THE WORSHIP GOD SEEKS

Introduction

-Dr. D. James Kennedy once said:

“Most people think of the church [worship service] as a drama, with the minister as the chief actor, God as the prompter, and the laity as the critic/audience. What is actually the case is that the congregation is the chief actor, the minister is the prompter, and God is the critic/audience.”

-What he was railing against was this idea that church worship services are spectator sports where the people just get to sit back and enjoy a show, and then later on complain about some portion of the service that they did not like—because worship services are about the people, right?

-D. James Kennedy says: WRONG. Worship services are where we as a group, at the prompting of the ministers, demonstrate to God how much worth we give to Him by our singing His praises and aligning ourselves to His Word. We come for Him.

-But too many churches in their worship services make it about themselves, so really, instead of showing God worth, they show themselves worth, and in essence they then begin to worship themselves.

-There is a story about a young boy who went to a church service with his father one Sunday morning. That evening, before getting into bed, the boy kneeled at his bedside and prayed, “Dear God, we had a good time at church today, but I wish you had been there.”

-God will come in presence and power in the places where He is truly worshipped, not where people attach His name to the worship of themselves. There is a right way to worship and there is a certain worship that God seeks, and in our passage today Jesus lays that out for us.

-In the passage, Jesus is travelling to Galilee from Judea making His way through Samaria, where He has a divine appointment with a Samaritan woman at a well. Here He reveals many different spiritual truths to her, one of which is the type of worship that God the Father seeks to receive from the hands and feet and voices of His creation.

-And my prayer is that this is exactly what we at Harvest Baptist Church offer to our God.

John 4:16–26 ESV

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 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. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 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.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”

-There are six lessons about worship that we learn from Jesus:

I) Worship comes from a heart made alive in Christ

-Right before this part of the discussion, Jesus offered the woman living water, which is a metaphor for abundant spiritual life that can only be found through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the source of this living water, and the Holy Spirit is the content or makeup of the water.

-People are born spiritually dead and thirsty, and only what Jesus Christ has to offer is able to quench that spiritual thirst. And after receiving that living water, you are made so alive, and you are so filled with the Holy Spirit, that it overflows out of you to touch the lives of others, but it also overflows out of you in worship to God.

-Only when you have tasted of the living water and are made alive does true worship begin. Those whose spirits are as dry and dead as a desert are unable to rightfully demonstrate God’s worth because they know nothing of God.

-They have not tasted that the Lord is good, and so they have no praise to give Him. They have not been empowered by an indwelling Spirit, so they have no service to give Him. They have not had their spirits made alive, so they have no heart to give Him.

-Only those who receive Jesus Christ, who drink of the living water that He offers, know God personally and intimately and in relationship, and then they are able to reflect back to Him how worthy He is of all we can give for the wonderous things He accomplished in our creation, in our salvation, in our redemption, and eventually in our glorification. Only when made alive can we truly worship.

II) Worship flows freely from a heart cleansed of sin

-To get the Samaritan woman to a point where she sees her need of living water and then her heart be in a place where it can rightly worship, Jesus forced her to face her sin.

-Jesus tells her to call her husband. He did not do this to rub her face in her sin and failures, but to bring her to a point where she is willing to confess and repent. All her adult life she had been looking for meaning and purpose and peace in her relationships with men. So after husband #1 didn’t do it, she moved on to husband #2. And after he didn’t do it, she moved to #3 and so on it went until this point in the passage where she just had a live-in boyfriend.

-She had a sin cycle of trying to find in men what only God could provide for her. This sin formed a barrier in her life that prevented her from seeing God clearly, knowing God fully, and then worshipping God freely. In her sin she had no freedom to demonstrate to God His worth.

-So Jesus pointed at the sin, not to shame her, but to free her—because He alone is able to forgive sin, thus removing the guilt and the shame and the fear that comes with it.

-And so it is with us, even though we may have drunk freely from the fountains of living water by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved, the sin we still commit causes there to be a barrier between us and God such that we are not able to worship Him as we ought.

-Isaiah warned:

your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. (Isa. 59:2 ESV)

-You cannot hold on to your sin (be it your anger, your bitterness, your lust, your greed, your pride, or whatever it may be) and still have freedom to show God His worth.

-But as we are reminded in 1 John:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 Jn. 1:9 ESV)

—deal with the barrier that has broken fellowship with God. Then, and only then, can you meet with God and say you have worshipped.

-There was a story of a man who had travelled in Europe visiting old cathedrals in France. He noticed that the cathedrals are beautiful on the inside, but their exterior is often distasteful because of the art carvings which depict animals with hideous features. He asked about this strange custom, and he was told that the builders in the Middle Ages wanted these figures to represent man’s sinful, carnal appetites and prejudices! They were placed there to remind all who came to worship that they should first deal with their sin before entering the sanctuary if they hoped to meet with God and worship Him.

-Are you so stubborn in your sin that it is keeping you from truly worshipping God?

III) Worship is not tied to a specific location

-Jesus confronts her with her sin, and whether or not she is trying to change the subject or if she is trying to put Jesus to the test as being a prophet, she references the debate about where it is that proper worship of God occurs.

-King David had set up worship in Jerusalem, with His son Solomon building the temple on the mountain there. Later, after the Northern Kingdom separated from the Southern Kingdom, the Northern Kingdom set up worship on Mt. Gerizim, within sight of where Jesus and the woman stood at the time of this encounter.

-Jesus’ answer to her is very telling. There is going to come a day when people will not worship on either of those mountains, because the location of worship will not matter.

-The temple, the residence of God, will no longer be in a geographic location. Rather, the true believer of God who comes to Him through Jesus Christ will have God indwelling him. So wherever a believer goes, God goes, and wherever God is, worship can happen.

-That means worship does not have to occur in a building where the church regularly meets—meaning you can worship God on days other than Sundays and Wednesdays, and in places other than the buildings we mistakenly call churches (since the people are the church, not the buildings).

-There is nothing particularly sacred or holy about a building—yes it has conveniences and comforts that help us worship—but this ground is no more holy than elsewhere, because God is not here (in the building), God is here (in the heart).

-President Woodrow Wilson shared with some friends that he had gone to a barbershop one day, and D. L. Moody sat in a chair next to him. Mr. Moody had such a holy air about him, and spoke with such godly grace, and spoke such wonderful things about God that Wilson said he felt like he was attending worship—there in a barbershop.

-So worship is not tied to one specific location. It happens within us. And that leads us:

IV) Worship engages the spirit, not just the body

-Jesus says that the worshipper of God is going to worship in spirit and in truth. And when it says that people worship in spirit, it is talking about the immaterial part within us that houses the Holy Spirit and is able to commune with God.

-People worship in spirit when their heart and mind and personality are absorbed in the majesty of God, and reflect back to Him His glory. And that means that just because someone is going through bodily motions of what we might term worship does not mean that actual worship is going on.

-People can sing the songs, listen to the prayers, endure through the sermons, but their inner self was never engaged—they are able to check off their religious list that they made it to a service, but they cannot truly say that they worshipped.

-Worship engages that which is within us as much as it engages that which is outside us.

-Jesus, quoting Isaiah, warned about this when he said in Matthew 15:8-9:

This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;

9 in vain do they worship me, (Matt. 15:8-9 ESV)

-Sure, the people were going through all the right motions—these Jews were saying prayers, singing songs, listening to teachings, making sacrifices, following the ordinances—and yet it meant nothing because their hearts were not engaged with God.

-There is an old story about a man who dreamt that an angel escorted him to church one Sunday. There he saw the keyboard musician playing vigorously, the praise team singing, the musicians playing their instruments with gusto. But the man heard no sound. The congregation was singing, but the sound was utterly muted. When the minister rose to speak, his lips moved, but there was no volume. In amazement, the man turned to his angel escort for an explanation.

“This is the way it sounds to us in heaven,” said the angel. “You hear nothing because there is nothing to hear. These people are engaged in the form of worship, but their thoughts are on other things and their hearts are far away.”

-Just because you come to a service doesn’t mean you worshipped. You worship in spirit, not just in body.

V) Worship is based on revealed truth

-Jesus says the true worshippers of God not only worship in spirit, but also in truth—that is their worship is based on who God truly is and what God truly is like.

-He earlier had told her that the Samaritans do not understand who it is they are worshipping—they do not have a complete knowledge of God, and so their worship is faulty. You can’t fully worship what it is you don’t have a personal knowledge of.

-How do we receive a personal knowledge of God? Through God’s revelation of Himself, and that comes through Scripture. Knowing God through His revelation drives what it is we worship about Him. If you worship a God that does not fit His revelation of Himself, then you are not worshipping the true God.

-If we are to worship God rightly, we accept the truth and worship Him because He created all things, He sustains all things, He is holy, He is just, He is loving, He is merciful, He must punish sin, but He loved humanity enough to send Jesus to die for their sins, and was raised again for eternal life.

-If you do not know, understand, or accept the truths that God revealed about Himself, you are worshipping a false God. And the thing is, these supposed Christian denominations who deny half the things the Bible says about God are actually worshipping themselves because they make their god out to be just like them.

~A god who does not condemn people for their sin; who really doesn’t call anything sin; who lets people do whatever they want; etc.

-You can only worship God when you know the truth about Him. Finally…

VI) Worship leads to a decision about Jesus

-Although the Samaritans had some good theology, it was not complete—they knew there was going to be a Messiah, but only that He would be a prophet like that of Moses.

-The Samaritan woman made reference to that—and Jesus had to set her straight==He was the Messiah. He is God, come in the flesh, to live the perfect life, die as the perfect sacrifice for sins, and be raised again as a demonstration of His person and power.

-When you worship God, you are confronted with the person of Jesus, and a decision must be made with what you are going to do with Him. Will you write Him off as some mere religious leader, or will you receive Him and your Savior and Lord, and then bow down to give Him the honor and glory He is due.

-Right worship always confronts you with the person of Jesus—the giver of living water; the one who alone gives abundant spiritual life. What are you going to do about Jesus today?

Conclusion

-I’ll close with this:

There is a story from a few centuries ago that Thomas K. Beecher once filled the pulpit for his famous brother, Henry Ward Beecher, at the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York. Many curiosity seekers had come to the church service merely to hear the renowned preacher, Henry Beecher, speak.

When Thomas Beecher appeared in the pulpit instead of his brother, some people got up and started for the doors. Sensing that they were disappointed because he was substituting for his brother, Thomas raised his hand for silence and announced, “All those who came here this morning to worship Henry Ward Beecher may withdraw from the church at once; all who came to worship God may remain.”

-Who are you worshipping this morning? Did you come for the music? Did you come for the programs? Did you come for the preacher? Did you come out of habit? Did you come to enhance your reputation? Or did you come to worship God?

-Where is your heart, mind, and spirit this morning? Is what you do on the outside reflective of a worshipful spirit on the inside? Is there sin blocking you from the freedom to worship properly? Do you need to confess and repent? Are you worshipping God in truth as He has revealed Himself in Scripture?

-During the invitation, maybe you need to come to the altar to align yourself with God. I invite you to come worship Him in the way He seeks. Maybe you need to get some things right that are preventing you from doing so.

-And what have you done with Jesus the Messiah? Have you believed upon Him for eternal life? Don’t just come to a worship service, but allow it to lead you to give your life to Jesus this morning.