Give Him Glory | Part 1

From the Love Word Finding studios in Memphis, Tennessee, I'm Byron Tyler, here with Kerry Vaughn, the CEO of Love Word Finding.

Kerry, today Adrian Rogers in a message, give him glory. You know, in context of John 4, which is where we'll be looking today, Adrian Rogers explains our urgency to worship the right person, God the Father. And this is that experience that we read about when he meets the woman at the well. It's true, and we exist for one reason and one reason only, to bring him glory. Correct?

Yes. You know, we play to an audience of one, and I think if we could really truly live out our lives so that we're not playing to man or we're not playing to others, but that we are playing to an audience of one, then we're actually bringing our worship to him. Here's an Adrianism that I like. Every day is a holy day, and every place is a sacred place. And so I think, you know, we don't come to church to worship, but as Dr. Rogers would say, we bring our worship to church.

I love that. Worship comes from within. We serve God with our spirit first before we ever serve him with our hands and our feet.

Absolutely. And so it's a whole different perspective on giving him true glory. I even think about the Lord's Prayer. Our Father, you know, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. You know, what a way to start off a prayer that we give him glory and we give him praise and honor right out of the gate. Well, that's something we encourage our listeners to do in their lives is to give him glory. And we're so appreciative, too, when they take time to write us and let them know how the glory of Christ is working out in their life, in their jobs, in their schools, whatever they might be doing.

Here's one that says, These messages from Adrian Rogers are embedded with so much truth in a time of peril. I pray that God will expand the ministry of Love Worth Finding so that the voice of Pastor Rogers would be made available to more people around the world. Don't you love that? Oh, I love it.

I love it. You know, we broadcast in 196 countries and to see our footprint by the grace of God even grow. Dr. Rogers once stated, When you forget about yourself and begin to worship him, when you stop trying to be blessed and start worshiping God, there will be blessings all over you.

I love that. It reverts back to Matthew 633 that says, But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these other things will be added unto you. Now, that's the worship that's not about us. That's a worship that's about him.

So when the passion of Christ becomes our passion, then we begin to see the glory of God. That reminds me, Kerry, about this month's premium, The Passion of Christ and the Purpose of Life book. It's available to our listeners.

Yes, it is. It's available at LWF.org during the Easter season. You'll see it there. It's available for a gift of any kind, plus much, much more when you talk about the resources and materials of Love Worth Finding. Well, with today's message, Give Him Glory, Part 1.

Here's Adrian Rogers. Would you take God's Word and be finding the Gospel of John, Chapter 4? John, Chapter 4, look, if you will, in Verse 24. Here are the words of Jesus.

Jesus said, God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. Now look up here and let me ask you a question. Have you ever been in a boring worship service?

Be careful how you answer. Listen, you have never been in a boring worship service. You may have been in a boring church service, but if you have been worshiping God, that is one of the most thrilling, exciting, thrilling, and meaningful things that could possibly happen to you to learn to worship God in spirit and in truth will turn the monotonous into the momentous, worshiping him in spirit and in truth. Now listen to me, folks.

What we're talking about today is not incidental. It is the bottom line. It is the ultimate priority. It is the highest good to worship him. It is your, listen, your supreme duty. It is your maximum privilege.

Did you get that? It is your supreme duty. It is your maximum privilege. You're going to cheat yourself if you do not listen to this series on worship. You're going to bless yourself if you will drink it in, imbibe, and practice what our Lord teaches about worship. They asked Jesus, what is the greatest commandment? Now they asked the greatest teacher, I suppose, the greatest question. And the greatest question would be, what is the greatest commandment? And the Lord Jesus gave the answer in Mark chapter 12 verses 29 and 30. The first of all commandments is, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind and with all thy strength. This is the first and great commandment, one Lord, one love. Now, if you keep this commandment, you'll be blessed.

If you fail to keep it, you will suffer. In the passage that we had before us, John chapter 4, the word worship is used at least 10 times, some form of the word to worship. And I believe that it is the definitive passage in all of the New Testament on the subject of worship.

Now let me give you the background for this statement that Jesus made in John chapter 4 and verse 24 that God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. The Lord Jesus is on a journey and I want you to notice in verse 4, the Bible says, and he must needs go through Samaria. Now our Lord is going up to Galilee and he has been down in the southern part of the land of Israel, down in Judah. And now he has turned northward and he is going to Galilee. Now normally, when a Jew of this day and age would go from the southern part to the northern part of the land, he would not go, I say he would not go through Samaria. He would take a detour for two reasons. Number one, the detour was the easiest way to go down along the banks of the River Jordan where there were not so many rocky crags and mountains and precipitous places to fall.

That was the easiest way to travel. But besides that, they went around Samaria very frankly because they did not like the Samaritans. Now that's to put it mildly. They abhorred the Samaritans. They hated the Samaritans and the Samaritans returned the favor. Now who were the Samaritans? In the year 721 B.C., the people of Israel who had rebelled against the Lord were carried away captive. That's in the year 721 B.C. Now the captors took the strongest and the best, the most noble, the most educated, the finest of the people away captive, but they left the sick, the weak, the poor, and the illiterate, they left them in the land.

We don't want to bother with you. And so the others are carried away captive. Well, these people who were left in this land that we call Samaria, they began to intermarry with themselves, began to reinforce the gene pool of weakness. And besides that, some Babylonian stragglers came in and they began to marry with these Jews who were left behind.

And the Babylonians brought their paganism in. The Jews would have nothing to do with these people. They looked down upon them. They would not even eat out of a plate that had been eaten out of by a Samaritan, no matter how many times you washed it. Now the Samaritans wanted to go down to Jerusalem to worship, but they were not allowed.

They were told to stay out. So they built their own place of worship, their own house of worship on a mountain that was there in Samaria called Mount Gerizim. So you had two places to worship. You had Mount Zion where the temple was, and then Mount Gerizim where the Samaritans worshiped.

Now that's the background. And the Bible says that Jesus must needs go through Samaria. That is, he had a divine appointment, because as we're going to see in just a moment, there was a woman there who needed redemption. She needed to be saved. She needed the Savior. It was not accidental.

It was not incidental. It was a purpose of our Lord to go through Samaria to this forsaken place by the Jews and to meet this woman who would have been so despised by the Jews. It was a divine appointment. When I welcomed you today, I said, you're not here by accident. I believe you're here by divine appointment. I believe that God rules over everything. I believe not a blade of grass moves without his permission. And I believe that God has every one of us here by divine appointment, because we, like this woman of old, are going to meet the Savior here in this place.

Now, let's continue to read and see what happened here. Verse 5, Then he cometh to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now, Jacob's well was there. By the way, I have been to Jacob's well on a number of occasions. That well is still there.

It's one of the most authentic places in the Holy Land. Now, Jacob's well was there. Jesus, therefore, being wearied with his journey, set thus on the well, and it was about the sixth hour. There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink.

For his disciples were going away unto the city to buy meat, that is, to buy food. Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest a drink of me? You can almost hear a snarl in her voice as she says this, which am a woman of Samaria. Now, it's bad enough that she was a Samaritan, but she was a woman of Samaria. The women of this day were looked down upon and denigrated, and she says, Why are you talking to me? And then she goes on to explain it as if he didn't know.

For the Jews have no dealing with the Samaritans. Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou would have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. A woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. And by the way, the well is very deep. I've been there.

I can testify of that. From whence then hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob which gave us the well and drank thereof himself and his children and his cattle? Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw. Now Jesus saith unto her, Go call thy husband, and come hither. At this moment, if she was able to blush, she blushed because the woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus saith unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband, for thou hast had five husbands.

Today we'd give her an Academy Award, wouldn't we? Thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband. That is, now she's just living with a man without even the benefit of a marriage ceremony. In that saith, Thou truly, Jesus saith.

You're telling the truth when you say, I have no husband. The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. And I'm going to stop there for just a moment, but I want you to notice this divine appointment. Here was a woman, she was bound by sin. Here was a woman who had really a thirsty soul. It was God that she was thirsting for, but she had gone from husband to husband. She had gone from affair to affair, and it had all turned to dust in front of her, and she's now just a sort of a faded flower.

She's living now with a man without even the benefits of marriage. She has become the dirty plaything of, I suppose, a dirtier man. You know what people would call that today? The new morality.

Well, we can tell from John chapter 4, it's not new, and it's certainly not moral. We have the same thing today, and Hollywood is leading the pack. By the way, people talk about reforming Hollywood. I think you'd probably be easier to run a soda shop in hell than to reform Hollywood.

If it happens, that would be wonderful, but that's not where I'm pinning my hopes. I want to tell you the truth. These with faces like angels and morals like alley cats are becoming the entertainment in America today, and people are having that filth piped right into their living room. Well, here was this woman. She was bound by sin. Don't envy these people who live in this lifestyle. Pity them.

Pity them. I thank God for a Christian home, a godly marriage, and, friend, that's what you ought to strive for, and that's what you ought to build by the grace of God. But she was bound by sin because she'd been blinded by Satan. Satan had lied to her. Satan said, this is the way you're going to find satisfaction, lady. As Dr. Robert G. Lee, the late, great pastor of this church used to say, you can eat the devil's corn if you want to, but he'll choke you on the cob.

Now, the devil, as he said, offers high wages, but he pays in counterfeit money. The Bible says the bread of deceit is sweet, but afterward a man's mouth shall be filled with gravel. Satan had blinded this woman, and now she's just broken by sorrow.

She's been discarded by these men like some kind of a worn-out garment. Now, sin has its thrills, but it doesn't have its joys. Sin thrills, then it kills. It fascinates, then it assassinates, and here she was. Here she was, bound by sin, blinded by Satan, broken by sorrow, but Jesus must needs go through Samaria. This was a divine appointment, and Jesus begins to talk to this woman about living water, about drinking from the well of salvation himself, the fountain of living water. Now, what she did was what many people do when you start to zero in on their spiritual need. She began to argue denominations.

She said, now, wait a minute. You're a Jew. We're Samaritans. The Jews worship in Jerusalem. The Samaritans worship in Samaria.

The Jews worship on Mount Zion. We worship on Mount Gerizim. Which is the right place to worship?

Have you ever noticed how people want to argue denominationalism rather than talk about salvation? Which is the right place to worship? She's saying, we worship here because our fathers worship here.

Our father, Jacob, worshiped here, and our fathers are telling us this is the right place to worship. A Baptist was talking to a Methodist trying to get the Methodist to be a Baptist. The Baptist said to the Methodist, why are you a Methodist? Why aren't you a Baptist? He said, well, I'm a Methodist because my father was a Methodist, and his father was a Methodist, so I'm a Methodist. The Baptist said, that doesn't make sense.

What if your father was a fool and your grandfather was a fool? Then what would you be? He said, well, I guess I'd be a Baptist. People just want to argue religion.

That's what this woman is doing. She's saying, where should we worship? Look in verse 20. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Now, Jesus now begins to talk to her about what I want to talk to you about today, which is the subject of worship. Oh, what this woman needed was an encounter with the living God, and that encounter is called worship. Now, this woman only had two alternatives, at least that she knew of. That is, she could worship at Mount Gerizim, the place of worship there that the Samaritans had built, or she thought maybe in Jerusalem. Now, these were the two options of that day.

Now, let me tell you what they were like. The Samaritans worshiped with zeal. As a matter of fact, there's still a few Samaritans alive today.

Did you know that? I have been to this place, and I've been up on Mount Gerizim, and I have met some Samaritans. There's some real, live, living Samaritans today, just a handful of them, just a few hundreds of them that are still living today, still worshiping there.

Now, let me tell you about the Samaritans. The Samaritans rejected most of the Old Testament. They only kept five books of the Old Testament, what we call the Pentateuch.

The rest of it, they said, we don't have anything to do with. So, they rejected primarily a good part of the Word of God, but you talk about worshiping with fervor and zeal. They still do that. They still make animal sacrifices today. These Samaritans have a zeal, but not according to knowledge. Now, that's the kind of worship they had in Samaria. Now, the Jews, they worshiped in Jerusalem. They believed all of the Bible of that day, the Old Testament.

They believed it from Genesis to Malachi. They believed it all, and they worshiped there in the temple, but their religion was dead, dead as a wedge. Jesus said, Isaiah prophesied of you, and this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. So, what you had here on the one hand is uninformed zeal, and on the other hand, dead orthodoxy.

Now, that's what you have today, folks, all around. If you look around, by and large, we have basically the same thing today when people are trying to worship. The Christians worshiped in ignorance, but they had zeal. The Jews had the truth, but they rejected the Spirit. Thank God we don't have to choose between enthusiastic heresy or lifeless orthodoxy.

And so, this woman had these two options. They had the heat without light or light without heat, to fry in fanaticism or to freeze in formalism, but neither one of them knew the truth of what it is to worship. Now, with that as a background, I want you to look now at the Scripture.

In verse 21, Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, that is, Mount Gerizim, where they were, nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father. Ye worship, ye know not what. That is, you've got ignorant worship. We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.

They had the truth. But now, notice verse 23, that the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit, that's what the Samaritans specialized in, and in truth, that's what the Jews specialized in, 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, with that in mind, I want to talk to you about worship today. What is worship in spirit and in truth?

Very quickly, I hope you get these facts down. Fact number one, we must worship the right person for it to be true worship. Look, if you will, in verse 23. The Bible says, For the Father seeketh such to worship him. You must worship the right person.

And who is the right person? The Father. Idolatry is to worship the wrong God. 1 Corinthians 8, verse 6 says, There is but one God, the Father. There is but one God. Now, we have today people who don't want to call God Father. They want to call God Mother. As a matter of fact, some foolish people have even rewritten the Bible to call God the Father, Mother, God, and all of this theological garbage. And that's what it is, folks.

I hate to tell you this, but sheer garbage. God is Father. There is one God, the Father. That's what the Word of God says.

Now, if that offends you, you come apologize to me after the service and I'll forgive you. Friends, that's just what the Bible says. God is Father. Father is not what God is like. Father is what God is. That is the very nature of God.

That does not demean or demote anybody. It just simply means that God is Father. Do you know what we're seeing today? A subtle move from Father God to Mother Earth.

Have you noticed that? Beyond that, some to Uncle Sam. From Father God to Mother Earth to Uncle Sam. But, friend, we must worship. We must worship the right person. The Father seeketh such to worship Him. Did you know that Jesus called God Father more than 70 times in the Gospels? It was His favorite term for the Almighty.

Now, that blesses me. That blesses me because I've been thinking about the nature of God. You think about His omnipotence, His mighty power.

He can do anything. You think about His omniscience. He knows everything. You think about His omnipresence. He's everywhere. Somebody said that God is a circle whose center is everywhere but no conferences nowhere. That's a mind-boggling thought. That's His omnipresence.

Those are great, big, double-jointed words. And many of us can't understand that. Many of us can't relate to that. But, Father, we can relate to.

Isn't that right? Father. And we'll hear part two of Give Him Glory coming up on tomorrow's broadcast. If you have questions about who Jesus is, about what He means to you, and believe the forgiveness that He's offering you, go to our Discover Jesus page at lwf.org slash radio. There you'll find resources and materials that can answer any questions you may have about your faith. Well, thanks for joining us today. And remember, because the Lord dwells in us, every day is a holy day, and every place is a sacred place. Worship God today with your whole heart and tune in next time for the conclusion of Give Him Glory, right here on Love Worth Finding.