Worship Out of a Pure Heart — Bill McLeod

Worship Commanded in Scripture

In Psalm 95 we read, O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker, for he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you'll hear his voice, harden not your heart.

Then in the next psalm it says, Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, fear before him all the earth. I want to begin by saying that worship is commanded in the Bible. Psalm 45 is a beautiful messianic psalm that is a psalm about Christ, a prophecy about Jesus, and in that psalm we have this statement, it says, He is your Lord, and worship thou him.

He is thy Lord, worship thou him. In Hebrews chapter 1 the word of God says that when God brought his first begotten son Jesus into the world, he said, And let all the angels of God worship him. And that's what they were doing in Luke chapter 2.

They were worshiping the baby Jesus. The shepherds came to worship. Later on the wise men came, a long, long journey, spent days in travel, so they could worship the baby Jesus, who could not respond to their worship in any way, because he was a baby.

But they felt it was worthwhile, and they worshiped him. And all through his life, people were worshiping him. People fell down at his knees. When he hung on the cross, one of the thieves worshiped him, he said, Lord, that's an act of worship, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom, and Jesus said, In truth I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.

Then after his resurrection, in Matthew 28, it says, And they worshiped him, but some doubted. They worshiped him. So worship is commanded, and then we have these many, many examples of which I've given just a very few, of people who worshiped the Lord Jesus Christ.

False Worship and the Heart

But not all worship is acceptable to God. For example, Jesus said, In vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. If you saw a person on his knees pray, you would assume they're a very pious person, they're quite religious, and they're likely a Christian, and you would think they're doing the right thing.

But God always sees to the heart of a matter that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God. And just because a person, just because even a Christian is praying, doesn't mean that God is pleased.

In vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. One of the basic problems with the Jewish people in the days of Jesus was this. The nation was controlled by the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

The Pharisees believed too much, and the Sadducees believed too little. The Pharisees believed there was a resurrection even of angels, well, angels don't die, where did they get that notion from? And the Sadducees believed there was no resurrection at all.

And both the Pharisees and the Sadducees were wrong, oh, very religious, and going to the forms of worshiping God. But all in vain. And isn't it awful to think of that, that a person could worship God a whole lifetime and have wasted every moment he spent before God?

But it's true for many. Is there a nation in the world as religious as India? I've been there, I've seen their temples, hundreds, thousands of them, all over the countryside. And they begin their prayers at five o 'clock in the morning, and today they're modern, they have public address systems, which they turn up as loud as they'll go, and they start broadcasting their prayers and their holy writings at five o 'clock in the morning till seven o 'clock or seven-thirty every morning.

You can't even think if you happen to be near one of the temples. And there are no noise bylaws, anti-noise bylaws. I was once in Madras in India in a home here, and there was a temple here and a temple there, and both blaring at the top of the power of the PA system, these prayers.

And almost anywhere I was in India, I heard them. Ah, but then I saw the temples, and adorned on the outside with grotesque, sometimes extremely ugly figures. And some of them, I was told, were demons.

Demons. But I was in a Christian home one time, and as I walked in the door, there was a little table right by the door, and on the table there were two wooden men about this high, beautifully, exquisitely carved, fat, squat, extremely ugly men, two men.

And I saw this, and I said, oh, where did you get those, what are those? She said, my father carved them, and this is the demon of lust, and that's the demon of blasphemy. I said, what did you say? A Christian home?

And her husband said, I've been trying to tell her, and right away she got very defensive. She said, my father is not a Christian, and my father carved those for me, and they're staying right there. I don't want to offend my father.

I said, my dear sister, you've already offended your heavenly father, what about that? And she saw it. She got rid of those things. Just think. Demon of lust, and the demon of blasphemy in a Christian home.

I can understand it on the walls of a temple, in a country that doesn't know God in a personal way, but how shocking to think it could be found in the home of a Christian. I wonder how much of her worship was acceptable to God when those two figures were standing there, an invitation for Satan to enter the home, and no doubt he had, in vain.

Ignorant Worship and the Coming Judgment

And then, in Acts 17, Paul talked about this. He said, Whom therefore you ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. God that made the heavens. He doesn't dwell in temples made with hands, neither is worship with men's hands, as though he needed anything.

And then he preached Christ. They were ignorantly worshiping God. He walked through the streets of Athens, and every corner there was an idol, a statue, a shrine. And he saw one with this inscription, To the unknown God.

And most people that pray are praying to the unknown God. I'm thinking now the aggregate total of people in the world that pray. They're praying in ignorance, hoping that somewhere out there, there's somebody that will listen.

And I know what that's like, because before I became a Christian, when I got into trouble, I always cried to God. But I didn't know God, and I wasn't sure he was listening. I hoped he was out there somewhere, but I didn't really know.

Whom therefore you ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. And Paul wanted to say, the times of this ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because he has appointed a day in which he'll judge the world in righteousness by that man, Jesus Christ, whom he has ordained.

Paul tells us in the book of Romans that there's a time coming when God will judge the very secrets of men by Jesus Christ. And whether you like it or not, whether you plan on being there or not, you'll be there.

And the Bible says every one of us shall give account of himself to God. And it further tells us in the word of God, there's time there for every purpose and for every work. And there's no gospel preaching then, no invitation to repent of your sins and come to Christ.

No more opportunities to worship God as we can now here in the flesh on earth. Oh yes, as Christian believers, we worship God on the other side, no doubt in a more meaningful and directly pure spiritual way.

But the things that could be now cannot be then. So now is the time to meet our God and to learn how to worship him acceptably. Then to the Samaritans, Jesus Christ said, you know, the Samaritans were sort of half-breed Jews.

They were Babylonians that had come down from Babylon and dwelt in the cities of Samaria after the Israelites, the northern kingdom, had been expelled and carried off into captivity. And because they did, you know, lions began to kill some of them.

So they thought this was because they didn't know the proper manner of worshiping the God of the land. And so they sent word back to Babylon and they sent back a priest from the Jews who came down to teach them the manner of the God of the land.

You know what it says? One of the strangest statements in the whole Bible. It says they feared the Lord and served their own gods. Can you put that together in your mind? They feared the Lord and served their own gods?

How could they do that? And it lists seven different gods that they were worshiping, pagan deities, yet it says they feared the Lord and served their own gods. And then the writer adds this postscript.

He says they feared not the Lord. They did not fear the Lord. They just thought they did, but they were not truly fearing the God of the scriptures. And so to the Samaritans, Jesus Christ said in the gospel of John chapter 4, he said that you worship, you know not what.

You worship, you know not what. Anyone like that here tonight? You worship, you know not what. God isn't real. Christ is not real. The Holy Spirit's not real. It's a form that I've learned, a way of doing it, that I've always done.

Maybe I learned it from my parents. Maybe at one time there was reality in my worship and that's lost now, it's gone. Because sin has entered into my life. That's something you have to consider for yourself before God.

Is your worship what it should be? Living? Vital? Real? Satisfying? Something you enjoy? You know, the old Presbyterian catechism, I learned that as a boy, a series of questions and responses that began like this.

What is the chief end of man? See, I was raised in the Presbyterian church in Winnipeg, Canada. What is the chief end of man? And the question is, what is the chief reason for which man is on earth? And the answer was, man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.

And my brother Bob told me that he was in his twenties before he realized he'd learned that response wrongly. He'd learned it this way, man's chief end is to glorify God and to endure Him forever. And that's the way a lot of Christians live.

They don't endure God or enjoy God, they endure God. And in the language of Scripture, what they're really saying inwardly is, what a weariness it is. You know, there are people in the Bible that say, what a weariness it is.

Worship as a Way of Life

If I really love God, I love to be alone with God. I won't count two hours spent with God wasted time. Hmm, that's beautiful that I could have the time to worship my God and tell Him that I love Him and spend time in His presence.

So Jesus said, you don't know what you're worshiping. You worship you know not what. We know what we worship, Christ said, for salvation is of the Jews. But the Samaritans didn't understand. Then the Bible talks about what it calls will-worship in the book of Colossians, and he says there's a show of wisdom in will-worship, a show of wisdom.

It looks good. When I think of will-worship, you know what I think of? I think of what many times we do. That is, we worship when we feel like it. When worship ought to be a way of life, not some temporary thing I do when I come to church.

Like people say, I'm going to go to church and worship God. Well didn't you worship God before you went to church? If I'm not worshiping God as a way of life, I can't put worship on. You know, that's will-worship.

I turn it on, I turn it off. Oh no. It's just like repentance. Repentance is a way of life, not a single act. It's the way I live. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

So I forsake my way forever, and I walk in God's ways forever. It's a way of life. Repentance is, and worship is exactly the same. When I awake, I am still with Thee. I awaken in the morning, my first thought is God.

And I give God thanks for the night's rest. What a joy that is. Then I give God the new day, and ask God to guide and direct my footsteps through the new day. What a joy and privilege that is. And all through the day, I read the Bible.

I don't read the Bible all through the day, but what I'm saying is when I do read the Bible, or even when I'm not reading the Bible, I'm thinking of my God. I'm driving a car, I'm thinking of God. I'm talking to God.

I'm praising God. I'm singing choruses. It talks about singing. You make a melody in your heart to the Lord. Do you ever do that? Do you ever sing to God when no one else is around? You ought to practice that.

If you haven't done it, you should do that. Sometimes you just sing to the Lord. He'll never ball you out for having a voice like a crow. You know, sometimes when you sing around the house, the members of the family are so brutal, you know, they say, hey, shut up, you're spoiling my dinner or something, you know.

Because we can't sing, but we can sing and God hears it, oh, so sing unto the Lord a new song. In many, many places in the Bible it talks, in the Old Testament even, it talks about singing unto the Lord.

That's worship. And so when you sing in a, you know, corporate style as the congregation as we're doing tonight, sing unto the Lord. Forget there's anyone else around. Sing to the Lord. And God may use that, and often will use that to bless some other person.

Because sitting next to you or sitting behind you or sitting in front of you may be some person with a heavy, heavy heart, and they hear God speaking through your song. You may not have a voice like a nightingale, but God uses you because your heart's in tune and touch with Him.

God can't really use us. Sometimes maybe He's forced to in certain situations, but normally God can't use me unless my heart is right. When my heart is right and I'm singing to my God, then He speaks through me to other people.

Will worship, watch that. Do you ever ask a person, where do you worship? You can read the Bible for a thousand years, you never find a phrase like that in the Bible. We should never ask people, where do you worship?

Because that means that worship is not a way of life. Oh, I worship at this church, or I worship at that church. And you mean to tell me you don't worship God in between? That sort of question should have no place in the Christian life.

Earnest Worship Before Conversion

Will worship. And then there's earnest worship spoken of in the Bible, like Lydia, before she became a Christian, she worshipped God, it's said. The Ethiopian eunuch, he worshipped God. And there's other people in the book of Acts particularly, we read about them, how they worshipped God.

Yet they were not born again. And their worship of God, well, they were worshipping God to the best of their ability. They didn't know Him in a personal way yet. There's a beautiful book, I'm just trying to remember the title, and I'll think of it maybe after a while.

If I do, I'll tell you what it is. But the book, it's a record of what's happened in the history of the church down through the centuries among primitive peoples who sought God before the missionaries came.

One remarkable story I'll tell you about, there was a bunch of, they were elders, village elders, a true story, and they met together because they'd all had a dream the night before. And they met together and talked about the dream and discovered that all the elders of this primitive village had had the same dream.

And in this dream, a white donkey came into their village. And each one of those elders were instructed to follow the white donkey and would lead them to a white man that had the book of God. Now these men had been seeking God but didn't know where to find Him.

They were like Lydia and like the Ethiopian eunuch. And so sure enough, the next day, a white donkey walked into the village. These men had prepared, they didn't know how long they'd be following the donkey.

It turned out, I think, to be five weeks. But they prepared food and they followed the donkey day after day after day after day. And the donkey finally wound up in Rangoon in Burma and started walking down the streets and they followed this donkey.

And it came to a missionary compound and it turned and walked in the gate and stopped beside a big hole in the ground and there it stopped. And they all gathered around the donkey and they got looking for the white man with the book of God.

And they couldn't find him. You know where he was? He was down in the hole in the ground. He was digging a well. And he heard this commotion and talking and came up the well and here were these men and here was the white man and where was the book of God?

You see, they were worshiping God as best they knew how. And God did the most remarkable thing. It's a true account in bringing those men to the man with the book of God. But he was a man that knew how to worship God, as Jesus said, we must worship God in spirit and in truth.

Worship in the Beauty of Holiness

Alright, worship is commanded, but make sure it's the kind of worship that God can respond to. Now, there's a statement three times given and five times alluded to in the scripture. It's the statement, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, fear before him all the earth.

At Founders Week in St. Paul, Minnesota, quite a few years ago, I heard Dr. Tozer bring three or four messages on that one text. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, I never forgot it. What kind of worship then is really acceptable to God?

What does our text say? Our text says, worship the Lord in the beauty of a holy life. To God, a holy life is a beautiful, beautiful thing. In Great Falls, Montana, I had a crusade there some years ago and after one of the services, a Christian woman, perhaps 25 or so, walked up, a very beautiful person, and an extremely beautiful person spiritually speaking, and we talked together a little bit.

And then she said something that I've never heard a person say in 40 years. She said, oh Brother McLeod, the burning passion of my life is to be a holy woman for the glory of God. But shouldn't we all feel like that?

That we should be a holy person for the glory of God? When God looks down at you and I singing or praising or serving, what does he see? The Lord doesn't take any pleasure in the legs of a man, it says, no.

The most beautiful face on earth to God must look like a walrus. When you consider the perfection in heaven, no, it's not that. But God is looking for holy lives. People that are separated unto God and separated from sin worship the Lord in the beauty of a holy life.

Do you qualify? Can you say your life is a holy life? You've given yourself completely to God. You have been emancipated from the fear of man and from man's way of thinking and doing things. Paul once said, if I yet serve men, I should not be the servant of Christ.

If I serve men, I can't be God's servant. Because all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. The world will never understand a holy life because a holy life rebukes them. They can't stand a holy life.

When Stephen said to some extremely religious people, you uncircumcised in heart and ears, you don't always resist the Holy Ghost, as your fathers did, so do you, religious though they were. And for his pains, what did they do?

They stoned him to death. They couldn't stand the holy life of this man of God who looked up into heaven and said, I see the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God. And they couldn't stand it. And they murdered him.

They thought they were holy people. They were not holy people. They were monsters hiding behind a façade of religion with wicked hearts, so wicked that they killed Stephen, after killing Jesus, the Son of God.

So don't expect the world will fall in love with you if you become a holy person. But let me tell you something, God will fall in love with you, that's what God wants. Worship the Lord. Oh come, it says, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our maker for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.

Today, if you'll hear his voice, harden not your heart. Whatever you do, don't harden your heart against God. Maybe tonight he's talking powerfully to your heart. Don't harden your heart against God. Job said, God makes my heart soft.

Let him do that. The scripture says in Proverbs, though you should pound a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet his foolishness will not leave him. And God can pound some people for fifty years and they're more stubborn at the end of fifty years than they were when God began.

But the wise person will break and say, God, yes, I'm wrong, you're right, please forgive me. And seek the face of God and never be satisfied until my life is right with God and right with men. So you can look any person in the eye, know there's nothing between you and that person.

And you can look up and say, God, there's nothing between my soul and my Savior. Not of this world's delusive dream. Nothing between my soul and the Savior. What a beautiful way to live. All attention goes out of life and you begin to enjoy life because things are right the way they should be.

Simon Magus and a Heart Not Right with God

Here was a man, Simon, heard the gospel through Philip and he believed and he was baptized and he continued with Philip, beholding and wondering at the miracles he saw. And then he offered money to Peter and said, give me also this power that in whomsoever I lay hands he may receive the Holy Ghost.

He wasn't a holy person. And Peter said, your money perish with you, literally, to destruction you and your money. Your heart isn't right in the sight of God. I perceive, Peter says, that you're in the gall of bitterness.

You're in the bond of iniquity. But hadn't he believed? Wasn't he baptized? Yes. But he was in the gall of bitterness. He was in the bond of iniquity. To destruction you and your money. You've neither part nor lot in this matter, he said.

Your heart isn't right in the sight of God. I think there's hope for the man because he said, oh, pray to the Lord for me that the things you've spoken won't happen to me. So there's hope for him. But somehow his heart was not right.

And maybe you've believed and been baptized and yet tonight your heart isn't right. There's lust in your heart. You've been lying to other people, perhaps. You have a very critical spirit. You listen to people preaching.

You listen to me preaching tonight and you're sitting there in an icebox. You're as critical and as cold as can be. You know, some people, they go to church to analyze the sermon. Listen, if you want to exercise in analyzing sermons, I suggest you start analyzing some of the sermons in the Bible.

I doubt very much if a single psalmist's sermon in the Bible conforms to standards that people think today's sermons should have. What was Peter's sermon like in the day of Pentecost? Over half of his sermon was nothing more or less than a quotation of Old Testament Scriptures.

He didn't have an introduction and he never had a conclusion. He never had any illustrative material but quotations from the Old Testament. Peter didn't know the laws governing sermonizing. I mean so much for that.

Tom Skinner and the Power of a Dedicated Heart

Tom Skinner, he's a black evangelist in the States, he used to run with the toughest gang in Harlem. Their gang always won in the street rumbles they used to have. And to become top man in the gang, you had to fight other people with knives because men would come and challenge your leadership and you fought with knives.

And he won, every time. He came home from one of their escapades one night, turned the radio on, and some stupid preacher was preaching. He sat there and laughed. Do you know why? Because the guy's English was so poor.

I mean he said, ain't, and used words you shouldn't use, and he listened and he sat there and he laughed. He never heard anything. He was so stupid and ignorant all his life. And twenty minutes later, he was on his face before God, weeping, broken by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Nobody would ever print that man's sermon, but the Holy Ghost used it to break that proud heart, Tom Skinner's heart. He became an evangelist to the black people of America, and God used him in winning thousands of people to Christ.

It wasn't some nice pretty sermon, it was a message from God through a dedicated heart. God doesn't care so much about the rest, you know, people, that's not important. But worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, fear before him, all the earth.

Worship in Spirit and in Truth

How do I worship him? Jesus said the Father is seeking for people that will worship him in spirit and in truth. You see, the Samaritans said to Jesus, the Samaritan woman said, our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is a place where men aren't to worship.

You know what she was saying, well, I'm a Baptist and you're a Lutheran, I hope the Baptist won't take offense. She was preaching denominationalism, she said, you've got your way of doing it, we've got our way of doing it, so you go your way, and I'll go my way.

And Jesus exploded that in a second. He said, the hour is coming, and now is when the true worshippers should worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such to worship him. Has he found such in you?

You worship God in spirit and in truth? Paul said, writing to a Gentile church, in which no doubt there were a few Jews, but he said, we are the circumcision, who worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.

He is not a Jew which is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh, but he is a Jew which is one inwardly. And circumcision is that of the heart, and not of the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God.

So we Christians are the true circumcision of God, the true Israel of God, the true Jew, the Jew means praised of God, the ones that praise God, that worship God, that are praised in return by God, because we love him through Jesus, his Son.

So the Father is seeking for people that will worship him in spirit and in truth. Has he found one such in you? How is your worship of God? How is your prayer life? How is your walk with God? You see, that's the burning question.

How are things between you and the Lord? Dead and cold? Would you do something about it tonight? We're to worship him as maker. Remember now thy creator in the days of thy youth, it says in Ecclesiastes chapter 12, verse 1.

As a matter of fact, the word creator in the Hebrew language is in the plural. Remember now your creators. Creation is ascribed to God the Father, Christ the Son, and the blessed Holy Ghost. Worship now your creators in the days of your youth.

He is your maker, it says. Worship thou him. For no other reason than that, I ought to worship my God. The Lord said in Exodus, talking to Moses, he said, Who has made man's mouth? For who makes the dumb, or the deaf, or the seeing, or the blind?

Have not I the Lord? So God made you just the way you are. Now maybe you added a few pounds. Don't blame that on God. Some people, you know, they're so fat that if they fall over, they're just as tall as when they stand up.

Then there are some people that are so thin that when they drink tomato juice, they look like a thermometer. But whether I'm thin or fat, tall or short, God made me. Thank God for the way you are. Zacchaeus was so short, he couldn't see over the crowd.

You know what happened? His shortness became his salvation. He had to run in front of the crowd and forget his dignity and climb up a tree to see Jesus, which would not have been true if he'd been six foot four.

And he might have missed salvation. God made you. And God ordained your parents. And God ordained a time in history when you and I should be born. You see, it says in Acts chapter 17 that God has made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth and has determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation, why?

That they should seek the Lord. If happily they might feel after him and find him, though he be not far from every one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being. Everything you see is ordered of God.

And in the final analysis, what God wants is holy people that worship him. Worship him as maker. Then worship him as savior. Remember that woman in the Gospel of Luke, a sinful woman, a woman of the streets.

And she came in and stood behind Christ, weeping and began, her tears were falling on his feet and she was wiping his feet with the hairs of her head. And Simon, that religious Pharisee was sitting there and he said in his heart, ah, this man, if he was a prophet, he'd know what kind of a dirty woman that is touching his feet, he'd kick her away.

And Jesus said, Simon, I have something to say to you. And Simon said, say on. But it wasn't very nice. It winds up this way, Simon, to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little. Are you one of those people that say, I never got drunk in my life.

I never ever committed adultery. I never ever stole any money. I was never really a bad sinner. Ever feel like that? And congratulate yourself that you are not a bad sinner? Well, a lot of us have done that.

Read about some horrible person, you know, or you hear a testimony of a person that did all kinds of wicked things. By the way, I wish when people give their testimony, they wouldn't glorify sin the way they often do.

Lots of books are out, I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't even have them in my home. Christian books. Well, some person spends eight chapters telling all about their wicked, sinful past, all the people they slept with, all the times they were drunk and all the horrible things they did.

Then at the back, they got a little bit about Jesus, you know, I say garbage. I wouldn't even read those books. When Paul gave his testimony, do you know all he ever said? He said, I was a persecutor and injurious.

I was a blasphemer, but I attained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And he never gave us any of the details. So when you give your testimony, be very careful that you don't glamorize sin.

I don't care how much sin you were in or how little you think you were in. But listen, what I was going to say was this, I digressed for a moment, is this. People think they haven't sinned much because they haven't done the things I was talking about a few minutes ago.

But listen, what is the worst sin of all? The worst sin of all is to reject Jesus Christ. That's all you have to do to end up in hell. That's all. And you have a catalog of sins in Revelation 21 .8. And where does it start?

But the fearful and the unbelieving. And then comes the abominable and the murderers and the whoremongers and the adulterers and the idolaters and the liars. But at the top of the list are the fearful.

The fear of man brings a snare. And the unbelieving. You didn't believe in Jesus Christ. That's worse than murder. It's worse than whoremongering. And you think you weren't a great sinner? You were, in God's sight.

But just as long as people think I didn't do much that was wrong, their love for God is going to be little because they think they were not forgiven very much. After all, it says in the book of James, if you keep the whole law and offend in one point, you're guilty of all.