Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Work and Worship

Today’s sermon is on work and worship, and we’ll be looking at a specific aspect of worship from Leviticus 2:1-10, the grain offering, or what we refer to here as the tribute offering.

Leviticus 2:1-10. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

When anyone offers a grain offering to the Lord, his offering shall be of fine flour, and he shall pour oil on it and put frankincense on it. He shall bring it to Aaron’s sons, the priests, one of whom shall take from it a handful of fine flour and oil with all the frankincense, and the priest shall burn it as a memorial on the altar, an offering made by fire, a sweet aroma to the Lord. The rest of the grain offering shall be Aaron’s and his sons. It is most holy of the offerings to the Lord made by fire.

And if you bring as an offering a grain offering baked in the oven, it shall be unleavened cakes of the flour mixed with oil or unleavened wafers anointed with oil. But if your offering is a grain offering baked in an oven, it shall be of fine flour, unleavened, mixed with oil. You shall break it in pieces and pour oil on it. It is a grain offering.

If your offering is a grain offering baked in a covered pan, it shall be made of fine flour with oil. You shall bring the grain offering that is made of these things to the Lord. And when it is presented to the priest, he shall bring it to the altar. Then the priest shall take from the grain offering a memorial portion and burn it on the altar, an offering made by fire, a sweet aroma to the Lord. And what is left of the grain offering shall be Aaron’s and his sons. It is most holy of the offerings to the Lord made by fire.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the beauty of your scriptures and bless us now as we seek to understand this text and its implications for our worship and also for our work. Please give us, Lord God, warnings and encouragements today in Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

So what I want to do today is essentially do three things. The first thing is we’re going to talk about the order of worship here at RCC in relationship to covenant renewal worship and its place, the tribute offering’s place in that flow. And this is, you know, old hat for some of you and brand new for some of you. So I want to talk about covenant renewal worship a little bit from Psalm 50.

And then after that, I want to use the worship service in two ways. One, I want us to look at the beginning of worship after we’re called into God’s presence, the confession of sin. And I want to focus on that for a little while in relationship to our work. And that’ll be a warning portion of the sermon—warning about sin and work. And then after that, we’ll look at the tribute offering and some of the detailed language that we just read, and that will be an encouragement, yea, even a command to work.

So we’ll talk about worship as a whole and the flow of it. And then we’ll talk about the confession of sin at the beginning of worship as a warning to us not to sin by way of our vocation. And then we’ll talk about the tribute offering as a command from God to transform the world through work and to bring it to him.

So that’s kind of where we’re going by way of big picture.

## The Flow of Offerings and Covenant Renewal

The immediate context of the tribute offering is the flow of offerings in Leviticus 1-5, which we have always printed up in a summary form. Leviticus 9:22, at the end of your order of worship, kind of summarizes that flow. And what this is all about is God renewing covenant with us by means of the worship service and ultimately pointing to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, Jesus’ once-for-all offering on the cross.

His death, resurrection, and ascension is applied to us every Lord’s day in covenant renewal worship. So I want to talk about that a little bit. And to do that, I want to read from Psalm 50.

Psalm 50. So if you want to turn there, that would be a good thing to do. And I’m just going to read through it and make a couple of comments.

The mighty one, God, the Lord has spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun to its going down.

This talks about God renewing covenant with us. We’ll see that here. And by way of a meal, we’ll see that what we’ve got going on in Psalm 50, from one perspective, is this call to worship in verse one. Right? So God has called you here today. God has spoken. From the rising of the sun to the going down, he has called us.

And verse two: Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God will shine forth.

So he calls us here in hope that as we leave this place, God will shine forth from the place of worship. Remember, Zion is not the temple mountain. Zion is the tabernacle of David mountain, which was a little picture of New Testament worship—no ongoing blood sacrifices there. Apparently the ark of the covenant, the presence of God directly open to the people, and worship comprised of both Jews and Gentiles. So it was a little picture of New Testament worship, and that’s what Zion is.

And so when we read that God will call us and then out of Zion beauty will shine forth, this is really the worship service. So as we apply it to work, the purpose of being called here is for the beauty of God to shine forth. And one significant way it shines forth will be when you do your work tomorrow competently, in a beautiful way, and the beauty of God will be shining forth.

Verse three: Our God shall come and shall not keep silent. A fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very tempestuous all around him.

So when we come into the presence of God in special convocative worship, it’s dangerous. You know, pastors always have this kind of two-edged thing going on—a two-edged message to communicate to you. One is to, you know, not make you sinfully fearful of God, but to assure you that Jesus has paid the price for your sins, right? And he’s provided peace with God.

On the other hand, we can then rest in kind of a cheap grace and think that we can approach God lightly. And so Psalm 50, speaking at least from one major application to covenant renewal worship, says, “Don’t approach me lightly. When you go to church, it’s not just to hang out with your buds, okay? Not just to have a good time. Yeah, there’s a lot of assurance that you’ll be given, but it should involve some degree of fear to come into the special presence of God in special convocative worship, because we go to heaven symbolized by me walking up that aisle. We’re all processing into heaven, as it were, at the beginning of worship.

But God also comes down to earth. And when God comes to earth, there is this judgment aspect. Judgment begins at the house of God and then moves out into the other areas. So God is coming.

Verse three says, verse four says: He shall call to the heavens from above and to the earth that he may judge his people.

So one specific thing that happens here is judgment. The word that’s going to be preached is a sharp two-edged sword. It’s supposed to cut you. It’s actually supposed to kill you and then resurrect you, too, right? And so it has those aspects to it. That two-edged sword is God’s word. God’s sword devours you, but ultimately he transforms you.

So he comes to judge his people. At the beginning of the service, when you confess your sins, you should be thinking of God coming to be with you. You’re in his presence now. He’s come to judge you. And confession should be a rather automatic response to fall down before God, confessing our sins.

Gather my saints together to me. So we’re assured that we’re saints. Those who have made a covenant with God by sacrifice. So this is kind of the key text for covenant renewal worship, at least one of the ones that’s talked about a lot.

We have made a covenant with God, or rather he has made a covenant with us. He’s always the initiator, by sacrifice. Sacrifice—that word in the Old Testament usually means a meal. Now, it relates to the sacrifice of Christ and the application of all that he has done, which we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes, but ultimately sacrifice also refers to this meal.

And so when we take this meal and Jesus says “this is the new covenant,” right? “This is the covenant.” Then God is renewing covenant with us by sacrifice. The sacrifice of Christ ministered to us in a meal. And that’s our identity. We’re saints, holy ones of God, not because we work great, not because we’re good moms or dads, not because we’re, you know, moral people that keep the Ten Commandments, but because God makes a covenant with us through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. His righteousness, his goodness, his work is the basis for our covenant with God and our peace with him and our community together as well.

What did we just sing? We just sang a nice line here: All ye men of tender heart, forgiving others, take your part. That’s wonderful to sing that and to think about it. You know, if you think you’re coming here today because this is a good church as opposed to a bad church, these are good people compared to bad people—you know, from one perspective, I suppose there’s some truth that, you know, we at least see what God wants us to do.

But from another perspective, that is really a bad way to think about it, because all we are—saints that God has made a covenant with by sacrifice—because we are, apart from the grace of Jesus, apart from—well, we still are sinners, forgiven sinners in the eyes of God. And that must be the perspective we have as we come in to worship God. If we don’t, judgment, pride of who we are and how well we do, brings the judgment of God on us.

And that pride is manifested in terms of whether or not we are men of a tender heart, forgiving one another, right? So if you don’t do that to people that confess their sins, watch out when you come to worship here on the Lord’s day. Our identification as saints, as we’re gathered together as those who have made a covenant with God by sacrifice:

Let the heavens declare his righteousness, his righteousness, not ours. For God himself is judge.

Hear, O my people, and I will speak, O Israel, and I will testify against you. I am God, your God. I will not rebuke you for your sacrifices or your burnt offerings, which are continually before me. I will not take a bull from your house nor goats out of your hands, for every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills.

So he’s saying, “Look, when you come into worship, God comes as the judge and he says, ‘I’m going to testify against you.’ Every Lord’s day I think God testifies against us. Now, he’s for us, but he testifies against us. We look back on the week and we’ve committed sins, and he testifies against us. And then we look at his word. We look at work, for instance, and we recognize that we’ve sinned relative to our work this last week. There are points at which we were incompetent, points at which we were lazy, points at which we just didn’t care about God’s calling and assignment of the work that God’s given to us as an example.”

So God’s going to testify against us. And then when we hear the word preached, it is a two-edged sword. It brings conviction to the end that we would be healed and matured and sanctified, right? But that doesn’t happen if you don’t recognize either your deliberate rebellion against God in particular areas or your lack of conformity because of your immaturity. Either way, the word preached always brings a degree of testifying by God against us.

I know all the birds. And he says here, “Look, don’t think you’re coming here to give things to me. I don’t need whatever you’ve got.” God says, “The cattle on a thousand hills, they’re mine. You know, I got all the wine and all the bread I need. Don’t think you’re giving me stuff. I’m giving you stuff.” The point of this covenant renewal worship is God giving gifts to us ultimately. Yeah, we worship and praise him, but he’s here to give us gifts, not vice versa.

I know all the birds of the mountains and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I wouldn’t tell you. For the world is mine and all its fullness.

You know, all the other false gods of antiquity—the worshippers would come and bring them food and a lot of it, because those gods were hungry all the time. God says, “Hey, I don’t need your food. There’s food on my altar.” God does take that memorial portion that we just read. But this is not because of some need he has to be served by you. You know, he’s not some god that needs the service of people for his identity as to who he is or his reality. It’s completely wrong. And yet, I know that you know that’s stupid, right? But on the other hand, think about how sometimes that’s kind of how we think.

We’re here to praise God, to serve him. We’ve done great things and we’re giving it all to God, because he really, you know, needs those things from us. He doesn’t need it from us. He delights in our gifts. He delights in our being his children and image-bearers, but he doesn’t have need of these things.

What does he want you to bring?

Will I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? No.

The implied answer: Offer to God thanksgiving. Pay your vows to the most high. Give him thanks. Do what you’re supposed to do. That’s what he says you’re supposed to do. Give him thanks for his grace, for his mercy, right? And for whatever he’s done in your life through your work, give him thanks for those things.

Call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you and you shall glorify me.

So your prayers this last week, calling upon him in times of trouble or need, and he delivers us—and we’re supposed to glorify him then.

But to the wicked, God says, “What right have you to declare my statutes or take my covenant in your mouth, seeing you hate instruction and cast my words behind you?”

People do this. You know, in the Old Testament, they would come week after week, day after day to the temple, but their lives were not really in conformity with what they were supposed to be. And some of us can do that, too.

One of the big problems when it comes to work in America today is a kind of dualistic notion of it. So when we’re here, we’re Christians, and when we’re at work, we’re workers, and there’s two kind of separate worlds. Keller talks about this in his book. And so it’s easy, you know, to do things relative to our work that really are not—they don’t have integrity with the unity of our person. And then to come to God thinking that he’s going to accept us.

When you saw a thief, you consented with him.

Now, that’s vocation stuff. Now, nobody’s going to see a guy robbing a 7-Eleven and probably consent with him, but if you see business practices that unfairly take advantage of other people, right, that really are not—aren’t involved in looking to the interests of others, as I talked about last week—aren’t involved in mutual self-interest in commercial transactions and actually play fast and loose with facts or contracts or whatever it is.

And if you’re part of that kind of banking system or provider of a good or service, and you see this con—essentially theft from another word—and don’t do anything about it, this is what he’s saying. When you saw a thief, you consented with him by your silence. You see, you saw injustice through the workplace and didn’t really try to think through and do something about it. And you’ve been a partaker with adulterers, right?

So, you know, and again, adultery and idolatry are so linked together. We can become so idolatrous with our work, and the scriptures see that as akin to adulterers. And there are certain industries in America that essentially what they promote is adultery, literal adultery. So you know, you’ve done these things.

He says, “You’ve given your mouth to evil and your tongue frames deceit.”

So you’ve used your words and speech both in personal relationships. But now we’re thinking about vocation—to frame deceit and to effect theft. Okay? You’ve done this thing.

He says, “You sit and speak against your brother. You slander your own mother’s son.”

So now it’s very personal, right? We use our tongues over the week to say things about each other that really is at least verging on or going over the edge of slander. So he’s saying when you come to worship, and these common things that we do with our tongues—James says, “Who can tame it?”—and the common misapproaches to our work and vocation, he says, “You do these things, these things you have done.”

And here’s the problem: I mean, there’s repentance capable for those things. There’s forgiveness for those things. But here’s the problem:

These things you have done and I kept silent. You thought that I was altogether like you, but I will rebuke you and set them in order before your eyes.

Covenant worship is dangerous because God is judging and evaluating us. It’s how he matures us. How else is it going to happen, right? And we think that God’s like us—you know, “Ah, a little slander, a little theft, you know, a little framing of deceit. No big deal. God won’t care. He’s gracious, right? God loves me and he has a wonderful plan for my life.” Of course, he loves me. It’s his job. I’m a pretty nice fellow, actually, and particularly if I’m a Christian and I’m approaching my work in a Christian way. Yeah, of course he loves me. And of course, it’s he’s gracious toward me. And you know, I know I do this stuff week by week. I keep doing it. But you know, God, his job is to forgive. And that’s why I go to church—just to get forgiven.

And God says, “No, you think I’m like you. I don’t have that attitude.” God says, “That’s not who I am.” He says, “I will set them in order before your eyes.

Now consider this, you who forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver. Whoever offers praise glorifies me. And for him who orders his conduct aright, I will show the salvation of God.

So we’re here to experience delight in and grow in the salvation of God. But to do that, you see, we repent, and we let God’s word slay us, and we mature and we move ahead.

We know that covenant renewal worship is a grand and glorious thing, but it is a fearful thing, right? To come into the presence of the holy God that we’ve offended in small ways, great ways this last week.

Now, if we understand that though, and that forgiveness is here for those who truly repent and who, you know, at the beginning of our service don’t just, you know, engage in a liturgical action and just read the words “my fault, my own fault, my own most grievous fault”—it’s just a liturgical action and it’s just what you do every week—and who knows, and then when the silent time you think, “Well, I don’t know, maybe these other people are bad. I’m not so bad.” You know? Or if you don’t prepare for worship the day before, which you should do—thinking about, again, in terms of this sermon series, your work: incompetence, not doing what you said you would do, not following through on your word to fulfill things that you’ve said you’re going to do, framing of deceit, perhaps in some ways, laziness, partying too late so you don’t really put in a solid day’s work that God—not your employer, God—has called and assigned you to that task.

Remember last week? You see, you could fill in a hundred other things. I wish we would. I wish we would use our community groups for a while over the next few months to talk about these things—to talk about vocation, to talk about God’s conviction of what we’re doing wrong, how we fall short in our vocations, as well as the wonderful things that God is accomplishing—competency, beauty, well-being for other people, mutual interests, et cetera—through our vocations.

I think we need to do that, particularly in this country, because, as I said, this kind of dualistic thing—work is work and Christianity is Christianity—that’s kind of the thing we’re going to continue to fall into in this culture if we don’t work hard at it. So to use your community groups to talk about, for instance, sins to be repentant of at the beginning of the worship service, or the day before the worship service, or when they happen in your life that week before, this would be an excellent thing.

## Covenant Renewal Worship and Work

So this is covenant renewal worship, and it’s significant. It’s how beauty will shine forth into the world, and it is scary. But it’s also greatly reassuring that what God wants us to do is thank him from our hearts and increasingly order our conduct right by letting him slay us and heal us.

Now, one of the reasons I wanted to start with this is one of the comments I got from one of our men last week after the service. He said, “You know, it’s certainly true that we need to stress the significance of what we would normally think of as secular vocations, but it’s also true that you can go so far that way that the other ditch we start to fall into—and nobody wants to be a pastor, nobody wants to be an elder, right?—because we’re all doing this stuff over here. And that’s where the really the work of God is going. What’s the mission of God in the world? Our vocation.”

But you see, what I’m trying to say here is covenant renewal worship drives the shining forth of beauty in your lives. So covenant renewal worship is both the recipient of your work through the tribute offering, but it’s also the thing that drives and helps you to understand the word of God and have wisdom about your work so that you can shine forth. So worship is exceedingly significant.

That’s what Psalm 50, among other things, is saying, and what we want to understand. This is really important stuff that we’re doing right now, and it’s important in terms of our work and our vocation. And so the men who guide that worship service, bring it together, comprise its various parts—these are very important callings in the kingdom of God.

Now, you know, we want to avoid the medieval thing with “spiritual and temporal”—spiritual is the real work and temporal is just sort of busy work till you die or something. We want to avoid that like the plague. But in our day and age, the church is seen as so insignificant, and worship is just sort of a psychobabble attempt to sort of make you feel better about whatever you didn’t feel good about last week. And you sing some songs that make you happy, and you sort of—and I shouldn’t belittle that, because they’re important psychological realities that God fixes in us through the worship service.

But you see, the church and the worship of God have become such a light thing in our day and age, such an irrelevant, insignificant thing, that it is important to sound forth the reality that covenant renewal worship is exceedingly significant—not just in terms of our personal life, but so that beauty would shine forth as you stream into your work week this week. You see, this is significant for all of that.

It makes you regularly, every week, evaluate your life, your work life included amongst that. Confess sins as to how you either perform that task that you’re called and assigned to well or not well, and to what degrees, to evaluate that, to seek for God’s power and strength so that you can do that better, and then to get wisdom from the word of God in terms of how to mature in the workplace. So this is really significant, and growing up, you know, men to do this work is exceedingly significant as well.

So I wanted to begin with that as kind of a caveat—or let’s avoid the other ditch too that we talked about last week, the ditch of seeing temporal work as insignificant. But let’s not forget the significance of covenant renewal worship. And that’s where this particular text is. And this particular text is both a warning to us and a tremendous encouragement to us relative to our vocations.

Okay. In what way?

## The Tribute Offering and Its Meaning

Well, first of all, let’s say why—let’s say why, even though even the ESV calls this offering in Leviticus 2 a “grain offering.” If you have a Bible software program and you click on the word “grain,” or you go online and click on it and say, “What’s the Hebrew word here?” It has nothing to do with cereal. Well, it has something to do with it. It’s comprised of grain, right? Which is what cereal means.

So it is a grain offering in the sense that grain is involved in it, processed grain made into either fine flour, cakes, whatever it is, donuts, whatever it is it’s made into. But it is grain. And so, rather than translate this word the way it should be translated, for some reason translations continue to this day to call it the “grain offering.” But if you click on the actual word that’s translated “grain,” and then look at how it’s used, what you’ll find in the Old Testament in the Hebrew is that it’s the word that described a gift that you offered to a king.

So somebody conquers your land or somebody is your ruler, and you don’t know how he got there—to give him a tribute, a gift, something to give, show thanksgiving and submission to him being your Lord. This is what this word, minha, in the Hebrew actually is. And so in covenant renewal worship, you know, it’s best, I think, to call it the tribute offering. It’s tribute from a vassal to a Lord.

Now, when we say that, it fits right in with Psalm 50. The Lord is coming to judge us. But we want to distinguish it from secular lords and vassals. Obviously, when we give our tribute to our king, to Jesus, and to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we don’t do it in the same way that a vassal does to a lord. Typically, we do it with love. We’re supposed to do it because we want to do it. It’s our reasonable service of worship.

Romans 12:1, right? Romans 12:1 says, “Therefore,” and goes on to talk about our worship and our work based upon the realities of the gospel. “Therefore, do your reasonable service,” right? Bring to him tribute. Bring to him tribute. And so that’s what this is. We call it the tribute offering because that’s what it is. And that’s what the Bible clearly states it to be. And I’m very sorry for all the translations that call it a “grain offering.” That is of no help whatsoever. But understanding that the Hebrew word should be translated “tribute”—this is helpful. This really puts it in the context of an understanding of what’s actually being said here.

Now, this is seen—the basic flow of covenant renewal worship is described for us. So the tribute offering is one of four different offerings that are described in Leviticus 1-4. And those four offerings are sort of summarized in Leviticus 9:22, which is on our order of worship.

So the overall context of this tribute offering in Leviticus 2 that we’re talking about is the work of Jesus and its effect as demonstrated or pointed to by the worship of the Old Testament. So the worship of the Old Testament is describing all the blessings and benefits of the sacrificial system, all of which point to one sacrifice, the Lord Jesus Christ, for sinners in his resurrection and ascension.

So the tribute fits in that. And in Leviticus 9:22, we’re sort of shown the order of these offerings. We read, “Then Aaron lifted his hands toward the people, blessed them, and came down from offering the sin offering, the burnt offering, and peace offerings.” So it says that he does this blessing. So that’s kind of preeminent in that text. You’re here to be blessed at the end of the service and commissioned to go shine, including very significantly in your workplaces. And as you shine, to bring back some of your work product and bring it to God as tribute, your loving gift to the king who enabled you, who gave you the calling and assignment to do your particular work.

So that’s what this is. And so you’re here to be blessed. But this blessing only occurs after Aaron had done these other offerings. After he had offered the sin offering—that’s a purification offering. It’s an offering that purified the people. Their daily sins would accumulate and make them unclean, so to speak, or defiled. And to purify themselves, the sin offering was offered.

So that offering is given. And then it says the burnt offering. And if you’ve been here very long, you’ll know that’s the ascension offering. That word doesn’t mean “burn.” It’s called the “burn offering” again because in the description of it in Leviticus 1, it’s all burnt up except for the skin. But the actual word that’s translated “burnt offering” means “to ascend.” So the ascension offering. And then finally, the peace offering, and that is a good translation of the particular word.

So you’ve got this flow of covenant renewal worship described generally in Psalm 50 and then specifically in Leviticus 1-4, and then this is what the model is for how we worship here at Reformation Covenant. These are the elements of what Jesus has accomplished for us, and it’s the order of the elements that Jesus has prescribed for us.

Now, if you were listening carefully, you didn’t hear “tribute offering,” right? You heard “purification, ascension, and peace.” So where’s the tribute offering in the flow that leads up to blessing?

Well, Leviticus 9:17 says this: Then he brought the grain offering, tribute offering, took a handful of it, burned it on the altar besides the burnt sacrifice of the morning.

And in this verse and in other verses, what you find out is that the tribute offering is linked to the ascension offering. They go together. Okay? So the ascension and tribute offering go together.

So when we read that Aaron does the purification offering and then the ascension offering, we fill in this understanding from other passages that the ascension offering includes the tribute offering. Okay? It’s about transformation of state, but it includes this tribute that we give lovingly to our king as work product. Work product is the way to think of that. And then it leads to peace.

So that’s the place of the tribute offering. So here in our worship, it’s really pretty simple. I know it sounds complicated, but it isn’t. We come to church, and the first major—the first offering, the first work of Jesus that’s applied to us is in purifying us or cleansing us from our sins, the purification offering, that comes first.

So God calls us to renew covenant with us. We confess our sins. He gives us the assurance of that forgiveness. He applies the work of Christ. Our amen to God is our confession of our sin as worship begins. And then God brings us into his throne room, teaches us from his word, and in response to that word, our second amen.

The first is to confess our sins, and then praise, of course. But the second amen is to respond to God’s preached word by bringing him tribute. And so we bring the offering up, right? And we bring our tithes and offerings to the front. We’re bringing tribute in loving response to what the King of Kings has accomplished.

So Jesus died for our sins, but he also died so that we could be transformed, be the beauty of God shining forth out of Zion, coming out of this place to do work and bring the world back to him in transformed state. Our job is to go grab a hold of the world, make it better, and then bring some back. Like, you know, like my cat would bring back a rat, or like a child would bring a painting, or like I would make Christine come out and look at the lawn I mowed. “Isn’t that nice?” “Yes, it’s very nice, dear.” You know, we bring back what we do and show it to our father and he approves of it, right?

So that’s what happens. The first amen is confession. The gift is forgiveness and glory. The second amen—response to God’s preached word, hooked up with the ascension and tribute offering—is our response of bringing back work product that we’ve accomplished this past week because of the grace and love and enablement and empowerment, because of the calling and assignment, and as a result of that equipping that God has given us to do work in the world.

So we bring that back, and then the third phase of our worship—and by the way, the prayers are connected to that, because we just read that the tribute offering had frankincense connected to it. Frankincense in the sacrificial system is a picture of prayers, and this is quite clear if we took the time to do it. So the prayers of the people are the second amen, or response to the preached word. The first is the tribute offering, and the second are the collective prayers of the people that one of your pastors leads you in after the sermon.

So that’s the second phase, and the third phase is that peace offering stuff, and that’s rejoicing, community or life together, and that’s what it all is leading to, right? And so confessing our sins and doing our work well and having that work informed by the word of God and then bringing that to God results in rejoicing, life and community together. And that’s the cycle of what our lives are about.

And all that’s possible. It’s all a reflection of the single work, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of our savior. He forgives us our sins. He calls and assigns us work. Gratefully receiving the work product from that—a symbol of it, a product of it—and he brings us into rejoicing, facing life together at the Lord’s table.

So that’s kind of the overall flow of this tribute offering. Now, what I want to do now—so that’s kind of covenant renewal worship, the direct place of the tribute offering in it, and in our worship. And the one point I want to make, and I will stop here—I won’t move on to the rest of this today—but the one point I want to make has to do with the significance of these instructions for worship.

## The Warning: Work and Sin

So we know all those things are what Jesus says. We can just do them any order we want to do them, and what’s the big deal, right? But no. If we look at how the Bible instructs our worship, it says to move from forgiveness—right, purification offering—to tribute and then to peace. It wants us to do it in this order. The tribute offering follows the purification offering.

And one of the important elements of that is to remind us that, as great a thing as work is—it’s a great thing, right? Work, I love it. Let me just say one more thing about that before I get into the dangers of work.

One of the reasons I like Tim Keller’s book, Every Good Endeavor, is because I think it’s the first thing I’ve ever read in Christian circles that resonated with a concern I’ve had for years. You know, you always hear that cliché when somebody’s on their deathbed: they never say, “Gee, I wish I would have spent more time at the office.” And this is always used to produce some degree of guilt or response from men, typically—although now more and more women, I suppose—as to why they don’t, you know, they feel guilty. They haven’t spent more time with their kids or their wife or their friends, whatever it is.

And of course, it’s obviously true, right? I mean, it’s obviously true that our relationship to our wives and our children and friends shouldn’t be given short shrift. But it’s always bothered me a little bit.

Keller, in his book, well, let me just read you what he says. He says, “Here’s a more interesting perspective. At the end of your life, will you wish that you had plunged more of your time, passion, and skills into work environments and work products that help people to give and receive more love. Can you see a way to answer yes to that question from your current career trajectory?”

Well, that’s interesting, isn’t it? And I’m like, yes, I knew somebody would articulate this concern I’ve had for so many years. If you see work in terms of this vocation, this calling from God that you’ve been assigned to, and if you see the motivation as service and love for others, like we talked about last week, then why in the world is there supposed to be such an obvious answer that, “Oh yes, we all spent too much time at work during our lives. We all spent too much time loving our neighbor.” No.

So work is a wonderful thing because it is a significant way—not the only way, but it’s a significant way—that we love and serve other people. We fulfill, you know, the second great commandment, which really is fulfilling the first one, to love God, by loving our neighbor, right? And work should be about that. And if the mission of God in the world is our vocation, and I think a very significant aspect of it is, then clearly work is a really big deal and a really great deal.

So work is a really good thing. We’ve been saying that for four weeks, right? But work is also a very dangerous thing.

You know, idolatry takes good things and makes them ultimate things, right? So you can be idolatrous with food or, you know, whatever it is, whatever you’re idolatrous with—money, these are not bad things. God gave us these things that reflect the value of God somehow. But idolatry says that something that is good, I’m going to say that’s the one thing I really need for satisfaction, salvation, meaning, and purpose in life, right?

So to take a good thing and make it the ultimate thing. Well, many men—and maybe more and more women—do exactly that with their work, right? We know this. We know that lots of people have that their identity becomes more and more what they do.

Martin Lloyd-Jones, great preacher, before he was a preacher was a doctor. And he said afterwards that there were many doctors that he knew that on their tombstone it should say “Born a man, died a doctor.” And you know, from one perspective, you’re like, “Well, yeah, he was really committed to his vocation.” But no. You know, it’s interesting.

There’s a book by Vos that I think—Howard L. maybe taught a class on or something on vocation—and I’ve looked at other such books. And what they all—the thing that I never liked about them is they talked about vocation generally, and then work vocation as a subset of that. Not that that’s not true, but I always wanted to see more and more on work vocation, career. But the point of those books is sound. You’re not just a doctor. You’re not just a manager at your job. You’re not just a ditch digger. You’re not just a painter. You’re not just a, you know, a musician. You have a calling first and foremost as a disciple, a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. And in his discipleship of you, he has you engaged in a wide variety of tasks, one of which is vocation. Very significant one. Tremendously, tremendously used by God to love people, to advance the world, but it’s just one of them.

You’re a mother, some of you. You’re a father. You’re a brother. You’re a sister. So you’re a family member. You’re a community member. You’re a church member. You’ve got clubs or special interest groups you’re part of. You’re called to all of those things by God. The callings from God, the things that you’re called and assigned to, are not to be restricted just to your vocation.

When we see that happening in someone’s life, then we say that guy’s a workaholic. We say that he—we could as Christians, we would say—he’s becoming idolatrous about his vocation. And what I’m suggesting is we can see that in secular people. But if you come to grasp the value and beauty and majesty of work, and vocation as the mission of God in the world, then you’re going to be tempted as a Christian worker to make that idolatrous, won’t you? It is a very good thing, and idolatry takes very good things and makes them ultimate things.

So the point here is that before we get to work, we’re getting God’s judgment upon us through forgiveness and repentance. And one of the things we need to repent of is making our vocations the ultimate thing in our lives and with them starting to become idolatrous in our lives. So one of the things we should always be thinking about, or at least regularly think about, is: Am I becoming idolatrous with my work, with my vocation?

Another area to think about in terms of confession before we get to offering our work product and the tribute offering is not just work as our identity, which is related to idolatry, but work as our basis for our right standing with God. Works righteousness. And so, you know, what we can think is, “Well, yeah, we know we have to confess sin occasionally, but ultimately our right standing with God is because we’re doing so good.”

And again, we have a particular temptation to that at this church. You know, if you stress the love of God and you stress vocation and being good family members and all that stuff, and you get people that are doing pretty good, we can start to think that somehow our right relationship—and if you stress that faith without works is dead, as we did going through James, you can start to think or begin to perceive that your works, what you do in the workplace, for instance, becomes actually why it’s okay for you to come to worship and what you feel good and safe about in terms of your life.

And this results from too small a view of sin. We isolate sin, again, you know, down to small things, and too high a value placed upon the importance and significance of work in our relationship, or to justify our relationship with God. It’s a simple thing I’m trying to say, and I’m probably not doing a very good job.

But one of the big temptations for fallen humanity is to think that we can work our way back into right relationship with God. And as Christians who are doing a lot of good works and a lot of good things, we can be tempted, when we come to church, you know, to think that somehow our righteousness itself—our practical outworking of good things and justice in our vocation and careers—is the basis for being right with God.

And that’s when we get to that point. Well, how do you know if you’re doing that? Nobody would say they’re doing it.

Well, you can think about it, meditate. But here’s one way to test it. And I mentioned this earlier. When you look at other people in a church like this and they fall into sin—sin that you know about—and you start to look down your nose at them and avoid them, well, you probably have some pride and self-righteousness going on, and you’re probably not really doing the sort of confession at the beginning that’s going to make your work product acceptable in Christ, okay? You’re going to get those things backwards, right?

And that’s the third area of warning: pride. Pride in who we are. Even if we know that the grace of God is the basis for our relationship, we start to develop pride about our work.

Now, there’s a good pride about our work. Nehemiah said, “Remember me, God, for all the things I’ve done.” We can do that. But to become sinfully prideful, right? Pride, idolatry—these are the genesis sins of everything else.

Martin Luther, you know, all the other violations of the Ten Words come from the first one, having other gods and idolatry, which he sought together. Idolatry is what results in all the other sins. Don’t think your problem is out here. Your problem is idolatry.

And the seven deadly sins—the head sin, the main sin was pride. And pride led then to all the other deadly sins. And so when we come to worship and we begin with the purification, the sin offering, with confession of sin, we are being assured by God that only the righteousness of Jesus Christ can make you right with God, okay?

And it has to result in works in your life. But that’s never what the basis of your relationship with God is.

Now, if you fail to get that, you fail to see the love of God in providing Christ as that righteousness for you. We don’t ever want to come here and go through a routine confession of sin at the beginning and then get around to this neat tribute stuff and think about our work and all that stuff. No, we want to be very careful that we don’t mess everything up and have God tear us in pieces because we’re coming here self-righteously. We’re coming here with an identity that’s formed totally by our work, or we’re coming here in pride—pride before God.

If we do that, you see, God will tear us in pieces. He’s here to judge us. And a denial of the essential—I know we can define the gospel as broadly as it is, but it’s also narrow. A denial of the good news that Jesus Christ died for your sins and his righteousness, his holiness is your right standing before the Father. If we deny that, you know, through pride, self-righteousness, or through seeing our identity not as disciples of Jesus first and foremost but as workers—homo faber, man who makes things—if that’s our essential identity in our lives, then we’ve failed at covenant renewal worship.

Then when we come to this table and we drink the blessings of God, they can down to judgment to us.

## The Grace of Repentance

Now, the nice thing about sin is the wonderful thing about sin, the thing that I rejoice about sin is that it can be forgiven. Now, maybe you’ve done some of that. Maybe you haven’t focused on the person and work of Jesus. Maybe you haven’t said amen to the first gift of glory and life through the death, resurrection, and ascension of our savior. Maybe when you come and confess your sins, it’s been, you know, short-shifted. “Probably wasn’t very kind to my wife this morning,” whatever it is.

And if you haven’t thought through some of the ways you sinned in the assignment and calling of God this week, you know, then if we’ve sinned in that way, if we’ve sinned as a congregation—and I fear this, I got to tell you, I think I fear this more than anything else—that we become, because of the blessings of God to us, right, gestalt and waxed fat. He had all these blessings from God and he began to think it was his stuff, his blessings.

I probably worry more than anything else about our church that we become self-righteous, as evidenced by pride, as evidenced by a failure to embrace other people that are here with you in this community who may either have sinned in ways that you know about, or maybe you just think they’re kind of weird and are different than you. That kind of pride to see will just—it sets the whole thing wrong as we begin to move into covenant renewal worship.

When I get back from my trip—I’ll be gone for two weeks, two Sundays—going to San Diego for a conference on loss, the annual conference of the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation. Christine and I are going there. It should be great, particularly for a congregation like ours that has a lot of us aging, experiencing more and more loss. And then I’ll be heading to the Council meetings at Lake Tahoe for the Presbyterian Council meeting.

When I get back, we’ll pick up this tribute offering, and we’ll look now not at its relationship to the purification offering and the need to get that straight as we move toward the tribute offering. We’ll look at more of the specific details of this tribute offering itself, and we’ll relate it to Romans 12:1-2.

But understand this as we prepare for that: You saw as we read through it that it was processed, that the tribute we brought to God—and I’d mentioned this earlier—is processed stuff, right? You bake it in a pan. You make donuts. You make a cake, whatever you can do with it. And there’s different things that can be done with it. And then there’s this memorial portion. We’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes at the table.

But this is what it is. Our work, what we’re supposed to do in life, is to take the world and improve it. We don’t bring back grains of wheat as the tribute. Fine flour, flour baked into a cake, flour made into pancakes over a fire. We add value to the world and to the assignment and calling God has given us in the world through our work. That is essential to covenant renewal worship.

You know, the Bible says it’s the sluggard that doesn’t add value. The sluggard doesn’t roast what he catches in hunting. He eats the darn rabbit raw. Okay, much better cooked. Well, I don’t know. I guess there are people that like maybe rabbit sushi. I don’t know. But the point of the proverb is that the sluggard doesn’t add value to what God gives him. God gives a rabbit into his hand. He’s supposed to do something with the darn thing, right? God gives you a job. You’re supposed to add value to it. God gives you a house. You’re supposed to make it better. God gives you a plot of land. You’re supposed to add value.

And the tribute offering shows us that we have to bring back not raw grain but value. And it shows us that the relationship of that kind of work follows the application of the purification for our sins effected by Jesus.

## Conclusion: Cain and Abel

One last example. I don’t know this. I’m not sure about this, but nobody really knows. At least that I can tell, there’s no consensus on the difference of the offerings of Cain and Abel. Abel brings an animal, which would have been purification or ascension. Cain brings grain, which would have been tribute. And Cain’s offering was not regarded by God. He didn’t like it for some reason. And Cain went away from there with a bad attitude and kills his own brother.

Now, that’s what I’m saying: we can’t skip over the application of the blood, the death of the Lord Jesus Christ for us on the cross, forgiving us our sins, purifying and cleansing us from our sins. We have to have that at the beginning of our worship. And if we do that perfunctorily and then get to this place and say, “Yes, work. I work. I’m doing good at my work. My work is my identity,” and I bring forward my grain offering, my tribute offering, my processed representation of the work product, the value added that I did this last week—if you bring that, who are you like?

If you bring that apart from sin offering, apart from confession of your sins, you’re like Cain. Then you’re like Cain. And we know the end of that story. And we know the end of the descendants that came forth from Cain.

Jesus came as the one whose blood is compared to the blood of Abel, but speaking better things than that of Abel, right? Because he accomplished all these things that Leviticus 9:22 and Abel’s offering and even Cain’s offering in right place—all those things pointed to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ whose blood speaks better things than that of Abel.

That’s what we’re doing today: we’re practicing, learning how to properly order our lives with a first and primary emphasis upon the purification of our sins effected by the blood of Christ. And only then seeing our work with the significance and importance that God calls us to do.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we ask that you keep us from idolatry in our vocations. We ask that you keep us from dualism—doing our work like the world. Help us, Lord God, to think through: are we affecting our workplace, which is normally secular? Or is our workplace affecting us?

Help us, Lord God, not to engage in works righteousness, thinking that somehow because of the great stuff that we’ve grown and made into flour, we can bring it to you without the blood of Jesus as the foundation and element of our acceptance to you. Help us, Lord God, not to see our identity totally wrapped up in our vocations, but to see our identities instead as disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Help us this week, Lord God, to evaluate who we are so that when we come back next Lord’s Day and throughout this week, we might indeed look at the ways that we’ve failed to manifest Christian vocation and ways in which we’ve actually turned that great gift of yours into an idolatrous thing.

Bless us, Lord God, to this end. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.