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So like I said, John chapter
4, we're going to start in verse 20. I'm just going to go ahead
and read through verse 24. John 4, verses 20 through 24. So I'm just going to start with
a little bit of context and background here. Jesus is speaking here
with the woman at the well. It's a very well-known part of
scripture for many in our audience tonight. But he's speaking with
the woman at the well, and I want to take just a moment to talk
about the Samaritans and what the difference is between them
and the Jews and why it's important at all. This is going to give
some needed context for what I'm talking about tonight. So
the Samaritans were a kind of distinct cultural identity that
were born out of the aftermath of the Assyrian conquest of Samaria
when Assyria took over Israel during the time of the divided
kingdoms. What happened was Assyria came in. They conquered Samaria,
the then capital of the nation of Israel. And basically, they
just deported as many Jews as they could from that area. as
a way to kind of make sure a rebellion didn't come up again later. And
so what they also did, they brought a bunch of Assyrian nationals
in to kind of inhabit that now very recently depopulated land.
It was good fertile land, good for setting up cities and communities,
and a great way, like I said, to make sure there wasn't a messy
rebellion in a couple of years when the Jews got tired of being
oppressed. And so what happened there was the remaining Jews
who were not deported, you know, the old and the weak and whoever
just didn't get dragged out, mostly from the tribe of Ephraim,
I believe, they intermarried with the Assyrians that came
in and they created this distinct cultural identity of Samaritans.
The Jews did not like the Samaritans at all. Obviously, they were
the result of an intermarriage between Jews and Assyrians, a
big enemy of the Jews. And so what they did, they kind
of ostracized them from society. The Jews believed that the Samaritans
were half-breeds of a sort. They didn't want them in their
temple. They didn't want them in their
towns. They didn't want anything to do with them. And in fact,
what would happen was when Jews would travel from the north of
Israel down into the south, into Judah, they would go completely
around Samaria to avoid even dealing with the Samaritans at
all. And so the entire fact that Jesus is here with a Samaritan
woman is interesting to view. It means Jesus was there on purpose.
He didn't happenstance come upon the Samaritan woman. And so with
that context, the Samaritans, they also worshipped on a different
mountain than the Jews did. Like I said, they weren't welcome
with the Jews, so they had their own mountain where they worshipped.
I'm probably butchering the pronunciation, but Mount Gerizim is where they
had their worshipping, and that's where they fought very violently
with the Jews over their mountain. Was it Mount Zion, the Temple
Mount, or was it Mount Gerizim where you're supposed to worship?
And so with that, I'll go ahead and start reading in verse 20.
The Samaritan woman is speaking here. She says, 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 worshippers 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. So, my emphasis tonight
is going to be on those last couple passages, those who worship
God must worship Him in spirit and in truth. But does it make
sense why I had that context about the Samaritans yet? My
key question for this time that we have before us tonight, with
this passage we have before us, is what does Jesus mean that
those who worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth? For those of you who know your
Old Testament, this is a big pivot. We know that God had emphasized
the tabernacle and the temple for worship. He had picked the
temple mount. He picked who could build the temple, that being
Solomon. He had given very detailed instructions for the building
of the tabernacle and the temple. And now God is saying the time
comes when it doesn't matter where you're going to be worshiping.
It doesn't matter which mountain. In fact, he says the time will
come when you're not worshiping on either mountain. You'll be worshiping
in spirit and in truth. That's who the Father is going
to be searching for. So what does that mean for us? So I want
to start with a bit of an emphasis on spiritual realities here.
Jesus so often focused on the spiritual realities using parables
and earthly story to illustrate his heavenly meanings, those
spiritual realities to which humanity is often so blind. We're
really good at missing those things of heaven. So just looking
at some of these things that might help form a quick answer
for us. The first one is that God is
a spirit. We see this in our passage, God is a spirit. Jesus
Christ is, of course, the physical incarnation of God, but God the
Father is a spirit. And then God's kingdom is a spiritual
kingdom. How many times did Jesus have
to say to his disciples, my kingdom is not of this world? They're
asking, Lord, will you at this time return the kingdom to Israel?
And he says, no, no, no, you're focusing on the wrong thing.
You're focusing horizontal. I want you focusing vertical.
They're saying they're waiting. The Jews were waiting for a very
real, physical kingdom to come and be established among them.
They're looking for someone to come in on a white horse with
a sword and destroy the Romans and throw off the shackles of
oppression and bring them back to the glory days of David and
Solomon. That's not what Jesus came for in that moment. He wasn't
coming to bring back the kingdom of Solomon. He was coming to
establish His heavenly kingdom. And then this also points back
to John 3, where I've been studying a lot at the nursing home with
some of the older folks there. Just looking at John 3, looking
at Jesus' discussion with Nicodemus, verses 5 through 7, Jesus says,
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water
and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born
of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee,
ye must be born again. So we know that God's kingdom
is spiritual, God is a spirit, and so it logically follows that
those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. And so the first point here is
that while people on earth endlessly bicker over where and when and
how to worship God, The time has, in fact, already come when
true worshipers of God are the ones who are worshiping Him in
spirit and in truth. And I know I'm answering the
question with the same thing that's causing the question, but I'm
going to elaborate more, I promise. So, looking to break this down
a little bit more, people are endlessly arguing over where
and how to worship God. Anyone you ask, and probably
everyone you ask, is going to have a different idea of what
proper worship is, how it's carried out, where it should happen,
and what limitations it has. Even among our various churches
that would be classed as Protestant, you know, all of our different
denominations are going to have a different idea slightly. And I would guess
if I asked every person in here what worship was, I'd get a slightly
different answer from everyone. The Samaritans and the Jews,
similarly, had their separate places of worship. They argued
violently over it. They both thought that they were
right. That's what the Samaritan woman was trying to distract
Jesus with. She was trying to ask him, which
mountain is the correct one? You're in Jerusalem, we're over
here on Mount Gerizim, which one is the correct mountain?
But Jesus is emphasizing the spiritual reality over the physical
reality. And before the coming of Christ,
we know that God was worshipped in the tabernacle in the Old
Testament. And later on, after the time
of King Solomon and into the New Testament, until about AD
70, God was worshipped in the temple, on the Temple Mount in
Jerusalem, where priests oversaw sacrifices and worship according
to the Mosaic Old Testament law. Had the yearly sacrifices that
came in for the sins of the people, you know, your bulls and your
cows and your doves, those sort of things that were sacrificed
regularly. And you have other important festivals happening,
a festival of booths, a couple of other festivals that have
escaped my head at the moment. But there's a constant emphasis
on the temple mount there. After the coming of Christ, worship
of God has not been confined to a specific geographical location. The separation between Jew and
Gentile geographically was made rather irrelevant, and the temple
was no longer central to worship. Even in the case of our church
here, worship is not confined to the four walls of the sanctuary,
right? I talked about the last time I was up here, our ministries
don't stop at the four walls of the building, right? They
continue everywhere we go. So with the first coming of Christ,
all of God's children have received equal access to him. This is
a really, really cool thing about Christianity. You look at other
faiths where you have to make pilgrimages to various places. Roman Catholicism emphasizes
pilgrimages to the Vatican. Islam emphasizes pilgrimages,
at least one in your lifetime, to Mecca. We don't have to make
pilgrimages anywhere. We can choose to go check out
Israel if we want to, because there's some cool history there,
but there's nothing requiring us to do so. Our ability to worship
God, to speak to God, to confess our sins to God, to be forgiven
by those sins by God, and to grow in grace have all been almost
built in to us after our indwelling by the Holy Spirit as believers.
It comes with the territory of being a Christian, I could say.
There's no requirement to go to a specific spot. And that's
what Jesus is saying here. That's what he's getting at.
There is no physical requirement to be in a specific place to
be saved or to worship God. The main truth from Jesus here
is that those who worship him are worshiping in spirit and
in truth, not that there's an emphasis on a specific place
to go. And I would say it's probably a good thing we don't have to
go to the temple in Jerusalem after what Titus did to it in
80, 70, it was difficult to get to. So what does Jesus mean by
spirit and truth? We've looked at the physical
location not being a relevant factor in how we worship God
in so much as we don't have to go to a specific spot. But what
does it mean, what does Jesus mean by spirit and truth? I'm
going to answer the question. I'm going to answer it in a couple
of parts. Looking first at worshiping in spirit, Moses told the people
in Deuteronomy 6 that they were to love God with all their heart,
soul, and might. And then you'll recall in Matthew and the other
Gospels, Jesus expanded upon that a bit, saying that we are
to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind,
and strength, and also to love our neighbor as ourselves. Worshiping
God in spirit means that our worship must be wholehearted
and genuine. There must be a true, deep love and passion for God
and the things of God that rings through our life, or else, honestly,
we may as well not bother worshiping at all. A half-hearted worship,
a lukewarm heart, and a lazy attitude regarding worship will
not please or glorify God. And therefore, our worship must
be a true expression of the love in our hearts for God. You'll
recall in the early chapters of the book of Revelation, Jesus
is speaking to one of the churches in Asia. I want to say Laodicea,
I might be wrong, but he is basically condemning them because they
are lukewarm in their worship. He is saying, because you are
lukewarm, I like to spew you out of my mouth. We've all had
that. We got like hot water in the car after a long afternoon
in Walmart or something. Your water bottle is really hot.
We want to just like spit it out. There is no desire to keep that water
close to us. And that's what Jesus is saying
to the Laodiceans. You are lukewarm. I would rather that you were
cold or hot for me. Not being lukewarm, riding the
fence, sitting in the middle, not being committed fully. A
half-hearted worship is not something that's going to honor and glorify
God. God is here for our whole hearts, our whole being, right?
All of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, not half of your
heart and a quarter of your mind and maybe a third of your strength
on a good day if he's lucky, right? That's not what he's here
for. And furthermore, we know that putting up a facade to try
and fool other people doesn't do us any good either. Samuel
was told by God in 1 Samuel, the man looks on the outward
appearance, but God looks on the heart. That's what God is
concerned about when it comes to worship, when it comes to
obedience, when it comes to Christianity as a whole. Works don't do anything,
really, to save us. They don't do anything to keep
us. That is all of grace. So, when it comes to our hearts,
they have to be wholly surrendered to God, and so our worship must
be wholeheartedly surrendered to God. I'm starting over myself. But worship in spirit is worship
that is genuine and wholehearted. And I have Psalm 100 bookmarked
here. I just wanted to kind of look
at it. Worshiping in spirit should also be, I could use the word
spirited, there should be a level of joy to it. We're not called
to, the fruits of the spirit, they're love, joy, not love and
stone-facedness. So Psalm 100 says, Make a joyful
noise unto the Lord all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness.
Come before his presence with singing. And let's skip down
to verse 4. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his
courts with praise. Be thankful unto him and bless
his name. For the Lord is good. His mercy is everlasting and
his truth endureth to all generations. So, our worship should be genuine
and there should be a level of joy to it. There should be a
level of happiness to be here to be worshiping God tonight.
There should be a level of enjoyment to getting to honor and glorify
God with our hearts, with our minds, with our lips as we sing
or by sitting and listening to a sermon, right? And then looking
down at worship in truth, right? Our worship, this is important,
our worship must be characterized and supplemented by a knowledge
of God revealed in his word. We must be properly informed
in our worship and not running around with every wind of doctrine
or every flashy hip new trend in the music or worship scene.
We have to be very careful when it comes to our worship. We can't
just take whatever new idea comes around that looks cool. We have
to be careful to try it by the Word. We know that God has left
instructions for worship. He was very, very particular
about how He was worshipped in the Old Testament. There's nothing
that we see in the Bible that would lead us to believe He's
less particular now than He was then. We know that our God is
never changing. He is immutable, the same yesterday,
today, and forever. Worship with passion without
applied truth will lead to a shallow emotional worship that is comparable,
I could say, to a high from a drug. Once that high of emotional fervor
fades away, so too does our passion for God, like the seeds in the
parable of the sower that fell on shallow, stony earth and grew
fast. They grew up really nice looking
immediately, and then at the first bit of temptation, struggle,
trial, persecution, heat from the sun, they were scorched,
they withered away immediately. There was no depth to them. That's
what we want to avoid in our worship. We don't want a shallow,
shallow Christianity. We want it to be deep and we
want it to start from the heart. Where was I? On the other hand,
worship that is all knowledge and no spirit will be dry and
emotionless. And that can very easily give
way to a stony legalism where every aspect of worship is simply
a checklist that makes us holy. We show up singing two or three
songs, we pray, we listen to the Word taught because it's
the checklist that makes me right with God, and not because of any real desire
to worship God from our hearts. Worship in truth is worship that
is not emotionless, but it is reverent, it is respectful of
God, and it is controlled and led entirely by the Holy Spirit
and by the revealed Word of God. So worship in truth is grounded
in and focused on God. It's not led by, it's not even
led by us, right? Our own human thoughts, our ideas,
our plans should not be what leads worship. What leads worship
should be the Word of God. Then looking to worship in the
believer's heart, right? A lot of what I've just said
applies most when you are, in fact, within the four walls of
a church building, which is what I just said we weren't looking
at exclusively tonight. So the heart of the believer
is incredibly important for worship because, like I was saying earlier,
worship is not confined to one specific location. Therefore,
it follows that worship should be happening at all locations,
specific or not. It should be happening at all
times. We're told to pray without ceasing. David did not give us
a time frame for when we should be praising God. We should be
entering into his gates with thanksgiving and praise, and
we should be praising him for the day that he has made. What is it, 7 to 8 o'clock on
Wednesdays and 9-ish to 12-ish on Sundays? We don't get to just
make those boundaries by ourselves for worship. So worship in the
heart of the believer, the true believer, is going to be what
I would call a natural occurrence. The true worship that glorifies
God is not a facade put up to deceive man, nor is it, like
I was saying earlier, that holy checklist that when completed
leaves us all good with God. Getting up in the morning and
saying a quick prayer and reading a couple chapters in the Bible
does not make us holy, nor is it something that we should have
to force ourselves to do. There should be within the believer
a desire to learn more about God, to commune with God, and
to praise God, because as our Father, we have that love for
Him in our hearts. That love has come, of course,
because He first loved us. First John 4, 19, we love Him
because He first loved us. And so, because we love Him,
there should be that desire to speak to Him, to commune with
Him. Can I use the term hang out? To be with Him in this way
that we can on earth. To come into His presence, like
David said, to enter into His courts and His gates with thanksgiving
and praise. So true love for God is something that comes naturally
to the believer after salvation as a result of the pre-applied
love of God. He loved us first, and thus we are enabled to love
him more by his grace and his work in us. I like to say anything
good that is in me comes from God, and all the bad stuff is
my own fault. I think we can all apply that to ourselves.
All the good stuff is him, all the bad stuff is me, and we've got
to take responsibility for it, right? If there is any love for
God in the heart of a person, that person's life will be characterized
by that love for God. And that person's worship of
God will be genuine and will not be a chore. And Jesus said to
his disciples that you will know, others will know that you are
my disciples by your love one for another. He did not say,
by your Bible reading every day, nor did he say, by your faithfully
attending church every Sunday. He didn't say, others will know
you're my disciples because you argue with each other about theology
every day instead of actually doing anything productive and
constructive with your time. He said, it will be by your love
one for another. And thus, we can conclude that
our lives will be holy and entirely and fully characterized by a
love for God. And then true love for God is
not going to be a heavy burden. God has made it clear to us that
He loves us. By way of an example, we know that our parents love
us, and so when we know that our parents love us, that makes
it a little bit easier to love them back, right? Makes it easier
to love them back, to have that desire to honor them and to do
what they say, and that's born of that love for them that we
have. And that desire to make them proud will lead us to make
choices that honor them, fulfilling our various responsibilities,
doing our chores, right? We're going to want to make our parents
proud because we love them. In the same vein, for the true
believer, there's no need to force ourselves to want to honor
God. While we struggle with sin, I can say myself the most probably,
and while the Christian life is an active and a hard one,
the true believer will have an indwelling desire to honor, love,
and glorify God and to proclaim Him to all those around him.
When it comes to following God, Matthew 11.30 says that His burden
is light, His yoke is easy. Following Him is not a chore,
right? It is hard, don't get me wrong.
We take up our cross, we follow Him, but it is a difficulty,
a hardship that we will willfully take up because we are taking
up that cross and following us. Not necessarily dropped on us,
we take it up and we follow Him. That's the command that we're
given by Christ. So looking to combine the two,
right, we've looked at worship in the believer's heart. We looked
at worship in spirit and in truth. So by way of kind of tying them
all together, I want to start with a quote from Jonathan Edwards,
who said, I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise
the affections of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided
that they are affected with nothing but truth. Edwards was in the
1700s, so it can be a little hard to understand that sometimes.
So I'm going to go ahead and break it down a bit. So he's saying, I should think
myself in the way of my job to raise the affections, the joys,
the admiration, emotions towards God of my hearers as high as
I possibly can on the condition, the sole condition, that these
affections are raised by nothing but truth. It reminds me of a
Voddie Bauckham quote recently. He said that he will not compromise
the meaning of scripture to fit in with the culture. It's the
same thing. We cannot change our view of
God because that makes worship easier or more palatable to other
people. We can't try and make worship
more palatable to unbelievers. That's not how it works. Unbelievers
are going to be unbelievers whether we make worship palatable to
them or not. Edwards here is recognizing that truth and only
truth is what is going to be used to properly inform one's
view of God for proper worship. Only truth can properly influence
the emotions as well in a way that brings honor to God. The
truth of God, being of infinite value, is worthy of infinite
passion. Synonyms there, joy, celebration,
admiration, and love. Because we know that God is holy,
we know that He is perfect, He is just and loving, we should
have that desire to worship Him. And having a proper view of God
and a proper view of ourselves is going to facilitate or better
facilitate that worship of him. So spirit and truth and worship
are going to complement each other rather than being at odds.
They complement together. You can marry the truths together.
A proper knowledge of the truth of God is going to motivate us
to truly worship him and a true worship of God will A true worship
of God is informed by a proper knowledge of Him. Those who do
not worship God properly, of course, are behaving dangerously.
We know that God was, like I said earlier, very particular about
worship, and He remains particular about worship. He has left examples
and orders for worship in the Bible for us to follow, and those
who will change how we worship just because they feel like it,
or because they think that they know better than God how God should
be worshipped, because they would prefer to worship God in a way
that's easier for them. They're putting themselves above
God. They're telling God, I know better
than you, so I'm going to do what I want to do, and you can
just kind of deal with it. And that's really not a smart
thing to say to God. Nowhere in Scripture, and to back that
up, how many of you are familiar with Numbers, the account of
Aaron's sons offering strange fire to God? Bad idea. But what
they did, Aaron's sons were consecrated to the priesthood. And when they
were consecrated, God spoke with Moses and Aaron. And he says,
I have some non-negotiables from my priests. The people are going
to do their thing, but I have some non-negotiables for my priests.
These non-negotiables are that I will be honored and revered
by the priests and that I will be honored and revered by the
people, right? The people are going to be shown
by your life to honor and revere me. You are going to take your
job before me so seriously that when others around you see you,
they are going to want to honor and revere you more because of
how you're acting. Aaron's sons ignored that. They
tried to offer a sacrifice in a wrong way. I don't know a lot
of the details about it. I don't know if they did it on
the wrong day or they did it the wrong order, but whatever it is, they
did it wrong enough that God declared it strange fire. And
when they offered that sacrifice or attempted to offer it, he
immediately struck them down. And Aaron was a little bit distraught
at that, but what are you going to do? God will be honored by
his priests. so that he will be honored by
his people. So God is very, very, very particular about how he
is worshipped. He knows exactly the best way
that he is gonna be worshipped. He knows what he wants and why
he wants it and when he wants it, the exact way he wants it.
And for any of us to try and claim that we know better is
the height of human pride. And that's something that I think
should be very strongly condemned. I think that would go without
saying, but I'm gonna say it anyways. That should be very
strongly condemned. That's not something that we should be ever
listening to, entertaining at all. Nowhere in Scripture do
we find an endorsement of a shallow, emotion-driven service, nor on
the other hand do we find any praise of any dry legalism. There
is a balance to the worship of God, and again, the key to that
balance is a proper view of God and a proper view of oneself.
Looking towards an application, that means I'm almost done actually,
we can see by this passage that while worship is important, no
physical location matters more than any other for true worship,
as true worship is in the heart of the believer. Similarly, salvation
does not come by any work done in the heart of the believer
on the part of the believer. That work in the heart is accomplished
entirely by God, His will, His work. There's nothing a building
is going to do one way or the other to interfere with or cause
you to be saved when it comes to that spiritual work in your
life. Now there can be physical distractions in various buildings,
that's why we avoid certain buildings, but if I'm in this building as
opposed to being in Walmart, that's not going to have a bearing
on whether or not God decides to save me, right? If I pray
out to God and I can ask him to save me from my sin, being
here does not matter any more than being at Walmart would matter
for that. Nor does being at any other church, if that prayer
is made in sincerity, nor does any other building happen to
manage that, right? So we're not more holy because
we go here, but nor is anyone more holy because they go to
another church down the road. Where was I? Salvation comes by the
will and work of God in the heart and life of a person, right?
We know our soul is, right? Grace alone, faith alone, in
Christ alone, for the glory of God alone, right? And no work,
including going to church or being baptized, makes you a believer
and automatically good with God. So, like I was saying. Was that
me? That was probably me. I was standing
differently. So like I was saying, there is no specific building
that's going to change your salvation status. There is no specific
work you can do that will change your salvation status, apart
from crying out to God, knowing exactly how few works you can
actually do to save yourself. And then looking specifically
to the believer, I've been at the nursing home doing that Bible
study every week the last couple months. You all have heard about
that just a little bit. We've been looking through the
book of John kind of expositorily, and this is actually the passage
I preached to them today. Looking back at John 3, right at the
very end, John the Baptist is speaking about how he must decrease
and Christ must increase. Sorry, I got that mixed up. And
that's what I took to the older folks last week, is that we must
continually be decreasing and Christ must be increasing. And
here we see an opportunity to really apply that, really get
kind of down into it and show how this message is actually
applicable in the actual daily life of the believer. Something
that I think is pretty important for a sermon. If you're going
to sit here 20, 25 minutes, you may as well know what you're
going to do afterwards as a result of it, right? So our worship of
God is something that ought to be flowing from us, informed
by our knowledge of God, something as natural as drinking water
or breathing. It needs to be spirit and truth, not one or
the other. It needs to be a worship that is entirely grounded and
focused on God as revealed through his word, facilitated and supplemented
by a proper knowledge of God and a proper knowledge of ourselves.
It should happen all the time. all the time, every place, not
just a church, not just in one specific building, and there's
also no skipping church, just because of it, right? Just because
I'm saying that worship can happen everywhere and that a specific
building is irrelevant does not mean we get to skip and forsake the
assembling of ourselves together. We have that command in Hebrews,
you're not allowed to skip church, even if pastor's on vacation, right? And also, it should be genuine,
wholehearted, no facades, no faking it, right? There are many
times, of course, we come to church. I can say it myself,
right? I have come to church and not been in the mood to immediately
start singing as soon as the piano started. I think most of
us can say the same thing. Sometimes we have a headache.
It's been a really long day. I'm really tired. Or maybe I
just had a really long argument with the family the entire way
in from 29 Palms, and I really just don't feel like I'm in the
right mindset for worship. That is, sadly, a little bit irrelevant,
because our worship is not focused on our own feelings, our own
circumstances. Our worship is focused on that view of God.
This is that He is holy, He is just, He is immortal, invisible,
the only wise potentate. He is the omnipresent, omnipotent
Lord of all creation, and He deserves to be worshiped whether
we happen to feel like it today or not. We cannot decide that
our feelings matter more than God's facts, right? And then
looking once more to the unbeliever, I'm sure there's one here tonight
at least, or at least one listening. If you know in your heart that
you aren't a believer and that your worship of God is simply a checklist
created by your parents, your church, your vague family, which
is something you happen to do, maybe you got it from your grandparents.
I know a lot of folks raised Catholic, just kind of stay Catholic
just because that's where they always were. Let me be the one
to sell you, by the authority of God's word tonight, your works
aren't enough. Your church isn't enough. Your
baptism isn't enough. Your good works aren't enough.
I've been emphasizing good works a lot in my messages at the Old
Folks Home, right? Isaiah 64, 6, all of our righteousness, all
our good works are as filthy rags compared to the holiness
and goodness of God. Our good works aren't enough
to save us, no matter how many good works you do. I saw a quote
recently, couldn't tell you exactly who it was from, but the holiest
saint could spend their entire life doing nothing but good works,
and that's still not enough to get to heaven. We can put it
a little more personal. I could spend my entire life
doing nothing but good works. Still not enough to get me to
heaven. The good works don't do it. Ephesians 2, 8 and 9.
For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves
is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast. The
only thing that is sufficient to save you is the saving work
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who lived a sinless life
and was crucified by sinful men, to be the payment for our sins."
And this is the kicker. Every sin that we commit, whether
it offends another human or not, every sin, no matter how big
or small we think it is, offends that holy, righteous, perfect
God that I was just saying we need to worship constantly no
matter how we feel. That God who is holy and terrible and
awe-inspiring is offended personally by every little sin we commit.
And that is a terrible thing to consider when we consider
the punishment for sin, the just punishment for sin for those
who are outside of Christ. Any who is outside of Christ will
perish. I mean, there's not much to say
after that, right? There is no ifs, ands, or buts. The one who
is outside of Christ will perish. If you were outside of Christ
today, and you were to die before you got home tonight, you would
find yourself catapulted into a very painful, tormented eternity.
And I don't say this to try and scare you straight, all right?
It's not like a school program out of prison, all right? We're
not going to scare you straight. I'm saying this to warn you. Because I do not want
to hear one day that I should've been warning people about the
very real reality that is hell, and I chose not to because it
was inconvenient or uncomfortable to talk about. Hell is uncomfortable
to talk about. How bad must it be to be there,
right? We don't like talking about it,
it's kind of scary, it's kind of sad, right? It is sad. It is sad to
hear that our soul has been catapulted into eternity without Christ.
But how much worse would that make us want to talk about it
to them? How much worse would that make us want to say to the unbeliever,
you are going to hell if you do not repent. And that is not
something we say to scare them straight. Again, we say it out
of love. Because it is, how much more loving can we get than to
try and show someone the way to eternal paradise? And on the
flip side, how much must we hate someone to deliberately not tell
them about eternity that they can have in Christ? So to the
unbeliever, today is the day of salvation. Now is the accepted
time to come to Christ and to see him for who he truly is.
We know from God's Word that He will not turn away any who
seeks Him. He will not cast out anyone who comes to Him. Anyone
who comes earnestly to Christ, seeking Him with their whole
heart, will not be cast out. They're not going to be kicked
away. They're not going to be thrown out. God will accept any who
come to Him during the time that He is accepting salvation now. So I can confidently say to the
unbeliever to come to Christ today because his yoke is easy,
his burden is light, he's not going to reject any who come
to him. And then I do have just some closing thoughts that kind
of appeared after I had finished with this whole fire and brimstone
part. But John 3 has just been staying in my head a lot. That's
what happens when you preach it for like a month straight.
But looking at he must increase and I must decrease, this is
kind of a continuation of that. That's how I treated it when
I was preparing this lesson. It was a continuation of that
last lesson, especially for the folks at the nursing home. Because
in a way, this is a continuation, because a proper view of God,
knowing that he is holy and just, that he is worthy of being worshiped,
and this proper stance of having him increase in our lives and
having us decrease in our own lives, will motivate true believers
to worship him in a way that brings him honor and glory. We're
going to want to worship him. We're going to wind up worshiping
him properly if we have that proper view of him and the proper
view of his word. And then one last thing to leave
with you all is that our ultimate goal is to exalt Christ in every
part of our lives for His glory and our eternal good. We are
bought with a price. Our lives are not our own. We
don't get to say, my body, my choice. We don't get to say,
I'm the boss of me. We don't get to talk about bodily
autonomy because we belong to Christ. We remain on earth only
to fulfill the will of God. And how much ought we to be fulfilling
his will in our worship of him, if not anything else? We talk
about fulfilling his will for our lives, right? I've talked
about that a lot. I'm looking at careers, I'm looking at college.
Gotta fulfill his will for me. How much more, if I'm going to
seek his will earnestly in where I go to school for a year or
five years, how much more should I seek to honor him in how I
worship him? Because worship, that worship,
if all things go according to plan, that's going to be happening
my entire life. I should be worshiping Him my entire life, and then
for all eternity. So we should probably figure
out how to do it right, right? Or else there's going to be a problem
at the pearly gates. He's the one in charge. He knows
what works best. I talked about this earlier. He knows what he
wants from his people. What he wants, how he wants it, where
he wants it, why he wants it. To ignore his word and to seek
to worship him in a way that pleases us, to ignore what he
says, or worse, to just take it and It's the opposite of elevate,
his word, to lower it in ourselves, to put ourselves up on that pedestal
of being the one in charge of how we worship God. I mean, that
draws my mind to the story of Lucifer, right? I will be like
the most high. It's nothing less than idolatry and pride, putting
ourselves up as the king of this specific part. We don't get to
talk about, let's see here, how does the song go? King of my
life, I crown thee now, thine shall the glory be. Lest I forget
thy thorn crowned brow, lead me to Calvary, right? If we're
crowning him king of our lives, that doesn't mean we get to promote
ourselves to like vice king. We don't get to be prime chairman,
sorry, prime minister. We don't get to be chairman of
this or secretary of that department. We don't get to head up anything. We are the last person who should
honestly be in charge of our own lives because we're, as humans
know, we are really, really good at messing everything up. We're
really good at not doing things the right way, right? So, we
must decrease, He must increase, and we who worship God must,
must worship Him in spirit, wholehearted, genuine, from the heart in a
way that is designed to honor and glorify Him above all others,
and in truth, truth that is grounded in His Word, Truth that is designed
for his honor and his glory. Truth that says, I don't know
what I'm doing. By comparison, I don't know what
I'm talking about. I shouldn't be the one in charge because
I'm not the omnipotent, omniscient creator. And when we have that
proper view of ourselves as being rather incompetent and that proper
view of God as being the only competent one in this entire
universe, it'll motivate us to truly worship him the way that
will honor and glorify him. That's right.
Worshipping in Spirit and in Truth
Series Midweek Service
| Sermon ID | 82125178144484 |
| Duration | 38:16 |
| Date | |
| Category | Midweek Service |
| Bible Text | John 4:20-24 |
| Language | English |
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