Dale Partridge - The Covenant Home Part 6： Covenant Renewal Worship with Dale Partridge

00:00:00.000 Turn with me to Leviticus 9. We'll be reading Leviticus 9 in preparation for the sermon text

00:00:09.300 this morning. Leviticus chapter 9, hear the word of the Lord. On the eighth day, Moses called Aaron

00:00:20.080 and his sons and the elders of Israel. And he said to Aaron, take for yourself a bull calf

00:00:28.800 for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering, both without blemish, and offer them before the

00:00:35.580 Lord. And say to the people of Israel, take a male goat for a sin offering and a calf offering 0.60

00:00:42.340 and a lamb, both a year old without blemish for a burnt offering and an ox and a ram for peace

00:00:48.720 offerings to sacrifice before the Lord and a grain offering mixed with oil. For today the Lord will

00:00:56.000 appear to you. And they brought what Moses commanded in front of the tent of

00:01:01.040 meeting. And all the congregation drew near and stood before the Lord. And Moses

00:01:06.280 said, This is the thing that the Lord commanded you to do, that the glory of the

00:01:11.680 Lord may appear to you. Then Moses said to Aaron, Draw near to the altar and offer

00:01:17.660 your sin offering and your burnt offering and make atonement for yourself

00:01:21.660 and for the people and bring the offering of the people and make atonement for them

00:01:26.860 as the Lord has commanded. So Aaron drew near to the altar and killed the calf

00:01:32.720 of the sin offering, which was for himself. And the sons of Aaron presented the blood to him

00:01:38.660 and he dipped his finger in the blood and put it on the horns of the altar and poured out the blood

00:01:44.960 at the base of the altar. But the fat and the kidneys and the long lobe of the liver

00:01:50.640 from the sin offering, he burned on the altar, as the Lord commanded Moses.

00:01:57.000 The flesh and the skin he burnt up with fire outside the camp.

00:02:02.260 Then he killed the burnt offering, and Aaron's sons handed him the blood,

00:02:06.520 and he threw it against the sides of the altar.

00:02:10.260 And they handed the burnt offering to him, piece by piece, and the head,

00:02:15.440 and he burned them on the altar.

00:02:17.540 And he washed the entrails and the legs and burnt them with the burnt offering on the altar. 0.80

00:02:23.560 Then he presented the people's offering and took the goat of the sin offering that was for the 0.57

00:02:28.860 people and killed it and offered it as a sin offering like the first one. And he presented

00:02:34.600 the burnt offering and offered it according to the rule. And he presented the grain offering,

00:02:40.280 took a handful of it and burnt it on the altar besides the burnt offering of the morning.

00:02:46.060 Then he killed the ox and the ram, the sacrifice of peace offerings for the people.

00:02:53.580 And Aaron's sons handed him the blood, and he threw it against the sides of the altar.

00:02:59.700 But the fat pieces of the ox and of the ram, the fat tail and that which covers the entrails

00:03:05.620 and the kidneys and the long lobe of the liver, they put the fat pieces on the breasts, and

00:03:11.820 he burnt the fat piece on the altar.

00:03:15.160 But the breast and the right thigh Aaron waved for a wave offering before the Lord, as Moses commanded.

00:03:22.740 Then Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them.

00:03:26.560 And he came down from offering the sin offering and the burn offering and the peace offerings.

00:03:31.960 And Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting.

00:03:35.180 And when they came out, they blessed the people.

00:03:37.940 And the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people.

00:03:40.620 And the fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the pieces of fat on the altar.

00:03:47.840 And when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces.

00:03:52.440 This is the word of the Lord.

00:03:55.880 Believe it or not, by the end of the sermon, you guys are going to understand that passage in Leviticus 9.

00:04:02.160 And so I know we can look at passages like that and go, wow, what does that mean? 0.96

00:04:09.020 How can we make sense of the bloody mess of the Levitical priesthood? 0.97

00:04:14.920 But we will be discussing that today. 0.99

00:04:18.680 We finally arrived at the final sermon of a six-part series on the covenant home.

00:04:26.580 And we've covered the basic framework of covenant theology.

00:04:29.620 You can go back and listen to all of these.

00:04:31.660 Covenantal headship through male representation of responsibility.

00:04:34.700 We talked about covenant marriage.

00:04:35.980 We talked about the roles of wives, the roles of husbands.

00:04:39.760 We talked about having a covenantal mindset on parenting.

00:04:44.040 Today, we are going to discuss how the covenant of grace, the covenant of marriage, the covenant

00:04:51.940 of the family are woven together in the covenant of the church.

00:04:55.780 You're going to see it all kind of climactically come together in this process.

00:04:59.980 Now, I've broken the sermon into two parts.

00:05:02.340 The first is covenant cancer, and the second part is covenant renewal worship.

00:05:10.920 I really do believe that this will change the way you view the order of worship at a church.

00:05:18.600 And it is going to be theological.

00:05:22.040 My expectation is that you will learn things that you may have never heard before in a Christian church.

00:05:28.160 Please just stay with me as I go through this.

00:05:31.560 As I've emphasized over this series, individualism is a cancer to the covenant.

00:05:39.980 Okay, when you're in covenant with Christ, you're in covenant with one another.

00:05:43.940 So just because we're in covenant with Christ, that means that we're in covenant with one another.

00:05:49.240 You can't separate the two.

00:05:52.380 Okay, we are co-citizens within the covenant.

00:05:55.220 That needs to be established quickly.

00:05:58.400 Our emphasis on autonomy can make covenantalism even feel cultish to our American culture.

00:06:08.560 Wait, you guys are covenantal? What does that mean? You're accountable? You are connected?

00:06:13.840 You're devoted to one another? That feels a little bit cultish to me. It feels a little bit too much

00:06:20.840 controlling to me. We're so acclimatized to independence that we can't even handle

00:06:26.800 interdependence. We can't handle a real accountability or devotion to one another.

00:06:35.120 Many Christians have bought into this idea that God has an independent or private relationship

00:06:41.600 with just you, kind of apart from the local church. It's this individualized thinking.

00:06:47.640 We peddled this idea of a personal relationship with Jesus for like four decades now, and it's so 0.63

00:06:54.680 deeply entrenched into our American Christianity that it's left Christians saved, separated,

00:07:02.840 and weak. That is exactly what the result has been. We've forgotten that God's promises to 0.95

00:07:09.320 his people are covenantal, not individual. Yes, there's an individual portion of your

00:07:16.060 relationship with God, but the promises are covenantal, not individual. We've forgotten

00:07:21.660 that scripture has defined god's people as a body and as a flock and as a building and as a bride

00:07:27.980 okay we've forgotten that the lord's prayer begins with our father who is in heaven not

00:07:33.820 my father who is in heaven there is an absolute usness that is in biblical thinking we've

00:07:44.940 neglected the idea of seeing ourselves as brothers and sisters who have been adopted

00:07:50.860 into a covenant family. You can drink, I mean, let me rephrase it this way. You can't drink of

00:08:00.100 the covenant of the cup of the Lord's Supper on Sunday, and then the rest of the week act like

00:08:08.220 you're a free agent. You can't do that. You can't bear the sign of the covenant baptism on your body

00:08:16.800 and then isolate yourself from the body of Christ.

00:08:19.860 That's not biblical thinking.

00:08:23.000 You're not your own free agent, autonomous, independent individual

00:08:27.900 if you're part of the covenant.

00:08:30.400 You're accountable then to the covenant people of God

00:08:33.800 and of course, obviously to Christ.

00:08:35.260 Proverbs 18.1 says of the independent man or family,

00:08:40.540 it says, whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire.

00:08:44.600 You want to know why those people who can't seem to commit to any sort of long-term anything?

00:08:53.540 It's because they seek their own desire. When a man isolates himself, he seeks his own desire.

00:09:00.880 He goes on to say he rages against all sound wisdom. The local church is not another club

00:09:07.940 or homeschool group that you join where engagement is optional. That's not what this is.

00:09:14.600 This isn't like I show up as long as my Little League

00:09:19.860 schedule for my kid doesn't interfere

00:09:21.920 and I have nothing better to do, I'll be there.

00:09:24.080 That's not the perspective that you have

00:09:26.620 around the worship in the covenant community of the church.

00:09:29.940 No, church is the local manifestation

00:09:32.420 of your Christian life.

00:09:35.900 It's how we live out the Christian life.

00:09:38.180 It's in community.

00:09:41.660 It's the primary means of grace.

00:09:44.600 the primary means of edification instruction fellowship encouragement for your family

00:09:48.920 it's where all the covenant blessings flow you want to see a guy who follows christ who has a

00:09:54.120 terrible life he's probably not connected to a local church i can't tell you how many times

00:09:59.800 people come up to me with their problems and i'm like are you a member of a church

00:10:04.760 no we don't really go to church it's like you you're expecting to grow and to be sanctified

00:10:11.240 and encouraged and to be edified and and to be corrected and be to be blessed and to be guided

00:10:16.360 and to be educated but you're not in a church where all of those things actually flow you don't

00:10:23.000 prioritize that and then you're coming to me or some other person complaining that your life is

00:10:29.720 not looking like the scriptures and you don't know why it's a very strange perspective to have

00:10:35.960 have. If the church was a trunk of a tree and Christ was the roots, according to scripture,

00:10:43.880 we're not independent sticks and leaves. That's not what we are. Okay, we are one organism. We're

00:10:50.020 drawing strength primarily from the roots, but particularly from the branch that you are attached

00:11:00.420 to. Okay, yes, we are primarily pulling our strength from the roots, but you're connected

00:11:07.460 to this branch, in this town, in this church, with this community. That's where your little twig

00:11:15.580 is grafted in. We're all pulling from the roots, but just like a twig or a limb cannot bear

00:11:25.900 physical fruit if it's disconnected from the branch, we cannot expect a believer to bear

00:11:30.020 spiritual fruit apart from the local church the body of christ does that make sense the point i'm

00:11:35.380 trying to make is that god's ordinary means for dealing with his people is not apart from the

00:11:42.980 church it's through the church it's not apart from the church it's through the church we live in a

00:11:49.860 time where everybody has their own independent worship oh i do this and i do that and i listen

00:11:55.780 to this podcast and that sermon over here and i i have this bible reading and i i have this group

00:12:01.060 over here and no those are not church your men's group's not church your bible studies not church

00:12:06.980 your family worship's not church this is church there are primary elements there's there's elders

00:12:16.180 there's the lord's supper there's the sac or the sacraments there is a commitment it's on the

00:12:21.060 lord's day there are so many qualifiers according to scripture what makes church church swimming

00:12:26.980 is not getting baptized and drinking wine on the weekend is not doing communion why

00:12:32.420 well because it's not actually in alignment with what we see in scripture we know we're at church

00:12:38.580 here we are submitting ourselves to the covenant gathering the ceremony of the church now we can

00:12:46.340 see god using ordinary means all the time um how do people get saved through the preaching of

00:12:52.740 the minister or the preachers we are sanctified and edified by the work of pastors and teachers

00:12:57.380 we receive the grace of the sacraments at the hands of the ministers we are exhorted by christians

00:13:02.500 brothers and sisters in addition you constantly see the relational order and interdependence we

00:13:09.940 are all to submit to christ husbands are to leave their homes wives are to submit to their husbands

00:13:15.060 children are to obey their parents christians are to submit to one another there is a constant

00:13:20.100 interdependentness throughout the scriptures that you cannot even for a moment think of a framework

00:13:26.500 where you are an autonomous isolated christian it just doesn't fit with the scriptures

00:13:34.980 first corinthians 12 12-13 says

00:13:37.620 for just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body though many

00:13:46.500 are one body so it is with christ for in one spirit we are all baptized into one body

00:13:53.780 jews or greeks slaves are free and we are all made to drink of one spirit

00:13:58.820 in the old testament the prophet malachi says the church quote have we not all one father 0.75

00:14:05.540 has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless towards one another, profaning the

00:14:13.200 covenant of our fathers? Now I say this to clarify that you are not each in an independent covenant

00:14:20.940 with God. Okay. The church is in covenant with God and you are one member of the church.

00:14:29.120 It's a different perspective. It's slight distinctions that really help us understand

00:14:33.600 this. Your relationship with God cannot be seen as independent from your relationship with the

00:14:39.020 church. It's just impossible. Yes. Again, I'm not saying that you don't have an individual

00:14:46.900 or personal dimension with God. You do. Your devotion, your prayer life are certainly

00:14:52.540 individualized, but they are not isolated or segregated from your covenant life.

00:14:56.540 they they work in tandem with it uh scripture gives us instruction for the covenant life

00:15:04.460 it says confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed

00:15:10.040 bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of christ address one another in psalms and hymns

00:15:14.800 and spiritual songs therefore encourage one another and build another up be devoted to one

00:15:19.220 another in love and honor one another above yourself be kind to one another tenderhearted

00:15:23.400 forgiving one another as christ forgave you there are over 100 one another's in the new testament

00:15:31.960 how many of those do you actually fulfill on a regular basis

00:15:38.120 like the assumption of the new testament is your living life together multi-generationally

00:15:45.880 deeply connected the church having people over for dinner not just seeing them once a week you are

00:15:53.000 in each other's lives that is the assumption of the new testament in fact a lot of people read

00:15:58.760 the new testament they go wow those people are close and then they look at their life and they

00:16:02.680 go wow my life is not close with anybody and they get depressed and they wonder why am i not

00:16:07.880 experiencing the new testament christianity and they realize oh it's because i don't have a great

00:16:12.360 church and finally by god's grace the church is waking up and we're having people move from all

00:16:17.080 over the country to find a godly church it is worth moving heaven and earth to find a godly church

00:16:23.760 We have five families right now that are considering relocation to come here.

00:16:29.040 We've had several families already move here.

00:16:31.200 We have more families moving here than people finding us in our hometown.

00:16:38.580 The scriptures leave no room for covenant members to live an independent life.

00:16:44.500 If we get hurt, what do we do?

00:16:45.880 We forgive.

00:16:47.580 If we get corrected, what do we do?

00:16:49.260 We receive it in humility.

00:16:50.540 If we offend someone, we repent.

00:16:51.920 if we are concerned about something we talk about it if we're weak we ask for help this is normal

00:16:57.040 covenant life and when you know that then you start to realize oh i can have what my great

00:17:05.680 grandparents had who stayed at the same church for 45 years you can do that you know i know america's

00:17:14.400 pastime a favorite pastime is being offended okay we love being offended

00:17:19.360 not in the church okay your hope and goal and vision is that by God's grace if this church

00:17:28.720 stays faithful to the word of God that you'll be here for decades and your children will be here

00:17:36.940 for decades that's that's the vision multi-generational faithfulness as Corbin said

00:17:43.900 earlier. We don't hope to change Prescott in a week or a year, but maybe in a century

00:17:49.140 through multi-generational faithfulness. Now, sadly, many Christians were not raised

00:17:58.120 by parents who understand the church from a covenantal perspective. And I believe this

00:18:03.980 stems from the great deal of theological illiteracy and biblical amateurism that's

00:18:09.980 the church we just don't have it even most pastors don't grasp how the corporate worship connects

00:18:18.940 to the concept of the covenant they see corporate worship as kind of this means of expressing

00:18:25.100 devotion rather than the means of covenant renewal that's we're going to be talking about today

00:18:32.180 Renewal between us and God and renewal between one another.

00:18:37.880 Now, we can't expect a covenantal mindset in people

00:18:41.600 if the pastor doesn't have a covenantal mindset about the church.

00:18:47.160 And so I'm going to show you guys what corporate worship,

00:18:50.520 according to scripture, is to look like.

00:18:53.820 I want you to see how Sunday, the Lord's Day, connects to the covenant.

00:19:01.180 And this is where the whole Leviticus 9 stuff jumps in.

00:19:05.060 So, yes, that was just my introduction.

00:19:08.080 Covenant renewal worship.

00:19:11.040 In Scripture, worship only occurs in covenant.

00:19:20.220 Okay, there is no worship of God from people outside of the covenant.

00:19:26.000 Doesn't happen.

00:19:27.720 All worship comes from within the covenant.

00:19:31.180 So covenant must inform your worship.

00:19:39.180 Covenant is the guide to how we worship.

00:19:44.180 That is when we worship it should be expressed how?

00:19:46.180 Well through covenant faithfulness.

00:19:48.180 Our praise should be for covenant blessings.

00:19:51.180 Our preaching should be about covenant promises.

00:19:54.180 Our warnings should be about covenant curses.

00:19:57.180 Our communion should be about covenant union.

00:20:01.180 Everything should be wrapped around with a covenant mindset.

00:20:05.360 This is how God's people have always thought about worship.

00:20:11.180 Again, we're so saturated in Americanized individualism

00:20:15.080 that it's so difficult for us to even think covenantally

00:20:19.200 like a first century Christian or an Old Testament Jew.

00:20:24.640 The Lord's Day is not merely a worship service.

00:20:30.140 It's not just like our own localized worship service.

00:20:35.040 It's a weekly ceremony of covenant renewal and celebration.

00:20:39.960 It's a ceremony of covenant renewal and celebration.

00:20:43.380 And it's not just the local earthly event, but a universal and heavenly event.

00:20:47.880 And I don't have time to get way into this.

00:20:52.060 But this isn't just us worshiping.

00:20:55.580 Right now, we are worshiping not with just us, but with also the entire American church,

00:21:02.340 the entire global church that's gathering on the Lord's day, the saints who have already

00:21:07.660 departed, the angels in heaven that are standing before the throne of God.

00:21:11.500 We are worshiping together, according to scripture, all at one time.

00:21:17.560 Hebrews 12, 22 to 24.

00:21:20.060 If you want to follow along, you're welcome to turn there. 0.98

00:21:21.860 it tells Jewish Christians to not go back to Jerusalem for worship.

00:21:34.800 They wanted to go to a place.

00:21:38.280 The author writes in response,

00:21:42.560 but you have come.

00:21:44.660 Okay, just, this is past tense.

00:21:46.960 You got to see this real quick.

00:21:47.860 You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,

00:21:55.320 and to the innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are

00:22:00.740 enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect,

00:22:06.660 and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant. So again, maybe I'll do another sermon on this,

00:22:13.160 but covenantally speaking, when we're here on the Lord's day, when we're worshiping together,

00:22:20.620 we're not worshiping alone, but in spirit, you shall worship in spirit and in truth. We're

00:22:25.860 worshiping in spirit together with all the redeemed, the entire universal church, the angels

00:22:33.380 in heaven. There's so many references of watching, of the angels peering down to watch our worship.

00:22:39.320 The angels, the reason you see some of these ladies wearing head coverings is because there's 0.80

00:22:43.460 a passage of scripture that talks about it as being for the sake of the angels.

00:22:46.480 There is a greater and beautiful and more deep understanding about how the Lord's Day

00:22:51.400 covenantal ceremony is intertwined, not just with the earthly world, but also with the

00:22:57.440 heavenly world.

00:23:00.640 Now, covenant renewal worship, when you think of that term renewal, it doesn't imply expiration.

00:23:08.500 okay that's not what's being said there like oh i need to renew it because it's about to expire

00:23:12.420 that's not what it's saying it simply implies a need for covenant devotion or rededication

00:23:19.700 there's a weekly renewal and a weekly rededication of our covenant faithfulness to god

00:23:29.460 just as a marriage needs a regular renewal of intimacy a covenant faithfulness so the same

00:23:37.540 way our worship needs a renewal a rededication of our covenant faithfulness this is why the lord's

00:23:43.700 supper is the centerpiece of the corporate gathering it's god's means for covenant renewal

00:23:49.140 if you want to know what covenant renewal is just look at the lord's table that's exactly what it is

00:23:53.860 first corinthians 11 24-26 says this is my body which is for you do this in remembrance of me

00:24:03.860 me. This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of

00:24:11.000 me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he

00:24:17.800 comes. The Lord's Supper in the most explicit sense is an expression of covenant renewal.

00:24:24.900 That's what it is. It's a reaffirmation of our covenant status and our proclamation of our

00:24:30.620 covenant-keeping God. That's what you're doing. And I know we live in a casual culture that likes

00:24:36.080 to smash everything that's sacred and beautiful into some sort of scientific nothingness.

00:24:42.240 We like to imagine that everything is just scientific matter, that there's no spiritual

00:24:46.760 world, that there's no demonic realm, that there's no angelic realm.

00:24:51.960 But there is a real spiritual beauty that we have to see here.

00:24:56.360 now i think that we all agree that our worship liturgy should be rooted in scripture right we

00:25:03.600 want to make sure that what we're doing on sunday is actually biblical jesus says again john 424

00:25:11.860 god is spirit therefore his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth there is a

00:25:17.720 requirement for how we should worship romans 12 1 says i beseech you therefore brethren by the

00:25:23.420 mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God,

00:25:28.600 which is your reasonable service. Okay, that word service, that word service is the Greek word

00:25:36.060 literia. And it's actually where we get our English word liturgy. Okay, literia is our

00:25:44.280 order of worship. It's our liturgy. It's what we do when we worship God. And so when you look at

00:25:51.000 new testament and even the early church you can see their liturgy you can see their order of worship

00:25:56.920 their reasonable service to god and it followed the pattern of old testament worship their literia

00:26:06.760 in the early church followed the old testament pattern of worship now yes in the new testament

00:26:15.400 the paradigm of worship has changed. Stay with me, okay? The paradigm of worship has changed.

00:26:22.140 It's transitioned from pointing forward in the Old Testament to pointing backward in the New

00:26:28.280 Testament, from circumcision to baptism, from animal sacrifices to the sacrifice of Christ,

00:26:34.160 from the priesthood to the great high priest, from Passover to the feast of the Lord's Supper,

00:26:38.780 from tithes and grain offerings to giving, from waiting to going. The paradigm shift.

00:26:45.400 but the actual balance is not the underlying principles and structure of worship in the Old

00:26:57.440 Testament have remained the same in the New Testament. And this, of course, makes sense,

00:27:02.860 right? How else would the early church pattern their worship? What else are they going to model

00:27:07.740 it after? They didn't have the New Testament at that point. They're going to model it after the

00:27:10.400 Old Testament scriptures, that's all they had.

00:27:13.520 And so how are they patterning?

00:27:15.500 How are they modeling their worship services?

00:27:19.220 And how does that inform us on how we might model ours?

00:27:24.560 Now the structure of our liturgy

00:27:29.900 and the liturgy that they followed

00:27:31.640 is called covenant renewal worship.

00:27:35.120 You can see examples of this in Exodus 24, Leviticus 9,

00:27:37.980 Deuteronomy 27, Joshua 24, 2 Kings 23, Nehemiah 9.

00:27:42.100 What's interesting is that when you read the epistles,

00:27:44.680 you begin to see how the Old Testament

00:27:48.280 informs the language of the New Testament.

00:27:50.840 You start to see how the Old Testament

00:27:52.520 informs the language of the New Testament.

00:27:58.480 We can see that through the constant references to covenant,

00:28:04.320 through the constant references of sacrifices,

00:28:06.240 throughout the New Testament.

00:28:08.380 We see this in Matthew and Romans and Hebrews and Ephesians.

00:28:10.940 You have to see that in order to understand

00:28:14.980 New Testament worship,

00:28:16.400 you have to understand Old Testament worship.

00:28:21.660 When you look at Leviticus 9 and you go,

00:28:24.140 wow, that doesn't make any sense to me,

00:28:25.780 you are missing a great comprehension

00:28:27.880 of what New Testament worship ought to be.

00:28:30.340 we are what i call whole bible christians okay now in america we have a lot of new testament

00:28:40.680 only christians red letter christians we can see that worship in the new testament was not

00:28:48.140 reinvented pay attention to this statement worship in the new testament was not reinvented

00:28:54.560 it was fully realized. It was not reinvented. It was fully realized. The substance of the shadow

00:29:03.080 had finally come. The symbols now had their significance. Everything that was patterned

00:29:10.340 in the Old Testament, the bulls and the blood and the altar and the sacrifice is now actually here

00:29:16.420 in Christ. It was patterned and it's here. It was shadowed and now it's substance.

00:29:24.560 the promises had now had their fulfillment, but the pattern of worship has not changed.

00:29:33.660 It's not changed. The substance, the paradigm has changed, but the pattern has not changed.

00:29:40.100 There's a biblical interpretation, a principle of biblical interpretation called New Testament

00:29:45.660 priority. It means basically that we should always interpret the Old Testament through the lens of

00:29:53.500 the New Testament because there's more clarity in the New Testament so we could fully understand

00:29:57.780 the Old Testament because it's been further revealed in the New Testament. Augustine said

00:30:03.440 a really amazing quote. It says, quote, the New Testament is in the Old Testament concealed.

00:30:12.380 Okay, the New Testament is in the Old Testament, but it's concealed. The Old Testament

00:30:18.000 is in the New Testament, but it's revealed. Okay, did you grasp that? I'm going to say it one more

00:30:24.900 time so you get it. The New Testament is in the Old Testament, but it's concealed. You can't see

00:30:30.780 it. It's hard to see. There's lack of clarity. There's shadows. There's not substance yet.

00:30:35.600 And the Old Testament is in the New Testament, but it's revealed, clearer. You have the substance.

00:30:42.860 you have the significance, you have the promise. Everything is revealed more clearly.

00:30:50.300 Now, if the New Testament does not provide clarity on a particular Old Testament

00:30:54.500 practice, or if it doesn't find its fulfillment in a New Testament event, it's prudent to assume

00:31:04.920 that the Old Testament practice remains unchanged and we should continue on. We know that the

00:31:11.680 Passover was fulfilled in Christ. So we don't do the Passover anymore. The Lord's table is now the

00:31:19.440 New Testament form of the Old Testament Passover. We don't do that. Now, but my argument is that

00:31:24.860 in the old covenant, children were members of the covenant. There is no explicit information

00:31:32.700 that the children have been removed from the covenant. And so we assume that that just stays

00:31:37.880 the same. Now, the New Testament doesn't offer an explicit corporate worship liturgy. It just

00:31:45.300 doesn't exist. But since the New Testament uses congruent language from the Old Testament,

00:31:54.800 we can assume that the principles and structure of corporate worship

00:31:57.780 from the Old Testament are to remain generally as principles for the New Testament.

00:32:03.100 There hasn't been a clear shift. There hasn't been a clear fulfillment in the sense of

00:32:07.860 yes, the paradigm has been fulfilled, but there hasn't actually been an ordered passage of

00:32:13.060 scripture that says, this is how you are to worship now. And it's different from the way

00:32:18.540 that the Old Testament saints worship. And let me make some more clarity here.

00:32:22.980 I want to talk about principles and structure. And I'm going to get into the meat of this here

00:32:26.180 in a second. I want to talk about principles and structure of the Old Testament covenant renewal

00:32:32.660 worship. And you're going to see exactly how it connects with that order of worship that's in

00:32:37.660 your hand. If you survey the scriptures, the general principles of corporate worship, again,

00:32:47.040 the Old Testament, they're the saints. And how are they saved? By grace, through faith in Christ.

00:32:52.540 The same way that we're saved. They were saved in the Christ that was to come,

00:32:56.080 and we are saved in the Christ that came. But there's Old Testament saints. They weren't

00:33:02.520 saved by works. They were saved by grace through faith in Christ. The same way you're saved.

00:33:06.220 And when they gathered together, they worshiped in a particular order of worship.

00:33:14.040 They had a particular liturgy.

00:33:15.760 And there is some principles and structure that you need to know.

00:33:20.180 And it's the reason that Leviticus 9 felt so overwhelming.

00:33:24.860 It's because you don't understand the principles and structure that is in that passage of Scripture.

00:33:30.960 So, principles.

00:33:32.160 principles. There's three principles that you'll see in Old Testament and New Testament worship.

00:33:40.780 It's remembrance, reflection, and recommitment. Okay, that's the general overarching principles

00:33:48.380 when we come here to worship. It's remembrance, it's reflection, it's recommitment. It's remembering

00:33:55.700 what God has done and what he is doing. It is reflecting on that significance for you and for

00:34:05.020 your future generations. And it's a recommitment, a covenant renewal back to God's work in your life.

00:34:15.700 Now, those are the general principles of covenant renewal. Now, to uphold those principles,

00:34:21.240 the scripture offers a particular structure or liturgy

00:34:24.980 that shepherds the congregation through those principles.

00:34:29.700 Stay with me.

00:34:30.800 For example, so after Leviticus 9,

00:34:33.980 which you guys, we read today out loud,

00:34:35.680 after Leviticus 9, every time,

00:34:39.140 every time the sacrifices are recorded in the Old Testament,

00:34:43.540 they are recorded following that exact pattern.

00:34:48.280 Every time.

00:34:49.340 And it goes like this. Number one, a call to worship. Number two, it's four types of sacrifices.

00:35:00.100 Okay? Really three heavy ones and one minor one. It's a guilt offering, a burnt offering,

00:35:05.360 a grain offering, and a peace offering. Always in the Old Testament in that order. 0.62

00:35:10.040 Always. A guilt offering, a burnt offering, a grain offering, a peace offering. That is the order.

00:35:15.420 And then lastly, they close with a benediction or a blessing of the congregation. That is the

00:35:23.480 structure that you see in the Old Testament. If you were an Old Testament saint, you would know

00:35:28.060 that liturgy like the back of your hand. That is how you worshiped God. When the whole congregation

00:35:34.120 of Israel came together, it would always be a call to worship. And then it would be a guilt offering, 0.51

00:35:40.900 a burnt offering, a grain offering, a peace offering, and a benediction. That is the flow

00:35:45.780 of Old Testament worship. Now, again, our paradigm is different. Throughout church history,

00:35:53.340 Christian worship service have generally followed the same pattern. We are following, 0.67

00:35:59.600 even in our church, you'll see that we follow that exact same pattern.

00:36:05.560 I'm going to break it down for you guys. It's easy to memorize.

00:36:07.960 we're likely actually updating our order of worship soon anyways, just so we can add these

00:36:14.940 words in there to help you remember the structure. It's five C's, five C's, okay? It's call to worship,

00:36:23.520 it's confession of sin, it's consecration, it's communion, and it's commissioning.

00:36:30.460 Okay, we follow this already, but that's just an easy way to memorize this.

00:36:37.000 There's five C's that make up a covenant renewal worship.

00:36:41.120 And I'm going to go through and show you how each of these stages of the liturgy of Christian worship correspond with the Old Testament pattern of covenant renewal.

00:36:54.740 You're going to see this, and I hope that when you worship here,

00:36:58.520 you're going to start to recognize what you're doing.

00:37:02.340 For example, when we had a confession of sin today,

00:37:08.840 and when I gave you the assurance of pardon,

00:37:14.900 the motive for our praise is because of the assurance of pardon.

00:37:22.280 If you're sitting there going, I'm forgiven and I'm not going to sing, you're not getting it.

00:37:30.000 If you're saying I'm forgiven and I'm just going to sit here and

00:37:33.200 that's the disconnect that we need to bring together. So you can see what's happening here

00:37:42.860 is that you're walking in to a ceremony. You're washing yourself clean with a confession of sin.

00:37:50.860 you've been assurance of had an assurance of pardon and you are praising God for it

00:37:56.340 that's one example

00:37:59.700 so a call to worship

00:38:03.800 so a call to worship this corresponds with the prophets the priests the kings the patriarchs

00:38:11.160 calling the congregation of Israel to covenant renewal worship you are going to see this all

00:38:15.820 over the Bible. But if you look to Joshua chapter 24, it's actually titled in your ESV edition,

00:38:22.120 The Covenant Renewal at Shechem. Okay, this is a call to worship. It's calling the congregation.

00:38:30.720 Now for us, this is what we're doing. We're summoning the covenant people of God to a Lord's

00:38:35.560 day ceremony of covenant renewal. Come, let us worship the covenant keeping God.

00:38:41.420 That's what we're doing. I know again, our casual culture just wants to go,

00:38:45.280 just make it nothing.

00:38:49.600 You want to minimize and flatten everything that's spiritual.

00:38:55.360 Next is confession of sin, which we have gone through.

00:39:00.180 The confession of sin corresponds with the guilt offering.

00:39:04.420 You are going to see a direct connection.

00:39:06.340 The correspondence is that the confession of sin

00:39:08.840 is rightly connected to the guilt offering,

00:39:11.900 which in the Old Testament was a spotless animal

00:39:14.500 that was slaughtered in your place.

00:39:17.540 And it was to make restitution for your sin.

00:39:21.220 Now, we don't have to sacrifice an animal

00:39:23.160 because Christ was our perfect spotless substitute.

00:39:29.680 Okay, Hebrews 9.26 says,

00:39:31.480 he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages

00:39:33.760 to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, end quote.

00:39:37.680 so for us the guilt offering is a confession of sin we've just entered the lord's day ceremony

00:39:47.940 we again we washing the hands of our conscience we remove any shadows between us and the lord

00:39:52.060 yes there's no condemnation for those who are in christ jesus we get that but it also says

00:39:56.220 in the scripture that if you have you say that you have no sin that you're a liar and that we're

00:40:00.580 called to examine ourselves before we partake of the lord's table and because of the guilt offering

00:40:06.840 of Christ because of his perfect guilt offering his slaughtering his blood the

00:40:13.860 confession of sin ends with an assurance of pardon he's the propitiation of our

00:40:20.640 sins first John 1 9 says if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to

00:40:25.460 forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness this is Old Testament

00:40:30.300 language you cannot even think about the word cleanse without understanding what

00:40:34.460 it means in the Old Testament. And our response to this assurance of pardon, because of our great

00:40:42.280 guilt offering in Christ, is praise. And it's why we sing. And so if you're not connecting

00:40:49.960 the guilt offering with Christ and the pardon of sin, and that's not motivating you to actually

00:41:01.640 lift your voices, the heavenly courts, you can start to see how you're missing a little bit of

00:41:07.740 what's going on here as a covenant renewal. Next is consecration. It's the third C.

00:41:17.360 And this corresponds with the burnt offering. We read about this in Leviticus 9.

00:41:23.460 Now in a burnt offering, it's sometimes called an ascension offering. It's where the entire animal,

00:41:29.260 except the skin, is burned as a sacrifice. It's trying to express complete devotion to God.

00:41:37.220 It's not focusing so much on the animal, the body. It's focusing on the smoke ascending up to God.

00:41:44.780 It's taking and consuming the entire thing. And all of the smoke rises. In the Old Testament,

00:41:53.220 the whole animal is consumed. The smoke ascends up to God, and God actually consumes the animal.

00:42:02.260 He consumes the substitute. He consumes the smoke. Christ, again, is our burnt offering.

00:42:10.940 He was consumed as a sweet aroma for God.

00:42:16.760 Ephesians 5, 1 through 2 says, therefore, be imitators of God and beloved children,

00:42:20.300 and walk in love as Christ loved us

00:42:23.340 and gave himself up for us

00:42:24.980 a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

00:42:28.540 If you don't understand the Old Testament implications

00:42:30.980 of what is being said,

00:42:31.760 you're going to miss that.

00:42:34.820 If you don't understand that Christ was stripped

00:42:37.540 and laid down and completely burned on the altar for you

00:42:41.180 and the smoke of his perfectly devoted life,

00:42:45.540 complete obedience to the law

00:42:47.040 was rising up into the nostrils of God.

00:42:50.300 for us the burnt offering is laying down our lives because christ laid down his life for us

00:43:00.040 we are dying in that burnt offering with christ paul says in romans 12 present your bodies up as

00:43:08.000 a living sacrifice and be transformed by the renewing of your mind to the will of god okay

00:43:12.800 this speaks again to this concept of consecration the word consecration means to kind of give your

00:43:17.580 life wholly and fully to God. Allowing yourself to be burned up in Christ. In the Old Testament,

00:43:30.060 the ascension offering was associated with a public reading of scripture. You are going to

00:43:34.780 see, if you study the Old Testament, an ascension offering that's being burned up with a reading

00:43:39.520 of the law of God. You're going to see that to be completely devoted to God means also to

00:43:46.340 completely submit to God's word. And so the way that we express our burnt offering in Christ

00:43:54.600 is total devotion. It's receiving God's word and it's submitting to it completely, fully giving

00:44:02.180 our lives over to the word of God. And so in our liturgy, when you see the section where we pray

00:44:10.060 and we devote ourselves to God and I'm preaching the word of God, you as the congregation are

00:44:15.680 giving yourself fully to the word of God. You're allowing

00:44:20.700 yourselves to be burned up in Christ and hearing the law of

00:44:24.080 God, the word of God and say, I'm going to give everything, my

00:44:27.040 whole life to God's word. Next we see communion. Now communion

00:44:41.020 corresponds with the peace offering. Again, we have the guilt offering, right? We have

00:44:47.680 the ascension or the burnt offering. We have then the peace offering. Now, in there,

00:44:55.340 and I'll just say this briefly, we don't do this here at our church, but in the consecration,

00:45:00.060 in the midst of the burnt offering, there then comes what's called a grain offering.

00:45:06.240 Now, a grain offering is the Old Testament equivalent to giving.

00:45:10.220 Okay, you would bring your grains, your tithes to the storehouse.

00:45:14.480 Now, what you have here is full consecration, full giving of yourself includes giving to the church.

00:45:23.680 And so many churches put the offeratory in that section of their liturgy.

00:45:27.800 We have it at the end.

00:45:30.860 But again, communion.

00:45:33.580 So again, we have call to worship.

00:45:35.520 we have confession of sin, we have consecration, and then now we have communion. And this

00:45:42.900 corresponds with the peace offering. Now in the Old Testament, the peace offering, it's a type

00:45:47.660 of burnt offering, but instead of burning the entire animal, you only burn the fats and the

00:45:55.480 organs. You heard about all the lobe of the liver and the entrails and the fat that was at the tail

00:46:00.460 of the ox. It's the best and most prized parts of the animal. You're burning the best to God.

00:46:09.580 You have to understand how this connects here. It says that the priest would then actually,

00:46:15.940 you heard it, throw the blood at the side of the altar, sanctifying and purifying the altar.

00:46:21.380 now the rest of the meat of that sacrifice of that peace offering was shared a portion of it

00:46:32.440 was given to the priests and a portion of it was given to the person that was worshiping

00:46:37.440 and they would eat that with their family in a communal meal so the peace offering you get to

00:46:44.760 actually partake in the offering with god okay this is again an old testament type of the lord's

00:46:52.840 table it's a peace offering and it's exactly what we're doing so for us christ is our peace offering

00:47:01.000 his body was the choice portion okay his blood was thrown at the side of the altar and was

00:47:08.600 sanctifying us and when we express this peace we have now through christ we see that in the lord's

00:47:16.360 supper we come and we partake at the lord's table together with him because we are at peace we have

00:47:22.760 been reconciled through the body and blood of the sacrifice so that's what's being foreshadowed in

00:47:31.960 the old testament it is being completely realized in the new testament we're not just making stuff up

00:47:40.280 over here in the new testament let's just go worship the way that we want to no we're we're

00:47:44.440 taking the old testament prefigured reality that was preparing people for and pointing people to

00:47:53.160 christ and now we're over here we're looking at christ he is fully fulfilled he has realized all

00:47:59.560 All the substance of Leviticus 19 is now found in Christ.

00:48:04.680 And we're now following that pattern.

00:48:09.260 And what is our response to communion?

00:48:11.760 What is our response to knowing that we've been reconciled to the Father through Christ?

00:48:16.240 That he is our perfect peace offering?

00:48:18.140 What do we do after that?

00:48:19.080 Well, we stand up and we sing doxology, which is the Greek word for praise.

00:48:24.100 okay this again if you're just singing and not connecting it to the reality that i have

00:48:30.760 just recommitted my covenant status with god if you're not seeing that there was a peace offering

00:48:36.420 made on your behalf and that the best part of christ was burned up on for your behalf

00:48:40.920 and that his blood was sprinkled to make you pure then your doxology is just going to be lifeless

00:48:48.620 You're not going to recognize that you need to stand and praise,

00:48:52.900 oh Lord, I am reconciled to the Father because of the peace offering of Christ.

00:49:00.180 And last is commissioning.

00:49:04.060 And this corresponds to the congregational blessings

00:49:08.600 where you see the patriarchs, the prophets, the priests, the kings.

00:49:13.880 May the Lord bless you and keep you.

00:49:15.980 You see these throughout the Old Testament.

00:49:17.860 they would pronounce covenant blessings upon the covenant people

00:49:22.740 from the authority of the position that they have now in the new testament for us this is our

00:49:29.200 closing prayer in benediction the lord has called and ordained the ministers to be the overseers of

00:49:37.760 the congregation and to have an authority over the congregation and to proclaim the word of god of

00:49:43.720 blessing over the congregation. And we use what the term, which is called benediction, which is

00:49:48.500 just the Latin word for blessing. And we offer a benediction to the congregation. We pray that the

00:49:55.480 Lord would take you and you would go out and you would fulfill God's commission for this city in

00:50:01.660 your life. That the commission of God would be fulfilled through the means of this church.

00:50:09.040 Okay.

00:50:10.440 I know this is a lot.

00:50:12.660 I want you guys to zoom out for a second, just for a second.

00:50:17.200 And I want you to see how this liturgy,

00:50:20.620 this process of covenant renewal,

00:50:25.100 it upholds the principles of remembrance,

00:50:29.560 reflection, and recommitment.

00:50:32.200 It's upholding that.

00:50:34.080 You're remembering what God,

00:50:35.440 do you remember your life before Christ?

00:50:38.120 Do you remember what God's done for you?

00:50:41.160 Are you reflecting upon that?

00:50:44.020 Can you get to the end of a worship service without a recommitment?

00:50:52.000 The liturgy is shepherding your soul through this process.

00:50:58.700 But it also does another pattern.

00:51:01.600 Another pattern is cleansing and consecration and communion.

00:51:04.960 It's making you clean.

00:51:06.360 It's laying your life down before the Lord, and it's bringing you back in with full communion with the Lord.

00:51:13.940 Now, this is, I think, the crux of everything here.

00:51:17.180 In a sense, covenant renewal worship is a weekly corporate reenactment of your redemption.

00:51:25.820 Do you get that?

00:51:27.360 I want you to see that.

00:51:28.340 That every week when you renew the covenant with God, that it is a weekly corporate reenactment

00:51:39.220 of your redemption. It's a liturgy of gospel renewal. It's a story of guilt to forgiveness,

00:51:48.380 aversion to devotion, separation to communion, cursed to blessed. That is what we're doing here.

00:51:54.920 It's not just some random thing we found on the internet.

00:51:57.580 Say, hey, let's just do an announcement, three songs, a sermon, and then some prayers.

00:52:04.120 No, there is a deep-rooted reality.

00:52:08.940 But if you can't understand the context,

00:52:13.820 the deep historical reality in the Old Testament,

00:52:18.580 the theological depth, you're going to miss most of it.

00:52:23.280 You're not going to see how each part is walking you through your own redemptive story.

00:52:32.340 Now, I know that liturgy, I heard one pastor say, it can kind of feel like I don't want to learn

00:52:40.880 the steps to that very intricate dance at the ballroom with my wife because I'd be so focused

00:52:49.280 on following the footsteps that I wouldn't enjoy just holding my wife.

00:52:56.440 But the reality is, what if you just memorized the dance and you could do both?

00:53:03.660 What if you could memorize the liturgy? So you're not so heavily thinking about, okay,

00:53:09.220 what are we doing now? And what am I doing now? And I can't focus on God because I'm so focused

00:53:12.560 on making sure that I can remember these five C's and how they apply to the Old Testament.

00:53:16.360 what if you just actually study this and you memorize it and you teach it to your children

00:53:22.580 so that the order of worship and the process of worship in this church is a beautiful dance of

00:53:28.680 your redemptive story. And you can love and worship Christ at the same time while having

00:53:33.780 a full and deep and rich understanding of why we do the worship that we do.

00:53:39.860 because when you see the beauty of the gospel unfold stage after stage every single Sunday,

00:53:51.960 you can finally appreciate God's design for order

00:53:57.140 and that what we're doing is not man-made, but it's from God himself. Amen? Amen. Let's pray.

00:54:10.500 Father, we thank you that we are your covenant people

00:54:12.820 and that you are our God.

00:54:16.980 Lord, we ask that you would take this congregation

00:54:18.980 to a depth of covenantal understanding.

00:54:24.680 Lord, that we would see the sacrifice of your son

00:54:28.220 through the stages of our liturgy.

00:54:31.900 That it would shepherd our souls

00:54:34.380 to a greater comprehension of the gospel.

00:54:37.680 that our praise and theology would go higher

00:54:42.260 as our theology went deeper

00:54:43.720 that you would give us a greater love

00:54:49.620 and passion

00:54:51.280 that our families would be deeper

00:54:55.460 and more reverent

00:54:57.480 not for the sake of reverence

00:55:00.340 but Father for the sake of love

00:55:01.600 Father we ask that you would do this work in us

00:55:05.680 that we would be a people that is

00:55:06.900 informed, that we would enjoy the blessing of having a Bible in our hands, Lord, that you would

00:55:16.560 give us a desire to read both Testaments, that we would see how the New Testament is the

00:55:22.020 fulfillment of the Old Testament. Bring us to those deep places, that we would have fervent

00:55:29.800 families that would change this city with the word of your cross. In Jesus' name, amen.

00:55:36.900 Amen.

Dale Partridge - May 30, 2024

The Covenant Home Part 6： Covenant Renewal Worship with Dale Partridge

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