Introduction: A young Baptist Minister was preaching a Revival at a small church in Maryland. Following the service the pastor of the church asked him to stand at the back door with him to greet people as they left to go home. He enjoyed talking with several people, all of whom were very nice and complimented him on the message. But then a woman walked up to him and took him off guard by grabbing him by the hand, looking him straight in the eye and saying, "Dr. Streiker that was a sorry sermon.” Then instead of leaving she turned around and walked back inside the auditorium. He didn’t know what to think. Then a few minutes later there she re-appeared. This time she shook his hand, and said, "A sorry sermon and you didn’t even preach it well!" Then just as she had before, she turned around and walked back into the auditorium instead of leaving. A few minutes later she returned, looked him straight in the eye, shook his hand for the third time and said, "A sorry sermon and you didn’t preach it well, and I hope you never come back." Well as you might imagine this young minister was crushed. He turned to the pastor and said, "Carl what’s with this woman?" The pastor quickly said, "Ah don’t pay any attention to her. She’s not very bright, she just goes around repeating what she hears everybody else saying.".....................
Well I certainly hope and pray that isn’t what you think about me after the service today.
Introduction: One Sunday morning, much like today, Henry Jones woke up with his wife standing over him, shaking him, and saying, “You have to get up, we have to get ready for church.” Henry gave her a dirty look and said, “I don’t want to go to church today, I want to go back to sleep.” His wife crossed her arms, gave him one of those looks, and with a stern voice said, “Give me three good reasons why you should stay in bed instead of getting ready for church.”
“Okay” He answered, “First, I don’t get anything out of the service. Secondly, I don’t like the people, and finally, no one there likes me.” He then challenged his wife to give him three good reasons why he should go to church.
She said, “First of all, it will do you some good. Secondly, there are people at the church who really do like you, and will miss you if you aren’t there. And most importantly, you’re the pastor.”
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people today who would agree with this man. People all over Southern Illinois, and around the nation woke up, looked at the clock, and rolled back over and went back to sleep this morning, instead of getting up and getting ready for
Sunday School and Worship. Apathy and indifference have invaded many of our churches and are having a devastating effect on our worship services. Many people come to worship every week even though they really don’t expect to experience God in any way.
Illustration: Someone once asked Angel Fernado, the pastor of a church in Northern California if the people who attend his church ever come expecting anything. He responded by saying, “Yes, they come expecting to be out by 12:00 o’clock…..By the way is that why you have this clock here on the pulpit?
I hope that is not the case with you this morning, because our God is an Awesome God, who truly is worthy of our worship and praise.
Worship is vital to the life and health of any church. Therefore I want to spend a few minutes discussing the importance of worship with you this morning.
If you have your Bibles with you this morning I encourage you to turn with me to the fourth chapter of the gospel of John. In just a few minutes I will begin reading in verse 19. But before I do that let me give you a little background to this passage of scripture.
Jesus and his disciples were traveling from Judea, which was in the Southern part of Israel, to Galilee, which was in the North. Most Jews who made this journey crossed over the Jordan River near Jericho, and traveled up the Eastern shore of the river to the area around the Sea of Galilee before crossing back over the river into the region of Galilee. They did this to avoid the area known as Samaria. You see the Jews hated the Smaritans, so consequently most Jews were willing to take the long way around rather than traveling through Samaria, which was a much shorter route. However, as we see in verse 4 of this chapter that Jesus and His disciples, chose to travel through Samaria, rather than bypassing it. When they came near the Samaritan city of Sychar Jesus sent the disciples into the city to buy food, and he stayed outside the city near Jacob’s well. He was sitting there when a Samaritan woman came to draw water from the well, Jesus asked her for a drink of water, and engaged her in conversation. The woman was shocked that Jesus, being a Jewish man would even talk to her much less ask her for a drink of water. She was even more shocked when He told her that he knew that she had had several husbands and that the man she was presently living with wasn’t her husband. That brings us up to where I want to begin reading in verse 19 and I’ll read through the 26th verse.
The first thing I want to say about worship this morning is this…
I. Where you worship God is not nearly as import as actually doing it.
This Samaritan woman tried to get into an argument with Jesus about whether or not it was better to worship God in the Temple in Jerusalem, or whether it was okay to worship Him there in Samaria. Jesus refused to argue with her, He simply responded to her question by saying that a day was coming, and was in fact here, that it wouldn’t matter where you worshipped God. Instead He emphasized that how a person worshipped was much more important, and we’ll talk more about that in just a few minutes.
So how can we relate that to our lives today? Essentially what Jesus is saying is that it doesn’t matter to God whether you worship at the Baptist Church, the Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church or the Pentecostal Church. What matters is that you take the time to worship Him.
After all, God intended for the Sabbath day to be a day of worship. The fourth commandment says, “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” Now I realize that we worship the on Sunday instead of on the Sabbath, but the principle is still the same. Sunday, isn’t just another day of the week. Instead, it is a day that has been set aside for us to come together and worship the Lord our God. So, instead of rolling over and going back to sleep, or going to the Lake or golf course, we need to make sure we take the time to worship God.
Now I know what some of you are thinking, and you’re right. You can worship God anywhere, you don’t necessarily have to be in this auditorium.” In fact, I’ll be honest with you, one of the most meaningful worship experiences I’ve ever had was out in the middle of a corn field. I had gone deer hunting one clear November evening, and as I made my way back to the truck after dark I turned my flash light off and looked up into one of the most beautiful night skies I had ever seen. The words to the familiar hymn “How Great Thou Art.” leaped into my brain. It goes like this, “O Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds thy hands have made, I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, thy power througout the universe displayed.” It was an experience I’ll never forget. However, that is an example of personal worship and God not only wants us to worship him as individuals, he also wants us to come together and worship hymn as a local body of believers.
In his conversation with this Samaritan woman, Jesus didn’t mean that it was no longer important or necessary for believers to gather together collectively for worship. In fact, on the Sabbath, depending on where he was, Jesus could always be found either in the Jewish Synagogue or at the Temple, worshipping His Heavenly Father.
The writer of the book of Hebrews knew the importance of Christians coming together to worship the Lord on a regular basis. In Hebrews 10:23 The Message Paraphrase says, “Let’s keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going. He always keeps his word. Let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, not avoiding worshiping together as some do but spurring each other on, especially as we see the big Day approaching.”
So the first thing we need to remember about worship, is to just do it. The next thing I want you to remember about worship is this…
II. When we worship is not nearly as important as How we worship.
Some Baptists believe the only appropriate time to worship God is at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. But that’s not true, many churches including this one have services that begin much earlier than 11:00 o’clock. There are even a few congregations that have started having Saturday night worship services.
In verse 23 of our text Jesus said, “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 truth.”
You know, we refer to our services as worship services but that doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone that comes, actually worships God. In fact far to many people today are simply “going through the motions.” They know what to do and when to do it, but they do it more out of habit or obligation than out of their love for the Lord.
Of course this has always been a problem, and I’ll talk more about religious rituals during the evening service tonight. During the time the Prophet Amos prophesied both the Southern Kingdom of Judah and the Northern Kingdom of Israel had gotten away from God. They were still going through the motions of worship, but that’s about it. Listen to what God said to them through the prophet Amos, in Amos 5:21 he said, "I hate all your show and pretense – the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies. I will not accept your burnt offerings and grain offerings. I won’t even notice all your choice peace offerings. Away with your hymns of praise! They are only noise to my ears. I will not listen to your music, no matter how lovely it is.” New Living Translation
How many of you this morning are simply going through the motions? How many of you are simply ‘playing church’ today?
Henry Blackaby, the Author of Experiencing God knows how important it is for us to gather together and worship God. He says, “There must be a return to focused, specific, intentional worship by God’s people. If they do not worship, they will die spiritually. Much of the sin and brokenness in our churches could be resolved in short order if God’s people stood before a Holy God and genuinely worshipped Him in “Spirit and Truth.”
King David knew how important it was to worship God, listen to what He wrote about worship in Psalm 95:1-6. He said, ‘Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. For the LORD is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker.”
He reminds us here in the sixth verse that we must humble ourselves before God in worship. We need to remember that He is the Master and we are His servants. Therefore before we can approach His throne to worship Him, we need to humble ourselves and purify ourselves from all of our unrighteousness. Calvin Miller, a well-known Baptist writer and speaker says, Worship starts with a broken heart, not with announcements, or hymns, or praise choruses, or the choir special, or even the sermon, but with a genuine, deep-seated longing to be made whole.
So not only do we need to remember to worship God regularly, but we also realize how we worship Him is more important than when or where we worship Him.
The next thing I want you to remember about worship this morning is…
III. The Way we Worship God is not nearly as important as Why we Worship.
Which reminds me of a poem I came across a few years ago. It is entitled:
“The Vertical View”and it goes like this:
There once was a church upon a hill
Where everything was fine until
Some of the Family wanted something new;
Which made other Holy siblings mumble and stew.
The Pastor called a business meeting
And after the church’s traditional seating
The deacons cried, ‘come one, come all…
What style of worship should fill this hall?’
Traditional, blended or contemporary,
Each was determined and contrary.
One lady said about the hymns, “They’re so pretty.
Good enough for Saint Peter, good enough for me.
Little James he was called although he was quite old
Said, “Aren’t the hymnals getting too hard to hold?”
I visited a church within this past year.
They projected their words on a screen in the air.’
Yet another had visited a newer church plant.
And this was his view on what was their slant.
“They had a band and a neat little keyboard
That when it was played, boy did it roar.
The performances were slick,
The routines they were polished
The drama brought the point home,
And the bulletin was abolished.”
I’ll not hear the organ, I won’t see the cross,
With this I am not happy,’ stated Miss Ross.
From that point on their voices grew stronger
Each emotional plea became longer and longer.
Then a voice of strong and stern love
Silenced the meeting as He spoke from above.
“You come to the church weekly to meet Me here
But instead of pleasing Me, you are pleasing your peers.
The music, the robes, the organ, the patter
These things, to Me, just don’t matter.
I am Who I am, and I made you like Me.
‘Remember your Maker’ is My Worship decree.
I sacrificed My Son, I turned from Myself.
So what does it matter what’s on the shelf?
On Me set your mind, To Me please draw near,
Then the blessings of heaven around you’ll appear.
You give many renditions of church as a game
But you fail to give water in My holy Name.
You pray using eloquent Thee’s and Thou’s
And yet you forget the here’s and the now’s.
Your worship is not tied to a style or a post.
Heart to heart meeting is what I love most.
You see I don’t think God cares whether you attend the Contemporary worship service or the Traditional worship service. I don’t think He cares if we use the piano and organ or whether we have a praise band that includes guitars, drums and a keyboard. In my opinion it’s not the style or way we worship that is important, it’s the condition of our heart, and what is motivating us to come to worship.
A 7 year old boy was listening to his parents discus the worship service on the way home
from church one Sunday afternoon. The mother made the comment that she didn’t particularly like the song that the choir sang. The Father then complained about the pastor’s sermon being too long. The little boy listened to his parent’s complaints and then said, ‘Oh, I don’t know I thought it was a pretty good show for a dollar.”
Unfortunately many people today are like this family. They want to be entertained when they go to church the same way they are when they go to the movie or a ballgame. This is just one of the misconceptions that people have about worship. If you are coming to worship to be entertained you’re coming for the wrong reason.
Dr. William Wilson directs the Chapel services at Duke University, in North Carolina. Since students at Duke are not required to attend the chapel service, Wislon was intrigued that one particular student always seemed to be there. So one Sunday after the worship service Wilson approached the young man and said, “How do you like chapel?” The student politely said, “I like it.” The chaplain then asked, “Well what do you think about the preaching?” The student replied by saying that he also liked the preaching. Dr. Wilson was determined to get more information out of the young man, so he asked, “Well, what exactly do you like about it?” The young man looked up at the chaplain and said, “Look Dr. Wilson, I’m going to be honest with you. I come to chapel to meet women.” Well, at least He was honest. But when a person’s only motivation for coming to a worship service is to meet a member of the opposite sex, then they’re coming for the wrong reason.
The only reason we should come to worship is to honor and praise the name of Jesus Christ and express our love to Him, if we come for any other reason then we are coming for the wrong reason. This is something that Thomas K. Beecher understood well. Thomas was the brother of the famous Congregational preacher Henry Ward Beecher, who served as the pastor of the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York for several years. He was one of the greatest preachers of the 19th Century. I’ve read where people would travel for hundreds of miles just to hear him speak. Henry knew he was going to be out of town one particular week so he asked his brother Thomas to preach for him that particular Sunday morning. As usual there were a great number of visitors in the congregation that Sunday morning, but when they realized that the man that had come to hear wasn’t going to be preaching some of them began to get up and start to leave. At that point Thomas Beecher stepped up to the podium and said, “All of you who came here this morning to worship Henry Ward Beecher may now leave; all of you who came to worship God may remain.”
So you see, your motivation for coming to church to worship God shouldn’t be because you like the way the preacher preaches, or you like the way the choir sings, or you like the way the band plays, or anything else. The only reason you should come into this sanctuary on Sunday morning is to worship The King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Unfortunately that isn’t the reason most people attend church. Christian Author and pollster George Barna says that for the past several years his research has shown that adults consistently admit that even though they may regularly attend worship services at church, that they rarely feel as if they have really connected with God during those services. He goes on to say that the main reason millions of people attend church every week, is not to worship God, but is instead to have a pleasing experience. He says, “most Americans go to church to satisfy or please themselves, not to honor or please God.” Amazingly, few of the people he interviewed who attend worship services regularly said that worship is something they do primarily for God. Instead a much larger percentage of those who attend worship services regularly claim that they do so for their own personal benefit and pleasure.
In other words they come to church for selfish reasons.
(1) Some people see a worship service as nothing more than an opportunity to get ‘filled up.” They compare the church to a “Gas Station.” People who see worship like this want are looking for just enough spiritual nutrition to get them through the week.
A couple of ladies who didn’t know one another before the flight began struck up a conversation as the plane taxied down the runway. Before long they were sharing their life stories with one another. They talked about their social lives and how much they enjoyed going out after work and having a few drinks and letting their hair down. Then they complained about the relationships that they had had over the years and about how shallow some men are. Then they complained about their jobs and how much stress they were under. Finally, one of the women said, “you know I just don’t know if I could make it through the week if it wasn’t for church,” and the other lady quickly agreed.
(2) For others, worship services are more like pep rallies to get them fired up and ready to take on anything and everything that the Devil throws at them during the week.
These individuals seem to feed off of the energy of worship until they work themselves up into an emotional high. They tend to view worship as something that God does for them, rather than something we do for God.
Now please don’t misunderstand me… in some ways worship is like a filling station. When we worship we receive the necessary spiritual nourishment we need to accomplish the task God has given us. And in some ways, worship is also like a pep rally. In that we come together as brothers and sisters in Christ to encourage one another, and cheer one another on in the faith. But worship is so much more than that.
Rick Warren, the Author of the Purpose Driven Life begins that life-changing book, with four simple words. “It’s not about me.” That’s what I’m trying to get you to understand about worship. It’s not about me, it’s not about you, it’s not about what we like or dislike. It’s not about what we ‘get out’ of the service. Worship is About God. The focus must be on Him and not on us. The purpose of worship is to praise and Honor the Lord Jesus Christ. Revelation 4:11 says, “You are worthy, O Lord to receive glory and honor and power." When we truly worship God in Spirit and truth, then we experience the wonderful principle found in James 4:8 which says, “if we draw near to God, He will draw near to us.”
In his book, Kingdom Principles for Church Growth, Gene Mims said, “The purpose of worship is to come before the Lord in obedience to praise Him, to hear from Him, to confess to Him, and to commit our lives to Him. Every worship service is to be an encounter with the Lord, transcending our feelings, desires, and even our abilities to perform.”
Richard Foster said, “If worship does not change us, it has not been worship. To stand before the Holy One of eternity is to change. Worship begins in holy expectancy; it ends in holy obedience.” This is certainly what when the Prophet Isaiah saw the Lord High and lifted up. According to the scripture when Isaiah saw the Lord High he cried out and said, “Woe is me for I am a man of unclean lips.” But then after being cleansed from all of his unrighteousness, and after being in the Presence of The Most Holy God he responded to God’s call and proclaimed, “Here am I. Send me.”
Let me ask you a question this morning? Why did you come to church today? I hope it wasn’t just to meet my family and me and listen to me preach. Worship is vitally important to the life and health of the church, so I hope you will remember that…
(1) Where you worship God is not nearly as import as actually doing it.
(2) When you worship is not nearly as important as How you worship.
(3) The Way you Worship God is not nearly as important as Why you Worship.
Would you bow with me in prayer?
