Keystogreatworship
THE KEYS TO GREAT WORSHIP HEBREWS 13:9-16
I hope that you have brought your copy of God’s Word with you this morning. I want to remind you that everything we do around here is based on the Word of God. It is our compass, tool, instrument for doing things God’s way. We try hard not to do things our way, but the Lord’s way. This is why the songs we sing are based on the Word of God. This is why we pray and give is because the Lord has instructed us to do these things. I hope you can see why we put so much emphasis on Scripture. It is the only book that can instruct us in how we are to appropriately respond to the Lord, because of all that He has done for us.
So if you have your Bible, I invite you to turn to the thirteenth chapter of Hebrews. This morning’s sermon comes from this great book that stresses the superiority of Christ over Moses, angels, and the Old Covenant that God gave to the children of Israel. To read this book, I believe is to invoke worship because Christ is the main subject and points us to how He is better than anyone or anything.
I want to begin reading in verse 9 and read through the 16th verse. As we continue our theme for the month on what is genuine and true worship, I believe this text helps us discover some three keys to great worship. But before, I give you the three keys to great worship; you need to know a very important truth or you cannot offer great worship or any form of worship that would be acceptable to the Lord.
In verses 9-14, the writer of Hebrews, who wrote mostly to a Jewish audience (some of which had accepted Christ, others who knew Christ intellectually, but not in the heart, and those who have completely rejected Christ). In these verses, encourages his readers and us that a relationship with the Lord is our only reason for worship.
RELATIONSHIP IS OUR REASON TO WORSHIP – 9-14
In the previous chapters, the writer is building a case for why Christ is superior over those who have gone before and over anything that has gone before. Now, in chapter 13, he exhorts his audience to consider their actions in light of the truths that have been expounded upon.
In the first five verses of the chapter, he gives the practical side to Christianity. You see Christianity is not a passive religion in that you believe a few facts. No, Christianity is about a transformation that takes place in our hearts because of what Christ has done for us. Therefore, it will help us be better neighbors, better ministers, better family members, and better stewards. And we do all these things with the promise and help of God, who promises never to leave us or forsake us. So if we believe these promises of God by faith, then we will live a transformed and normal Christian life.
In verse 7, the author of this letter encourages his readers to remember their leaders, who have taught them the Word of God and modeled the Christian life before them. Can I say that we ought to learn from those who have gone before us in the faith and learn from their experiences in the Lord? For you, it might be a family member; he could be a good friend, or a pastor or Sunday school teacher or even curling up with a great biography of those in the faith. There is much to learn from those who are consistent and constant in their faith.
Yet, in verse 8, he says the things you were taught in the past by the great leaders about Jesus had not changed. Remember, Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Jesus is unchanging or if you want a technical word, immutable. He is the same today and in the future as he was in the past. There is nothing in his character or essence that will evolve over time or dissolve over time. Jesus is an eternal being, unlike us who are created. In other words, he has always been, is and will continue to be.
These statements lead us to our text this morning and the presence we need in our lives in order to properly worship the Lord. As the writer of Hebrews explains in verse 9, he says in knowing that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever, then don’t think the teaching about him has changed. The message you received when you first believed has not changed just like Jesus has not changed. Christianity is built upon the truthfulness of God and we know from the Bible that God cannot lie nor will ever lie because he can’t. It is impossible for him to do so.
Evidently from reading verse 9, there is some type of strange teaching that was impacting the church and it had to do with food. So we read that our hearts are to be strengthened by grace, not foods. Let me ask you a question “Is your heart strong?” Now, I am not talking about your physical heart. Not that organ which beats inside the walls of your chest. No, I am speaking and the author of this letter is speaking about the inner man. The part of you that thinks, feels, grieves, rejoices, rages and trusts. So is your heart strong? Does it have the strength to be the kind of person that is described in the first five verses? This has nothing to do with the power to put on a show or the ability to clean the outside of the cup and leave the inside filthy, dirty like the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. This is strength that comes from the inside and cleans up the outside naturally.
So verse 9 tells us where to turn and not to turn to have this kind of strength. He says be strengthened by grace, not foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them. So in other words, don’t go after alien teachings that promote diet or certain foods. Remember the Jews had dietary laws and certain things were declared clean and unclean. So there were individuals promoting this kind of teaching, even when Jesus said it is not what goes into the body that defiles, but that which comes from the heart. Instead feed on grace day after day, morning and night.
John Piper, in a sermon, instructs us how we ought to do this? How do you do that? If you don't eat food to strengthen your heart, how do you eat grace? If you wake up in the morning and feel guilty and defiled because of something ugly you did yesterday, or you feel like a failure because of how poorly something went yesterday, what do you do? The "strange teaching" might say, "Eat a good breakfast. Get the right nutrition pumping through your blood. Do some exercise and get out into the sunlight." But God says, "Get your heart strengthened by grace. On a morning like that, eat grace for breakfast."
We can feed on grace because of what verse 10 says. “We have an altar from which serve the tent have no right to eat.” What does this mean? Well, the writer takes us back in to the life of the priests in the Old Testament in Jerusalem. Those who have not received the Messiah (Jesus) continue serve the tabernacle, which was meant to point to the final sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Instead these have rejected Christ and continue to serve something that is of no benefit for them.
So this verse declares where we are to go to get this grace. The altar is a reference to the cross on which Jesus died for our sins. It is there that forgiveness and hope is offer. So instead of going to the kitchen for some type of food to settle your guilt, go to the cross where grace is dispensed. It is only through the cross that grace is offer and not through works or diets or even the law.
As we continue to read in verse 11, the writer directs us to the most important day on the Jewish calendar which is the Day of Atonement. He explains that on the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16, after the blood of the sacrificed bull and goat is taken into the holy of holies, and sprinkled there to cover the sins of the people, the bodies of the bull and the goat are taken outside the camp and burned (Leviticus 16:27). "For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest as an offering for sin, are burned outside the camp." The point he is making is that these sacrifices are not eaten, as with some other sacrifices. The nourishment the people received on the Day of Atonement was forgiveness and hope, not meat.
Yes, but all of that was meant to point to Jesus, the final sacrifice for sin. There was a lesson in that. The writer draws out the comparison in verse 12: "Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate." In other words, Jesus has fulfilled the sacrifices of the Day of Atonement; they are completed in him; they find their final meaning in him. And the meaning is: All there was to eat on the Day of Atonement was forgiveness and hope. That's all there is to eat from the altar of Calvary where the body of Jesus was consumed with suffering.
So the point is: When you feel like a failure, when you feel discouraged and hopeless and dirty, don't turn to food. It's an alien remedy, and verse 9 says, it has not benefited those who walk in it. It only makes things worse. Instead go to the altar of grace. We have an altar. And there is food. And the food is grace - the grace of forgiveness and the grace of hope. The only way to be strong is to come back to this table again and again.
The only way for us to have our heart strengthened by grace is not by works or some religious system or following a set of rules; it is only by going to the altar (the cross). It is the only help to make us better in every aspect of our lives. We must continually feed upon the altar of grace. So in order for us to worship well, we must have a relationship. If you do not have this relationship, then you cannot offer the sacrifices that are pleasing to God. With helping you understand the only One who can help us from our failures and disappointments, let us look at three keys to great worship.
KEY #1 – THE SACRIFICE OF PRAISE
So in understanding the sacrifice of Christ on the cross of Calvary, now we can better respond to God because of what Christ has done for us. He has established a relationship with us through his Son by offering us forgiveness and hope. In receiving this grace, God now shows us how to respond to it. You need to keep in mind that the Old Testament was built around sacrifices in the Tabernacle and Temple, which pointed those early believers to Christ. And in the New Testament, the new way is built around sacrifices, but of a different kind. For the Old Testament it was the bringing in of an animal, but in the New Testament we do not bring animals. We offer our bodies as living sacrifices to the Lord (Romans 12:1).
So one of the sacrifices we offer to the Lord because of the great sacrifice of God through his Son to establish a relationship with us is to give the sacrifice of praise. One of our duties as a Christian is to praise the Lord continuously with our lips. In other words, we stand in awe of God.
If your heart is not amazed by the grace of God, and your mind is not gripped by the truth of God, and your sense of right and wrong is not permeated by the justice of God, and your faith is not resting in the power of God, and your imagination is not guided by the beauty of God, and your life is not steadied by the sovereignty of God, and your hope is not filled with the glory of God, then the service of God will be what Paul calls works of the law, and not the fruit of the Spirit. Work for God that is not sustained by wonder at God is a weariness of the flesh. – John Piper
Here we are told that the sacrifice of praise is the fruit of lips. Fruit, as we know, grows naturally when the sap is flowing within. In the same way, praise ought to be natural to the believer because He resides inside of them. Jesus said some honor him with their lips, but their heart was far from him. So the connection is that the fruit of lips is an outcome of a heart that has been touched by God.
God says that our lips should acknowledge his name. What this means is that we are to speak and praise the Lord with real sounds and words. And we are to do this continually. This is not a one-time offering. It is not a Sunday morning offering or when I am around God’s people type of offering. No, it is continual 7/24 thing. Now this does not mean after every sentence we utter we are to say praise the Lord or Hallelujah. But we are to continually offer praise to God.
Yet, most Christians live somewhere beneath what this text says should happen. God gives us this experience not as a bad or impossible thing. If we want this, this text says we can have it. We meet on the Lord’s Day, not to be seen by others or great each other. We sing songs and offer prayers not to be heard by each. No, we gather on the Lord’s Day to meet with God. The hymns and choruses sung are to encourage you to praise God. The sermons preached are there to help you better praise the Lord. So we are to offer the sacrifice of praise, which is the first key to great worship.
KEY #2 – THE SACRIFICE OF A SHARED LIFE
In verse 16, we read “do not neglect to do good and to share what you have.” Not only are we to offer a life of praise to the Lord, but we are not called to live in a vacuum. In other words, it is unbiblical to say that Christianity is a private thing. Well, in a sense it is private because only you can decide to follow Jesus, only you can decide to pray or read the Bible or witness. But the Christianity that I read in the Bible is public. Why would Jesus say you are a light, which should not be hidden under a basket; or salt; if it never touches anything and only kept in its shaker? Christianity is a shared life with others. This is why there are 31 one another’s mentioned in Scripture. This is why the Bible describes the church as a flock, or body, or fellowship, or family.
So as Christians we are to do good and share what we have. How? All you have to do is look at the first few verses of this chapter. You see the Bible says that we are to live other people. I am sure you might have heard the acrostic for JOY (Jesus, others, yourself). We ought to be the type of people who look for opportunities to help others.
Living a holy life consists of loving the Lord with heart, soul, and mind, and of loving one’s neighbor as oneself. The early Christians illustrated their love for the
Lord by devoting themselves to the teaching of the gospel, the worship services, communion, and prayer (Acts 2:42). But they also showed their love for their fellow man by sharing everything they had (Acts 4:32). In fact, they took care of the poor so that “there were no needy persons among them” (v. 34). Love for the Lord has its counterpart in love for the neighbor. These two go hand in hand. When we say that we love the Lord, we must be ready to help our neighbors in need. This is what the Macedonian believers did. Says Paul, “Entirely on their own, they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service [showing generosity] to the saints” (II Cor. 8:3–4).
The way we do this is at MCBC is to plug into a small group, so you can discover what each other’s needs are. So if you are not attending Bible Study, I encourage come next week an hour early and find a class that can share their lives with you and you can share your life with them. The second key is the sacrifice of a shared life.
KEY #3 – THE SACRIFICE OF SUFFERING
Look at verses 13-14. Jesus said the same thing in Luke 9:23, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will save it." Being a Christian means following Jesus, and following Jesus means going with him to Calvary—outside the camp. Following Jesus means that we might suffer for Him. Are we willing to do so.?
For the Jew, going outside the camp was to leave the comforts of tradition and rituals and ceremonies and going to Christ by risking expulsion, alienation and even persecution for following Christ.
For us it is different. It is denying self and taking up our cross to follow Him. It is the idea of being hated by the world because their sins are exposed by our lives and testimonies. You see Christians are not taken out of the context of a sinful world, but remain in it to be a witness.
Do you not what that means? It means we go sometimes into the unknown, the dangers that surround us everyday and tell them about Jesus. It is getting out of our comfort zone. Outside the camp is where all the unreached people of the world live. We as evangelicals, Christians in the west this means we are willing to bear his reproach. Moses chose to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt.
The reason we are willing to suffer is because here there is no lasting city but there is a city yet to come that is and we should seek it. Hebrews 11 is a list of heroes of the faith who sought a better country, known as a heavenly one. In fact, the Bible says that the world was not worthy of such individuals.
The thought that Christians are only called to live and work where it is safe is not a biblical thought. Biblical thinking proceeds on the assumption that we are all called to follow Jesus outside the camp where there is reproach and danger. It may be the risk of ostracism and scorn at your work. It may be the risk of egg on your face at school. It may be the pain of misunderstanding from an unbelieving relative. So we can go outside the camp and bear the abuse he did or we can be disobedient to the Great Commission.
As I studied these verses they remind me of the way we are suppose to fulfill our mission statement of reaching Sylacauga to love God and to love others. The sacrifice of praise is helping ourselves and others to exalt the Savior through worship; the sacrifice of the shared life is the same as equipping the saints to do the work of the ministry through small groups, and the sacrifice of suffering is evangelizing the lost through Tuesday night visitation or mission’s opportunities.
As we close, I want to show you something of utmost importance that will help us offer these sacrifices in being pleasing to God. It is found in verse 15 in two words THROUGH HIM. All Christian worship is worship THROUGH JESUS. Why is this crucial? Because we are sinners. And we have no access in ourselves to God. But personal, heart-felt praise can't be sustained if you feel that God is against you and not for you. A heart of praise is sustained by the smile of God, not by his frown.
How then shall sinners like you and me offer in the presence of a holy God a continual sacrifice of praise? The answer is THROUGH HIM—through Jesus. It's all there in verse 12: "Jesus suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood." Sanctified for what? For entering the presence of God. "Christ died for sins once for all the righteous for the unrighteous that he might bring us to God" (1 Peter 3:18). "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). "Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies; who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus who died . . . " (Romans 8:33f.).
Jesus is the smile of God. He invites you to come to God through him this morning for salvation and from then on to offer a sacrifice of praise, the sacrifice of the shared life, and the sacrifice of suffering.