We have read the text. It's only the first five verses of Hebrews 8. I looked at the last part of this chapter and I said, no way I'm going to do all of this in one sermon. So the first five verses this morning, Hebrews 8, 1 through 5. I'll start off by talking about perfect obedience, and you'll see why very quickly. So we understand that the Bible teaches us that Jesus was perfect in every single way, including that he never sinned. We also know that this is the exact opposite of every single one of us, don't we? And we thank God because without that, without His perfection, we couldn't be saved. Salvation requires obedience to God's law. And obedience requires perfection. It does not require approximation or trying as hard as you can. You have to be perfect. when it comes to God's law, and Jesus did that. And so therefore, the last chapter concluded with this verse. The law appoints men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a son who has been made perfect forever. When thinking about perfection according to the law, I think, and I mentioned this last week, our minds naturally go to the Ten Commandments. It's just kind of the default And that's not wrong, and it's not bad. When we think about obedience to God, this is the first thing that should come into our minds. Certainly, Jesus' perfection includes keeping the Ten Commandments without fault. However, when Hebrews talks about Christ's perfection, at least in our present passage, what we saw last week in chapter 7, that law that he has in mind is not the Ten Commandments per se. Rather, it is what our confession of faith calls ceremonial law. And that's different than moral law. So ceremonial law is all of those laws that pertain to the priesthood and to the tabernacle that the priesthood was to serve and to guard. And thus we might say that what is in mind here is not merely perfect obedience, it's perfect worship. OK, so that's why I said that Jesus is not just perfect in his obedience to the law, it's other things too. And one of those is his worship. Perfect worship implies perfect obedience, but it does so by taking us to a place that we don't usually think of when it comes to perfection. So Jesus is the perfect worshiper. Now, today we have come here to worship God, and so this is particularly relevant for a Lord's Day meeting. Do not think that it is strange that Jesus, who is God, would worship. One of the temptations of Satan was to get Jesus to worship him, wasn't it? Instead, Jesus said, worship the Lord your God. That is who Jesus will worship, not sin, not Satan. In fact, Sin is a form of self-worship. And so Jesus' perfect life is itself an act of true God-worship. The Son glorifies the Father and does all things the Father sends Him to do, even while the Father glorifies the Son. And so to give glory to someone else is a kind of worship. That's what the persons of the Godhead do with each other. And so we might say that the chief end of God is to glorify and enjoy himself forever. If he didn't do that, what would he be? He'd be an idolater. He'd be worshiping something other than himself. But Jesus, and I was just talking about him as God, Jesus is also the son of God and the son of man. And so he offers up his worship, not just as God, but as one of us. And so this morning we want to take a look at exactly what he did, why he did it according to our passage and how that matters for us today. We can say without question that this is what Hebrews wants us to do because it begins our passage as it tries to summarize this difficult meat of the word by saying, now the point of what we're saying is this. So that's how he starts off chapter eight. We've been seeing for several chapters that Jesus is our high priest. That's nothing new in our text. A priest is someone who offers things in a temple and he does it on behalf of other people. The priest is a human mediator between God and man. We've seen that this particular mediator had to die What is in view in Hebrews 8 1 is his exaltation? Because he died. Alright, so look at his exaltation here for just a minute verse 1 We have such a high priest one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven So let's think about this for a moment first of all, there's nothing particularly new here as far as Hebrews is concerned, but We would do well to remember some things There's three things that are mentioned in this verse. First, Jesus is at the right hand. Second, the right hand is by the throne. And third, the throne is that of the majesty in heaven. Now, all three of these have been mentioned previously in Hebrews. These things take us very back to the very beginning of the letter, the way it started, where we learned that Jesus is greater than angels. It's a verse 3 of chapter 1 after making purification for sin. He sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high That's almost exactly what verse 8 1 says Chapter 1 verse 8 of the Sun. He says your throne. Oh God is forever and ever and so If you go back to 1, chapter 1, you see the context and you come to our verse now, you see that he's never really left that original point. What he's going to do is start fleshing out this idea of what it means that he was at the right hand of majesty making purification for sins. So the right hand is a phrase of military power. This is the guy who kept the king safe and who led the armies of the king. And even today we talk about the right hand of man, don't we? David says that Yahweh is his right hand, is the warrior who fights for him. In the New Testament, the phrase is often used of Jesus' new relation as the God-man to heavenly beings. So consider something like 1 Peter 3. He has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him. So you see that the right hand and his subjection, his authority, his rule is what's in mind there. Now, as we're talking about heaven, we should also remember that there are many thrones in heaven. So what do you mean there's many thrones in heaven? Well, some of these thrones have humans sitting at them. You remember the 24 elders sitting on their thrones in Revelation or in Daniel 7 or Colossians 1. In other places, we read about other beings sitting on thrones. And so there's many thrones. But when we are to know that there's a specific throne that's in view, It tells us this is the throne of the majesty in heaven, it says. Now, that kind of an idea is found in other places with synonyms. So, for example, Jesus sits at the right hand of power in Matthew or More common is to say he's at the right hand of God. So majesty, power, and God are synonyms. And the point is that Jesus sits at the throne that's at the right hand of the throne of heaven. He's been exalted or ascended to the highest position in heaven because of his death and his resurrection. But there's one more way that the right hand language is used, and it's used of our salvation. And don't think that these are a problem with one another. Actually, they fit together like a hand and a glove. Salvation in the right hand is priestly language. So think about Acts 5. God has exalted him at his right hand as leader and savior. Or in Romans 8, Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who is indeed interceding. for us. So the right hand and intercession, that's priestly work. Or when Christ is offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. So given the context, all of this is in view in Hebrews 8. Jesus became a high priest, and because of something that he did at his death, he has been elevated to the highest seat in heaven as the God-man, above the 24 elders, above the sons of God, above the thrones and principalities, to the seat of majesty itself. So this is a divine claim that it's making. Jesus is God. No one else has ever sat here. So let's look at more about what it says specifically that Christ did to get here. And that's really the last four verses we'll look at today. So the way Hebrews begins now is to talk A little bit different than what it has said before in the book. So 8-2, Jesus has become a minister in holy places. Well, we've seen that. This is what priests are. They are ministers. And this is where priests minister. They minister in holy places. But suddenly, we get caught off guard a little bit. We get a new reason why he's exalted to heaven. Because his ministry was not merely on earth, it is in heaven. Now this is an amazing thing to think about because no other earthly priest has done this and it has far-reaching implications for his worship as one of us as well as our own our own worship. So Hebrews speaks about the true tent that the Lord set up not man. Now, when I wrote my book on baptism, this was actually the favorite part that I had in that book. It's the longest section, and it's on temples. Really, it's a biblical theology of baptism and water. And it follows this same idea that we're going to talk about here. So I really like talking about this. I could go on and on and on. I'll try and contain myself. The word tent is a reference to the Old Testament tabernacle. But the true tent, is not the tabernacle. So what is it? Well, we can say without question in verse five that the tabernacle was a copy and a shadow of heavenly things. Now, a copy and shadow is a language of typology. And so like Melchizedek, Hebrews is employing typology to help us understand something about what Jesus did. Now, ordinarily, we think about a type as something that comes prior to an anti-type, okay? The anti-type is the full reality, the type pointed to it in a shadowy way, and so the anti-type comes after the type. Peter uses baptism and the flood this way. He says, baptism, which is the anti-type to the flood, now saves you. Then he says, not the removal of dirt of the flesh, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So Noah's flood is a type and Christian baptism is the anti-type. The flood comes first, the anti-type comes second. Even though Christian baptism in that very verse seems to be actually kind of a type of salvation, but I won't talk more about that. Now, the amazing thing that Hebrews is saying here is that the type, which is the tabernacle, actually comes second. The tabernacle comes after something else was already there. Have you ever stopped to think about this? The implications of this for our worship, as we will see at the end, are, I think, profound. Now, with many types, such as types of Jesus, like Adam or Noah or covenants or in our case, a place of worship. There is a heavenly reality that exists prior to the Old Testament types that God puts here on earth to teach us something that is greater that's coming in the future. We can picture it kind of like a triangle. You've got a heavenly anti-type that's in eternity past. And the type comes down in the Old Testament and the anti-type comes down in the New Testament. But it's all coming from heaven. They're all connected to heaven. Types do not arise out of the clear blue sky. And many of them do not only point forward, they actually point backward or upward. So they're actually patterned on things that are in heaven and have existed since before Genesis 1-1. Now why does that matter? Because God is actually programming redemptive history on earth so that history itself becomes a pattern of heaven. As in heaven, so on earth. You remember Jesus asking us to pray that. He wasn't kidding. One of the things that our sin has done is it has severed the link between heaven and earth, between the two realms. And so the history of the Bible is about God putting these realms back together through Christ, who is reconciling all things to himself. Reconciliation does not just include man, but also the new heavens and the new earth. And Jesus is the link between these two places. Now, another thing that helps us understand is that types are not arbitrary and culturally bound conventions. When we come to our own worship as an example, at the end of this, we're going to see how important it is to understand that worship is not a cultural convention that man made up. It has roots in this. There is a heavenly temple. Remember Isaiah 6. It begins, In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Well, what temple does he see? Well, he's certainly not seeing the one in Jerusalem. How do I know? Because in the next verse, he sees seraphim flying around with a bunch of wings. Curiously, when you read this, or many of the texts in Revelation as an example, you see quickly that there are heavenly beings that are positioned around heaven's altar. And they seem to do some kind of ministry here. So not only is there a temple in heaven, but heavenly beings are doing some kind of priest-like service in it. That's what it means to gather around a temple altar. So now the Bible does not call them priests, but it is clear that some kind of ministry or priestly activity is not something that God just made up willy-nilly with human beings or with Moses. There is a higher order at work here. So Revelation gives some description of this place and I want to talk about this and I'm going to compare the heavenly temple with the type which is the tabernacle. So the heavenly temple in Revelation 4 and 5 and a few other places It has three layers or tiers to it, okay? There's an outer layer and this is where it says that myriads of angels and every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and the sea, they're there at this outer part. They sing praises around the throne. This is the space where we find a sea of glass and we find a sacrificial altar. As you move closer to the throne, you come to the second space and you find 24 elders that create a kind of a wall as they surround the throne in a circular way. In this space, you find seven blazing lamps. You find a golden altar of incense. And as you come into the majestic presence itself, the most holy place, you see four living creatures. You see an emerald rainbow. It encircles the throne. There is thunder and lightning, there is Jasper, and there's a Carnelian throne, and the Lord sits upon this throne. Now, this is the heavenly temple that we're talking about, okay? It's the archetype. This is what existed before the tabernacle ever came into being. This is what Moses and his tabernacle are based upon, as are all temples in the Bible. In the corresponding place to where the myriads of the creatures go in heaven, this is where people were allowed to walk in the tabernacle. It's called the courtyard. Here they would offer sacrifices on a bronze altar, and there would be a washing basin where they would wash. It corresponds to heaven. As you move west, you come to the holy place, the second space. You find a lamp stand, you find a table of showbread, and you find an altar of incense. Same thing as within heaven. And inside there, surrounded by this cloud that comes from the incense that's burning, is the most holy place. And this is where God's law is, as it's placed inside of the Ark of the Covenant. And on top of that Ark of the Covenant is what's called a mercy seat. And guess what that is? It's a throne. And God is said to come and sit on that throne in that place. The point is, The tabernacle is a copy of the temple of heaven. That's why it's so very important that Moses, when he's about to erect the tent, and this is in verse five, was instructed by God saying, see that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain. Moses wasn't just making some cool place. He was literally bringing heaven down to earth. so that that place of earth would become sacred space where God could dwell. The tabernacle was going to be the place where heaven and earth would collide quite literally. This is where God would meet with the people and where sin would be dealt with and where they would be made holy. It was a gateway between heaven and earth. So Hebrews tells us that this tabernacle is a copy of the temple in heaven. The priest down here on earth are doing stuff that's somehow parallel to what's going on in heaven. And yet I'm not entirely certain that even the heavenly temple is exactly what is in Hebrews mind. Yes, there is a heavenly temple, but even that temple seems to be just a reflection of invisible realities that exist in the Godhead alone that only he can see. And so he has to make it visible to our eyes somehow. And so he does it through this architecture. So in God's mind and according to his nature, there is this layout, if you will, for how even the angels have to approach him and for what to do if sin enters into the most holy place of heaven itself. You go, how can sin enter heaven itself? Have you ever read Job going up or Satan going up into heaven to meet with God? What would you call that if not sin entering into heaven itself, right? So there has to be a way for this place for this to be able to happen. So it says that Jesus is a minister in the holy places in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. Well, that could be, I think, a reference to the heavenly place that I've just talked about, because men did not build that. But I think it refers to even something greater than that. John 1 14 tells us that the word became flesh and dwelt among us. Remember this verse? The word dwelt is the word skino, and the noun form is used in the Old Testament to translate the tabernacle, which is called a tent. So Hebrews uses that very same word for a tent here. Literally, what John is saying is that the Lord pitched his tent in the flesh of Jesus. This is predicted in the Old Testament. Shout and be glad, O daughter of Zion, for I am coming and I will live, katoskino, among you. John is saying that God has chosen the place where the word would meet with his people on earth. You want to meet with God, you go there, to the New Testament tabernacle. In the next chapter of John, Jesus is referred to as the temple. Jesus predicted that he would rebuild the temple. He's looking over at the temple mountains, destroy it and I'll rebuild it in three days. The Pharisees laughed and said, it took 46 years to build this thing. You're going to raise it in three days. They were thinking physically, but it says, but he was speaking about the temple of his body. And they didn't get it. And so the point is, Jesus is a greater temple than even the one that exists in heaven. Though we have to understand that the heavenly temple and the earthly copies teach us true things about worship. Things that are transcendent, things that are objective, things that are eternal. Things that don't change with cultures or religions. And Jesus is the key to all of that. From here we move to verse 3 and Hebrews begins to discuss gifts and sacrifices. Every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices, thus it's necessary for this priest, that is Jesus, also to have something to offer. Now it makes sense to move from a priest to temple. And since this is the place where sacrifices are offered, it makes sense to now move more specifically from the temple to the gifts and sacrifices. The point it's making is that priests could not come to the tabernacle empty handed. This wasn't a gym where they were going to play basketball. This wasn't a concert hall where they were going to hear the latest CCM band. This is the holy place of planet earth, the stairway between earth and heaven. This is where God was. Therefore, sinful priests had to bring offerings. Numbers 18 says verse one. So the Lord said to Aaron, you and your sons and your father's house with you shall bear iniquity connected with the sanctuary and you and your sons with you shall bear iniquity connected with your priesthood. You can go back to Leviticus. Moses said to Aaron, draw near to the altar and offer your sin offering and your burnt offering and make atonement for yourself and for the people. And bring the offering of the people and make atonement for them as the Lord commanded. And so the priests had to, by the decree of God through Moses, make offerings in the tent for themselves. So Hebrews uses two words, he uses gifts and sacrifices. And both can describe offerings that are given for sin, but they can also describe other things such as sacrifice for praise. Hebrews 9 is going to start to tease out more about the nature of Christ's offering in terms of what it does. So we'll wait till chapter 9 for that. But the point for now is that when you come to God, you do not come empty handed. It is necessary to have something to offer. If that was true for a Jewish priest, then it's also true for our great high priest. And that's what he's saying. If history shows us that this is the way that you approach kings and princes on the earth, people come before kings and they give them gifts. How much more should you do with God? As David teaches us, these offerings must cost me something. So what offering did Jesus give? The last verse of Hebrews 7 told us he offered up himself. Now, have you ever done that? Frankly, I wonder how many of us have ever really sacrificed much of anything to come before a holy God. And thank God in his grace, we don't have to do that because we have Jesus. But Jesus' offering was himself. And this makes my thought about verse 2 and the temple all the more interesting. You see, he offers up himself in the temple, which is his own body. Do you see how Jesus then is the intersection between heaven and earth? Here he is dealing with sin. That's why he's called both the temple and the lamb. It's pretty mind blowing, isn't it? He doesn't have to go to a different place to offer it. He is the place. He doesn't offer a different sacrifice, an animal or a human. He offers himself. He is the sacrifice. But Jesus offering, and this is verse four, is different in another way because he did not offer it on earth. Now, his body was on earth. He died on a cross, but something happened to him when he died. He went somewhere. Now if he weren't on earth, he would not be a priest at all. Now that's probably referring to the ascension where he is now in heaven as our high priest, but I think it also refers to the place he went when he died. So it's his present ministry in heaven as our intercessor, but it's also his past work at his death when he made his offering. He entered into heaven itself and made the offering of himself, and he did so by his own priestly work through himself. Truly, if you understand even the smallest fraction of what life was like under priests in the old world, where you had to offer things every day, you had to go to a specific place to make an offering, this would blow your mind. And it would shake you to the core. It's absolutely incredible because all of these things come through our Lord Jesus. Something else arises here in Hebrews. Jesus does what the priests do. because no priest can come into hand before God. Yet the priest did it according to the law and Jesus does not. It puts the paradox like this. On one hand, it's necessary for the priest to offer something. And so that seems to make Jesus sacrifice something that's legal. It's necessary. On the other hand, if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. And that seems to imply that Jesus is not offering according to the law. Jesus offerings for some other reason. And both of these coincide with his perfection. So this kind of comes to this idea of a perfect law without question. Verses four and five are dealing with law. The word law is used in verse four. Priests offer gifts according to the law. Verse five has the idea of law in it as well. Moses is instructed by God. That's law. It's a commandment. See that you make everything according to the pattern. So these laws then reflect the unchangeable nature of God in his holy perfection. God gave laws to Old Testament priests so that they might have a place in a service to perform something that would allow God to dwell in their midst. Now, if they disobeyed, didn't do what God said, or did it wrong, God's wrath would come down on them and he would separate himself from them. God's priestly laws were gracious to Israel in the sense that they as they point forward as types, through the tabernacle, through the animal sacrifices, they kept God from consuming them because they were sinners. And thus these laws that Jesus is obeying, these ceremonial laws, reflect something about the perfection of God as it's applied to salvation. And in this sense, Jesus is offering in accordance with all of the things in the law. Jesus is obeying the law. But yet Jesus offering is not a literal animal, is it? It's himself. It's not in a physical building of wood and metal. It's in his body. It's not in the type. It's in the anti-type. And as the anti-type, it's a perfect offering. Praise God for that. As the anti-type, it is the perfect temple. The Old Testament law couldn't possibly have commanded Old Testament priests to offer something like this. Hey Aaron, I want you to go and offer yourself as a sacrifice for sin, a burnt offering. And I want you to do it in your own body. That would be blasphemous, wouldn't it? So we enter back into Melchizedek's priesthood in order to understand how he can do this. Jesus is doing the very things earthly priests did, but he's doing it better than them through a better priesthood, a better temple, and a better sacrifice. And so therefore, it both is and is not according to the law. You see, Jesus transcends these things because he's God. Jesus offering is not obligatory in the sense that he had to obey the actual Torah in the sense that Aaron did, because if he would have done that, his sacrifice would not have been perfect. Right. If he would have offered an animal. His sacrifice is not perfect. He would obey the Aaronic law, but it would not be a perfect sacrifice and we would be lost in our sins. Hebrews will talk much more about this as it goes along. So instead he offers himself up and he does it freely. Not according to law, but according to grace. He did this so that you and I might have salvation through him. He did this so that the father might be glorified. He did this so that he might be glorified as the one who's seated at the right hand of majesty. He did it so the spirit might be glorified in his coming work in Christ as Christ sent him at Pentecost to come into the lives of the saints. This is the free activity of God. to reconcile all things to himself in Christ that he might be shown preeminent in all things. Christ's work as the perfect priest in the perfect temple with the perfect gift through the perfect law is the definition of soli deo gloria, to God alone be the glory. So that's the text. I want us to think about a couple of things for what it might mean for us today. Two things come to my mind. First one is that people just don't seem to understand that God is not like us. I don't know how else to put it in our culture than that. We have this buddy-buddy idea of God. He's our boyfriend. He's our girlfriend. We sing songs that sound like that. God is not like us. He is completely holy. He is absolutely perfect in righteousness, goodness and truth. And these things never change in God. And we are the exact opposite of this. We are filthy, wicked liars. All of us. And in order for a consuming fire not to burn us to ash, we have to be made like him. We have to become incorruptible and non consumable. Is there another word for that? Couldn't think of one. I know there is. We have to have our sins atoned for. We have to have someone go before us to make an offering that will appease God and more that will allow us to be considered as righteous. to be made holy, to be a place where God can dwell. We have to be justified. We have to be sanctified. We have to be glorified. You see, we are chaff and chaff does not stand a chance in a forest fire. And that's how we need to think about approaching a holy God. You know, it's all the rage to say that there are many ways to God. But you know, according to this text, that's not only not true, it blasphemes Jesus in his death to say it. There's only one way to God, even as there's only one way into the most holy place in the tabernacle, in the tabernacle, God lives at the end of a one way dead end street. You can't just go under the tent and pop in to the most holy place. This is because of our sin that we continue to commit. The one way that we go to God is through the offering that appeases God and takes away that sin. And there is only one offering that does this. It is a perfect offering. And there is only one who has offered this offering, the Lord Jesus Christ. God only dwells on a throne of grace in one place, and it is in His heavenly temple. But there's only one who has gone before us into that temple and has been accepted. That's the Lord Jesus Christ. There's only one temple that is holy and pure and utterly undefiled. This is the temple of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. There's only one priest who has been accepted in his priestly work and is able to offer a sacrifice not for himself, But for others, that's the Lord Jesus Christ. And so it is blasphemous to say that there are many ways and many religions because none of those religions have a perfect mediator that have gone into a perfect temple and offered a perfect sacrifice for sin, except for the Christian religion. And it's God, man, the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you see that? Now, you might be sitting here complacent or saying, well, boy, I've heard this a million times. You want me to go down on Pearl Street Mall and preach this? I'll probably be put to death. The point is, friends, you can only come to God through him. You can't do it through yourself, can't do it through your parents, you can't do it through your pastor, you can't do it through the church. You have to come through Jesus. And today is the point of preaching is that God freely offers this Jesus to you. He offers him in grace is the one who died in your place. He offers you salvation, that if you will trust that this Jesus alone has done these things for you. And if you give up trusting in all these other things to bring you to heaven, you will be saved. Anything else is an idol and it, along with you, will fall on the day of judgment if you don't turn from your sins to Jesus. And so believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. What do I do? Believe on him and confess him before men and you will be saved. A lot of people might believe Jesus in their hearts. That's very evangelical. But you know, there's something else that we don't talk about too often, and it's confessing Him before men. When it comes down to it, and they put the gun to your head, what are you going to do? I believe in Him silently in my heart. That isn't going to cost you very much, is it? Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord. Be baptized. Enter publicly into the Christian faith through these things. And don't be ashamed of the Lord Jesus. He was not ashamed of you. That's the first thing. The second thing that comes to my mind is our own worship of Jesus is the perfect worshiper. We are also worshipers. How does this affect our worship? Jesus worship was pleasing to God because it was perfect. Our worship will be pleasing to God as perfect if it comes to God through the Lord Jesus Christ who mediates our worship in heaven and through the Holy Spirit who mediates your worship on earth. This is because God has made you his temple. I haven't talked about this yet, but it's the extension. Jesus' body is his temple and you are his body on earth if you're in Christ. The apostle calls this a great mystery, doesn't it? You are the body and the temple of God. And therefore, if you are in Christ, your worship will be acceptable in his sight. The very place where you are, the very person who you are becomes acceptable. No longer does this ground have to be made sacred. No longer does there have to be a burnt offering to make your, you know, continually do this over and over so that you can come before a holy God. He has made you holy. But there's more. Many people leave their own worship right here and they leave it at that. And they fail to consider the eternal objective nature of worship itself. Heaven does things in a certain way. And it doesn't do it in a whole lot of other ways. Some Christians think that if you're just sincere, and if you're a Christian, that God will accept your worship. Now, it might be true, I guess, sort of, but it's very short-sighted to think that way. Christians want to obey God. Christians understand that the way of worship since Cain and Abel onward has been not only about sincerity, but about obedience to him. See that you do all things according to the pattern given to you on the mountain. Do you think that that idea has fallen by the wayside because Jesus has come? No, it has not fallen away. Now it has been fulfilled in Christ and therefore The application changes to us, but it has not gone away any more than the heavenly temple has vanished. Divine worship is not open to cultural relativism. We reformed Christians have something called the regulative principle of worship. So let me explain this because some of you may not be familiar with this. And this was a principle of worship that the reformed churches developed many centuries ago. as they were thinking about how should we worship God publicly and corporately. The principle is a corporate principle for what we're doing right now to guide us in that. How should we worship God publicly in light of the many errors of Rome and its abuses in worship? Now, the Lutherans, we were the first to start the Reformation. They didn't exactly reform worship very much. And so this isn't a Lutheran principle of worship. It was the Reformed churches who came along and said, you guys didn't go far enough. Why is this important to even ask the question? It's because corporate worship is a danger to your soul if it syncretizes Christianity with things like paganism or secularism. or hedonism, or take your pick, because those things lead you astray from trusting the Lord Jesus alone, and they do it while you think you're worshiping God alone. It's very subtle, and it's pernicious, and it is dangerous. It's why our churches are in such a sorry state today, because they have given up this idea. They think Worship is just completely relative. It doesn't matter how you worship God. So our church's confession of faith flows in this stream of Reformed Presbyterian tradition and it states the principle like this. So what's the regular principle? Here it is in a sentence. The acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by himself and so limited by his own revealed will. He may not be worshiped according to the imaginations and devices of men nor the suggestions of Satan under any visible representations or any way not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures. If you put it more simply, in corporate worship you have to have a positive command in order to practice something. That's what the principle says. Basically, it's Sola Scriptura applied to worship. It's a very different principle from a Roman principle. where it teaches that you can do anything you want as long as God hasn't forbidden it. Now, it's possible that both principles could look almost exactly the same in some places. But in other places, there's one that has like brakes that put a stop to things and the other one just just slide on down wherever you want to go. You can have almost anything you can dream of in worship if that second is your principle, because how many things has God not forbidden in his word? I mean, the list is endless. At any rate, my point isn't here to get into a discussion of how you apply the regulative principle. It is, however, to say that the basic idea of the principle is from the Bible. When reading biblical proof text for this in books, there are plenty of them to go around. You can spend weeks talking about this. One of them that comes to my mind is Deuteronomy 12. We read it for the law. You will not worship the Lord your God in that way. For every abominable thing that the Lord hates, they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. Now you go, okay, well that's just the first principle. God's forbidden burning your children in the fire. But listen to what it says as it summarizes it. Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it. So the idea of a positive command. Now that has striking similarities to Hebrews 8.5 and it's why I am bringing this up this morning. Moses was commanded to do everything exactly as God told him, and Moses obeyed. Now, there are different applications of things between Old and New Testament worship. But the basic principle of only doing what you're commanded is very important. And why is that? Because the way of worship is heavenly, transcendent, and eternal. And you can't figure it out by just looking at yourself. I think God wants me to worship Him this way. No, you can't do that because it's invisible. How are you going to find that out? God has to tell you how he wants to be worshipped. The worship is for him after all, isn't it? That's why we're here. This is what we've seen today with the way of offering the gift. There's one way to go into a temple. You have to bring a gift. There's one temple to offer it in. You can't go to any temple you feel like. There's one mediator to make that offering and we can go on. Now, Jesus has fulfilled the legal Old Testament requirements of the ceremonial law so that we don't have to practice things like animal sacrifices anymore. I get that. The New Testament worship, though, does not stay in the shadows of Christ, the shadows of the Old Testament. It comes to Christ as he's incarnated. Fulfillment does not mean that it's done away with. Instead, it means just what it says. He's fulfilled things, but the elements of worship commanded in the New Testament are there to lead us into the true temple of Christ through his church. They lead us there because they point to him. What are the elements of worship there in our confession? There are things like preaching the word of God, very specific kind of preaching, things like the sacraments. They teach you about his death and his resurrection. Things like singing songs, hymns and spiritual songs to one another. Very specific kind of songs that teach you about Christ and help you to worship him. Hey, those are the elements of worship. And they're given in the New Testament. They're prescribed by him. See, God alone knows how He wants to be worshipped, and God alone knows what is best for our own souls when we do worship. We do not know what is best for us. We think we know what's best for us in worship, but our thoughts are crooked on this matter. We think that our modern measures of worship draw us near to God. But he knows that our clever inventions actually pull us away from the wonders of the gospel by replacing it subtly with the imaginations of our own hearts. Colossians calls this will worship. In the King James, fascinating phrase, will worship, you worship your own wills. Jesus calls it the doctrines and commandments of men and friends God loves us and wants us to keep us from harming ourselves in our own worship It's why he tells us how to worship him. So if I can get anything across from our passage today It's to help you understand that worship is not a cultural invention of man. It's an otherworldly participation in heaven on earth We go to meet with the living God through the living Son who is seated at the right hand of majesty on high through the Holy Spirit whom he has sent into our hearts and he leads us into worship. Participation in the glories of heaven ought to make the excitements of this world and its self-imposed worship and all the things that it thinks are so fun to do in worship. Meeting with God ought to make those things fade from your mind. into nothingness. If the church could once more capture what is really happening when we gather together, if we could once more see what is really going on right now, these distractions that are paralyzing the modern church would fade into oblivion. I promise that. Have you come to understand the things we're talking about today? Have you seen the wonders of the perfect Christ and His divine worship? Father, please bless the hearing of your word this morning. Thank you so much for what Jesus has done. Thank you for sending him. We praise the son for his work on our behalf. The only one who can lead us into worship. We pray that you would keep us humble as we think about this, for we're not made acceptable in your sight. We're not able to worship you because we do things right. We're able to worship you because Jesus did things right. And it's always and only through him that we worship and that our worship is acceptable to you. We pray that you would hear our prayer in Jesus name. Amen.