True Worship, Part 8

We are to worship in spirit and in truth, a perfect balance. Not just spirit, that is, not just enthusiasm, but truth.

Not just truth, but enthusiasm. From the deep part of our soul we worship, we express ourselves based on God's revealed truth. Spurgeon, the great British Baptist preacher, put it this way. He said, my happiest moments are when I'm worshiping God, really adoring the Lord Jesus Christ, and having fellowship with the ever blessed spirit. To me, he said, it is the nearest approach to what it will be in heaven. When you think about the great joys of the Christian life, that quote gets to the core issue.

Worshiping God, in spirit and in truth, that's the closest thing to heaven on earth. Today on Grace To You, John MacArthur helps you understand how to worship God in the right way. His study is called True Worship, and today's lesson begins right now. I have been, as you well know, greatly concerned about the matter of worship. And wondering whether this is unique to my own era, I have read some more ancient scriptural commentators, some more ancient saints of God, to see if they too faced similar periods of time when the church had lost its perspective on worship.

And I found that to be the case. In fact, throughout church history, there seemed to be a rather constant cry calling the people of God to a worshiping life. For example, Saint Anselm of Canterbury years ago said this, up, slight man. Flee for a little while thy occupations. Hide thyself for a time from thy disturbing thoughts. Pass away now thy toilsome cares, and put aside thy burdensome business. Yield room for some little time with God, and rest a little while in Him. In the inner chamber, shut out all thoughts, save those of God, and such as can aid thee in worshiping Him. Speak now to God and say, I seek thy face.

Thy face, Lord, do I seek. And thus did He call His people to worship. Van Drew Bonar, a great nineteenth-century saint of God, he wrote down the musings, the thoughts, the lessons the Lord taught him, the impressions he had each day. And I start at the beginning of the book, and I went all the way through the book and read each of his entries written on the Lord's day, Sunday.

Many of them revolved around the theme of worship. One of them that particularly struck me, he wrote on the twenty-sixth Lord's day of 1881, during the whole day and every service, I felt myself strengthened and upheld by the Lord's presence and spirit more than usual. There were moments of great nearness.

End quote. And I stopped at that point, moments of great nearness. And I said to myself, I long to know those kind of moments, moments in which there's an overwhelming sense of the nearness of God. I wonder whether most Christians ever really experience that.

I wonder whether you can reach back into your memory and find moments of great nearness. Moments when you have drawn nigh unto God and as James 4-8 says, he has in response drawn nigh unto you. Moments in which you have sensed profoundly the presence of God, moments when the divine nearness has been like your own hands and feet, your own breath, that intimate. And all through this series, this has been really the purpose and goal of it, that we might so draw nigh unto God that we are literally overcome by His presence. Now, in our look at worship, we've tried of course not to exhaust the theme, but just to touch, as it were, the edges of it that the Spirit of God might begin to teach us. And we've looked at a definition of worship. We've talked about the importance of worship.

And we know it's important because it's God's priority. He seeks true worshipers, it says in this passage. We've talked about the source of worship and that is salvation. We were redeemed to worship. We've talked about the object of worship and the object is God as Spirit and as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We've talked about the sphere of worship. We are to worship everywhere and at all times and yet uniquely in the assembled presence of God's redeemed people. And now we are looking at the nature or the essence of worship, what it is. We are to worship in spirit and in truth, the perfect balance. Not just spirit, that is not just enthusiasm, but truth.

Not just truth, but enthusiasm. From the deep part of our soul we worship, we express ourselves based on God's revealed truth. And you remember that I showed you the Samaritans had the Spirit and not the truth and the Jews had the truth and not the Spirit. And so Jesus says it isn't here in Gerizim and it isn't there in Jerusalem. God is to be worshiped in spirit and in truth and true worship brings both of those together. You cannot have enthusiastic heresy on the one hand and barren orthodoxy on the other and really worship God. There must be a mingling.

You can't have heat without light and you can't have light without heat. The two must be in balance. And remember last time we looked at the concept of spirit and we said that to worship God in spirit means to worship God from your inner being. It isn't superficial. It isn't external.

It isn't formal. It isn't liturgical. It's the heart. And that's what the psalmist meant in Psalm 103 when he said, Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me, bless His holy name. And what Paul meant in Romans 1-9 when he said, I worship God in my spirit. And we suggested to you that there are several necessary elements to worshiping God in spirit. First, spiritual life. We have to be alive spiritually, alive to God.

We have to be those who possess the Holy Spirit which comes by salvation. And to begin with then to worship in spirit, we must have had a transformed inner person and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God. Secondly, we must focus our thoughts on God. Worship comes out of the heart that is thinking on God. Thirdly, our thoughts on God are dependent on discovery and meditation out of the Word of God. And as we look at the Word of God and as we discover its truths and meditate on its truths, we find ourselves worshiping.

And then fourthly, we must have an undivided heart, an undivided heart. The psalmist says, I will praise thee with my whole heart. I will praise thee with my whole heart.

To worship in spirit then is to have a spirit transformed by regeneration, to think on God, to concentrate all of our faculties on Him and His work. And those thoughts rise from the discovery and the meditation on the Word of God and flow back to God through an undivided heart. You know, many times in the Old Testament, you can read it in Isaiah. You can read it in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. You can see it in the New Testament in Matthew's Gospel. The Lord indicts people for worshiping Him externally while their heart is far from Him.

That's a rather common phrase. These people worship Me with their form, but their heart is far from Me. That's the very antithesis of what God desires. He desires the heart to be nigh unto Him. In Psalm 112, we find a psalm of praise. It begins, Praise ye the Lord, and it follows along the line of praise. And how is it that the heart can praise? It comes in verse 7. It says, His heart is fixed. And then in verse 8, His heart is established. You see, it is a fixed heart and an established heart, totally focusing on the wonder of God out of which arises praise. In Psalm 57, we find again the same thought. Verse 7, My heart is fixed, O God.

My heart is fixed. I will sing and give praise. Awake up My glory. Awake sultry and harp.

I Myself will awake early. I will praise Thee, O Lord, among the peoples. I will sing unto Thee among the nations. For Thy mercy is great unto the heavens and Thy truth unto the clouds. Be Thou exalted, O God, above the heavens. Let Thy glory be above all the earth.

You see, again, it is a fixed heart. And we ask ourselves the question, are we really there when we come to worship the Lord? And there are many times when we may think we are and we're not. And that's where Psalm 139 comes in. Search Me, O God, and know My heart. Try Me and know My thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in Me and lead Me in the way everlasting. Now David says, Search Me, O God, and know My heart.

And if you find anything, deal with it. And that is an admission that even David couldn't fully understand his own heart. He may have felt that he dealt with everything. And so he says, God, there may be some things that I don't see. And it may be that in our hearts and in our lives, the reason we have difficulty really abandoning ourself in worship to God, the reason we don't experience the nearness of God that we would like to experience is because we have areas of our life that are not dealt with and may be areas that we are blind to and only God knows. And so as we approach this matter of worship to have an undivided heart, we must come with an open and repentant spirit. And that would be the fifth in those elements of true worship in the Spirit.

There must be an openness. There must be a willingness to say, God, turn on the search light and whatever you find in the corner, expose it. And if you have found it very difficult to worship, if you come and go home and there's little change in your life and there's little sense of the nearness of God, there's little sense of entering into divine presence, it may well be that there are areas in your life which you have long overlooked that only God knows about and you must plead with Him to search them out and expose them and willingly confess them in a broken and a contrite spirit.

You see, those things must be dealt with. Every time in the Scripture we talk about worship, we must talk about cleansing, purging, purifying, confessing, repenting because the only person who can utterly and fully enter into communion with an utterly holy God is one whose sin is utterly dealt with. And we don't want to go rushing into God's presence in our impurity thinking that all is well.

We, like Isaiah, must confess before God our sin and allow God to touch that living, burning cold to our lips if need be to purge us. Now, Charnock wrote many years ago these words, without the heart it is no worship. It is a stage play. It is an acting apart without being that person really. It is playing the hypocrite.

Listen to this. We may truly be said to worship God though we lack perfection, but we cannot be said to worship God if we lack sincerity. That's very true. We may worship imperfectly, but we cannot worship insincerely. And so as we come to worship God, it must be from the depth of what is within us a sincere worship of God. So we yield our spirits to the Holy Spirit who fills us with His presence and power. We ask Him to cleanse out every corner of our lives and then the flow of worship can occur.

Nothing superficial about it. Now let's look at the second imbalancing element. We worship in truth. We worship in truth.

And we touched on it last time in our discussion of the idea of discovery and meditation on the Word, but let me just expand it if I might. All worship is in response to truth. All worship is in response to truth. There is no worship that is not linked inseparably to truth.

Worship is not an emotional exercise with God words inducing feelings. Worship is a response built upon truth. Now Pilate asked the very important question, what is truth? And Jesus answered it in John 17, 17 when He said, Thy word is truth.

Or Psalm 119, the testimonies of the Lord are true. Now if we are to worship in truth and the Word of God is truth, then we must worship out of an understanding of the Word of God. If we're going to worship God truly, we must understand who He is and the only place He revealed Himself is in His Word.

In Romans 1 18 it tells us that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth. Now there is the truth in terms of conscience, the truth in terms of what is called general revelation. And then verse 19, that which may be known of God is manifest in them. God first of all disclosed Himself in general terms in conscience and in creation.

And men hold that truth about God. But verse 25 says they exchanged the truth about God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator. Now God's whole purpose was to reveal Himself. He revealed Himself first of all in creation and conscience and then He revealed Himself crystal clear in the pages of the Word of God. If we are to worship in truth, then we are to worship truly as God is to be worshiped. And the only place we'll find God truly defined is in the Bible.

It is the Bible that explains the God of creation and the God of conscience. Everything we know about God is in the Word of God. And to worship in truth then means to worship from out of an understanding of the Word of God. You cannot worship God in a vacuum.

You cannot worship God apart from His revelation. An illustration of this comes to mind in the eighth chapter of Nehemiah where it tells us that Ezra opened the book inside of all the people, that is the Word of God. And he opened it up standing above the people on a platform and immediately all the people stood up at the presentation of God's Word. And Ezra blessed the Lord the great God and all the people answered, Amen, Amen, lifting up their hands and they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.

The Word of God, just its very holy presence threw them all to their knees in an act of worship. All worship, listen now, is in response to truth about God. And all truth about God is revealed in His Word. If we're called to worship God, then we want to worship God as God is.

If we want to know how He is, we have to look at His self-revelation. The Bible discloses the truth about God which guides our worship. And truth is the objective factor in worship as spirit is the subjective.

But both must come together. In Psalm 47, 7 there's a very interesting statement. It says, Sing ye praises with understanding. Sing ye praises with understanding. All worship must be based on truth. Worship is not simply holding hands and swaying back and forth or having ecstatic experiences, having experiences that have no meaning or no content. That is not worship. Worship is not even a good feeling, as good as good feelings are. Worship is an expression of praise from the depth of the heart toward a God who is understood as He is truly revealed. Sing ye praises with understanding. There's no virtue in saying you're worshiping God in something which you don't or nor does anybody else comprehend. There's no true worship apart from a true understanding of God.

Any group that does not understand truth about God does not worship God, cannot worship God, for He is worshiped in spirit and according to truth. In 2 Corinthians 4, 2, Paul says we've renounced the hidden things of dishonesty. We don't do things that manipulate. And we don't walk in craftiness. We don't handle the word of God deceitfully.

In other words, we don't use it to induce certain experiences or certain results or responses. But by manifestation of the truth, we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. Paul says I will never use the Bible. I will never deceive anybody.

I will never try to be dishonest with anybody to gain my own ends. All I desire to do is to manifest the truth and therefore to commend myself in the sight of God. All response in worship is a response to the word of God.

And it's amazing how many people don't understand this as I mentioned some time earlier. People very often ask me, how can you have a worship service when you preach such a long time? When do your people have time to worship?

And the answer is you cannot worship God apart from an understanding of who He is. That's why I'm so committed to expository preaching. That's why I'm so committed to the systematic teaching of the word of God week in, week out.

There is no other thing to do. I could give you clever sermons that would move your emotions. And they would move your attitudes. And I could maybe make you cry by filling in a whole lot of stories and other things.

I could make it interesting and fun and exciting. But when it was all said and done, you might say, boy, John MacArthur can preach, but you wouldn't worship God. It is a far greater challenge for me to teach the word of God and let it command you to respond to God as God is revealed in this self-revelation.

That's why I think that any young person going into the ministry who's not committed to expository preaching is cutting his own throat ultimately. Because people must respond in life at every dimension to the truth of the word of God. We have to worship in truth. And truth is revealed in this word.

And that's our source. And that's why I'm so totally committed to the fact that we must teach the word of God. When the early church met together, they met to discuss the apostles' doctrine, to be taught the apostles' doctrine, the teaching of the apostles.

What were they? They were the revelations of God about himself. The self-disclosure of God made manifest through their writings and their teachings. And they were the substance of the truth on which those people worshiped. That's why Paul said to Timothy, until I come, read the text, explain the text, and apply the text. Stay in the text. Teach sound doctrine.

What's that? Truth about God. We're not here to create an emotional experience. We're here to teach you about God out of this book. And out of that foundation of knowledge comes worship. In the early church, they worshiped and they used songs and they used hymns and they used spiritual songs.

They made melodies. They had times of praise and times of thanks. And all of those are listed in Colossians 3, 16 and 17. But it says in 16 before that, let the word of Christ dwell in you, Plutios, abundantly, fully, richly, so that when the word dominates you, then your praise is regulated and your worship is conformed to the divine standard. So the nature of worship, the essence of worship, what is it?

It's to offer God worship from depths of our inner being in praise and prayer and song and giving and living, but always based upon His revealed truth. And it's so difficult to keep the church conformed to that because the church tends on the one hand to get cold and lifeless and dead and icy, and on the other hand to get emotional and fanatical and feeling oriented. And there must be a balance. And we who tend to be on the icy, unemotional end get intimidated by the feelers over there, don't we? But that's not where it belongs either.

It's both in balance. We must know the truth. You know when Paul went to Mars Hill in Athens in chapter 17 of Acts, their worship was unacceptable and his indictment is most telling, most telling. He says a very simple thing to them. Just listen. Verse 23, as I passed by and behold your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription to the unknown God whom therefore ye worship in ignorance.

There was the indictment. You worship in ignorance and that's unacceptable. You cannot worship God in ignorance. And may I say that even on the cold and sort of orthodox end where ritual and formality and routine and tradition has become a mindless, meaningless activity, there's just as much a loss of true worship as in the ecstasies of the other extreme. And so I submit to you that if you're going to worship God, there must be faithful commitment to the Word of God.

It isn't going to happen by some zap out of heaven. You worship as the overflow of your understanding of God's self-revelation and it's here in this book. As you study the Word of God and discover its truths and meditate on its truths and focus on God and have an undivided heart and a repentant heart that's pure and clean, you're going to find the flow out of that heart as one of worship. Over and over in the New Testament you read this phrase, Brethren, I would not have you to be what?

Ignorant. There's no premium in the Bible on ignorance. Be diligent to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

Truth, truth, truth. And so we have been given the command to worship in spirit and in truth. Now, I trust and pray that the Spirit of God will tie those things deep within us. The essence of worship, so simple, yet so profound in its perfect balance, can only be accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit. But you must come along with a willingness to dig into the Word of God so that your worship will be a flowing over of that discovery and meditation. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for tuning in today. John's helping you to understand God's character and to respond rightly in John's current study called True Worship. John, today you made the point that all worship is a response to truth about God. And of course, God is revealed in His Word.

And so for listeners who are new to the Scriptures and maybe don't know a lot about how to study the Bible, as well as for long-time Christians for whom the Bible has become familiar, what practical guidelines would you have for how to go deeper in the study of God's Word? First of all, I think there's a general superficiality in the Church today. So much preaching is just disastrously inadequate. And so people are cheated out of enriching preaching. That's why they flock and flood to these conferences where they get the Word of God with some kind of richness and some kind of depth. So you need to start by being in a situation where you're being taught the Word of God so you have some depth coming at you, where you have some opportunities at Bible study and perhaps some fellowship groups or Bible study teachers that handle the Word well. But then on a personal level, the things you don't understand about the Scripture, somebody else does understand.

And you need to go to the sources where the Scripture is explained and that's what Grace To You has done its entire lifetime of communicating the Word of God. One of the tools that I would suggest for you, if you're really serious about investing your life in the Word of God and reaping the everlasting dividends, would be to think about the MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series. Now don't panic, it's 34 volumes.

That's the library for a lifetime. It covers every book of the New Testament. All 27 books are in the MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series. I preached through these books over the years and then wrote commentaries based on those messages and with additional material. The idea of a commentary is to explain everything in the text.

It's like having me sit next to you as you study God's Word. Great resource for any serious Bible student. There are a couple of ways to get the MacArthur New Testament Commentary. You can order all 34 volumes at once or if you already own a portion of the Commentary Series, order the volumes you need to complete the set or start with one. Order the volumes on the Gospel of John or the Book of Romans and go from there. There's never been a better time to buy for a limited time.

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Call us toll free at 800-55-GRACE or go to our website, gty.org. Again, keep in mind that each volume of the MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series is available right now at 25% off the regular price and that sale goes through tomorrow. This is an ideal time to pick up the commentary on Romans, Ephesians, or Revelation. Again, to purchase John's commentary volumes, discounted 25%, call us at 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. Let me also mention a few more Bible study tools that are currently available at 25% off the regular price, starting with Grace2U's flagship resource, the MacArthur Study Bible. It has 25,000 footnotes that explain virtually every passage of Scripture. You can also get books including The Gospel According to God, Slave, The Fulfilled Family, all of our books. To take advantage of this sale, place your order now at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. I trust you were encouraged by today's Bible lesson and be here tomorrow when John shows you what your life will look like if you're a true worshiper. It's another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.