True Worship, Part 6

We don't wait to worship, to bow our heads and draw our conscious mind into God's throne room as it were in prayer. God is everywhere at all times and therefore to be worshipped everywhere at all times.

And we who have been redeemed are able to fulfill the seeking Father's wish that we worship Him everywhere and at all times. They turn their services into musical displays and their sermons into political harangues or philosophical essays. In fact, they exchange the temple for the theater and turn ministers of God into actors whose business it is to amuse men. That sounds like a description of today's user-friendly approach to crafting a worship service.

But Charles Spurgeon spoke those words more than a century ago. Clearly, worshipping God the wrong way is nothing new. Of course, the instructions on how to worship God the right way aren't new either. Learn how to apply those instructions as John MacArthur continues his series called True Worship here on Grace to You.

And now, here's John. Open your Bible, if you will, with me to the fourth chapter of John's gospel as we continue our series in worship, looking at this marvelous passage and drawing out of it the things the Spirit of God would teach us, that we might worship God as He would be pleased to be worshipped. Jesus is in conversation with the woman of Samaria in the fourth chapter of John, and we pick up the conversation in verse 20 as the woman speaks. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what? We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Now the clear word that comes out of this text is that God seeks true worshippers. God seeks those who will worship Him in a manner that is acceptable to Him. Now in understanding worship, it is important that we have a definition.

And so we began our series with a simple definition. Worship is giving honor to God, giving honor to God. That's a very simple definition, but that really says it.

Several key points come out of that definition. The first one is that worship is giving. Worship is giving. We are so oriented toward receiving that it's hard for us, I think, to understand that.

We live in such a consumptive, selfish, ego-centered society where everything is for us, for me. That it's hard for us to understand that God wants us to give to Him. And when we come together as God's redeemed people in the congregation of fellowship, and we come for the purpose of worship, it is not to receive, it is to give. It is not to get a blessing or to gain something as much as it is to worship, and that is to give to God.

When a Jew in the Old Covenant came to worship, he did not come to take anything. He came to give. He would give an offering.

He would give not only money as was prescribed, but he would offer a sacrifice upon the altar. Everything was geared around giving to God, and that is the essence of worship. It is giving to God, not receiving, that we are concerned with. Worship then also, we noted in our definition, is in contrast to ministry. Ministry is that which flows down from God to us. Worship is that which flows up from us to God, and they provide for us a very beautiful balance. As in the Old Testament, there was a prophet who spoke down to us from God. There was a priest also who spoke up to God on the behalf of man, and those two things are always held in balance. Having given a definition, we then talked about the first major point, the importance of worship.

Why is it important? It is important, we noted from verse 23, because true worshipers are those whom the Father seeks. God seeks true worshipers. Now if God seeks true worshipers, then true worship is important. God seeks true worshipers.

This then is the priority. In fact, I'm convinced, as we've been seeing all along, that you as a Christian have as a single primary reason to live the fact that you are to worship God. That is what you are, a true worshiper. That is what you are to do, truly worship.

That is the very core of the meaning of the existence of a redeemed person. So you are called to be a true worshiper. It is important, it is the very most important thing you do to worship God, because that's what God seeks you to do. And even when you serve God, in a very real sense, that is a form of worship, isn't it?

Because you are honoring Him by obeying His commands relative to service. The second major point that we looked at was the source of worship. And the source of worship, again, in the same thought, the Father seeketh such to worship Him. The source then is the seeking of the Father. And I believe it is an efficacious seeking. It is a redemptive seeking.

It is, if you will, to use the old theological term, an irresistible seeking. God is drawing into His kingdom true worshippers. And when an individual is redeemed, that is the transformation that makes him a true worshiper. In the New Testament, we are redeemed to worship. We are made into true worshippers. That's why we said that maybe the best definition of a Christian is found in Philippians 3, 3, where it says there that we are they who worship God in the Spirit.

That's a classic definition of a Christian, a worshiper of God, a true worshiper. And Hebrews 10 says, since Christ has redeemed us, since His sacrifice has perfected us, since we have been brought into God's presence through a new and living way, let us draw near. In other words, the response to redemption is worship.

Come near God and offer Him the praise that is due His name. We are redeemed to worship. Therefore, the ground or the basis or the source of worship is our salvation, our redemption. So the importance is seen in God's seeking worshippers. The source of worship is seen in God redeeming and saving us to that end.

Now, the third point that we looked at is the object of worship, the object. And we saw that, didn't we, in several verses. First of all, verse 21 says, worship the Father. Verse 23 again, twice, worship the Father. And then verse 24, God is a Spirit.

We are then to worship God. And God is defined to us in two terms, first as Spirit and secondly as Father. First as Spirit, secondly as Father. Now, we've already discussed God as Spirit, but it's very important that I refresh your memory, so listen very closely.

God is, first of all, Spirit. That is, God cannot be confined to a building. He cannot be confined to a temple. He cannot be confined to a grove as the pagans thought their gods were. He could not be confined to a mountain somewhere. He could not be confined to an image made with hands out of wood or brass or gold or silver or any other substance. God cannot be confined to temples made with hands, it says in Acts 7 and also in Acts 17. God is beyond that kind of confinement because He is an ever-living, ever-present, eternal Spirit.

He has no flesh and bones. He is a Spirit who is everywhere at all times pervading the full universe and on into endless eternity with His conscious presence. God is everywhere at all times. He is the eternal, living Spirit. So God then is to be worshiped as an ever-present Spirit. He is alive at all times.

He is everywhere at all times. Therefore, worship becomes a way of life, doesn't it? Every living, breathing moment of life we live in the presence of God. In Acts 17 it says it's in Him we live and move and have our being.

We move in the midst of His spiritual presence. Therefore, at all times worship is fitting and worship is proper because we are in the presence of God. We don't wait to worship to walk into a church. We don't wait to worship to bow our heads and draw our conscious mind into God's throne room as it were in prayer. God is everywhere at all times and therefore to be worshiped everywhere at all times. And we who have been redeemed are able to fulfill the seeking Father's wish that we worship Him everywhere and at all times. And so then, first of all, we worship God who is the eternal, omnipresent Spirit. But we can't stop there because three times in the text it says we also worship the Father...the Father. And that is a further qualification of the object of our worship.

Now I want you to listen to what I say because I think most people have misunderstood this concept. When you think of the term the Father, you think of God as Father, and I know this because this is the way I thought for many years. You immediately think of God as our loving Father. We worship God as a loving Father. We're His children and He's our Father, and as we worship Him, we not only worship Him as this vast, omnipresent, eternal Spirit, but as this intimate, loving, personal Father. And that is true, but that is not what is being discussed in John chapter 4. That is not the issue here. It is not talking about our Father, the Father of believers.

That is not the emphasis made here. The emphasis here is that the Father...now watch this...is the Father in the Trinitarian sense. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, right?

Three in one. The triangle, the Trinity. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. It is in that Trinitarian sense that God is designated here as the Father. It is not primarily in relation to us as His children. It is His essential relationship within the Trinity. Now, He is then presented here...now watch this very carefully...as the Father of the Son, and the Son is the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is very important. So that when you worship God as Spirit, you worship Him also as Father, not just the Father in a vague sense of all mankind, as the liberals might say, but as the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. And you cannot worship God apart from that designation. Now you say, well, what does all this mean?

Stay with me and you'll see. First and foremost in the New Testament, whenever God is discussed as Father, it is as Father of Jesus Christ. I think about seventy times Jesus speaks to God, and every time He comes before God, He says, Father, except one when He was separated on the cross and said, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?

Every other time He calls Him Father. It is unique within the Trinity that God is the Father and the Son and then the Holy Spirit. And this is an inter-Trinitarian designation.

Now let me show you what it means. It is not that when Jesus says Father, the emphasis is not that He is a Son in submission as a Son might submit to His Father, although that's true. The emphasis is that He is a Son in sameness of essence as a Son is with His Father.

Did you get that? It is talking about the sameness of essence. He is the Son and God is the Father, meaning they both are the same essence.

If I am a man, if I am a man from the race and the tribe and the people and the generation and all of the genetics that have gone into me and I have a son, my son will be what I am. It is sameness of essence and that people is the heart and soul of the relationship that Jesus constantly expresses with the Father. He is emphasizing the sameness of essence, the oneness of nature so that God can never be worshiped unless He is worshiped as one and the same with Jesus Christ. So that Jesus says, no man comes unto God but what?

By me. You can never worship God at all unless you worship God as the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, that is one with Jesus Christ. It is a statement of deity, of equality.

Now let me show you. You say, how in the world can you see all of that in those verses when it just says worship the Father? Because I know how John uses the term.

Follow it. Chapter 5, verse 17. And this is a great truth, profound truth. John 5, 17, Jesus answered, answered the Jews who were persecuting Him for what He did on the Sabbath day, He answered them, My Father works hitherto and I work. And there He is calling the first person of the Trinity His Father and He says, We work together, My Father and I. Now what did they think He meant by that? Verse 18, They sought even the more to kill Him because He had not only broken the Sabbath but said also that God was His Father, making Himself what? Equal with God.

Right on target, folks. That's exactly what He was saying. When Jesus said, He is the Father and I am the Son, He was speaking of their equality of essential being, of essence, of nature, of deity. He is God of very God as God the Father is God of very God. They were right on.

That's exactly what He was saying. Look at chapter 10 in John's gospel. And Jesus says in verse 29, My Father who gave them to Me is greater than all. And no man is able to pluck them out of My Father's hand. And now He goes one step further.

I and My Father are one. Again, the Father and the Son, the same essence. And the Jews took up stones to stone Him. And He answered them, Many good works have I shown you from My Father.

For which of those works do you stone Me? The Jews answered Him, saying, For a good work we stone Thee not, but for blasphemy, and because that Thou, being a man, makest Thyself God. You see, when He said He was the Son of God and God was His Father, they knew He meant the sameness of essence, deity equal to God the Father. The seventeenth chapter, and Jesus prays to the Father. In verse 1 He says, Father, the hour is come, glorify Thy Son that Thy Son also may glorify Thee. As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him, and this is life eternal that they might know Thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom Thou sent. He equates Himself with the Father and that eternal life is through knowing Him as much as it is knowing God. And in verse 5 He says, glorify Me with Thine own self with the glory I had with Thee before the world began.

Give Me back that prior full glory that I knew before the incarnation, that which is deserving. He was equal with God, and the Father and the Son is the statement of their equality. In Matthew chapter 11, I just would note one other verse, and there are more that I could show you, but these are samples. Matthew 11, 27, Jesus said, All things are delivered unto Me by My Father, and no man knoweth the Son but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father except the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. And here in that marvelous passage, the Lord is again presenting the unique essential oneness of the Father and the Son. There is an intimacy of knowledge between the Father and the Son that is not available to any human perception. They are one.

They are one. Now listen, you can go back to John 4 if you want. When Jesus calls God Father, it's not our Father that He has in mind, it's His Father.

And it is a blatant outright statement of His deity, His equality. And that's why He said in John 14, which I didn't read to you, but just will quote, If you have seen Me, you have seen whom? The Father.

The Father and the Son are one. What do you say? Well, why are you doing all this, John?

Just for this now, listen very carefully. There are people who say they worship God and to affirm that God is the eternal living Spirit everywhere present and they are worshiping Him. And they may be saying that He is their Father and they worship Him as their Father, but if they deny that Jesus Christ is essentially the same as God the Father, their worship is unacceptable.

You understand that? So no one, no time worships God as Spirit who does not worship God as the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. God cannot be defined in any other terms. God is not just God up there, He is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and there's no other way to define Him or worship Him. So when you have Jehovah's Witnesses or the liberals who would deny the deity of Jesus Christ yet claim to worship God, it is a lie because God is none other than the one who is the same with Jesus Christ. And that is the message of the Epistles.

Now let me show you how they understood it even if we don't. Look at Ephesians chapter 1 and let's just see some samples of their worship. In Ephesians 1 you have one of the great peons of praise ever given in the Bible, one of the great benedictions, one of the great statements of glory offered to God. In fact, from verse 3 to 14 is one sentence without a period.

It's just a long list of praise phrases. But it begins this way in verse 3, Ephesians 1 through 3. Blessed be the God. What God? What God? The God and Father, the Father of whom? Of our Lord Jesus Christ, you see.

That is how God is known and is not known apart from that. In verse 17 of the same chapter, in Paul's great prayer, he prays that the God, what God? The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory. And again, God is qualified as the God who is identified with the Lord Jesus Christ.

In 2 Corinthians, another illustration, chapter 1 verse 3, blessed be God. What God? What God are you worshiping? Even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And again, you see, God is known as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In Philippians chapter 2, that great passage, verse 9, God has highly exalted Christ, given Him a name above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and so forth.

And then in verse 11, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God. What God? The Father.

The Father of whom? Of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the only way God can be known. In Romans 15, next to the last chapter, the sixth verse, the Apostle Paul says that, Ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God. What God? Even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. You see, beloved, you cannot worship God apart from a recognition that Jesus Christ His Son is equal to God. That's His deity. You say, well, that's all Paul. Did everybody agree with that?

Well, I'll just give you a sample. Peter sure did. 1 Peter 1, 3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. How about the Apostle John?

He did too. 2 John, verse 3, listen to this, Grace be with you, mercy and peace from God. What God? The Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father.

Isn't that great? You see, God is not just some floating spirit going through space and anybody can sort of plug in anywhere they want with any particular form they want. God is eternal. God is vast, filling all of eternity, ever present, everywhere to be worshiped at all times by all people. The only way you ever come to God is as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And now you know why he had to say, no man comes unto the Father but by me. So I just tell you that because you can't worship God apart from Jesus Christ. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. John's current study is showing you how to glorify the Lord in every aspect of your daily life. The title of this study, True Worship. John, we've all had days where we're tired or the kids are disobedient or we're going through a trial and it's hard to worship and to keep your focus on the glory of God. And so I was wondering, what do you do when you're going through times like that? Is there a specific part of the Bible that you would turn to or maybe a psalm or something that brings your thoughts back into focus on worship?

Well, and this is pretty consistent with what we've been saying the last couple of days this week. I find myself in moments of stress singing hymns. I guess because I've been singing them since I was able to sing as a tiny little child. I remember as an illustration of this when Patricia had the car accident 25 plus years ago now and broke her neck. People asked me, how did you respond when I was trying to get to the hospital to find out what had happened? And I said, all I can remember is singing hymns all the way there. I find my comfort in rehearsing the truth about God. Great is thy faithfulness, it is well with my soul. Those were two hymns that I sung as I was trying to find out what happened to my wife. And those are based on scripture. In fact, many, many great hymns are actual scripture or a very slight variation from scripture. So I have found that I obviously worship the Lord as well in the remembering of scripture verses. My brain is also saturated with scripture. So it's sort of a mingling of hymns, familiar hymns that also have an uplifting capability just because they are hymns and they have the beauty of a melody and remembering scripture verses.

And there's a third thing I would say, Phil. In times of trial, I remember the providence of God in the past. I always remember the past.

It's amazing. People say when you get old, all you do is talk about the past. There's a reason for that. The reason when you get old and you talk about the past is because you have this incredible history of God's intervention. There's never been anything in my life, looking back, that I can't say God worked it out for good. I'm a living illustration that Romans 8 is true. And if you're a 23-year-old Christian, you don't know that yet.

If you're a 35-year-old Christian, you might have seen it a few times. But if you're my age, the history of divine providence and intervention, that turns every disaster into something absolutely God-honoring and glorious and beautiful. The memory of providence serves me well in any time of difficulty. Yeah, thank you, John. That's very helpful.

And friend, before you head into the weekend, let me remind you that nearly everything we sell is 25% off the normal price. So I would encourage you to pick up the MacArthur Study Bible or a commentary or John's book on worship when you contact us today. Our phone number here is 800-55-GRACE. You can also go to the website at gty.org.

The Study Bible is available in multiple translations, and John has commentaries on every New Testament book. Again, to order the MacArthur Study Bible, the MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series, John's book on worship, and more at 25% off the regular price, call us at 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. Well, friend, if you have not been following the live stream for our Truth Matters Conference, today is the last day for that. We've been having a great time with members of the Grace To You family at this sold-out event at the ARC Encounter in Kentucky. To live stream any of the remaining sessions, you'll find the details you need at our website, gty.org. Again, that's gty.org. And now on behalf of John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson, reminding you also to look for Grace To You television this Sunday on DirecTV channel 378, or check our website for local airtimes, and then join us Monday when John continues his series, True Worship, with another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You. .