Worship by the Book #2 - "A Better Word: The Dialogical Principle of Worship" (Heb 12:18-29)

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If you have a Bible, then I hope you do, take it in turn with me to Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews and chapter 10.
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Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews, actually chapter 12.
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Chapter 10 is where I'm going next week. Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 18.
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Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 18. For those of you who are visiting, we are in week two of a four -week sermon series for the month of January that we've entitled
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Worship by the book. Worship by the book. And we've been thinking about what the Word of God has to teach us about the subject of worship.
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Last week we talked about the what's often called the regulative principle of worship. The fact that in our worship, we want our worship basically to be biblical.
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That we want to do those things that God has explicitly commanded in his Word. No more and no less.
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Well, as we pick up with our series this week, there was a quote I read this week in my present, my preparation, excuse me, that it just stuck with me.
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Usually I read a lot in preparing these sermons and some of what I read, honestly, I can kind of leave behind.
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And some sticks with me. And this quote I'm about to read to you stuck with me. It's from a really excellent book.
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If you can find a copy, I highly recommend it. It's called, Oh Come Let Us Worship, Corporate Worship in the
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Evangelical Church. The book was written by a Presbyterian pastor called
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Robert Rayburn. He was also a seminary president. He was the president of Covenant Covenant Seminary, excuse me, out in St.
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Louis. And he wrote this book, again, dealing with the subject that we're dealing with in our sermon series, which is our worship.
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And in talking about our worship, he introduces his book, Oh Come Let Us Worship, with this quote.
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As I read it, you'll probably get a sense of why it stuck with me. So this is the quote from Dr.
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Rayburn. He said, quote, The worship of God is at once the true believer's most important activity, and at the same time, it is one of the most neglected activities in the average evangelical church.
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There remains among believers today a woeful ignorance concerning the significance of true worship and the means of attaining the rich blessing—excuse me, the blessing of rich, rewarding worship.
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Well, I happen to agree with Dr. Rayburn. I do think that at the same time, we recognize that worship is important.
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And yet, I was just thinking about it just this week. How many sermons have I heard explaining to me, not the command to worship—I've heard plenty of those—but how many sermons have you heard, have
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I heard, about how to worship? Better yet, why we worship the way we do.
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These are questions that, like I said, I think about often of late, and it's part of that constant thought about this issue that leads me to this sermon series that we're going to be engaged in for the next few weeks that we've called,
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Oh Come Let Us Worship. And this afternoon, as we come to this series, this message in our series, we're coming to a subject that doesn't get talked about as much.
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It doesn't get quite as much press, but I happen to think that if we understand this concept, it will actually revolutionize not just why we worship, but I think it will do something for our hearts, and not just our hearts and our minds as well, as we think about what is happening in the moment of worship.
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And I happen to think this text in Hebrews 12 is gonna help us. So Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 18.
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This is the one text we're gonna be in today, so I usually would say keep something here, but just keep your
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Bibles open to this text, because this is where we're going to camp in this sermon. Hebrews chapter 12, verses 18 through 29.
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If you picked up one of the red hardback Bibles that we give away in the back, that's page 1063. Page 1063,
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Hebrews chapter 12 from verse... Did we get it working? Oh, result, there we go.
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Alright, Hebrews chapter 12 from verse 18 through to 29. If you can stand with me out of reverence for God's Word, I would greatly appreciate it.
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Hebrews chapter 12, beginning in verse 18. Zoe, if you could be so kind as to pass me my phone in that case.
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Hebrews chapter 12 then, beginning in verse 18. Brothers and sisters, these are
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God's words. For you have not come to what could be touched, to a blazing fire, to darkness, gloom and storm, to the blast of a trumpet and the sound of words, those who heard it begged that not another word be spoken to them, for they could not bear what was commanded.
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If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned. The appearance was so terrifying that Moses said,
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I am trembling with fear. Instead, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living
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God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriad of angels, a festive gathering, to the assembly of the firstborn whose names have been written in heaven, to a judge who is
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God of all, to the spirits of righteous people made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood which says better things than the blood of Abel.
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See to it that you do not reject the one who speaks. For if they did not escape when they rejected him who warned them on earth, even less will we if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven.
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His voice shook the earth at that time, but now he has promised, yet once more,
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I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens. This expression, yet once more, indicates the removal of what can be shaken, that is created things, so that what is not shaken might remain.
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Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful.
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By it, we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and awe.
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For our God is a consuming fire. We pray that God would add his blessing to that reading of his word and help us understand it as we come to it.
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Let me pray, ask for the Spirit's help, and we will get to work in God's word. Well, Heavenly Father, we thank you for your goodness to us.
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We thank you that you give us all that we need for life and godliness in the knowledge of you through your word.
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And now, Father, as we come, especially to the preaching of your word, we pray that your good gospel word would go forth with power, that we would hear the law and its humbling effect, and that we would hear the gospel in its saving and freeing aspect.
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Father, it's our custom to take a moment to pray for other churches in our area, and Father, we thank you for our friends at Coram Deo Medford.
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Thank you for the witness that they have. We pray for Pastor Brian Noble and for Pastor Jason over there as they seek to minister your word to your people.
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Pray that you would strengthen them, equip them with all that they need to glorify you. Father, that's our prayer for Coram Deo, and it's our prayer for us now as we come to the ministry of God's word.
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Asking all these things in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. Please be seated.
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I've titled our message this afternoon,
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A Better Word. A Better Word. And I've given it the subtitle. It may sound a little weird and technical, but I'll do my best to explain it as we go.
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The Dialogical Principle of Worship. The Dialogical Principle of Worship.
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As we begin this afternoon, I want us to start with a question. I don't know, maybe if you give thought to this question.
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I give a lot of thought to this question, especially standing behind the pulpit as I do week in, week out now.
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Here's the question that I want to start with. If you had to ask the question, what is the mark of a good worship service?
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How would you answer that question? Let me ask the question again. What is the mark of a good worship service?
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I am, I just turned 32, 32 in December. I've been in church my entire life.
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I can count, actually on one hand, the number of Sundays I've not been in church. That's a lot of Sundays.
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For some of you, you're much older than me. You've been in church much longer than I have. What is the mark of a good worship service?
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What would you say makes the difference between a good service and a not -so -good service?
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We were having technical issues a few minutes ago. Would that have ruined the worship service if we weren't able to fix those things?
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Is it the music? Is it bubbly, vivacious personality?
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Is it production value? Do we need a few more lights, lasers, and fog machines? Is it an emotional response?
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What is it that makes corporate worship fit for purpose?
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That's really the question we've been trying to answer with this whole series. And I ask that question, especially today, because the principle
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I want to talk to you about from Hebrews chapter 12, if you rightly understand it and you rightly appreciate it,
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I think it may go some way to helping you think about what makes a service of worship faithful or not, good or not.
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One of the tragedies I found this week is, as I wanted to put together this message, I found that there was very little discussion of this.
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So unlike last week when we talked about the regulative principle, oh, there were tons. I had more stuff to read than I had time to.
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On this, not so much. I had to ask a few friends who are much more scholarly than I am, and they pointed me in the right direction.
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But by and large, this kind of falls by the wayside. This idea of what we've called a dialogical principle of worship.
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That may sound really complicated. So allow me to give you the simplified version, as I like to call it. I call it the principle of communion and renewal.
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That's an easier phrase than dialogical, I imagine. That when we gather for worship, here's what
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I mean. It's actually my big idea for this sermon. That in corporate worship, God calls us into his presence, where as he speaks his word over us, and we respond to that word in our acts of worship, we are renewed as a people and enjoy fellowship with him.
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Let me say that again. In corporate worship, God calls us into his presence, where as he speaks his word over us, and we respond to that word in our acts of worship, we are renewed as a people and enjoy fellowship with him.
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Fifth, I mean, I'm convinced that if you understand this— Okay, let me not oversell.
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I was taught as a marketing guy that you should always undersell and over -deliver. So let me try and not oversell too much.
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Do I think that understanding this by itself will cure the issues that you may have with corporate worship?
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We all bring baggage to corporate worship. Let's just be clear. We all bring previous experience. We all bring our own expectations.
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We all bring some kind of baggage to this subject. Do I think this one principle will fix that baggage?
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No, I don't. I'm not that naive. Do I think that this might put some of those problems in perspective?
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I absolutely do. And so that's why we're going to take time and walk our way through Hebrews chapter 12, because I think this section in Hebrews 12 actually unfolds this principle for us in a way that we can all agree, because it's coming straight from God's word.
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Now, I won't spare too much time giving you a background to the letters of the Hebrews. I've been to Hebrews a good bunch of late, so if you've been coming regularly,
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I've given a few intros. Suffice it to say, Hebrews chapter 12 that we've come to, the passage right before this is a warning.
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He gives a warning to these Christians, an exhortation for them to keep on holding to Christ, to not abandon
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Christ for the old covenant. And it's in the context of that warning, as he's fleshing out that warning, that we come to our text in chapter 12 from verse 18 through to the end.
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I want us to look at this passage, because the definition I just gave you comes, I would argue, from this text.
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So let's take a few moments and study this passage, and see what God has to say to us. First of all, consider with me that worship begins with gospel invitation.
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Worship begins with gospel invitation, verses 18 to the first part of verse 24.
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I'm convinced that so many discussions of worship have gotten off on the wrong foot, because we primarily think of worship as something we are bringing to God first and foremost.
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Think about it. And there's a sense in which it's biblical to say that.
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We'll come to that in a few moments. But if your understanding of worship is primarily something that you bring to God, something that we bring to God, then you've grounded it not in God, you've grounded it in you.
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So based on us being either in the mood, or I like to call it Simon Says Worship.
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Some of you that have been in churches that are like this, you know, I love worship leaders, God bless them. But sometimes they do too much.
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And one of the things, you know, is you always have those worship leaders, the type who are telling you, come on, everybody, clap your hands.
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Everybody, like Simon Says. Simon Says, clap your hands. Simon Says, lift your hands. Simon Says, raise your hands.
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Sometimes it's that that's moving us in worship, whether it's us personally or someone coercing us with their high energy, as it were.
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We often start with our acts of worship, which God receives from our hands. Now, we'll get to that later.
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There is a sense in which the Bible talks about our worship as a sacrifice, but we don't start there.
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Worship actually begins with a divine invitation. The authors of the
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Hebrews, the one I like to call the preacher, he points to the reality that we don't have a God who, as it were, shields us from himself, like what happened at Sinai.
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So look at verse 18 again. Verse 18. For you have not come to what could be touched, to a blazing fire, to darkness, gloom, and storm, to the blast of a trumpet and the sound of words.
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Those who heard it begged that not another word be spoken to them, for they could not bear what was commanded.
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If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned. The appearance was so terrifying that Moses said,
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I am trembling with fear. This is Exodus chapter 19, for those of you taking notes.
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Exodus 19, it's the prelude to God giving the law. If you read
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Exodus chapter 19, in that event God comes down and he thunders and he blazes in his sovereign and royal glory.
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This is the king who has come down to deliver his law to his people.
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But when you read that passage in Exodus chapter 19 and the follow -up in chapter 20, that massive display of power, it didn't actually stir up a desire in the hearts of the people to draw close to God as a nation.
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Don't believe me? Taking notes. Exodus chapter 20 verses 18 and 19. All the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the ram's horn, and the mountain surrounded by smoke.
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When the people saw it, they trembled and stood at a distance. You speak to God and we will listen, they said to Moses.
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But don't let God speak to us, or we will die.
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Can I pause for a moment? In a sense, this is exactly how sinful men should feel when
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God comes around. Let's be honest, in church sometimes we feel this pressure.
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I feel it at times as a pastor. There's this pressure that we feel to try and sell
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God a little bit. Almost like God needs a salesman and it just so happens that at this moment,
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I'm his salesman. So I need to kind of shave off the rough edges, so to speak.
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You know, I need to become like a used car salesman, kind of hide the dents in the bonnet and the weird paint job.
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Hood, hood, hood. I just remembered I'm not in the UK. Hood. I noticed my father -in -law was like, what is he talking about?
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Um, yeah. Hood, hood, hood. We feel like we have to be like a used car salesman for God a little bit.
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Yeah, I mean this God who is angry at times at sin.
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I can't tell people about that. I mean, people don't want to hear about God who's angry. I mean, a
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God who killed his own son to save him. I don't know if we can say that. You know, we almost want to sell
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God as being like kind of big grandpa in the sky. No, he's old, he's nice, and he lets you do whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want.
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If I learn anything from the Exodus 19 and 20 affair is that sometimes God is scary. Sometimes God is terrifying.
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Frankly, sometimes God puts the fear of God, quite literally, into people. And can
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I say that sometimes it's okay to let non -Christians sit with that. Sometimes it's okay to just let them deal with the fact that God can be terrifying at times.
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I might add some Christians need to be let sit with that a little bit. But if that's all that God is, that would be a problem.
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Because if God was only terrifying, if God was only scary, if God was only powerful and holy and just, that would be a problem.
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But praise God, that isn't all that God is. Even in this text, that's not all that God is.
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If this text ended in verse 21 and he jumped to his application, that might put a different slant on things, but pay attention to verse 22.
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Verse 22 he says, instead, in contrast to the experience of the people when they encountered
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God delivering his law, instead you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living
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God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels, a festival gathering, to the assembly of the firstborn whose names have been written in heaven, to a judge who is
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God of all, to the spirits of righteous people made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood which says better things than the blood of Abel.
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Yes, the law of God, and I think that's the contrast he's making here between God in his law and God in his gospel.
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Yes, the law thunders and terrifies. It should do that for sinful men. But that's not the only word that God speaks.
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In the gospel, we don't encounter an angry judge, but we meet
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God, the same God, but now we meet him in all of his mercy and in all of his goodness.
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And in fact, do you know is that unlike the Sinai event where they had to encounter God at a distance, that's why
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God gives you instruction, listen, even if an animal touches this mountain, kill it. Keep your distance.
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But did you catch verses 22 to 24? There's not a language of distance, there's a language of, if I can be fanciful, language of proximity, of closeness.
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We come into the very presence of God himself. In the
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Old Testament, Mount Zion was God's capital, as it were. It was the geographic center of his reign, as it were.
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That's where his people recognized God reigns from here. And in fact, when you read the prophets, they will often treat
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Zion as synonymous with the very rule and reign of God. And the author says, you've come to Mount Zion.
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You've come to the very kingdom of God himself. He says that we have come to the heavenly
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Jerusalem, to the very presence of the angels, to a festive gathering.
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This isn't like what happened on Sinai that was terrifying and people begged not for this to happen.
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This is a gathering of a different kind. In the gospel, we come to a festive gathering, a time of joy and of celebration.
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It's interesting, he says that we have come to heaven itself, as it were. And that's why he can say, you probably thought this was strange when you read it.
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Did you see it there in verse 23? He says, to the assembly of the firstborn, whose names have been written in heaven.
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Here's an interesting aspect to our worship, isn't it? That as we gather, we are engaging in the same event, what the fathers in the faith used to call the communion of saints.
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That we take our place alongside the people of God, past, present, and future.
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And that's why he can say that we have joined the assembly of the firstborn. Why? Because Christ is the firstborn and we're united to him, whose names are written in heaven.
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He says we've come to God himself, who is the judge of all. And he says that we have come to Jesus himself.
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Dear friends, in the gospel, God calls us out of the world and the judgment that it so rightly deserves because it's broken
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God's law. And he calls us into intimate, close communion with himself.
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In the gospel, God summons us out of judgment and death and fear and terror.
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And he summons us into rest, into receiving from him, into acceptance with him.
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Okay Kofi, that's great and that's wonderful. What does that have to do with corporate worship? Everything. You see, this is where, like I said, this might start to reorient the way we view our worship a little bit.
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Corporate worship is designed by God to be, catch this, an earthly microcosm of that very large spiritual reality.
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Stay with me because this is where, I'll be honest, as evangelicals, we don't always do a good job when we talk about worship in this aspect.
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Our services of worship, not just our sermons, sometimes we put more weight on the preacher.
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And I say this, it may sound a little self -serving, but I'll say it anyway. Sometimes we put more weight on preachers than they need to bear.
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They need to be the soul evangelist. They need to be the one proclaiming. Yes, they should. But guess what? The entire worship service, if it's put together rightly, should reflect that reality of God calling his people into communion with him.
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If we understand corporate worship rightly, this time that we engage in, week in and week out, is meant by God to be an invitation on an earthly level into his very presence.
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Far from being just a chore we tick off because, well, we're Christians and that's what
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Christians do, I suppose. Or a time where we come to chase a high that we won't feel anywhere else during the week.
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Actually, corporate worship, if it's understood correctly, is an invitation. Some of you, like me, grew up in churches where people would talk about, well, we invite the presence of God into our worship.
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And I like to say, don't be so presumptuous. You don't invite God's presence, he invites you into his presence.
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I mean, after all, we believe in the omniscience of God, don't we? And the omnipresence of God, he knows all things and he's everywhere.
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God got to church way before you did. And when we gather for worship, what
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God is doing is he is inviting us once again to hear and partake of the gospel story once again.
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So it's not that we just have a gospel invitation tacked onto the end of a sermon. Actually, if we're worshiping correctly, the entire service is one big gospel invitation.
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If we're doing our jobs properly, the entire service should point us to the gospel.
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All the preacher does is comes and reinforces what the service has already been doing up to this point.
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The big picture of what God has done in our salvation ought to shape the details of our corporate worship.
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So Brian Chappell, again, another excellent book, I think I recommended it this week, Christ -Centered Worship, Finding Our Place in the
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Gospel Story, he says this, quote, our order of worship conveys an understanding of the gospel.
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Whether one intends it or not, our worship patterns always communicate something.
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If we understand this correctly, our worship and the way we lay out our worship should make the gospel somewhat intuitive.
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Not ultimately because the Spirit of God is the only one who can open eyes to understand the gospel message, but it should have all the pieces necessary.
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That's the first reality that we get from our text here in verses 18 to 24, that worship begins with gospel invitation, but secondly, worship involves
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God speaking to us. Worship involves God speaking to us. End of verse 24 through to verse 27.
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If you're reading along with me, you notice that I didn't finish the list when I got to verse 24, because there's one more thing in this list that he mentions.
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This list of privileges that we have because we have come to Christ. End of verse 24, he says, you've come to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood which speaks better things than the blood of Abel.
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That phrase, the blood of Abel, harks back to Genesis chapter 4 and the Cain and Abel incident. You know it well, no doubt.
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Remember what God says, Genesis chapter 4 verse 10, after that famous question, am I my brother's keeper? Verse 10,
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God says, what have you done? Your brother's blood cries to me from the ground.
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Those of you who are regulars will remember that we actually preached Genesis chapter 4. You can go back and listen to that on our
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YouTube channel. But what was his blood crying out for?
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What was Abel's blood in Genesis chapter 4 crying out for? I think the most common sense answer from the text is justice.
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He had been murdered by his brother, and as it were, God says, your blood has taken up a voice and it's crying out for justice for this evil thing that you've done.
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You may think, okay, well why does he mention that here then, here in Hebrews chapter 12? Well again, I think he's making a contrast between God's law and God's gospel.
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You see, the author, the preacher, is making a theological point that you shouldn't miss. He's saying that Abel's blood, as it were, is typical, it's a type as it were, of the law.
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What does the law ask for? If you break the law, it asks for justice. Justice must be satisfied.
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And he says, just like Abel's blood cried out for vengeance when Cain slew him, the law of God, when it's broken, cries out for justice.
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But that's not the only voice that speaks. Again, it would be bad news if that were the only voice that spoke, but he says, you've come to the sprinkled blood which says better things than the blood of Abel.
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In the gospel, summarized here as the sprinkled blood, the applied death of Christ, God speaks something better over you, over me, over all of those who have placed their faith in Jesus.
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As Calvin says, the blood of Christ is said to speak better things because it avails to obtain pardon for our sins.
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The blood of Abel did not properly cry out, for it was his murder that called for vengeance before God, but the blood of Christ cries out and the atonement made by it is heard daily.
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And again, this has huge implications for our worship, brothers and sisters. It impacts not just the shape of our worship, but also the purpose of it.
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It impacts the shape of our worship because our worship should and must reflect the fact that God has spoken graciously to us in the gospel.
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I'll say more about this in week four, but there's a reason why we have so many readings in our services, and almost all of them come from scripture.
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We are reflecting the fact that God speaks his word over his people.
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So it impacts the very shape of our worship, but it also impacts the purpose of our worship because when we come together, first and foremost, we come to hear our triune
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God speak his gospel to our souls. That's why each week, whenever I lead,
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I always say it's my favorite part of the week. We have an assurance of pardon after we have a corporate confession of sin.
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We have an assurance of pardon. We didn't just decide to do that. That's actually for a purpose.
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After we have confessed our sin, after we have confessed the fact that we have broken God's law, remember we are in Christ.
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And since we're in Christ, we have pardon. And so all we do each week is to remind ourselves of the pardon that we already have.
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Some traditions call it an absolution. I don't like that term for the simple fact that an absolution basically has its authority in the person giving it.
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It's not the person giving it. That's why I can do it, one of our service leaders can do it, and it still has the same effect because the power is not in me or our service leaders.
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The power is in the fact that it comes from this book. That's why we have an absolution of pardon every week.
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That's why you can guarantee, you can bet money on it. Fifty -two weeks a year from this pulpit, be it me or somebody else, you will hear some kind of message from the
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Bible. Why? It's not because I like public speaking. It's not because anybody else who fills this pulpit just likes public speaking.
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No, it's as our fathers in the faith said, I believe it was the second Helvetic confession, they said that the preaching of the
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Word of God, so far as it's true, is the Word of God. God is speaking to us.
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We're careful to prioritize reading of Scripture and the preaching of the Word for exactly this reason.
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Corporate worship, this is important, corporate worship is coming to hear
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God speak to his people with his Word of salvation, assurance, and comfort.
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Yes, you may see a human being up here when the Scripture is being read or the Scripture is being preached, but ultimately,
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God is preaching. It's like my friend John Benzinger says, it's the difference between using the Bible to preach your message and the
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Bible using you to preach its message. In light of the fact that God speaks, look how we're supposed to respond.
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Verse 25. Verse 25, see to it that you do not reject the one who speaks.
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What's unusual about that phrase? Anyone catch it? Let me see if I can point it out.
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Notice he didn't say, see to it that you do not reject the one who has spoken.
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Do you know what that is? Well, I've checked this. Pretty much every English translation translates this in the present because that's what it is.
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It's present active in the original language. The author, the preacher says that God speaks, not that he spoke.
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I know that there was a debate among Christians as to whether God speaks to people today. I have a view for that. I have a view on that.
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This is not the sermon for that though. Allow me to say this. I do believe that God speaks today through his gospel.
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That every time your soul hears the gospel, that's not a past declaration.
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No, it's a present declaration. God, present tense, is speaking to your soul his gospel word.
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I'm never foolish enough to presume that every person who turns up to church is a believer. I don't know the state of your soul. Only you and God know that.
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If you're here today and you don't know the Lord, allow me to say this, and I say this with all the love in my heart.
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If you're here today and you don't know the Lord, the Bible doesn't say that you're rejecting the church's words about Jesus.
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The Bible doesn't say you're just rejecting religious tradition, as it were. The Bible doesn't even say you're rejecting what might possibly be a good idea.
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No, the Bible says that in rejecting the gospel, you are rejecting
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God himself. And the Bible warns you.
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What happens if you reject that? Look at verse 25 with me. He says,
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See to it that you do not reject the one who speaks. For if they did not escape when they rejected him who warned them on earth.
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Again, another allusion to Exodus 19 and 20, where God came down and he gave them his law.
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If they did not escape when they rejected him who warned them on earth, even less will we if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven.
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His voice shook the earth at that time, but now he has promised yet once more, caught in the book of Haggai chapter 2, yet once more, and I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.
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I think the author to the Hebrews, the preacher, is not just talking about the Sinai event. He's definitely talking about that, but I think he's also speaking about the prophets of old.
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Men who were just like them, men of the earth, spoke to them God's word and they rejected it. And you see what happened to them.
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Sometimes Christians can give this perception that God in the Old Testament was really mean. Like, he's really harsh with people, but in the
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New Testament, no, he's so gracious. He's really, really nice.
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Not realizing actually God was gracious in the Old Testament, and actually he's firm in the New Testament too. Men spoke on earth, speaking
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God's words, and it was rejected. So, God in the person of his son, as it were, spoke from heaven. Jesus himself says that,
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John chapter 3. It's the son of man who is in heaven. He was on earth when he said that, but he's divine, which means he's both on earth and in heaven.
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God in the person of the son spoke from heaven, and through the gospel, he has not stopped speaking. In fact, one day, one day in the past, the voice of God shook a mountain, but the point he's making is that on that great and final day,
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God will shake not just the mountain in the middle of the Middle East, God will shake all creation.
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Kind of reminds me of a song that, in the tradition I grew up, we sang a lot. Days are filled with swift transition.
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Nought of earth unmoved can stand. Build your hope on things eternal. Hold to God's unchanging hand.
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Dear friend, if you're here today, you don't know the Lord Jesus, I invite you to grab hold of him by faith for dear life.
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There is no security to be found anywhere else. Everything else that exists can and will be shaken.
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That's the point of verse 27. This expression, yet once more, indicates the removal of what can be shaken.
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That is created things, so that what is not shaken might remain. But here's the good news.
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Everything that's not fixed, as it were, can and will be shaken one day.
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That's what God says to us, and that's what's at stake if you reject that. That day when everything else is shaken for dear life, guess what?
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You'll be shaken with it. But that's, for those who know the Lord, that's not their fear, because you see, for us, it's a different story.
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In the gospel, we find our place in Christ. Christ will never be moved and never be shaken because he is in his
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Father, and since that's the case, you will never be moved and shaken ultimately. Kofi, but I go through so much rough situations in life.
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Are you telling me that in the midst of that, I'm not being shaken? What I'm saying is, in the eternal sense, in the sense that ultimately matters, no matter what you go through,
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I love what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1, we are pressed, but we are not destroyed. Why?
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Because we're in Christ, and God has spoken his gracious word over us.
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The danger of verse 25 through to 27 isn't true for you if you're in Jesus, and you can take comfort in that.
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You can take comfort in the fact that when everything is shaken on that final day, because you are in Christ, you'll be just fine.
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Worship is rooted in divine invitation. It involves God speaking to us. Now we come in, because thirdly, worship calls forth a response.
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Worship calls forth a response, verses 28 and 29. If this is true, if we are not like the world that will one day be shaken, if we are as God's people, fixed and unmovable, if that is the case, what are we supposed to do?
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Well, verse 28, here's the response. He says, therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and don't sleep on that, therefore, in light of the fact that everything else will be shaken, but for the people of God, we won't be.
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Since we're not part of this world system that will one day be shaken, since we are citizens of the kingdom of God.
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By the way, did you catch that he said we are receiving a kingdom? Doesn't say we're building it.
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Christians have a habit of using language imprecisely, and sometimes this is one of them. We talk about building the kingdom of God.
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No. God built His kingdom. We're called to proclaim His kingdom, and we're called to receive it, but you don't build it.
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You're the receiver of it. I've lived in two houses that we've owned since I've moved here to the
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U .S. In both houses, I didn't build a thing.
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Well and good, I didn't build a thing. I didn't build a thing. What did I do? I received what someone had already built.
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That's a very important distinction. This is a grace gift that we receive, citizenship in this kingdom.
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He says, since we are citizens, what's the response? He says, let us be thankful.
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The word for thankful, funny enough, it's the same word as grace. In fact, some of your translations will say, let us have grace.
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It's the idea of responding graciously, responding gratefully.
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He says, let us be thankful. Here's how the same author, next chapter, if you're taking notes,
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Hebrews 13, 15, he says, therefore, and funny enough, he's talking about the same reality as in our text.
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Therefore, through him, let us continually offer up to God a sacrifice of praise that is the fruit of lips that confess his name.
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Here's where we can now start to talk about our sacrifice that we bring in worship. The sacrifice that we bring in worship is a response to what
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God has done in Christ. And that's why he can say, by it,
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Hebrews 12, 28, by it, we may serve God acceptably with reverence and awe.
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By the fact that we are receiving a kingdom, by the fact that we are the recipients of divine grace, we are able to serve
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God acceptably. The term serve here is a religious term. It's not service of a slave.
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It's the type of service that you only carry out in a religious context. So, in case you're wondering what the connection between this text and worship is, here it is.
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The response of God's people to his saving work is, first and foremost, worship.
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And we get two features of this grace -fueled, this grace worship in verse 28.
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So, notice he says that we should worship God acceptably in light of what God finds to be pleasing.
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Think back to last week's message, those of you who were here. But it's not just in terms of, okay, what
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God has asked for in his Word. The only way in which you and I are acceptable in God's sight is because of Christ.
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Ultimately, when he says that this worship should be done acceptably, it's done in light of Christ's righteousness, which makes us acceptable before God.
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So, he says worship should be done acceptably. But he says also it should be conducted with reverence and awe.
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Reverence and awe. Grammatically, those of us who are grammar nerds, you probably know this term.
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It's what's called a hendiodes. You think, oh, hen what? Hendiodes.
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It's literally when two words express one idea. Actually, you see a lot in the
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Bible. So, for example, the Bible tells you to repent and believe. The idea here of that phrase, excuse me, repent and believe, is that it's repentant faith or believing repentance.
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It's one idea, two words expressing the same idea. It's the same thing here. You could translate this literally as reverent awe.
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We'll talk more about this in week three, next week, I guess, when we talk about style of worship.
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But he says our worship should be characterized by reverence and awe. Reverence, literally the idea of the exercise of caution, restraint.
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Reverence isn't a musical style, first and foremost. It's a heart attitude. Reverence basically says,
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I know the God before whom I come, and if I'm coming before this God, then I want to be, Ecclesiastes chapter 5, careful how
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I approach him in worship. You'll hear some churches talk about, we have casual worship.
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And I want to be gracious. I know what they mean when they say that. But there's a sense in which worship can never be casual.
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There's a sense in which you can't just come into worship, it's no big deal. You all know how much I hate that phrase.
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If God is as holy as he is, if he is as exalted as he is, if he is as lifted up as he is, then we should think very carefully about how we approach him.
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But he doesn't just say reverence, he says awe. This is a much easier word to define. It's that emotion of profound respect for deity.
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That's how one dictionary defines this Greek word. You put them together and you get this idea of a heartfelt, respectful, properly restrained response to God in worship that is rooted in God's gospel word.
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And why can we do this? Again, verse 29, he says, all this is true because our God is a consuming fire.
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Now, read that properly. That's not a reference to judgment for the believer. For the unbeliever, yes, it is a reference to judgment.
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For the believer, fire in the Bible carries also the idea of transformation and empowerment.
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So for the non -Christian, yes, he has to fear the judgment of God. But for you who are in Christ, our
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God transforms and empowers us. And you know how he does that?
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In this otherwise unusual event that we call corporate worship. I'm almost done.
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I'm just going to share with you just some implications of this, and then we'll be done. I've got four of them. I'll make them quick. Some implications as we close.
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First of all, if worship is God speaking to us—that's why I said it's a dialectical principle.
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God speaks to us, we respond. Well, if worship is a response to God's gospel word, then we want to be careful that what we bring to worship is in line with that gospel.
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That's my first implication from this passage. In my top 20 list of things that will never cease to confuse me, and there are a great many,
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I want to be gracious when I say this, but I want to be truthful as well. I will never understand churches that on paper have an excellent, a sound theology, and then in their corporate worship will sing songs that come from places that directly contradict the gospel that they say they believe.
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Can I get punchy and name names for a moment? I just want to say, do it.
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God bless you. I can't understand for the life of me why Reformed and Bible -believing churches, churches like ours, would ever sing songs by Bethel or Hillsong or Elevation.
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Makes no sense to me. None. Maybe they just don't know.
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I'm sorry, that's not an excuse. In 2023, we all have smartphones, and we all have Google on our smartphones.
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Even you terrible people use Apple phones. It's happened to me more than once where I'll be visiting a church, or someone invites me to a service at a church, or I go for some function at a church, and you know, they have a time of worship, and it's all going great, and then they start singing.
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True story, this happened to me one time. They sang a City Alight song. If you know City Alight, the Australian group, they write some songs that we sing.
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They're great, wonderful, I love them. And they went straight from that into Reckless Love by Bethel.
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You can understand my confusion in that moment. I'm like, wait, we're not in Kansas anymore.
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Like, what just happened? Kofi, that's a little bit extreme.
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It's not that big a deal. No, I call it being discerning.
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Corporate worship ought to be an expression of the gospel that we believe, and I don't think it's too much.
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I'll leave this point alone with this. I don't think it's too much to ask that the songs we sing match the gospel that we proclaim.
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I don't think it's that much of a big ask. Secondly, if this is true, then we have to be careful that we don't fall into the trap of thinking that it is our acts of worship that make worship effective or not.
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So it's not our emotional, or verbal, or physical, or mix of the above response that makes worship true worship.
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If a service doesn't make me feel a particular way, that doesn't mean that God wasn't present.
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It's not that a service has enough elements of spontaneity that it ministers to you. I'll be honest and say that the explosion of entertainment that we live under makes this kind of difficult, because we are so used to watching things that are designed on purpose to move us one way or another as cheaply as possible.
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But according to the text we just read, I know we're not usually a call -and -response church, but for this one, let's be
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Pentecostal for just a moment. What is it, if you're paying attention, what is it according to our text that makes a service of worship effective?
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It's the gospel. And I put it to you that if the simple message of sins forgiven, of conscience cleansed, of death defeated, and a life without end isn't enough to stir your soul, and you need a particular kind of music, or enough of a mixture of things, or insert whatever thing we develop to add to our worship, if that's what you need and the gospel isn't enough,
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I'm sorry, I don't have anything for you, and I can probably speak for our music team when we say, we don't have anything else for you either.
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Third implication, if this is, of all that this is true, then worship is more than just an event that we participate in, it's formative.
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You see, the power of worship is not in individual moments of intensity, it's not just individual moments where you feel something, that's where the power of worship is.
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Actually, worship is powerful because of the shaping effect it has over time.
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As you hear the Scriptures read, as you sing to the Lord, as you pray in confession of sin, as you receive assurance of pardon, as you are taught the
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Word of God and you hear it in faith, as you partake of the table, as we will in just a moment, in the moment you may not feel like something is happening, but can
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I put it to you that over time, God is doing something. He is making you more receptive to his gospel promises, he's making you more receptive to the ministry of his
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Word. Some of you know this in your own experience, maybe you didn't come from a
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Bible teaching background, you didn't come from a background where the Scriptures were opened and explained, but then you somehow find yourself in a place where the
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Scriptures were being taught and Christ was being exalted, and you couldn't put your finger on what it was, and you maybe didn't even like it the first few times, but you kept coming back, you kept coming back, you kept coming back, and after a while, you've noticed that your tastes have changed, and what you once had no time for, you can't get enough of, you were hooked.
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Why? What happened? The Word of God was able to have its slow, steady, but sanctifying effect in your life.
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Can I put it to you that that's not just in the preaching of God's Word, but all of corporate worship does that, and can
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I encourage you not to shortchange the formation that the Spirit of God is doing through the ordinary means of grace for cheap spiritual thrills, that if you think long and hard about it, they actually hinder your growth, not help it.
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My final implication, and we'll come to the Lord's table, if worship is indeed a dialogue,
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God speaks and we respond, maybe it would serve us well to prepare for that dialogue.
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Next week, we'll spend some time in Ecclesiastes chapter 5 and what it has to say. One of the things that the preacher says in Ecclesiastes is that when you come to the house of God, that you should not offer to God what he calls the sacrifice of fools, unthinking, you didn't put any thought into this.
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It's one of the reasons that you probably wonder, why do we do this? Those of you who are on our church email list, we include the songs for Sunday in the emails every week.
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It's not because I run out of things to say in our emails, it's because I want to help us in preparing for the time of worship that we're coming into.
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If we come to this time recognizing, okay, God is going to speak to me and I am coming ready to respond to what
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God's gospel word says, if we recognize that, maybe it would serve us well to prepare for that event happening long before we get here.
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Faith family, I'll leave you with this. Ultimately, it's important for us to understand worship as a dialogue because if we understand that correctly, then we understand that God is speaking and speaking to us and he is molding us every time we gather for worship and that every time we gather as God's people, he is indeed speaking over us a much better word.
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He is speaking to us his very gospel itself and Father, we are so thankful that every time we gather for worship, we gather to hear you speak your gracious gospel over us once again.
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Father, we may not always come as prepared, we may not always come as engaged as we should and for those moments,
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Father, we ask for your forgiveness and we thank you that we have that forgiveness in Christ and so we ask for the power of Christ to rest upon us to help us in preparing for our times of worship, to help us in preparing for what it is that God is doing as we come together week in and week out to worship.
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We thank you, we love you, we pray all these things in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen.