1. What Is Worship Anyway? Series

How do we DO this?

It begins with our attitudes. Humility before him. Submission to his greatness. Love and respect and faith.

Then it moves on to our words – proclaiming your allegiance and your love of God. We express our respect and reverence for God through written words, spoken prayers, even silent prayers, and music.

But then it moves into actions. To truly make ourselves on offering we show God we revere him and honor him by LIVING our lives in obedience to God’s Word. We love our neighbor as ourselves. We avoid sin. We introduce others to the good news of Jesus Christ.

Worship that is pleasing to God is NOT constrained to one place (a church building) or in any certain setting.

It is NOT constrained to any type of music or silence or spoken word.

It is NOT constrained to one type of physical expression.

It is anything we do that says to God “here I am – I give myself to you as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to you”.

TRANS: But there’s more we can learn today about what true worship really is and how we can engage in worship that we know is pleasing to God. If we want to worship in a way that is pleasing to God, Jesus taught that we must…

2. Worship in spirit and in truth. (John 4:19-24)

As you turn there let me give a bit of background. Here Jesus is talking to a Samaritan woman at mid day at a hot, dusty well in the village of Sychar. He speaks to her of the living water he can offer her that will quench her spiritual thirst once and for all. As the conversation continues, she begins talking to him about worship, and the differences between the ways and places Jews and Samaritans worship God.

John 4:19-24 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

So, Jesus says, God wants worshipers who worship him in SPIRIT and in TRUTH.

What does this mean? Let’s take it one word at a time.

What does Jesus mean when he says we must worship in “spirit”? First off – something it does not mean. It does not mean to worship God in THE Holy Spirit. The word “the” is missing in the Greek. Yes God wants us to be empowered by the Holy Spirit as we worship, but that’s not what Jesus is talking about here.

This word “spirit” is the same word used when Jesus died and he “gave up his spirit” (Mt. 27:50) and when Jesus raised a girl back to life and her “spirit returned” (Luke 8:55) To worship in spirit (Gk. Pneuma) is to worship with the essence of your inner being. It is the opposite of worshiping with your outer actions only.