The Worship Service: Exodus 24:1-8

Good morning once again. I'll be reading out of Psalm 135, the whole psalm this morning.

Praise the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord. Give praise, O servants of the Lord, who stand in the house of the

Lord, in the courts of the house of our God. Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good. Sing to His name, for it is pleasant.

For the Lord has chosen Jacob for Himself. Israel has His own possession. For I know that the

Lord is great, and that our Lord is above all gods. Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all the deeps.

He it is who makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth, who makes lightnings for rain and brings forth the wind from His storehouses.

He it was who struck down the firstborn of Egypt, both of man and beast. Who in your midst,

O Egypt, sent signs and wonders against Pharaoh and all his servants? Who struck down many nations and killed mighty kings?

Sihon, king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan, and all the kingdoms of Canaan, and gave their land as a heritage, a heritage to His people

Israel. Your name, O Lord, endures forever. Your renown, O Lord, throughout all ages.

For the Lord will vindicate His people and have compassion on His servants. The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands.

They have mouths, but do not speak. They have eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths.

Those who make them become like them. So do all who trust in them. O house of Israel, bless the

Lord. O house of Aaron, bless the Lord. O house of Levi, bless the Lord. You who fear the

Lord, bless the Lord. Blessed be the Lord from Zion, who dwells in Jerusalem. Praise the

Lord. Let's pray. Father in heaven, I do come before you right now and ask that you would simply bless the preaching of your word.

I pray, Lord, you would take over my mind and my mouth, that we would hear your words and exalt the name of your

Son, Jesus, and that your children, your saints, would be edified in the preaching. It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Please be seated. So I have a question for you.

Have you ever gone mountain climbing? Not just hiking. I know there's some people who do some hiking around here, but actual mountain climbing.

There's a lot of prep work you need to do before you take on that kind of endeavor. First, you need to be in shape, right?

You don't just try climbing a mountain looking like me. It's not going to work. You need to know how to tie special knots.

You need a certain rope. You need to know how to belay a rope. I had to look that up. Belaying a rope means putting tension on it as a counterbalance in case someone falls.

Kind of important. You need to know that. You need the right equipment. You need a harness, a helmet, a headlamp, a backpack, and the right shoes.

Finally, you need a map and a plan. You don't just start climbing a mountain without knowing where the trail leads and where the dead ends are.

In fact, just this week in Colorado on Kit Carson Peak, 29 -year -old Madeline Baharlou, a very experienced mountain climber, cliffed out, which means she got stuck in an area where you can neither climb up nor down.

Tragically, she fell and died on the mountain before help could get to her. Mountain climbing is serious business, dangerous even.

Would you ever seriously consider climbing a mountain without taking the necessary steps or having the right equipment?

Probably not. But may I suggest to you that you and I may have gone mountain climbing already without even knowing it.

This morning I'm going to be speaking to you about worship, which is essentially mountain climbing.

Hebrews 12 says, but you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly

Jerusalem. As new covenant Christians, we have come to the mountain known as Zion, the church of Jesus Christ.

Now, mountains in the scriptures represent temples, religious authority, seats of power.

When we enter into worship, we are embarking up the mountain of God into his dwelling place to meet with him.

If there was ever a mountain to climb that we should take seriously, this is it. The Old Testament has several examples of men climbing a literal mountain to meet with God.

In Exodus 24, Moses climbed the mountain, Mount Zion. The elders were at the base of the while Moses was allowed to continue to climb up further and meet with God.

And at the pinnacle, he was able to eat with God. Then in Leviticus 9,

Aaron the high priest, he went into the tent of meeting or the tabernacle to meet with God, figuratively climbing a mountain.

See, the tabernacle is like a mountain on its side with the aggregates being wide and getting narrower and narrower as you approach the

Holy of Holies where God himself was. If you were to draw a mountain on a sheet of paper and lay it down, that's what the temple looks like.

You start wide and end up narrow and at the top where the Holy of Holies God was at.

Now, many people in many churches take to this task every week without knowing it, without wearing the right gear or having the right plan or understanding the significance and purpose of worship.

So I want to make sure here at Hope Reformed Baptist Church, we as a church know, first of all, what worship is, that we wear the right gear to climb up the mountain and that we understand the importance of worshiping

God correctly. We don't want anyone getting cliffed out. Worship is a vast topic, so we're only going to scratch the surface this morning.

But I want to go over a few important points. First, what worship is. Second, what happens during worship.

Third, how is it structured. And fourth, where does worship take place. So if someone were to ask you, what is the most important thing you've ever done in your life, what would you say?

If someone was to ask you what's the most important thing you've done this week, what would you answer?

Well, here's where I'm going to help you and give you the answer to both of those questions. The most important thing you've done this week or any other week in your life is worship

God. Worship is the most important thing you will ever do.

What you are doing now, taking part in as of 11 a .m. today, is the most important thing that you will do today or any other point in time.

And since it's the most important thing we do, it's vitally important that we do it correctly. You wouldn't want to be operated on a surgeon who doesn't take the operating room procedures seriously, right?

So the first thing we need to know is what is worship? Worship is the valuing and pursuit of that which you desire or hold most dear.

Worship is the valuing and pursuit of that which you desire or hold most dear. The dictionary of the

Old Testament prophets defines it like this. True worship involves reverential acts of submission before the divine sovereign in response to his gracious revelation of himself and in accordance with his will.

And that's important. We are to respond in reverence according to his revelation and his will.

In other words, we worship God in his way, not ours. Not one that we make up or come up with ourselves.

There are two common methods that churches employ to worship God. One is called the regulative principle.

The other is called the normative principle. Here in this church, we adhere to the regulative principle of worship, which simply means that we worship

God according to what the scriptures prescribe and no more. We don't add anything to it.

In fact, our confession, the 1689 Lyndon Baptist confession of faith, defines it this way in chapter 22. But the acceptable way of worshiping the true

God is instituted by God himself and so limited by his own revealed will that he may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men or the suggestions of Satan under any visible representation or any other way not prescribed in the holy scriptures.

Now, this is in contrast to the normative principle, which maintains that anything not expressly forbidden may be incorporated into worship.

Now, although well -meaning, given the tendency of the human heart, this can lead to dangerous practices or worse.

God cares about how we worship him. And since it's the most important thing we do, we have to make sure we're doing it according to his liking.

Why? Because he's the one receiving it. The word worship is actually a contraction of an older English word, worth -ship, which simply means that we declare the worth of something.

When we worship God, we are declaring his worth. And it's done in various ways, through prayer, scripture reading, praise, preaching, singing.

It's done corporately and formally, like today, the Lord's day, or less formally in the home with your family or with other believers on different occasions.

Most of all, worship is God -centered. He is the audience, not us.

We are declaring his worth, not ours. And very similar to the benediction we went over in Jude a couple of weeks ago, it's entirely

God -focused, as well as our worship should be. Have you ever walked out of a church service and been asked, hey, did you like the worship?

My response is, wow, I didn't know it was for me. You don't come to church to listen to worship or give a critique of the worship, like a movie review, as if this was worshiptainment.

You come to the service to offer worship. Worship is for God.

He is the audience, not us. And contrary to COVID -19 protocol, worship is essential.

You and I were created to worship. And in the absence of God, you will worship something else.

We all value and pursue something. We will declare by our words or actions what we deem worthy, what is worthy of our worship.

Remember Romans 1 .25, mankind exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator.

This is all the effect of the fall. But did you see in that one scripture, do you realize that in the suppression of God's truth, worship still goes on.

Worship continues. Man will continue to worship something. In fact, he will worship anything in the absence of God because he was created to worship.

It's innate in him. We were created to worship. Ask yourself, what do you pursue or think about most?

Because that's probably what you worship. And if it's not

God, then it's misplaced worship. Jonathan Edwards says it like this.

If man does not give his highest respect to the God that made him, there will be something else that he has in possession of it.

Men will either worship the true God or some idol. It is impossible that it should be otherwise.

Something will have the heart of man and that which a man gives his heart to may be called his

God. Another very important fact that we need to keep in mind is that worship is supernatural.

Now don't get scared. I know some of us are the frozen chosen, right? But God is supernatural.

If God meets with us in worship like he did with Moses on the mountain or the priest in the tabernacle and God is supernatural, then worship is a supernatural event to be taken seriously.

It's incredible. So worship is valuing and pursuing what you desire most.

It's the most important thing you can do and you will worship something. It's innate in you.

Let's move on to what happens in worship. In very simple terms, Jonathan Cruz says it like this.

Something happens to us, something happens between us and the people we worship with, and most importantly, something happens between us and God.

So there's a horizontal and a vertical. In worship, we are being molded and shaped for an eternity with God and each other.

In worship, we are exiting the mold that the world has set up for us and entering into a mold that prepares us for our ultimate end to glorify

God and enjoy him forever. See, the world has a mold that it wants to squeeze you into, and Paul warns us about it in Romans 12.

Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that by testing you may discern what the will of God is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will.

The world has a mold, a pattern that it wants you to conform it to, a framework that it wants you to adopt, but so does

God. However, only one of these patterns is the desired will of God and is good, pleasing, and perfect.

The other is not. The pattern of God or the pattern of the world? Can you guess which one

God wants? So we gather together on Sunday, the Lord's Day, to worship and rest.

It's our Sabbath. We exit the pattern of this world and enter into the pattern that God's given us, but it's not just resting from our physical labor that we're leaving behind.

We are exiting the pattern of chaos and disorder that the world exhibits in order to reorient our minds and recalibrate our minds around God.

So if I was to ask you, what is the opposite of rest? I'm betting most of you are going to say work.

Rest, work. It stands to reason, and it's true, but another antonym to the word rest is unrest.

The opposite of rest is unrest, disorder, chaos. It's a manifestation of the systems of the world.

When we get together to worship, we are entering the God -ordained plan, the order for our lives, and learning how to think

God's thoughts after Him, and this is vital for us as Christians and for the kingdom. I like how

Doug says it. It's Christ or chaos. Either the world's way or God's way, we are being molded by what we worship and pattern our lives after.

So if the object of your worship is worthy of worship, and worship molds and shapes us, then you're training yourself for something good, something worthy of all eternity with God.

Conversely, if the object of your worship is inferior, then you are still being molded and shaped, but you're preparing yourself for something bad, the judgment of God.

Again, either way, worship prepares you for something, and everyone worships something.

This can prove very beneficial or very detrimental because, like we read this morning, we actually become like what we worship.

We read in Psalm 135. So listen again to what the psalmist said in verses 15 through 18.

The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak.

They have eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths, nor those who make them become like them.

So do all who trust in them. What the psalmist is telling us is that we become like what we worship.

We get fit into that pattern and mold. In this case, Psalm 135, their hearts become alive to whatever it is they're pursuing, silver, gold, trusting in whatever they fashioned with their own hands, and then they become dead, blind, deaf, mute to the

God who created him, them, with his own hands. Someone once said, in the beginning,

God created man in his own image, and ever since then, man's been trying to return the favor. We try to create

God in our own image. The sinful heart of man wants to rule, not be ruled over.

It wants to be God. It is the height of foolishness to worship things you have made with your own hands.

In an extended quote from the prophet Isaiah, he says it most convincingly. If you want to follow along, it's Isaiah 44 verses 14 through 20.

He says it like this. Man plants a cedar, a tree, and the rain nourishes it.

Then it becomes fuel for him. He takes part of it and warms himself. He kindles a fire and breaks bread on it.

Also, he makes a God out of the tree and worships it. He makes it an idol and falls down before of it.

Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the other half, he eats meat. He roasts it and is satisfied.

Also, he warms himself and says, ah, I am warm. I've seen the fire. And the rest of it he makes into a

God, his idol, and falls down to it to worship it. He prays to it and says, deliver me, for you are my

God. They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes so that they cannot see, and their hearts so they cannot understand.

No one considers, nor is their knowledge or discernment to say, half of it I burned in the fire. I also baked bread on its coals.

I roasted meat and have eaten. Shall I now make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?

He feeds on ashes. A deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, is there not a lie in my?

He plants a tree, cuts it down, bakes bread over it, cuts the other part into a statue, and worships it.

They are deluded who think that the idol, the statue that they fashion with their own hands, will save them.

Not seeing God as the supreme object of worship, they look to their own efforts, something they've created with their own hands, and they become like what they worship, blind, deaf, mute.

And this is anything but supernatural. Remember, I told you, worship is supernatural. They are becoming like what they worship.

They are becoming like the wood for the fire, preparing themselves for disaster.

One of the clearest examples of this in all of scripture is the golden calf in Exodus 34. It says, now when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people assembled about Aaron and said to him, come, make us a

God who will go before us. As for Moses, we don't know what has become of him. So Aaron took the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf.

And they said, this is your God, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. A golden calf.

Here they took the gold, the jewelry, the very same jewelry that they received as a parting gift from the

Egyptians when God initially delivered them, and molded it into a calf to worship it.

And Aaron says, well, it just popped out of the fire that way. And a while back, I had talked about why it was a calf.

Think about it. A calf. A little baby. It's easily led.

It's tame. I put a rope around its neck. I lead it wherever I want.

I lead, it follows. I tell it what to do. It listens to me. It's a baby cow.

It's not big, strong, or frightening. It's submissive. It's nothing that I have to fear or submit to.

Think about it. If we were going to start a football team at Hope, what would we call it? The Hope Reformed Baptist Church Lions? The Hope Reformed Baptist Church Bulls?

Or the Hope Reformed Baptist Church Calfs? Will strike fear in the heart of the opponent, wouldn't it?

And fatefully, it's this idol that the Israelites would later become like. Listen to what

Amos says in chapter four. He says, hear this word, you cows of Bashan.

The calf has grown up, only worse because it's older and knows more. Listen to you, hear this word, oh cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria, mountains, power, authority, who oppressed the poor, who crushed the needy, who say to your husbands, bring now that we may drink.

The Lord God has sworn by his holiness, behold, the days are coming upon you when they will take you away with meat hooks, just like the calf.

Here the Israelites, the cows, will be led by their captives, the Babylonians.

They will be led like the baby calf that they worshipped and brought right back into slavery.

Back then it was Egypt, here now it's Babylon for them. You will become like what you worship.

That is the pattern that the world wants to squeeze you into. Worship anything but God and become like it, a slave.

You've heard the slogans, you be you. Love is love. Follow your heart.

Pattern, mold, lies. So what's the solution? Worship God in the pattern he lays out for us in the scriptures so that we become like him, like his son

Jesus. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. He is the way. And he also said, enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide, and the way is easy that leads to destruction.

And those who enter it are many, for the gate is narrow, and the way is hard that leads to life.

And there are a few who find it. Just like the mountain, the gate on the bottom is large. Everybody wants to try to climb that mountain, but the way up is narrow.

What's even more beautiful about this pattern is that when we, as his church, collectively, together, worship the same thing, the triune

God, we become united in one common goal and desirous of each of us to fulfill it.

We become one with our creator and one with each other. Just like Jesus prayed, may we be one as they, may they be one as we are one.

So we gather together and exalt the name of Jesus. We sing praises to our God. We offer worship to him and we encourage and help each other to attain the same goal,

Christ likeness. We become like what we worship, a community in unity and a unity in community.

It's our triune God. He's a unity in community and a community in unity. We become like that because we're worshiping a common goal.

All right. So, so far we learned what is worship, pursuing and valuing that which you hold most dear. It's the most important thing that you can do.

And we just learned what happens during worship. We are being molded and shaped for eternity and we become like what we worship.

We all worship something. Now let's take a look at the structure of worship and how it's ordered.

The structure of worship or the order of worship is called the liturgy. You might've heard that word.

And we actually get the word liturgy from the Bible. It's the Greek word liturgia, which is a combination of two words, laos meaning people and ergon meaning work.

Literally, liturgy is a work of the people or a public service.

That's why we call this a worship service, right? We are offering service, worship to God.

Therefore, liturgy basically refers to the order of a corporate worship service as performed by the people.

And the term is found both in the Old Testament and New Testament in many places. Just to, Numbers 8 .22, the

Levites went in to do their service in the tent of meeting before Aaron and his sons. That word service is liturgy.

And in Luke 1 .23, when Zechariah, the priest was ministering in the temple and he encountered the angel who removed his voice, it says, and when his time of service was ended, he went to his home.

Liturgy. So liturgy, the order of service is a biblical concept.

Okay. And the way liturgy is arranged will affect how we're shaped. So this is important, right?

We want to be shaped correctly since worship is the most important thing we can do in our lives. We want our thoughts ordered after God's pattern to think his thoughts after him.

He's a God of order and the order, the liturgy that we follow on the Sabbath is centered around bringing our busy, chaotic lives into order around the

God we worship. With the goal of conforming us to the image of Christ. Paul, when referring to worship in 1

Corinthians 14 says, all things should be done in decency and in order. Remember, we're climbing the mountain of God and entering into the most holy place when we worship.

We need to set our feet in the right place when climbing a large mountain or risk losing our lives.

We don't want to fall. Nadab and Abihu learned the hard way. They offered strange fire on the altar to God and God sent down fire and consumed them.

They violated God's order of what was acceptable worship and lost their lives in the process. Incidentally, they were practicing the normative principle of worship, just saying.

So the church has a prescribed order, a liturgy for worship. And so does the world.

The world has a liturgy that it follows and that's a powerful liturgy. Let me give you an example of a worldly liturgy explained by James Smith in his book,

Desiring the Kingdom. He says, our world is full of secular or cultural liturgies, orders, orders of worship that are training us to yearn for a certain good life.

He says, everywhere we turn, we are confronted with liturgies that are shaping us at an unconscious level at the mall, at the university, at the stadium, and so on.

Take the mall, for example. It preaches to us the reality of our sin in thinking we don't have enough.

We don't have the newest and best thing, which means that we're broken, but we're presented with a gospel.

We can have the newest and best thing if we come to the mall and shop. There's the hope of redemption through consumption.

So we go to the we present our offerings, the merchandise, at the counter, the altar, and the priest, the cashier, gratefully accepts our token of work, our money, and gives us our goods.

And then the cashier sends us off with a little benediction. Remember to come back and shop in our store again. But the good life that is presented in the mall is never attainable.

What we buy will go out of style, and we will need more and more of it.

Nevertheless, we can easily be trained in the worship of consumerism." The goods of this world, the sexual desires of this world, the accumulation of money and power in this world will never ultimately satisfy you, but it will ultimately ruin you.

You need to worship something bigger. You need to worship something eternal. You need to worship something permanent.

Otherwise, you will sing like Jenny Lind in The Greatest Showman. All the shine of a thousand spotlights, all the stars we steal from the night sky, all the attention on me, never be enough, never be enough.

Towers of gold, still too little. These hands could hold the entire world, but it'll never be enough, never be enough.

Beautiful in appearance, beautiful voice, yet possessing a starving and desperately empty heart.

And she's right. Those things will never be enough, because we were created to find our ultimate satisfaction in the

God who created us, the eternal, permanent, omniscient God, not the gods that we create for ourselves.

Conversely, worship through liturgy is more powerful and shapes us for eternity.

We become like what we worship. The liturgy we use to worship God cannot reflect the values of the world.

It needs to reflect the gospel as found in the scriptures, because the scriptures are God's word, and the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.

And remember, when the scriptures speak of salvation, that includes justification, being declared right in God's sight, sanctification, the longest part, and then glorification.

So it's the whole process. In other words, it's a whole lifestyle. This is not just, I raised my hand and asked

Jesus into my heart. It's working out your salvation with fear and trembling, because we will become like what we order our lives around.

So the liturgy we follow is vital, because our worship will either lead to restoration, or it will lead to ruin.

We need to be formed in the right way, for the right reason, and into the right people. So what does worship look like?

What does a typical liturgy look like? Well, it should follow a covenantal shape. We're covenant believers here, right?

God deals with us through covenant, and liturgy is no exception. A typical covenantal liturgy, like you're seeing today, is arranged as follows.

First, there's a call, a call to worship. Next, there's a cleansing, a confession of sin. Then there's consecration.

We hear the word, and we partner with God, and we promise to follow his word. Then there's communion.

We eat with God, and then a commissioning. We're given a benediction and commissioned to go out into the world.

And the high point of the service is communion, where we fellowship and we eat with God like Moses did at the top of the mountain.

Communion is the pinnacle and goal of the service. Let's go through each one quickly.

So we start with a call to worship. We read the Psalm 95 this morning.

Oh, come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker, for he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, the sheep of his hand.

So we start by coming to God and acknowledging his majesty and his shepherding over us.

This would be like us standing at the base of a big mountain to gaze up at it and admire its size and its beauty and ready our minds for the challenge ahead to climb it carefully, cautiously.

How much more so with God in view? Then there's a period of cleansing. We cannot approach

God with sin hidden in our hearts. So we confess our sins before God, who calls us and made us to worship.

And rather than having to offer an animal sacrifice, we acknowledge the forgiveness we have in Jesus, the

Lamb of God, our advocate with the Father. If we don't confess our sins and repent, we should not move forward.

It would be like starting to climb a 14 ,000 -foot mountain with flip -flops on. You'll not get the proper traction, and eventually you're going to fall and get hurt.

We need to be cleansed first and made fit to receive the Word of God. We have to put on the righteousness of Christ to climb this mountain.

Next, we have consecration. We are consecrated by the preaching of the Word and the exaltation of Jesus in the gospel.

As the preacher faithfully exposits God's Word, we should hear the voice of our Savior directly to us and draw closer to Him.

It's here during the preaching that God's Word does a work in our hearts. He transforms us by the hearing of His Word through the power of His Spirit.

He sets us apart for His purpose. That's consecration. In the hearing of the Word preached, it acts as a double -edged sword.

For the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any double -edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

And no creature is hidden from its sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account.

As we hear the Word preached, we are cut to the heart by the sword. We are disassembled on the altar of God.

But then when we hear the gospel and repent and are forgiven and sanctified, the fat is cut out and removed, and we are reassembled, put together in proper order.

We are brought near to God in love and conformed to the image of Jesus. And then we respond like the

Israelites in Exodus 24. Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, all the words of the

Lord has spoken, we will do. We commit ourselves to following what we just heard.

Incidentally, the word consecrate literally means to fill the hand. Deuteronomy tells us that we bind the law as a sign on our hand and that she'll be as frontlets between our eyes.

What comes in through here comes out through here. The hands carry out what

God has put in. Consecrate. God's people are not hearers of the

Word only. They are doers of the Word. We become people of action after ascending the hill of the

Lord. And this all culminates with our being transformed by the Word of God, our being brought together near him, and then celebrating that covenant meal.

The pinnacle of our worship is communion with God. We get to eat with our

God and celebrate the new covenant we have in him. And church, it's only a foretaste of what's to come when we see him face to face and share in the wedding supper of the

Lamb with a full glass of wine, not a thimble. This communion, this communion meal is a mountain dreamers, a mountain climbers dreamer, a mountain climbers dream come true.

Because it's at this point that we've made it to the peak of the mountain. And finally, we have the commissioning, the benediction.

We are reminded that we bear his name and have intimate fellowship with him. Then we're commissioned to go out into the world, share the good news, and expand his kingdom.

We serve our God and Savior and we serve people. We are here to herald the good news that Jesus is

Lord and there is forgiveness in no other name. Now, if you're following along with the mountain climbing analogy, this is the point where you put on I climb my

Pike's Peak t -shirt and you go out all over town displaying what you wore because you climbed the mountain.

You let everyone know. The same pattern of worship, call, cleansing, consecration, communion, and commissioning is found in Leviticus 9 and 2

Chronicles 29. Because there is a scriptural order to worship. Order is essential to worship and any worship service that is out of order or even wild, as I've heard some call it, is not worship.

Everything is done in decency and order. So far we heard what worship is, the pursuing and value of what we hold most dear.

It's the most important thing we do. We know what happens during worship. We are being molded and shaped for eternity.

And now we know there's a liturgy, a proper order in worship to God. Lastly, we have to ask, where does all this happen?

26 Westfield Road, Quorum, New York, of course, right? Well, yes and no. In worship, we're approaching our

God, immortal, invisible, the only wise God. Where does God the Father sit?

On his throne in heaven. Where does Jesus sit? Seated at the right hand on his throne.

Where are those seats? In heaven. When we worship God, we're entering into the heavenly realm and into the throne room of God himself.

And just like when the Jews worship God in the temple in Jerusalem, we ascend up into his presence.

At least 28 times in the Bible, the term up to Jerusalem is used because Jerusalem is located at the top of a mountain,

Mount Zion, the same mountain that Moses and the elders climbed. So when the Jews went to worship, they were climbing up the mountain to meet with God.

In fact, there are 15 Psalms, Psalm 120 to 134 that are traditionally known as the

Psalms of ascent because they were sung while making pilgrimage up to the temple on the feast days.

Worship is a move upward into the heavenlies. The book of Hebrews gives us a better and clearer description of this scene.

Listen to how the author contrasts the old covenant temple with the new covenant temple. He starts off Hebrews 12, 18.

For you have not come to what may be touched, that's invisible. Now the old covenant, a blazing fire, the darkness and gloom and a tempest, the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken.

Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I tremble with fear. That was the old covenant temple, one that could be touched, but not us.

Listen to where we go and what we get in the new covenant because of Jesus. But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living

God, the heavenly Jerusalem and to innumerable angels in festal gathering and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven and to God, the judge of all and to all the spirits of the righteous made perfect and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, to the sprinkle blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

When we worship, we are brought into the city of the living God, where the father and son are seated in heaven and we're surrounded by angels.

We're in the assembly of the firstborn saints and in the presence of our God and savior himself, we meet and encounter with the living

God and commune with him. It's amazing. It's supernatural. And I have to admit that I was, as I was putting this message together,

I realized how many times I have not taken worship as seriously as I should have. There's a big difference between going to church and going to the movies.

Leland Rykin says it like this. We worship our work. We work at our play and we play at our worship.

Church, we're being brought into God's presence and he deserves our best. He deserves all of our attention.

He deserves all of our affection. He deserves us being prompt. He deserves our best appearance.

He deserves our best clothes. He deserves our best everything. He deserves our Bibles open and our cell phones closed.

Why? Because we're seated in the heavenlies in Christ, with Christ. It's the most important thing we do.

It's the most important thing we will ever do in our lives. So worship is the pursuing and valuing of what you hold most dear.

It's the most important thing we will ever do. And we know what happens during worship. We are being molded and shaped for eternity.

And there is a liturgy, a proper order to worship. And now we can see where it takes place in the presence of God in heaven.

Correct worship, worship that will, worshiping that which is truly worthy of worship,

God alone, will lead to restoration and reunion. Incorrect worship, valuing anything above God or besides God, will lead to ruin and removal.

Everyone worships something. Are you worshiping something bigger than you, created or uncreated?

Are you worshiping something temporal rather than eternal? Are you worshiping something momentary or something permanent?

Will you be singing never enough or will you be singing he is enough? Church, the worship service is simply and effectively a visible rehearsal of the gospel message.

Repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, calling on his name for the forgiveness of your sins.

Redirect your worship to him alone who deserves it and be reconciled to God. So, now how do we respond and move forward knowing all this?

Well, after I pray, our brother Jerry is going to come up and lead us in another hymn. And then we'll prepare our hearts to meet our

God in communion, remembering the order that he laid out to conform us into his image.

Let's pray. Father in heaven, you are the only thing worthy of our worship.

And we ask you, Lord God, for forgiveness for the times that we've worshiped things that we fashioned with our own hands, things that are not eternal, things that are temporal, things that will wear out.

Father, you created us to worship. I pray, Father God, if there be anybody in here who doesn't know you, that you would incline their hearts in the right direction to worship you.

May we worship you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. You are worthy. This is the most important thing we can do.

Father, we need your help to do it. But we acknowledge you as our God, our king, the only thing, one worthy of our worship.