This article is based on Pastor Adrian Rogers' message, A Worshipping Church.
What is life’s highest good?
Is it service? That is wonderful. Is it sacrifice? Indeed, that is glorious. But life’s ultimate priority, and greatest privilege, is worship.
Christian worship will free you and fulfill you, glorify God through you, and give you great joy. And the only way we can learn to worship as a Church is to learn as individuals.
The Samaritans were Jews left over from the exile, who then intermarried with the Canaanites. The Jews looked on them as a mongrel race.
But in John 4, Jesus is traveling through Samaria. He is hot and tired, so He sits down on the parapet around a well.
A woman comes to the well. This woman was what we would call a shady lady.
Jesus says to her: “Would you give Me a drink of water?”
Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”
Jesus Christ is what every soul thirsts for. He is the water of life.
This poor woman was bound by sin, and blinded by Satan. Religion was a washout to her. It did not satisfy her hungry, thirsty soul. She needed to lift her eyes from the things of this Earth and learn how to worship.
So, Jesus teaches her.
God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.
This woman knew about worship, but she did not understand true worship. What she wants to do is argue about religion. “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship” (John 4:20).
Jesus said to her, “You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22).
The Samaritans had rejected all of the Old Testament except for the five books of Moses. They were so certain they knew the truth, that their worship on Mount Gerizim was the right worship. What they had was zeal and ignorance.
The Jews had the truth, but they had no zeal. Jesus said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honors Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me’” (Mark 7:6b).
Here you have enthusiastic heresy; there you have dead orthodoxy. The answer is not formalism or fanaticism; not heat without light, nor light without heat—but true worship.
Look at the word “worship.” It really comes from two words: worth and ship. By how you worship, you show what God is worth to you.
Worship goes beyond a church service, music, or candles and incense. Worship is all that we are, responding to all that God is, revealed in Jesus Christ.
You are going to worship something. Man is incurably religious. Anything that you love more, fear more, and serve more than the Almighty is your idol. “‘To whom then will you liken Me, or to whom shall I be equal?’ says the Holy One” (Isaiah 40:25).
But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.
Why would we worship? Because that is what God wants of you. The Father seeks worship for two major reasons.
This is the reason why idolatry is such a sin: first the man molds the idol, and then the idol molds the man. We become like what we worship.
That is true in the negative sense, and in the positive also. The more you worship God, the more you will become like God. “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18).
To spend time with God, worshiping, will make you godly. We become like the things with which we spend time.
Do other people see Jesus in you? Do not answer rhetorically; answer sincerely in your heart.
God desires worship for Himself. “The Father is seeking such to worship Him” (John 4:23b).
“Father” is not what God is like; “Father” is who God is. We do not get our idea of God from fatherhood; we get an idea of fatherhood from God. If you take away the fatherhood of God, you miss the Bible.
There are things about God we will never understand. We may not understand them even when we get to glory. God’s omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, eternality—those are concepts beyond the human mind.
But you do not have to understand all of God’s attributes to know and love God. You do not have to understand how He keeps the sun, moon, and stars in orbit in order to call Him Father, if you have been born again.
Worship is rooted in the fatherhood of God. When we worship, we are responding to the Father’s love.
Jesus said we are to worship in spirit. That is, worship comes out of the inner man.
But the human spirit cannot worship unless it is enjoined with the Holy Spirit. That is why you have to be saved and Spirit-filled in order to truly worship.
“The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth” (Psalm 145:18; emphasis added). That is why there should always be exposition from the pulpit of the truth of God, from the Word of God. You cannot worship God ignorantly.
“For God is the King of all the earth; sing praises with understanding” (Psalm 47:7; emphasis added). Worship is a loving response to the God revealed in the Bible. That is why we study the Bible.
“And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” This is the first commandment.
How are we going to love God?
Passionately—with as much as is in you. Half-hearted worship is an insult to Almighty God.
Selflessly—with all of your soul. The soul is the self. People say, “I didn’t get anything out of worship.” Who said you were supposed to? We are here to glorify God.
Thoughtfully—with all of your heart. Serve the Lord with knowledge and wisdom.
Practically—with all of your strength. “And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him” (Colossians 3:17).
There is no place that is not a holy place. There is no ground that is not sacred. There is no time that should not be a time of worship. So when we come to church, we do not come merely to worship; we bring our worship to church.
John 4:9-10,20-24; Mark 7:6, 12:30; Isaiah 40:25; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Psalm 47:7, 145:18; Colossians 3:17
To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
Give unto the LORD the glory due to His name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.
