The Essence of Worship

The Essence of Worship
9/12/99


Open your Bibles to John 4 where Jesus is talking to the Samaritan woman at the well. While you’re turning there I’ll tell you the subject of this morning’s message - The Essence of Worship.
(John 4:21-24) Jesus said to her, “Woman believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall you worship the Father. You worship that which you do not know; we worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit; and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

The phrase I’d like you to underline in your mind is toward the end of verse 23 where it says “for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.” Recently I was driving home from Houston with Nathanael - Nathanael was in the back seat sleeping, or reading - and I was praying and all of a sudden I was overwhelmed with gratefulness to God for my life. I was just filled with thankfulness to the point that I felt like I was going to burst. Have you ever had an experience like that? But something even stranger happened next, and this doesn’t happen to me very often, but I had a vision - or what approximated a vision - I think it really was a vision from the Lord because it was intense, it was sudden and unexpected and it has grown in intensity in my mind’s eye since that time. What I saw were two big hands reach deep into my chest, even into my heart, and open it up. What I saw there was something incredibly beautiful. I saw a concert of praise and worship going on in the inner room of my heart. That is so unusual, because probably like you, when I try to look into my heart with my natural eyes what I see is all the bad stuff. I see the anger, the selfishness, greed and lust and all this stuff. But this time, I believe what I saw is what God is doing in there. There is a sanctifying work going on in our hearts that we aren’t aware of. There is a consistent or continual work of praise and worship ascending to the Father in that deepest place of our hearts. I wonder if the reason we see all the junk is because God is pushing that to the outside, to the outer rim of our hearts as he is sanctifying that inner place. After all, maybe we should believe Him when he says, “I am at work in you both to will and to do my good pleasure.” And I am confident of this very thing that He who began a good work in us will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. I want you to be encouraged this morning as we start to talk about worship that God is doing a sanctifying work in you. You may be worshipping in that deepest place of your heart all the time and not even be aware of it. Doesn’t it make sense that we may not even be aware of 90% of what God is doing in us. We only see so little and in such a limited way.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about worship. Here’s Jesus with the Samaritan woman and he says to her, “You worship that which you do not know.” Now, a careful reading of that passage reveals something and what it reveals is this: He wasn’t just saying her concept of the Father was limited. He was saying more than that - He was saying her whole system of worship, her preconceived ideas, her patterns of worship are skewed,