“The Vision of Wonderful Worship”
John 4:9-26
A paramedic was asked on a local Dallas TV talk-show program: “What was your most unusual and challenging 911 call?” “Recently,” the paramedic began, “we got a call from that big white church on 11th and Walnut. A frantic usher was very concerned that during their worship service an elderly man passed out in a pew and appeared to be dead. The usher could find no pulse and there was no noticeable breathing.” “What was so unusual and demanding about this particular call?” the interviewer asked. “Well,” the paramedic said, “we carried out four guys before we found the one who was dead.”
Folks, whether we realize it or not the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is on the “endangered species” list. In many churches the preaching is as dry and stale as a year-old piece of bread. The singing sounds like folks need a good dose of Geritol or Castor Oil or both. If someone were to shout, “Amen” they’re stared into silence. Heaven forbid they stand up and start praising Jesus for that’ll be grounds for calling the police for disturbing the peace. Too many churches have become mausoleums for the dead rather than a coliseum of praise for Jesus. Now, on the other side of the dead church is the delirious church. They’re so excited a tranquilizer couldn’t calm them down to a moment of meditation if fired from a high-powered rifle straight into their heart. They’ve got a band that sounds just like that hullabaloo down at Harry’s Honky Tonk on Saturday night. They think they’ve got the spirit of Pentecost but all they’ve got is the spirit of the age, prostituting themselves to the world’s flair and flim-flam. The preachers in the pulpits of these churches choose deliberately to read a text out of the Bible and never preach what it says. It is nothing less than Isaiah’s denunciation of prophesying smooth things from their Sunday morning stage show. But this condition is nothing new. Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, “there is no new thing under the sun.” The First Dry-Gulch Downtown Baptist Church and the Hootenanny and Horse Collar Community Fellowship were exactly what Jesus was talking about to this woman at the well. You had the Samaritans and the Jews. You had the mountain worship and the metropolis worship. Some worship in spirit - that’s the Pentecostals, the shoutin’ mountain Samaritans, and the community churches with their powerful crowd-drawing praise bands. Then some worship in truth - that’s the dry, orthodox, sterile, prideful, and icily cold Baptist churches that won’t let you raise more than one hand or be arrested by the deacons. You see, there really isn’t anything new. They had the same problems then as we do today and Jesus was and still is trying to get our worship right.
Folks, when worship isn’t right the church isn’t right. The church cannot please God one whit without her worship right. The Father seeketh such, the Father seeketh such to worship Him in spirit and in truth. I have been mandated today to give you four things Christ indicated in our text today that will get our worship right in the church.
The Essence of Worship
First of all, we never get our worship right until we understand the essence of worship. That word “essence” means whatever is the singlemost, significant individual feature of something. If you go to one of these fancy department stores like Peebles or Nieman Marcus, you can buy a perfume by Marc Jacobs called Essence, that is if you’ve got money to blow. The stuff costs $60.00 for 3 ounces. Why is it so expensive? Because they claim to have distilled from the gardenia flower the single significant aroma and made it into a perfume you can splash behind your ears and drive a man wild. Such is the hype of the advertising world to take your money. Marc Jacobs also has cucumber, daisy, orange, and grass perfumes which claim to have captured the essence of those natural products which God made in the first place. Why don’t they just rub a green cucumber behind their ear or orange peel instead. That would be cheaper. The point I’m trying to make here is that Jesus distills the essence of real wonderful worship in verse 21: “Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.”
I want to give it so plain to you today so you can take it home with you. You have not worshiped just because you have come to church. Plenty of people come to church and never worship even though they think they did. You have not worshiped even though you sung, prayed, or even preached. All of that could be a performance rather than a position. Jesus says it is not the performance, nor the place that matters. Worship is all about getting yourself in a position of being in the presence of Almighty God. Now, let me ask you this. When you come to worship on Sunday do you meet with God or do you just meet with the preacher and your friends? You can meet with the songbook, the hymn book and your pocketbook but if you haven’t been able to get into the presence of God you’ve missed having a worship experience altogether. You know, as I’ve studied for this week’s message, I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of what we do in church is just as much a farce in the eyes of God as what this woman at the well was boasting of to the Lord Jesus Christ that day when she got corrected and changed.
Some go to church to take a walk.
Some go to church to laugh and talk.
Some go to church to meet a friend.
Some go to church, their time to spend.
Some go to church to meet another.
Some go to church, a fault to cover.
Some go to church for speculation.
Some go to church for observation.
Some go to church to doze and nod.
The wise go there to worship God.
The woman at the well that day was boasting of her worship and she didn’t even know that she was standing in the presence of God. She said to Jesus that day, “I perceive that thou art a prophet.” She didn’t give him any more status than a fortune-teller because He had told her He knew she had been married five times. What this woman needed was an encounter with God that would change her life. That is what happened. She finally realized she was in the presence of the God-man and her heart was smitten with the guilt of her sin.
The Bible says in Psalm 100:4, “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.” You can enter into the church building and never worship. You can enter the pulpit to preach or to sing and never worship. You can enter into the sweetest fellowship with your fellow believers and never worship. But you cannot enter into the Holy presence of Jehovah God and not worship. David also wrote in Psalm 95:6, “O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker.” Coming into the presence of God will do something to your spirit. Jesus said, “they must worship Him in spirit as well as truth.” You may be as smart as you can be about God in your head but if your heart doesn’t bow in broken contrition and adoration in His presence you have a false worship that mocks the very God you claim to know. What about it, my friend? Sunday by Sunday do you just come to church or do you come before the Lord? Many people never enter in to His presence though they walk through the door of the building. How many worship services have we held through the years that have never been true worship because the Lord’s people are so dull spiritually they cannot get behind the veil and into the Holy of Holies with God? That is a frightening thought for sure!
The Enjoyment of Worship
Let me move on to tell you wonderful worship calls for the right enjoyment of worship. Do you enjoy worship? Let me say something shocking to you. Worship was not primarily meant for you to enjoy. It was meant for God to enjoy. You can enjoy it to your highest delight and that worship service never be pleasing to God. What good is it if it doesn’t please God?
A woman by the name of Wilma went out of her church one Sunday and as usual used the tip of her cane to make a point with her preacher. She tapped him on the chest lightly with her cane while making her point. “Preacher, that sermon this morning was a pretty good sermon.” Her pastor replied humbly, “Wilma, I thank you, but it wasn’t me, it was the Holy Spirit.” Without batting an eye Wilma kept tapping her cane in the middle of the preacher’s chest and said, “Oh no, if that sermon had been of the Holy Spirit it would have been far better than that.” You know we do a lot of things in the church for our own enjoyment without the least thought for what God would enjoy and we call it worship. Beloved, if we do that we’re really just worshiping ourselves.
The woman at the well was boasting of her church over Jesus’ church in Jerusalem and she missed the point altogether. Jesus point blank said it wasn’t the place that mattered or what even went on in the place but who received the worship. Some churches are not doing much more than throwing a religious party and the guest of honor is themselves. This happened in a church in England and they took drastic steps. Some of you have heard of Matt Redmon. He is the writer of the song Heart of Worship. Do you know how that song came about? He belonged to a church in England. He was a part of a four member worship band. The pastor of the church noticed that though the music was perfectly in tune and orchestrated well something was missing in the church’s worship services. Pastor Mike Pilavachi said, “we had become connoisseurs of worship instead of participants of it. In our hearts, we were giving the worship team grades on a scale from one to ten: ‘Not that song again,’ or ‘I can’t hear the bass,’ or ‘I like the way she sings better.’ We made the band the performers of worship and ourselves the audience.” Pastor Pilavachi fired the band temporarily and all but Matt Redmon left the church angry. Redmon stayed on and learned through the experience finally writing the song Heart of Worship. You may remember the lyrics:
“When the music fades, And all is stripped away, And I simply come, Longing just to bring, Something that’s of worth, That will bless your heart, I’ll bring You more than a song, For a song in itself, Is not what You have required, You search much deeper within, Through the ways things appear, You’re looking into my heart, I’m coming back to the heart of worship, And it’s all about You; All about You, Jesus. I’m sorry Lord for the thing I’ve made it, When it’s all about You. It’s all about You Jesus.”
John Piper has said concerning worship, “Until God gets something out of it we never will.” That is so right. Is God blessed with our worship? Do you ever get the idea that God is just saying, “I wish you would just quit having worship services and start worshiping Me.” He said that to Joel: “And rend your heart, and not your garments” (Joel 2:13). He said that to David in Psalm 51, “For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” He said that to Hosea, “For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.” (Hosea 6:6) Worship is for the enjoyment of God.
The Enemies of Worship
That leads me to tell you there are some enemies of worship. The woman at the well’s heart was clouded over. She couldn’t see past the physical water which didn’t satisfy. She could see Jesus as a run-of-the-mill prophet but not as the Lord of her soul. The inability to truly worship, to get into the presence of God, to bring high pleasure to the Lord of Heaven is due to heart disease. George Barna, the Christian author and pollster, says that 50 percent of people who go to church report that in any given year they have not experienced the presence of God in the worship services. God has become a distant, impersonal, theory to most people who go to church. Then why come to church if He is no more than that. There are several reasons people go to church for nothing. If you don’t get God you’ve gotten nothing.
First of all, there is the enemy of a distracted heart. A high school girl wrote her friend the following letter: “I attended your church yesterday. Although you had invited me, you were not there. I looked for you, hoping to sit with you. I sat alone. As a stranger, I wanted to sit near the back of the church but these rows were all packed. An usher took me to the front. I felt as though people were staring at me and I was on parade. During the singing of the hymns I was surprised to see many people weren’t singing. Between the sighs and yawns, they were just staring out into space. I watched three girls I knew from school and respected whisper to each other all through the service. Another girl was giggling all the time. The pastor’s sermon was interesting, although it looked like many members of the choir didn’t seem to think so. They looked bored and restless. There were several people who got up and left during the sermon and then came back. I thought, “How rude!” I could hear the constant shuffling of feet, books, papers, and doors opening and closing. The pastor spoke about the reality of faith and it got to me. I made up my mind to speak to someone about it after the service but the moment the closing prayer was said utter chaos broke out. People rushed out the doors and those who took their time were not friendly. I looked for some teens who I could talk to about the sermon, but they were all huddled over in a corner talking about the latest rock music they liked. My parents don’t go to church so I came alone yesterday hoping to find a place to truly worship and feel some love. I’m sorry but I didn’t find it in your church so I won’t be back.”
Aletheia, people are coming to church today to find authentic worship. They want to know if God really does exist and if they can relate to Him. The only way they are going to know the answers to those questions is if they truly see real Christians connecting powerfully with a real God right in front of them. We need to be the church where they see that instead of all the distractions that goes on around here. Babies should not distract us. Bladders should not distract us. And babbling of the mouth should not distract us. Our focus should be on God.
There is not only the enemy of a distracted heart. There is the enemy of a dirty heart. The woman at the well had a dirty heart and she was trying to hide it by being pious, religious. She talked about going to church. I agree with the lost man on the outside of the church who criticizes the church. Some of the biggest hypocrites in the world are in the church because they pretend to be holier-than-thou and have a dirty heart. I don’t agree with the sinner who uses that as an excuse to avoid God and God’s church. He’ll die and go to hell clinging to that excuse. But folks, the church needs to get cleaned up and quit playing church. Roger Williams III was on a flight from Sacramento to San Diego, California to attend a National Youth Ministry Conference. Two gorgeous women sat down in the seats next to him. Roger was trying to read a magazine but the conversation of the two ladies competed for his attention. They talked about their dating life and their intimate relationships with both single and married men. One started complaining, “why do guys have such a hard time committing?” The other said to the young boys shock, “yea, and why don’t they ever leave their wives like they promise to?” Then the other one said something incredible, “If it wasn’t for church, my life would really be H_ _ _!” At this point Williams was glued in attention to every word of the women. The other lady said, “Wow, you go to church too; I know exactly how you feel; If it wasn’t for church, I don’t know where I’d be.” The other lady chimed back, “Yea, if I miss more than two weeks of church everything in my life goes nuts.” Folks, do you see it. Some people just see the church as a religious fix. While they court God on Sunday they sleep with the devil all week. I’m telling you if you’re doing that you need to know that it is going to take more than a religious fix to keep you out of hell and get you into heaven. You need to be born again. You really do need to come into God’s presence and get saved like the woman at the well.
There is also the enemy of a dignified heart. Some folks are just too dignified to really worship. The woman at the well didn’t think well of the Jerusalem worship. There was a reason for that. The Jerusalem worship was so planned and programmed to the instructions of the Mosaic law for the feasts that it left out the heart-felt joy of genuine worship. The joyful worship of the Samaritans in the mountain of Jacob was so exuberant the Jews thought it rubbish. Both were wrong. But the biggest problem with worship today is that it can become a duty. This is why people miss church. They have an enjoyment of something else over church. They wouldn’t do that if they were worshiping right. Preachers start preaching those loyalty sermons, good ones too. I mean if your postman skipped delivering your mail every Monday and Thursday would you think he was a faithful postman? If your refrigerator stopped working for a day or two every now and then would you say, “Oh, I don’t worry about that; it works most of the time.” Yet, people are so hit and miss with their church attendance while at the same time thinking all along they’re faithful Christians. They’re not. They’re just not faithful but you don’t make them more faithful by pushing the guilt sermons. They’re probably tired of dignified worship services that doesn’t stir up any more than carpet dust on the way out the door. They had rather be at the ballgame or family stuff than at that boring church. It reminds me of that visitor that showed up at this very formal and dignified church one Sunday and the service was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. The visitor got so excited at something the preacher said that he shouted out, “Praise the Lord.” What he thought was just second nature to him everybody in that congregation thought was out of place and they stared at him like a tree full of owls. The service went on a little bit and they guy got stirred up again and said, “Glory to God” in powerful praise. One of the regular attenders leaned over and tapped the fellow on the shoulder, “young man, we don’t praise the Lord like that around here.” Another member nearby heard the exchange and said, “Yes we do, its on page 759 in the Responsive Reading.” We don’t need distracted, dirty or dignified hearts if we are to turn loose and worship God in spirit and truth.
There is also the enemy of a dull heart. You know some folks just attend Bedroom Baptist Church with Pastor Pillow on Sunday morning. Do you know why? They don’t prepare for worship and many who crawl out of bed like a zombie bring that zombie into church unprepared for worship. The Bible says of Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles 19 that though he had many mistakes in his life he had prepared his heart to seek God. The Bible says of king Jotham over Judah in 2 Chronicles 27, “So Jotham became mighty, because he prepared his ways before the LORD his God.” The Bible says of Ezra, “For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD.” My friend, you’re not going to do much in worship or get much out of worship if you don’t prepare your heart for worship. Worship is glorifying God which means you must humble yourself. Worship is about honoring God in the “beauty of Holiness” the scripture says. If you try to sing the songs of Zion out of a heart shamed with hidden sin you’ll never get the blessings of God that way.
The Evidence of Worship
I must quickly close to talk to you about the evidence of worship. The evidence of worship is a changed heart. You cannot come into the presence of God without having a heart change. If you go out of here today and you none different you didn’t worship and you didn’t get into the presence of God. It is that simple. This woman at the well had a heart change. She was convicted about her sin. She was converted to forsake her sin. And she was changed to testify of her release from sin.
A parable is told of a community of ducks waddling off to duck church one Sunday to hear their duck preacher. After they waddled into the duck sanctuary, the service began and the duck preacher spoke eloquently of how God had given the ducks wings with which to fly. He pounded the pulpit with his beak and said, With these wings, there is nowhere we ducks can not go! There is no God-given task we ducks cannot accomplish! With these wings we no longer need walk through life. We can soar high in the sky! Shouts of Amen!¨ were quacked throughout the duck congregation. The duck preacher concluded his message by exclaiming one more time, With our wings we can fly through life! WE......CAN.....FLY!!!!¨ More ducks quacked out loud AMENS! in response. Every duck loved the service. In fact all the ducks that were present commented on what a wonderfully convicting message they had heard from their duck preacher.... and then they left the church and waddled all the way home. A church that has real worship will fly, will fly into the heavenlies and meet with God, and their lives will be so changed that all the world will see it, hear about it, and want to know where they go to church. If Aletheia ever expects to grow our worship must be absolutely real before God.
