True Worship, Part 5

It can be all summed up, I think, by the words of our Lord Jesus in Matthew 4 verse 10 where you want to know what you love the most. If you want to find out what you really worship, then you need to think about, well, what you think about? Where does your mind wander to when you have a free moment? When the paycheck comes, how do you dream of spending it? What sort of things drive you?

What are you passionate about? John MacArthur is going to help you examine your priorities and show you how to make God your ultimate priority, as John continues his current study titled, true worship. And I'll join John for today's lesson. As I've tried to point out to you and to others recently as I've traveled around, I really believe that in the church of Jesus Christ today, there is a very lack of centrality given to the matter of worship. The church does not focus itself on worship as such in so many, many cases. And Tozer of a past generation said worship is the missing jewel in the evangelical church. And if that was true in his time, it is equally or even more true in our time. And so we are calling our church and calling the people of God to a proper commitment to worship.

In so doing, we've chosen this as a basic text. But if you remember where we began our study, we went all through the Scripture to try to point out how very commonly worship is spoken of in God's Word. It can be all summed up, I think, by the words of our Lord Jesus in Matthew 4, verse 10 where He says, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and Him only, shalt thou serve. Jesus Christ calls for man to worship.

We saw in Romans chapter 1 that the basic definition of a non-believer, of a pagan, of an unregenerate person, of a godless person is He is one who refuses to worship God. We also saw in Philippians 3, 3 that the basic definition of a Christian is one who worships God. So worship is the issue. We live in a world of people who will not worship God. And we who know Jesus Christ are the true worshippers.

And it says in verse 23, it is such that the Father seeks. So that worship in reality is the goal of redemption. Worship is not some kind of a side light.

It is the very purpose of God's redemptive act in Christ. God was bringing men from being non-worshippers to being true worshippers. And if then we who are redeemed are the true worshippers, how true should be our worship? And yet we have missed so much of the meaning of real worship.

And that's why we've been sharing these days on the subject. Now the first point that we wanted to look at in the text is the importance of worship. The importance of worship. And we saw that from verse 23. The Father seeks true worshippers.

That makes it important. That makes it the most important thing in human existence to worship God. It is commanded of us.

We saw that. It is the theme of redemptive history from eternity to eternity. The destiny of every human being is related to worship. Scripture is loaded with references to worship.

And we are convinced of its absolute importance. In fact, if you read the 66th chapter of Isaiah and the 23rd verse that closes out that great prophecy, you will find that everything resolves itself in a worshipping community. It says there in the new heaven and the new earth, all will worship God.

And that's where history is going. It started that way when God created man. To worship him, man fell. And the recovery process is on to gain a remnant out of human society who will for all eternity with the holy angels worship God. And we read in the 10th chapter of Hebrews, of course, that the Lord Jesus Christ has redeemed us and in so redeeming us has opened up a way of access whereby we may enter into the presence of God to worship him. We are to come nigh, boldly, and worship. Who is it that we worship? Worship, you see itself, is not enough. As important as it is, it is not enough to just worship. The object of worship must be very clearly understood. There are people across the world and have been through all of human history who worship. They do not, however, worship the right object.

And as we looked at these verses, we were very clearly instructed that there's only one object of worship. Repeatedly, it says worship the Father. Worship the Father. Worship the Father.

Worship him. And then it says in verse 24, God is a spirit. The one we are to worship then is defined to us in two terms, spirit and Father. Spirit speaks of his essential nature. He is a spirit as to his essential nature.

Father speaks of his essential relationship. The shorter catechism, some of you will remember if you had catechism when you were young, says God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being. And the Bible teaches us that God is a spirit. God is not a person in the sense of being a person like we are confined to a place or confined to a form. God is without a form, as we know it, a corporeal, human, physical, limiting form. God is an eternal, omnipresent spirit. He is not confined to any place or any time so that all the gods of the nations in which they represent deity as a rock or a carved image or something out of silver or gold or a tree or a river or a mountain or a star or the moon or the sun is not God because God is not limited or confined to any of his created elements. God is spirit. And beloved, that is the basis of all understanding of worship. What it tells us is that if God is a spirit and is everywhere at all times, then we must worship him at every place and every time.

Do you understand that? We cannot allow ourselves to perceive of God as a being who dwells in a building to whom we come for worship on Sunday and Sunday alone. God is a spirit being. He is not to be confined or conformed to any imagery.

In fact, that was the commandment we saw, wasn't it? No graven image, no likeness of God. He is to be perceived as spirit. Now, you say, well, John, what about the temple and what about the Holy of Holies where the Shekinah Glory dwelt between the wings of the cherubim? Isn't that saying that God lived in the temple and God lived in the tabernacle and wasn't it called the house of God? Well, in a very unique sense, God's presence was there.

That is true, but not in a limiting sense. He was everywhere as well as he was there, but he was there uniquely and I'll show you why. The temple and the tabernacle and the holy place and the Holy of Holies and all of those things are symbols. The whole ceremonial system is symbolic. It was a symbol to speak of a greater reality. It was there in order that men might perceive God in the symbol, not as the ending but as the beginning of their perception. For example, we come to the Lord's table and we say the Lord is present with His people at His table and we say that as we partake of the cup it is the blood of Christ with which we commune, as we partake of the bread it is the flesh of Christ with which we commune and there's a real sense in which those symbols are elements which draw us to worship. But their purpose is not to be the beginning and the ending of worship, but to be the stimulation of a life of worship so that we see beyond the symbol to the reality of the living God.

Perhaps we can illustrate this clearly from Acts chapter 7. Stephen is preaching a great sermon here in which he recites much of the history of the people of God and he comes in verse 46 to a discussion of the house that was built for God and he says in verse 47, Solomon built God a house. Now the fact that Solomon built God a great temple did not mean that God was therefore confined to that temple as you and I might be confined to a house. Because verse 48 says, just because there was a temple and as marvelous and wonderful as it was, the Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands. In fact in verse 49 the prophet says heaven is His throne and earth is His footstool and what house could you build to contain that kind of God? Where can you put a place for that kind of God to sit down and rest? He is too vast, too infinite to be contained in any house.

In fact He made everything and He fills everything. Now only an ignorant Jew would have perceived that God was limited to the temple. An understanding Jew knew that that was only a symbol in the midst of the people as a reminder of the eternal presence of the eternal omnipresent God. In fact they knew from the very beginning, didn't they, in Deuteronomy 6 when they were told that most basic truth of all their religion, the Lord our God is one God? And then God said to them, you say that and you speak about that.

When you sit down, stand up, lie down and walk in the way. In other words, no matter where you are or what you do, you be cognizant and aware of the eternal living one holy God. The temple was only a reminder. The sacrificial system, the ceremonial system was only a prodder of the conscience to cause them to turn their heart toward the living and the true God. So that from that symbol there might come a reality of life commitment in worshiping God.

It was never intended to be the end but only the means. In the 17th chapter of Acts as Paul speaks to the philosophers in Athens in verse 24, he says, God who made the world and all things in it, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands. Neither is worshiped with men's hands. In other words, you can't confine Him.

You can't limit Him. He is Spirit the God who extends through all of time and all of space and all of infinity and all of eternity and therefore is to be worshiped at all times and all places by all people. Syrians called the God of Israel the God of the hills. And it reflected their own idolatrous perspective because their gods were the gods of the valleys. They had built groves for their gods in the valleys and they felt their gods were confined to those groves and so their gods were the gods of the valleys and the gods of Israel were the gods or the God of the hills. But that reflects a pagan perspective. And it may have been that even the Samaritans were a little confused about that because they had isolated their worship to Mount Gerizim, thinking that maybe that's where God was.

But God is a Spirit and He always wanted to be worshiped in the fullness of His spiritual presence. In Jeremiah chapter 7, as Jeremiah speaks to that sinful people, the Lord gives him a message and it's in chapter 7 verse 21, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, put your burnt offerings under your sacrifices and eat flesh. For I spoke not unto your fathers nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. In other words, He says, put that away.

That wasn't what I was after. That was only a symbol of the reality. This is what I commanded. Obey My voice and I'll be your God and you shall be My people.

Walk in all the ways that I've commanded you that it may be well with you. God says it wasn't that in and of itself. That was only a symbol to make you remember My presence.

Visible reminder. But in the New Covenant, in the maturing of the New Covenant, even that is set aside. And we find in John 4 verse 21, the Lord Jesus saying something very important.

He says, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you shall neither in this mountain nor at Jerusalem worship the Father. In the New Covenant, it was the end of the ceremonial symbols. It was the end of the temple symbol.

It was the end of that physical identification. And the New Temple became the believer in whom the living Spirit of God dwelt and that Spirit of God became the proder of true worship. No longer an outward symbol, but an inward reality. And we of the New Covenant possessing the Spirit of God and being together the living temple in which dwells the Spirit of God find internally the prompting to true worship that they found externally as they camped about the tabernacle. And so God is to be worshipped as a living Spirit anywhere and everywhere at all times and all places by all people. And so when we say that the basic feature of Christian living is a worshipping life, that's exactly what we mean. Worship is the bottom line. We are those who worship God, says Paul, and rejoice in Christ and have no confidence in the flesh.

We are the true worshippers. Now if we are to worship God as Spirit, and I want to dwell on this just in one other aspect. If we are to worship God as Spirit, then we must define His nature to begin with. We could say, well, I worship God and I think God is, well, let's see, I think He's sort of a nice guy up there and He just is like this or that. And somebody else might say, well, no, I think He's sort of a benign philosopher. Somebody else might say, well, no, I think He's this sort of God.

And you could all invent whatever form you wanted. So it's important for us to worship the God who is Spirit in terms of how He is revealed in Scripture. And I think we can sum it up in one word. In one word, and I think that is the word which most sums up the nature of God, He is holy. He is holy. And God to be worshipped must be worshipped as holy. That is His unique otherness.

That is His unlikeness to the human creature. He is holy, flawless, without error, without sin, without mistake, fully righteous, utterly holy. And beloved, let me just suggest to you that that's the basic comprehension necessary for true worship, that God is holy. And there's a lot of, I think, well-meaning effort today and a lot of supposed worship going on which does not really regard God as holy and thus falls short. A lot of nice songs being sung and nice feelings being felt and nice thoughts being thought and nice emotions being expressed, but not in terms of God as holy.

And so it may be a little more than an emotional exercise that makes you feel good. God must be regarded as holy. Now that can best, I think, be summed up in the words of Psalm 96, one of the great psalms that calls us to worship. And it is in many ways very parallel to 1 Chronicles chapter 16, but it says that we are to sing unto the Lord. We are to bless His name. We are to show forth His salvation. We are to declare His glory among the nations, His wonders among the people.

He is great, greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all gods. Honor and majesty are before Him. Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary. And then verse 7, give unto the Lord glory and strength.

Give Him glory, bring an offering, come into His courts. It's all worship. Then you come to this very key statement in verse 9. And here we qualify the attitude or perspective of worship. Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of what? Holiness. And then it's tacked on fear before Him. You can never perceive holiness apart from fear. Because if you perceive God as utterly holy, the consequences you will see yourself as utterly unholy and there will be a sense of fear because a holy God has a right to a holy reaction against an unholy creation so that the true spirit of worship is an overwhelming sense of unholiness in the presence of a holy God.

Now, I want to reinforce this in your thinking by taking you back through some familiar ground, but I cannot teach this series and leave this out. So look at Isaiah chapter 6. The concept of worshiping God with holiness and fear is what we're after. It's not just Old Testament. Hebrews 12, 28 says worship God acceptably with reverence and godly fear for our God is a consuming fire.

So it's New Testament as well. But in Isaiah 6, Isaiah goes to worship the Lord. And he goes into the temple. King Isaiah has died after 52 years on the throne.

It's about 740 BC, just a few years before the northern kingdoms going into captivity as a judgment for their sin. He sees the demise of his people. He senses the problem in his nation and he rushes into the presence of God to worship. And he has a vision of God in verse 1 in which God is majestically lifted up, surrounded by seraphim who are the guardians of the holiness of God.

Two of their wings are used for service and four of them are used for worship, giving us an insight into the priority of worship. Even they worship God. They cry back and forth and this is what they say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And there we find again that most magnificent definition of God's otherness, God's uniqueness. He is holy. He is holy. And as Isaiah is worshiping God, he perceives holiness and that is the right perspective. That God has a holiness that causes him to react against sin.

And what is Isaiah's response? Verse 5, then said I, woe is me. I am disinterested. I am disintegrating. I am falling apart.

I am going to pieces. And the word woe means curse, curse me. He is overwhelmed with his sinfulness. He says I'm a man with a dirty mouth and I dwell in the midst of a people with dirty mouths. All he can see is his sin and he has the best mouth of all of them. But he cannot see any goodness in himself in comparison with God. And the reason it's so stark is the end of verse 5 because he has seen the king, the Lord of hosts. Now you may not have a vision like this, nor may I, but nonetheless the lesson is true that when we enter into the presence of God, if we truly see God, we see him as holy, holy, holy. And so we are then faced with a sense of our utter unholiness.

If you have never worshiped God with a broken and a contrite then you've really never worshiped God because that is the right response to entering the presence of holy God. Holiness inspires fear. He was afraid.

Why was he afraid? Because he knew that a holy God had every right to react against an unholy sinner. He knew that God had every right to judge him.

God had every right to take his life on the spot. And I guess my heart is concerned that there's a lot of flippancy in entering into the presence of God in our society today, that God has become so casual in our thinking. God has become so human, so buddy-buddy that we don't understand the whole perspective of God's utter holiness, that he is a consuming fire, that he has a holy indignance against sin. And if we flippantly rush into his presence with lives unattended to by repentance and confession and cleansing by the Spirit, then we are vulnerable to that holy reaction. It is only by his grace that we breathe another breath, is it not?

For he has every reason to take our life, for the wages of sin is death. And so Isaiah has the only reaction that a true worshiper could ever have in true worship, and that is humble, broken contrition. He sees himself as a sinner, and in the midst of his repentance, in the midst of his confession, the angel comes with a coal, purges him, and God says, you're the one I'll send in my place. And there is a marvelous communion, there is a marvelous camaraderie, there is a marvelous union between God and the true worshiper through the confession of sin and the purging of his lips. And so that's really the spirit of true worship.

You see, the holiness of God are overwhelmed with your own unholiness. True Worship. That's John MacArthur's focus, and it's the title of his study here on Grace to You. John is a pastor, author, and he's chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, and he's the teacher every day on this broadcast. Well, John, I know that when people hear the title of our series, True Worship, their thoughts naturally turn to music, because in most of our minds, there's a strong connection between music and worship, especially in church.

And so with that, I'd like to get your thoughts on a question that came in from our Q&A line. This one comes from a listener named Matthew, and we'll play his question, and then John, you respond. Hi, my name is Matthew, and I am calling from Waukesha, Wisconsin, and I was just wondering what's the purpose of music in church today, and is it really worshipping God? And I know that it's our heart towards God, and it's the knowledge of the Word that is worshiped, so why is there music in the church today? Well, that's a good question, Matthew, and you might even ask the question, why is there the kind of music there is in the church today? Because not all music is designed to really express worship.

Much of it is just an emotional bath. But why is there music? Because when you go back into the Old Testament, God designed music. God even planned for Israel to have instruments and to play musical instruments.

You have that all through the Psalms. You have even notes indicating certain instruments to be played. There was a choir in Israel. There was a musician in Israel who led the choir. There were other musicians in the worship of Israel.

And why is this? And I think the reason for this, and the reason you have the book of Psalms, is because singing your theology helps you to learn it and remember it, helps you as well to express it. You may not have thought deeply about a certain doctrine or certain theology, but you could sing a great hymn that articulates theology accurately, and you would be literally teaching your own heart and soul the truth of that doctrine in the refined poetry and the beauty of the accompanying music as you sing. In my judgment, music does two things.

One, it allows the believer to worship in spirit. That is, it lifts you just into the dimension of music, which puts the expression into a form of beauty that God has clearly designed as an elevation of human conversation, the beauty of music. But secondly, music in worship also gives you the opportunity not only to worship in spirit, but in truth, if the music is faithful to the Word of God, if it is biblical. So when you're talking about music, the music should be, first of all, an expression, an explosion of affection and beauty that allows you to express your love to the Lord, and then in terms of those words which declare accurately who He is and what He has done and all that He has revealed in His Word. So it takes, again, as I said, it takes the truth and elevates it to a level of human communication that adds to it beauty and even memory, because when we sing great hymns, they become memorized. I know there's rarely a moment in my life if I'm not in a conversation that I don't have a hymn running through my head. So this is a common grace for the whole world to have music, and it's enriched far beyond that in the Church, because it becomes a vehicle for us to lift up our praise to the Lord and also to discern and define and memorize sound doctrine.

Thanks, Jon. And now, friend, if you have a question about a particular Bible passage or a doctrinal issue or trends in the Church, pick up a copy of the MacArthur Study Bible. It has 25,000 footnotes that can help you know God's Word like never before, and right now it's available 25% off the normal price. So order your copy today. Call 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. Besides the 25,000 footnotes, the MacArthur Study Bible comes with dozens of maps and charts and detailed introductions to all 66 books of Scripture. To order your MacArthur Study Bible, contact us today. And remember, the prices for nearly everything we sell have been cut 25% for a limited time, and shipping is still free. To shop right now, go to gty.org.

Or you can place your order by phone weekdays between 730 and 4 o'clock Pacific time. The number 800-55-GRACE. Well, friend, today is the kickoff for our teaching conference called Truth Matters, and although the event is completely sold out, you can participate from wherever you are via live stream. We hope you'll do just that. Find all the details at gty.org. Truth Matters runs today and tomorrow and Friday, so watch as many of the teaching sessions and Q&A sessions as you can.

Go to gty.org for the links. And now for John MacArthur and the staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Be here tomorrow when John looks at how understanding God's holiness should affect your worship. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.