True Worship Beyond Location and Style

Sweet hour of prayer, what a wonderful time to come before the Lord and to just humble ourselves before Him and to seek His face. We're going to talk about worship this morning in Sunday school class. We've already had a great time of studying and those three things that we talked about this morning was worship is an expression of the worth and the value of God and that worship includes our exalting God in all of our life. And third, we worship with other believers' anticipation of seeing God. I think that this time is sometimes taken for granted as just another hour out of our life but today we really truly want to focus on what it means to worship God Almighty. I'm going to be turning to John chapter 4 in just a few moments. That's a different aspect of worship but you all know the story, you know this chapter, you know it, you've read it, you've heard it many times. It's the story of the woman at the well. Jesus and His disciples left the Jerusalem area and began to go up into the Galilee area but to do that they had to pass through an area called Samaria. And normally most Jewish folks would take a detour and go around on the east side of the countryside and not go up through Samaria because they thought that if they would go through that part of the world that they would become tainted, that they would be unclean because they considered the Samaritan people unclean people. And so Jesus did not do that. Jesus went right through the heart of that country and He went right through that land hoping to touch and to relate to people that needed to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. So on the way He stayed outside and this place was a town called Sychar and it was also the place where Jacob's well was. And He sat near that well and He told the disciples to go on in town and buy some food. And while He was there this woman came out to this well to draw water. And Jesus said, I'm thirsty, would you give me a drink? Now immediately this caught that woman by surprise for two reasons. Number one, she was a woman, He was a man, why would He be asking her for water? Number two, she was a Samaritan, He was a Jew. And she confronted Him about that. Why would you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan, for water? That's unusual. Why would you do that? And Jesus said this in verse 9, 10, verse 10, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that's saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water. And she began to think, what is this living water? And she began to ask, sir, I'd really like to have, who wouldn't, would like to have living water that would never bring thirst to you again? She said, sir, I want some of this. And what Jesus said to her was eye awakening. He said, go get your husband and bring him out here. And she said, no, I have no husband. He said, you're correct, you have five husbands. And then she said this, and this is where we're going to pick up in verse 19. The woman said to Him, sir, I perceive you're a prophet. And then she changes the subject. She quits talking about water. Don't know why she did this. But she said, our fathers worshiped on this mountain. But you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship. Now Jesus said to her, woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will we worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for 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 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 the Messiah is coming, He who is called Christ. When He comes, He will tell us all things. And Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am He. Let's pray. Father, as we take a look at this passage of scripture this morning, speak to our hearts. Speak to our minds. Speak to our souls, Father, that we would be faithful to go and to share others the love that You've given to us. Father, we want to truly worship You this morning. More than anything else, we want to adore You. So Father, teach us how to do that. We give You praise. We give You honor. In Jesus' name, amen. I have four quick points this morning before we take the Lord's Supper. First of all, true worshipers are not concerned about the location. Jesus said there's going to come a time when worshiping on this hill or worshiping on Jerusalem is not important. And what that really was was a picture of what was to come and what the New Testament church was going to be because it was all going to be focused on Jesus Christ. He would be the focus of our attention. He would be the focus of our worship. It wouldn't be the location that was important. And we'll talk a little bit more about why those things were important. In fact, let me show you a picture here right quick of where this occurred. If you've got that next screen. There we go. Right there. That's actually a picture. On the left side is Mount Gerizim. On the right side is Mount Ebal. And where that modern day town is, is close to where Jacob's Well is and where Sikhar was. Now, what was happening is, is that in 900 B.C., if you know your history of the Bible and the history of Israel, there was a first church split, okay? Rehoboam was the son of Solomon and he was the king of Judah, the southern kingdom. But Jeroboam, the captain of the army, there was a political divide and a religious divide. He divided the country right in two and they went to the north and that was called Israel. And what happened over the course of time, and as we know in 722, the northern kingdom was just completely disseminated and dispersed throughout the country and the religion went with it. And they began to intermarry. They began to relate to other nations who did not worship Jehovah God Almighty and that worship became diluted. But they would worship at this place and they would keep some of those combined worship ideas and they kept the Judaism kind of thoughts and they would go up on this hill of Mount Gerizim and they would still have their holy place, if you will, to worship. And it became a ritual, traditional place to worship God that this lady that still practiced to this very day where Jesus was. Now in the southern kingdom in Judah, eventually in 586, same thing happened. They began to turn away from God. And so when the Babylonians came in and completely destroyed the temple of Jerusalem and that place of worship went away for a period of years until it was finally rebuilt during Nehemiah's time. What Jesus is trying to tell her, it's not the location that matters, it's the heart that matters. Now, for me, you know, I've worshiped at a lot of different places and this is a great place to worship. We need places to have corporate worship. But some of my most favorite places to worship have been at different places. When I was a college student, my grandmother went through a stroke and I was way out in Texas and she was in California. And so I wanted to just go and connect with God and pray that God would intervene in her life. And I found a place out in a field. I found a flat rock. I sat on that rock and I looked at all of God's creations. I looked at the stars. It was a cold, chilly night in December and the moon and the stars were all out. And I remember that to this very day that God intervened in my life. And I knelt on that rock and I prayed to God all night and I cried out to God. I said, God, reveal yourself to me. And it became a very special location for me to have a personal worship time. I also remember when I went to South Africa, we went to a little village on one Sunday morning and we went up to this little house that was not finished. It was a village that was being built by the government and some of the houses were not complete and this particular house was not complete, but they were allowed to meet in this church. They didn't have any windows. They didn't have any doors. We just walked into that little house, had a few chairs. We had no piano. We had no guitar. We had no organ. All we had was a tambourine in our hands and they began to sing in their native tongue. I didn't know what the words were, but I began to play like I did and I just hum along and I began to worship and I sensed the power and the presence of God like I never had before my life because the Holy Spirit that dwells in us was the same Holy Spirit in South Africa. Can you imagine that? It didn't matter that we were worshiping in this building with no windows, with no doors, with very few chairs. In India, I worshiped in a hallway that was about this long and literally a hundred people would come, no chairs at all. They would sit on the floor and they would crowd at the back of the church just to get in to sing and to worship and to praise God and there was no air conditioning and boy, they didn't take baths too much over there. It was a pleasant smell and aroma to God though because we were worshiping God Almighty. We've come today to do that very same thing, to give God the glory. Some of you might be saying, okay, well I can worship out on the boat catching some big black bass, right? I can do that. Well, you can, but that's personal worship, but God demands us to get together corporately and that's what we've done here. He wants us to come together to worship together. Ephesians 5, 18 through 19 says, but be filled with the Spirit. Now, right before that it said don't be drunk, but that's not the main point of that passage of scripture. What's the main point of that scripture is be filled with the Holy Spirit. When we come to this place here, those of us who are born again already have the presence of the Holy Spirit lived in us, but what we need to do is to make sure that when we come to this place on Sunday morning that we're filled with the Holy Spirit and that we're ready to give God our glory, give him glory and praise and worship him. And then verse 19 says of Ephesians 5, addressing one another. Now listen, you can't address somebody if you're out there fishing by yourself, right? You can address God, but when the scripture says addressing one another, he's talking about a corporate, and here's what we're supposed to do in worship. We're supposed to give praise in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing, making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always for everything that the God, the Father, the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Have you done that this morning? I hope so. That's why we came. We came to worship God Almighty. Amen? Amen. Now, I want to tell you something. I love to come to worship and I don't care where it's at. I don't care if it's a cowboy church. I don't care if it's an old gospel, southern gospel church. I don't care if it's a contemporary church, just rocking it out. I don't care because I'm not there for that. I've come to worship God Almighty, and I have trouble doing that these days because I have a problem with my vocal cord, if you haven't noticed that by now. That's why I have this throat lozenge, that's why I drink water a lot. Please forgive me when I do that. I pray for God's healing all the time. He told me not to drink coffee anymore, and that's hard for me not to do, but I try so that that vocal cord can heal, but I love to preach the gospel and I love to sing, and I can't sing the way I used to. It wasn't very good, now it's worse, but I love to sing when I come to church because it's not about me, it's not about the tune, it's about Jesus. It's about God. I want to bless the Lord, oh my soul. I want to bless his holy name. That's why we come to worship. Listen, let me tell you the second thing this morning. True worshipers are not concerned about style. I'm touching on that already. Jesus said in verse 25, and I'm reading this out of the, oh no, I forgot to read Hebrews 10, 25 about. Let me read this because you know this, and let us not neglect or forsake the assembly or meeting together as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of the return, drawing near. Folks, I love to come to church because I get so much encouragement from people, love you, praying for you, glad you're here. That's why we come, and that was touched on in our Sunday school class this morning. I didn't want to overlook that point, but let me get back to point two, style. In verse 22, Jesus said this, or the lady said this, you Samaritans know very little, no, Jesus said this, you Samaritans know very little about the one you worship, while we Jews know all about him, for salvation comes to the Jews. Now you might say, what does that have to do with style? It has to do with style because Jesus was saying, you've missed the point. The point is that when we come before God, it's about his promises, it's about his hope, it's not about our style. He's saying it's really, it comes through Jews because there's this promise of the Messiah, it's the promise of the coming king, it's the promise of Jesus Christ himself, and it's always about him, worship is all about him. It's not about us, it's about him. In churches today, there is an argument today about whether we need to be attractional or we need to be missional, and I'm here to tell you today, we need to be both. Now I'm probably about to make some of you mad, that's okay, I love you. But folks, if we're not about being attractional, then let me make a suggestion to you. What if next week we just turn off the heaters and the air conditioners and say, we're going to do church without air conditioning and heating? Don't we want a comfortable place to worship? Of course we do. You've done some wonderful things to this facility, why did we do that? It lightened this place up, I love what you've done in this sanctuary, and there's nothing wrong with that. But we did that so that when our guests come, that they will feel welcomed here, they'll feel bright, they'll feel like it's a great place to come to worship God Almighty. So every church is attractional to some extent. We do what we do because we're trying to reach people for Jesus Christ, amen? So yes, we want to be attractional, we want to do it well, we want to plan for those who aren't here yet. We need to be reaching people for Jesus Christ. But at the same time, that's why we do it, we need to be missional. We preach the gospel of Jesus Christ so that people might come to worship the same God that we worship. Psalms 99 says, the Lord reigns, let the peoples tremble. He sits enthroned upon the cherubim, let the earth quake. The Lord is great in Zion, he is exalted over all the peoples. Let them praise your great and awesome name, holy is he. The king in his might loves justice, you have established equity, you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. Now catch verse five. Exalt the Lord our God, worship at his footstool, holy is he. I want you to grab a mental picture this morning of what happened in the old Hebrew worship when they went into the gates and to the holy of holies. And the only one that could go into the holy of holies was the high priest. And when he went into the holy of holies, in that place was the Ark of the Covenant. And what they thought and what they believed, that God showed up there. And that God would literally rest his feet on the Ark of the Covenant. And for them, that was the worship experience because it was the time that God showed up. David would come in and begin to add some things in Psalms 104. He says, enter the gates with thanksgiving, go into the courts with praise, give thanks for him and bless his name for the Lord is good. And what would happen is that they would add instruments and they would sing and they would praise as they entered into that temple out in the gates and into the courtyard. And then as the high priest would go into the holy of holies, he would bow himself and kneel at the footstool of where God was literally at, laying his feet on the Ark of the Covenant. That was worship. You see, the praise part of church is singing praises and giving thanks and praying unto God Almighty. The worship part is when we take our hearts and our attitude and we get on our knees before a holy God. And literally that's what the word worship means is to bow before God. Two other quick points. And these are simple. They're right there in your scripture. True worshipers will worship in the Spirit. True worshipers will worship in the Spirit. To worship in Spirit is to worship in the new realm which God has revealed to people. Worshiping God in Spirit means with reverence, with attentiveness, with having the right purpose of honoring God while understanding what we are doing. Now there is a distinction here between God's Spirit and between our Spirit. But folks, if you're like me, I can remember back in the old days when we had our two little kids and we only had one car and coming to church, Jeanette works on a different timetable than I do. I like to be here early. She likes to get here on time. That always created tension for us. And there were a few Sundays I did not have the attitude of worship. You get me? You've done that, haven't you? You've come to church and you've had an argument before you come here and you're not in the attitude of worship. Now you can get there, but we've all been there. So what Jesus is telling her is that we need to worship with the right attitude. That Holy Spirit that dwells in us needs to come bubbling out and we need to learn to what that really means. In Hebrews chapter 12, verse 28, it says, Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe. In the Old Testament, that word fear usually meant awe-inspiring. In other words, before we come before and fear the Lord, we are to reverence Him and we are to be in awe of a holy God. You ever had those awe-inspiring moments? I have. One of my moments was in Norway. My dad and mom lived over there for three years. He was with Phyllis Petroleum and I was in college and Jeanette and I got to go a couple years after. But I got to go and we would take trips over in Norway, just driving trips to see the countryside. One day we drove and we took this little road, and I'm not sure why we did. It didn't lead anywhere. But we took this little road and went over a little hill, and when we came over this hill with this most beautiful valley that I've ever seen in my life, there was a beautiful river that just flowed down the river. And on each side, down the way, was this huge mountain. mountain of granite. And on this side was another huge mountain in granite. And out at the end looked like infinity and it looked like if there was ever a door to heaven, that was the door. And it was one of those moments where I just went, ah. That's got to be what it looks like to enter into the pearly gates as we walk into this presence of a holy God. Just totally in awe. And that's as close as I can explain what it means to be in awe of a holy God. And that still falls short. We talked about that, Mike, this morning a little bit, how hard it is to describe how to honor a holy God. But he still expects that. And the best we can do is fall on our faces because we're broken people, folks. We're not perfect people. God is the only perfect person in this world. But he still expects us to worship him in spirit. And finally, the last point this morning, and it's a quick point, to worship in truth. True worshipers are those who realize that Jesus is the truth of God. Jesus said, I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life. And no man cometh unto the Father but by me. Folks, we cannot worship anything else but the truth of Jesus Christ. It is the object of our worship. It is what we preach about. It is what we sing about. If we go any other way, it is not genuine, true worship. We worship in spirit, and we worship in truth, and truth is Jesus. Period. Acts chapter 4, 12 says, and there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among man by which we must be saved. To worship in truth is to worship God through Jesus Christ himself. When this lady, this woman at the well, recognized that this was Jesus, what did she do? She went back into the town. She told them who she had met, and what happened? The whole town came out to see Jesus. Listen to what the Bible says. And so when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them. He stayed there two days, and many more believed because of his word. And they said to the woman, it is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world. Genuine worship will always lead us to the feet of Jesus, and it will always allow us the privilege to go and tell the world, come, worship with us a God who loved us so much that he gave his only begotten Son on the cross of Calvary, that we might have the gift of eternal life, and that we might live for eternity through Jesus Christ. That is how we worship in spirit and truth. This morning we're going to continue our worship by going into the Lord's Supper. I do not take this lightly, folks. This is one of the most wonderful services that we as a church experience. And for me, it humbles me. I move with emotion every time I come to this place to experience the Lord's Supper. Why? Because I feel so unworthy to remember what Jesus Christ did for me on the cross of Calvary. You can trivialize this act of worship today if you so choose to do so, and just say, OK, we're going to take this bread and we're going to take this juice. It doesn't mean anything. I hope you don't do that, but I hope that you worship the Lord in spirit and in truth when you take this Lord's Supper. There's nothing magical about it, but there is something spiritual about it. Jesus told us to do it, and we do it because we remember Him and what He did for us on the cross of Calvary. Those who are going to serve, would you please come forward at this time, please? We are going to pass these elements in just a moment, and as they pass the bread, if you will, please hold on to that. Then we'll say a quick word, and then we'll take the elements together. Jesus would teach us, and He taught His disciples that as they come together that each of these elements represent a certain aspect of worship, of who He was and what He did for us. So Rusty, if you will, lead us in a word of prayer before we distribute these. Father, we are here to worship You because of the kind of person You are. You made it possible through Your Son, Jesus Christ, that He was willing to shed His blood so that we could be forgiven and be in a better relationship with You. We thank You for that. He was willing to sacrifice His life and be broken on the cross so that we don't have to have a broken life, that we can be healed, that we can be followers of You, that we can have a relationship that starts even today that lasts for eternity. We thank You for that, and as we take this bread and this juice, we ask, Lord, that You would help us to remember all that You've done for us and the great price that You've paid for us. We thank You for Jesus. We praise You in His name. Amen. This bread represents the body of Christ. He shed every ounce of His blood for broken people like me and you. On that cross, His body endured the shame. He said, as often as you take this bread, you do this in remembrance of me. As we prepare for the cup, Ozzie, would you come and pray over the cup, please, sir? Our gracious Fathers, we come to partake of this. I want to ask that for each one of us, it be remembrance of what You've done for our lives, that we might be with You one day. Father, bless this time. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. This cup represents the blood of Jesus Christ, and honestly, it's still one of the mysteries in the Bible is to understand why there needed to be a blood atonement sacrifice. But from the very first man and woman that sinned upon God, the shedding of the blood, animals to give clothing to the very times of the sacrifice system in the Old Testament days, there's always been the blood sacrifice until one day Jesus to God said, no more. My Son, I'm going to offer as the final blood sacrifice. For in the blood, there is life. In Jesus Christ, there is life. He shed His blood that we might have life, life everlasting. Jesus would tell His disciple, as often as you drink this cup, you do this in remembrance of me. Father, our hearts are full of gratitude. I can't ever say thank you enough, but thank you. Thank you that you've chosen to give to me eternal life through your precious Son, Jesus Christ. Now, Father, may I honor you with my worship, with my prayers, with my thanksgiving, with my songs. We love you, Lord. We love you. In Jesus name, amen. Gentlemen, you can be seated. The disciples left that upper room, and they sung a song. And today, we'll close our service out by singing a song. Denise, come and lead us. Shout to the Lord, all the earth let us sing. Power and majesty, praise to the King. Mountains bow down, and the seas will roar at the sound of your name. I sing for joy at the work of your hands. Forever I'll love you, forever I'll stand. Nothing compares to the promise I have in you.