as our New Testament reading. Please stand for the reading of God's Word. This is the Word of the Lord. Then indeed, even the first covenant had ordinances of divine service and the earthly sanctuary. For a tabernacle was prepared, the first part in which was the lampstand, the table, and the showbread. which is called the sanctuary. And behind the second veil, the part of the tabernacle which is called the holiest of all, which had the golden censer and the Ark of the Covenant overlaid on all sides with gold, in which were the golden pot that had the manna, Aaron's rod that budded in the tablets of the covenant. And above it were the cherubim of glory, overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these things we cannot now speak in detail. Now when these things had been thus prepared, the priests always went into the first part of the tabernacle performing the services. But into the second part, the high priest went alone once a year, not without blood, which he offered for himself and for the people's sins committed in ignorance. The Holy Spirit indicating this, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest while the first tabernacle was still standing. It was symbolic for the present time in which both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make him who performed the service perfect in regard to the conscience. concerned only with foods and drinks, various washings, and fleshly ordinances imposed until the time of reformation. But Christ came as high priest of the good things to come with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood, He entered the most holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this reason, he is the mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of eternal inheritance. Now turning to our Old Testament reading, which will be our text, we'll look at more closely in a moment. Leviticus 24. Leviticus 24, reading from verse one to verse nine. Again, this is the word of the Lord Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, command the children of Israel that they bring to you pure oil of pressed olives for the light, to make the lamps burn continually. Outside the veil of the testimony, in the tabernacle of meeting, Aaron shall be in charge of it from evening until morning before the Lord continually. It shall be a statute forever in your generations. He shall be in charge of the lamps on the pure gold lampstand before the Lord continually. And you shall take fine flour and bake 12 cakes with it. Two-tenths of an ephah shall be in each cake, and you shall set them in two rows, six in a row, on the pure gold table before the Lord. And you shall put pure frankincense on each row, that it may be on the bread for a memorial, an offering made by fire to the Lord. Every Sabbath, he shall set it in order before the Lord continually, being taken from the children of Israel by an everlasting covenant. And it shall be for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place, for it is most holy to him, and the offerings of the Lord made by fire for a perpetual statute. Thus ends the reading of God's holy, inspired, and inerrant word. Lord God, as we approach this time of looking at your word more closely, we do pray that you would open the eyes of our minds to behold wonderful things out of your law. And Lord, we do pray the prayer of Elisha that you would Not only open the eyes of those around us, but open our own eyes to see what is there. We have no need to fear. There are more that are with us than are with them. O God, open our eyes to see what Your Word teaches, that we might leave joyful, that we might leave encouraged to worship You in spirit and in truth. We ask all these things for Jesus' sake. Amen. You may be seated. Have you ever become weary in worship? Weary in worship. Perhaps to the point where you've asked yourself, why am I here? Maybe you've had a Sunday where the night before, you didn't sleep very well. And because of that, you slept through your alarm clock. And because of that, you skipped breakfast. Then you finally made it on time And you got here, and the announcements went pretty well. But then one of your children started to scream, so you left and went to the cry room. And everything was going well for a while. Once you got to the preaching of the words, it was too loud. Your child was still loud in the cry room, so you left. And somewhere along the line, you ended up in a small, dark corner of the church building, trying to listen in as it was piped through and streamed. And that afternoon, you realize that you somehow messed up the crock pot, and it burnt lunch, and the children didn't nap, and you dragged everybody into worship, into the church. It's Sunday evening, you think of a thousand things you could be doing. You think of Monday when you'll hit the ground running, and you don't even know how you'll do it. And in that moment, Maybe a sense of weariness in worship sinks in. Maybe that day isn't your day. Maybe it's a sickness. Maybe it's a trial. Maybe it's someone in the congregation that there's some tension. I don't know your situation, but for all of us, there's this potential for weariness in worship where we find ourselves, even maybe this Sunday evening, sitting in our pews, asking the question, Why am I here? What am I even doing? I feel so weary. It's possible to grow weary in worship, and when we do, I think it's good to ask ourselves a question, to remind ourselves of what happens in public worship. What happens when we as God's people gather together on the Lord's Day for praise and adoration? What happens in worship? And to answer that question, I want us to look more closely at Leviticus 24. Leviticus 24, just to set it in some context, chapter 23 is a discussion of the feast days of Israel, what happened in worship once a year at those special times. In chapter 24, We see a picture in the holy place of what happens in worship every week on the Sabbath day. And in particular, it is the holy place. And just to give us some orientation of where that is in the tabernacle, I'll give you a brief tour. Come up to the tabernacle in the Old Testament times, the outer court, you meet the brazen altar. You keep going and you come to a basin filled with water for cleansing. Then you enter into the holy place. And on your right, you see a table, acacia wood, overlaid with gold, and on it, the showbread. On your left, you see a seven-branched lampstand. And then straight on, altar of incense, a veil, and behind that, the Ark of the Covenant. Leviticus 24 is particularly dealing with that middle compartment, that first part of the inner place in the tabernacle, the holy place. And there are three things that we see in Leviticus 24 that are given particular attention. We see the show bread on the table on the right-hand side as you come in. Then you see the lampstand shining its light across the way. And in the midst of all of this, we have Aaron, the priest, arranging the bread, trimming the lamp. The bread, the lamp, the priest. Maybe it seems puzzling, foreign, strange, arcane, archaic, but actually, we look closely and with the eyes of faith in Leviticus 24, we get a high definition picture of what happens in worship. What is happening right now? Are you weary in worship? Well, congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, remember what happens in worship, and it's simply this. The people of God enjoy the special presence of God through the priest of God. God's people, you, the congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, enjoy his special presence through his appointed priest. Worship. In worship, we enjoy the Lord in a special way. And really, my burden, my burden this evening is that you, in your weariness, perhaps, by looking at this passage, would come to appreciate afresh what happens in public worship. And more than that, that you would afresh and enjoy the God whom we worship. and join God in a special way. And so what we'll do this evening is look at what I'll call a three-dimensional portrait, a 3D picture of what happens in worship. And there are three dimensions. The first is the people of God in verses five to seven. And then we'll look at the presence of God in verses one and two. And then finally, we'll look at the priest of God in verses three and four, and in eight and nine. People, presence, priest. 3D picture, let's look at the first dimension, the people of God. And we see the people of God displayed symbolically in verses five through seven. If you look at our text, it says, and you shall take fine flour and bake 12 cakes with it. Two-tenths of an ephah shall be in each cake. You shall set them in two rows, six in a row on the pure gold table before the Lord. And you shall put your pure frankincense on each row that it may be on the bread for a memorial, an offering made by fire to the Lord. What we have here is the Lord instructs Moses to bake 12 loaves of bread, to divide them six in one row, six on the other, on a golden table, and also to sprinkle that table with incense and then burn the incense as a memorial. And you might be thinking, what does that have to do with the people of God? Let's look at the bread on the table more closely. Notice, it's not just any bread, it's 12 loaves of bread. And if you were Moses, and you'd seen everything you'd seen, and you'd written everything you'd written, and you saw and you heard the number 12, what would come to your mind? Would it strike you that on that table there was one loaf of bread for every tribe of Israel? There was one loaf of bread. for Reuben, and Simeon, and Levi, and Judah, and Issachar, and Zebulun, and Dan, and Asher, and Gad, and Naphtali, and the half tribe of Ephraim, and Manasseh, and ultimately for Benjamin. 12 loaves, 12 tribes. Not just that, but notice that they're arranged in a certain way. First, it seems a little curious. There's six over here. And there's six over here, two piles, two rows of bread. And you might wonder why that is, but if we read in Exodus, chapter 28, I think we get a clue. In chapter 28 of Exodus, verse nine, it says, then you shall take two onyx stones and engrave on them the names of the sons of Israel. Six of their names on the one stone and six names on the other stone in the order of their birth. What do we have? six loaves in one row, six names on one stone, 12 loaves of bread on the table, 12 names of the tribes of Israel on the breastplate of the high priest. I think by now, if you're tracking with what Moses is tracking with in this passage, you'll see that this bread represents the people of God. Not just the people of God in the Old Covenant, the 12 tribes of Israel, but as we move to Jesus Christ, whom does he commission? 12 apostles. 12 apostles, 12 tribes, 12 loves, and in that great glorious picture of Revelation 21, it all comes together. We have Jerusalem, the 12 names of the 12 tribes written on 12 gates, and the apostles' names written on 12 foundations. 12 tribes, 12 apostles, 12 loaves, the whole people of God in history represented by the bread. That's what the bread means. What about the frankincense and the fire in verse 7? Let's read that again. And you shall put pure frankincense on each row, that it may be on the bread for a memorial, an offering made by fire to the Lord. And this is a reference for a modified form of the grain offering in the Old Testament, in the sacrificial system. And in the grain offering, the worshiper would give a portion of bread to the priest. as almost like a tithe to him, a payment to him. But in addition, he would take incense, frankincense, and he would burn it as a memorial to the Lord. This offering by fire, we could almost say, was a tribute to God as king. It was a pledge of love and loyalty to God. It was a sweet-smelling savor to the Lord. It was a picture of total dedication. The commentator Gordon Windham says this of the grain offering, it was an act of dedication and consecration to God as savior and covenant king. It symbolized the dedication of a man's life and work to God. So what do we have? The bread, the people of God. We have the burnt incense, total devotion to God. Put it all together, the people of God gathered for worship. A couple points of application on the people of God first. In public worship, seek the unity of the brethren. Seek the unity of the brethren. Unlike our current culture, we are not lone ranger Christians. We're not isolated billiard balls separated from each other on a table. We are the body of Christ. We are one loaf. We are one people. And we see that so powerfully, even right now, as you look around. You're not just individual Christians. You are that. But you're gathered as the congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as we do that, we're reminded that we have different ethnic backgrounds. Some of us are rich. Some of us are relatively poor. Some of us are old. Some of us are young. Some of us have kids. Some of us don't. We have a lot of differences. Different education. Different everything. Except we have one very important thing in common. the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are one in Him. And so we show charity toward each other. We serve each other. We seek the unity of the body. I'm reminded of this wonderful picture. There's a sermon titled Public Worship to Be Preferred Before Private Worship by David Clarkson. And he describes Christians as lively coals, as live coals that are burning like embers. And he says, if they're isolated from each other, they go out. They grow cold. When they're gathered together, as you are right now, They burn, and they grow, and they set each other on fire, and they edify, and they build up in a way that you can only see happen in the assembly of God. So seek the unity of the brethren. Also, second, surrender everything to God. If the bread reminds us that we are one people, unified, that burnt incense reminds us to surrender, to offer to God everything, our time, Set aside a whole day Sabbath worship. Surrender your money, your tithes, and your offerings to advance God's kingdom. Surrender your energy. Pour yourself out for the Lord. Pour yourself out in service and in singing. Surrender everything to God. In the words of the Apostle Paul, present your bodies, living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. people of God gathered for worship. That's the first dimension. Let's move to the second dimension of the picture, second dimension, the presence of God. the presence of God, and we see that in verses one and two where it says in our text, when the Lord spoke to Moses saying, command the children of Israel that they bring to you pure oil of pressed olives for the light to make the lamps burn continually. We've been looking at the table, the table with the bread, a picture of God's people, and then we turn our eyes to the left in the holy place and we see the lampstands. You might wonder again, what does this have to do with the presence of God? Let's break down the image a little bit. The lampstand really has four parts. There's the lampstand itself, then there's the oil that fuels it. You light that oil on fire, there's fire, and that fire produces light. Let's look at each of those in turn. First we have the lampstand. And if you read Exodus 25, there's a detailed description of what this lampstand looks like. And really, if you read it, it's a stylized tree with blossoms. It has a central shaft, and then on either side, there's three branches here and three branches there, with a central shaft making it seven branches, a seven-branched menorah, a seven-branched lampstand, a stylized tree, which for the Israelite, he would think, this is life. This is the tree of life. Lampstand. Second, we've got this lamp needs fuel. That's why in our text, Moses calls the people to bring oil pressed from the olives, and that oil fuels the lampstands. If you wonder what does oil signify in the Old Testament, if you go to Zechariah 4, that great night vision of the seven-branched golden lampstand, God says, what is this? Well, it's not by power. It's not by might. It's by my spirit, saith the Lord. The oil is an image of the spirit and his power. Third, once that oil is lit, it produces fire. We think of that pillar of cloud by day, pillar of fire by night, this fire, this canopy of glory. Fire, the glory of God. Fourth, that fire produces light. And that's really the key emphasis in this passage. Not just that the lamps would be kept burning, but they would burn to produce light, illumination. And you wonder, what does the light mean? Well, as we heard even this morning in the pronouncement of the benediction, Numbers 6 says this, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you. and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you His peace. So then shall they put my name on the children of Israel and I will bless them." That image of God, as it were, shining His face upon His people in blessing. The light which illumines is a light which blesses. So put it all together, we have the lampstand, the oil, the fire, the light. We've got the tree of life. We have the power of the Holy Spirit. We've got the glory of God. We have the blessing of God. In other words, we have God's special presence, his light, his power, his glory, his blessing, the presence of God. How do we connect these things? We have the people of God. We have the presence of God. How do they come together? Well, I want to remind you that in this arrangement, in the holy place, Moses was told and Aaron was told where to direct the light of the lamp. In Numbers 8, God tells Aaron, I want you to make sure that the light from the lamp goes directly forward, which means that when he lit that lamp, the light would shine onto the table, onto the bread. In other words, the bread was basking in the light from the lamp. The people of God were basking in the light of God's special presence. If you think about this, just in that context, you have a gold lamp stand, you have a gold table, the walls are paneled gold, you set the light on fire, the light comes and shines onto the bread, onto the table, and the whole room just breaks forth with light. Glory, a beautiful picture. Dr. Michael Morales describes it this way, the arrangement of the holy place of the tabernacle portrayed the ideal of Israel, basking in the light of divine presence in the house of God, abiding in the fires of his glory. When you realize that's what it was like, that's the picture. You understand something of the psalmist. When the psalmist says, one thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. You know, something about the psalmist said when he said, the Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. This is the heartbeat of the psalmist, that he pants. He pants. He longs to see the gates, the courts of Zion. Because in public worship, the people of God enjoy the special presence of God. The people of God, the bread on the table, bask in the light of God's presence, the light from the lampstand. This is what is happening in worship. Now in saying this, you might wonder, isn't God present everywhere? Why is it that we say that we dwell in His special presence, we enjoy His special presence in public worship, if God already dwells everywhere? And it's true. God fills heaven and earth. We live and move and have our being in God. You might even put it a step further and say, well, I'm a Christian, which means that the Holy Spirit lives inside me. I'm in union with Christ. I can't be any closer to Him or any farther away from Him. What do you mean we dwell in His special presence? Well, the Scriptures also say this, draw near to me and I will draw near to you. Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them. And in Revelation, we see Jesus in the midst of the candlesticks, in the midst of His churches. This is a special presence that God has promised to be with us in a special way when we gather as His people. A few points of application. in public worship, come to be blessed. Come to be blessed. We often think of worship as our service to God, and it is. But first of all, in worship, God serves us. Think about it. He calls us into his presence. He assures us of His pardon. He consecrates us by His Word. He communes with us at His table. And then He commissions us. He sends us forth with His blessing ringing in our ears. God loves to serve His people so that they can serve Him in return. So it's alright to come to worship empty in order to be filled. To come hungry, ready to be fed. Come thirsty in order to be refreshed. to come and see God setting forth before us a rich table, saying, come, take and eat. It's okay, it's all right, it's appropriate to come to worship, to be blessed by our God. But second, in public worship, come to be changed. Come to be changed as you attend to the means of grace by faith, as you attend to the reading, to the preaching of the word of God, to the prayers, of God's people, to the fellowship of the saints, to the sacraments, you bask in God's transforming light. You bask in his special presence. Again, Michael Morales puts it this way, just as basking in the sun's light brings color, warmth, and health to the body, so basking in God's presence brings holiness. In other words, gradual sanctification. Think of it this way, if you spent all your days in a dark attic with blackout curtains, you'd probably get very, very, very pale, very weak. shriveled up, impoverished. Your eyes would grow dim. And then if you stepped out into the light, it would be too blinding for you. You wouldn't know what to do at first. But over time, as your body responded to that sunshine and that sunlight, started absorbing vitamin D, you would start to grow ruddier and stronger. You would start to bask in the light of the sun, and it would help you grow. Even so, we come to worship to be changed as we bask in the light of God's presence. And so, read the word of grace, listen to the word of grace, approach the throne of grace, minister grace one to another, and then eat and drink to your spiritual nourishment and growth in grace. Come to be changed. Third, in public worship, come to commune with God. Come to communion with God. There's all sorts of good reasons to come to worship, to minister to other people, to pay your tithes and offerings, to do so many things. But ultimately, remember that the basic pulse beat of worship is communion with God. It's so easy to forget this. And I'm reminded as we're teaching a Sunday school class on the shorter catechism, but what is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. John Piper put it this way, to glorify God by enjoying Him forever. That this is what you're meant to do. That communion, particularly with the Father in love, and the Son in grace, and the Spirit in comfort. Union and communion with Jesus Christ in grace and glory. What it's all about. Come to worship and realize that God's house isn't just a dwelling place, it's a meeting place. We can tell our children, we're not just going to church, we're going to meet with God. Come to commune. The people of God, enjoying special presence of God. That's the first two dimensions of our picture. But if you've been tracking, there might be a question in your mind, a question that's given attention multiple times in the book of Psalms. And it's this, Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in your holy hill? Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord? Because if you think about it, we're redeemed people. We're still people who struggle with indwelling sin. How can a sinful, finite, fallen people dwell in the light and fire of God's special presence? How can you gather together and not be blinded by his light and not be consumed by his fire? At first you might think this is a glorious picture, but if we're finite fallen creatures, God's radiance by its very nature would kill us. Burn out our retinas. That takes us to our third dimension. The third dimension. And that is the priest of God. We're reminded. In our Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 7, the distance between God and the creature is so great that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto him as their creator, yet they could never have any fruition of him as their blessedness and reward but by some voluntary condescension on God's part. which he hath been pleased to express by way of covenant. We hear about that covenant in verse 8 of our text. It says, the everlasting covenant. And who mediates that covenant? Who enables fallen finite people like you and me to have this kind of communion with God? It's the priest of God. If you look carefully at our text, you'll see that the priest is intimately involved both in the arranging of the bread and in the lighting and trimming of the lamps. Notice that he arranges the bread in verses 8 through 9. It says in verse 8, being taken from the children of Israel by an everlasting covenant. And it shall be for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place, for it is most holy to him from the offerings of the Lord made by fire by a perpetual statute." Every Sabbath day, Aaron would arrange the bread on the table. Every Sabbath day, the priest would call God's people together cleanse them, sanctify them. Notice also who trims the lamp in verses three through four. It says, outside the veil of the testimony, in the tabernacle of meeting, Aaron shall be in charge of it from evening until morning before the Lord continually. It shall be a statute forever in your generations. He shall be in charge of the lamps on the pure gold lampstands before the Lord continually. What was Aaron's job as the high priest? It was to trim the lamps. And as I mentioned before in Numbers chapter 8, his specific job with the lamps was to make sure they were pointed and directing their light straight onto the bread. He was mediating the blessing of God unto the people of God. Notice also the time elements in this passage. Over and over again, it says words like this, that Aaron's job was to be done continually, from evening until morning, continually, forever, continually, continually, everlasting, perpetual, Sabbath by Sabbath. The priest of God was called to mediate the everlasting covenant between God and his people. That's what he was called to do. In other words, to take all of these images together in worship, in public worship, the people of God enjoy the special presence of God through the priest of God. And if this was true in the Old Testament, in the shadowlands of the Old Testament, how much more true in the full light and glory of the new covenant with Jesus Christ. Think of Jesus Christ for a moment. Like the priests, he entered into his public ministry at the age of 30. That is baptism. He was anointed with the Holy Spirit to be a priest. that like that burnt incense in the grain offering, he was called and he did dedicate his entire life to God and to his service. Truly, he was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. And on the altar of his cross, he offered up an atoning sacrifice to his father. And in his resurrection, the father declared him to be truly a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. that this Jesus then ascended on the clouds of heaven. He ascended as a sweet-smelling savor and aroma to His Father. And there, even now, He intercedes for you. He prays for you. Think of the shorter catechism, Christ executed at the office of a priest and is once offering up of himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God and in making continual intercession for us. And do you realize that even now, he not only prays for you, his people, but he is the one who leads us in worship. A lot of broad evangelical churches like to talk about the worship leader. And it could be any number of people. But who ultimately leads us in worship? It's the Lord Jesus Christ who inhabits the praises of his people. He is the one, through the lips of a human minister, who calls you together. Jesus, our great high priest, is the one who assures us of pardon, that his blood cleanses every single sin. He is the one who consecrates us by his word. For His word is truth. His word sanctifies. He is the one who calls us to the table and says, take, eat. This is my body. This is my blood. Eat, drink, have communion with me. He is the one who, through, again, the lips of a human minister, pronounces that great word of blessing and benediction. He is the one who says, now go. make disciples, baptizing them, teaching them, and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age. Jesus leads us in worship. All of our worship is truly and definitively through Jesus Christ. The people of God enjoy the special blessing of God through his appointed priest. And the only application we can draw from that, it's very simple. worship, ascribe, acknowledge, magnify the Lord. As John Piper puts it, gladly reflect back to God the radiance of his work. And do all of these things through Jesus Christ. That's why we tell our children, we often give them this example. to pray in Jesus' name. It's not just Christianese to tack on at the end of your prayers. We pray in Jesus' name because he is the mediator of the everlasting covenant. He is the great high priest. We pray in Jesus' name. We come to God in this manner. We approach the Father, and we do so through the Son and by the Holy Spirit. This isn't just language we use. This is reality. We worship. Through Jesus Christ, it's all about Jesus. This evening, are you weary in worship? Have you ever become weary in worship? Or is there perhaps a day coming up, for whatever reason, it starts to sink in on you, I feel weary. And you come into this place and you think, Why am I here? What am I doing? Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, let us remind ourselves not only of why we're here, but what actually happens in worship that you, the people of God, enjoy. the special presence of God through His priest. That you bask in the light of God's life and blessing and power and glory and you do so through Jesus Christ. That's what happens in worship. That's what's happening right now in the exhortation of the word. That is what will happen with particular power in only a few moments when you hear that wonderful, shining word of benediction. Let us, as God's people, cultivate a love for public worship, even when it's hard, even when you're in a season of life that's particularly trying, let's cultivate a love for what God is doing in our midst. Let us enjoy God together in a special way. Let's pray. Father, we confess that there are times in our our creatureliness, our frailness. For we are truly frail children of dust and feeble as frail. Lord, there are times when we confess we are weary and we are tired and we are burnt out by the things of this world. And Lord, we pray that You would keep us from ever coming into this place and bringing that weariness with us despising your good gifts. But oh Lord, we pray that you would set our hearts on fire with a love for Jesus Christ, with a love for your worship, for a love for what you're doing in our midst. God, we pray that we would truly enjoy you in our worship. We would enjoy what You're doing in our midst. That You would cause us to lift up our eyes and to see what it is You're doing in us and through us by the power of Your Spirit. Oh God, help us to enjoy You. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.