Worshiping In Spirit And In Truth - [John 4:23-24]

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Well I have a few questions for you. Is Sunday evening worship service only for the super holy saints?
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I look out among you and I think it must be. This is the cream of the elect.
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I think that's how sometimes we view that. Does Sunday evening, does it crimp your golf game?
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If you go to Sunday evening service, are you missing important football games? And here's the key question.
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When I was contemplating this, I thought, can the Red Sox win if we don't watch?
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I think a lot of people don't come to Sunday night service because they're afraid that the Red Sox won't win if they don't watch.
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Now what about Sunday morning? I mean, how many people were here this morning? It was a lot. 240, 250, something like that.
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But when we come on Sunday morning, is it something that we just kind of go, hey, I did that, check that off my list?
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Is it a religious duty? Is it something that we do out of a sense of obligation?
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Tonight, we're going to be talking about the proper attitude that we should have to worship.
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I'd invite you to open your Bibles to John 4, John chapter 4. This is a great chapter of the
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Bible, and I mean, I'm going to, I'm not really going to preach the whole chapter, but I'd like to.
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I remember one of the first messages I ever heard was on John 4, and it wasn't our regular pastor that taught it.
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He was actually, the guy who did it was a seminary student then, and I was just a new believer.
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And so the pastor says, next week we're going to hear Tony McCracken preaching
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John 4, the woman at the well. Like, everybody knew what that was, and you know, how boring and how dull.
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I thought, that is a great sermon. We're not going to go through the whole chapter, but we'll go through bits of it.
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John 4, verses 23 and 24. Now, I have a few rather silly questions.
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Have you ever seen this bumper sticker that says, Jesus is a liberal? I've seen this like twice in the last week.
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I mean, I see him from time to time, and I just think, well, was he a liberal?
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Is he a liberal? I mean, they point to some teaching, and they say, well, look, he cared about widows and orphans and the poor, and in that sense, he was a liberal.
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And I'm going, okay. And he paid his taxes. Does that make him a liberal? He was in favor of upholding government, you know, not overthrowing it.
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Does that make him a liberal? I don't know. I don't think we can point to the scriptures and say that Jesus was a conservative or a liberal.
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Now, another question. Was Jesus radical? I think he was pretty radical, and I think we'll see that tonight in chapter 4.
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I think it depends somewhat on how you define that. But in John chapter 4, he radically broke a lot of the social norms, things that people didn't do.
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Jesus did. First of all, as I said, this is a story about the woman at the well and Jesus talking to her.
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Well, talking to a woman was not something that you did. Sorry, ladies. But at that time, you know, people talk about how oppressive
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Christianity is toward women, and I'm like, well, actually, he was revolutionary.
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He was radical in the way he dealt with women, completely broke with all the norms. John 4, verses 25 through 27.
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The woman said to him, this Samaritan woman, and we'll talk about what that means in a minute.
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I know that Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ. When that one comes, he will declare all things to us.
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Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he. He said, I am the Messiah.
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At this point, his disciples came and they were amazed, not at what he'd been teaching. They were amazed that he had been speaking with a woman.
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Yet no one said, what do you seek or why do you speak with her? They weren't going to question him.
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They were just amazed that he was doing it. Talking with a woman, radical for its time.
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Well, she wasn't just any woman. She was a Samaritan woman. Now, what do we know about the Samaritans?
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Half -breeds, dirty, they were considered unclean. When we say half -breeds, boy, that has a negative connotation.
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But what were they? They were a mix between Jewish race and just the kind of the peoples around there, the
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Assyrians and the other people there. And what had happened was, the
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Jews who got left behind when the other ones were taken off into captivity, they intermarried with the peoples that were still around there.
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And they were considered unclean, as somebody said. And why would that be?
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Why would they be considered unclean? Why could you not interact with Samaritans? It was more than just they were not racially pure.
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They were also, they were religiously impure.
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They were idolaters. They had their own religious system. It was kind of similar to Judaism, but not really.
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It was interesting, when we went to Israel several years ago, and we would find, we would find, we dug them up.
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They would take us to places, and they would show us altars.
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And by the time we got done with the tour, we could tell what was a genuine altar and what was not. And one of the things that you would see over and over again, is these altars would have steps up to them.
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And the Jewish temple did not, because that was considered work, and you were not to do that.
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So, anyway, be that as it may, they would build in these, they would have places of worship that would all have stairs in them.
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So she was a woman, hence the she, a woman, a
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Samaritan, and, here's the killer, she was not a moral woman.
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This is one of my favorite passages in the whole Bible, John 4, 16 -19. He, talking about Jesus, said,
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Go call your husband and come here. The woman answered and said, I have no husband.
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Jesus said to her, You have correctly said, I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.
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This you have said truly. The woman said to him, in the biggest understatement ever,
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Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. He knew everything about her.
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He knew everything about her. This was not, you know, a
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Sunday go -to -meet -a -woman. This was a woman that had a past. She'd been divorced or had had five previous husbands, and she was living with a man who was not her husband, even then.
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She was not morally clean. I mean, if we were to stack up the evidence against this woman, and all the reasons why
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Jesus should not talk to her, this was radical. Woman.
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Samaritan. Not moral. There is no way he should have been talking to her. And so what did
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Jesus do? He not only talked to her, he turned her into a missionary. Look at verses 28 and following.
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So the woman left her water pot and went into the city and said to the men, Come, see a man who has told me all the things
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I have done. This is not the Christ, is it? They went out of the city and were coming to him.
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So she goes in and she says, This guy is unbelievable. He knew things about me that nobody could know unless they had some familiarity with my past.
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Could this be the Messiah? And the people come out to see him. And what's the result?
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Verse 39. From that city, many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman who testified.
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He told me all the things that I have done. So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they were asking him to stay with them.
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And he stayed there two days. Many more believed because of his word.
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And they were saying to the woman, It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this one is indeed the
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Savior of the world. This woman that he should not theoretically have been talking to became a missionary and many came to Christ and were saved on account of this interaction that Jesus and this woman had.
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I mean, when we think about Samaria, this is a place, this is how lowly Samaria was thought of.
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The Jews would actually walk way out of their way to go around Samaria because to even walk through that area was to make oneself unclean.
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And yet Jesus interacted with this woman and used her in a great way. Now tonight,
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I want us to zero in on these two verses in John 4 so that we will see three truths about worshiping
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God that ought to change our thinking about the way we approach going to church and worshiping
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God. We gather on Sundays with a specific purpose. Why do we come here? Why is it that we show up here?
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To worship. We come here to worship the triune God who has saved us.
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First, you are to be a true worshiper of God.
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Again, looking at the text, but an hour is coming and now is. What does that mean?
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But an hour is coming and now is. There'd been a long -anticipated promise.
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This woman knew what he was saying. He said, or she said it. Could this be the
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Christ? She knew who he was. This was the promised one, the Messiah. That which was to come, he who was to come, was here.
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Isaiah 9, verses 6 and 7, the Christmas verses of Isaiah.
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For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, and the government will rest on his shoulders, and his name will be called
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Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
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There will be no end to the increase of his government or of peace on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore.
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The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this. The child in this prophecy was
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Jesus. He was the promised one, the one who would fulfill the covenant God had made with David to raise up one who would reign on the throne of David forever and ever.
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Now, one cannot be a worshiper of God, a true worshiper of God, without faith in Christ.
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The text goes on to say, when the true worshipers will worship the
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Father. I don't know why I'm letting myself get twisted there, but the word true is aleithinas, and it pertains to being real, genuine, authentic.
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With the birth, the advent of our Lord, we have entered a time in which it is no longer possible to genuinely worship
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God apart from worshiping his Son. How do we know that? How do we know that that's how we need to worship
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God? Starting in the
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Old Testament, Psalm 2 verse 12 would tell us this, Do homage to the Son, that he not become angry and you perish in the way, for his wrath may soon be kindled.
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Now listen to this, How blessed are all who take refuge in him. Why would we want to take refuge in the
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Son of God? Besides the fact that the psalmist tells us we'll be blessed. Why would we want to take refuge in him?
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Who is the Son of God? Besides Jesus. What is he? Cindy.
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When he comes back, he's going to be the judge? I had that. He will be our judge. Acts 17 31.
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God has appointed him to be the judge when he comes back. That's right. So it's good to take refuge in him.
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Because if he's going to come back and judge everyone, and we've taken refuge in him, then we have some hope that this judge, actually we have a great hope, this judge will be merciful to us.
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Because we have invested ourselves entirely in him. Why else would we, or is it not possible to any longer worship
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God without worshiping Christ? How about because in,
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Oh, Godman. Okay.
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John 14 6. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. Exactly right. And see, he is the only way to the
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Father. We can't worship the Father without worshiping the Son. Jesus said in John 10 30,
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I and the Father are one. And you know, I love it when people say, well, you know,
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Jesus never claimed to be a deity. He never claimed that he was God. His original audience got it.
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In John 10, what did they do right away after he said, I and the Father are one? They tried to kill him.
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They took up stones. They were going to stone him. For what good deed do you seek to stone me?
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Not for a good deed, but because you make yourself out to be God. Secondly, you are to worship
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God with your entire being. Your entire being. You need to worship him in truth.
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You have to worship him in a real authentic way, which means you can only worship him through Christ.
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You are also to worship him with your entire being. The true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.
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Now spirits, a lot of times we hear it described as the Holy Spirit, but it's not a limiting term in the sense in that way, does not refer to worshiping in the
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Holy Spirit, but rather worshiping God with one's whole being. One definition puts it this way.
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Spirit is the source and seat of insight, feeling, and will.
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Generally as the representative part of human inner life. What does that sound like?
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If we're talking about the Old Testament and I said the heart, it sounds exactly the same way.
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We would describe that in the Old Testament as the mission control center. And that's what we're talking about. So to worship
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God with your spirit is to worship him wholeheartedly, to worship him with your entire being.
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So what are the practical, some practical implications of that? I mean, a couple came up either yesterday morning when
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I was talking to somebody and even this morning. How about being preoccupied with something else when you come into church?
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If it's a dispute with somebody else that you're involved in, if it's, I don't know, let me just pick a random thing.
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Maybe it's a cell phone call. Maybe you're so invested and enamored with something else that you can't stop thinking about it.
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Even while you're in church. I really wish I was golfing. You know, maybe you should wear a t -shirt in here.
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I'd rather be, you know, fill in the blank. People come here thinking about that, thinking about someone else.
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They don't come in here fully devoted to the idea that they are going to worship
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God. One of the things that we were able to do this last year, Janet and I went down to Orlando, Florida, and we visited
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R .C. Sproul's church. It's very formal, but one of the things he did, and you know,
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R .C. Sproul has a grand voice. I love to listen to it. And he, before he comes in and they do a little procession, like I said, it's very formal.
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But before he comes in, he's on the microphone and you can't see him. And he says, you have left the profane and entered the holy.
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And he says it in such a way where he is like, I think I have entered the holy.
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It's not the building itself. You need to leave the cares and troubles and thoughts of the world outside and come in here and single mindedly, wholeheartedly worship
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God. And it is to be a joy, a joy, a joy, a joy and not drudgery.
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This isn't something that we grudgingly do. It's something that we do with our whole being.
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As I said, now, this is something, again, this just boggles my mind. I do not understand.
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If you love Jesus Christ, if you have been saved from your sin, if you have a hope of heaven, if you sit here justified, if God is conforming you into the image of his son, and you come in here on Sunday morning and you don't want to sing,
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I don't get it. I don't understand that. Let me read you a few verses, kind of puts you in the mood to sing.
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I mean, I sing like a fool. Why? Because it's not because I think I have a great voice. I need to cover up everybody else.
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You know, it's not Steve and the Steve that's, I just think, I just think this is a way that I can express my joy to Jesus Christ.
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Psalm 5, verses 11 and 12. But let all who take refuge in you be glad.
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Let them ever sing for joy. And may you shelter them, that those who love your name may exult in you.
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For it is you who blesses the righteous man, O Lord, you surround him with favor as with a shield.
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If we thought about that, if we came in and we thought, God has surrounded me with favor like a shield.
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I should be glad. I should be singing for joy. I should be exulting in the
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God of my salvation. But we still come in here and sit down and maybe crack open the hymnal, but you know,
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I'm really not going to sing. I don't sing all that well. God's not grading on pitch.
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He's looking for hearts that are filled with joy, that want to worship Him. Psalm 13, verses 5 and 6.
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But I have trusted in your loving kindness. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
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I will sing to the Lord because He has dealt bountifully with me. If you're sitting there tonight and God has dealt bountifully with you, if He has taken your sin, placed it on His Son, Jesus Christ, and given you
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Jesus Christ's righteousness, how can you not rejoice? How can you not sing to the
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God who has done this for you? Psalm 33, verses 1 to 3.
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Sing for joy in the Lord, O you righteous ones. Praises be coming to the upright.
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Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre. Sing praises to Him with a harp of ten strings.
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Sing to Him a new song. Play skillfully with a shout of joy.
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We should be shouting. We should be excited. This is a great opportunity every time we get to come in here.
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And you know what? Not all of us get to preach. Not all of us get to publicly pray.
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We all get to fellowship. We all get to sing. And when we have that opportunity, we should do so wholeheartedly.
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And again, can you be entirely engaged in worshiping the
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God who has saved you and be thinking about work, be thinking about someone or something else, be preoccupied with anything?
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And may I say that our concept of worshiping God in spirit, that is, with our whole being, is too often lacking.
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We need to leave everything else behind and focus on our
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Lord. Your time of worship ought to be transcendent.
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The body of Christ worshiping Him with every fiber of their collective being. I dare say
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I think our meetings would be transformed if 220, 40, 60, 80 people here came in on Sunday morning totally committed to the idea that everything they did was going to be with a mindset toward glorifying
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God, toward worshiping Him. And really, what is it if we do less than that? If we come in here and we just kind of go through the motions, how does that honor
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God? So firstly, you are to be a true worshiper of God.
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Secondly, you are to worship God with your entire being. And thirdly, you are to worship
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God as He is. Scary word. Theology matters.
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Look again at the text. True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.
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For such people, the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit.
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God is spirit. God, it is written, is seeking worshipers.
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Now, seeking, it uses that verb there, has a connotation of He's out there looking.
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He doesn't know where they are, but He's going to find them. Well, no. It has a connotation of requiring or demanding in the
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Greek. I mean, we know that if God wants worshipers, He could find them. If He wanted just worship,
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He could make the stones worship Him, right? And He creates worshipers of Himself.
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Listen to how the commentator Hendrickson describes this. He says, The Father seeks, not in the sense that there are individuals who have made themselves such worshipers, and the
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Father is, as it were, searching for them, like Diogenes with a lamp, going around looking for those worshipers, but in the sense that He keeps on intensely yearning for His elect in order that He may make them such worshipers.
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His seeking is saving. It is ever God who takes the initiative in the work of salvation.
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It is never man. When God seeks such worshipers, He finds them. He seeks them.
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He saves them. They worship Him. God is at work saving sinners.
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And when He saves them, they ought to worship Him. And we should be thankful that God seeks and saves the lost, because if He didn't, we would never find
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Him. MacArthur notes, Had He not revealed Himself in Scripture and in Jesus Christ, God would be utterly incomprehensible.
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And if you don't believe that, try interacting with an unbeliever and talking about God. Their ideas of God are far too human.
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They don't like the God who is in the Bible. Talking about theology matters, cultists cannot adequately worship
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God. They don't even understand who He is. Call Him whatever they want.
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The God they worship is not the God of the Bible. Theology matters. The God, this passage tells us, who exists is a spirit.
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What are the implications of Him being a spirit? Can't see
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Him. I'm sorry?
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He could be everywhere. Okay. I didn't have that one. It's good. I like that.
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Well, He's not a created being. He's not energy. I just thought about that, you know, because we have the
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Star Wars church. Did Mike send out the Church of Spock thing?
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That was just bizarre. But He's, and this is the important thing,
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He is not a physical entity. You know, right before the meeting, I just went into my office just to double check that I had this right, because I didn't want to misspeak, but this is correct.
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Kenneth Copeland, since I didn't really name any names this morning, Kenneth Copeland says of God, and let's just look at that real quickly, just to show you the importance of hermeneutics.
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Isaiah 40, verse 12. Isaiah 40, verse 12.
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And if you ever want to know if somebody is teaching things improperly, just watch what they do with a little fragment of a verse, and if you don't get scared, you should be.
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Verse 12. Anybody know what the context of this is or what's going on here?
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The greatness of God. Excellent. Kenneth Copeland, thank you. That's one of our elders there. The greatness of God, and that's the point here.
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Now, when he says, when Isaiah writes in verse 12, and marked off the heavens by the span.
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I see that I have a little note there in my, or half cubit.
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Well, it's interesting, because I think some verses do, or do some versions say span of his hands or something of that nature?
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Anyway, this is what Kenneth Copeland teaches about that. He says, by that, we know that God is not enormous.
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In fact, because the span of a hand would be about seven inches. He goes on and he posits, he suggests that God is about 6 '2 or 6 '3 and weighs 190 pounds.
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I'm not making this up. You can't make stuff like that up. And it's all documented.
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I've got, that was in a book by Hank Hanegraaff, a book I read many, many years ago, and I really enjoy.
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But he quotes these guys, and what's really scary is to listen to the tape, where these guys say these things, and you realize that they can call themselves
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Christians, but they don't know God. They don't know that he's a spirit.
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They're talking about him being 6 '2 or 6 '3. 190 pounds, like somehow,
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I don't know. I guess it's to make him more like us. But this is not what the Bible teaches.
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And again, as most all of you know, I come from a cult that says that God is created, a cult that taught and teaches that God has a physical body.
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And so to read things in the Bible that contradict that,
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I mean, I don't know what I used to do. I guess I used to just gloss over them or ignore them just like everybody else did. But to see these things now is just to go, well, how could anybody believe that?
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And then you have somebody who, a popular televangelist, and it's so hard to, because I remember when
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I first, a couple of things. When I first went to seminary, I received some advice.
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Well, you know, it's great that you're going to seminary, but you also need to make sure that you learn something practical while you're there.
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Okay? Obviously doesn't get it. And then they were wondering, this is my family, they were wondering if also, you know,
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I might turn into some televangelist and selling prayer cloths and things like that.
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It's really not where I'm at. But anyway, in order to worship God, we have to recognize the fact that He is a spirit.
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We have to worship Him as He is. Colossians 1 .15, talking about Jesus, says that He is the image of the invisible
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God. He is the icon, the representation. Icon is the
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Greek word, by the way. Icon's not always a bad word. He is the image, the very picture of the invisible
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God. As best as we can see God in a physical representation, it's
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Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, God Himself is invisible. 1
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Timothy 1 .17, Now to the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only
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God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
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There's no getting around that. You can't worship
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God and have a deficient view of Him. Or if you have a deficient and ignorant view, you can worship
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Him, but it won't be everything that it could be. The more we study about God, the more we know about Him, frankly,
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I think the more amazed we are that He would save us. The more amazed we are that He would spend any time at all worried about us.
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And that's what we see as we read the great men of God who wrote the Bible, as we read what they said in reflecting upon themselves, they didn't think,
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I'm so good and God is pretty lucky to have me. They were undone.
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They said they were the chief of sinners. They just thought, I can't believe God would take a loser like me.
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And that's how we need to view God. Great. We come
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Sundays to worship a great God and we need to recognize Him for who
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He is. Now, let me ask you, how do you approach
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Sundays? I mean, beyond the obvious things that most of us don't do, go to bed early
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Saturday night, lay out your clothes, you know, all the things that we're always told to do that we never do.
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How do you approach Sunday? Let me make a few suggestions on how we ought to approach
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Sundays. First, we should have an eagerness to gather together.
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Hebrews 10 verses 23 to 25 say, Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.
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And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another.
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And all the more, as you see the day drawing near. We gather to hold fast, that is to retain faithfully, to guard the traditions.
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Now, some traditions are not necessarily inspired. There are a lot of things that we do that aren't written down anywhere.
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They're just traditions. But this one is, this idea of getting together as a body, is inspired of God.
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We gather together to stimulate one another to love and good deeds. And what that means is, we get together to incite one another, to get excited about having a loving concern for the body and serving one another.
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We are to exhibit genuine care for one another. And too often,
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I think, especially in the morning, I think there's almost this sense that, you know, we've been here quite a while, and frankly,
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I didn't get enough to eat at the donut table, I need to get home. My stomach is growling,
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I'm out of here. I would love to find some way to get folks to linger a bit, to get to talk to one another just a little bit, to bear one another's burdens, to encourage one another, to pray for one another.
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We need to have that eagerness to gather. Why? Because it's like a family reunion every
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Sunday. Secondly, we need to make it a priority to gather.
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In Acts 20 verse 7, Acts 20 verse 7, Luke writes,
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On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul began talking to them, intending to leave the next day, and he prolonged his message until midnight.
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And you guys thought Pastor Mike goes along. He prolonged his message until midnight.
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He's never gone that long. I was thinking about this, this week, and I just thought, you know, this whole idea, how was your weekend?
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How many times do we hear that? How was your weekend? And I thought, you know, really?
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Now isn't this amazing? That is theologically incorrect. It's not the weekend.
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Why? Because Sunday is the first day of the week. Sunday, may
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I say that if Sunday morning, let's just say for the sake of argument, Sunday morning is the accumulation of an entire week spent worshiping the
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Lord Jesus Christ. I hope that we worship him as we work.
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We worship him in our homes. We worship him in what we do and what we say and what we think.
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And we come here Sunday morning to celebrate and to get together to stimulate one another to love and good works, to hear the word, to sing, to sing, and that Sunday night is a way to start the next week off right.
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It is the first day of the week. Now we haven't yet, maybe the elders will take this up, we haven't yet assigned mortal sin status to missing church.
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But may I say that some, some of us may be too willing to discount
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Sunday attendance, to just kind of shrug it off. Why would you not want to gather with God's people and worship him?
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What could on a regular basis be more important than coming to worship God? Again, and I don't want to be a legalist, but why would a
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Christian choose to do something else on a consistent basis? Once in a while, I get it. But on a consistent basis, it's hard to understand.
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Thirdly, we should have an eagerness to hear the word. First Timothy, well we need to hear it read.
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First Timothy 4 .13 would tell us, Paul writing Timothy on how to run a church, he says, until I come, give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and teaching, the public reading of Scripture.
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How many of us tune in when the word is read? How many of us listen tonight when
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Gladman read? When Ron reads a few verses to kind of get our minds right in the morning?
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We don't all have voices like R .C. Sproul. I wish I did. But when the word is read, it's not the voice of a man that matters, it's the voice of God.
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These are his words, and we need to listen to them. If God thought it was important enough for us to have this word and to read it in church meetings, we need to be there, and we need to listen attentively.
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The word is effective. It has an impact on our lives, but it can't do that if we don't listen.
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We also need to have the word preached. Second Timothy 4, verses 1 and 2, a passage you know well.
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Paul writes Timothy and he says, I solemnly charge you, in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead by his appearing and his kingdom, and you can't get a more solemn charge than that, preach the word.
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Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction.
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John Piper says, and I think this is right, people are starving for the glory of God. Do you know how many people we get emails, can you recommend a church by Boston?
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Can you recommend a church near Cambridge? Can you recommend a church? And the answer is always, I wish we could.
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Lord willing, maybe someday we'll be able to. But people,
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Christian people everywhere, are starving for the glory of God, and yet we have people who choose not to hear the word taught.
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Fourthly, we need to have an eagerness to participate in corporate prayer. Now, how many of you, maybe
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I should have everybody close their eyes, how many of you, when you're praying, sometimes your mind wanders?
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Those who kept your hands down, you're either very elevated, or, you know, your arm's not working.
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But if our own private prayers can wander, how much more if we listen to somebody else pray?
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How much more? It is a difficult thing. Why? I mean, I used to do this, you know, in seminary, and I've mentioned this before, but we had a class where our assignment was to pray an hour a day.
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And, you know, we would, you start, and you just think, an hour, I can't possibly do that.
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That's impossible. And so what happens, you know, is you start with the best of intentions, and you're praying, and the next thing you know, there are bills you have to pay, and what about that overtime spot?
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And, you know, the next thing you know, and you go, wait, I'm supposed to be praying. And so, you know, it kind of develops some things to do, including,
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I mean, if I really started struggling, I would just start singing. Can I just tell you that it is hard to have your mind wander if you are singing and you are focused on the words?
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It is a great thing to do. Or to read the scripture aloud, I would do that too. Just all kinds of things to keep myself from wandering, my mind from wandering during prayer.
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And in corporate prayer, when we are here together, because what do we do corporately to worship
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God? Let's think about this for a minute. We hear the word, we have the word preached to us, we need to listen to the word again, we have it read, we have it preached to us, we sing, and we pray.
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And when we pray, when we pray, how do we stay tuned in?
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What do we do? And I think sometimes it is just a matter of, I mean, I listen sometimes and I just think,
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I think a lot of bad things like, I wish I could pray like that. Or, I didn't know that.
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You know, I didn't know so and so was hurting and I am just like, I need to remember to pray for that. Different things. We need to tune in, do whatever it takes.
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Why? Because we are here to worship God as a body. And when we pray as a body, we need to listen.
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I just thought of another one. I don't know why I didn't write this down.
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Part of our worship is what? One I haven't mentioned is giving. You know,
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I'll never forget one man back in California who actually left the church we were at because he was convinced that people were looking at his checkbook and cared about what he was giving.
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Now, if you know anything about Grace Community Church, you know what a huge church that is. And I can honestly say, coming out of a cult where they would interview you every year to find out what you were giving and why, to have somebody never talk to you about what you were giving, it was a remarkable turnaround.
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And we don't ask anybody here. But, again, the same thing goes.
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If I'm going to worship God with my whole heart, I need to be what the
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Bible says, which is a cheerful giver. I need to be able to give sacrificially, but to do so with joy.
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Why? Because it's not... God has given me everything, and so if I give him something back, it's not like I'm losing.
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Sometimes I think we almost have calculators in our head, and we go, wait a minute, how can
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God get so much? Wrong. He's given us everything. Worship.
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Giving is worship. Sixthly, we need to have an eagerness to find someone to serve.
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Do you come to church with the idea that somebody today is going to be blessed because I am going to make sure that they're blessed?
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I'm going to encourage someone. I'm going to serve someone. I'm going to find some way to help some brother or sister in Christ with a problem that they're struggling with.
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First Corinthians 12 .7 tells us that, but to each one is given the manifestation of the
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Spirit for the common good. We have spiritual gifts. We have spiritual giftedness given to us by God.
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Why? Not for ourselves, but for the common good, to come alongside those who may be hurting, those who might need encouragement.
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So we need to be true worshipers of God. You also need to worship
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God with your entire being, with your whole heart. And you are to worship
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God as He is. Theology matters. Having a right idea, the right knowledge of God.
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Thinking of Him as He is, not as we would have Him to be. Now let me ask you again.
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How do you look at Sunday? How do you view Sunday? Is it the highlight of the week?
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I've got to tell you. When I look at Sunday, I think about it, honestly, as a great opportunity for me to catch up with people that I don't get to talk to all the time, that I'd like to.
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It's much like if you have the opportunity to celebrate a holiday, and some of you will have this opportunity to celebrate with your family who are unbelievers.
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That's one thing, and it's kind of nice, but it gets a little hollow after a while. If you have a house full of believers, and I'm pleased to say that we're going to have a house full of believers on Thanksgiving, and I'm looking forward to that.
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Maybe not a house full, we could probably use a few more. It is a great joy.
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There is nothing better than to be together with people who love the Lord, and to worship
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Him together. This is an opportunity to gather with our Christian family and to worship our
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Father. Now, do you come here with preoccupations, with grudges, with unresolved disputes?
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Are you one of the non -singing Christians? Are you bored? If you come here to worship with the right attitude, you cannot possibly be bored.
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That is just not possible. There's so much to think about and so much to do, so much to be grateful for, so many people who need to be served.
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How can you be bored? Impossible. Absolutely impossible. We serve a great
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God, and He demands that we worship Him in spirit and in truth. Let us do that.
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Let's pray. Our great
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God and Savior, You who have saved us, who have taken us out of the way that we would have chosen for ourselves, who have saved us from the fiery pit, have called us unto
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Yourself, have justified us, have reconciled us to Yourself.
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Lord, You are, even now, sanctifying us, conforming us into the image of Jesus Christ through Your Word, through Your Spirit, through our interactions with one another.
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Lord, would You just give us hearts that would long to worship You, that would long to leave the troubles, the cares of the world behind, politics, bills, arguments, traffic, everything, every problem outside.
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And Lord, to look at this place, not as holy because it's a building, but as holy because Your people gather here to worship a holy
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God. Would You give us hearts that are undivided in their attention toward You, hearts that long to leave the profane and to worship the holy.
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Lord, fill us with a love for You and a desire to worship You as You are.