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But I realize even as we were speaking about it, it needed to be. And so I purpose to mention it again at the outset of this morning's study.
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It is very significant that the word worship is most commonly found in the scriptures to be a verb.
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It's a word of action. It's not an adjective or a noun, although in a few places it's used that way.
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Worship should not be understood as something chiefly that we derive from God, but rather worship is a verb.
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It's what we offer to God. It's what we give to God. And that's very significant. For all too often, worship in today's consumer culture is assumed to be primarily a means to receive something we need or something we desire from God.
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And often churches will have a philosophy of church ministry that makes the person in the pew really the center of all things, the focus of all that takes place in a so -called worship service.
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The person in the pew is Lord, so to speak, in the philosophy of ministry in many places.
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And those churches that are perceived to provide a worship experience are, frankly, the most appealing to unspiritual and poorly instructed
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Christians. Notice a worship experience, that's a term that you hear quite often. There, worship is used as an adjective, not as a verb.
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It's something you experience rather than something that you offer to God. And that's not how the
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Bible presents worship. Their motivation for going to church is primarily to obtain something from God, not to glorify
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God. It's a worldly spirit of pragmatism that always asks, what did
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I get out of it or how did it help me? It's a self -absorbed, sinful individualism that measures spiritual truth by its utilitarian value.
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And many times that's the motivation for people to go to church. What am
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I going to receive? What am I going to get? As the chief desire, right at the top of the list.
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Suppose we're close friends and I had the habit of coming to your house each week to visit you, but I stopped coming because I did not perceive
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I got anything from it. You would immediately think of me being a rather selfish and self -centered wouldn't you?
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I've been going to your house week after week, I haven't been helped by it. Well, so it is with those who attend the house of God with little desire except to obtain something from God.
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I didn't get anything from God today. I'm going home without. Well, your whole purpose for going to church that day was skewed, was false, because we don't chiefly come to church on Sunday to get something from God.
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We come to give something to God. We came to worship God. And so when we come together as the people of God on the
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Lord's Day, if we're thinking rightly, if we're thinking as Christians, biblical Christians should be thinking, we are to do so in order to offer true worship to him through our prayerful, joyful, thankful praise for who he is and for all that he has done for us in Christ.
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Worship is to be understood by what we render to God, not what we receive from God.
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Worship is an action in which we glorify God. Worship is not a feeling we get when we are in a so -called worship service.
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And yet oftentimes that's what the idea of worship has been reduced to in the minds of so many.
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If they get their emotions stirred, they think they're really worshiping. But that is not worship, according to the
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Bible. The issue is not what moves you or makes you feel close to God. Rather, what is all important is that you please
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God in what you offer him. And God has prescribed in his word what it is that we are to offer to God, render to God in our worship.
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He has prescribed for us quite clearly what he desires from those who worship him or would worship him.
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And he's made it quite clear in his word what displeases him and what he will not accept from people who gather supposedly to worship him.
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And so when we come to God, we are to do so in spirit and in truth.
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We are to set ourselves and our own interests and desires as secondary. Yes, we want to receive something from God, obviously.
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But that cannot be our primary motive or desire. Our primary desire is to glorify
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God. And even there, glorify is a verb. It's something we do, not something we receive.
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And we're to glorify God. True worshipers are the ones who offer that which God desires most.
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And by the way, those true worshipers will be those who receive most from God for having done so.
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Clearly, that's true. Now, toward the end of last Lord's Day message, we address the important matter of Christians making preparation prior to coming to worship in order to worship
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God rightly. And throughout scripture, of course, the people of God prepared themselves for the worship of God, for when
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God was going to come and meet with them. The main goal of preparing for worship is to sanctify
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God in our hearts. That's ultimately what our preparation includes or involves.
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All right. Sanctifying the Lord in our hearts. I referred last week to the classic work of Jeremiah Burroughs, a
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Puritan, who wrote the book entitled Gospel Worship that's been republished in the last 20 years or so.
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The verse that he, Burroughs, called upon regarding the nature of our preparation to worship
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God was Leviticus 10, verse 3. There, God declared to Israel, I will be sanctified in those that come nigh to me.
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Coming nigh to me would, of course, be to worship God. But notice this preparation must be done beforehand.
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I must be sanctified. I will be sanctified in those that come nigh to me. The context of this verse was
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God speaking to Aaron, the high priest of Israel, whose two oldest sons had just been killed by God, Nadab and Abihu.
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Here's the account, Leviticus 10, verses 1 through 3. And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the
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Lord. In other words, they came and worshiped God in a way that God had not commanded them, prescribed to them.
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They essentially became creative in the way they were going to worship God. And so they brought and offered strange fire before the
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Lord, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the Lord, and often at times
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I think that should probably be understood as lightning, as it were, from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the
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Lord. And then Moses said unto Aaron, this is that the Lord spake, saying, and here's that statement,
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I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified.
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And then we read that Aaron held his peace, even though his sons had just been killed due to their faulty worship of God.
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God had prescribed the way he was to be approached, prescribed the way he was to be worshipped, and they knew quite well what they were doing was not what
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God prescribed. And because God is a holy God, and he's only going to be worshipped in the manner that he is prescribed, their worship was not only accepted, but they brought the wrath of God upon them.
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And so these two priests, who were sons of Aaron, legitimate priests before the Lord, attempted to worship
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God in a way that he had not commanded. They had become creative in their worship.
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They had offered strange fire. They suffered severe consequences for doing so.
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God consumed them with fire. And in God's explanation to Aaron, he said, I will be sanctified in those that come nigh to me.
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God is holy. He has prescribed how his people are to come into his presence to worship him.
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And certainly when we come to worship God in his presence, our primary focus and emphasis should be upon God himself.
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And we would approach to worship him only in the manner that he is prescribed in his word. Now, some may immediately discredit or dismiss that whole account as being
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Old Testament and ancient Israel. And thankfully, you know, they would say we live under the
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God of the New Testament, not the old who is a God of wrath and judgment. You have a very similar thing in the
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Church of Corinth in the New Testament. They were abusing the Lord's Supper. They apparently observed the
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Lord's Supper while they had a love feast, a meal with the church body. And some of the rich people were getting drunk on the wine of the communion table and eating bread while some in the church were going without because they were in poverty.
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And the apostle Paul said, for this reason, there are many among you that are sick and many have died.
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And they were doing so because they were failing to worship God as God had prescribed.
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God is a holy God, and he's just as holy today as he was back in the days when he took care of Nadab and Abihu.
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And we should have a high view of God and understand that when we come to worship God, we ought to do so according to the way the word of God has prescribed for us.
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You recall how our Lord Jesus rebuked the Pharisees in strife for setting aside the written word of God and substituting the tradition of men in their place, in the place of the scriptures.
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And they thought that they were worshiping God. But the Lord said of them, in vain do they worship me.
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God said, you know, you're coming to worship, but in vain, it counts for nothing. God didn't receive it at all.
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In vain they worship me. Why? Because they were teaching as doctrines, as truth, the commandments of men.
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They were keeping their traditions rather than the word of God to guide them in their worship. The Protestant reformers adopted a standard for assessing whether or not certain practices should be maintained in the public worship of God.
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And this was a very important matter for the early reformers. By definition, they reformed or attempted to reform the church.
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And when the reformers had learned the original languages of the Hebrew Old Testament, the Greek New Testament, and when the
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Bible was translated into their own native tongue, they became quite concerned that the way to worship
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God has been, as practiced and proclaimed by the Roman Catholic Church for a thousand years, was out of sync with what the word of God taught.
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And so they sought to jettison any practice that was not prescribed in the word of God.
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And the reformers adopted the order and elements of worship that could clearly be shown to be illustrated or commanded in the
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Holy Scriptures. And so the principle that these reformers maintain in reforming the church's worship was called the regulative principle of worship.
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And we should understand, we should know what that term is and what it means. This principle that the early
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Protestant reformers advocated says basically this. Acceptable worship of God is only that worship that's prescribed by God in his written word.
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That and that alone. They argued that we may not come into God's presence and worship him in ways of our own choosing and of our own creation.
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The regulative principle of worship, which distinguishes the historic Calvinist approach to public worship of God from, say, other views, states that only those elements that are instituted or appointed by command or example or which can be deduced by what they called good and necessary consequence, in other words it follows that from the scripture, only they are permissible in worship.
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And whatever is not commanded or cannot be deduced by good and necessary consequence from scripture is prohibited.
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The regulative principle of worship. God has revealed in his word the way that he invites and encourages his people to worship him.
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And it's our responsibility as a church and your responsibility as a Christian to understand what ways
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God has prescribed in his word to come into his presence. And so we are as they were, the reformers were, if we worship
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God according to his word. We would then be as they, coming together not for the better but for the worse.
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That's describing the church at Corinth when they were abusing the Lord's Supper. They thought they were coming to worship
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God. He says you're not receiving any advantage whatsoever by coming into the worship of God when you abuse the
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Lord's Supper in that way. You're actually making it worse on yourselves by coming to worship
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God in a faulty way. We hear much today and we have for a generation now about so -called new and creative worship that's being practiced among many and many churches.
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And really this is a denial and abandonment of the regulative principle of worship that the
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Protestant reformers held to so tenaciously. Again, God is a holy
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God and as such he has prescribed how he is to be worshipped. And you and I do not have the authority to make changes in what he has commanded.
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Now the regulative principle of worship is to be distinguished from what is called the normative principle of worship.
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Regulative and normative, two different principles of worship. The normative principle of worship teaches that whatever is not prohibited in Scripture is permitted in worship as long as it's agreeable to the peace and unity of the church.
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In other words, they would advocate you can be creative in the way that you worship God. In short, they argue there must be agreement between the general practice of the church and no prohibition in Scripture for whatever is done in worship.
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And so the normative principle of worship, not the regulative, but the normative principle of worship is generally accepted approach to worship practice say by Lutherans, Anglicans, many evangelicals, and Methodists.
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The regulative principle of worship is generally held by reformed Christians and we would identify ourselves with them.
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We would advocate that if the Scriptures do not command or illustrate a duty or practice it's not to be employed in the public worship of God.
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The point is this, God does not permit or approve of our being creative in the forms and mode of our worship.
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God is holy and he's declared how his people are to worship him. Worship is
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God's work, not man's work. Worship is what we render to God, not what we derive from him or our service to him.
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It's extremely important. Our own Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 states this matter quite clearly, the regulative principle of worship.
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And there's a number of paragraphs in this article and it basically underscores and advocates what we've just been describing.
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Now there's nothing authoritative about the Baptist Confession of 1689 except to the degree it accurately reflects what
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Scripture teaches. But this is what the Reformed Baptists of the 17th century concluded as to the teaching of Scripture.
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Here is paragraph one. The light of nature shows that there is a God who hath lordship and sovereignty over all, is just, good, and doth good unto all, and therefore to be feared, loved, praised, called upon, trusted in, and served with all the heart and all the soul, with all the might.
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But the acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imagination and devices of men, nor the suggestions of Satan under any visible representations, or any other way not prescribed in the
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Holy Scriptures. In other words, worshipping God through the use of idols. And so paragraph one describes our duty to worship
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God, and it also identifies a source of instruction whereby we may learn how to worship
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God properly. And then paragraph two reads this way. Religious worship is to be given to God the
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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and to him alone, not to angels, saints, or any other creatures, since the fall, not without a mediator, or in the mediation of any other but Christ alone.
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Clearly that is a refuting of Roman Catholic teaching and practice.
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Christ is the only mediator between God and mankind, and so in our worship we are not to render any kind of adoration or veneration to anything or anyone except God through Jesus Christ.
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And then paragraph three describes our worship in this way, talking about prayer in particular.
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Prayer with thanksgiving, being one part of natural worship, is by God required of all men, but that it may be accepted is to be made in the name of the
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Son, by the help of the Spirit, according to his will, with understanding, reverence, humility, fervency, faith, love, and perseverance, and when with others, in a known tongue, or a known language.
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Now you might read that and think, well this is against charismatics and teaching and speaking in unknown tongues.
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No, actually, again, that was a slap against Roman Catholicism, praying in Latin.
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And in public worship of God, prayers were to be offered in the language of the people. And so that's what that pronouncement is.
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And so what is stated in that paragraph is the responsibility and privilege of prayer, as well as defining what proper prayer is within the church.
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And then the next paragraph limits the realm of prayer. There are some for whom prayer should not be offered.
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Prayer is to be made for all things lawful, and for all sorts of men living, or that shall live hereafter.
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It's okay to pray for your unborn children, unborn descendants. The scriptures set forth that.
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And nor for those of whom it may be known that they have sinned the sin unto death.
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We won't go there because of the time it would take to explain that. But there are some things that we're not permitted to pray for.
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We're not to pray for dead people. I get that request. I received it last week.
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There was to be a gathering of a memorial in the region, and I was asked as a pastor to join.
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I didn't go because it was requested specifically if each pastor would offer some prayer for those that died in the great influenza epidemic of the early 20th century.
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No way in the world I could participate in that. And yet so many commonly do. There's no permission to do that in the holy scriptures.
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And so we're to pray only for those things that are lawful. And then in the fifth paragraph we have, we read of the different means of legitimate worship that God has prescribed.
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And so what is the regulative principle of worship? What does it prescribe? Here it is. Here are the elements of worship, which were basically the same as what was practiced in the
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Jewish synagogues. The reading of the scriptures, preaching, hearing the word of God, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, singing with grace in our hearts to the
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Lord, almost a direct quote from Colossians, as also the administration of baptism and the
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Lord's Supper are all parts of religious worship of God to be performed in obedience to him with understanding, faith, reverence and godly fear.
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Moreover, solemn humiliation with fastings and thanksgivings upon special occasions ought to be used in a holy and religious manner.
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And then the last paragraph in the confession speaks about the places where worship, true worship is permitted.
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And we've addressed this in the last couple of weeks. Again, Jesus told the woman, the hour is coming now is you're not going to worship here on this mountain or in Jerusalem, but anywhere you can worship
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God in spirit and truth. Paragraph six, neither prayer nor any other part of religious worship is now under the gospel tied on to or made more acceptable by any place in which it's performed or towards which it is directed.
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You don't have to pray towards Jerusalem as the Old Testament saints did. But God is to be worshipped everywhere in spirit and in truth, as in private families daily and in secret, each one by himself, private times.
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So more solemnly in the public assemblies, which are not carelessly nor willfully to be neglected or forsaken when
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God by his word or providence calleth there unto. And so our confession to faith in that article sets forth what we're describing and clarifying what it is, this regular principle of worship.
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Yes, it's a Protestant principle, but it is thoroughly biblical and grounded in the written word of God.
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Now we've considered our Lord's words to the woman of Samaria that when people worship God, they are to worship him in spirit and in truth.
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We can see this really capsulated in a few verses or one verse in Psalm 19.
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Psalm 1914, we read the psalmist expressing, Let the words of my mouth, the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in your sight,
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O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. There you really have a description of the true worship of God.
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And the psalmist was praying that God would receive his worship. The psalmist requests that God will receive his worship, realizing and acknowledging that God himself must enable him to worship rightly and that God must also redeem him from sin.
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And so this verse may be coupled, say, with Hebrews 12, 28, which states, Let us have grace by which we may serve
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God. And the Greek word translated here in the English word serve literally, and let us worship
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God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. And so by considering these matters, we might propose a definition, a biblical definition of gospel worship.
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Worship according to the scripture is that which we offer to God by his grace, with reverence and godly fear through our speech and thoughts that are acceptable to God.
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That's what true worship is. Now, let's be more specific about this matter before we move on in our text back in John chapter four.
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We should worship God with the right motive in the right manner and using the right means as God has prescribed.
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First, let us worship our God with the right motive. When we gather together to worship our
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God on the Lord's Day like this morning, our primary motivation should be to worship
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God. In other words, to glorify God. And this might seem quite basic, but it would seem so few get it right.
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For example, let's take the typical church attendee or even church member.
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And I'm not describing our church necessarily, but there are churches like this. He leaves the church service, which had not risen to his expectation, and he expresses his disappointment.
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Well, I didn't get much out of church today. This really reveals a complete ignorance or denial of everything that we've been saying thus far.
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The question we should be asking ourselves is this. Did the Lord get much from me today?
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That's the question that each of us should be asking ourselves as we leave here. The evidence that true worship has taken place is not whether or not
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I perceive that I've gotten anything from it. True worship has taken place when one can say based on Scripture and his heart's intention toward God, that God received something from him.
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Has God received something from you today? Your heart devotion, a clarity of understanding of truth regarding who he is and who you are in Christ.
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The person who dismisses or disregards a church service or a sermon by saying I didn't get anything out of that reveals really he hasn't been worshiping
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God at all. When we can affirm today God received from me the best
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I could offer him in my sincere devotion, that is my spirit, and praise of who he is and what he's done, in other words, in truth, then you may go home content and satisfied.
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Even if you didn't get a buzz, a feeling of any type whatsoever, if you've been true to God, you've truly been sincere in spirit and in truth,
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God has been pleased with what you've offered him if you offered it through Jesus Christ.
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You have performed your proper and pleasant duty to worship God. You've worshipped your God as he commanded you to do, called you to do, and you're privileged to do as a
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Christian. And so when this simple test is applied, then I think it can easily be seen that much which is touted as worship is really not biblical worship at all.
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But one might ask, well am I not supposed to get anything from it? Of course we are, but the benefit flows from God to us by having set aside ourselves as the principal concern, the principal subject of our heart, and rather fixing our mind and fixing our heart upon God where it belongs.
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And so as long as you come to church motivated chiefly for what you can get out of it, do not think that you'll receive anything from the
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Lord. The Lord Jesus would be able to justly charge you with the offense of so many on the day following his miracles of the loaves, and we'll see it in John chapter 6.
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Most assuredly, Jesus said to these 5 ,000 people, you seek me not because you saw the signs, in other words, of who
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I truly am, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. You're only coming to me because of what you can get from me.
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You're not coming to me for who I am. And because many people come to church primarily for what they can get out of it rather than for what they might offer to God, often they will only keep coming to church as long as they're serviced.
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But when the time arrives, when they're not being serviced in the manner that they've determined for themselves, they're down the road.
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They're going to find someplace else. And these are the people who are easily deceived, deceived by what some claim to promise them.
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They're deceived in thinking for a time they're receiving it. I quoted Os Guinness, I think two weeks ago, a great
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Christian writer. It was his thought that these great mega churches that are so so -called seeker sensitive, that are shaped, again, with the person in the pew as the center of all things.
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He says those church buildings will be vast carpet showrooms within a generation. And what he's saying is, is that people sooner or later are going to find that they're not receiving what they've been promised.
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And they're going to end up going elsewhere for what they desire. And so we need to worship
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God with the right motive. And sometimes it takes preparation, preparation of ourselves to get us in this right frame of mind.
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We go through the week and we're thinking about ourselves and what comes to us.
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And we've got to set aside ourselves when we come on the Lord's Day and worship our
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God. And so we need to prepare ourselves. And then, of course, we need to worship
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God in the right manner, with reverence and fear. And so we should place great privilege on our on the on.
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We should have great priority to our privilege and responsibility to worship God. I would encourage us not only to prepare ourselves, but to be here in place in time.
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I so appreciated our African brothers in Christ in our church in Munich, Germany.
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They would always arrive at church early. They would come in quietly, reverently, sit down with their hands folded.
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And they would pray for themselves and pray for the church and pray for me with view to the onset of the worship service.
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We should be prepared. And we should come with with this holy thought in mind that we're going to offer true worship to God in the manner that he's prescribed.
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And then again, we should attempt to worship our God without distraction.
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I have a book in my library at home, and it's called The Remedy for Wandering Thoughts in the
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Worship of God. The entire book addresses this problem that we all have.
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The concerns of life, their interests impose themselves upon us. And we need to ask the
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Lord to help direct our minds and our hearts to the matter at hand. Let's turn back now to John chapter four and pick up where we left off after we've addressed this matter of worship, which is so critically important.
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Again, we read in John 4, 25 and 26. The woman said to him after he said that the hour is coming now is when they who worship
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God will worship him in spirit and truth. For the father is looking for such to worship him.
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The woman responded to him. I know the Messiah is coming who's called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all things.
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And Jesus said to her, I who speak to you, am he. That's a profound statement.
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In fact, apart from the trial of Jesus, this is the only place that we have recorded in the
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Gospels where Jesus specifically and directly identified himself as the
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Messiah. And he did so to this Samaritan woman as they were sitting there in the middle of the day at Jacob's well.
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Verses 25 and 26 conclude the second portion of the narrative. If you recall our outline, the woman expressed the belief of the
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Samaritans in the coming Messiah. The Samaritans believed that the coming Messiah would be one who would restore and reform his people.
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They actually believed that the Messiah would be a greater prophet than Moses. They took that prophecy of the
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Messiah in Deuteronomy and they anticipated this Messiah would come and instruct them rightly.
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And she indicates that here in this verse. By the way, the entire scene is drenched in irony.
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Here you have this woman instructing the Messiah about the Messiah. I know when the
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Messiah comes, he'll instruct us in all things. J .C. Ryle, 19th century Church of England bishop, summarized this woman's condition quite well.
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Verse 25, he says, this verse is a very interesting one. It shows the woman at last brought to the very state of mind in which she would be prepared to welcome a revelation of Christ.
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She'd been told of living water and expressed a desire for it. She'd been told of her own sin and she'd been unable to deny it.
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She'd been told the uselessness of resting on any formal membership of the Samaritan Church. And she was told of the necessity of spiritual and heart worship of God.
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Now, what can she say? It's all true, she feels. She cannot gainsay it. But what can she do?
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To whom is she to go? Whose teaching can she follow? All she can do is to say that she knows
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Messiah is one day coming and that he will make all things clear and plain. It's evident that she wishes for him.
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She is uncomfortable, sees no relief for her newly raised perplexities unless Messiah should appear.
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And then Jesus made this claim to her. You know, woman, I am he.
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I am the one speaking to you, am he. By the way, the way
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Jesus expressed this, or the way it's recorded in Greek, is rather significant.
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When he said, I who speak to you am he, the
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Greek text actually does not have the pronoun he. Jesus basically says,
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I am the one speaking to you. And so when the Lord Jesus made this statement to the woman, he wasn't just claiming to be the
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Messiah. He was setting himself forth as the manifest
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God of the Old Testament. Just as God in the Old Testament, the period of Moses at the burning bush, said,
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I am who speaks to you. Jesus is telling this woman at the well, I am who's speaking to you.
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I am the Messiah. But he's also making a statement that he is God incarnate.
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The Lord had helped this woman in her confession of sin, and now he helps her in her confession of faith. We're at the top of page seven of your notes.
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And so to this obscure woman, Jesus reveals point blank that he had revealed to no one else he was a
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Messiah. Perhaps she had suspected this man was more than what she had originally thought.
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As one wrote, if she had begun to have an inkling about his identity, it was now confirmed. He whom the
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Jews expected as the promised prince of the house of David, was at the same time the one whom the Samaritans expected to be a prophet like Moses.
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She had not known at first who it was that asked her for a drink of water. But now she understood how he could make a claim that marked him out as a greater than their father,
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Jacob. It was the coming one in person who sat thus by the well and spoke so wonderfully to her.
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Can you imagine the power of the moment when she realized this, when she heard these words? Matthew Henry wrote of the great privilege bestowed upon this woman.
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And then he described God's ability to impart grace to a hearer who may not have all the opportunities or knowledge that others may have enjoyed.
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Perhaps you're hearing, I'm hearing stories all the time in Muslim lands.
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I mean where there are no Christian witnesses, no Christian churches, about Muslims all over the
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Muslim world that are having personal subjective encounters with Jesus Christ.
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And they're coming out of there as Christians, even though they've never had a Bible in their hands. I was talking to our friend
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Ross a couple of weeks ago, and he was at some conference and talking to a fellow who had converted out of Islam in a
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Middle Eastern country. And Ross was trying to get his testimony, how he was converted, and the man was very reluctant.
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I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to draw attention to it. And finally, you know,
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Ross got this man to tell him, Well, the truth of the matter is I had a dream, and God revealed to me
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Jesus Christ is the only Savior. I embraced it, and my life was transformed. And he was going to seminary to study to be a
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Christian missionary to Islamic lands. That's taking place all over. And here Matthew Henry talks about the ability that God has to reveal himself to some who may not have a lot of the privileges and background that others have.
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And he uses this woman as an example. Christ did never make himself known so expressly to any as he did here to this poor
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Samaritan. And then to the blind man, he also revealed himself. No, not to John the
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Baptist when he sent to him. No, not to the Jews when they challenged him to tell them whether he was the
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Christ. The Christ would thus put an honor upon such as were poor and despised.
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This woman, for aught we know, had never opportunity of seeing Christ's miracles, which were then the ordinary method of conviction.
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Note to those who have not the advantage of the external means of knowledge and grace, God has secret ways of making up the want of them or the need of them.
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We must therefore judge charitably concerning such. God can make the light of grace shine into the heart, even when he doth not make the light of the gospel shine in the face.
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The Lord conducts his work in the world and sometimes in ways that are quite amazing and mysterious to us, and maybe out of the ordinary too.
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Our confession of faith states that God normally works salvation in people, normally by the means of the word.
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But what's being implied is sometimes God works out of the ordinary. The fact is
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God is a sovereign God, and he's going to save the people that he purposes to save. Again, our
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Lord's statement to the woman is quite emphatic. I who speak to you am he. And he was declaring to the woman,
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I am. Well, that was enough of the woman. She would go off to the city and tell everybody she encountered, there's a guy out here who told me everything
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I ever did. Could he be the Christ? But even as Jesus was finishing his conversation with this woman, the disciples returned.
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And we read that in verse 27 through 38. We have a few minutes remaining. We'll try and get through a little bit of this.
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Let's begin reading with verse 27. At this point, his disciples came and they marveled that he talked with a woman.
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Yet no one said, what do you seek? That should have been lowercase u, asking the woman.
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Or why are you, Jesus, talking with her? The woman then left her water pot, went her way to the city and said to the men, come see a man who told me all things that I ever did.
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Could this be the Christ? And then they went out to the city, out of the city and came to him.
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In the meantime, his disciples urged him, saying, Rabbi, eat. And he said to them, I have food to eat of which you do not know.
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And therefore, the disciples said to one another, has anyone brought him anything to eat? And Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
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Do you not say there are still four months and then comes the harvest? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes, look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest.
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He who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.
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For in this the saying is true, one sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored and others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.
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We're going to have to address most of that next Lord's Day, Lord willing. Notice the disciples returned to Jesus, even as he was speaking to the woman.
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The disciples returned from the nearby town, a Samaritan town, probably Sychar, where they had purchased food.
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They must have come to the well as Jesus and the woman were completing their discussion, and they marveled that he was talking with a woman.
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The verb marveled or perhaps surprised is set forth in the Greek verb tense as imperfect.
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It's the imperfect verb tense, and that's significant. And what that means in this context is the disciples' surprise was more than momentary.
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It shocked them that Jesus was talking to this woman. They were taken back by it.
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It was very unconventional and even unseemly for a
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Jewish man to talk to any woman. In fact, among the
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Jews, for a man to talk at any length with any woman, even your wife, it wasn't a desirable or what they regarded a profitable thing to do.
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This quote is something I came across. I thought I have to read this before us. We've come a long way.
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The disciples who had gone into the city to buy food now returned. They were surprised at finding their master talking to a woman who was no doubt all the greater because the woman was a
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Samaritan. But for a rabbi to engage in conversation with a true -born Jewish woman was regarded by many as a waste of time that might have been more profitably spent.
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The classical comment on this verse is provided by the words of Yosef ben Yoachon, a rabbi of the 2nd century
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AD. These were his words. Prolong not conversation with a woman. And then together with an editorial comment of whoever was responsible for preserving this rabbi's words, that is to say, even with one's own wife, how much more with a neighbor's wife?
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And hence the wise men say, he who prolongs conversation with a woman, brings evil upon himself, ceases from the words of the law, and at the last inherits
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Gehenna, which is a Hebrew word for hell. Now that is a negative view of women.
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But with the coming of the Lord Jesus and the church being established, the status of women and treatment of women, of course, was greatly improved.
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It was a very profound and transformative statement that in Christ Jesus, you're all children of God through faith.
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For as many as you as were baptized in Christ and put on Christ, there's neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free.
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There's no male or female. For you're all one in Christ.
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Can you imagine how transformative that was to that culture, the Christian church in conflict with the culture of the day?
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And the Lord Jesus demonstrated the reality of what was going to take place in his churches through his own earthly ministry.
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He treated this woman with interest, dignity, true regard for her soul.
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But his disciples at this point were clueless, at least almost so. For they knew better than ask the question, why do you seek or what do you seek?
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Or why are you talking with her? As one wrote, they wondered he should condescend to talk with such a poor, contemptible woman, forgetting what despicable men they themselves were when
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Christ first called them into fellowship with himself. And yet they acquiesced in it.
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They knew it was for some good reason, some good end at which he was not bound to give them an account.
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And therefore, none of them asked what seekest thou or why talkest thou with her? And thus, when particular difficulties occur in the word and providence of God, it's good to satisfy ourselves with this in general, that all is well what
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Jesus Christ says and does. And that certainly is true. They at least had learned to keep their mouths shut, even when they were shocked or surprised or puzzled.
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I think we'll stop there, because next week I want to talk about how the woman left the water pot and then went into the city.
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There's significance there. She went back to the city with a different mission than when she left the city.
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She was coming out to get water. She left the water pot. And that's a significant statement by the
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Holy Spirit to the Gospel writer. With the abandoning of that water pot is really an emblem of her abandoning all of the religion of Samaria and the
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Jews ceremonial religion and embracing wholly the living water, experiencing the living water that Jesus bestowed upon her.
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She went back to that city, a transformed woman. And she declared the good news of Jesus as the
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Messiah to the men of the city. Come look at this man. He told me everything
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I've ever done. Well, that perked their interest. And they came out and then they believed on Christ also.
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Great revival took place. And it was due to the ministry of the Lord Jesus. And then he expressed what great joy this was.
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Even he said, you know, the fields are now ripe on the harvest. He was probably pointing to the disciples.
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Look at all these Samaritans coming out of the city. And they're flowing up to where he was. And I don't say the harvest is four months from now.
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No, the harvest is right now and ready to harvest. And he says, that's the food that sustains me.
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They hadn't fed him. You know, that was the water that refreshed him was the joy of accomplishing the work of his father in saving souls.
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There's a wonderful gospel invitation here. And we'll give consideration to it next time.
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Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for your word. Thank you, our God, for the glorious revelation of Jesus Christ to this woman.
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And that her life was transformed. And we thank you, our God, that you do that same work in your people today.
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When they hear the gospel. When they understand who Jesus is. And when they embrace him wholly through turning from their sin and believing on him as the
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Messiah. He indeed is eternal God. Father, he is your eternal son who took upon himself our human nature and dwelt among us.
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And then died for us, atoning for our sin. And rose for us. And he is reigning even now in heaven over your kingdom.
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We thank you and praise you, our God, that you've made us a part of that kingdom. And that he is our savior.
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He is our Lord. We pray, Lord, that you would help us to worship you. Worship him rightly as you've prescribed in your word.
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And help us, Lord, to be as this woman. To leave this church building, as it were. And to go out and tell others about Jesus.
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And may you bless that effort. That gospel witness that we would see a great harvest of souls in our day.
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For we do pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.