REFORMING OUR WORSHIP: LEAVING CULTURE AND MOVING TO THE SCRIPTURES

"Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him." John 4:21-23 ESV

Over the years I have heard many statements that reveal most Christians view of worship. For example: "The worship was so good today." "I love the worship at that church". "That was the best worship I have ever experienced!" "My wife and I want to find a church where there is good worship?" "I didn't get much out of the worship today." "I am not really that into worship, I like good teaching." "I go to church for the worship not the preaching." "I really look forward to the worship time on Sunday mornings."

I could go on and on in what I have heard over the past thirty two years I have been a pastor. Most Christians seem to confine worship to a place, or a day, or an event and worship to singing. What does the New Testament say about worship? To be more specific, what does Jesus say about worship?

In John 4:24 Jesus has a conversation with a Samaritan woman. The Samaritans viewed worship in terms of outward forms and geographical locations. Jesus says an astonishing thing when He addresses the woman: "The hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father...the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him." Here Jesus takes the word proskuneo - that dominant Old Testament word for worship - and transforms it into a concept that is mainly inward rather than outward, and mainly pervasive rather than localized. Instead of being in this mountain or in Jerusalem, it is "in spirit and in truth."

What Jesus is doing is giving us the true view of authentic worship. Not that it will be wrong for worship to be in a place like a church building or a mountain top or that it will be wrong for it to use outward forms; but rather he is making explicit and central that this is not what makes worship worship. What makes worship worship is what happens "in spirit and in truth" - with or without a place and with or without outward forms.

True Authentic Worship is worship "in spirit" and "in truth". What does this mean? I believe that "in spirit" means that true worship is enabled and empowered by the Holy Spirit and happens first as an inward, spiritual event, not mainly as an outward bodily event. And I believe that "in truth" means that this true worship is a response to true views of God and is shaped and guided by true views of God.

Jesus radically redefines worship as being significantly de-institutionalized, de-localized, de-ritualized. The whole thrust is being taken off of ceremony and seasons and places and forms; and is being shifted to what is happening in the heart - not just on Sunday, but every day and all the time in all of life.

This is what it means when we read things like, "Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31). And "whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father" (Colossians 3:17). This is the form of worship commanded in the New Testament: to act in a way that reflects the value of the glory of God. The inner essence of worship is the treasuring of God as infinitely valuable above everything. When we worship God will be duly praised, because he is duly prized. -So worship is not about place, form, event, or environment. Worship is about God and lived out and expressed from the heart in life.

Romans 12:1-2 portrays all of life as worship. "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." Jesus said, "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good deeds and give glory to your father in heaven" (Matthew 5:16). All of life is the outshining of what you truly value and cherish and treasure. Therefore all of life is worship.

I think that there is no group in church history that better understood the teaching of Jesus on worship than the Puritans. Patrick Collinson summarizes Puritan theory and practice by saying, the life of the Puritan was in one sense a continuous act of worship, pursued under an unremitting and lively sense of God's providential purposes and constantly refreshed by religious activity, personal, domestic and public.

Inner spiritual reality is the key to true and authentic worship. We see it in Matthew 15:8-9 when Jesus says, "This people honors me with their lips but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me." Worship that does not come from the heart is vain, empty. It is not authentic worship. It is no worship. Matt Redmond says, “No one can speak of things they have not seen…worship starts with seeing, our hearts respond to your revelation.” Worship is our response to seeing and savoring the preciousness and greatness of God from our hearts. Therefore, the essence of our worship is prizing Christ, being satisfied in Christ, cherishing Christ, and treasuring Christ in our hearts.

So everything we do alone, during the week, and when we gather together as the people of God is meant to outwardly express the loving, cherishing, and treasuring of Christ that is in our hearts. The outer forms of worship on Sunday mornings when the people of God gather together are all of the acts that show how much we treasure God. And the forms of worship they take are in singing, in the offering, in the preaching and hearing God’s word, in serving and encouraging one another, and the partaking of the Lord's Supper.

Nothing makes God more supreme and more central than when a people are utterly persuaded that nothing - not money or prestige or leisure or family or job or health or sports or toys or friends - nothing is going to bring satisfaction to their aching hearts besides God. This conviction breeds a people who worship in spirit and truth. Authentic worship means that all during the week and with God's people on Sunday morning what we do is to go hard after God: we are going hard after satisfaction in God, and going hard after God as our prize, and going hard after God as our treasure, our soul-food, our heart-delight, our spirit's pleasure.

During the Reformation a slogan was cried out, "semper reformanda", meaning “always reformed, always reforming.” The Puritans held onto this and so do I. The the point of the slogan is that the church is always to be reforming its doctrine and practice according to the Scriptures.
To be reformed means to be “always reforming” by shaping what I know about God against what He has revealed about Himself. May we listen to Jesus and the apostles and "reform" our cultural views of worship and become true worshippers in "spirit" and "in truth" every day and together on Sunday.

Pastor Bill