The Manner of Worship | John 4:19-26 | Worship by the Book

This message is the third in Worship by the Book, our study on the Regulative Principle of Worship. It looks at John 4:19-26, where Jesus tells the woman at the well that true worship will no longer be tied to a mountain or a temple, but will be worship "in spirit and truth." We consider what it means to worship in spirit, engaging God with our whole heart rather than merely going through the motions, and what it means to worship in truth, letting God's own revealed word shape how we approach him rather than sincerity alone. Through the golden calf and the account of Nadab and Abihu, we see that sincere worship can still be wrong worship, and that God has graciously told us both who he is and how he desires to be worshiped.

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Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon from First Reformed Church in Edgerton, Minnesota. Each week we dig into God's Word, trusting that the Holy Spirit will continue the good work of sanctification in us.

Just a few weeks back I had to go to Aplington, Iowa for a Presbytery Ministerial Committee meeting because we needed to do the committee examination of the student we examined here yesterday morning. I don't know if you've ever been to Aplington, Iowa but it's a little bit of a haul and on the way home I had been listening to a podcast and the gentleman that I was listening to mentioned the brilliance of the writing of C.S. Lewis and specifically the Chronicles of Narnia. And so I still had roughly three hours left to drive at this point. It had been a long day so I decided to pull up an audiobook of one of the Chronicles of Narnia and to help me pass the time I chose the silver chair. Well in that story the children go into the world of Narnia just like in all the other Chronicles and I enjoyed hearing the story because I knew it very well and I always think it's fun to listen to a story like that again because you notice new things or you catch something that maybe stands out to you differently on this listening through it. Well on this listen I really noticed the way that C.S. Lewis had the characters talk when they were addressing nobility and I also noticed the way he had the nobility speak when they were talking about the weight of their duties as nobility.

We just don't talk like that anymore. We have lost most formality in our culture. I mean maybe we're careful on how we talk when a highway patrolman pulls us over for speeding but otherwise we don't really talk in a formal way. Formality is really something from the past and in fact we often discourage formality because it's seen as a lack of authenticity and in our culture is there really a greater sin than to be inauthentic to not find your true self? We just don't talk this way anymore.

While none of us have been in a royal court you know the kind of formality that I'm talking about. We've seen this depicted in movies and television enough times that we're able to imagine a scene in the throne room of a king and queen. There are people spread around the room and certainly most of those serving in that room would have the protocol down perfectly. A courtier knows not only the words to speak but all the correct times to bow. They come day after day in the appointed clothes performing all the assigned tasks and saying all of the right words. When a courtier addresses the king with kind words of royalty is it heartfelt devotion that she feels or is it just rehearsed flattery? Does she truly care for the king and who he is or is she just repeating phrases that she has been told to say? There's nothing about the formality itself that does or doesn't cause her to love or hate the king right? The issue is the heart behind the words and beneath the clothes.

So as we come to our third week in our worship by the book series today we are considering the manner of worship. Two weeks ago we considered the God who commands our worship. We saw that it is a gracious thing that our holy Creator has rescued his people and he shows us how we are to approach him and last week we considered the elements of worship and saw that the word is central to our worship along with the breaking of bread the prayers and the singing of Psalms hymns and spiritual songs. My emphasis has been that while we are prone to seeing guidelines as something restrictive or legalistic the truth is that God's instructions for worship are gracious and they give us freedom so that we know that we are worshiping him rightly.

Well as an essential part of worshiping God the position of our hearts is very important and honestly that's the hard part about worship. It's easy to get here. It's easy to stand up when everyone else stands up. It's easy to recite the words of the prayer of confession. It's easy to say the Psalm together. It's easy to repeat the creeds. The words are right here in front of us. We know it's an entirely different thing to take these things to heart and to say them in thankfulness because you know that you are here to worship the God who has rescued you from sin death and hell.

So we're starting out this morning in John chapter 4 and we're coming to this story in the middle of a chapter but it is a pretty familiar story. Jesus is in Samaria and he's tired from traveling and so he sits down at a well outside a town called Sychar around noon and asks a Samaritan woman who's come to draw water for a drink and their conversation moves from physical water to living water and then Jesus tells her without her having said a word about it that she's had five husbands and the man she's currently with isn't her husband and so that's where we're at as this passage the passage that we read started today. This woman is caught off guard by how well this stranger knows her and she says what we see here in verse 19 that she perceives that he's a prophet.

Well we also need to understand as we come to this passage and consider what it's telling us about worship some history because Samaritans and Jews share a difficult and bitter history. After the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel in the year 722 BC the people that were left behind intermarried with foreign people and the Jews came to regard Samaritans these intermarried folks as ethnically and religiously compromised. Samaritans held to their own version of the law that the Torah and they also changed the location of worship to Mount Gerizim. They believed that that was the place that God had actually commanded while Jews of course insisted the only legitimate place of worship was the temple in Jerusalem. The hostility here ran both directions. They didn't like each other and by Jesus day this wasn't just like a old grudge this wasn't the Hatfields and McCoys or something like that it was a deeply felt division over ethnicity but also true worship.

So what the woman is saying here is a big question in their time for these people. Where does true worship take place? Where does God meet his people? Where does he receive their sacrifices that atone for their sins? So what Jesus does here is actually pretty surprising. Our natural assumption is that he would pick a side. Jesus is a good Jew he keeps the law. He and his disciples make their way to Jerusalem for the feast. You'd think he'd set the woman straight on how the Samaritans are wrong but that's not at all what he does. He doesn't pick a side instead he points to the future. He tells her that an hour is coming and is here when worship will not take place on Mount Gerizim or in Jerusalem and we can't comprehend how earth-shattering and mind-blowing that is. Yes we come to church to worship but we don't in any way claim that here in this room this is the only place that God is truly worshiped. As we sit here this morning we know we have friends worshiping in both directions and I would like to think I would hope that none of us saw them pull up to their church this morning and thought you're not worshiping the one true God because you don't come to our building.

For the Jews and Samaritans in the first century worship was a very geographical thing. Again we can't even really fathom this. Worship took place where there were sacrifices and those sacrifices obviously required a geographical place for them to take place. So when Jesus said this I'm guessing the woman at the well probably thought well if it's not going to be on Mount Gerizim and it's not going to be in Jerusalem there must going to be a new place for sacrifices. They must be moving to a new location. This woman would have had no category to understand worship that was not geographical.

My point is that what Jesus is saying is earth-shattering and it shows us that the physical places of worship were never the point in the first place. God was always more concerned with the position of the hearts of His people than their keeping of the guidelines He had put in place. They could be in Jerusalem for the feasts, offer all the sacrifices that were required of them, they could say all the right words, and as we read throughout the Old Testament they could still have hearts that were far from Him.

The worship in the temple was not an end unto itself it was pointing to a greater reality that would come in the Lord Jesus Christ. She was worried about whether her people or the Jews were right, about where the sacrifices should take place, but the one who would be the ultimate once and for all sacrifice was standing there right in front of her.

And Jesus doesn't just leave her with the fact that one day neither of these places will be the location of true worship. He tells her what worship will actually look like when that hour arrives. See Jesus isn't relocating worship. He's not leaving the mountain in Samaria or the temple in Jerusalem and packing up to go to a different mountain or a new city or a different building. He says that worship is going to look different altogether. True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. And as we continue with this idea of the manner of worship today we are going to first consider the idea of worshiping the Father in spirit.

So in this statement we get the idea that worship isn't about just going to the right location anymore or performing the prescribed rituals. Worship in the temple in the Old Covenant was about sacrifices performed by a very small group of people on behalf of the rest of the people. It was also easy for the people to feel as though they had met a particular standard. You were required to attend the feast and to bring a particular sacrifice. It would be very easy for the people to feel like they checked all the right boxes and so because I showed up in Jerusalem I offered the sacrifices. I said the right words. God and I are good to go. Everything is good between me and God.

Well throughout the Old Testament there are stories where all the sacrifices were happening but the hearts of the people were far from God. The issue was not that they weren't fulfilling the obligations of the sacrificial system. They brought sacrifices but there was no remorse over their sin. They claimed to love God but it was all just a religious show.

So the call here to worship the Father in spirit is a call to worship with more than the external actions but to seek to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. It's a call to have sincere hearts that acknowledge our need and turn to God in repentance and faith. And I believe that we get this and understand this well. Like I mentioned in my opening there's a big difference between someone who goes through the motions and someone who deeply means what they say and backs it up with their actions. We've all seen the person who is all talk and truthfully chances are at some points in our lives we are those people. We've been all talk. We've lacked true sincerity of heart in our devotion to God.

So this statement by Jesus to worship the Father in spirit helps correct two errors that we can make. It helps us to stay on the road and avoid driving into the ditches on either side. The first ditch is treating worship as external performance. You know what I'm talking about showing up to the right place going through the right motions and assuming that's enough. We aren't here accumulating reward points towards heaven. We don't get bonus points because we make our way to this building on the Lord's Day. God was never impressed by attendance alone.

Well the second ditch runs the opposite direction. If worship is really about the heart some people conclude the external forms don't matter much at all. If I don't feel it they say it doesn't count. So why bother with the words of a confession, the structure of the service, the specific things we're asked to sing and pray and confess. Just let me worship however I feel in the moment wherever I am but feeling something sincerely doesn't mean that you're worshiping the true God rightly. Sincerity can be sincerely wrong.

So what do we do to avoid this? First a practical thing that we can do is come to the Lord's Day prepared to worship. Spend some time before the service whether at home the night before or in the morning or maybe in the car before you come inside asking God to prepare your heart for worship. The noise of the world so easily distracts us. Ask God to put the busyness and distractions of the week behind you during your time in worship. We've all sat, every last one of us has sat in worship and had the stresses of the previous week and of the week to come invade our mind to the point that we're barely able to remember that we were here for worship at all. Well God has promised to meet us in worship. If we pray that he would help us to quiet our minds he will help us so that we can be present to hear his word and let the Holy Spirit do that good work in us.

Another practical way that we can do this is to pay attention to the words you say in worship. When we sing take notice of the words that are leaving your mouth. When we confess sin together remember where you have failed in the past week instead of just reciting the words on the screen. The words we say in worship aren't just things to get through. They're meant to be applied to your actual life, your actual week, your actual sin, your actual struggles. The words and structure of our worship are a map. They're meant to lead us to actual confession, actual gratitude, true repentance. They're not meant to be just words we say and forget. So as we come to worship let's pray that God would quiet the busyness and the noise and that we would be able to notice the words that we're saying and apply them to ourselves.

But as we continue here there's a deeper question we haven't gotten to yet. I said sincerity alone isn't enough. You can feel something with your whole heart and still be sincerely wrong. So how do we keep from sincerely following our feelings often to the entire wrong direction? This is why it's important that we remember that Jesus says true worship is in spirit and truth. Worship is not just about how we feel. Jesus isn't telling the Samaritan woman that there won't be worship on this mountain or in Jerusalem so just do whatever you feel like. Humans so easily end up making a God in our image instead of worshiping the true God that created us and redeemed us. This is why we desire to worship God as he desires to be worshiped. He has told us who he is in his word and how he is to be worshiped. When we worship without the truth we still worship sincerely but we're prone to drift. And Scripture displays this for us.

Think back to the story of the golden calf. The people were sincere. They wanted to make an image to have a feast to Yahweh. Remember they weren't trying to worship some false God. The golden calf was not a random deity. They were trying to worship Yahweh. Their worship was sincere but they were sincerely wrong. They were worshiping God falsely and Scripture doesn't treat that as a smaller problem.

We saw another example when we looked at the story of Nadab and Abihu a few weeks ago. We don't get the indication that those sons of Aaron were trying to be rebellious. Chances are they sincerely took in strange fire. The problem wasn't their emotions. Their problem was the rejection of the revealed truth that God had given them.

And both stories teach us the same lesson. Sincerity was never the missing ingredient for Israel at the golden calf or for Nadab and Abihu at the altar. What was missing was truth. God's own revealed word about who he is and how he is to be approached. Worship in spirit without worship in truth doesn't produce weaker worship. It produces worship aimed at a God of our own making. However sincerely we mean it. That's why Jesus doesn't stop at telling the woman to worship in spirit. True worship holds both together. A heart genuinely and deeply engaged and a mind shaped by what God has revealed about himself.

I started this morning talking about the courtier in a throne room. Someone who could bow at exactly the right moment and speak exactly the right words and I asked whether any of that told us what was actually happening in her heart. It doesn't and it can't. The formality itself can't tell you if she loves the king or merely fears him and doesn't want to do anything wrong. You can't tell if her devotion is real or rehearsed.

This is what we've seen this morning in this passage. The manner of worship was never about checking the right boxes, going to the right mountain or saying the right words or having the right feelings in the moment. Location was never the point as Jesus told the woman at the well. Sincerity alone was never the point. Israel learned that with the golden calf and as Nadab and Abihu learned at the cost of their lives. True worship isn't a box to check at all. It's humbly coming to the throne of grace, letting God's Word tell us who he is and how he desires to be worshiped and letting his spirit do the deeper work in us that no ritual, no rehearsed line, no location in a building somewhere could ever do for us. Nothing that no passing feeling could ever do either. Worship is about coming to God and worshiping in spirit and truth. We come to worship God. We don't come to perform for him. He has told us plainly who he is and what's awesome is that he meets us here. He comes to us as we desire to worship him in spirit and truth. So may our worship be formed by love and devotion to our God, the God who has revealed himself to us. Amen.

Let us pray. Great and merciful God, we praise you for the gift of your word that you show us the manner of worship that it is to be in spirit and in truth. We pray that through your word and spirit you would give us hearts of deep devotion to you, that we would desire to know you more, that we might worship you in truth, and we pray oh God that our worship would be a testimony to the world, that we might show your mercy and your grace to a world that so desperately needs it. It's in the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon. For more information about First Reformed Church, head to our Facebook page or website edgertonfrc.org.

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