Crown Him the Son of God, before
the worlds begin. And ye who tread where He hath
trod, crown Him the Son of Man, who every grief hath known, that
wrings the human breast, and takes and bears them for His
own, that all in Him may rest." Wow! It's even more powerful
when you don't sing it. We'll sing that song soon. And
the scripture that comes from such hymns. It's immeasurably
impossible to pinpoint, because the fullness of the apostles
teaching overwhelmed me. As I pray, they do you as you
hear such words, as you see that Christ, though he was God, counted
himself nothing and became a slave obedient to death on a cross
that we might become the righteousness of God. that he was born out
of a womb from which he created, stepping out of glory into the
sinfulness of man and made himself subject to humanity and to creation,
the creator. All of these things that we sing
as we worship are to remind us in the spirit of our minds about
who it is that we worship and why it is that we worship him.
That's why at Grace Truth, we are very careful and peculiar
and particular with the songs that we use in our corporate
worship, because often people like to involve themselves in
a feeling rather than in truth. And if the truth doesn't bring
you to the feeling, then our worship is no worship at all,
but rather emotionalism and sensationalism. And so today will be my last
week in the covenant series, if you will, and we'll move right
back into Ephesians next week or the week before or the week
after and the week before will be today. So not not today. We
are going to be in Ephesians for just a moment. And then we'll continue to move
through that letter as God continues to lead us. My prayer for you
today is that you would see, as we talked last week about
the unity of the body in relation to its maturity for its mutual
benefit, and today we look at the reality that God has created
the church to be a people for his own glory unto the praise
of his glorious grace. We often overlook that. And I
went to reminisce about how I preach that as it was used several times
in Ephesians chapter one. And honestly, there is not enough
time in history to give enough time to the worship of God and
to the reasoning behind why we should worship him. And so as
we look at this. Covenant worship sermon, we need
to ask ourselves, Have I had a wrong view of worship? All
of us will probably say at some time or another, yes. And some
of us today will look and say, well, I've never considered that. Or maybe this area I have sort
of confused. Let me go ahead and help you
understand that even after today, there won't be a full expression
and defining of worship because I believe it cannot be fully
defined without exegeting all of Scripture. For I believe it
is the purpose of all of Scripture to the praise of his glorious
grace. And so as we look at it, ask yourself today, if you were
to define worship, how would you do it? Worship. Well, it's easy to tear down
words and to do a lesson on history and entomology of the term. But
in reality, easy way to understand worship is that it used to be
worship, ascribing worth to God. To proclaim his worth, to praise
his worth. His value. which includes his
attributes, his power, his being, his character, his nature, his
person, all of the things that God is and does and has and accomplishes
and says and thinks and loves and hates are reasons to worship
him. But I will tell you that most
of us have failed in many ways, but all of us have probably failed
in one way. And we failed in one way our
understanding of worship by contemplating worship from a personal perspective. We have failed very badly in
that. And that nowhere in Scripture
do we find prescribed by any means a personal worship apart
from a corporate worship. Yes, we personally ought to worship
God with everything we are. with all that we do with our
hands and thoughts and eyes and ears and where we are in the
hearts and in our minds. But when it comes to the expression
of worship, it's always corporate. For the New Testament church,
we are one small part of a collective whole. And when that whole worships,
the worship is true. When that whole is divided and
one person decides, well, we're not going to covenant with anyone
because we don't need a church. We are lying and we are making
God to be a liar because Christ came to create a church. To the
praise of his grace, and so if that's the reason that the church
exists and we have this mindset that we are OK, worshiping and
growing and studying and living and loving and learning all on
our own, then we have missed the Scripture. We have misunderstood
and misapplied the totality of the New Testament in that it
is not written to any person. It is written to the body of
Christ. The New Testament, not only is
it not written to any one person, it is written to no unbeliever.
For all the epistles of the New Testament are written to and
only to the church so that when it is taught, it ought to be
taught from the perspective of regenerate souls so that when
the warnings come or the exhortations come or the teaching comes, we
learn and we grow and we understand from the perspective of a new
heart. And when we sit like this and wonder, it is then when God,
through the hearing of that word and wonder, can bring to life
that whole soul which was dead and lost forever. Well, worship. I've preached a lot on worship.
I've written a lot on worship, and I still don't grasp. the
reality of what worship is and what it should be. But in my
feeble attempt today, by the grace of God and through His
Word, I pray that you will see a clearer picture of the vitality
of the church in corporate worship. What is the greatest of all the
commandments? Jesus is asked of the Jews, by
the Jews, in an attempt to trick Him, to get Him to say something
blasphemous. And Jesus says these words coming
and quoting from Deuteronomy chapter six. He says to love
the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
And then he stops and he says, and the second of equal importance
is to love your neighbor as yourself. All the laws of the prophets
hinge on these two. Now, if you know anything about
the laws of the prophets, there are six hundred and fourteen
laws in the Old Testament. And Jesus says that out of those
614, that all of the 612 hinge on these two. To love the Lord
your God with all that you have, all that you are and all that
you ever will be, and to love your neighbor as much as you
love yourself. So herein lies the problem. Do we worship in that way? And
if we worship by ourselves, Are we honestly worshiping God by
distancing ourself from his people? And that is the point that I
pray God will show you today. Worship in our introduction is
not individualistic. Worship is not emotionalism,
though worship is individually important and individually required. It is not individually whole.
For we are individually inclusive of one another. And so as I am,
so are you and vice versa. And as we worship together, we
as the church worship. And so I would like to suggest
to you, as I used the cliche last week, that a church is only
as strong as its weakest member. I would say the worship of a
church is only as strong as its weakest member. Now, of course,
that's not necessarily true. Because if we measured our worship
with the most zealous of us, among us, in comparison to the
glory due God, it would seem like hate in comparison to what
is due him. And so understand that even with
the most passionate of our hearts affection, we will never worship
God the way he deserves to be worshiped. I believe that's why
God has ordained an eternity for us to continue, that we might
catch up to the lowest starting point of the starting line of
the gate of the entry to the road to worship after billions
and billions of eternities. And yet it will never satisfy
us and we will continue to seek after him for we who are his
children love him above all things. So not only is worship not individualistic,
although it is inclusive individually, it is not emotional, but it is
intellectually emotional. In other words, as I read that
hymn earlier and I thought to myself the reality that God. The Virgin. was born out of the
virgin God, born out of the womb from which it was created, God
incarnate, God in the flesh, whose arm those crimson trophies
won. The imagery behind that reality
that Christ bled and died for the wickedness of my soul overwhelms
me, in which now his brow adorns. Fruit of the mystic rose, as
of that rose the stem, the root whence mercy ever flows. The
idea that Jesus, in His atoning sacrifice, willfully gave His
life to save sinners is overwhelming to me. And then the reality that
the God of the universe was a baby in the city of David some 2,000
years ago blows my mind. And it's emotional. But the only
reason that it moves our heart is because it has also moved
our minds. There's a difference in emotional
response to God in worship and emotionalism, which I believe
is secularism. We never lose ourselves. For
if we lose ourselves, we are disobeying the Scripture, which
says that we are always to be of sound mind. And we are always
to worship in spirit and in truth, both. And at the same time, we
cannot worship in spirit if our minds are unaware of what is
happening, for it is not of God. And so the truth of God's Word
teaches very clearly. And this isn't just an apostolic
idea. This isn't just an inference that Pastor Tipton has pulled
in his understanding of Scripture. This is a direct quote from Jesus
himself in John chapter four. where he says that God is spirit
and his worshipers must worship him in spirit and in truth, for
the Father is seeking such worshipers. Jesus makes no qualms about coupling
those two together. Matter of fact, Jesus says that
eternal life is not an experiential, emotional driven thing that happens
to you through the spirit, though it is. But he says fully that
that which the spirit does spiritually produces a full understanding
mentally. And he says, I quote John 17,
this is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God and
the son, Jesus, whom you have sent. So if knowing God is eternal
life, John then teaches us that no one has ever seen God, but
he is who is at his side has made him known the fullness of
God is seen perfectly in Jesus, the Christ, who is the living
word of God. So worship, then, if I were to define it this morning,
this is what I wrote. Worship is adoration and expression
of such adoration and of the worth of God in our minds, our
soul, our heart, our bodies, our attitudes, our actions and
our affections. Worship of God is indeed the
result, therefore, of knowing him. And one knows because he
has been reborn by the spirit. As we see Nicodemus in John 3,
he knew Jesus, he knew God, and he came and he professed such
knowledge. And Jesus says, you're dead, you're lost, you can't
see the kingdom. Nicodemus, thinking he was talking
about just his understanding, goes on to be expressive, and
Jesus then clarifies, I'm not talking about see, I'm talking
about enter. You are not of the kingdom of
God, Nicodemus, though you believe in me and you say that I am of
God, you are not. seeing me. And you know why? Because you have not been born
again. You cannot see the kingdom of
God without being born again, no matter what decision you make,
no matter what understanding you have. Many people choose
to understand and receive the facts that Jesus indeed is the
son of God. Those facts will take you straight
to hell for the demons believe and tremble. The demons in the
New Testament we see in Luke, in Jesus' ministry, where Jesus
goes and he's preaching in Capernaum and he's preaching in the region
of Nazareth. And we see that the demon possessed
man and the temple comes and the demons speak to him and say,
Oh, holy anointed one of God, have you come to torment us before
our time? And Jesus rebukes him and calls
him out and he leaves the man unharmed. And the people marvel
and they say, what kind of word does this man speak that the
devils obey him? Demons know who Jesus is. They're
not delusional. They know that they are doomed
and have no hope and they're not disturbed in some sense of
wondering how they're going to fix it. It is not going to be
fixed for them. And yet that knowledge does not
save. Gnosticism is a heresy. It is
a pursuit of knowledge. It's a pursuit of academics.
Good. Grow in our academics. But those
academics can pull the worship right out of our soul if we are
not born again. And if we are born again, as
we study to show ourselves approved, we will become bored with the
venue of academia and we will fall on our face in worship.
For the hypostatic union, as we call it in systematic theology,
is the fact that Jesus is fully man and fully subject to the
humanity of his being. But yet he at the same time,
without merging, is fully God. How amazing! So what if it doesn't
cause us to love him more? to see the true reality of the
vast sacrifice and the stepping out of the wonderful glory that
Jesus did to become the Savior of those who do not deserve not
one ounce of His grace. And so with all of that, I want
to tell you a bunch of things. I would say thirty seven points
today in the sermon, not an exaggeration. So we'll just bullet them out,
not necessarily expositional, but till we get to the end and
there are eleven points at the end of the sermon. And yeah, we've got
time and. So just listen to it if you can't
keep up because it's going to be a train ride and I pray it
will bless your heart. As the church, we covenant together
for God covenants with his people and he commands us to covenant
with each other. Yes, there is a universal body and I'm reminding
us of what we've done the last three weeks. And you might say,
well, church membership is worldly, it is not. In the days of the
apostles, there were those who were in Jerusalem who looked
at the Christians there and they wondered what it might take to
be a part of them. They were contemplating, we see
in Acts, as to whether or not they would join that fellowship.
We also know that there is fellowships that are required in the New
Testament. There were lists made of widows and others who were
tended to. There were requirements of those
people. They had to be a certain age. They had to have certain
criterion for their for their marriages and things in order
to receive help and food from the church. They could not have
been married once and they had to be 60 years or older. And
so there's a list of things that are taking place there. There
are also a fellowship daily of the church where they daily devoted
themselves to the apostles teaching. And so in this, we see the example
by we see the example of the New Testament church and that
they were in covenant with one another. The commands of scripture
is to encourage one another as long as it's called today to
bear one another's burdens. to submit to one another, to
submit to the elders and the leaders of the church, to submit
to the Word of God, to grow into maturity to the stature of the
fullness of Christ. And so, as we see all of this
stuff, what are we to do but say, oh, I can do that anywhere?
And every week we go someplace else to another group of people
who don't even know our name. How are we accountable to such
people? We're not. And that it also teaches that
if those who are of the faith start to leave the faith and
they leave the church, in Hebrews 10, it's an evidence, in Hebrews
4, it's an evidence that they are indeed possibly apostate. And so the church does what?
Goes after them, and if they refuse, we push them away. And
we don't let them back in until they've repented. Then that's
with any sin. How are we to do that if we're
not in covenant with one another? And so we covenant with one another
because it is the example we covenant with one another because
it's the only way we can grow. We covenant with one another
because it's the only way we can minister to one another.
We covenant with one another because it's the only way the
church can truly worship. And so when it comes to worship,
we have to have a unity of worship. Unity and unity. Most people
say, well, we are in unity. We're all here together. We stood
up and we sang the same song, but Abba father. You see, this
is where our Americanized individualism comes in. Oh, yeah, God is my
daddy. That's what that word means.
Daddy, it's an intimate. It's not just the grandfather. It's daddy. We go bold before
the throne of grace. It's access to God in the holy
places with confidence and full assurance. We don't shrink back.
We don't shirk back. We don't hide. We don't tap on
the door real lightly and hope He'll let us in. We don't wait
because He's with someone else more important. We're children
of God, and we go straight to Him because Christ has given
us the door to go into the places of God. We are intimate with
Him. He is our Daddy. If we don't know the reality
behind that of who God is by singing songs or understanding
Scripture that have some truth to it, then we all could be singing
differently. So there's no unity in that worship. Oh yeah, God is my father. Is
he the father like your earthly father? Is he the father, the
opposite of your earthly father that's not godly? How are we
ascribing that daddy, that intimacy with God? Well, the Scripture
says we ascribe it because in Christ. We are the children of
God. So I believe that there must
be covenant in worship. Let me give you all this as quickly
as I can. And then we'll get to the text,
this is all introduction. Without covenant, there can be
no worship. Yes, we can worship. But are
we really worshipping together if we were just to go to another
fellowship today and we're worshipping? How many times have I been in
a fellowship preaching all over the country in different types
and denominations of churches, camp meetings, youth camps and
conferences, college campuses, and you preach and you sit there
and you hear the people singing songs and you look around because
I'm always on the front row and you turn around and you see people.
You see some people standing like this. You see some people
like this. You see some people sort of moving around and spinning.
And you see some people crying. You see some people picking their
nose. Some people looking at their watch. And you just wonder, are they
worshipping the same God I'm worshipping? What truth did they
hear last week together as a church that's keeping this guy picking
his nose and this guy looking at his watch and this guy jumping
and this guy crying? What is it? Well, there are individual
experiences with God. But there must be a unity in
the object of our worship. Who is the one true God? Who
is he? Who is the Christ? And so without covenant, there
can be no true corporate worship. We covenant because of God's
revelation, which is salvation in Christ Jesus. And so there's
some points I want you to understand. God created the church for his
pleasure. God created the church for his
pleasure, not to make his joy complete, because he's fully
satisfied with himself, without anything else that was made.
God was not lonely, for he's self-sufficient. If God needed
anything else to complete himself, he would not be God, that which
completed him would be. Be very careful. So when we sing
praises of the Father, Are we singing that God's our daddy
and he's desperate for me? And that's why he saved me. And
now that God has me, he's full. You know, the scripture does
teach that Christ will be complete when he has his bride. But God put forth Christ as propitiation
to display the righteousness of God, for God had forgiven
you before the world began church. So God created the church for
his pleasure. It's without covenant in that truth. How do we worship
together with that truth? Here's another one. God created
the church by his grace. So if you say, well, man created
the church. I hear it all the time. Man created organized religion.
No. Well, yes, man did create organized
religion, but God created an organism called his body. And it is the church. And it
is not a place. It is a people. And it can establish
wherever two or more are together, so is the church. God created
it by His grace, an effectual grace that guaranteed the salvation
of all who Jesus seeks. Jesus says, I came to seek and
save the lost. Not, I hope to. I came to. And He has found and
He will find all that He seeks. The third thing, God created
the church to bear the image of his son. We see in Ephesians
chapter one that in love, God predestined us to be conformed
to the image of his son. And so God created the church
so that the world would look at the church and the cosmic
powers. Ephesians chapter three, verse 10. Look at the church.
The devil looks at the church and the enemies of God look at
the church and they go, wow. Look what God has done. We see
the nature and the image of His Son. Next, we know that God created
the church to reflect the nature of His glory. What does that
look like? Well, look at the gospel. Look
at the church. Look at the power of God in the church. Where Paul
says that the power of God that is at work in Jesus Christ, that
raised Him from the dead, is already at work in you, church.
See, he didn't say you, the one there on the front row in the
second blue sweater. Not that. He didn't say that.
He said you, the body, the whole of the church, God's power is
already at work in you and in Christ. You have all spiritual
blessings. There is nothing else to get.
There's nothing else to seek. And if you seek anything else,
you're an idolater. See, that's truth. The nature of his glory. God
created the church to mature into the fullness of Christ.
So we measure ourselves not by how the pastor looks, for Pete's
sake, and not by how our brother or sister looks, or not how some
evangelist on television looks. We don't measure ourselves by
the sinfulness of man or the morality of man. We measure ourselves
by the fullness of the stature of Christ. And so we are to mature
into Christ. God created the church for that
purpose. So when we worship together, whether by song, now here's the
cool thing. Some of us think that worship
has to do with music, it doesn't, it has to do with truth. Because you're worshiping now. Matter of fact, I would tell
you that the word of God is a greater worship than singing. To read and to hear and to meditate
on the word of God. Is a fuller worship. And God
created the church to mature into the fullness of Christ.
God created the church to display his wisdom, Ephesians 3 10. What
wisdom? We've gone through that a million
times. But the wisdom that God has got people from all nations,
tongues and tribes have nothing in common. And he's put them
together in a fellowship of faith, a covenant community. And they display his wisdom. God created the church to reveal
His word. God created the church to establish
His power, to show His great power. What do you mean by that? Well, where is there a greater
power at work in the world than in the church? Well, I haven't
seen any power lately. And you're blind. Why is there no power in your
life? Well, because your worship's misaligned. Your meditation's misaligned.
Your focus is misaligned. You want to see power? Watch
God convict you of that and bring you to joy. Watch God take death
and turn it into life. Watch God take a rebellious,
wicked person who hates him and turn him into a lover of Christ
like Paul. God created the church to dumbfound
the wise, Paul says, 1 Corinthians chapter 1, to bring to nothing
the things that are, to use the weak and the lowly things of
this earth to destroy that which is lofty and powerful and popular
and proud. Oh, pride comes before the fall.
God created the church to receive glory. For himself and for her,
as Paul prays, and now To God be the glory forever and ever
in all generations through the church and in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Remember that? And God created the church unto
the praise of his glorious grace. So with that unity in worship,
those things cannot be done without a covenant of worship. And now
we look at this from a more. Focused point of view, we need
to have a right understanding of worship, why? See, it's so
hard to get all this out because if we don't have a right understanding
of worship, we don't have the right focus or the right object
of worship. If we think worship is doing
A, B or C, then we've missed the idea that we are exalting
the one true God. And we put our emphasis on the
doing worship rather than the worship itself or the object
of that worship, or we put our emphasis on the worship, or we
put our emphasis on the quality of the worship. Well, that was
good worship. You ever said that? Of course
we have. That was a good worship service.
Or that was a good worship song. Or that was a horrible solo.
I couldn't even worship. You see, we've all said that
stuff. I'm saying things that have come out of my mouth before.
So why is that? We point to the wrong thing.
We're focused on the wrong stuff. It's like baking a cake and all
the while you're sifting through that batter to find the baking
soda. I know I put it in here. Just let it do its work. The
outcome is the cake. The outcome is adoration. Let
that which moves us to that which is the Spirit of God be working. Do not quench the Spirit by focusing
on the vehicle. But praise Him. And so right
understanding of worship establishes a right focus and a right object.
It also measures the truth of God in Jesus Christ. See, God
shows himself, as I've already said, in Christ and through Christ. And so God has shown in our hearts,
2 Corinthians 4, verse 6, to give us the light and the knowledge
of God in the face of Jesus Christ. So if we are to worship God rightly,
we must know Christ intimately. How does that work? I've already
said it. We must be born again to see him and to enter into
him. And once we are in him, we love him, we devour him, we
desire him, and we are not satisfied in anything but him. How do we
get more of Christ? Time. Time. Time in the word, time
with the word, time with the church, time in the church, time
worshiping together, time studying together, time praying together.
We have time. A right understanding of worship
allows a clear expression of truth in Christ and discerns
what so many have hold on to, which is a false hope and a false
truth. A right understanding of worship
dissects and discriminates against that which is not true. How are
you worshiping God for that? That's not biblical. Why would
you say that? Why would you love that? You're
loving what you think God's putting on the table all the while. That's
the devil's to give. See, the enemy will teach you
more scripture than you think. The enemy will bring things to
mind and twist it. And when you're not in the covenant
of faith with your worship, you will begin to worship things.
And what do you do? You get out there and after church,
oh, God was so good today and he did this and he said that.
And well, great. What if what you say doesn't
match with scripture? For most congregations, that
goes right over our heads and we walk away going, man, I wish
I could be that spiritual. But all the while, what they
just said was wrong. And my prayer is that among the
saints of grace through church, that we would all be able to
discern and discriminate with each other. And if I get up here
and I say some kind of wham, bam, wooly mess, that after church
or rather right in front of me, just go, whoa, whoa, whoa. What
are you talking about? Give me a minute because I may
be an example. But anyway, if it doesn't resolve, say something.
Change it. We need a clear expression of
truth. The church is to display the
clear gospel. It's to show holiness and righteousness. It's to be so different from
the world that the world goes, I hate you. What do you mean you don't want
to participate in my sin and hate people like me? What do
you mean you don't want to do these things and fall prey to
lies? Who cares what you do? I care
what I do. I care whose I am, don't we? The right understanding of worship
provides a picture of God's intention, which reveals, which is to reveal
that he is, now get this, and this is where we're going from
this point forward, he is the center of all things. God is
the center of all things. So therefore, what worship does
not do is put God there. What worship does do is recognize
he's there. You can't put God at the center.
He's already there in His head and He's the apex of all things.
He's the creator of all things. He owns all things. He rules
all things. He will destroy all things. He will establish all
things. Everything is under His feet. Nothing is out from His
eye and nothing is apart from His eternal decree and His purpose
and His divine decrees. Nothing. Everything, wicked,
evil, righteous, good, bad, ugly, smelly, beautiful. It's all His
and it's all under the orchestration of His mighty hand. Everything. That's called sovereignty. And
if we say, yeah, all but, then we don't know the one true God. It's one thing to say, I don't
get it. Great. Neither do I. We'll just talk
about that which we do not get. But we will proclaim what it
is. And that's that God is sovereign. Well, God couldn't do that. God
did do that. No matter what we think He can
and can't do. You don't think that the power
that Satan has is not God's power? Absolutely. God sent Satan to
Job. And He says, do everything you
want to do with him, but kill him. Destroy him. Kill his kids.
Kill his wife. Kill his house. Kill his crops.
Kill his money. Kill his body. But don't kill.
Don't take his life. God sent Satan to destroy Job. And when the house fell down
and killed his children, Job said, blessed be the name of
the Lord. The Lord gives and the Lord takes
away. He's taken my kids. Praise you,
Father. Praise you, God. Praise you.
You took my kids. That's insane. The world hates
us for that. See, that's sovereign. God is
at the center of all there is. Worship recognizes where he is. You see that? Therefore, introduction,
therefore, the body of Christ apart does not worship accurately. Because we can fall. We ought
to. We do worship all the time as
much as possible. We are meditating and scribe,
but we worship out of the corporate covenant of truth and doctrine
and teaching and worship together. And so that it comes and we culminate
our worship together in unity. Do you see that we culminate? that which is true together.
We come together. So as I live my life through
the week and when I come with the saints, even for breakfast
or to work or to whatever, we culminate our worship together.
We bring each of our own personal times with God throughout the
entire day and throughout the entire week together. And then
as we fellowship and we come to this day, the Lord's day,
then we all bring it together and it should match. It should
mesh. It should all look the same.
Different experiences, different realities, different circumstances,
but the God in the center of it all is immutable. And he never
changes. And his truth never changes.
And his gospel never changes. And the power of the spirit never
changes. So the church protects herself
when she worships together. The church worships accurately
as a whole unto and out of scriptures and the doctrine of God. The
church believes in the reality of God as he reveals himself
and thus does not become idolaters, which I believe is the individualistic
and man centered sermons that we hear in most pulpits. And
then we get these types of responses, well, God to me is. OK. Be careful that what that is,
is not outside Scripture. One of the most strange things
that I ever saw was the week that my grandmother Adams was
passing. And I was looking at the cards
that she wrote on her table, and every day she'd write a different
word, role, title. for who God was in her life right
then. And Father was the first one.
Always Father. And there were three cards, front
and back, lengthwise like this. Handwriting was very impeccable.
And about two-thirds of the way down, it got real sloppy. The
last thing she wrote on that card was Husband. And I saw that disturbed me.
Two things that disturbed me. Three things that disturbed me.
That my grandmother was probably the last thing she ever wrote.
Secondly, that she suffered and it was bad handwriting. Her penmanship
was impeccable. It just saddened me. Showed me
the futility of this life apart from Christ. And thirdly, I didn't
quite grasp it. But are we not the bride of God?
Are we not the bride of Christ? And I know that other than Jesus,
the one thing she loved more than anything was her husband. And at that moment, she realized
that her father. Was her true husband. Do we worship that way accurately? See, the corporate worship of
God provides boundaries against sensationalism, egocentrism,
idolatry, false teaching, sensuality, fickleness, do not be carried
away by every wind of doctrine, tossed to and fro, the steadfast
you hold firm. So the church worship steadfastly
without moving to the realm of individualism and sensationalism.
The church worships with covenant and in unity. And when we are
collectively unified, we honor God greatly. So in that. I believe
the last thing I want you to see is that worship in unity
proclaims the message of the one true God and the son whom
he has seen, as Jesus says in John 17. And it does so in review
of what I said thus far, if you didn't get all the points, here's
three of the main ones by clearly maintaining the gospel, a clear
picture and the message of the gospel. The second big one is
moving all things back to the center of God who is at the center
of his work. And the third and final thing,
by establishing praise for His grace and glory. Now turn to Romans chapter 15. So you're about to burn me at
the stake because I haven't used any scripture, right? A lot of scripture in
there. It's just too much to list. Verse 8. We're doing a grave injustice
here, jumping in to 15 chapters, but it'll speak for itself, I
promise. The whole of Paul's argument
in Romans is that God has saved Gentiles and that those Jews are not the people of God, but
are part of the people of God. Now the Gentiles are a part of
it. So there's a real loose, watery, bad fourteen chapters
of Romans, Psalms, about seven years. Chapter fifteen, verse eight. For I tell you that Christ became a slave By
the way, I changed that because the word do loss and diakonos
is slave, not servant. For I tell you that Christ became
a slave to the uncircumcised, which are the Gentiles. To show
God's truthfulness, you see that. In order to confirm the promises
given to the patriarchs, the founding fathers of Israel. And
in order that the Gentiles, the uncircumcised, excuse me, servant
to the circumcised, which is the Jew. And in order, verse
nine, that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. So right there, if we just use
verse eight and nine, we get this message. God. Sent Christ to be a slave. To the Jews. To show God's truthfulness. in order to confirm the promises
given to the patriarchs and in order that the Gentiles might
glorify God for His mercy. So what Paul is saying there
is that God sent Christ to be a slave so the Gentiles would
worship Him for His grace. So now Ephesians 1, we'll jump
out of the page when you see that, to the praise of His glorious
grace. For as it is written, there are
five text that Paul paraphrases right here, and I'm not going
to go through where they all are, but you can look them up.
Therefore, as it is written, I will praise you among the Gentiles
and sing to your name. And again, it is said, he goes,
Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people. And again, it is said,
Paul says, Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let the peoples
extol him. And again, Isaiah says, The root
of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles.
In him will the Gentiles hope. And then Paul states in verse
13, May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in
believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound
in hope. Beautiful stuff. Beautiful stuff. Eleven clear things. about unified
worship as Gentiles, as the body of Christ, as a New Testament
church. True, unified worship is seen
in these eleven ways. It is a unified truth of God's
decree and purpose. See verse eight. For I tell you
that Christ became a slave to the circumcised to show God's
truthfulness. What is he talking about? That
God had proclaimed to do so. And so now the decree and the
purpose of God was not to just save Israel and then, oh, they
didn't work out, so we'd go to them. Paul's saying that the fullness
of time, that before the world began, God decreed to save Gentiles. And you know the first Gentile
that he saved? Abram. Who he changed to become Abraham.
Abram was a Chaldean from Assyria. who worship the moon, God, and
as he worshiped the moon, God called him out and said, You're
mine. So Abrams, the first gentile. He brought him into the light
of his beloved son. So unified worship is a unified
truth of God's decree. Unified worship is a unified
praise of God's glory and mercy. Look at verse nine. In order
to confirm the promises of God's of the patriarch and verse nine
and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.
And so true worship that is unified is unified praise of God's glory
and his mercy. So we are together worshiping
God for his glorious grace. As we sing, as we hear the word,
as we read, as we pray, as we talk, as we live our lives together,
we stand on the foundations, not of pluralism, not of relativism. What that means is many ways,
many thoughts, many beliefs, many paths to God, many experiences
to God, pluralism or relativism. Well, this means that to me and
that means this to you. So we're both right. This is a microphone or an ice
cream cone. I'm talking to it. You can eat
it if you want to. One of us is wrong. And we both
could be wrong. Ice cream cone. Slide trombone. Neither one of us are going to
get what we think we're getting. That's relative relativism. The
church doesn't dabble in that. The church comes from a unified
praise of his mercy and his truth. The third thing, true unified
worship is a unified celebration which is commanded by God. to the Gentiles and the Jews
together as one. Look at verse 10 through 12.
Rejoice, O Gentiles. Did he say, hey Gentiles, do
you want to rejoice? Does God say in Scripture, would
you please praise me? Could you get joyful? Would you
mind if you had time, please, rejoicing? No, he commands it. Rejoice. And again, I say rejoice. Rejoicing is a commandment. Praise
is a commandment. Joy is a commandment. How dare
he? Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles.
He didn't say, look at y'all praising the Lord. It says, praise
the Lord. It's a command. Praise the Lord,
you Gentiles. So it's a celebration, which
is commanded by God. The fourth thing, true unified
worship is a unified gospel of God's son, verse 12. And Isaiah
says the root of Jesse will come. Even He who arises to rule the
Gentiles in Him with a Gentile's hope. Who is that? I tell you
that Christ came a slave to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness
in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs and in
order that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy. So true unified worship is a
unified gospel of God's Son. The good news of Jesus was being
proclaimed since the Garden of Eden. God said, who told you you were
naked? He wasn't ignorant. He's holding
Adam accountable for his sin. Well, the woman you gave me told
me to eat of the fruit and I ate it. Woman, why did you do that? The snake you made told me to
eat it and I ate it. Everybody's passing the buck,
and it all points back to God, that God's not the author of
sin nor evil. In the gospel of Jesus Christ,
God killed an animal and covered their nakedness with skins as
a shadow of the Lamb of God. And then He said, I will take,
and between you and the serpent there will be enmity between
His offspring in the seed of woman. And you will strike His
heel, but He will crush your head. Who is the seed of woman but
the virgin Jesus, the virgin birth Jesus. True unified worship is a unified
hope. Look at verse 13. May God, may the God of hope,
so He's the God of hope. fill you with all joy and peace
and believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you
may abound in what? Hope. So unified worship is a
unified hope. What is hope? Hope is not a wish
with our fingers crossed. Hope is a certain guarantee with
great confidence. It is a done deal. It's done. It's over. It's accomplished.
It's yours in Christ. It's all spiritual blessings
which are yours already, which you've already been given, which
you have obtained. And yet you haven't gotten them,
but they're yours and you've already got them, but you haven't.
You see that? We are, but are not yet. We have,
but have not yet. So confident Paul does in Romans
7 and Romans 8 that he says, Those to be called, he justified,
he justified, he sanctified. Those he sanctified, he has glorified.
Perfect past. It's done, but I'm not glorified.
Look at me. You're not glorified. We're still
in this world. We will be one day. It's already
done. We're just waiting for that hope. And so unified worship is a unified
hope in the midst of all sin, in the midst of all storms, in
the midst of all suffering, in the midst of all death. In the
midst of all hopelessness, there is hope. And so what does that
do? What does that hope bring? A
unified feeling of joy right there in verse 13. A unified
feeling of joy and a unified feeling of peace in what? In our faith. in our unified
faith in believing. And so, we have the fullness
of joy. Now get this, in the midst of death and dismemberment,
we're joyful. We're not happy about it, but
we're joyful. For our hope is secure in Christ.
And the fullness of that joy and the filling with joy also
is a filling with peace in believing. Pesteon. Faith. So we have peace in our faith.
So when the world and the flesh go, run now, save yourself, we
go, God's already done it. Christ is it. We rest in hope. Faith in Christ alone. So unified worship fulfills and
brings and maintains a unified joy and a unified feeling of
peace with a unified faith, as Paul says, and Ephesians was
one Lord and one baptism, one faith, one spirit. And the last thing. The last
two things. Is it's a unified power, don't
overlook that word, look at that. So that by the power of the Holy
Spirit, you may abound. It's not a possibility. That
there in that English is sometimes tricky for us. But what it means
is so that God will fill you with all joy and peace in your
faith, so that, and that you will be believing, so that by
the power of that same God's Spirit, you will abound in hope. What in the world else are we
looking for? Now, take that and ball it as
tight as you can and swallow it like a pill and you will jump
up for joy. So the prescription for worship
comes there. From his hope, hopelessness to hope, to hope. Grace upon
grace. And this hope is a unified hope.
It's a universal hope for the church. and the church alone. It's an exclusive hope that all
the church has. You want escape from your flesh? Then worship with the church
from a unified point of view of the hope that comes in the
trueness of Christ. You want peace? Worship God for
being your peace. Christ made peace on the cross
with His flesh. It's paid for. You and I, as
the church, get this. It sounds heretical. In terms
of judicially, we owe God nothing but worship. Did you hear that? The church,
judicially. Now, if we were to pull it back
and look at all the records, and from a humanistic point of
view, we owe God our very torment and our flesh. Judicially, because
Christ has taken our sin, God is satisfied. It has been paid.
We owe God our worship. Our adoration, our praise, he
is due that. We don't owe him the debt of
our judgment because Christ has taken it, it is paid. So worship, then, is not about
individualistic ideas and philosophies, but worship is about truth alone
in Christ, who is the truth, who is the eternal life. As John
says, which was made manifest to you, and now that which was
manifest we proclaim to you. And what does he say there in
1 John 1? So that our joy may be complete. So when God brings to life the
heart of a sinner and they become a child, that heart longs after
Him in Christ. And our pleasure is Christ. Our hope is Christ. Our love
is Christ. Our power is Christ. The power
of God is at work in His church. And the greatest manifestation
of that power is what? Worship. Not signs, not miracles, not
wisdom. Worship. Or let's put it another
way. The greatest of these is love.
To love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your
mind and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. That's it. That's why Paul in
Ephesians says that we might grow up into every way into him
who is the head, into Jesus Christ, to the measure, the fullness
of the stature of Christ. And what do we abound in? We
grow up when the when the when the church is equipped in every
way and every joint which is being held together by God is
working in the way it should be. We grow up in love. We abound in love, we abound
in affection for God and for each other. So church, as we
worship. That unity must also be at the
apex. Not just our love for God above
and beyond our love for each other, but that love for each
other must be there, so our worship of God without our intimacy with
each other is worthless. It's worthless. So as we come to the close of
this message. My prayer for us is several things,
but first and foremost, that we the brethren and sisters of
the flock. would see the gravity of worship
forever. And then secondly, is that you
who are indeed the church would see that there is there is a
glorious power at work through the word of God into your heart
and life right now and that you are at an apex at your at your
place in life to wherever you're going to be a part of our fellowship
or a fellowship. You are now going to be dissatisfied
with just philandering. And thirdly, I pray that those
who are in the sound of this teaching that might find themselves
dissatisfied even with the idea that God, by His grace, would
save you and cause you to be a lover of His glory and His
grace towards you in Christ and through Christ. And I would add that a fourth
prayer is that God would indeed establish the truth of these
things in the hearts of our children as they sit here. And understand
that there is no class and there is no curriculum and there is
no teacher. That could put this stuff in the hearts of our children.
Anywhere near close. As effective as God, the Holy
Spirit can put it in their hearts as they sit here in color or
look at the stars or coo and cry. And so be encouraged that
your children hear the word of God. Let's pray. Lord, as I have stated that which
I desire to pray for, Lord, help me continually to pray and Lord,
help us as we siblings in Christ pray for one another. Let us
not walk away from this table looking to check our lives off
and go, got it, got it, got it. Move on, Lord. Let us just forever
simmer in this in the sauce of this just beautiful, glorious
grace that you've given us today. In order that we wouldn't try
to figure out worship, we would just live it. Father, I thank you that you
are able to do far more than I could ask you to do right now
or even think that you could do. Lord, do those things, do
that which is greater than we could ask for. Father, save us out of temptation,
deliver us from evil, lead us into the paths of righteousness,
help us to be convicted of not being satisfied in the cross
and in the gospel, Lord, and help us to no longer find pleasure
and joy and laughter in the things of the world and the debauchery
of this life, but, Father, to look at it with disdain and,
Father, that we would truly see The beauty of the sun as the
light of him shines in us and through us to the world of darkness. And Father, as we prepare to
continually covenant, we thank you that your covenant is eternal
and you will not fail us even when we fail. But let us strive. Let us strive to make our election
sure. as we live before Your face,
Coram Deo, that we might be a fragrant offering to Your face and to
Your heart and to Your ears and to Your eyes and to Your nose.
In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.