Well, it's a great pleasure and privilege for me to be here at the conference. I'd like to thank Dr. Beeke for the kind invitation. It's always a delight to see Joel and to sit under his ministry. So thank you very much indeed for being willing to have me with you once again. Please turn with me in your Bibles to the gospel of John, to the fourth chapter, and we'll read the first 24 verses. Much of what I'll be saying tonight focuses on verse 24, God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth. But it often strikes me how often this verse is dislocated from its context. And the context is dramatically revealing for us because it reminds us that the great mission of the church embodied in the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ is not to see sinners saved, but to see sinners brought to be worshipers of the living God. The goal of our calling in the gospel is not simply to fit people for heaven's glory, but to fit them for the highest endeavor and activity they could as created beings ever engage in. And that is in the worship of the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we evangelize so that people might come to glory and worship corporately the great God of heaven. John chapter 4. When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, though Jesus himself baptized not but his disciples, he left Judea and departed again into Galilee, and he must needs go through Samaria. Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Joseph's well was there. Jesus, therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well, and it was about the sixth hour. There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus saith unto her, Give me a drink. For his disciples were gone away into the city to buy meat. Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest a drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. Jesus answered and said to her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. From whence then hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?' Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again. But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst. But the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water that I thirst not, nor come hither to draw. Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither. The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, thou hast well said, I have no husband. For thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband, in that saidst thou truly. The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what. we worship what we know for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him." God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth." Why was there a reformation in the church in the early and middle decades of the 16th When Martin Luther was pinning the 95 thesis or statements to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany, October 31st, 1517, he was not thinking at all about reformation. The theses were in Latin. He was looking for a scholarly debate. He was deeply concerned about the corruption, the confusion, the tragedy, moral and theological, that was scarring the face of the church of Jesus Christ. He had little thought about a seismic reformation. But seismic reformation there was. If I were to ask you the question tonight, why was there this seismic theological and moral reformation in the early and middle decades of the 16th century, I wonder what answer you would instinctively give. I would guess, I could be wrong, but I would guess that the greater majority of reformed Christians would say, well, that's a no-brainer, it's Christianity 101. The answer is surely that there was a reformation because the gospel of the grace of God in Jesus Christ had been buried beneath an avalanche of church traditions for centuries. And God was recovering the true doctrine of salvation for the life of the church and for the good of the world. Well, if you were one of my students and you gave me that answer, I would smile because I'm a kind Scotsman. And I would say that's a B answer. It's a B answer. It isn't an A answer. Maybe you're thinking, but surely you're wrong. Surely the Reformation was all about the recovery of the gospel of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. And I would say yes and no. The fundamental reason why there was a Reformation was not so that the gospel of God's salvation in Jesus Christ be recovered for the church and the world, though that was God's proximate purpose. God's ultimate purpose for the Reformation was that He might be worshipped according to His Word. Listen to John Calvin. He wrote in 1543 a stellar little treatise, you can read it in an hour or so, on the necessity of reforming the church. His friend Martin Busser had encouraged him to write a defense of the Reformation. Calvin wrote this very quickly. And in the preface dedicated to the Emperor Charles V, Calvin explains why. there needed to be and had been a reformation. He writes, if it be inquired then by what things chiefly the Christian religion has a standing existence amongst us and maintains it truth, it will be found that the following two not only occupy the principal place, but comprehend under them all the other parts, and consequently the whole substance of Christianity, namely, a knowledge first, writes Calvin, first of the mode in which God is duly worshipped, and secondly, of the source from which salvation is to be obtained. First, of the mode in which God is duly worshipped, and secondly, of the source from which salvation is to be obtained. Now, did you hear what Calvin is saying here? The first concern of the Reformers was that the knowledge of God be recovered for the life of the church in order that God may be worshipped, not according to the imagination of mere men, but according to God's own revelation. God first, men and women second. Now I know it's somewhat artificial to separate these two because you cannot worship God as He has commanded you until you are born again of the Holy Spirit, until the truth of God pierces your heart and you cast yourself upon the Lord Jesus Christ, saying in these words or in some other words, upon a life I did not live, upon a death I did not die, another's life, another's death, I stake my whole eternity. Until that happens, you cannot become a worshiper of the living God. But Calvin is making a fundamental and foundational point here in his treatise on the necessity of reforming the church. He's saying, this is why there was a reformation, because God was not being glorified as he ought to be glorified. You see, our salvation is not God's ultimate purpose. You know those great words in Romans 8, 29, those he foreknew, he also predestined, that we might be conformed to the likeness of his Son. That's God's proximate purpose, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. God's ultimate purpose is the glory of his Son, the cosmic adulation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God who loved us and who gave himself for us. You and I are God's proximate purpose. His Son as the sent one of the Father, the upheld one of the Spirit, is God's ultimate purpose. Calvin put it very bluntly in another of his magnificent Reformation works, his letter of response to Cardinal Sadaletto in 1539. Sadaletto had been commissioned by the Pope to try and win Geneva back to the Roman fold. And Calvin, of course, had been dismissed the year before. And Sadoleto writes a very intriguing, actually a very intriguing and engaging letter to try and win the Genevans back from the Reformation to the Roman fold. And the Genevans don't really know how to reply to Sadoleto, so they write to Calvin. They had dismissed him. But they say, will you please reply to this letter from Cardinal Sadaletto? It's one of the brilliant defenses of the Reformation. And in that letter, let me encourage you to read it, but in that letter Calvin writes these words, there is nothing more perilous to our salvation than a preposterous and perverse worship of God. Why ought we to be concerned about worship? Why ought we to be concerned that God is worshiped according to his word and not according to the fancies, the imaginations, the ideas of mere men and women? Because, says Calvin, nothing is more perilous to our salvation than a preposterous and perverse worship of God. Now, why did Calvin think that? Why do you think he thought that and wrote that in his defense of the Reformation? Maybe you're thinking Calvin's overstating the point. Yes, worship's important, but is it that important that we get it right? Is it important that we get our doctrine of justification right? The doctrine of the worship of God is more important than the doctrine of justification, because God is more important than you and me. He's more important than our salvation. I'm not belittling, as you will know for one moment, the glorious biblical doctrine of the double imputation of our sins to Christ and his righteousness to us. That's why the Westminster Shorter Catechism, as it begins, maybe not as eloquently as the Heidelberg, but oh, gloriously, man's chief end, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. You see, if God is not worshiped according to His Word, according to His own will and then why should His revealed Word determine and shape our understanding of salvation? That's what concerned Calvin. Get the fountainhead wrong and our salvation itself is imperiled. The Reformation at heart was a recovery of the biblical worship of God. And that leaves us, I think, asking the question then, how does God want us, or better, how does God command us to worship Him? Worshiping God isn't a suggestion to consider, it's a command to obey. Now, I've often thought it strange, even perverse, that evangelical Christians could be so passionate about defending and contending for the biblical truth of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, and yet be so indifferent to the biblical truth that God is to be worshiped according to his word, and not according to the fertile imagination of men and women. There's an illustration of it in the Bible, not only to draw our attention but to fix our hearts and minds on the seriousness with which God takes His worship. The opening verses of Leviticus chapter 10, where God kills Nadab and Abihu, because they offer strange fire, unauthorized fire, uncommanded fire. They take it upon themselves to worship God according to their own imagination. God is not being callous. He's not being hard-hearted. He's not being miserable and niggardly and narrow-minded. He's saying to the cosmos, it matters how you worship me. that you worship me and honor me according to who I am. God is spirit, and not according to the imaginations and fertile ideas that you might conceive. I am not a bigger version of you. I am God. There was a reformation then because men like Luther and Calvin were brought to see that God's Word alone was to shape and define our worship of God and how we appropriate the salvation of God. So with this in mind, think with me a little about our Lord's words to this woman of Samaria in John chapter 4. It's a beautifully, beautifully constructed narrative. When you begin reading it, you're drawn into the beauty of the narrative. You're drawn into the unfolding nature of the narrative. You can't wait to see what will happen next. Our Lord, in the sovereign providence of His Father, finds Himself where He does at the well of Sychar, Jacob's well. He initiates this conversation with this woman. He breaks all the cultural and social and religious taboos of the day. He is out to win this woman, to woo her to himself. She's had five husbands. The sixth she's living with is her live-in lover. Jesus is going to be her seventh and last man. He is the man she's been looking for all her life, but didn't know it. And Jesus engages her in conversation, and he slowly, he starts where she is, but then he deftly leads her along. He speaks of living water. You can almost, I think, Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, John beautifully portrays for us and pictures for us the words of our Lord Jesus. You can almost hear the woman salivating, living water. Oh, give me this living water. There's a wonderful linguistic backdrop to this actually, because Jesus says to the woman early on in the conversation, give me, he says, give me something to eat. But when the woman replies to him, she says, why do you ask of me? Jesus didn't ask her, he commanded her, dos, pain. Give me, I command you to give me. But she hears the command as if it were a request. That's grace. She hears the command. Why do you ask me? There's a wonderful texture of grace running through this narrative. And it comes to this point, the woman is aching. Give me this living water. Then Jesus says, go and call your husband. Oh dear, husband. She doesn't want to say she's at five, and the six is not actually her husband. I have no husband. Why does Jesus say that? Why does He not just say to her there and then, I'm the living water? Because there will be no salvation in the darkness. She has to come out into the light and have her life pierced by the light of God. She has got to come and be humbled and be convinced of her desperate need of this living water. No salvation in the darkness. We could dwell at length on the conversation, but as it comes to a climax, the wound talks about we worship on this mountain, Mount Gerizim, or in Jerusalem, and Jesus says, you don't understand. The hour cometh and now is when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, not on Gerizim, not in any place, but in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him." God is spirit, incorporeal, immaterial, infinite. He's not located in places. He is not placated by paintings. He is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship in Spirit and in truth. Now if you know the Gospel of John, you will know that the Gospel of John is littered with what are called double entendres. I have a dear friend who did a Ph.D. at Cambridge. He also did a Ph.D. in Persian poetry at Oxford, one of those polymaths. He did a Ph.D. at Cambridge on the Gospel of John, on the double meanings in the Gospel of John. And I said to him once, I said, There must be about 20 I've come across, and he looked at me and said, Ian, there are about 100 linguistic double entendres in the gospel of John. And I think this is clearly one of them. What does John mean by spirit and truth? Well, of course, he could mean inwardly from the heart. Worship must be from the heart. and according to God's revealed truth. That makes sense. And I think that's embedded in what our Lord's saying. But there is something more here, because earlier in chapter 2, John has also, has already told us about the Lord Jesus Christ being the true temple. He is the one in whom we worship God. And all through John's gospel, the ministry of the Holy Spirit is profoundly significant. I don't have time to trace it through. I've little doubt myself that John is speaking here in this double entendre, this double meaning. What is the worship that we are to give to God? It's worship that is to be from the heart. It's worship that's to be contoured and defined and styled and informed by God's revealed truth. But it's also worship that's by the Holy Spirit. And according to Jesus, who himself is the truth, I am the way, the truth, and the life, he will later say in John 14. He is the embodiment of truth. True worshipers worship in Christ and through Christ. You see, God is invisible. God is Spirit. And we only know Him through His self-revelation in His Son, the incarnate Savior, Jesus Christ. I think it's striking that The one preposition in worship, in spirit and truth, governs both nouns. It's not worship in spirit and in truth, but worship in spirit and truth. There are not two separable aspects of true worship. They are one. True worship is in spirit and truth. And the Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth. He's the spirit who has come to glorify Jesus Christ, who is the truth. That's why the Reformers were always, always, always arguing that God's worship must be shaped and styled by spirit and truth. It's why John Owen somewhat provocatively said, without the Holy Spirit, we may as well burn our Bibles. What use is a Bible to a man who is blind and dead? He's got to be made alive by the Spirit. So what will this mean for God honoring worship? Let me say, just as a preface, none of this means that God's worship will be static or monocultural or independent of tradition. Let me say that before I qualify it. When Calvin discusses worship in book four of the Institutes, he has a magnificent passage, book four, 1030. And at the end of it, don't need to go into the details of it, but he's talking about worship and he's recognizing that times change, people live in different places, and he says, let love be our guide and all will be safe. Now, someday I'm going to set my students a question. I'm not going to tell them who wrote this. I'm going to say, discuss in the context of Christian worship this statement, let love be our guide and all will be safe. I think some of them will say, well, that's Benny Hinn. And I'll get their papers back, and I'll say, well, actually, it was John Calvin. Calvin didn't mean we're to pay little attention to the differences that churches have, but he's saying something very profound. Let love be our guide within the reformed context. Treat our brothers and sisters with the generosity with which God treats us. So what will all that mean for God honoring worship in the time we have left? Let me say six things, just very simply and very briefly. Number one, first and foremost, God's worship will essentially be scriptural and not traditional. What I mean is that true worship, worship in spirit and truth, will be filled with the truth of God's written revelation. Worship will be patterned after the songs of the Old Testament and the songs of the New Testament. Worship will blend objective truth and heartfelt experience. Worship will not be shaped by tradition or culture. But it will not ignore tradition or culture. And the Reformers made this very significant distinction between sola scriptura and nuda scriptura, naked scripture. The Reformers did not deny the significance and the importance of the creeds of the church. They didn't live lightly. to the traditions that they had received. They always sought to test them by Holy Scripture. If you were to ask a Jehovah's Witness, do you believe the whole Bible? Absolutely. Jehovah's Witnesses are verbal inerrantists, so they think. And if Dr. Beakey has a JW applying to the seminary and Dr. Beakey were to write down 100 biblical statements, the JW would affirm every single one of them. And then you would ask, or I assume he would ask, what does that mean? What does that mean that Jesus is the Son of God? What does that mean that the eternal Word became flesh, kaihologos satsagenito? And he would be confounded. The Reformers were not ignoring tradition. Calvin quotes Augustine 403 times in the Institutes. I once counted. Maybe Carol Truman will set me right later. Our singing, our praying, our preaching should be saturated with the truth of God's Word. Not just its language, but its doctrine, its proportion, and its passion. In that letter to Cardinal Sadaletto, Calvin wrote, I know how difficult it is to persuade the world that God disapproves of all modes of worship not expressly sanctioned by His Word. But that's not the church's problem today. I would want to say, I know how difficult it is to persuade the church that God disapproves of all modes of worship not expressly sanctioned by His Word. But worship in spirit and truth of necessity must be worship that's informed, shaped, and styled, and wholly informed by the Word of God written. Secondly, God's worship, this is a mouthful, but I'll try and unpack it, God's worship will be Trinitarianly Christological. I don't just want to say Christocentric, because the danger is we can isolate the Lord Jesus Christ from the Father and from the Spirit. Of course they are to be distinguished, but never to be isolated one from the other. Because the Lord Jesus Christ is always the sent one of the Father, and the enabled and upheld one of the Holy Spirit. And so Christian worship in spirit and truth will be permeated by, not just punctuated with, but permeated by a Christology that's Trinitarian. Some of you will know that in one of the institutes, Calvin, who is a little more, I think, like the Eastern Fathers in his understanding of the Trinity than the Western Fathers, but he says this remarkable statement Regarding some words of Gregory Nazianzen, a late fourth century Greek father, Calvin said, these words of Gregory vastly delight me. Now Calvin's never given to overstatement. So when Calvin says he's vastly delighted in something, you say, oh, right, okay. What vastly delights you, John? These are the words that vastly delighted Calvin. You think about them. No sooner do I conceive of the one than I am illumined by the splendor of the three. No sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one. When I think of any one of the three, I think of him as the whole. My eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I'm thinking escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of that one so as to attribute a greater greatness to the rest. When I contemplate the three together, I see but one torch and cannot divide or measure out the untold. That's from Gregory's Baptismal Oration 40, section 41. Two or three years ago, I was reading it, reflecting on it again, and I came through to, Joan was sitting there, one of our boys, Jonathan. I said, let me read you this. I'll just take five minutes. Gregory is instructing a catechumen, preparing for baptism. And I read the Baptismal Oration to Joan and Jonathan. I said, what do you think? John just looked and couldn't say anything, and Jonathan just went, wow. Here is someone captivated by who God is, captivated by the glory of the Holy Trinity. You know, there's great talk today about our worship services being seeker-friendly, and I think that's a good thought. You know, the greatest good we can do, seekers, is for them to come into our church worship services and see people caught up in wonder, love, and praise at who God is and what God has done. That's the greatest good you will ever do, a seeking sinner. All our prayers, our songs, our confessions, and our preaching should have a Trinitarian shape to them. Even when we're singing to the Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness, my glory are, my beauty is dressed, we should ever be thinking of Him as the sent one of the Father. enabled by the Holy Spirit to fulfill all righteousness, for it was by the eternal Spirit that He offered Himself unblemished to God on Calvary's cross. Worship in Spirit and truth will be Trinitarianly Christological. Thirdly, worship will be supremely, if not only communal, Let me simply mention this in a couple of sentences. What I mean is that the high point of our worship will not be our quiet times or family worship, but the corporate worship of the saints on the day that God has ordained from the beginning of time. Ephesians 318, it is together with all the saints that we learn how wide and high and deep and broad is the love of Christ. The high moments of Christian worship. And there will be blessed moments, I've no doubt, and can testify to them when we're alone with God or praying or reading with our wives or our children. These will be precious moments, but The Lord's day, as we gather, I rejoiced when they said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord. Would we could dwell more at length on that. But number four, God's worship will not be tied to a holy place, but it will focus on a holy day. It's true that all of life is worship. We are to give our bodies as a living sacrifice, Romans 12, 1, which is our reasonable service or our rational, logical worship. And that's true. All of life is a moment-by-moment devotion to the Lord who is our God in Christ. But when Christians gather on the Lord's day, Yes, we gather for fellowship and teaching, but we first gather to worship our great and glorious God. God has given us one day in seven. for our good, for our refreshing and our renewing. Aren't you most refreshed and blessed on the Lord's Day, not in the afternoon when you're resting, lying down and reading quietly? Aren't your souls most invigorated, your minds quickened, your whole beings enlarged as you stand in response to the call, let us worship God? And you sing, thine be the glory, risen conquering son, to God all praise and glory. Aren't those the moments that most invigorate you and make you larger than you really are? Number five, God's worship will be from the heart. I've touched on this. Remember our Lord Jesus' words in Mark 7, quoting Isaiah 29, this people worship me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Worship is the overflow of a life invaded savingly by the transforming grace of God in Jesus Christ. Worship is the inevitable overflow of a life into which God has come to dwell. I remember, I wasn't raised in a Christian home, I had no Christian background, didn't know anything in the Bible except David's lament over Saul and Mount Gilboa, there's another story to that. Didn't know anything in the Bible until I heard John 3, 16 and was converted through it. But I remember at the age of about 10, my parents, who never ever went to church, my mom, I think, went once with me, twice, and my dad once, and before they died. I remember at the age of 10, sent to a local Presbyterian Sunday school in the great housing area where I lived in Glasgow. And I remember the hymn they were singing. Rock of ages, cleft for me." Now, I was a relatively bright little boy in my school, and I was standing thinking, what on earth is this? Be of sin, the double cure. Cleanse me from its guilt and power. At 10, I could parse every word in that sentence. I had no clue what it meant. I thought, what is that? Rock of ages, cleft for me. What's this double cure thing? Fast forward seven years, sang that hymn again. I just thought it was amazing. I just thought it was amazing. I saw who the Rock of Ages was. I understood the double cure. Worship began to flow from my heart because that's what worship is, it is the overflow of a life into which God in Jesus Christ has come. And six, and just finally, God's worship will be reverently joyful and joyfully reverent. I think we are better at the reverent than the joyful in our Reformed tradition, I think. I think we at times are a little embarrassed to be overly effusive. When I first came to America, I was preaching a small PCA church in Mississippi, and they had one black lady in the congregation, just the godliest woman. We went to visit her, Joan and I, and I remember yet, just gave us this lovely meal, and we're talking, and she said, you know, when you're preaching, I want to jump up and shout, praise the Lord, and all you Presbyterians just sit there. I said, Evelina, you jump up and shout, praise the Lord, and God helping me, I'll just say, amen. But God's worship has this beautiful blend of reverence and worship. You have it in the Lord's Prayer, our Father, boy, what intimacy, who art in heaven. boy, that suffuses the intimacy with creaturely reverence, doesn't it? We could look at Psalms, we don't have time. So, the Reformers' passion at the time of the Reformation was for God to be worshiped according to His Word. God is Spirit. Therefore, I think that's the flow of the Greek, therefore he must be worshipped in spirit and in truth. He's to be worshipped according to who he is, not according to what you think you are. God is not a bigger version of you, and he's not a bigger version of me. He is God, and he's not left us in the dark how to worship him. Let love be our guide and all will be safe. Let us be generous in our critiques of one another. Let us not be slow to correct one another if correction there need be, and let us be willing to receive correction. One of the marks of the magisterial reformers was their catholicity. It's breathtaking at times. It's unsettling at times. We start with God because He is who He is. Let us pray. Ever-blessed God, our God, and our Father in the Lord Jesus Christ, we bless Thee for Thy goodness, Thy mercy, Thy lovingkindness, We bless Thee, Lord, that Thou hast not treated us as our sins have deserved. We ask Your forgiveness that we have not given to You the worship that You alone are worthy to receive. Enable us by the blessed ministry of the Holy Spirit to worship Thee rightly, to worship Thee from hearts that overflow with delight and desire. Look upon us, Lord, we pray, in your unfailing kindness and make us all that saved sinners can be this side of glory. And we ask it through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.