I'm going to talk to you for
a little while this morning about worship. Let's look here in verse
19. We're still talking about this
woman that our Lord said and discoursed with about many things,
and she thought she knew a lot, and He knew that she didn't.
And He sat on the well, and He communicated with her on her
level, and began to tell her what she didn't know. Now let's
look here. The woman at verse 19. The woman
saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our
fathers worshipped in this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem
is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus saith unto
her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when you shall neither
in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father. Ye worship
ye know not what. We know what we worship, for
salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now
is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit
and in truth. For the Father seeketh such to
worship Him. God is spirit, and they that
worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Now, I want to give you five
things this morning in this lesson that I believe all five of these
things are contained in this text, and they have to do with
true worship. And the first thing is this,
true worship has to do with the understanding. Men and women
talk about worship today, and what they are talking about is
not something that they know in their mind and in their heart,
not something that precedes from a confident understanding, but
it's emotions. It's all emotions. It's what
the eye sees, what the ear hears. And that's why you go into these
places and you've got all these visual aids. You've got crosses
and flags. I don't have a Christian flag
up here because I don't believe in them. Christ is my ensign.
He's my flag. He's the Lord our banner. And
I don't have crosses up here because He died on a cross. It's
Him that we look to, not the cross. It's Christ. And it's
not Christ the man in a bodily form, His person, what He did
in Him, what He come to manifest. We see His glory. When we're
talking about Christ, we're not talking about, you know, folks
have pictures of projections on their walls of what they thought
Christ might look like and so on and so forth. It's not that.
Folks who saw Him didn't see Him. I don't know how many people
actually saw Him with their eyes but didn't see Him. They didn't
see what was in his heart. They didn't see what he was doing.
They didn't see that the Father had sent him. They didn't see
his glory. In Isaiah chapter 6, he said
he saw the Lord. And he didn't see him in a bodily
form, but he saw him high and lifted up. He saw him in his
lordship. He saw that his train filled
the temple. And so sitting here beside this
woman, he begins to tell her something about true worship,
and true worship has to do with the understanding. Men and women,
they have cathedrals, and they are designed. Just go by and
look at them. They are impressive to look at. We went to Washington,
D.C. My wife and I had a visit with
my son, and one of the main attractions there is the National Cathedral,
they call it. It's a big Catholic cathedral,
and you can see that thing from 20 miles off. I never saw such
a building. You could stand a football field's
length away from it and couldn't get it in a photograph. It's
just huge. It's massive. And it has all
this Gothic architecture on it, and it's all done out of marble
and granite. It's just a beautiful building
and it's full of stained glass windows and people just go in,
you know, and they're just in awe. They walk real soft when
they go in, like that's got something to do with something. I don't
know why people do that. But they just look around in
awe at this building, you know, and folks do that. They come
into these cathedrals and buildings. They're designed to do that,
to affect your feelings and emotions. In the old churches, they used
to round the corners because they said the devil would hide
in the corners. So they rounded them. You go
in there and all those old buildings, every one of them had round corners.
You won't find a square corner in it. Come up to the ceiling
and they rounded that part up. And just all of these things,
they all add together. Religion adds these things, all
these visual aids and music and entertainment and all those things,
so that when you go home you feel lifted up, you feel inspired,
and what you call that is worship. That has nothing to do with worship. Worship has to do with the understanding. Our Lord told this woman that
geography had nothing to do with worship. She said, ìWe worship
in the mountains and you say you have to go down to Jerusalem.î
Well, it was indeed a fact. The Jews were required to go
down to Jerusalem because in Jerusalem is where the priesthood
and where the sacrifice and where all those things ordained of
God that spoke of God were located. So it's just like here, you're
not going to go over here to First Baptist Church and worship
God because they don't preach Christ. They're not going to
say anything that's going to affect your understanding in
such a way that you can worship God. You're just going to sit
in there and come out of there empty. You're going to come out
of there not knowing what you heard. You're going to come out
of there as ignorant as you were, if not more than when you went
in. And the same thing applied where this woman was and where
Jerusalem was. Jerusalem was the place where
his name was declared in that temple. In that mercy seat, over
that ark, by the priesthood, by the sacrifices, by the labor
where they went by and cleansed, all these things projected the
name of God and His glory and redemption. And they went down
there and some of them, with understanding by faith, worshiped
God. And some of them just went down
there and went through the ceremonies and went home. You worship, you know not what.
So I know for a fact the first and main ingredient to worship
is the understanding. I must understand who God is. Who God is. I can't worship an
unknown God. I've got to come to some understanding
of who God is. And geography has nothing to
do with it. And there was a day, you know, And he himself was
about to end that day and fulfill all these types and shadows.
And so he tells this woman, there's a day, and now is, when true
worshipers, they're not going to worship in this mountain and
they ain't going to worship in Jerusalem. Huh? Now that's just a fact. I don't
need a building to worship God. I just need to come together
with His people hear the gospel of God's sovereign grace preached,
and I sit there and worship God. I can do it in a car. I can do
it in a building. I can do it at home. She worshiped. She knew not what.
We must have an understanding of who God is. And we might go
through the motions, and we might listen to a bunch of entertainers,
and they might work us up, and most of them do, and that's what
Pentecostalism's all about, man. They get a big set of drums up
here and some guitars and somebody on a bass guitar, and they get
that rhythm going, get that music going, and they get to clapping
their hands and running up and down the aisle, and pretty soon
everybody's into it. I went one time with my brother
to one of these things and they got up and they were doing this
thing they called the Jericho March. The minute I walked in
that church building, I knew that was a place I didn't need
to be. And I took my cousin one time up 13th Street and I asked
him on the way home, I said, well, what did you think about
that? He said, I felt as out of place as a two-tight shoe
because he was Armenian and he didn't hear what he was used
to hearing. But, so here's these folks and they're going around,
they're doing this thing they call the Jericho March and they got
the music going, they're clapping their hands and I'm the only
one in the building still sitting in a pew. And finally the pastor
came over where I was and a couple of the elders and he said, brother,
he said, don't you feel like marching? I said, yeah, right
out the door. I got up and I left and I didn't
go back. But that's what they call worship.
It's designed to make you feel good about yourself. And all
these pictures and flags and stained glass windows and holy
water and smokers and whatever else is included in worldly religion,
there's just no end to the things. It's all designed for you to
feel good about yourself. And so when you leave there,
and his message is going to be right in coordination with all
these aides and all these other things. He wants you to feel
good about yourself. And when you leave, when you
leave out of there, he's wanting you to feel good about yourself.
Well, you can't worship God and feel good about yourself. When
Isaiah saw the Lord, do you know what he said? I'm a man of unclean
lips. He didn't feel good about himself.
He felt worse. He felt worse. Daniel. Where is a man of God like Daniel? Daniel said, when he saw the
Lord, he said, my comeliness melted into corruption. Job,
when he heard the Lord, he said, now mine eyes seeth thee. He
said, I put my hand over my mouth. I'm never going to say anything
again. I'm not going to say anything. I know how ignorant I am. I know
how dead I am. The Apostle John, who laid his
head on the Lord's breast, who followed Him, was close to Him,
loved Him. On the Isle of Patmos, when he
saw the Lord in His glory, he said he fell down like a dead
man at His feet. True worship levels man. It puts man in the dust, and
it exalts the glory of God. We see God for who God is, and
we stand in awe of Him. He said, when thou enterest into
the house of the Lord, be more ready to hear than to offer the
sacrifice of fools, for they consider not that they do evil.
Evil is when you just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, on and on and
on, not knowing what you're saying. You see, when the Lord heard,
and He was saying good things. But the Lord heard Job and Job
overstepped his bounds. Job got a little pride. He got
tired and he got angry. And he began to talk down to
his friends. And the Lord said, hang on. He
said, now I'm going to ask you something. And you gird up your
loins like a man now and you answer me if you can. And boy,
for three chapters, I mean without a breath, he just popped one
thing right after the other. Job put his hand over his mouth
and he said, I ain't got anything else to say. Worship puts man
in the dust and it exalts God in his true character, in his
true attributes. And you can't worship God in
ignorance. That's not worship. That's just
playing church. And you might go through the
motions, you might do a lot of things, but you won't worship
God. Old Nebuchadnezzar, that old Babylonian monarch, he stood
up there and proud, and if they wore overalls back then, I can
just picture them thumbs right in behind them overalls, sitting
there and looking out over that big kingdom. And he said, it's
not this great Babylon that I've built for the glory of my name,
by the power of my might. And God took him down as a beast. and caused him to eat grass like
an ox, and caused his hair to grow like bird's feathers and
his nails like bird's claws. And he left him out there until
seven times, ever how long that was. And he just left him out
there as a beast, let him know who he was. And he said, when
my understanding returned unto me. Now that's when you're going
to worship God. I'm telling you the truth. When
my understanding returned unto me, he said, then I praised and
extolled the God of heaven. That's when we're going to worship
Him, when our understanding, when God enlightens the understanding
about who we are and who He is. This woman was satisfied even
in her adultery, even in her sin, she was satisfied with that
little bit of whatever it was that she called religion. She
was satisfied. She learned to accept things
the way they are and she just satisfied until the Lord of glory
sat down and told her, you worship you know not what. You don't know what you worship. God is Spirit. He's called in
Scripture the invisible God, and the only way for you to worship
Him is through the understanding, and that by revelation. It must
be revealed to us. We're so ignorant and we're so
prone to the religion of this world and to the traditions passed
down to us by our fathers. We're so captive in the darkness
of our fallen nature that we never come to any kind of understanding
of who God is. We're surrounded by testimonies.
I've been talking to you now for several weeks in Genesis
about the revelation of creation. In Romans chapter 1, Paul said
that all these things in the Godhead are revealed in creation. He has showed it to you. You
are surrounded with it. You live in it. Over in Acts
chapter 17, it says, "...in Him we live and move and have our
being." He is all around us. And He has left a witness in
us. We are created in His image. All the faculty. Why man? What
is man that is not mindful of Him? Man walks around head and
shoulders above any other creature on the earth. There is nothing
else on the earth to even compare with him. God has left a witness
in him. He has left a conscience in him. We are without excuse. But the
revelation of God's character, of His holiness and justice and
all these things, His mercy and His grace, all those things come
by revelation. They come by revelation. and
they come through the Word of God. So true worship is an act
of the understanding, and that understanding by three things,
by the testimony of nature, by the testimony of God's Word,
and by sight, by the Spirit of God, of the gospel of His sovereign
grace in Christ. Those revelations come. And when
they come, they come and they exalt God and they cast man down
into the dust. Now come on, be honest. You can't
walk out here and stand in this front yard and look around at
creation and feel like you're somebody. You can't do it. Don't
it make you just feel small when you look up and there are stars
and there are stars beyond those stars and stars beyond those
stars? Here we are, we're living in
the space age, and they're sending out pilot ships out there, and
as far as they go, when they take a picture, it looks like
they haven't went an inch. There's still stars out there,
still worlds out there, still things out there. It's infinite. It's infinite. Don't that make
you feel tiny? Make you feel like a little speck?
That's worship. That's worship. You say it and
the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth
His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech.
Oh, these things. That's what inspires man to worship. It's an act of the understanding. And I tell you this, any man
who in his heart desires to know God, God will reveal Himself
to him if the desire is there. And when he does, he'll find
out that even the desire that he put there was of the Lord.
He puts it there. Alright, here's the second thing
I know about true worship. It's an act of the will. My people
shall be made willing, he said. They've got to be made willing.
It's not of him that willeth. It's not of him that runneth,
it's of God that shall with mercy. But he's going to be made willing
in the day of God's power. And when he is, his heart will
willingly reach out to God. His heart will willingly sit
there and rejoice. Just rejoice. Just sit back and
take it in. I remember the first time I ever
saw the Rocky Mountains. I went up. I wasn't married yet. I went up to northern Canada.
I went up to Banff, Alberta, a big national park up in the
Canadian Rockies, right there at the foot of the Great Glacier.
And you just can't believe how pristine and beautiful those
Rocky Mountains were. And the way the road was, it
sat down between the fields. It was kind of dug out, and you
traveled for several miles like that, and all you could see was
just the sides of the road, the bank. It was like driving in
a creek bed or something. And all of a sudden, you come
up out of there, and when you did, there they were. They were
just there. It was so captivating to me that
I pulled off the rope and just stood there. I just wanted to
take it in. When the heart's raised up in
worship, that's what happens. We sit and we listen to this
gospel, and we hear His grace, and we see His character, and
we see His glory, and we just sit there and just soak it up. Just soak it up. And worship
is a heart work. It's a heart work. And we're
made willing. Nobody forced you to get up this
morning to come down here. Nobody twisted your arm. Why
did you come? You came in anticipation to worship
God. You came to hear. Came to hear. That's what the believer does. He's been made willing. He knows
what he is. He knows who God is. And he knows
who Christ is. And he's willing. He will. And
I know this, true worship is an act of the affection. Philippians
3, verse 3, Paul identifies true believers. He said, ìFor we are
the circumcision which worship God in the Spirit and rejoice
in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh.î We rejoice. The
believer doesn't just come out of duty and sit there and listen
to words said, and it's just another message, and then next
week it's just another message, and the same old thing. One lady
said, old Scott Richardson said, all he ever preaches is just
Christ, Christ, Christ. He said, would you write that
on my tombstone? We rejoice in Christ. It's not
a labor for the believer to come hear Christ. He rejoices. He
looks forward to it. He anticipates it. And he looks
forward to it and he goes and he rejoices. He rejoices in Christ
Jesus. All the affection, the love,
the love of God He shed abroad in our heart, with joy, peace,
all those things, all the fruits of the Spirit are stirred within
us as we come and hear the Gospel and our hearts go up in worship
to God. True worship has to do with the
affections. And it stirs these affections. And then fourthly, true worship
is an act of faith. You're not going to worship a
God you don't believe in. You just ain't going to do it.
You know, I hear folks talk all the time about God is sovereign. I believe in a sovereign God
and then some kind of little germ comes along or they get
cancer or something. They don't want to talk about
the sovereign God anymore. Now they want to talk about,
you know, what I can do. What can I do? What can I do?
When they find out they can't do anything, then they bow before
that sovereign God. Worshiping God has to do with
faith. He that cometh unto me must believe. He must believe that I am, and
am a rewarder of those that diligently seek me. He says in Hebrews 11, verse
1, faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence
of things not seen. Now watch this. Here's what he
says in verse 3. Through faith we understand that the worlds
were formed by the word of God so that the things which are
seen were not made of things which do appear. The only understanding
the believer will have of creation I don't care who says what. I
don't care how much carbon dating. I don't care how much scientific
facts. The only understanding that will please the believer
and cause his heart to rise up in worship is that understanding
that creation was of God. It's of God. You can't worship God apart from
faith. Two men came together on the
same day to worship. came by his own reasoning. He came by his own understanding.
He came by what seemed right to him. Might have been a family
counselor. He might have sat down with his
wife and said, well, what do you think? And she said, well,
I, you know, and told him what she thought. And it might have
been a family thing. They might have all got together
and worked in that garden the whole year and got those big
things out and set them aside, all these first fruits, brought
them down there with his own understanding and by his own
reasoning and his own feelings and set them down there before
God. He was proud of what he offered. He worked hard for what
he offered. But what he offered was not of
faith. What he offered was of his own works and what seemed
right to him. He didn't come there by faith.
And you can't worship God apart from faith. Abel, on the other
hand, he came with an understanding. He came by the instructions that
his father gave him. There was nobody else to give
it to him except Adam. Adam told him what to bring,
told him what God required, told him what God demonstrated to
them in the garden. Told him about the promised seed,
the woman's seed. Told him all about it. He knew
exactly what he was doing when he came and slew that lamb and
laid him on the altar. And by faith, it says, he offered
a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. By faith. By faith. You can't worship God apart from
faith. Cain tried it. Cain tried it. Cain got upset
about it and slew his brother over it. And folks still getting
upset about it, ain't they? Huh? You tell them what they're
doing down there this morning, they all gathered down there
this morning, and they're singing, I'll Fly Away, and whatever else,
I'll Meet Mama in Heaven, or whatever else it is that they
sing, and they're clapping their hands, and celebrating, and talking
all these things, and you tell them that what they're doing
is obnoxious in the eyes of God, and they'd slay you if they could.
The only reason they don't is because it's not socially acceptable. Turn with me. Well, I'm going
to skip over that. I quoted that to you a while
ago out of Ecclesiastes. And here's the last thing I want
you to see. True worship is an act of reverence. It's an act
of reverence. When we come into the house of
God, we need to reverence. We need to reverence God. Anybody
with a sight of His glory and a sight of His majesty and any
kind of an inkling about what God is doing, where His Son is
seated, the work that He's accomplished, the powers that He's overcome,
The glory that He's manifested in His being and all that He's
done, anybody within is going to come in here and reverence
God. They're not going to come in here popping gum and carrying
on. They're going to come in here
and sit down in godly reverence and they're going to listen and
hear and hope God will speak to them. That's what I was quoting to
you while I go out of Ecclesiastes chapter 5. He said, when thou
goest into the house of God, be more ready to hear." We need
to prepare our hearts and study in prayer. Prepare our thoughts
by reading and meditation. That's why I publish a bulletin.
I want you to read these things. I want you to see these things.
I want your mind to be tuned in to worship. I want to take
your mind off of the things of the world and the pains that
you're feeling when you sit there, the pains of old age or sickness
or whatever it is. I want to take your mind off
of those things and tune your mind in on Him. That's where
worship is. It's all on Him. And the one
true sign to me of a believer is his willingness and readiness
of mind and heart to hear from God. And if we come with our
little petty arguments and our little candy stick questions
and all the things that folks do in religion, and when we come
to that, we're not going to worship God. You're not going to worship
God. I'll tell you what the Lord calls
it. He calls it the sacrifice of fools. That's what He calls
it. The sacrifice of fools. When
God has so plainly declared, and that's what my message is
going to be about this morning, when He so plainly declares these
things, clearly, undeniably, It's religion that causes the
confusion. God's clear in His Word. It's
clear. It's right there. It's simple,
plain, little one-syllable words. Listen to this verse. I'm just
going to quote this to you and then I'll close. He said, "...by
grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It
is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast." There's
not a word in that that you can't understand, is there? Religion gets a hold of that
and they make that so complicated that they don't know. It's just
unbelievable how complicated they can make that verse of Scripture.
There's not a word in there over two syllables. True worship, true worship with
the understanding by faith, with the affections, by the will and
with reverence to God. Bless that to your heart, to
your understanding for Christ's sake.