If you would, turn in your Bibles
this morning to John chapter 4. John chapter 4. There are many people today who will gather and will engage in what they
call worship. Worship. They will gather to sing. They'll
sing songs. They'll have inspirational messages. They'll carry out various programs. Do certain rituals. Have certain ceremonies. But none of these things are
biblical worship. They're not the worship of the
true and living God. They were like the woman that
we read about here in John 4. who encountered the Lord Jesus
Christ at a well. When you begin John 4, it says
that Jacob's well was there. And if you know anything about
the well of grace that Jacob was enabled to drink at, You
can say, yes, he was. Jacob's well was there. And so she says to him in their
conversation in verse 20, our fathers worshiped 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. You worship ye know
not what. We know what we worship. for
salvation is of the Jews." You see, hers, like many, was
just traditional. She worshipped, she thought,
according to the traditions of her people, of her parents. And she thought it was tied to
a place to a temple, to a building, to a city. But Christ looked at her and
he said to her, you worship, you know not what. You don't know anything about
worship. And you cannot know anything
about worship because you're ignorant and blind of who God is. You don't know the truth, and
therefore you do not know how God is worshipped. You worship you-know-not-what. So Christ says to her in verse
23, 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 Spirit, and they that
worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. He says the Father seeks such to worship Him. And that means that the Father
does not seek to find such already doing it. But He seeks them to
cause them to worship Him in the only way He can be worshipped. God is Spirit, and they that
worship that truly worship Him must worship Him in spirit and
in truth. And that's why there aren't many
true worshipers in our day. Because men neither worship God
spiritually, And neither do they worship Him
according to truth. I asked myself this morning, and I ask every one of you here, and I ask everyone that might
hear this message, Are you a true worshipper? Are you a true worshipper? And the first thing that I would
point out this morning is this. God is not worshipped in temples
and special buildings and holy places that men appoint and ordain
to be such. Turn over to the book of Acts
chapter 17. Acts chapter 17 and verse 21
where Paul is at Athens. And he describes these Athenians
in this way, for all the Athenians and strangers which were there
spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear
some new thing. That describes religion in our
day. That's why there are always so
many storefront churches, religious organizations. Men are looking
and seeking some new thing. But the gospel is the everlasting
gospel. And as one old preacher said,
if it's new, it isn't true. And if it's true, it isn't new. Verse 22, then Paul stood in
the midst of Mars Hill and said, ye men of Athens, I perceive
that in all things you are too superstitious. actually too religious. Because religion in general,
false religion, is always bound up in superstition. You're too superstitious. For I passed by and beheld your
devotions. I found an altar with this inscription,
to the unknown God, whom therefore ye ignorantly
worship. Him declare I unto you. God to you is the unknown God. God that made the world and all
things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth,
dwelleth not in temples made with hands. You don't go to the holy land
to find him. You don't find him in temples
and cathedrals and great church buildings and such as that. The
heavens cannot contain him. Now look at verse 25. Neither
is worship with men's hands. That thief, with his hands nailed
to a cross, he worshiped God. He did nothing outwardly, physically,
but he worshipped the Lord Jesus Christ. Neither is worship with
men's hands as though he needed anything. Today's God needs things. He needs your time. He needs
your talents. He needs your money. He needs
your service. He's a needy God. But God, as
though He needed anything, saith, He giveth to all life and breath
and all things, and hath made of one blood all nations of men
for to dwell on the face of the earth, and hath determined the
times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation." God determines everything. as it pertains to all men, and
if they have anything, it came from Him, because He created
all things, and He still owns all things. that they should
seek the Lord, if happily they might feel after him and find
him, though he be not far off, far from every one of us, for
in him we live and move and have our being, as certain also of
your prophets, poets have said, we are also his offspring. For as much then as we are the
offspring of God, that he created us, that he made us, that he
gave us this physical life, we ought not to think that the Godhead
is likened to gold or silver or stone, graven by art and man's
device for the times of this ignorance. You thought I was harsh in saying
that this woman was ignorant? No, she was ignorant. This ignorance. And the times of this ignorance,
God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent. And repentance is toward God. It's a turning from all that
we thought was right about God to all that is true to God. It's a turning from self and
from all false gods to God Himself. And it's always joined. with
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. God is not worshipped by man's
hands or by these things that men do, nor is he worshipped
in cathedrals or temples or any of these things because he made
all things. You can't give him something
because he owns it all. And then secondly, true worship. True worship is of the heart. That is the spirit of God working
in our hearts or our spirits. And the spirit of God brings
us to cease trying to worship God based on anything in us or
of ourselves. Turn over to Philippians. Philippians chapter 3. Here Paul again writing to the
believers at Philippi. He speaks with this severe language
in chapter 3 and verse 1, and he says, Finally, my brethren,
rejoice in the Lord, to write these same things to you. To me, indeed, is not grievous,
but for you it is safe. I don't tire of saying this.
I don't tire of preaching this. Because it's for your spiritual
safety that God has called me. He says, beware of dogs. Beware of evil workers. Beware of the concision. That is, those who have this
right according to the flesh and who know nothing about this
spiritual circumcision of the heart. He says, for we are the circumcision,
the true Israel of God. When Christ said there, salvation
is of the Jews, he was talking about the true Israel. And he
says here, for we are the circumcision which worship God in the spirit and rejoice in
Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. That's how he characterizes the
true worshiper here. He says, we are the ones who
worship God, who worship God spiritually, by the Spirit of
God enabling us, and by rejoicing in Jesus Christ, and by having
no confidence in the flesh. You mean we can't have a little
confidence in our baptism, or a little confidence in our giving,
or a little confidence in our witnessing, or a little confidence
in our going to church, or our help, our work around the church?
We can't have a little confidence in those things, and have no
confidence in the flesh. He says, though I might also
have confidence in the flesh, if any other man thinketh that
he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more. If you
think you can trust in the flesh, I could trust in the flesh more
than any of you. Why? Because I was circumcised
the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin,
and Hebrew of Hebrews, as touching the law of Pharisee concerning
zeal, persecuting the church, touching the righteousness which
is in the law, blameless? In other words, you could stand
up the best church member, the best religious zealot, the best
moral person, the best dedicated and zealous person in any age,
you can stand them up against Paul, and Paul was more. You know why I know that? Because
the Spirit of God led him to write it and say it. He was more,
he was a better everything than the best religious person in
the world. But he said, look in verse seven,
but what things were gained to me. He admits what most people won't
admit, and that is that these things he thought were gain to
him. He thought that they were going
to take him to heaven. He thought that they were going
to better him in the sight of God in some way. He said, but
those things which were gain to me, not those things that
he knew that he did which were wrong. But those things which were gained
to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea, doubtless, and I
count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge
of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss
of all things, and do count them but dung. Don't they count for something,
Paul? They count for sin. I view them as dung, as nothing
but filth and garbage and things like that. I count them but dung,
that I may win Christ and be found in Him, not having mine
own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through
the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. It's not through doing, but through
believing. We worship the Lord Jesus Christ. We worship God through believing. We believe on Him. We trust in
Him and we don't trust any other thing. We worship Him spiritually
and we rejoice in Christ. We don't rejoice in what we've
done or what we plan to do or our works or anything like that.
We rejoice in Christ and we have no confidence in any other thing. in any other thing of the flesh. Because the Spirit of God brings
us to an end of ourselves as any part of the equation of salvation. Therefore, any reason to be a
part of salvation and reveals to us that Christ is the Savior,
He's the one that does the saving. That's why we worship Him. We worship Christ because He
finished the work. We worship Christ because He
actually redeemed us. We worship Him not because He
made possible something or available. We worship Him because of who
He is and because of what He accomplished, all of our salvation. And I'm sure of this. I'm absolutely
sure of this. One can only worship, they can
only worship God who trusts in the finished work, in the accomplished
salvation, in the work of righteousness that Christ crucified achieved. And it's for this reason If it must be Christ crucified
plus something that you do, you're lost. You will never be saved and therefore
you will never have any reason to worship God. Absolutely none. You can talk about what Christ
did for everybody all you want. You can talk about how he loves
everybody all you want. You can talk about how the Spirit
is trying to work with everybody all you want. But it is only
in something that is accomplished and sure that you have reason
to worship God for. And one can only trust in Christ
by the Spirit of God showing Christ. Turn back over to Genesis
chapter 22. Genesis 22 is just like everywhere
else in the Bible. This is just one of the early
illustrations. Because it shows the only way
that the true God, the living God, can be worshipped. And it happens in the life of
a man by the name of Abraham. We know Abraham was a believer. We know Abraham was called a
friend of God. We know that Abraham was a true
worshipper. Verse 3 of Genesis 22 says this,
And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his
ass, and took his two of his young men with him, and Isaac
his son, and claimed the wood for the burnt offering, and rose
up and went unto the place which God had told him. Then on the third day, Abraham
lifted up his eyes and he saw the place afar off. He traveled three days by foot,
by horseback, if you will. And he saw finally the place. And Abraham said unto his young
men, abide ye here with the ass, and I and the lad will go yonder
and worship. What is he gonna do? Travels
three days. Finally sees the place of God's
appointment. And he tells the young men, you
stay here because Isaac and I are going to worship. We're going to worship God. That was his reason for going.
That was his reason for traveling. He wasn't on a vacation. He wasn't
on a sightseeing tour. He was on a mission to worship
God. And he knew what men and women
do not know today. He knew, because God had taught
him, he knew that God can only be worshipped by sinners on the
basis of a sacrifice. a sacrifice for the worshippers
sins. Everybody makes fun of the word
sin or sinners in our day. But sin is as real as God and
God who is the offended one God, our Creator, has determined that
He will and He must, because of His holy and just character,
punish sins. And all have sinned. So, any worship is going to involve
sacrifice. Verse 6 says, And Abraham took
the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son,
and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife, and they both went,
both of them together. They went up to the place of
worship. They've got everything necessary,
seemingly. Fire for the wood to burn, a
knife, everything like that. When we read verses like this,
we ought to remember what Paul said when he said that the gospel
involves how Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. Because the scriptures that he
was talking about are these Old Testament scriptures. The New
Testament scriptures had not been written yet. We're in the
process of it. And he says, they were written
for our admonition, those of us upon whom the end of the age
to come. So Christ died in a fashion and
a type that is typified in the Old Testament scriptures. And God must be worshipped by
the sacrifice of a lamb. Now you look down here at verse
7. I don't know how old Isaac was
here. I suspect he was a young man. It says, And Isaac spake unto
Abraham his father, and said, My father. And he said, Here
am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire
and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? They've gone to worship. They've
gone to worship God. They've gone to worship God as
the sinners that they were. And here is this young man who
knows much more evidently than most people in our day. He knew
that to worship God, there had to be a sacrifice, and it had
to be the one of God's approving and appointing. It had to be
a lamb. I just want to walk into churches
where there's all this preaching and all this singing and ask
that question, where's the lamb? You're not saying anything about
the lamb. You're not preaching the lamb.
You're not worshipping God because you've got no lamb. Where's the
lamb? Well, the Bible tells it. The announcer of the Messiah,
John the Baptist, he came in his first sight, led by the Spirit
of the Lord Jesus Christ, of Jesus of Nazareth, he said, Behold
the Lamb of God. This is God's Lamb. And he's the only one that can
take away sin. He's the one that takes away
the sins of the world. Not every person in the world,
but every people, tribe, nation, and kindred, and tongue of people
out of all the world. He takes away their sin. That means Christ died for sinners. That's why this place is not
full this morning. There are not many sinners in
our day. An old preacher said, a sinner is a sacred thing because
the Lord has made him such. to know your sins, to know something
about what you are before God, to know what you are in this
flesh and of yourself and of your nature and all these things.
Only God can teach us and convict us and make us to know just exactly
what He says that we are. Christ died for sinners. Only sinners worship God. Paul says, if he be writer of
Hebrews, for then he must often have suffered since the foundation
of the world, if his sacrifice was like every other. But his
sacrifice, it says, but now once in the end of the world hath
he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Can't worship God without a lamb. And there's only one Lamb of
God. All these lambs in the Old Testament, all these creatures
that were offered as a sacrifice to God, they were just pictures
in type. John said, this is the Lamb. Behold, the Lamb of God that
takes away the sin. And God can only be worshipped
through the death of a sacrifice that He provides, and all else
is sin. Verse 8, And Abraham said, My
son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering. So they went both of them together. They didn't have a lamb. They
didn't have a sacrifice. They're just like you and I are
in ourselves. And if left to ourselves, we
don't have a sacrifice. We can't produce one. We can't
figure it out. We can't do anything that would
please God or give God anything. Some people think if they sacrifice
a lot or if they give a lot or if they do a lot, God will accept
it. But you gotta have a lamb, and
it's got to be a lamb of God's providing. Because it's for Him. God will
provide Himself a lamb. He's the offended one. He's the
one that requires a sacrifice. He's the one that says what it'll
be. He's the one that must accept
it. And God, in order to accept something, must have it first
come from God. Because only God can satisfy
God. So Abraham said, God will provide
for himself. That's what I'm telling you about
today. A God provided salvation. A God provided sacrifice. A God provided land. Because that's the only thing
he'll accept. And God is worshipped through
this sacrifice, through this death, and he's only worshipped
on the principle of substitution. I can't believe one time I heard
a preacher preach from this text and he said, Abraham knew nothing
about substitution. Oh me. You see, he worshipped God on
the basis of substitution, on the basis of imputation. Look over in verse 9, And they
came to the place which God had told him of, and Abraham built
an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound up Isaac
his son, and laid him on the altar of wood. And Abraham stretched
forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the
angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven. And said, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, here am I. And he said, lay not thine hand
upon the lad, neither do anything unto him. For now I know that
thou fearest God, and seeing thou hast not withheld thine
son, thine only son from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes,
and look, and behold, behind him a rain. What's a ram? It's a male sheep,
male lamb. When men and women paint their
pictures of Jesus and all, he's just holding this one little
frail lamb. That's the picture we have of
a lamb. This lamb is a ram. horns signifying the power, horns
caught in a thicket signifying submitted to divine justice,
caught in the hands of abiding law and justice of God, submitting
himself to the righteousness of God. And Abraham offered this God-provided
sacrifice Look at verse 13. And Abraham
lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram
caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the
ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his
son. That's about as plain a statement of substitution
a plain picture of suffering and dying in the place, in the
room, instead of another. In other words, Isaac was taken
off of that altar, the ram was put there, and that ram died,
that innocent victim died in the place of Isaac. God said, Abraham, You're the wrong father, on the
wrong hill, with the wrong son, at the wrong time. But you're a type of him. You're a picture of him. He died as a substitute. And Isaac walked away free. And Abraham and Isaac worshipped
God. God showing them again the only
way that he can be worshipped. That the only way that sinners
could come is in this God-provided sacrifice and substitute who
had their sins imputed to him. And he bore them in his own body
on that tree. That's what Christ is doing.
He's dying as this lamb. He's dying as this ram was offered. Paul said in Ephesians, Husbands,
love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and he
gave himself for it. Christ said, as the Father knoweth
me, even so know I the Father, and I lay down my life for, or
in the place of, in the room instead of, as a price of redemption
for my sheep. And God is only worshiped through
the sacrifice that he has to reveal. In other words, here's Abraham
and Isaac, they're engaged in this worship, they think, but they can't see one that's worthy
of it. And so God has to show him that
ram caught in the thicket in the bushes that he's provided I wonder how long that ram had
been caught in the thicket. I know this, Christ has been
the one sacrifice for sins for his people from old eternity
and the only way anybody ever sees them as such is for God
to reveal it to them. I hath not seen ear hath not
heard, we have not the spirit of the world, but God has revealed
them to us, has revealed that he freely has given us all things
in Christ, he revealed them to us by his spirit and his gospel. Verse 14, And Abraham called
the name of that place Jehovah-Jireh, as it is said to this day, In
the mount of the LORD it shall be seen. In other words, what that means
is, what Jehovah-Jireh means, the Lord will see to it. The Lord will provide. And that's what we always see
in worship. We see God who has provided. who has seen to our salvation
in its entirety. And we worship him. That's what
Abraham did. Abraham said to those religious
Jews, your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and
was glad. Worship makes people glad. Glad people worship. Happy people
worship. It's not how you can look so pious, weep, make like the Lord's table what
I used to call a pity party for Jesus. It's a feast. feast of gladness, feast of grace. God is only worshipped when the
Spirit of God takes this God-glorifying, man-abasing truth and humbles
us and enables us to believe it and brings us to fall at His
feet and praise and thank Him and adore Him. The word worship is connected to this meaning. It means to kiss like a dog licks his master's
hand. Not sure you want to worship
now, are you? But it is so humbling. It means
to fawn or to crouch or to prostate oneself in homage. It means to
do reverence. It means to adore. Just fall down before. When a sinner finds out, by the
Spirit of God, through the truth of God, what God in grace has
done for him in choosing him from old eternity, of sending
his son to die as his substitute, of sending his spirit to effectually
and mightily reveal this to him, We are in awe. And as we contemplate these things,
I've always likened it to like walking out on the tree limb
where there's nothing else to do except fall down. Fall down and worship Him. Fall down and adore Him. Turn
over to Matthew's Gospel. Matthew chapter 15. There's another
woman that came to our Lord. Verse 21, it says, then Jesus
went thence and departed into the coast of Tyre and Sidon.
And behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coast and
cried unto him, saying, have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son
of David. My daughter is grievously vexed
with the devil. But he answered her not a word.
And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away, for
she crieth after us. But he answered and said, I am
not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He wasn't talking about the Jews
by nature either. He wasn't talking about that
earthly people. who are but a type of the true
people of God. God said, I'm sent just to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel. She was confronted with his sovereignty. She's confronted with what he
actually came to do. She's confronted with the truth. Then she came. and worshipped Him. She came and worshipped Him,
saying, Lord, help me. That's truth. You lay down your
life for the sheep. You have an elect people that
were chosen in you before the foundation of the world. You
have a people that were given to you by the Father, you have
all these things that show about your mercy and grace and its
sovereignty and your... That didn't turn her away. She said, Lord, help me. Lord, help me. But he answered
and said, it is not me, to take the children's bread and to cast
it to dogs. That's about as low. He called her a dog. You know, being called a dog
is a much more honorable thing than being called a sinner. Because a sinner in God's sight is worse than
a dog in himself, in herself. A sinner is everything offensive
to God, a rebel against God. An ungrateful
person of the truth of God, of the blessings of God, of even
the natural creation of God, worse than a dog. But look at her. Verse 27, and
she said, Truth, Lord. It's all truth. You can't say enough about me.
as bad as I am as a sinner. Paul said, I'm the chief of sinners.
You can't. That's true. I know it's true. Your word says it's true. Truth. Yet the dogs eat the crumbs which
fall from their master's table. Lord, I want just a crumb of
your grace, crumb of your mercy, crumb of your power. I don't
deserve anything, but like that man, Lord, I believe,
but help thou my unbelief. I'm not deserving of anything.
I just pray you'd show mercy on me. Everything you say is true. And
everything you say about me is true. I'm a dog, worse than a
dog. But the dogs eat the crumbs which
fall from their master's table. My wife's got a dog. And we never sit down to eat. But what that little fella isn't
just, just right at her feet. I told her, you ought not to
give that dog table food. But he sits right there and he
pleads. And sooner or later I'll see
her slip him something down under the table. She'll eat it all up. She's the master. She's the dog,
Lily. She begs crumbs. And that's what
sinners who worship God do. They beg crumbs from the master's
table. True worshipers don't worship
God to be saved. They worship Him because He has
saved them. They worship Him for His mercy
to them. They worship Him for His sovereign,
distinguishing grace to them. They worship Him as God over
all glorious, and they fall down before Him. They honor Christ
as all. Are you a true worshiper? In the book of Judges, in the
18th chapter, you can read about some people called the Danites. And the Danites were looking
for a place. They were looking for land. They
wanted to set up a town, build up a nation. And so they were
searching around, and they came to the house of a man named Micah. Micah had a graven image in his
house. He had all the religious paraphernalia
in the house, and he had himself a priest. They came back later, establishing themselves in the
area, and they came back to Micah's house, And they stole his idol. They stole all his religious
paraphernalia. And they said to his priest,
wouldn't it be better for you to be a priest over five or six
hundred families than it would be for you to be a priest in
one household? Sounds like religion today. Every preacher that gets The
Lord's calling to go to another place is always more money and
more people. Bigger buildings. So they took him. And they had a lot of people.
They had all the idols, all the religious paraphernalia, and
they had themselves a preacher. And they carried on. But I want
to read you The last verse of Judges 18. And it says, and they set up
Micah's image, which he had made all the time that the house of
God was in Shiloh. They call it worship. It wasn't,
because God only manifested himself in Shiloh. Guess what Shiloh
means? Shiloh was a type of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Christ is only worshipped in
the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is only worshipped where
the gospel that gives Him all the glory is proclaimed, where
people gather to exalt and honor Him and His grace and His salvation. You don't say, like men are told
today, Come to worship, or be sure to worship tomorrow at the
church of your choice. Because all the time, the house of God is that child. It's always in Christ. It's always
where he's exalted, where songs are sung that exalt him, where
things are done that exalt him. done according to his word. I remember one time I sent a letter to a missionary and I told him there were three
things that were necessary for this congregation to assist him. And I was writing the letter
to him so he could show it to some people. I said, we support a man, a man
that God has called, a man that has honor and integrity, honest
man, moral character. We support a man that God has
called. And number two, we support a
message, one message, the gospel of the free and sovereign grace
of God in Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We support only that
message. And number three, we support
a method, the biblical method, the God-glorifying method, Christ
honoring method and we don't support anything else because
we try to practice that ourselves. We want to worship God. We don't
want ten business meetings every month and a whole lot of stuff
that doesn't amount to a hill of beans. We want to worship Because that's what saved people
do. They fall down and adore the
Lord Jesus Christ. Our Father, we pray that you'd
enable us to be true worshipers who worship you in spirit and
in truth. who rejoice in Jesus Christ alone
and who have no confidence in the flesh. We pray that you would do so
for your honor and your glory because we ask it in your son's
name. Amen. Amen.