Sermon Tone Analysis

Video On Worship: 3:06

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Spiritual Disciplines: Worship

In the video, the narrator noted that “Everyone worships”.

It’s more a matter of what it is we worship.

She went on to say that: Next Slides

“When we worship the created and not the Creator, we are left unfulfilled and unsatisfied.

We deny God the worship that is rightfully His.”

In case you haven’t guessed yet, this morning as we continue in our series on The Spiritual Disciplines, as we begin to look in to the Spiritual Discipline of Worship.

So far, as we have been going through the Spiritual Disciplines, we looked first of all at the Spiritual Discipline of our Time in God’s Word.

This is the most important off all the disciplines, as this is the area where God Himself speaks to us the most.

Then we moved into the Spiritual Discipline where we plug into the power source, that is the Spiritual Discipline of Prayer.

We now move into the 3rd Spiritual Discipline, the Spiritual Discipline of Worship.

Worship is, perhaps, the most misunderstood of all the Spiritual Disciplines.

There is really: Next Slide

2 Reasons why worship is misunderstood:

First,

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We often equate worship to one specific activity-Singing.

In too many eyes on Sunday mornings at church, we move from worship into the prayer time, from worship into the offering, from worship into Communion, from worship into our time in God’s Word.

But when you really drill down, all of these things are a part of worship, and worship doesn‘t stop there as we saw in the video earlier.

The second reason worship is often misunderstood is the Next Slides

We often limit worship to one specific location: Church.

Worshipping in one specific location is not something that is new to our culture today, it has been going on since Biblical times.

We see this illustrated in John 4. Go ahead and turn there, as your turning, let me set the scene for you.

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John 4-Page 1131 in the pew Bibles

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Add map of Samaria later

Jesus had just spent time ministering in Judea, and was now ready to head back to Galilee.

The quickest way to Galilee, was to go through Samaria, which is the direction Jesus chose to go with His disciples.

Once in Samaria, they arrived to the town of Sychar.

Jesus sent His disciples to Sychar to get some food, or at least that is what appears to be taking place.

The real reason was that He had a divine appointment.

Weary from travel, Jesus sat down by a well.

It was right about noon, the heat of the day, when a Samaritan woman came to the well to draw water.

Now there are a couple key things to note here, one, there were several wells closer to town that this woman could have drawn her water from, and two, no one came to draw water in the heat of the day.

Generally they came towards the evening hours when it was much cooler.

The Samaritan woman had come during the heat of the day, and to a well off the beaten path for some very specific reasons.

She was an outcast.

In the eyes of the Jews, all Samaritans were outcasts, but this woman was also an outcast in the eyes of her own people.

With this as the back drop, let me read part of the passage to you:

John 4:7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water.

Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”

8 (For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.)

9 The Samaritan woman said to Him, “How is it that You, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and Who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”

11 The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep.

Where do You get that living water?

12 Are You greater than our father Jacob?

He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”

13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”

17 The woman answered Him, “I have no husband.”

Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.

What you have said is true.”

At this point in time it dawns on her that this was no ordinary Man.

Wanting to move the topic from her life of sin to something else, she said to Jesus:

“Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.

20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but You say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”

So you can see that questions about where worship ought to take place has been around a long, long time.

But something else is about to take place in this passage that is very important, look at the very next verse, verse 21: Next Slide

John 4:21, 23 & 24

He goes on to add in verses 23&24: Next Slides

Now there are 3 keys I want you to notice in these verses.

The first key is that now that Jesus was on the scene, worship as it was known, had changed.

Up until He appeared on the scene, location was a key part of worship, and the Temple in Jerusalem was where most worship was to take place.

But now that Jesus was on the scene, worship was changing from an external conformity to ceremonies and rituals, into an internal move of the heart.

I guess you could say that location was still very important, but the desired location had changed from a physical one to a spiritual one.

The next key I want you to take note of from these verses is extremely important: Next Slides

God seeks our worship.

Look at the end of verse 23: “ for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.”

Did you pick that up?

The Father, the God of the universe is seeking worshippers.

Now I want to make sure you understand something here, God, being all powerful, could force all created beings to worship Him.

If He wanted you on your knees before Him right now, it would take nothing more than a thought from His mind and you would bow before Him.

But that wouldn’t mesh with what Jesus goes on to say to the Samaritan woman.

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“those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

God seeks our worship in spirit and truth.

So what exactly does this mean?

First, let’s look at what it means to worship in spirit.

This is a big part of why God doesn’t force us to worship Him, even though He is perfectly capable of doing so, you see God desires that our worship of Him be completely authentic in your spirit, not forced.

John Piper says; “Mere outward movements of the body, is not worship.

Not prayer, not singing, not bowing down.

Those are not of the essence of worship.”

Dallas Willard says; “Worship is the active engagement of our whole being.”

The apostle Paul addresses what it looks like to worship in spirit in Colossians 3:16-17

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Colossians 3:16-17 Page 1253 in the Pew Bibles

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Colossians 3:16-17

The word Paul uses for “dwell” means “to live in” or “to be at home”.

John MacArthur writes:

Paul calls upon believers to let the Word take up residence and be at home in their lives.

MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1992).

Colossians (p.

159).

Chicago: Moody Press.

In reference to the word “richly” MacArthur goes on to write: