This in an excursus on worship from a lesson on the Old-Testament book of Exodus. It speaks to many of the issues concerning worship in our current-day setting.
Exodus 25:40: “See to it that you do according to the pattern that you were shown on the mountain.”
This one verse lays out an important principle for God’s people and how we are to meet Him in worship. The Greek Old Testament Septuagint is virtually identical but instead of “pattern,” it uses “example.”
– What principle does this verse lay out for us as God’s people?
Scripture repeats this idea several times. Concerning the Temple, which replaced the Tabernacle, we find from the Old-Testament Apocrypha, Wisdom 9:8:
You [God] gave me [Solomon] the command to build a temple on your holy mountain and an altar in the city that is your dwelling place, a copy of your holy tabernacle that you established from the beginning.
Within the New Covenant, Stephen quoted that verse before the High Priest (Acts 7:44). The book of Hebrews takes that verse and shows that it still applies, but in its fuller and fulfilled context. After quoting that verse, Hebrews says:
But now, Jesus has received a superior priestly service, since the covenant that he mediates [the New Covenant] is also better and is established on better promises. [Hebrews 8:6]
Yet, the pattern that God gave to Moses was a “a pattern, a shadow, of what is in heaven” (Hebrews 8:5). Through that one verse, and the other quotations of that verse and Scripture’s further expounding of it, God shows that we are not to worship Him in the way that we choose. Instead, He gives us a pattern, a shadow, of heavenly worship that we are to follow.
So we can see, from the beginning, that God’s people worship in a structured and ordered way–that is, liturgically. And as High Priest, our Lord Jesus Christ serves at heaven’s altar in the true Tabernacle after which the earthly Tabernacle and Temple were patterned (Hebrews 8:1-2).
In the Old Covenant, to worship properly meant keeping the pattern of worship that Yahweh revealed to Moses on Mt. Sinai. In the New Covenant, Jesus said:
Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. For I assure you: Until heaven and earth disappear, neither the smallest letter nor even the smallest stroke of a pen will disappear from the Law until everything has been accomplished. [Matthew 5:17-18]
Jesus didn’t come to abolish the Old Covenant, but to fulfill it. Therefore, how we worship today is not a matter of preference (or adiaphora) but of still following God’s original pattern in its New-Covenant fulfillment and form!
Here is how many today in our culture approach worship.
Here is how worship should be patterned.
Our Heavenly Citizenship
Philippians 3:20: Our citizenship is in heaven.
– As God’s people, where is our true citizenship?
– If we are citizens of heaven, then what should primarily shape our worship of God?
– If we are citizens of heaven, how does that truth inform what we do in worship, what we sing, and even what we display in the church sanctuary?
Heavenly Worship
In Isaiah 6:1-8, Isaiah briefly experienced heaven’s liturgy. Revelation, chapters 4 and 5, records the Apostle John’s vision of heaven’s liturgy, where he saw the crucified, resurrected, and ascended Jesus. There, the saints in heaven were praising Him and falling down (pipto) and being prostrate (proskeneuo) before Him in worship, and incense being burned before Him.
– How can the Apostle John’s vision of heavenly worship shape how we worship?
– How can our worship “style” help inform and teach us that our worship is a reflection of what takes place in heaven?
It’s The Lord’s Liturgy
We also see, from Scripture, that the earliest Christians had a deep sense that when they worshiped, they were using the Lord’s liturgy!
Acts 13:2: While they [the church at Antioch] were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”
“While they were worshiping the Lord” is more literally, “While they were liturgizing to the Lord.” The participle, liturgizing, means “to perform liturgical acts.” To translate this in a way that doesn’t do violence to the English language would be: “While they performed the liturgy of the Lord.”
This reveals that the early Church recognized that their worship forms were not their own but the Lord’s. After all, the church in Antioch did not originate liturgical worship; its roots were in ancient Israel, of course with the liturgy being shaped by Jesus as the fulfillment of the Old Covenant and the Messiah to whom the Old Covenant pointed.
In the same way that Old Covenant foreshadowings (types) pointed forward to their fulfillment (antitypes) in the New Covenant (example: the great flood was a foreshadowing of baptism, 1 Peter 3:18-21), so also is it with worship. The Old Covenant’s liturgical worship was fulfilled in the greater reality of the New Covenant’s liturgical worship.
With Whom Do We Worship?
But more takes place in our worship than simply being a “copy and shadow” of what takes place in heaven.
Hebrews 12:23: You [the saints on earth] have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to countless angels in festive gathering, to the church of the Firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect.
– Besides the people with whom we gather, are we worshipping with others? Who are they?
– To whom does Scripture refer when it mentions the “spirits of the righteous made perfect”?
– How does this show that you can’t worship God according to His pattern, at home, in private?
Referring to the Lord’s Supper (which Jesus called “the New Covenant”), the Apostle Paul tells us that the bread and the cup are not merely symbols, but a participation in the body and blood of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:16). In the Old Covenant, God came down to His people. However, in the New Covenant, God lifts us up and brings us into contact with the heavenly and eternal realities that the Old Covenant merely pictured.
When you come to the Divine Service, you are spiritually brought into heavenly realities. Jesus Christ is actually present and with Him are all the angels, archangels, saints, apostles, prophets, and martyrs of the Church. With them, we adore our Father in heaven and worship as the one Body of Christ.
