As Christians corporate worship is both a privilege and a responsibility. So how should we decide how and where to worship?
Is it better to be solemn or exuberant? What really matters to God? Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg shares practical guidelines gleaned from the Apostle Paul's instruction to the Thessalonians. First Thessalonians 5 and verse 16. Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not put out the Spirit's fire, do not treat prophecies with contempt, test everything, hold on to the good, avoid every kind of evil.
Now, what I'd like to do in the time that is available to us this morning is to provide an introduction to 1 Thessalonians 5 16. Let me then introduce this matter of learning how to worship. First of all, I want to say three things regarding worship about which God is never indifferent. For God is the object of our worship, and all worship begins with God and his glory and does not begin with man and his interests or man and his need or man and his preoccupations. So we need to be careful to understand the things about worship concerning which God is not indifferent. Number one, God is not indifferent as to whether we worship or not. It's not a kind of take-it-or-leave-it thing, while God looks down upon us and sees whether we're worshiping or not, and he is somewhat casually indifferent to it all—not for a moment. Nor is he prepared to accept from us the kind of lame excuse which says, you know, others are good for this, but I personally am just not cut out for worship.
It's something I like to leave up to others. Myself, I just don't worship. Well, if you don't worship, there is something more significantly wrong with you than you have ever realized, and I'll show you that before we conclude.
God is not indifferent as to whether we worship, because man by his very nature, as distinct from the beasts of the field, is a worshiper. That is why anyone who has taken anthropology at college or at university knows that every culture that has been discovered in the world has been discovered as a worshiping culture. And the issue is not, do they worship? The issue is, who or what do they worship? And why do these people worship as they do?
And the answer is, because they have been made with an innate knowledge of God within them. And so they reach out beyond themselves for someone or something to declare their allegiance. And so it is that one of the key evidences of man's rebellion against God lies not in the fact that men and women have ceased to worship but lies in the fact that they now worship the wrong things. You see, this morning, all of America worships. All of our friends and neighbors are engaged in some form of worship today. They may not be aware of the fact, nor may they describe it in those terms, but they recognize that it is that which is beyond themselves which is significant to them to which they give their time, to which they give their attention, and to which they give their devotion. Oh, we pride ourselves in the fact that we're not like some cultures in Asia that have these shrines set up down the street. And we tend to be very arrogant in our response to that and say, Look at these poor souls! If only they came to America, they wouldn't be like that anymore.
No, you're right. They would be like something else. They would worship at some other shrine, perhaps. They would worship in some other way.
Romans chapter 1 and verse 25 describes far as the predicament of every dying culture. Romans 1 25, therefore, they exchanged the truth of God for a lie. And they worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator, who is forever praised.
Amen. And you can find it on bumper stickers as you drive home today, all about Mother Earth and how we ought to make sure that Mother Earth is happy and that we might pay attention to Mother Earth. That is nothing other than to create, as with the pantheists of old, the notion that somehow or other the earth itself is worthy of our worship.
No, it is not. And every decaying culture will miss the fact that God is worthy of our worship, and that the earth is the Lord's in the fullness thereof. God, then, is not indifferent as to whether we worship. Secondly, and it follows—we've already alluded to it—God is not indifferent as to the object of our worship. As to the object of our worship. Turn, for example, to John chapter 5 and listen to the words of Jesus as he speaks to the crowd around him. Verse 22 of John 5, The Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son.
Notice this. So that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Now, do you understand what Jesus is saying there? Do you understand the categorical, distinctive nature of what Jesus is making clear? What he is saying is that people who simply want to embrace the idea of worshiping God with a small g, whoever he is or whatever he is, are not in point of fact worshiping God. Because there only is one God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the only people who really worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ are those who at the same time honor the Son just as they honor the Father.
And he who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Now, the implications for this are radical and important. Those of you who were reading the newspaper carefully this week will have read in the leader page in the editorial section the response to the visit of the pope. And upon his departure, one of the editors wrote a piece concerning his visit, pointing out the fact that the pope had spoken to large crowds, he had spoken with emphasis, he had spoken with forcefulness regarding his moral and theological perspectives.
But, said the editor, many of these things are actually disregarded even by his own faithful adherence. And then came the concluding paragraph to the effect. Now, says the editor, the fact is, however, that the pope's visit is good for America, because he somehow transcends all religion.
And he is a symbol of the desire of men and women in America to interconnect with one another and to connect with their God. T-H-E-I-R-G-O-D. Mistake.
It was capitalized. Now, the message is clear. Here comes somebody who is very committed, very devoted to his perspective.
A few people like that, some who are supposed to like it don't even like it. But let's understand what it really says to the American culture. This is what it says. It reminds us that transcending all of those preoccupations, all of those theological niceties, is the issue of how we the people may be interconnected with one another, and we might as individuals be connected to our particular God. And Jesus says, He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.
Okay? So in other words, Mormonism cannot worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. For in Mormonism, Jesus is a created being.
He is not coequal and coeternal with the Father. The same for Jehovah's Witnesses. The same for Unitarianism. The same for Universalism. The same for the pluralism and syncretism, which is consuming the religious right in an endeavor to get, quote, prayer back into the public schools. But not to get prayer to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ into the public schools—just to get prayer to whoever you want into the public schools.
One minute of silence so that whoever can say whatever to whomsoever. Now, for me, I gotta be honest and tell you, that's not a preoccupation. Because when I argue for that, I argue on a horizontal plane as if somehow or another my God was just my God, alongside the Indian God and the Hindu God and the Buddhist God and the any kind of God. Jesus says, No, he who does not honor the Son cannot honor the Father for there is only one God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And our culture is so bedeviled in its thinking that the only thing that is unacceptable on the religious plane now is the kind of thing I'm telling you this morning. Your friends and neighbors do not care, provided you go back to them and say, Yesterday morning, I was worshiping my God.
And I'm sure you had a nice time with your God. God is not indifferent as to the object of our worship. What does this mean in practical terms? It means that our worship must be God-centered. It means that our hymns and our songs must be full of God. It means that our worship must be, first of all, vertical and then secondarily horizontal.
It means that our worship must be Trinitarian. And this is very important, because people say to me all the time, And what is Parkside Church? What does it mean that it is a non-denominational church? Does that mean that it is a Unitarian church? Now, some of you couldn't answer that, because you don't even know what a Unitarian church is. A Unitarian church is a church without Jesus in it. It hasn't got a second or third person of the Trinity.
It's only got one out of three. And so, by both our testimony and then by our worship, we must declare ourselves to be those who are keenly aware of the fact that God is not indifferent concerning this. One of the Puritan prayers that comes out of a wonderful book, entitled The Valley of Vision, puts this wonderfully in frame. The prayer says, O triune God, three persons and one God, I will bless and praise thee, for love so unmerited, so unspeakable, so wondrous, so mighty to save the lost and raise them to glory.
Now notice the Trinitarian element. O Father, you have loved me and sent Jesus to redeem me. O Jesus, you have loved me and assumed my nature and shed your own blood to wash away my sin.
O Holy Spirit, you have loved me and entered my heart, implanted their eternal life, and revealed to me the glories of Jesus. God is not indifferent then as to whether we worship. Secondly, he is not indifferent as to the object of our worship.
And thirdly, he is not indifferent as to the manner of our worship. The manner of our worship. I want, if I may, to distinguish between manner and mode.
Forgive me if I use the words ineptly, but I'm thinking mode in terms of style. I'm thinking manner in a more substantive way. There are a variety of modes or styles of worship which are influenced by culture, by history, by denomination, by preference, etc. But the manner in which we are to worship is not up for grabs.
It is put succinctly for us, again by Jesus—this time in John chapter 4, if your Bible is open, you need only go back a chapter—to where Jesus is addressing a lady at the well. In the course of conversation, she raises the issue of worship. And she's concerned about the distinction between Samaritan worship and Jewish worship. The Samaritans worshiped in Gerizim, and the Jews worshiped in Jerusalem. And so she says to Jesus, Are we supposed to be up there in Gerizim, or are we supposed to be over here in Jerusalem?
Verse 21, Jesus says, Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know. They were enthusiastic but misguided. We worship what we do know.
They were instructed but unenthusiastic. For salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and does now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. Now, that, I'm suggesting to you, designates the manner of worship about which God is not indifferent.
And it is distinct from a mode or a style of worship. The Father across the world today is seeking worshipers. He is seeking those upon whom he may lay his hand and draw to his Son and fill with his Spirit in order that in multiple tongues and in multiple places the very seed of Abraham may be created to praise him. His perspective is not uniquely on United States of America. His perspective is not channeled through our selfish preoccupations. His gaze is cast over all the world, and he is seeking those the manner of whose worship will be in spirit and in truth.
Now, if you think about that, it helps. Because if we were able to start a journey by means of airplane and drop down in our Father's world in various parts and continents today, we would find people who are equally committed to this manner of worship. We would find people for whom John 4.23 is absolutely crucial.
If you said to them, Now, what are you seeking to do? Well, because we know that God is not indifferent as to the manner of our worship. We are seeking to worship him in spirit and in truth. So now we're in Kenya. We're on the Indian Ocean coast.
We're in Mombasa. And we are confronting men and women scantily clad, beating on a variety of drums, playing a variety of windward instruments, and engaging in a mode of worship radically different from anything that would be found in the shores of the continental United States. Their exuberant, repetitive praise is their expression of seeking to worship in spirit and in truth.
We arrive in the Western Isles of Scotland, and you come to worship with me in a small church amongst the Free Presbyterians. And there you will find that there is no musical accompaniment at all. There is no playing of an organ, there is no playing of a piano, there is no playing of anything.
There is no singing of any song save the songs which come from the hymnbook of the church, the psalms. And we say to them, What in the world are you doing here? How, they will reply, We are convinced that since the manner of our worship is to be in spirit and in truth, we are worshiping in the way that we should. We may descend amongst the ritualism or the formalism, the liturgy of Lutheranism or Episcopalianism. We may go amongst some of the most vibrant, charismatic, and Pentecostal enthusiastic worship we could ever find. We may be dropped in in a few Baptist churches that are going, Hymn prayer, hymn prayer, offering hymn message hymn, benediction. And right across the board, everyone will answer if they're the Lord's people.
Every single one of them will say the same thing. We are seeking to worship in spirit and in truth. The manner is universal. The mode is distinguishable.
Now, we may argue that one mode is better or one mode is more right or one mode is more conducive to the way that we feel. But listen, loved ones, you cannot say this. You cannot say, Worship in spirit and in truth means this. Unless you're prepared to add a couple of words.
We may say, Worship in spirit and in truth means this to me. Or to us. Or right now.
Or in here. But it is the ultimate in arrogance and in pomposity to assume that of all the cultures and places and possibilities and diversities which the Spirit of God has created, a spirit who is like fire that cannot be contained, and a wind from which we cannot find its source and origin, it is ridiculous to assume that one particular mode is the issue. That's why the Bible does not address mode.
That's why it addresses manner—to give us freedom with the mode on the basis of the manner. Okay. You say, right? Fine.
We'll go with you for a moment or two longer on this. If the manner of acceptable worship is so important and it is to be in spirit and in truth, tell us, what does spirit and in truth mean? How would we be able to identify a congregation that is committed to that manner of worship?
Let me tell you three more things. Number one, to worship in spirit and in truth is to engage in biblical worship, which is grounded in the truth of Scripture. In other words, it doesn't start with Mr. and Mrs. Feelgood. It starts with the Bible. It starts with the revelation of God.
It starts with our encounter of him. It begins, as I've said, with God and his glory, and then comes secondly to us and our preferences and our needs and our preoccupations. Archbishop Temple, writing in an earlier generation, said, Worship is the submission of our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by his holiness. It is the nourishment of the mind with his truth, the purifying of the imagination by his beauty, the opening of the heart to his love, the surrender of the will to his purpose. And all of this gathered up in adoration—the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable. Adoration—the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable. That's, you see, why the act of the woman in Mark 14 was so offensive to some of these stuffy rascals around her.
Because she was prepared to be thought a fool in order that she might break that which was most precious to her and give it up to the Lord Jesus Christ. There needs to be a theological foundation upon which we build our worship and our praise. Nobody can worship God properly unless they're theological. And to be theological means just to have a knowledge of God as it is revealed to us in the Bible. In other words, it's what we know from the Bible that gives us the lips to praise.
The hymn writer says, "'Tis what I know of thee, my Lord and God, that fills my heart with praise, my lips with song." Not what I know of myself, because what I know of myself gets me down. There's no point in pumping myself up. Even when I pump myself up, I'm not worth pumping up.
And at my most pumped up, there's still a lot to discourage. So if I'm looking to that, to energize me in worship, no, I'll never really worship. "'Tis what I know of thee, my Lord and God, that fills my heart with praise, my lips with song." You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. Today's message is titled, Learning How to Worship an Introduction. And if you'd like to share this message with a friend, or maybe use it in your church's new membership class, let me remind you, all of the sermons in Alistair's online library can be streamed or downloaded or shared for free. Visit our website, truthforlife.org. And here at Truth for Life, we are thrilled to see so many people accessing our website, listening to Alistair's teaching without cost being a concern.
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