"The Rules of Worship" Ezra 3 Sunday Evening Worship Service

The Bible teaches that people were dec made by God for one overarching purpose.

We were made by God for the purpose of worship.

What it means to be made into the image of God is to have the capacity for relationships, and specifically relationships that give life.

This is what the essence of the Trinity is that the Father and Son can be in relationship with one another, and life can come from that.

The Father is life-giving.

The Son has life in and of himself given to him by the Father.

The Spirit is the Spirit of life.

The image of God is that we can have relationships with each other, and those relationships can bring life.

But that's not all the image of God means.

God also made Adam and Eve for the purpose of working.

They were to work on the earth.

And of course, when sin comes into the world, those relationships become difficult.

The curse upon Eve will be pain and childbirth, so the life giving becomes difficult, and the work becomes difficult.

The curse on Adam is that laboring with his hands will be difficult.

But the overarching purpose of God in how he made Adam and Eve was that he made them to worship.

They were supposed to magnify his glory back towards him.

When we say magnify God's glory, we mean that God reveals his glory and his attributes and his power in the life of Adam and Eve.

They then take that glory and are supposed to display it to creation.

It's supposed to be magnified in their hearts.

In other words, it's supposed to be made more clear through how they respond to it, and it's supposed to be cast back again into the world.

This is what Scripture teaches.

Isaiah 43, verse 21.

Isaiah 43:21

John 4 23, Jesus says, The hour is coming, and it's now here where worshipers will worship the Spirit in Father and truth.

Because, listen to this part.

We all know the first half of the verse, the second part.

We were made for the purpose of praising God.

We were made for worship.

You see this in Genesis, you see this in the Psalms, you see it in Revelation.

Worthy are you, O Lord God, to receive glory and honor and power.

And then Revelation 4.11, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.

God made us to worship.

That is our overarching purpose in life.

So it might surprise you then that not all worship is pleasing to God.

Not everything that is worship is pleasing to God.

In fact, the you know, sin comes into the world through worship.

Cain's active sin was worshiping in the wrong way.

Cain presented his offering to God, and it was not in accordance with what God had required from him.

It was not worship according to God's prescribed commands.

Cain wasn't worshiping God as he was commanded to.

And that becomes a pattern for sin.

There is much in the world that is worshiped that is not pleasing to God.

Much of the world's worship, it's not just that it's not pleasing to God, much of the world's worship is in fact offensive to God.

It is, it reeks before him.

It is, he finds it offensive because he recognizes the heart behind it.

In fact, in Isaiah, it goes through some of the attitudes that are behind worship that is not, I mean, that is offensive to God.

It's not just that worship towards the wrong God would be offensive, although that should be obvious, right?

If God made you to worship him and you worship someone else, that would be by definition offensive.

Think of somebody who's having an affair on their spouse, and they say, I'm showing this other person love, and I was made for love.

I'm showing them love.

No, it's offensive to your spouse because you're having an affair.

That is the way worship is towards another God other than Yahweh.

It's offensive to him.

It might have the songs, it might have the attitude from the heart, it might have the hands, it might have the same things that you see in the Bible around worship, but if it's to the wrong God, then it's offensive.

But another way in Isaiah that worship is called out as particularly offensive is when people are worshiping because of sin in their heart.

They're worshiping from selfish motives and self-seeking motives.

And so God designs worship to be around him.

It's with that in mind, I want you to turn to Ezra 3.

Ezra 3.

I don't know if I said Ezra earlier, but I meant it in my heart.

Ezra 3.

And what we find here is the Israelites are brand new back in the land, straight back from exile.

They were thrown out of the land because their worship was offensive to God.

They were thrown out of the land because God gave them priests, and the priests turned into, you know, priests of Baal and priests of idols.

And so God took the kingdom from them, threw them into Babylon.

Now, generation later, God is bringing them back into the promised land.

It's the second entrance into the promised land.

And you saw last week when we looked at Exodus chapter, I mean Ezra chapter 2, we saw the list of all the people that came back.

Ezra 2 · chapter mention

Ezra 3, we find out what it is, all of these people, all the people that returns back, what it is exactly they do when they get there.

4,234,360 of them.

They're all back in the land.

They have 736 horses to be learned, 245 mules, 435 camels, 6,720 donkeys.

What are they going to do with all of these animals and with all these people?

This is what we encounter in chapter 3, verse 1.

When the seventh month came, and the children of Israel were in the towns, the people gathered as one man in Jerusalem.

Then arose Jeshua, the son of Jezoadak, with his fellow priests, and Zerubabel the son of Sheila, with his kinsmen, and they built the altar of God in Israel to offer burnt offerings on it, as it is written in the law of Moses, the man of God.

We see already that one of the people who returned is Shelsbazar, is not, or Shesbazar is not here anymore.

This is the one the Babylonians had tasked with bringing the Jews back.

He's already bounced.

Apparently he brought the Jews back into the promised land.

You see him at the end of Ezra 1.

He left, leaving these tens of thousands, 42,360 Jews in the promised land.

They're now gathered together with their real leaders, the leaders that are staying, and they are gathered together to worship, verse 2 says.

To worship.

Verse 3.

They set the altar in its place, for fear was on them because of the peoples of the lands.

They offered burnt on offerings on it to Yahweh, burnt offerings morning and evening.

They kept a feast of booths, as it is written, and offered the daily burnt offerings by number according to the rule, as each day required.

And after that the regular burnt offerings, the offerings at the new moon, and at the appointed feasts of Yahweh, and the offerings of every one who made a free will offering to Yahweh.

From the first day of the seventh month they began to offer burnt offerings to Yahweh.

But the foundation of the temple of Yahweh was not yet laid.

So they gave money to the masons and the carpenters, and food and drink and oil to the Sidonians and the Tyrians, to bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea, to Jaffa, according to the grant that they had from Cyrus, the king of Persia.

Let me give you an outline as we look at this chapter together tonight.

Five rules for worship.

And if you have your sermon book with you, this outline is in there.

And so you can follow along and just jot other notes as they come to you tonight.

Five rules of worship.

Because there's a recurring theme in this chapter as we go through it.

Maybe you've noticed the phrase a few times.

Everything like you see at the end of verse 2, they're doing it as it is written in the law.

Or again at the end of verse 4, as each day was required.

Everything they're doing is exactly verse 5 according to the appointing of Yahweh, is the phrase that is used there.

Over and over and over again in this chapter, the recurring phrase is they are worshiping God according to the rules laid out by him.

And that's going to be our first point tonight.

There's five rules of worship.

The first of those points is that these rules are defined by God.

Everything they're doing is about worship here.

This whole chapter is consumed with worship.

They're back in the land.

They barely have houses yet.

They don't have infrastructure.

Remember, when they come back to Jerusalem, they are walking into a city of rubble.

It was destroyed.

The temple was pulled apart.

There was just a band of vagrants is what was left there at the end of Jeremiah, and they murdered the governor, and then they all fled.

This place, jackals rule this place.

Well, they come back and they are rebuilding the city.

They're clearing out the trash, and their first objective is to restore worship to the city.

And they do that, this recurring phrase, according to the rules of Yahweh.

These are defined by God.

They built the temple according to the law of Moses.

They built the they followed Solomon's pattern even.

You notice they even bought the lumber from the same place Solomon bought the lumber from when he built the temple the first time.

In other words, they're not being creative here.

They are rebuilding exactly like it was done before.

In France, when the Notre Dame Cathedral burned to the grounds, the French government started this big uh fact-finding mission with public town halls all over the country where people could give suggestions for how they thought the Notre Dame Cathedral could be redesigned.

There was no such council meetings in the book of Ezra.

They were not trying to be novel here.

They weren't trying to incorporate people's input.

They were building for one purpose.

They wanted this temple to be just like Solomon's temple, because Solomon's temple was built according to God's rules.

And there are a lot of rules about how the temple was supposed to be built.

And we don't get all of them in Ezra 3.

We just get the hinted at that they start this process just like God would have wanted them to do.

And they had to do so with haste.

Notice verse 3.

They set the altar in its place because fear was on them because of the people of the lands.

There's these other tribes around them that are antagonistic towards the Israelites.

They don't like the fact that they're Jews back.

They don't like the fact that Jerusalem is being repopulated.

Do you remember Jerusalem is not on the way to anywhere?

There are highways that run on the other side of mountains in both directions, but you have to go out of your way to get to Jerusalem.

And so it seems likely Jerusalem was left more or less vacant.

But now as people move in, the surrounding neighbors are hearing about this and they object, and they're going to cause problems.

We'll see these problems next week in Ezra chapter 4.

Ezra 4 · chapter mention

But it's fascinating to me that their enemies start circling, and so they're in a rush.

What is the first thing they do?

Uh-oh, our enemies are around us.

Let's build the altar.

And some of these rules they would have had to follow.

The Mosaic Law says an altar must be built using unhewn stones.

In other words, you cannot fasten the stones.

If you've been to Jerusalem now and you've gone to the temple now, you see that all those stones are hewn.

The whole temple is built out of these stones that Herod allowed them to rebuild the temple with, but the altar could not be made from those kind of stones.

That's Exodus 20, verse 25.

Exodus 20:25

They would have started these daily sacrifices.

That's why the altar is there.

Every day you would offer a lamb mixed with flour, oil, and wine in the morning, and another lamb identically prepared in the evening.

That's Exodus 29.

The sacrifices were earlier restored by Joash.

This is not the first time they tried to reinstitute these.

2 Chronicles 24, they launched them again.

2 Chronicles 29, Hezekiah launched them.

But now they're being re-established for the third time, and everything is according to God's rules.

Now I want you to just take note of this in your minds.

Why does worship have to be according to God's rules?

It should be obvious, but it's worth getting your mind to think about.

Worship needs to be according to God's rules because worship is towards Him.

He is the object of worship.

Therefore, you have to fashion it in that way.

Just like you can't use any key to start any car, you have to use your key to start your car.

In fact, in our household, we have two Nissans and they have almost identical key fobs.

And I cannot tell you how many times I've grabbed the wrong one out the door, and it does not work.

Usually when I'm late.

I don't know why that is.

But the right key to the right car.

Worship for God has to be designed by Him.

It has to be designed by Him.

Otherwise, it's not authentic worship.

It just isn't.

Now think of this in a marriage example.

If I wanted to take my wife out somewhere nice, teach her somewhere nice for her birthday next week, I can think, what is a couple, two weeks.

I got time.

A couple Yeah, good.

I'm doing my math right now.

Okay.

I'm not going to take her to a college football game.

We have been to a college football game before.

In fact, we went to USC, UCLA, in the Rose Bowl.

What an epic game.

I mean, that is like that is the rivalry game in Southern California.

And she didn't like it.

Um it was the downs thing.

It was hard.

It's actually harder than you would think to explain how four downs works in football and ten yards resets it, even uh it's a very complicated process.

And so the game did not it was not entertaining for her.

We tried a Nebraska football game later, which she loved, but that was, I think, the people that were there more than the teams.

So for her birthday, I'm not gonna take her to a football game.

That's not pleasing to her.

It's not a way to honor her, even if I like going to it.

Hey, babes, it's your birthday.

I love watching college football, so let's go to a game.

Not quite.

But I really love it.

Doesn't work.

You can be sincere in how you worship God, but if you don't worship him in a way that is pleasing to him as revealed by him, it is offensive.

It is not true worship.

So many people don't understand this point, and they think as long as they are sincere, God receives their worship.

What a lie that is, and that is the American lie.

God will know that I have tried hard, that I have had good motives, that I did what was best according to me.

What a lie that is.

Oftentimes people think they can do whatever they want as long as it is them doing it.

Oh no.

It's interesting.

In the New Testament, Jesus reserves his worst rebukes, his worst rebukes for the religious people.

Those that worship God with all of the external trappings of religion, the Pharisees, they get the worst rebukes from Jesus.

And we so often think that's misplaced.

We think the the harlots and the tax collectors and the liars and the swindlers and Barabbas and the murderers and the traitors, they're the ones who deserve God's judgment.

They're the ones who deserve wrath.

But these religious people, they are being sincere in their worship.

Why would God show judgment on them?

They're so sincere.

They're so fastidious.

Look at their clothes and their hair and their sacrifices.

They are so religious.

Certainly, that's got to count for something.

It counts for nothing.

Because it's not pleasing to God.

And Ezra III, these people go in the promised land and start out with such an intensity to do things in a way that is pleasing to God.

So the first thing we notice in these few verses is that the rules of worship are defined by God.

The second theme we've saw as we just read it is that worship is a response to the forgiveness of sins.

It is a response.

And you see that just with the existence of the altar.

That's the first thing they put up in the altar in verse 3.

And back in verse 2, they built the altar of the God of Israel so they could offer burnt offerings on it, according to what was written in the law of Moses, the man of God.

The Torah gives these daily sacrifices.

The daily sacrifices are a continual reminder that God is the one who forgives sin.

That's what they are there for.

And then in verse 4, they kept the feast of Booze.

The feast of Booze, it's a week-long feast.

It actually is eight days, as is described in Scripture, but the Jews referred to it as a weeklong feast, and it was a festival where they stayed outdoors.

Remember, we talked about this in our study of Jonah because it's a big feature in the book of Jonah.

But the Jews would, in this week, and even in this Israel to this day, they follow this.

They pitch tents and they put tents in their courtyards and in their parks, and there's tents everywhere, and you're supposed to sleep outside under the tents.

And you've been in New York City, they have the trucks that drive by, the Sukkoth trucks, and you can rent uh, you know, 45 minutes or 15 minutes, whatever it is, of being under the tent out there on the street, like a food.

Some people buy burritos from the trucks and other tacos, and some get there 15 minutes under the tabernacle.

And the Jewish rule is that the tent has to have enough of an opening in the top for you to see one star at night.

And so that's the rule.

And they do this for a week.

And now in Israel, it would be more like an American Christmas.

I mean, all these today, modern day, all these tents are everywhere, and it's a celebration.

They've got lights on them and fruit hanging from them and decorations from them.

It's a massive festival.

Well, this is what they launch.

That lets you know they arrived back in the Promised Land probably in October when this feast would have been.

They weren't there in the spring because there's no record of them celebrating Passover.

They probably left Babylon in early summer, and as I mentioned, it's four months or so to get there, and so they would have arrived probably around October.

And they get there and they hastily set up this feast.

So they're sleeping outside, which is convenient because their houses aren't ready yet, as they're offering up these sacrifices.

They do all of the sacrifices which are pointing back to the fact that their sins are forgiven.

That's going to give way to the feast of the trumpets, it was pointed out.

There are trumpets that are blasted and the law is read.

All of this is revolving around the setting up of the altar.

This is not the first time the Jews start to worship by setting up an altar.

Do you know when Noah got off the ark?

The first thing Noah did when he got off the ark?

Set up an altar.

When Abraham got to Canaan, the first thing he did, set up an altar.

When Elijah won his showdown with Baal, he rebuilt the neglected and rejected altar.

When David conquered Jerusalem, winning it for Israel, the first thing he did was build an altar.

And this is before there was even a temple.

David wasn't even allowed to build the temple, but he built an altar.

This is the pattern in the Old Testament.

If you want to worship God, the first thing you do is you build an altar.

And that's because God is worshipped through the forgiveness of sins.

It says in here that they kept all of the sacrifices.

Just a little phrase, look at verse 4.

The daily burnt offerings by number according to the rule, as each day required.

That's each day of the feast of booths.

You probably don't know this because I checked.

This is not one of the Iwana memory verses.

Numbers 29, 12 through 38 describes to you what those sacrifices are.

And I wanted, it's one thing to say there's a lot of shedding of blood to worship God according to this rule here for the forgiveness of sins, but I want to read you what the sacrifices are that go with the feast of the booze.

You don't need to flip there, you can just listen.

Numbers 29, verse 12.

Numbers 29:12

Day one, you will sacrifice thirteen bulls, two rams, fourteen male lambs who are a year old, and they shall be without blemish, then the grain offering of fine flour mixed with oil, three tenths of an ephawh for each of the thirteen bulls, two tenths for each of the two rams, a tenth for each of the fourteen lambs, and also one male goat for sin offering.

I love the goat thrown in there at the end.

Besides that, the regular burnt offering, which we had read earlier, its grain offering and its drink offering.

That's day one.

Day two, twelve bulls from the herd, two rams, fourteen male lambs, a year old without blemish, with the grain offering and the drink offering for the bulls, for the rams, for the lambs in the prescribed quantities.

Also, one male goat for sin offering.

Goat thrown in again.

Those goats, you know.

Watching all the bulls go out, then the rams go out, and the lambs go out, and the goats are like, yes, one goat.

Goat's goat goes out for sin offering, it says, and also the regular burnt offerings and its grain offerings and drink offerings.

Now I won't read you all of the eight days, but they follow days one through seven follow the same pattern.

The only difference is one less bull a day.

So day three, eleven bulls.

Day four, ten bulls.

Day five, nine bulls, and a partridge and a pear tree.

Day six, eight bulls.

Day seven, seven bulls.

Day eight, one bull.

This is the different day.

Day one bull, one ram, seven male lambs a year old without blemish, one male goat, again, for sin offering, besides the regular burnt offering as grant offerings.

I tallied them all up this afternoon.

For this feast of booze.

So they're brand new in the land.

Just there.

It would require 71 bulls being sacrificed.

Fifteen rams, a hundred and five lambs, and eight goats, in addition to the normal daily sacrifices.

That is a lot of sacrifices.

Each of those designed to show that without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness of sins.

This comes from Hebrews 9, verse 22.

Hebrews 9:22

Indeed, under the law, almost everything is purified with blood.

Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.

Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves, with better sacrifices than these.

What that means, what they're building there with this altar and the temple, it's a copy of what is in heaven.

So the idea is that in the center of heaven is an altar that is meant to represent that God cannot be approached without the shedding of blood.

In other words, Jesus has scars in heaven.

In other words, through all of eternity you will remember that Jesus had to shed his blood for you to approach God.

So if there's an altar in heaven, how much more does there need to be one on earth?

And if Jesus is going to be our sacrifice, well, his blood is better than the blood of bulls and goats.

That's Hebrews 9, verse 22.

Hebrews 9:22

This is not all about pomp and circumstance.

It's about driving home the point you cannot worship God without the shedding of blood.

Number three, worship is exclusive.

It is exclusive.

Let me read one more verse here, verse 8.

Now, in the second year of their coming to the house of God at Jerusalem, in the second month, Zerubel, the son of Sheila, and Jeshua, the son of Josedak, made a beginning together with the rest of their kinsmen, the priests and the Levites and all who had come to Jerusalem from the captivity.

They appointed the Levites from twenty years old upward to supervise the work of the house of Yahweh.

This is a brand new start.

There's no continuity here with the Babylonian worship and the Israelite worship.

This is all new.

They're reconstituting the priesthood.

They're going to rededicate the temple.

Everything is starting over.

They're driving home the points.

This is not what we did yesterday.

Because yesterday we were in Babylon.

How can we worship God in Babylon?

Was the psalm.

How can they do that there?

But they're back now.

And they're anxious to worship God properly.

They're going to have enemies from their own people who remain in Babylon.

They're going to have enemies from the neighboring people.

And they have enemies because they are exclusive.

They don't worship the gods of the world.

They're going to re-institute the priesthood.

The priests they they put up are connected to the priests who worshiped 200 years ago.

200 years ago.

There's been this long pause, but they're going to relaunch it.

Worshiping God is exclusive.

He does not share worship with the other gods.

You cannot share the worship of the Lord Jesus with the other gods of the world.

You cannot serve as Jesus says, both God and money.

This is why the New Testament uses the language of being born again.

When a person becomes a worshiper, they're born again.

They pass from darkness to light.

They have a new creation, they become.

There's no mixed worship.

Worship is either directed at the Lord or directed to others and those in the world.

And God is only worshipped exclusively.

Then number four, worship is about God.

This seems obvious, but I just want to draw your attention to verse 9 here.

Jeshua with the sons and brothers.

Cadmael and his sons, the son of Judah, together supervised the workmen in the house of God along with the sons of Henadad and the Levites and their sons and brothers.

And when the builders laid the foundation of the Yahweh's temple, the priests in their vestments came forward with trumpets.

This would have been quite a scene.

The Levites, the sons of Asaph, they had them, the hymn writers, with symbols to praise Yahweh according to the directions of David, the king of Israel.

And they sang responsively.

What would they sing?

And you should ask yourself that question.

If we open the worship center anew like we did a few weeks ago, what's the opening song?

You know, if you got to choose it, what song would you want to launch it?

Michael just showed us pictures of building a new church in Cuba.

And I wonder what hymn they opened with.

Don't answer.

But I just wonder.

What would you choose for the dedication of your church building?

And you get what they chose for their opening hymn, the first hymn, back in the new place.

They chose Psalm 100.

And I forget if I put it on the screen for you or not.

Nope.

Psalm 100.

Let me read it for you.

A Psalm for giving thanks.

Make a joyful noise to Yahweh, all the earth.

Again, it's another psalm that reminds you that people were made for worship.

Serve Yahweh with gladness.

Come into his presence with singing.

Know that Yahweh He is God.

It is He who made us, and we are His.

We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

Enter His gates with thanksgiving, His courts with praise, give thanks to Him, bless His name, for Yahweh is good, His steadfast love endures forever, and His faithfulness to all generations.

That is a great song to sing in the temple dedication, isn't it?

Worship God because He made you for it.

And the last verse, He is so faithful.

Generations will worship Him because of His faithfulness.

That's the song that they sing.

What I love about the song, it is all about God.

And the Psalter has a lot of songs that are about the experience with God, which is fine.

It has a lot of songs that are about persecution.

It has a lot of songs that are about trials.

But this psalm that they chose, it's all about God.

We worship God because who he is.

We worship God because He made us, it says.

We belong to Him.

We are sheep.

He is our God.

And so we worship Him.

Notice that worship is directed back towards God.

I feel like I'm saying the same thing in all these points, but I'm saying the same thing in all of these points.

Worship goes back to God.

Now, if you're tracking with me through one through four, first five may seem like a typo, or the fifth point I want to make may seem like a typo, but if you get points one through four, you should understand verse five as well.

Worship is about getting, not about giving.

Verse 12.

Well, the end of the middle of verse 11.

All the people shouted with a great shout when they praised Yahweh, because the foundation of the house of Yahweh was laid.

Many of the priests and Levites and heads of father houses, fathers' houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of his house being laid.

Though many shouted for joy, so that the people could not distinguish from the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping.

For the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away.

So everybody's so excited.

First of all, Jews, when they mourn, when they wail, it's shrieking and it is very loud.

It's not like the kind of American like sniffle Kleenex.

Like it is shrieking, often clothes being ripped, and yelling.

So you need like a volume baseline for this.

There are some of the old men who are yelling and shrieking and mourning and weeping very loudly.

But you cannot hear them because of all of the celebration of the rest of the crowd.

So if the baseline is people, men who are yelling and wailing, they are drowned out because everybody else is worshiping and rejoicing so loud it drowns out the wailers.

Think about that in our own congregation.

If one person stood up tonight while we were singing and started screaming and shrieking and weeping, I think DC could have drowned him out.

But this it would be dicey for the rest of us.

But the whole, all these old men that are just so sad, and we'll talk more about why they're sad in a few weeks, but they they just see the temple that they're looking at the foundation, and it's so small.

And some of that is that grows in your mind, right?

I remember going back and seeing the hill I used to sled down in Steamboat Springs when I was a little kid, and man, they bulldozed that thing down.

It's so small now.

And my mom says, no, it's always been that size.

No, I'm sure.

I needed a chairlift when I was a kid to get to the top of that thing.

No, no.

It'd be like coming down this now.

It's kind of silly.

That's how the old men are when they look at this temple.

It's just so small and they're weeping about it.

But everybody else is so happy.

No, I say worship is about getting, not about giving.

Because in our minds, we want to make it the other way.

We often even say, you might have even heard me say, I try to catch myself and keep myself from saying this, but sometimes it slips out that we come to worship to give to God.

And when I say it, I always give one of, huh, huh?

I don't like that.

Because if you say you come to worship to give to God, who is needy in that scenario?

God.

And who has deep pockets in that scenario?

Me.

I have what God needs.

Fortunately for God, I'm here to give it to him.

And I can even call it worship.

But if you go down this list, is that how worship is described as giving to God?

Now certainly there are sacrifices involved, but when you think rightly about the sacrifices, they are making an atonement for sin.

David does say it's not right to worship if it doesn't cost him anything, but why?

You have to ask yourself, why?

Is worship costing you something and end in and of itself?

Or is the fact that worship costs you something pointing to something bigger that you get from it?

And I think it's the latter.

What do you get from worship?

Well, you go back to how we began at the very beginning tonight.

I said that God made you for the purpose of worship.

So what you get when you worship is the experience of fulfilling what you were made for.

And you were made to magnify the glory of God.

You were made to receive the glory of God, to experience and to refract it back to the world.

To magnify it.

So as the glory leaves you, it becomes more perceptible.

Instead of one source of glory into the world, namely God, there becomes lots of sources.

God through his word, God through his world, and then God through you.

You become little glory machines, little praise machines, worshiping wherever you go, magnifying the glory of God in the world.

God is a fountain and from him comes his goodness, and as you experience it, you are now sharing that with the world.

So you're getting, you're receiving from God the experience of delighting in who he is.

That's what you see in here when you see this overarching joy.

You have to dispel of the idea that God needs you, because when you believe that God needs you, you elevate yourself in importance.

If you think God needs you, you think that there are no rules for worship.

Because after all, God should just be grateful that he gets what you give.

But the reality is that God has rules for worship because he is the one who is being worshiped.

He is not the beggar here.

We are the beggars in the worship encounter.

And God is philanthropic.

God is the one who is generous to us.

So we come to receive, and we receive from God the experience and delight of having our sins forgiven, the experience and delight of seeing his faithfulness in our life, and the experience and delight of magnifying and celebrating that.

Worship is very much the chance to receive from God.

And that's where we get the rules for worship.

We are hungry and he gives us bread.

We are needy and he is philanthropic.

Most of all, we are sinners and he's forgiving.

John Piper uses an illustration which he stole from Jonathan Edwards, which I will steal from Edwards then.

Of the person who is wandering in the wilderness and he finds a stream and he drinks from the stream.

He's dying of thirst and he drinks from the stream, and the stream is so good.

So what does he do?

Should he bottle up water from the stream and hike back up and find the spring and pour it back in to thank the spring for making water that is so good?

Just want to give some of it back to you?

That's weird.

Rather, you should drink from the spring, drink from the stream, and then tell others how good it is.

And the more you enjoy the water, the more the spring is glorified.

Not the more you give back to it.

And so that's why there's very much this pattern in the Bible of worship: that is, you receive from God, you rejoice before the world, and God is made out to be great, not you.

God is glorified, not you.

Worship is about how you respond to what you receive from the Lord.

It's okay to come to church needy.

It's okay to come here needy and feeling like I feel down, I need to hear from the Lord.

I feel down, I need to be with God's people.

I feel down, I need to be encouraged.

That is why we come to worship.

It's also okay to come to worship feeling strong and feeling like I've had a good week spiritually and I got to see the Lord work in these different ways.

I'm also going to come to worship because now I'm coming to rejoice in what God has already done in me.

Those are the good motives.

That's what's happening here in Ezra 3, I think.

I don't see any hints that their motives are bad here in Ezra III.

I only see good hints here.

It seems like they are worshiping out of an overflow of their love for the Lord.

Our joy is to give God worship.

And we give him worship when we receive his benefits from him.

Oh, give thanks to the Lord.

Rejoice in him, forget not all of his benefits.

And that takes me to Jeremiah 33.

Now, this is a verse, again, you might not be familiar with, but it's written, Before the Israelites were in exile, they were in Babylon, and we're gonna end here.

Jeremiah 33, verse 11, Israel is on their way to exile, and Jeremiah tells them, This is what Yahweh says.

Jeremiah 33:11

In the place in which you say, This is a wasteland.

There's no people here, there's no animals here.

In the cities of Judah, in the streets of Jerusalem, they're desolate, without man or inhabitant, or beast.

There will be heard again the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, and the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, and the voices of those who sing, as they bring thank offerings into the house of Yahweh.

So notice what Jeremiah's prophecy is.

You're on your way to exile, and this place is desolate.

Remember, Jeremiah ended Jeremiah's life, Jerusalem was a ghost town.

This place is horrible.

But Jeremiah says, I hereby prophesy, the day is coming when these streets will be filled with people.

They'll be filled with people, and what will the people be doing?

Sacrificing and singing.

And notice what Jeremiah says.

What song will they be singing, Jeremiah says?

Give thanks to Yahweh, Lord of hosts, for Yahweh is good, and his steadfast love endures forever.

Jeremiah says, when they get back to the land, they're going to open their hymnals to hymn number 100.

They're going to sing Psalm 100, and then you will know that God's faithfulness will be re-established in the land.

And that is exactly what you see in Ezra 3, verse 11.

Ezra 3:11

They are back, and they're overwhelmed at the goodness of God.

They're overwhelmed at the fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy.

The Lord has plans for them to prosper them and not to harm them.

And they respond by singing the psalm that Jeremiah said he would.

Lord, we're thankful that you are a covenant-keeping God, that you keep your faithfulness to the generations.

Lord, we're thankful that you come to us through Jesus Christ.

We are in need, we are sinners, and you come to us as our Savior.

Our biggest need is to have our sins forgiven, and yet you have not required from us bulls and goats.

You instead have provided the Passover lamb who takes away our sins.

So we can come to you and worship you with a clean conscience and pure hearts and uplifted hands because of the death of Jesus Christ.

It's his cross that makes our worship acceptable.

It's his resurrection that gives us life.

He fulfills these laws.

He becomes our tabernacle.

He becomes our light.

In him we live and move and have our being.

We know, Lord, that you are not served by human hands as though you needed anything because you give all people life, breath, and all things.

What you command us to do is to worship you.

And so we do so tonight.

But we know we can only worship you in spirit and truth.

We have no works to bring.

We provide sin, sin which makes our Savior's cross necessary.

And so we're thankful, Lord, that you were the Passover Lamb.

It was your blood that became the sacrifice for our sin, so we can worship you even here tonight.

We give you thanks for this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you for being with us today.

And now a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, emmanuelbible.church.

If you're not a member of the local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.