John 4:23
“But 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. God is spirit, and those who
worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Today I should begin John chapter 5, but as I was reading,
these verses grabbed my mind; what is meant by the phrase “true
worshipers?” And what and how will they
worship? Jesus tells us they must
worship the Father in spirit and truth, and God is seeking such people. Are you and I one of these that the Father is
seeking?
If you and I are being sought by the Father, and yet because
of the religious training from our youth, or the people we hangout with have
convinced us that what we call worship is what God the Father calls worship,
but it is not; then we have placed our ladder on the wrong wall, no matter how
good we feel about our actions. Where
does worship happen? Does it only happen
in a building we call a church, does it require a worship leader who leads us
in repetitive music? Does it happen when
we sit under a preacher, and he leads us in worship, do the Scriptures give us
a guideline on how to be a true worshiper?
Maybe we should begin by looking at verse 24, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in
spirit and truth.” Could
it be clearer that to be a worshiper we must first have God as the object of
our faith? 1 John 5:1, “Everyone who
believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves
the Father loves whoever has been born of him.”
Skip down to verse 5, “Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who
believes that Jesus is the Son of God.” So it can be stated that before true worship
can happen it will require a worshiper to place faith in the object of their
worship. Verse 24 also speaks to this
fact, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in
spirit and truth.” So to be a true worshiper we must look
not to our fleshly performance but we need the Spirit to guide us into
worship. Galatians 4:6 addresses this; “And because you
are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba!
Father!”
One area we must watch-out for is formalism in our worship,
the prophet Isaiah who was speaking for our Lord, stated in Isaiah 29:13, “The Lord says:
“These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules
taught by men.” It would be a true statement in saying that
obedience to the commands of our Lord is at the heart of worship, in 1 John
3:18, we are told, “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in
deed and in truth.” Now skip to verve 24, “Whoever keeps his commandments abides in him,
and he in them. And by this we know that
he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.”
In the Revelation we have an angel proclaiming to those on
earth the following found in chapter 14:7, “And he said with a loud voice, “Fear God and give him glory,
because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and
earth, the sea and the spring of water.”
My prayer is that you and I will be people who worship in
spirit and truth, and I’m fearful that much of what we do in church is closer
to Isaiah 29:13 than it is to worship.
You might say; “Worship happens when we do the will of our Father, walk
in the Spirit, and not in our flesh.”
From the Back Porch,
Bob Rice
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