The God Who Commands Our Worship | Deuteronomy 12:29-32 & Leviticus 10:1-3 | Worship by the Book

If you were meeting a head of state, you wouldn't just show up whenever you felt like it, wander the room, and talk about whatever crossed your mind. There's a protocol, and skipping it wouldn't read as passion. It would read as a threat.

This week we began a new four-week series called Worship by the Book, looking at what's known as the Regulative Principle of Worship: the conviction that God alone has the right to determine how he's worshiped. Not because he's difficult to please, but because he's holy, and because he's told us plainly, out of love, rather than leaving us to guess.

We traced this theme from Deuteronomy 12, where Israel is warned not to borrow worship practices from the nations around them as they enter the Promised Land, to the sobering account of Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10, two priests who knew God's instructions and offered "unauthorized fire" anyway. It's a hard passage, but it points to something good: God has never left his people to guess how to come near him. He has always told them plainly, and in Christ, he has secured the way in.

Watch the full message above, and join us as we continue this series over the next three Sundays.

📖 Click to Show the Transcript of this Sermon

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 are going to go and meet a king or a president or some other head of state, there's a certain protocol that needs to be followed. We can't just walk in, decide when we want to go, and chat with someone in a position like that. We don't just show up on our own terms or whenever we feel like it. Now while I don't think any of us have ever been in a situation like that, I think we all know that there would have to be a specific way that all of that goes down. We would have to gain access in a specific way. We would have to be sure to keep the topic of conversation on track and not just spout off about whatever we feel like. We wouldn't be allowed to walk around the room and touch anything we feel like handling. You'd also have to be on time and make sure that you don't try to enter until you're announced. We know that there would be these expectations. Skipping these instructions and rules would be unacceptable, even if it was out of excitement or because you thought you had a better way for the meeting to all go down. Your inability to follow protocol would be in no way read as respect. In fact, it would likely cause you to be seen as a threat and that's the last way you want to be seen when you're in the presence of someone with extensive security. Now we understand why a monarch or a head of state would have these requirements. They're busy, they require security, and in their position they just can't be approached like someone on the street.

Well this morning we're starting four weeks considering the topic of worship. In the fall of the past several years we've taken a break from working through books of the Bible to dig into some doctrinal topics and in the past we've considered the authority and sufficiency of Scripture, the doctrines of grace. Last year we dug into the topic of covenant. Well this year we're gonna look at what's known as the regulative principle of worship. That sounds really fancy but what that means is that we desire to worship God in the way that he tells us to worship him. We want to worship God by the book, not because it's about the rules or because we're blessed because we follow them in a particular way. It's because we want to worship the God who has rescued us by His grace in the way that he commands us to do so. And what we need to understand is that what we do on Sunday mornings when we come for public worship is not something that generally speaking has been arrived at because of arbitrary preferences. Our desire is to come and to worship God as he desires to be worshiped. And today we're looking at the first place in Scripture where God makes that explicit. The moment his people are about to enter the promised land. They're surrounded by nations who worship whoever and however seems right to them. And God tells them plainly that he will not be approached in that way.

Now as I just mentioned the context of the the book of Deuteronomy is telling the people of God the law again before they cross the Jordan River and they go into the promised land. The word Deuteronomy literally means second law. And it's not that God is giving them a second law in the sense that there's a new law, it is a telling again of the law in order to prepare the people to go into the promised land. And the verses we read this morning are a warning against idolatry. And this warning starts off in verse 29 of chapter 12 with a reminder of who is going to enable them to go into the land. They're not making their way into the land because they got together and they came up with a scheme for getting out of slavery in Egypt and they said you know we'll get out of slavery and we're gonna move the whole lot of us to a different geographical location because that sounds like fun. No, God has gone in, he has rescued his people from slavery in Egypt, he has brought them out and now after wandering in the wilderness for 40 years they are going into the promised land. They're not gonna do this by their own strength or by their own power. It is the Lord God who will cut off the nations before them. The covenant God of Israel, the one who has revealed himself to them by name, he is going to make this possession of the land possible. This right here is an amazing reminder of the grace of God. If they were to go into the land and try to overtake it by their own power they would fail. No mistake about it, but here God says I am going to go before you and I will give you victory and as they go into that land by his power he wants to be very clear about something. As they go in and destroy them they should not inquire of how they served their gods that they might do the same.

Now it's fundamental that we understand what is going on as they go into the land and in order to do this we've got to go back quite a ways. We have to go back to what happened in the garden. Adam and Eve were created to worship God. They were made to commune with him, but the serpent came and tempted them. They fell into sin and they were banished from the garden. And as the story of Scripture continued from that point we see this continual struggle between the godly line, the one who will bring about, the one who will save humanity, the one who will crush the head of the serpent. There's a struggle between that godly line and the servants of the serpent. And as the book of Exodus opened up things look dire for the godly line don't they? You know the story. They're in slavery but it's worse than that. Pharaoh, the agent of the serpent, is having all the male children killed. The promise of God can't survive without the male offspring, but God keeps his promises and so he brings the people out of slavery and now they sit here on the edge of the promised land and it's more than just a different geographical place. We need to understand that as they are sitting here on the edge of the promised land they are going to a new Eden. That's the idea here. A new chance to get it right. And when the serpent comes and tempts them will they stand firm? Will they expel the serpent or will they fall into idolatry and be expelled from the land like Adam and Eve? Will they be sent from the garden or will they remain there?

So God being the creator and Redeemer of his people he is the one who is going to define these terms. He is going to define how they follow him and worship him. The people are not to invent or innovate. They are not to mix in the practices of how their pagan neighbors worship. In fact God tells them not to even inquire about how they worship false gods. You see the problem with pagan worship was not just that they were directing words at a false deity or a different God. That they were saying that we love you whatever regional deity. The problem was that the nature of their worship was often sensual and we see here that it often involved child sacrifice. God is not simply telling them he doesn't want them to worship the false gods because then they would be getting the attention that he wants. Worship is directed toward God but we have to remember that worship is more than that. It also does something in us. Worshipping the one true God forms us. It shapes us as we are called to be like him and live lives of holiness. Worship directs us towards God and who he is and it shapes us. Therefore worship of false gods must also do something in us and to us as well. It turns us away from God. It traps us in the mire of sin and unbelief. God loves his people. He does not want them doing the abominable things that he hates.

So as they sit here on the precipice of the promised land, he tells them to be careful that they do what he commands. He says that they should not add to it or take from it and we can understand why this is important. This past week it was fun. Like I loved being able to go to that first volleyball game in the new gym at the public school. That was fantastic. It's like that gym was made for volleyball. It was wonderful. I don't think one ball hit the ceiling. That is rare in this town. That facility was built to specifications that were put there by the architect. They put together plans for the facility so that it could do what it was designed to do. Now imagine if someone on the crew building this gym decided that they thought a room should be in a different place or that a load-bearing wall or girder was unnecessary because they didn't like it or because they had a different purpose or a better purpose than the architect. A change like that can do more than just change the design. It can change the integrity of the entire structure.

Well, God designed worship to do something in his people. It's more than an expression of their emotions for him. It forms us. It shapes our loves and points us to him and his saving work. This is why we're deliberate in telling or that why God is deliberate in telling the people that they were not to add to or take from what he has told them to do as they enter the land. What he's told them to do is purposeful. It showed them who he was. It gave them an assurance that they were in covenant with him. God wasn't requiring this of them because he was being oppressive or limiting their freedom and their free expression. He was giving these clear commands to them in love. He's given them a gift of all the people he had only revealed himself and the proper worship of him to them alone. Not only was that a gift in itself but it was how he continually gave them the gift of his grace. What he's saying here isn't about limitation. It's about the abundant overflowing grace that he is bestowing upon his people. He has saved them from slavery in Egypt. He forgives and he atones for their sins and now he is protecting them from idolatry and slavery to sin. He's not squashing their creativity or their freedom. He is the reason they're free and he is telling them how they can maintain freedom and stay away from the captivity of sin in the world.

Worship is serious because it's the difference between freedom and slavery, life and death. Now we tend to be really casual about the idea of worship but in Scripture it's serious business. Think about it. The first murder was over worship when Abel's sacrifice was pleasing to God and Cain's was not. Also think about the golden calf where they built an image in an attempt to worship God with methods they borrowed from pagan worship. As a result of this 3,000 people died. Stories like this make us realize the gravity of what we've read in Deuteronomy because it isn't just a hypothetical scenario. This isn't something that the people might do or we might do. Worship God incorrectly. They have already done what God is warning them about in this passage and so another situation that shows the gravity of this takes place in the passage we read from Leviticus this morning.

As we move to these verses it's important that I set the context because just what we read this morning is regardless of the context it's harsh but without the context it's sort of difficult to understand. So prior to this chapter in Leviticus everything regarding the practice of the temple worship and sacrifices has been spelled out. The priests have been instructed, they've been commissioned and they've been installed in their offices. They know how they're to do their jobs. Every detail is known to them and it all points to the holiness of God and the need of the people to have forgiveness of their sin. Even the priests can't be flippant about going into the presence of God. They only go on certain occasions and they go with blood and as we've seen in the past they go in veiled with the smoke that comes from incense. So at the end of the initiation of this system in chapter 9 they bring fire before God and then he sends out fire and it consumes a sacrifice.

Well then we come to verse 1 of chapter 10 and we see that those who we would think would know better to try and do things on their own try and do something on their own. We would expect that the sons of Aaron, the head of the priests, to stick to the instructions but instead they take their censors, they put fire in them and they bring fire they were not supposed to bring. In verse 2 we learn that like when the fire came out from before the Lord, fire comes out. Remember this parallels what happened before, that's important. In that previous chapter the fire consumes a sacrifice but in this instance the fire causes Nadab and Abihu to perish. It's really an awful thing to think about. We're not given a reason for why the sons of Aaron did this. We don't know if they thought what happened previously was kind of cool and so they wanted to perform it again and see the fire come out they wanted to do it on their own. Later in this passage a few verses down God tells Aaron to make sure that they don't have strong drink, the priests don't have strong drink before they go into the tabernacle. Who knows maybe Nadab and Abihu had a little too much to drink, lost inhibition and it led to their being consumed by this fire. But at the end of the day the reason they did this is irrelevant. The issue is they did not take seriously the absolute holiness of God and they didn't realize that the rules for going into His presence were for their protection.

In reading this it's really easy to think that this was harsh and that somehow God was capricious in His actions here and don't get me wrong that the deaths of these men is sad. This chapter of Scripture always always moves me because it's so sad. Reading it this morning, reading that Aaron kept his peace after his sons died, I was worried about starting the sermon. This is a moving passage of Scripture. But the deaths of these men, as sad as they are, it's not because God was flighty in His judgment of them. The previous two chapters had spelled out how they were to worship Him. He was very clear how to remain safe in the presence of His holiness. They knew. The priests had to know how they could safely relate to this absolutely holy God but for some reason they disregarded it. Nobody, nobody could have gone into the presence of God and lived because He is absolutely holy. But yet God in His mercy had set apart a people for Himself. He had given His people access to His mercy and grace through the system He had put in place. The laws surrounding the rituals in the temple sound so rigid to us. They sound unnecessary but they're actually an amazingly gracious thing. Yahweh had not revealed His name to any other people. All the other nations were lost in idolatry and they were worshiping nothing. They were praying to rock and stone and metal. They were screaming into the void. But the Creator of heaven and earth chose a people for Himself and He revealed Himself to them and He told them, "I am holy and here's how you come into My presence and you come to know Me and how you are made right before Me. How I will make you holy so that you can come into My presence." All this was known. It was clear. It was a gracious thing but Nadab and Abihu trifled with the holiness of God and they perished.

I'm sure as you read this story at some point your mind has gone to a logical place. Sure we are reading this but this is in the Old Testament. How does this apply to us in the New Covenant? Now of course we don't have the rituals and if we mess up the Lord's Supper somehow this morning you won't get a fireworks show of me being consumed. Maybe some of you want that. I don't know. The point here as we read this is that God has blessed us with the means by which He meets us and He comes to us and it's important that we understand the gravity of worship. Not that we're gonna be smited but because God is amazing, He is holy, He has shown us this grace and we have the promise of salvation in Christ. It also reminds us that worship is important because we're formed by it. We are shaped when we gather here. It's not just a time where we come and reflect. When we come to worship it's a means by which God works in us to make us holy. He calls us. He sets us apart to hear His Word, to bring Him praise, to receive His good gifts in the sacraments. God ordains worship and we need to be deliberate to understand what a blessing and what a gift it is that we are able to come here and come into His presence. He is so gracious to us as His people. God has revealed Himself to us in the person and work of Jesus and He has set us apart as His people and now He calls us to come and to worship Him.

I want to look at a New Testament verse from Hebrews 12 verses 28 and 29 and as you read this, remember this was written to Hebrew Christians. So recall the story we read about Nadab and Abihu as we read this. "Therefore let us be grateful 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." Now because of the fact that we've been saved by the grace of God through the work of Christ, we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken and so this moves us to worship Him with reverence and awe for our God is a consuming fire. The grace shown to us leads us to worship and this is more than just an expression of gratitude, it's an acknowledgement of God's holiness and the fact that He graciously invites us into His presence.

If I started out, I talked about having an audience with a head of state and how particular things would be required of us in order to go in for that meeting. In an instance like that, you would probably have to dress a certain way or stand in a certain place. When we talk about worshiping God with reverence and awe, we aren't talking about how we dress, the exact words we say. What we're talking about is a heart directed toward God and a realization that it is a privilege, it is a blessing that God calls us to worship, to gather as His people and through this He not only reminds us of the gospel, assures us of salvation, but He is shaping us and forming us to the image of Christ. So we are taking a look at worship for four Sundays, not to make sure that we follow particular rules, but to understand how amazing it is that God calls us and gathers us each week so that we can have an audience with Him. It's a means by which He delivers the glories of His grace to us. This is why the Word of God is central to our worship because we believe that our God who is holy comes to us and He speaks to us. In the call to worship, He calls and gathers us. In the singing of praises, we hear of His glory and majesty not just from my mouth, but from the voices that are singing around you. It's an announcement of this holy God we serve. In the call to confession, we acknowledge His holiness. We acknowledge our inability, but then God quickly speaks a word of assurance to us that because we are in Christ, we are forgiven and we're in right relationship with Him. In the reading of the Word, the God of the universe speaks to us and we hear the story of what He has done for us as His people. In the sermon, we hear of the grace and mercy of God and we are called to believe the gospel, to walk in newness of life. God is speaking to us as His people. And then at the end in the benediction, the Word again speaks a blessing to us as we depart from here because we're going out to live as aliens and strangers in the world, but the Word of God speaks to us in the benediction and reminds us that God is the one who sends us out to be His servants in the world.

The big point here is that God speaks to His people in worship and we want to be certain that we hear Him and that we let it shape us. That's the reason we want the Word of God to regulate our worship because it's how we know God is speaking. It's His Word. His Word is how we're reminded of the grace of Almighty God. Why would we seek out anything else?

Let us pray. Almighty and everlasting God, we thank You that You've made us Your people, that in Your Word You show us Your grace and Your mercy, that You remind us of our inability, but soon thereafter we are shown that You are the one who brings us to Yourself. We were unholy, unworthy, but the grace of God in Christ covers us with His perfect righteousness. That is a covering, that is a protection that even the priests of the Old Testament couldn't even fathom. They went in with smoke and with blood. We come into Your presence clothed with the righteousness of Christ. When You see us, You see His perfect obedience. We thank You for that gift. May we as Your people walk in newness of life and daily, daily rest on Your grace. It's the name of Jesus 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.

Continue the Series

This message is the first of four in Worship by the Book, our fall study on the Regulative Principle of Worship. Visit the series page to catch up on future messages as they're posted, or explore our full sermon archive to hear past series, including Walking in the Light, our study through 1 John.