Sermon: The Divine Liturgy Pt. 1 - What Is Worship? (Psalm 29:2)

The Divine Liturgy Pt. 1 – What is Worship?
Sunday, March 16th, 2025
Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Psalm 29

Prayer

Make your voice O Lord to resound within our souls, that having our hearts tested and pierced by Your Holy Word, we may be found altogether pleasing in your sight. Give now, what only you can give, light and life, salvation and peace. We ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Introduction

Consider for a moment two men. We’ll call one of them Richy and the other Gordy. Richy is an avowed atheist and unbeliever; Gordy is a faithful Christian. Both men are scientists, both are university professors, and both take pleasure in studying the natural world. These two scientists are outdoorsy types, they like to camp and hike and be out in the woods. And so one summer they plan to go exploring together. They travel to the Pacific coast and behold the ocean in all its mighty power. They visit old forests and touch trees large enough to drive through. They pitch their tents upon a hill, and on one clear night they both look out and see in the sky above, the cold moon, stars innumerable, the outline of our galaxy, and distant planets far away. And in that moment, a sense of fear and reverence comes upon them both, a sense of their own smallness and insignificance in the face of a world so vast.

• The question I want to pose for you is this: What is the difference (or at least, what should be the difference) between Richy the atheist and Gordy the Christian in that moment under the stars? Put another way, What distinguishes Christian fear and reverence, from the atheist’s fear and reverence?
• The answer the Bible gives (in Romans 1 and elsewhere) is that the unbeliever worships the creation, whereas the Christian worships the Creator.
  • Psalm 14 says, “The fool says in his heart, there is no God.” And therefore, when Richy is confronted with something transcendent, beautiful, awe-inspiring and glorious, he isn’t quite sure what do with it. There is tension within him.
  • The most reasonable thing to do would be to acknowledge and give thanks to some Creator and then search out at all costs who that Creator might be (go to Church!).
  • But if you refuse to do that, well your options are kind of limited.
    • You could choose to invent from your own imagination some story of how the world came to be (call it a big bang billions of years ago). You could invent your own deities or gods who created the universe. Take the Greek myths as an example of this impulse. The Bible calls this option idolatry and vain superstition.
    • Another option is you could choose to worship the thing itself as divine, as many other pagan religions have done. They offered sacrifices to sun, moon, and stars, to trees and rocks, making the whole world into a divine being worthy of worship. We call this species of idolatry pantheism or monism (all is one).
    • A third option, perhaps more common in our day, is the choice of irreligion and irreverence.
      • This is the person who has become so blind and numb to reality, that if they ever look at the stars, if they ever touch grass or taste the ocean’s salt spray, if they ever hold a newborn baby in their arms, they are unmoved. It doesn’t do anything for them. There is no fear or reverence or sense of wonder.
      • There are some people whose conscience is so seared, and whose mind is so darkened, that they cannot even recognize truth, goodness, or beauty, when it is staring them in face. The Bible warns of this kind of hardness of heart, where you become intellectually disabled from seeing God’s handiwork in the world.
  • Paul says in Romans 1:22, “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged [traded!] the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man…[they] changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.”
• The difference between an unbeliever and a believer, between Richy and Gordy, is that when they behold something awe-inspiring, one is stirred up to give glory, honor, thanksgiving and praise to God (they sing the doxology), while the other is not.
  • The fool looks at the heavens and says there is no God. Whereas the Christian looks up and says with the Psalmist, “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him?” (Psalm 8:3-4).
  • The Christian feels his smallness and insignificance (not to mention his own sins and unworthiness), and then he rejoices, he glories, in that God cares for him, The Creator knows him by name, The Creator has numbered his hairs and his days and so loves him that he carries him in everlasting arms. The Christian glories in that the One who fashioned the stars fashioned him, and then came down from the stars and visited us. And not only did he visit us, He promised to elevate us and make us like the stars, numerous and glorious beyond our heart’s imagining.
  • Compare that joyful trembling with what the unbeliever feels or doesn’t feel. Yes, the atheist might feel his smallness, but it leads him to despair. He cannot believe that in a world so big, of uncountable galaxies millions of miles away, that the Creator of those marvels could care for him. That is too unbelievable. Too unrealistic. Too absurd to be true. And so the atheist chooses tocut himself off from God. He refuses to acknowledge Him or thank Him and worse he uses that denial of God’s existence to justify his own wicked lifestyle.
  • As my former Pastor Doug Wilson likes to say, there are two tenants to the atheistic worldview: “There is no God, and I hate him.”
  • Or as Jesus says in John 3:19, “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”
• What happens to people who love the dark? What happens to societies, and nations that deny God and hate him? Or worse, to people who hear the gospel of Christ and reject it, spurning the blood?
• If you read on in Romans chapter 1, The Apostle Paul says that those who deny God and refuse to give thanks, basically become gay and wicked. They become sodomites, lesbians, and like beasts enslaved to their appetites.
  • It says in Romans 1:26-31, “For this reason God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.”
  • Is that not a description of America right now? Does it not terrify and grieve you that we have so expelled the True God from our public consciousness that He has given us over to a wicked conscience?
    • We are “inventors of evil things.” We boast and revel in what is contrary to nature and in the name of love and tolerance and scientific progress. We have more parks for pets than for children in our cities. We have chosen sterility and barrenness instead of fruitfulness. On one side people are acting like irrational animals, and on the other side people are trying to become one with the internet. There are some who have moved beyond transgenderism to transhumanism. This is what happens when you “do not like to retain God in your knowledge.” This is what happens when you refuse to give worship and thanks to the One who made you. The punishment in this life is that God gives you over to what you desire. The punishment is that he lets you debase yourself with things that are not fitting.
    • So how bad of a hangover does America need to have before we learn to live soberly and justly in the fear of God? Because we are on one long and insane bender.
• So this is the choice before our nation in this hour, and it is the choice before everyone in this room: Choose this day whom you will serve. The living God or the self/the ego. The living God or mammon. The living God or deaf and dumb idols.
  • It says in Psalm 115:8, “ Those who make idols are like them; So is everyone who trusts in them.”
    • Meaning that if you worship what is false and dead and demonic, you become false and dead and demonic.
    • But if you worship what is true and living, good and holy, you become truly alive, good and holy. That is what right worship does to a person.
    • Paul says in Romans 8:29 that God’s destiny for us is that we be “conformed to the image of His Son.”
    • He says in 2 Corinthians 3:18, that when we behold with an unveiled face the glory of the Lord we are “being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
  • So the way to find out Who or What you areactually worshipping, is by comparing yourself with Jesus. Are you becoming more like Jesus, or less like Jesus?
    • What characterizes you more? The fruit of the Holy Spirit? Or the works of the flesh? If you are unsure, ask your spouse, or your children?
    • Into what image and likeness are you presently being conformed to? Because we are always changing in some direction, for better or for worse, towards Christ or away from Christ.
• Paul says in Romans 12:2, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
  • Those you are only two options. Conformity to some created thing, or conformity to the Creator.
• And so if it is true that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, then we should want to know how to glorify God, and how to enjoy Him? And that is what this short sermon series I have entitled The Divine Liturgy is intended to help us with.
• So with all that by way of a kind of manifesto and introduction, I want to use the rest of our time to briefly answer two basic but important questions:
  • Q1. What is worship?
  • Q2. How should we worship?
• And to help us fill out our understanding of this what and how of worship, I am going to give you one Thesis or Principle in answer to each question.

Q1 – What is worship?

The answer to this question is found in our sermon text of Psalm 29, specifically verse 2. It says there, “Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name.”

• This is a great definition of what worship is. Worship is the act of giving to God the glory that is due to Him.
• And if that is our working definition, there are some further questions we need to ask like:
  • What is due to God? What do I owe Him?
  • What is glory? And how do I give it?
  • This bring us to our first Thesis/Principle which is…

Thesis #1 – Worship is a matter of justice.

• As Christians we owe to God a double debt.
  • We owe him a debt as our Creator and Author of our being, and we owe him a debt as our Redeemer and Author of our salvation.
  • Now a debt accrues whenever you receive something that you did not deserve. And so ask yourself, Did you deserve to be created? How could you if didn’t exist?!
    • Paul asks this question rhetorically in 1 Corinthians 4:7, “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?”
    • God says likewise in Job 41:11, “Who has preceded me, that I should pay him?”
      • So unless you made yourself and keep yourself in being by your own power, you are a debtor to Your Maker.
    • All of us have an umbilical cord through which God injects being into us. We are all still drawing our life from Him, even if we don’t know it. This is why atheism is so irreverent and foolish. You are hacking away at your own life source.
• So as a matter of Justice, we owe to God whatever we received from Him; that is His due! And if we received everything from Him as an undeserved gift, then that means your whole life is grace stacked upon grace, it is mercy followed by mercy.
  • Even before God sent Christ to die for our sins, we owed to God an infinite debt. And so how much more when the Son of God took to himself our humanity and our sins, and suffered and died to bring us to God?
    • Paul says in Romans 8:12, “Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. [what good did flesh ever do for you?!] For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify [put to death] the deeds of the body, ye shall live.”
• God has so arranged the order of our salvation that when we acknowledge the debt we owe to God, and then receive by faith the payment of that debt that Christ offered on the cross, we become debtors to grace. We become debtors to the Holy Spirit. And that is the best kind of debt to owe, because it means you are recipient of grace upon grace.
• NOTICE: You cannot both receive grace and have no debt to pay.
• And so when say that Worship is a matter of justice, of paying our debt to God, what we are saying that worship is only and ever a response to God’s grace. God acted first to create you and then recreate you in Christ.
  • God took the initiative and even your response to His initiative was enabled by Him.
• And so God only demands from us what is good for us. And because God has no need for us, it is in the very act of us giving to Him that we receive the benefit. This is why Jesus says, it is more blessed to give than to receive.
  • The Blessed God is a giver, and so when he commands that you give to him all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, He is telling you how to become truly alive. You give him back everything, because he gave you everything, and when you give him everything, He gives you even more.
  • That is how worship is a matter of justice when you are worshipping a God who is grace and goodness all the way through.
  • So that is Thesis 1 – Worship is a matter of Justice.
• This leads us to our second question and second thesis.

Q2 – How Should We Worship?

Again, we find the answer to this question in Psalm 29:2, “Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name; Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.”

• So how do we give to God the glory due to his name? By worshipping Him in the beauty of holiness.

Thesis #2 – Christians worship in the beauty of holiness.

• What is the beauty of holiness?
  • This phrase beauty of holiness refers in the first instance to the beautiful and holy garments that the high priest had to wear when he offered sacrifice.
  • God says to Moses in Exodus 28:2, “And thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother for glory and for beauty.”
  • And then we are given a description of this beauty of holiness of the high priest. He was to wear as his ministerial uniform:
    • Fine linen of blue, purple, and scarlet needlework.
    • An ephod and breastplate with an onyx stone on each shoulder that had the names of the tribes inscribed upon it, 6 on one side and 6 on the other, and then 12 gemstones on his chest, one for each tribe of Israel.
    • At the hem of his garment, he wore golden bells and colored pomegranates. And it says in Exodus 28:35, “And it shall be upon Aaron when he ministers, and its sound will be heard when he goes into the holy place before the Lord and when he comes out, that he may not die.”
      • So wearing this uniform was essential to come before the Lord, otherwise you die.
    • And then we read what was placed upon the head of the high priest. It says in Exodus 28-36-38, “You shall also make a plate of pure gold and engrave on it, like the engraving of a signet: HOLINESS TO THE LORD And you shall put it on a blue cord, that it may be on the turban; it shall be on the front of the turban. So it shall be on Aaron’s forehead, that Aaron may bear the iniquity of the holy things which the children of Israel hallow in all their holy gifts; and it shall always be on his forehead, that they may be accepted before the Lord.”
  • So that was the originally prescribed beauty of holiness in which the high priest could give to God the glory due unto his name.
  • And of course, all of those external signs of beauty were pointers to the person of Jesus and the saints in Jesus.
    • What does the fine linen signify but the perfect humanity of Jesus. And for the saints, it says in Revelation 19:8, “And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.”
    • What do the onyx stones upon the shoulders and the colored gemstones on the chest signify but how Jesus, the true Israel, bears our burdens, he wears us close to his heart, and then he carries us from the outer court into the holy of holies.
      • In Revelation 21 we see that these 12 gemstones become 12 foundations for the New Jerusalem. And what are those foundations but the preaching of the 12 apostles who are founded upon Christ the cornerstone?
    • What are the golden bells but the sound of Christ’s voice who announces that the kingdom of God is near, and that the priest from the order of Melchizedek has come.
    • What are the blue, purple, and scarlet pomegranates but the fruits of Jesus’ life, the many graces and virtues he bestows on those who hear the bells.
    • What is the golden plate upon the head, HOLINESS TO THE LORD, but the full divinity of Jesus, for as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:3, “the head of Christ is God.”
• And so the only way to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, is to worship the Lord in the person of Jesus. Jesus is the beauty of holiness in whom all are prayers, thanksgivings, worship and praise are offered. This is why we pray “in Jesus’ name.”
  • Jesus is our beauty of holiness, and as members of his mystical body, we receive from him beauty and holiness into our own souls. That is what conversion is. That is what regeneration is. That is what justification, sanctification, and glorification effect in us. They are God transforming us from one degree of glory to another.

Conclusion

What is worship? It is giving to God the glory that is due to Him. Religion is a matter of justice.

How do we worship? In the beauty of holiness that is Jesus Christ.

• So I exhort you with the words of our Psalm once again: “Give unto the Lord, O ye mighty, Give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name; Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.”
• In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.