January 19, 2009

• JMac on Worship

  The Kind of Worship God Desires, Part 1

  There are two things that kill worship.  One is man-centeredness and the other is pragmatism, the idea that we will do whatever works.  We cannot worship the culture. That’s pragmatism.  Nor can we worship the unbeliever.  That’s man-centeredness. 

  This is hardly what Scripture calls us to.  The Word of God calls us to God-centered, spiritual worship.  The illusion is that this man-centered, pragmatic, non-worshiping assembly of people called a church has the power to change people’s lives, that a non-worshiping, pragmatic gathering of people designed to appeal to a non-worshiper has power to bring that non-worshiper into becoming a worshiper.  It’s highly unlikely, however, since a non-worshiper attending a non-worshiping church would have no idea what worship was.  In reality, the greatest evangelistic power resides in the true worshiping church...a true gathering of God’s people genuinely worshiping Him has the greatest collective power in the world to make the gospel believable and effective.
   
  Another component is the privatization of spirituality.  We are not a collection of people with a private faith celebrating the privacy of that faith.  We are a collection of people with a public faith who have made that confession openly, as you heard in the waters of baptism tonight, and that confession is that Jesus is God the Son who came into the world and died on a cross and rose again to provide salvation for us.  We believe the content of the Christian faith.  Yes we have a faith that is subjective but it is a faith placed in history that is objective.  Our meetings are designed to focus on God, they are designed to honor God.  They are designed to exalt Him.  We come before God to confess our sin to Him, to renew our covenant to obey Him, to hear Him speak in His Word, to learn more about Him, to love Him more, to serve Him more.  And our worship is directed at Him.  This is why the church gathers.  This is why the true church has always gathered, to worship God. 

  Worship is a word today that has been loaded with a lot of personal mystery and intuition and imagined spiritual experience by which people mean whatever they mean.  When we talk about worship, we’re talking about something very specific, very objective, revelatory, unfolded for us on the pages of Scripture.  It is not private, it is not personal in the sense that you define it yourself.  It doesn’t rise out of your intuition.  It doesn’t rise out of your experience.  It doesn’t rise out of your imagination.  It isn’t the invention from your own mind of what you want it to be.  True worship is simply treating God in the way that God has commanded us to treat Him.
   
  There are a number of key words.  Perhaps one would be enough in the New Testament, proskuneo, to worship, it means to bow down, to prostrate oneself, to kiss the hand.  It is honor paid to God and that is why we come together, to give honor to God.  You might hear someone say, “Well I went to church today but I didn’t get anything out of it.”  Really, it wasn’t for you!  That wasn’t the point.  If you came to get something out of it, you missed the whole point.  You should have shown up to give something to God.  God is the focus of our worship.  It is giving to God honor and reverence and homage and adoration and glory and obedience.  We come to bring before God that which belongs only to Him.  We gather to give to Him what is rightfully His.  We come together not to receive anything for ourselves, but to give glory and honor to Him.  We come to offer Him a fragrant offering that belongs only to Him. 

  It’s important for us to understand the distinction between worship and ministry.  Ministry is what we do for others.  Worship is what we give to God.  Ministry is that which comes down to us from the Father through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit through us to others.  Worship is that which goes up from us by the Holy Spirit’s power through the Son to the Father.  Ministry descends from God to us and through us, worship comes through us and to us and ascends to God.

  Open your Bible to John 4:21, the familiar encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well.  “Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall you worship the Father.  You worship that which you do not know.  We worship that which we know, for salvation is from the Jews.’”  You have there a clear distinction between useless, ignorant worship and informed worship.  Verse 23, “But an hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.  God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”  The Father seeks true worshipers.
   
  One could conclude that that is the purpose of salvation and one would be right.  You were saved to be a worshiper.  In Philippians chapter 3, verse 3, Paul defines believers as those who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.  Believers are those who worship in the Spirit of God and give glory to Christ Jesus.  We are worshipers.  We gather to worship collectively.  Do we worship personally?  Of course we do.  Do we worship when we’re alone?  Of course we do.  We do not worship God, however, in a personal private way, manner.  We do not worship a personal private God.  We worship the God revealed in Scripture in the manner He has revealed that He is to be worshiped in Scripture and we do worship Him privately and personally in that way as well as publicly and collectively in this way. 
   
  Number one, how important is worship?   Scripture calls for worship as the priority.  Let’s begin at the Law in Exodus 20.  “Then God spoke all these words saying, ‘I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.  You shall have no other gods before Me.  You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is heaven above, or on the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth.  You shall not worship them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children on the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me.  But showing loving-kindness to thousands to those who love Me and keep My commandments.  You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.’” Here the Law begins the summation of all that God demands out of all humanity with a call to worship Him and Him alone.
   
  In Exodus 34:14 “You shall not worship any other God, for the Lord whose name is jealous is a jealous God.”  This is further defined later on in the second giving of the Law in the book of Deuteronomy where the same commands are repeated again in the fifth chapter of Deuteronomy, “I am the Lord your God...verse 6...who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, you shall have no other gods before Me, shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above, or earth beneath,” etc., etc.  The Law is repeated. 
   
  This is further defined in Deuteronomy 6, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.” And here it’s spelled out what worshiping Him means, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.  And these words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up.  You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead and you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”  When you live your life in every way, standing up, sitting down, lying down, walking in the way, going in the house, out of the house, in the gate, out of the gate, remember this, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, your mind and your strength.  This is the first and great commandment.” 

  God wanted His people never to forget that He was to be the focus of their life at all times that they were awake and conscious.  And so when God established His people, He gave them a worship place.  You remember, He gave them a tabernacle and there He says in Exodus 25:22, “I will meet with you.  And from above the mercy seat I will speak to you about all that I will give you in commandment for the sons of Israel.”  God goes on to describe this place where He’s going to meet them.  Seven chapters, 243 verses describe it.  By the way, creation only took 31 verses.  This is the place where God is going to be worshiped.
   
  In the first chapter of Numbers, we’re still in the Mosaic Law, there is direction given by God how each part of Israel camps around this place.  The tribes were placed on all different sides.  The priests were placed in certain configuration.  The Levites in certain places.  The four sides, each had representative tribes, three in each location facing each side, the priests and the Levites, everything faced the tabernacle.  Everything faced the Holy of Holies where God communed with Israel.
   
  According to Numbers 1 and verse 3, soldiers could be twenty years of age.  According to Numbers 8 verse 24, Levites could be 25 years of age.  But priests who served the temple had to be at least 30 years of age, Numbers 4 and verse 3.  Why?  Worship was the priority and worship leadership demanded the highest level of maturity.
   
  The first offering that was introduced in Leviticus chapter 1 verses 1 to 9, the burnt offering was called the ascending offering which the people offered when they ascended to God and of this offering 100 percent of it was burned on the altar.  It all went to God, the symbol of worship.  In fact, the altar eventually became known the brazen altar, but it became known as the altar of the burnt offering because the initial offering, the ascending offering by which you launch your worship is all burned up, it is all offered to God.  This depicts the essence of true worship.  It is devoted to God alone, like the incense.  It is all for God and for no one else. This is the divine order.  The tabernacle was the place of worship.
   
  Later on when the temple was built, the temple became the place of worship.  When you look at Isaiah chapter 6, you see a picture of God high and lifted up, majestic in His heavenly temple in the vision that was given to Isaiah and He is surrounded by basically worshiping beings of His own creation called angels.  Angels are worshiping creatures.  They have four wings which express worship...covering their faces so that they cannot see the full blaze of His presence, He’s too glorious; covering their feet for the ground on which they stand is holy; four wings for worship, two to fly in service.  Worship is the priority. 

  Psalm 95 verses 6 and 7, “O come, let us worship and bow down.  Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker, for He is our God.” That expresses the attitude of true worship.

  In the New Testament, a couple of passages to draw to your attention just to help in defining the biblical command to worship as a priority.  Romans chapter 12, “I urge you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God which is your spiritual service of worship.  Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”  We are called to acceptable worship, to a spiritual service which is acceptable to God.  And in order to do that, we have to have a kind of worship that is not conformed to this world. 

  1 Peter 2:5 “We are living stones built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”  I just want you to understand that your life is a call to worship.  Your salvation made you into a worshiper.  You worship in the power of the Spirit of God, you give glory in that worship to Jesus Christ, Philippians 3:3.  You have been redeemed and made into a true worshiper, John 4:23-24, because the Father seeks true worshipers who worship Him in spirit and in truth.  You are to present your body, your whole being as an act of spiritual sacrifice, acceptable to God in worship.  You are a royal priesthood, a holy priesthood, offering up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God.
   
  This is what it means to be a Christian.  Worship is the priority.  Worship is first.  Before ministry there is always worship.  In Isaiah 6 we read of worship by the antiphonal angels, “Holy, holy, holy...holy, holy, holy,” they said.  And once Isaiah saw the holiness of God, he was destroyed and devastated and crushed and he cried out that he should be cursed along with Israel because he had a dirty mouth and he lived among a dirty-mouthed people.  And the Lord sent an angel with a coal from off the altar and put it on his mouth because penitence and cleansing is painful, that’s the imagery there.  And he was cleansed and his sin was cleansed. And he was purged.  And then God said, “Whom shall I send?  Who will go for us?”  He said, “Here am I, send me.” And the Lord sent him.  Service always follows worship.  It’s the vision of God that comes first, as it did for Isaiah.
   
  So worship is essential because it is commanded in Scripture.  It is THE priority.  Before we are anything else, we are worshipers of the true God, the God who is not only the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob but who is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  In fact, it would be well, I think, for us to say of ourselves, we are not only believers in Jesus Christ, we are not only Christians, but we are worshipers of God through the power of the Spirit who give all the glory to Christ.  We are worshipers.  Our worship is not personal and private, intuitive, mystical kind of spirituality, our worship is of the true God revealed in Scripture. 

  Now there’s a second thing to consider.  We could also ask how influential is our worship, or how vast are the implications of our worship.  And the answer to that is, how we worship influences everything, absolutely everything.  How you worship is the most defining thing about your life.  Superficial worship, shallow worship, wrong worship cripples, debilitates, robs God of what is rightfully His, limits your usefulness, denigrates your whole Christian experience.  We need to worship in the right way, to give God what He is due and to put ourselves in a position of being most useful to God. 
    
  What is unacceptable worship?  Worship that has a wrong influence, a wrong affect, a wrong result?  Number one, worship of false gods.  We’ve already seen that in the commandments of Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5.  Romans 1:20 talks about how unacceptable this is. “Since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power, divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made so that men are without excuse.  They did not...even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God.  They didn’t give Him thanks.  They became futile in their speculations, their foolish heart was darkened, professing to be wise they became fools.  They exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man, birds, four-footed animals, crawling creatures."  This is unacceptable worship. 

  Job 31:24, “If I put my confidence in gold, and call fine gold my trust, if I gloated because my wealth was great, and because my hand had secured so much, if I had looked at the sun when it shone, or the moon going in splendor and my heart became secretly enticed, and my hand threw a kiss from my mouth at the sun or the moon, that too would have been an iniquity calling for judgment for I would have denied God above.  If I worship gold, or if I worship an idol made of gold, or if I worship the moon or the sun as the pagans have, I have denied the true God.” 

  Deuteronomy 4:14, “The Lord commanded me at that time to teach your statutes and judgments that you might perform them in the land where you’re going over to possess it.  So watch yourselves carefully, since you didn’t see any form on the day the Lord spoke to you at Horab from the midst of the fire, lest you act corruptly and make a graven image for yourselves in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the sky, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water below the earth, beware lest you lift up your eyes to heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the hosts of heaven, and be drawn away and worship them and serve them, those which the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.” 

  Don’t worship animals.  Don’t worship stars again, celestial creation.  There are biblical warnings about any supposed deity that you worship in something created is really worshiping demons. 

  When you go to the Old Testament you can hear Isaiah denounce this, you can hear Ezekiel denounce it, you can hear Jeremiah denounce it, Daniel denounce it.  It is denounced in the New Testament, a couple of times in the book of Acts, in the book of Revelation, the worship of any false god.  Perhaps the most memorable of all these passages begins in Isaiah 44:12  “The man shapes iron into a cutting tool, does his work over the coals, fashions it with hammers, working it with his strong arm, gets hungry, his strength fails, drinks no water, becomes weary, working really hard with a cutting tool over the blacksmith fire.  Another man takes wood, shapes it, measures it, outlines it with red chalk, works it with planes, outlines it with a compass, make sit like the form a man, like the beauty of man so that it may sit in a house.  He cuts cedars for himself, takes a cypress or an oak, raises it for himself among the trees of the forest, plants a fir.  The rain makes it grow.  And then it becomes something for a man to burn, so he takes one of them and warms himself.  He also makes a fire to bake bread.  He also makes a god and worships it.  Makes a graven image and falls down before it.”
   
  How ridiculous is that?  To make a god with your own hands?  Take a tree, use some of it to make bread, some of it to keep warm and some of it to make a god.  God does not look kindly on the worship of a false god.  There is a movement today, a very popular movement that says that God will accept the worship of a false god if that’s all you knew.  That somehow God will overlook the fact that you’re worshiping a false god and based on your sort of noble effort, He will take you into His heaven.  Not true.  It is not acceptable to worship a false god.
   
  Secondly, it is unacceptable to worship the true God in a wrong form.  In Exodus 20 the people of Israel were told to have no graven image.  It didn’t take them long, chapter 32, they already had a graven image.  They already had a graven image, a golden calf.  The Lord speaks to Moses about this, “The people have corrupted themselves, they have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them.  They have made for themselves a molten calf and have worshiped it and have sacrificed to it and said, ‘This is your God, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.’” That’s the bizarre part, they were worshiping the true God of Israel who brought them out of Egypt in the form of a golden calf.  It is unacceptable to worship a false god.  It is equally unacceptable to worship the true God in a wrong form.  

  Thirdly, we could say another form of unacceptable worship is the worship of the true God in a self-styled way.  You find this illustrated, for example, in Leviticus 10.  Again, it didn’t take very long after these commandments were given by God, the main one being to worship Him in a true way, to have people violate that.  In Leviticus 10 is the story of Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, who took their respective fire pans and offered strange fire before the Lord, intruding in the priestly office in a way that was a violation of God’s ordered plan and revelation.  The fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them and they died before the Lord.  Not only are you to worship the true God in the true form as a spirit and not an idol, but in the true way which He has ordained.
   
  And, fourthly, another unacceptable way to worship God is to worship the true God with a wrong attitude.  You might actually be worshiping the true God, you might actually be worshiping the true God as spirit, not in a form made by man, you might be worshiping the true God as spirit in ways that the Scripture says you are to worship, but you might be doing it with the wrong attitude.  This is hypocritical, formal legalism, ritualism.   

  Malachi 1:6, “A son honors his father, a servant his master.  Then if I am a Father, says God, where’s My honor?  If I’m a master, where’s My respect, says the Lord of host to you?  O priests who despise My name.  But you say, ‘How have we despised Thy name?’  You’re presenting defiled food upon My altar.  Instead of bringing the best, you bring what’s rotten and can’t be eaten.  You say, ‘How have we defiled You in that you say the table of the Lord is to be despised?  You defile Me when you think so little of the offering brought to Me that you bring what is corrupt.  Or when you...verse 8...present the blind for sacrifice.  Is not the animal supposed to be perfect?  And when you present the lame and the sick, is it not evil?  Why not offer it to your governor?  Would he be pleased with you?  Would he receive you kindly, says the Lord of hosts?  But now you will not entreat God’s favor that He may be gracious to us?  With such an offering on your part, will He receive any of you kindly, says the Lord of hosts?  O that there were one among you who would shut the gates that you might not uselessly kindle fire on My altar.  You are phony, your religion is phony, your offerings are phony, your fires, sacrificial fires are useless.  I am not pleased with you, nor will I accept an offering from you for from the rising of the sun even to its setting, My name will be great among the nations and in every place, incense is going to be offered to My name, and a grain offering that is pure for My name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts.  But you are profaning it.”
   
  Verse 13, “You say, ‘My how tiresome it is,’ and you disdainfully sniff at it, says the Lord of hosts.”  In other words, you’re weary with all these offerings.  “Just performing and you bring what was taken by robbery, what is lame and sick.  Should I receive that from your hand?  But cursed be the swindler who has a male in his flock and vows it but sacrifices a blemished animal to the Lord, for I am a great king...a great king, says the Lord of hosts.”
   
  Look at chapter 3.  He says in verse 8, “Will a man rob God?  You’re robbing Me?  ‘How have we robbed You?’  In tithes and offerings, you’re cursed with a curse, you’re robbing Me, the whole nation of you.  Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse so there may be food in My house.  Test Me now in this, says the Lord of hosts.”  Verse 13, “Your words have been arrogant against Me, says the Lord.  Yet you say, How have we spoken against You?  You said it is vain to serve God and what prophet is it that we have kept His charge and that we have walked in mourning before the Lord?  So now we call the arrogant blessed.  Not only are the doers of wickedness built up but they also test God and escape.”
   
  Everything was hypocritical, phony, perfunctory, ritualistic, legalistic, false worship.  Amos chapter 5, “Stop your songs,” he says, “your hearts aren’t right, your music is an abomination to Me.”

  God is to be worshiped as the true God, in the true form as that eternal spirit, in the true way that Scripture calls us to worship, and with a true heart attitude.  Then it becomes acceptable worship.
   
  What is acceptable worship?  Psalm 24:3, “Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord?  Who can come up to worship?  Who may stand in His holy place?  He who has clean hands and a pure heart.”  You’re clean on the inside, you’re clean on the outside.  “He who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood, who has not sword deceitfully.  He shall receive a blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation.  This is the generation of those who seek Him who seek Thy face, even Jacob.” 

  Acceptable worship is the most defining thing in your life.  The goal of salvation is to produce worshipers.  God wants to be worshiped acceptably.  We are first and foremost beyond anything else worshipers of the living and true God.  You hear all these people today who say, “Well yes, I believe in God and I believe in Jesus, but I don’t go to church.  I have a very personal faith.” If you don’t hunger and thirst for the collective expression of worship, it’s likely that you’re probably not a Christian, or if you are one, you are into disobedience.  We are those who worship in the spirit of God and give glory to Jesus Christ.  This is the highlight of our lives.  Personal worship, yes in the true way, worship from the heart at all times, but also a hunger for the collective expression of worship and praise that comes when the people of God gather.  We don’t forsake the assembling of ourselves together.  We gather together as those who are true worshipers.  In fact, for us it’s the highlight.  We can’t wait to come together with the people of God to offer worship to our Redeemer. 
   
  That worship takes a lot of forms.  True worship touches every area of our life.  Romans 14:18 says, “How you worship affects how you treat fellow Christians.” That’s a matter of acceptable worship.  Romans 15:16 tells us that winning the lost is a form of worship.  Ephesians 5:10 says walking in the light is acceptable worship.  Philippians 1:11, Philippians 4:18 says personal holiness is acceptable worship.  First Timothy 2:3, prayer for others is acceptable worship.  First Timothy 5:4, gratitude is acceptable worship.  First Peter 2:20, righteous suffering is acceptable worship.  Everything in our lives done by the power of the Spirit to the glory of God becomes acceptable worship.  Hebrews 13:15-16 sort of wraps it up, “Through Him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God that is the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name and do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifice God is pleased with praise, with giving thanks, with all manner of doing what is good and sharing with others.” All of that constitutes worship. 
   
  
  

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  The Kind of Worship God Desires  -Pt. 2

  Worship is not a matter of time, it’s a matter of content.  More music does not necessarily enrich worship.  Worship is a mental experience and is enriched by what the worshiper knows.  It is not an emotional experience, emotion follows.  But we worship when we praise the Lord, that’s one way, corporately, and our praise is informed with revelation.  Truth informs and therefore increases worship.
   
  So again, the question is not how can you worship with so much time taken up in preaching, but rather, how can you worship with so little time taken up in preaching?  Our text speaks to that issue, John 4:21, Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall you worship the Father.  You worship that which you do not know, we worship that which we know.”  Therein is the essence of true worship compared with false worship.  False worship is an emotional involvement without knowledge.  True worship is based on knowledge. 

  It goes on to say, “For salvation is from the Jews, but an hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth.  Yes in spirit, with the full expression of human emotion.  But also in truth, for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.  God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” The Samaritans worshiped in spirit void of truth.  You might say the Jews worshiped with truth void of spirit.  But the Father seeks those who worship Him with fully engaged expressions of praise as well as fully informed minds. 

  To worship God is the response to a recognition of who He is and what He has done.  The more you know about God and the more you know of His revelation, the more informed your worship is.  Worship comes from an old, old English word worth ship, an old Anglo-Saxon word, that is to ascribe worth to someone.  Worship is simply ascribing to God that which you know to be true about Him.  And if you have a limited understanding of God, then you have a limited capacity to ascribe worth to Him.  If you have a rich and fully informed understanding of the nature of God, then you have the capacity to ascribe to Him full worth as full as has been revealed.
   
  We want to be those kinds of worshipers, fully informed so that what we express in praise with our emotion is in response to the full understanding of the God we worship, who He is and what He has done.  Therefore, we go back to our question, how can you worship with so little content?  There’s a lot of talk about worship today and there is an emphasis on worship that in many cases has replaced preaching and theology...and thus worship is an uninformed expression when it should be a fully informed expression. 

  Worship is foundational.  There are four reasons for considering worship as a priority, number one, Scripture is filled with worship.  From the beginning to the end, the people of God are marked by worship.  And God accommodates that worship by designing it into His redemptive purpose and into His covenants.  The Ten Commandments begin with a true adoration and worship of God alone and no other God.  The Great Commandment which is another way to express that first commandment about having no other gods and worshiping only the true God says, “To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.” That is to gather all your faculties around the reality of who God is and love Him for who He is. 

  In the middle of Israel there was a tabernacle and the tabernacle was the place where God dwelt in the Holy of Holies and the tabernacle was the very centerpiece of life in Israel.  The tribes were placed around the tabernacle, three on each of the four sides so that life focused on the tabernacle because God was to be the focus, worship was to be the focus of their life.  When the temple was constructed, the temple became the focal point of life in Israel.  All things went in the direction of the temple.  The Old Testament is then marked by worship. 

  And you follow the history of Israel even before Abraham and before Israel, you have the patriarchs building altars...Abraham building altars everywhere he traveled, and worshiping God as Noah had and others before him, and even Abel who worshiped God acceptably at an altar in the book of Genesis.  Worship dominates the Old Testament.  It also is central to the New Testament.  Romans 12 says, “We are to offer to God spiritual worship which is acceptable to God.”  First Peter 2:5, “We are to give spiritual sacrifices which are again acceptable to God.” 

  If you were to study the Old Testament and watch the flow of it, you would see that when the people of God worshiped God in an acceptable way, they are blessed, and when they don’t, they are punished.  The same would be true of the New Testament where God carves out the redeemed church, a group of true worshipers who thus experience His blessing.  When you look into the future into heaven, heaven is marked by worship.  The best glimpse of heaven, found in Revelation 4 and 5, marks worship as the dominant feature of our eternal life.  

  Scripture is filled with worship from Genesis right through to Revelation.  Secondly, worship touches all of life. It is not a once a week experience, it is a way of life.  If we say it’s a way of life, for whom is it a way of life?  And the answer to that is for those who have been redeemed, regenerated and born again...for those who have been converted, justified, whatever salvific term you want to use.  Acceptable worship occurs only in the heart of one who has been transformed.  Salvation launches us into the capability of worshiping God.  That is to say, no one apart from salvation can worship God.  People might think they worship God, they do not.  The Jews who talk about worshiping the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob do not truly worship Him because there is no access to worshiping Him, there is no acceptable worship to be offered to Him apart from faith in Jesus Christ. 
   
  I remember a couple of years ago when I was talking to some Russian pastors about Allah and they were under the illusion, and had been for many years, that Allah was just another name for God and that Muslims worshiped the true God.  They do not worship the true God.  You cannot worship the true God unless you have been redeemed through faith in Jesus Christ.  Acceptable worship belongs only to those who are saved, only those redeemed, justified and regenerated.  That’s when the capacity to worship begins.  We are the true worshipers, all the rest is false worship of the true God.  There is worship of false gods, and there is false worship of the true God.  And so, being saved then opens up for us the opportunity and the privilege and the responsibility and the duty of true worship. 

  What are we talking about when we talk about “worship touches all of life?”  Just about everything we do that could be labeled righteous is a form of worship.  Romans 14:18 The Apostle Paul has been talking about how we treat our fellow believers.  We...verse 13...don’t put an obstacle or a stumbling block in a brother’s way.  We don’t do anything that’s going to harm another believer.  And coming on down to verse 18, Paul writes, “For he who in this way serves Christ is acceptable to God.” 

  That little phrase “acceptable to God” is very often connected to worship, such as in Romans 12 and 1 Peter 2.  So here is a form of that worship that is acceptable to God and it is this, the way you treat your fellow Christian endeavoring never to cause your fellow Christian to stumble into sin.  That is to say, having a godly influence on others becomes a form of worship which is acceptable to God. 

  In Romans 15:16, Paul says that he was given grace from God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, ministering as a priest the gospel of God that my offering of the Gentiles might become acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.  Paul says, when I preach the gospel and people respond and believe and those people are then offered to God as a offering, this is acceptable to God.  Here then is another form of worship, that is leading someone to the knowledge of Christ causes you to have the privilege of offering, as it were, that person to God as an acceptable sacrifice.
   
  Worship is not just corporate praise.  Worship is how we treat other believers and taking the gospel to non-believers who respond.  In Ephesians 5, we look a little more broadly at the concept of worship.  Paul is talking about how we are to walk in the light, verse 8, walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth, trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.  Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, instead, expose them.  Walking in the light is pleasing to the Lord.  Walking in the light is acceptable to the Lord.  Walking in the light which means goodness and righteousness and truth is an acceptable form of worship.  Again you can see how it touches all of life, how we deal with fellow believers, how we deal with non-believers, our own commitment to goodness and righteousness and truth.
   
  In Philippians1:9, Paul prays that "your love may still abound more and more in real knowledge and all discernment so that you may approve the things that are excellent in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ."  And then this, “Having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.  Personal righteousness is what is in view here, a life lived in love abounding, in real knowledge, consequently in discernment, approving things that are excellent, sincere, blameless, filled with the fruit of righteousness to the praise and glory of God.  Personal holiness is acceptable worship.  Personal righteousness is a form of worship.
   
  In 1 Timothy 2:3, we read this, “This is good and acceptable in the sight of God, our Savior.”  Notice that each of these passages has in it the idea of being acceptable to God or pleasing to God.  And what is he talking about?  Verse 1, “I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority in order that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.”  And not only is it an acceptable offering to God, or an acceptable expression of worship to pray for the salvation of others, including all that are over us, but to lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.  This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior.  It matters to God how we live in society in a virtuous and godly way, praying for the salvation of those around us and responsible for us.  This too is acceptable worship.  In 1 Peter 2:20, it says, “When you do what is right and suffer for it and patiently endure it, this is acceptable with God,” or “This finds favor with God.” 
   
  All these things are ways to worship and they consume our lives...how we treat fellow believers is an expression of worship to God.  There is a way to treat them that becomes acceptable worship.  Winning the lost by means of preaching the gospel is a way to offer spiritual sacrifices unto God.  Walking in the light, that is in goodness and righteousness and truth is acceptable worship.  Personal holiness is acceptable worship.  Prayer for the lost and living godly lives is acceptable worship.  Caring for widows is acceptable worship.  Suffering for righteousness is acceptable worship.

  But we want to talk specifically about the aspects of praise as acceptable worship.  So for a moment, look at Hebrews chapter 13. 

  So, the importance of worship, our first point...it dominates Scripture from Genesis to Revelation.  Secondly, it touches all of life.  It is the way we live our lives.  Thirdly, the importance of worship can be seen in that worship is the major theme in redemptive history.  That is to say, we’re being redeemed with a view to being worshipers.  Nehemiah 9:6, “The host of heaven worships Thee.”  That’s what all the holy angels in glory do.  

  When God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden, they were there as expressions of His creative power for the purpose of worshiping Him.  They, however, decided to turn from Him and worship something else.  In the case of Eve, she worshiped the serpent, that is she entrusted her destiny to him as someone who was more truthful with her than God.  And Adam, I guess you could say, in a sense, worshiped her cause he followed her into sin.  And so, God then ordained redemption which He immediately demonstrated after the Fall by killing an animal, taking the skin and covering the sinner.  He would cover their sin.  There was the possibility of sin being covered.  There was also the promise that one would come who would bruise the serpent’s head, crush Satan for his evil deeds, once and for all finally.  That launched redemptive history and redemptive history is God recovering worshipers.
   
  The Fall came when Adam and Eve chose not to worship God.  The first division among men was the division between Cain and Abel and it was a severe division in which Cain killed Abel, that’s how much hostility there was in that relationship.  And all of that hostility can be traced right back to the issue of worship.  Cain worshiped unacceptably, his offering was rejected.  Abel worship acceptably, his offering was received and it was this issue of acceptable and non-acceptable offerings that led to this murder.
   
  If you follow the history of the plan of redemption into the patriarchal period, you will see that God demonstrated Himself to the patriarchs again and again.  Abraham on occasion after occasion built an altar at which point he worshiped God, as other patriarchs did.  And when the patriarchs worshiped God properly, they were blessed.  And when they did not, they were punished.  When God then out of the loins of Abraham brought into existence the nation of Israel, as long as Israel worshiped God acceptably, they were blessed, and when they did not, they were punished.  The nation Israel escaping out of their incarceration for 400 years in Egypt went into the wilderness.  When they got into the wilderness they made the golden calf, violating God’s instruction for worship and were condemned to 40 years of wandering and dying in the desert without ever entering the promised land.  Even Moses never was able to enter the promised land because he refused to worship God the way God said He was to be worshiped.  And he expressed an act that was in defiance of God’s clear instruction, he worshiped God by obedience...Moses violated that, never entered the land. 
   
  When Israel went into the land after the older generation died, every time they worshiped God rightly, every time they offered God acceptable worship, they were blessed.  There are illustrations of this, of course, maybe just give you one that comes to mind, 1 Chronicles 29.  “Then David said to all the assembly, ‘Now bless the Lord your God,’ and all the assembly blessed the Lord, the God of their fathers, and bowed low and did homage to the Lord and to the king.  And the next day they made sacrifices the Lord and offered burnt offerings to the Lord, a thousand bulls, a thousand rams, a thousand lambs with their libations and sacrifices in abundance for all Israel.  So they ate and drank that day before the Lord with great gladness.  And they made Solomon, the son of David, king a second time and they anointed him ruler for the Lord, and Zadok as priest.  Then Solomon sat on the throne of the Lord as king instead of David his father and he prospered, and all Israel obeyed him.  And all the officials, the mighty men, and also all the sons of David pledged allegiance to King Solomon, and the Lord highly exalted Solomon in the sight of all Israel, bestowed on him royal majesty which had not been on any king before him in Israel.” 

  Everything went well when they offered God true homage and worship.  And when they did not, they were, as you well know, severely punished.  This was part of what Stephen said in his testimony in Acts 7, “Stephen rehearsing the history of Israel, reminds them that they had made a calf, verse 41 of Acts 7, and brought a sacrifice to the idol and were rejoicing in the works of their hands.  But God turned away and delivered them up to serve the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets, it was not to Me that you offered victims and sacrifices 40 years in the wilderness, was it O house of Israel?  You also took along the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of the god Rompha, the images which you made to worship them.  I also will remove you beyond Babylon.” 

  They dragged into the land the idols and they worshiped the idols.  And we all know the history of the kingdom, the united kingdom and the divided kingdom and all the idolatry that dominated them and led to the Babylonian captivity.  The worship of Israel was corrupted at that point and always there was a remnant, there were pure worshipers.  But the nation apostatized and remained that way even until Jesus’ time.  There were as a revival at the end of the Old Testament era under Nehemiah and Ezra, great revival indicated in the book of Ezra and the book of Nehemiah.  But for the most part, theirs was a history of failing to worship God acceptably.  And Jesus came and began His ministry.  The first thing He did in John’s gospel was to go to the temple and clean it out.  It was corrupt.  It was dominated by corruption.  And Jesus called for true worshipers.  At the end of His ministry, He did the same thing again, cleaning out that corrupt place and calling for true worshipers.  There was always blessings on those who truly worship, always judgment on those who do not.
   
  When the church was born, it was born as an assembly of true worshipers who worship, as we saw in Philippians 3:3, who worshiped the Lord Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit of God.  Scripture then is dominated by worship.  Life is dominated by worship and redemptive history is dominated by the call to true worship.  And again, scenes in heaven are always in the future.  Go to the book of Revelation chapter 4, 5, 11, 14, 15, 19, 22, scenes in heaven are always scenes of worship.
   
  One other thing to say, as if it needed to be said, worship is commanded.  It not only dominates Scripture, it not only dominates life, not only dominates redemptive history, but it is commanded.  Matthew 4:10, and Jesus recites the command.  He is, as you remember, drawn away into temptation and under the temptation of Satan He quotes from Deuteronomy.  In Matthew 4:10, “Be gone, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.”  

  In John 4, Jesus is talking to a Samaritan harlot, a woman who has had, to put it mildly, a very sorted life.  She has had a handful of husbands.  She has been engaged in what you would call today serial monogamy.  But it’s more than that because she is now living in a situation of adultery or fornication because she’s living with a man who is not her husband.  Jesus is not talking to an advanced believer, but to a very immoral woman.  He’s not talking to some kind of Old Testament saint, not talking to a theologian, He’s talking to, from a Jewish perspective, a half-breed harlot.  He is evangelizing the lowest of the low, hated because she was a half-breed, hated more by any who maintained any kind of standard of morality because she was a harlot, Jesus is evangelizing this woman by calling her to become a true worshiper.  He demands worship from her because God demands worship from her.
   
  This is what it is to be saved.  It is to become a worshiper.  That is the essence of evangelism.  It is not just that we seek men in order that we might call them to be worshipers, but look at verse 23, end of the verse, “The Father seeks worshipers.”  This is a divine enterprise.  I don’t hear this in contemporary approaches to evangelism.  I don’t hear a lot of things that are characteristic of gospel evangelism, biblical evangelism.  I don’t hear people being told to become slaves of Jesus Christ.  I don’t hear an emphasis on repenting from sin and confessing Jesus as Lord, denying oneself, taking up a cross and following Him in total obedience.  And I don’t hear the call to become one who is consumed with worshiping God, the true God and the Lord Jesus Christ.  The Father seeks worshipers.  Therefore, as we go out to evangelize our friends and family, people we meet, we are calling them to become worshipers of the true God who worship the true God in the true way.  The Father seeks efficaciously, by the way, effectively true worshipers so that when a person becomes a believer, he or she becomes immediately a worshiper.  True believers worship God.  True believers worship Christ.
   
  In 2 Corinthians 4:15 Paul says, “All things are for your sakes,” he’s talking about his preaching of the gospel of Christ and the resurrection of Christ.  He says, “All things are for your sakes that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God.” That’s worship.  When someone is truly converted, their heart is literally overflowing with gratitude to God that comes forth in praise to His glory.
   
  So acceptable worship is not some additional element of Christian experience, it is what it means to be a Christian.  There’s no such thing as being a Christian and not being a true worshiper.  The Father seeks efficaciously, effectively, savingly to create worshipers whose passion is to worship Him, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
   
  That’s why I don’t think we have to tell true believers to come and worship, to come and praise the Lord, to come and sing hymns to His glory and His honor.  That’s the truest expression of their transformed nature.  And where that doesn’t exist, we have every right to question the claim to a transformation.  Worship is the delight of the believer.  It is the delight of the Christian.  It has been generated by the work of God in the heart. 

  And so, when you come to Christ, you become not only self-denying, obedient, confessing Jesus as Lord and you as His slave, but you become a willing, eager, glad worshiper.  That’s why you love to sing.  That’s why you love to serve.  That’s why you love to go, you love to care.  That’s why you’re concerned about how you treat another believer.  That’s why you are concerned about righteousness, godliness, virtue, truth because all of these are the supernatural evidences of the new creation.  This is the fruit of the work of God in your heart.  And this is only the beginning, folks, because we will engage in this worship throughout eternity. 

  We begin the scene in verse 4 where Jesus had to pass through Samaria.  He had to because He had a divine appointment.  “He came to a city of Samaria, verse 5, called Sychar near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.  And Jacob’s well was there.  Jesus therefore being wearied from His journey was sitting thus by the well.  It was about the sixth hour.  There came a woman of Samaria to draw water.  Jesus said to her, ‘Give Me a drink.’  For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.  The Samaritan woman therefore said to Him, ‘How is it that You, being a Jew, ask for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?’  For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” 

  The Kingdom of Israel had split, as you know, into the Northern Kingdom known as Israel, and the Southern Kingdom known as Judah.  The Southern Kingdom, Judah, which was made up of Judah, the tribe of Judah and Benjamin, didn’t go into captivity until 597 to 586 B.C.  But long before that, the Northern Kingdom was taken captive, 722 B.C.  The Northern Kingdom of Israel was taken by Sargon.  Most of the people were driven out, they were carried as captives to Assyria, many other places, cities of the Medes.  You can read about it in 2 Kings 17.
   
  The conquerors of the Northern Kingdom were content, the Assyrians, were content to leave the very low people in the land.  So they took away for slaves or to sell off to others the best and they left the lowest of the low.  The poor then remained in the land, the land began to be infiltrated by pagans coming from other nations.  They intermarried with the remaining Jews in the land.  They were given the name Samaritans after the capital city Samaria.  This then becomes a mixed race of people who are also mixed in their religion.  They have a combination of elements of Judaism mingled with various forms of paganism that make up this kind of Samaritan religion that exists when our Lord meets this woman. 
   
  They wanted to be accepted by the Jews later on when the Jews came back from captivity and reconstituted the Southern Kingdom.  They wanted to be allowed to reenter and to have some dealings with the Jews.  They were not allowed to do that. 

  In fact, you remember when the remnant came back from Babylonian captivity, began to rebuild the temple, the dispossessed and disdained Samaritans and their allies tried to stop the work.  Remember that?  Ezra writes about it.  The reason they did was because the Samaritans had been refused permission to cooperate with them in the rebuilding.  They wanted to be accepted but they were not allowed to be accepted so they tried to stop it.  They had said, “Let us build with you, for we seek your God as you do.” And the answer from the Jews was, “You have nothing to do with us in building a house unto our God.  Get out of here.”
   
  This blunt refusal exacerbated the animosity between the Samaritan and the Jews, and so they went back to Samaria and back to a mountain in their own area called Gerizim and there they built their own temple.  And that temple lasted until 128 B.C. when it was destroyed by John Hyrcanus who was one of the Maccabaean leaders.  Even after that temple was destroyed, Samaritans continued to offer their worship on that hill where their temple once stood.  And some still do even into the modern era.
   
  They accept only the Pentateuch, historically, and not the rest of the Old Testament.  By the time you come to the period of the Lord Jesus Christ, they are a hated people, they are a despised people.  When Jews have to travel north, they will literally go around and across the Jordan and up another way much more sequitous(?) to avoid going through Samaria.  But Jesus goes through Samaria because He has an appointment with this woman.  This is the key to understanding the passage and it’s why she says, “Why are You talking to me since I am a Samaritan woman and You are a Jew and Jews have no dealings with Samaritans?”
   
  Then Christ reveals to her who He is.  “Jesus answered and said to her ‘If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, Give Me a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.’” Don’t you know, dear woman, that I am the very one you and your people have long to know for all these centuries of your alienation?  I am the one that you have longed to know, the God that you have wished to know and not been allowed to know?  I am the one who can give you living water.
   
  “She said to Him, ‘Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep.  Where then do You get that living water? You’re not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well and drank from it himself and his sons and his cattle.’  Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water shall thirst again.  Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.’  The woman said to Him, ‘Sir, give me this water so I’ll not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.”  He said to her, ‘Go call your husband and come here.’  The woman answered and said, ‘I have no husband.’  Jesus said to her, ‘You well said I have no husband, you have had five husbands and the one whom you now have is not your husband.  This you have said truly.’  And the woman said to Him, ‘I perceive that You are a prophet.’”
   
  She doesn’t deny His remarks about her immoral life.  In fact, she calls Him a prophet, one who spoke for God and could read secrets.  She admits her guilt.  In fact, in verse 29 she reports to others, “Come see a man who told me all the things that I have done.  This is not the Christ or the Messiah, is it?”  She knows this could be the long-awaited Messiah. 

   This is a revelation of Christ to one who is not even seeking, a revelation of Christ who is not an awakened sinner.  He awakens her to her sin and reveals Himself to her, as it were, out of nowhere.  She responds with the most burning question.  Verse 20, and this sets up the discussion on worship, “Our fathers worship in this mountain and You people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” 
   
  That really is a question though it doesn’t take the form of a question.  The question is this, where are we supposed to worship?  If You’re a prophet and You must be because You just told me all the things that You could never know about me, if You are a prophet and You speak for God, sir, please answer one question...where do we worship?
   
  You understand that the assumption in the mind of this uninformed ignorant harlot is that true religion is a matter of worship?  I mean, that’s the first thing out of her mouth.  That is the first question.  The first question from her is not what are You going to do for me?  Can You solve my problems?  Can You give me a better life?  Can You make me more happy, more successful?  There’s one compelling overarching penetrating question and it is this, where do we worship?  The assumption of all religion is that you worship the deity.  How can we ever lose sight of this?  That’s what we’re doing is calling people to be worshipers, even people who are uninformed know that.  Her conscience is pricked.  Her soul is pierced.  She affirms her sin.  Now she wants to make it right.  She wants to approach God.  But where?  How?
   
  And now comes the answer that is so very important.  The answer is, it’s not where, it is whom.  Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall you worship the Father...” 
   
  Wait a minute.  Neither place is His answer.  Neither place.  “You worship that which you don’t know.  We worship that which we know.”  You don’t have the revelation, we have the revelation.  For salvation is from the Jews.  We have been the source of saving truth about God.  We’ve been the repository of divine revelation and you have not.  But an hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth.  And that’s how you must worship, verse 24.
   
  So what He says to her is it’s not about a place, it’s about a person.  It’s not here in Mount Gerrizim, and it’s not even in Jerusalem.  And an hour is coming very soon when even Jerusalem is going to disappear as a place of worship.  Most likely referring to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. 
   
  So Jesus focuses her off the place on to the person.  That text focuses on the second main point that I want to give you, the object of worship...the object of worship.  And it simply says, “You shall...verse 21...worship the Father.”  Verse 23, “True worshipers shall worship the Father.”  End of the verse, “For such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.”  Verse 24, “Those who worship Him.”  It’s not where, it’s whom. 

  And I think we understand this.  But this is huge to them...to her...to the religious world.  We worship a God who is Spirit.  Verse 24, “God is Spirit.”  Literally, Spirit, the God, the God who is one glorious Spirit.  This deals with God’s essential nature.  This gets us into theology proper, as it is called. 
   
  The point is, this is a world of idols and they all had a location and they all had a physical form.  We don’t worship a form in a place.  We worship a God who is Spirit, not form.  As Jesus said, “A spirit hath not flesh and bones as you see Me have.”  We worship the immaterial divine Father, the God who is spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable in His being.  You cannot be conceived in form in any material form.
   
  In Jeremiah 23 verse 23, “Am I a God who is near, declares the Lord, and not a God far off?  Can a man hide himself in hiding places?  Do I not see him...declares the Lord...listen to this...do I not fill the heavens and the earth, declares the Lord?”  Jesus says to this woman, “You’re not worshiping someone who is somewhere.”
   
  In Isaiah chapter 40, “And this is the essential reality about God, that He is spirit.”  Isaiah chapter 40, verse 18, “To whom then will you liken God or what likeness will you compare with Him?  As for the idol, a craftsman casts it, a goldsmith plates it with gold, and a silversmith fashions chains of silver.  He who is too impoverished for such an offering selects a tree that does not rot, seeks out for himself a skillful craftsman to prepare an idol that will not totter.  Do you not know, have you not heard, has it not been declared to you from the beginning?  Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?  It is He who sits above the vault of the earth.  And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.  It is He who reduces rulers to nothing, who makes the judges of the earth meaningless.  Scarcely have they been planted, scarcely have they been sown, scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth, He merely blows on them and they wither.  The storm carries them away like stubble.  To whom then will you liken Me that I should be his equal?, says the Holy One.  Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these stars, the One who leads forth their host by number, He calls them all by name.  Because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, not one of them is missing.”
   
  We’re not talking about a God who can be reduced to gold or wood or metal.  We’re talking about a God who is far beyond that.
   
  In Isaiah 44, after a discussion of the stupidity of making a God out of wood, verse 18 says of those who do that, “They do not know nor do they understand.  He has smeared over their eyes so they cannot see in their hearts so they cannot comprehend.  And they fall down before a block of wood and feed on ashes.  A deceived heart characterizes them.”
   
  Verse 24, “Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, and the One who formed you from the womb, I the Lord am the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by Myself.”  This is the great transcendent God.  God is not an idol and doesn’t want to be compared to an idol. 

  1 Samuel 5, is one of the most interesting moments in the history of Israel.  The Philistines took the ark of God which was not an idol form of God but simply a case holding some of the important memorabilia of Israel’s history as a reminder of God’s faithfulness.  But the Philistines saw it simply as Israel’s God.  And the Philistines warring with Israel stole the ark of God and brought up to Ashdod.  They took the ark of God, brought it to the house of Dagon and set it by Dagon.  Dagon, the fish god, related, of course, to the Philistines’ love for the sea. Now they had Israel’s God, so they just took Israel’s God and stuck Him in the temple with Dagon.  This is where the gods were so they put the ark there.
   
  God did not look favorably on that comparison.  When the Ashdodites rose early the next morning, Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord.  Who...the conversation was...who knocked Dagon over?  And so they took Dagon and set him up again.  And when they arose early the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord and this time the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off on the threshold and only the trunk of Dagon was left to him...which was God’s supernatural way of saying, “Don’t pick this thing up again.” 

  Sure, verse 5 makes sense.  “Therefore neither the priests of Dagon nor all who enter Dagon’s house tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day.”  The worship of Dagon seriously declined.  God is never pleased to be compared to an idol.  Worship is not in a place, not in this mount, not in Jerusalem because God is not confined to a place.  God is Spirit.
   
  Temples?  Sure.  Those were symbols, not representations of God.  The ark was not a representation of God, it was a symbol of God’s presence.  The temple was a symbol of God’s presence and power, the place where people could go and gather and worship God in ways which He had prescribed as acceptable to Him.  Only ignorant Jews confined God to the temple.  Even the Syrians didn’t confine the God of Israel to the temple.  The Syrians called the God of Israel the God of the hills.  They knew He was not confined to that building.  Their gods, they believed, were the gods of the valleys.  Some thought their gods were the gods of the groves.  But even the ignorant Syrians knew that the temple was not placed where God was confined but only the place where God was represented.  And the wise Jews certainly knew it if the Syrians knew it.  God was not confined to a place.  He is a place.  He is every place.  There is no place without God.  God is everyplace at all times.
   
  Acts 17:28, “In Him we live and move and exist.”  His essence fills all space and time, all eternity and all infinity.  He may express Himself in an act, in a unique location, at a specific time, but He is infinite.  This is why Christianity has never had a temple.  You say, “Well I used to go to Temple Baptist Church.”  I know, that is a terrible name for a church...temple?  This is not a temple, this is not the house of God, you are the house of God. 

  So, when it comes to worship, we’re concerned about the importance of worship and we’re concerned about the object of worship, and the object of worship is the infinite transcendent eternal God who is spirit.  Now you can follow this up on your own throughout Scripture and you will find references to God’s infinity, God’s eternality, God as spirit many, many places.  It is clear that true believers have always understood that.  We worship the God who is a spirit so we are never confined to a place. 

  It is not just a God who is spirit, but it is the God who is revealed as to the truth of His nature.  He is spirit by nature, but what are the attributes that make up His nature?  We have to be accurate about them as well.  There are some people who think the God of the Old Testament was evil, angry, hostile, vicious.  No, the same God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament, there’s only one true God.  Worship is exclusive to the one God who is that eternal spirit who is defined as to His nature as spirit and as to His attributes by all of those glorious characteristics that are disclosed to us in Scripture.  The dominant one being His holiness and this is where we’ll pick it up next time. 

  ---

  The Kind of Worship God Desires, Part 3   
  

  When we’re talking about worship, we’re not talking simply about an expression in a song, or a corporate worship, we’re talking about personal commitment to give honor to God all the time everywhere in every circumstance, which then calls us to always do that which we know honors God.  True worship is a life.  It is not something that happens on Sunday.  This is merely a verbal expression of a true worshiping heart. 

  The music is how you find words and how your emotions are released in a wondrous God-designed form so that the joy that you feel as you worship God can be expressed.  But the worship is deeper than the verbal expression.  The worship informs and motivates that verbal expression.  When we say we offer to God worship, we are simply saying we not only with our mouths but with our lives do everything to honor the One who is worthy of all honor.  It is giving to God honor. 

  How important is worship?  It’s very important, it is what God is doing redemptively.  God is seeking worshipers.  And the seeking here is what theologians would call efficacious seeking.  That it is not some kind of random hope-so kind of seeking, but an effectual seeking that brings about a real salvation.  You could parallel this with John 6.  “No man comes to Me except the Father draw him.”  It is the same as the Father drawing.  The Father seeking is an effectual seeking, it is an effective seeking, it is a saving seeking.  It is the Father drawing the soul to Christ.
   
  And what is the Father doing in that?  He is drawing a worshiper.  He’s seeking true worshipers.  In other words, the point of redemption is that we become true worshipers, that we live lives totally and utterly devoted to the worship of God in the fullness of His trinitarian person.  This then is our priority and will be our priority forever and ever in heaven, where our worship will be made perfect.  Whether we hear the Apostle Paul say, “Present your bodies a living sacrifice as an act of spiritual worship,” or we hear Peter say that, “You are a spiritual priesthood offering up spiritual sacrifices to God as an act of worship,” it is the same thing.  We have been saved to become worshipers.  And Jonathan was saying a few minutes ago that I have been controversial through the years, more so outside the church than inside the church.  I know I’m not controversial here because I’ve been teaching here long enough and we all understand what the Word of God teaches.
   
  But one of the things that he mentioned, The Gospel According to Jesus, was the most controversial book I ever wrote.  And all I was saying in that book was one simple truth, Jesus is Lord.  Why would that cause controversy among evangelicals?  I was simply saying that when you become a Christian, you submit yourself to the sovereign lordship of Jesus Christ, you become a slave of Christ, and the rest of your life you do what He wills you to do, you do what honors Him.  And what honors Him is obedience.  It is not that all of a sudden you have now taken Jesus into your life so that He can wave His magic wand and give you all you want, you have now identified Jesus as Lord and you are His slave and the rest of your life you’re going to do what He wants you to do because you love Him and honor Him and you know He is worthy of your complete obedience.  That’s simply Christianity.  The Father seeks true worshipers, those who ascribe to Him honor as a way of life.  It is the absolute priority.  And then secondly, we kind of expanded that thought a little bit, and we talked about the source of worship.  And at this point, I go back to the same statement.  The Father seeks true worshipers.  God not only has in mind that we would be true worshipers, but He effects that...He is the source.  We are redeemed by His power so that we become true worshipers.
   
  What I’m getting at in that sense is that if someone doesn’t acknowledge the lordship of Christ though they say they might believe in Jesus, if someone isn’t lost, to borrow the hymn, in wonder, love and praise, if someone isn’t consumed with the privilege of being a slave of Jesus Christ who is Lord, if someone isn’t totally devoted to worshiping the Lord, to worshiping God in His trinitarian fullness, then you could ask the legitimate question...is that person one whom the Father has truly sought?  You have all kinds of people who talk about Jesus, but you have far less who live lives devoted to His honor.  True worshipers are those who have been transformed by the sovereign power of God into those who worship, Philippians 3:3, in the spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.
   
  What happens when you become a Christian is, you can’t run fast enough from all your fleshly desires.  You leave them all behind.  That’s again that great statement which is repeated throughout the gospels, “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me.” That’s a true worshiper.  True worship is defined by obedience and praise is simply the overflow of that loving heart consumed with the desire to obey and honor the Lord.  We are made worshipers.
   
  You don’t have to artificially generate it.  It’s the most consistent thing that a believer does, is worship.  All you need to do is inform it.  That’s why we teach the Word of God.  And I told you a few weeks ago that I was asked early in the ministry here, “How in the world can your people worship when you give these long sermons?  Take up all the time preaching?”  And my response was, “How in the world could anybody worship if you didn’t know the truth about God?  And the more you know, the more informed your worship is, the more informed your worship is, the more you are a true worshiper.”
   
  Then we considered thirdly the object of worship.  Who is the object of worship?  Verse 21 ends up with, “Worship the Father.”  Verse 23 says, “Worship the Father.”  Verse 24 says, “God is spirit and those who worship Him...”  We are to worship the one who is spirit and the one who is Father.  Okay?  Those are very important ideas.  We are to worship the God who is spirit and the God who is Father.
   
  Now this is where we left off last time.  I talked, first of all, about God who is spirit, that is His essential nature.  He’s not an idol.  He’s not a statue.  He’s not confined to a building.  He’s not confined to a place, a mountain, to a location, to a city.  He is omnipresent, that means He is alive everywhere at all times.  He is eternal, transcends time, no beginning and no ending.  He is ever and always alive, a living spirit to be worshiped at all times and all places, never confined to any location or to any form. 

  Even in the Old Testament, the tabernacle and the temple were not the places that confined God or even contained God.  They were symbols of His eternal and limitless presence.  God is spirit and God is eternal and infinite spirit.  He is at all times everywhere in the universe and He is to be worshiped at all times and everywhere by those who have been sought as true worshipers.
   
  In Acts 7:48, these words are familiar to us, “The Most High does not dwell in that which is made by hands.”  That’s against the background of idolatry, and of all the temples in the world that are supposedly the houses of God’s.  He is that eternal living spirit who is to be worshiped at all times in all places by those who belong to Him. 

  What is the defining characteristic of this God who is spirit?  It is not just that He is limitless, it is not just that He is eternal, it is not just that He is immutable, or unchanging, it is not just that He is omnipresent, all places at all times.  What is His essential nature?
   
  And I think to understand that, we need only to be reminded that we are called in the Old Testament to worship God in fear.  When we worship God at all times in all places, because God is always available to the true worshiper, wherever that true worshiper is, we also need to understand that when we come to God, there is a foundational reality about Him that is to be understood.  And here it comes from Psalm 96:9, “Worship the Lord in holy array, tremble before Him, all the earth.”  Worship the Lord in holy array.  Tremble before Him, all the earth.
   
  To whom does the Lord look?  To whom does He look?  “To this one I will look.”  Isaiah 66:2, “To him who is humble, contrite of spirit, who trembles at My Word.”
   
  Where does this fear come from?  This fear comes from the fact that God is holy.  Turn, for a moment, in your Bible to that wonderful sixth chapter of Isaiah.  And this is a monumental portion of Scripture upon which I have preached a thousand times, probably, through the years.  And I love it greatly.  But it takes us, in a sense, to the essential attribute of God that relates to us worshiping in holy array, worshiping with fear.  And that is God’s holiness. 
   
  “In the year of King Uzziah’s death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne lofty and exalted, the train of His robe filling the temple.  Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings; with two He covered His face, with two He covered His feet, with two He flew.  And one called out to another and said, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of host, the whole earth is full of His glory.’  And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of Him who called out while the temple was filling with smoke.” 

  Here is the prophet Isaiah who has a vision of God and he sees God high and lifted up in majesty and glory on His throne.  And the defining characteristic of God is thrice repeated by the antiphonal angels that are hovering in His presence, “Holy, holy, holy,” back and forth they say.  And His holiness is a threat to a fallen world and so it shakes the very threshold, the foundation of the temple.  And the temple fills with smoke because our God is a consuming fire.  And in that vision, Isaiah is literally devastated and he says in verse 4, “Woe is me.”  He pronounces a curse on himself.  He pronounces damnation on himself, judgment on himself.  “For I am ruined.”  Literally in the Hebrew, “I am disintegrating, I am crumbling into pieces.”  He sees a vision of the holiness of God.  And it is a devastating experience for him.  It results in a fear, it results in a kind of dread, or a kind of horror.  It results in a literal disintegration of his own mind.  He begins to crumble, fall apart under the power of the vision of holiness.  And what is causing him to crumble is he is fully aware of his own sinfulness and it’s a melt down, it’s a total melt down.  He said, “I’m ruined...I’m ruined.  I’ve seen God and I’ve seen holiness.  And if I’ve seen God, God has seen me.  And if He sees me, He sees sin.  I am undone.” 

  Why?  “Because I am a man of unclean lips.”  Why does he say that?  Because depravity shows itself most readily by our mouths.  It’s our speech that betrays our fallenness most often.  Long before your deeds will betray your fallenness, your mouth will betray it.  And he knew it.  Not only that, “I live among a people of unclean lips.” Somebody might say, “Why are you saying this, Isaiah, you’re a prophet of God?”  And he would answer, “For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of host.  I have seen God in His holiness on display.  I am destroyed.”  That’s the essence of a vision that produces worship.
   
  It’s one thing to say God is spirit.  It’s something else to say God is spirit but God is holy, holy, holy.  The true worshiper goes to worship in holy attire out of sense of fear.  How many times in the Old Testament are we instructed to fear the Lord?  Holiness inspires fear because we realize our sinfulness.  It results in brokenness.  It results in trembling at the Word of God, as we saw in Isaiah 66.  True worship rises out of that context.  It is essential if you’re going to be a true worshiper to have a vision of the true God, the God who is spirit but the God who is spirit who is holy, holy, holy.  And I believe the true worshiper starts with an awareness of the awesome holiness of God and his own utter unholiness. 

  This is not something that was only experienced by Isaiah.  Abraham, Genesis 18:27, confessed that he was nothing but dust and ashes before God.  Job in Job 42:5-6 said, “I repent in dust and ashes,” when he had a real vision of God.  Manoah, the father of Samson, came home after he had seen a vision of God and said to his wife, “We shall surely die,” Judges 13.  Why?  “Because I saw God and if I saw God, He saw me.  I saw holiness, He saw sin.  We’re dead.”  That’s the vision. 
    
  This is the vision that rose out of the heart of Ezra.  Turn to Ezra chapter 9, Ezra, the student of Scripture, is stunned by the sins of his own people.  And in Ezra 9 and verse 3, he shows himself in the throes of remorse.  “I tore my garment, my robe, pulled some of the hair from my head and my beard, sat down appalled.  Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel on account of the unfaithfulness of the exiles gathered to me and I sat appalled until the evening offering.”  Just literally distraught over the sinfulness of the people of God.  

  And in verse 5 he launches into a prayer.  “At the evening offering I arose from my humiliation, even with my garment and my robe torn, and I fell on my knees and I stretched out my hands to the Lord my God, and I said, ‘O, my God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift up my face to Thee.  My God.”  Now remember, like Isaiah, we’re talking about the best man.  Isaiah was the best prophet, the leading prophet.  Ezra is the great spiritual teacher of the Jewish population.  And yet, in the presence of God he is overwrought with his own wretchedness. 

  This is the thing that I think is so utterly missing in what poses today as worship.  So much of what I see and hear as worship music, is anything but.  The words might say things that are true.  But there’s a frivolousness, there is a superficiality, there’s a shallowness in the attitude of those who are participating in it that betrays that this is not true worship.  Where is the trembling at the words of the God of Israel?  Where is the humiliation?  Where is the shame and embarrassment?  In verse 6 he says, “For our iniquities have risen above our heads and our guilt has grown even to the heavens.  Since the days of our fathers to this day we’ve been in great guilt and account of our iniquities we are kings and our priests have been given into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plunder, to open shame as it is this day.” And he goes through the history of the tragedy of Israel.  “But now for a brief moment, grace has been shown from the Lord our God, to leave us an escaped remnant and to give us a peg in His holy place...amazing language...just to give us one little place that we can hold on to in His holy presence.  For we are slaves...verse 9...yet in our bondage our God has not forsaken us, but has extended loving kindness to us.”  Verse 10 he says, “And we have forsaken Thy commandments.”
   
  Over in verse 13, he says, “And after all that has come upon us for our evil deeds and our great guilt since Thou, our God, has requited us less than our iniquities deserve and has given us an escaped remnant as this, You let us come out of captivity, You’ve given us our life back and our nation back and we don’t deserve it.”  This is the posture of true brokenness that worships before a holy God.
   
  And verse 14, “Shall we again break Your commandments and intermarry with the peoples who commit these abominations?  Wouldst Thou not be angry with us to the point of destruction, until there is no remnant nor any who escape?  O Lord God of Israel, Thou art righteous.”  And one more comment at the end of verse 15 about our guilt and how no one can stand before Thee because of this.
   
  Where is this in our worship?  Where is this overwhelming sense of our sinfulness?  Yes our sins are forgiven.  Yes they’re removed by the blood of Christ.  But they still should be the horrible reality and the profound burden that makes us worship in humility and brokenness. 

  Turn to Daniel 9, here’s another one of the, I think, the two favorite prayers of mine in the Old Testament, Ezra’s in chapter 9, and Daniel’s in chapter 9.  Daniel praying also with the whole nation in mind, in verse 4, “I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed and said, ‘Alas, O Lord, the great and awesome God.’” Can I remind you that the language here lifts up God?  This is not the language of Jesus is my buddy and God is my pal.  This is a very, very different understanding.  “Alas, O Lord, the great and awesome God who keeps His covenant and loving kindness for those who love Him and keep His commandment.  We have sinned, committed iniquity, acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from Your commandments and ordinances, moreover we’ve not listened to Your servants, the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings, our princes, our fathers, the people of this land.  Righteousness belongs to Thee, O Lord, but to us open shame.”  And it goes on. Verse 8, “Open shame belongs to us.”  Verse 9, “We have rebelled.”  Verse 10, “Nor have we obeyed the voice of the Lord.”  And so it goes. 

  I really think what Christians need is a vision of the holiness of God.  It was Habakkuk, you remember in Habakkuk 3:16, that trembled at the voice of the Holy One.  The restored remnant feared the Lord when they heard His holy Word spoken by Haggai, the prophet, chapter 1 verse 12.  And, you know, even when you come in to the New Testament, God incarnate in Jesus Christ was a frightening, frightening person...truly.  When on the Mount of Transfiguration Jesus pulled His flesh aside and revealed His manifest divine blazing glory, Peter, James and John who were there were literally scared into a coma.  They fell over like dead people, like Ezekiel did when he had a vision of God, like Isaiah did in the sheer fear of being a sinner exposed to holy God.
   
  Perhaps in less dramatic in some ways revelation, you remember that the disciples out on the Sea of Galilee, a storm came up and it says they were afraid, Jesus stilled the storm and it says they were exceedingly afraid.  It is more frightening to have God in the boat than a storm outside the boat.  They knew who was in their boat, they were exposed.  They knew they were in the presence of the Creator who controls the wind and the waves and they were terrified.  And they should have been terrified.  It’s a terrifying thing to be in the presence of absolute holiness when you are a wretched sinner.
   
  Peter was fishing, Luke 5, couldn’t catch anything.  “The Lord said to him, ‘Put out into the deep water, let down your nets for a catch.’  Simon said, ‘Look, Master, we worked all night, caught nothing.  Do You think we did that on one side of the boat?  What do You mean put out your nets for a catch, You think we missed something out there?’  But they obeyed.”  And you remember what happened.  They had so many fish they filled both boats and both boats started to sink.  “And then Simon Peter fell at Jesus feet.”  This is what he said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”  Why did he say that?  Next verse, “For amazement had seized him.”
   
  Trauma had seized him.  He was panicked because he was in the presence of the one who controlled fish.  And Jesus did this in His miracles to traumatize people.  His authority was so apparent, it says, the people were astonished at His teaching.  His words were so absolutely mesmerizing that they said, “Never a man spoke like this man.”  His works were so undeniably divine that the blind man said, “Why here is a marvelous thing, that you know not where He is and yet He’s opened my eyes.  If this man were not from God, He couldn’t do this.”   

  His purity was undeniable.  He said, “Which of you convicts Me of sin?  And there was no answer.”    His truthfulness was unquestionable, “If I say the truth, why do you not believe Me?,” He said.  His power fascinated them.  “What kind of man is this,” they said in Luke 8, “He commands the winds and the water and they obey Him?”  And when the multitudes saw Him heal the paralytic in Matthew 9, they marveled and glorified God who had given such power.  They were stunned at His dominance of the demons.  The multitudes marveled saying, “They had never seen anything like it,” when He cast out the demons in Matthew 9.  When He came to a fig tree and it died in His presence, Matthew 21, they marveled.  When He stood before Pilate silent, showing no fear, giving no defense, the governor himself marveled.  His teaching was so beyond anything they had ever heard, John 7:15 says, “The Jews marveled, saying, ‘How does this man know this, never having learned?’”
   
  The person of Jesus Christ, everywhere He went, was the likes of which no one had ever seen or heard.  It was stunning, traumatizing, frightening and still there was no real true worship.  There was no fear of God before their eyes, to borrow the language of Paul.  But He put Himself on display.  For those who believed, their fear, their wonder, their marvel turned to faith and turned to love.
   
  We need to understand the holiness of Christ and the holiness of God.  We need to understand the fear of the Lord that they need to be viewed with wonder and awe.  We lose that.  We need to remember that God killed Nadab and Abihu for offering strange fire, that the ground opened and swallowed Korah, Dathan and Abiram.  That God killed Uzzah for reaching out with his hand and touching the Ark of the Covenant.  That God killed Uzziah the king, we read about in Isaiah 6 cause he stepped over the boundary line.  That God slew 40 young men who yelled, “Bald head, bald head,” and mocked the prophet.  We need to remember that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, that God destroyed Chorazin and Bethsaida in the New Testament.  We need to remember that God killed Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 when they lied to the Holy Spirit in front of the church.  We need to remember that the Apostle Paul said there are some in the church at Corinth who have died because they desecrated the Lord’s table.  We’re dealing with our awesome God.  He turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt.  He sent serpents to bite the disobedient Israelites.  This is our holy God. 
   
  But beyond that, and this is the way to understand it, He displayed mercy.  The question in the Old Testament that I’m often asked is, “Why is God so cruel?” That’s not the question.  The question is, “Why is God so merciful?”  Everybody deserves that death.  Everybody deserves divine punishment instantaneously and immediately.  But it doesn’t come.  The question in the Old Testament is, “How could God be so patient, so merciful through all of that?”  The answer, of course, is Paul’s words, “He is by nature a Savior.”  But from time to time, God does these devastating acts of holy judgment to remind us of what we all deserve.  But sinners get used to mercy.
   
  I read an article about a guy who said he’s a journalist.  He vacillated between being an agnostic and an atheist and an agnostic and an atheist.  He and his wife had no room in their lives for God.  This is a life of blasphemy.  This is a life of rejection of Christ.  This is a life that has violated the law of God at its first commandment, and that is to worship God and Him alone.  This is a life that would have every reason to be snuffed out and yet he goes on and he flourishes and he succeeds and he advocates his viewpoint.  Sinners get used to mercy.  And so when God acts in judgment, they’re offended by it.

  You remember in Luke 13 the story there, don’t you?, how we mentioned it this morning how Pilate’s men came in and sliced up some worshipers and the following story about how a tower in Siloam fell and killed people.  And they asked the question, “Why did that happen?”  And the Lord’s answer is, “You better repent or you’re going to perish also.”  Ultimately all sinners perish.  The general perspective though is that God is merciful and patient, as Romans 2:4 says, the kindness and forbearance of God.  But we need to understand that God is a holy God.
   
  And even those of us who have come to salvation must understand His holiness.  We worship God in the beauty of holiness and with fear.  Hebrews 12:28 says, “Worship God acceptably.”  What is that?  “With reverence and godly fear.”  I am grieved, wounded by the superficial kind of worship of our great, glorious, holy, merciful God.
   
  Worshiping the God who is spirit and the God who is holy is where worship starts.  And that is why in our worship on the Lord’s day morning when we come together, we sing hymns about God.  The choir sings anthems about God.  We extol God.  We celebrate His glory and His holiness cause that’s the foundation.  Worshiping God who is spirit but the God who is holy and worshiping Him in fear. 

  We not only worship God who is spirit, but we worship the Father, verse 21, verse 23.  God is spirit and those who worship Him, that takes care of worshiping the God who is spirit, but the God who is Father.  The concept of God as Father, God as spirit who is holy, God as Father...this is a glorious truth. It’s not talking about worshiping God as your Father.  That comes later.  It’s talking about worshiping the God who is the Father in the essential nature of the Trinity.  And we’re going to dig into this incredible trinitarian theology.  The idea is that He is the Father in the Trinity where there is the Son and the Holy Spirit.  We’re going to see that God must be worshiped not only as the eternal, omnipresent spirit, the eternal, omnipresent spirit who is absolutely perfectly holy, but He is the God who is a Trinity.  He is in trinitarian relationship.  This is the essence of His nature. 

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