John 4:23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.

The other main thing that is impacted by truth is the singing of the truth. 

So, it is important what we sing in our worship of Him. They must be a reflection of God’s truth and they must communicate truth and they must align with truth. 

We would not put up with heretical preaching but we do put up with heretical singing. False doctrine is false doctrine whither it is preached or whether is put to a tune and sang. 

We are most lax when it comes to the truth in our singing. If its singable its good for worship. Maybe not!

It is possible that what I have spent hours studying to explain and get right, is destroyed with songs we sing. I don’t think God takes it lightly and we shouldn’t either. 

When we sing, what we sing needs to be a correct reflection of the truth of God—who He is and what He has done. 

There are far too many Christian songs with too many I’s in them. I would not be offended if we came together and sang songs that had no mention of I, me, my, mine, or ours in it. 

I don’t come to church to sing about me. I don’t getting any enjoyment out of that. There is a far better subject to sing about then me. The cross is better, the blood is better, grace is better, mercy is better, God is better, Jesus is better, the Spirit is better, salvation is better, redemption is better, all of those are better. Surely we can find better things to sing about then us. 

We must make sure that what we offer to God in both preaching and singing is so governed by our love for truth that it reflects Biblica truth and the truth of God. 

I don’t care who preaches it how they preach it or who sings it or how they sing it, the important thing is what do the words say? Are they reflective of the truth of God?

I have told you this before, your job is to evaluate everything I say in light of the Word of God. If I don’t preach the Word faithfully, you should call me on it. I would expect nothing less from you. In fact the reason I spend so much time in study, is because I know you will do just that. 

But, is your job not also to evaluate what we sing in light of the Word of God too? In fact, everything we do is to be evaluated in light of the Word of God. 

Worship is our giving to God. Worship is giving our ear to God in the preaching and giving our voices to God in singing. 

If we worship God in spirit and truth, the externals don’t matter. The truth will always govern what we do in the spirit. 

There is something that happens when true worship happens. Our souls are fed, our souls are encouraged, our souls are helped, our souls are uplifted, In fact, I would say, we have no idea of all the ways the Holy Spirit helps through the worship of God in Spirit and in truth. Maybe we won’t know for months or years. 

But if we don’t worship in Spirit and truth as God desires, there will be no working of the Spirit of truth either. God is not going to work in us and through us in our idolatry. 

John 4:23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. 

Because worship is a lifestyle, truth must be our lifestyle as well. As spouses, as parents, as children what is our attitude toward truth? Do we honor truth with our lives, at home, at work, at play. It is easy to love truth this morning, its much harder on the job and at home. 

But what about here this morning. This worship service is the corporate gathering of people who have been worshipping God in sprit and truth individually all week long. That is what it is. 

One of the main things that are impacted by truth in worship is the preaching of the truth.

Most people think that worship takes place before the preaching. When the last note on the instuments is done, worship is done, and now its the preaching part.

People think that preaching is the thing we tag on to the end of worship. Most people think that worship is just in the songs. In most churches, more planning and more effort and more resources are put on the singing. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

But the preaching and the teaching of the Word of God is the central act of worship. It simply cannot be replaced. The word of God read, preached, meditated upon, and applied worship it is God who is speaking to us. We reflect back truth is song. So truth governs all we do in worship. 

The reason many people have a flippant attitude toward the preaching is that they believe that God speaks to them in many different ways. If they miss the preaching, then God will speak to them some other way. 

But when we give our attention to the Word preached we are recognizing that the Word of God is the way that speaks to us. God does not speak through nudges, still small voices, promptings, and impressions. God does not speak little personal private messages to you. God does not speak in dreams in visions. He used to but he speaks to us in his Son that is confirmed by those who heard him and penned the truth down. 

When the message of the sermon is the message of the text, you are truly hearing the voice of God himself. True worship cannot happen without the faithful preaching of the Word of God. 

Worship is poor because our knowledge of God is poor and our knowledge of God is poor because the preaching is poor. 

Our hearts cannot be lift up to the adoration of God until we have gone down in the depths of the Word of God. 

That is why we must there must be the study of the Word of God before there is the preaching of the Word of God. 

In many churches there is shallow preaching, which has produced a shallow understanding of the truth, which has resulted in very shallow worship of God. The more shallow the preaching the more shallow the worship. 

Worship is not in the lighting, the strobe lights, the fog machines, the performances, or the gimmicks, no we need a profound understanding of who God is and what God has done in his Word and in response to his greatness the only response is praise and awe and wonder. 

There are two options for us to take, the first is that we create a response in people. Create the right environment,  put together the right song list, get the music just right and create an emotional wave going the pastor can ride all the way to the decision time. 

Or, secondly we can gather together around the Word and dive deep into the scripture so that worship is our response. Not that we create the response but that worship is our response. The response to what? To truth.  

The effect of emotional activity is that people leave church feeling good and the effect of the truth is that people worship. Because in truth they see God and the heart of the children of God long to see him and worship him. 

John 4:23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.

Truth is whatever really is. Whatever really is, is truth. What we see, what we feel, what we think, or what we perceive may not be the way things really are. Truth is reality. Truth describes the way things really are. The Bible tells us the way things really are. It is in Scripture that we have recorded for us the way things really are. Not the way things seem to be or the way we think things are but the way things really are. 

We learn in Scripture the way things really are about God, about salvation, about death, about morality, about the Bible, about humanity, about sin, about the future, about the kingdom, about the eternity, about Jesus, about the Holy Spirit, and much more. There is truth that coresponds with reality. 

Every word written in Scripture is absolute truth. The Bible reveals to us the way things really are, whether we like or not and whether we receive it or not. 

We llve in world and a culture that constucts all of life on nothing but lies. Everything Satan does is build on lies. Everything in this world is governed by and is held together by lies. 

The whole thing depends on us believing the lies. It’s all deception. It’s all run by the father of lies. 

Our main problem is that we just swallow the lies. 

There is only one source of truth. There is only one source that will tell us the way things really are. That source is the Word of God. 

The world hates the Word of God because it exposes their lies. 

The reason that the Scripture is true is because it’s author is absolute truth. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus is full of grace and truth. Everything Jesus said is truth, everything Jesus ever did was truth, everything he revealed was truth. Jesus was truth incarnate. His nature is truth. It is impossible for God to lie. 

In Satan there is no truth and in God there is nothing but truth. Therefore God is trustworthy and can be fully relied upon. 

So, if God is absolutely truth then everything he as said in His Word is absolutely true. 

We live in a time when the commonly held belief is that truth is subjective and not objective. Most people believe that truth is dependent on the individual. Most people think that we can believe two absolutely contradictory things and both of us be right. There is no one who is really wrong. What is true for me might not be true for you so in essence the truth can not be fully known. The only absolute is that there are no absolutes. 

But the truth can be known, the truth can be affirmed, truth can be practiced. Truth is discovered by us and not determined by us. There is the truth and then there is everything else. 

God has revealed to us the truth and the truth is not something we should be careless about. The flippant attitude that so many have about the truth reveals the realty of their attitude and thoughts about God. 

A careless attitude toward truth reveals our hearts attitude toward God. If we don’t care about the truth, we really don’t care about God. It is because I do care about God, that I do care about the truth. Does that make sense?

If truth is not present in our worship, then the God of truth is not present in our worship. Which means there is a lot of stuff called worship that is without truth and its around the wrong god. 

John 4:23 When the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.

You might say, I’m just not interested in the kind of worship you have described today. That is not what I am looking for. I am looking for a more emotional and more entertaining worship. 

But do you know who is interested in the kind of worship I have described today? God is! When the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.

The Bible is clear that God is not interested the sacrifices, the offerings, the wine, the sacrifices—those might be the expressions of our worship but what God is interested is our hearts. God wants your worship. 

That is why, I think, we must be careful about people worshipping for us. God is interested in my worship of him today. He wants my heart and spirit to worship him today. Not just the externals but the externals as an expression of my heart and spirit. 

He wants me to come because my spirit wills to come. He wants me to sing because my spirit loves him and appreciates him. He wants me to pay attention to the sermon because my spirit loves his word. He wants my prayers because my spirit depends on him. He wants my praise because my spirit adores him. 

Expressions of our worship must be in place but they are not the main thing, the heart, the spirit by which these expressions have their life in God is the main thing. 

When I come to church, I am to come to offer to God what no one else can see, that is the affection, the adoration, the obedience, and the submission of my heart. That probably involves some preparation of your heart to do that. That probably involves repentance.

When I come to church, I want to make sure that I eliminate any possibility that I might distract someone from worship. So, I turn my ringer on my cell phone off, I don’t let my kids talk and do distracting things. I know things happen but whatever I can control, I make the effort to do in order to not distract someone from worshipping God because God is interested in true worship. 

I remember in the church I where I was saved, two things used to drive me crazy that people did during the service. One woman would clip her nails. That drove me nuts. To hear the clipping of her nails while the preacher was preaching. The other is the rattling of candy wrappers. Is that sound not elevated 10x in church. 

There are things that happen that you can’t control, I understand that, but there are things that we can control and I think we should for the worship of God. Worship is a sacred time and we need to treat it as sacred. 

The words of the songs we sing should reach our hearts and not just be words on our lips. My spirit must be engaged in the singing. We are worshipping God in our singing. Not just singing. Not just noise but noise for him. You might not like the tone of my singing but God thinks it is beautiful because it is coming from a heart that loves and adores him. 

Worship of God if it is spirit, cannot be simply turned on on Sunday morning when you show up here. Today is an expression of your life that is lived in worship of God all week long. One reason worship lags at church is that our lives are not lived everyday in everything we do with an aim of worshipping God. 

Worship at church is simply the expression of what has been happening with you all week long. 

Our worship is for an audience of one. And this one who is our audience, knows our hearts and whether our worship is spirit worship or just formalism. It is not easy to worship God, but we do it without much thought. 

Let me quote Spurgeon who always says if far better than me, 

“It is far more difficult to worship God in spirit than in form. To patter through a dozen Hail Mary’s or Our Father is so easy, that I can nearly go to sleep over them: to repeat a form of prayer in the morning and evening is a very small matter, and one can be thinking of the shop all the while; to go to church or chapel so many times a week is a cheap duty, and withal one may still be a thief or a hypocrite; but it is hard, very hard, to bring the heart down to humble penitence, and the soul to holy meditation. The last thing that most people will do is to think. The noblest part of our nature is still the least exercised. Humbly to tremble before God, to confess sin before him, to believe him, to love him — this is spiritual worship! Because this is so hard, men say, “No, no, let me crawl on my knees around a shrine! Let me kneel down before a pyx, let me help to make a cope, or to manufacture some pretty piece of millinery for the priest to wear. Let me go every morning to the steeple house and come out in half an hour, and feel I have done my religion.” That is quite easy, but the hard part of religion is the part of spiritual worship. And yet again, to worship God spiritually men would have to part with their sins. There is no effect produced upon a man’s conscience by his being sprinkled, or by his taking the sacraments, he can do all that and be as much a pleasure-lover, or a worshipper of Mammon, as he was before; but, to worship God spiritualty, a man must give up his sins, must overcome his pride and lust, and his evil concupiscence must be cast out of him. Many persons might honestly declare, “I do not mind worshipping God if it consists in doing penance, or going without meat on Fridays; but if I am to give up my sins, love God, seek Christ, trust to him, I cannot attend to that.”

John 4:23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. 24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

When we think of the spirit of man what it is that we are talking about? Is it our emotions? I think it does involve emotions but the spirit is more than emotions. Emotions is a part of worship but it is not all there is. 

Emotions must serve our worship and not dictate our worship. Our emotions must be kept in check but worship is to include our emotions. They are involved in some level. All emotions are an expression of worship to God. All emotions, joy and depression, gladness and disappointment, hope and discouragement. All emotions are involved in worship. 

But what we can’t do is say that certain emotions are worship and certain other emotions are not worship and we can’t say that the more intense we are emotionally the more we have worshipped God. 

Our emotions are part of spirit worship but they are not all that is involved in sprit worship. 

Our worship involves our affections. Affections are different than emotions. Affections are the direction of our hearts. Our love, our priorities, our likes and our dislikes. All of those have to be directed toward God if true spirit worship happens. If my affections are directed toward other things, the worship of God does not happen. 

Now you answer the question, who does a worship service designed around the priorities of people, the preferences of people, and the likes and dislikes of people really worship? Not God. If I go to church at a certain time because I have things to do so I need to get this out of the way, If I go to a certain church because a certain type of music appeals to me, if I go to a certain church because my friends go there, do I think true sprit worship is happening?

In spirit worship all our affections are to be toward God, I love God, I prefer God to everything else, the glory of God is my priority, He is my priority, I like what He likes and I dislike what he dislikes, that is what makes up true sprit worship. 

The will is involved in worship. Our redeemed will. Our freed will. We come to will to submit ourselves to your word, I will worship you, I will offer to you my worship in wonder, in praise, in song, in my attention, in my emotions, in my affections, in my obedience, and in adoration. 

We think we just come and somewhere in song number three, worship kicks in. No, we come with a redeemed will that communes with God. The regenerated will, wills us toward God end not toward other things. Spirit worship happens because your redeemed will makes certain decisions of submission, obedience, to sing, to praise, to not count celing tiles, to not check Facebook, to not answer email, to not text. 

Spirit worship involves our emotions, it involves our affections, and it involves our wills. 

What does spirit worship not involve? Spirit worship is not mere formalism. It is not just going through the motions. It is not just showing up, doing this and this, and then leaving. It is not just moving your lips. It is not just that which does not involve your heart. 

Our worship has structure and order but the danger of structure and order is that we just go through the motions and not worship. 

Spirit worship is not about pursuing some feeling. Worship is not about getting some feeling. You don’t come and say you have worshipped because you have achieved some feeling. Worship is no pursuing goosebumps. Worship is about getting the lift, getting that charge, getting something to get me through the next week. That is so man-centered. Worship is not what you get out of it. 

It is possible to truly worship God and feel like nothing went past the ceiling. Most times you don’t feel like heaven opened up when you worship. 

Here is what some people say when they leave a church, ready, I just don’t get anything out of the worship. Are you supposed to get anything out of worship? There is nothing here that prevents anyone from giving their worship to God. 

You see if we get caught up in you getting something then we got to get people to give it to you. Better singers, famous singers, better preachers, famous preachers, better song leaders, famous song leaders, because it’s about you getting something. It is not about that, it is about you giving your spirit worship to Him. That is what we are interested in. 

I am to leave church, feeling that I have given God my attention, my emotions, my affections, my will, my praise, my offering, my obedience, I have held nothing back from my heart and my spirit today. Not what did I get out of it but what did I add to it. Ask that question when you leave today, what did I add to the worship of God at Lakeview today?

John 4:23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. 24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

As we look at this, I don’t think that the sprit here is the Holy Spirt but the spirit that is in us. You will notice that the term “spirit” is not capitalized which means it is not describing the Holy Spirit. This is the unseen you in contrast to the flesh which is seen. 

This doesn’t mean the Spirit of God has no place or involvement in our worship. He certainly does. The Holy Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are the children of God. The Holy Spirit encourages our worship and engages our worship. The Holy Spirit takes what we offer, in all of its feebleness, and transforms it into something beautiful and presents it to God the Father. The Holy Spirit teaches us to pray as we ought to prayer, He illuminates the Word to us as it is preached. He convicts of sin and convinces of righteousness. The Holy Spirit is responsible for the giftedness in our worship. 

He is involved in all those ways. But that is not what Jesus is describing here. Jesus is describing the opposite of formalism. Jesus is describing worship as much more than external actions. Jesus is describing worship as happening in the inner part of us. True worship happens deep inside our sprits and our souls where the unseen part of us offers worship to God. 

It is not the Holy Spirit that is being emphasized here but our inner spirit. Now, that means the part of you that was dead but has been born again by the power of God. The dead man cannot offer worship to God. A bunch of goats getting together and singing gospel songs does not constitute worship. A bunch of lost people getting together and singing and raising their hands does not constitute worship. 

My ability to know God, to love God, and to worship God is still-born. My spirit shows no signs of life. Paul says it is dead. The spirit part of us, that is dead at our physical birth must be made alive, it must be regenerated, it must be made alive. The spirit in us must be given life. If that does not happen then I cannot worship. 

You cannot make a worship service out of a bunch of dead people singing Christian songs. No matter what the song is, no matter how doctrinally correct the sermon is, and no matter how spiritual the worship leader is. It just cannot happen and it does not happen. It is impossible for a person who has not born again to worship God. Impossible. 

That is why I have said that to be saved is to be made a worshipper. To be born again is to be made a worshipper. To truly believe the gospel fo Jesus Christ is to be made a worshipper.  A spiritually alive person worships God. But a spiritually dead person can’t even though they go through all the outward motions. 

Worship is not about our physical bodies. The problem is, that we don’t know if true worship or idol worship takes place in church. We can’t see the heart. So, what we see people doing outwardly or not doing outwardly, does not prove worship is or not taking place. 

You can worship God by raising your hands, shedding tears, or by coming to the alter or you can worship God by not raising your hands, by not shedding tears, or by not coming to the alter. Worship is not about the outward it is about the inward spirit. Does that make sense?

Only God and I know if I have truly worshipped him or not. 

John 4:23 …for the Father seeketh such to worship him.

The Father seeks those who worship him truly in spirit and in truth. 

God investigates our worship. We can call it worship. We can define it as worship. We can be convinced that we have worshipped but God ultimately determines what is true worship and what is not. God knows what we know about him and he knows our hearts as well. 

God knows if we are worshipping a God we truly know and he knows if our hearts are near or far away. We can put on the disguise of worship but it does not fool God. 

Understand something here. If the songs, if the sermon, if whatever we do this morning does not move you to worship God, it has all been a failure. If the knowledge of God has not warmed your heart to love him, adore him, reverence him, acknowledge him, repent to him, magnify him, and worship him, it is has been wasted time. 

I am not here to move your heart to worship God. I am not here to get you to respond to God in worship. That is not what I am trying to do in our service. I am here to tell you about God, to share with you the truth of his Word and his revelation. I am here to share with you the magnificance of the gospel. 

And it is the truth, the very truths that are shared, that is what moves your heart, truth is what increases your love for him, enhances your adoration of him, floods your soul with reverence of him, causes you to acknowledge him, makes you repent of sinning against him, gives you a desire to magnify him, and brings you to worship him. 

If we don’t put the emphasis on truth, we know worship will not happen. But if we do emphasis truth, worship just might happen and in the hearts of those he has saved and caused to live by the new birth, worship will happen. 

God is not the least bit interested in our ignorant worship no matter how much or loudly we do it. God is not the least bit interested in our formality that has no heart in it. God seeks those who worship him in sprit and in truth. God is seeking true worshippers.

The important thing is that we are involved in worship that is acceptable to God. God created the world for His own glory. God now is seeking worshipers who will bring Him glory, not just for an hour on Sunday, but every day through all their activities. Whether they eat or drink or whatsoever they do. 

There are those whose worship is man-centered. It’s patterned more after the entertainment world than after the Bible. It draws attention to the performers, but not to the Lord. Or, on the other end of the spectrum, some go through all the rituals week after week, but their hearts are not in submission to God. They mistakenly think that because they went through the rituals, they’re good for another week. 

If God is seeking true worshppers, should we not be concerned that our worship be something he would seek and accept? 

We have to get the truth right and the right truth has to get us moving toward God! That is the worship God is looking for. 

John 4:22…we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.

What Jesus does not say is that both are worshipping the same God in the right way. He does not say that all worship is acceptable. He does does not admit that he is no position to judge their worship. He does not say that all roads lead to God. Jesus is saying that one way of worship is wrong and one way of worship is right. 

The line that divides true worship and false worship here is the knowledge of God. Jewish worship is right because it is worship in truth and not worship in ignorance. 

The problem with the Jews was not ignorance it was their corruption of worship. 

It is possible to have a right understanding and revelation of God and fail to worship God properly. The Jews had made worship about self-serving, elevation of tradition, and self-righteousness. But the Jews knew who God was but they still failed to offer true worship. 

So, the Samaritans had Spirit and no truth and the Jews had the truth but no Spirit and worship is in both Spirit and truth. 

John 4:23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: 

One of the things that we take very seriously at Lakeview is what is taught and preached. There must be truth. There must be the gospel. We will not compromise that. We will not water down truth to gain a crowd. We value truth. We value sound doctrine. 

But, that in itself does not constitute true worship. Just because we can cross all our T’s and dot all our theological i’s, does not mean we are truly worshipping. Even though we are sound in doctrine and we guard against error we can still fail to offer God true worship. 

You definitely cannot worship God in ignorance. There is no question about that. But we might not worship God even if we have knowledge of God. 

So, here is the deal. Your mind can be far from God and your heart can be far from God. If either of those are true, we can’t worship. Worship is with our minds and our hearts. Not one or the other but both. True worshippers worship God in spirit and in truth. 

Now here is the key. Your heart can’t educate your mind about God but your mind can warm your heart for God. What your mind understands about God can make your heart passionate about that God. 

As Alistar Begg said to the contemporary preacher, “do not ask me how I feel, ask we what I know.” If we gain knowledge of him, then we may feel him in a loving, adoring, and worshipping way. 

The promise of Scripture is that if we draw near to God, he will draw near to us. How do we draw near to him? By knowledge of him through Scripture. How does he draw near to us, in our worship of him. 

John 4:22 Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.

John MacArthur says about worship, ““Worship is all that we are, reacting rightly to all that He is”

William Temple wrote, “To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, and to devote the will to the purpose of God”

Worship is not music. Worship is loving God. Worship is honoring God. Worship is knowing God for who He is, adoring Him, obeying Him, proclaiming Him as a way of life.

All of life is to be oriented “God-ward,” permeated with a sense of His majesty and glory.

People often mistakenly think that if they go through the proper externals of “worship,” then things are okay between them and God. As long as they go to a church building and go through the weekly rituals, they figure that everything is fine. But they haven’t dealt with God on the heart level. They haven’t repented of their sins of thought, word, and deed. So Jesus tells her that it’s not the externals that matter as much as the internal.

People worship the true God according to their limited knowledge of him but what we see is that their limited knowledge is not enough to make what they were doing worship. They worshipped God but they did not really know the God they were worshipping. 

In worship services in many churches today, the truth is removed. It is more about emotions and felt needs. Songs are shallow and the preaching is shallow. The Word of God is not being expounded and explained in its proper context. But their emotions are being pressed and we call it worship. 

The Samaritans did not know the God they said they worshipped because they only knew the God of the first five books of the Bible. That was all the Scripture they recognized. What about the God of the prophets? What about the God of Job? What about the God of Song of Solomon? What about the God of the Psalmists? What about the God of Jonah? What about the God of Daniel, Isaiah, and Ezekiel? What about the God of the Gospels? 

They worshipped a God that they did not know therefore it was not really worship. 

God has revealed himself to us in all of the Scriptures. His thoughts, his will, his ways, his attributes, and his decrees. 

The Samaritans were not the chosen people of God. The Jews were God’s people. And God has revealed himself to and through the Jews. Salvation is of the Jews. The writters of the Bible are primarily Jews. Jesus was a Jew. Salvation came first to the Jew. It is through the nation of Israel that God has chosen to reveal himself to the world. 

There is nothing noble about ignorance to Scripture. People think that doctrine and theology and details and depth of Scripture hinders the worship of God. They just want to offer worship to God in an way that is not clouded by doctrine or theology. That’s not noble because you cannot worship God in ignorance. 

We must worship God as he has revealed himself in Scripture. That is why worship centers on the Word of God. 

John 4:21 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. 

Jesus gives her an answer that no Jew nor any Samaritan would give. This answer would offend both Jew and Samaritan. I am sure the woman is expecting Jesus, a Jew, to go on and on about the beauty of the Temple in Jerusalem. But he doesn’t.

Jesus says true worship is not at Mount Gerizim or Jerusalem. Worship is not confined to a specific location. Worship is not based on tradition. Worship is not tied to preference. Worship is not according to human opinion. 

How you have always worshipped and how you think worship should be is irrelevant. Our preferred mode of worship does not matter. What I think and what you think makes no difference. 

It is not the place that is important, but the person that is important. 

We are not to try to think up what we are to bring to God in worship but we are to come to him as he has commanded us to come to him in worship. It is not our ideas of worship but what the Word reveals. We don’t worship God on our terms, but on his terms. 

We are to elevate Christ, we are to highlight Christ, we are to sing of Christ, we are to adore Christ, we are to magnify Christ, we are to glorify Christ, we are to preach Christ, we are to give to Christ, and we are to marvel at Christ. 

Nothing that happens is worship is about my feelings, my preferences, or my ideas. It is not about the style of music, it is not about the length of the sermon, it is not about how we have always worshipped. It’s not about some new method of worship. It is not about any of that. 

Worship is about God. God is jealous of his worship. God does not give points for sincere efforts. He does not give points for good ideas. He demands worship according to his revealing of how He wants to be worshiped. How we are to worship is not up for debate, it is clearly revealed in Scripture. 

What I think is right, what I am more comfortable with, or what I enjoy most is not a consideration. What God says is the only consideration. 

But what do we do? We worship where and how we prefer. We worship the way we always have worshipped. We worship according to what we enjoy. Mostly it comes down to the type of music. 

Do you know what I have learned during the Covid-19 situation? That you can worship without a choir and you can worship without special singing and you can worship with just congregational singing just fine. But many people can’t. Worship with just congregational singing is just not entertaining enough and Lord, knows worship is about us being entertained. 

Again, we are about worshipping our traditions, our desires, our thoughts, instead of God. But we are not worthy of worship, only God is. 

So, what Jesus is saying is that worship is not about where you have always done it, or how you have always done it, or why you have always done it. Worship is about the magnification of Jesus Christ. 

So, we sing of Him not ourselves. We pray to him, thanking him and depending on him, not ourselves. We preach of him and his character and works, not ourselves. We communicate his Word and not our opinions. 

John 4:22 Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.

There is worship that happens that is unfounded in knowledge of worship. In other words, there is a lot of false worship going on. We can call it worship and it not be true worship. We all worship something but not always is our worship the worship of God. Many times we simply worship ourselves, our preferences, our desires. 

Sincere worship, yes, but no true worship. It is worship that is based on ignorance of the God of worship. It is possible to worship our idea of God, the best way we think we can and it all be wrong and worthless. Much of worship is a self-centered mess. 

The demand of worship is that we worship God the way God has revealed that we worship him.