What is Real Worship?

1. 0:11 yes and amen thank you very much for leading us in music this morning how many of you were here for worship night can i see your show hands yeah i think the walls may still be vibrating and echoing a little bit from the from the service that night it was wonderful i will tell you after worship night friday night and i taught in a membership class all day yesterday my my pipes are running low so hopefully i can make it through the end some of you are thinking it's okay if you don't pastor it's all right unless i don't know i know your thoughts what what is it makes one worship experience just wonderful it's it's glorious it's uplifting it's it's transformative and and you could just stay there for hours and hours enjoying worshiping the lord and other worship services grindingly slow and you we preachers when back when men used to wear watches i don't know how many of you still do but uh we preachers used to have a rubric that if we saw people glancing at their watches you're in trouble you see them tapping their watches and going like this to see if they're still running you're done just say amen close in prayer and try to do better next week what is it what's the difference between those kinds of services a number of years ago i was in a class at covenant theological seminary talking about worship and just in an informal break it's about 12 passages or so from different traditions and we we started talking amongst ourselves what is it that makes a worship service really come alive for us those of us who do this all the time we do this for a living this is part of our work what makes a worship service really happen for us tell you more about that in just a minute or two our text this morning is from john chapter 4 verses 19 through 26 pastor james and by the way he is out of town this morning speaking of our veterans he is fulfilling his obligation to the united states national the united states military and serving as chaplain up in mississippi this week so he stayed here through worship service friday night got a late night flight to new orleans and drove to jack or to mississippi and so we miss you pastor james hurry home uh he preached on john chapter 4 about two months ago and assuming most of you probably don't remember what was in that chapter let me just uh give you the context here okay uh jesus is traveling through samaria and samaria is hostile territory for jews the jews and the samaritans do not like each other at all so most jews don't go through there if they can avoid it jesus goes right through samaria comes to a town called sychar where there's a well dug by his great great great great whatever grandfather jacob jacob's well and there's a woman there drawing water in the heat of the day which is unusual women usually went out to draw their water in the cool of the morning or late in the evening and this woman's out there in the heat of the day by herself because she's not well thought of in the town so she's by herself and jesus speaks to her which again is against cultural cultural norms at the time men don't speak to women they don't know and jews don't speak to samaritans but he says to her may i have a drink she's very surprised but here we see the first eight verses of the of the chapter you see a man needing a drink of water and that shows us the humanity of jesus and after that jesus begins to talk to her and he says to her go bring your husband and she says i don't have a husband he says you're right you've had five husbands the man you're living with now is not your husband she's stunned by this whenever i read that passage i think of an elderly lady who was at a party one night now an elderly meets an elderly gentleman as they're talking the woman says to the man you know you look like my fourth husband he says your fourth husband my goodness madam how many husbands have you had three she says i've had i've had three and so this woman has been through quite a few men or quite a few men have been through her however you want to put that and she's living with a man that she's not married to and so of course she wants to change the subject she says let's talk about worship let's talk about something religious we'll pick it up in john chapter 4 verse 19 the woman said to him sir i perceive you are a prophet our fathers worshiped on this mountain but you say that in jerusalem is a place for 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 but we worship what we know is what we know that 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 in 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 will you pray with me our lord and our god as we look now into this portion of your word this is your word inspired written down and preserved the ages for us lord your word is truth sanctify us in the truth meet us in this place meet us at the point of our need that we might more worthily magnify you and when we leave this place we're more like jesus than when we got here for i make this prayer in his name amen amen so the first part of the chapter we see the humanity of jesus second part of the chapter we see the compassion of jesus and now in this third movement here we see a whole new paradigm for worship we see the deity of jesus the lordship of jesus the woman says i see you are a prophet that's her way of saying yeah you nail me you know me i see you're a prophet so hey let's talk about worship can we our fathers worshiped on this mountain in samaria but you jews say we're supposed to worship in jerusalem how which is it and jesus says to her woman worship is about internal realities not external appearances it's about hearts and minds and souls it's not just about words it's about worship that worship deals with the who and the what and the how not the externals and the incidentals 1769 william cooper wrote a hymn called jesus where thy people meet and the first verse says jesus where thy people meet there they behold thy mercy seat wherever wherever they see thee thou art found and every place is hallowed ground wherever we go it's a place of worship wherever we go together it's a place where wherever you go by yourself it's a place of worship because worship is a lifestyle not just something we do for an hour on sundays have you ever thought about now if you're new to us today first of all we're really glad you're here you're not here by accident you're joining us online for the first time we're glad you're with us as well those of us who do this all the time you ever thought about what a strange experience this must be for somebody coming in here for the first time they come into a big room they've probably never been in before with a bunch of people they've probably never met before and we urge you to greet some of those people those strange people or people who are strange to you and then we ask you to sing songs you've probably never heard before a bunch of people singing songs together the only time you ever do that is if you go to a concert we ask you to sing along we ask you to recite or repeat back to some guy on a platform words from a book you may never have read and then we ask you to listen to some other guy in this case the same guy speak words from that same book that we proclaim to be eternal binding truths for all people everywhere and oh by the way along the way we might ask you to contribute some money for the privilege of doing all this i mean that's weird but if you know jesus is lord it's normal it's life it's health it is a very heartbeat of the christian faith is to worship god and spirit and truth we're made to worship that's why we do these things we will worship something or someone whatever it is we spend the bulk of our time and energy our our thoughts our efforts focusing on could be our work could be chasing money or position or power could be another person man or woman whatever it is we focus the bulk of our energies and our efforts on that can be your god it can become an idol for you and the one true god takes a very very dim view of idols so what does it mean to worship god in spirit and in truth we live in a time where there's an enormous renewal of word of interest in worship and that's good in fact if you go on the website for christian book distributors they're probably the largest wholesalers of christian materials in this country their their website is christianbook.com it used to be cbd.com and for some reason they decided to change i don't know It kind of bothers me how many of you knew what I meant when I said that.
2. 10:04 They're now christianbook.com, and you go on there and you type in the word worship, and it will turn out 20,555 entries over 100 pages. There's a tremendous renewal of interest in worship, and that's a very good thing.
3. 10:22 It's a very good thing that we are interested in what it takes to worship God and worship well. As long as it remains anchored in the eternal abiding truth of God's word, worship in spirit and in truth. So what is it? Corporate worship?
4. 10:38 Well, we do it every Sunday. I wonder how many of us could actually define what it is we do here. Vance Havner likes to say that too many worship services start at 11 o'clock sharp and end at 12 o'clock dull. Well, no, ma'am, not here. No, we're not going to have that kind of worship here.
5. 10:54 Worship comes from an old English word, worth-ship. Worth-ship. To worship is to declare someone's worth. When we worship God, we are declaring that he's worthy. That's what we did in Psalm 29 for those of you who were in here at the time.
6. 11:10 Ascribe to the Lord, O mighty ones. Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name. Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness. That's it. That's the heart of worship. Giving God his due.
7. 11:27 Giving our utmost for his highest. Now notice the focus of the tension in the worship service. It's not on the preacher. It's not on the music team. It's not even on the kids as beautiful as they are. No, the focus of worship in a worship service is God almighty.
8. 11:45 When our vocalists sing, they minister to you, but you're not their audience. When our instrumentalists play and we appreciate their artistry, and they minister to you as well, but you're not their audience. When Pastor James or I preached the word to you, we hope we minister grace to you, but you're not our audience, because you're not an audience.
9. 12:07 You're a congregation. You are our fellow participants, our fellow worshipers. We have an audience of one. And we are here to glorify and magnify him, and we invite you to do that with us in the singing and the fellowshipping and the giving of tithes and offerings and our prayers and our recitations from God's word and the preaching and application of the word of God.
10. 12:30 You're not an audience. You're our fellow participants in worship. So much of what we go on, I'm afraid, in other kinds of, well, in all kinds of worship services, isn't God-centered. It's me-centered. Reformed people say, educate me.
11. 12:45 Liberals say, affirm me. Fundamentalists say, convict me. Charismatics say, excite me. Secularists say, entertain me. Wounded people say, heal me. Modernists say, persuade me if you can.
12. 13:03 Post-modernists say, embrace me if you dare. All those felt needs, some more legitimate than others, all have a common denominator, and it's me. We think worship is about us and what we can get.
13. 13:20 Listen, you're important. We are important. We are so important that God the Father sent his only son to die on a horrible cross, to pay the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
14. 13:36 We're so important. God made us in his image and sent his son to redeem us when we were lost. But we're not the most important thing. God is. We're second. We must keep in our minds that he is number one in worship. We're here to extol the beauties and the virtues and the grace of our triune God.
15. 13:58 He's the audience. We're all participants. I want to say, I think our black brothers and sisters, I think they get this better than we do. If you've ever been in an African-American church service, it's full contact spirituality. The preachers don't need notes because the congregation lets them know exactly where they are, and they punctuate it.
16. 14:16 They let them know how he's doing. If he's doing well, some of you know this. If he's doing well, they'll say, amen. Preach it. Come on. Make it plain. Or just plain preach. If the preacher's struggling, they'll say, well. And if he's really going down in flames, somebody will say, help him, Lord.
17. 14:35 Lord, I want you to know for the remainder of this morning, I'll take all the amens and preach and bring it. Can I get a witness up in here? I'll tolerate one or two wells.
18. 14:52 We'll have no help him, Lords. We're clear? Ushers, would you get the name? Worship in spirit and truth.
19. 15:08 I'm going to go a little seminary on here, but you need to understand something. In the passage we're reading, when Jesus said we're to worship God in spirit and in truth, there's no definite article there, so it's not the spirit, like the Holy Spirit. In spirit means the human spirit.
20. 15:24 It means everything that makes us human. The way we think, the way we feel, the way we speak, the way we relate to other people. Our attitudes, our inner thoughts, everything that makes us human. We're to bring it all into the place of worship, and to worship God holistically, with intellect, affect, will, and yes, even our bodies.
21. 15:46 Think about how our forebearers, the old covenant people of Israel, think about how they worshiped. They weren't sitting in pews in an air-conditioned building. They're standing, hands raised. They're weeping. They're shouting. They're standing for hours in the hot sun, listening to the law of Moses from the Torah.
22. 16:05 They're lying face down, prostrating in the dust, crying out to God. They're tearing their garments, sackcloth and ashes. It was a completely and extremely physical event. The people of God worship. You contrast that with the way a lot of us worship today.
23. 16:21 It's very buttoned down. We sit on our hands. Not so much here, praise God, but other churches, as if showing emotions somehow beneath our almighty God. It's not. Jesus says, the hour is coming. It is now here when worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such people.
24. 16:43 God is looking for people who will worship him that way. He actively seeks out those who worship him that way. I'm going to put up on the screen a favorite definition of mine. I've got 15 pages of definitions of worship in my files.
25. 16:58 This is one of my favorites, and some of you have seen it before, but I think it's so beautifully stated. It's from a former archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple. With a name like Temple, he had to be religious, didn't he? And he says this, All of these are based on the attributes of God, but they all have an impact on the worshiper.
26. 17:32 Every aspect of our humanness is reflected in who God is, and he's reflected in us. Somewhere, somehow, somebody started the rumor that we're supposed to, especially if you're in a Reformed camp, we're supposed to be buttoned down and quiet. No. Bring it all into the place of worship.
27. 17:50 Absence of emotion does not equal higher spiritual maturity. Far from it. I'll read another quote from a mentor and a hero of mine. His name is Jonathan Edwards. He's one of the brightest minds America ever produced, and if all you know about him is sinners in the hands of an angry God, you don't know Jonathan Edwards.
28. 18:09 And his magnificent, groundbreaking work, The Religious Affections, and by that he means the emotions, this is what he says. I want to read it to you because it's so beautifully put. How can they sit and hear of the infinite height and depth and length and breadth of the love of God in Christ Jesus, of his giving his infinitely dear Son to be offered up a sacrifice for the sins of men, of the unparalleled love of the innocent and holy and tender Lamb of God, manifested in his dying agonies, his bloody sweat, his loud and bitter cries, and a bleeding heart, and all this for enemies, to redeem them from deserved eternal burnings, and to bring to unspeakable and everlasting joy and glory, and yet be cold and heavy, insensible and regardless?
29. 19:07 Where are the exercises of our affections proper if not here? What is it that does more require them? And what can be a fit occasion of their lively and vigorous exercise if not such a one as this? Family, if we can sit in here contemplate on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross and be unmoved by it and unfeeling by it, I have to wonder, have you ever been to the cross to see what he has done for us?
30. 19:41 I don't think you can do that and walk away unmoved. Now, I'm going to take just a couple of minutes to address a very hot issue here, and I'm going to do it on purpose. You ready? I know I'm going to hit some nerves here, but that's what preachers do. I'm going to talk about music.
31. 19:57 Some of us here... We love the old hymns. We love the old traditional hymns. We've seen quite a few of them here, and we have over the years. Go back to the 18th century, Amazing Grace and Can it Be, one of my favorites. Go to the 17th century, and you get a mighty fortress is our, I'm sorry, 16th century, you get a mighty fortress is our God.
32. 20:19 Back to the 13th century, Be Thou My Vision, and even into the 10th and 11th century, All Creatures of Our God and King. These songs have been around for hundreds. Some of them over a thousand years because they're great music, and their lyrics are deep and meaningful.
33. 20:37 If the church is here a hundred years from now, we'll still be singing those songs because they're meant to last. Now, some of you don't like the old songs. You only want contemporary music. You want to hear the stuff by Mercy Me, Casting Crowns. Am I the only one that has a hard time telling which one of those is which until the radio tells me?
34. 20:56 Carrie Jobe and Toby Mac and for King and Country and Matthew West and Phil Wickham and Matt Marr and Zach Williams, Stephen Curtis Chapman, and of course, Chris Tomlin, and of course, Taylor Swift.
35. 21:15 And wait, what? I just want to see if you're still with me. And you only want to sing those songs that have been on K-Love's short playlist for about two weeks. Listen, I like those songs too, but I got to tell you, a hundred years from now, we're probably not going to be singing those songs.
36. 21:33 Some of them might last, but not very many. How do I know that? When was the last time you heard a song? We sang a song in church by Larry Norman or Randy Stonehill or Second Chapter of Acts or even Amy Grant or Michael W.
37. 21:49 Smith. They're still around, but we're not singing their songs anymore because contemporary music, as great as it is, it's meant to be disposable. We sing it now. It won't sound good in 10 years. No, that's okay. Whenever God blows the winds of renewal through the church, it always comes with an explosion of fresh new music.
38. 22:08 Praise God. And for you traditionalists, I got news for you. Every song we sing, all the traditional hymns, at one time, they were contemporary music and the old guard hated them. Thank God they stuck around. Some of the music we sing today may make it that long.
39. 22:26 I don't know. So by all means, love it, enjoy it, sing your hearts out. But can I just ask you, those of you who only love the traditional hymns, you don't like the new stuff, those of you who only love the new stuff and don't have any use for the old hymns, can we just love each other enough to sing each other's music, knowing how important it is to other people, makes them feel at home here in the family of Christchurch.
40. 22:50 Can we love each other enough to do that together? I don't like everything we sing here and I pick a lot of it. Don't tell Caitlin. But we pick it because we think it makes a point, it goes with what we're singing, what we're speaking about in church.
41. 23:08 And I sing it just the same. I'm not singing real well this morning because I'm about out of vocal cords, thanks to Friday night and yesterday. But can we sing each other's music? It's one way to love your neighbor as yourself. All right. Enough said about that.
42. 23:23 Believe me, I can go on about that a long, long time. I wrote a dissertation on this stuff. I will spare you. But what it boils down to is loving one another enough to do that while we worship God in spirit and in truth. Worship is to treasure God. We ponder his worth and then we go do something about it, engage the will.
43. 23:42 Let me just say a brief word now about truth because we've got to talk about truth. We must worship God truthfully and for us that means it's going to be anchored to the word of God. It must be anchored God's inspired, inerrant, infallible eternal word of God, the eternal scriptures, the Bible.
44. 24:01 Whenever the people of Israel wandered away from God's covenantal restrictions, which was all the time, sooner or later, a prophet would arise and he would cry out, to the law and to the testimony, meaning, get back to the Bible. And somebody would bring the scrolls out from wherever it had been hidden and they'd read and people would weep and they'd repent and God would restore them again.
45. 24:25 I love what the late, great Rich Mullins had to say, one of the best writers we ever had. In his song, Creed, he says, I believe what I believe is what makes me what I am. I did not make it, no, it is making me. It is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man.
46. 24:43 God's truth makes us who and what we are. A sermon, it's not just a collection of my wise and profound thoughts. They are wise and profound and you should hear them all. What are you laughing at? You're not here to hear my opinions or my viewpoints.
47. 25:00 You're here to hear something from God's word that you can apply to your life. That's what we're trying to do here, Pastor James and myself. We work hard at this. We really do. We don't get it right all the time. We really work hard to try to bring the truth of God's word to our people. That's what an elder does.
48. 25:15 So we worship God in spirit, yes, the whole person, in truth from the word of God and it must be done according to the scriptures and we have to do it. Here's another good seminary word for you. It's got to be done Christocentrically because it's all about Jesus. So if you come here on a Sunday, we give you five keys for financial success and four secrets to a better marriage and we give you God's secret code for winning the lottery and if you do, please tithe.
49. 25:44 We give you all that great stuff and we don't present Christ to you. We failed and you got ripped off. This is not a self-help club. This is not a pep rally. This is God meeting with his people and transforming us more and more into his image as we were intended to be.
50. 26:04 You've all seen that bumper sticker, will the last American leaving Miami please bring the flag? I think God looks at his church and says, will the remaining Christians in Miami please raise the cross? Don't be ashamed of it. It's what gives us our life. It's what gives us our salvation.
51. 26:21 It's what gives us eternal life. The woman says, I know Messiah is coming. When he comes, he'll share everything. He'll show us everything. Jesus says to him, you're looking at him. I who speak to you am he. It's a very clear statement.
52. 26:37 This is the story of how Jesus takes a sinful broken woman living with a man who's not her husband and transforms her by the true worship of the one true God. He doesn't scream at her. He doesn't scold her.
53. 26:53 He doesn't shame her. He loves her into the kingdom of God. Now we don't know the end of the story but I believe she went and got that man and she brought her whole town and they came back and heard Jesus himself present the truth of God to them.
54. 27:08 So whatever else we do on Sundays, we want to present Christ to you and him crucified, dead, buried, and resurrected, and ascended. We'll follow him one day. So this morning I've tried to present this passage to you as faithfully as I could that the hour is coming when God will seek worshipers who worship him in spirit and in truth and that we can be part of that great worshiping community and God actively seeks for those of us who will do that, who will seek him and worship him actively, not passively, heart, soul, mind, strength, hands, feet, bodies, our wills, everything we have made in the image of God that we reflect it back to him for his glory and his praise.
55. 27:52 Now I started off this morning telling you about that conversation I had with some fellow pastors. About 12 of us, it was just during a break in this worship class, we were just talking amongst ourselves about what made worship really come alive for us, those of us who do this for a living, do this every week.
56. 28:07 What makes the worship service really happen for us? And what we said was so, in some ways surprising me and something powerful. I wrote it down and I've remembered all these years later and I want to tell you what the four things are but I'm going to start with number two and then I'll give you three and four and then I'll come back and tell you number one because I think it might surprise you.
57. 28:25 The second thing that makes the most important thing for us was meaningful, well-prepared messages. Listen, I'm not a critic of other guys preaching. I know how hard this is to do and to do it well so give me a guy who believes this, presents the truth as clearly as you know how I'm good.
58. 28:41 He doesn't have to be a bibliogram. Just give me a guy who has worked to present the truth of God to me and I'm there. I'm all for it. The third thing is a sense of flow that, you know, there used to be a time in church where we'd say, okay, and I'm not knocking this, this is just, this is where we were.
59. 29:00 Take your hymnals, turn to page such and such. We'll sing verses 1, 2, and 3. Well, now we just put it up here on the screen and we just do it. We love that sense of flow. The fourth is a sense of abandonment into God's presence. When we forget about ourselves, we're just enjoying being in the presence of God Almighty.
60. 29:17 That's 2, 3, and 4. You know what number one was for us, preachers, do this for a living? The number one thing that makes worship really come alive, meaning for us, is robust, heartfelt, congregational singing.
61. 29:32 Y'all don't know what it does for us. We hear you sing the way you sing. Now listen, I love preaching. I'm dedicating my life to it. But in heaven, there's not going to be any preaching. In the new earth, no need for preachers, but there will be singing, joyful singing around the throne.
62. 29:54 So this morning, what we're doing is a precursor. It's a rehearsal. It's a rehearsal. ... what we're going to be doing in all eternity. So, people, for my sake, for our sake, for God's sake, let's sing.

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