The Covenant Home Part 6： Covenant Renewal Worship with Dale Partridge
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Summary
This is the final sermon in our six-part series on the Covenant. In this sermon series, we will cover the basic framework of covenant theology, the role of fathers and mothers, and the roles of husbands and wives in the covenant of marriage. We will also discuss how the covenant and family are woven together in the Covenant of Grace.
Transcript
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Turn with me to Leviticus 9. We'll be reading Leviticus 9 in preparation for the sermon text
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this morning. Leviticus chapter 9, hear the word of the Lord. On the eighth day, Moses called Aaron
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and his sons and the elders of Israel. And he said to Aaron, take for yourself a bull calf
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for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering, both without blemish, and offer them before the
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Lord. And say to the people of Israel, take a male goat for a sin offering and a calf offering
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and a lamb, both a year old without blemish for a burnt offering and an ox and a ram for peace
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offerings to sacrifice before the Lord and a grain offering mixed with oil. For today the Lord will
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appear to you. And they brought what Moses commanded in front of the tent of
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meeting. And all the congregation drew near and stood before the Lord. And Moses
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said, This is the thing that the Lord commanded you to do, that the glory of the
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Lord may appear to you. Then Moses said to Aaron, Draw near to the altar and offer
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your sin offering and your burnt offering and make atonement for yourself
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and for the people and bring the offering of the people and make atonement for them
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as the Lord has commanded. So Aaron drew near to the altar and killed the calf
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of the sin offering, which was for himself. And the sons of Aaron presented the blood to him
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and he dipped his finger in the blood and put it on the horns of the altar and poured out the blood
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at the base of the altar. But the fat and the kidneys and the long lobe of the liver
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from the sin offering, he burned on the altar, as the Lord commanded Moses.
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The flesh and the skin he burnt up with fire outside the camp.
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Then he killed the burnt offering, and Aaron's sons handed him the blood,
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and he threw it against the sides of the altar.
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And they handed the burnt offering to him, piece by piece, and the head,
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And he washed the entrails and the legs and burnt them with the burnt offering on the altar.
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Then he presented the people's offering and took the goat of the sin offering that was for the
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people and killed it and offered it as a sin offering like the first one. And he presented
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the burnt offering and offered it according to the rule. And he presented the grain offering,
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took a handful of it and burnt it on the altar besides the burnt offering of the morning.
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Then he killed the ox and the ram, the sacrifice of peace offerings for the people.
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And Aaron's sons handed him the blood, and he threw it against the sides of the altar.
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But the fat pieces of the ox and of the ram, the fat tail and that which covers the entrails
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and the kidneys and the long lobe of the liver, they put the fat pieces on the breasts, and
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But the breast and the right thigh Aaron waved for a wave offering before the Lord, as Moses commanded.
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Then Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them.
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And he came down from offering the sin offering and the burn offering and the peace offerings.
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And Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting.
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And when they came out, they blessed the people.
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And the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people.
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And the fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the pieces of fat on the altar.
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And when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces.
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Believe it or not, by the end of the sermon, you guys are going to understand that passage in Leviticus 9.
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And so I know we can look at passages like that and go, wow, what does that mean?
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How can we make sense of the bloody mess of the Levitical priesthood?
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We finally arrived at the final sermon of a six-part series on the covenant home.
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And we've covered the basic framework of covenant theology.
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Covenantal headship through male representation of responsibility.
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We talked about the roles of wives, the roles of husbands.
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We talked about having a covenantal mindset on parenting.
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Today, we are going to discuss how the covenant of grace, the covenant of marriage, the covenant
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of the family are woven together in the covenant of the church.
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You're going to see it all kind of climactically come together in this process.
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The first is covenant cancer, and the second part is covenant renewal worship.
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I really do believe that this will change the way you view the order of worship at a church.
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My expectation is that you will learn things that you may have never heard before in a Christian church.
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As I've emphasized over this series, individualism is a cancer to the covenant.
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Okay, when you're in covenant with Christ, you're in covenant with one another.
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So just because we're in covenant with Christ, that means that we're in covenant with one another.
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Our emphasis on autonomy can make covenantalism even feel cultish to our American culture.
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Wait, you guys are covenantal? What does that mean? You're accountable? You are connected?
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You're devoted to one another? That feels a little bit cultish to me. It feels a little bit too much
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controlling to me. We're so acclimatized to independence that we can't even handle
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interdependence. We can't handle a real accountability or devotion to one another.
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Many Christians have bought into this idea that God has an independent or private relationship
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with just you, kind of apart from the local church. It's this individualized thinking.
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We peddled this idea of a personal relationship with Jesus for like four decades now, and it's so
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deeply entrenched into our American Christianity that it's left Christians saved, separated,
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and weak. That is exactly what the result has been. We've forgotten that God's promises to
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his people are covenantal, not individual. Yes, there's an individual portion of your
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relationship with God, but the promises are covenantal, not individual. We've forgotten
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that scripture has defined god's people as a body and as a flock and as a building and as a bride
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okay we've forgotten that the lord's prayer begins with our father who is in heaven not
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my father who is in heaven there is an absolute usness that is in biblical thinking we've
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neglected the idea of seeing ourselves as brothers and sisters who have been adopted
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into a covenant family. You can drink, I mean, let me rephrase it this way. You can't drink of
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the covenant of the cup of the Lord's Supper on Sunday, and then the rest of the week act like
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you're a free agent. You can't do that. You can't bear the sign of the covenant baptism on your body
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and then isolate yourself from the body of Christ.
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You're not your own free agent, autonomous, independent individual
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You're accountable then to the covenant people of God
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Proverbs 18.1 says of the independent man or family,
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it says, whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire.
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You want to know why those people who can't seem to commit to any sort of long-term anything?
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It's because they seek their own desire. When a man isolates himself, he seeks his own desire.
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He goes on to say he rages against all sound wisdom. The local church is not another club
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or homeschool group that you join where engagement is optional. That's not what this is.
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This isn't like I show up as long as my Little League
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and I have nothing better to do, I'll be there.
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around the worship in the covenant community of the church.
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the primary means of edification instruction fellowship encouragement for your family
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it's where all the covenant blessings flow you want to see a guy who follows christ who has a
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terrible life he's probably not connected to a local church i can't tell you how many times
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people come up to me with their problems and i'm like are you a member of a church
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no we don't really go to church it's like you you're expecting to grow and to be sanctified
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and encouraged and to be edified and and to be corrected and be to be blessed and to be guided
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and to be educated but you're not in a church where all of those things actually flow you don't
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prioritize that and then you're coming to me or some other person complaining that your life is
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not looking like the scriptures and you don't know why it's a very strange perspective to have
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have. If the church was a trunk of a tree and Christ was the roots, according to scripture,
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we're not independent sticks and leaves. That's not what we are. Okay, we are one organism. We're
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drawing strength primarily from the roots, but particularly from the branch that you are attached
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to. Okay, yes, we are primarily pulling our strength from the roots, but you're connected
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to this branch, in this town, in this church, with this community. That's where your little twig
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is grafted in. We're all pulling from the roots, but just like a twig or a limb cannot bear
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physical fruit if it's disconnected from the branch, we cannot expect a believer to bear
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spiritual fruit apart from the local church the body of christ does that make sense the point i'm
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trying to make is that god's ordinary means for dealing with his people is not apart from the
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church it's through the church it's not apart from the church it's through the church we live in a
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time where everybody has their own independent worship oh i do this and i do that and i listen
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to this podcast and that sermon over here and i i have this bible reading and i i have this group
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over here and no those are not church your men's group's not church your bible studies not church
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your family worship's not church this is church there are primary elements there's there's elders
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there's the lord's supper there's the sac or the sacraments there is a commitment it's on the
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lord's day there are so many qualifiers according to scripture what makes church church swimming
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is not getting baptized and drinking wine on the weekend is not doing communion why
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well because it's not actually in alignment with what we see in scripture we know we're at church
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here we are submitting ourselves to the covenant gathering the ceremony of the church now we can
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see god using ordinary means all the time um how do people get saved through the preaching of
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the minister or the preachers we are sanctified and edified by the work of pastors and teachers
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we receive the grace of the sacraments at the hands of the ministers we are exhorted by christians
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brothers and sisters in addition you constantly see the relational order and interdependence we
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are all to submit to christ husbands are to leave their homes wives are to submit to their husbands
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children are to obey their parents christians are to submit to one another there is a constant
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interdependentness throughout the scriptures that you cannot even for a moment think of a framework
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where you are an autonomous isolated christian it just doesn't fit with the scriptures
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for just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body though many
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are one body so it is with christ for in one spirit we are all baptized into one body
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jews or greeks slaves are free and we are all made to drink of one spirit
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in the old testament the prophet malachi says the church quote have we not all one father
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has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless towards one another, profaning the
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covenant of our fathers? Now I say this to clarify that you are not each in an independent covenant
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with God. Okay. The church is in covenant with God and you are one member of the church.
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It's a different perspective. It's slight distinctions that really help us understand
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this. Your relationship with God cannot be seen as independent from your relationship with the
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church. It's just impossible. Yes. Again, I'm not saying that you don't have an individual
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or personal dimension with God. You do. Your devotion, your prayer life are certainly
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individualized, but they are not isolated or segregated from your covenant life.
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they they work in tandem with it uh scripture gives us instruction for the covenant life
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it says confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed
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bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of christ address one another in psalms and hymns
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and spiritual songs therefore encourage one another and build another up be devoted to one
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another in love and honor one another above yourself be kind to one another tenderhearted
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forgiving one another as christ forgave you there are over 100 one another's in the new testament
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how many of those do you actually fulfill on a regular basis
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like the assumption of the new testament is your living life together multi-generationally
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deeply connected the church having people over for dinner not just seeing them once a week you are
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in each other's lives that is the assumption of the new testament in fact a lot of people read
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the new testament they go wow those people are close and then they look at their life and they
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go wow my life is not close with anybody and they get depressed and they wonder why am i not
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experiencing the new testament christianity and they realize oh it's because i don't have a great
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church and finally by god's grace the church is waking up and we're having people move from all
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over the country to find a godly church it is worth moving heaven and earth to find a godly church
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We have five families right now that are considering relocation to come here.
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We have more families moving here than people finding us in our hometown.
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The scriptures leave no room for covenant members to live an independent life.
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if we are concerned about something we talk about it if we're weak we ask for help this is normal
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covenant life and when you know that then you start to realize oh i can have what my great
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grandparents had who stayed at the same church for 45 years you can do that you know i know america's
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pastime a favorite pastime is being offended okay we love being offended
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not in the church okay your hope and goal and vision is that by God's grace if this church
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stays faithful to the word of God that you'll be here for decades and your children will be here
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for decades that's that's the vision multi-generational faithfulness as Corbin said
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earlier. We don't hope to change Prescott in a week or a year, but maybe in a century
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through multi-generational faithfulness. Now, sadly, many Christians were not raised
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by parents who understand the church from a covenantal perspective. And I believe this
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stems from the great deal of theological illiteracy and biblical amateurism that's
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the church we just don't have it even most pastors don't grasp how the corporate worship connects
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to the concept of the covenant they see corporate worship as kind of this means of expressing
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devotion rather than the means of covenant renewal that's we're going to be talking about today
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Renewal between us and God and renewal between one another.
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Now, we can't expect a covenantal mindset in people
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if the pastor doesn't have a covenantal mindset about the church.
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And so I'm going to show you guys what corporate worship,
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I want you to see how Sunday, the Lord's Day, connects to the covenant.
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And this is where the whole Leviticus 9 stuff jumps in.
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Okay, there is no worship of God from people outside of the covenant.
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That is when we worship it should be expressed how?
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Our preaching should be about covenant promises.
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Everything should be wrapped around with a covenant mindset.
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This is how God's people have always thought about worship.
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Again, we're so saturated in Americanized individualism
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that it's so difficult for us to even think covenantally
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like a first century Christian or an Old Testament Jew.
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The Lord's Day is not merely a worship service.
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It's not just like our own localized worship service.
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It's a weekly ceremony of covenant renewal and celebration.
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It's a ceremony of covenant renewal and celebration.
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And it's not just the local earthly event, but a universal and heavenly event.
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Right now, we are worshiping not with just us, but with also the entire American church,
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the entire global church that's gathering on the Lord's day, the saints who have already
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departed, the angels in heaven that are standing before the throne of God.
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We are worshiping together, according to scripture, all at one time.
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If you want to follow along, you're welcome to turn there.
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it tells Jewish Christians to not go back to Jerusalem for worship.
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You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,
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and to the innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are
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enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect,
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and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant. So again, maybe I'll do another sermon on this,
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but covenantally speaking, when we're here on the Lord's day, when we're worshiping together,
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we're not worshiping alone, but in spirit, you shall worship in spirit and in truth. We're
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worshiping in spirit together with all the redeemed, the entire universal church, the angels
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in heaven. There's so many references of watching, of the angels peering down to watch our worship.
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The angels, the reason you see some of these ladies wearing head coverings is because there's
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a passage of scripture that talks about it as being for the sake of the angels.
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There is a greater and beautiful and more deep understanding about how the Lord's Day
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covenantal ceremony is intertwined, not just with the earthly world, but also with the
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Now, covenant renewal worship, when you think of that term renewal, it doesn't imply expiration.
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okay that's not what's being said there like oh i need to renew it because it's about to expire
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that's not what it's saying it simply implies a need for covenant devotion or rededication
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there's a weekly renewal and a weekly rededication of our covenant faithfulness to god
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just as a marriage needs a regular renewal of intimacy a covenant faithfulness so the same
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way our worship needs a renewal a rededication of our covenant faithfulness this is why the lord's
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supper is the centerpiece of the corporate gathering it's god's means for covenant renewal
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if you want to know what covenant renewal is just look at the lord's table that's exactly what it is
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first corinthians 11 24-26 says this is my body which is for you do this in remembrance of me
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me. This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of
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me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he
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comes. The Lord's Supper in the most explicit sense is an expression of covenant renewal.
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That's what it is. It's a reaffirmation of our covenant status and our proclamation of our
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covenant-keeping God. That's what you're doing. And I know we live in a casual culture that likes
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to smash everything that's sacred and beautiful into some sort of scientific nothingness.
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We like to imagine that everything is just scientific matter, that there's no spiritual
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world, that there's no demonic realm, that there's no angelic realm.
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But there is a real spiritual beauty that we have to see here.
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now i think that we all agree that our worship liturgy should be rooted in scripture right we
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want to make sure that what we're doing on sunday is actually biblical jesus says again john 424
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god is spirit therefore his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth there is a
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requirement for how we should worship romans 12 1 says i beseech you therefore brethren by the
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mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God,
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which is your reasonable service. Okay, that word service, that word service is the Greek word
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literia. And it's actually where we get our English word liturgy. Okay, literia is our
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order of worship. It's our liturgy. It's what we do when we worship God. And so when you look at
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new testament and even the early church you can see their liturgy you can see their order of worship
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their reasonable service to god and it followed the pattern of old testament worship their literia
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in the early church followed the old testament pattern of worship now yes in the new testament
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the paradigm of worship has changed. Stay with me, okay? The paradigm of worship has changed.
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It's transitioned from pointing forward in the Old Testament to pointing backward in the New
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Testament, from circumcision to baptism, from animal sacrifices to the sacrifice of Christ,
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from the priesthood to the great high priest, from Passover to the feast of the Lord's Supper,
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from tithes and grain offerings to giving, from waiting to going. The paradigm shift.
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but the actual balance is not the underlying principles and structure of worship in the Old
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Testament have remained the same in the New Testament. And this, of course, makes sense,
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right? How else would the early church pattern their worship? What else are they going to model
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it after? They didn't have the New Testament at that point. They're going to model it after the
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And how does that inform us on how we might model ours?
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You can see examples of this in Exodus 24, Leviticus 9,
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Deuteronomy 27, Joshua 24, 2 Kings 23, Nehemiah 9.
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What's interesting is that when you read the epistles,
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We can see that through the constant references to covenant,
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We see this in Matthew and Romans and Hebrews and Ephesians.
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we are what i call whole bible christians okay now in america we have a lot of new testament
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only christians red letter christians we can see that worship in the new testament was not
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reinvented pay attention to this statement worship in the new testament was not reinvented
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it was fully realized. It was not reinvented. It was fully realized. The substance of the shadow
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had finally come. The symbols now had their significance. Everything that was patterned
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in the Old Testament, the bulls and the blood and the altar and the sacrifice is now actually here
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in Christ. It was patterned and it's here. It was shadowed and now it's substance.
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the promises had now had their fulfillment, but the pattern of worship has not changed.
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It's not changed. The substance, the paradigm has changed, but the pattern has not changed.
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There's a biblical interpretation, a principle of biblical interpretation called New Testament
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priority. It means basically that we should always interpret the Old Testament through the lens of
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the New Testament because there's more clarity in the New Testament so we could fully understand
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the Old Testament because it's been further revealed in the New Testament. Augustine said
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a really amazing quote. It says, quote, the New Testament is in the Old Testament concealed.
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Okay, the New Testament is in the Old Testament, but it's concealed. The Old Testament
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is in the New Testament, but it's revealed. Okay, did you grasp that? I'm going to say it one more
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time so you get it. The New Testament is in the Old Testament, but it's concealed. You can't see
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it. It's hard to see. There's lack of clarity. There's shadows. There's not substance yet.
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And the Old Testament is in the New Testament, but it's revealed, clearer. You have the substance.
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you have the significance, you have the promise. Everything is revealed more clearly.
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Now, if the New Testament does not provide clarity on a particular Old Testament
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practice, or if it doesn't find its fulfillment in a New Testament event, it's prudent to assume
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that the Old Testament practice remains unchanged and we should continue on. We know that the
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Passover was fulfilled in Christ. So we don't do the Passover anymore. The Lord's table is now the
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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.
00:33:15.760
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.
00:33:32.160
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.
00:34:39.140
every time the sacrifices are recorded in the Old Testament,
00:34:43.540
they are recorded following that exact pattern.
00:34:49.340
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,
00:37:14.900
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
00:38:03.800
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,
00:38:49.600
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.
00:39:06.340
The correspondence is that the confession of sin
00:39:11.900
which in the Old Testament was a spotless animal
00:39:23.160
because Christ was our perfect spotless substitute.
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.
00:42:16.760
Ephesians 5, 1 through 2 says, therefore, be imitators of God and beloved children,
00:42:28.540
If you don't understand the Old Testament implications
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
00:42:50.300
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.
00:45:35.520
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.
00:48:11.760
What is our response to knowing that we've been reconciled to the Father through Christ?
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.
00:49:04.060
And this corresponds to the congregational blessings
00:49:08.600
where you see the patriarchs, the prophets, the priests, the kings.
00:49:17.860
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.
00:50:12.660
I want you guys to zoom out for a second, just for a second.
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.
00:51:01.600
Another pattern is cleansing and consecration and communion.
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.
00:51:28.340
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.
00:52:13.820
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
00:54:16.980
Lord, we ask that you would take this congregation
00:54:24.680
Lord, that we would see the sacrifice of your son
00:55:01.600
Father we ask that you would do this work in us
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.