Or, What God Wants with the Assembly
Scripture: Selected Scriptures
Date: January 29, 2012
Speaker: Sean Higgins
The Patterns of Worship (Part 2)
Understood correctly, worship is an end not a means to an end. When we offer acceptable worship to God, we’re not waiting for something else to happen. The thing we want is happening while we worship.
So what is the “thing” we want that we get as we worship? There are a number of things that we want that are good:
All of these things are good and right. Each one is included in what we really want. But by themselves, even added together, without the glue and ultimate goal, these are not the end of worship.
Again, what is the “thing” that we want? What is the thing that we get during worship, not after worship? Whatever it is, it ought to be the same thing God wants, right? Our expectations should match God’s expectations. The end that we have in mind shouldn’t be different than His or either we’ll fall short or we’ll end up in a different place. What is the “thing” that God wants when we worship? What does God want from the assembly?
Certainly He wants recognition. He wants to be known and honored. All men are required to acknowledge Him. This is the fundamental suppression of the truth by godless men who, though they know God, do not honor Him or give Him thanks. Certainly He wants righteousness. He wants to be obeyed and served. All men are responsible to obey His law. According to Romans 2, even those without God inspired revelation have God-given conscience that either accuses or excuses according to His standard. But neither our recognition of Him or righteousness before Him is the end of worship. What, then, does He want with us?
In order to answer that question, we must go back to who God is, His nature, His eternal existence before Genesis 1:1 as triune Life. Did the Son recognize the truth about the Father? He knew with omniscience, with all wisdom. Did the Spirit serve in righteousness? He served perfectly and will total holiness.
If God wanted righteous recognition alone, He should have kept to Himself. Even if finite beings had never sinned, they still could never put their minds around infinite attributes. We do not add any understanding to His. And even as redeemed people, we do not make His righteousness more clear. What are we good for? What does He want with us? What do we get when we worship?
RELATIONSHIP . All our systematic theology doesn’t add anything to His truth. All our combined good works and praise songs, over generations and across the globe, add nothing to His holiness. But, we do add to the pool, so to speak, of eternal life. We do increase the fellowship of the Trinity.
God wants relationship with the assembly. The thing we want is to enjoy being together with Him, to meet with Him, to share in His goodness and love.
Adam lost fellowship when he sinned, both with his wife and with God. Sin separates. Yes, sin makes stupid. Sin keeps men from recognizing truth. And yes, sin soils. Sin keeps men from righteousness. But the first and worst work of sin is to remove us from God’s fellowship. Likewise, the first and best thing the gospel does is restore us to God’s fellowship.
Corporate worship is meant for fellowship. Fellowship is built on God’s revealed facts, the Word. We do learn about Him. Fellowship is built on God’s redemptive forgiveness, Christ’s sacrifice. We do offer humble praise to Him. But the goal of revelation and redemption, the goal of worship, is loving relationship.
If fellowship is the goal of worship, how do we communicate and enjoy that in our service? Is there a pattern for us to approach Him?
Last week we observed the three main categories of offerings in Israel’s sacrificial system. Aaron and his sons performed these sacrifices in a particular order in Leviticus 9. The progression of the offerings makes the same point we’ve considered so far this morning. The goal of worship was fellowship with God, and that’s what their liturgy expressed.
We didn’t read all of the instructions for each offering, though the initial explanations for the various offerings is found in Leviticus 1-7. For that matter, Israel’s own understanding (or disregard) increased throughout their history. Nevertheless, the sin offering, burnt offering, and peace offerings outlined how God’s people draw near to Him.
Worship followed this sequence because worship was more than simply people ascribing “worth-ship” to Him. Worship was about His people meeting with Him. Israel’s liturgy focused on drawing near to God.
As great as the sacrificial system was, however, it was only a shadow. The animals couldn’t completely substitute for a sinful man, so they were offered over and over again. The priests who offered the sacrifices weren’t perfect, so they had to sacrifice for themselves first. And even when all of God’s instructions were followed exactly, the people still couldn’t get into the holy of holies, the place of God’s presence.
These preparations having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the first section, performing their ritual duties, but into the second only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people. By this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing… (Hebrews 9:6–8)
The priests represented the people, but the people could not draw near. They weren’t welcome “inside” with God.
Before we move on to the realities, by way of summary, the OT sacrificial system represented not less than, but much more than forgiveness of sin. The sacrificial system represented God’s covenant in which He made provision to forgive them and fellowship with Him as they served Him. The liturgy of their offerings demonstrated that aim.
So does our liturgy. We have a time of confession to lay hold of Christ’s completed sacrifice. We move on, forgiven in Christ, to consecration where He transforms us for His service. Then we commune with Him in a meal of peace before going back out. In Christ, who fulfilled the sacrifices, we are forgiven, sanctified, and drawn near to God. Because of Christ, we draw near ourselves, not through a man-mediator. We know the way in.
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, (Hebrews 10:19–20)
The “holy places” were previously out of bounds. They are no longer off limits in Christ. So “let us draw near” (v.22). The worship of the assembly is a meeting with God, and the goal of worship is also the goal of the gospel.
It shouldn’t surprise us that the Gospel follows the same pattern. The New Covenant realities fill in the Old Covenant outline. Perhaps part of the reason whey we have a hard time seeing the point of the OT offerings is that our Gospel understanding is slim. When we reverse engineer the Gospel, we should see the OT sacrifices, the liturgy pattern, the aim of men meeting with God.
We rightly understand the gospel as Paul summarized it.
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, (1 Corinthians 15:1–4)
But these verses summarize Christ’s sacrifice on the cross that secures the new covenant. They don’t describe what do we do with the gospel or what it does to/for us?
Jews and Gentiles, obviously immoral and hypocritically moral, disobedient and dead men everywhere are called to repentance and faith in the gospel. The gospel calls them, not only to forgiveness, but to life, to worship. The gospel upsets people, not as much because it offers forgiveness, but mostly because it calls for submission to Christ as Lord. The gospel summons all men everywhere to come to God.
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. (2 Corinthians 5:20)
The call of the gospel is, “Come and worship.”
Who will not fear, O Lord,
and glorify your name?
For you alone are holy.
All nations will come
and worship you,
for your righteous acts have been revealed.
Revelation 15:4
We begin our service with the same call: Come, now is the time to worship. Come let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our God, our Maker.
This is the first, though not the only, part of the good news. The wages of sin is death, Jesus died as a substitute so that all who believe would be saved. In order to participate in His sacrifice, we must confess our sin, turn from it, and receive His forgiveness. He promises all those who confess and believe that they will be saved, they will be justified, counted righteous in God’s sight.
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
Believers also confess their sins. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)
Justification is the beginning of salvation, not the end. He forgives our sin and then, through His indwelling Spirit, begins to form us into the image of Christ. The gospel delivers us from the penalty and the power of sin. That’s part of the reason Paul was eager to preach the gospel among the Roman believers (Romans 1:15), a letter with the theme of the gospel of righteousness. Christ’s sacrifice fulfilled the burnt offering, too, and in him we “present [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is [our] spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1).
We’re not sin offerings, we’re burnt offerings. Rather than being consumed as dead, we’re consumed as living. We died with Christ and we live with Christ (Romans 6:1-11). With sacrificial vocabulary, Paul exhorted the Romans:
Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. (Romans 6:13)
God doesn’t demand worship, forgive those who repent, begin changing them, and then keep them at arm’s length (which for Him could be a solar system’s width). When He saves a man, He shares His eternal life with that man, He dwells in and with that man, He identifies with that man with intimacy like that of a husband and wife.
If I come home and blow up at Mo, then come back before dinner and ask for her forgiveness, what am I wanting at that point? I should want more than her legal declaration that she won’t bring up my offense again later. I should want more than being told I’m forgiven while she keeps her back turned from me. I (should) want an embrace! I want to sit down for dinner and enjoy being together. I want the relationship restored.
That’s why we have communion every week. We share a meal with God every week. He does not reluctantly forgive us because He said He would, hear our songs from across the universe, and leave it. He meets with us in a glad meal. (see 1 Corinthians 10:16-18)
We’re the wrong side of humble when we’re afraid of glory. We all, “beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18; see also 1 Peter 1:7; 5:10).
If God alone is all glorious, then no one else is glorious at all. No exaltation may be admitted for any other creature, since this would endanger the exclusive prerogative of God. But this is to imagine a paltry court. What king surrounds himself with warped, dwarfish, worthless creatures? The more glorious the king, the more glorious the titles and honors he bestows. The plumes, cockades, coronets, diadems, mantles, and rosettes that deck his retinue testify to one thing alone, his own majesty and munificence. He is a very great king to have figures of such immense dignity in his train, or even better, to have raised them to such dignity. These great lords and ladies, mantled and crowned with the highest possible honor and rank are, precisely, his vassals. This glittering array is his court! All glory to him, and in him, glory and honor to these others. (Thomas Howard, Evangelical Is Not Enough, 87)
In other words, we go out to call more worshippers (of all nations, Matthew 28:18-20; Psalm 86:9). He is our God. He covenants to forgive us and take care of us and eventually bring us to Himself. In the meantime, He blesses us for our image-bearing work. He blesses our relationships and our responsibilities so that we honor His lordship everywhere.
The process will continue for as long as His wisdom determines, over generations and among all peoples. As His redeemed, reconciled people say so, God topples death and rebellion and unbelief.
Why do we do what we do each Lord’s day when we assemble for worship? Why do we do we follow this particular order of service? Why does it matter?
Our liturgy communicates the eternal aim of the Trinity. He calls us to worship, forgives us, changes us, communes with us, and blesses us for serving Him in dispersion-mode. Our liturgy embodies the potent progression of the gospel which itself is the fulfillment of God’s aim to draw men near. The form functions to communicate the goal. The evangel pattern shapes our expectation of what happens here.
When we assemble, we don’t do less than offer humble thanks and praise. We don’t do less than learn about Him and identify ourselves with His name. But we do all of those things because we’re “in.” Christ brings us into the holy place of God’s presence.
We do this, we follow this progression because it communicates that God wants fellowship with the assembly, and it communicates it with our practice not only by our proclamation. Our kids learn every week that God wants fellowship with His people, not only because we tell them, but because they WATCH us. They watch us enjoy gospel realities, not merely hear us explain them. They will watch and, by God’s grace, will want what we have.
This ends up being an evangelistic service after all. The Gospel fingerprints are all over it.
In our liturgy, we celebrate the gospel as:
Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12:28–29)