Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Song of Solomon 3:6-11. “Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke perfumed with myrrh and frankincense with all powders of the merchant. Behold his bed which is Solomon’s. Threescore valiant men are about it of the valiant of Israel. They all hold swords being expert in war. Every man hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night. King Solomon made himself a chariot of the wood of Lebanon.

He made the pillars thereof of silver, the bottom thereof of gold, the covering of it of purple, the midst thereof being paved with love for the daughters of Jerusalem. Go forth, oh ye daughters of Zion, and behold King Solomon with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousal and in the day of the gladness of his heart.”

Last week, we began a series of sermons going through the liturgy of the church—the order of service that we perform every Sunday, every Lord’s day, every Christian Sabbath when we get together to worship our Savior and our King and our Redeemer and our Creator. And we said last week that the word liturgy shouldn’t disturb us. Liturgy simply means the order of the work of the service of the people. Every church has liturgy. The question is: Is it good liturgy or bad liturgy? And that demands a standard by which liturgy is measured.

And that standard is explicitly the Word of God. And so the Word of God is to develop our order of service for us and teach us how to worship God correctly in our special convocation of worship on Sunday.

We said that last week based upon Psalm 95 and many other scriptures and examples: the call to worship by God is the initiation of worship. And so God puts forth his sovereignty in worship by calling us to him. We respond; we don’t initiate worship. God initiates it and we respond to him. And that principle of alternation or dialogue that we talked about last week continues throughout the Lord’s day and that also sets a pattern for our lives. Our lives are lived in reciprocal response to the Word of God. We respond to God and he takes the initiative in all things.

We have a little picture of that—though we certainly don’t know if it’s actually the case—with David’s harp. Some of the Jewish rabbis seem to think that the harp hung over his bed opposite the window and God’s wind would come in through the window and play David’s harp. And that’s not necessarily accurate, but it certainly is a good picture to help us remember the order of worship. God’s wind comes and we respond as David’s harp responds—by obeying him and by coming forward to worship him and sing our praises.

So God initiates the dialogue and he calls for our response in that dialogue in terms of our worship to him.

A call to worship by God is a call for us to stop our routine and come instead into a separate routine that God has established for this day uniquely of the week. We also said that the ones who are called are us. They are the called community of Jesus Christ. God shows partiality in who he calls to worship. He calls for a redeemed community. And because it shows partiality, there are implications in the call to worship of warfare. Because partiality divides people. And the history of man is the history of two groups of people: the society of Satan and the Church of Jesus Christ, the city of man and the city of God.

The called people are called into the city of God and into the Church of Jesus Christ on Sunday to worship him. And for that reason, there are instances in the Old Testament where the tabernacle of God is referred to as a fort or a fortress. It is a high place of defense, but it is also a place of armament as we go into the warfare, preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ and bringing men to conversion—men and nations—throughout the rest of the week.

And so, the call to worship is a call to worship. It’s a call to service. It’s a call to adoration. It’s a call to submission. It is a call to warfare. It is a call to rest. And it is preeminently a call to joy in the finished work of our Savior.

Now, this mention of warfare—remember I said last week that the call to worship that we use is a verbal call from the written Word of God. And this morning, we use Psalm 95. We’ll be using that probably for the next few months to help remind us of that call. But we can use various calls to worship throughout the Scriptures that replace the old Roman Catholic tolling of the bells. It was the church bells that produced the call to worship.

In one of the books—I think it’s called “True Sword and Flame”—that we got from England for the conference up in Seattle last month, it gives an account of various martyrs of the faith in France particularly. And in that recitation, we were reading it this last week with my children, the story of Jean Cavalier in 1702. And it said that at that particular point in time when there was battle going on between the Christian forces and the non-Christian forces, on one occasion when the stock of musket balls ran low, they converted the bells of their churches into musket balls. And that’s a good picture to remember: the bells of the church, the call to worship, is indeed a call to warfare as it were—impartiality. It’s a call to preach the Gospel and bring men to conversion to Jesus Christ.

Now I mentioned last week that as an example of God’s regulating our worship, the order of the offering in Leviticus 9. And how we have a trespass offering first spoken of there to make sure that you come here with sins confessed. We have a purification offering as we come before God’s presence, the confession of the general confession of sins.

After the call to worship, we have a whole burnt offering next with cereal. And when we hear the Word of God preached, we respond after the sermon by coming forward with our persons and with our substance—with our cereal, as it were—and with ourselves in dedication to Jesus Christ, who himself, of course, is the whole burnt offering that those things all pictured. And then there’s the peace offering. And so our formal worship service on Sunday is concluded with a meal with God in communion.

And that peace offering is sealed there and we have a meal with God and covenant with him and with his people.

I mentioned one other thing—I’ll try to think of other pictures like this throughout the Scriptures that give us this little picture of worship. Another one can be found in Exodus 19 through 24. In those chapters, without going through the detail of it, the people are called to meet with God. There’s a call to worship. They are told to prepare themselves explicitly for that meeting with God, and we’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes.

The people then come out to meet with God. God gives them a command word. The people assent to that word, and then the agreement is sealed with a covenant sign. And that again is a picture of our worship service. God calls us. We’re to prepare for that call, and we’re going to talk about that today. We hear a command word from him. We assent in obedience and he then seals that agreement, that covenant with the Lord’s Supper at the end of the day.

Today we’re going to talk about specifically the day of preparation, and the term itself—the day of preparation—is found in all the Gospel accounts talking about the day in which the Jews would prepare for the high Passover. The day… I’ve listed the references there and we won’t take the time to go through those verses, but it is interesting that, as I said, in all the Gospels there is this explicit mention of a day of preparation. And specifically, the day of preparation was the day before the Sabbath. And in the accounts given, it’s specifically the day before the high Sabbath of the Passover itself.

And so it was a particularly important day of preparation, and the Jews have had in their history this day of preparation in which everything was to be prepared for the high Sabbath day. But it is a generalized term as well. And the Jews always prepared the day before their Sabbath for meeting with God. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Now I suppose we’re taking this a bit out of order. I suppose what we maybe could have done is gone through the various component elements of worship and then at the end talked about how we then prepare for that. But I wanted to follow roughly the chronology that we come to practice on Sunday. The chronology really begins with the preparation. We couldn’t start there. We wanted to start with God’s initiative and the call to worship. And so we’ll talk about preparation today. And it will have implications for other parts of the order of service and not just the call to worship.

In any event, we’ll primarily spend most of our time looking at a liturgical order of preparation. And I’ve kind of given you an outline there that is roughly the outline of the order of service that we’ve talked about: We prepare for the King’s presence. We prepare for worship and we come. We prepare for the King’s proclamation. We prepare to obey his word to us. And we offer ourselves in response to that preached word. We prepare as well for a meal with the King. And we prepare for eating and greeting, as it were, one another and sitting around the King’s table downstairs with the King’s household, the King’s friends.

And we prepare for that meal. We prepare for the King’s seal. The seal I’ve separated from the meal. It’s really one thing—the agape, the love feast leading into the communion meal with Jesus Christ. But that is the King’s seal upon this entire covenantal arrangement. And that speaks to us of preparing for our evaluation. Communion is evaluation, as it were, from God. And we should come to that understanding. And we should remember the work of Jesus Christ and trust in that work.

And we prepare for the King’s Day as well. When we leave church on Sunday—2:00, 1:30, if you just stay for the first half of the service, 12:00, whatever it is—you go home to the balance of the day set apart as the King’s day. It doesn’t end when you leave church. So that’s kind of the order we’ll follow here, and then we’ll conclude with a few brief Biblical snapshots of preparation.

## First: Liturgical Order of Preparation

We prepare for the King’s presence. We should come to church prepared to worship God. We acknowledge the Caller. And this will build on last week. We said that Psalm 95 puts forward three characteristics of God that we are to respond to. He is our Creator. He is our Redeemer and he is our Sovereign. He is the King of all gods. Remember we said that God refers to civil rulers. He is a civil ruler and he commands us to obey him. He has created the world and all that is therein, including us. And so we’re commanded to come forward when he calls us. And he has redeemed us. And so we come forward as appreciative of his redemption. And that’s a good model to keep in your mind as you prepare for meeting with God on Sunday morning—in your devotions and in your prayers—that you come to meet your Creator, your Redeemer, and your Sovereign.

Now, it’s very important here to recognize, as we said last week: well begun is half done. It’s important that we recognize we don’t come to church to get something primarily. We don’t come here to see what we get out of this service. We don’t go away and say, “Well, I wonder if I really got much out of it.” We come here wondering if we put much into it because what we’re called to do is to worship God this day.

That is the primary focus of this day. It is a call not to come and get fed. Ultimately, it is a call primarily to come and worship God. He has redeemed us for the purpose that we might be a praise to him. That’s why we get together on Sunday.

See, and so you got to get that squared in your mind first. That’s the first bit of preparation as you come forward on Sunday—to remember why you’re here. You’re not here to get something. You’re here to honor God with your presence, with your prayers, and with your singing. And so, we come forward to worship and to give to him what is due him by reason of his being our Creator, our Redeemer and our Sovereign.

It is a royal audience that we have this day. And you’ll notice that throughout the outline I’ve put this idea of the King’s presence, the King’s word, the King’s table, the King’s seal, and the King’s day. We come into a royal presence Sunday morning in a special sense.

Now, we know that God isn’t contained in the four walls of the church, but God calls us to set aside a day in which we in particular measure focus upon him and his preeminence. And so, I don’t want to have to repeat that a number of times. Just put in the back of your mind: we realize God isn’t contained within the four walls of the church. Just as Solomon realized God wasn’t contained in the four walls of the tabernacle. He understood that God filled the whole world. And yet God has a special presence where he manifests himself and calls for our worship. And that is when we come in convocation of worship together on the Lord’s day.

So we have a royal audience with the King of Kings and our Redeemer on Sunday morning. And that means that we should be there on time. It means that we should be prepared to be here alert and bright and ready to meet the King. If you had a breakfast engagement tomorrow morning with President Bush or other personages of that sort, or Queen of England or something, I’m sure that you would make adequate preparations to be there on time and to be there punctually and to be there alert. This means that our preparation begins, of course, the day before.

And the day before we meet with our royal Creator, Redeemer and Sovereign, we are certainly to get ourselves to bed at a reasonable time so that we can get up at a reasonable time, if at all possible. Of course, I realize there are things that happen in the week and some of us have odd work schedules. But the point is that whichever degree we can control our routine Saturday night, we begin the preparation on Saturday for the meeting with God on Sunday. And that’s what we’re talking about today—preparing for that worship.

We get up on time. We get up in plenty of time to come here and to do what we have to do to come prepared to meet with our Sovereign. We confess who we are. We acknowledge the Caller—Creator, Redeemer, and Sovereign. And as we come forward, we should come forward prepared to confess who we are. That we are first of all creatures.

In Ecclesiastes 5:1, we have a beginning of four or five proverbs relative to worship. And we have in verse one of chapter 5: “Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God. Be more ready to hear than to give the sacrifice of fools, for they consider not that they do evil. Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God. For God is in heaven and thou upon earth. Therefore, let thy words be few. For a dream cometh through the multitude of business, and a fool’s voice is known by multitude of words.”

Here in Ecclesiastes, we have the distinction between heaven and earth, between the Creator and the creature. And since we come to worship our Creator and we acknowledge that we are creatures, we come forward carefully. We come forward not having an excess of words. We come forward more ready to hear than to talk and to work with God. We come forward more ready to hear than to worship God by being attentive to what he is going to have to say to us and then by responding in praise to him.

We come forward very carefully because we come before the Creator and we recognize that when we prepare to come forward to him, we recognize and prepare ourselves by remembering that we are creatures. Okay, we’re made of dust and we’re not the Creator.

A proper, I think, posture for doing this—as we come before the presence of God at the beginning of service prior to the call being issued—we know that the call is going to be formally issued at 10:00 straight up. Prior to that, we should have, I think, a period of silence in which we acknowledge that God’s presence is who we come before to worship.

Habakkuk 2:20 says, “The Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before him.” If we don’t prepare right, we won’t be in the correct understanding of what we’re doing here. As I said last week, we’re not an audience. We don’t mill about. As we get ready for the show, we get ready to meet with God. And as a result of that, we should be respectful, reverent, understanding that we’re coming before our very Creator.

We are to walk humbly with our God. Remember, we said that the requirements from Micah—the three requirements of man—one of them is to walk humbly before God. And as you come forward for worship, you should remember to walk humbly before the God in whose presence you are called to give forward your worship on this day.

Robert Weber in his book “Worship Old and New” spoke of this aspect of silence and the Quaker perspective. In his book, he quotes from Rudolph Otto, a book called “The Idea of the Holy,” and Otto writing about the Quakers and their value they put on silence says this: “It was not so much a dumbness in the presence of deity as an awaiting of his coming in expectation of the Spirit and its message. In this sense silence,” he said, “is a solemn religious observance of a numinous and sacramental character—a communion, an inner straining not only to realize the presence of God but to attain a degree of oneness with him.”

You see, that’s proper preparation. Recognizing that we come into the presence of the Creator, having a silence before us, a reverence to meet with God, and to give him praises and worship him—not just to experience his coming, but to recognize that he’s come and he saved us and he’s brought us into his covenant community for the purpose of being a praise to him. And so, we confess who we are. We walk humbly with God.

And we prepare when we come to church to be silent before him because he is in his holy temple.

Secondly, we confess that we are the redeemed of God. We are his creatures. We are also redeemed, and we’re the redeemed community that he has created. Now, this means—this talks about our again about our heart attitude toward God. Not just a reverence and a fear of who God is, but a great deep abiding appreciation for who God is.

It’s a preparation of our hearts to come and worship him and to give him adoration and praise based upon his redemptive work in Jesus Christ.

And it’s interesting that even here when the Scriptures do tell us in various places to prepare our hearts to come to meet with God, that still God takes the initiative in this. Psalm 10:17 says: “Lord thou hast heard the desires of the humble thou wilt prepare their heart thou wilt cause thine ear to hear.” So the Psalmist tells us that God actually prepares our heart as well. We’re commanded by God to prepare our heart for worship, but we have to acknowledge again his initiative in this. Even that our preparation of our heart is in response to his preparation of our heart.

How does God prepare for us, as it were? We have a beautiful picture of this in Luke 15:22 and following. The father says to his servants, “Bring forth the best robes. Put it on him. Put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet.” The fatted calf is then killed and they have a merry feast. God prepares for us the way that the prodigal’s father prepared for him.

And when we come before our Redeemer, we don’t come just before our Creator with a sense of reverence—and certainly that is there—but it’s also an acknowledgement that God has killed the fatted calf, that he’s given the sacrifice of his only Son for our sake, and we come forward in loving appreciation for what he’s done. He puts a robe upon us and he puts a ring on our finger. The ring speaks of power. Pharaoh put his signet ring on Joseph when he gave him control over his empire. And God calls us to dominion. And so when we come forward, we should prepare ourselves before we come to church remembering we come before our Creator, but we also come before our Redeemer who has prepared a place for us.

He has prepared salvation, blessing, and great honor to us being in Jesus Christ. He’s given us dominion. He’s given us a ring. He’s given us clothes. He’s given us shoes on our feet. We come forward in his imputed righteousness, clothed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. He’s prepared us. And so then we are called to prepare our hearts before him.

1 Samuel 7:3: “Samuel speaks into the house of Israel, saying, If you do return unto the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods and astronauts from among you and prepare your hearts unto the Lord.”

Samuel is saying that if you’re going to prepare to meet God, part of that preparation of your hearts that God calls us to do is to put away false idols and to leave behind sin and to serve God only. Part of this happens before we come to church. Again, we’re going to lead up here to a statement of having devotionals in the morning before you come to church. We should come to church clean, of course.

When we prepare by going to bed early Saturday night and by getting ready to get up early Sunday morning to meet with God punctually, we get up Sunday and we wash. We wash our bodies. We put on clean clothes. We put on good clothes. Why do we do that? It’s a reminder. As we come before God, we’re to have our minds washed, our hearts washed, our robes washed with the understanding of Christ’s forgiveness offered through his blood.

And so I’ve listed some Scriptures there from the book of Revelation that speak about the washing of the robes. The saints have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. And so when we come before God’s presence and prepare to meet him, we come with clean clothes. More than that, the clean clothes are a reminder to us that we’ve washed our robes, our person, our presence in the blood of the Lamb. And so we’ve asked God for forgiveness in the morning. We’ve come before him and confessed our sins—whatever needs to be confessed at that point in time. And we wash our robe.

Sunday morning, the way we have clean clothes, we’re also to have clean hearts as we come before God. How does that happen? Well, the Scriptures say we’re supposed to sanctify ourselves, prepare ourselves, set ourselves apart for the worship of God through two things. We’re sanctified by word and we’re sanctified by prayer.

Remember I told you that in Exodus 19, we’re going to return to that where God commands the people to get ready for him. It says in Exodus 19:10: “The Lord said unto Moses, Go unto the people, sanctify them, today and tomorrow. Let them wash their clothes and be ready again the third day. For the third day, the Lord will come down to the sight of all the people upon Mount Sinai.” And indeed, in verse 14 of that text, “Moses went down to the mountain to the people and sanctified the people, and they washed their clothes. He said, Be holy. Be ready again the third day.”

We’ve talked about the third day—the day of resurrection. That’s what this is: the third day, the day of resurrection. And God tells us to be ready for that third day when he comes to meet us and he comes to give us a command word out of his Scriptures. He says to be ready—to sanctify yourselves and again to wash your clothes. And that has reference to the washing of our minds through sanctification. And that sanctification happens through the word and it happens through prayer.

We are to be walking humbly before our Creator and we are to love. That was the second of the three requirements according to the book of Micah. Hesed is covenantal faithfulness and covenantal grace and mercy shown to us. And we’re supposed to love—to exhibit acts of kindness, covenantal Christian kindness to other people—the way that God has exhibited that to us when we come forward to worship him. Remember, he’s our Creator—to walk humbly. We remember he’s our Redeemer and we’re to love the hesed that he’s shown to us and show it to others as well.

We are to be preparing ourselves with willing hearts. Psalm 110:3 says, “Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power.” Okay, we’re to be a willing people to God. Revelation 3:20 says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come into him and will sup with him and he with me.”

We are to be willing and anxious to meet with our Savior because he is our Savior and he’s our Creator. And then third, he is our Sovereign. And as a result, then we confess who we are when we say that we are his subjects. We come forward as subjects. And this emphasis is upon God’s authority as our Sovereign. And God’s authority as our Sovereign means he calls us forward in covenantal obedience and we come forward as covenantal units.

Okay? And if we’re going to come forward as families in response to the call to worship, that means that our preparation for that call to worship and the proper response to it should also be in terms of families. And so we’ve got a job to do with our children and with the rest of our extended families in our households to prepare for worship together jointly. Everybody getting ready Saturday night and then everybody having family devotions in the morning because we come forward to God covenantally in the authority structure that he has given to us.

It’s interesting again that in Exodus 19-24, when the people come forward to God to meet with him, they’re arrayed in a certain pattern of rank. And that has this idea of covenantal ranking as we come before God’s presence. And certainly, that is application to us as we come forward in our families in rank around God and around his preached word to worship him.

We come forward in authority. And so the family comes forward together. We’re to have family devotions. I’m suggesting here in the Sabbath morning to turn our hearts toward God and to reconcile the children to the parents and the parents to their children.

In Luke 1:17, we read that the people were to be—there was to be a preparation so that the people would be prepared for the Lord. It said that John the Baptist would come. And in Luke 1:17, this is a pronouncement of his coming. And John the Baptist is to do something here to prepare the people for the Lord. And what he is to do is turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children, the hearts of the children back to the fathers. And so they come together covenantally as a unit in response to God then.

Okay? And so that’s a picture also of our preparation as we get ready for worship. We come together in family devotions and we turn our hearts back to each other and we bond together, as it were, as a family in devotions around God’s word and go around God’s throne as we come before him in prayer and supplication and confession of sin. And so we’re reconciled and then we are people prepared for the Lord.

I said before that sanctification includes the word. John 17:17 says, “Sanctify them through thy truth. Thy word is truth.” And so if we’re called upon to sanctify ourselves to meet with God, as Exodus 19 says, that means we’re to sanctify ourselves through his word. And so when we get up Sunday morning and we make our preparations Saturday night, we read the word of God and we sanctify ourselves through that word.

The love of Christ is the aim of the Sabbath. We come forward to worship Jesus Christ, to enhance our love for him, to act on the basis of that love. Revelation 2:4 says, “Nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.” And it’s easy for us to be caught up in the toils of work and troubles and cares and obedience, and yet forget to love Jesus Christ in response to what he has done for us.

If we start off our Sabbath mornings with walking humbly before God and recognizing who we’re going to come before, and recognizing that as our Redeemer who has given his life so that we might have this opportunity to worship him and he called us forward to worship him, then we’re going to be coming forward with a great love for Jesus Christ.

We should meditate upon who he is. We should prepare ourselves for meeting with him and remember in our Sabbath devotions in the morning, and remind our children, of who it is that we come to worship. The one who died—who died willingly, who died because of his great love for us—who died and gives us salvation in spite of all the sins that rush to our minds Sunday morning or Saturday night that we’ve done throughout the week.

We come forward confessing those sins, washing our garments, washing our hearts, meditating upon the work of Jesus Christ, reading his word, being sanctified and set apart as a holy people to him that we might come forward in pureness of heart to worship him.

We remember to walk humbly. We remember to love hesed and we do justice. The three requirements of man in response to God’s being our Creator: We walk humbly before him. In response to him being our Redeemer, we love hesed—his covenantal faithfulness and love—to show it to others. And then we love justice because he’s our Sovereign and we do justice as defined by his law. The Sovereign’s law is the basis for justice.

Psalm 78—we’ve talked about that Psalm before in terms of what we’re supposed to teach our children. Remember, there were three things in Psalm 78 that God says we’re supposed to do, that the people didn’t do during times of unfaithfulness. They don’t remember God’s works. They don’t remember the covenant nor his laws.

His works means we’re supposed to walk humbly before him who can do all things because he’s the Creator. We remember his covenant of grace and love—as I said—and we’re supposed to obey his laws and do justice. And those are the three ways in which we prepare to come forward and meet our Creator, Redeemer and our Sovereign. These things should be on our mind as we prepare to meet with him.

So the first element of preparation is preparation for the King’s very presence—to create, a Redeemer and Sovereign—and getting our hearts ready before him by preparing early on Saturday to get to bed, to get up early, to family devotions, etc.

## Secondly, we prepare for the King’s proclamation.

And as I said, we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here in the liturgical order we’ve talked about so far, but I want to go through all this at this point in time, and maybe we’ll pick it up again at the end of the series and put some refinements to it.

But secondly, we know that once we are called to worship, we’re going to have a proclamation from our King. We’re going to have the word read and preached, and we’re supposed to respond to it with obedience and an offering of ourselves. And along this line then we can prepare by praying for the word. We can pray for the preacher and again, Sunday morning, Saturday night, pray for the word being preached by praying for the man who will deliver that word. Pray for the congregation that they might receive that word and pray for yourself—that you might have open ears to hear what God has to say.

And finally, pray for the Lord’s enabling. It’s obvious from the passages I’ve listed there that it is up to God to open our ears to these things. Luke 24:45 says: “Then opened he their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures.” Isaiah 50:5 says, “The Lord God hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back.”

So, we should pray for God’s enabling—that he would open our stuffed up ears. And we should pray for that before we come to church. And as the word is beginning to be preached, we should throw up a quick prayer to God as well to be attentive to what is said and to pray for that word.

We should hear the word. In addition to praying, God detests prayers that are simply prayers and never action. And secondly, because we prayed and received that word, we should then hear the word and we should respond to it accordingly.

I might mention here that it is important that all of us who are capable of hearing the word be in the presence of the word being preached. It seems rather obvious, but it is an important thing to remind ourselves of when God calls us forward as these covenantal units. He does this in terms of families.

Now, we think that the book of Nehemiah gives us clear instruction that little children that can’t understand what’s being taught can be taught at a different level someplace else. But those people that can understand what’s being taught should be here. And that means mothers and that means older children. And that means that again, we’re interrupting our routines on the Sabbath day to come forward and mold ourselves to God’s routine. And God’s routine then becomes the basis for our routine throughout the week. And it molds us and we come back again to learn more.

Point is, we might have routines that would interrupt the hearing of our word. We should interrupt those routines and instead attend to the word and attend to the worship that he calls us to give him.

We attend. We hear the word with purity. James 1:21 says: “Receive with meekness the engrafted word. Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness.” And again, the emphasis there—time and time again in the Scriptures—is to confess our sins before God, to cleave not to those sins but to cleave to the Lord and to leave those sins behind and to confess them as we come to hear the word.

If we regard sin in our heart, God will not give us open ears to hear his word. He will judge us for our hypocrisy. So we must come with purity having confessed our sins in the morning.

Secondly, we come attentively. Acts 16:14 says that Lydia “attended unto the things that Paul spoke.” Luke 19:47 says that in terms of Jesus’s teaching in the temple, “the people were very attentive to hear him.” The people were attentive to hear Jesus. Lydia was attentive to hear Jesus’s apostle Paul. And so today, you’re to be attentive to hear the words of the preachers that God has called up in his providence to declare the word to you. We’re to be attentive and paying attention to what is said.

There are some aspects here which will help us in this. We’re not to have distraction of eye. Job says in 3:11, “I made a covenant with my eyes, not to look upon a maid.” The point is that it’s a good picture for us as we come before worship of God. We come to hear his word. We covenant with God to not be distracted. We covenant to keep our eyes under control, not to be looking about the room and thinking this and that other thought because that’s distraction. God wants us to hear the word attentively.

We’re not to have distraction of mouth, and we’re not to be talking and you know, doing things with our tongues that we shouldn’t be doing when the word is being preached. We’re to be attentive with our mouth and we’re not to have distraction of heart either. Isaiah 29:13 says: “These people come near me with their mouth, with their lips, they honor me, but they remove their heart far from me.”

It’s the easiest thing in the world to covenant with our eyes and lips not to be distracted. Very hard thing to do: covenant with our heart not to be distracted from God’s word. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. And certainly that’s true of our thoughts and of our heart during the preaching of God’s word. And the devil will attempt to distract you from that word because the word is life to us. The word gives us understanding of who God is and our requirements and is an administration of grace to us to obey him. And so the devil and your own sinful nature will do all that it can to disrupt the hearing of that word.

The hearing of God’s word is extremely important. God’s proclamation of the King—that we come forward in his presence to hear—should be heard attentively.

It’s said of St. Bernard that as he entered the church building, he would say, “Stay here, all my earthly thoughts.” I should mention here by the way that some of these illustrations I’m using come from Thomas Watson’s “Body of Divinity,” in which he deals with the Fourth Commandment. And it is a tremendous work, and much of this material came from that work.

In any event, St. Bernard said, “Stay here, all my earthly thoughts,” as he entered the church building. And that would be a wise thing for us to do as well. To make preparations as we come into the sanctuary itself, we say, “Stay here.” We want to focus upon God. We want to hear his word. We want to respond to him, not respond to these other thoughts that may be lingering in our minds from out there that have troubled us during the week.

Hyrum confessed that often as he sat in church, he sometimes was actually walking in a gallery, or sometimes he was in the counting house, or whatever. The idea being that certainly we can be sitting here with our bodies, having our eyes forward and lips silent, but still our thoughts are wandering off to the sporty yard, the basketball, whatever it is, the place of work, other distracting thoughts. And we should prepare ourselves for that and ask God to help us to make a covenant with our hearts not to be distracted from his word.

And then finally, we should not have the distraction of slumber. Proverbs 23:33 says, “Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep. So shall thy poverty come as one that traveleth and thy want as an armed man.” God warns us in Proverbs not to slumber but to work, otherwise we’re not going to be able to eat. And God would warn us here, I think, by way of application, to coming to feast upon the fat things of his word and the good things that he gives us in that word—not to slumber, lest we not be fed. And poverty comes upon us—that is worse than the poverty of the body where the body wastes away, because now your soul wastes away itself.

And so we come before God attentively without distraction of slumber. 1 Thessalonians 5:6 says, “Therefore, let us not sleep as do others. But let us watch and be sober. Steal yourselves for the hearing of God’s word that you not be distracted and slumber. And again, a key to that is to go to bed on time Saturday night.”

The second key may be not to eat too big a breakfast on Sunday morning, which would also cause us to become somewhat drowsy and sleepy. Okay?

So, we’re supposed to hear the word. We pray for the word. We hear the word attentively and we hear the word knowledgeably without distraction. We know the source of that word. 1 Thessalonians 2:13 says, “For this cause also, thank you God without ceasing, because when ye receive the word of God, which you heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.”

Okay? So the idea is that when you hear the word preached, do you recognize that in God’s providence—to whatever degree the man that preaches the word establishes the truth of that word—that is God’s word to you. The source of the preached word is not the preacher, but rather it is God himself.

Watson in his “Body of Divinity” said that ministers are but pipes and organs through which the Spirit of God plays. And that’s our understanding as we come before the word—knowledgeably as to its source—but also knowledgeably as to its consequences.

Deuteronomy 30:19 says, “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore, choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.” The consequences of obedience or disobedience to the preached word is life and death, blessing and cursing. And if we keep that in mind—the source of the word, the responsibility of hearing that word, and the consequences of hearing or not hearing—then we’re much more likely to be attentive to what is said.

God will hold us to account for what we hear. We are able to give a stewardship account to God of the word that we have heard preached from his servants in the pulpits and for what we’ve also studied out ourselves.

One way to do this—to remember to be able to give an account to others and to God of what’s said—is to speak about the sermon throughout the rest of the day or the rest of the week, to think it through, to talk about it in our families, to teach it to our children. You know, the idea is that church is, in terms of its educational ministry, to adults. And the adults are to teach the children. And so it’s your responsibility to pass on to them what we’re saying this morning.

And by the end of this series of talks—three, four months from now—your children should know that order of worship as well. They should be able to worship with truth and understanding as well of what they’re doing. And they’re not going to be able to do that unless you teach it to them. Even if they’re sitting up here, they’re not going to catch all of what’s said. You should talk to them in your homes about the sermon. And that’ll help you also to remember and to retain what’s been given to you by God in which you must obey and live.

You’re to practice what you hear. And if you have vows that come to you as you hear the preached word, if you have commitments that you make to distract—or to remove rather—sin from your life, then you should follow through on those commitments and vows and regard those things very seriously. Again, Ecclesiastes 5 says that you must be very careful as you come into the presence of God and very careful what your response to God’s word is. You must do what you—how you respond.

So, we come before God in the hearing of the word. We pray for the word. We hear the word. We come before the word knowledgeably, and we also hear the word delightedly.

Delightedly. Jeremiah 15:16 says, “Thy words were found and I did eat them and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart. For I am called by thy name, oh Lord God of hosts.” We’re Christians. We’re called by his name. And we’re supposed to understand that his word is sweetness to us. It is a source of great joy and rejoicing in our heart. The preached word is to have that kind of delight for us.

We’re to prepare to receive that word delightedly. We’re supposed to recognize that before we come here. If we understand those things and put ourselves in the proper mind to hear the proclamation of the King, then we’ll delight in it. The Song of Solomon chapter 2:3 says, “As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.”

You see, I began this morning with a reading of the Song of Solomon. It talks about the relationship of the bride to Christ. That’s the whole picture there. And we began by talking about the procession of Solomon as he comes and as the people are called out to worship him. Solomon being a type of Jesus Christ. And when God comes to us, he comes in much more royal array than Solomon ever had. You see, Solomon was just a vague shadow of what Jesus Christ is.

He is our beloved. And we come forward to our beloved, and he drips down sweet words from his Scriptures to us—the fat things of the word, as it were—to feed us, to nourish us, and to cause us to delight in him and who he is and in his salvation and redemption.

And so we hear the word without distraction. We hear the word knowledgeably. We also hear the word with great delight because the source of that word is our Savior who gave his life and his very blood that we might hear that word and respond in faith.

And finally, of course, we’re supposed to not just pray for the word and hear the word. We’re to obey the word. We must come forward in full obedience.

James 1:22 says, “But be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” Hebrews 12:25, “See that you refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escape not who refused him that spake on earth, how much more shall not we escape if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven?”

We’ve talked about this before, but Hebrews 12 draws two mountain imageries. The mountain we’ve come to—the heavenly city of God—that is exemplified in our Sabbath convocation of worship is a mountain of much more judgment than was the old mountain. We have much more blessing and privilege as we know who Jesus Christ is. What they only saw in shadows, we’ve seen in full daylight. And so we have much greater responsibility to respond in obedience to that word preached by our Savior and by his messengers.

In terms of this, I would remind you all, of course, that we’re talking about your obedience to the preached word. You shouldn’t be there sitting thinking about how other people should respond to that word and their problems. You should be thinking about your problems in terms of obeying that word and your responsibility to respond to that word. You’re not supposed to be here with a censorious spirit of either the preacher or the rest of the congregation. You’re supposed to be here listening for what God has to tell you and correcting problems in your life and coming into obedience.

We’re not to be listening preeminently because we have itching ears wanting great interesting things to delight our mind. We’re supposed to hear because we have things that we need to know that we might live in God’s presence through obedience to the Savior Jesus Christ.

Watson said: “There’s a great difference between one who goes to the flower shop that she might get a flower to wear in her bosom and hers that goes to get flowers to make medications and syrups.” During his time, the flower shop was a source of spices and other things that would make people well. And the point is that if we come to church just for adornment purposes and all we walk away from is having some interesting head knowledge, we’ve adorned ourselves, but we haven’t cured ourselves.

We’ve got to recognize, and if we’ve done our preparation correctly in the Sabbath morning and we’ve confessed our sins before God and we’ve recognized that we’re redeemed and we have a need for redemption from our sin, then we’re going to know that we have a need for cure as we come before the hearing of God’s word—that it’s to be a corrective, reforming word to us and a great delight to us then to create wholeness and health as we walk in obedience to it.

So, we’re to prepare for the King’s proclamation as we are to prepare for the King’s presence.

## And then third, we prepare for the King’s meal.

We come to together to feast. The great rejoicing feasts of the Old Testament now find their fulfillment every week when we come together in the agape, or love feast, with the fellow members of Christ’s kingdom—the fellow members of his household of grace and faith. And we should treat each other with that sort of respect.

We have to remind our children this frequently: that when you’re talking to other children in our house, you’re talking of children of God, ones for whom Christ died. And you’re supposed to treat them with great respect. They’re kings’ daughters and kings’ sons. When we look at each other in this church, that’s what we should remember. We’re kings’ daughters and kings’ sons.

When we have our feast downstairs together, rejoicing around the King’s table, we should recognize we do so with the King’s subjects and treat them with that kind of respect and love and kindness and tenderness.