Turn together in our scriptures to the second book of the Bible, Exodus, and the 28th chapter. We shall read the verses 31 through 39. Exodus 28 from verse 31, this is the word of God, listen as he speaks. Make the robe of the ephod entirely a blue cloth with an opening for the head in its center. There shall be a woven edge like a collar around this opening so that it will not tear. Make pomegranates of blue, purple, and scarlet yarn around the hem of the robe with gold bells between them. The gold bells and the pomegranates are to alternate around the hem of the robe. Aaron must wear it when he ministers. The sound of the bells will be heard when he enters the holy place before the Lord and when he comes out so that he will not die. Make a plate of pure gold and engrave on it as on a seal holy to the Lord. Fasten a blue cord to it to attach it to the turban. It is to be on the front of the turban. It will be on Aaron's forehead, and he will bear the guilt involved in the sacred gifts the Israelites consecrate, whatever their gifts may be. It will be on Aaron's forehead continually, so that they will be acceptable to the Lord. Weave the tunic of fine linen, and make the turban of the linen. The sash is to be the work of an embroiderer. Thus far God's word, and the grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God does abide forever, and God will add his blessing to his word. Well, the story of Christianity is a story of conflict. Our teacher this morning taught us that we should expect human conflicts, interpersonal conflicts, but the story of the Christian church is one of ecclesiastical conflicts. Throughout our history, we have struggled over this doctrine and that doctrine. The creeds that we appreciate and recite so often in the back of our Psalter hymnal are developed out of such conflicts in order to point the way to the orthodox and biblical expression of the Christian faith. The Reformation itself, that part of the history of Christianity to which we look and from which we gain so much insight and appreciation into God's Word itself is drawn out of the conflicts of the church and certainly out of the conflict concerning worship. We were rather amazed in some sense and not so much in another sense as one of the sisters and I were walking back over here after the Sunday school class to see how the teacher, Dr. Godfrey's lecture this morning dovetailed with what we have said and will say this hour, Lord willing. And then as he announced his sermon, gave a teaser to try to get everyone to come back, certainly for the second service, that it will apparently dovetail again this evening. Worship is a conflicting area in our day. Dr. Mike Horton frequently writes about the worship wars that take place. And isn't it sad that the very act in which the church is called to practice, to participate, the act of worship has turned into a field of conflict, a field of battle. We would find the right way. We would listen to God and see what he would have to say to us in order that we might, at least in our own hearts and possibly in our own congregations, find as pure a way of worship as is possible for us. So this morning we're going to talk about worship, not private worship, but that best worship which a Christian offers in the company of the saints and the gathering of the congregation on the Lord's Day. Corporate worship, the worship in and with the saints of God, the congregation, the worship that is in Jesus Christ. We want to think together about worthy worship, and we'll do so, Lord willing, by three ways. In the first way, we want to think about worthy worship being mindful of the purity that's required of the worshipers. And secondly, worthy worship requires that we be mindful of the provision of God for his worshipers. And finally, that worthy worship requires that we be mindful of the person whom we praise and worship. So we worship God. We seek to worthily worship Him, and to do so we must be mindful of the purity God requires that He demands on the part of His people. We're told in the last book of the Bible that the redeemed before the throne of God will sing a new song. They sing a new song saying, You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, For you were slain and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You, God, are worthy of the praise of the church. You're worthy of the praise of the world, of the universe. The word worship, as you likely know, comes from a root word that means worthyship. God is worthy of the worship and praise of us, his church. Over and over again throughout the Psalms, the psalmist sings of this same idea. I will call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised, he sings in Psalm 18. The same sentiment is echoed in the 48th Psalm. Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. That same phrase in Psalm 96, in Psalm 113, we're told that from the rising of the sun to its going down, the Lord's name is to be praised. We'll come back to this thought in a few moments, Lord willing, but we needed to lay out a foundation for our consideration of worship at this point. We come to worship God, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, because God deserves it. He deserves, he is worthy of the praise of his church. But we need to consider, by way of looking into the explanation of the meaning of our scripture text for this morning, Just who it is that may worship. And more particularly, what are the qualifications required of those who do worship God? Now, right after the giving of the Ten Commandments, as they are recorded this first time, as we've read just a few moments ago from Exodus 20, at the beginning of the wilderness wandering, the very beginning of those 40 years of the Exodus, God gave detailed explanations to his people for his will for their lives. He gave certain very specific laws, and he laid down for his people how to live before him. This is the subject of the 22nd verse of Exodus 20 and following. He speaks of the law of the altar, the law of servants in chapter 21, and following that he speaks of the law of violence and the law of animals and the law of property and on and on. You may notice, if you think about it, that these first laws particularly refer to what we're used to speaking of as the second table of the law. That is, the love your neighbor as yourself commandments. Then, beginning in the middle of the 23rd chapter of this book of Exodus, the Lord began to give specific laws that would, if obeyed, keep an Israelite in right standing before himself. There was the law of the Sabbath, the law of feasts, and so on. These were the laws reflecting the first table of the law. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and strength. God then, by way of very specific rules for the building of the tent of meeting, that is the tabernacle, the sanctuary, began to define the precise manner and means in which he was to be approached by his people. At the end of this, in this 28th chapter, from which we just read, God describes to the minutest, to the tiniest detail, the garments that the Aaronic priests were to wear. They were to wear these when they came into the holy place and into the holy of holies, especially on that great day of atonement. The first thing we would have you note about these things, both the application of the first table and of the second table of the law, is that there was not one item, absolutely nothing in all of these things left to the creativity or imagination or artistic abilities of the Jews. Not the congregation, not Heron, not even Moses. It was all to be done as God detailed it. We point out the purpose of all these details of the priestly garments from the breastplate to the ephod, the blue sash, the blue robe rather that was worn under the ephod, the tunic and the turban and the crown on that turban and the sash. That purpose, we point out now, is stated in verse 2 of our 28th chapter. You may look there with me. The commandment is to make sacred garments for your brother Aaron, literally holy garments, to give him dignity and honor, literally to give him glory and honor. These are to be holy, sacred garments. That means garments that have been set apart from common use. They're not worn in any other time. They're only to be used in the worship of the tabernacle and later of the temple. Notice that this dignity here, our NIV, I think is a little misled. The dignity is not for him, not for Aaron. It's not Aaron's dignity. It's not any of the priest's dignity that is in view. It is the Lord's alone. The clear teaching of Scripture is that God will not share his glory, and that's the literal word used here, with another. The honor, another translation of that word is beauty, by the way, isn't to enhance the beauty of the one who wears the robe or the priest, but to point to the beauty of our God and Savior. On the forehead of the priest, attached to his turban, as we've read in our passage, there was a golden band, really a crown, and on it was to be written, Holy to the Lord. But look again, will you, at the reason that this holy to the Lord engraving is there. Verse 38, it will be on Aaron's forehead and he will bear the guilt involved in the sacred gifts of the Israelites. The sacred gifts of the Israelites consecrate, whatever their gifts may be. It will be on Aaron's forehead continually so that they will be acceptable to the Lord. All these details, not one fraction of an inch of the entire construction of anything from the tent of meeting to the various smallest details of the priest's garment, was left to human imagination or creativity. All the beauty, all the glory, all the symbolism of everything to do with approaching God is there, given by God. And for what purpose? We're told that what the children of God are going to then bring in the midst of all that symbolism and beauty is their guilt. Literally, the text reads their iniquity, their sin. All the beauty laid upon them and built around them to demonstrate their guilt. After all this, when the priest comes into God's presence, he wears right on the front of his mind, as it were, the confession and the acknowledgement that the very best he or anyone else will ever offer is filled with sin, guilt, iniquity. We're not going to get into the issue at this point in our sermon with the difference between the worship of the Old Testament Israel and the new Israel of God in the church today. We'll come to that in part in a few moments, Lord willing. But look at this principle with me, will you, that is an abiding principle for the church as she was then and is now. Isaiah the prophet said to us in the 64th chapter of his prophecy, We are all like an unclean thing. All of our righteousness is like a filthy rag. We all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, there's the same word, like the wind, have taken us away. I can almost hear some thoughts. Wait a minute, that's Old Testament stuff. Well, yes, but remember the Apostle Paul said exactly the same things in Romans 3. For instance, at verses 10 through 16, 10 through 18, we read, As it is written, there is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. So much for seeker services. When I said that this morning, I was rebuked gently by a sister who said, Well, then how can we reach out to the lost? The Word of God is powerful to save. No one seeks after God, the scripture says right here. It is God who seeks his worshippers. And when he does, he finds Romans 10 through the preaching of his word. Surely we need not go on into the many other verses in the New Testament that prove our point that there's no worthiness on our part, that our best worship is filled with sin. What was so graphically presented right there on the forehead of the high priest is also indelibly printed on the mind of a believer. He and she are sinners. A great Scottish preacher, Robert Murray Machine, once said that his best worship was so filled with sin that he needed to repent of his sinful worship. And he said, even my repentance is so filled with sin, I need to repent of my repentance. And he said, my tears of shame over my sinful repentance needs to be repented of because I'm so filled with sin. If so for him, certainly for us. Among the many other things to be learned from that profound response of our Savior is he met that woman of Samaria by Jacob's well, recorded there in the fourth chapter of John's Gospel. is that great declaration that our Savior made. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship him in spirit and in truth. Brothers and sisters, no matter how often this verse is twisted and turned away from its basic, plain meaning, this point cannot be taken away. Our Lord Jesus teaches us the absolute need for purity in worship. It's impossible to truly worship Christ, to worship God, Spirit, Father, Son. Whether you take this Spirit here with a little s, as the translators of the NIV do, or with a capital S, meaning in the Holy Spirit, as I believe is the better meaning, it's impossible to worship in Spirit and in truth without worshiping God according to His truth, His objective truth, through His Spirit's revelation in the Word of God. In other words, Christian worship must be holy, holy, worthy worship. And we New Testament Christians are as unholy in our worship as were the Jews. We leave this point for our next, mainly that worthy worship requires that we be mindful of the provision of God for his people. The Jews are well known to have been a stubborn and stiff-necked people, as the prophets so often said. But let's be honest, not unlike us, are they? They and we are rebellious and stubborn and stiff-necked. Over and over again, the Jews promised and they re-promised and promised yet again that everything that God had said in his law, they would do. You remember Joshua, after they made that last covenant with him and the Lord, and they said, we'll do it. He said, you cannot do it, for you are a stubborn and a stiff-necked, rebellious people. When God called Moses up on the mountain to receive the tables of the law, God's people said, everything the Lord has said we will do, but they didn't, and we don't either. And so all they could do, when or if the Lord truly touched their heart, is the same that we must do when the Lord touches our heart. And that's to confess with our brother, the Apostle Paul, as he writes as a Christian from Romans 7, at verse 23, I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? So let's not wander too far from the priest's garment. Let's look again. There was that plate, that golden band, that crown on the high priest's head. It read, Holy to the Lord. And with it, the admission, the confession and the recognition that the iniquity, the guilt, the sin of the holy things that the children of Israel offer to God are filled to the full. It's as if God constantly reminded the Jews by saying, or rather asking the question, do you faithfully give your tithe, Israel? It's still full of sin. Do you faithfully keep the appointed feast, Israel? It's still full of sin. Do you faithfully pray, Israel? It's full of sin. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The brother said so rightly this morning, and what a message the church needs to hear today. We live in such a day of casualness, or, as Dr. Godfrey said, a buddy approach to God. Everywhere we turn, we see God brought down to our level so that we may be made comfortable with him. We're convinced that this is a fruit of the egalitarianism begun in the French Revolution and finding ripe fruit in our land today. Everything controls that. We've brought the preacher down to everybody's level so he's a man just like us so we don't really have to listen to his opinion either. And we've brought God down and we no longer have awe of his presence. We're no longer trembling with joy because of his salvation. There's no longer true reverence in worship in so much that's called the church today. In any gathering of the church today, we readily, too readily see among us, And far too often don't we find in us, at best a lukewarmness, and so often the iniquity of hypocrisy, the iniquity of hearts, far from God carrying out ritualistically religion with little awe and reverence. It's true, we have to confess it. We need to repent, and then with Brother Mishane, repent of our repentance. For we, too, sin. We're no better than ancient Israel, are we? What God said to them through the prophets, when he said, I hate, I despise your feasts, he could well say to us in our day. But there's good news. There's good news here. Here's the good news for us sinful, hypocritical, new Israelites. Aaron may bear the guilt. Look again at that priestly garment. There on the bottom of the priest's robes were those pomegranates. I'll be honest, I don't understand. Maybe Dr. Godfrey will teach me the symbolism of them. But I do understand the bells. Those little golden bells. Verse 35, Aaron must wear it when he ministers. The sound of the bells will be heard when he enters the holy place before the Lord and when he comes out so that he will not die. The ministry in view was especially that great day of Yom Kippur, the great day of atonement, after he had offered sacrifice for his sin and for his family's sin and then he offered the sacrifice for the sin of all the people of Israel, the blood of the Lamb. The blood of the Lamb was carried into the Holy of Holies to be sprinkled on the mercy seat of the altar. When that most holy deed was done, when God had received that offering, when the Israelites heard the tinkling of the bells, they knew that the high priest still lived. Therefore, God had accepted again their sacrifice and covered their sin. Keep in mind it was with great solemnity, great awe, and great reverent fear that the high priest each year entered into that Holy of Holies. He would never walk through the front door, if we may speak that way, and just saunter up to the mercy seat. No, he fed his way around the outskirts, along the wall, with fear and with trembling because he was in the presence of God Almighty. Has God changed? Is this God now, today, in the words of the other President Bush, a kinder, gentler God? I am the same. I do not change. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today and forever. Even the most sinful, hypocritical, liberal priests down through the years when he entered that holy of holies did so with fear and trembling. So you read in the historians of the Jews the people waiting expectantly outside knowing their sin just as we do though we cover it up in our Sunday best suits though we cover it up with our religious facade our masks of faith but we know and they knew their hypocrisies. They knew their own spiritual dullness and laziness. But they knew that they needed to hear that for the sake of the blood of the Lamb they had been forgiven. And so when they heard that tinkle, tinkle, tinkle of the little bells at the bottom of the hem of the garment, they would say, He's coming out. He was not struck dead. Our sacrifice has been accepted. Again, verse 35, Aaron and his sons must wear them whenever they enter the tent of meeting or approach the altar to minister in the holy place so that they will not incur guilt and die. You see, it wasn't without purpose that the sons of Aaron, including Nadab and Abihu, We're mentioned at the beginning of this 28th chapter of Exodus. Remember that they, that is Nadab and Abihu, would later offer unholy worship and praise to God in unholy fire. And God did not tinkle their bells, but drove them to death. But here we read that when God has accepted the sacrifice, the priest is not struck dead in the presence of God but he lived God accepted the offering they were declared forgiven this is God's provision for his people which must then lead us finally to hear about the fact that worthy worship requires that we be mindful of the one whom we worship or the person whom we praise we took note at the beginning of our sermon of the glory and the beauty of all the priestly garments, as well as all the other details within the tabernacle and then later in the temple. All the items that were set apart for the purpose of worship of God, that they weren't for their own sake. They were not for the aesthetic appreciation of the congregation of Israel. They were not set there for the beauty of an artist's work to be set up for all to see. They weren't for the glory and honor and pomp and circumstance of the priesthood, but they were all, all to point to the glory and honor of God. The book of Hebrews so well explains all these details that we need not even refer to a specific part. You can think, for instance, of the eighth chapter. And the writer of Hebrews says, The point of what we're saying is this, that we do have a high priest who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven, who serves even now in the heavenly sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by men, our Lord Jesus. And we come before God in the name of that high priest. In him we must worship. We must have that same awe and reverence that typified the Old Testament saints, and yet with the confidence and knowledge that because our high priest, though he was struck dead for our sin, he yet lives. And the bell of his grace rings out across the centuries even to us today. Jesus, our high priest, is the one who's gone through the heavens, Even gone to that place where he bore the iniquity, not merely of old Israel, but of the whole world that sits and groans yet today under the weight of sin. And he bared there on that cross the iniquity of the sons and daughters of men. And he went to death. But death did not hold him. He broke death's strong bond, as we read again this morning. The resurrection was the testimony that the high priest now reigns and rules forever. And he is alive and he is seated at the right hand of the majesty on high. And we await his return in glory as the church. That golden band, that crown that declared holy to the Lord, you remember, was replaced by a thorny crown. that thorny crown thrust upon his brow that drew his sacred blood. On Jesus' mind, you see, was the thorny issue of the sin of men that he would atone for. He would bring to that cross, on his mind and heart, the names of every single man or woman or boy and girl that God has elected from eternity and would save through his blood. The Jewish high priest prayed first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people. Our high priest Jesus took our sins upon himself and he yet makes intercession for us. With this mind, we may offer worthy worship. Will you? Let's pray. Father, we confess that what we do is to offer sin. But we confess the sinless one is the one whom we lift up. We confess his shed blood is our righteousness. His holiness, our holiness. We don't bring anything in our hands, Father, but we bring him. Because you have granted us to believe, to know and love. So therefore, receive your due in Jesus, we pray. Amen. Thank you.