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Preached in Markham Baptist Church,
February 5, 2006
WORSHIP THE LORD: PART 3 -
TWO ESSENTIALS TO WORSHIP
John 4:1-26
Let me remind you of the route we have taken in this series
focusing on worship. We have seen how worship is a lifestyle not an event.
As we studied Romans 12:1 we discovered that our spiritual act of worship is
offering our whole self to God. This is not something that we have to do, or
must do but is a reasonable response to the mercies of God. It is as we
experience the grace of God and power of God and the wonder of God that we
worship God by giving ourselves to Him. I encouraged you to pray for
yourselves, and for our church the prayer in Ephesians 1:17-18: “I keep
asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father may give
you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I
pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you
may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious
inheritance in the saints.”
Then last week Pastor Jamie made us aware of some of the
detours that can distract us in our worship of God. Our pride, a frantic
pace, our possessions are just some of the few distractions he mentioned
that can derail our worship.
And today I
want us to open our Bibles to John 4 and to think of two essentials for true
worship.
Here in John 4
we come across a conversation that Jesus is having with a Samaritan woman by
a well in the middle of a hot middle-eastern day. Now I can tell you that
the Samaritan woman has never had a Jewish man treat her with such respect.
She has three two plain strikes against her – A) she is a woman (women were
looked down on in Jewish society) and B) she was a Samaritan. The very fact
that He talks with her is astounding. This just wasn’t done during this
time, John makes it plain for us in verse 9.
“Jews do not
associate with Samaritans.” Now when you read that sentence you really have
to read it with !!!!!!! at the end of it because that is the sentiment with
which it is written. Jews did not associate with Samaritans and what Jesus
is doing is shocking, astounding, incredible.
But Jesus does
not recognize these boundaries and begins a conversation with her by asking
for a drink. She says how can you ask me for such a thing? Don’t you know
we’re not supposed to be talking?
And from verse
10 on Jesus turns the conversation to speak of spiritual truths. He uses
physical realities, like water to speak of spiritual truth like living
water. He offers to her water that will satisfy her thirsty spirit. Verse
10: “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink,
you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
She doesn’t
get what He’s talking about. And she says, look you don’t have a bucket. The
well is deep - where is this living water?
And in the
next couple of verses Jesus uncovers her spiritual thirst. She has a thirsty
spirit and has been trying to quench that thirst in a series of disastrous
relationships. So that in verse 16 Jesus says go call your husband and she
says, “I have no husband.”
Jesus says I
know, you have had five husbands and the one you live with now is not your
husband. Jesus quickly identifies the fact that she is trying to satisfy an
inner thirst with physical relationships.
And at verse
19 some scholars say that she becomes embarrassed and quickly tries to
change the subject. But it could be read differently. Instead of embarrassed
silence, between verse 18 and 19 put in there a sigh of relief as she
realizes that here is one who understands her and who might just be able to
help her connect with God. And she says, “Sir, I can see that you are a
prophet. Can you help me find the one for whom my soul thirsts? Can you help
me find God?” That’s what she is essentially asking at verse 20.
“Our fathers
worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must
worship is in Jerusalem.” Can you help me find God?
Isn’t that a
wonderful sentiment. Is it your sentiment? I hope it is. You know my prayer
for you -for us as a congregation - Lord make us thirsty, make us hungry for
you. There are some of you with teenagers in your home and you know they are
always hungry – you want me to stop praying that! The fridge door is always
open. But of course I’m not talking about being physically hungry. O God,
make us spiritually hungry, make as hungry as a teenager is for food – who
never seems to be satisfied with his last meal – make us that hungry for
you. Do you know that when we are hungry, or thirsty for God He promises us
that He will satisfy us? That’s the great message of Isaiah 55 – “Come,
all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat! Come buy wine and milk without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not
satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will
delight in the richest of fare.” (Isaiah 55:1-3) Our God promises to
fill the hungry with good things (Psalm 107:9).
And so this
woman is spiritually thirsty and she asks Jesus how can I get in touch with
God? How can I worship God? “Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but
you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is Jerusalem.”
There’s a
whole political, social and religious history behind that statement.
Basically Samaritans believed that the place to worship God was one mountain
and the Jews believed that the place to worship God was another mountain and
that true worship did not happen if you were in the wrong place.
And Jesus says
at verse 21, “Believe me woman a time is coming when you will worship the
Father neither on this mountain or in Jerusalem.” A time is coming when
the “where” will not matter.
“You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship
what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and
has not come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and
truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit,
and his worshipers must worship in spirit and truth.”
Jesus says
there that true worship has nothing to do with the “where”; it has nothing
to do with right places. Worship has everything to do with right people -
what Jesus calls true worshippers. Verse 23 – “A time is coming
when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth for
they are the kind of worshipers the father seeks.”
What does this
mean? Remember that Jesus is trying to teach us spiritual truths. He is
reminding us that our life is more than physical appetites, physical desires
and physical looks and material things. There is an eternal spirit in you
and in me that will live forever, either with God or without God. There is
an eternal spirit within you that has been disfigured by sin and needs the
cleansing of a perfect sacrifice. Jesus is that perfect sacrifice. There is
an eternal spirit within you that needs feeding and God's Word is that food.
There is an eternal spirit within you and it is in the spirit that we are to
worship God.
The tragedy is
that so many people live their lives only on the physical plane. Everything
is explained for them in the material. Their feelings, their opinions, their
decisions and their experience of life is entirely physical - material. It
all focuses on what they can see and touch and feel.
That's where
the Samaritan woman is at: "Where am I supposed to worship God?" If
she were alive today she might ask the question differently, saying how am I
supposed to worship God? Should I worship God in quietness following a
written order of service? Or should I worship with my hands raised and
everyone joining in prayers with "Thank you Jesus", "Praise you Jesus"?
Should I worship with the organ, and piano, or is the drums and guitar the
way to go? Should we sit in rows or in a circle, should there be one person
leading, or a group of people leading? Should there be old hymns sung or new
choruses sung?
And Jesus
says, Wait, wait, it's not essentially about any of these things - they are
all material, physical. True worship is about worshipping God in Spirit
because, he says in verse 24, "God is spirit." He's in a different realm
than the physical. He is in a different plane than the material. To be sure,
He can be found through the material and through the physical but that is
not where our focus is to be.
We get so
caught up with the stuff that we can see or hear - the hymns, the choruses,
the instruments, the tempo of the music, that we sometimes fail to remember
that it’s the part that we cannot see or hear that is the most important
part of worship - our spirit in touch with God.
I know that
may sound hugely impractical to some of you. To worship God in spirit – what
does that mean? Well, practically speaking it means that we allow ourselves
to fall deeply in love with God and to express that love. This is the kind
of worshipper that the Father seeks. It has little to do with right places
and right instruments and everything to do with people who are deeply in
love with God expressing that love.
The old Bible scholar John C. Ryle writes, “The most gorgeous cathedral
service is offensive in God’s sight if all is gone through coldly,
heartlessly, and without grace. The feeblest gather of three or four poor
believers in a cottage to read the Bible and pray is a more acceptable sight
to Him who searches the heart than the fullest congregation gathered in the
largest cathedral.”1
We get so caught up with the externals of worship when it is the internal
relationship with God that matters most to God. While I was on my holidays,
I read a biography of Robert Murray McCheyne - a great man of God used in a
mighty way in the Church of Scotland in the 1840s. And I was fascinated to
read about the description of the church at that time. The worship style was
very simple - “no one dared even to dream of an organ playing, and a choir
was only tolerated.”2 And as the organ was introduced, churches
split, denominations were torn apart (of course there were other
contributing factors but this was part of what caused the division.) As I
was reading this, I was thinking the devil must be laughing his head off,
saying, “Look what I can get the churches to do. In the early nineteenth
century I got the churches to split because there was no organ and people
wanted one, then in the late twentieth century and early twenty‑first
century I have got churches to divide and split because there is an organ
and people don’t want one!” The devil’s laughing at us folks, and God must
be crying. It’s not about that – it’s not about the drums, the organ, or
guitar, or video or drama or puppets. If you want true worship, real worship
Jesus says, then worship Him in spirit. It has little to do with the
ceremony – it has everything to do with hearts in touch with God.
“It's a pure heart, a broken and contrite heart you will not despise O
Lord.” (Psalm 51)
It's being transformed by the renewing of your mind and offering your bodies
as living sacrifices. (Romans 12:1-2)
And when that happens, we allow ourselves to fall deeply in love with God,
and then worship happens.
Of course the first step is that we are reborn - that we allow the Spirit of
God to convict us of our sin and we recognize that the only way to be right
with God is to believe in the work Christ has done for us on the cross and
to receive His forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
That's the first step, believing and receiving Jesus Christ as Saviour. And
then after that, it is constantly walking with the Holy Spirit, allowing Him
to lead, allowing Him to be sovereign in our lives - and that's daily.
But true worship is also worship in truth. If the first essential element in
worship is to worship God in spirit, the second essential element is that we
worship God in truth.
The opposite of truth is an untruth, a lie. Jesus gives all sorts of
examples of worship that is not true. There are two men coming to worship
and praying, one says, "Thank you Lord that I am not like other men,
robbers, evildoers, adulterers or even like this tax collector." (Luke
18:12) That's worship that is untrue. It is playing church. So let’s worship
God in truth, recognizing the truth about ourselves.
First recognize the truth that you are loved. God loves you. Know that God
loves you. You say, “I don’t feel that God loves me.” So God takes us to
Calvary and there assures us again and again that He loves us, so much so
that He willingly allowed His Son to die for us. It is there He takes the
megaphone and puts it to His lips and says I love you!
But then we say, How can he possibly love me? I don’t deserve such love.”
Exactly. That’s the second truth we must recognize about ourselves as we
come into worship. We don’t deserve God’s great love. The miracle of it all
is that God loves us first, before we are perfect, before we are able to
reciprocate that love, He loves us. O, that we would come into worship ready
and willing to recognize the truth about ourselves. “There is no one
righteous, not even one.” (Romans 3:10)
“There is no difference for all have sinned and fall short of the glory
of God.” (Romans 3:23)
“At one time we were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in
Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and
without God in the world.” (Ephesians 3: 12)
O, that we would recognize the truth about ourselves when we come to the
worship event. On what grounds can we boast before God? We have none. O that
we would recognize the truth about ourselves. And then that we would
recognize the truth about God!
O that we would know the truth of God’s holiness. We love to sing, “Holy,
Holy, Holy, Lord God almighty.” But we don’t want any mention of God’s
judgment which is to come. We don’t want any talk of Jesus Christ coming
again in glory casting those who denied Him into an eternal fire prepared
for the devil and His angels. So we worship the lie. But you cannot
attribute holiness to God without recognizing that if He is holy then there
must be judgment. O that we would worship God in truth – We have lost this
reverential respect for the truth of God’s holiness.
We come and we sing of God’s ability to save, His ability to forgive. But we
don’t actually believe that His grace is big enough to forgive us, we don’t
actually believe that His grace is big enough to save us. And so we don’t
worship in truth. And we forget.
“But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far away have been brought
near through the blood of Christ.” (Ephesians 2:12, 13).
We sing and celebrate God’s power - “We sing the mighty power of God that
made the mountains rise.” But we do not really believe that God has the
power to use a small congregation like our own. We don’t really believe that
He can use us to transform this town, this country this world for Him. And
we don’t worship in truth. And we forget the truth – “Now to him who is
able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine…” (Ephesians
3:20)
Or think of His ability to transform. We may believe that God can forgive us
and get us into heaven, but we don’t really believe that He can make us into
new creations. We don’t really believe that He can change our characters so
that the fruit of the spirit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness and faithfulness, gentleness and self-control can really come to be
in our lives. That’s true for everyone else, but not for us. And we don’t
worship in truth and forget that we are being “built together to become a
dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:22).
O that we would worship God in spirit and in truth.
I pray that each and everyone of us would allow the Spirit of God to so fill
you and so empower you that our church will experience a revival. And that
kind of worship is not the result of engineering - it is not the result of
traditional music or contemporary music. It is not the result of more organ
playing or more guitar it is something God bestows on people hungering and
thirsting for Him.
May God grant us
that grace for His glory.
Copyright MBC and Tom Cullen - February 2006
1. Ryle,
J.C. Expository Thoughts on the Gospels John 1:1 through John 10:9
(Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing,), 207.
2.
Robertson, David, Awakening, (UK: Authentic Media, 2004), 62.
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