Genuine Worship Series: Is God’s Word In You?

Genuine Worship Series: Is God's Word In You?

Let's take our Bibles and turn to John chapter 4. Please turn there with me this morning, and when we arrive there, I'd like to pick up somewhat midstream in this conversation between our Lord and the woman at the well in John chapter 4 verse 20.

In verse number 20, we read there it's the woman says our fathers worshipped in this mountain and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus saith unto her woman believe me the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what. We know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews.

But the hour cometh and now is when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Let's mark our Bibles to this portion of Scripture here in John chapter 4 this morning and let's pray that God will bless the reading of his word to our hearts and our understanding.

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the choir special as it reminds us of the blessed truths and promises found in Psalm 23. We thank you also for this portion of scripture we just read. We pray that you'll help us to not only understand, but to apply, by your grace, the truths found in this passage to our lives.

We pray that it would spring forth in our lives in the form of fruit, and that others would be able to see the truth, Christ, in our lives, in our thinking and in our words and actions as we go day by day. Lord, we're not only called to worship in a sanctuary, in a building, but Lord, our lives are to be lived to the honor and glory of the one who's called us, the one who saved us.

And so help us to do that, whether it be on the job, in the home, in the school, wherever we are, Lord, that Christ would be seen in our lives. We pray now that you'd bless us as we continue in this worship service, in Jesus' name, amen.

I believe we are pretty familiar with this story of the woman at the well, and even just recently on Wednesday nights, not too long ago anyway, we looked at how Jesus would came through this passage just maybe a month or two ago now and saw where Jesus was ministering.

He must needs go through some area. And that was really the spirit of his entire ministry was he, not that he would always necessarily say that, but he would say in other times, in other places, I must be about my father's business. My meat is to do the will of him that sent me.

He was compelled at all times to do the will of his father. He must needs go and do this. He must need speak to this person. And I think however mundane at times our lives may feel, we need to realize our everyday life is a ministry for the Lord.

We're ministering, even if we're shining shoes, you know, or we're washing dishes or whatever we're doing, we're to do it as unto the Lord, to do it heartily, to do it as unto the Lord. But here he's ministering as he's speaking to this woman at the well in Sychar.

We notice in the Samaritan woman here in John chapter 4, he would say that, give this principle. In verse 23 he says, but the hour cometh and now is when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father seeketh such to worship him.

God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. Before I say anything specifically about what we just read there I do want to say that we've taken quite a number of weeks now and we've seen different aspects of missing the mark failing when we should have stood failing to hear any number of those things that we saw that are characteristics of what it means to miss the mark and and then last week I in the spirit of what we saw on the Sunday school hour this morning.

It's not good enough to abstain from that which is evil. We must cleave to that which is good. We must, even in that, my desire was, even in pointing out the sins, was to see also, but what is the good? We saw last week, we're to look unto Jesus, not to look at our past.

Forgetting those things which are behind, looking forward, looking up, not looking in and not looking back, but looking and not even looking around. We see ourselves and we should see those around us through the lens of looking unto Jesus. And if we will see others through that lens of looking unto the Lord, We said last week it's for the for the want of that or for the lack of looking unto Jesus that that all of these sins that we've talked about from God's Word arise.

It is because of the failure to look to the Lord that we we sin in our thought, word, and action. But by God's grace, by God's grace as we look to him he will help us he will enable us to overcome to overcome those things we notice here this morning though that I want us to see that God desires a genuine heart of worship he desires a genuine heart of worship and and he had to leave the temple complex to find it he had to leave he had to the the great beautiful structure of the temple and it was really out many times in the highways and the byways of life that he met.

It was the publicans. It was it was the Samaritan woman. It was these individuals that were viewed more so as looked down upon by the religious that actually had the the response of heart that Jesus was looking for, that had the kind of heart response that was pleasing to God, that was precious in his sight.

And we have a lot to learn from the things that we will see that the Lord is saying in response to how she responded here. In the Old Testament, the word for worship that is commonly used has the idea of bowing down or prostrating oneself. In the New Testament, it's very much the same.

It has the idea of to bow down before, to reverence, even sometimes the idea of kissing the hand, but both of them have this idea of bowing down, bowing down. You see the posture the publican got in. It's not so much about the physical posture as it is the posture of the heart, of course.

But the spirit and the posture of the publican versus the Pharisee was one of God be merciful to me, a sinner. He bowed himself to the ground, would not so much as look up and said God be merciful to me, a sinner.

This is not saying that everyone who trusts in Christ has to be in that physical posture. But they must have the spirit of that man, the spirit of that individual, the publican. Now this woman responded honestly to the Lord here.

Well, ultimately responded honestly to the Lord. To start with, well she said, she didn't tell him the whole truth did she? She said that she wasn't married. and his response to her was something along the lines of, you know, you say truthfully that you've had five husbands, right?

And the one that you're with now is not your husband. And then we noticed that as he begins to speak to her, he gives this illustration about water, but then he ultimately gets to the heart of the good news, which is that the water, the well that will not run dry, and the water that will last forever is spiritual in nature, and that's what she needs.

It's not simply this well that she's going to keep going back to and drawing from physically, but that she needs Christ. She needs to know him personally. There's different responses. We see, and once again I'm not expounding this whole text because we've done it recently, but what he's getting to with this woman is you're in need of what I alone can offer you.

You're in need of it. And she saw it. She believed it. And it was evident that she did because when she went forth and left that encounter with the Lord, she said, come see a man told me all that ever I did. Is not this the Messiah? Is not this the Christ?

He's the one that we've been looking for. Come see someone who knows me well." And you know in so many words he's pegged who I am and he has the answer for my needs. He has the answer for your needs as well. There's different ways that people respond to the Lord when he deals with them though.

There's the response of you know someone like those on the day of Pentecost, remember? We have well we have those that were on the day of Pentecost that responded well that were saved and were baptized but there were others there were others that would harden their hearts to the gospel.

They would harden their You know, those on the Day of Pentecost were pricked in their hearts and they said, what must we do? And yet there were others who would reject. They would harden their hearts like we see in Acts chapter 5. Look in Acts chapter 5 verse 33.

What does it say there? Acts chapter 5 and verse 33 says, when they heard that, what Peter and the apostles said, they were cut to heart and took counsel to slay them they took counsel to slay them instead of instead of humbling themselves like the Samaritan woman did and and believing they took counsel to slay the messengers in acts 24 verse 25 we remember there that Felix trembled and said go thy way for this time And when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.

He kicked the can down the road, so to speak. He did not, he was under conviction evidently, but did not respond to the Gospel. He led on to believe that he might respond, but he did not respond positively to the Gospel. But we praise the Lord that this woman did.

And it was very clear what the Lord was saying to her is that it is not worship is not about where you are physically geographically in your location it is about the heart response to God it is about how the heart is in is responding to God. The Lord says here in this passage, we've already made mention of it, that the Father, that God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

He would make reference to the fact that we know who we worship. In Jerusalem we have orthodoxy, right? We understand there's one true God we understand that but he was not saying that all that all that was going on there was right but there was there was a drawing nye to God with the mouth wasn't there there was a drawing nye to the true God with the mouth even when they were in the Old Testament worshiping that golden calf they still were using Yahweh's name but we noticed that their heart was far from him.

They were not worshiping him truly in spirit. It was just in the formality of it, but the heart was, it was like a shell without a spirit there. It was dead, dead worship. It was not true worship before God because the spirit of worship had been left off and lost, but the worship that we see in that heart of the Samaritan woman, the worship we see in the heart of the publican that we mentioned already this morning, is what God is looking for.

The health of our church, or any church for that matter, is dependent upon worship, true worship of God. It doesn't matter how many of these verses we memorize. We can memorize the whole Bible in song. I'm not saying it doesn't matter.

But we can memorize all the scripture we want and it not be in us, if you know what I mean. Understand that. We can put all the verses we want in cross-stitch on the walls and all the magnets on the refrigerator, and those are all good, that's good.

In fact, the Bible actually encourages that for the sake of our children even, putting them around the house. But if it's not in our heart, then it's just no better than what we read of that was going on in Jerusalem, right? It's no better than that.

It's not about the number of people we have to fill the pews or the lack thereof. It's not about we need a good orator. It's not about the size of the building. It's not about any of those things. You think about the church. We just said Wednesday night as we've been working our way through the Gospels and we saw Peter.

Remember how Peter and Andrew's house, the Lord went to their house, and he went and healed Peter-in-law's mother. In that communal kind of living, they had multiple family members in the common area in the house, in that courtyard, and then it was interesting to see that in many of those, well, really all of the early churches were held in houses.

I thought that was interesting to think back in houses. Before Constantine's Christianity, when Christianity wasn't the … It was sort of unlicensed back in that day they met in homes and when they and I think it's important to not forget but to remember that churches are made up of homes churches are made up of hearts of individual worshippers if we are not individually worshippers in spirit and in truth then what we do when we come together in a building is not going to necessarily be worship.

We have to individually be in our hearts, in our homes, worshiping the Lord. We have to have that true heart before God of worship. I thought this week about how many hours we spend in God's house. If you come to every time the doors are open, regular services.

If you come to every time the doors are open and you stay in fellowship for a few minutes afterwards, you'll spend seven hours a week here in the Lord's house. That's 6.25 percent of your entire average waking hours would be 16 hours a day, I think.

I mean most of the eight hours a night of sleep is probably the average of all the people that get. I require seven, so it's probably it's a little less than six percent of my week but six point two five percent less than a tenth that means ninety three point seven five percent of your week is spent living your life in your home at your job in school with your family wherever you're spending your week you're living outside of this house of worship but the Lord is seeking those that will worship him in spirit and in truth not Not just for the 6% of the week, but every day, every day, every moment of every day.

I can't help but think of the weekly piano lessons that I used to, I mean I've had different piano teachers, but the piano teacher I had the longest. She would say, alright, she said, you know, time to go put it to practice, you're Here's your target practice time each day.

You're gonna practice for this amount of time. And of course, she probably knew that none of her students did it perfectly, but she would say multiple times over the years, well, I would be frustrated sometimes because I didn't do it as well as I wanted to do.

I go, oh, I thought I was gonna do better than that. And she said, well, I can tell you've been practicing though. I can tell you have been practicing. You know, there's a difference between sort of faking it and actually, a teacher can tell when you've been putting in the work, even if you're making mistakes, you're making mistakes that have changed from the mistakes last week, perhaps you've gotten, you've made progress at least.

And I think when we genuinely commit ourselves to those things that we say that we believe, We commit to, we must commit to practicing and living them out day by day, not just on Sundays, not just on Wednesday, but we must say, Lord help me today so that your word may order my steps.

I want to be pleasing in thy I want to live for you. And that's, you know, you know when you're when you're living in a way that is a good response to God, maybe what you hear on Sunday or what you read in your Bible this morning or what God's been speaking to you about through any number of avenues.

I mean it may have been through a conversation, the Lord brought a certain subject up to you that he's been pressing upon you, a certain thought that he's been saying, you really need this in your life. It may be a recent failure, you got exposed in some way.

It happens to all of us, right? We realized a need because of a circumstance that arose and we said, I didn't respond very well to that, or I wasn't thinking right about that or there was some need in my life there. We need the spirit of the publican, not that we are getting saved over again or something like that, but no, we need the spirit of humility that the publican had.

God gives grace to the humble. He gives grace to the humble. That spirit of humility and faith in the Lord. The spirit of humility and faith, not what we must avoid and what we must pray that God will deliver us from in any and every way is hypocrisy.

Lord, I don't want to be a hypocrite. I want to worship you in spirit and in truth. I want to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth. I was reading a while back A.W. Tozer said, and it might be a bit harsh, but it applies sometimes.

He said, Christians don't tell lies, they just go to church and sing them. Christians don't tell lies, they just go to church and sing them. Sometimes, do we do we intend to ask the Lord for the things that we sing? Are we are we intending for the Lord to help us in those things that we maybe even promise sometimes as we sing those?

I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord. I'll say what you want me to say. So do we mean that when we sing those words? Proverbs 23 verse 7, let's look there. Proverbs 23 verse 7, look at those, look at these words.

It says there, this is speaking of the man who for as he thinketh in his heart so is he. He says what? Eat and drink, sayeth he to thee, but his heart is not with thee. He's saying one thing but he doesn't actually mean it.

It's coming out of his mouth in words but it's not in his heart. He's just saying it But he has other motives. It's like we just said about what the Lord said about his own people of Israel. They draw an eye with their mouth, but their heart is far from me.

So it's not genuine. It's not genuine. It's not real. Do you know that the Lord wants us to be genuine? He wants us to be genuine. He wants us not to be hypocrites. He didn't die on the cross to save us so that we could be hypocrites.

He died on the cross so that we could be genuinely worshippers of him. That's what he wants of each one of us. When singing the hymns, John Wesley said, sing spiritually. He said sing spiritually.

Don't just sing mechanically or mindlessly. Don't just go through the motions. Sing from the hearts. And he would say in that hymn, what did he say? In one of the hymns that he wrote, he said, False and full of sin I am, thou art full of truth and grace.

That's honest. That's honest heart before God. When God sets apart, sets us apart, he wants us to be truthful and honest in our worship of him, not hypocritical. Lord, I have to offer to you, but I come with empty hands and desire that you would accept this humility of faith just trusting you.

Thou art full of truth and grace. I have nothing, nothing in my hands I bring simply to thy cross I cling. That's the spirit of worship. When we get up in the morning we ought to be praying, Lord, order my steps according to thy word.

Lord, help me to hide your word in my heart so that I might not sin against thee, because I know that without thee I will fail. I am weak. Thou art strong. We don't need to have pretense. We need to be honest and genuine before the Lord and before others.

Only by faith, humble faith in God, can we be good? Because we're not good. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, we read, are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth in his way. I did some research into that.

I've heard it said before that was not really somewhat ambiguous as to whether that's talking about the he's talking about the Lord delighting in our way or we're delighting in his way. And actually the structure of the Hebrew there is somewhat ambiguous.

It's not a hundred percent clear as to whether it's talking about the Lord delighting in us or us delighting in the Lord. So I think both ways, typically the way commentators will say it is that the Lord delights in the man whose steps are ordered by his word, but I think the truth can be either way since it is ambiguous.

It's not, there's a, the reference isn't clear what it's referring back to in that context there as as the steps our steps are ordered by the Lord it is true that he will delight in in our walk and and and our steps will only be ordered by the Lord as we delight in his word and his way the word the psalmist prayed that his steps will be ordered by or in the Word of God.

Have we received God's Word by faith? Have you received God's Word individually by faith? Then God does delight in his children. God delights. He delights to hear from his children. The prayer of the upright is his delight.

He delights it when we He delights in us as we walk according to what he tells us to do. It's not complicated, but it's a heart matter. It's not we're the ones who complicate it by our doing our own thing at times and turning and going in the way we think is right rather than the way the Lord says is right.

But God has made his will very clear to us in his word. Look in John 17 verse 8. John 17 verse 8, Jesus says here in verse number 8, For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me and they have received them and have known surely that I came out from thee and they have believed that thou didst send me.

So God has given unto us his words and we received them those who believe have received them and and then in verse 14 he says I have given them thy word and the world hath hated them because they are not of the world even as I am NOT of the world and then he says in verse 17 that sanctify them through thy truth thy word is truth those who believe thy word.

The word is to sanctify us. We're in the world, but we're not of the world. We were of the world. Now we're of the word. We're of the word. The word is our identity. The word is the revealed testament or will of God toward us.

And we who have received the word, you remember when we were in the world, when we used to be in our life of sin in the world, it says in 1st John 4 verse 5, it says there, they are of the world. Therefore speak they of the world and the world heareth them.

They, if you're of the world then the world gets you, I guess you can say. The world, the world just, they know when you're speaking of the world, but if you're speaking from the standpoint of the word, you're weird.

When you speak from standing upon the Word of God and having the Word of God, having received the Word of God, now you're strange. Now you're different. You're marked, you're you're maybe avoided can we say at least and yet perhaps in some ways indeed because of the fruits of things that God is blessing those who truly worship him and truly love his word 1st John 4 6 says we are of we are of God we're of the word, we are of God.

He that knoweth God heareth us. He that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Well, all of that, I think of what we read in our bulletin this morning.

I put this quote in there by F.B. Meyer. I've been really blessed in reading a book of his here recently. He talks about this, just say, I'll just use a little bit of the statement here. He says, when the Bible itself becomes irksome, inquire whether you have not been spoiling your appetite by sweet meats and renounce them or treats things of this world.

And believe that the word is the wire along which the voice of God will certainly come to you if the heart is hushed and the Lord shall speak he says more Christians than we can counter suffering from a lack of prayer and Bible study and no revival is more to be desired than the systematic private Bible study there's no short and easy method of godliness which shall which can dispense with this as we've already said the Pharisees drew near with the mouth but the word what did Jesus say to them in John 837, my word hath no place in you.

My word hath no place in you. I'm gonna say in this message this morning that a fundamental aspect of worship to God in spirit and in truth is the word has to have place in us. The word has to be in us.

I'm not just saying I've grown up around the Bible all my life." No, the Word has to personally be in you, because if it's in you, what does John say is going to happen? The things you speak, people are going to recognize the Word's in you.

When you speak, they're going to know you're not of the world because you've received the Word. They're going to listen to you and they're going to say, I don't really want to talk to that guy or I don't even know what to say to that fellow or that lady because something changed in them.

They're not speaking world speak any more. They're speaking words talk. They're speaking of the word. He that is of God heareth God's words. John 847 says, ye therefore hear them not because ye are not of God.

What happens when you read and you're in your… I'm just asking and we ask ourselves this question as I ask this. When you read God's Word, or you hear God's Word being spoken, what, does it ever convict you of any, does God convict you of anything?

Do you, does it feed some hunger in your soul? Does it meet the needs of your heart? Do you say, thank you, Lord, for that Word? It met a need that I had today. Is it quench, thirst? Does God's word, do you recognize God is speaking to me through his word?

Well maybe we say in the past I did but if we're honest with ourselves it's kind of grown silent to me. It's just become so familiar. I just don't really, maybe we're crowding it out with other things in our lives that we haven't really gotten still and listened to what the Lord is saying.

Does the Word illuminate our understanding as we read? Do we think of other scriptures? I'm encouraged when I hear my children say, oh that's just like the Lord says over there in that passage and in this other place. That's encouraging to me to hear that because I believe that's the Holy Spirit bringing scripture to the heart and mind.

Does it leave us with a desire for more. I want to look deeper into that in God's Word. I want to go back for more of that. If you ever have something you really like to eat, I mean some good butter rolls with honey, I mean you've got to go back and get some more of those, you know.

And it should be the same way with God's Word. Is it sweet as honeycomb, as honey in the honeycomb to us? Have we received God's Word? Is it guiding our steps? Is there a hunger for his word? Is it affecting our speech?

The Lord is not looking for, well I belong to this group, therefore I'm a real worshiper. Or I go to this church, or I, you know, we have a, you know, a pastor that explains things really good and all that, you know, that's good, that's well, but I'm talking about individually.

Do we love the Word of God? God wants this word to be engrafted in our hearts and minds. If the word is in us, it will come out of us. If it's in us, it will come out.

I will leave you with a quote that a brother shared with me recently by A.C. Gableine, he said, having the truth, listen closely, having the truth necessitates walking in the truth. One who claims to have the truth and does not walk in it shows he does not know the truth in his heart.

But But walking in the truth is the result of having and knowing the truth. It's ultimately, God knows, God knows what is in our hearts. Having the truth necessitates walking in the truth. and if we're not walking in the truth, praise God, for a child of His, there's that chastening, that chastening work where He is dealing with our hearts.

I pray that everyone here today, that you know in your heart before the Lord that you are a Christian, that you are a true worshiper but is there a desire in our hearts today? Lord, help me to draw nearer in my worship to thee.

Help me, Lord. There was not, there was not any burden the Lord placed upon this Samaritan woman. He said, alright now that you're saved, I want you to get ready. You've got to go back to town and tell people about what I've done for you.

He didn't say anything about that she just went and told people it wasn't it wasn't getting up the gumption so to speak it was just it was like the natural outflow of look what the Lord's done for me look what the Lord has done for me I pray that will be true in each of our lives if it isn't already that that would be the case that we would have a revival of a worship in our in our hearts before the Lord maybe that's grown cold you look like we sing in of those hymns, how cold we are growing in service and prayer, our love needs rekindling, our altars repair.

Oh Lord, send a revival and let it begin in me. May that be true. May we be true worshipers before the Lord. Heavenly Father, we thank you for these moments we've had in your word.

We will give an answer one day for what we have done with the truth. Have we done very little with it or has it brought forth much fruit in our lives? Lord, help us not to take confidence in a building, in some heritage we may have, Lord, help us not to take confidence in anything except in the cross of Christ by whom we are crucified unto the world and the world unto us.

Help us to truly have this heart, a burning heart, of worship before you, Lord. Lord, may it start in our private study, in our families, in our homes. May our children know we're not hypocrites.

May our grandchildren, may our wives, may our husbands know that when we come to church, we're not putting on something. This is not a facade we've got to keep up for six, seven hours a week. No, this is the reality of our hearts before you, Lord.

Help it. May it be so. And if it's not, Lord, humble faith is all that's needed to respond to to your dealings with us. We pray and ask these things in Jesus' name, Amen.