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October 4, 2008

Good Sabbath,

What are we talking about when we say “formal” worship? Any acts of reverence for God are acts of worship. Anytime we make the choice to obey God’s commandments, to keep his Sabbath and Holy Days, to study his word or to live our lives in accordance with his word, we are engaging in acts of worship ... but not necessarily formal worship. The word “formal” indicates that we’re talking about something with structure — something defined by a sequence of events and with a beginning and an ending.

A person can live a worshipful life, engage in daily prayer, remember to thank God for all of their blessings, as well as their trials, and study the word diligently, and yet never engage in an act of “formal” worship. This describes most of those in the Church of God.

When God commanded his people to assemble together, it was not just for fellowship with each other. Nor was it just to listen to the priesthood read scripture and explain it to the people. Those things happened and are still an important element of the worship experience today. But the people were also actively engaged in the worship. It was not only about and for the priesthood. It could not have happened without the priesthood and they acted on behalf of the people, but not to the exclusion of this people.

In ancient Israel, the priesthood was responsible for the daily sacrifices — morning and evening. These required sacrifices were for the cleansing and maintaining of the tabernacle so that God could continue to dwell among his people. God chose to set aside the sins of his people through the blood sacrifices (a picture or foreshadow of the blood sacrifice that would be made later through God’s own son). Only the priesthood could perform the daily sacrifices in order to keep themselves and the tabernacle ritually pure and holy. Without the sacrifices, God’s spirit presence would have left because it cannot exist in the presence of sin (or ritual impurity) — which is exactly what eventually did happen.

The daily sacrifices were a form of worship as they represented a reverence for God and his word. They were a form of acknowledging the spirit presence and honoring it. The priesthood had been established for this very purpose — to keep the house of God holy. They did that through a series of rituals that surrounded the sacrifice — and through adhering to a set schedule daily for the sacrifices.

We all know the Day of Atonement was the time when the holy of holies was cleansed once a year — and then only by the high priest. Few recognize that the daily sacrifices, performed by the rest of the priesthood, served a similar function on a daily basis.

But scripture speaks of many other sacrifices in addition to the daily sacrifice as well. The book of Leviticus spells out in detail all of the sacrifices and why they were performed — as well as all the sacrifices that were related to the Sabbath or Holy Days and the times when God commanded the people to hold a holy convocation or to assemble together. There isn’t space here to spell out all the different sacrifices and what they meant. But I want to point out that they all did not relate to only the priesthood. (Read Leviticus 1 through 7 for the details of the offerings that applied to everyone).

The entire system of sacrifices, whether animal, grain, or drink offerings, were God’s worship system, designed by him so that all of his people could come to him in worship. The people could come on any day for either the morning or the evening sacrifices with offerings of their own to atone for sins or to offer thank or fellowship offerings and many other purposes. There was a formal order to the way the assemblies were held. The priests had functions that they had to do twice a day, which were generally performed first, but they also helped the people who were bringing individual offerings.

For example, if a member of the community was bringing a sacrifice to atone for sin, the person bringing the sin offering was to lay his hand on the head of the animal and then slaughter it before the Lord at the place of the burnt offerings (Lev. 4:27-31). After that, the priest would take over and place the blood on the horns of the altar, remove the fat and burn it as a pleasing aroma to the Lord, and thus perform atonement for the person seeking forgiveness. But note well — the actual killing of the sacrifice was done by the person who brought the offering for sin.

The scriptures do not spell out whether the supplicant spoke any words before God at this time, but it seems likely. After all, the person was seeking forgiveness for a sin or sins.

We can be thankful that Christ’s death has ended the need for us to bring animals and kill them before the Lord in order to seek forgiveness of our sins. The whole idea is distasteful to most of us. But the principles behind the entire sacrificial system have not been done away by Christ’s sacrifice — only the actual death of the innocent animals has been done away. Christ’s life was of much greater value than any animals could ever be. He died ONCE to fulfill the need for all animal sacrifice, but his death did not end the worship system, only the way we do it.

We are still to come before the Lord on a regular basis in worship. Just being obedient to all of his laws and keeping all of his Holy Days does not absolve us from the need to seek him for worship, praise, and confession. As independents, it is easy for us to be neglectful of this.

One of the problems with mainstream Christianity, and the men who fostered the doctrines on which it leans, is that they don’t believe God meant what he said. They don’t believe him when he speaks of things that are to last throughout all the generations … or forever. For them, forever ended when Christ died!

They admit that Jesus Christ obeyed all of God’s commandments, even through they fudge around with the Sabbath commandment. But they fail to take note of the fact that God never qualified a single statement that referred to observing something forever by saying “or until I send my son,” “or until my son makes a new covenant with you,” or any kind of statement that indicated there would ever be an end to his commands, statues, or ordinances. Instead, we find God telling the people to observe these things throughout their generations.

Christianity’s problem also revolves around their replacement theology. They believe that because the nation of Israel failed in their commission to God, God has replaced them with the followers of Christ — and that all those instructions to observe something throughout their generations only applies to Israel. Nothing could be further from the truth.

God does not change (Mal. 3:6). What was established from the beginning and was told to his people to observe throughout their generations is as true today as when the words were first spoken. Christianity does NOT replace Israel … Christians are to be grafted into Israel, not replace them (Rom. 11:11-24). Therefore, what God commanded to be observed forever applies to Christians just as much as it applied to its first recipients in ancient times.

The Church of God has no trouble in accepting the Sabbath, the Holy Days, the New Moons, and many other aspects of the worship system established from the beginning. But they fail to recognize the involvement of the people in that worship. They’ve condensed the people’s involvement down to just paying tithes, showing up for fellowship, and to listening to instructions from the leadership.

There is no room in this message to get into a discussion about tithes, but we need to be clear that the tithes of the Old Testament were an integral part of the worship system. They did not, however, replace the need for the various offerings and they do not today replace the need for people to come before God in worship.

God expects us to come before him and to speak words in formal worship of him.

Hosea 14:1-2 (NKJV) — O Israel, return to the LORD your God, For you have stumbled because of your iniquity; 2 Take words with you, And return to the LORD. Say to Him, “Take away all iniquity; Receive us graciously, For we will offer the sacrifices of our lips.”

This was written long before Christ came to make the final blood sacrifice. It is speaking prophecy as well as an appeal to Israel to turn from their sinful ways. God is clearly telling them to bring WORDS and is calling those words the SACRIFICES of the lips. A note in the margin of the NIV bible says “offer our lips as sacrifices of bulls.” (i.e., the words are to replace the sacrifice of animals). Obviously, God is addressing a time when the animal sacrifices would no longer be the method by which we worship and seek forgiveness from God. We are being instructed to “speak” our praise and worship, not to offer the blood of innocent animals, but to offer ourselves.

Some might read this scripture and say it is only talking about prayer and not about formal worship. Prayer is essential to our spiritual worship life. All worship is a form of prayer. When we speak words of adoration and praise for God, it is prayer. When we offer words of confession, it is prayer. Even when we raise our voices in song, it is prayer.

The problem is that in the Churches of God the people are not even being taught how to pray properly. I’ve been listening to these prayers for years. What they amount to, in condensed form, is an opening prayer asking God to bless the lips of the men who are about to speak and a closing prayer thanking God for the words the speaker said to them. Again … its all about the leaders and nothing about the people — for that matter, it is very little about God either.

True worship is about god. It is not about the leaders or what blessings that God can bestow on the lips of the leaders.

Next week I’ll put up a description of what actually took place during the morning and evening sacrifices, including the Psalms that were sung and how they were used as part of the sacrifice. While very little of the actual activities can be applied today, the principles behind it all can lead us to understand how we are to worship God today.

Have a great Sabbath day.

Sincerely,
B.J. Lord
www.soundatrumpet.com