Learning How to Worship: An Introduction

First Thessalonians 5:16:

“Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

“Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.”

For those of you who are tracking with us since 5:12, we have been seeking to learn a number of things. First of all, we have been learning how to respect the leaders, and we dealt with that in verses 12 and 13. We then went on from there to discover how we should live in peace with one another, and we saw the importance of warning the idle, encouraging the timid, and helping the weak,[1] and so on—all of these dimensions which make for living in harmony with one another within the framework of a local church. And now this morning, beginning at verse 16, we’re going to address the issue of learning how to worship.

At first glance, it may not be apparent that Paul is addressing the issues of public worship here. I do believe that he is, and I’m going to tell you why. But in telling you why, I want you to know that I would not wish in any way to be dogmatic concerning this. I believe there are good grounds for regarding it in this way, and I’m going to show you why.

First of all, because the emphasis up to this point of verse 16 has been unashamedly and clearly corporate. He has been talking about the way in which the body is to relate to the leadership in the body and then, in turn, the way in which the members are to relate to one another. Therefore, if in verse 16 he were to change and immediately particularize this emphasis and immediately individualize it, it would be a change of emphasis and a change of strategy.

I don’t believe he does. And one of the clearest indications of the fact that he doesn’t is found in the fact that each of these verbs is in the plural. It’s not in the singular. He is not addressing a personal perspective on worship, albeit these are personal dimensions, but he is addressing what should happen when the people of God are together. I think that’s the significance of verses 19 and 20. When he says, “Do not put out the Spirit’s fire” and “do[n’t] treat prophecies with contempt,” again, he is presumably thinking of what would be taking place, in terms of prophetic ministry, when the people come together and they listen to the Word of God. And he is saying to them, “I don’t want you to be dampening the enthusiasm of the Spirit nor being dull in relationship to the instruction of God’s Word.”

And I think the thing that is most helpful is just to stand back from it as you would from a painting. And when you stand back from a painting, you get a perspective on it. You put things in line and in relationship to one another in a way that isn’t possible when you’re right up close. And when you stand back from the text and you take the flow of Paul’s argument, you see that from verse 12, he is addressing these matters of relationships within the church. “First, let’s get the leadership and relationship to leadership right,” he says. “Secondly, let’s get our fellowship with one another in true focus”—hence the call to live in peace. “And thirdly, let’s make sure that we understand the nature and the priority and the place and the significance of worship.”

Now, the final thing that convinces me that this is a true way to assess the place of these verses is in the fact that in other letters that Paul writes, you find him weaving the same kind of thoughts together. For example, let me just give you two.

In his letter to the Ephesians and in 5:19, he says, “Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” So, their worship and their thankfulness are interwoven with one another.

When you go forward past Philippians into Colossians 3:15, you find the same emphasis: “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.” Sounds a little bit like 1 Thessalonians 5: “Live in peace with each other,”[2] he says. Same emphasis: “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.” There’s the thankful emphasis. And “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to [the Lord].”

So it’s almost as if Paul, as he writes to these various churches—indeed, we ought not to be surprised by this—has various points of emphasis. And although he may make them in a different way in a different context, still he doesn’t leave them out. And whether it is to the church in Ephesus or the church in Colossae or the church in Thessalonica, he says, “I want you to understand how thankfulness and peacefulness and prayerfulness and worship all are interwoven.”

Now, what I’d like to do in the time that is available to us this morning is to provide an introduction to 1 Thessalonians 5:16. To do so is to take some of you back through familiar territory. I don’t apologize for this. In fact, what the Bible says is that I should always be reminding you of these things so that you would be able to recall them[3]—that the task of pastoral ministry is not so much one of innovation as it is one to produce recollection.

And in light of what we considered last time regarding teaching the Bible with great patience and careful instruction, I need to be patient in recognizing that not everybody grasps everything the first time around. Indeed, not everybody grasps it the second or the third time around. And also, as our congregation continues to grow, God is adding to our number in new people, and it is impossible for me to assume that what some of us have come to regard as foundational material is actually foundational in the thinking of others who have subsequently joined us.

And so, as would happen in a school classroom, the teacher says, “Now, some of you are going to have to be kind, because we have some new students here, and I’m going to have to backtrack a little bit so that they may be able to understand what you understand.” And in the process of that, of course, those of us who are apparently the intelligent and well-versed students breathe a great sigh of relief, because as soon as the teacher begins to introduce the material which is supposed to be familiar to us, we say, “I don’t ever remember hearing this in my life.” And consequently, we’re so glad that the new people came so that we in turn might be refreshed by recollecting the same vital material.

Now, let me then introduce this matter of learning how to worship.

Worship’s Fact, Object, and Manner

First of all, I want to say three things regarding worship about which God is never indifferent—about which God is never indifferent. For God is the object of our worship, and all worship begins with God and his glory and does not begin with man and his interests, or man and his need, or man and his preoccupations. So we need to be careful to understand the things about worship concerning which God is not indifferent.

Number one: God is not indifferent as to whether we worship or not. It’s not a kind of “Take it or leave it” thing: “Well, God looks down upon us and sees whether we’re worshipping or not, and he is somewhat casually indifferent to it all.” Not for a moment! Nor is he prepared to accept from us the kind of lame excuse which says, “You know, others are good for this, but I personally am just not cut out for worship. It’s something I like to leave up to others. Myself, I just don’t worship.” Well, if you don’t worship, there is something more significantly wrong with you than you have ever realized, and I’ll show you that before we conclude.

God is the object of our worship. And all worship begins with God and his glory and does not begin with man and his interests, need, or preoccupations.

God is not indifferent as to whether we worship. Because man by his very nature, as distinct from the beasts of the field, is a worshipper. Men and women by nature know that there is one to whom we owe allegiance, that there is one before whom we should bow in reverence. That is why anyone who has taken anthropology at college or at university knows that every culture that has been discovered in the world has been discovered as a worshipping culture. And the issue is not “Do they worship?” The issue is “Who or what do they worship? And why do these people worship as they do?” And the answer is: because they have been made with an innate knowledge of God within them.[4] And so they reach out beyond themselves for someone or something to declare their allegiance. And so it is that one of the key evidences of man’s rebellion against God lies not in the fact that men and women have ceased to worship but lies in the fact that they now worship the wrong things.

You see, this morning, all of America worships. All of our friends and neighbors are engaged in some form of worship today. They may not be aware of the fact, nor may they describe it in those terms, but they recognize that there is that which is beyond themselves which is significant to them, to which they give their time, to which they give their attention, and to which they give their devotion.

Oh, we pride ourselves in the fact that we’re not like some cultures in Asia that have these shrines set up down the street. There are, by and large, within the city of Cleveland no Daoist shrines. You cannot find that brightly colored paper and that rarefied sense in your nostrils of the burning of the produce and of the laying out of the apples and the oranges. And we tend to be very arrogant in our response to that and say, “Look at these poor souls! If only they came to America, they wouldn’t be like that anymore.” No, you’re right. They would be like something else. They would worship at some other shrine, perhaps. They would worship in some other way.

Romans 1:25 describes for us the predicament of every dying culture. Romans 1:25: “[Therefore] they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and [they] worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.” “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and [they] worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.” And you can find it on bumper stickers as you drive home today, all about Mother Earth, and how we ought to make sure that Mother Earth is happy, and that we might pay attention to Mother Earth. That is nothing other than to create, as with the pantheists of old, the notion that somehow or other, the earth itself is worthy of our worship. No, it is not. And every decaying culture will miss the fact that God is worthy of our worship and that “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof.”[5]

God, then, is not indifferent as to whether we worship. Secondly, and it follows—we’ve already alluded to it—God is not indifferent as to the object of our worship. As to the object of our worship. Turn, for example, to John chapter 5, and listen to the words of Jesus as he speaks to the crowd around him. John 5:22: “The Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son”—notice this—“[so] that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.”

Now, do you understand what Jesus is saying there? Do you understand the categorical, distinctive nature of what Jesus is making clear? What he is saying is that people who simply want to embrace the idea of worshipping god with a small g—whoever he is or whatever he is—are not, in point of fact, worshipping God. Because there only is one God—the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the only people who really worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ are those who at the same time “honor the Son just as they honor the Father.” And “he who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.”

Now, the implications for this are radical and important. Those of you who were reading the newspaper carefully this week will have read in the leader page, in the editorial section, the response to the visit of the pope. And upon his departure, one of the editors wrote a piece concerning his visit, pointing out the fact that the pope had spoken to large crowds. He had spoken with emphasis. He had spoken with forcefulness regarding his moral and theological perspectives. But, said the editor, many of these things are actually disregarded even by his own faithful adherents. And then came the concluding paragraph, to the effect: “Now,” says the editor, “the fact is, however, that the pope’s visit is good for America, because he somehow transcends all religion, and he is a symbol of the desire of men and women in America to interconnect with one another and to connect with their God.” “T-h-e-i-r G-o-d.” Mistake! It was capitalized.

God is not indifferent as to the object of our worship.

Now, the message is clear. Here comes somebody who is very committed, very devoted to his perspective. A few people like that. Some who are supposed to like it don’t even like it. But let’s understand what it really says to the American culture. This is what it says: it reminds us that transcending all of those preoccupations, all of those theological niceties, is the issue of how we the people may be interconnected with one another and we might, as individuals, be connected to our particular god. And Jesus says, “He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.” Okay?

So in other words, Mormonism cannot worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for in Mormonism, Jesus is a created being; he is not coequal and coeternal with the Father. The same for Jehovah’s Witnesses. The same for Unitarianism. The same for Universalism. The same for the pluralism and syncretism which is consuming the religious right in an endeavor to “get prayer back into the public schools”—but not to get prayer to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ into the public schools; just to get prayer to whoever you want into the public schools. One minute of silence so that whoever can say whatever to whomsoever.

Now, for me, I’ve got to be honest and tell you that’s not a preoccupation. Because when I argue for that, I argue on a horizontal plane, as if somehow or another, my God was just my god, alongside the Indian god and the Hindu god and the Buddhist god and the any kind of god. Jesus says, “No. He who does not honor the Son cannot honor the Father,” for there is only one God—the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And our culture is so bedeviled in its thinking that the only thing that is unacceptable on the religious plane now is the kind of thing I’m telling you this morning. Your friends and neighbors do not care, provided you go back to them and say, “Yesterday morning, I was worshipping my God, and I’m sure you had a nice time with your god.”

God is not indifferent as to the object of our worship. What does this mean in practical terms? It means that our worship must be God-centered. It means that our hymns and our songs must be full of God. It means that our worship must be first of all vertical and then, secondarily, horizontal. It means that our worship must be Trinitarian. And this is very important, because people say to me all the time, “And what is Parkside Church? What does it mean that it is a nondenominational church? Does that mean that it is a Unitarian church?” Now, some of you couldn’t answer that, ʼcause you don’t even know what a Unitarian church is. A Unitarian church is a church without Jesus in it. It hasn’t got a second or third person of the Trinity. It’s only got one out of three. And so, by both our testimony and then by our worship, we must declare ourselves to be those who are keenly aware of the fact that God is not indifferent concerning this.

One of the Puritan prayers that comes out of a wonderful book entitled The Valley of Vision puts this wonderfully in frame. The prayer says, “[O triune God],”

Three Persons and one God, I will bless and praise thee,
 for love so unmerited, so unspeakable, so wondrous,
 so mighty to save the lost and raise them to glory.

Now, notice the Trinitarian element:

O Father, [you have] loved me and sent Jesus to redeem me;
O Jesus, [you have] loved me and assumed my nature,
   [and] shed [your] own blood to wash away my [sin],
   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
O Holy Spirit, [you have] loved me and entered my heart,
   implanted there eternal life,
   [and] revealed to me the glories of Jesus.[6]

God is not indifferent, then, as to whether we worship. Secondly, he is not indifferent as to the object of our worship. And thirdly, he is not indifferent as to the manner of our worship. The manner of our worship.

I want, if I may, to distinguish between manner and mode. Forgive me if I use the words ineptly, but I’m thinking mode in terms of style; I’m thinking manner in a more substantive way. There are a variety of modes or styles of worship which are influenced by culture, by history, by denomination, by preference, etc. But the manner in which we are to worship is not up for grabs.

It is put succinctly for us again by Jesus, this time in John chapter 4. If your Bible is open, you need only go back a chapter, to where Jesus is addressing a lady at the well. In the course of conversation, she raises the issue of worship. And she’s concerned about the distinction between Samaritan worship and Jewish worship. The Samaritans worshipped in Gerizim, and the Jews worshipped in Jerusalem. And so she says to Jesus, “Are we supposed to be up there in Gerizim? Or are we supposed to be over here in Jerusalem?”[7] Verse 21: Jesus says, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know.” They were enthusiastic but misguided. “We worship what we do know.” They were instructed but unenthusiastic.

For salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.

Now, that, I’m suggesting to you, designates the manner of worship about which God is not indifferent. And it is distinct from a mode or a style of worship. The Father, across the world today, is seeking worshippers. He is seeking those upon whom he may lay his hand and draw to his Son and fill with his Spirit in order that in multiple tongues and in multiple places the very seed of Abraham may be created to praise him. His perspective is not uniquely on United States of America. His perspective is not channeled through our selfish preoccupations. His gaze is cast over all the world, and he is seeking those the manner of whose worship will be “in spirit and in truth.”

Now, if you think about that, it helps. Because if we were able to start a journey by means of aeroplane and drop down in our Father’s world in various parts and continents today, we would find people who are equally committed to this manner of worship. We would find people for whom John 4:23 is absolutely crucial. If you said to them, “Now, what are you seeking to do?”—“Well, because we know that God is not indifferent as to the manner of our worship, we are seeking to worship him in spirit and in truth.”

So now we’re in Kenya. We’re in the Indian Ocean coast. We’re in Mombasa. And we are confronting men and women scantily clad, beating on a variety of drums, playing a variety of woodwind instruments, and engaging in a mode of worship radically different from anything that would be found in the shores of the continental United States. Their exuberant, repetitive praise is their expression of seeking to worship in spirit and in truth.

We flip back from there and go to the Western Isles of Scotland. We arrive in the Western Isles of Scotland, and you come to worship with me in a small church amongst the Free Presbyterians. And there you will find that there is no musical accompaniment at all. There is no playing of an organ. There is no playing of a piano. There is no playing of anything. There is no singing of any song, save the songs which come from the hymnbook of the church, the Psalms. And we say to them, “What in the world are you doing here?” “Ou,” they will reply, “we are convinced that since the manner of our worship is to be in spirit and in truth, we are worshipping in the way that we should.”

We may descend amongst the ritualism or the formalism, the liturgy, of Lutheranism or Episcopalianism. We may go amongst some of the most vibrant charismatic and Pentecostal, enthusiastic worship we could ever find. We may be dropped in in a few Baptist churches that are going hymn, prayer, hymn, prayer, hymn, offering, hymn, message, hymn, benediction. And right across the board, everyone will answer—if they’re the Lord’s people—every single one of them will say the same thing: “We are seeking to worship in spirit and in truth.” The manner is universal. The mode is distinguishable.

Now, we may argue that one mode is better or one mode is more right or one mode is more conducive to the way that we feel. But listen, loved ones, you cannot say this: you cannot say, “Worship in spirit and in truth means this,” unless you’re prepared to add a couple of words. We may say, “Worship in spirit and in truth means this to me,” or “to us,” or “right now,” or “in here.” But it is the ultimate in arrogance and in pomposity to assume that of all the cultures and places and possibilities and diversities which the Spirit of God has created—a Spirit who is like fire that cannot be contained and a wind from which we cannot find its source and origin—it is ridiculous to assume that one particular mode is the issue. That’s why the Bible does not address mode. That’s why it addresses manner: to give us freedom with the mode on the basis of the manner.

“In Spirit and in Truth”

Okay. You say, “Right. Fine. We’ll go with you for a moment or two longer on this. If the manner of acceptable worship is so important and it is to be in spirit and truth, tell us: What does ‘spirit and in truth’ mean? How would we be able to identify a congregation that is committed to that manner of worship?”

To worship in spirit and in truth is to engage in biblical worship which is grounded in the truth of Scripture.

Let me tell you three more things.

Number one: to worship in spirit and in truth is to engage in biblical worship which is grounded in the truth of Scripture. To worship in spirit and in truth is to engage in worship which is biblical. In other words, it doesn’t start with Mr. and Mrs. Feel-Good. It starts with the Bible. It starts with the revelation of God. It starts with our encounter of him. It begins, as I’ve said, with God and his glory and then comes, secondly, to us and our preferences and our needs and our preoccupations.

Archbishop Temple, writing in an earlier generation, said,

Worship is the submission of … our nature to God. It is the quickening of [the] conscience by His holiness; [it is] the nourishment of the mind with His truth; the purifying of [the] imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of [the] will to His purpose—and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable.[8]

“Adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable.” That’s, you see, why the act of the woman in Mark 14 was so offensive to some of these stuffy rascals around her: because she was prepared to be thought a fool in order that she might break that which was most precious to her and give it up to the Lord Jesus Christ.[9]

There needs to be a theological foundation upon which we build our worship and our praise. Nobody can worship God properly unless they’re theological. And to be theological means just to have a knowledge of God as it is revealed to us in the Bible. In other words, it’s what we know from the Bible that gives us the lips to praise. The hymn writer says, “ʼTis what I know of thee, my Lord and God, that fills my [heart] with [praise], my lips with song”[10]—not what I know of myself, ʼcause what I know of myself gets me down. There’s no point in pumping myself up. Even when I pump myself up, I’m not worth pumping up. And at my most pumped up, there’s still a lot to discourage. So if I’m looking to that to energize me in worship, I’ll never really worship. “ʼTis what I know of thee, my Lord and God, that fills my [heart] with [praise], my lips with song.”

You come out of a situation in the middle of the week where things have gone poorly for you—whatever it might be. You finished a paper, and it was rotten, and you know that you got a lousy grade before it even comes back. You made a sales call, and you could tell from the way the guy said, “I’ll be getting back in touch with you,” that you’d never hear from him again in your life—that you were going to have to continue to go and knock on more doors, because you still had not made your quota. You perhaps were concerned because the circumstances you’d left at home or the preoccupations with just the daily grind and maternal considerations are just absolutely crushing you and weighing you down. Perhaps you’ve had dreadful news of the loss of a loved one, or perhaps your marriage has begun disintegrate; your spouse has walked away. Now, where is there going to be praise in all of this? Unless you’re able to retreat to the Bible and say,

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.[11]

“Oh,” you say to yourself, “things are not the way I would like them to be. I am not all that I ought to be. My circumstances are not all that they should be. But it’s ‘what I know of thee, my Lord and God, that fills my [heart] with [praise], my lips with song.’”

Some of your friends have beat you up. You had an elbow in the ribs from the most unlikely of sources. You took a spike in the shins that you were never expecting. And as you drove in your car, you said to yourself, “I don’t know how to get out of this one.” And we heard the words coming back from our Sunday school, “Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?”

Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged;
Take it to the Lord in prayer.

What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear!
[Oh,] what a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer![12]

I am so glad that [my] Father in heav’n
Tells of his love in the book he has giv’n;
Wonderful things in the Bible I see,
[And] this is the dearest, that Jesus loves me.

She may not love me, he may not like me, and they may say this about me, but “I am so glad that Jesus loves me, Jesus loves even me.”[13]

And suddenly, there is equilibrium. The circumstances haven’t changed. There’s no one at the other end of the telephone line. There is no mail as expected in the mailbox. There is no money for the payment of the check. But “it is what I know of thee, my Lord and God, that fills my lips with praise and my heart with song.”

When you come to worship—when I come to worship—out of that spirit, boy, will you hear singing! Boy, will you experience praise! But when we come to worship expecting that something is going to “trigger it for me,” nobody’s got a big enough or diverse enough trigger to trigger it for everyone. You better be pulling your own trigger before you leave the house and loading up the bullets in your gun so you don’t arrive to sit and fire a bunch of blanks.

It is biblical. Biblical. Theological. That’s why we’re not singing silly songs like “Kumbaya.” Does anyone know what “Kumbaya” was about? It’s why, by and large, we’re not singing “If I were a butterfly, I’d thank you, Lord, for giving me wings.”[14] That’s why we are singing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” That’s why we are singing “Meekness and Majesty.” That’s why we are singing “At your feet we fall, mighty risen Lord.”[15] That’s why we are singing, “O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise!”[16] Separated by miles and by years, the hymn writers give fuel to our praise because their words are biblical. And to worship in spirit and in truth is biblical worship. It is grounded in the Word of God. I’ve said enough.

Secondly, it is also rational, insofar as it engages the mind. Genuine worship engages our minds. The idea of some kind of Hindu mantra-singing is absolutely unbiblical—the idea that what you do is you get together, and you sing yourself into a kind of frenzy; you disengage your brain, and you just let it move you; you just go with it. There is no basis in Scripture for that. It is through the mind, to the heart. True worship engages our minds. That’s why Paul says to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 14, he says, “In your thinking be [mature].”[17]

Worship is a conscious activity. It’s not an unconscious activity. Worship is not a glandular condition. It doesn’t happen on its own. You don’t just sit there, and it goes, “Oh, goodness! Did you see that? I just started to worship. Isn’t that amazing? I wasn’t planning on it or nothing, and it just… I just… I’m doing it!” No, you’re not. You might be doing something else, but you’re not worshipping. Because worship is a conscious activity. That’s why it demands preparation. It demands preparation.

Genuine worship engages our minds.

You think of the preparation. When I spoke at Cedarville a few weeks ago, I was sitting, eating breakfast in my hotel in Springfield, Ohio, and I was sitting next to three guys, two of whom were attorneys, and one was their client. And our tables were so close to one another that I couldn’t help but hear what was going on. Fortunately, I was not the opposing attorney. I don’t know how they knew I wasn’t. Presumably, they checked it out. But if I had been, it would have been a great insight for me, because they were preparing, meticulously, their client for testimony. And they were going back and forth: “Well, what if they say that? What if they say this? Now, if he says that, you say this. Now, say that to me.” And the guy would say, “No, don’t say that! If you say that, we’re in deep trouble. Say it just the way I’m telling you.” And they were meticulous in their preparation, so that when the guy goes “Order!” they weren’t leaving a thing up to chance. They were prepared.

That’s how it’s supposed to be in worship, in corporate worship. It ought not to be that Pastor Owen comes and leads us from the front here, and when he calls us, as it were, to order, who knows what’s about to happen because of the manifold lack of preparation in each of our hearts? ʼCause we’ve been listening to the same radio programs we always listen to Monday through Saturday. We’ve been engaged in the same kind of news broadcast that we always listen to Monday through Saturday. We’ve been engaged in the same old junk, and we just decided that somehow or another, we’d be able to press button A and become worshippers. I’m going to tell you: you won’t. You can’t. It doesn’t happen that way. It demands preparation.

And as strange as it may sound, I still remember my father saying as we would be driving along in the car… And I used to think it was banal. I used to resent it. And sometimes… You know, I’m being honest. But my dad would say, “Okay, it’s time to prepare ourselves for worship.” And although he couldn’t hold a note—with that I can identify—he would lead us off in some songs or some choruses as we drove in the car, so that when we came into the experience of corporate worship, we’d have already warmed up the pipes, tuned in our thoughts, established our parameters, and made preparation for what was about to take place.

Can I ask you this morning: How did you prepare for this worship event, in terms of what you listened to in the car, in terms of the time that you got up, in terms of the time you went to bed last night? Is it really good enough to say that I will attend upon Almighty God and listen to him speak through his Word and that I will offer to him praise and worship on the fragments of my poor sleep patterns because I was too selfishly oriented to go to bed in time to get up in the morning? Every pilot takes his proper rest. He’s going to fly. Every surgeon takes his proper rest. He’s going to carve. Every worshipper takes our proper rest. We’re going to praise.

You see, it demands preparation. And it demands exposition. “What you worship,” says Paul to the Athenians, “as something unknown I[’m] going to proclaim to you.”[18] And the proclamation of the Word of God, declaring the truth of God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, is directly interwoven in our praise.

The Book of Common Prayer, given to us from the Anglican Communion, declares that we assemble in God’s presence, both “to hear his most Holy Word” and “to set forth his most worthy praise.” Indeed, genuine preaching in and of itself is worship, because it is “a sacrifice of praise”; it is “the fruit of lips”[19] of those who acknowledge his name. It’s not a performance. It’s not a speech. It’s not a talk. It’s worship!

Steven Charnock in an earlier generation says, “When we believe that we [should] be satisfied, rather than God glorified” in our worship, then “we [put] God below ourselves,” as if somehow he’d been made for us rather than we for him.[20] And yet, if you do exit interviews with people in relationship to their experience of worship, by and large, people answer always in terms of their personal expectations: “Well, it was a little longer than I expected. Well, it was a little livelier than I expected. It was a little duller than I thought. There was a little too much preaching. There wasn’t enough singing. It wasn’t enough kind of singing.” There wasn’t this. There wasn’t that. There wasn’t the next thing. Why? Because all the expectations begin horizontally.

But when I understand that God is supposed to be glorified and I’m not supposed to be satisfied—that’s a byproduct—then God stays where he should be, and I stay where I should be. But when it begins with my satisfaction rather than God’s glory, then God is down here, and I’m up here, as if somehow, he existed to serve us.

Finally, to worship in spirit and truth is not only biblical, grounded in the truth of Scripture; rational, engaging our minds; but it is spiritual. It is spiritual. And this, you see, is why some of us can’t get it. Because we are unspiritual. You say, “Well, I’m a spiritual being. You just said at the beginning that everyone is a spiritual being.” No, let me share with you what I mean by this.

In Ephesians chapter 2, Paul describes the circumstances of the Ephesian Christians—indeed, of all believers—before they came to Jesus Christ. And he says to them, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.”[21] Now, I’m here to tell you that dead people don’t sing. For the last twenty years of my life, I’ve spent more time than most people with dead people—apart from the time that undertakers spend and doctors often spend. But I have been in more funeral homes. I’ve been put in more strange situations and surrounded by all kinds of dead bodies—enough to scare the living daylights out of you! But I’ve been in those places, and I have never once heard any one of them break out in song. Never once! One-hundred-percent, flat-out zero singing. No singing! Why? ʼCause they’re dead! And dead people don’t sing. And the reason that some of us don’t worship is because we’re dead.

Now, that may seem very unpalatable to us. Indeed, it may seem phenomenally offensive to us. And I understand that. But I’ve got to tell you: dead people can’t sing. And as long as you and I remain dead and in our trespasses and in our sins, as long as you and I remain separated from God in our rebellion or in our indifference, removed from the wonder of who Jesus is and what he has done upon the cross, then all of this talk about worship and all of the experience of worship will just leave us absolutely cold.

Indeed, you’re saying to yourself if you’re in that condition this morning, “Frankly, I don’t know what all this fuss is about.” Check it out! Maybe you’re dead! Indeed, you are dead, unless Christ has made you alive. Jesus said, “I am come that you might have life and that you might have it in all of its fullness.”[22] Why would he say to living, breathing people that he had come to give them life? They had life. They didn’t have spiritual life.

“Oh, but,” people say, “I’m a spiritual person, you know. I am very interested in spiritual things. I go to Borders bookshop every so often, I get myself a café mocha, and I read all those things about angels. I’m a very spiritual person.” I understand you have a spiritual interest. And the reason that you feel the way you feel is because the Spirit of God is at work within your mind, forcing you to consider the fact that there is something beyond yourself. But I want to tell you: you’ll only find the answer in Jesus. And when you meet Jesus, then he’ll make you alive. And when he makes you alive, he’ll make you sing.

Let me give you a paltry illustration of it. Twelve years ago, I didn’t know which end of a baseball to hold. Twelve years ago, I couldn’t have cared less about baseball. I didn’t know first base from who knows where. As far as I was concerned, the Indians and their stadium and everything else was geography totally unfamiliar to me. But not today. Not today! I’ve been made alive. I am alive to it! Now I have a family here from Scotland. They haven’t got a clue what’s going on. They’re looking at me; they’re saying, “How in the world could anybody be so excited about this?” “Is it not,” said one of them, “a little bit boring to keep playing, day after day after day, the same team?” “Oh,” I said, “you see, you’re dead! But if you, like me, would come alive, then you’ll sing. You’ll care.” I make the point purposefully.

We need to be spiritually alive. Secondly, we need to be spiritually assisted. Once alive, we need to be assisted. That’s why Ephesians 5:18 says, “Don’t get drunk with wine and get boozed up in excess, but be filled with the Spirit of God, and sing and speak to one another.”[23] The reason some of us have got a problem with worship is because we are not living Spirit-filled lives. We are grieving the Spirit of God by our rebellion, by our selfishness, by our disinterest, by our preoccupations. And because it is different from how I may expect it to be, I don’t enter into worship as I might. And the reason is that I am not being spiritually assisted.

“Well,” you say, “what do you do?” You get flat on your face before God and say, “Assist me. Assist me.”

Cleanse me from my sin, Lord,
Put thy pow’r within, Lord,
Take me as I am, Lord,
And make me all your own.
Keep me day by day, Lord,
Underneath your sway, Lord,
[And] make my heart your palace
And your royal throne.[24]

“Assist me.”

My gracious Master and my God,
Assist me to proclaim,
To spread through all the earth abroad,
The glories of thy name.[25]

The only way you will have a worshipping congregation is when they are spiritually alive, spiritually assisted, and, finally, spiritually active. Spiritually active. Doing it, in other words. Ephesians 5:16: “making the most of every opportunity.” Saying, “I was glad when they said [to] me, Let us go [to] the house of the Lord.”[26] “I’m glad to be in the house of the Lord. It may be different from what I normally engage in. I may have traveled from out of town. I may like it with the temperature up a little more; I may like it a little cooler. I may like it a little more liturgical; I may like it a little freer. I may, frankly, like that they had chandeliers that I could swing from; I may like that they had kneelers that I could kneel upon. But you know what? I recognize that the Spirit of the Lord is in this place. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And so let me then be spiritually active. I will sing. I will praise. I will honor. I make a commitment to spiritual activity.”

And then—saying with the psalmist, “What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward[s] me?”[27]—I will make a renewed commitment in the awareness of the fact that God is not indifferent as to whether I worship; God is not indifferent as to the object of my worship; God is not indifferent as to the manner of my worship. The manner of my worship is to be in spirit and in truth. It is to be biblical, grounded in the Bible. It is to be rational, engaging my mind. And it is to be spiritual. So I need to be alive. So I need to be assisted. So I need to be active.

Some of you need that God would make you alive today. You’ve been wondering why it is that there’s no engagement. You turn that computer screen on, and you press the buttons, and nothing comes up. “Why doesn’t the mouse move?” I said to myself. “What kind of dumb mechanism is this? I can’t even get it to appear on the screen!” Someone says, “You know, maybe this little plug in the back might make a difference.” “Oh,” I said. “You got a good point there.” I got the mouse. I got the desire. I got the cord. I got the screen. I got the plug. I ain’t got it plugged in!

Some of you are coming Sunday by Sunday. You got the place. You got the songs. You’ve got the group. You’ve got the interest. But you’re not plugged in. And today in our prayer room, there’ll be people be able to introduce you to what it means to be plugged in to the life source of Jesus Christ.

Let’s bow together in a moment of prayer.

Just where you’re seated, respond to God’s Word as he’s spoken into your life. I know he has to mine. I know my preparation is often poor. I know my expectations are often selfish. I know how easy it is to grieve the Spirit, to put out his fire.

So we pray, O God, that you will come to our waiting hearts in the conclusion of this morning hour. Where we live in disobedience, grant that we might repent and follow after you. Where we have no knowledge of your life, grant that we may cry out to you and find you to be everything that we need. And where, frankly, we’ve been sitting on the sidelines and letting other people do the hard work—we’ve been in the dugout but not on the field—we pray that you will enable us to be active and to make the most of every opportunity. We thank you for one another. We thank you for the great group and congregation you’ve given to us. We thank you for the diversity of spiritual gifts, not least of all in the realm of music. And we pray in these days that you will show us what it means to worship you in spirit and in truth.

And now may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you his peace, today and forevermore. Amen.

[1] See 1 Thessalonians 5:14.

[2] 1 Thessalonians 5:13 (NIV 1984).

[3] See 2 Peter 1:12.

[4] See Ecclesiastes 3:11.

[5] Psalm 24:1 (KJV).

[6] “The Trinity,” in The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers, ed. Arthur Bennett (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1975), 3.

[7] John 4:20 (paraphrased).

[8] William Temple, Readings in St. John’s Gospel (London: Macmillan, 1947), 68.

[9] See Mark 14:3.

[10] Horatius Bonar, “Not What I Am, O Lord” (1861).

[11] William Cowper, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” (1774).

[12] Joseph M. Scriven, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” (1855). Stanzas reordered.

[13] Philip P. Bliss, “Jesus Loves Even Me” (1870).

[14] Brian M. Howard, “The Butterfly Song” (1974).

[15] David Fellingham, “I Am He That Liveth” (1982).

[16] Charles Wesley, “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing” (1739).

[17] 1 Corinthians 14:20 (NIV 1984).

[18] Acts 17:23 (NIV 1984).

[19] Hebrews 13:15 (NIV 1984).

[20] Stephen Charnock, “On Spiritual Worship,” in Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1840), 1:264.

[21] Ephesians 2:1 (NIV 1984).

[22] John 10:10 (paraphrased).

[23] Ephesians 5:18–19 (paraphrased).

[24] R. Hudson Pope, “Cleanse Me.” Language modernized.

[25] Wesley, “O for a Thousand Tongues.”

[26] Psalm 122:1 (KJV).

[27] Psalm 116:12 (KJV).