What is True Worship? (John 4:23–24)
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And so we find ourselves in chapter 4. So if your Bible is open to chapter 4, we're going to look at a couple of verses that we looked at even last week. We're going to extract those verses, take a deeper look at that. But I want to begin this way. I'm no master of the English language by any means, but I do know a few things. I know the word delicious is an adjective. I know that the word truthfully is an adverb. I know that the word Dr. Pepper is a noun and it's a good tasting noun, all right? I know the word you is a pronoun. The word with is a preposition or a conjunction. And the word you, excuse me, the word and is a preposition. And listen to this, the word worship that we're gonna talk about today is a verb, right? And it's a very important verb on how we respond to the God who created us and the God who delivers us and the God who calls us to worship him in spirit and in truth together.
You see, sometimes we misunderstand our role as the people of God. We have a mission statement that says to glorify God by making more and better disciples through intentional relationships. Now it's all about disciple making, right? But before we get to the disciple making, we say we wanna glorify God by doing that. In other words, what's greater than disciple making is that we are producing true worshipers through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Worship will always be with us. We'll talk about that here in just a moment. But the church of Jesus Christ is a glory-displaying community. Peter gives us a definition of worship in 1 Peter 2, verse 9. He says to proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. What a great definition. This is our testimony. Paul says that we turn to God from idols to serve the living and the true God. John, the apostle, at the end of his first letter in chapter 5, he says, little children, guard yourself from idols, knowing that there was always going to be a battle, even in the Christian life, to set up little idols in our life, just as we saw the Israelites do in the Old Testament.
You know, you and I may laugh at bowing down to carved up wooden beams or maybe artistically molded statues, but we might blush at how our hearts can bow to things like money and possessions and a career, or habits, or beauty, or image, or fashion, or sports, or work, or education, or retirement, or listen to this, even family sometimes can be an idol if they get more devotion and more attention than God who said this, you shall not worship any other God. The Lord, your God, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
Last Sunday in our study of this gospel, we saw Jesus tell the woman of the well that being a true worshiper was not about worshiping in the right location. She was all concerned using a diversion tactic away from the fact that Jesus revealed her need that she had some serial marriages and she was an immoral woman and she was an outcast and he was ministering to her. And she kind of diverted the attention to the religious world about the little debate they have between the Samaritans and the Jews, and where do we worship? We worship at Mount Gerizim. You guys worship in Jerusalem in the temple. He says, no, no, no. That's not at all what it's about. It's not about a location. It's about who you worship, and it's about how you worship. And that's what we want to look at today. It's worshiping the right person in the right way.
Now, when you define the word worship, you're going to find nine different Hebrew words in the Old Testament that you'll come across that all have an aspect of worship. They run the gamut from boasting to thanksgiving to shouting to confessing to plucking strings on an instrument to singing to extolling and kneeling and blessing and bowing down and lifting hands and lying prostrate. 1,110. In 82 times, you'll find these nine different words giving us different nuances of what it means to praise our Lord. In the New Testament, you're going to primarily find two. And one in this text. Nine different times the word worship is used between verse 20 to verse 24. And you're going to see this word that basically means to do homage by kneeling and giving honor to a superior. Now all these words focus on the rightfully due worship that God, our Heavenly Father, deserves.
I would say my favorite scripture summary of worship is putting these four verses together. Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory. Worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing for from him and through him and to him are all things. And those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth. Maybe to bring it down to a way in which we can understand it maybe in a better way is I love this definition of worship that says, it is giving God all that I am, my mind, my emotion, my will, and my body to all that he is and all that he says and all that he does. You see, it's our response.
Worship is our response to what we value the most. And for a believer, it is any and every expression of obedience and praise and honor and adoration and confession and gratitude that's offered to the true and the living God by a regenerated soul who knows the truth about God and loves Him with all their hearts. That's why worship can't be reduced to a type of worship like singing, which is a great part of worship, but it's only a little part as we gather together or as we have individual times of worship. It can't be reduced to an effect of worship that makes you feel good. Well, I really felt good today when I went to church. Or maybe in the spirit, though we should experience emotion like joy, It can't be reduced to a place of worship like the church building, though it would certainly include a gathering location for the corporate body to worship together. It can't be reduced to a day of worship like Sunday, though we gather corporately on Sunday, that first day of the week, as the early church did to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But worship can't be reduced to a personalized worship where you focus on your own private way. Or it can't be reduced to a preference in worship where it's all about a certain style or experience you desire.
I've heard all my life sometimes different people, hey, good to see you, glad you're here today. And they say, well, you know, I just didn't really like the music today. It just didn't really move me. Or, you know, I just didn't really get a whole lot out of that service today. Could you imagine if you went home and all of a sudden God spoke to you and said, hey, what did I get out of you today at the worship service? Ooh, right? You see, worship isn't really about what we get. It's all about what we give to the Lord. And we all know the law of the harvest. You will reap what you sow. There will be great blessing when we worship as the Lord honors our worship to him. But it's what we give to God in heart and time and energy and emotion and singing and praying and listening and learning and confessing and thanking and communing and serving and creating and fellowshipping and focusing and blessing and working hard and living and obeying him because he's the audience of one.
So you have your Bibles open. Let's look at our text today. John chapter 4 here. And I want to back up to verse 20 where all it begins. This is when she kind of diverted the attention away from all the sin that he exposed because he's the omniscient one. She never couldn't believe this guy knew everything about her. And all of a sudden she says this, verse 20. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. She brings up the argument, the debate they used to have. Jesus said to her, woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For such people the Father seeks to be his worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
As we look at this little section here, we pull it out of the interaction as Jesus was evangelistically ministering to this woman at the well. And her eyes were being opened to the reality that someone special is talking to me and knows some things. And she knew what the first five books of the Old Testament as a Samaritan had in their own Bible, that there was a promise that there was going to be a Messiah who would come, a prophet. And she was perceiving that to be him. And we find out later on she converted, told the whole town at Sychar, you've got to check this guy out. And she just invites everybody in town to come visit with him. And many believe the Bible said because of his testimony, of her testimony.
So this morning I want to focus on those two things. Who we worship and how we worship because that's what Jesus says true worshipers will do. So first of all, true worship is all about who we worship. Notice, again, Jesus reveals three things about who we worship. This said three times, we worship the Father. It doesn't mean we don't worship the Spirit or the Son. He's saying, listen, the primary focus of our worship is on the Heavenly Father. He mentions it three times. Secondly, he says we worship God who is spirit. He's immaterial. He doesn't have the body like Jesus Christ does. And we worship the triune God, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And Jesus Christ now has this eternal body. But the heavenly Father is invisible, immaterial. He's not confined to an idol or to a building. Thirdly, we worship a father. Now notice this in verse 23, who seeks certain people to be his worshipers. And that's where we come to true worshipers. How do we truly worship the Lord?
It's interesting to note that what we read about getting who of our worship correct, we read things like this in Isaiah. I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is no one like me. That's important to note. Jesus, in his 40 days out in the wilderness, being tempted by Satan himself, in one of his temptations said to the devil, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only. Only. Jesus says true worshipers will worship the Father. So the question is, who is our Heavenly Father? As I was tracing that out this week, I was just amazed once again at how much God tells us about this aspect of God who is our Heavenly Father.
I'm going to share some of those with you. Number one on the list that I found in Scripture is that He's the Father who created you. God is the center of everything that exists. Deuteronomy 32 verse 6, listen to this. Is he not your father who has bought you? He has made you and established you. And then Malachi said the same thing. Do we not all have one father? Has not one God created us? And then what does John say in Revelation? He created all things. Did you notice what it didn't say in the Bible? There's no words about natural selection or big bangs or primordial soup or random chance or gatherings of atoms in some green slimy algae. There are no monkey songs. None of those things are mentioned in Scripture. Why? Because he's the creator. It just didn't happen by chance. You and I are no accident but intentional by the product of intentional design by our heavenly father who made us fearfully and wonderfully.
Another thing we learn about the father is he's a father who adopted you and I. If you're a father, you're going to have children or you're not a father. Having children is what makes a father a father. And so we become God's children through what? Believing in the Lord Jesus Christ and being born of the Spirit. That's what we've been learning in John. And all that implies that you and I have a personal relationship with God. Now this is interesting. I don't know if you've studied other religions, but there's no other religion that has any kind of God or gods that you can have a personal relationship with except Christianity who has a God who's called our Heavenly Father. He loves us. He adopts us into his family. That's an amazing, amazing concept. He reveals himself as a father in order to show us our adoption into the great family of God.
Now, I was reading up a little bit about adoption in the United States. It's kind of interesting. There's around 5 to 7 million Americans who are adoptees in the United States and 120 to 135,000 children who are adopted almost every year. Most of those adoptions are by step-parents or relatives. But not all the children out there, maybe in foster homes, have yet to have somebody who they could call their father. But note this, every single believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has been adopted by our Heavenly Father into His eternal family. There are no orphans in Christianity. Romans 8, 15, you've received the spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, Abba, Father. How about Ephesians 1.5? He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ. He bestows on every person who believes in the Son, listen to this, the legal status of being a child and an heir, an heir of God and a joint heir with Jesus Christ, with all the rights and the privileges of being in the ultimate family of God. It's an amazing thing.
So how can anyone escape the just and the merciless wrath of God that falls consciously and eternally upon sinners? What have we been learning in the Gospel of John? It won't be because your sweet sincerity you had and you didn't really know better. It won't be because of your own self-effort since God calls your good deeds filthy rags. It won't be by the hope that God's love will overlook your unrepentant sins. It won't be because you trust in another God since all other gods really don't exist and are truly false and phony. No, it's only by the cross work of Jesus Christ and his resurrection that That moved God to put both his justice and his love and his mercy and his grace on display in the conversion of hell-bound orphans like us being adopted into his eternal family. It's an amazing father.
Now here's another aspect of the father we find in the scripture. He's the father who's compassionate toward you. Psalm 103 verse 13, just as the father is compassionate to his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. Isn't it great to know that we have a heavenly father who has compassion on us? We're needy people. We're messy people. He has compassion on us. One of the things we're not going to talk about is he's also a father in Hebrews 12 who corrects us. He disciplines us. He gives us those spiritual spankings that we need as a good heavenly father to correct us, to bring us back in line. But he does this because of his compassion. Just like Jesus in Matthew chapter 9, when he looked out to the multitudes and he saw them like downcast and distressed and dispirited, they were like sheep, what? Without a shepherd.
Fourthly, he's the father who provides for you. Here's what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. Your father knows what you need before you ask him. That is amazing. He knows what we need. And then he goes on to say that we are worth much more than the birds that don't sow, they don't reap, they don't gather, yet they're fed by our Heavenly Father and we're worth more than them. So he's our great provider as a Heavenly Father.
What about this one? He's the Father who loves you. John, who wrote the Gospel of John, also wrote 1, 2, and 3 John and the book of Revelation. Here's what he said in 1 John 3, verse 1. See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called the children of God, and such we are. Amazing. To think about the who. And this is just one part of our triune God. The Father. He's the sovereign God. He's a merciful God. He's a holy God. He's a loving God. But he's our heavenly father. And he loves us. Listen, while God is clearly the creator of every single person who's ever exist, he's only the father to those who believe and have been born again and adopted into the family of God. The list goes on. We don't have time to go through all these, but let me just mention them. He's the Father who guides and teaches you like Isaiah tells us. He's the Father who protects us. He's the Father who forgives us. He's the Father who generously gives good gifts to us.
But notice the one in our text today. He's a Father who is worthy for us to seek out. He's looking for those who would be his true worshipers, it says in verse 23. This is so important for us to remember. One of the things that we quote in our foundational faith statement is from the great and famous Westminster Catechism from the 1600s. And it's the first question. What is the chief end of man? The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Forever. John Piper wrote this statement in his book, Let the Nations Be Glad. Now listen to this quote. This is an interesting quote. Disciple-making is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Disciple-making exists because worship doesn't. Worship is ultimate, not disciple-making, because God is ultimate, not man. And when this age is over and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, disciple-making will be no more. It is only a temporary necessity, but worship abides forever.
So again, as we glorify God by making more and better disciples and people come to Christ, they become true worshipers for eternity. Disciple making is for this life. So true worship is knowing who we worship and Jesus focuses our hearts on our Heavenly Father. who is worthy of our praise. He's worthy of our confession. He's worthy of our time and our energy and our commitments in every single realm of life. Not just getting together on a Sunday for an hour and a half and saying, let's just sing some songs and pray some prayers and preach some sermons and have some communion. Yes, those are elements, important elements that God has given us. but involves every area of life. You know what it involves? As we leave church today, we'll be worshiping how we drive out of the parking lot and the frustration it might bring, you know? And then it only begins the rest of the day, maybe in relationships or maybe something else is going on. We have an opportunity to worship the Lord.
Now, I want to invite everybody to stand, if you will, with me. We're going to do something a little bit different here in a sermon. I was reading this week in Psalm 100 and I thought, this is a great psalm. We need to all share this together. So I want you to just kind of read this psalm with me and I'll do my part, you do your part. And let's read this and listen to these words. Let's proclaim these to the Lord. Shout joyfully, Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before him with joyful singing. And enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him. Bless his name. Amen. Amen. You may be seated. Isn't that an amazing short psalm? Now, where's that psalm again? Psalm what? It's easy to remember. Now, listen, there's only six verses. So I'm going to challenge you and myself. Let's memorize that thing. I mean, it's just a great way to remind yourself, hey, I'm here to worship the Lord. Psalm 100.
So the first thing we see that Jesus tells this woman at the well that's going to bring her to conversion is about being a true worshiper is somebody you've got to know who our God is that we worship. Who deserves our praise and our adoration and our life of service and worship? Secondly, he comes to this part where he says true worship is all about knowing how we worship. And he says we must worship in spirit and truth. But I want to digress just a moment to say it's interesting to know that in the Gospel of John, I found three different words. It says three different times, must, must, and must. And we've already seen all three. In chapter 3, verse 7, he says this, you must be born again. In chapter 3, verse 14, he says the Son of Man must be lifted up. And now we come to verse 24 in chapter 4, and he says those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. Isn't that interesting? It's an incredible three uses. The first one concerns the Holy Spirit who imparts that new birth. You must be born from above. The second concerns the Son who must be lifted up on the cross for us. Thirdly, it concerns the Father who becomes the object of our worship. He who worships Him must worship in spirit and truth. And the order, by the way, is important. Before you can worship God properly, you've got to be a true worshiper. You've got to move from being a false worshiper to a true worshiper. And a true worshiper is somebody who's going to be born from above because of what Christ did on the cross for us.
Notice that the must in our text in verse 24 has two aspects to it. He talks about the truth and he talks about worshiping him in spirit. Spirit. Now this is important because true worshipers, according to Jesus, must do both. We worship in spirit and in truth. So to worship in spirit without the truth is to worship false gods. And to worship in truth without spirit is to fall into a lifeless orthodoxy where doctrine is just alone the most important thing just to learn and to know and not practice. You see, worship is a verb and therefore it's an intentional response. John Calvin made these words famous. He said, Isn't that true? It's an artifactory. And the very first idol we have in our life is little children is this. What? Self. Me, my, my, my, my. Right? And we struggle with that pretty much the rest of our lives in varying degrees until we come to know Christ. And he's on the throne where he rightfully is. And we've submitted to him. And we worship him.
But because everybody's born a worshiper, even atheists worship as they bow down to their own God of materialism or rationalism, that's why the first two commands that God gave us are all about making sure we direct our worship-prone hearts to the right person in the right way. You shall have no other gods before me, and you shall not make yourself an idol. Why? Because God is the audience of one. He's our audience. So instead of saying, I really didn't get anything out of the worship service today, maybe we should be saying, Lord, what do you want me to give to you in my worship today? And I think one of the great verses that we say around here quite a bit is 1 Corinthians 10, 31. Whether you eat or whether you drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. That's worshiping right there. Even the mundane things of eating and drinking. You see, worship is all of life activity. It's honoring God in how you love and work and play and spend and repay and save and give and sing and relate and forgive and witness and pray and listen and study and obey and write and speak and text and post and emote and resist and everything else. It's all life. It's all life.
So what I want to do in talking about the how, I want to involve what Christ says here, and I want to look at the rest of Scripture and see what are the ways in which God directs us to worship. And I found five different ways that we can worship God and grow in our worship. And number one is this, is worship with a readied heart. Prepare yourself to worship. You're just not going to automatically get up in the morning and do your shower routine and do your hair and all other things. You get dressed and go to work and everything's just going to be fine unless you're ready to say, Lord, I really want to worship you today in how I work and how I live and how I speak and how I react and how I get educated or whatever it may be, whatever you're doing. We need a ready heart. Hebrews 10.22 says, So maybe in the morning it's saying, God, help me not be distracted by all the idols in the world that I will see today and experience today and may be tempted by today. And meditate upon your gospel of grace. That's why Philippians 4, 8, and other verses say things like this, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, and whatever is right, and whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there's anything excellent, anything worthy of praise, let your what? Mind dwell on these things. God, I don't want anything to distract me. And maybe it's starting the day out and saying, I'm going to confess my sins to the Lord. Amen. Satan doesn't really care how you worship as long as you don't worship God's way. That's why the whole world is full of worshipers. You're either on the false side or you're on the true side. And even if you're on the true side, you can sometimes do it in false ways. So we worship with expectation. We want to get odd with God. We want to have a readied heart.
Secondly, worship is done with a receptive mind. Have you ever noticed that we doodle mentally? You kind of doodle in your head sometimes about life and things and thinking through things. What does God tell us? The foundation of our understanding and our worship is out of the word of truth. The Bible, he says, worship me in the truth. You must worship in truth. One of the longest books or longest chapters in the whole Bible. Do you guys remember what it is? It's Psalm what? 119. I mean, it is long. Almost every verse is completely about the Word of God and its effect in your life and how you want to respond to the Word. There's all kinds of different names for the Word. But it's a chapter that reminds us of the foundation that God wants us to worship Him accurately the way He designs. So he wants to hear from us. He wants to see our praise. It's about the who and the why. You see, if there were true worshipers, then that means there were false worshipers. And so we read things like this in Hebrews 12. That sounds good, doesn't it? Hey, that's good. Then he says this, It's almost like he says, here's what we're supposed to do. Now remember how important this is and serious it is. We have a God we serve as a consuming fire. Yeah, he's compassionate. Yeah, he's loving. He's merciful. But he's serious on how we worship him.
So beware of some of these ways to fall into false worship. You can be a false worshiper by worshiping other gods, which are, by the way, just not false gods. Now listen to this. Look it up sometime, 1 Corinthians 10.20. You know what they are? They're demons. The demons are behind the false gods in the world today. They animate these false gods. They make them alluring. Secondly, you can be a false worshiper by worshiping other gods which are not just, excuse me, you can be a false worshiper by worshiping the true God in a false form like the Israelites did when they got impatient with Moses who was up 40 days with God on the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments on these two stones. And what do they do? They get impatient. Aaron, what in the world? What's going on up there? Okay, let's make something here. And so Aaron obliges them and makes this molten golden calf in Exodus 32. And there's dancing and there's worship. And listen, they're trying to worship the true God. They're just impatient. And so they make a false form of it that they learned from other nations. Moses comes down. He's furious. He drops the Ten Commandments. They break. And he says, listen, we're going to turn this calf and we're going to melt it down. And he threw it into the water and he made all the people drink the water. He wasn't happy.
Sometimes we can worship the true God in a false way. Sometimes we can be a false worshiper by worshiping the true God in a self-styled way, like Nadab and Abihu were the priests. And they were prescribed to go, I mean, I don't know if I would like to be in the priesthood of the Old Testament. They had such precision on how they had to do the offerings every single morning and evening and the different kinds of trespass and the peace offerings and all kinds of different offerings and they were very prescribed and so nabat and abihu desired hey let's offer some strange fire before the lord let's do it a new way and guess what god did he killed him on the spot dead and gone listen we don't offer strange fire or what about uzzah He did something very noble, it seemed to me, when I read the scripture. They were taking the Ark of the Covenant back from the Philistines. They were bringing it back to the people of God. They put it on a cart and they're rolling in. The cart hits something in the way and it starts to fall. And he catches the Ark of the Covenant and saves it. Guess what God does? Kills him. You're like, God, what in the world are you doing? What are you doing? God says, listen, I told you to carry it by poles only. That's the only way you move the Ark of the Covenant. You disobeyed me. And I'm making an example. Uzzah wuzzah, right?
And listen to this. You can be a false worshiper by worshiping the true God with a hypocritical heart like the religious leaders did in Jesus' day. He was constantly troubled by this. Jesus said in Matthew chapter 15, you hypocrites, this people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far away from me. And in vain do you worship me. You're wasting your time. You see, our praise can only go as high as our understanding goes deep in the truth. So we worship with a ready heart. We worship with a receptive mind because of the truth of God.
Thirdly, we worship with some aroused emotion. It's not raucous. It's not out of control. God gave us emotions to express passionately for his glory and for our good. And Jesus says you must worship him in spirit. So you read the passion of the Psalms. It's amazing. All kinds of emotions come out. Oh, as the deer pants for a water brook, so my soul pants for you, oh God, my soul first for the living God. So how do we see that happen? Sometimes we have a rejoicing heart, like it says in Psalm 35, my soul rejoices in the Lord, it shall exult in his salvation. I remember someone saying when I was growing up, he says, listen, if you really think you have joy down in your heart, then let it show up on your face. That makes sense. What about a humble spirit who worships in the spirit of God and you put no confidence in the flesh, Philippians 3 says? Or what about a God-fearing attitude where you fear the Lord and you praise him, Psalm 22 says, or a contrite heart that Psalm 51 says, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. Oh God, you will not despise me. Or maybe a lamenting heart crying out to God through your sorrow and your grief. Being candid and honest and confessing to the Lord your emotional, your mental, your relational agony. So we read a lot of psalms like this. So we see that There's a roused emotion that we can have in different ways.
Fourthly, we worship with a righteous will. Remember, worship is giving all that I am, my mind, my emotion, and now my will. To choose to worship him with an intentional willingness. And we find all kinds of ways to do that. Number one, we pray fervently. That's a way to worship the Lord. Here's what it says in Psalm 5. Another way we affect our will in worship is we choose to obey. What does the Lord require? But to keep his commandments. He is your praise. He's your praise. Another way we choose to enact our will is we choose to forgive others who sinned against us. And so we read forgiving each other just as God in Christ has forgiven you. We choose to love following the second greatest commandment. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
In actions that we see, you can choose to serve with excellence. God says, where is my honor to the priest in Malachi's day? Where is my honor? And you despise my name. And they say, why? How are we despising your name? And here's what he says. You are presenting defiled food upon my altar. You're presenting the blind and the lame and the sick lambs for sacrifice, and I am not pleased with you, nor will I accept an offering from you. My name will be great among the nations, for I'm a great king, and my name is to be feared above all. Above all. And we willfully choose to do good works. You let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who's in heaven. Another way to praise the Lord. There's many ways for us to willfully use that volitional ability God has given us to choose to worship him.
And then the last way is we worship with a responsive body. Now turn your Bibles to Revelation, or excuse me, Romans, just to, middle of the New Testament here, Romans. Very familiar verse to many of us in this room. Romans chapter 12. You understand that God has given us this material tent that we live in right now. Some of us have a young tent. Some of us have an older tent. We have the difficulty, the challenges. Sometimes we get sick. Sometimes parts wear out. Sometimes we get injured. There's all kinds of challenges with our bodies along the way. But these are the bodies that God says, I want you to worship me with. What does that mean? Now watch this. Therefore, I urge you, in verse 1, brethren, by the mercies of God. Who are the mercies of God? Chapters 1 through 11. He just told them about the mercies of God. All that Christ did. All that the Holy Spirit does. And he says, to present your what? Your bodies as a living sacrifice acceptable to me. Which is your spiritual service of what? Worship. Worship. You know what the problem is with a living sacrifice? It keeps jumping off the altar. Have you ever noticed that? God wants us on the altar as a presentation of worship.
How do we do that? Well, sometimes we do that with a singing mouth. Like it says in Psalm 105, sing to him, sing praises to him. And by the way, 2 Chronicles says, do it with a loud voice. Some of you sing loudly and you should. Some of you don't just move your mouth, and I can barely hear anything from what I'm sitting in front of you. Some of you just don't sing. Everybody should be singing. That's one aspect of our worship, not just in the corporate time, but in our individual time. As you're driving down the road, it's fun to sing songs and feel like I can sing any way I want before the Lord who knows what I'm trying to sing to Him, whether it's on key or not. How about this? How about a bent knee? Come, let us worship and bow down, Psalm 95 says. How about a bowed head? So they sang praises with joy and bowed down and worshiped.
Now, I even notice in the corporate times that, you know, some of you bow during the sermon, and it's not because you're worshiping God. It's because you're falling asleep. You're doing that, you know. And sometimes it stays down. I can see you. I can see people. I've always wanted to point that out to you, but I don't want to offend you. Maybe especially now after not having an hour of sleep last night. But we have clapping hands. How about Psalm 47? Oh, clap your hands, all you people. Shout to the God with a voice of joy. Or uplifted hands. Lift your hands to the sanctuary and bless the Lord. Psalm 134. Now, we're all different in the way we express with our bodies, our worship and our praise. Some of us like to use every part of the body. That's fine. Like if you're like my mom who was growing up, my dad and my mom were total opposites. My mom was a total stoic, and my dad was just, you know, he would bounce around everywhere, you know. And so I used to sit by my mom in high school, and when we'd go to worship, you know, and sometimes people would raise their hands, and I'd grab my mom's hand and go like this, and she would go. She was not going to move that way. And she loved the Lord. I mean, she loved the Lord, but you're not going to get me to do something I don't want to do. I said, okay, fine, you know. Love you anyway, right? Okay.
How about dancing feet? Let them praise his name with dancing in Psalm 149. I'll never forget the first time in 2005, I went over to Africa, South Africa, and we were preaching and teaching and just doing some training with pastors over there. And then we had a singing time. And all of a sudden, they had these guys lining up between each other doing the song like this. And they grabbed me and put me in this thing they call the Congo line. And you're just grabbing somebody in front of you. I'm like, wow, I've never done this in my life. And they wormed around like a caterpillar through the whole crowd. I'm like, what is this? Is this right? Is this wrong? And I'm like, hey, they do it in different things. Go to another part of the country down in South America, they do it a different way. Everybody expresses their worship sometimes in a dancing in a different way.
What about a grounded face? Job arose and tore his robe, and he shaved his head, and he fell to the ground, and he worshiped the Lord. Or maybe a shouting mouth. Let us joyfully shout to the rock of our salvation. Now, the last couple of days, I've been to the state high school tournament, basketball tournament. I love basketball. I love watching the kingdom, or the Tacoma Dome. And I started, you know, because I was working on this message, I'm thinking about, man, look at this. I'm watching all these people. And there was the thrill of victory and high fives and hugs and yelling and screaming. And then there was the agony of defeat, you know. They're out of there. They're mad. They're mad at the refs or whatever it may be. And every kind of emotion and every kind of body expression you can imagine. And God says, here we have this shouting voice to the Lord, right? That's an act of worship when we share the good news of the gospel.
How about thankful speech? Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks through him to God the Father. What about hard work at work when you go to work tomorrow or tonight or whenever you go to work? Whatever you do, do your work heartily as for the Lord rather than for the men because your ultimate boss is the Lord. How about maybe greeting one another with that holy kiss? It's a calling for a warm, above-board greeting, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I mean, we could go on and on. There's different expressions that God has given us a body, and so we worship by giving all that I am, my mind, my emotion, my will, my body, to all that he is and all that he says and all that he does. That's the worship that God is calling us to give.
We're a worship-driven people. Whether it be worshiping the Lord by staying Christ-centered and saying he must increase and I must decrease. Or whether it's we worship the Lord by being God's missionaries to make more and better disciples of Jesus Christ. Or we worship the Lord by being words saturated which details God's story of glory. Or we worship the Lord by being baptized which pictures our union with Christ and our forgiveness in Him. Or we worship the Lord by ministering to one another through our fellowship. Or by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love. United in spirit and intent on one purpose. or by resolving conflicts that honor his peace plan, or by serving one another with our spirit-empowered gifts that God gives us. or by functioning in the gender roles that God has assigned us, or being led by godly and qualified leaders, or by communing together around the bread and the cup of the Lord, or by being accountable to the Lord and one another in our holiness, or by being generous to the Lord's work in and through the church, or by partnering faithfully, intentionally, and actively with a local body of believers. I mean, the list goes on just in the Christian world, but then we've got the whole realm of life.
So let me close with giving you some maybe practical tips. What are the ABCs of maybe growing as a true worshiper of the Father? Number one is what we already talked about, and that's acknowledging Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. That means the first step is you need to bow your knee to Christ as saying, I was a false worshiper, now I'm going to become a true worshiper because I'm going to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm going to follow Him. He's on the throne, not me anymore or any other idol. The B stands for build a daily time with the Lord. Listen, you're only going to grow in your worship as you understand what God reveals about himself in the word. Through prayer and through reading and studying. The letter C is clear away the worldly trash. This is serious. Eliminate. The influences of the world that hinder your growth in worship. It could be TV. It could be social media. It could be radio. It could be podcasts. It could be a number of things. I mean, the list could go on and on and on because here's what the Bible says. Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness.
The letter D would be devote Saturday night to preparation for our corporate worship together. Just prepare your heart. One way you do that is don't stay up too late. Maybe it's sitting, maybe reading some scripture or maybe just calming your spirit or, you know, it's just getting yourself ready. Thinking through the opportunity to be with God's people and to worship together. The letter E is engage in worship without distraction. Avoid the personal distractions that can happen in everyday life as well as in our corporate time together. And don't distract others when you're worshiping with God's people. Give your full attention to singing. Give your full attention to praying, to preaching, to communing, to fellowshipping, to serving.
And finally, I feel like this is the number one thing. It's the most practical thing. It's just focus all of life on God's glory. Remember, your worship extends into every single area of life. And again, 1 Corinthians 10, 31, whether you're eating or whether you're drinking, the most mundane things of life, whatever you do, it adds everything. Do it all to the glory of God. So be a true worshiper. That's what God wants here at Christ Church. He wants us all to be true worshipers, and he wants us to find people who don't know and who are false worshipers out there, and they don't even know they're false worshipers, and they don't even know they're worshiping. They just think this is life. They don't know that all kinds of other things are on the throne of their life and not Jesus Christ. And that's why we share the good news, because people shared the good news with us. So we could become true worshipers of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Scripture References from the Sermon
Gospel of John (Primary Text):
John 4:23-24 (main passage)
Old Testament:
1 Peter 2:9
Deuteronomy 32:6
Malachi (general reference to "one father")
Psalm 103:13
Psalm 100 (entire psalm read corporately)
Isaiah (reference to "I am God and there is no other")
Psalm 51 (broken and contrite heart)
Psalm 22 (fear the Lord and praise Him)
Psalm 5 (prayer reference)
Psalm 95 (bow down and worship)
Psalm 47 (clap your hands)
Psalm 134 (lift your hands)
Psalm 149 (praise with dancing)
Psalm 35 (soul rejoices in the Lord)
Psalm 105 (sing praises to Him)
2 Chronicles (reference to singing with loud voice)
New Testament:
1 John 3:1
1 John 5 (guard yourself from idols)
Romans 8:15
Ephesians 1:5
Hebrews 12 (discipline/correction; consuming fire)
1 Corinthians 10:20
Exodus 32 (golden calf)
Matthew 15 (hypocrites, honor with lips)
Philippians 3 (no confidence in flesh)
Matthew 9 (sheep without shepherd)
Romans 12:1 (living sacrifice)
1 Corinthians 10:31
Philippians 4:8
Specific Story References:
John 3:7 ("you must be born again")
John 3:14 ("Son of Man must be lifted up")
Nadab and Abihu (Leviticus 10)
Uzzah and the Ark (2 Samuel 6)
Job (tore robe, shaved head, worshiped)
Quoted but Not Cited:
"Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory" (Psalm 115:1)
"Worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing" (Revelation 5:12)
"For from him and through him and to him are all things" (Romans 11:36)
"You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only" (Matthew 4:10/Luke 4:8)
"As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God" (Psalm 42:1)
Westminster Catechism reference (not Scripture but a theological statement)
Allusions and Themes with Suggested Verses:
Worship Themes:
Psalm 29:2 (worship in the beauty of holiness)
Psalm 96:9 (worship the Lord in holy attire)
Revelation 4:8-11 (heavenly worship)
God as Father/Creator:
Isaiah 64:8 (we are the clay, You are the potter)
Acts 17:24-28 (God who made the world)
False Worship/Idolatry:
Exodus 20:3-5 (first two commandments - explicitly mentioned)
1 Kings 18 (Elijah and prophets of Baal)
Adoption:
Galatians 4:4-7 (adoption as sons)
Romans 8:14-17 (joint heirs with Christ)
Total Life Worship:
Colossians 3:17 (whatever you do in word or deed)
Colossians 3:23 (work heartily as for the Lord)