Oh, OK. All right. Is this working? OK. We got to troubleshoot this thing, or are you good? Oh. All right. Give him a second. All right. Still no? Should I use this? This? This? Okay, good. All right. We're good now. Let's go to the Lord in a word of prayer as we begin our time today. Well, Father, we come to church to worship you And Lord, as we sang, we want to know you. We want to know you more. And Lord, we look forward to the day where we get to heaven and we have all eternity to get to know you more. Lord, as we open your word this morning, help us to comprehend it, to be attentive to the things you have for us. And Lord, I pray that you would change our lives so that they'd be more pleasing to you. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Well, as a church, we've been going through a series on the purpose of the church. Pastor's been going through this for the last few weeks. And today, because it's my turn to open the Bible with you, and I'm up here most, most weeks leading you in worship. We thought it'd be appropriate for me to kind of talk a little bit about worship. And so every week we, as a congregation, we sing, you know, four or five praise songs. And we do that because why? We want to worship God, right? We want to worship God. So let me ask you, have you ever considered whether God accepts your worship, whether God accepts your worship. Because here's the thing, when you look at the Bible, you see that the Bible is littered with examples of God rejecting worship. It's sobering to realize that. And to me, a few examples started, of course, with Cain in Genesis 4. But then throughout the Old Testament, in Isaiah 1.13, God tells Israel to bring your worthless offerings no longer. In Jeremiah 6.20, he said, your burnt offerings are not acceptable and your sacrifices are not pleasing to me. In Malachi 1.10, oh, that there was one among you who would shut the gates that you might not uselessly kindle fire on my altar. I am not pleased with you, says the Lord of hosts, nor will I accept an offering from you. Amos 5, 21, God says, I hate, I reject your festivals, nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies. And then in verse 23 of the same chapter, take away from me the noise of your songs. So this is a consistent theme throughout scripture, throughout biblical history, People have been getting this worship thing wrong. People have been getting this worship thing wrong. And it turns out it's actually pretty hard to get it right. Nobody thinks at the time that they're worshiping that they're getting it wrong, right? Nobody sets out to offer unacceptable worship before God. Everybody thinks they're doing the right thing. Everybody thinks they're offering acceptable worship. And Today, it's the same thing. Modern Christians in America seem to completely take for granted that God will accept whatever is thrown up at Him. Now, it's true that because of the cross, some things about worship has changed, but it doesn't mean that God's standards for worship is lower, does it? In fact, I think God's standard for us in worship is higher because we have more information now, right? And we have less excuses. So now, this morning, I want to turn the mirror on ourselves. I want for us to think about what makes us so sure that our worship is acceptable before God. Well, to begin to answer this question, we need to start with a biblical understanding of what worship is. And if you look at the word worship in the Bible, there are a few words that are used for that. And many, there have a few different meanings. Most of them mean to fall down before. Some mean to bow down. And one word means to kiss towards. And all of these words are, painting this picture of you appearing in a throne room of a king, right? So you've been invited to the court of a king, and what's the first thing you have to do? You have to bow to the king. And then you, in those times, what you would do, you would bow over the king's ring, and you would kiss the ring. And that would be the symbol that you are loyal to the king. And what happens, of course, if you don't do that? If you go into the king's throne room and you refuse to bow, Right, it's an instant death sentence, right? And actually, that's a pretty good image of worship to have in our minds, I think. That's actually a pretty biblical image. So what are you saying when you're falling down? You're falling down before something declares that that thing that you're falling down in front of is more worthy than you. That thing is more worthy than you. You are less than it, right? And therefore, you give it your admiration, your honor, your respect. And in fact, the word worship comes from, in English, if you look at the history of the word, comes from the word worth-ship, right? That used to be the word. And of course, that talks about ascribing worth to something, giving something, or not giving something worth, but declaring the worth of something. That's what worship means. to ascribe worth. And worship then is this honor and respect given to something of supreme worth. So it's possible then, if you look at that definition of worship, to worship other things than God, right? It's possible. What's one thing that people worship other than God? Okay, self or money, right? Wealth. That's actually a common theme in scripture, that people worship mammon, or wealth, or money. And that looks like this. All of your thoughts, and all of your deeds, and all of your conversations, all are directed towards serving the acquisition of more wealth. For other people, it could be a political cause. It could even be your kids that you put in that type, that place of worship above God, place of worth. Okay, so now when we worship something other than God, what does the Bible call that? Idolatry. It's possible to be an idolater then without ever touching or seeing a carved image, right? Let me just show you this in Colossians 3, 5. Might as well turn there in Colossians 3, 5. And we're going to be a little bit around the Bible this morning, so kind of work out those fingers. Colossians 3, 5. says this, and now watch how the apostle Paul says this, consider your members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to what? Idolatry. And in this case, the idol in question that Paul is addressing is sex. or sensuality. So Paul is talking actually, by the way, in this passage to believers. Okay. That's something to keep in mind. It's possible for believers then to be engaged in idolatry as well. Wealth, sensuality. And the way you do that is by putting something in your life in that place of worth above God. So When we talk about worship, it's really important for us to understand that worship encompasses your whole life. Worship is a whole life worship. The way you live your life, and the way you speak, and the way you live, and the way you think, and what you spend your time on, and what you do, what you pursue, and what you value, you are assigning worth to something. It goes for believers and unbelievers alike. And so when we talk about worship, we're not talking about what we do for 20 minutes on Sunday morning. Right? And in fact, what we do for those 20 minutes on Sunday morning better be an overflow of the worship that's already going on in your life. You have 20 minutes on Sunday morning and that ought to be the overflow of the 10,060 minutes that you have during the week. Musical worship then is just the tip of the iceberg, right? It's the tip of the iceberg. It's the part of the visible worship you can see, but underneath the iceberg better be a mountain of worship propping that up. If not, then this here doesn't mean anything. You see, it doesn't mean anything without, it's just empty words. And this is an analogy that you can think about. If you had like a husband or wife, and your husband or wife completely ignored you for seven days a week, and not taking your wants or your needs into consideration, not even acknowledging your presence, not speaking to you, and in fact is out running around with other people behind your back. But then for 10 minutes a week, when all of your family is over, and he wants to look good in front of them and wants to impress them, he comes to you and he says, I love you, honey. Now, would you appreciate that? Would you appreciate that? Of course not. That would be offensive to you. What are you doing the rest of the week? So, think about this. Why would you expect God to accept your worship If during 99.8% of the week you're prayerless, we don't care about the Bible, we're entertaining idolatry in our heart, we're not loving or serving the people that he called us to as people, we're not concerned with God's kingdom, and we don't restrain our fleshly impulses. If we do that for 10,060 minutes a week, then we come up and worship him in song for 20 minutes a week. You come and sing, I want to know you, right? God's probably up there saying, say, hey, wait a second, you got 10,000 minutes that you could have used to get to know me. So why don't you stop singing that song and come get to know me? See, we have to be very careful. Acceptable worship must be whole life worship. It must be a whole life worship. So you may think that that might be all that God requires. That's a pretty big requirement, but you might think that that's all that God requires for your worship to be acceptable. But it's not. Because you can say, you know, I'm not one of these people. I serve God throughout the week. I'm in the word and I pray and sharing the gospel. But guess what? That alone is still not enough to be acceptable worship. Because if we just left that there, you might think that what matters is just a lack of hypocrisy, right? It's just sincerity that matters. Yet, there are a lot of sincere people within the Bible and today whose worship God rejects. Because that's not all God is looking for. And let's meet one of these people in John 4. Let's open up with me to John 4. If you're using your Pew Bible, it's gonna be on page 1062. And pretty much any discussion of worship has to start with this passage. In fact, this is the passage the pastor was quoting while he was praying in the pastoral prayer. Because this is what Jesus himself is saying about true worship. In John 4, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at the well. The Samaritans are a mixed race people, part Jew, part Gentile. And what that means, of course, is that they are in between two worlds. To the Jews, they were Gentiles. And to the Gentiles, they were Jews. So they had nowhere to go. They were rejected by both. Historians tell us that there's a lot of bad blood between the Samaritans and the Jews, so severe that it often descended into real violence. The historian Josephus actually records that the fighting became so severe at one point that Roman soldiers had to go in to stop the fighting. And the way they stopped the fighting is by beginning to crucify the leaders on both sides. That's how they would stop the fighting. They don't kid around, right? They just go straight to crucifixion. Now, because of this bad blood, the Samaritans were not welcome to worship with the Jews on the Temple Mount. That's where the temple was. That's where the Jews worshipped. So they decided, you know, we don't need them. We're going to set up our own mountain. We're going to worship there, Mount Gerizim. And so Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well, and he makes quite an impression on her. He knows stuff about her that nobody should know. Only God would know. And he knows her secret sins, the secret sins of her heart. And so she becomes convinced that Jesus is somebody special, a special connection to God. At this point, yeah, she doesn't know exactly what kind of connection. She doesn't know that he's a son of God or the Messiah. She will know that. But at this point in the narrative, the scripture records that the woman gets to ask him one question. So she, she realizes this, this person is connected to God somehow, and she has the chance to ask him one question. So now think about this, right? If, if you had one question to ask Jesus, If you got the chance to ask one question, what would you ask him? Okay, on the spot, I don't think I would come up with anything that deep. I'm not really that kind of person. I think for me, I would probably come up with a hundred things to ask him about ten minutes too late. Or maybe I'd waste my question on something like, Lord, would you say that cereal is a type of soup? Something I was thinking about this week. Okay, but this woman is clearly quicker on her feet than I am. And she knows she has one chance. She's gonna go for it. She asked the one question that's been on her mind pretty much since she was a child. And to her credit, I want you to notice, the reason she picked this question is because she's sincere. She's sincere in wanting to worship God the right way. And this is her question in verse 19 of chapter four. The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain. And you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. See, what's the question? The question is, Lord, where is the acceptable place to worship you? Where is the acceptable place to worship? Is it the mountain of the Jews? Or is it the mountain of the Samaritans? Which is what I've been doing my entire life. Because I want to make sure I get this right. That's her heart. Jesus answers her in verse 21. Jesus says to her, Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. Jesus doesn't really dodge her question. She says, look, you guys got it wrong. You worship what you do not know, and salvation is from the Jews. So you are actually wrong. The right location at that time to worship was in Jerusalem. Why? Because that's what God had prescribed at that time in history. So God had prescribed everybody has to go to the temple multiple times a year to go worship. Why? Because God said so. He's the one being worshiped. So he makes the rules. But verse 23, but an hour is coming. And now is when the true worshipers will worship the father in what? and truth. For such people the Father seeks to be his worshippers. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. Jesus is saying something is coming. Something is coming that's going to change everything and of course he's talking about what? Talking about the cross. What's going to happen at the cross? The barriers between the Jews and the Gentiles are shattered. And then the location where true worship can take place is decentralized from Jerusalem to any place in the world you can worship. And the cross is what changed that. The cross changed everything. But I want you to notice something subtle in the text, right? Jesus says this. He says, true worshipers. Think about what that means. That means that Just as there was true and false worship in that time, there's going to be true and false worshippers in our time. True worshippers, a distinguishing character for the true worshippers is that they will worship in spirit and in truth. And by the way, this wasn't happening in either Israel or Samaria. The Jews worshipped in truth in that they worshipped what they knew. but they did not worship in spirit. Multiple times, Jesus calls them out for their hypocrisy and their desire to be seen before men. But on the other side are the Samaritans. They're passionate and emotional and sincere, but they didn't have the truth. And Jesus says, now God is seeking worshipers who worship in both spirit and truth. See, God expectations, right? Were they lowered because of the cross? No, they were raised. And you and I then must get right what the Jews and Samaritans got wrong. We must worship in spirit and truth. So for the rest of our sermon, we're gonna unpack what that means. Let's take on truth first. We'll talk about truth and we'll talk about spirit. What does it mean to worship in truth? I think it means two things. First, to worship in truth means to worship God with accurate doctrine. Worship God with accurate doctrine. Imagine your friend comes up to you and he says, guess what? The other day I was at the supermarket and I ran into Pastor Bobby and we had this awesome conversation. And you're like, wow, that's great. And he's like, yeah, yeah, that short Chinese bald guy, he's great. And we talked about so many things and you're like, Wait, what? That's not my pastor. And by the way, I'm fairly sure that the pastor hasn't gone to the supermarket for 30 years, so that would have been your first clue. But your friend might then go on excitedly about the conversation he had with your pastor. But then you've tuned him out because this is not your pastor he's talking about. He's talking about somebody else. And in the same way, when we worship, we must get our facts right about God. Being excited about God, when you have the wrong facts about God, is just empty emotionalism. It's not acceptable worship. And the fact is, you're not worshiping God. You're worshiping a God of your own imagination. And if you look around, you see that so much of worship culture in our day is this kind of worship. This is the God of popular Christian radio, soft and fuzzy and nonjudgmental, positive and encouraging, life coach in the sky. And it doesn't matter what your doctrine is because God is here to help you live a better life, right? who wears any mention of sin, or any mention of holiness, or wrath, or judgment, or hell, or repentance, you would be far pressed to hear any of that. And if you take all those things away from God, then you worship a different God. Not only that, you have a different gospel. Because if you are to worship God, then you first and foremost must know who he is as he's revealed himself in the pages of scripture. He is the triune God, no beginning and no end, self-sufficient, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, holy, just, righteous, whose justice requires that he meets sin with eternal punishment for each and every one of us. who's a sinner, and we all are sinners. We are all guilty. But this is also this God who sent his son Jesus, the second member of the Godhead, to come to earth, born of a virgin, fully God and fully man, who lived a righteous life, and then died on the cross and paid the penalty that God required of us. And because of his death, and only because of his death, it is possible for us who believe in Jesus to worship God. because he broke down that barrier that sin had erected between man and God. And whoever leaves in this Jesus, he becomes Jesus' disciple and friend and brother and will inherit eternal life. And if you don't agree with any element of that, the Trinity the eternality of God, the sovereignty of God, the incarnation, the substitutionary atonement, the propitiation of sin, the sinfulness of man, and you're not worshiping the God of the Bible. It doesn't matter how much energy you're singing with. It doesn't matter how much passion you have. You're worshiping a God of your own imagination, a different God. Doctrine matters. You see, the philosophers of our age, they're telling us that truth is fluid. They're telling us that truth is relative, and it depends on your background and on your experiences. Everybody can have sort of their same truth. And you know what? The church, to a large degree, has bought into all of that. And in many churches that I've been to, doctrine is kind of a bad word. And in fact, it's rare today to see any church that takes any strong stance on things like creation or eschatology or reformed theology or even the depravity of man, the perseverance of the saints. It would be very unusual to walk into a church and happen upon a sermon about the Trinity or the holiness of God. And in fact, in many churches, it's frowned upon even to bring up Doctrine because it's divisive it divides people and I've been personally told when I was at another church a sound church actually that Talking about these doctrines just get in the way of loving Jesus Because that's all we want to do right, but of course my question would be which Jesus are you loving? Which Jesus are you loving? There's an amazing verse in the book of Hosea Hosea 6, four to six, I'll read it to you. It says, for I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice and in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. You hear that? The knowledge of God is what delights God. You knowing about God delights Him. That's worship. So you can't acceptably worship without truth. Truth is, in fact, the engine that drives your worship. And listen, the more truth you know, the richer your worship will be. This is how John MacArthur puts it. He says this, let me explain worship in a simple way. The deeper your understanding of the truth of God, the deeper your understanding of God himself, the higher your worship goes. Worship is directly correlated to understanding. The richer your theology, the more full your grasp of biblical truth, the more elevated your worship becomes. You don't have to turn the music on for me to worship. Low understanding of God, superficial, shallow understanding of God leads to superficial, shallow, contentless hysteria. You can whip that up. You can create that kind of frenzy. It has nothing to do with worship. It isn't worship. It's not connected to worship. It is sheer hysteria in a mindless expression. End quote. So you see, God, do you see friends? Good intentions are not enough. You must worship God with accurate doctrine. But there's a second thing that it means to worship God in truth. And that is you must worship using his prescribed methods. prescribed method. It's not an exaggeration to say that the pages of Scripture are filled with corpses of the people who presented God with an unprescribed method of worship. And to see this, let's look first at Leviticus 9, where there is a worship service going on. Leviticus 9, turn there with me. Leviticus chapter 9. page 111, actually 112, because we're gonna start at verse 22. So watch, we dropping in on their worship service, okay? Then Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them. And he stepped down after making the sin offering and the burnt offering and the peace offerings. Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting. When they came out and blessed the people, the glory of God appeared to all the people. Then fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the portions of fat on the altar. And when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces. Stop right there. Wow, this is incredible. How would you like to be in a worship service like this? The glory of God visible, fire coming out from heaven, people shouting, falling on their faces in worship, joyful, emotional, heartfelt. Things are going great. This is a great worship service. Let's turn to chapter 10 and look at what happens next. Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took a censer and put fire on it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them. And they died before the Lord. Talk about a buzzkill, right? Worship service is going great. People are crying, emotion off the charts. And these are the sons of the priest, sons of Aaron. They just wanted to worship. They're not meeting to offend God. Heart's in the right place. And in their zeal to worship, they did something that God did not prescribe. Bam, dead. Their father though, he's the high priest of Israel. It doesn't matter who your father is. It matters who your God is. See this pattern again in 2 Samuel chapter six, let's turn there, 2 Samuel chapter six. 2 Samuel chapter six. It's gonna be on page 322 on your pew Bibles. Here we're dropping in on another time of celebration. And this time featuring King David. Again, everything is going great. In fact, David is being obedient to the Lord and God just gave him a great victory over the Philistines. And they finally even got the Ark of the Covenant back. This is an artifact that God himself designed to represent his very presence. And they're about to bring this Ark home. What a time of celebration. Let's pick up in verse three. They placed the Ark of God on a new cart, that they might bring it from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. And Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, were leading the new cart. So they brought it with the ark of God from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. And Ahio was walking ahead of the ark. Meanwhile, David and all the house of Israel were celebrating before the Lord with all kinds of instruments made of fir wood with lyres, harps, tambourines, castanets, and cymbals. So stop there for a second. Just picture this. Imagine a celebration. You've got instruments. You've got all of these stringed instruments. You've got percussion instruments. You've got cymbals. Great music, transcendent music. This is music fit for a king. Celebration, heart. And they even put the Ark on a new cart. because of their love and their respect for God. But look at verse six. As they're going along, what happens? But when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out towards the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen nearly upset it. Okay, there's a bump in the road, right? Going around, there's a bump in the road. Oxen bucked. Ark is sliding off the cart. Well, would you do? Ark is sliding off the cart. This is the ark of God. So Uzzah in his respect and his love and his reverence, he doesn't want the ark that God designed to fall on the floor. So he reaches out to stop it from falling on the floor. Except that God has said previously that you can never, ever touch my ark. Wait, but this is a special circumstance, right? I mean, the ark is about to fall on the floor, guys. Verse seven. And the anger of the Lord burned against Uzzah, and God struck him down there for his irreverence, and he died there by the ark of God. Should have let us fall on the floor, I guess. Understand that it was King David that's created the situation. God had actually commanded them to transport it with people on sticks, on rods. And David thought it would be more convenient if they just put it on an ark and let oxen carry it. It's a far distance. Nobody wants to take days, right? Let's just put it on a cart for this one time. It's more convenient. But what did David learn from this? Look down in verse nine. So David was what? afraid of the Lord that day. Wow. Let me ask you, when you worship God, how much fear are you experiencing? A lack of fear of the Lord is a problem in a lot of worship today. And because we have no fear of God, our generation has made worship about the people, They've made worship about men, about us, and about our experience in the worship. And it's about feeling a sense of emotional catharsis. That becomes a primary thing in a lot of modern worship. But if we feared God, what we would understand is that worship is not about us or about our presence, sorry, our preferences. or about our catharsis, or about our convenience, or even about what kind of music we like. Because a fear of God understands that worship is for God. It's not for you. And because it's for God, it must be done God's way. So let's look at this. What are the ways that God has prescribed for acceptable worship. Well, Hebrews 10.25 tells us we are to meet corporately as a church body to build one another up in love and good works. First Timothy 4.13 tells us that scripture is to be publicly read during church services. God says the Bible is to be explained and preached. during worship. In second Timothy four two, we confess our sins in Joshua seven nineteen. Songs and hymns and spiritual songs are sung. Colossians three sixteen and the churches ought to meet together so that the church is gonna be a house of prayer. Matthew twenty-one thirteen. The individuals ought to be giving from their finances in Philippians four eighteen and we ought of course to be taking the Lord's Supper. That's what we were talking about last week. The pastor was preaching on that. First Corinthians eleven and Those are the things that God has prescribed. So if you're a Christian, you are not free to say, look, I'm a Christian, but I don't like organized religion. Don't like church. Don't like waking up on Sunday because that's inconvenient. I just like to do my own time of reading the word and, and maybe listen to some radio. And then that's my worship. You're not free to do that. It doesn't matter whether convenient or not, or you enjoy it or not, the thing is that God commanded you to do that. And on the flip side, you don't get to add things to worship either. You're not free to incorporate things like prayer beads. You're not free to bow down to statues of the saints. And one of the big things in the church today is something called holy yoga. And some churches are actually designing programs around this, that you come and do yoga with Christian music, and that's somehow worship to the Lord. So your preference is irrelevant. Your convenience is irrelevant. Your innovation is irrelevant because worship is for God. Remember that it's not for you. We worship God on his terms, not ours. So worshiping God in truth is to worship God then with accurate doctrine and with prescribed methods. So now let's look at spirit. Finally, the last ingredient that is, is spirit. It's the second thing that Jesus told a Samaritan woman. To worship in spirit means to worship God with the right attitudes. Right attitudes. And at first, we already talked about this. It can't be a hypocritical attitude. You need to be conscious, of course, of your life before God. It's whole life worship. But I want to look at Romans chapter 12 with you, and this will drive home the point for us. Look at Romans chapter 12, verse one. Read this, therefore, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice. What? Acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of what? Of worship. See, this is what true worship is. In the Old Testament, you would have to bring animals to sacrifice, right? You'd have to bring them to the altar. Cross changed everything. And what are we to bring now? You're to bring yourself. You're the animal. Back in the Old Testament days, you were to bring an animal, not just any animal, right? What were you supposed to bring? Something unblemished? Something pure? Something spotless? So what are you to bring today? You are to bring an animal that is pure and unblemished and spotless. That's the point that he's making. This is how you're to bring yourself before God. You want to be constantly cleansing yourself of the impurities of the world, the filth and the sin. Any kind of sexual immorality, any kind of idolatrous heart, any kind of angry, unforgiving heart, any kind of jealousy, any kind of envy, and that's just the list from Galatians 5, those are the things that ought to be out of your life by the time you come to worship God. And in this verse, who is providing the service here? Who is doing the work? You are. It's your spiritual service of worship. Before you do that, you cannot come and worship God in spirit. A long time ago, there was a popular praise song called, Come As You Are to Worship, right? I mean, that's not a bad song, but it's a little bit inaccurate in the sense where we ought to be coming from to God transformed to worship. I mean, when you're saved, of course, you come as you are, right? There's no requirement to salvation, but you better not stay where you are. If you're saved, you will be transforming and changing and sanctifying. Look at verse two. Do not be conformed to this world, but be what? transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what the will of God is, what is that which is good and acceptable and perfect. It's a pretty high standard. We must continually then be fighting to renew our minds, to make it agree with what the Word of God says. That's what the sense of this verse is. We're trying to renew our minds and be in the Word so that we will agree with God. God is not going to change His opinion. We need to change our opinion so that we agree with what God says, His will, His revealed will. The work that you must do is to bring your mind in conformity to God's revealed Word. So, This is what it means to cleanse ourselves. A similar idea is expressed in Psalm 24, which should be a familiar song now. Psalm 24, look at verses three to six. Psalm 24. Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who may stand in his holy place? Verse four. He who has clean hands and a pure heart who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood and has not sworn deceitfully. He shall receive a blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. This is the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face. Even Jacob. Finally, after you've understood the truth of God's word, After you've checked that your methods of worship are according to what God has prescribed, after you've checked that you're not being hypocritical and you've purified yourself for worship by the renewing of your mind, now you're ready to engage your emotions. You see, God does definitely want you to be engaging your emotions in worship. And the very fact that he uses instruments, he wants us to use instruments to praise him, means that he wants us to feel emotional. That's what music does. Music has that kind of power to stir us up. And so emotion is the proper response to the truth of what God is and what he has done. So if you're not emotional when you're praising God, then it means pretty much one of three things. Either means I haven't done a great job at picking out songs, with good theological content, could be, or maybe you don't properly understand the truth that it's talking about because you don't have the depth of knowledge yet to appreciate it. Or it means that you've checked out mentally and you're just going through the motions. Those are the possible options. Now, true worship will engage your emotions. What are the emotions? Just briefly talk about them. The first emotion you ought to have, as we talked about before, is fear and reverence and awe. And in fact, if you look at the Bible, what happens when people encounter God, when people encounter a vision of God even, fear and brokenness is the only emotion they have. Isaiah, Moses, Abraham, the Apostle Peter, the disciples, how they react to Jesus, it's everywhere. When confronted with God's holiness, the only proper response is fear and brokenness. Isaiah proclaimed, what was me? I am a man of unclean lips. And it's not a fear of rejection that we're feeling, but the kind of fear that you would have if someone stuck you in the same room with a lion, a friendly lion. Don't worry, the lion is friendly. But you respect the power, don't you? you respect, you know that at any moment that lion could turn from a friendly lion to something else. The claws, I think it was C.S. Lewis who was talking about how the claws of a lion can have two modes. They can be furry and caress, or the claws can come out to stab, right? And in the same way, when you come to worship God, Remember, you're coming before the all-consuming fire. That is the holiness of God. And what's more, you are presenting him a sacrifice. And what is that sacrifice again? Yourself. This is your sacrifice, Lord, holy and unblemished. I find that pretty scary, to be honest. But not only fear and brokenness, the last emotion you must necessarily feel It's joy. And the biblical examples here are too numerous to really talk about, but I'll just give you a rundown. I mean, just remember when John the Baptist, as a fetus, encountered Jesus, he left for joy in the womb. I don't understand that, but that's the amount of joy that Jesus filled him with, as a fetus. And Philippians 4.4, clear biblical command, rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Psalm 97 one, let the nations be glad. Psalm 84, my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God. First Peter 18, you greatly rejoice with, sorry, you greatly rejoice with joy, what? Inexpressible and full of glory. The joy that you rejoice in is inexpressible. can try to express it, but it's inexpressible. And there are many more. The scriptures are just so clear that joy is a proper response. Well, you understand the holiness of God, you understand the sinfulness of man, you understand the price that Jesus paid for you, that he brought you out of the darkness and into the light. that he set the captives free. Oh, death, where is your sting? And oh, grave, where is your victory, right? That's what you're celebrating. Christ has won the victory for you. And here's the awesome thing. If you come to God having believed in Jesus, and you come presenting acceptable worship, the Bible promises that God will accept your worship. And that's more, what's more than that? God will make the worship enjoyable for you, enjoyable for you. We are the ones at the end of the day who benefit from worship, right? Does God need our worship? No, he doesn't need our worship. He doesn't need anything. He's self-sufficient. Who is the one who gets the benefit? It's us. Worship is directed at God and for God, but the benefit accrues to us. See, true worship is enjoying God. And when we worship the acceptable way, this is how we come the closest we can on this earth to experiencing the joy of heaven. In fact, just to close, I want to take you to one last place in scripture, just to show you what this is all leading towards, right? This is the worship that we do here is just practice for this in Revelation 19. Just practice, we're just practicing, just rehearsing. And heaven will be full of nothing but perfect worship. Revelation 19 verses one to five. After these things, I heard something like a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven saying, Hallelujah, salvation and glory and power belong to our God because his judgments are true and righteous. For he has judged the great harlot who is corrupting the earth with her immorality. And he has avenged the blood of his blonde servants on her. And a second time, they said, repetition, right? This is what the pastor was saying. Hallelujah, her smoke rises up forever and ever. And the 24 elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who sits on the throne saying, amen, hallelujah. And a voice came from the throne saying, give praise to our God, all you his bondservants, you who fear him, the small and the great. Then I heard something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder saying, hallelujah, for the Lord, our God, the almighty reigns. Do you know who that is? Do you know who was the sound of the mighty peals of thunder and the many waters? Who do you think that was? That was you. And that's me. And brothers on that day, that will be our voices saying in response, hallelujah for the Lord our God, the almighty reigns. That's what we're rehearsing for. And I can't wait to be there. Amen? Let's pray. Father, we so clearly see in your scripture that we, that you don't take worship lightly. You're serious about how your people worship you. Help us, Lord, to evaluate for ourselves, as well as for our church, whether we are indeed worshiping in spirit and in truth, because that's the only kind of worship you accept. Forgive us, Lord, if we have in the past offered up anything that was unworthy. Help us now to be careful to worship you with acceptable doctrine, with acceptable methods, with an acceptable attitude, with the proper emotions, and help us once again to do so now. In Christ's name, amen.