Please join your hearts and mind now in prayer as we ask the Lord’s blessing upon the reading of the sermon text and the sermon to follow and your reception of that word preached to you. Let’s pray once more.

Our great God and heavenly Father, we praise you again that you indeed have not only come and accomplish what needed to be done to give us life, that you saved us, that you applied that by your spirit in time, and that you have given us life, given us hearts that beat for you. And we pray, Lord, as we come to this word, inscripturated and preserved by you through time, we pray that we would hear it receptively, Lord, and hear it with hearts that are ready and willing to believe. Dear Lord, we do truly bask in the privilege of your presence as we worship together now. This truly is a mysterious work that’s beyond our comprehension, but we praise you for it and we thank you that you call us to do just that. And we pray that you would meet with us now as we come to you once again, Lord. And we ask, speak, for your servants are listening. And all God’s people said, amen, amen.

Take your scriptures now and turn to Hebrews. We got a text for this morning, Hebrews chapter 12. We’re trying to do a resetting, beginning our year, looking at worship. Last week and this week and next week probably we’ll wrap it up. But Hebrews chapter 11, as we reorient and reframe ourselves, just what are we doing? What are we doing here? It’s easy to forget. It’s easy to be torn down by the world. the lies that it tells. Hebrews chapter 12, please give your full attention now.

This is the reading of God’s word, starting at verse 18. God’s word says, for you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further message be spoken to them. For they cannot endure the order that was given. If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned. Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I tremble with fear. But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, to heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks better, a better word than the blood of Abel. See that you do not refuse him who is speaking, for they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. At that time, his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens. This phrase yet once more indicates the removal of things that are shaken. That is things that have been made in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.

The word of the Lord. Amen. Please be seated. Well, we are deep into January, the first month of the year. And as some of you may know, January takes its name from Janus, the god in Roman mythology. And Janus was the god who looks both ways, right? And so it’s a beginning of the year. And we’re looking back to what has happened and forward to what is to come. As I mentioned last week, it is the beginning of the year and all the relatives have gone home. The wrapping paper is cleaned up and the tree is put away. We’re getting back to our normal lives. And as we do so, we realize very quickly the struggles and difficulties and pains of life are still here. And it’s important that we, as God’s people, look back at what God’s done, right? We’re told in scripture again and again to remember, to remember the work of the Lord. We’re also to look forward to what’s ahead and to his promises for his people, ultimate promises for the future and close promises for the right now in our lives. Promises that though we return to our lives full of brokenness and stress in this fallen world, that God will be with his people to dwell forever with them in glory and to sustain them through life in this pilgrim land, even here and now. One of the gracious and wonderful ways that the Lord does this, that he strengthens and teaches and sustains us, is through what we’re doing now, corporate worship. Week by week, as his gift and his grant to us, a foretaste of glory. And that’s what it is, a foretaste of glory. And so I wanted to begin, as I had said, this year, looking again at this key part of our Christian lives, corporate worship, worship as the people of God assembled before Him. As I said, I’ve tried to do this every year, most years, by refocusing on the worship of the church. And I don’t think it can be overstated, or we could reflect too much on how important and incredible the gift of worship is for His people together on His day. It’s good to be regularly reviewing what we believe and why we do what we do. So I wanted to take these couple of weeks at the beginning of 2025 to reset for us, or maybe for the first time, look at what Hebrews calls acceptable worship. And I wonder if you’ve ever thought about that, this text, this little phrase in Hebrews. What is acceptable worship? What does that even mean? Or if there’s even such a thing as acceptable worship. You know, many people in many churches don’t really think in those terms. They would be hard pressed to say that any worship is unacceptable. But clearly the Lord is making a distinction in his word here in Hebrews. Is there such a thing as unacceptable worship? Are there types of worship that regardless of good intentions would be unacceptable? Well, if you look at Hebrews 12, 28, we have to conclude that there is acceptable worship, and there’s worship that is unacceptable. Because if there’s no standard for us to know acceptable from unacceptable worship, it ends up coming down to what? It’s what you feel like doing, right, from what you feel like. And that’s the popular view, of course. Just be sincere or really mean it, and that’s the That’s the threshold. It’s not merely a matter of appropriate instruments or hymns or songs or the age of the music. It’s much bigger than that. Much more comprehensive, much more overarching. So we don’t want to get bogged down in this this morning and those issues. Not that they’re unimportant, but they’re not all important. They are more downstream to what is truly and really important. And the important question is that we have to ask, what does God expect and what does he accept? What is acceptable from us in corporate worship? What is acceptable worship? Last week, we looked at the pattern of worship that we find in God’s word, from the sacrifices to the temple, to the covenant that was made. We’re gonna approach this question this morning by looking at Hebrews 12, as we have just heard, to see what we can learn further about Worship, what is it that God expects and what does he accept in worship? Just what are we to do? What are we doing in worship? And I pray that as we look at this, we’ll see that corporate worship is altogether amazing. And I hope you will see that, that is altogether awesome, truly awesome, what God has given us. And I pray that as we look at this text that we will, again, reorient ourselves to this glorious gift of God, and that we will be moved to praise him and to worship him as we do more and more and more and always. Just to reframe what’s going on in the book of Hebrews as we’re entering into dipping in towards the end of the book, what’s going on there? What’s the context of this passage in Hebrews 12? You’ll remember that Hebrews, just by way of summary, is all about the superiority of Jesus. superiority of Christ. It’s about the superiority of his person. It’s about his superiority of the priesthood of Christ and the superiority of the privileges of believers, those who belong to him. And the author is giving them a warning, which presupposes a problem. And the core of that warning is related to the worship of the church. The church there is made up of mostly of Jewish believers, those who’ve come to faith, and many of them are doing what they’re leaving to return to Old Testament worship. They’ve left the corporate worship of the church and returned to Old Testament Jerusalem, temple sacrificial worship with priests and all. This is what they knew. It’s what they’re familiar with. It’s what they preferred. And there’s a temptation to go back there, you see, to that physical form and focus of worship. So Hebrews, this book, which many have recognized is a sermon, in it, the author is pleading with them. He’s saying, don’t do it. Don’t go back to the old. Don’t return to that which has passed away, to temple worship. He’s telling them that Christ is superior and that in Christ, God has given them something better, something better. And in fact, all of the old way was preparatory and pointing to Christ who has come. So what God has offered us in Jesus along with him, the worship that God has given us is superior to the old covenant because Christ is the culmination of all those pointers, all those promises, all of that preparation, the fulfillment of Jesus and our worship of him is superior to old covenant worship. And so if that’s true, And it is, it’s really a no brainer that if no covenant worship is superior to Old Covenant worship, remember that worship in the Old Covenant is that which God ordained, right? That which even though it was meant to pass away, if what God ordained for a time is inferior, how much more inferior is anything that man could come up with outside of God’s Word? If New Covenant worship is superior to Old Covenant worship, it should be very clear that New Covenant worship is superior to any of the inventions of man from the idol factory that is his heart. So let’s dig into this text for a little bit this morning. We’ll probably get through some of this, but we’ll at least break the seal and see what Hebrews has for us. As we look at it, we see that Hebrews gives a number of reasons why this is the case, why New Covenant worship is superior And it gives us some grounding, right? Reasons and then grounding when looking to figure out what is, the answer to that question, what is acceptable worship? And what we find is that acceptable worship has to do with three things. It has to do with a place, with a posture, and with a people, right? You have this in your outline, I believe. Acceptable worship has to do with a place, a people, and a posture.

Hebrews first discusses the place of worship, the true place of acceptable worship. It must be in the right place. And so he extrapolates as he speaks of this, the author, and in verses 18 to 22, it begins with a comparison, you’ll see there, of two gatherings, right? It’s comparing these two gatherings. God’s word is so rich and full that sometimes we miss simple propositions. that are clear as day for us there. We see there in Hebrews a comparison between church assemblies, right? Look at what it says in verses 18 and then 22. It says, you have not come to a mountain that may be touched. And then in verse 22, but you have come to a mountain, it’s Mount Zion. What is he talking about in verse nine, in verse 18? What is he talking about? You have not come to a mountain that may be touched. When we look at this passage, we see there’s a pretty clearly that he’s talking about Mount Sinai and about Israel who was gathered in the wilderness. Remember they came and they gathered to enter into covenant with God on the mountain. And it’s clear that this was a physical mountain. It could be touched, but the warning there at that time was do not touch it. Remember it says, even if the beast touches the mountain, it will surely die. but for certain it was a touchable mountain, a visible, physical mountain. And Hebrews is saying, that’s not the mountain, you new covenant people, you believers, you Christians, this is not the mountain that you have come to. It says you’ve come to what? The heavenly mountain that we need to grasp by faith. There’s a physical mountain and there’s a heavenly mountain. Deuteronomy 4, we heard the language there, and we see that the language is all mirrored or echoed or, you know, forecasting what we see in Hebrews 12. You have not come to a mountain that can be touched. And then it describes the mountain how? Blazing fire, burning, darkness, gloom, tempest. He’s describing Sinai. in that event that Israel saw and experienced in the wilderness. And he tells the Hebrews, this isn’t your reality. This isn’t for you. This is not your worship as the assembled people of God, of the New Covenant Church, the Church of Christ, those who named the name of Jesus. You, New Testament Church, are not like them at that mountain. You are a corporate assembly. You have come to a mountain, but it’s a different mountain. Hebrews gives us this comparison between these churches or these assemblies. There’s one church or assembly at Mount Sinai in the wilderness. And then there’s a church or assembly of the new covenant that Christians, the Christians in the Hebrews, what he’s speaking of, and they are gathered at a different mountain. He’s saying, They’re at Mount Zion. And he says, you’re no longer, we’re no longer at Sinai, but instead we’ve come to this rich mountain of grace in the new covenant, the fulfillment of all that that pointed towards all the placeholders. So they come like we come to Mount Zion, verse 22 tells us. We have come to nothing less than it says, Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. He’s not talking, of course, about three different places, but he’s calling the same place by three different names, Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. And he says, you’ve come to this one place, this one assembly. In the Old Testament, Zion is just another name for the city of Jerusalem. We see this throughout the Old Testament. So the author of Hebrews tells them that they shouldn’t go back to that physical place, Jerusalem, because they’re currently in Jerusalem, the heavenly Jerusalem. And he warns, if you go back to that physical city, Jerusalem truly will be lost. They want to go back to the holy place in Jerusalem and to temple worship. And the author of Hebrews is warning them that if they’re really concerned about Jerusalem, really concerned about Zion, they’re already there, even now. Because it’s not the physical one down in Palestine. And this should strike us as odd, perhaps, if we’re paying attention. Because the author of Hebrews says what? You’re not in Sinai, you’re in Jerusalem. The Jewish Christians were not trying to go back to Sinai. They weren’t making a journey to return to where the Ten Commandments were given. Their desire was not to get to Sinai. What they wanted was to get back to Jerusalem where the temple was. So we see what the author here to the Hebrews is doing. He equates Sinai and physical Jerusalem together, right? Very interesting, and he says they’re the same place when you compare them to the true, the heavenly Jerusalem, the Jerusalem that is now. And this is the only place in the New Testament, sorry, this isn’t the only place in the New Testament that we see this. Recall Galatians 4, right? If you remember in your reading of Scripture there in Galatians 4, Paul is making a similar point, and he’s making a similar comparison. And he says in verse 25 of Galatians 4 regarding Hagar, remember he’s making this comparison. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia. She corresponds to the present Jerusalem for she is in slavery with her children. Paul says Hagar was a type of mountain, type of mountain, the Mount Sinai. And he tells us where that mountain is, it’s in Arabia. And then he says, now that mountain corresponds to present Jerusalem whose children are in slavery even now. And he says Sinai is physical Jerusalem. In all physical Jerusalem’s children are in bondage because they have not received the Messiah. So Paul takes Sinai and Jerusalem and he makes them parallel and he combines them together. And he continues, Paul does, that Jerusalem that is above is free. And she is the mother of all of us, speaking of the church. And so regarding true worship, Paul says that that is no longer Sinai, physical Jerusalem, they’re out, they’re not the place for true worship. And some of you may be making another connection in your minds for the gospel of John. Recall in John chapter four, where Jesus is speaking with the woman at the well. She asks him a question about worship, about the proper place for acceptable worship, remember. And what did Jesus say in response? He tells her, woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. But the hour is coming and is now here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. And he says, look, you’re no longer gonna worship at this mountain, nor in Jerusalem. The hour is coming. And now is where that’s all changed. The physical mountains, it’s not physical mountains on this earth, but instead you worship the Jerusalem that is above. And Hebrews 12, 22 calls this Jerusalem, heavenly Jerusalem. Heavenly Jerusalem, it’s in heaven. It’s the same Jerusalem that Revelation, you remember, tells us will come down on the last day. It says, and he carried me away in the spirit to a great high mountain. And he showed me the holy city, Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. Right? So the author of the Hebrews is saying, that’s where you are right now. That’s where you are. As a corporate assembly, when you come together to worship in the church of Christ, he’s telling them, you don’t need to go down to Jerusalem, because you’re already in Jerusalem, the true heavenly city. And where is it? It’s up in heaven where God is. That’s where you are when you are gathered together in corporate worship, in this assembly, right? It’s mind-blowing. That’s what God’s word tells us. Do you see that? It’s worship, and in worship we are drawn into heaven itself, even now. The question for us is, do we believe that? We believe that, and if we believe that, how radically would that change our attitudes towards worship? How radically would that change our lives? We are given week by week this blessing, this privilege, this gift to be called up to where we will be forever as a foretaste to lead us through the rest of the week till we come again and experience it once more. I think it would change our lives incredibly. It’s hard for us really to let that sink in and detach ourselves from the rest of our lives. Our minds have a hard time thinking that this is true. Because in our minds, we think, well, it sure looks like we’re in a little neighborhood with unplowed streets and a little brick building with parking struggles and all the rest. But what we read here is that when we answer God’s call, and we come to corporate worship, we aren’t simply here. Rather, we’ve been called up into heaven itself and are assembled in the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem. And I know it’s hard to comprehend. It’s hard for us to believe. We have weak faith. We are very physically minded. We’re very physically tethered. But know for certain, brothers and sisters, know for certain that when you are beat down from this life in this pilgrim land and all that it does to you and all that your heart does to you, When you are weak from the journey, from the world and the devil and your own flesh, remember that and know that Lord’s day by Lord’s day, he calls you to come and experience a foretaste of glory in worship with one another before him by the Spirit. He calls you to taste a small sample of what that heavenly worship will be like, even here as we are gathered week by week in this small brick building. And by it, he strengthens, and he grows, and he refreshes you. You see, acceptable worship is worship at the right place. We need to grasp this heavenly worship because he tells us next, what he tells us next intensifies the glory of what’s going on in worship. He says acceptable worship is in the right place. For the sake of time, this is what we’ll look at next time, so please come and hear the rest of this. Worship is in the right place. And it’s with who are we worshiping with? But for the sake of time, remember today just what we’re doing here, right? Remember what we’re doing and believe what the Lord tells us in his word. Remember what we’re doing here in this old building, again, with a tiny parking lot and small restrooms in an old town. Remember that none of that is even on the list of significance. When we get what we’re doing in worship, when we grasp that, when we comprehend what it is that we’re doing, because truly acceptable worship must be done in the right place. And that place isn’t a physical building here or a physical location, regardless of the physical details of that location or building. We’re being called truly and really into glory itself. between the call to worship and the benediction. We are communing in worship by the Spirit up into glory. That’s incredible. Again, doesn’t that affect our attitudes? Doesn’t it affect your attitude towards what we do, Lord’s Day by Lord’s Day, week by week, right? We don’t come here just to go through the motions for tradition’s sake or for merely social reasons. We come, and when we come, we come prepared in prayer, in faith, bringing Christ with us to this assembly, expecting to encounter him again in a fresh way, because we need to be told, brothers and sisters, Again and again and again, just what he’s done to rescue us for himself. And when we do, how could this ever be boring? How could this ever be laborious or wearisome? It is food for our souls. In corporate worship, we’re being drawn into glory with the saints who’ve gone before us. And even with Jesus, as Hebrews tells us, and when we are done, we are fueled with the fire of faith to go back down from the mountain. back into the broken and desperate world that we walk through all of our life here. And we go charged by the spirit, armed with the truth, full of love and boldness that he’s given us in this weekly encounter, in this small building, with the small outpost of the kingdom of heaven, even here. And most certainly and preciously, we go in peace. Go in peace. So know this this day, brothers and sisters, the peace that comes from belonging to this mighty Savior, who’s fulfilled all of those things, the superior Christ. Remember that peace and that peace that comes for the next life, yes, but also for every moment and every day of this life as well. Let us go out from here now and live for him in the comfort of his power, telling the world where life and peace and love is truly to be found. Amen.

Let’s pray. Our Heavenly Father, we praise you again, and we ask that you would give us hearts to believe. We confess the weakness of our faith. We confess the nearsightedness of our vision. Lord, we confess that we are so inundated and grounded and the physical realities of where we are, that we lose sight of the glory and the reality of what’s truly true, what’s truly ours in Christ, and that which we are doing when we come before you, together as your people, answering your call, and we go through that pattern. that we would be refreshed and we would be renewed, that we would be useful to you as we live out our faith. Lord, we praise you that you have not left us without instruction or direction in this life, especially how we’re going to approach you in worship. We thank you that you’ve given us this word and that you’ve been kind to us and sought us and called us to yourself and cleansed us in Christ. We thank you that you’ve established for our weak and feeble souls, the means of grace to remind us, to seal to us, to communicate to us again, the benefits of our salvation in Christ. We pray, dear Lord, that you continue to tune our hearts for glory. We pray briefly for our households. Bless us and strengthen us. Grant to us your spirit. to faithfully serve you in the roles that you’ve called us and to live for you. We pray for our children, Lord, we pray bless them. Guide us to model for them, to teach them the most valuable thing that we have, and that is the truth of the gospel and life in Christ. We pray, Lord, for the visitors that are here. We pray for those who don’t know you. We pray for our loved ones who despise you. Lord, we pray your mercy upon them. We pray that you would give them new hearts, new life, bring them from death to life, that they would love you and serve you. We pray for your people, whatever we might endure in this life, that we would see you, our God and King, that you are faithful and gracious to us and that you are our sure refuge amidst it all and even unto glory. Dear Lord, work through us, even us, to bring the light of Christ into this world in which you’ve placed us. Provide for our needs, especially this year, Lord, continue to Lead us along, help us to be mindful, Lord, and alert to the opportunities that you have for us. Help us to better reach the city with the purity of the gospel. Direct our ways, we pray. Be merciful unto us, strengthen us spiritually, and we pray, Lord, evermore confirm us into the image of our King, your Son. For it’s in his name that we pray all these things, amen.