Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. These days many churches have high energy music and some feel worship may have moved into entertainment. Today Erwin Lutzer takes a look at how we should view our services and the music in them.
Stay with us. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, how can we apply the lessons Jesus taught the woman at the well to how we should worship today?
Well, you know, Dave, you've raised a very sensitive issue, haven't you? And that is the nature of worship services today. And even though it's difficult sometimes to know exactly where the line is drawn, it is true that oftentimes the congregation is not expected to worship. The congregation is expected to see worship happening. What I want to do is to emphasize the fact that in answer to your question, Jesus was speaking to this woman and he said, you can worship me in spirit and in truth no matter where you are.
Bottom line, we need to worship with honesty and transparency no matter where we find ourselves. Now to all who are listening, I'm holding in my hands a book that I think is very exciting, very instructive regarding God's creation. It's a 365 page devotional. We've never offered this before, but this book actually has 365 color photographs explaining God's creation regarding issues such as biology, anatomy, astronomy, geology, history.
If you were to take out 10 minutes a day and read these and study them and share them with others, you would have a vast knowledge that will help you to defend the faith, to show the errors of Darwinian evolution, and at the same time actually lead you to worshiping God the creator. For a gift of any amount, we're making it available for you. Let me give you a website. I hope that you have a pen or pencil handy. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com.
Ask for the book without excuse. Meanwhile, let us take time now to worship in spirit and in truth. It's all right to applaud, but let's not applaud just because we saw some ability on this platform, not just because the choir sang so well. Let's applaud for God. That's why we applaud. We say, I praise you and I magnify your name. Now you can clap and say, Lord, I magnify your name. That's what we should be doing.
And not just because the singer happens to be so good and thank God for the good singers that we do have. We need to ask ourselves this question. And then he goes on to say that he bemoans the fact that believers seem to have succumbed to secularism, et cetera. But let me communicate to you the last paragraph. Christians are privileged to contemplate the things of God, the holiness of his being and his commandments in Jesus Christ, and to refrain from the works of the devil in all their subtle manifestations. What better time is there than before the service in God's house to meditate reverently on what he requires of all of us.
There's something to be said for that. You know, I came from a little church that was so small that if 50 people had showed up, we'd have had to go to the neighbors to get some chairs. And we knew though, as children, you could talk out on the street. You could even talk in the lobby, which is as small as your kitchen.
Two or three people could take their overshoes off in the lobby at a time if they were tall and thin. But all of us as children knew that the minute you go into that sanctuary, you're quiet because why? You expect that here you are going to now come together into God's presence. You are going to give God glory and praise. And this is the place where in a special way we will meet him.
Now what we have to remember is this. Jesus is saying that worship is a matter of heart. I've emphasized that of course you can worship him alone in a hospital bed room or wherever you are. But there's a sense in which we come together now and we worship God together. And this is a special place not because of the brick and mortar, but because God dwells with his people. Jesus said it's a matter of heart. You see, this is my struggle.
This is my kampf, to use the German word. This is the thing that tears in my soul is that when we talk about styles of worship and we reduce it to words and style, we forget the fact that the real issue is one of heart. And we are dishonest when we reduce worship to words or when we sing about God, but do not seek him. When we praise him, but we do not obey him. Remember what Jesus said to the Pharisees?
He says, well, as Isaiah prophesied of you hypocrites, the people honor me with their lips. They are singing the right songs. Maybe they had discussions in those days too. Should it be contemporary?
Should it be traditional? But they were singing the right songs. They had the right words, but he says, your heart is far from me. Jesus is reminding us that worship is a matter of heart. Secondly, it's a matter of truth. The same verse, verse 23 of truth.
What does that mean? Truth, first of all, regarding as to who God is, we come into God's presence and we know that we are in the presence of the one true holy God. My friends, the God that we worship is not the God of contemporary talk shows. This is not the God, you know, who, who is accessible to everybody at any time in any way through any name. This isn't the God that we're talking about. That's the God of mythology.
It's the God of the occult. We come before a God who demands a sacrifice before we can approach him and that's why we come in the name of Jesus. We always begin our worship services that way because apart from that, we would be blown away. We would be rejected and so we come and we come and we come and we know that this is a holy God.
Truth about who God is, truth about who we are. You know, despite my many faults and I'm sure there are many, one thing I do like to do is to practice what I preach. I don't always do it. Sometimes I preach way beyond my experience. Years ago on Saturday night, I used to look into a mirror and I used to practice my message and then my kids used to say, dad is practicing what he preaches.
I don't do that anymore. Maybe I've outgrown that, but I said this week I'm speaking on adoring God. Maybe I should spend some extra time adoring God. So as I began to adore God, I mean really, really seriously adore him. It's amazing all the things that God brought to my attention. Said, what about that sin that you haven't dealt with? What about those thoughts that you've had that have not yet been confessed?
What about this matter that you didn't take care of? And suddenly I began to realize, you know, this business of worship means that when we seriously worship God, the first thing he does is begin to clean us up. And I began to realize again how easy it is to worship him with our lips and our heart far from him. And if we are serious, if we worship in truth, we will worship like Isaiah who said, woe is me for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of the people of unclean lips because mine eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts. And we fall down and we worship and we say, oh God, we're sinners. We're sinners. We're sinners. But we worship. That's worship in truth. If God wills it next time I preach on this, which is the next message in the series of two, I hope to speak about the cost that is involved in worship.
It isn't just coming to church and singing hymns, even though they're good hymns and good choruses. Jesus says it's a matter of heart. He said it's a matter of honesty. It's a matter of truth. Thirdly, he says, you know, it's a matter of priority. And this excites me the most.
It's a matter of priority. He says the Father seeks such worshippers, or as my translation says, these are the kinds of worshippers the Father seeks. The eyes of the Lord go to and fro throughout the whole earth, seeking those whose hearts are perfect towards him. The eyes of the Lord go along the rows at Moody Church, all along there. The eyes of the Lord go into the balconies. The eyes of the Lord go into the homes. The eyes of the Lord go among the people of God. And God's saying, I'm seeking for someone who will worship me in spirit and in truth. So God goes seeking.
And what happens to us? Well, you know, we're too busy. We're too tired. God hasn't been there for us like we wanted him to be there. He hasn't answered our prayers. Little do we realize that unanswered prayer is one of the means by which God seeks worshippers. We don't understand that. So we think God has blown us off and we don't understand what's going on. And so God goes on a hunt and he goes seeking and maybe he finds one in 10 or one in 20.
I don't know, but I do know this. It is almost impossible to develop worshippers in an affluent culture. Because as long as we're secure in our jobs, as long as we're secure in our relationships, as long as life is going along pretty well, we will not seek God. It is when he comes along and this is why God has various means by which he does his seeking or else he would never find anyone who worshiped him. One is unanswered prayer. The reason he doesn't answer our prayers is he wants us to keep coming back and he wants us to realize that more than an answer to our prayer, we need him even more than our answers.
That's the whole point. Disappointments in life. It's God's seeking. God is saying, I want you to, I want you to no longer be able to depend upon those people and depend upon things so that he keeps cutting out from under us all the props so that finally we are left alone with him and we cry up with Asaph and say, whom have I in heaven but thee and there is none upon the earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart fails, but God is the strength of my life and my portion forever.
I've got nothing left but God. The trials of life, God seeking worshippers. He gives Job's 10 children, 10 children are dead, boom, in a windstorm, 10 fresh graves on the hilltop.
What did Job do? He bowed low and he worshiped and said, the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. That's how God does his seeking and God desires that this be the centrifugal force of our life and Jeremiah, you remember says, my people have done two evils. Number one, they forsaken me, the fountain of living water.
That's the first thing they do, but they never stop there. He says they hewn out cisterns, broken cisterns, he says, that can hold no water. And so what they're doing is they're seeking water somewhere else. You and I have to seek water.
That's true physically. It's also true spiritually. You're going to find it somewhere, but all of the watering holes of the world are empty or foul. But you and I don't believe that do we? We keep hanging on and saying, I have to find it here. I have to find it there somewhere, someplace and God keeps saying, here I am. Nancy Spiegelberg wrote, Lord, I crawled across the barrenness to you with my empty cup, uncertain in asking a drop of refreshment. But if I had known you better, I'd have come running with a bucket. My wife used to say what my mother used to say too is that sometimes when you eat between meals, you spoil your appetite. You know that that is true. If I drink a milkshake, I don't have to eat for a day and a half.
My appetite is just gone. Here's what happens. We cram our lives with so many different things and if we have a little bit of room, we add something else to it, totally cramming our lives and we get enough of these things to be able to make it by in life. And in the process we bypass God. We bypass the father who's seeking worshipers.
Let me conclude with some observations. Worship, my friend, is at the heart of all ministry. Do we believe that? Worship is at the heart of all ministry. I think of what Pastor Wiersby said in his book on worship. He's talking about all the things that we do except worship. And then he says, and what more shall I say for the time would fail to tell me of Sunday school contests, bus ministries, youth rallies, discipleship programs, church growth seminars, liturgical renewal movements, ecumenical programs, denominational promotions, all of which promise new life for me and my congregation. But they didn't do the job because they were cut flowers that had no roots.
They had been divorced from worship and therefore they could not produce fruit. This explains, he says, why success in these ventures often creates more problems than it solves. For the emphasis in our successes, he says, is often on men's techniques and achievements, not on God's power and God's glory. It's the heart of ministry. We minister because we love God and because we worship.
It's the heart of the purpose of life. Here's a woman who blew it in terms of her marriages, five marriages now living with a man unmarried. Would you say that she failed in her marital relationships? Even by today's standards, that's failure.
And Jesus says, why don't you become a worshiper? Many years ago, more than 25 years ago, I wrote a book entitled Failure, the Back Door to Success. And remarkably, it is still in print. I like to say the reason is because it sells so well at Moody Bible Institute during exam time. But you know why I wrote that book?
I was sitting in a seminary classroom many, many years ago and I overheard a professor say one statement and that captivated me. It is simply this, that success as we generally think of it is not open to everyone. Not everybody can be successful in getting money. Not everybody can be successful in their job. Maybe not even everybody can be successful in their marriages.
Success as we generally think of it is not an option to many people. But fellowship with God is. You can delight the heart of God by being a worshiper no matter what your past is. You can learn to adore God and in adoring God, you can fulfill the delight of the Father who seeks for worshippers and if he does not find them in high class society, he'll go to the lower classes and find those who know the beauty of forgiveness and he will find their people who delight him because the centrifugal force of their life is worship.
Let me give you a final observation. It's the basis of ministry. It's the basis of purpose and by the way, speaking of purpose, you know of course that in heaven, heaven will not need any preachers. But heaven is going to need worship leaders because in heaven we're going to continue to do what we have done here on earth, namely worship God and God says I want you to begin right now. Let me give you a final thing and that is it's the heart of evangelism.
It's the heart of evangelism. You know, it's interesting this woman, if we had time to read the rest of the story, did you know that she leaves her water pot and goes back into the city and tells everybody whom she met? She says, is he not the Christ? It says in verse 28, leaving her water jar. All kinds of people have said, why did she leave her water jar?
Why didn't she take some water with her? Well, maybe it's because of the enthusiasm at the moment. I like to think of this. Maybe there's even more here.
Maybe it's this. Now that she has learned the refreshment of living water, it almost seemed as if physical water was no longer necessary. She says, now that I've met the water of life who has come to fill my soul and given me within a spring of water that gushes up into eternal life. She was so excited about that.
She forgot that she even needed the other water to live. At any rate, she runs and she tells everybody about this and it says in verse 39, many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony who said, she told me everything I ever did. And she became an evangelist to lead others to Christ and Jesus stayed there. And isn't it wonderful that she learned to worship?
She learned about forgiveness and a bit of worship and she became an evangelist. John Piper is right when he says that the real goal of missions is not even to see people saved as such. The real goal of missions, he says, is evangelism or rather the real goal of evangelism and missions, he says, is worship.
Why? Because we value God so much, we want more tongues to give him praise. And that's why we go to the far ends of the earth. It is for the glory of Jesus. It is that more people in more cultures, in more situations will be able to praise his name.
And that's our motivation. You say, well, how do we learn to worship? I hope to deal with that more specifically in the next message, except to say this, that even the how is less important than the more fundamental question of heart and truth and priority.
It's in his presence that somehow all of life is rearranged and begins to make sense. You say, Pastor Luther, I've failed greatly. There's not much of my life left. I've walked far from God. Would you join this woman in becoming a worshiper, adoring God and delighting his heart? Let's pray. Father, we do say in sincerity, fill my cup, Lord. I lift it up, Lord. Come and quench this thirsting of my soul. Father, we've thirsted for many things. Make Moody Church thirsty for God like that deer panting after the water brooks. Oh, come Holy Spirit, make this a sanctuary in which we adore you and everyone around us know that we adore you. Make us an adoring people. Help us, Lord, because we are so needy and we confess our sins, which are so many that stand in the way of complete focused adoration. In Jesus' name. Amen. And you know, friends, I'm holding in my hands a book that I believe will enable you to worship God in a new way.
In Romans chapter one, the apostle Paul says that they worship, he's speaking of unbelievers, they worship the creation and not the creator. This book has 365 color photographs, one for every day of the year that explains various aspects of God's creation. If you were to take out 10 minutes a day to read this book, to study it, you would learn about biology, anatomy, astronomy, geology, history. All of these subjects are covered for a gift of any amount. We're making this book available for you.
We have never offered it before. And also today is the last day that we are making this available for you. What an opportunity it would be for you to begin the new year, spending 10 minutes a day, learning so much about our great creator God. I hope that you have a pen or pencil handy because I'm going to be giving you some contact info. Meanwhile, I want to thank you in advance for your help as we continue to share the good news of the gospel around the world.
You want to worship the God who created the worlds, animals, plants. This book, I believe will help you do just that. Here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now, if I said that too quickly, I hope that you have a pen or pencil handy so you can write down rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com or you can call us at 1-888-218-9337.
As I emphasized before, this is the last day we're making this resource available for you. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. Running to Win comes to you from the Moody Church in Chicago to help you understand God's roadmap for your race of life. Next time, we think about the problem of unanswered prayer and how it relates to how we should worship God. Plan to join us. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
