Worship - Given by Mark Ralf

Worship

What is worship?

We use the word often and we think we under­stand it, but we find it very hard to define. What does it mean to worship God, and how should we do it?

What is worship?

A Buddhist monk with his prayer wheel?

A Catholic nun with her rosary?

A Muslim bowing down in prayer at the mosque?

They all think they are worshipping. But are they?

People ask us: “Where do you worship?’ by which they mean: ‘Where do you go to church?’

Others leave a Christian meeting and say: ‘It was a great time of worship today’, by which they mean the singing. Is that all that worship is?

Is worship just going to Church, is it music and singing? Or is there more to it than that? What is worship? And how should we do it?

In John 4:23, the Lord Jesus referred to ‘true worshippers’ who are ‘the kind of worshippers the Father seeks’.

The implica­tion is clear: there is such a thing as false wor­ship that does not please God. Just think about that for a moment. It would be a dreadful thing to think we are pleasing God, and that we are worshipping him, when we are not.

The only way we can avoid that mistake is to turn to what God says in his word, the Bible.

A lot of our thinking about worship is confused and often unbiblical. We are often in danger of returning to legalism and religion.

Our passage was John 4:16-26

The passage tells the story of a remarkable event. It’s remarkable because the conversation took place at all. Jewish men would not normally go through Samaria or be seen talking to women in public, let alone Samaritan women. Jews despised Samaritans as racial mongrels and religious heretics. And what is more, in v16-18, this particular woman was known for her loose liv­ing.

Most people would have shunned her, but Jesus spoke to this woman with great tenderness and compassion.

Even the geography is remarkable…

Their conversation turned to the subject of worship and points to three things without which we will not be able truly to worship God:

The Lord Jesus himself

The Holy Spirit

The truth

A. True worship is impossible without Jesus Christ

In v10, Jesus offers the Samaritan woman ‘living water’. At first, she misses the point: she thinks he is talking about literal water. But when Jesus reveals a supernatural knowledge about her multiple marriages, she begins to realize that she is talking to someone really special: In v19, ‘Sir, I can see that you are a prophet’ What she says next is strange: ‘Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem’.

Is she is introducing a red herring into the conversation?

Can she feel the spiritual heat rising and so brings up this safe theological topic for discussion, to get the focus away from herself and her immoral life?

I don’t think so. The issue she raises was of great importance at the time.

It concerned the question of true wor­ship.

Where should people go if they wanted to meet with God?

Should they go to Mount Gerizim, as the Samaritans believed (that was where their temple was), or to Jerusalem, as the Jews believed?

Who was right? The rise of Islam and Buddhism says this is still an important question today. Where can God be found?

Where can God be found?

If someone begins to seek after truth, where should they go? To Mecca or Jerusalem? To the Bible or the Baghavad Gita? To Jesus or Buddha? Where can God be found? It is a vital question. We will never be able to worship God rightly until we find the answer. The subject this woman raises is not a smokescreen to avoid the real issue. No, this is the real issue. She wants to meet with God. But where should she go to find him?

Jesus’ reply is not what she expected:

v.21 ‘Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain [Gerizim] nor in Jerusalem’. He is saying that it will not be long before the ancient dispute between those two great tem­ples will be obsolete. She will not have to go to either place for a genuine encounter with the living God. He is not ducking the question. He makes it clear just where he stands on this dis­puted issue: In v22, ‘You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews’. The Samaritans were wrong and the Jews were right. God did choose to focus his presence with his people in the temple in Jerusalem, not Gerizim. For centuries Jerusalem had been the place to which he expected his people to come to meet with him. But all that was about to change: v23 ‘Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth’. A new way of engaging with God was about to be introduced. It would not depend on any one place. It would depend on ‘spirit and truth’.

There are no more holy places

That is radical teaching. All over the world, people and religions have set apart special places and designated them as ‘holy’. In their understanding, if you want to meet with God you have to go to a shrine, a temple, a mosque, or even a church. Some people act as if the buildings are holy – as if God lives there.

Some people bow towards the front on enter­ing a church building, as if somehow God lived up there. They might be horrified to know that we serve coffee and biscuits from the hatch on Sunday mornings. But there is in fact nothing inappropri­ate about that. We must not think of a church building as ‘the house of God’. There are no holy places any more. For generations, you had to go to the temple at Jerusalem if you wanted to meet with God. But he had never intended that to continue forever. Through the prophets, he spoke of a new age when the Messiah, God’s Son, came to earth.

Jesus Changes everything

It all changes once the Messiah comes. True worship is dependent now on a person, not a place; on Jesus, not the temple. He is the fulfilment of all that went before. The time has come because Jesus has come.

Chartwell was Winston Churchill’s private house. It is open to the public and displays a whole range of items that belonged to him —some of his clothes, a few letters and the odd cigar. As you look at them, you can almost get a sense of the presence of the great man. But just imagine that Winston Churchill could some­how come back to life and you heard he was living in London. You would not go to Chartwell any more if you wanted to be close to him and get to know him; you would go to London. There would be no point in going to see a few cigars that are merely symbols of his presence; you would go see the man himself. In a similar way, the temple is made redundant once Jesus comes. It contained only symbols of God’s presence, tablets of stone with his com­mandments, pointing to his holy character. But with Jesus comes more than a symbol; he is the reality itself, God himself in human form.

If we want to worship God, we do not have to go to a religious building or place. We must come to Jesus.

True worship is impossible without Jesus Christ. The next two points we will consider, that we also need the Holy Spirit and the truth, are really only extensions of this fundamental truth.

B. True worship is impossible without the Holy Spirit

In v24, Jesus said: ‘God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth’. What does Jesus mean by ‘spirit’. Some say he is referring to the human spirit, ‘the inner me’- not about externals — special rituals in holy buildings. It begins, rather, in the heart; it must be an internal reality, in my spirit. That is undoubtedly true, but I think Jesus is saying much more than that here. ‘Spirit’ refers to the Holy Spirit. There can be no true worship with­out him. In other words, true worship is super­natural. It is not something I can offer by myself. I need God’s help, by his Spirit, to wor­ship him properly.

Worship cannot be limited to what we do in church on Sunday. Worship means submitting to Jesus Christ in every area of my life, and that is something I cannot do by myself; because it clashes with my natural desire to live to please myself rather than the God who made me.

Self-worship

By nature, I worship myself. I live as if I am God. I live for my desires, my comforts, and my ambitions. We are all like it - by nature. But Jesus calls us to change. He demands that we dethrone ourselves and live instead for our king. He commands us to throw our own crowns at his feet and live lives of submission and obedience to him. That is what it takes to be a true worship­per and, by myself, I cannot do it.

It is easy to turn up at church on a Sunday, say some prayers and sing a few songs. Anyone can say, ‘I believe in God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit’. Anyone can sing: “And can it be that I should gain’. But true worship means more than that. It is not just words, but actions as well, for I show what I really think about Jesus by the way that I live. To truly worship, I need to change the whole direction of my life. Worship means showing my love for Christ by living for him in my family, among my friends, at work or college, at the party or in the car. And that is something I cannot do by myself; it is impossible for me.

‘You must be born again’

So how can true worship be possible? It is all very well to say that we can only worship God through Jesus Christ, but how will I ever come to Jesus Christ, if by nature I run away from him? The answer is that I will only come to Jesus by the Spirit. It takes a miracle of God to make a worshipper.

That was even true for Nicodemus, a very religious man whose meet­ing with Jesus is recorded in John 3. He thought he had been worshipping God all his life, but he had not been. Jesus tells him in v3: ‘I tell you the truth, no-one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again’.

Nicodemus knows that was impossible for him: v4‘How can a man be born when he is old? ... Surely he can­not enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!’

But what is impossible for us is possible with God, through the intervention of God’s Spirit. Jesus said in v5: ‘I tell you the truth, no-one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit’. We need a miracle if we are ever going to bow down at Jesus’ feet and become true worshippers of God.

‘Worship in Spirit’ doesn’t therefore; refer to speaking in tongues or exercising other par­ticular spiritual gifts. Nor is Jesus referring to emotional times of singing. This worship is not the preserve of only a select band of Christians. All those who are born again ‘worship in Spirit’ - the one leads to the other. Conversion leads to a life of worship.

We must not confuse religion with true worship. If we haven’t put our trust in Jesus we are going through the motions of empty religion – not worship.

C. True worship is impossible without the truth

Some might say: ‘I can accept that it’s a good thing to worship God through Jesus Christ. I don’t have a problem with that, but surely, there must be other ways as well? Think of all the people in the world, worship­ping God so sincerely. You’re not really saying, are you, that true worship is something that only Christians can offer?’ Yes, I am saying exactly that, because that is what Jesus taught.

We cannot pick and choose how we worship. We must worship ‘in spirit and in truth’. Truth is not a popular concept these days. We live in a pluralistic society. People around us believe in all sorts of different things, and we are consid­ered highly arrogant and offensive if we claim that we have the truth and that those who dis­agree with us are wrong. Shirley Maclean, the actress and New Age guru, said once:

‘Everyone has his own truth and truth as an objective reality does not exist.’ But Jesus would not agree. He refers not just to a truth or to subjective truth, but to the truth — there is no other. He said: ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me’. Jn. 14:6) He is not just one option among many. He is unique; he alone makes true worship possible.

Jesus is the truth

Jesus makes true worship possible because he shows us what God is really like. We don’t worship a god that we have imagined. Other religions begin on earth, with human beings looking up into an’ unseen heaven and speculating as to what God might be like. But Christianity is not based on speculation. It begins in heaven, with God taking the initiative to come to earth to reveal truth to us about himself. Because we have this truth, we are able to worship God as he really is, not simply as we imagine him to be.

But we need more than revelation to make true worship possible. It is not just ignorance that prevents us from worshipping God: our sin does as well. By nature, we turn away from God. We need to be brought back into relationship with him. And Jesus is the redeemer, the rescuer, we need.

If we are to continue to worship him properly we need to keep hearing the truth about him. Worship never begins with us; it is always a response to the truth. It flows out of an understanding of who God is and what he has done for us in Christ. It should be God’s truth in the Bible that fuels our worship of him through­out the week.

Three in one

True worship is impossible without Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and the truth. Do you see how those three points really merge into one? True worship of God the Father is only possible through God the Son – who rescues us, by God the Spirit – who reveals the truth to us as we hear God’s truth from his word, the Bible.

‘Living sacrifices’

¹Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God — this is your spiritual act of worship. ²Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:1-2)

Jane is having a really bad day at work.

One of her colleagues phoned in sick

Extra jobs when she was already overloaded

Presentation at four o’clock

Her stress levels were high

Photocopier broken just as she needed it

The last straw was a secretaries who lost a vital bit of paper with all the facts and figures she needed.

She would have to make the presentation without this information and look like a complete fool in front of everyone.

Jane was furious.

But just as she was about to launch a verbal attack on the secretary, she remembered what she had read in her Bible that morning — how God had forgiven her for all the dreadful things she had done. She thought to herself: ‘If God is prepared to forgive me, shouldn’t I forgive others?’ She managed to bite her tongue and the words stayed in.

John has just arrived at college. He knows no one and is desperate to make some friends, so he goes along to as many social events as he can. He has been to all sorts of introductory meetings. Monday was the Star Trek Appreciation Society, Wednesday was the Wine Drinkers Society, and today is the Boat Club. He is not going to row (he is not that fit), but everyone else will be there and it is a chance to meet more people. It soon becomes clear to him that the main aim of the evening is not to discuss the finer points of rowing, or even to watch Steve Redgrave videos. It is, rather, just to get drunk. John notices that all the friends he has been making over the last few days are downing pint after pint and he really wants to join in. They will not think very much of him if he switches to orange juice after a couple. There is a battle raging in his mind. Should he please his new friends and fit in with the crowd, or should he aim to please God? When he thinks of it like that, he knows what he has to do. Christ had been willing to die for him; what is a little bit of embarrassment com­pared to that? And so he switches to orange juice before he gets drunk.

And then there is Peter. He has been looking forward to going to church all week. He likes meeting up with everyone, but above all he loves to sing. He is in church, singing at the top of his voice: ‘I love you Lord, and I lift my voice to worship you, 0 my soul rejoice ... I will give you all my worship, I will give you all my praise. You alone I long to worship, you alone are worthy of my praise.’

What is worship?

Which of these three people is worshipping God? If we asked people in Ewell High Street the majority would probably say Peter is the worshipper. The language of worship is most commonly used to speak of what takes place in church. It is not just non-Christians who speak this way. Church notice boards invite people to ‘Worship here this Sunday’, with the implication that ‘worship’ is what happens within those four walls. Lots of the Christians talk about music as if that alone is Worship’. Is that all that worship is — what takes place when Christians meet together, and espe­cially when they sing praise to God? Not according to the Bible.

The Bible insists that worship concerns the whole of life. Peter may be worshipping God as he sings in a church building, but so is Jane as she bites her tongue at work, and John as he switches to orange juice at the party. So as we think about worship, don’t just have church in your mind. We need to be thinking about what we will be doing next Monday morning at eleven o’clock, for example, or on Saturday evening at nine o’clock. We are called to worship God wherever we are at those times as well. If we really understand what God teaches on this subject, it should have implications for every­thing we do, wherever we may be.

Paul teaches that worship requires a remembrance of God’s mercy, and an offering of my offering of my body to God and an obedience of God’s will in all parts of life.

Worship requires a remembrance of God’s mercy

Chapter 12 verse 1 is one of the great hinges, or turning points, of Paul’s magnificent letter to the Roman Christians. Chapters 1-11 focus on what God has done for sinful human beings. The theme of chapters 12-15 is what we should do in response. Paul is saying ‘God has done so much for you, now live for him.’ An understanding of God’s mercy is the fuel that powers worship in all parts of life.

I watched the film ‘Les Miserables’ last night. In the novel by Victor Hugo, Jean Valjean has recently been released from jail and is looking for lodgings. That is no easy task because, in those days in France, ex-convicts had to carry special identity cards. All the innkeepers are suspicious of him and will not take him in. He wanders the streets until at, last one man takes pity on him — a bishop. Vaijean goes to bed, waits until the bishop is asleep and then goes around the house, looking for things he can steal. He soon finds the family silver and runs off with it.

The police soon find him with the silver and, assuming that he has stolen it, take him back to the bishop’s house and knock on the door. What happens next is a shock and surprise to everyone. The bishop says: ‘Ah, there you are, Valjean! How good to see you. I thought you’d be back. You must have come for the candlesticks. They’re silver too. I meant you to have them as well.’ Then, turning to the policemen, he says: ‘You didn’t think he was a thief, did you? Oh no, I gave him this silver; it’s his.’ The baffled gendarmes go away, leaving Vaijean with his mouth wide open in disbelief. He is never the same again. The amazing generosity and grace of this bishop have such an impact on him that he is a changed man. For the rest of his life he devotes himself to helping those in need.

God’s gift

Paul’s letter to the Romans tells a similar story. Paul reminds us that every one of us has robbed God. God made us and has poured out his love upon us. He has given us everything that we have and enjoy, but we have robbed him of the praise, love and obedience that he alone deserves. Instead, we put other things above him and live for these things as if they were God: money, pleasure, and success. We disobey God day after day after day. God could insist on the full penalty and throw us into the dungeon of hell, separated from him forever. But instead, in his infinite love, God offers us a gift — not of silver candlesticks, but of something infinitely more precious — the gift of forgiveness and the possibility of being his friends forever. He went to great lengths to make that possible. It cost him the death of his one and only Son, the Lord Jesus. He took the punishment that we should have faced so that, if we trust in him, we can be right with God - no matter what we have done wrong. That is the wonderful message of Romans. God offers all of us an amazing pres­ent, even though we deserve nothing but punishment from him.

Jean Valjean was never the same again after the bishop’s act of kindness. Surely God’s mercy to us should have an even greater impact on our lives.

Worship is not about human beings trying to win favour from a reluctant God. It flows out of a grateful heart as we remember what God has done for us: it is ‘in view of God’s mercy’.

Some Christians delight in the early years of their Christian lives to hear of Christ and his death for them on the cross. But then, as time passes, they feel it is time to graduate from that message on to something else. They feel they need something more sophisticated. It is a dan­gerous mentality. Of course we need to be stretched in our thinking and seek to learn the whole counsel of God from the Scriptures. But we can never leave the basics behind. The message of God’s mercy to us is not just for non-Christians and young believers. It is for all of us. We are to keep it in view throughout our lives; we will not worship God otherwise. Worship requires a remembrance of God’s mercy.

2. Worship requires an offering of my body to God

In the days before Christ, God called his people to bring animal sacrifices to him in the temple. Those sacrifices were always intended to be a tem­porary provision. They pointed beyond themselves to the one, perfect sacrifice which Christ offered when he died on the cross. The cross put an end to animal sacrifices; there was no need for them anymore. Christ’s sacrifice makes sinful humans who trust in him totally pure in his sight and fit for a relationship with him. So we do not have to offer a sacrifice to help us stay in the right with God. Christ has done all that is necessary to achieve that. We are per­fect in God’s sight because of what he did for us.

But there is still a sacrifice that I am called to offer: the sacrifice of myself. In a sense, Paul is saying: ‘Don’t bring a sacrifice, be one. In response to God’s mercy, offer your body to him.’ — ‘this is your spiritual act of worship’.

The mind matters

In many religions, worship and the mind are divorced. In much Eastern religion, we are encouraged to switch off our minds with the help of bodily exercises and mantras etc.

In recent years, Eastern thinking has had a big impact on Western culture. We are elevating experience above thinking, feeling above the mind. One writer has put it like this: ours is ‘a culture in search of an experience, not in search of truth’. In choosing a religion, ‘The one measurement that matters is the spiritual high it gives, as if worship were some kind of drug. This tendency has affected Christianity as well. Many people who come to church are looking for an experi­ence. They do not want to think; they want a direct encounter with God. They want to feel his presence with them. And when they do, or at least when they think they do, they call that ‘worship’. For them, worship is primarily to do with the feelings rather than with the mind. But the Bible will not allow us to divorce the two. True worship will certainly involve our emo­tions, but it does not begin with them. Worship is rational; it involves the mind.

Worship involves thinking because it begins with what God has done for me in Christ. It is a response to what I have understood about his mercy. If I switch my mind off, I break the connection with the truth that prompts my worship. So worship must be rational. But it can never stay just in the mind.

The body matters

Paul’s use of the word ‘body’ tells us that he does not understand worship to be a purely intellectual, mental activity. It is down to earth. It is about what I do with my body as I offer it, not to myself for my own gratification, but to God in his service. It is about what I say with my tongue, what I watch with my eyes, where I go with my feet, what I do with my sexual organs and my hands.

Have we said in our heart: ‘Lord, here I am, wholly available. ’ll do any­thing, I’ll go anywhere for you, Lord. Here’s my job, my family, here are my relationships, my talents, my time, here’s my whole body. Use it for your glory; use every part of my life?’ Am I holding a part of my life back? I need to hand it over to God and say: ‘Lord, here I am. Use me for your glory as I offer the whole of myself in worship to you.’

I love the old story of the little boy who was very moved by a sermon on giving. The minis­ter had stressed that God is the great giver and that what we give is to be in grateful response to his gift to us of his own son. When the plate was passed round for the collection, the boy looked in his pockets to see what he could con­tribute. He found a dirty handkerchief, a conker on a piece of string and a rusty old penknife. He did not feel that any of those items were ade­quate gifts in the light of all that God had given him. He hesitated for a moment while he held the plate in his hands, then he put it on the floor and stepped into it. That is worship: the offer­ing of our whole selves, our bodies, to God.

3. Worship involves obedience to God’s will in all parts of life

Paul spells out what that will mean in practice. ‘Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.’ If we are to wor­ship God properly, we must be prepared to stand out and be different. J.B. Phillips translated verse 2: ‘Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God remould you from within.’ That is not easy. Anyone can sing with great gusto on a Sunday: ‘I will offer up my life in spirit and truth’ But worship is not so easy on a Monday morning or a Saturday evening, when we are surrounded by colleagues or friends who have no desire to live God’s way.

We cannot judge a church’s worship by what happens in the hour or so when they meet on a Sunday. The real test is how its members behave during the rest of the week. Do we fit into the world’s mould? Or are we true worshippers who obey God? How do we live?

Ruth Graham, Billy’s wife, placed a card above the kitchen sink at home. It said: ‘Divine worship offered here, three times daily.’ Perhaps we could echo those words as we go to the office tomorrow morning, or start the ironing, or go to some meeting: ‘Divine worship offered here’.

After all I’ve said, why are we meeting here today?

3 things.

To remember God’s mercy. We are drawn to worship our rescuer in the same way as crowds instinctively gather at an amazing event.

To bring him thanks and praise. We should all be participants in some way when we meet. What Jesus has done doesn’t allow us to watch the show and score the performance. We are part of the remembrance event.

To encourage one another. To do this we need to know one another. We should be known for the way we love one another. We should be building each other up in our faith. And we should be showing practical care and concern for each other.

All through this week I pray that the Lord Jesus makes us aware that we should be living out our worship of him. It would make a huge difference to our lives.

Amen.