First Presbyterian Church
Wichita Falls, Texas
February 27, 2011
WORSHIPING GOD IN SPIRIT
The Glory Due His Name: Part 3
Isaac Butterworth
John 4:21a, 23-24 (NIV)
‘Jesus declared..., “...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.”’
What does it mean to worship God in spirit? It would be wrong for us to give the impression that it is simply ‘spirited’ worship, that all we’re talking about when we talk about worshiping God in spirit is emotional display. Emotions are tricky and often unreliable, and, given the right circumstances, they can be worked up. People can be made to do all sorts of things as the result of compelling rhetoric by someone like Hitler or by the iconic presence of a rock star. So, I think we would be wrong to equate what Jesus calls worship in spirit with mere emotion.
At the same time, I do not want you to hear me saying that emotion has no place in the worship of God. Deep feeling rightly attends our devotion to Christ. ‘Peace I leave with you,’ Jesus says; ‘my peace I give to you.... Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid’ (John 14:27). In exchange for the emotions of turmoil and fear, Jesus gives us peace, a settled feeling of confidence and well-being. And this is a gift of the Holy Spirit. The same with joy. In another place, Jesus said, ‘I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete’ (John 15:11). And, of course, there is the book of Philippians, which is replete with the word ‘joy,’ so much so that it is often called ‘the epistle of joy.’ ‘Rejoice in the Lord always,’ Paul writes therein. ‘I will say it again: Rejoice!’ (Phil. 4:4). And in Galatians, where he names the ‘fruit of the Spirit,’ he includes joy and peace (Gal. 5:22).
We are emotional beings, and it is unlikely that we would check our emotions at the door when we enter the sanctuary. Our great forebear in the faith, John Calvin, chose as his personal emblem a hand extending upward to God and in that hand a heart aflame. And beneath the image he inscribed the words, ‘My heart I offer to you, O Lord, promptly and sincerely.’
Worship in spirit cannot be reduced to emotion, but neither must we exclude emotion. We talk much about ‘order’ in the Presbyterian church, but, when we’re at our best, ‘ardor’ is just as much a part of our way of life.
Today, I want to talk about worshiping God in spirit by using the two images suggested in the passages we have read from the Bible: fire and water. The Holy Spirit is associated with both these elements in the pages of Scripture. In Matthew, chapter 3, we hear John the Baptist preaching to the multitudes in the wilderness, and he says to them, ‘I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire’ (v. 11). And what we are to understand there is not that the Holy Spirit and fire are two different realities. They are not; they are one and the same.
Likewise, in John, chapter 3, Jesus says to Nicodemus, ‘No one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and Spirit’ (v. 5). Again, we are not to understand water and the Spirit to be two different entities but, rather, one and the same. This becomes clear when you read elsewhere in John’s Gospel, where Jesus says, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him’ (vv. 37f.). And John immediately explains Jesus’ words this way: ‘By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive’ (v. 39).
So, the Holy Spirit is presented to us in Scripture in the image of fire and also in the image of water. If we are to know how to worship God in spirit, we need to explore both these images.
I. THE SPIRIT AS FIRE
Let’s consider first the Spirit as fire. Fire, of course, burns, and when we worship God in spirit, there is unquestionably a burning.
The prophet Malachi tells us an intriguing fact about the people of his day. He says they ‘wearied the Lord’ (Mal. 2:17). Think about that for a moment. What would it take to ‘weary the Lord,’ to become an annoyance to God? God himself tells us.
All it takes is for us to let worship become nothing more than mere form, nothing more than simply going through the motions. When our worship becomes perfunctory, it fatigues the Lord. What is meant to exalt him exhausts him! In Malachi, chapter 1, God tells the people it would be preferable if they didn’t even bother coming to church. ‘Oh, that one of you would [just] shut the temple doors,’ God says, ‘so that you would not light useless fires on my altar!’ (v. 10).
Useless fires! Can worship really come to that? It can when we confuse church attendance with worshiping God. It can when we depend on outward form and ignore inward formation. So often in worship we clock in; we clock out. And we count the minutes in between. We stand. We sit. We recite. We mouth words. But it all stays on the surface. It does not penetrate to our depths. Our worship is bland, and, therefore, our lives are bland. That’s why we need the fire of the Holy Spirit.
When the Holy Spirit comes with fire, there is a burning away. There is a burning away of all the impurities in our lives. And no wonder we avoid it, it is so painful! Deuteronomy 4:24 says, ‘The LORD your God is a consuming fire,’ and we’d best not forget it. One day we will casually invoke him, and he will come into our midst as fire, wild and uncontrolled, the flames of his presence devouring our complacency. And won’t we be surprised? Isaiah is speaking of God when he asks, ‘Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who of us can dwell with [such] burning?’ (Isa. 33:14).
And isn’t that exactly the question Malachi asked? The people of his day rattled off their prayers, reading them out of their moldy, holy books, summoning God to come into their presence. ‘Is that what you really want?’ the prophet asked. ‘Do you want God to come?’ ‘Yes,’ the people said. ‘We want God to come.’ ‘But,’ Malachi asked, ‘who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites [that is, the ministers] and refine them like gold and silver’ (Mal. 3:2f.).
My friends, do you know the origin of the word ‘purify’? It has its source in pyr, the Greek word for ‘fire.’ When we worship in spirit, we invite God’s Spirit to come as fire and to burn away all the dross, to purify us.
II. THE SPIRIT AS WATER
But that is not all that we must say about worshiping God in spirit. We have considered the Spirit under the image of fire. Let’s now consider what it means to see him under the image of water. Water cleanses, of course, and it refreshes. It gives life and sustains it. And these are aspects of our worship when we worship God in spirit.
Return with me, if you will, to Jacob’s well in Sychar and listen again to Jesus’ conversation with the woman he met there. You will recall that he asks her for a drink, and she interrupts the conversation with talk of their differences. You know: ‘You’re a man, I’m a woman. You’re a Jew, I’m a Samaritan.’ It is then that he says, ‘If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water’ (v. 10).
Again, she deflects him with cynicism. ‘You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?’ (v. 11). Then Jesus says, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life’ (vv. 13f.).
We are to associate this life-giving, life-sustaining property of water with the operation of the Holy Spirit among us and within us. The Scriptures use the imagery of water in a number of ways to show us the grace of God, which we receive through the Holy Spirit. As water satisfies physical thirst, so the Spirit satisfies the soul’s thirst. ‘Come, all you who are thirsty,’ we read in Isaiah, ‘come to the waters’ and drink (Isa. 55:1). As water nourishes life in nature, so the Spirit nurtures life in the one who takes pleasure in God. Psalm 1 says of such a person, ‘He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither’ (v. 3). As water cleanses and heals the body, so the Spirit cleanses and heals the heart.
Paul tells us that ‘Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word’ (Eph. 5:25f.). I hope you can see that, often, in pairings like this one of ‘water’ and ‘word,’ ‘water’ represents the Spirit. And so, the reading and preaching of the Word of God is attended by the Holy Spirit, who uses it to cleanse us and prepare us for the appearing of Christ.
When we worship God in spirit, our spiritual longings are satisfied, our hearts are cleansed, and our lives become fruitful -- all to the glory of God.
When the Spirit breathes on us with a harsh and consuming fire, there is the disruption -- should I say incineration? -- of all our cherished defenses against God. When the Spirit showers us with refreshing water, there is a restoration of all the treasured blessings of God. My friends, let us open ourselves to both operations of the Spirit. Jesus once said, ‘Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil’ (John 3:19). It is no wonder people hate the light. It exposes us. It searches our hearts and leaves them defenseless, and we fear that. We fear exposure. But hear me: The same light that reveals sin heals sin. The light exposes, but its radiating heat is likewise therapeutic. This is simply another way of saying what we have already said about the work of the Spirit in our hearts. The Spirit burns away all that contaminates; then he irrigates the wound with his life-giving flow.
How can you worship God in spirit? Here’s how. Come into God’s presence with an open heart. Hide nothing from his burning gaze. Enter the place of worship as though you were descending into a furnace, and let the Spirit’s flames consume everything in you that distorts your humanity -- your sin and your inclination to sin, your indifference toward God and neighbor, your self-satisfied, unconcerned smugness before the holiness of God. Endure for your own good the fiery blast of the Spirit’s judgment. ‘Fear not,’ says the Lord. ‘When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the LORD, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior’ (Isa. 43:1b, 2b).
And then, when the impurities are burned away, what do you do? You wait for the healing waters of the Spirit wash over you and renew you and become for you ‘a spring of water welling up to eternal life’ (John 4:14). This is not something you work up; this is not something you generate by your own will. This is given by God and received by faith.
