True Worship, Part 8

John 4:20-24

I'd like you to turn again, if you will, in your Bible to John's gospel, chapter 4 as we come to the last in our series on worship. This is our eighth message, and perhaps of all of the messages this one will be the most profound, I trust.

And I would like to remind you of the text in which we're dealing by reading just verses 23 and 24: "Jesus says, But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit; and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth."

I have been, as you well know, greatly concerned about the matter of worship. And wondering whether this is unique to my own era, I have for the last week or so, read some more ancient scriptural commentators, some more ancient saints of God, to see if they too faced similar periods of time when the church had lost its perspective on worship. And I found that to be the case.

In fact, throughout church history there seemed to be a rather constant cry calling the people of God to a worshipping life. For example, St. Anselm of Canterbury, years ago, said this: "Up, slight man. Flee for a little while thy occupations. Hide thyself for a time from thy disturbing thoughts. Pass away now thy toilsome cares and put aside thy burdensome business. Yield room for some little time with God and rest a little while in Him. In the inner chamber shut out all thoughts save those of God, and such as can aid thee in worshipping Him. Speak now to God, and say ‑ I seek Thy face, Thy face, Lord, do I seek."

And thus did he call his people to worship.

I was reading on the airplane coming back from Dallas on Wednesday, THE DIARY OF ANDREW BONAR, a great nineteenth century saint of God. He wrote down the musings, the thoughts, the lessons the Lord taught him, the impressions he had each day. And I started', at the beginning of the book and I went all the way through the book and read each of his entries written on the Lord's day, Sunday. Many of them revolved around the theme of worship. One of them that particularly struck me, he wrote on the 26th Lord's Day of 1881. "During the whole day and every service I felt myself strengthened and upheld by the Lord's presence in Spirit, more than usual. There were moments of great nearness. 11 end quote.

And I stopped at that point ‑ moments of great nearness. And I said to myself ‑ I long to know those kind of moments. Moments in which there's an overwhelming sense of the nearness of God. I wonder whether most Christians ever really experience that? I wonder whether you can reach back into your memory and find moments of great nearness? Moments when you have drawn nigh unto God and as James 4:8 says, "He has in response drawn nigh unto you." Moments in which you have sense profoundly the presence of God. Moments when the divine nearness has been like your own hands and feet, your own breath. That intimate. And all through this series, this has been really the purpose and goal of it, that we might so draw nigh unto God that we are literally overcome by His presence. And I have been preaching to myself, before I have been preaching to you, I have been speaking to my own heart ‑ how can I expect that you should have such nearness to God, unless I have that? The great desire of my heart is to come forth to speak to you, to preach to you, to teach you, and bearing in that preaching and teaching the very power of God that comes only to those who are in His presence. Because I know what happens in this pulpit will either aid your worship or destroy it.

Richard Foster, many years ago, said: "Preaching that is without divine power will fall like frost on worship. Heart preaching,'' he said, "inflames the spirit to worship. Head preaching smothers the glowing embers."

And so, I have a great responsibility. I suppose all of us could experience and have preaching that was biblical, where all of the interpretation may have been correct. And the Bible was the text. But somehow it was chilling, cold, icy, fell like frost on our worship. And on the other hand, we have all been exposed to that profound power of God that anoints the servant of God and those times when he speaks as if he has come from the very throne room itself.

And so, while the series has been directed in many ways to all of you, it has been directed particularly to me.

Now in our look at worship we've tried, of course, not to exhaust the theme, but just to touch, as it were, the edges of it, that the Spirit of God might begin to teach us. And we've looked at a definition of worship.

We've talked about THE IMPORTANCE OF WORSHIP. And we know it's important because it is God's priority, He seeks true worshippers, it says in this passage.

We've talked about THE SOURCE OF WORSHIP. And that is salvation. We were redeemed to worship.

We've talked about THE OBJECT OF WORSHIP. And the object is God as Spirit and as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We've talked about THE SPHERE OF WORSHIP. We are to worship everywhere and at all times, and yet uniquely in the assembled presence of God's redeemed people.

And now we are looking at THE NATURE, OR THE ESSENCE, OF WORSHIP. What it is.

And that's why I read verses 23 and 24 where it says twice we are to worship in spirit and in truth. We are to worship in spirit and in truth ... the perfect balance. Not just spirit, that is not just enthusiasm, but truth. Not just truth but enthusiasm. From the deep part of our soul we worship, we express ourselves based on God's revealed truth. And you'll remember that I showed you the Samaritans had the spirit and not the truth, and the Jews had the truth and not the spirit, and so Jesus says ‑ It isn't here in Gerizim, and it isn't there in Jerusalem, God is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth. And true worship brings both of those together. You cannot have enthusiastic heresy on the one hand, and barren orthodoxy on the other and really worship God. You cannot have heat without light, and you can't have light without heat. The two must be in balance.

And remember last time we looked at the concept of spirit. And we said that to worship God in spirit is to worship God from your inner being, it isn't superficial, it isn't external, it isn't formal, it isn't liturgical, it's the heart. And that's what the Psalmist meant in Psalm 103 when he said, "Bless the Lord, 0 my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name." And what Paul meant in Romans 1:9 when he said, "I worship God in my spirit."

And we suggested to you that there are several necessary elements to worshipping God in spirit. First, spiritual life. We have to be alive spiritually, alive to God. We have to be those who possess the Holy Spirit, which comes by salvation. And to begin with then to worship in Spirit we must have had a transformed inner person, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God.

Secondly, we must focus our thoughts on God. Worship comes out of the heart that is thinking on God.

Thirdly, our thoughts on God are dependent on discovery and meditation out of the Word of God. And as we look at the Word of God, and as we discover its truths and meditate on its truths we find ourselves worshipping.

And then fourthly, we must have an undivided heart...an undivided heart. As I read at the beginning of our worship this morning from Psalm 9, the Psalmist says: "I will praise Thee with my whole heart." I will praise Thee with my whole heart.

To worship in spirit then is to have a spirit transformed by regeneration, to think on God, to concentrate all of our faculties on Him and His work. And those thoughts rise from the discovery and the meditation on the Word of God and flow back to God through an undivided heart.

You know, many times in the Old Testament, you can read it in Isaiah, you can read it in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, you can see it in the New Testament in Matthew's gospel, and Luke's gospel, the Lord indicts people for worshipping Him externally while their heart is far from Him. That's a rather common phrase. These people worship Me with their form but their heart is far from Me. That's the very antithesis of what God desires. He desires the heart to be nigh unto Him. And that's why, for example, true worship is expressed in very clear terms in Psalm 108 and it goes like this, basically, at the very beginning of the chapter:

"O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise." And then in verse 2:

"Awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early. I will praise Thee, 0 Lord, among the people."

In other words, the music of praise rises out of a fixed heart, an undivided heart, a settled heart focusing singularly and only on God.

In Psalm 112 we find a Psalm of praise. It begins: "Praise ye the Lord." And it follows along the line of praise. And how is it that the heart can praise? It comes in verse 7, it says: "His heart is fixed." And then in verse 8: "His heart is established." You see, it is a fixed heart and an established heart, totally focusing on the wonder of God out of which arises praise.

In Psalm 57 we find again the same thought. Verse 7: "My heart is fixed, 0 God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise. Awake up, my glory: awake psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early.    I will praise Thee, 0 Lord, among the peoples: I will sing unto Thee among the nations. For Thy mercy is great unto the heavens, and Thy truth unto the clouds. Be Thou exalted, 0 God, above the heavens: let Thy glory be above all the earth."

You see, again it is a fixed heart, it is a resolute heart, it is a determined heart, a heart focused totally on God. So you begin then with a resident Spirit, and a transformed heart, thoughts centered on God, being in the Word of God with discovery and meditation, and then an undivided and fixed heart.

And we ask ourselves the question ‑ Are we really there when we come to worship the Lord? And there are many times when we may think we are and we're not and that's where Psalm 139 comes in. I think it's most interesting, you know the verse, just listen to it: Psalm 139:23 and 24 says: "Search me, 0 God, and know my heart; try me and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

Now David says ‑ Search me, 0 God, and know my heart. And if you find anything, deal with it. And that is an admission that even David couldn't fully understand his own heart. He may have felt that he dealt with everything, and so he says ‑ God, there may be some things that I don't see. And it may be that in our hearts and in our lives the reason we have difficulty really abandoning ourself in worship to God, the reason we don't experience the nearness of God that we would like to experience is because we have areas of our life that are not dealt with and maybe areas that we are blind to and only God knows. And so as we approach this matter of worship to have an undivided heart, we must come with an open and repentant it spirit. That would be the fifth in those elements of true worship in the spirit. There must be an openness, there must be a willingness to say ‑God, turn on the searchlight and whatever you find in the corner expose it. And if you have found it very difficult to worship, you come here and go home and there's little change in your life, and there's little sense of the nearness of God, there's little sense of entering into divine presence it may well be that there are areas in your life which you have long overlooked that only God knows about and you must plead with Him to search them out and expose them and willingly confess them in a broken and a contrite spirit.

You see, those things must be dealt with. Every time in the Scripture we talk about worship we must talk about cleansing, purging, purifying, confessing, repenting because the...the only person who can utterly and fully enter into communion with an utterly holy God is one whose sin is utterly dealt with. And we don't want to go rushing into God's presence in our impurity, thinking that all is well. We like Isaiah must confess before God our sin and allow God to touch that living, burning coal to our lips, if need be, to purge us. And so we worship in spirit. When the Spirit of God resides within us and when we are willing to follow our thought line so it's consumed by God, when we're in His Word discovering, meditating, an undivided heart to which we have given God full access to uncover anything that stands between us and Him. That is worshipping in spirit.

Now Charnock wrote many years ago these words: "Without the heart it is no worship; it is a stage play. It is an acting a part without being that person really. It is playing the hypocrite." Listen to this: "We may truly be said to worship God though we lack perfection but we cannot be said to worship God if we lack sincerity."

That's very true. We may worship imperfectly but we cannot worship insincerely. And so as we come to worship God it must be from the depth of what is within us, a sincere worship of God.

So, we yield our spirits to the Holy Spirit who fills us with His presence and power. We ask Him to cleanse out every corner of our lives and then the flow of worship can occur. Nothing superficial about it.

Now let's look at the second and balancing element. We worship in truth ... we worship in truth. And we touched on it last time in our discussion of the idea of discovery and meditation on the Word. But let me just expand it, if I might. All worship is in response to truth. All worship is in response to truth. There is no worship that is not linked inseparably to truth. Worship is not an emotional exercise with God‑words, inducing feelings. Worship is a response built upon truth.

Now Pilate asked the very important question ‑ What is truth? And Jesus answered it in John 17:17 when He said: "Thy word is truth." Or Psalm 119:142, "The testimonies of the Lord are true."

Now if we are to worship in truth, and the Word of God is truth then we must worship out of an understanding of the Word of God. If we're going to worship God truly we must understand who He is and the only place He revealed Himself is in His Word.

In Romans 1:18 it tells us that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth. Now there is the truth in terms of conscience, the truth in terms of what is called general revelation.

And then verse 19: "That which may be known of God is manifest in them."

God, first of all, disclosed Himself in general terms in conscience and in creation. And men hold that truth about God. But verse 25 says: "They exchanged the truth about God for the lie and worshipped and served the creature more than the creator."

Now, God's whole purpose was to reveal Himself. He revealed Himself, first of all, in creation and conscience, and then He revealed Himself crystal clear in the pages of the Word of God. If we are to worship in truth then we are to worship truly as God is to be worshipped. And the only place we'll find God truly defined is in the Bible. It is the Bible that explains the God of creation and the God of conscience. Everything we know about God is in the Word of God. And to worship in truth then means to worship from out of an understanding of the Word of God. You cannot worship God in a vacuum. You cannot worship God apart from His revelation.

An illustration of this comes to mind in the 8th chapter of Nehemiah where it tells us that Ezra opened the book in sight of all the people, that is the Word of God, and he opened it up standing above the people on a platform and immediately all the people stood up at the presentation of God's Word. "And Ezra blessed the Lord the great God and all the people answered, Amen, Amen, lifting up their hands and they bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground." The Word of God, just its very holy presence, threw them all to their knees in an act of worship.

All worship, listen now, is in response to truth about God. And all truth about God is revealed in His Word. If we are called to worship God then we want to worship God as God is. If we want to know how He is we have to look at His self revelation. The Bible discloses the truth about God which guides our worship.

And truth is the objective factor in worship as spirit is the subjective. But both must come together. In Psalm 47:7 there's a very interesting statement, it says: "Sing ye praises with understanding." Sing ye praises with understanding. All worship must be based on truth. Worship is not simply holding hands and swaying back and forth, or having ecstatic experiences, having experiences that have not meaning or no content, that is not worship. Worship is not even a good feeling, as good as good feelings are. Worship is an expression of praise from the depth of the heart toward a God who is understood... as He is truly revealed. "Sing ye praises with understanding." There's no virtue in saying you're worshipping God in something which you don't, nor does anybody else, comprehend. There's no true worship apart from a true understanding of God. Any group that does not understand truth about God does not worship God, cannot worship God for He is worshipped in spirit and according to truth.

In II Corinthians 4:2 Paul says we have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, we don't do things that manipulate. And we don't walk in craftiness, we don't handle the Word of God deceitfully, in other words, we don't use it to induce certain experiences, or certain results or responses. "But by manifestation of the truth we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God." Paul says ‑ I will never use the Bible, I will never deceive anybody, I will never try to be dishonest with anybody to gain my own ends, all I desire to do is to manifest the truth and therefore to commend myself in the sight of God. All response in worship is a response to the Word of God.

And it's amazing how many people don't understand this. As I mentioned some time earlier, people very often ask me ‑ How can you have a worship service when you preach such a long time? When do your people have time to worship? And the answer is you cannot worship God apart from an understanding of who He is. That's why I'm so committed to expository preaching. That's why I'm so committed to the systematic teaching of the Word of God, week in‑week out. There is no other thing to do. I could give you clever sermons that would move your emotions and they would move your attitudes, and I could maybe make you cry by filling in a whole lot of stories and other things. I could make it interesting and fun and exciting but when it was all said and done you might say Boy, John MacArthur can preach, but you wouldn't worship God. It is a far greater challenge for me to teach the Word of God and let it commend you to respond to God as God is revealed in this His self‑revelation.

That's why I think that any young person going into the ministry who is not committed to expository preaching is cutting his own throat ultimately. Because people must respond in life at every dimension to the truth of the Word of God. We have to worship in truth. And truth is revealed in this Word. And that's our source. And that's why I'm so totally committed to the fact that we must teach the Word of God.

When the early church met together, they met to discuss the Apostles doctrine .... to be taught the Apostles‑ doctrine...the teachings of the Apostles. What were they? They were the revelations of God about Himself, the self disclosure of God made manifest through their writings and their teachings. And they were the substance of the truth on which those people worshipped. That's why Paul said to Timothy ‑ Until I come read the text, explain the text and apply the text, ‑ stay in the text. Teach sound doctrine. What's that? Truth about God.

We're not here to create an emotional experience. We're here to teach you about God out of this book, and out of that foundation of knowledge comes worship.

You know, if you want to see an illustration of this, look at I Corinthians 14 and this might serve as a good illustration. People in the Corinthian church had pretty well flipped out to the extreme of enthusiastic contentless activity. I mean, they were going through all kinds of ecstatic gibberish and the rather upfront, showy kind of demonstrations that had come out of their pagan background ‑ had been dragged into the church ‑ and they were setting content and truth aside for the sake of their ecstasies and they were unintelligible non‑understandable emotional experiences. And Paul indicts them in verse 14 by saying ‑ If I pray in a tongue, or language, my spirit prays but my understanding's unfruitful. And that's ... that's to limp because God wants to be worshipped not only in spirit but in ... what? ... in truth. And an unfruitful understanding is not what God wants.

And so, he says: "I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the understanding also. And when I sing I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also." I mean, because people must understand what they see, it says in verse 16.

Now go to verse 23. And he says, as an illustration, "If the whole church comes together to one place, and everybody speaks these unintelligible languages, and somebody comes in who is unlearned and unbelieving, they're going to say ‑ you're mad." The result is they're going to just say these people are out of their minds. "But if you preach," and that's what prophesy means ‑ to speak forth, "if you preach the Word of God and one comes in who believes not or is unlearned, he will be convicted and judged. And the secrets of his heart will be made manifest, and he will fall down on his face and worship God."

You see, the effect of a purely emotional thing is that people get a good feeling. The effect of the truth is that they worship God. And don't ever confuse