To Glorify God through Worship

Last time, we began exploring some of the foundational things to this church, beyond that bare minimum we covered in our 9-week Basics class. Critical things, things that stand as a guideposts, so important to this local church body we felt compelled to call them both in our existing constitution, and also to purposefully, consciously continue to include in the proposed changes to our bylaws we as the leadership of this body have put forward to our membership to affirm.

There are many things that this church does, and often does very well, which we can lose sight of if we don’t call attention to it and set it before our eyes and hearts on a regular basis.

So today, I want to build upon what I taught last time, and if you recall I had put this before you last time:

Every ministry, activity, action and thought of the believer collectively and individually shall be purposefully designed and directed to bring glory to God. (I Corinthians 6:19-20; 10:31; II Corinthians 10:5; Colossians 3:17, 23-24)

And so, in our shortened time in Christian Life Hour this morning, I would like to begin unpacking how we believe that the Bible calls us as a church to bring glory to God, for we see in the Bible that God has given the church a mandate to be diligent in 5 areas all designed to glorify God: in worship, in edifying its people, in equipping its people, in evangelism, and in guarding. Today, we’ll only be looking at that first mandate, to worship God.

Let’s pray before we begin:

O Lord our God, most High and most glorious, You are incomprehensible yet prayer-hearing, You are known yet beyond knowledge, You are revealed yet unrevealed; we adore You for making us capable of knowing Yourself, for leading us to desire You. Let not pride swallow our hearts, for how often we have injured our Redeemer in this way. We bless You for the discoveries, the invitations, the promises of Your gospel, for in them is pardon for rebels, liberty for captives, salvation for the lost. We pray today that You would grant us power by Your Spirit to worship You now in spirit and in truth, that we may forget the world, but seek to glorify Your holy Son and set Him on high, to render all glory and honor due to His blessed name. Amen!

Worship God Rightly

If you were to go into most churches across our nation today and to ask them what “worship” is, I think you would hard-pressed to find a good answer based in scripture. The reason for this, is that many if not most “christians” are unable to discern between entertainment that has a religious veneer, and true worship. Our culture has long idolized experience and idolized emotion that this attitude has infected the hearts and minds of even true Christians, such that their hearts have been cauterized and they can no longer recognize anything else!

But this is not God’s desire – He desires those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth. In fact, we will see this morning that those who truly worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth, for the glorification of God alone rather than for the emotional ecstacy of “experience”, which has nothing to do with worshipping and glorifying God.

Turn with me over to John 4. Most of us know the story well: Jesus has left the region of Judea and so He went back into Galilee, but rather than going out of His way, He’s done something unusual and is passing through the region of Samaria – you know, where the half-breeds lived, the impure descendants of Jews mixed in with other peoples, they were considered unclean by the Jews.

But Jesus led His disciples straight through Samaria, coming to the city of Sychar, where He sat down by the well and waited while His disciples went to buy them food, and while He was waiting a Samaritan woman came to the well, and He asks her for a drink. She’s shocked, He says she should have asking Him for a drink, she’s confused, He says grab your husband and bring him back here to me, she says I don’t have a husband, He says you’re right, you’ve had 5 and the one you now have isn’t your husband.

At this, she recognizes Him as a prophet, and one talking to her no less, and so in verse 20 she asks the most compelling question on her heart that should could ask a prophet of God: where should we worship. John 4:20, ““Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.””

That we should worship God is the given; the burning question, the foremost question she has, is where.

And Jesus’ answer is profound, we are well-advised to pay close attention starting in verse 21:

John 4:21 LSB

Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.

Location doesn’t matter. The places associated with worship to the Samaritans was Mount Gerizim, where they had built a temple of their own after being rebuffed by the Jews returning from exile, remember the Jews in Ezra and Nehemiah had told them on no uncertain terms “no! Your religion is defiled, you’ve mixed in other things, it’s impure and we’ll have no part of bringing something impure into our worship.”

But neither was the place associated with the worship of the Jews, the temple rebuilt under Ezra and Nehemiah and restored and expanded under Herod acceptable either. Neither place was going to be a place of what God considers “worship”.

John 4:22 LSB

“You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.

Biblical worship of God is not based upon anything other than the fully revealed Word of God. To have an incomplete view, as did the Samaritans who only had the 5 books of Moses, is not sufficient. Nor is adding in the rites, practices, and alterations of the revealed word of God, such as the Samaritan addition to the 10 commandments to build an altar at Mount Gerizim acceptable either. Worship, to steal a phrase from the modern U.S. courtroom, must be based on “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

And that truth deals particularly with salvation, beginning with the fact that it is necessary, then realizing and believing that salvation you need is exclusive to God’s revelation of it within Scripture. You can’t decide for yourself what is acceptable, nor can you rely upon the traditions of your culture (something the average American “christian” ought to take note of!).

But then, Jesus comes to the heart of the matter as He continues in verses 23 and 24:

John 4:23–24 LSB

“But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and 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.”

Do we worship in Mount Gerizim? No. Do we worship in Jerusalem? No. Well then, where do we worship? In spirit. In truth. The question was always one of location, and what Christ is saying is that the place where we truly worship is in the spiritual realm. When our Lord declared in Matthew 15, “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me”, He followed that statement with a condemnation, “in vain do they worship me”, He’s saying much the same thing. It is of no use to concentrate upon the physical action if that action is not accompanied by – or, more precisely, the result of – an overflow of spiritual worship of God.

And we should be clear, by “worship”, προσκυνέω, we’re talking about giving honor to a superior. To recognize the one to be worshipped as worthy of that worship, to pay homage to them, to give them reverence and respect, to adore and to praise them. The word literally means “to bow down” before the one you willfully submit to as superior to yourself.

When we worship God, we ascribe worth and worthiness to Him and proclaim that worth and worthiness heart-fully and will-fully.

And so when we consider that this “worship” is both in spirit and in truth, we ought to realize this is talking about seeing and recognizing God as He is – not as we wish Him to be – and then respond accordingly.

Isaiah understood what it means to worship – to recognize God for who and what He is, and to respond and acknowledge His greatness accordingly, and we ought to take careful note of how Isaiah worshipped God; for when Isaiah encountered the Lord on His throne, we read his account in Isaiah 6:5, “Then I said, “Woe is me, for I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, Yahweh of hosts.””

These are no mere words for show. His worship of the Lord God was an immediate and thorough recognition of the greatness of God over Isaiah himself.

You see, when we worship God, we elevate God over ourselves. In our hearts and in our minds, true worship is characterized by submission to God, He as the master, we as the slave; He as the authority, we as the servant. Not only is there a submission, however, there is likewise a great reverence for God Himself. To behold His glory is a fearful, for our souls viscerally feel their pitiful worth in comparison. Isaiah felt he was undone on account of seeing the Lord, Moses’ face was pressed into the cleft of the rock and covered, and yet still he was profoundly affected by the presence of Yahweh from that time onward.

1 Corinthians 1 helps us understand why we don’t worship God the way everyone else worships their deaf, mute, dumb, unliving gods.

1 Corinthians 1:26–27 LSB

For consider your calling, brothers, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong,

1 Corinthians 1:28–29 LSB

and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may abolish the things that are, so that no flesh may boast before God.

Romans 1 also talks about improper worship, and the wrath God pours out now on those who give the glory that by rights belongs to God and God alone to another:

Romans 1:21–22 LSB

For even though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools,

Romans 1:23 LSB

and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the likeness of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

What happened?

Romans 1:24 LSB

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.

Romans 1:26–27 LSB

For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions; for their females exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the males abandoned the natural function of the female and burned in their desire toward one another, males with males committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

Romans 1:28–31 LSB

And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to an unfit mind, to do those things which are not proper, having been filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, violent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful;

Romans 1:32 LSB

and although they know the righteous requirement of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

What is the penalty of worshipping anything other than God alone? “Worthy of death.”

Not only is worshipping the wrong god worth of death, but so also is worshipping the right God the wrong way.

Leviticus 10:1 LSB

Then Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans and put fire in them. Then they placed incense on it and offered strange fire before Yahweh, which He had not commanded them.

Leviticus 10:2 LSB

And fire came out from the presence of Yahweh and consumed them, and they died before Yahweh.

So when we go back to the statement in John 4, we ought to realize that there is a crucial seriousness here.

John 4:23–24 LSB

We, if we are truly called of God, truly saved, ought to realize that this attitude of submission and reverence that results in the elevation of God as the one who is being worshipped, rather that we the worshippers.

Although we may be tempted to equate worshipping the Father “in spirit and truth” of John 4 with “spiritual service of worship” of Romans 12:1, “Therefore I exhort you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice—living, holy, and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”

The tendency here is to say that “worship” is simply a life lived in service to God as a response to salvation.

Now, there is a point that a life lived in service to God being an appropriate response to salvation, but that is not the same thing as being a “true worshiper of the Father in spirit and truth.” “Spiritual service of worship”, λατρεία, is entirely different from the προσκυνέω, worship which is a reverential rendering of the honor due to the Lord God almighty.

Both are important. Both are warranted. Both are necessary.

But we must never lose sight of the desire of God the Father in John 4:23, “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.”

It is specifically the Father who is to be worshipped, it is specifically the Father who deserves our intentional reverential fear and awe.

And there is a great danger here, too. There is an increasing tendency in many churches to take an overly-familiar view of God, which calls Him solely by the affectionate pet-name, which emphasizes only friendship, which views Him only as the childlike “daddy”, which entirely rejects the true worship He seeks.

It is this worship of the Father that we must do first. The response of a spiritual service of worship in daily life of necessity follows the reverential fear and awe due to the Father, for our God is a consuming fire.

It is only worship, done in knowledge and exultation of God’s revealed Word, centered around the person of His Son, recognizing our utter dependence upon Him, that will fulfill this mandate given to us.

And one of the primary purposes of Hickory Corners Bible Church is to do just that, in everything that we do. When we come together corporately, when we consider a ministry, when we have Christian Life Hour or our main Sunday morning “worship” services, when we gather Sunday evenings for prayer, Word of Life, and AWANA, when we meet together for church business, when we gather together for special events, our purpose must always be to, through what we say, what we do, and in our hearts, be to worship God in the manner He desires.