The Worship of God | John 4:19-24
Knowing God Part 6
Pastor Charles Price
If you have a Bible with you tonight, I am going to read from John’s Gospel, Chapter 4: John’s Gospel Chapter 4. There are some of you I know who come here just in the evenings and I just want to say that next Sunday night, having just come back from India, I want to bring a report of what is happening there in India. And I plan to do that 6 o’clock next Sunday evening.
Let me read to you then John 4 and I am going to read from John 4:19-24. This is part of a conversation that Jesus had in Samaria with a woman whom He met at the well, Sychar’s well. And in John 4:19:
“‘Sir,’ the woman said, ‘I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.’
“Jesus declared, ‘Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.’”
Those verses are probably the definitive statements of Jesus on the subject of worship. For a number of weeks we have looked at this theme of knowing God. Knowing God, of course, is the very heart of the Christian life. It’s the greatest thrill in the Christian life – the fact that we may know God. It’s the greatest adventure in the whole of life of course. Jesus said,
“This is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
And we have talked over five areas about knowing God. We talked about the existence of God, first of all, looked at some of the evidences from a closed Bible that indicate that God exists.
But then we talked about the knowability of God, how that He has revealed Himself that we may know Him, not just presume or not just hope or not just believe in some vague way.
Then we talked about the experience of God, that God reveals Himself again and again through experience.
Then we talked about the sovereignty of God.
Last time we talked about the holiness of God.
And on this occasion I want to talk about the worship of God. And I want to ask three simple questions basically. First of all: What is worship?
Then I want to ask the question: Why do we worship? Why is it that God requires our worship? Why is that necessary?
And thirdly, we’ll ask the question: How do we worship?
First of all then, let’s ask the question: What is worship? First of all I need to clear some ground because the popular use of the word ‘worship’ tends to be very limiting. We tend to speak of worship as a gathering of Christians engaged in a corporate act of worship. So outside some churches you will see a sign which will say that worship time is 9:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m. or whatever. People will ask you the question sometimes, “Where you do worship?” And by that they actually mean is “Where do you go to church?” But they have associated the act of going to church with worship. That is a very limiting understanding of worship.
Perhaps even more limiting is that sometimes we associate it with the musical part of the service – you know, the singing of hymns and songs and we call that worship. And I have been to preach on a number of occasions at a place where they will say to me, “Now we’re going to have a time of worship and then you are going to preach. Your preaching comes after the worship.” But clearly by the definition it’s not part of the worship because worship is simply singing songs to God or about God.
Now of course, we know why people speak in those terms, and these are very important and very valuable times and we may meet God very powerfully during those times. But when the Bible speaks of worship, it’s not talking about singing songs or meeting together at a specific time and place.
There is a marked difference between the Old Testament descriptions of worship and the New Testament descriptions of worship. And it’s important we understand this difference. In the Old Testament, worship was centered on a place, usually on a form that would be followed, a time and rituals that would be observed. God said to Moses, for instance, back in the book of Exodus when Moses was about to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, God said, (I quote Exodus 3:12),
“I will be with you. This will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.” (Speaking there of course of Mount Sinai.)
And that was the place where God revealed to Moses His instructions for building the tabernacle and establishing the priesthood and all the rituals and regulations that went along with that. And the tabernacle is the central place of the worship of God through the wilderness journey and initially in their settlement in Canaan until eventually Solomon replaced the tabernacle with a permanent structure – the temple – but which followed very similar rituals and regulations. And when that was eventually destroyed by the Babylonians and the Israelites came back after the exile, Ezra was the one who brought about the reconstruction of the temple because it was central, it was vital to Israel’s relationship with God and their worship.
And so through the Old Testament worship tends to be centered on a building. The building is a hallowed building. It’s on hallowed ground. There are prescribed patterns that are followed through. It involves rituals and routine that had to be observed. That is the Old Testament picture of worship. And so it’s understandable sometimes why we carry over some of those connotations to the New Testament, though in the New Testament it is totally and radically different.
In the New Testament, worship has nothing to do with any special buildings or any particular rituals or any special personalities such as a priesthood, which of course was abolished by the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, when you come to the New Testament and the New Covenant, it is – and I’ll use the word deliberately – it is remarkably different from the Old Covenant when it comes to worship. Because if the Old Testament emphasized form and structure and ritual and liturgy and externals, the New Testament teaching about worship is entirely focussed upon internals - in the heart and life of the worshiper.
That’s why I read those verses from John 4 because in this discussion with the woman of Samaria, they begin to compare – at least the woman does – Samaritan worship with Jewish worship. Samaritan worship took place on Mount Gerizim; Jewish worship was centered on the temple in Jerusalem. And the woman said to Jesus,
“Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” [John 4:20]
In other words, the argument, the discussion is about geography. “We believe that this place – the mountain on Gerizim – is somehow sanctified and the place where we worship; you Jews say the temple in Jerusalem is the place where you worship.”
But Jesus said to her,
“Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.” [John 4:21]
Not meaning that you don’t worship on Mount Gerizim or you don’t worship in Jerusalem – I have preached in Jerusalem on a number of occasions, I have worshiped with people of God there. He’s not saying that’s out of bounds; He’s saying that whether it’s Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim is going to be totally irrelevant. Why? Because He says,
“A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” [John 4:23]
So in contrast to the external forms of the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim and the Jews in the temple in Jerusalem, said Jesus, it’ll be nothing to do with the place or structure or external rituals; it’ll be entirely to do with internal realities.
That’s why, by the way, although we are glad to have buildings that we make use of, such at this building, don’t confuse this building with the house of God or the place you meet with God because of the nature of the building. Hopefully we do meet with God because of the community of the believers that meet here. The church in the New Testament is not a building; it is people. And the contrast between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant is that worship which was built around external places, features, rituals, programs is transformed to being in spirit and truth and it’s internalized.
Let me read you something John Piper has written. John Piper is a writer who in his several books has written about worship and I am indebted to one of his books for some of the things I am going to share with you tonight. But John Piper writes,
“What we find in the New Testament is an utterly stunning degree of indifference to worship as an outward form – an utterly stunning degree of indifference to worship as an outward form and an utterly radical intensification of worship as an inward experience of the heart.”
There is therefore, by the way, nothing sacrosanct about how church services are conducted or where churches or congregations meet. You know, Christians through history have become very content and familiar with certain buildings and places and forms. And when things begin to take place outside of these, we get uncomfortable. When John Wesley, who led that great revival in the 18th Century – when John Wesley led that great revival and he began to preach out of doors, which was something new, he was rejected by much of Christendom because his preaching outside the sacred buildings as people saw it was to desecrate the work of God.
Similarly when his brother Charles Wesley began to write some of the great hymns that we still sing now 250 years later, began to put his hymns to the popular tunes of the day in order that they would become accessible to the masses and people began to criticize Charles Wesley because he was using these worldly tunes to spiritual songs. Because there had developed in peoples’ thinking something sacrosanct about certain buildings and certain music. And these traditions that we have may be okay as long as we remember that they are traditions and there is nothing sacrosanct about these external forms under the New Covenant.
Now Jesus in His own ministry challenged the Jewish understanding that worship of God was confined to certain buildings and certain forms. For an example, in Matthew 12 when He was discussing with the Pharisees initially the law about the Sabbath, and they began to talk about the temple and He said to them,
“I tell you that one greater than the temple is here”. [Matthew 12:6]
And of course He is referring to Himself. He was saying, “The place where men and women are going to meet with God is not in a building; it going to be in Me, through Me. Now this was so offensive to them that a few verses later it says,
“The Pharisees went out an plotted how they might kill Jesus.”[Matthew 12:14]
He had made a crucial statement you see. “Worship is not about structures and forms and buildings; it’s going to be about Me, someone greater than the temple.” On another occasion when He turned over the tables of the moneychangers, you remember, in Mark 11:17, He said to them,
“My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.”
Thereby He took the attention away from the outward acts of Jewish worship and said, “This is about communion with God and is for everyone, not an exclusive group following certain rituals.”
And they were so offended by this that it says in the next verse:
“The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him…” [Mark 11:18]
From a human perspective, the reasons why Jesus was put to death were to do with His attitude to the worship in the temple – from a human perspective. He totally riled the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the priests. He said it’s not about a place; it’s about Me.
This was something radical. And going back to the conversation with the woman of Samaria: when she asks, you know, “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; you say Jerusalem is the place – who is right, which place is right?”
His answer is: it’s nothing to do with any place at all. Worship has to do with the spirit and truth. And I take it to mean when He says, “worship is in spirit”, to mean it is from the inner part of you, it is directed by the Holy Spirit’s activity within you; it’s an inward spiritual event, not an outward driven event. And when He said “it’s in spirit and in truth”, I take it to mean that in truth it means it’s based on a true understanding of God – not worshiping because you feel like it or the way you feel like it, but as a response to the truth that you know about God.
To worship in spirit and in truth therefore is a disposition towards God. Not that outward forms are wrong or unnecessary; we need structure in life and sometimes structure in the way that we - corporately certainly – worship might be helpful to us. That’s why we do meet and we sing these songs because they do express worship, they are a means whereby we connect with God in spirit and in truth. Our songs are about truth – that’s the criteria of the songs that we sing. I often make the point: the criteria is not whether they are old or new – some of us like old ones because the tunes remind us of old days, some of us might like new ones – that isn’t the issue. The issue is not about whether they are old or new but whether they are true, whether they are expressing truths about God. And as they express truth about God, they enable us to worship in that sense.
Well, that’s my first question, which is: What is worship? Under the New Covenant, in the relationship into which you and I have been brought, which is not now through a priest or an intermediary apart from Christ Himself who is our Priest, who connects us to the Father, worship is in spirit and in truth. It is internal rather than external form.
The second question I want to ask then is: Why do we need to worship? And I want to confess to you that the idea of God requiring worship troubled me for a long time, many years. A number of things sounded wrong about God requiring our worship. Firstly, it sounded egotistical of God to demand our worship. It sounded to me more like the requirements of a tyrant, who demands to be worshiped, than of a God of love and a God of compassion and a God of humility – all these things characterize God. Now of course if anyone has a right to be egotistical – that is, to be self-centered – God has that right. But it seemed alien to His character.
Secondly it seemed to me that if God needs our worship, as I remember being told that He did, or if He needs our love for that matter, there would seem to be something deficient in Him if He needs our worship and needs our love. I had heard it said a number of times that God created us because He needed someone to love and we were to be those objects of His love and we’re to love Him back.
It’s only relatively recently that I have thought this through again. Is it God who needs our worship or is it we who need to worship? I want to quote you from C.S. Lewis – I left the book down there but I copied out the quote anyway – C.S. Lewis’ book “Reflections of the Psalms”. But C.S. Lewis of course in his typical profound insights often in his book “Reflections on the Psalms”, gives a whole section to worship and praise. And he comments very helpfully – I am going to quote part of what he says, or several extracts I am going to just merge together. He says,
“All enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise. The world rings with praise: lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game. There’s praise of weather, praise of wines, praise of dishes, of actors, of horses, of colleges, of countries, of historical personages, praise of children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians and scholars. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy” (Listen to this) “because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment. It is it’s appointed consummation. It is not out of complement that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete until it is expressed.”
I love that because what he is saying is that in our praise and worship of God, the delight that we have in God is incomplete until it is expressed and our worship of God is the opportunity to verbalize with our mouths and with our emotions that which makes our worship complete. And it is to us as we worship God, as we praise God, it is to us where the value and the benefit of that then is received.
This morning, those of you who were here, when I was talking about hungering and thirsting after righteousness, I said that our Christian lives are either driven by appetite within us or by a sense of obligation, which comes from outside us. It’s either an internal drive or it’s an externally imposed drive. And so it is in our worship of God. It is an internal necessity that we express our praise and our worship of God.
You see if we see worship as an obligation to satisfy God’s need, it’ll be a chore to us in all likelihood. But if it’s a natural expression of our love for God – the One whom we adore, the One whom we are thrilled about, the One that we are excited about, the One who is worth more to us that anyone else or anything else, the One who is our first thought in the morning and our last thought at night, then worship is as necessary and as satisfying to us as it is necessary and satisfying for a man to tell his wife that he loves her. And if you are cynical about the enduring quality of married love, it’s like newlyweds telling each other they love each other. It’s not only natural to do so, it is necessary for them to do so in order for that love to be enjoyed and deepened – simply the expression of it.
We worship God not because He demands it. We worship God because we love Him and because we love Him, we have to worship Him. We have to express our praise. Love unexpressed is also un-enjoyed. In fact I have a quote here about why it is so emotionally healthy to express love and the same would apply to express praise and worship. Someone called Dr. Trish Whynot wrote this:
“Unexpressed love festers in your body and can re-surface as an illness. Love unexpressed can be as harmful to you as anger unexpressed – they both become negative emotions. But love expressed and even anger appropriately expressed, become positive emotions and provide health.”
And I would say that is true of our worship, that as we express our worship, we become healthy in spirit. And to not express our worship and our praise of God is to stifle a necessary expression of our emotion and our minds as we love God and submit to Him.
So why do we need to worship? It’s not that God in heaven needs our worship to meet some deficiency within Himself, but we need to worship because as we express our worship, we express our praise, we complete in a very real sense our love for God and our awe of God.
So how do we worship is my third question. I had pointed out earlier that in the New Testament under the New Covenant, worship is not about form or structure or external rituals; it’s about internal issues. Worship is in spirit and in truth. So I am not going to go back on that and give you some structures, but I find it interesting in the New Testament language associated with Old Testament worship is often used of our activities before God – words like ‘sacrifice’, which we don’t offer anymore because Christ has offered sacrifice once and for all. But nevertheless, the word ‘sacrifice’ is used sometimes of actions in which we are to engage, because it is expressing this as being like worship. There are certain things it says are like a fragrant offering to God. That takes directly from the language of worship in the Old Testament but applies to the New Testament.
I want to give you five that I can find - there may be more, but in the time I have had to search for this, I can find five. And these are ways in which we worship.
First of all, we worship with our words. And I want to give you a verse for this: Hebrews 13:5 [Hebrews 13:15] the writer says,
“Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise – the fruit of our lips that confess his name.”
Using this Old Testament language of sacrifice, he speaks of praise, the fruit of our lips. And one of the ways in which we worship God is by words that confess Him and His name and His goodness and His glory. That includes singing. That is one of the best ways to express our praise because singing involves the emotions, whereas words don’t necessarily so, but music does, connects with how we feel. And so one of the ways we worship is through words. That’s why we do spend time singing in a service such as this. Because that singing is an expression of worship, it is an opportunity to express in words and with our emotions our love for God and our adoration of Him and truths about Him which reassure us and thrill us.
The second way we worship is we worship with our works. Let me read you Hebrews 13:16. He says,
“And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.”
Again, the language of Old Testament worship. He says by doing good and sharing with others, you are engaging in sacrifices, that pleases God. And therefore our works, our good works may be done for the benefit of somebody else but they are an expression of worship to God. We’re saying by the way we do these things, “It is because God is God and because I love God. That is why I serve other people too.” He calls it a sacrifice for which God is pleased.
Remember Cornelius before Cornelius was ever a Christian, he was a Roman Centurion but seeking for God. An angel appeared to him – let me read from Acts 10:4:
“And the angel appeared to him and said, ‘Cornelius!’
“’What is it, Lord?’ he asked”
“And the angel answered, ‘Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God.”
That phrase, ‘memorial offering’, again connects with the Old Testament idea of worship. And he says, “Your prayers, your gifts to the poor, your good works, even though you are not yet a believer, even though these won’t save you of course, but they have come as a sweet-smelling savour”, which is how one translation puts it.
By the way, be very cautious in hitting people hard for their good works as though good works are nasty. Good works are good, good works please God. They don’t save anybody. When you see somebody who is outside of Christ and by their good works they are doing things, don’t knock them on the head for that, allow that expression of goodness to lead them in a journey whereby they are brought to Christ as Cornelius was in the realization that “my salvation has nothing to do with good works – it’s to do entirely with the grace of God”, but those good works are a memorial offering, a sweet smelling savour that ascends to God. And that’s why Christians engage in good works – not because, “Oh no, I’ve got to do some good works”, but because “I love God and that’s how I worship God”. It’s part of our worship of God to engage in good works.
The third way is we worship God by our availability to Him. And I am going to read Romans 12:1:
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices”, (again that goes back to the Old Testament ideas of sacrifice…but)”present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship” (is how the New International Version puts that).
That the day by day presentation of yourself to God – it becomes a disposition every day. “Lord, I am available to you today.” That is your worship he says – pleasing to God. And I would add to that, that it’s not just presenting ourselves but it’s also presenting those who are close to us to God; it’s parents presenting your children to God.
I say that because the very first time the word ‘worship’ occurs in the whole Bible is in Genesis 22. God [Abraham] had been asked by Abraham [God] to offer Isaac in sacrifice, you remember, and he went on a journey for three days. And at the base of Mount Moriah he left his servants behind and said to them… he said to his servants as he and Isaac alone were to go up Mount Moriah, he said,
“Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” [Genesis 22:5]
What did Abraham mean, “We will worship”? When they went up the mountainside you remember Isaac said, “We have the fire and we have the wood but where’s the lamb?” He didn’t say, “We have the guitar and we have the drums; where’s the keyboard because we’re going to worship”. What did Abraham mean? Abraham was going to do something he didn’t understand, that God had asked him to do.
“Take your only son Isaac whom you love,” said God (rubbing in the pain of this by saying “whom you love”) and offer him in sacrifice”. [Genesis 22:2]
And Abraham took Isaac up the hill. Though he did say to his servants, “We will go yonder (I’m quoting the King James here when I say ‘yonder’) – what does he say? “We will go over there – we will worship and then we will come back to you”. And I detect in that plural “We will come back” that Abraham in his heart says, “I’m going to follow through exactly what God has told me to do and I don’t know how He’s going to do it but He may have to raise Isaac again from the dead, but we will come back”. Because every promise that God had made to Abraham was wrapped up in his son, Isaac. “We will come back”. So there’s faith there that God is going to bring them both back.
But it’s interesting: the very first time the word ‘worship’ occurs in the Bible is when Abraham is going to offer his son in sacrifice to God. And he calls it ‘worship’. It’s not just presenting ourselves; it’s presenting everything we love and saying, “Lord, everything I have and everything I own and everything I love I present to You.” And sometimes it’s very specifically; worship is giving our children to God. “God, you can help Yourself to them, whatever You want to do with them.” And that can be a costly thing.
The fourth thing I find where we worship God is we worship God with our giving. Let me read to you what Paul said in Philippians 4:18, writing to the Philippians after they had sent him a generous gift. And he says,
“I have received full payment and even more; I am amply supplied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent.” (Listen to this…) “They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God.”
Very similar to Romans 12:1 “presenting your body, acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God.” Well here he talks about their giving, their financial giving. He says it’s a fragrant offering; it’s acceptable sacrifice that’s pleasing to God. That’s why it’s not just a con when we say that, you know, our giving financially is part of our worship, to make it sound a bit more palatable. It is part of our worship that that which we own we present to God and give to God.
And if I said to you the first time the word ‘worship’ occurs in the Old Testament is Genesis 22, the first time the word ‘worship’ occurs in the New Testament is in Matthew 2:11 when the wise men came to Jesus as a baby and it says that,
“On coming to the house,” (in Matthew 2:11) “they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented to him gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh.”
Notice the association there: “They worshiped him and opened their treasures”, because to worship is to open our treasures to God. Whatever those treasures may be. They are opening them to Him. And so we worship by our giving. We say, “God this is how much I love You. Do you think your giving is a fair reflection of that, personally? “This is saying how much I love You”.
Fifthly - and here’s an interesting one - we worship Him in our dying. When Paul, writing to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4, was expecting shortly to die (he was now an old man), he described his death this way:
“For I am now ready to be offered and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” [2 Timothy 4:6-7]
He described his own death there as an offering. “I am ready to be offered.”
And just thinking about that – in fact, only this afternoon, how that our death can be an act of worship - it was for Jesus, who His last words were, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
Stephen, the first martyr, said something very similar. As Stephen died, he said, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”. His act of dying was an act of worship. And we’re not always conscious of our moment of dying. But as the Lord Jesus was, as Stephen was, as Paul was anticipating it, he saw even death as an act of worship to God.
Worship is not something we come to a building to do. When we come to a building like this for the particular services that we are here for, we are going to express our worship. It’s a wonderful thing to do it communally, but our worship of God is seen in the words that we speak, in the works that we engage in, in the availability of our lives to Him twenty-four hours a day, in our giving of that with which God has blessed us, and even in our dying.
The true worshipers, said Jesus, will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. God is spirit; His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. That means there are no impositions except that which the heart and the spirit demand of us out of our love for God. It’s in spirit. And if there are no impositions except what our own hearts and spirit demand of us, there are no restrictions either to our worship except the parameters of truth, for we worship in spirit and in truth, our worship of God is based on the revelation of Himself in His word.
And that’s why we are called to be a worshiping people. To know God is to worship God, because to know God is to be filled with such wonder and adoration and love that as C.S. Lewis said, “To praise is to complete that experience of love”.
I want to finish by quoting William Temple, who was a very godly archbishop of Canterbury back in the last century. I love the way he has defined worship. He defined worship as “quickening the conscience by the holiness of God, feeding the mind with the truth of God, purging the imagination by the beauty of God, opening the heart to the love of God and devoting the will to the purpose of God.”
“Quickening the conscience by the holiness of God, feeding the mind with the truth of God, purging the imagination by the beauty of God, opening the heart to the love of God and devoting the will to the purpose of God.” Is there anything left out of that? Is there any part of your life, which, by that definition, will not result in praise and worship of God? Next time somebody asks you, “Where do you worship?” why don’t you say something like, “In the bathroom”? It would make them stop and think.
“Oh really.”
“Yes.”
Why not say, “In the workplace”. Why say, “In such and such a church on such and such a street”? That’s going back to an Old Covenant, which focussed on buildings and places and rituals and forms. But we now live in a relationship with God where in spirit and in truth our whole lives are an expression of our worship of Him. The way we go about our business, the way we conduct ourselves expresses our worship and love and adoration of God.
Let’s be a worshiping people, not just a worshiping community when we’re together, but that our lives be an expression of our worship and it’ll bring deep satisfaction to our own hearts as well as pleasure to a God who seeks that we worship in spirit and in truth.
Let’s pray together. Father, we do thank You this morning (this evening) that we are able to worship You because You have chosen to reveal Yourself to us in such a way that we don’t simply stand in awe at some mysterious God out there somewhere. We do recognize the mysteries; we do recognize that which we cannot comprehend about Yourself. But thank You that You have revealed Yourself to us in such a way that we can respond in freedom and worship and adoration, because You are a God who loves. You are love. You are a God who is kind, who is patient, who is merciful, who is just, who is sovereign. And I pray Lord Jesus that the way we live our lives, the way we engage with each other, the way we spend our money, the way we drive our vehicles down the road, the way we talk to the anonymous person at the check-out counter in the local supermarket, the way we act will be an expression of our worship of God. We pray it in Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Let me read to you then John 4 and I am going to read from John 4:19-24. This is part of a conversation that Jesus had in Samaria with a woman whom He met at the well, Sychar’s well. And in John 4:19:
“‘Sir,’ the woman said, ‘I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.’
“Jesus declared, ‘Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.’”
Those verses are probably the definitive statements of Jesus on the subject of worship. For a number of weeks we have looked at this theme of knowing God. Knowing God, of course, is the very heart of the Christian life. It’s the greatest thrill in the Christian life – the fact that we may know God. It’s the greatest adventure in the whole of life of course. Jesus said,
“This is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
And we have talked over five areas about knowing God. We talked about the existence of God, first of all, looked at some of the evidences from a closed Bible that indicate that God exists.
But then we talked about the knowability of God, how that He has revealed Himself that we may know Him, not just presume or not just hope or not just believe in some vague way.
Then we talked about the experience of God, that God reveals Himself again and again through experience.
Then we talked about the sovereignty of God.
Last time we talked about the holiness of God.
And on this occasion I want to talk about the worship of God. And I want to ask three simple questions basically. First of all: What is worship?
Then I want to ask the question: Why do we worship? Why is it that God requires our worship? Why is that necessary?
And thirdly, we’ll ask the question: How do we worship?
First of all then, let’s ask the question: What is worship? First of all I need to clear some ground because the popular use of the word ‘worship’ tends to be very limiting. We tend to speak of worship as a gathering of Christians engaged in a corporate act of worship. So outside some churches you will see a sign which will say that worship time is 9:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m. or whatever. People will ask you the question sometimes, “Where you do worship?” And by that they actually mean is “Where do you go to church?” But they have associated the act of going to church with worship. That is a very limiting understanding of worship.
Perhaps even more limiting is that sometimes we associate it with the musical part of the service – you know, the singing of hymns and songs and we call that worship. And I have been to preach on a number of occasions at a place where they will say to me, “Now we’re going to have a time of worship and then you are going to preach. Your preaching comes after the worship.” But clearly by the definition it’s not part of the worship because worship is simply singing songs to God or about God.
Now of course, we know why people speak in those terms, and these are very important and very valuable times and we may meet God very powerfully during those times. But when the Bible speaks of worship, it’s not talking about singing songs or meeting together at a specific time and place.
There is a marked difference between the Old Testament descriptions of worship and the New Testament descriptions of worship. And it’s important we understand this difference. In the Old Testament, worship was centered on a place, usually on a form that would be followed, a time and rituals that would be observed. God said to Moses, for instance, back in the book of Exodus when Moses was about to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, God said, (I quote Exodus 3:12),
“I will be with you. This will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.” (Speaking there of course of Mount Sinai.)
And that was the place where God revealed to Moses His instructions for building the tabernacle and establishing the priesthood and all the rituals and regulations that went along with that. And the tabernacle is the central place of the worship of God through the wilderness journey and initially in their settlement in Canaan until eventually Solomon replaced the tabernacle with a permanent structure – the temple – but which followed very similar rituals and regulations. And when that was eventually destroyed by the Babylonians and the Israelites came back after the exile, Ezra was the one who brought about the reconstruction of the temple because it was central, it was vital to Israel’s relationship with God and their worship.
And so through the Old Testament worship tends to be centered on a building. The building is a hallowed building. It’s on hallowed ground. There are prescribed patterns that are followed through. It involves rituals and routine that had to be observed. That is the Old Testament picture of worship. And so it’s understandable sometimes why we carry over some of those connotations to the New Testament, though in the New Testament it is totally and radically different.
In the New Testament, worship has nothing to do with any special buildings or any particular rituals or any special personalities such as a priesthood, which of course was abolished by the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, when you come to the New Testament and the New Covenant, it is – and I’ll use the word deliberately – it is remarkably different from the Old Covenant when it comes to worship. Because if the Old Testament emphasized form and structure and ritual and liturgy and externals, the New Testament teaching about worship is entirely focussed upon internals - in the heart and life of the worshiper.
That’s why I read those verses from John 4 because in this discussion with the woman of Samaria, they begin to compare – at least the woman does – Samaritan worship with Jewish worship. Samaritan worship took place on Mount Gerizim; Jewish worship was centered on the temple in Jerusalem. And the woman said to Jesus,
“Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” [John 4:20]
In other words, the argument, the discussion is about geography. “We believe that this place – the mountain on Gerizim – is somehow sanctified and the place where we worship; you Jews say the temple in Jerusalem is the place where you worship.”
But Jesus said to her,
“Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.” [John 4:21]
Not meaning that you don’t worship on Mount Gerizim or you don’t worship in Jerusalem – I have preached in Jerusalem on a number of occasions, I have worshiped with people of God there. He’s not saying that’s out of bounds; He’s saying that whether it’s Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim is going to be totally irrelevant. Why? Because He says,
“A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” [John 4:23]
So in contrast to the external forms of the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim and the Jews in the temple in Jerusalem, said Jesus, it’ll be nothing to do with the place or structure or external rituals; it’ll be entirely to do with internal realities.
That’s why, by the way, although we are glad to have buildings that we make use of, such at this building, don’t confuse this building with the house of God or the place you meet with God because of the nature of the building. Hopefully we do meet with God because of the community of the believers that meet here. The church in the New Testament is not a building; it is people. And the contrast between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant is that worship which was built around external places, features, rituals, programs is transformed to being in spirit and truth and it’s internalized.
Let me read you something John Piper has written. John Piper is a writer who in his several books has written about worship and I am indebted to one of his books for some of the things I am going to share with you tonight. But John Piper writes,
“What we find in the New Testament is an utterly stunning degree of indifference to worship as an outward form – an utterly stunning degree of indifference to worship as an outward form and an utterly radical intensification of worship as an inward experience of the heart.”
There is therefore, by the way, nothing sacrosanct about how church services are conducted or where churches or congregations meet. You know, Christians through history have become very content and familiar with certain buildings and places and forms. And when things begin to take place outside of these, we get uncomfortable. When John Wesley, who led that great revival in the 18th Century – when John Wesley led that great revival and he began to preach out of doors, which was something new, he was rejected by much of Christendom because his preaching outside the sacred buildings as people saw it was to desecrate the work of God.
Similarly when his brother Charles Wesley began to write some of the great hymns that we still sing now 250 years later, began to put his hymns to the popular tunes of the day in order that they would become accessible to the masses and people began to criticize Charles Wesley because he was using these worldly tunes to spiritual songs. Because there had developed in peoples’ thinking something sacrosanct about certain buildings and certain music. And these traditions that we have may be okay as long as we remember that they are traditions and there is nothing sacrosanct about these external forms under the New Covenant.
Now Jesus in His own ministry challenged the Jewish understanding that worship of God was confined to certain buildings and certain forms. For an example, in Matthew 12 when He was discussing with the Pharisees initially the law about the Sabbath, and they began to talk about the temple and He said to them,
“I tell you that one greater than the temple is here”. [Matthew 12:6]
And of course He is referring to Himself. He was saying, “The place where men and women are going to meet with God is not in a building; it going to be in Me, through Me. Now this was so offensive to them that a few verses later it says,
“The Pharisees went out an plotted how they might kill Jesus.”[Matthew 12:14]
He had made a crucial statement you see. “Worship is not about structures and forms and buildings; it’s going to be about Me, someone greater than the temple.” On another occasion when He turned over the tables of the moneychangers, you remember, in Mark 11:17, He said to them,
“My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.”
Thereby He took the attention away from the outward acts of Jewish worship and said, “This is about communion with God and is for everyone, not an exclusive group following certain rituals.”
And they were so offended by this that it says in the next verse:
“The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him…” [Mark 11:18]
From a human perspective, the reasons why Jesus was put to death were to do with His attitude to the worship in the temple – from a human perspective. He totally riled the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the priests. He said it’s not about a place; it’s about Me.
This was something radical. And going back to the conversation with the woman of Samaria: when she asks, you know, “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; you say Jerusalem is the place – who is right, which place is right?”
His answer is: it’s nothing to do with any place at all. Worship has to do with the spirit and truth. And I take it to mean when He says, “worship is in spirit”, to mean it is from the inner part of you, it is directed by the Holy Spirit’s activity within you; it’s an inward spiritual event, not an outward driven event. And when He said “it’s in spirit and in truth”, I take it to mean that in truth it means it’s based on a true understanding of God – not worshiping because you feel like it or the way you feel like it, but as a response to the truth that you know about God.
To worship in spirit and in truth therefore is a disposition towards God. Not that outward forms are wrong or unnecessary; we need structure in life and sometimes structure in the way that we - corporately certainly – worship might be helpful to us. That’s why we do meet and we sing these songs because they do express worship, they are a means whereby we connect with God in spirit and in truth. Our songs are about truth – that’s the criteria of the songs that we sing. I often make the point: the criteria is not whether they are old or new – some of us like old ones because the tunes remind us of old days, some of us might like new ones – that isn’t the issue. The issue is not about whether they are old or new but whether they are true, whether they are expressing truths about God. And as they express truth about God, they enable us to worship in that sense.
Well, that’s my first question, which is: What is worship? Under the New Covenant, in the relationship into which you and I have been brought, which is not now through a priest or an intermediary apart from Christ Himself who is our Priest, who connects us to the Father, worship is in spirit and in truth. It is internal rather than external form.
The second question I want to ask then is: Why do we need to worship? And I want to confess to you that the idea of God requiring worship troubled me for a long time, many years. A number of things sounded wrong about God requiring our worship. Firstly, it sounded egotistical of God to demand our worship. It sounded to me more like the requirements of a tyrant, who demands to be worshiped, than of a God of love and a God of compassion and a God of humility – all these things characterize God. Now of course if anyone has a right to be egotistical – that is, to be self-centered – God has that right. But it seemed alien to His character.
Secondly it seemed to me that if God needs our worship, as I remember being told that He did, or if He needs our love for that matter, there would seem to be something deficient in Him if He needs our worship and needs our love. I had heard it said a number of times that God created us because He needed someone to love and we were to be those objects of His love and we’re to love Him back.
It’s only relatively recently that I have thought this through again. Is it God who needs our worship or is it we who need to worship? I want to quote you from C.S. Lewis – I left the book down there but I copied out the quote anyway – C.S. Lewis’ book “Reflections of the Psalms”. But C.S. Lewis of course in his typical profound insights often in his book “Reflections on the Psalms”, gives a whole section to worship and praise. And he comments very helpfully – I am going to quote part of what he says, or several extracts I am going to just merge together. He says,
“All enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise. The world rings with praise: lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game. There’s praise of weather, praise of wines, praise of dishes, of actors, of horses, of colleges, of countries, of historical personages, praise of children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians and scholars. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy” (Listen to this) “because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment. It is it’s appointed consummation. It is not out of complement that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete until it is expressed.”
I love that because what he is saying is that in our praise and worship of God, the delight that we have in God is incomplete until it is expressed and our worship of God is the opportunity to verbalize with our mouths and with our emotions that which makes our worship complete. And it is to us as we worship God, as we praise God, it is to us where the value and the benefit of that then is received.
This morning, those of you who were here, when I was talking about hungering and thirsting after righteousness, I said that our Christian lives are either driven by appetite within us or by a sense of obligation, which comes from outside us. It’s either an internal drive or it’s an externally imposed drive. And so it is in our worship of God. It is an internal necessity that we express our praise and our worship of God.
You see if we see worship as an obligation to satisfy God’s need, it’ll be a chore to us in all likelihood. But if it’s a natural expression of our love for God – the One whom we adore, the One whom we are thrilled about, the One that we are excited about, the One who is worth more to us that anyone else or anything else, the One who is our first thought in the morning and our last thought at night, then worship is as necessary and as satisfying to us as it is necessary and satisfying for a man to tell his wife that he loves her. And if you are cynical about the enduring quality of married love, it’s like newlyweds telling each other they love each other. It’s not only natural to do so, it is necessary for them to do so in order for that love to be enjoyed and deepened – simply the expression of it.
We worship God not because He demands it. We worship God because we love Him and because we love Him, we have to worship Him. We have to express our praise. Love unexpressed is also un-enjoyed. In fact I have a quote here about why it is so emotionally healthy to express love and the same would apply to express praise and worship. Someone called Dr. Trish Whynot wrote this:
“Unexpressed love festers in your body and can re-surface as an illness. Love unexpressed can be as harmful to you as anger unexpressed – they both become negative emotions. But love expressed and even anger appropriately expressed, become positive emotions and provide health.”
And I would say that is true of our worship, that as we express our worship, we become healthy in spirit. And to not express our worship and our praise of God is to stifle a necessary expression of our emotion and our minds as we love God and submit to Him.
So why do we need to worship? It’s not that God in heaven needs our worship to meet some deficiency within Himself, but we need to worship because as we express our worship, we express our praise, we complete in a very real sense our love for God and our awe of God.
So how do we worship is my third question. I had pointed out earlier that in the New Testament under the New Covenant, worship is not about form or structure or external rituals; it’s about internal issues. Worship is in spirit and in truth. So I am not going to go back on that and give you some structures, but I find it interesting in the New Testament language associated with Old Testament worship is often used of our activities before God – words like ‘sacrifice’, which we don’t offer anymore because Christ has offered sacrifice once and for all. But nevertheless, the word ‘sacrifice’ is used sometimes of actions in which we are to engage, because it is expressing this as being like worship. There are certain things it says are like a fragrant offering to God. That takes directly from the language of worship in the Old Testament but applies to the New Testament.
I want to give you five that I can find - there may be more, but in the time I have had to search for this, I can find five. And these are ways in which we worship.
First of all, we worship with our words. And I want to give you a verse for this: Hebrews 13:5 [Hebrews 13:15] the writer says,
“Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise – the fruit of our lips that confess his name.”
Using this Old Testament language of sacrifice, he speaks of praise, the fruit of our lips. And one of the ways in which we worship God is by words that confess Him and His name and His goodness and His glory. That includes singing. That is one of the best ways to express our praise because singing involves the emotions, whereas words don’t necessarily so, but music does, connects with how we feel. And so one of the ways we worship is through words. That’s why we do spend time singing in a service such as this. Because that singing is an expression of worship, it is an opportunity to express in words and with our emotions our love for God and our adoration of Him and truths about Him which reassure us and thrill us.
The second way we worship is we worship with our works. Let me read you Hebrews 13:16. He says,
“And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.”
Again, the language of Old Testament worship. He says by doing good and sharing with others, you are engaging in sacrifices, that pleases God. And therefore our works, our good works may be done for the benefit of somebody else but they are an expression of worship to God. We’re saying by the way we do these things, “It is because God is God and because I love God. That is why I serve other people too.” He calls it a sacrifice for which God is pleased.
Remember Cornelius before Cornelius was ever a Christian, he was a Roman Centurion but seeking for God. An angel appeared to him – let me read from Acts 10:4:
“And the angel appeared to him and said, ‘Cornelius!’
“’What is it, Lord?’ he asked”
“And the angel answered, ‘Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God.”
That phrase, ‘memorial offering’, again connects with the Old Testament idea of worship. And he says, “Your prayers, your gifts to the poor, your good works, even though you are not yet a believer, even though these won’t save you of course, but they have come as a sweet-smelling savour”, which is how one translation puts it.
By the way, be very cautious in hitting people hard for their good works as though good works are nasty. Good works are good, good works please God. They don’t save anybody. When you see somebody who is outside of Christ and by their good works they are doing things, don’t knock them on the head for that, allow that expression of goodness to lead them in a journey whereby they are brought to Christ as Cornelius was in the realization that “my salvation has nothing to do with good works – it’s to do entirely with the grace of God”, but those good works are a memorial offering, a sweet smelling savour that ascends to God. And that’s why Christians engage in good works – not because, “Oh no, I’ve got to do some good works”, but because “I love God and that’s how I worship God”. It’s part of our worship of God to engage in good works.
The third way is we worship God by our availability to Him. And I am going to read Romans 12:1:
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices”, (again that goes back to the Old Testament ideas of sacrifice…but)”present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship” (is how the New International Version puts that).
That the day by day presentation of yourself to God – it becomes a disposition every day. “Lord, I am available to you today.” That is your worship he says – pleasing to God. And I would add to that, that it’s not just presenting ourselves but it’s also presenting those who are close to us to God; it’s parents presenting your children to God.
I say that because the very first time the word ‘worship’ occurs in the whole Bible is in Genesis 22. God [Abraham] had been asked by Abraham [God] to offer Isaac in sacrifice, you remember, and he went on a journey for three days. And at the base of Mount Moriah he left his servants behind and said to them… he said to his servants as he and Isaac alone were to go up Mount Moriah, he said,
“Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” [Genesis 22:5]
What did Abraham mean, “We will worship”? When they went up the mountainside you remember Isaac said, “We have the fire and we have the wood but where’s the lamb?” He didn’t say, “We have the guitar and we have the drums; where’s the keyboard because we’re going to worship”. What did Abraham mean? Abraham was going to do something he didn’t understand, that God had asked him to do.
“Take your only son Isaac whom you love,” said God (rubbing in the pain of this by saying “whom you love”) and offer him in sacrifice”. [Genesis 22:2]
And Abraham took Isaac up the hill. Though he did say to his servants, “We will go yonder (I’m quoting the King James here when I say ‘yonder’) – what does he say? “We will go over there – we will worship and then we will come back to you”. And I detect in that plural “We will come back” that Abraham in his heart says, “I’m going to follow through exactly what God has told me to do and I don’t know how He’s going to do it but He may have to raise Isaac again from the dead, but we will come back”. Because every promise that God had made to Abraham was wrapped up in his son, Isaac. “We will come back”. So there’s faith there that God is going to bring them both back.
But it’s interesting: the very first time the word ‘worship’ occurs in the Bible is when Abraham is going to offer his son in sacrifice to God. And he calls it ‘worship’. It’s not just presenting ourselves; it’s presenting everything we love and saying, “Lord, everything I have and everything I own and everything I love I present to You.” And sometimes it’s very specifically; worship is giving our children to God. “God, you can help Yourself to them, whatever You want to do with them.” And that can be a costly thing.
The fourth thing I find where we worship God is we worship God with our giving. Let me read to you what Paul said in Philippians 4:18, writing to the Philippians after they had sent him a generous gift. And he says,
“I have received full payment and even more; I am amply supplied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent.” (Listen to this…) “They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God.”
Very similar to Romans 12:1 “presenting your body, acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God.” Well here he talks about their giving, their financial giving. He says it’s a fragrant offering; it’s acceptable sacrifice that’s pleasing to God. That’s why it’s not just a con when we say that, you know, our giving financially is part of our worship, to make it sound a bit more palatable. It is part of our worship that that which we own we present to God and give to God.
And if I said to you the first time the word ‘worship’ occurs in the Old Testament is Genesis 22, the first time the word ‘worship’ occurs in the New Testament is in Matthew 2:11 when the wise men came to Jesus as a baby and it says that,
“On coming to the house,” (in Matthew 2:11) “they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented to him gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh.”
Notice the association there: “They worshiped him and opened their treasures”, because to worship is to open our treasures to God. Whatever those treasures may be. They are opening them to Him. And so we worship by our giving. We say, “God this is how much I love You. Do you think your giving is a fair reflection of that, personally? “This is saying how much I love You”.
Fifthly - and here’s an interesting one - we worship Him in our dying. When Paul, writing to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4, was expecting shortly to die (he was now an old man), he described his death this way:
“For I am now ready to be offered and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” [2 Timothy 4:6-7]
He described his own death there as an offering. “I am ready to be offered.”
And just thinking about that – in fact, only this afternoon, how that our death can be an act of worship - it was for Jesus, who His last words were, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
Stephen, the first martyr, said something very similar. As Stephen died, he said, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”. His act of dying was an act of worship. And we’re not always conscious of our moment of dying. But as the Lord Jesus was, as Stephen was, as Paul was anticipating it, he saw even death as an act of worship to God.
Worship is not something we come to a building to do. When we come to a building like this for the particular services that we are here for, we are going to express our worship. It’s a wonderful thing to do it communally, but our worship of God is seen in the words that we speak, in the works that we engage in, in the availability of our lives to Him twenty-four hours a day, in our giving of that with which God has blessed us, and even in our dying.
The true worshipers, said Jesus, will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. God is spirit; His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. That means there are no impositions except that which the heart and the spirit demand of us out of our love for God. It’s in spirit. And if there are no impositions except what our own hearts and spirit demand of us, there are no restrictions either to our worship except the parameters of truth, for we worship in spirit and in truth, our worship of God is based on the revelation of Himself in His word.
And that’s why we are called to be a worshiping people. To know God is to worship God, because to know God is to be filled with such wonder and adoration and love that as C.S. Lewis said, “To praise is to complete that experience of love”.
I want to finish by quoting William Temple, who was a very godly archbishop of Canterbury back in the last century. I love the way he has defined worship. He defined worship as “quickening the conscience by the holiness of God, feeding the mind with the truth of God, purging the imagination by the beauty of God, opening the heart to the love of God and devoting the will to the purpose of God.”
“Quickening the conscience by the holiness of God, feeding the mind with the truth of God, purging the imagination by the beauty of God, opening the heart to the love of God and devoting the will to the purpose of God.” Is there anything left out of that? Is there any part of your life, which, by that definition, will not result in praise and worship of God? Next time somebody asks you, “Where do you worship?” why don’t you say something like, “In the bathroom”? It would make them stop and think.
“Oh really.”
“Yes.”
Why not say, “In the workplace”. Why say, “In such and such a church on such and such a street”? That’s going back to an Old Covenant, which focussed on buildings and places and rituals and forms. But we now live in a relationship with God where in spirit and in truth our whole lives are an expression of our worship of Him. The way we go about our business, the way we conduct ourselves expresses our worship and love and adoration of God.
Let’s be a worshiping people, not just a worshiping community when we’re together, but that our lives be an expression of our worship and it’ll bring deep satisfaction to our own hearts as well as pleasure to a God who seeks that we worship in spirit and in truth.
Let’s pray together. Father, we do thank You this morning (this evening) that we are able to worship You because You have chosen to reveal Yourself to us in such a way that we don’t simply stand in awe at some mysterious God out there somewhere. We do recognize the mysteries; we do recognize that which we cannot comprehend about Yourself. But thank You that You have revealed Yourself to us in such a way that we can respond in freedom and worship and adoration, because You are a God who loves. You are love. You are a God who is kind, who is patient, who is merciful, who is just, who is sovereign. And I pray Lord Jesus that the way we live our lives, the way we engage with each other, the way we spend our money, the way we drive our vehicles down the road, the way we talk to the anonymous person at the check-out counter in the local supermarket, the way we act will be an expression of our worship of God. We pray it in Jesus’ Name, Amen.