About the Author: Sunday Sermons from Sell Chapel are written by Rev. Preston Van Deursen, Director of Pastoral Care at the Masonic Village at Elizabethtown.
I want you to listen to the following poem and see if you can guess its subject:
“I am your constant companion.
I am your greatest helper or your heaviest burden.
I will push you onward or drag you down to failure.
I am completely at your command.
Half the things you do, you might just as well turn over to me, and I will be able to do them quickly and correctly.
I am easily managed; you must merely be firm with me.
Show me exactly how you want something done, and after a few lessons I will do it automatically
I am the servant of all great men and, alas, of all failures as well.
Those who are great, I have made great.
Those who are failures, I have made failures.
I am not a machine, though I work with all the precision of a machine, plus the intelligence of a man.
You may run me for profit, or run me for ruin;
It makes no difference to me.
Take me, train me, be firm with me, and I will put the world at your feet.
Be easy with me, and I will destroy you.
Who am I?
I am HABIT!”
Habits can make you, or they can break you. The one habit of we ought to have as a Christian is the habit of worship. It should be a holy habit. It should be a hallowed habit. It will be a healthy habit. Just as God made a bird to fly, and a fish to swim, God has made us to worship.
But I am convinced as I have studied the subject and turned it over in my mind, so many people, if not most people, really do not come to church to worship. A. W. Tozer once said, “Worship is the missing jewel of the church.” I want to make something very plain today. Our first obligation if we profess to be a Christian, above all else, is to worship God. The first obligation of our church is to worship God. The last part of our
In John 4 we read the story of the Lord Jesus meeting a woman at a well. She was a Samaritan woman, a sinful woman. she was burdened with sorrow, and she was broken by shame. The Lord Jesus talked to her about one subject that radically and changed her life, and that subject was worship.
Nothing changes our life when we can truly worship God. to do that and get it right we have to hear the three truths that the Jesus shared with the Samaritan woman These truths can also change our lives
I. Worship Is Not Localized In A Place
The woman said to Him, ‘Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.
Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.’
Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father.
You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.'”
Now the background for the beginning of this discussion on worship is very important. In 1722 B.C. God judged the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom, which was called Israel, and allowed the heathen nation of Assyria to conquer the land and to take the people captive. But not all were taken away; some were left behind. At the same time, the Assyrians settled many of their own heathen people in the land of Israel.
Down through the years those heathen Assyrians and the Jews began to intermarry. They produced a culture of people who were half-Jew and half-Gentile.
These people came to be known as Samaritans. They were despised by the Jews. The Jews who were pure-bloodied looked upon these Samaritans as “half breeds.” As a matter of fact, the Jews called them the most despicable thing you could call them back then-“dogs.” (Today that’s mild)
Down through the years these Samaritans had developed their own system of worship, because they were not welcome at the temple in Jerusalem. So they built their own temple on Mount Gerizim.
So her question simply put was this: “Where should I worship, here or in Jerusalem, in our house of worship or in the temple?” Jesus gave her an answer that absolutely boggled her imagination. “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.” (v.23)
What Jesus was saying was this: “Worship is not tied to where you are, but who you know.” You see, there was a time that the Jews considered that if you wanted to worship you had to go to Jerusalem and you had to worship there in the temple. But since Jesus came, there has been a radical change. In the Old Testament God had a temple for his people. In the New Testament God has a people for His temple.
1 Cor. 6:19 says, “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?” 11 Cor. 6:16 says, “For you are the temple of the living God.” Do you know what your body is twenty-four hours a day? It is a place of worship. Your body is the house of God.
You see, worship is not localized in a place. You don’t have to be a certain denomination or go to a certain place in order to worship God. Now that immediately raises the question: “Did you just tell me that I don’t have to go to church to worship God?” That is exactly what I said.
But let me quickly add this: If you are saved you will want to go to church. Heb. 10:25 makes it plain that we are not to “forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhort one another, and so much more as we see the Day approaching.”
I’ve got news for you. If there is in your heart a desire to worship God, there is also a desire to worship God with other people who want to worship God.
“I worshiped in the hills today
where God in greatness stood;
Revealing all His majesty
in water, stone, and wood.
I heard His voice speak from the brook,
I saw mountains He had made;
His aspen trees clapped golden hands-
I rested in their shade.
I saw the graceful trees He made,
the balsam and the birch;
But all the while my conscience cried,
you should have gone to church.”
The church is a place where we come together to worship God corporately, but individually, if you know the Lord Jesus Christ, you worship God anywhere you go.
“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.” Now Then an incredible statement made in v.23. It says “the Father is seeking such to worship Him.” Did you know that God is looking for worshipers? More than workers, and more than witnesses, God is looking for worshipers. The reason is so simple. When you become a worshiper, you will become a worker, and you will become a witness.
Now you would think that churches would be over flowing with people wanting to worship God, knowing that God is looking for worshipers. Look around, I think today God is still looking for worshipers. I want you to know too, God is not looking for churchgoers. God is not even looking for church builders. God is looking for worshipers; people who will come and link their heart to His heart. Now when you understand what I mean by worship, I think you will understand why God is looking for worshipers.
Dr. Warren Wiersbe has defined worship in this manner: “Worship is the believer’s response of all that he is-mind, emotions, will, and body-to all that God is, and says, and does.
But you notice that God is not only looking for worshipers, He is looking for “true worshipers.” I guess that means there is such a thing as true worshipers and false worshipers. So how do we tell the difference?
Well, the God that we are to worship is called repeatedly here “the Father.”, it is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus calls refers to the Father over seventy times just in the gospel of John alone.
So if the god that we worship is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are not worshiping God. we are neither a true worshiper, nor is our worship true.
II. Worship Must Be Actualized With A Passion
“God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (v.24) Now this may be the single most important and exhaustive statement on true worship found from the first chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of Revelation. The Lord Jesus Himself, who is God, tells us in the first person exactly what He expects true worship to be.
First of all, true worship is spiritual worship. He says, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit.” Keep in mind that just as God is a trinity, man is a trinity. He has a body, soul, and spirit. But true worship must take place in man’s spirit.
That means we just can’t worship God with the body. if we just come to church, if we just show up, if they just sit down in a pew, we have worshiped God. We come to the right place, and do the right things at the right time, then our worship is complete.
It is plain that we are to worship God with your body. we are to use our voice We are to use our ears to hear. We are to use our eyes to see. We are to participate in the worship but these are the expression of worship, not the essence of worship.
We just can’t worship God with our soul. Some of us think worship is tied up in how we feel. So they believe that if they laugh at a joke, or cry at a story, or say amen at some point during the sermon, that they, too, are worshiping God. Now once again, all of those things are well and good, and I believe that true worship should be emotional, but that is the expression of worship, it is not the essence of worship.
Well, you see, God is a Spirit, and those who are going to worship Him must worship Him in their spirit. Worship is when your spirit connects with His Spirit through the Holy Spirit.
Without the Holy Spirit in your human spirit, you cannot worship God. You can clap to the songs, sing with the choir, say amen to the sermon, but you cannot worship God. Because true worship first of all must be Spirit-filled. The Bible says in Eph. 5:18, “Be filled with the Spirit.” But then it goes on to tell what the filling of the Spirit leads you to do.
It leads you to be “speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” (v.19) What I also want to say that true worship ought to be Spirit-felt. The Bible says your heart only has three temperatures.
Mt. 24:12 speaks of cold hearts; Rev. 3:14 speaks of lukewarm hearts; and Luke 24:32 speaks of burning hearts. Worship is both a thermometer and the thermostat of the Christian life. If your heart is cold or lukewarm, it will show up in the way you worship God. Your worship will be routine, it will be dull, it will be boring. Instead of looking at your Bible during the sermon, you will be looking at your watch. But if your heart is truly centered on God, and we are participating we don’t need to be done in 45 minutes it is amazing how fast time flies when you’re worshiping.
A pastor tells of vacationing in North Carolina. On Sunday morning he got up and went down to a particular church, and he said that church was dead, the preacher was dry, the people were cold, the service was boring, and nobody spoke to him. I know that doesn’t happen here but
After the church service was over, he said he went down to a restaurant to get some lunch. He said the building was bright, the people inside were happy, the waiters were friendly, the food was good, the service was excellent, they thanked him for coming, asked him to come again. The pastor said, “Neither place gave an invitation that day, but if they had, I would have joined the restaurant.”
I heard about a paramedic who was asked on a local TV talk show program, what was your most unusual and challenging 911 call?”
He said, “Well, recently we got a call from that big white church down on Main Street. A frantic usher was very concerned that during the sermon an elderly man had passed out in a pew,
The interviewer said, “Well, what was so unusual and demanding about that particular call?”
The paramedic said, “Well, we had to carry out thirty-seven people before we found the one who they had called about
Our worship and each of us need to be alive when we come to God’s Holy house.
One last thing I want to say about our worship so we get it right.
It has to revolve around the word of God. The core of any church service is not the music, the praise, the choir it is the word of God.
Wherever the Word of God is heard, God is present.
One Sunday night a little boy knelt down beside his mother and daddy to say his evening prayers before he went to bed. Here’s what he said: “Dear God, we had a great time in church today. I wish you had been there.” Well, dear friend, any time true worship takes place, you will find the true God right there, and the true worship of our true God is the one habit we all should have.
