer by Herman Wistos entitled, I Will Cling to You.

Most gracious Heavenly Father, from eternity, oh

Lord, did you set your thoughts upon us to bring glory to yourself through a people so undeserving.

We are less than nothing before you, yet we will keep you always before our eyes and treasure you in our hearts.

We delight to meditate on you, and together as your people, we cry out, how precious are your thoughts to us, oh

God. How vast is the sum of them with true repentance.

We grieve the countless hours, the days, the weeks, the years that have passed without holy and pleasing thoughts of you, or did you out of sheer mercy and love choose us for salvation?

Then we submit to you as our Lord and our King, the portion of our souls, our chief, our only delight.

Lord, we pray that by your spirit, you draw us into a love that surpasses all understanding and that we love you in return with all of our hearts, all of our minds, all of our strengths, that you grant us assurance, not to make us careless, but to make us pure.

Lord, you have honored us beyond measure by calling us your children. You make this known by pouring your love into our hearts through the

Holy Spirit, or we pray today that you empty us of everything else, that we may be filled with you and you alone.

That our life together be marked by love, by worship, by obedience, and by joy in you to the utmost of the strength that you supply.

Father, we cling to you as we pray all of these things in the name of our blessed Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen. You may be seated. In our first message in verses 10 through 28, where we actually focused in on verses 10 through 16, and then 27 and 28, we talked about what it meant to be a truly reconciled people.

And we will carry that theme through today because it is still instructions regarding being a reconciled people.

Today, we look at worship in the life of a believer.

But each one of these three main themes, obedience, holiness, worship, are a part of our lives, again, not as a means to obtain salvation, but rather as things that flow from salvation, as a result of what has already been accomplished and guaranteed in our life.

That is why we flow into obedience, and we flow into a life of holiness, and we flow into a life of worship.

Not because we wanna get something, but because of what has already been given to us.

The reason I wanna stress this is because, in truth, much of today's church is opposed to that particular message.

Much of today's church would actually say that our demands for obedience and holiness and right worship are legalistic in an effort to obtain salvation, when the truth of the matter is, is it's what scripture tells us should come out, and that obedience and holiness and right worship are defined by God, versus what most of the world and the church wants to believe, that obedience and holiness and right worship is defined by the individuals.

When we have that viewpoint, the viewpoint of it's subject to each particular individual's wishes and desires and preferences regarding obedience, regarding holiness and regarding worship, what we end up with is worship and church that looks and sounds like the world.

Worship and church and obedience and holiness that is indistinguishable from the world.

The result of this is that we literally make our little g gods and worship them, because our little g gods are the gods of self, the gods of preference, the gods of that's my decision and for me to decide, and not the

God of the Bible. We take a look at the

Israelites here at the foot of Mount Sinai, we see an example of this exact problem.

Moses is on the mountain the first time, receiving instructions, receiving the commands, receiving the 10 commandments.

By the way, the commands and the 10 commandments had already been given to the people, they are without excuse, remember they cut a covenant with God.

They hadn't been given the 10 commandments written on the tablets, but they had been verbally communicated and Moses had written it in the book of the covenant.

You don't recall that, go back and read some in Exodus, you'll find it. Somewhere around chapter 20 to 25.

So as you see that, what we experience is that they are now left without an excuse for what occurred at the foot of Sinai.

What actually happened was that they chose, they determined that to create this

God out of gold so that they could worship in a manner that they wanted.

God's word to them in verse 17, right here in Exodus 34.

You shall make for yourself no molten gods. Now prior to this, because they have already been given the 10 commandments, by demonstration in his deliverance from the land of Egypt, by his actions in provision and protection since they have come out of Egypt and moved to Sinai, and then again by the very commands that they have been given, they know that they are to worship the one true

God. Remember that was the very first command?

And the second one dealt with the issue of creating idols for worship.

So this is not new information to them, but yet God rewords this in such a way that he is extremely clear, that he is very specific.

That not only is he the one true God that is to be worshiped, but he is to be worshiped in the way that he commands.

For us, even within the church, we need to be reminded that although we have been made new, although we have been reconciled to God, our flesh clings desperately to fight for control and to exert its control over us.

It wants us to go the way of the flesh. And while the spirit that now indwells us pulls us towards the path of the spirit.

And these two things are at contrary, they're at odds with each other. And we need to remember that our heart above all is wicked.

It's been said of our hearts that they are literally idol factories that we generate faster than you can imagine things of our own making to worship.

And so the question that we ask, we have to ask, is so that we know the truth and we know that we are reminded of what worship is, what true worship is, the question that we have to ask ourselves truly on a continual basis is, what does it look like?

And how do I know if my worship is true and it's right?

Well, if you recall, in the Gospel of John, there was a conversation, an encounter between Christ and a

Samaritan woman at the well. There were a lot of things discussed in this particular encounter, but one of the main parts of the conversation we find in John chapter four, verses 19 through 24.

And as Jesus and the woman have been having a conversation, she has come to a point where she sees

Jesus at least as a prophet. And as that, she asked a question and here is what the word says.

The woman said to him, him being Jesus, of course, I see, sir, I see that you are a prophet.

And then she asked, or she makes this statement, our fathers worshiped on this mountain and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.

Now, it's not phrased as a question, but what she is doing here is dealing with one of the teachings of the

Samaritan people. And that is that the mountain that was right outside of where the well that he and this woman were sitting at was the appropriate place, the center point of worship for the people where the

Jews saw it as Jerusalem. Now, the teaching of the

Samaritans is not completely unfounded. It actually comes from scripture. The problem is, is they gut most of the

Old Testament and what little bit they have left points to that and does not point to Jerusalem.

And so they're going off of their teaching, which is why Jesus responds to her, woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the

Father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know for salvation is from the

Jews. That's why he says that. Because what you're worshiping, you don't really know. We worship what we know.

We're right at the moment, but there's coming a day.

And he says, but an hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship the

Father in spirit and truth. For such people, the Father seeks to be his worshipers.

God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth.

And so essentially, she's asking the same question that we should be asking ourselves. How do we know when our worship is true?

How do we know when our worship is according to the word of God? Of course, she's again pointing to this particular problem that I said, but Jesus's response puts the focus on what true worship looks like.

That it is first and foremost worship of the one true God and that it is worship in spirit.

MacArthur is always helpful. He writes these words, spirit here does not refer to the

Holy Spirit, but to the human spirit. Worship must be internal, not external conformity to ceremonials and rituals.

It must be from the heart, the transformed heart, the heart being led by the spirit.

Truth calls for this heart worship to be consistent with what scripture teaches and centered on the incarnate word.

The worship of neither the Samaritans nor the Jews could be characterized as being in spirit and truth, even though the

Jews had a more complete understanding of the truth. Both groups were focused on external factors.

They conformed outwardly to regulations, observed rituals, offered sacrifices.

But the time had arrived since the Messiah had come when true worshipers would no longer be identified by where they worshiped, but by those who worship the

Father in spirit and truth. Paul writes his letter to the church at Philippi, he calls those people the true circumcision who worship in the spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.

It is these people the Father seeks to be his worshipers by sovereignly drawing them unto himself.

And so this is where we begin. We begin with the simple question, is our worship truly worshiping the one true

God Yahweh in spirit and in truth?

Is it according to his word and centered on the incarnate word or centered on Christ?

That's the first question that you need to ask yourself. Listen, just because it includes

Christ's name doesn't make it Christian. Just because it's sung by a

Christian artist doesn't mean it's according to the word of God. We are to use just as much discernment when it comes to our worship, our singing, our living, our obedience, our holiness, all of these things are act of worship as we are to use in who we listen to and where we receive our teaching.

This is exactly why true worship and true obedience are tied together.

If we don't begin with addressing the situation of our worship, whether it's truly focused on him, and I heard

Paul Washer make the comment one time that there's a lot of people doing things in the name of Christ for themselves or some such, that's probably a paraphrase, it's not a direct quote.

But the point is, they're trying to make it look pretty, they're wearing the

T -shirt, they've got the bumper stickers, they've got the Bible cover, they went out and got the biggest, baddest

Bible they could find, but the reality is it's nothing more to them than a decoration.

It's a suit that they put on, a front that they are showing because their worship is not genuine, it's not true, it's not real.

This is why Paul encouraged the Romans and all other believers in Romans 12, one through two, therefore,

I exhort you, brothers, I call on you earnestly, brothers, by the mercies of God, according to the mercies of God, according to the things that God has done in your life, present your bodies as a sacrifice, one that is living and holy, one that is not conformed to this world, but that is transformed.

And how it's transformed? Transformed by the renewing of your mind.

And this is good and pleasing to God. So good, so pleasing that he literally says it is your spiritual service of worship.

So when we begin with God as the object of our worship and his word as the source of our worship, then our worship begins to be true and right.

For truly reconciled people worship the one true

God. A few minutes ago, I alluded to the fact that this is not in an effort to gain salvation, but as a result, so proper and right worship flows out of the deliverance that God has provided for his people.

As God makes this covenant with Israel, and he repeats these commands, many of which he's already given them, he's not doing so willy nilly.

It's not like Moses put the 10 commandments up on a dark board and just said, let me figure out which ones

I wanna add to this section. God purposely intentionally placed the information that's here in the way that he did so to give us guidance.

One, to demonstrate to us that a reconciled life leads to obedience. Two, to demonstrate to us that a reconciled life leads to holiness.

And three, that a reconciled life leads to true worship, consisting of obedience and holiness that results from the deliverance that he has already provided.

Each one of us, every person sitting in this room today, every person who hears this message, every person on the face of the entire planet whoever has been and ever will be was born with a sinful nature.

And each of us would have continued left to our own devices, left to ourselves on a path that leads to eternal damnation.

Listen, you don't arbitrarily decide.

You don't wake up one morning and go, you know, I should follow God. The spirit moves in your life, otherwise we would continue because we love darkness more than we love the light.

In God's grace and his mercy though, he set his electing love upon us.

And his call to us was effectual. And we turn from darkness and to light.

And result of that turning from darkness to light, we worship him because of what he has done.

Look at verse 18. Verse 18, he says to them, you shall keep the feast of unleavened bread.

Well, hopefully that rings all kind of bells in your mind. Hopefully you recall that this is intricately tied to the

Passover. And it begins to do things inside you that you begin to recall that this particular feast was tied to the

Passover instituted just prior to the final plague, done so for the purpose of identifying those who belong to God and those who did not.

No disobedience was tied to it. If you were obedient to God and you applied the blood to the doorpost and the lintel, the angel of death passed over.

You were disobedient and you did not apply the blood. The angel of death did not.

And even those who would have been genetically

Jews would have still faced this particular plague.

So the first thing we need to understand here regarding these feasts, because three feasts are mentioned in this passage.

These particular feasts being celebrated in the Old Testament were for the purpose of God's people coming together and not just coming together to throw a big party.

It was God's people coming together before Him in communion and in fellowship.

Second thing we need to understand, these feasts find their ultimate fulfillment in Christ, which is why we are not commanded to keep them as they were once kept.

That does not mean we are not commanded to gather because we are, very explicitly. But it does mean that we don't gather in the same methods.

We don't go through the same processes for these particular feasts as they did.

But one of the things that we need to note is that just as they were called to come together and we are called to come together, all of this coming together is to be done in a corporate atmosphere.

He didn't say for the people of God to go to their individual houses. He said to come together before Him.

Pink writes, how blessedly this tells forth God's grand design in redemption. It is not only for the purpose of emancipating

His people and bringing them unto Himself, but also that they may be happily gathered around Himself.

That is what the feast speaks of, communion and joy. God gathered

His redeemed around Himself in holy convocation, Himself the center of peace and blessing.

A little further down in verse 25 of Exodus chapter 34, we read an additional command that ties into the feast of Passover.

In verse 25, we read the following words. You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread, and the sacrifice of the feast of the

Passover shall not be left over until morning. And so just as obedience came into play with worship, so now does also holiness.

Now you may go, wait a minute. I don't understand how any of what you just said has anything to do with holiness.

And I'm glad that your brains are thinking that way because that's what we're facing to talk about. And so as we look at it, what we see here is a couple of things in this verse.

First of all, the statement, my sacrifice. Now, that's an interesting statement.

The reason it's an interesting statement is because it doesn't speak of your sacrifice. He's not telling the people to bring their sacrifice.

He specifically says my sacrifice. This not only speaks of the sacrifice that must be offered on a continual basis to Him by the priest, but also serves typologically to point us forward to the ultimate sacrifice, the once for all sacrifice of Christ.

But I also want you to notice that the blood cannot be offered with leavened bread.

Now, you may think, oh, well, it's the feast of unleavened bread. It's Passover and at Passover, they didn't have any leavened bread.

So that makes perfect sense. But you need to recall the understanding of leaven that we see, the understanding of yeast that we see across all of scripture.

You see, it's typically used in connection with sin and corruption, contamination.

For Israel, it was a reminder that this sacrifice needed to be pure, undefiled.

For us, it's a meaning very similar, but it actually speaks to our worship.

You see, our worship cannot be undertaken in a manner that is not holy.

It must be undertaken in a manner that is worthy of the sacrifice that was made for you and I.

In just a few moments, we are going to partake of the Lord's Supper. And as we do so, this is an act of worship.

And as an act of worship, it must be taken in the proper manner and not in a manner that is defiled, not in a manner that is unholy.

The charge will be for you to examine yourself. Also, again, they are reminded that nothing of the sacrifice was to remain.

For them, it was a promise of future provision. They remember they were preparing to depart

Egypt. And so it would have been necessary for them to want to take leftovers, to have to eat along the way.

A lot of people, but the fact that they were to consume it all speaks that God would continue to provide.

And so making sure that nothing remained was an act of putting their faith in God.

Their faith that His provision would occur. For it still serves as a reminder.

But when we tie it into the words of John, as he writes the words of Jesus in John chapter six, we read these words.

This is the bread which comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And also the bread which I give for the life of the world is my flesh.

Then Jews began to argue with one another saying, how can this man give us his flesh to eat?

So Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves.

He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.

He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. It's a reminder that the provision that God has made for our salvation and our faith in that provision and that that provision is complete, that we need not worry.

It is a act of assurance. And that as we come to him in worship, and we do so in a manner that is obedient and in a manner that is holy, then we are reminded of this assurance.

However, if we do so in a way that there are doubts in the back of our mind that there are as to whether or not this sacrifice was enough or if he will indeed sustain us, if we hold back from God the very life that he has already purchased, then what does our worship really tell us?

And so finally, the worship, the truly reconciled people worship

God in fullness and they do so always.

What we have here is this sweeping and humbling reality that we are confronted with in verse 19.

The text, the LSB, translates the first clause of this particular passage.

As the first offspring from every womb belongs to me. Other texts translate it as all that opens the womb is mine.

Some actually use the word matrix for the word womb, all of which is appropriate translation.

The point of the whole thing is that all things belong to and are from God.

God, Yahweh asserts his absolute and comprehensive ownership.

Nothing exists outside of his sovereign claim.

Life itself, its beginning, its continuation, its purpose, all belong wholly to him.

Nothing is outside. This is not just a ceremonial regulation that's given to Israel.

This is a theological assertion about reality. Yes, yes, they were to dedicate the firstborn.

Yes, they were to go through this elaborate process. But then you ask the question why?

The reason is is because it makes them acknowledge that it belongs to God alone and that he is not claiming part of his people's lives.

He is not merely claiming his religious observance. He's not merely saying that, okay, these two hours you spend at church on Sunday morning are mine, the rest of the time is yours.

What he is saying is that all of your life, from first breath to final cry is his.

It's all his. He claims everything.

And so true worship flows from reconciliation that is rightly understood. Having this half -concocted idea of what it means to be reconciled is not good.

A people who have been redeemed don't approach God selectively. You don't pick and choose.

You submit. To be reconciled is to be acknowledged that we are no longer our own.

We are not proprietors. We are stewards. We are children.

We, our children, our possessions, our time, our strength, our intellect, our resources are not ours.

We call them ours. We function as if they are ours. But in reality, they are entrusted to us by God to be held for his glory.

To worship God in fullness means that you empty yourself of self -ownership. See, this is one of the big problems that the world can't get past.

Because the world is tied into worshiping self. Self. Like we've made an idol out of this.

They're called selfies. And we use them to adore ourselves and to elevate our status.

The reality is they're not selfish, they're his. Because it belongs to him.

God has entrusted all things to us. When you look at the language in verse 20, this is why it becomes so striking.

We see this picture here, this unclean animal, this donkey that can only be redeemed with a lamb.

And if it can't be redeemed with a lamb, it must be destroyed. Picture is an unavoidable one.

And it should be a deeply humbling one. Because you see, the truth is you and I, we're that donkey.

We're that unclean animal. That must be redeemed by the lamb.

But listen, we talked a little bit about this in Sunday school, but we're not weak, merely.

We're not simply misguided. We are unclean.

We are senseless. We are stubborn in our fallen state.

Yet, thanks be to God that he did not simply leave us to destruction, but provided the lamb, his lamb, his sacrifice.

You see, redemption has to precede worship because only a redeemed person is reconciled to God and only one who is reconciled will worship.

Only those redeemed by sacrifice could appear before God. Not only that, look at the rest of the verse.

You shall redeem all of the firstborn of your sons. None shall appear before me empty handed.

Redemption, reconciliation with God fills the heart with gratitude.

It forces praise onto our lips and it drives us into a life of an obedient offering so that we don't come before him empty.

We come before him filled with praise, with adoration. Worship is not confined to a song, a posture, a place.

It is the lived response of a reconciled people who recognize, who recognize that all they are is

God. All they are and all they have belong to God.

That you and I as believers recognize that all we are and all we have belong to him.

Our children are dedicated not as some ritual, but as an acknowledgement of divine ownership, a way in which we steward our lives joyfully knowing that our lives and the lives of our children were bought with a price, that we don't withhold anything, that we train our children in the way of the word, that anything that we try to hold back denies the redemption that worship.

That was, that were made worship possible. And so we worship

God in fullness and we worship God continually. We worship in fullness because we know that the fullness of his claim and the fullness of his grace, we've been redeemed by the lamb.

We come not empty handed, we come offering ourselves, heart, soul, body, mind, strength to him as living sacrifices, as those holy and pleasing to God.

But if Exodus 34 has been teaching us anything, it not only teaches us that we do so in fullness, we do so continuously that the reconciliation that we have received is not aimless.

That God did not just set us off on a path, restore us so that we can feel forgiven, but that he restored us, that he reconciled us, that he redeemed him to him, that he redeemed us to himself so that we could walk with him.

The golden calf revealed the nature of mankind.

The renewal of the covenant reveals the mercy of God across all of history.

Even his interaction. You recall when Moses was still on the Mount the first time and God sent him down and he says, you go down and deal with your people because if I go,

I'm gonna wipe them out of existence. What mercy, what grace, what follows this renewal of covenant is not a blank slate for self -direction.

God doesn't say, hey, I reconciled you, go do what you want, be who you think you are, find your truth.

What he says is that you come to me, that you walk with me.

Israel proclaimed a feast to an idol. God pushes them back into the feast that he appointed so that their joy would never again be untethered from his truth.

Listen, so many people wanna think, oh, the Christian life robs me of joy and happiness and all these things, but the serious godliness, you remember, is a continual feast.

It is a joy in God always. He provides for our gladness and the rhythm that he provides, this holy rhythm that is weaved is not done so just on a annual basis or a once in a blue moon, but the rhythm is done weekly.

Six days you shall work, but on the seventh, you shall rest. Even during plowing time and harvest time, you'll rest.

All of your life, you will rest in me. Even when times are tough, even when things are going difficult, even when excuses feel the most reasonable, those times when you're extremely busy, those times when things are, hey,

I just, I don't really have time this week to plug worship in. I don't have time this week to gather.

I don't have time this week to come together with the people of God. You see, our misunderstanding around the whole

Sabbath day is we've decided that it's a lazy day.

It's an opportunity for a rest. And so in our truly American way of doing things, we have decided that rest means that we don't do anything but snooze, sleep, relax.

But the truth is that that day is a day about being occupied or engaged with God.

Pink observes the Lord's provision of mercy for our soul's occupation with himself.

And so if God is teaching his reconciled people that their lives should take time to be engaged by him, it is done so that we understand that our lives can't be governed by urgency, a production schedule, fear.

It's a reminder of God himself that you are sustained by your

Lord, not by your labor. And if we're honest, this is where we truly worship.

When life is frantic, when responsibility mounts, when demands increase, what do we instinctively sacrifice first?

The gathering of the body of Christ? The reading of the word of God? Prayer, quiet communion.

Typically we tell ourselves when the harvest breaks, when the pressure dies down, when things get less busy, then

I'll re -engage. But God tells us something entirely contrary to our life.

He says, even in those moments, especially in those moments.

Listen, if you can't learn to rest with God, in the busy times, in the hectic times, in the stressful times, or to put it in some modern day vernacular that some people like to use, in the valley, how will you ever learn to rest in him in the good times?

When things are at peace, when you're on the mountaintop. Matthew Henry said, all worldly business must give way to that holy rest.

Not because God is harsh, not because he is mean, but because he is kind.

He knows that the heart that will not pause before him will eventually replace him.

A hurried soul, a hurried soul is not a neutral soul.

A hurried soul is a soul that is vulnerable, is a soul that is open to attack.

And people who are freshly reconciled need to be guarded from returning to golden calves.

When we're new in the faith, when we've just entered into this relationship, it's so easy to turn back.

If you recall, that's the whole reason the book of Hebrews was written. Persecution had begun to increase on the

Jewish Christians. And so as a result, this letter is written to the church to demonstrate to them that the old ways are not better.

Here, even though you're facing adversity and difficulty and trials and tribulations and stress and busyness and all the trappings of life,

Christ is still Lord of all. And in those moments, in those moments when we should be resting, it is pride that says,

I have to keep going or everything will fall apart. Then in our passage,

God moves from this weekly rest, this appointed weekly

Sabbath to this corporate worship. Scripture again says in verse 23, three times a year, all your mails are to appear before the

Lord, Yahweh, the God of Israel. Now, this is not a command that we're only to meet three times.

Most Christians already do that anyway. Father's Day, Christmas, Easter, and maybe Thanksgiving.

Mother's Day, if they don't do Thanksgiving. Father's Day, if they don't do Mother's Day. One of these other holidays, if they haven't done any of those.

Me, myself, and I day, I don't know. The reality is this.

The call, Scripture calls us to gather as a body of Christ continually. Not to forsake that gathering.

Why? Because worshiping together, worshiping in a situation is a time for covenant remembrance.

Listen, redemption was to be proclaimed. It was to be celebrated. It was to be, we were to be reminded of it.

Worship is not occasional. It's not casual. It's not optional. They were to appear before the

Lord. Like servants receiving commands and like petitioners seeking favor.

It is a command that we are to obey. And yet we do so with joy.

Why? Because the Lord is, the Lord God is infinitely blessed. He is great. He is glorious.

But He is also, He is also the personal father of His children.

He is in covenant with His people. He desires to tabernacle, to dwell with His people.

And even now that dwelling is still but a shadow of what it will be one day. The indwelling of the

Holy Spirit is wonderful. It is something beyond what anybody in the

Old Testament was able to experience. But one day we will be before Him face to face.

We will see the fulfillment of His desire to dwell with His people.

And so God understands the objections. He understands the realities.

And so He says in verse 24, He begins to deal with an objection.

Well, what if all the men leave? What about the land? What about our homes? What about our families? What about our safety?

God says, don't worry about any of that. I've got it. For I will drive out nations before you, enlarge your borders, and no man will covet your land when you go up to appear before Yahweh, your

God, three times a year. You're like, well, okay, that's great. But I'm not really worried about anybody stealing my home while I'm gone.

That's not really a reason that I don't come to church. Listen, what He's really saying is obedience does not make you vulnerable.

Obedience to Him does not make you vulnerable. You may feel vulnerable. You may feel like the world is challenging you.

You may feel like the odds are stacked against you, but at the end of the day, obedience to Him places you under His protection.

What do you think would happen if you are being 100 % obedient to Him, living the life that He has called you to live, and the worst possible thing that you can imagine happen, which would, for most people, be their death?

For me to live is Christ, but to die is gain. Remember, Paul had his whole argument about it.

It's better for you, for me to be here with you, to teach you the things that God would have me to teach you, but it's better for me, far better for me to be with Him.

And so I count everything that I ever have had or ever will have as lost. Not just lost, but literally done.

Pure waste for the glory of Christ. So when pressure rises, when schedules tighten, when plowing time and harvest arrive in our lives, does worship become negotiable?

Do you begin to live as if God commands, God's commands are reasonable in theory, but unrealistic in practice?

This call to worship is not a religious accessory. It's not the icing on the cake. It's not the tie -tack that holds the tie in perfect place so that you obtain something.

It is a response out of a reconciled heart. A heart that does not drift away from God because it returns to Him continually because we belong to Him.

And if we belong to Him, our time belongs to Him. Our calendar belongs to Him. Our work belongs to Him.

Our homes belong to Him. Our families belong to Him. Our safety belongs to Him. Our worship then is not partial.

It is complete. It is full. It is in everything. And it is consistent because grace did not just merely forgive, it reconciled.

And so this reconciliation that God takes the people of Israel through is not an abstract doctrine.

It's your life. There's not this vague sense of forgiveness. It is a reordered existence shaped by God's holiness, by His claims, by His presence.

A people who are reconciled by grace do not negotiate in our worship.

We do not redefine our obedience. We do not compartmentalize our holiness.

We belong entirely to the Lord who redeemed us.

God did not merely forgive Israel. And He does not merely forgive us. He gathers us.

He instructs us. He claims our times. He guards our lives. He anchors our joy. Grace did not loosen

God's grip on us. It secures it. And where grace reigns, worship becomes not occasional, not convenient, but continual.

So the question is, does your life testify that you belong to God or that you only believe

He exists? Are you here because you're afraid that if I'm not here, then

I don't admit that He exists? And if I don't admit that He exists, then I got a one -way ticket? Are you here because you want the odds in your favor?

Do you worship simply as a means to obtain? Or does your life truly testify that you belong to God?

Because when the pressure rises, when your calendar fills, when the obedience costs, your worship remains fixed.

Because truly reconciled people do not ask whether worship fits their lifestyle.

They order their life around worship. Most gracious and holy

Father, Lord, we come before you not in an effort to negotiate, not in an effort to earn, but as those who have been claimed by grace.

Father, we have been redeemed at the cost of blood. You have reconciled us to yourself when we ourselves could not move towards you on our own.

Forgive us, Lord, for the ways that we have treated worship as optional, for the times where we have seen obedience as flexible, and for the moments where holiness was a mere inconvenience.

Lord, help expose the idols that quietly take your place, our busyness, our fears, our desires to be in control.

Lord, teach us to rest where you command us to rest, to gather where you call us to gather, to trust where you have promised to protect.

Lord, we pray that our lives are shaped by your word, not by the urgencies of this world, that our worship rises from gratitude, from joy, from reconciliation, not from habit or pressure or routine.

Father, we pray for you to claim our time, our work, our families, our strength, our hearts, that we would not appear before you empty -handed, but holy offering of ourselves, being living sacrifices, sacrifices that are holy and pleasing in your sight.

And may our joy be found where it can never fade, in you and you alone.

We ask all of these things in the name of our faithful Redeemer, Lord Jesus Christ.