Alright, Jared just spoke to us about the different covenants throughout the Old Testament and how we worship through them in seed form, and now we get to look at the flower of worship in the New Testament. And the question I want to frame this around is, is worship in the Old Testament and New Testament fundamentally the same? I think there's been a lot of progress in biblical studies in saying the Bible is a unified story through things like the Gospel Coalition, the Bible Project. But when it comes to worship, I think we still kind of think that that was Old Testament worship, and now in the New Testament we have something fundamentally new. So I want to answer that question for us as we look at this. Is worship fundamentally the same in both testaments? So I wanna frame this around this article, Hear Ye Him, Worship in the New Testament, by Sherman Isbell. And so I'm gonna read a portion of that, and then we'll jump in. So throughout biblical history, God has given his church ordinances of worship by which he is to be approached. Certain solemn forms and ceremonies have been invested by God's Word with significance for worship. God has been glorified as his people obeyed his instructions, employing these rites as the vehicles for rendering praise to him. Indeed, observance of these ordinances has been a test of submission of God's people to his revealed will. In the Garden of Eden, the tree of knowledge of good and evil was given to put Adam's obedience under trial. Circumcising the males of his household was the responsibility of Abraham. Remembering the Lord's death by giving and receiving of bread and wine is a duty which no believer may ignore. The Lord's designation of certain ordinances for worship continues in the New Testament church. No doubt the New Testament apostles used the language of an Old Testament ordinance, figuratively, to describe the believer seeking to honor God in all the course of his life. But far more commonly in the New Testament, we read of worship ordinances which are to be kept when the church comes together in its assemblies. Prayer, reading the word, preaching, congregational singing of hymns and psalms, baptism, and the Lord's Supper. What is it, then, that gives legitimacy to our particular activity for included in worship? Is it the experience of God's people who find, over a period of time, that some practices are conducive to feeling of reverence and adoration? Is it the value God's people see in them for dramatizing the truths of the gospel? Is it the likelihood of drawing unbelievers who might be impressed with the activities that seem to be as sophisticated or entertaining as something that might see in a secular world? Is it the consensus judgment of the church's governing elders which should determine what is appropriate ceremonies for us in worship? In Mark 7, 3-13, Jesus instructs us that worship is vain when it is practices are based on the traditions of men and do not have a warrant in God's word. In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Jesus cites these words from the book of the prophet Isaiah, disclosing that there is a continuity of principle here between Old and New Testament. It is the commandments of God alone that we are to seek direction for acceptable worship. Worship has been misguided and has lost its value when it is not the result of obedience to an authorizing command from God. The authority of human tradition cannot make an action righteous nor make an activity an ordinance of worship in Christ's church. Never in scripture do men institute a practice for religious worship and then meet with divine approval of their conduct. In Mark 7, we have such an instance of divine condemnation when men sanctioned religious practices not required by God. What is it that is raised washing, eating, drinking, and singing to the significance of being ordinances of worship for the New Testament Church? Might painting, dancing, and dramatic plays be given a similar standing? It is the Word of God alone which sanctions a sacramental association between the crucified body of Christ and the bread of the Lord's Supper. No other authority can draw that connection. Only the Word of God can provide the warrant that transforms any activity into a worship ordinance. True worship is an act of obedience rendered to a biblical command requiring the performance of that activity as a duty. In this, the Sovereign Lord asserts His own wisdom and good pleasure in determining of what is acceptable element of worship. According to Mark 7, worship activity is only glorified unto God when it is sanctioned by His command. Without God's word of institution for the service we offer Him, what we do in worship is fruitless. In passing from the Old Testament to the New, God has not surrendered his exclusive prerogative as the determiner of worship ordinances. The difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament worship lies elsewhere. Now we'll jump down to the end. There is a distinction between Old Testament and New Testament worship in the manner of our access to God. The Old Testament believers dealt with altars, tabernacles, veils, and animal sacrifices, shadowy representations, approach into God's presence rather than relating immediately to the true tabernacle in heaven. There is a distinctiveness of approach in the New Testament worship because we deal not in the realm of shadows but come boldly to God's own throne, the way into the most holy place now being manifest. The Old Covenant copies of heavenly things were unable to to cleanse the conscience and remove the fear of death and association with the shadows left men with a spirit of bondage and a sense of condemnation. The New Testament regards these shadows as a restraint in our bold approach to God. Christ, by his death, has purchased for us a directness of access and a freedom from the typical pomp and ceremony of the Levitical priesthood. Do we cherish this liberty from the Mosaic instruction? Christ shed his blood to acquire it for us. The beauty of New Testament worship is not produced by aesthetic display. When a congregation tries to worship God by making a creative, artistic program for its services, it is not only offering to God something he has not commanded and never sought, it is also failing to appreciate the nature of our access into God's very presence in heaven, which was won for us by the blood of Christ. The glory of our God is the glory which surrounds our priests in heaven. Does this suffice for us? A pomp of heaven is not to be independently recreated in a shadow on earth. For the shadows and copies, even those ones authorized by God, have been abolished by the death of Christ. Now we go by faith into the true tabernacle, which is immeasurably superior. We participate not in symbols, but in the realities in heaven when we worship. The simplicity of New Testament forms of worship, the absence of outward pomp, and aesthetic exhibitions speaks volumes. It tells of the complete reality of our entrance into the holiest of all in heaven. We are no longer playing with models, but we have come to the New Jerusalem itself. The New Testament worship is not an imaginative aesthetic product offered to God. The Old Testament temple worship was a pictorial spectacle of the prefigured entrance of Christ into the sanctuary. What was foreshadowed has arrived. It is inconsistent to perpetuate the depiction of its awaited debut. Are we being unduly fascinated with sensory displays like those of the temple? A bride does not continue to hold wedding rehearsals after the marriage has taken place. Now she has something better to enjoy, namely the actuality of marriage relationship. Or as the Vessel Reformer, Yohannes Eukalopteus, put it in the Old Testament, ceremonies were like lighting of candles, which in the hours before dawn serve their own purpose. But after the sun has risen in the morning and ascended to the height of its noonday position, it is a strange lack of appreciation for the sunshine when we continue to burn candles. Appreciation for the efficacy of Christ's sacrifice should show itself by not seeking to return to a shadow notion of glory and worship. In Acts and in the epistles to the Hebrews, we see indications that the Jews clung to the temple service in Jerusalem because they did not recognize the superior glory of Christ as the New Testament mediator. Worshippers before the coming of Christ were meant to inquire into the meaning of the temple typologically as it is pointed forward to him, but now believers look to Christ fully revealed as the Savior who has been exalted and has entered into heaven itself. We should not pray with our faces to Jerusalem, hankering after the outward pomp of the temple ordinances. Rather, we should be absorbed with the glory of our Redeemer's intercessory ministry in the heavenly throne room. May we pray toward heaven where Christ mediates so competently for us and where we enter by believing prayer into the holiest of all. May the worship services in our churches bespeak the efficacy of Christ's priestly ministry in heaven and the immediacy of our approach to God. That is the article. So I just want to draw a couple key themes from this article. And just by example of what he's getting at. I just want you to think about why would God choose things as simple as water and bread and wine for signs in the New Testament compared to the extravagant and bloody signs in the Old Testament? It seems like there's a radical difference. Just by reading the Old Testament, you see all of these great outwardly glorious signs. The temple that Solomon ended up building. The reign of all the kings and the queens of the earth coming to Solomon. just how glorious it was, it was intense, there was many sacrifices, it was bloody, there were signs of circumcision and sacrifices. So why would God do that? Is God saying that there's a fundamental difference, or is he pointing to something different? And so to rephrase the article in a shorter manner, I think the Westminster Confession gets at what the article was trying to get at as well. And when a Presbyterian wants to compliment something, they say, it's not the Bible, but. And that's normally how they talk about the Westminster. It's not the Bible, but it's pretty good. And this is how the Westminster talks about it in chapter seven, paragraph six. In talking about the new covenant, it says, under the gospel, when Christ the substance was exhibited, the ordinance in which this covenant is dispensed are the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. And here's the key phrase here, which though fewer in number and administered with more simplicity and less outward glory, Yet, in them, it is held forth in more fullness, evidence, and spiritual efficacy to all nations, both Jew and Gentiles, and it is called the New Testament. There are not, therefore, two covenants of grace, differing in substance, but one and the same under various dispensations. So to continue getting that in a different way, I want you to think about a Venn diagram. Now, I know you thought you graduated from school and didn't need Venny's diagram anymore, but think about those circles, and they overlap, and there's like a section in the middle where they're the same, then there's sections on the sides that are different. What these are getting at, and to use the phrase from the article, in the very middle, What makes the Old Testament and New Testament fundamentally the same is God's exclusive prerogative as the determiner of worship ordinances. Chris used this phrase, the regulative and normative principle, and what's going on here is that in both Testaments, God is the one who gets to say how we worship. Just like in creation, God isn't a watchmaker and just lets you go and sets creation off by itself, God in worship is not a watchmaker. He does not say, here's a couple principles, go get them and I'll see you at worship. He gives us direct instruction. Now, we don't have every single thing to do, like should we use PowerPoints in singing, but he does give us the things and elements in worship that we need to worship him. And we are not free just to make up our own ideas. And so what's going on here is that in both Testaments, fundamentally, God is the exclusive has the exclusive prerogative in both Testaments to define how we worship. And so from that we can stretch that out a little bit more. Is that the only similarity between Old Testament and New Testament? Are they basically different, but God still gets to tell us what to do? And still we can say, even more, they are fundamentally the same. That in the Old Testament, the article in the Westminster talks about in the New Testament we have the spiritual substance, Whereas in the Old Testament, we have the visual forms of the things that are found out in the New Testament. They're examples of what, in the New Testament, that true worship looks like. But they're not just examples. God isn't just saying, this is kind of what worship is like, and then we're gonna do it in the Old Testament. They're real pictures of realities, of heavenly realities. Think about when David, they just made their way into Jerusalem. Think about what David wanted to do. He's like, man, I got this great house, this is wonderful, this is huge, I'm the king. God's been living in a tabernacle, in a tent for all throughout the Bible. We gotta make God this big house. What's God's answer? I didn't ask for a house. In the prophets, if I was hungry, I wouldn't tell you, David. I don't need you to build me anything. Actually, what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna build you a house. That's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna build you a house. Solomon, later down the road, we can work out the temple. But I want you to understand that this temple is pointing to something. I don't need a house, but I'll use it. I'll use this to show you what I'm like." And throughout the, in the Psalms, David starts to pick up on this and realizes in Psalm 51, he's like, ultimately, the sacrifices isn't what you're really trying to get at. You desire mercy, not sacrifice. Not that the Israelites weren't supposed to offer sacrifices, God did ordain that, but there's something deeper. There's a deeper reality to what God is trying to get at. And so what's going on is that when Christ comes, When Christ comes in the New Testament, he is taking all of those pictures, all of these symbols of worship, and bringing the true reality. In the New Testament, and like I said, it's not just examples, that there are pictures of this reality, Christ doesn't show up and say, all right, those things were great, let's do something different. He says, those things were great, and I'm gonna show you what they really mean. For sacrifices, Christ doesn't say, oh man, that stinks, let's do something different. He says, I will be the true and final sacrifice. So when we come into worship, we don't bring lambs and goats, and Alan doesn't sacrifice them right here, not because that's hard to do and boring and how do we get people to come, But because Christ has finally given to us a sacrifice that is complete and efficacious for eternity. It's efficacious like in once a year and the high priest would come and offer a sacrifice and they didn't need to do that until the next year. There was something about that day of atonement that lasted for a year. But that priest was sinful. And the sacrifices wouldn't last for two years, you had to do it every year. And so there was a reminder of sin. But when Christ comes, the day of atonement has come, and it lasts for eternity. The reason that we don't offer sacrifices is there is a sacrifice that has been offered that is continually efficacious. If that sacrifice were run out, we would need to again. But it never will. In David's kingdom and his house, it's not that we don't need a king anymore. A king of the lineage of David is that we have a king that won't die, that has died and has risen for eternity and is with us forever and ever. It's not that we don't need prophets, it's that we have the final prophet in Christ. We have the full revelation of God's word. And so, is this in Scripture, is this the New Testament, or is this Josh talking? Well, we read in Hebrews 8, one through seven. Now, the point in what we are saying is this. We have such a high priest, one who is seated on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, and the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices, thus it is necessary for the priest also to have something to offer. Now, if you were on earth, you would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. They serve as a copy and a shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, see that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown to you on the mountain. But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is much more excellent than the old, as the covenant he mediates is better, since that it is enacted on better promises. For if the first covenant had been faultless, there would have not been occasion to look for a second." So what's going on there is that the author of Hebrews isn't saying that Christ came to do something different. He came to do something better. So we had an example, or Moses was given an example of the heavenly tabernacle, and he used to build the earthly tabernacle after that example. But we don't have a tabernacle anymore on earth, not because one doesn't exist, it is because Christ is in the heavenly tabernacle. He is truly in the place of God and sends the Spirit that wherever his people gather is the place of the tabernacle. Am I taking this out of context in Hebrews? I would say no. In Hebrews 12, 18 through 25, we read, For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire, a darkness and gloom and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be given to them, talking about Mount Sinai and the giving of the law. For they cannot endure the order that was given. If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned. Indeed, also terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I tremble with fear. But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festival gatherings, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven. and to God, the judge of all, and the spirits, the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. See that you do not refuse him. So the author of Hebrews, again, is saying that Jesus has come to do something, not different, but something better. See, we don't go to Jerusalem to worship, but we do go to the heavenly Jerusalem that was modeled after the heavenly city. See, it needs to be said that Christ's nation is not any given geopolitical nation, and that's true. America is not God's chosen nation. South America, Canada is not God's chosen nation. But God's people is a geopolitical nation. It is the asketological political nation. It's the last kingdom. Remember in Daniel, the kingdoms of the earth are gonna come and go and wane and this one will rise and this one will fall and this one will rise and this one will fall. But there's one more coming, right? God's kingdom, on the new heavens and new earth, God's kingdom will be the last one standing. It won't be America, it won't be Canada, it won't be Europe. There'll be one last geopolitical nation in the new heavens, the new earth, and it is God's kingdom. Paul to the Philippians, to the Roman colony in Philippi, out in the empire on the outskirts of the Roman Empire. What does he say to the Roman citizens hanging out there on the outpost? No, he says, Philippi, just remember, your citizenship is in heaven. Though you might think geopolitically you are an outpost of Rome, but eschatologically you're an outpost of heaven. That little geopolitical nation called the church, That we are in existence, a foretaste of the world to come, a foretaste of the last nation, a foretaste of the heavenly Jerusalem that will fill all of the earth. So we can wait with patience, that when our lives don't look great, when our country does not look great, we can know that our true country is coming. And so this is not a sermon, so I don't have applications, but I do have considerations and implications before we leave for lunch. Just two, worship is, I'm using two Greek prepositions here. Worship is para us, but it is not peri us. That worship is for us, it does provide benefit for us, but worship is not about us. Fundamentally, worship is about God and is about obedience to our Heavenly Father. It is about triune worship to our God and to our King and coming into the presence of the true things, coming into God's temple to worship King Jesus through the Spirit, the glory of the Father. but also worship is about God, but we are not the only, it's not just us and God, there are also other people to consider in worship. We come with our fellow, with our fellow gents, I'm trying to keep G's here, but there's other, our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, and that though God commands worship and he dictates what there ought to be, There are decisions we do have to make in worship, and true worship looks like yielding to the choices of others. That might be, what songs do we pick? What color should the carpet be? I think we have to decide that right now. What food should we have after? There are choices where we yield to our brothers and sisters in Christ out of love. and that by that the world would know because there's a watching audience of how we look to and love one another. So in worship there's the audience of God, there's the audience of gents, our fellow brothers and sister, and the audience of the Gentiles. Now something that has very clearly been stated that we should not be seeker-friendly in church. We should not be, as the audience stated, trying to figure out what is the most attractive thing to do, what's gonna get the most people through the door, and try to do that. It's been said the church doesn't need to do a C-plus job of what the world is A-plus at. For trying to be a concert, I'd rather go to a Taylor Swift concert than go to a C plus job done by the church. The church has a different job. At the same time, though we should not be seeker sensitive, we should not be seeker hating. Sometimes the reformed branch of Christianity would be like, we're not going to be seeker sensitive, and so we're going to make sure that the only way anybody would ever want to come is if they truly love God. And so though we shouldn't be seeker sensitive, we shouldn't be seeker hating. We shouldn't try to make it as miserable as possible. Now, I'm overplaying that a little bit. I think the goal should be seeker loving by how God defines it in his word. We should love people and that's how people come to know the one true God of Israel, the one true God of the churches. By the way, we love one another and how we love them. And so an example of this is the Reformation has emphasized the clarity of scripture. These heavenly realities, heavenly things should be made clear, that we should have services in English, we should not stay in Latin, we should have services that are clear in English and also understandable to the watching world. And so here's just something, a consideration, I don't have the answer to this, but just one way that gets worked out. One use of language, and not just English, Greek, Latin, all these different languages, but the way we talk about things should be clarified to the way that the world speaks and talks. I'm not saying we should condescend or change what we do, but we need to understand the way the world talks in order to clearly communicate the gospel. So here's an example of this. One of our friends, their daughter was applying to a private Christian school and she's brilliant. And she's also, she's a little dyslexic. And one of the questions on that was, why do you deserve to go to this Christian school? This isn't in Buckhannon, this was in Tennessee. And she was fraught over it. Why do you deserve to go to this Christian school? She's like, I don't deserve anything. I only deserve hell apart from Christ. She's like in middle school. It was really sweet. And her mom's like, gets her sister and sends her up. She's like, go help your sister. And she realizes it says, why do you desire, not why do you deserve? to go to this Christian school. And so in Christian circles, we use this language, why do you deserve things? And Christians rightly respond, we don't deserve anything. And that language in the world today is normally talked about as, am I enough? And the Christian answer is, no, I'm not enough. Jesus is enough. Jesus is better. And that is, in that context, that is true and proper and right. But come the next generation, maybe you've seen t-shirts that say, I'm enough, and then Christians will have t-shirts that say, I'm not enough, Jesus is enough. I think possibly what could be happening is that there are two different questions being asked there. In the 18th century, after the Enlightenment, that our culture has just kind of been, has fed off of, It became popular and cool and reasonable to become an atheist. And in America, what we wanted was to remove God away, but still have our ethics and still have our morals and still have science and all of these things, still have all of that. But we started telling people that you're basically a bunch of atoms stuck together and molecules in a world that wasn't created and has no meaning. And so people started getting anxious and started getting anxiety and were anxious about everything. And what we have told the next generation has produced tons of trouble with mental health. It's something that's biological, and it's also just something that we tell people that causes anxiety. And so this is a huge back story to whenever a 15-year-old kid comes and says, man, am I enough? The church needs to be careful to say, yes, you're a sinner that's in need of God's grace and mercy, and you are not enough, but we still have to answer what they're asking is, does life have meaning? Do I have any value? And the answer the church has is you are made in the image of God. Your life has meaning and it has a purpose to glorify God and enjoy him forever. And you're not just a bunch of cells stuck together. That you don't have to come up with your purpose in life. And it's not just, you don't have to be dependent on your emotions. And so what the church needs to do and clearly preaching the gospel is also clearly understanding what people are asking. Now, I don't know the solution to these things, but I think the principle is we need to preach the gospel in words that people can understand. I don't know how to clearly do that all the time, but that's just factors we need to consider. And then lastly, before we eat, worship is opening your eyes, not closing them. Going off the Enlightenment is that sometimes we think of, or the world will think of faith as just like a blind leap. That you're closing your eyes to reality and you're just kind of forgetting about the world. But actually, what the New Testament is preaching about worship is that worship is opening your eyes to the heavenly realities that exist all around us. opening our eyes to that King Jesus is really on the throne, that he is in the heavenly tabernacle, that he is interceding for you, that Jesus is the true and one sacrifices that removes our fear of condemnation, that gives us grace in our time of need and who can sympathize with us. And with that, I will pray for our food.