Unashamed Worship John 4:24 (Nov 06 2016) Mike Armstrong

Perfect.

You can turn in your Bibles if you would to John chapter 4.

John 4 · chapter mention

We're going to be looking at really one verse in there today, though we will be looking at the context of all of that.

But as you are turning there, if you can, take a look at the screen.

And can anyone kind of tell me what kind of donut those are?

Thank you.

Someone said the best.

It is the Boston Cream Donut.

Truly the Cadillac of Donuts that is.

Now I love donuts.

I really do.

And I try kind of in this uh day and age or in my the stage of my life to not eat as many as I would like to eat.

But if uh you have a place that you know that makes um the best Boston cream donut, uh you and I need to put our heads together after the service, so make sure that you come and tell me about that.

Now um the reason I have that up there um is because if you ever gotten a Boston cream donut, and uh you you know you're super excited about this, you couldn't wait to uh to chow down on it, and you took a big uh bite out of it um only to realize that there was no cream in the middle.

Yes, no, you ever had this kind of experience before?

Am I the only one?

It must be because I get mine at Tim Hortons sometimes.

Okay?

Travesty! Right?

It's a travesty to do that.

It's it's all Boston no cream.

This kind of thing has happened to me uh a couple of times, and uh it just it kind of ruins the entire uh experience.

Now you might be thinking, why are we talking about donuts uh right now at church?

Well, I mention it because uh sometimes our worship is like biting into a creamless donut.

A something seriously missing.

Something seriously missing.

And I mean, how many of you, if you were kind of to assess your own sort of worship experiences, whether that's in a service or just your own kind of connection to the Lord in worship, whether that's here or somewhere else, um, how many of you would sense that your worship could be, I don't know, better?

Right?

There's room for improvement.

Maybe it's more it's more passion, it's uh it's more authenticity, it's it's more humility, it's it's greater gratitude in my worship, it's it's a clearer focus in all of it.

I think deep down, if we are Christ followers, uh we desire more.

We desire more in our worship, and I think sometimes we will leave uh a setting like this, a church service uh somewhere, kind of feeling like um we didn't get the most out of it.

I didn't get the most, I left a lot, I left a lot on the table, and maybe we feel that we've been, I don't know, distracted by something.

It's you know the cares of the world that we brought in here, and I wasn't able to focus on the right things.

Or maybe our focus was on uh something that's less than the most important thing.

Like maybe it's it's a certain instrument, and and you're thinking about how that one person is playing, and you're not really thinking about the fact that this is a worship uh to the Lord.

Okay, maybe for you it's you know, you you you you find yourself caught up in just sort of being a spectator in the whole thing.

And you sit here and you're just you know, you're just kind of standing, and you know, other things are kind of happening around you, and there's music playing and you know, all of that, but you're not engaging um at all in what's actually taking place.

Now, worship, it's it's way more than just what takes place here on a Sunday morning.

All right, it's way more than that.

We're gonna get into that as we uh go here.

Uh, but here's what it really comes down to.

Okay, God Himself is looking for true worshipers.

He's looking for true worshipers.

Now, the big question for us is is that us?

Right?

Is that you?

Are you a true worshiper of the one true God?

Is that our church?

Could we be characterized as a church that is locked in and going for it when it comes to worship?

I want you to think about those things as we read this here this morning.

Again, like I said, we're focusing on verse uh 24 in John chapter 4, but I'm actually going to read uh most of this section, starting in verse 1, to give us a good sense of what's going on here.

John 4 · chapter mention

So read along with me.

Verse 1 now says this.

It says, When Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples, he left Judea and departed again for Galilee.

And he had to pass through Samaria.

So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

Jacob's well was there.

So Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.

It was about the sixth hour.

A woman from Samaria came to draw water.

Jesus said to her, Give me a drink.

For his disciples had gone into town, uh into the city to buy food.

The Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?

For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, Give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.

The woman said to him, Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep.

Where are you getting where are you going to get this living water?

Are you greater than our father Jacob?

He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.

Jesus said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

The water that I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty, or have to come here to draw water.

Jesus said to her, Go call your husband and come here.

The woman answered him, I have no husband.

Jesus said to her, You are right in saying that you have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.

What you have said is true.

The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.

Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.

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

You worship what you do not know.

We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.

But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshippers 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 Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ.

When he comes, he will tell us all things.

Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am He.

Lord, we come before you now.

Lord, recognizing that, Lord, you are looking for a specific type of person to come to you and worship, and then a specific way that we are to worship.

And Lord, we want to get all of that right.

Lord, we want to be counted among those who would be considered true worshipers, Lord.

We want that to be the passion of our church.

And so, God, as we jump into this here, Lord, stir up our hearts, God, we ask, with affections for Jesus Christ.

Give us passion for the name that is above every other name, that we would worship you in spirit and in truth.

God, help us, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, hey, welcome back to our new series that we started last week called All In.

And this series is where we're talking about our foundations as a church.

In many ways, this is kind of our DNA as a harvest Bible chapel.

This is what we are fired up about.

These are the things that we are committed to as a body of believers.

And so today we're going to be talking about our second pillar.

We've got four pillars.

Last week we talked about our word pillar, proclaiming the word of God without apology.

Today our second pillar is lifting high the name of Jesus Christ in worship.

If you like short form, if you can't memorize all of that, unashamed adoration.

Unashamed adoration.

This is huge to who we are.

This is massive.

Now, do you realize that worship is why you were created?

Do you understand that?

Do you realize that worship is why we are here?

It's what you were created to do.

It's what you were created to be.

That's a worshiper.

Now, I think often what we tend to do is we we kind of think, or we often think that worship is sort of an aspect of a church service.

Right?

We think that it's the it's the singing portion.

Or we often think of worship as the kind of music that we might have on our phones or we listen to in the car.

But hey, worship, worship is so much more than that.

It's so much more.

Worship is to be an all-encompassing way of life for those who are completely enamored by Jesus Christ.

Our worship is to be real and authentic.

Our worship is to be powerful and awesome and life-changing and earth shaking and window rattling.

That is what our worship is to be.

Again, we are to be true worshipers of the one true God.

It's supposed to consume us on every level of our being, no matter where we are.

It's a 24-7, 365 kind of thing.

And so here's where we're going today.

If you're wondering, it's it's on the screen here.

It's uh our church truly worships Christ when we realize God's nature, praise flows from within, and it's according to what's true.

And that's of course in your notes as well.

And so what we're gonna do is we're gonna pull this all apart here as we unpack this from our verse.

And so uh here's the first thing as we get into it.

Okay, we um our church truly worships Christ when we realize God's nature.

When we realize God's nature.

Again, we're looking at verse 24 here, so take a look at the first part of that.

Look at what it says.

It says that God is spirit.

It says that God is spirit.

Now you might be thinking, I mean, we just read through all of this, right?

But you might be thinking, well, well, why would God say this?

Why would Jesus say this to the woman at the well at this point in the conversation?

Right?

What is he getting at?

Let me give you a bit of a review as to kind of what we just looked at here, the first 19 verses.

Okay, Jesus has been out with his disciples, his 12 disciples, and he had been ministering and discipling and talking about the kingdom of God to all kinds of people and talking about uh and showing that he was uh the Messiah, and he was giving them lots of hints about that, and he was actually on his way to Galilee, and uh on his way he had to pass through Samaria.

He had to pass through Samaria.

Now, if you know anything uh about the the relationship between uh Jews and Samaritans, would you say it was like it was it was good or not so good?

Right?

Not so good.

It wasn't very strong.

It was kind of like the relationship between like people from Newmarket and like Keswick, right?

You feel that?

I'm from Mount Albert, so I feel like I can talk about that and I'm not super attached to it.

Love you, Keswick, love you, Newmarket, all of that.

But hey, in this situation, Jews and Samaritans, I was way uglier than that, right?

They had a huge history of uh, you know, a lot of things to do with religion and and and relationships.

There's a lot of discord.

They had they had no time for each other.

Okay, Jews had this superiority complex for sure, where they just thought they were flat out better than Samaritans.

They didn't talk to each other.

Uh the verse there actually says they had no uh dealings uh with Samaritans.

And so what happens is Jesus comes through this town in Samaria, and it's uh it's noon, and he runs into this woman at the well, and what does he ask her?

He asks her for a drink.

Now you need to understand that was like a huge cultural no-no, what he did.

Okay, first of all, he is a Jew talking to a Samaritan.

Okay, that just like didn't happen.

That was that just never happened.

He didn't do it.

Second of all, it was a man talking to a woman, which was like even less likely to happen.

It was just something that was kind of woven into their culture.

It it uh it didn't happen.

On top of that, you had Jesus, who was a rabbi, okay, so he was like at the top of the respect meter in his culture, talking to um a woman who was uh, let's say, uh a loose woman, okay?

So she was at the bottom of the food chain, if you will, um, in her own culture.

Okay, Samaritans didn't even talk to her.

She was considered like the lowest of the low.

And so he comes to the well at noon.

Now that's significant because what would happen in those days is uh people would go to the well and gather water um early in the morning when it was cool.

Okay, it was cool.

The sun wasn't at its at its highest.

So, what's the woman doing there?

She's there at noon, no one else is around, apparently.

Well, it's because she was such a social outcast that she couldn't even go to the well with her own people.

So you get a sense of this scene here that's happening.

Jesus, who we know is the Messiah, he is God, he is entering into a conversation uh with this woman who no one wants to talk to, no one wants to give her the time of day.

And so we asked her for a drink.

She is rightly surprised.

And he's like, hey, listen, if if you knew who I was, you'd be asking me for a drink.

You'd be asking me for the living water that I had.

And she was she's confused by it because she thinks that he's talking about physical water that you would drink.

He's of course talking about spiritual things, he's talking about eternal life, he's talking about salvation.

He's like, that's what you would ask me for.

She's like, Well, give me this water.

She's just thinking a drink.

He's like, I don't want to come back out here on a hot day.

That's what he's uh going into.

And he says, Well, why don't you go back and get your husband?

And at first glance, we're like, why would he talk about that?

Like, why wouldn't, you know, why does he need to go there?

Well, because he's trying to get to the to the bottom of her sin issue, before she can know God personally, sin has to be dealt with.

And she's like, I don't have a husband.

You can feel this the kind of the discomfort in the situation for her.

And he's like, You're right.

You've actually had five.

And the man that you're with now is not your husband.

And so she's like, Wow, like I perceive that you were a prophet, she says.

Now pick it up here.

Verse 20.

Follow along with me.

Look at what she says.

She says, Our fathers worshipped on this mountain.

I may be thinking, like, that's a vicious swing from what from what he was just talking about.

He was talking about, you know, living water and and her uh adultery problem and all of that, and now she's swinging it over to worship.

Now we don't know why she said that.

Maybe it's because she had this question.

She's always wondered, it's always been kind of burning in her.

Maybe she's trying to avoid her sin.

We're not too sure, but this is what she says.

She says, Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you, as a Jew, say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.

Okay, so notice how she is totally wrapped up in the location of worship.

That's what she cares about.

Again, she was a Samaritan.

She was from the north.

Okay, she was she was from up where Israel was, and the Jews congregated down in the south.

In the north, the Samaritans worshiped on the Mount of Gerizim.

Okay, that was their that was their spot where they believed God met them, where his manifest presence was.

The Jews, and then here the reason for that is because Samaritans only believed in the first five books of the Old Testament.

Okay, they believed in the Pentateuch.

That's uh Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

Right?

The Pentateuch.

They believed in that.

So they had a very limited understanding of the revelation of God.

The Jews believed the entire Old Testament.

And so they had a more full understanding of God's desire for them in worship, and that the temple was built in the southern kingdom, in Jerusalem, and that's where God's presence was.

So she's all caught up on this location thing and all of that.

She doesn't understand this, but there's something else missing from her understanding of worship.

She also doesn't understand the object of her worship.

She doesn't know who she is to worship.

She has no idea of uh of who God is, what he's like.

She doesn't know him personally, that's for sure.

That's what she says here in verse 21.

Uh Jesus says to her, verse 21, take a look.

He says, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

He's like both locations, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter.

Neither 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.

For the hour is coming and is now here when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.

And then he launches into the verse we're focusing in on here.

Verse 24, he says, God is spirit.

God is spirit.

And so Jesus, he helps her understand.

He's like, listen, worship isn't primarily about the where, it's about the who.

It's about the who.

It's about God.

And you need to be able to comprehend what he's like.

You need to be able to understand his nature.

God is spirit.

It's meaning that God is a supernatural, non-material being as opposed to a physical being that can be comprehended by our physical senses.

You see here how he's helping her realize and understand God's nature.

Okay, because God is spirit, it means that he is invisible.

He isn't bound by location.

He isn't bound by the mountain or by the temple down in the south.

He is everywhere.

And she was caught up with all of that for sure, but he's like, no, God is omnipresent.

He is at all places at once.

I love Numbers 23, verse 19.

Numbers 23:19

It says, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones.

Luke 24, 39 is referring to God as the invisible God.

God is spirit.

And so what God uh what Jesus is doing here is he's telling her, and he's telling us all of these years later, that to be a true worshiper begins with a realization of whom we're dealing with here.

You have to comprehend this.

Now, the Bible, it makes it really clear to us that corporate worship, so that's kind of like what we're doing here right now, we're gathering together with other believers to lift high the name of Jesus.

Corporate worship is absolutely critical.

He says, don't forsake the gathering of yourselves.

But there's even more to worship than that.

True worship is also very much personal and individual.

And it's not limited to a certain time and place and a location.

Meaning that kind of no matter where you are at as an individual, no matter where you're at physically, you're to be filled with this sense of God's nature and who he is and the awesome reality of all of that, of his omnipresence, of his awesome power, his omnipotence, his unlimited knowledge, his omniscience.

You know, if we're not struck by the awesomeness of God's nature, then we won't ever be a church of true worshipers.

We just won't be.

Okay, to put it another way, if you would sense, just kind of individually here, that your worship is generally or lately has just been kind of flat, like it's stagnant and stale, whether that's a you know in a personal sense or in a corporate way.

If you know, if worship is, you know, in any way boring to you, or you know, it's something I just I just don't ever think about it.

It's just kind of something I come and do and I go and I leave, then something is seriously off.

Do you recognize that here today?

What that means is if you don't think about God's nature and and worship is not important to you, it means that something else has captured your heart.

Something else has your affections.

Something else is more important to you.

Something else is functioning as God in your life.

The Bible calls this idolatry.

Calls it idolatry.

See, God created mankind.

He created every single person who has ever walked the earth or whoever will.

He's created us with the capacity to worship.

So we all worship, whether we know it or not.

Every single person does.

The question is, who or what do we worship?

And so for you, is it is it God?

Is it the God of the Bible?

Or is it something else?

Is it something less than God?

Okay, what are some examples of some of the things that we might worship in our day and age?

Well, I think one of the things that's really obvious is we worship the idol of appearance, don't we?

We worship the idol of appearance.

We all want to look a certain way.

A lot of us are obsessed with how we look and our bodies, and are we thin enough?

Are we strong enough?

Are we in good enough shape?

And we often worship at the altar of the gym.

And we want to work out.

We worship at the church of the mall, trying to meticulously put together a look that we think will satisfy us.

Appearance is a huge idol for us.

Maybe that's captured your heart.

Maybe it's sex.

Probably not a whole lot we need to say about that.

I think it's pretty obvious that our culture is saturated in sex, and that, of course, that problem comes into the church, and many of you would maybe even, you know, in a moment of honesty, admit that you're not in the greatest place when it comes to lust.

It has captured your heart.

You're going after that.

That has become a functional God in your heart that you metaphorically bow down to and worship and think that you need.

How about this one?

Money.

Money is obvious.

A lot of us worship the idol of money or the things that money can buy.

And you know, we're consumed with the pursuit of going after money and having all the stuff and having all the things and comparing ourselves to our neighbors and our friends and the rest of our family and whatever it might be.

And I need to have these, and I'm gathering them, and I'm hoarding them, and this is my little kingdom that I've got here.

That's the idol for you.

Maybe it's power.

You worship the idol of power?

I demand, I crave authority.

I crave and demand leadership, and I want to be the boss, and I want to be the one in control, and there's no way that I'm gonna let anyone ever tell me what's up.

It's power for you.

Maybe it's relationships.

Relationships might be your idol.

I mean, how often do we have this?

I mean, it's it's permeated.

You know, even the church for sure, this idea that you're less of a person unless you're like dating somebody or married.

Right?

And that's just so not true.

But how many of us have bought into that and we're so insecure and self-conscious because we're not in a relationship, we worship that idol.

For others, it's it's maybe food.

Right?

We worship the idol of food.

We're obsessed with food.

We go after that all the time and it's become it's gone too far.

Okay, if one of these things, maybe it's more than one of those things, maybe it's something I didn't quite mention, you might want to fill in the blank for yourself.

But if uh if one of these is hijacking your capacity to truly worship Jesus Christ, then you need to ask him right now, as we're going through this, for him to meet you where you're at in that problem.

Is that not what he does with a Samaritan woman?

I mean, she's she's a mess, right?

She is broken, she is hurting, she's caught up in the sin of adultery and lust and who knows what else.

And he just intersects himself in her life.

He says, I am the true God.

I have living water for you that will truly nourish you.

These other things will not.

Would you do the same here today?

Would you invite the Lord into your problem, into the mess, into the muck of your life?

And would you ask him to reorient, change the orientation of your heart?

Lord, I don't want to worship these things anymore.

I want to worship you.

You alone are worthy of it.

It begins by recognizing his awesome nature.

And that you would be captivated by the wonder of who he is.

Now, again, I don't think we could go on without saying that to be a true worshiper of Christ, if you want to break it down to the very first steps ever, it means that you need to become a follower of Jesus Christ.

Now, if you were here this morning and you would know, you understand, you would realize that you don't have a relationship with the one true living God.

You have to realize just like this, like just what Jesus was trying to point out to the Samaritan woman, that there's sin in your life that blocks that from happening.

She had a hunger on a certain level to know Jesus.

She didn't understand all of it for sure.

But maybe you're sensing that today.

And you're sensing that God is more than what you were going after.

And you you want him.

Well, it starts with recognizing that you've got sin.

That all of that is a big-time barrier.

It is a roadbloc between you and God.

And there is nothing that you can do about that roadblock.

No amount of being a good person or behaving properly or checking off the boxes of religious duty, none of that cuts it.

None of that impresses God.

So you're like, well, what do I do then?

Well, it's recognizing that Jesus Christ went to the cross to pay the penalty for your sin.

And that he offers you salvation free.

It's a gift of grace.

If you would recognize your sinfulness and ask Jesus to take all of that away, you would be saved.

He would become your savior.

Heaven would be waiting for you when this life is over.

And between now and then, he's gonna do a work in your life to transform you and to give you a heart of worship.

If you have questions about that, talk to the person that you brought uh that brought you here today.

Come talk to one of us after the service.

We would love to help you.

Please.

Don't let it, don't let another day go by.

Okay, second thing here.

Our church truly worships Christ when we realize God's nature, and then praise flows from within.

Praise flows from within.

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in, what does it say?

Spirit.

We must worship him in spirit.

Okay, what does that mean?

What does it mean that we're supposed to worship him in spirit?

Okay, well, I think it would be very easy for those of us who kind of know the scriptures to assume that this means that that the Holy Spirit empowers our worship, and that's what he's talking about.

G, the Holy Spirit gives us the ability to worship in a way that pleases God.

And all of that is true.

Okay, Philippians 3.3 says that we worship by the Spirit of God.

But that's not exactly what this verse is talking about.

It's talking about something different.

And there's a quote here, it's going up on the screen.

I love this.

That word spirit here, it does not refer to the Holy Spirit, but the human spirit.

Worship must be internal, not external conformity to ceremonies and rituals.

It must be from the heart.

It must be from the heart.

See, this was another problem with the Samaritan per uh woman's worship.

She, because she didn't know the who that she was worshiping, she was getting the how messed up as well.

Her worship was merely external.

It was this lifeless religious act, kind of performed on the outside.

You know, anyone looking at her is like, oh yeah, she's going to a service, she's doing great, but it wasn't flowing from within.

It wasn't coming from her heart.

She was about the act only, but her heart was completely disengaged from the entire thing.

Which means that her worship wasn't true.

It wasn't authentic.

Now, if you're married here today, I want you to think about your wedding ceremony.

Okay, think about that.

And and I mean, I was, you know, I was the groom, and uh, you know, I think about, obviously, hopefully that's obvious to us.

Um that wasn't in the notes at all.

Um, but I think about it.

When I saw my bride can't come in, the doors opened at the back of the church.

You know, I started to I started to well up with emotion about the entire thing, and and I was like, I can't believe that this day is finally here, and this is incredible that the Lord has led this, and I'm gonna have this awesome responsibility of leading my wife towards Jesus Christ, and then the ceremony begins, and and you get to the point where you've got to say your vows.

I mean, just picture yourself on that day, and you finally had to share your vows.

Now, listen, I'm guessing, I'm guessing that your vows, when you said those, you meant it.

Right?

You you you you meant it.

Your words were coming from the heart.

Okay, true worship is very similar.

God wants our praise to flow from our hearts, or listen to this.

Or it's meaningless.

It's meaningless.

Not only is he unimpressed with mere external acts of showy worship that's detached from desire that comes from within.

Not only is he unimpressed by that, he's actually, he's actually disgusted by it.

Because we are robbing him of glory.

And that is the goal of our lives, to give Jesus Christ the glory, every drop of it, every ounce.

Isaiah 42, verse 8 says, My glory I give to no other.

Isaiah 42:8

He is jealous for his glory.

And so the question really becomes here, you know, are you okay with a with a half-hearted, disengaged, vague appearance of true worship?

Are you okay with that?

Are you fine with the fact that something's missing when it comes to your worship experience?

Or do you want to change?

Do you want to grow?

Do you want something better?

You know, I find that for me, kind of in my stage of life and where I'm at, I'm finding that there is nothing less satisfying to my soul these days when I just go through my emotions in my walk with Christ.

When I go through the motions when it comes to my worship, when it comes to singing a song, when it comes to reading scripture, when it comes to praying with my kids, all of those things are acts of worship.

When my heart isn't disengaged from any of that, I kind of sense like a feeling of emptiness about the whole thing.

Do you feel that um for yourself?

You know, as I grow in Christ, I find myself less and less okay with the mere appearance of worship.

It's fake.

I find myself with this increasing hunger to worship truly.

Lord, I want to give you glory, Lord.

I want it to come from the heart.

I want my heart and my mind and my will and my emotions, all of it to be fully involved.

And I want Jesus Christ to truly be pleased by it.

I want him to know that He, that I think He is, he is awesome.

I want Him to be thankful.

I want to I want Him to know that I'm thankful for the gospel, for my salvation.

I want I want to show Him how grateful I am for the fact that He's given me this mission to serve the church and lead my family?

It's incredible.

I want Him to receive every ounce of my praise because He is worthy of it.

He is worthy of way more than I could ever give.

Are you with me on that?

Are you with me on it?

Is that is that what you want?

Is that what you want for your life?

Is that what you want for your family?

Now listen, I really want to talk here for a few moments just about kind of our our Sunday morning worshiping, uh, worship services together.

I want to talk about this because I think there's some things that you and I, you know, myself, I include myself in this, we can really grow in when it comes to sort of experiencing this awesome worship and engaging more fully.

Because I envision a church, I envision us as Harvest Bible Chapel Newmarket, I envision us as a church that loves to worship.

We can't wait to be here on a Sunday morning.

We are geared up, we are we are fired up.

It's not just something that we do to get to the sermon, or it's not just something that we do to get our wife off of our backs so we can go to lunch and watch football.

No, it's uh it's a focus for us.

It is the passion of our hearts.

You know, we have this with this expectation that, you know, God's gonna be here and I want to come meet with him.

Where our singing is just this joy-filled, grateful gratitude, regardless of the kind of week that we had.

If it was a terrible week or it was a good week, we are here and we are fired up, and from the very first note and the welcome harvest, we are locked in because it's an extension of what we've been doing all week.

We don't have to like switch gears in this like really awkward and painful way from I'm just doing my own thing to, well, I guess now I'm worshiping.

No, it's because that our lifestyle reflects a heart of worship.

You know, where this horizontal mindset that we all wrestle with, where you know, we're so concerned about other people and what they may or may not think, all of that just kind of drifts into the background, and it's this vertical preoccupation that we're going for.

Where Lord, all that matters is you.

And I just want to give you all of my praise and all of my worship, and I want to thank you for how awesome you are.

When we give God glory like that, he showers his glory.

He showers his manifest presence on us every single Sunday.

That is what I am praying about here at our church.

I encourage you, join me in that prayer.

Pray that God would be here every single time that we meet in all of our ministries, that we'd be locked into this.

Is that something you can get excited about?

I think I'm excited about it.

Hope that's clear.

I hope this is a vision that you can pursue along with me.

Well, here, I want to give you a couple of very practical things that I think that we can do.

I said I was gonna get to it, now we're getting to it.

Okay, here are the practical things that we can do to kind of get ourselves into a better position so that we can be even more truer, even truer worshipers.

Here's a practical practical things.

First one, prepare your hearts in advance.

Prepare your hearts in advance for things like coming to church on a Sunday morning.

Pastor Paul talks about this quite a bit.

He would say that worship uh begins Saturday night, where you would maybe look over the sermon or the passage and know kind of this is the direction that Pastor Mike's gonna be going in this week.

And I want to make sure that I am praying and I am preparing my heart.

Lord, would you do a work in me tomorrow morning as I come and as I lead my family, that you be leading your kids and your wife in that as well.

Prepare your hearts.

Be open and willing for the Lord to do something.

Prepare yourself in the mornings when you get up.

One of the things that we've kind of just recently done is we like, we blare worship music every single morning as we're getting ready.

It's just like it's going hard and it's going loud.

Because we're trying to get our kids engaged in this and ready for what they're gonna come and experience in Harvest Kids and what we're gonna experience here.

Okay, prepare your hearts in advance.

Same thing goes if you're going to a small group during the week.

Or if we have any students in here, you're going to harvest youth.

Okay, prepare yourself.

Lord, do a work in me today.

That's the first practical thing we can do.

Second one here, show up on time.

Show up on time.

Okay, you probably knew that I was gonna go there, right?

But hey, I think our church is um fairly diseased with this, if I can say that.

Okay, and so many other churches as are as well.

But hey, I don't care about that.

I care about us.

And I care about you.

And I really care that you would come here prepared and ready on time, ready to receive everything that God has planned for you.

And if you don't take that seriously and you're walking in during the first, second, third song, or whatever it is, you are missing out on what God has.

Okay, and we're not legalists about this.

If something goes down and, you know, we had one of our kids had a nosebleed as we were like leaving the house one Sunday and you gotta turn around.

We showed up a little bit late.

It happens.

Okay, we're not legalists about it, but if it becomes this habit where every single week or five out of six weeks, you're you're rolling in late.

What does that say about what you value?

I'll tell you what it says.

It says that you value you more than you value God.

And I don't mean to be harsh and heavy-handed about this, but if you're sensing uh uh kind of this feeling of guilt over that, I would say this.

Good.

Good.

Allow that to lead you to a place of renewed commitment.

Lord, I am gonna come on time.

Lord, would you forgive me for the half-hearted attitude that I have had in my in the way that I approach church?

Okay, you need to know that we craft our services very carefully.

We pick the songs very carefully.

I was working with John this week, and and and usually it's with Greg to set up the service in a way that gets us from point A to point B.

And if you're coming halfway through that, you've missed the bus.

You really have.

So think about that.

Show up on time.

Here's another practical one.

Sit near the front.

Sit near the front.

Just practical, right?

You've heard me talk about this before.

This isn't news.

I love it.

We're starting to fill in some of these seats right now, so you guys are rocking on this.

But here's one of the things, here's an example I'll give you.

When I was a youth pastor, I had a couple of uh, I think it was like grade 10 uh girls come up to me and just said, Hey, we want to like lock into worship a little bit more and have this be a great experience.

But there's like that group of grade nine boys that are super distracting uh all the time.

And they said, What can we do?

And I said, you know what?

Come sit at the front.

Where you're not gonna see the distraction in front of you.

And trust me, I grew up like sitting in the back row, like I owned that back row growing up.

And as I grew, I started, well, part of it is being on staff at a church, you kind of need to sit at the front, but part of it for me now, I couldn't sit at the back.

I just find it too distracting.

I I love to be near the front where there's nothing going on.

I feel like I can focus in on the Lord.

So sit at the front, sit near the front, fill these seats in.

You notice that we have the, we rope off the like the last couple of rows in the morning?

That's because we would have you come in and sit near the front and fill those seats in.

And for the stragglers, if they didn't hear or weren't listening or don't care about the part about coming early, right?

They can come in and they can sit there.

Or if it's somebody who's new in our church and they're not quite feeling comfortable yet, we want to make this as comfortable of an experience as possible.

But if you want to get the most out of the Lord and you want to draw closer to him, I think it's a good picture of just, Lord, I want to come close to you.

So sit, sit near the front, just really practical.

Here's one physically engage.

Okay, physically engage.

Okay, do things like actually sing.

Actually sing.

I love that you're laughing about this.

This is so good.

Physic, like actually sing.

So sometimes, sometimes we have we we see people and they're just like kind of standing there, just looking around, or like on their phone, you know, whatever.

Engage.

Engage is all that.

Now let me encourage you.

Okay, I have seen growth in this.

Right?

I want to encourage you as a church.

I mean, there were like Greg and I would talk about this from time to time.

Like when I'm sitting at the front here and all I can hear is my voice, that's just a bad scene.

My voice is not great.

Okay?

But now I've like, I noticed just a few months ago, like I can hear you guys singing now, and it's it's becoming louder, and I can hear that, and I can sense the passion involved.

Sing.

Keep doing that.

Physically engaged.

You can maybe raise your hands.

You can do that.

You can sometimes you can just close your eyes and you're you're trying to focus on the words.

I know that sometimes for me to focus and truly worship, it's actually not singing.

You're like, wait a second, isn't that the opposite of what you just said?

Yeah, sometimes I just like to let it kind of wash over me and and and just receive what the Lord is doing in the church during that moment.

Okay, but physically engage.

We're not looking for this to be external, right?

We're talking about this to be, you know, um, by spirit, coming from within, from your heart.

And here's another thing here.

Be willing to grow.

Okay, be willing to grow in all of this.

I want to really challenge you on that because I've heard um from lots of different people over the years that, you know, well, I I I don't sing or I don't get engaged because that's just not my personality.

Or, you know, you don't know my church background, and that's just not what we did, and that's what I'm used to.

Well, I would say this don't let your personality or your church background be a roadblock to what God wants to do in you, bringing you into deeper worship.

Hey, I get it.

We all have backgrounds, we all have different backgrounds, we're all coming from different places.

But are you willing to grow, or would you challenge me?

Would you stretch me in these areas?

If we're like, nope, it's not my personality, or it's not what I do.

I I think that kind of shows like a like a stiffed necked approach.

I think we want to have soft hearts in all of that.

Okay, I wouldn't really encourage you to pray this through that Christ will draw you into a place where you would truly worship in spirit.

Okay, last thing going quickly here.

Our church truly worships Christ when we realize God's nature.

And praise flows from within, and it's according to what's true.

It's according to what's true.

Verse 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

Okay, to worship in truth simply means to worship in line with what's true about him.

Now, last week we talked about the word of God and how the word of God is truth.

And we talked about how churches and Christians these days are really compromising truth.

And there's this widespread kind of abandonment of the Bible and what it teaches us, because and primarily or fundamentally it teaches us truth about God and who he is and truth about ourselves as well.

Now listen, when we begin to fudge on the truth or we compromise the truth, what we end up doing is we end up creating an entirely different God, a different God that we are more comfortable with, a God that is more palatable to us.

And hey, when we do that, we are no longer worshiping the God of the Bible.

Problem?

Problem.

Right?

Huge, huge issue.

We're on very shaky ground when we do that.

Because we have a commitment to proclaim the authority of God's word without apology, that's our first pillar.

Because of that, we're gonna do everything that we can to worship the God of the Bible precisely.

We wanna worship him correctly or accurately.

We need to worship him for who he really is, not some watered down version that makes us feel more comfortable.

That's not what we're gonna do here, not at harvest.

We're gonna change who we are to worship the true God, not reverse it and change who we are, uh who he is.

We want to worship him according to what's true.

Here's an example of all of that or an illustration for you.

Um if I were to go on a date with my wife Ange, and I know many of you know her, and uh, she is nothing but a joy, okay?

But if I were to go uh on a date with her and we were to go um out for a nice dinner and I were you know immediately uh beginning to uh talk about how great I thought her long black hair looked or some other attribute that had nothing to do with her actual appearance, um, how do you think that's gonna go for me?

Not so great, because I'm not I'm not I'm not encouraging her, I'm not extolling what's accurate about her.

Do you think she's gonna be pleased by it?

No.

She's gonna be frustrated.

That date's gonna end quickly.

Okay?

In the same way, we must worship the Lord according to what's true about him.

If we change who he is, he's not gonna be pleased.

He's not gonna be pleased.

We need to be willing to look at the uncomfortable parts, the things about God, where he is zealous for his glory, he is serious about sin.

He wants to conform us and change us and purify us.

That process, he cuts off dead branches, John 15.

Those kinds of, those pictures are uncomfortable.

They're painful.

But they tell us what's true about God, and we want to worship him accordingly.

Okay, so when it comes to our worship here at our church, whether it's here, whether it's at Harvest Youth on Tuesday nights, it's it's harvest kids upstairs, it's, you know, some of our small groups even have worship going.

We want to be very careful uh to choose songs, if I can focus on that aspect of worship.

We want to focus on songs that are true about God, and then sing those songs to God as an offering of worship to him.

And hey, as we grow in our knowledge of the truth of God, as we do that, as we anchor ourselves to the word of God, our worship will become even more passionate.

It'll become more passionate.

Spirit and truth.

That's what we're going for here.

We're not going for one or the other.

It's not this spirit or truth type of thing.

We're not, we're not going for, you know, the one side of the coin that's this worship that's marked by this wild emotionalism where it's, you know, passion for passion's sake.

It's it's a whole bunch of hype and it kind of looks okay on the outside, but it's no longer according to what's true about God.

Okay, neither, excuse me, neither are we going for the other side of the coin, where our worship is like, you know, overly and only cerebral.

And it's it's mind-engaged only, and there's there's no expression of of joy.

No, no, no, proper emotional response.

We don't swing one uh too far one way or the other way.

It's spirit and truth.

So, church, do you want to be a true worshiper?

Is that what you want our church to be?

That's what I want.

That is what we are going for.

We want to settle for nothing less.

Because that is again what brings God's glory down.

That's what makes church incredible.

That's what means we will be putting out extra chairs for people.

We'll have to order new ones.

When God's glory is here, we are changed.

I trust that you are considering this for yourself and thinking about, hey, where am I at with this?

Am I in this place where I want to worship in spirit and in truth?

Am I a true worshiper?

Am I growing towards this?

Are you willing?

Are you willing to be all in?

Not one foot in, one foot out.

All in.

That's what I'm excited about.

As the Lord builds our worship culture here, as we get more fired up, as we grow closer to Him, it's gonna be awesome.

It really is.

Okay, I'm gonna invite our worship team uh up right now.

And uh we did this uh on purpose.

We had uh one song and then the message so that we could respond uh in worship.

So we have uh a few songs that we are gonna be singing um in a few moments as well.

We're gonna be taking up communion, which is another act of worship.

So great that uh that fell on this week uh as well.

And so this is a time where we are to lock in now to what the Lord has for us.

Hopefully, your appetite has been wetted, if I can even put it that way.

Wet.

I don't even know how you say it.

Hopefully you're ready.

Hopefully you're you're good to go.

Let's worship.

Let's worship in spirit and in truth.

Let's pray.

God, we thank you for this time together, Lord.

Build this in our church, Lord, build this in our hearts, not this showiness, not this outward only worship, Lord.

But because you are spirit, we will worship in spirit and truth.

Lord, challenges us on this, encourage us in this pursuit.

Lord, we need your grace, we need your spirit to allow us to help us in all of it.

So, Lord, as we respond now, be pleased with the praise of your people.

We pray this in your name.

Amen.