A great Christian thinker (Karl Bart) once said, "Christian worship is the most momentous, most urgent, most glorious action that can take place in a human life." And we would say, "Amen" to that, wouldn't we?  I know that you would agree that worship the most momentous, most glorious action that takes place in your life during the week.  There are times when you are in such close contact with God that you feel that you are participating in a most glorious event.

There are times in worship when you know you are in the presence of the Holy God - and you catch such a vision of the sovereignty of God, and the awesomeness of God, and the complete holiness of God that your spirit is brought low in humility, and in quiet reverence you whisper a prayer of confession asking for God's grace.  But along with that you also are assured that God loves and has forgiven you in the person of Jesus Christ so that your spirit rises in joy and you sing His praise and you can hardly keep from dancing in the aisles.  Maybe it is through a prayer, a song, a solo or the preached word that you KNOW, you know God is alive and is present.  You know that whatever burden you came in with, you have been able to cast it upon Him and your loving Saviour now carries it for you.  And when that happens, worship is the most glorious, most momentous action in your life.

But there are other times, there are other times in worship - well instead of me describing it to you see if you can't identify with this video clip. Video clip of Mr. Bean in church.

How many can identify with this?  It's very real, isn't it?  And it is this that we want to avoid - it is our vision that we offer worship experiences that glorify God and to know and recognize His sovereignty in your life.  It is our vision to give you opportunities to praise His name, to honour His name and open ourselves up to Him so that He can minister to each one of us.

Well how do we avoid this Mr. Bean experience and instead have our worship as the most momentous, God glorifying experience of the week?

We believe it is a two-way responsibility.  It is the responsibility of all those who plan worship and it is the responsibility of all those who participate in worship.  It is a two way responsibility - it is not all mine and it is not all yours - it is our responsibility together.

Before we get to that though let's see what our Lord says about worship.  And we find His comment in the center of a conversation He is having as He sits by a well in the middle of one hot Middle Eastern day.  The conversation is recorded in John 4.  And there we see Jesus striking up a conversation with a Samaritan woman.  I can tell you that she has never had a Jewish man treat her with such respect.  You know how He offers her living water and how He uses the physical to illustrate the spiritual.  How He is offering water that will satisfy her thirsty spirit.  And you know how He quickly uncovers her thirst.  She has a thirsty spirit and has been trying to quench that thirst in a series of disastrous relationships.  In verse 16 Jesus says go call your husband and she says, "I have no husband".  And Jesus says, "I know - you've had five husbands and the one you live with now is not your husband." Jesus quickly identifies the fact that she is trying to satisfy an inner thirst with physical relationships.

And at verse 19, some scholars say that she becomes embarrassed and quickly tries to change the subject.  But it could be read differently, instead embarrassed silence between verses 18 and 19 put in there a sigh of relief as she realizes that here is one who understands her and who might just be able to help.  And she says, "Sir, I can see that you are a prophet.  Can you help me find the one for whom my soul thirsts?  Can you help me find God?"

Verse 20 - "Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."  There's a whole political, social, and religious history behind that statement.  Basically the Samaritans believed that the place to worship God was one mountain and the Jew believed that the place to worship God was another mountain and that true worship did not happen if you were in the wrong place.

And Jesus says in verse 21, "Believe me, woman - a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem." A time is coming when where will not matter.

"You Samaritans worship what you don not know we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.  Yet a time is coming and has come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks.  God is spirit, and His worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth."

Jesus says here that true worship has nothing to do with the where, it has nothing to do with right places.  Worship has everything to do with right people - what Jesus calls true worshippers - verse 23, "A time is coming when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks."

What does this mean?  I have been reminding you during the last number of weeks that we are more than what people see on the outside.  Our life is more than physical appetites, physical desires and physical looks and material things.  There is an eternal spirit in you and in me that will live forever, either with God or without God.  There is an eternal spirit within you that has been disfigured by sin and needs the cleansing of a perfect sacrifice.  Jesus is that perfect sacrifice.  There is an eternal spirit within you that needs feeding and God's word is that food.  There is an eternal spirit within you and it is in the spirit that we are to worship God.

The tragedy is that so many people live their lives only on the physical plane.  Everything is explained for them in the material.  Their feelings, their opinions and their decisions and their experience of life is entirely physical - material.  It all focuses on what they can see and touch and feel.

That's where the Samaritan woman is at - "Where am I supposed to worship God?" If she were alive today she might ask the question differently, saying how am I supposed to worship God?  Should I worship God in quietness following a written order of service?  Or should I worship with my hands raised and everyone joining in prayers with "Thank you Jesus", "Praise you Jesus"?  Should I worship with the organ, and piano, or is the drums and guitar the way to go?  Should we sit in rows or in a circle, should there be one person leading, or a group of people leading?  Should there be old hymns sung or new choruses sung?

And Jesus says, Wait, wait, it's not essentially about any of these things - they are all material physical - true worship is about worshipping God in Spirit because, he says in verse 24, "God is spirit."  He's in a different realm than the physical - He is in a different plane than the material.  TO be sure He can be found through the material and through the physical but that is not where our focus is to be.

We Christians often get mad at Hollywood and call them a godless bunch of film makers.  But I find that they are very much aware of the fact that there is another plane in life.  They are very much aware of the Spiritual.  So we have a group of teenagers lost in the woods scared out of their wits by a Spirit.  We have Keanu Reeves fighting an evil force in the world that above and beyond the physical in “The Matrix”.  We have a little English boy called Harry Potter learning all about a world that is so other worldly.

Those films know something that we often forget - there is more in this life than what we shall eat and what we shall drink and what we shall wear.  There is a spiritual dimension.  And God is spirit and we must worship Him in Spirit.

Here is an illustration that I found helpful.  Worship is a little bit like warm glowing icebergs.  There's the 10 percent that is above the water that you see.  It's an important ten percent.  You cannot ignore it.  It's the hymns, it's the choruses, it's the soloist, it's the prayers, it's the preacher, it's the way they are linked together.

But with an iceberg there's 90% that you don't see under water.  And it really matters.  So in worship, there's that 90% that you don't see, it's the work of God's mercy and grace in you and you can't see it working in others but it's there and the Lord sees it as He works in people's lives at depth so that true worship occurs.

It's a pure heart, a broken and contrite heart you will not despise O Lord.  (Psalm 51)

It's being transformed by the renewing of your mind and then offering your bodies as living sacrifices. (Romans 12)

It is when that happens, when you and I are broken open so that there is a humility and a willingness to listen to His Spirit and obey what He calls us to do that His Spirit invades our hearts so that something new and fresh might happen.

Worship is no longer a matter of checking off each item on the bulletin to mark the time; it is no longer sitting through the short prayer at the beginning, and the long prayer in the middle; it is no longer sitting there, thinking what a wonderful job the soloist did in her solo of “El Shaddai” and thinking how she hit every note - it is saying in your spirit thank you God that you are my El Shaddai, that you are my healer.

My friends we have become so concerned about the 10%, so utterly obsessed, so prejudiced, so bound by culture and past experience that we find ourselves investing all our energy in the 10% that we see.  When actually it's the 90% of the working of the Lord who is Spirit that makes worship.  That's the only place worship can happen.  God is Spirit and we must worship Him in Spirit.

Of course the first step is that we are reborn - that we allow the Spirit of God to convict us of our sin and we recognize that the only way to be right with God is to believe in the work Christ has done for us on the cross and to receive his forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Michael Quicke tells of how as a young boy he had to go to church three times on a Sunday.  His dad was the pastor so he had to go three times.  It meant walking to church over a mile three times.  So we walked to the morning service, walked back home.  Walked in the afternoon for Sunday School walked back home, then back again in the evening.  Sunday School could be fun depending on how well they got under the skin of their teachers.  And then there was evening service.  And he says that apart from those occasions with the teachers, it was boring.  It was so dull.  He had ways of coping with the dullness and the boredom - he counted the knots in the wooden pews, counted the hats, and counted the bricks and all the different techniques we had developed until one Sunday - the service was exactly the same, the structure was the same, the hymns were the same, the preacher was the same, everything was the same but (he says) I wasn't because I met Jesus I was exhilarated by the reality of a Lord who was really there and for the first time, I can remember it distinctly - it was alive for me this worship because I knew the Lord and because in my heart there was an openness and a brokeness that I could worship.

That's the first step, believing and receiving Jesus Christ as Saviour.   And then after that it is constantly walking with the Holy Spirit, allowing him to lead, allowing Him to be sovereign in our lives.  And that's daily.  That's where the two way responsibility comes in.  Don't expect to come here to worship if you haven't worshipped all week long.  Your experience will be a Mr. Bean experience.  Everything will be wrong, and you won't worship when in reality what MAY be wrong is your Spirit.

Your Spirit MAY be wrong, but the leadership of the church recognizes our responsibility.  And that is that our spirit is in step with the Spirit of God.  And that we are worshipping God in the Spirit.  And it is our responsibility to provide a worship experience that allows each person to come in contact with the Spirit.

But true worship is also worship in truth.  The opposite of truth is an untruth, a lie.  Jesus gives all sorts of examples of worship that is not true, there are two men coming to worship and praying one says "Thank you Lord that I am not like other men, robbers, evildoers, adulterers or even like this tax collector." (Luke 18:12) That's worship that is untrue.  It is playing church.  Today, some of us come in with smiles and we look like we have it all together but inside we don't.  We are hurting, we are in desperate need of God's grace and we are afraid to admit it, show it, and let others know.

And there's that two way responsibility again - you need to honest here, you need to be truthful in your worship.  But you need to know that is a safe place to be honest.  And that is our vision.  We seek to be the church that worships God in Spirit and in truth.  And that means that we be a people who practice grace toward one another.  Listen you only get one chance - if someone trusts you and opens themselves to you and we break that trust we don't get another chance.  Worship is a two-way responsibility.

But there is another example of Jesus gives us, and this is of true worship.  He says if you are offering your gift of worship to God and there remember your brother has something against you - go and be reconciled with your brother first then come and offer your worship (Matthew 5:23-24).  You see, our relationship with one another matters in worship.  It it's not right then it needs to be set right.  That's when true worship can happen.

Our vision for worship at Markham Baptist is that we worship God in Spirit.  I have said nothing about traditional worship, or contemporary worship, I have said nothing about the organ or drums, have said nothing about lay leadership or professional leadership.  But I have tried to get at the heart of what true worship is.

I have tried to articulate our true dream and our earnest prayer.  I hope it is yours too.  That each and everyone of us would allow the Spirit of God to so fill you and so empower you that our church will experience a revival.  And that kind of worship is not the result of engineering, it is no the result of traditional music or contemporary music, it is not the result of more organ playing or more guitar it is something God bestows on people hungering and thirsting for Him.

May God grant us that grace for His glory.

Copyright MBC and Tom Cullen - September 2002

---