What is Worship? - The Posture of Worship
What is Worship? • Sermon • Submitted
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What is Worship?
What is Worship?
Text: John 4:20-26
20 “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”
21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
22 “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
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.
24 “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
25 The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.”
26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”
Title: What is Worship?
Context
Context
Context:
Jesus has just been preaching and teaching in Judea:
Judea is the region where Jerusalem is. The Jewish temple is in Jerusalem.
When Jesus finds out that the Pharisees had heard that He was making and baptizing more disciples than John, He leaves Judea and returns to Galilee.
Galilee is a region north of Judea on the other side of Samaria. Nazareth is in Galilee, which is where Jesus spent most of His childhood after they came back from Egypt.
So Jesus is going home.
Here’s the catch: The Jewish people hated the Samaritans… They often skirted the whole region just to avoid them.
But Jesus chooses to go through Samaria. There was a road that went out to the East, across the Jordan and through the desert that many Jews would rather take when traveling north, but Jesus traveled right through the heart of the region to the city most despised by His jewish counterparts.
Remember there was a real tension between Jews and Samaritans.
Context: Their schism dated back to the Babylonian Exile.
The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Religion)
They (Samaritans) contended that Mount Gerizim was sacred because it was the site where the patriarchs made sacrifices, and where the Israelites made the first sacrifice upon arriving in Canaan.
In fact, the Samaritans saw the Jewish temple in jerusalem as illegitimate because the Samaritans were largely made up of the group that was allowed to stay during the exile…
That’s why when the Jews come back from exile in Ezra 4, the samaritans are opposed to the building of the temple in Jerusalem…
The Samaritans claim to be the true inheritors of Israel’s tradition because the rest of Israel was dismantled by the Babylonians and taken to another land. When they came back, they trried to restore things the way they were, btu the Samaritans claimed they were the ones who were left and should carry on the traditions…
So when Jesus shows up on the mountain to drink from the same well Jacob dug, the woman immediately brings up the conflict.
9 Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
Modern translation: “See, this is exactly the problem with you Jews. You come to this region, on this mountain, sit at our well, I’m drawing with MY bucket and you think you’re entitled to a drink? Just like you think you’re entitled to the way you worship. You think we are less than you, you look down on us, and now you’re entitled to even what we have?
The answer that Jesus gives takes the argument completely outside the current political climate:
13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again;
14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
He piques her interrest with this and she wonders where the water is at. He tells her, Go call your husband… John 4:17 “17 The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’;” John 4:18 “18 for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.””
This is the part where I can see the political divide: John 4:19-20 “19 The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. 20 “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.””
This woman is given a word of knowledge. Jesus knows things that He shouldn’t, and she even acknowledges tthat He must be a prophet, but then returns right back to the argument…
It reminds me of people who will come to church, have an experience with God, then return back to their life and argue about politics rather than focusing on the kingdom…
They believe that Jesus is coming back, but they are filled with anxiety about the what ifs…
What if he gets re-elected… What if he doesn’t get re-elected… Will the real president please stand up… Are we sure that’s what happened?
Well, I think the government is out to get us… Well I think we should all share… So I don’t have to work....
Well what if....
AND THE WHOLE ARGUMENT, JESUS IS TRYING TO GET THROUGH TO HER… YOU’RE MISSING WHAT’S RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU!
Aren’t we just like that woman? Rather argue about politics, or church preference, or which songs to sing, or which color the carpet should be, and Jesus is going, do you not see what’s happening?
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND!
What you think is important pales in comparison to the magnitude of the situation that is transpiring while we speak…
21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
It’s bigger than that! It’s bigger than politics, it’s bigger than church splits, it’s bigger than theological disagreements, it’s bigger than the stresses of every day life. It’s bigger!
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND!
But before He completely dismisses the whole argument He says,
22 “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
In other words, there is an opinion to be had in this argument… It does matter to some degree that you know a bit about it.
We aren’t supposed to just stick our head in the sand and pretend the world isn’t spinning. We are responsible for being the voice of reason and ethics and morals to this country with our vote.
But it’s not the main thing… I participate while I’m here, but this world is not my home!
There’s something bigger waiting for me! Something so grand my mind can’t conceive. There’s something better waiting for me.
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.
24 “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
What is Worship?
What is Worship?
When I started my word study on this idea of “worship” I found out that we have one word in English that is “worship” but there are several words in the original languages that describe what worship is…
Worship is a deep concept that is hardly described by one meaning or word, but spans across language and testament consistently
Both the Greek and Hebrew words that are translated as worship are all verbs that indicate some type of activity…
In other words, Worship is not simply words, but action… Worship isn’t just something you can say or declare, but it is an action that must be taken…
In other words, it is not just praise… We have relegated worship to the song service, but the worship described in the Bible is so much deeper than praise… It is a different phenomena altogether…
In the original language, there are two pictures of worship.
The Posture of Worship
The Posture of Worship
The first is the Posture of worship…
The posture of worship is often described as being bowed down or prostrate… It is a symbol of humility and reverence and awe…
When we are before the throne of God, we will be so overwhelmed with His majesty that we will be found prostrate in the posture of worship…
When Paul was on the road to Damascus, he was knocked off his Donkey and found himself prostrate on the ground and said, LORD LORD…
The posture of worship is the activity we participate in when we say we are having “praise and worship”… We are pairing our practice of praise with the posture of worship…
We are bowing ourselves down at the feet of Jesus, showing our humility and reverence for Him… That is the posture of worship…
The Pharisees were good at the posture of Worship… They were good at looking the part…
8 ‘This people honors Me with their lips,
But their heart is far away from Me.
13 Then the Lord said,
“Because this people draw near with their words
And honor Me with their lip service,
But they remove their hearts far from Me,
And their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote,
Their reverence… their worship… they have the posture of worship, but their hearts are far from me…
You can be good at the posture of worship but like this woman at the well, miss the big picture completely…
The Jews and the Samaritans were so caught up in squabbles over the law and geography that they missed the point completely…
The point is not where or how, but that you do it in Spirit and in Truth…
The Posture of Worship should be a reflection of your spirit…
The Posture of Worship should be a reflection of your spirit…
Some people are good at the show, but their heart is far from him… That’s why we have preachers and worship leaders that are falling prey to the schemes of the enemy…
Scandals and backsliding… People get so caught up they miss the heart of God…
The Posture of Worship has to stem from what’s happening in your Spirit…
If it’s not originating in your spirit, it results in a posture of worship that is shallow and fake…
The Posture of Worship must be true…
The Posture of Worship must be true…
If you are just going through the motions, your posture of worship is not in truth…
It profits no one if we come in here and go through the motions, but allow our minds to be on something other than Him…
He is the focus of our worship! He is the focus of our affections…
Our Posture of Worship must reflect what is happening in our Spirit and it must be true…
This was another shortcoming of the Pharisees… Their worship of God was done for their own sake, not because they were in Love with Him…
They would spend their time worshipping out of ritual and tradition… To be seen by men…
5 “When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.
They have received their reward, because their reward is to be seen by men....
The Posture of Worship is not a show!
The Posture of Worship is not a show!
True worship is done because our affections for Him are true…
The arguments over stylistic preference, furniture choice, carpet color, music genres, all seem pointless and arbitrary when worship is the result of our affections toward him…
I think the reason we have so many church splits, and scandals, and criticisms is because we have formed a posture of worship that is concerned more with the show of worship rather than the root of our affections…
The church today has lost what it means to worship in Spirit and in Truth…
Their posture of worship has been reduced to a 15 minute song service that comes before a motivational speech they call a sermon…
I would rather have a dozen people who would get vulnerable with God in the sanctuary and love on Him and allow their worship to be the result of their Spirit’s affection toward Him, than a room full of people who sing a song because it sounds good…
Story about worship night where I banned any hype songs…
We need honesty and vulnerability and humility and reverence… The style of music is of secondary importance to me… The skill of the musicians is of tertiary importance to me…
There is nothing more important when it comes to worship than our having genuine affections toward Him…
I have my own stylistic preferences like everyone else, but when it comes to my worship, it’s not my preferences that shape my affections for Him!
Altar Call
Altar Call
Let’s take a few minutes and participate in a genuine posture of worship… Mary can sing whatever she wants, but let’s gather around these altars and participate in the posture of worship…
There’s a second part to this message…
The Service of Worship… be here Wednesday night to hear that.