Our readings for this evening has a little bit of a change because of Mr. Olbermann's wonderful explanation of Exodus 19 where Moses and the Israelites were at Mount Sinai. I won't read them. Instead, I will read our text in Hebrews 12, 18 to 29, and then continue on to chapter 13, where I will be reading just selected verses. So, this is the word of the Lord. And by the way, it feels to me like I am continuing on the sermon this morning. Believe me, Mr. Oberman and I did not exchange notes. So, Hebrews 12, 18, and then all the way to chapter 13, verse 18. You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire, to darkness, gloom, and storm, to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them because they could not bear what was commanded. If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned. The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, I am trembling, we fear. But you have come to Mount Zion, to this heavenly Jerusalem, to the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, How much less will we if we turn away from Him who wants us from heaven? At that time His voice shook the earth, but now He has promised, Once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens. The words, once more, indicate the removing of what can be shaken, that is, created things, so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. Chapter 13 Keep on loving each other as brothers. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners and those who are mistreated as if yourselves were suffering. Marriage should be honored by all and marriage bed kept pure. For God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have. Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. Verse 13. Let us then go to him, Christ, who is outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come. through jesus therefore let us continually offer to god a sacrifice of praise the fruit of lips that confess his name and do not forget to do good and to share with others for with such sacrifices god is pleased obey your leaders and submit to their authority they keep watch over you as men who must give an account obey them so that their work will be the joy not a burden for that will be of no advantage to you. Pray for us. We are sure that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honorably in every way. Congregation of Christ, why do you come to worship every Lord's Day, Lord's Day after Lord's Day? Is it out of habit or tradition? Is it to gather together with family and friends? Is it to make you feel good? Have you ever wondered what really happens during a worship service and why our worship is so different from all the rest of other churches? In many churches today, some people come to see and hear entertaining music and informal chatty talks. Some say the purpose of worship is to save sinners. Others say the purpose of a worship service is to teach us how to live Christian lives. And still others say that the purpose of a worship service is to encourage the people to be involved in the betterment of the community. But our text this evening says that we gather to worship a holy and merciful God. We have to worship Him joyfully and revelantly and to encourage us to live a life of thankful obedience. Tonight we will look at how Moses and the Israelites worshipped in the wilderness in the Old Testament and how we as the kingdom people of God are to worship God today. So in looking at our text, I will read it again in Hebrews 12, 22-24 and then 28-29. It says, But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. And then 28 and 29, Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful. And so, worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for God is a consuming fire. And so, in looking at these verses, we will study these three things. Firstly, worship is a heavenly gathering on earth. Worship is only through the blood of Christ, secondly. And thirdly, worship is with thankfulness, reverence, and obedience. So worship a heavenly gathering on earth. Worship is only through the blood of Christ. And worship is with thankfulness, reverence, and obedience. Hebrews, as we learned this morning, as we heard this morning, is an exposition of how God's salvation plan unfolded from inferior types and shadows in the Old Testament to superior fulfillment. And the climax of this plan of salvation is the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is superior over all creation. He is superior to angels. He is the great high priest. He is superior to Moses. He is the mediator of a better covenant. He is the superior sacrifice. And he is the superior temple. So since Jesus is the superior prophet, priest, and king, it says in Hebrews 10.19 that we have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus. And when we enter the most holy place for worship, much more is happening than what we see here, today, tonight. God brings heaven down to us. In last Sunday's sermon, we learned that worship, the worship service, is a foretaste of heaven. This doesn't mean that we worship actually in heaven. We are transported physically. No, it doesn't mean that way. It means, though, that we worship by faith, spiritually, in heaven. We join a heavenly assembly in a heavenly worship. We worship together with our brothers and sisters and with thousands and thousands of angels in praise of the Lamb that was slain. But we can't see or hear any of them. We can only see and hear ourselves. This is a mystery which only God's Word reveals to us. In verse 22, it says, But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. Our text points to a contrast between worship at Mount Zinai and worship in Mount Zion. In the Old Testament, the Israelites first worshipped at Mount Sinai where Moses entered the presence of God in the mountain. It was a terrifying sight as we learned this morning. It was with lightning, thunder, darkness, with a loud voice, a loud trumpet. But in the wilderness, they also built a tabernacle so that they can worship there. Centuries later, King Solomon built a temple in Jerusalem. And the temple was built on a hill, on a mountain called Mount Zion. Psalm 48 calls Mount Zion the holy mountain or the city of the living God, the city of our God. Today when we gather for worship, we don't worship in an earthly Mount Zion in Jerusalem. And we worship in a heavenly Mount Zion. So our worship is a heavenly gathering in a heavenly Mount Zion, in a heavenly city called Heavenly Jerusalem. The Psalms and the prophets mention Mount Zion about 150 times in the Old Testament. And it looked forward to the coming of Christ to establish His temple, not on Mount Zion, but to the ends of the earth. Psalm 48, verses 9 to 10, speaks about this. Psalm 48, 9 to 10. Within your temple, O God, we meditate on your unfailing love. Like your name, O God, your praise reaches to the ends of the earth. Your right hand is filled with righteousness. Mount Zion rejoices, the villages of Judah are glad because of your judgments. And so, in the wilderness, God, Moses and the Israelites worship in fear. But here, on our worship, we do not worship in fear. we must not think that this is only Old Testament stuff because our God, the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament, it is the same unchanging, holy and merciful God. This is why Hebrews 12, 28, 29 says that let us worship acceptably with reverence and awe for God, our God is a consuming fire. This is a quotation from Deuteronomy. Our text in verse 22 says that we join thousands and thousands of angels in joyful assembly. Psalm 2.11 says, Serve or worship the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. And another psalm says in 96.9, Worship the Lord in the splendor of His holiness. Tremble before Him all the earth. So, if we link these verses together, we can see that our joy must be tempered by reverence and awe for God. Because He is a consuming fire. So, but how do we worship in both joy and reverence? Some people criticize Reformed worship, such as ours, as being like a funeral service. And sometimes we think that it is an insulting word to say. But one Reformed writer says that, yes, our Reformed service is like a funeral service. In what way? Because when we go to a Christian funeral service, we mourn over the dead loved one, a friend or a family member. We mourn with them. When we come to a funeral service, also we share in the joy when the dead saint is a Christian, the dead person is a Christian, we share in the joy that he is together with our God in heaven. In the same way, our worship service today is like a funeral service. We mourn over our sins. We grieve because Christ sacrificed His life for our sins. And at the same time, we rejoice that He rose from the grave, that because of that we are also firstborns who will be raised from the dead. And we are heaven-bound like the loved one who died. Our worship then is a balance between joy and reverence. When we sing praises, songs of praise and thanksgiving, we are to sing to the Lord with cheerful voice. Him serve with mirth, His praise foretell. Come ye before Him and rejoice, as the hymn writer says. When we hear God speak to us in scripture reading and in preaching, we are to be filled with reverence and awe for Him and His word. So when we gather for joyful and reverent worship, we're not just gathering before an earthly judge. Verse 23 says that we have come to worship God, the judge of all. We gather before an eternal heavenly judge who will judge all mankind in the end. But for his people, he doesn't come, we don't come to a God who sentences us to death. in the prison of hell. We come to a God who declares us believers as not guilty because Christ has been pronounced guilty in our place. He comes alongside us so that he will be our mediator. And that's why verse 24 says that we have come to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant. So heavenly worship focuses not only on our felt needs or on our feelings and desires. Our worship should focus on the risen Christ. He leads us in worship as our great high priest. We heard that this morning. He is our high priest interceding for us before God. He not only links us with all the angels in heaven and with our heavenly Father, but He links us with all other believers in the world and in heaven, those who departed before us. Verse 23 says that we have come to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven, and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect. So when we are gathered together this evening, we are just but a small part of all those who gather on the Lord's day from all over the world, from all tribes and nations and languages. And because we are firstborns, we inherit, we shall inherit that heavenly city. But not only that, we are also gathered with all the saints who are now in heaven, the spirits of men made perfect. Those who went before us in all the ages, they are made perfect, not because of their own works, but because of faith in Christ. This means that on the Lord's Day, Worship connects us with our Reformed Fathers of the past who are now in that heavenly city. And if we share the same historic Reformed worship that they had during their time, we sing the same songs that they have sung for hundreds of years. We pray the prayers that they prayed. We hear the same word that they heard. We partake of that same Lord's Supper that they partook. And that joyful and reverent Lord's Supper is only possible because Jesus Christ shed His blood on the cross, which leads us to our second point. Worship is only through the blood of Christ. And so when we worship, we not only center on Christ, we not only center on His majesty and glory and His victory, we also focus on His saving sacrifice for us. Our text says in verse 24 that when we gather for worship, we worship Christ who has sprinkled this blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. At Mount Sinai, all the people couldn't even come close to the mountain to worship because they will die. Moses had to sprinkle them with the blood of the animal sacrifices so that they can come near the mountain. And so they worshiped God in fear and trembling. Today, we don't worship in fear and trembling. We can enter God's most holy presence, not only in reverence and awe, but also with confidence and full assurance of faith. Because Christ, who is our sinless high priest, is in heaven interceding for us as sinners, as Hebrews 10, 21 and 22 says. Since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart of full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with water. So dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we cannot truly worship God apart from Christ who has sprinkled us with His blood. But Jesus does not sprinkle our bodies with His blood. He sprinkles our hearts to cleanse us from sin. The shedding of Christ's blood is so much different from the shedding of the blood of Abel. What did Abel's blood cry out? He was murdered by his brother Cain. And so, his blood was crying out for vengeance, for vindication. But Christ's blood doesn't cry out for vengeance. The blood of Christ cries out and speaks of grace and forgiveness of sins. And that's why our great high priest is said to be a once and for all sacrifice. He has already done and fulfilled all the sacrifices that God required. But our sacrifices are not sacrifices of bulls and goats. They are sacrifices of thanksgiving, prayer, songs, offerings. They are sacrifices of a daily obedience to God's word. Because to obey is better than sacrifice. To obey is better than sacrifice. Which brings us to our third point. Worship is with thankfulness and reverence. In verses 25 to 27, God has a serious warning to everyone. Let me read that again. see to it that you do not refuse him who speaks if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth how much less will we if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven at that time his voice shook the earth but now he has promised once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens. The words once more indicate the removing of what can be shaken that is created things so that what cannot be shaken may remain. So are you going to reject God's salvation in His Son Jesus Christ? Are you going to refuse the word of the God who speaks to you in His word? If the rebellious Israelites did not escape judgment and punishment in the wilderness how much less will you escape judgment if you reject and despise his word the terrors of Mount Sinai will be nothing compared with the coming judgment on those who reject him in that coming judgment not only the earth will be judged and will be shaken but also the heavens will be dissolved No earthly kingdom will escape judgment. Only the kingdom of God will not be shaken. And so our question this evening is, are you a citizen of that unshakable heavenly city? So if you are not, God's shaking will be your terrifying end. But you can be a citizen of the kingdom by putting your faith and trust in our Lord Jesus Christ. But if you are a kingdom citizen, God has some words of challenge for you. In our text, it says, Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe for our God is a consuming fire. Let us be thankful and let us worship God acceptably with reverence and awe. So there are two things, two challenges. So the first challenge is this. Let us offer acceptable worship to God with reverence and awe. Acceptable worship that is not created by our sinful minds. Worship offered to please and praise God and not to please our own feelings and desires. In our arts and sciences in this world, creative minds are very useful. They are good. But in worship, John Calvin says that our creative minds are idol factories. Our creative minds are idol factories when it comes to God. And so this is true for all of Israel's history. And it's still true today for all of us. God found Cain's creative worship unacceptable. God found Israel's worship in the wilderness when they made a golden calf unacceptable. We've been studying the book of Judges and we learned that Israel continued in their unacceptable idolatry. And all of them suffered judgment and punishment for their disobedience. While serving as a missionary in the Philippine Missionary High School last year, there was a series of seminars at the school called Creative Worship. Creative Worship, what a dreadful thing. Last Sunday evening, we were reminded of Israel's great sin of creative worship as prostituting themselves to the Baals. Creative worship is prostituting ourselves with the bales. What if God called us the same horrible name because we lust after worldly music? We lust after the dramas and the informal talks and all the other forms of entertainment to use them in our creative worship. So we are to offer acceptable worship, but how do we know what is acceptable? This morning, we learned that the Word of God is sufficient for us to know what is acceptable worship, what is an acceptable life in Christ. And we are warned repeatedly in the Scriptures not to add or subtract anything. In Revelation 22, 18, it says that if anyone adds anything to the words of this book, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. So all that we think, all that we do, and all that we say in our worship must be according to the word of God. Beloved friends in Christ, if our worship is different from all others in the world, then the world will see. They will see our worship. If we pray and read and sing scriptures, if we sing only psalms and other scriptural songs, if we preach the gospel faithfully, if we administer the sacraments faithfully, then they will come, but maybe not by the dozens as we might wish, but those who truly seek the Lord to worship Him in spirit and in truth, in joy and in reverence, they will come. And we see this in our own congregation that the true worshippers of Christ seek churches who worship in spirit and in truth and in joy and reverence. The second challenge is this. Shouldn't the benefits of the kingdom persuade you to live a life of thankful obedience to God? And if so, Hebrews 13, we read, shows what kind of life you are to live in, thankful obedience to God. There are many things that the preacher mentioned in Hebrews 13, and I would point out some of those to you. Examine yourselves with these questions. Do you love your brothers and sisters in Christ? Do you show hospitality to strangers who visit the church? Do you pray for believers all over the world who are persecuted and in prison? Do you honor your marriage by being faithful to your spouse? Do you treasure heavenly things, more than earthly things? Do you imitate faithful, godly men and women in the church? Are you faithful to the reformed doctrines our forefathers handed down to us? Are you willing to suffer humiliation, even persecution and death for Christ's sake because you look forward to that heavenly city? Do you proclaim the praise of God to the world? Do you get weary doing good and sharing what you have? Do you submit to and pray for your elders and pastors who keep watch over your souls? In other words, our catechism concludes this in question 86, summarizes this in question 86, that because Christ has redeemed us by His blood, our whole life must show ourselves thankful to God for His benefits, That by our godly walk, our neighbors also may be won for Christ. And so, dear people of God, let us not think that the worship service is a dull ritual. Let us not think that our worship service is not as exciting as others. That our worship service should be an evangelistic crusade. Let us remember that we are to offer acceptable worship with reverence and joy and in thankful obedience to God. Let us remember that when we gather, we gather with angels, we gather with all believers of all ages, we gather with our Lord Jesus Christ and we gather before our Heavenly Father, our holy and merciful God. So, let all revere His holy name in heaven above and earth below. Through endless ages, sound His praise. And so knowing this, that in eternity, we citizens of heaven will sing, Hallelujah! For the Lord our God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exalt and give glory to his name. Let us pray. We thank you, Lord, that you have revealed to us how we are to worship you and how we are to live thankful lives. May this knowledge transform us into living sacrifices So that we may be transformed by the renewing of our minds. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.