01.22.17
Intro
How do we move into a higher level of worship—in our personal lives and corporately as a church? Answering that question is more complex that you might think. But it is extremely important to find answers to the question. If I were to ask for a show of hands this morning, how many would like to go to a higher level of worship, I suspect we would have 100% uplifted hands. There are enormous benefits of entering into depths of worship. But what does it take to get there? We will begin to address that question today. We will do that by identifying some key foundations of genuine worship. I have seen many well-meaning Pentecostals and others get into trouble by seeking quick, easy answers to the question. The real thing is a costly thing. It’s not cosmetic. It’s not superficial. It speaks to the very core of who we are.
So we will start with Jesus statement to the Woman at the Well in John 4:23. She has brought up the subject of worship. Her approach is typical. She wants to address external issues. Specifically, she wants to know who is right about where worship is to take place. Are the Samaritans right? They say Mt. Gerizim is the proper place for public worship. Understand that she and Jesus at the foot of that mountains during this conversation. Conversely, the Jew took the position that Jerusalem is the place that God had designated for worship. From an Old Testament perspective, the Jews were right.1 However, Jesus took the conversation deeper. The real issue with worship is not an external issue. The real issue is heart condition. So in John 4:23 Jesus gives perhaps the most essential principle of worship. He said to her, “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. 24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."2 Lady, if you don’t get this one right, all the other conversations about worship will not matter much. Worship springs from the heart. Worship must happen between an individual’s spirit and the Spirit of God. Otherwise it just becomes an empty form—a form of godliness without the power of the Holy Spirit in it (sounding brass and clanging cymbals).
“God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” The Amplified adds in “reality.” This is perhaps the most profound, essential statement that could be made about worship. It’s not just a matter of doing it in the right location or having all the right methods. First and foremost –if you skip this you will go astray-- worship must flow out of a heart of worship. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day had gone to great lengths to orchestrate worship at the temple. Hundreds of people attended their services. Yet Jesus (quoting Isaiah) said of them, "These people draw near to Me with their mouth, And honor Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me. 9 And in vain they worship Me….” (Matt 15:8-9). It’s vain; it’s empty; it’s useless. They are doing the right moves; they are doing the right things physically—but I’m looking on the heart and (in reality) worship is not happening!
So the crucial mistake we must avoid is majoring on externals and missing the most fundamental issue of all. What is the heart condition? Are people really honoring God from the heart, or are they just mouthing the right words?
That’s why I want to begin with the foundations of worship that go on in the heart. This will not be exhaustive; but it should address the issue. Two foundations of worship:
I. Worship flows out of one’s REVELATION of who God is.
Jesus confronted the Woman at the Well with this statement. John 4:22 “You worship what you do not know….” The fundamental problem in your worship is not an external thing like location. The fundamental problem is that you don’t know God for who He is. Of course, this is the ultimate statement for a person who is dead in trespasses and sin. A person who does not know God at all is not going to be able to worship “in spirit and in truth.” But we are all limited in our worship by our revelation of God. We can only appreciate Him for what we know of Him. We can only adore His attributes to the extent we spiritually perceive those attributes. Have you been a partaker of His grace? Then you can praise Him for the grace you have experienced. Head knowledge may be a good beginning; but worship from the heart comes out of experience. You see David worshipping God out of his experiences with God. Let me give a couple of examples from the Psalms.
In Ps 28:6-7 David says, “Blessed be the LORD, Because He has heard the voice of my supplications! 7 The LORD is my strength and my shield; My heart trusted in Him, and I am helped; Therefore my heart greatly rejoices, And with my song I will praise Him.” He has discovered God as his strength and shield. In a tight place he called on the Lord; he trusted the Lord from the depths of his heart. God answered his prayer. God delivered him and in the process revealed Himself as David’s strength and shield. Now David can worship God as His strength and shield. “Therefore my heart greatly rejoices…” Based on his revelation of God and the joy in his heart, “And with my song I will praise Him.” It wasn’t that everybody got the music just right and the mood of the service just right. It was something that was happening in me as a result of my walk with God that simply had to come out in praise!
Ps 86:12-13 “I will praise You, O Lord my God, with all my heart, And I will glorify Your name forevermore. 13 For great is Your mercy toward me, And You have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.” He knows God is merciful because He has experienced that mercy personally. He knows God as the Deliverer because he has experienced deliverance himself.
Revelation of God comes out of our experience with God. We may get addition revelation as we worship the Lord. That happened to Isaiah when he saw the Lord high and lifted up after King Uzziah’s death (Isaiah 6). That happened to Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, as he was worshipping in the temple (Luke 1). When the heavens open during worship we may very well get additional revelation of God at that time. But we all enter into worship based on our understanding of God at the time.
Your level of worship is tied to your revelation of the God you worship. The higher your view of God, the richer your worship experience. The fear of the Lord is the real beginning of worship. The Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. When people have no fear of God they cannot be worshippers of God. David talks about the wicked in Psalm 36. He says “There is no fear of God before his eyes. 2 For he flatters himself in his own eyes….” The wicked man has a big opinion of himself and a little opinion of God. He is self-worshipping and cannot be a true worshipper of God.
The level of godly reverence in your heart is a function of your knowledge of God. It is a function of your willingness to humble yourself and open your heart to Him. The greater our esteem toward this infinite Creator/Redeemer the more equipped we are to worship from the heart.
This is why Jesus taught us to approach Father with “hallowed be Your name” (Matt. 6:9): understanding Him as separate and above all His creation; approaching Him with a high regard and respect for who He is. This is why the Jews would not speak name “Jehovah” out of intense reverence. In the preference of his book, The Knowledge of the Holy, A.W. Tozer wrote, “With our loss of the sense of majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine Presence. We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence. Modern Christianity is simply not producing the kind of Christian who can appreciate or experience the life in the Spirit. The words, ‘Be still, and know that I am God,’ mean next to nothing to the self-confident, bustling worshiper….” Rather than address those deeper issues, today’s church is excessively pragmatic, looking for quick answers and surface solutions.
If we try to generate a worship experience that does not flow out of sincere reverence for who God is, it will be contrived and it will become weird. The person who does not live in the fear of the Lord all week long is a hypocrite and a contradiction if he or she is feigning that respect on Sunday morning.
I could give you many examples of churches who would not pay the price during the week, but then tried to “make something happen” on Sunday. I’m thinking of one church that often feigns being drunk in the Spirit to “jump start” a move of the Spirit. I don’t think they are insincere in what they’re doing. They are friends of mine. But it’s not the real thing. And if you’ve been in this very long you can spot it in a second. I’m not wanting to work something up. I want to worship in the Spirit from a sincere heart, invite God’s presence, and then do what He tells us to do.
Another group spends hours upon hours getting every note on the keyboard precisely right, pursuing a very high level of technical precision. But virtually no time is given to seeking God, no time examining the heart. It becomes a performance. A great performance and genuine worship are two very different things.
These are the kind of mistakes I want to avoid.
So we address the core issue first: the fear (reverence) for the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Out of that wisdom flows genuine worship.
II. Worship flows out of GRATITUDE for God’s goodness.
Ps 136:1, “Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever.”
Worship is birthed out of a genuine appreciation for His goodness in our lives. Remember Paul and Silas’ prison experience in Acts 16? They had been beaten severely and thrown into a dirty, dingy prison. Circumstances were not good. The beating they received still hurt. But both men, from the heart, we convinced of the goodness of God and started singing and praising God. Others were hearing their worship. God moved powerfully in their behalf, but that’s another sermon. What I want us to see here is their settled revelation of the goodness of God. It was not like the morning dew (there in the easy times, but gone in the hard times).
They worshipped God in spirit and in truth because they were absolutely convinced of the goodness of God.
When a person lives a life of gratitude and praise, it doesn’t take very long to get in the Spirit during a worship service. Why? because they came in that condition. They don’t have to be coddled and pumped to get in the Spirit; they are in the Spirit—even if they were beaten and imprisoned that week.
Let me give you a contrast to that. The Children of Israel in the Wilderness were not able to enter into the things God had for them because of their unbelief. Unlike Paul and Silas, they were not convinced of the goodness of God. They had seen God do awesome miracles for them. They had been delivered from the bondage of Egypt. God rained manna from above for their provision. The goodness of God was expressed all around them. But every little bump in the road was an occasion for grumbling and complaining. They were unhappy with God. They were unhappy with the journey He had them on. They were not thankful. And they were not worshipful. Thankfulness lays the foundation for genuine worship. It hard to grumble all week, then do a 180 turn around at church and expect to have a great worship experience.
Phil. 4:6 commands us to “Be anxious for nothing…” (KJV). Some translations say, “Don’t worry about anything...” (TLB). We take that as a suggestion, but it’s actually a command. We understand a command when it says, “Thou shalt not murder.” We understand the command that says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery or Thou shalt not steal.” But somehow we tend to take this command as a mere suggestion. “Be anxious for nothing….” Let’s just say I have been violating that all week long, and I come into a worship service. How long do you think it will take me to get out of the anxious mode into the worship mode? Perhaps we could give you two hours, but you still probably wouldn’t be there. The answer is found in being thankful all week long and being ready to enter into worship when the service begins. The cares of life is something we all have to deal with. Phil. 4 tells us to deal with them through prayer “with thanksgiving.”
Our perception of life’s events depends significantly on how we view God and His involvement in our lives. The more we know Him, the more we believe His promises, the more worship becomes a natural response to Him. Have you developed a habit of thankfulness? If you have, you won’t have much trouble entering into worship.
I have only dealt with two foundations of worship: revelation and gratitude. The two are obviously related because a deep understanding of who God is will gender gratitude in our lives. I plan to talk about some things we can do during our Sunday morning time together to enrich the worship experience. But it would be misleading to only talk about that ½ percent of your week. How can we enter into deeper worship? Time in the word opens the opportunity for knowing God better. The practice of thanksgiving points us in the right direction for worship. These are things that we can do during our week as we anticipate a corporate time of celebrating the goodness of the Lord.
Pray
END NOTES:
1 1 Kings 9:3; 2 Chron. 7:12; Psalm 122
2 All Scripture quotes are in the New King James Version unless indicated otherwise.
