Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Leviticus 9:22

Sermon text today is Leviticus 9:22. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Leviticus 9:22. Then Aaron lifted his hand toward the people, blessed them, and came down from offering the sin offering, the burnt offering, and peace offerings.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your most holy word and we thank you for this particular verse. Help us, Father, to be transformed by the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ instructing us and transforming us by the power of the Spirit. Grant us, Lord God, open ears to hear things from your word that you may calm our fears, Lord God, and empower us for ministry. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

I bring you greetings from the churches in Poland that I visited and particularly from the churches in Verava and Poznań, the two main churches that our work is with when we go to Poland. While I was there they formed a Polish version of the Confederation of Reformed Evangelicals. They call theirs the Confederation of Reformed Churches, which is an improvement that I like actually. And the churches in Poznań and Verava signed this covenant between their churches. Much of it was taken from the CRE Constitution. And it’s been a delightful thing to go over there year after year, minister to those two churches primarily to build them up and to help them mature into what they are now.

They are very grateful and they wanted to make sure that I expressed to our congregation their great thanks and joy at your sacrifice in providing my airfare over there and back every year and covering my expenses when I’m there, the giving up of my time from duties here at RCC that has enabled me to go over there six trips. Now, they are tremendously grateful to Reformation Covenant Church for everything this church has done to help establish these two churches and now to mature them into a confederation of which they hope to add a couple more churches in the near future.

So, you know, I bring you greetings from them and their great thanksgiving and joy. I think unless there’s things in the schedule I’m not aware of, I think maybe next Sunday afternoon after the announcements Nathan and I will make a presentation in Ararat for those of you that would want to see some details of our trip and what we did.

One of the things I’ve done for three years now is visit some churches in upper Silesia around the region of Kraków, the old capital and cultural center of Poland. And this year I spoke at four churches and I spoke on these offerings from Leviticus that are summarized here in the verse before us and are found in Leviticus chapters 1-5.

Now, I know that as a church, we’re pretty familiar with these concepts. In fact, if you pay attention closely each Lord’s Day to the order of worship, Leviticus 9:22 now is just before the benediction. It’s actually printed on the orders of worship. There are these boxes that show this transition. But I wanted to come back to this text today and as I preached on this text at four churches in Poland, I thought about the way they answer some very big questions, you know, that we have in our lives.

So, I want to talk about these, give us a brief summary reminding us what these offerings are, then make some application to what Jesus Christ has accomplished, and then finally talk about the relevance of the worship of the church regulated by God’s word to the well-being of who we are and to the answering of these huge questions that sit in the back of our minds and frequently float their way to the front as we walk through our years in this sojourning portion of our existence spent on planet earth.

Now our worship is regulated, directed by the scriptures. I think I’ve mentioned this before but I hope to write an article perhaps and the title of it would be “Eyes Wide Shut.” Evangelical churches wish to please God in their worship, but because their eyes are closed to the New Testament by and large—their eyes may be as wide open as they can be, looking for how we might glorify God in worship, but they’re not going to see what they need to see.

Reformed people frequently are no better. There are reformed people who believe in the regulative principle of worship. They know that false worship, syncretistic worship, the mixture of the worship of Yahweh with the golden calf, for instance, is what brings God’s judgment upon a people. They know the importance of Lord’s Day worship. And yet, because they still live primarily in the context of a great divide between the Old Testament and New Testament, their eyes are wide open looking for how we’re to worship.

But in my estimation, their eyes wide shut. They’re not wide open because they refuse to look at the patterns that God has established. I believe that we do at this church practice a correct version of the so-called regulative principle of worship. Our formal Lord’s Day worship is not left to the imagination of the elders or the deacons of the congregation. It is directed by an understanding of how men have worshiped God for the last 6,000 years.

As we look at the covenantal administrations going from one covenant to the next, from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Moses to David and then to Nehemiah and finally Jesus Christ. As we look through these various covenantal administrations, we see transitions and maturation of worship leading up to the coming of Jesus Christ.

How do we figure out how we’re to worship? Well, we have in Leviticus a book written specifically with great detail and divinely recorded speeches from the Lord to Moses. I mean, there could not be a greater way for God to say, “This is the specific way you are to worship in this particular period of time during the time of the Mosaic Covenant.” Very explicit. We have a whole book and in actuality a book and a half because half of Exodus also given to Moses at Sinai as Leviticus was talks about the physical environment of the worship place. So we have much—we have a book and a half or so of very explicit detail about how to worship God and how foolish if we were to ignore what that teaches us.

Nobody’s proposing we do it exactly as they did. But we are saying that this is the basic principle of how God worships. This is the way to understand the work of Jesus Christ. All of these offerings were picturing the completion of work in Christ. Leviticus is as it were a prism that takes the single lamb that Abel offered that we know is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world when Jesus comes and refracts out that offering into its component elements.

So that when we come back to Jesus in the New Testament, we understand what significant things he has accomplished for us and in what way should our worship flow before God. Leviticus isn’t you know worship whole cloth made up new. Hebrews says that when there’s a change of priesthood there is a necessity a change of law and it means specifically and primarily the laws of worship. Leviticus is given because we now move from the Noahic covenant and Adamic covenant when worship was led by fathers patriarchal period and we now have a transition to Levitical ministers.

You remember I hope if you know your Bibles the tribe of Levi replaced the firstborn of each of the families. There was a transformation of worship, a maturation. Now the first two offerings in Leviticus are the whole burnt offering, a lamb or animal and then secondly the grain offering. And the first two offerings we see the patriarchs offering, Abel and Cain are the same thing. It’s a lamb probably from Abel and you know grain from Cain.

Cain’s problem was not that he brought something that God did not desire to see in worship. We know explicitly from Leviticus that it’s supposed to be part of the inspired worship of God. It was acceptable for the patriarchs to offer grain, but not unless it came second because the grain represents the work of the offerer. And that must always Leviticus tells us be layered on top of the whole burnt offering, the ascension offering of the lamb or the cow or the bird that symbolize the atonement for sins made by a substitute for us.

So Abel’s problem—Abel’s correctness rather was in offering a substitute, the work of Jesus to come. Cain began with his own labors. But the point I’m making is that worship doesn’t come whole cloth new in Leviticus. It transforms what the patriarchs were already doing. They were already worshiping at stone altars they would build and they were putting animals and grain on these altars. And the tabernacle simply made a more elaborate looking altar, a mountain.

They both represent the mountain, the top where the garden of Eden is located. We know as a mountain because the waters go down. And so there’s this transformation. The patriarchs worship again in a picture, a symbol of the place we have contact with God on the mountain and they worship with animals and other kinds of sacrifices burning on top of altars. And Leviticus transforms that. It doesn’t do away with it.

It transforms it. It gives us more detail of what the patriarchs might have been doing and gives us more detail for what his people are to do in preparation for the coming of Christ. It is a transformation, a maturation of worship. And then when David comes along, he further transforms the worship by adding, as we’ve seen before at the Tabernacle of David worship, he adds song and music to the silent worship or the unsung worship we should say at the tabernacle.

Probably silent totally, no words being said really. And so we have glorified speech now in the Tabernacle of David. And so these transformations and now Jesus comes not a Levitical priest a Melchizedekian priest after the order of Melchizedek and once more worship is transformed. It finds its culmination in the New Testament but it doesn’t find some kind of new altogether different way of worship. No, it is a transformation of what God has already said we should do in worship.

And so we believe at this church that the scriptures are to specifically regulate our worship and specifically Leviticus 9:22 gives us a divinely inspired sequence or movement of the worship of the church. It gives us a divinely inspired set of perspectives on the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It moves the text tells from the sin or purification offering. The word sin there in chapter 4 when this offering is described really is better translated as cleansing or purification. You purify yourself and the work worship environment first and then the burnt offering comes next.

The word burnt means ascend. Olah in the Hebrew that means the ascension offering. And even this word offering is more literally drawing near. How do we draw near to God in special Lord’s day worship? Well, end of the Levitical administration, we drew near through a purification sacrifice or thing being killed and slaughtered first and then we drew nearer through an offering that is characterized as an ascension drawing near and then finally we have the peace offerings and that’s the sequence: purification, ascension, peace.

And at the conclusion of that the text tells us Aaron then pronounces the benediction upon the people and remember the Aaronic benediction is the empowerment of the army of God for conquering, for victory. The Aaronic benediction is located in the book of Numbers. Numbers is a book where the army of God is preparing to advance into the promised land. Every Lord’s day, our mandate to march into the world victorious as conquerors for Christ is the movement of the worship. We move toward that benediction, the placing of the power of God upon his people to conquer, to fulfill the great commission of our savior.

So we have biblically regulated worship that tells us explicitly how worship moves, how it transforms, how it proceeds step by step.

Let’s look a little bit in review at Leviticus 1. Turn to Leviticus 1.

So, we know it goes purification, ascension, peace. But when God begins to describe worship to Moses and tell him explicitly what to do, we are told not first of the purification offering. The purification offering in a sense is the offering that most evangelicalism is familiar with. The purification offering doesn’t get recorded for us in detail in Leviticus until chapters 4 and 5.

And it is explicitly tied to cleansing from sins. The purification and reparation offerings, two different kind of offerings are both connected together in chapters four and five to the effects of sin on the person, the offerer. But Leviticus 9:22 tells us, well, that is the first offering chronologically. And hence in our church, the first thing we do is to confess our sins and be assured that we’re cleansed through the work of Christ.

Well, that’s the first thing chronologically in the worship sequence. There’s something else placed at the beginning of the book for emphasis. Something else as the primary place as these offerings are described for us in Leviticus. Something else, not the forgiveness of our sins. That something else is described in Leviticus 1.

Notice in verse one, that is the Lord called to Moses, spoke to him from the tabernacle of meeting. Let me just pause. God speaks from the place where Moses would come together and converse with God. God speaks forth from the convocated assembly of his people. God speaks forth particularly in Lord’s day worship and the preaching of the word. And then we have specific quotations. He says this, “Speak to the children of Israel and say to them when any one of you brings an offering to the Lord, etc.”

This is the red letter portion of Leviticus. You know, some of you have red letter Bibles. The Gospels, the words of Jesus are read. Well, in Leviticus, most of Leviticus is red letter. The Lord Yahweh is Jesus Christ. And he appears to Moses and he tells him very specific words and Moses does not reinterpret it somehow under the guidance of the Spirit. He writes it down verbatim dictation. These are red letter words, the words of Christ explicitly very clearly telling us what drawing near and worshiping the Lord is about.

And we read in verse three, if his offering is a burnt sacrifice, if his drawing near, what the word means offering, is a burnt sacrifice is an ascension offering. Then it has to be of a particular type, a male without blemish. Clearly pointing us to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Whether it’s the bull here, the son of the herd, the calf that will be described later in this context, the son of man, Jesus Christ, the lamb that also could be offered for the so-called whole burnt offering.

All these things picture Christ, the one who would come without blemish. But what’s going on? What is the purpose of the son of the herd or the Lamb of God? And what’s placed primary in the list of these offerings is the ascension of the animal. What’s placed first in drawing near to God is not simply the forgiveness of sins. The forgiveness of sins, the purification of the worshipper in the worship place is to the end that the worshipper would be transformed by the power of Jesus Christ.

We know this is called the whole burnt offering. What that means is that it’s wholly burned up. And of course it’s not. It’s like the Holy Roman Empire rather. It was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. The whole burnt offering is not wholly burned up. Its emphasis is not on its being burnt but on its ascension. And it’s not an offering. It’s a drawing near. But it’s called that because the animal is primarily burned up.

Its skin was not burnt. And we could maybe meditate on that. The clothing of Adam and Eve in the garden. The skin is discarded. The rest of the animal is transformed. The emphasis is not death. The emphasis is that the cow becomes a new cow. The lamb becomes a new lamb. Death is involved certainly because of men’s sin. But the result of this particular primary theological offering is the transformation of the cow or the lamb and they ascend to heaven into the presence of God.

They draw near through transformation and ascension. And we’re being told by this that the purpose of the work of Jesus Christ is not simply the forgiveness of sins. Now, it can be referred to in that way. That’s a summary for everything that’s going to happen in these offerings. They’re all rolled together in Jesus’s death forgiving sinners. But when the scripture uses that shorthand, the scripture anticipates that you know enough about your Bible and about worship that the forgiveness of sins is for a purpose other than just you getting clear of guilt.

And the purpose is the transformation of who you are. You have to lean on this animal identifying with it. The animal becomes you. Yes, the animal is killed. But that’s not the focus. It is not a burnt sacrifice. It is an ascension drawing near. And in worship, the confession of sins is followed by the ascension of the people to receive a message from Jesus Christ. He’s going to tell us his word and he’s going to assure us that we are new men and women.

That’s the point of the ascension offering in chapter one. The forgiveness of sins is a wonderful truth to be tremendously thankful for. But you see we do God a great disservice if we think the purpose is simply to go to heaven at the end of our lives. We become now temporally so to speak new creatures through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are transformed every Lord’s day. We go the scriptures tell us from glory to glory.

Purification offering is important. It’s important to recognize that Jesus Christ has indeed provided the forgiveness of our sins. Hebrews 9 says the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh. How much more will the blood of Christ who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God purify our conscience from dead works?

Certainly that language is sacrificial telling us that the purification offering is fulfilled in the shedding of Christ’s blood. But recognize what the purpose of the purification is given to us in this verse from Hebrews 9: who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God. Certainly it purifies us but more than that Jesus Christ ascends and offers himself and as a result assures our ascension as well.

We are told repeatedly in the New Testament that Jesus Christ is that purification offering who cleanses us from our sins. But the New Testament also tells us that the purpose of that is our transformation. Ephesians 5 says that in instructing men to love their wives even as Christ also loved the church that Christ gave himself for it that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word.

He is the purification offering for our sins. But to what end? Verse 27 says that to the end that he might present it to himself a glorious church not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish, the way the ascension offering was to be. The purpose of purification and forgiveness of sins, informing us every Lord’s day in the flow of our worship is the transformation of his people, becoming new men, new women, new boys, new girls through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

These two purposes are given to us again in 1 Peter 1. In verse 21, we read about that: through him are believers in God who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God. Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart since you have been born again.

You see, Jesus purifies us, ascends for us, purifies our conscience from the guilt of sin, but more than that transforms us, causing us to be born again, to become new men and new women. And this is what the worship service of the church dictated by the principles of Leviticus has applied to the work of Christ. This is what we learn every Lord’s day is that our sins are forgiven and we are being transformed. New men, new women.

The annual the twice daily sacrifice of Ezekiel in 46:13 is not a purification sacrifice. It is an ascension offering to the Lord. Morning by morning you are to provide this offering daily. The daily sacrifice the emphasis of it is ascension transformation not simply forgiveness of sins. Philippians 3 tells us that our citizenship is in heaven. We are that bull. We’re that lamb. Every Lord’s day through the ascension portion of our liturgy. We’re reminded that our citizenship is in heaven.

And indeed as 2 Corinthians tells us that we are beholding the Lord and we are beholding the glory of the Lord and from that beholding we are being changed into the same image from glory to glory by the Spirit of God. We are new men and women and we are increasing in glory and maturation as new men and women as we do this worship and as it instructs our lives. New people. We’re being transformed. We have been definitively transformed through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and we ascend before the Father.

What’s sanctification? The basic method of Christian sanctification is putting off the old man, accepting the forgiveness of our sins, confessing our sins, putting off the old man. But it doesn’t stop there. We’re to put on the new man. We’re to enter into this ascension offering, drawing near to God and recognize the newness of life that Jesus has given to us.

Now in Leviticus 9, the next offering that’s described is the peace offering. This is found in chapter 3. But chapter 2 tells us about another offering. Look at chapter 2 if you will. When everyone offers a grain offering to the Lord, his offering shall be of fine flour. He’ll pour oil on it and put frankincense on it.

So now we have a whole chapter. This chapter is dedicated to the grain offering so-called. Going to hear again our translations fail us. The word translated grain is actually tribute. It means to bring a tribute to a king. It’s called a grain offering because later we find out that it actually consists primarily 90 to 95% of it is grain. It’s heads of barley or wheat or whatever it is.

It’s grain, but it’s grain that’s been transformed by our work. This is what Abel or Cain rather brought. It’s grain that must have work applied to it by the worshipper. Now, it’s not listed in Leviticus 9:22. It said purification, Jesus forgives our sins. Ascension, he makes us into a new man. And then peace. It’s not listed because the ascension offering by itself never happens. The tribute offering is always layered onto the ascension offering.

And so, you can speak of them as two halves of one offering. The ascension is, you know, synecdoche, the part for the whole. You can use the word ascension to describe both ascension and tribute. The details of Leviticus 2 and later instruction Leviticus tells us that you put the ascension offering, that thing’s burning up totally, all going to God, and then you layer on top of that your grain offering or a portion of it.

Most of it feeds the priest. But this tribute offering, we’ve talked about this a number of times. You know, we’ve been forgiven of our sins. We’re made new creatures in Christ, and we’re becoming new, new, newer. Every Lord’s day, we’re being transformed and going from glory to glory through the application of Christ’s work. But to what purpose? What do we do as new men and women? And chapter 2 tells us our purpose is to bring tribute.

Our purpose is to go into the created order and bring back that created order, having worked it and made it more beautiful for God. We’re given purpose for this new ascension, new man life that we have. We’re a new creature toward a particular purpose that we might bring tribute to the Father. How important this is to us. It is so vitally important because it tells us that we’re not simply saved to wait around for the rapture, for the coming of Christ whenever that happens.

We’re saved to work, to labor, to enter into tasks that Lord God has given us to do. Our citizenship is in heaven. We see the heavenly blueprint, but we’re to take that blueprint and transform the world by it. Our bodies are not there yet. Someday they will be, but not now. And in the meantime, the tribute offering tells us and our worship service tells us every Lord’s day that we’re saved for the purpose of transforming the world to extending the garden image of heaven in the worship service into all the created order.

Our work is holy work before God. It’s beautiful. There’s a little picture of the holy place here. You know, the holy place had this lampstand with oil feeding it that shined over this loaf of bread. 12 loaves of bread representing the tribes. And there was also this golden altar of incense there. Oil and frankincense bread. And that’s exactly what chapter 2 tells us in verse one that you’ve got grain bread, but there’s oil and there’s frankincense, the thing that would be burned in a different sacrifice on that golden altar of incense.

It’s a little picture. It’s a mini holy place, this tribute offering portion of the worship. Then it reminds us that our work and our labors and what we produce for Christ comes into the holy place. It is wholly coming from him and it is acceptable before God. Both truths are so important that our work, our ordinary work of fixing cars, baking bread, changing diapers, this is holy work from God and it is acceptable.

And the picture of all that is this wonderful tribute offering that we bring in from chapter 2. So we’re purified of our sins. Our sins are forgiven to the purpose that we might be new people. And that newness of life is to be used for the sake of working in the context of the ordinary things of life. This wasn’t some exotic element that was brought in as a result of the labors. It was bread. It was the common affair that you would eat every day in your home.

And it was the common farm agrarian labor that’s being described here again by way of part for the whole of all of our labors. All of that work is holy work for Christ and becomes glorified and empowered. It has this purpose of transforming the world for the purposes of manifesting the kingdom of Jesus Christ. We’re saved for those purposes. The worship service reminds us of these aspects. And then before the benediction of power to go out conquering is given to us, we have the chapter 3 offering which is the peace offering.

In verse chapter 3 verse one, when is drawing near as a sacrifice of a peace offering and then it goes on to describe it of the herd or what kind of offering he gives etc. And we know from Leviticus 19 for instance and other texts that peace offering is the one that the offerer himself would eat a portion of. So the worship service moves to its conclusion prior to the benediction into this peace offering section as well.

Couple of other New Testament references to the ascension and tribute offerings.

In Romans 12:1, we read, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” So he’s saying that again, if he wants to sum up the worship that the Romans were to perform, he sums it up as the ascension offering that they’re to present their bodies as living sacrifices, dead things that are now alive, transformed.

This is the message of the ascension offering. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. In the ascension before the throne of Christ, we then have our understanding of the world transformed by his word. And our mind, our thoughts, our knowledge is based upon the ascension reality of Christ’s word given to us through the preaching of his word.

We are told in 1 Peter 2 that we are a holy priesthood, that we have been brought together as a spiritual house to offer spiritual sacrifice acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. And if we do not look at how our worship should be informed by his explicit instructions to the Levitical ministers, I don’t know how we can fulfill the requirement, the base requirement of our lives to come together and offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Leviticus tells us who Jesus is. It tells us the way that we are to worship him and to see the implications of Christ’s worship for the rest of our lives.

Paul spoke about being poured out as a drink offering for the sake of the Philippians in Philippians 2:17. Later, the tribute offering when they get into the land, the tribute offering, in addition to being grain, would also be wine. A portion of wine would be poured out as a libation offering. And Paul had no problems directly relating his ministry and service to Jesus Christ to that Levitical system.

And I think when he says that he’s being poured out as a drink offering for the sake of the Philippians, the point is that ultimately what we bring into the worship of God is not just our labors but the nations of the world are really the tribute of the world to God in worship as well. So the scriptures in the New Testament over and over again verifies that this sacrificial system of Leviticus instructs our New Testament understanding of the work of Jesus Christ.

Paul said that he was a minister of Christ to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. And so we see this broader understanding of what it is to bring tribute to God and to bring the nations of the world before the throne of God as well. The tribute included the frankincense represented by the prayers of the saints.

Then in Revelation, we read that the smoke of the incense combines with the prayers of the saints and it rises before God from the hand of the angel. And then the angel took the cense and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it onto the earth. The tribute offering, the response to the preached word of God, the consecration of who we are is then followed by the pastoral prayer of the church.

This is the ascension of incense before God. Revelation says it is effectual for transforming the world. That God moves then in terms of the prayers of his saints gathered together to offer tribute to God. That includes the tribute that is the prayer for the incoming of the nations of the world. And God says that he indeed gives us the nations of the world to bring before God in worship. He empowers us that this is accomplished.

And then as we said in chapter 3, we have this description of the peace offering. The scriptures tell us very explicitly that Jesus Christ is our peace. Jesus Christ is the one who brings us all the promises of God. 2 Corinthians 1 verse 20 says, “All the promises of God in Christ are yea and in him amen.” They are not yea and nay, they are yea and amen unto the glory of God. The peace is the presence of God and his blessings with us.

And in Jesus Christ, all the promises that God will be to us are exceeding great and exceeding reward. These are all bound together in the person and work of Christ. And he promises that his presence is with us as we celebrate the peace that is our Savior. And so Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the forgiveness of our sins, the transformation of mankind, the tribute, the work that he did affects our work and makes it meaningful and he is our peace.

And all of these things we recite before him and we learn of in the context of our worship and repeat it again and again that this is the purpose of the coming of Christ. Jesus came he tells us in the New Testament to destroy the works of the devil. Jesus came as the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world. Jesus came not to effect peace which is the goodness the good state of the conscience forgiven of sins.

No, the purification portion of the offering tells us that is true. But it’s not the conclusion. The peace that is the subject of the peace offering, the conclusion of worship is the assurance that all the enemies of Christ are made his footstool. That the world will be beautified both through vocation and through evangelism. And all the world be brought to the peace that is the presence of God in the context of the world that worships him.

This is the movement of the worship of the church. So chapter 1 reminds us of this ascension offering. Chapter two the tribute clinging to it. Chapter three the great culmination of peace. And this is then concluded by Aaron announcing upon the people the Aaronic benediction.

Now we’re familiar with these things and every time we talk about it and we get a little more familiar. But of course, the great truth of all these things is wrapped up in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Jesus has forgiven the sins of his people. He has caused humanity to ascend into the very throne room of God. The implications of worship are certainly broad and wide in terms of the world. But the implications of worship are important for you personally.

You have big questions that you come to church with and maybe they’re not on at the forefront of your thoughts, but they’re big questions. You know that you sin. You know that your sin is displeasing to God. And you know that guilt comes from sin. And you know that you are tempted to and often feel guilty for your sin. There was an old song by a group that the lyric went, “All the blood will never cover this mess.” And it’s easy for people who are sinners in their old man natural state, so to speak. It’s easy to doubt that their sins are forgiven. We feel like we should do something to take care of the problem that we create.

Or maybe that our sins are so heinous that we engage in that the Lord Jesus Christ certainly doesn’t forgive these. One of the great questions that plagues the soul of mankind is what about my guilt? Are my sins truly forgiven? And the worship of Christ dictated by the system given to us in Leviticus, the order that it is and the main elements, the work of Christ broken out into its refracted elements, so to speak, begins by putting us at peace.

You come before Christ every Lord’s day, and really the first transaction you enter into is this confession of sin. And the worship service is designed to answer that first huge question that plagues you and to week by week, year by year, bring you to a state of rest about that, knowing that indeed the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ has cleansed you from the guilt of your sin. I don’t care how heinous the sin was that you committed this past week.

You need to be assured and are assured by the officiant at worship that as you come before Christ, desiring for those sins to be cleansed, he assures you that your sins are purified. You’re purified. You’re cleansed from sin. But that’s not really enough. Our guilt isn’t the only thing that plagues us. Then, well, okay, if we’re forgiven, well, can I get any better at it? I’m glad that Jesus forgave me once more for yelling at my child or my wife or whatever it was.

I’m so thankful for that, but I don’t want to do that week by week. I want to be a new man. I want to be different. I want to get better at what I’m doing. Can I do that? Will I ever be able to get better at the sins that I so frequently commit? Can I move ahead? And every week, the worship of the church, at the ascension and the preaching of the word tells you, indeed, yes. Yes. Yes. You’re a new person definitively in Christ, your citizenship in heaven.

And by beholding the glory of the work of Jesus Christ, the one who has ascended and is at the right hand of the Father and has accomplished all these things for us beholding the glory of Christ, we are being transformed and we are going from glory to glory. Do not doubt it. To doubt the fact that you’re maturing through the work of the Savior is to doubt and to not exercise faith in what he has given us to believe.

He assures us every Lord’s day not just that our sins are forgiven, but you’re a new person and you’re being transformed week by week, month by month, as you come into the worship of Christ. He is making you into a new person, a mature person. He is helping you to put off the old man through confession of sin and to be assured that he is clothing you in his virtues, his patience, his courage, his perseverance, his steadfastness, his love.

The great question, can I become a better person? Is answered in the flow of weekly Lord’s day worship by Christ saying, “Amen. Yes, you can. The promises to you are yea and amen in Christ. Believe it.”

Well, good. Now I’m forgiven of sins and I know I’m a new person, but I’ve got to go change the diaper. Yet today I’ve got to go wrench some car. Tomorrow I’ve got to go look for a job. Tomorrow I’ve got to go write some program for somebody that I don’t know exactly what they’re doing perhaps.

You know, I thought of it in terms of my own family, that’s good. We’re new people. What about this stuff? We got to go make money to survive. No, what God says is you’ve been made a new person for the purpose of working and transforming the world. Another great question in our lives is this question of purpose. What am I here for? What’s it all about, Alfie? What am I supposed to do? What’s it mean? Is this all it means? Just I’m a new man. I get to go to heaven. Is that it? What’s the purpose? Do I have any purpose or meaning for my life? Or am I just running the same old treadmill?

That’s what the world wants you to think. God says the treadmill is most glorious. As you go to work day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, you’re assured every Lord’s day in the context of our version of the tribute offering as you bring your tribute from that work before God and he accepts it. He tells you that no matter what you’re doing, it is tremendous holy vocation for him.

One of my daughters works in a shop that sells baby clothes. Praise God, babies need to be clothed. One of my sons-in-law is becoming a computer programmer. Artificial intelligence changed the face of the world, I suppose. I don’t know what all it’s going to do, but I know it’s going to be used for great dominion tasks and already is. The advance of technology and computer technology has transformed the world. It’s removed a part of the curse. We don’t have to work with our hands as much as we used to. We’re not sweating as much as we used to because Christ says the world is being transformed.

And for 2,000 years, the church has worked vocationally to learn knowledge about the world. And it builds and it builds and it builds. And the world becomes a different place after 2,000 years of men just going to the nine to five every day. You see, yeah, your job has purpose. And my son-in-law is studying computer programming, the technological advances. Another son-in-law sells car parts. Well, you know, it’s real important that people can move around. Real important to be able to transport ourselves. It’s been vital to the flow of technology and the flow of our economy. That’s holy work from God. Just as holy work as the programming or my sermon preparation, whatever else it is, that is meaning and purpose, the desire and drive to keep people on the road so that they can be effective in their families, their recreation and their vocation.

And then my other daughter who’s married, doesn’t work so much, does a few things, but she’s changing diapers. Can we think of anything more important in the transformation of the world than raising up the next generation? Is there anything more important? I mean, I don’t want to put these things one against the other, but you know, we had discussion over in Poland, we’ve had this a couple of times. Mark likes to ask his Catholic study PE kids, you know, is there anything you die for? Would you be willing to die for Jesus Christ? And Bobo always gets a little upset. He says, I want to know, are they willing to change diapers for Jesus Christ?

You know, courage to go out and fight Iraqis, that’s one thing. But courage to change a diaper day by day amongst the drudge, you know, apparent drudgery and meaninglessness that has, that takes two courage and commitment for Jesus Christ. It really does. And husbands should be encouraging young mothers in our church who are doing this task which is so vital and important.

Does your life have purpose just raising the kids every day? Well, you know, tremendous purpose for transforming the face of our world according to bringing up disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ that they might transform the world. Tremendous purpose. You know, one of my sons is going to study economics again. You know, economics is how we beautify the face of the world through commercial transactions. Tremendous meaning and purpose. Another son works as a clerk at a store where people buy things that beautify their homes. They take them into their home and they feel like the world is transformed because they have some beautiful thing. They can eat some beautiful tasting thing. They can apply some beautiful thing to their hands and their hands smell nice and they just feel good.

That is glorifying to God. It is world transforming to take our homes and beautify them because that’s what it’s all about. It’s a little picture again that’s why we’re here. It’s our purpose in life to beautify the face of the world to the glory of God. And then he continues to go to college to learn what other tasks God may have him to do. You see, charity does the dishes. You know, there’s meaning and purpose for doing the dishes.

The dishes are the place for this transaction with Christ are placed before us two or three times a day. The death of something else for us. Life given to transform the world. And our very dining becomes a thing of beauty and grace when we do it self-consciously, recognizing the meaning it has to it. Washing dishes is an important dominion task. It’s a holy calling before God as is sweeping the floor and the other tasks our young children are doing.

Do I have meaning? What’s the meaning? Your purpose. Your purpose is to do those things that are set up before you this week. And know that God loves them. He loves it when you sweep good. He loves it when you do the dishes good. He loves it when you raise those children. He loves it when you clean the diapers. He loves it when you wrench the car and help somebody to get their car running. He loves it when you write a computer program that beautifies the world and rolls back a little more of the curse for mankind so we don’t have to sweat.

He loves it when you sell things that babies can be attired not just for the sake of utility but for the sake of beauty even when they’re young to be raised with a sense of beauty in the context of their lives. The big question purpose in life is answered every Lord’s day visually before us as we bring our offerings to God that he reminds us of the wonder and beauty of the simple daily tasks of life.

They’re a little holy place. Remember the tribute offering. It’s got the oil, the frankincense, there’s prayer, there’s empowerment of the Spirit going on. And then there’s work empowered by the Spirit and by our prayers. Holy work in the changing of a diaper, the scrubbing of a floor, you know, the purchase of the sale of car parts. Holy work for God. Meaning and purpose. Then as we move to the last offering, the peace offering, the other big question.

I’ve talked about this many times, but it’s one that will plague us, you know, for generations. Okay, I’ve got meaning and purpose in life for my individual labor. And I got forgiveness of sins, and I’m a new man to do the purpose, but I want more than that. I want community. I want friends. I want a family that’s really a family. I want a family that looks like those homeschool books say it should look like. I want friends who those books and Proverbs say friends should look like and I don’t have it.

Can I can I get peace? Which remember the peace offering is the one eaten in community. Can I have friends who won’t betray me, who aren’t whispering behind my back. The common experience of foreigners, I think, is you go to Poland or someplace and you’re speaking to your Polish friends in English and all of a sudden they start speaking to each other in Polish. Why are they doing that? Are they talking about me? And you start looking for maybe your name in there. Are they making fun of us?

You know, this is the common experience because we know that fallen man is deceitful and is harmful and we just have a hard time believing that we are indeed good enough, smart enough, and dog gone it, nobody likes us is what we think. We need to be assured that God says yes. Can you have friends? Can you have family? Yes. The peace offering, the communion meal is the picture that Jesus Christ is in the process of giving us community.

The great questions, guilt, purpose, who are we? Can I get better? And then finally, can we exist in community? The regulative principle of worship as some people apply it misses out on this beautiful richness and diversity of the work of Jesus Christ and the fullness of the life that’s portrayed by a simple observance of these dusty dry laws of Leviticus as we apply them to New Testament worship. What a loss to the church of Jesus Christ. What gain for us in this church. Praise God for the gift.

We gave this gift to Poland. A couple year last year I spoke on worship. The two churches have adopted these things. They’re reading Meyer’s book now. They’ve changed how they do worship. They’re thinking in terms of the stuff today. We pass this gift on. You see, the gift is that God answers the big questions in our lives.

You feel alone. God says, “Hey, I placed you in a community. Get used to it. Get used to it because I believe we’re going to spend eternity together, folks.” You know, Paul comforted the Thessalonians that they would recognize each other in the resurrected state, that they would see each other and be comforted that their loved ones that have died, they’ll see him again. Heaven is not some, you know, place where there’s no relationship.

Heaven is a place of relationships of plenty. And I believe that the relationships that we have here, while we’re going to have many more than just each other. These will be critical. These will be, you know, everything we’ve longed for in this church. You’ve longed for friends in this church who wouldn’t ignore you, betray you, hurt you sometimes. You’ve longed for parents that would do what they’re supposed to do. You’ve longed for children that’ll make you pleased. You’ve longed for friends for your family, even worse than friends for yourself, for your wife, for your children.

Like I think that all those friendships that have such promise, we see that it could work with people here and yet it doesn’t work. You know, it doesn’t work perfectly ever. And sometimes it works quite poorly. But I’ve been I’ve seen that over the years many times. But that hope that’s lit in us as we come together to share the peace offering. That hope that we have communion together and community in Jesus Christ, that will be fulfilled in the resurrected state. I have no doubt about it that all these relationships that present such difficulties with us as we try to build community in an age where everybody is individualized that is fighting completely against community that want you to look out for number one adding to your own selfish self-absorption.

All those things will be washed away and the great relationships will flourish. Why not bring some of that heavenly pattern to what we do now? Why not try to work hard at not committing the sins so that we won’t feel guilty knowing that Jesus has forgiven them. Why not make the effort to believe and then act on the basis that we’re new people in Christ to put on the new man this afternoon and tomorrow as we enter into the rest of our lives?

Why not take this renewed perspective and say tomorrow on their way to work, this is a holy calling before God and work hard at it from that perspective. And why not try hard to build relationships with people in the context of Christ to look for people that are on the periphery to bring them in to minister to them instead of just the little groups that we kind of naturally fall into. Those groups are great. Nothing wrong with those groups, but we want to expand it, extend it. We want to bring that peace that the peace offering in the Lord’s table is all about.

Jesus has accomplished all these tremendous blessings for us. And I hope that as we go through the liturgical reformation at Reformation Covenant Church, we want, the elders want as much as possible to take these great truths and have our worship service shout forth the answers from Christ and in Christ each week to these great questions that are on our minds. Can my guilt be removed? Can I become a better man? Do I have meaning in place? And can I live in community? And God says to every one of those questions, and we want it shouted forth by the liturgy of the church and the preaching of the church that the answers to each of these is yea and amen in Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the glorious worship of your church and the way you have instructed us that brings us, Lord God, the knowledge that we’re trying to glorify you. We thank you, Father, that in our worship, we try to glorify you by worshiping you the way you’ve instructed us to do in all of your scriptures. And we thank you that the end result of that attempt to glorify you is a tremendous source of blessing and assurance to these great questions that trouble us at all times. Thank you Lord God for the worship of the church focused on the person of Jesus. In his name we pray.

Amen.