Our call to worship this morning comes from John 4, verses 23-24. This is the place where Jesus was speaking to the woman at the well. And he said to her, 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. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit. and truth. The plain truth is God does not accept all worship that is offered to him. And we got to think about that. Is God going to accept the worship that you offer to him this morning? And the only way he'll accept it is if it's offered in spirit and in truth. Therefore, it's in our best interest to know what that means. And I'm just going to briefly say to you four specific applications that come from worshiping God in spirit and in truth. The first thing is this, you must worship God as he is. Notice what Jesus said, God is spirit. Therefore, men must worship him in spirit and truth. You must worship him in this way because of who he is. You know, sometimes we are prone to think that idolatry consists simply in bowing down before an idol, perhaps a statue of a Buddha, and bowing down prostrate before it, and lighting incense and candles around it, and that kind of thing, and that's what idolatry is. And of course, that is a form of idolatry. But we can deceive ourselves very easily into thinking that because we've never bowed down before an idol, therefore we're not guilty of idolatry. Well, all you have to do to be an idolater is, number one, love anything else more than you love God. But also, idolatry begins in the mind. It's when you begin to think of God as something other than what He's revealed Himself to be. I was reading in my devotions just this morning about the golden calf. You know, at the Golden Calf, they said, where is this Moses? He's been gone for six weeks. We don't know what's become of him. Make us gods who will lead us, which is really insane to think that you could create a god that could lead you. But nonetheless, Aaron tries to sanctify it. He makes the Golden Calf, and then he says, tomorrow we'll have a feast to Yahweh. We're just going to represent God, the true God of Israel, with this idol. But of course, the moment you use an image or a statue to represent God, you have misrepresented Him. And their worship completely changed. It became entertainment. It became about what delights the senses rather than about what pleases God. Even so, we can entertain false thoughts about God and worship Him as something we want Him to be, rather than what he has declared himself to be. He said to Israel at one point, you thought I was a man altogether like you, but I'm not. I'm not a creature and I'm not a man. I am God, and you must worship me as I am. Secondly, you must worship God in obedience to His holy word. To worship God in truth means worshiping Him according to what He's commanded in Holy Scripture. God has not left you to your own creativity to decide, how do I want to worship God? You know what? It doesn't matter how you want to worship God. What matters is how God wants to be worshiped. And he's told us how he wants to be worshipped in his word. And he said, here's my word. Don't add to it. Don't take away from it. Here's the things you're to offer to me. And he hasn't promised to bless anything that you invent. He's only promised to bless those things he himself has commanded. Nadab and Abihu found this out the hard way. They offered to God fire that he did not command, and God sent fire down to consume them. because their offering was sinful. This is called the regular principle of worship. It means that the Lord Jesus is the head of his church, and he gets to regulate how he's worshiped. And he's told us how to worship him, and it's by the reading of the word, the preaching of the word, the hearing of the word, singing the word, praying the word, and seeing the word in his ordinances. But then there's a third thing. Is it enough just to have the right doctrine and the right forms of worship? Is that enough? No, you must worship God in the power of the Holy Spirit. Eddy Betozer said it this way. He talked about Elijah on the top of Mount Carmel. What if he was on the top of Mount Carmel and he built the altar to God, and then he cut the sacrifice up and laid the sacrificial pieces on top of the altar? Would he have been content with that if fire had not fallen from heaven? And of course the answer is no. Without the fire from heaven, his sacrifice would have been in vain. Even so, we need the fire from heaven in the sense of the Holy Spirit being poured out upon us. It is all too easy for us to think, let's just go through the motions of worship, but we need the unction power. As Frank preaches later today, he's going to need the power of the Holy Spirit to do so. As we sing God's praises, we need the power of the Holy Spirit to do so. As Jesse will be leading us in prayer, he needs to pray in the Spirit, and we need to join him in the Spirit. so that everything we are doing is in the power of God's Holy Spirit. The overflow of the Spirit inside of us is our worship. And that leads to the fourth and final thing. You must worship God from the heart. you must worship God from the heart. Jesus said, this people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. It's all too easy, particularly in corporate worship, to think if I just mouth the words, I can kind of hide and isolate myself. As long as somebody else is worshiping God, I can just kind of put it on cruise control. And we can think of this as a spectator sport, like we're the spectators out here. But we're not. You know who the spectator is? You know who the seeker is? It's God Himself. And He sees into your heart. And He knows if your mind and your heart is truly engaged in His worship or not. Brothers and sisters, think about it. God is going to speak here today. Not in an audible voice in one sense, but in another sense, he is going to speak in an audible voice because his word is going to be read. His word is going to be preached. You're going to hear his word. Are you going to be listening with all your heart? We're going to be singing his praises, singing as a form of prayer to God. Are we mindful of who we're singing to and what we are singing, the content of our words? As a brother comes and leads us in prayer, This is congregational prayer, and we need to have our minds and our hearts at one with Him so that we truly are offering prayers, not just as an individual, but as a congregation. And as you sing His praises, will you sing with all your heart, meditating upon who He is? You know, on the best of days, our worship falls short of what God deserves. That being said, we don't offer it in our own names. We offer it through the mediation of Jesus Christ. And therefore, it's imperfections of our worship and the imperfections in our own heart can be sanctified so that they're acceptable in his sight. That's what we long for today. The Father, Jesus said, is seeking for true worshipers who will worship him in spirit and truth. Will he find what he's looking for here today? I pray by grace He will. Let's open in prayer. Our Father, we ask that the Holy Spirit would be poured out, not because we have had perfect weeks, or because we've pleased you in all respects. In fact, Lord, we have displeased you and we have sinned against you and against one another in different ways. We ask for fresh cleansing from the blood of Jesus for our sins. And we ask that through the name of Jesus Christ, you would pour out your Holy Spirit upon us so that every act of worship truly would be that. Worship that ascends to you as a sweet-smelling savor, well-pleasing in your sight. Meet with your people, Lord. Draw near to us and meet us where we are. Lord, for some who are downcast and depressed and discouraged, give them joy and encouragement. For some who are haughty and proud, humble them. Lord, for others who are rejoicing in you, help them, Lord, to have even more rejoicing because of it. And Father, we pray for those among us who are lost, that Christ will be exalted so high that they will be compelled to close with him by faith. But above all things, glorify yourself And Father, exalt your Son through the Spirit of God, such that He will have the preeminence in all things. And we ask this in Jesus' name, amen.