WORSHIP NOTES
Volume 21, No. 2 (February 2026)
THE OLD WAY
The tabernacle (and later the temple) was the physical and spiritual center of the nation and its worship life.
The tabernacle was to stand in the centre of the camp and provide the means by which all of life was to be related to God. . . .In concrete form it expressed the truth that human beings could not come into his presence on their own terms. (David Peterson, Engaging with God, 32)
The sacrificial system of the Mosaic covenant was extremely complex; chapter after chapter in Exodus and Leviticus communicate the regulations that the people were to follow: how to prepare, what to bring, what to do, etc.
One might well ask: What did the system and its complexity communicate? Why did God institute such a complicated system? Here are some of the likely reasons:
• To show the holiness and purity of God (he was set apart in the holy of holies)
• To reflect the beauty and majesty of God (the grandeur of the tabernacle and its decorations)
• To speak of the sinfulness of the people (they could not come close)
• To show the seriousness of sin (it was not a simple matter to deal with)
• To demonstrate the grace (hesed)of God (in providing a way to temporarily cover sin)
• To provide a test of the people’s obedience (thus showing a heart ofdevotion)
• To produce a growing frustration in individuals’ and the nation’s inability to keep the law of God!
This last is a crucial aspect. Over time, a godly Jew would realize that, after offering the same sacrifices year after year (Heb 9:25; 10:1-3,11), the people were still not getting any better. (If a consistent Israelite were to bring an animal for sacrifice every time he ors he sinned, that would surely lead very quickly to running out of animals!
In fact, the Old Testament really chronicles the inability of people to live according to God’s standards in their own strength—even God’s chosen people, who had the advantage of the presence and revelation of God. The people of Israel, after Moses had come down from Mount Sinai and relayed to them God’s commands, had rashly promised: “All that the Lord has spoken we will do!” (Exodus 24:3). Yet within a few chapters; they were worshiping the golden calf (ch. 32)! Indeed, all of Israel’s history post-Sinai seems to be a wholesale demonstration of the foolhardiness of the people’s proclamation at the mountain. The rest of the Old Testament gives vivid testimony to the large-scale devolution of that presumptuous and self-righteous pronouncement—beginning almost immediately with the golden calf incident, continuing with grumblings and worse crimes during the wilderness period and the lawless period of the judges, and later with a host of bad kings and the shocking large-scale neglect (or ignorance) of the law and the Passover for sometimes generations at atime (see 2 Kings 22:8-13; 2 Chronicles 30). Tragically, idolatry is never far away from taking center stage in the nation’s life.
In fact, Christopher Wright points out that there is no record in the Old Testament of the Year of Jubilee (commanded by God in Leviticus 25:8-15) ever being observed (The Mission of God, 295). He is quick to point out that the mere silence of the text does not prove that the events did not happen; yet it is still surprising that there is no biblical (or extrabiblical) evidence of such an important event taking place. Wright adds that the Day of Atonement is never mentioned either; and the same could be said of the sabbatical year (Leviticus 25:3-5): the seventy years of the Babylonian captivity were said to make up for the 490 years of neglecting to let the land rest every seventh year 2 Chronicles 36:20-25), which apparently also never happened.
THE “NEW AND LIVING WAY” (Hebrews 10:19)
The book of Hebrews makes it clear that God intended the Old Testament system to be temporary, in preparation for the coming of Christ:
For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. (Heb 10:1).
According to Paul, “the law was our guardian [or tutor, schoolmaster] until Christ came” (Galatians 3:24). Paul insists that the problem was not with the law (it was a perfect representation of the will of God), but rather with the people’s hearts (Romans 8:1-4). So through the law and the sacrificial system, the devoted Jew would begin to see the inadequacy of the system and to long for a better way. And indeed that better way is foretold in the prophets:
Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. Aer those days, declares the L8.7: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. (Jeremiah 31:31-33b)
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Ezekiel 36:26-27)
“They are called to a pure worship of the heart . . . [but] no amount of ethical striving or moral reform can make them holy enough to serve their God. A new covenant is promised as a new exodus and a new creation in which there will be a forgiveness of sins and a divine transformation of the heart (Jeremiah 31:31-34; 32:40; Ezekiel 36:24-28).” (Scott W. Hahn “Canon, Cult and Covenant: The Promise of Liturgical Hermeneutics,” in Canon and Biblical Interpretation, 220)
This New Covenant (which would be instituted through Christ’s death [Luke 22:20]) would bring with it divine enablement to live in obedience to God, in that he would write his law on their hearts and put his Holy Spirit within them:
For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Rom 8:3-4)
The complex ritual system of the Mosaic covenant would thus help to prepare for the coming of Christ and the new covenant by demonstrating the people’s helplessness and dire need for God to intervene in a decisive and redemptive way—which he indeed did through sending his Son to die for us, and then the Spirit to sanctify us.