Worship Call 0641 Worshipping the Father

Robert, you can't escape it! 1 Corinthians 15:55-58 "O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?" The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. Every day roughly 150,000 around the world die. Death has a way of raising our spiritual temperature and quickening us to re-evaluate life...especially to ask, "Am I doing all that I can do?" Have you ever heard of how the Nobel Peace Prize originated? Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, awoke one morning in 1888, shocked to discover his own obituary in the morning news. The newspaper had mistakenly printed the story about Alfred, instead of his brother, who had just passed away. As he read his own epitaph, the story of the "Dynamite King", the great industrialist who made an immense fortune from explosives -- Alfred Nobel was rudely awakened to the fact that the world viewed him as a merchant of death! The mistake was not wasted on him. Rather, it served as his wake-up call! As he read his obituary with horror, Alfred resolved to make clear to the world his understanding of the true meaning and purpose of his life. So he used his immense fortune to create a foundation which would promote and embody his ideal for world peace...and he is now remembered, not as the "Dynamite King", but the creator of what we know now as the "Nobel Peace Prize." Robert, let's allow this little message to be our wake up call. Let's re-evaluate our lives, look within...and ask ourselves, "Are we truly doing all that we can be doing for the Lord?" Because when this life is finally past, and our deeds are all recorded in the "Books", only what was done with and for the Lord, will last...forever! Your family in the Lord with much agape love, George, Baht Rivka, Elianna & Obadiah Tampa, Florida

Rarely if non at all is the Lord, The God of Heaven referred to as Father. at least not stated by the Israelites. Though they are Children of God, and children have a father, even the Lord says;

Jeremiah 32:38 (NASB95) — 38 “They shall be My people, and I will be their God;

Jeremiah 24:7 (NASB95) — 7 ‘I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am the Lord; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart.

Exodus 6:7; Jeremiah 30:22 Ex 6:7; Jer 32:38; Ezek 36:28; Hos 2:23; Zech 13:9

Happy to have God as my God and glad to be his people. we can praise the Lord for that. I have no other God but this God, and I will praise Him all of my life.

A Father however speaks of intimacy. A Father who loves his son. A father of a protocol son who loves his son unconditionally. A Father who would give all to receive to himself His son. A Father does not remain behind a veil out of view of his children. A Father does not require a go between, (priests) to communicate with His people but they have direct connection through prayer to the father. It is this God that we cry out Abba Father.

Here the Lord says to the Samaritan Woman

John 4:23 (NASB95) — 23 “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.

What is worship?

Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon (4352 προσκυνέω)

4352 προσκυνέω [proskuneo /pros·koo·neh·o/] v. From 4314 and a probable derivative of 2965 (meaning to kiss, like a dog licking his master’s hand); TDNT 6:758; TDNTA 948; GK 4686; 60 occurrences; AV translates as “worship” 60 times. 1 to kiss the hand to (towards) one, in token of reverence. 2 among the Orientals, esp. the Persians, to fall upon the knees and touch the ground with the forehead as an expression of profound reverence. 3 in the NT by kneeling or prostration to do homage (to one) or make obeisance, whether in order to express respect or to make supplication. 3A used of homage shown to men and beings of superior rank. 3A1 to the Jewish high priests. 3A2 to God. 3A3 to Christ. 3A4 to heavenly beings. 3A5 to demons.4353 π

to kiss like a dog licking the master’s hand is an interesting idiom.

Maybe God made such an animal as the domesticated dog to show us the kind of loyalty that we should express to the Father.

John 4:23 (NASB95) — 23 “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers

Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon 228 ἀληθινός

ἀληθινός [alethinos /al·ay·thee·nos/] adj

Genuine; sincere worshippers as opposed to those who are practicing religion will worship God in spirit and in truth.

John 4:23–24 (NASB95) — 23 “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.

God a spirit. But God is also a person. A rational being. He thinks, He determines to do, and God has a sensibility. as a rational being God Communes with other rational beings and they with Him. Angels and man who are also rational beings.

At the top of the triangle we have God. It is God who is sovereign and thus there is a protocol to approach God in a relationship and that protocol has to be learned and observed to approach God.

point of Doctrine: If man is approach God, it is on God’s terms and not on mans terms.

Not like Jacob in Genesis

Genesis 28:20–21 (NASB95) — 20 Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and will keep me on this journey that I take, and will give me food to eat and garments to wear, 21 and I return to my father’s house in safety, then the Lord will be my God.

Jacob had a lot to learn and so do we.

Relationship that we have is not with a religion. Not with Doctrine. Not with theology. but a person, a rational being. And while Doctrine and the study of God reveals and teaches us the protocol in how to live the Spiritual life, it is truth that our studies that lead us to an intimacy with a living loving caring person of God.

the woman spoke of father Jacob and where the ancestral Fathers would come to worship.

Jesus who is man, knows how to commune with the Father and who is God who knows what is required to properly worship God, is giving the greatest gift right now that the woman has ever recieved. the knowledge of how to approach God in intimate relaitonship.

all the Father’s that the woman spoke of are gone. But she through spirit and truth will be able to approach God in genuine worship.

John 4:24 (NASB95) — 24 “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon 4151 πνεῦμα

πνεῦμα [pneuma /pnyoo·mah/] n

breath wind life. in the Old Testiment the word is Ruach

and those that worship him must worship HIm in Spirit and in truth.

at the bottom of the triangle on one side there is spirit and on the other there is truth.

Let us today discuss the spirit aspect and tomorrow we will pick up the truth aspect of the relationship with God.

Again man does not approach God on his own terms. the way is made open first though the new birth which is the work of the Holy Spirit.

We enter into this world as the progeny of Adam. A body and soul but a human spirit that is dead to a relationship with the Lord. We are what Paul calls the Soulish or natural man.

1 Corinthians 2:14–16 (NASB95) — 14 But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. 15 But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. 16 For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.

Man is estranged from God.

In Adam all die. In Adam’s likeness there is no rapport with God.

In regeneration it is through the Holy Spirit that makes alive that which was formally dead, making us new creatures in Christ. and it is then that the spirit of God can commune with the spirit of Man.

Romans 8:16–21 (NASB95) — 16 The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him. 18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

Positionally we have all the rights and privileges of a Son of God.

It is the spirit that will come upon the believer at Pentecost promised by God who is our comforter, our helper, our advocate, our mentor and teacher.

John 14:26 (NASB95) — 26 “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.

We know nothing of God on or in our own power.

1 Corinthians 2:9–11 (NASB95) — 9 but just as it is written, “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, And which have not entered the heart of man, All that God has prepared for those who love Him.” 10 For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. 11 For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.

even from that which leads us into salvation it is the Holy spirit who revealed the way of salvation to us as we could not as spiritually dead descern for ourselves.

1 Corinthians 1:18 (NASB95) — 18 For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.