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Commentary on "Worship in the Psalms"
Day 5: Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - Worship and the Sanctuary
Overview
The subject of today’s lesson centers on the Old Testament requirement of bringing a sacrifice as an atonement for your sins at the sanctuary before you could approach God and worship him.
Observations
Since no sinner can approach a holy God and live without their sins first being covered, that requirement is still true today concerning rest from the penalty of our sins and how we are to approach God in worship. While true worship has always been centered on faith in the promises of God, there are significant differences of practice between then and now.
As Jesus was talking with the Samaritan woman at the well she perceived him to be a prophet and introduces the question of where was the proper place to worship God? We return to a passage used earlier this week:
Jesus told her, “Believe Me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:21-24 HCSB)
Jesus is simply saying that the debate on where to worship God would soon end with the fulfillment and end of the Old Covenant God made with Israel. Jesus is telling each of us that he is the fulfillment of all that the sanctuary and sanctuary service portrayed, 1 Cor. 11:23-25; Gal. 4:21-31. While there are certainly good reasons for Christians to gather together weekly or even more often to study holy scripture and mutually worship God, the focus is no longer about where to worship. Instead, our attention is towards him, the author of our salvation.
Here is an important reminder: While the Old Covenant introduced by Moses is now obsolete, be aware that the covenant God made with Abraham is an eternal unconditional covenant, Gen. 17:18-19.
The lesson draws our attention to Psalm 40:6-8 and compares it to Heb. 10:1-13. The author of today’s quarterly lesson is attempting to build on the flawed logic that the Mosaic Law King David says “is within my heart” is the very same law that Jesus and his apostles write about in the New Testament. We need to search deeper and see what scripture really teaches us.
I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart. (Psalms 40:8 KJV)
Obviously, King David is referring to the whole written Mosaic Law, not just the Ten Commandments written on stone. It is the whole law, both what is written upon stones and all that Moses wrote upon scrolls that is binding upon the Hebrew people because of the Old Covenant.
Tell me, those of you who want to be under the law, don’t you hear the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and the other by a free woman. But the one by the slave was born according to ⌊the impulse of⌋ the flesh, while the one by the free woman was born as the result of a promise. These things are illustrations, for the women represent the two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai and bears children into slavery—this is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. (Gal 4:21-26 HCSB)
The Mosaic Law, all 613 commandments of this law, was binding upon the Hebrew people because of the Old Covenant which was of ‘slavery’. Jesus speaks of freedom from slavery in the New Covenant which has nothing to do with the law of the now old obsolete covenant.
Therefore, no condemnation now exists for those in Christ Jesus, because the Spirit’s law of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. What the law could not do since it was limited by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending His own Son in flesh like ours under sin’s domain, and as a sin offering, (Romans 8:1-3 HCSB)
The commandments of Jesus Christ placed within us by the Holy Spirit is totally separate from the written Mosaic Law which is called ‘the law of sin and death’ in this passage in the book of Romans.
Since the law has ⌊only⌋ a shadow of the good things to come, and not the actual form of those realities, it can never perfect the worshipers by the same sacrifices they continually offer year after year. (Heb 10:1 HCSB)
Hebrews 10:1 sets the theme for the whole chapter by saying the law, meaning the whole written Mosaic Law, was never more than a shadow of the reality. This is the foundation for understanding the meaning of justification by faith so well illustrated in chapter eleven of Hebrews.
Summary
- The Old Testament sanctuary which was centered on innocent animal sacrifices was the ‘shadow’ of the ‘reality’ that pointed to our need to have our sins covered before we can approach and worship God.
- The utter failure for sinners to keep even a small part of the written law points to our need for a perfect sacrifice as a propitiation for our sins.
- Obedience to the requirements of the ‘shadow’ was done in faith that the Messiah would come and be the real and true sacrifice that would do what the sacrifice of animals could never do.
- The death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ who ascended into heaven and has been seated at the right hand of God the Father for well onto two thousand years points our worship towards and through the person of Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our salvation. Our focus is no longer on where to worship. It is all on who we worship. And, as Jesus told the Samaritan woman, we are to worship “the Father in spirit and truth”.
Copyright 2011 BibleStudiesForAdventists.com. All rights reserved. Revised August 7, 2011. This website is published by Life Assurance Ministries, Glendale, Arizona, USA, the publisher of Proclamation! Magazine. Contact email: BibleStudiesForAdventists@gmail.com.
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