The Purpose of Worship | Hebrews 12:18-29 & Revelation 5 | Worship by the Book

This message is the final installment of Worship by the Book, our four-week study on the Regulative Principle of Worship. After three weeks on who commands worship, what it includes, and how it's offered, this week turns to why. Hebrews 12:18-29 sets the terrifying mountain of Sinai beside the welcome of Mount Zion, where Jesus stands as mediator of a new covenant. Revelation 5 then pulls back the curtain on the heavenly assembly, worshiping the Lamb who was slain. Together these passages show that worship is not something God's people invent or start. It is something we step into, an ongoing, eternal song already underway. The message considers what it means that worship shapes us not only as individuals but together as the people of God, and how each Lord's Day rehearses what we will do forever.

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Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon from First Reformed Church in Edgerton, Minnesota. Each week we dig into God's Word, trusting that the Holy Spirit will continue the good work of sanctification in us.

If you've ever been to a concert, you know very well that the schedule does not revolve around you. If you're running late, the band doesn't hold off until you've arrived and you've made it to where you want to be at the show. You don't go to the movie theater and the feature starts when you've settled in with your comfortable seat and your popcorn and your beverage. When you're at a baseball game, you can't pause the game and run to the concession stand. With our excessively large televisions, on-demand media and sports, and comfortable furniture, we've become very accustomed to feeling like we're the center of the universe.

One of my favorite bands played Warped Tour this past summer and there was a live stream of the show that I was able to watch at my convenience. I didn't even have to watch it when they actually played. In fact, I also paused it in the middle when I needed to take the dog out. I watched a lot of Cleveland Guardians baseball over the summer and while I'm doing so, I can walk around the house, I can come and go, and if I hear some cheering that something happened, I can go back and rewind it, see what I missed. Favorite movies of mine are available on demand and I don't have to pay $20 for popcorn and pop, only to miss an important part of the movie when the consequence of a large Coke Zero comes to call.

Truthfully, a world of convenience centered around us is great, but the large screen and the premium sound of a theater can't really be replicated perfectly in our homes. And as much as I love my MLB subscription, the high-definition image isn't the same as being the part of the crowd at Jacobs Field in Cleveland. In the band whose livestream I watched a few weeks ago, I've seen multiple concert videos of this band over the years, but I would never tell you that I've seen them because I have never been able to see them live in person. My television and my couch can never replicate presence in a crowd where you're singing along with hundreds or thousands of other people and you feel like you are a part of something more than just a song being played through speakers.

As great as the convenience of our present time is, I think that it has slowly trained us to devalue presence. We think that we can get an experience without actually participating. More and more we become spectators of everything and it can even happen when we're present. I am guilty. A few months back I was at a concert in Lincoln and I realized I was holding up my phone and recording a portion of a song I like and I was watching on the phone. The band was less than 50 feet in front of me and I was letting a screen mediate the performance to me. And what I'm saying now isn't about presence or what I'm saying now is about presence. It's not me going off on the evils of technology or live streams or anything like that. All of those things are great. They allow us to experience things that we would not have been able to see or do in the past. What I'm talking about is valuing presence, participation, and community.

So as we arrive in this last week of our Worship by the Book series, we're considering the purpose of worship. And over the past three weeks we've established that God commands our worship. He's given us specific elements to gather around, and we've also seen that He calls us to worship in spirit and truth. And as we wrap up this week I want us to consider the significance of all of this. First and foremost, we worship God because He's majestic, He's holy. We worship God because He's worthy. But I've mentioned many times over the past three weeks, worship also does something in us. And I don't mean just personally. Worship not only shapes and forms the individual, it also molds and shapes us as the people of God together. Yes, we can offer worship to God individually at any time and in any place, but it's important that we remember that God calls us to gather, and it's more about--and it's about more than attendance or hearing a message from some guy standing at the front of a large room. As we gather as the people of God, we participate in something that has been going on. As we arrive in Hebrews 12 today, we see that it's speaking of worship that was already happening before we showed up. And what we see is that it starts at a mountain that the people didn't even want to get near.

So as we land here, it's important that we remember what's going on in the book of Hebrews. So early Jewish converts to the faith were struggling with persecution, and they were also used to worship and religious devotion that was being centered on sacrifices and ritual feasts, and it happened in a particular place in Jerusalem. Well, throughout the book of Hebrews, the author has been making a case that they should not leave the faith in Jesus Christ because all those things that they're missing or that they're being persecuted for not doing anymore, all of those things were not the ultimate things. They were pointing to Jesus. All those rituals, the sacrifices, the temple, those places were just a type and a shadow of something far greater, that they were pointing to a greater heavenly reality.

Now you likely remember what these verses in Hebrews are talking about, and if you don't remember off the top of your head, you'll remember once I tell you because what he's talking about here is from Exodus 19, where we're told that there was thunder and lightning at Mount Sinai. There was a thick cloud, and the whole mountain was consumed in smoke because the Lord God had descended upon it in fire. The ground shook, and there was a trumpet blast that increased in volume until it was deafening. And so Moses set boundaries around Mount Sinai, around the base of it, because if any person or beast would touch it, they would die.

The problem that the holiness of God in that place caused wasn't an issue of access to God. The presence of God was very near to those people. They could see His presence in the smoke that was covering the mountain. They could hear the trumpet, and they felt the ground shake beneath their feet. God was near to them, yet as we see here in verse 19, the people begged. They begged for it to stop. They didn't want to get closer. Not only could they not get closer, they flat-out didn't want to.

And look at verse 18, this first verse up here. It tells us that we haven't come to that mountain that can't be touched. As those who have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, there has been a dramatic shift in how we now approach God. We come, as it says here, to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, not a mountain with boundaries to keep us from being killed by the presence of God. We worship God in the Splendorous Holiness without fear because we have Jesus as our mediator.

So in the Old Covenant, the people approached God through the priests. Those priests took blood in on their behalf to the temple. And blood was required not because the whole system was ghoulish or morbid, but because the sin and rebellion against God that the people committed deserved death. And the blood they took in was to show that a substitution had taken place. A life had been taken on behalf of the ones who had offended the holiness of God. But now we come before God through a new covenant, a better covenant. In the old system, the mediators were priests, but those priests were sinners themselves. They were bringing the blood of an animal. But now the book of Hebrews has told us that our mediator, the one who goes into the presence of God for us, is one who is without sin and one who in our very own flesh perfectly obeyed the commands of God for us.

But this doesn't mean there isn't a severity and importance to how we approach God in worship or in how we view God. In fact, the author of Hebrews tells his readers that what was accomplished for them in Jesus is so important that it's essential that they hold fast to the truth of what Jesus, our mediator, has done. So this warning to not refuse the one who is speaking is important because of what Jesus has done for us. It is so substantial. The writer of Hebrews isn't telling us that because what Jesus has done is so amazing, the stakes are now lower. In fact, he's saying that our going before God is even more important because of Jesus we have greater access to God. We have the ultimate mediator, and so refusing Jesus is more serious.

So what do we do with this? Well, verse 28, we're told that we are to be grateful that we're receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. It doesn't tell us to be afraid and worried that we're going to mess up and and make it all go away. Instead, the author of Hebrews says to be grateful that we have this amazing access to God. Why gratitude? Why does author of Hebrews say this? Well, because we have received something. We didn't earn it. It's been given to us, bestowed upon us. When we understand the grace of God shown to us in Christ, it will naturally lead us to worship God with gratitude, and that produces in us awe. It produces reverence for the God who is holy and yet has given us access to Him because we have received as a gift the perfect righteousness of His most precious Son. We come to God through Him. We aren't treading carefully around the borders of a mountain that we can't touch. Instead, we as the people of God boldly go to the throne of grace because we have access to God through the blood of Jesus.

And as I started out, I was talking about presence. How easy it is to become a spectator even when we're in the right, we're right in the middle of something. We sometimes end up watching from a distance instead of being a part of what is happening around us. And as we've just seen in Hebrews 12, our access to God isn't from a distance. We're not worshiping from a distance. It says we've been brought to Mount Zion and to the heavenly Jerusalem. But what takes place there? Well, the beautiful words of Revelation 5 give us insight into this amazing truth.

You'll remember in Revelation, John is blessed here, was seeing into the assembly of heaven, the place that the book of Hebrews told us we've come to. And what is taking place there is worship, and it's centered on the Lamb, it's centered on Jesus. This worship is about Him and what He's done. He's our mediator, giving us access by His blood. We once again didn't earn it. We don't deserve it. It was accomplished by the Lamb who was slain. And what we see in this is that Jesus is more than just the way we enter into worship. He is the reason we are singing. He is the one that we worship.

And there's something here that I want us to be sure that we take note of. This isn't a worship service that starts when we arrive and ends when we depart. What John sees here is worship that is already in progress, worship that has been happening and will keep going on forever. And this actually has unbelievable significance for our thinking about what we gather to do here on the Lord's Day. We come not only being shaped and formed for our walk in this life, but we are rehearsing together for the worship that we will do for eternity. The songs we sing, the prayers we pray, the proclamation of what God has done in Christ, and are doing it together, are not disconnected from what is taking place in Revelation 5. It is preparing us for that day when without ceasing we will sing the anthem of heaven, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain."

When I was thinking about the different ways that we now can experience activities and events in a displaced way, the biggest thing for me as I was thinking about that is what makes them special. Actually being there makes them special is experiencing it with others. I don't want a private screening of my favorite movie at a movie theater. I want to go with friends, family. I want to enjoy the experience together and feel the excitement of others around me for having seen this movie in a theater with amazing picture and sound. I don't want the band I've never seen to come play for me while I sit on my couch. I want to travel to the show. I want to make my way to stand in a spot where I can see and I can feel the push and sway of the crowd as they play. I want to take in the crowd singing together as the band cuts out and it's just our voices. At a baseball game, I want to hear the crack of the bat, and I want to be a part of that first hopeful crowd pop, and I want to be a part of the hesitation as the outfielder tracks the ball to the fence, and then I want to be a part of that second crowd pop when we know the ball is gone, and I want to turn and I want to high-five a stranger who is excited as I am.

The primary purpose of worship is to glorify and magnify God, but it is also to shape and sanctify us, not just as individuals but as the gathered people of God experiencing Him together, and it's my hope that when we gather, our hearts will individually be prepared to worship God in spirit and truth, but we will also understand that we don't come here for a private screening. The crack of the bat is better with the crowd around you. Your favorite song strikes a deeper chord when there are hundreds of voices around you singing it with you. You can worship God privately, and that's an important part of personal piety, but hearing the voices around you as they confess, proclaim, and praise God is a profound part of our unity in Christ, and this is what our four-week consideration of worship has been leading to.

Worship was never ours to invent, and it was never meant to be ours alone either. God has told us how we are to approach Him. He's blessed us by telling us what we gather around, and He's shown us that true worship is in spirit and truth, and today we're reminded of what a blessing worship is. It's not a box that we can check off to start the week. We are giving praise to God for who He is and what He's done, but it also shows us that the gathering that we do each week, the prayer, the praise, the confession, the proclamation, is our stepping into the worship that has been ongoing. We are rehearsing for eternity, so let us come and worship, not out of obligation, but because we have gratitude for the salvation we've received in Christ, and we know that He has blessed us with a gracious way that we can be a part of the worship in heaven right now. We're a part of the ongoing eternal worship of our great God and King. Amen.

Let us pray. Great and merciful God, we thank you that you have shown us how to worship, but you also show us the purpose of it, that you shape us and you form us, but you also call us together to be one body. We pray, O God, that your worship that we participate in would sanctify us individually, but we pray that it would unite us together and it would help us all to grow in faith together. We pray that we would hear the voices of those around us and that the Spirit would use the Word being proclaimed by our sisters and brothers to build us up in faith, and that it would unite us, that the world might see our unity and our joy for worshiping you as a testimony to what Christ has done. It's in His name that we pray. Amen.

Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon. For more information about First Reformed Church, head to our Facebook page or website edgertonfrc.org.

Revisit the Series

This message is the final one in Worship by the Book, our study on the Regulative Principle of Worship. Visit the Worship by the Books series page to hear the full four weeks, or explore our sermon archive for other past series.