Proper Worship

Introduction

As I was preparing for this morning I was thinking what I would preach and as I was thinking an introduction to a song came onto my playlist. This was about the relationship of theology and doxology. It went like this; “Theology is the study of God and is very important, doxology is an expression of praise to God. So, the point here is that all theology should ultimately lead to doxology. If theology doesn't lead to doxology then we’ve actually missed the point of theology. So, if you have theology without doxology you just have dead, cold, orthodoxy, which is horrible. On the other side, you have the people that say “ah forget about theology I just want to praise”, but if you have doxology without theology you actually have idolatry because it’s just a random expression of praise but it’s not actually informed by the truth of who God is. So God is concerned with both, he is concerned with a accurate understanding of him and that accurate understanding of him leading to a response of praise, adoration, and worship towards him.” -Shai Linne

Our theology which is our knowledge about God should lead to proper doxology which is our praise and worship of him. Proper knowledge always leads to proper worship. Knowledge of God that does not lead to the worship of him is a dead, cold, legalistic view of the Bible. I see this in our world some and it is definitely something we need to be on guard for, but I see the inverse of this as being the biggest issue of our time. The inverse is praise that is not grounded in the truth of scripture, Shai Linne and many others describe this as idolatry because it isn’t informed about who God is. Praise without knowledge leads to a shallow, overly emotional experience. This is evident in churches such as Bethel, Hillsong, and Elevation.

As we begin I want to define worship because what we are talking about today pertains to our worship. Worship can be defined as; attributing honor, reverence, and worth to God. Again worship is attributing honor, reverence, and worth to God. While singing is a part of worship, worship extends to prayer, thanksgiving, giving, confession, preaching, teaching, and reading scripture. As you see this is called a worship service because it is all worship not just a portion.

It should also be noted that our knowledge and praise feed off of each other. If we are constantly filling ourselves with knowledge and truth about God it will result in our praise containing more knowledge and truth. When our praise contains more knowledge and truth then it will flow into our very being.

I heard one time that a baptist pastor was asked why they don’t have a catechism? A catechism is just a series of questions and answers that is memorized by kids and adults alike to give them the core knowledge of the faith, and many denominations use it. This pastor responded that they didn’t need it because they had the hymnal.

Whether you like it or not you are being shaped by what you fill yourself with. Here on Sunday’s you are being filled with good knowledge filled worship. This is just one day out of your week though. What are you allowing in your life the rest of the week? Is Sunday the only day that you worship?

God desires proper worship. We see this in stories like Leviticus 10 where Nadab and Abihu offer unauthorized fire to the Lord as worship and he strikes them down because he will be glorified. Not only that but this proper worship that God desires shapes who we are in Christ. Putting dishonorable things in us also shapes who we are.

Through all of this we are able to see the beauty of the gospel. It is amazing that God would even allow a sinner like me to have knowledge of him and to glorify and praise him. The beginning of knowledge that leads to proper worship is saving knowledge. Knowledge that you are a sinner in desperate need of a savior. Without this knowledge you will never truly know who God is and you will never be able to have the honor of truly praising him.

Transition to passage

Now the truths that I have been talking about are not without their scriptural backing and where I want us to focus today is the passage that I feel most relates to this topic of knowledge and praise or as we will now word it spirit and truth. So, if you would, turn with me to John 4.7-26

John 4:7–26 ESV

A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”

This is a story that I am sure many of you are familiar with about the woman at the well. Jesus begins this conversation with a Samaritan woman and the topic turns to worship. In the beginning the topic was the place of worship because the Jews had rules about where you could worship. Though there are many amazing truths here in this passage, I want to focus on verses 23-25. Within these verses Jesus begins by saying that they are now entering a new time of different worship, this is the time that we now live in. This is the time that people will now worship in spirit and in truth.

Let’s begin to unpack what Jesus meant by worshiping in spirit and in truth and see how this applies to us so heavily still today.

pray

In Spirit

True worship must be “in spirit,” that is, engaging the whole heart. Unless there’s a real passion for God, there is no worship in spirit. Without worship coming from our very being we are lacking true worship. How often do you worship with your whole heart? A few weeks back at men’s breakfast Rod brought a devotion and he talked about doing things for Jesus with your whole heart. We need the same thing when we worship. We see this throughout the book of Psalms where it says:

Psalm 9:1 ESV

I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.

Psalm 111:1 ESV

Praise the Lord! I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart, in the company of the upright, in the congregation.

Psalm 138:1 ESV

I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart; before the gods I sing your praise;

Worship in spirit where you give it all to God. This is the type of worship that he desired and this is the type of worship that we should want to give. Giving God the glory, honor, and praise that he deserves is our joy and pleasure. It shows complete satisfaction in him and as John Piper says “God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in him.” We only get this joy and satisfaction through offering God praise in spirit because of our relationship with him. This is our right response to the work that he has done in us, this is our right response to the gospel.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is the most miraculous thing to ever happen, even more miraculous than the creation of the world. After making everything perfect and mankind messing it all up God would do something to make it right, he would make a way for forgiveness. The way that he did this is by sending his son to live a perfect life among all of the imperfection that we have made and then he allowed his son to die a brutal death bearing our sins, our iniquities, our wrongdoing. He would do all of that for us! Lost broken sinners. Jesus didn’t stay in that grave long though because he rose from it. All that is required to be saved it to put your faith in him for salvation and to repent or turn away from our sins. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This gospel is why we praise God with our whole heart, with every ounce of our being, with our entire spirit. We do this because of all the wonderful things that he has done for us. He did the most amazing thing ever for us and that is why we praise with everything that we have.

This is a good time for some reflection because you need to know if you are worshiping in spirit. Maybe the full reality of your salvation has never hit you so you have never worshiped with all that you got. Maybe over time you have begun to worship less and less and you just no longer praise with your whole heart. If this is you, you need to pray that God would renew a spirit of praise and adoration within you and begin to give him your all. Maybe you have never come under the reign of the gospel and have never put your faith in Jesus, today you need to do that and join the rest of us as we praise God with all we have, as we praise God in spirit.

In Truth

Jesus didn’t just leave it at that though, he didn’t say there is coming a day where you will worship in spirit. He said there will come a day when you will worship in spirit and in truth. Worshiping in truth is properly informed worship. Unless we have knowledge of the God we worship, there is no worship in truth. Just like was mentioned in the quote before, there are so many in the world today that say “forget theology, I just want to praise”. That is idolatry! You don’t know what it is you are even praising.

I am currently taking a Christian ethics course in seminary and tomorrow I have my midterm so if you have any complaints about the sermon please come to the office to make them after 10:30, but we have been talking about the ten commandments a lot. The ten commandments are also known as the moral law of God and are the basis of all other laws found in the Bible, they are also the law that is still binding to us today. When debating right and wrong you can always take it back to the ten commandments, including in worship. The first three commandments; have no other gods, have no idols, do not profane the Lords name. We are to only worship the one true God, not self, not country, not the church, only God. We are to worship what we know, not some senseless idol. We are to ascribe things that are true to God’s holy name.

This is something that I was particularly convicted of a few years back because a song that I particularly liked was the song reckless love. If you are unfamiliar with this song do not listen to it because it is so catchy you will never get out of your head, many of you are humming it now. In this song it says that Gods love is reckless. This goes against the third commandment, it ascribes something to God that is not true. It was at this moment in my life that I started to pursue true knowledge in the scripture, it was at this point I started to pursue truth. It was also at this point that I started to truly worship. Worship that was more informed started to come from deeper in my spirit and it started to come from more than just music. Admittedly it was slow at first and I had to knock several bands off of my playlist but it deepened my faith drastically.

In Romans chapter 1 it talks about people that gave up God and live in the way of the world and it says in Romans 1.25

Romans 1:25 ESV

because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

This is how the people of the world are described in Romans, we do not want it to also be describing us, the church. May we never exchange the truth about God for a lie. May we always worship in truth. So how can we begin to fill ourselves with truth so we can properly worship him?

Read the Bible

This is a simple one and many of you that know me know that I have to mention it once and you probably know what I am going to say next, read all of it. There is no substitution for Bible reading, devotions, while good, don’t count. Real time in the Bible is necessary. Right now I have a good sized group of youth that are working to read through the whole Bible in a year and they are crushing it. I’m guessing some of them have already read books of the Bible that a lot of you never have. Reading through the entirety of the Bible doesn’t allow you to deep study every passage but it does give you a large knowledge base of the entire Bible and as you do eventually deep study or even while listening to sermons it will be that much more effective. We cannot know the truth until we saturate our very souls in it and the words of scripture are truth.

Listen to solid Bible teachers

If you come on Sunday’s that is at least once but it is good to give ourselves more than just that. We see in the book of Acts some went to listen to teaching daily. In today’s day and age we have access to listen to about any preacher you want whenever you want. Listen to guys like John Piper and Mark Dever, listen to conferences such as T4G. Fill your mind with truth by first reading the Bible yourself but also by listening to strong Bible teaching.

I want to also group into this category reading solid books. There is no way to listen to a Charles Spurgeon or Johnathan Edwards sermon, but you can certainly read them. There are books such as the preaching the word commentary series that are basically written sermons through books of the Bible.

Listening and reading from strong Bible teachers that teach the true gospel is a way that we can grow in our knowledge of the truth.

Listen to strong biblical music

What we sing gets ingrained into our minds. Everyone here in this room can quote more song lyrics than Bible verses. What a difference it would make in our lives if those song lyrics were saturated with the truths of scripture. I’m not saying that all you have to listen to is old hymns the quote I began this sermon with was from a Christian rap artist that uses his rap to educate about scripture. There are bands such as sovereign grace music that take a more traditional style with newer songs, and some old. Music is a large part of worship and it shapes our lives we should think about the music we listen to so that we can make sure that we are shaping our lives in the proper way.

I will also say that it is through music that we are first attacked by false teachers. They lure us in with enticing music then expose us to destructive heresies. One example of this is the band called elevation. Now I will be honest I have not listened to much of their music but other than being shallow I have not heard anything that has set off alarms. They have concerts and the pastor of their church gives a message at them, Steven Furtick. This man is one of the biggest false teachers of our day. They lure you in and expose you to these things. I have even fallen victim to their schemes.

What we sing matters.

Really understand the gospel

My final tip, though we could go on, is to really understand the gospel. When we work to really understand the gospel and what all it entails we are filling ourselves with the greatest truth there is. Many people who have put their faith in Jesus still don’t fully understand the gospel. As a Christian you should be able to state the gospel in a clear way because it is what made you a Christian. If you are not a Christian, it is through the gospel that you become one. The gospel can be summarized in this God made everything perfect, Man messed it up and brought sin into the world, Christ came and made a way for us to be forgiven, this all rest on our Response of faith and repentance. God, Man, Christ, Response. These are the four categories that you should work to understand so that you can be filled with truth. If you have never had that moment of response to the gospel you need to have that today because that is the first truth that you must understand and follow. There is no other gospel than this one, there may be other ways to phrase it, but there is no other gospel.

We must realize too that this knowledge alone does not save us. Demons knew who Jesus was, the Devil knew scripture. Knowledge is the beginning of salvation but it is through faith alone that we are saved.

Understand the gospel so that you can worship in truth.

Conclusion

As we come to a close this morning this is the core truth that I want you to understand; we are to worship in spirit and truth, we are to have proper theology and doxology, we are to know God and Praise God.

These things feed off of each other and influence our growth in the faith. We should worship with our whole heart but that worship should be properly informed worship that is based in truth. If we desire to serve God the right way we should desire to worship him in the way that he wants to be worshiped. He does not desire to be worshiped in songs that are merely catchy and sermons that are just entertainment. He desired to be worshiped through the truth of himself with the entirety of our being.

Don’t get confused this morning on who this message is for, I am speaking to everyone here today. This is about our personal worship. Worship is attributing honor, reverence, and worth to God. We should all be doing this daily in the right and proper manner. Without these things the worship in our lives is either dead cold legalism or idolatry. This is no new teaching but rather a very old one. We must worship in spirit and in truth.

At the heart of all of this is the gospel. The gospel is the reason that we offer worship in the first place. It is our salvation. Today if you want to put your faith in Jesus so that you can be forgive of all your sins and join us in true worship don’t wait any longer. As soon as I am done praying here in just a moment come. Jesus gave his life so that we could be forgiven and have the honor to praise him. Be saved today.

There is no secret formula to salvation just like there is no secret formula to worship. Salvation is found in faith and repentance, true worship is found in spirit and truth.