James Diliberto - Worship God - Let Your Lifesong Sing - Session 1 - In Spirit and Truth

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:00

   Good morning everyone. It's so good to be here. Thank you for coming to Novi. It's really special for me to be here. And it's not the first time I've been here. This is 13 years since last time I was here at Novi. Now as we begin, I just want to reflect and hopefully I can find some people here. Back then we did Meet Our More Than Conquerors. And I just wonder if anyone can find themselves in this photo. Who was here for Novi 2012 when we were at Morrison at the old summer Bible camp? Now a few people. And now whose first time was it then? Okay. Alright. So I was told that for some of you it's the last time. So apparently I'm the bookends of your Novi experience. But if you see some people here, Novi has been a camp that has been really special to me since the time that I heard about it starting. It wasn't intense as I said last night. But it's such a special camp and I hope it is really special for you. It was really special for me back then and continues to be now. But it's a completely new generation. I don't know so many of you, but I'm so grateful to be getting to know you. And I'm really grateful. We're doing the same stuff. I would say this is an uplift here. So this was the best we could do back then. Well done Annie and music team.

2. 1:28

   This is like absolutely incredible what you put together. And then some people have gone on from this camp to meet and get married. Yes, indeed. I don't know if any of these people were married, but some are here. But as I go back, the only real standout for me was the time that Daniel wore a costume. So well, it's nice to have you here. And one more little one. I really appreciated that last song and you've really grown up.

3. 1:58

   I don't know who's in the womb there. Who is here? Next time, next door. We are wired for worship. We were made to worship. It is our true calling. And when we figure out what that is, we become fully what God created us to do. Humans were made to worship. It's one of the things that separates us from all other created beings. Our capacity to worship. We are imago Dei. We bear the image of God. We are image bearers. And because of that, we have a God-shaped hole in our hearts that will not be filled until we fill it with God. And we will spend our whole life trying to fill it with things that will never satisfy. The only thing that will ever fill that hole is when we come to know, adore, worship, and fellowship with our Creator. But every day, our affection, our devotion, our adoration, our honor, our reverence are probably given to something because we are wired to do this. And when we don't pour it out on our Creator, we generally end up pouring it out on other things, aka idols.

4. 3:33

   I'd like you guys to participate in something now. I think I can actually do this by just doing a switcheroo here. There we go. Look at that. Alright, now I know they said no phones except for eSword. No phones except for eSword and participating in my surveys. Okay. So, I'd like everybody to hop on here. And I want you to, when I say to you, right, we gotta kick start now, right? I know some of you are like two hours sleep. So, oh, I'll move it. I am so short. You're telling me you can't get that over. But, there you go. Alright, I'll speak to you through this veil of darkness here. Hopefully, you guys got the survey. Alright, what I would really like you to please do, don't worry, it'll be on the next one. What I'd like you all to do is I would like you to tell me, alright, when I say worship, tell me what comes to your mind. There's no one that says right or wrong answer. Well, actually, there's probably some wrong answers, but give it a go. Tell me what it means to you. Now, if you get stuck, you can still go to menti.com and pop in that number. If you missed the QR code over my short and you can still find it there at the top. So, just pour out everything that you think.

5. 4:49

   So, when I said worship, what did you expect I was going to talk about? When you heard that I was coming here, I'm going to talk about worship. What did you think? What did it make you think of?

6. 5:06

   Alright, so for the sake of, I don't know, are these being recorded? For the sake of the recording, anyway, I will just read, well, I'm not going to read all of them. That's a big one. Well, anyway, the one that's right in the center is praise. Well, it's not that one. The amount of people that are saying guitar, well, that's good. But yeah, I'll just call out a few. Spirit and truth. Commitment. Commitment! Sorry. You know you know. Anyway, commitment, guitar, giving glory, gratitude, prayer, praising God, awesome. Those are all really, really good.

7. 5:40

   What is 6'7"? What is 6'7"? Like, my kids are too young to be ready to know what that is. So, I don't know. Anyway. Alright, you can keep adding if you want. Can somebody explain that to me? 10 seconds? 10 seconds. Not worth it. Okay. Alright. Now. How many of you like the song 10,000 Reasons?

8. 6:01

   Yes. Okay. Awesome. Hopefully we can see it at some point. We'll get it in there. We'll squeeze it. No. No. Come on. Please. Okay. Now. If you were to say you were to worship God, if you really believe that song, if you think that's true, surely you can come up with 150. 10,000 Reasons? Or is that just a word? Is that just a nice song? Or is it really that way?

9. 6:36

   Is God really that glorious? Is He really that worthy? Or is that just a nice thing to say? Well, I'd like you to maybe pop in some of that. If it gets silly, I'm just going to skip it. Thank you. Awesome. Alright. So, just keep going. And what I want you to do this weekend is I want you to think about, as we discover all these reasons to worship God, what I'd like you to do is, I'd like you to grab a marker.

10. 7:06

    I'd like you to go over to this little sticky pad over here or a pad that could be stuck with Plutax. And I'd like you to write that on there. And I want you to fill this room with it. I want you to plaster these walls with reasons why we worship God. And I want to see them.

11. 7:20

    By the end of tomorrow, I want to see them all around. I want to be surrounded. I don't think we're going to hit 10,000, but surely we can hit however many pieces of paper on that chart there. Alright. Thank you. Let's just run through some of these. Okay. Awesome. Family, peace, friends, creation, no anxiety, hope, nature, creation, life, peace, salvation, eternal life, family, my wife, I agree, life, truth, mercy, the free undeserved gift of grace, hope, creation, peace, and so on and so on.

12. 7:53

    Cool. You made the point. Good. Well, we can all go home now. We got the point of the weekend. No, just kidding. So what we are going to do this weekend is try to find what we mean by worshiping God and try to really hone in on why that matters. Worship and why it matters, which is the title of this first session.

13. 8:14

    Now, Christadelphians, for us, worship has been central to a lot of what we do. But if you're probably thinking that I was going to be doing the talks this weekend, and many of you said even last night, you were thinking, we're probably going to be talking about music. You wouldn't necessarily be wrong.

14. 8:30

    And Christadelphians and worship music, this has been a core part of our background. So if you open up our hymn book, that beautiful hymn that we just had there, thank you so much for choosing it, just hearing you sing that, it was amazing. But for worship and for witness, those are two things we're going to talk about in the next session.

15. 8:46

    But for worship and for witness. And we now have the new blue book. So it's the second coming of the blue book, for those of you who know. You know, I know it was blue, now we have the new blue book. And so we now even are creating books that are called worship, that are filled with songs for many of the people in this room, which is just so beautiful.

16. 9:05

    And if you're from Charlie Hall, raise your hand. I did a winky sneak down to Charlie Hall. And on your core values in your foyer, if you just go right down, your core value, one of them is worship. We believe that worship reflects both individual and collective needs and praises God. So what is it?

17. 9:30

    What is worship? Maybe let me illustrate. There was a time in my life where, about your age a little bit more, I would say that I worshipped a band that I really liked. Now, I didn't just really like them. I'd say I worshipped them. Let me tell you why. Because I gave it my money, my time, my thought, and not just my intentional thought, my idle thought.

18. 10:07

    As in just sitting around, boom, starting thinking about the music, thinking about their show, thinking about that last song that I heard. My admiration, my aspiration, musically, and even testimony. I would tell people about it. Have you heard of this band? Have you heard of Dave Matthews' band? They're like incredible. You've got to see them live.

19. 10:25

    They're just like the best ever. You've just got to see them. And you possibly, by my actions, could have said that I was demonstrating that they were the greatest conceivable thing in my life.

20. 10:42

    By the evidence. And the reason why I did that before is because I think there was a time where I could have given you 10,000 reasons for my heart to find. And I wonder if maybe in those times it would have been just as easy for me to give those 10,000 about a ride.

21. 11:01

    Now, in the last year, if you were in Melbourne or Sydney, I'm sure you saw this. Some of you possibly went. I'm sure it was good. But the mania that came over in this country, over this. Now, I don't understand it. That's fine. It doesn't make sense to me. But I think she's a great performer.

22. 11:26

    She's a great songwriter. And I'm sure it was a good time. But like, seriously, you need to calm down. That the amount of time spent, like, worship here. Some people even came back and said, when she comes out, I felt like I knew her. You don't know her. She didn't talk to you.

23. 11:50

    She doesn't invest in you. But because you savor the things that she has put out, you feel like you're having an exchange. You feel like you know her. And again, I'm not saying anybody did anything wrong. I'm just saying that if we can do that for Dave Matthews and Tay Tay, like, come on.

24. 12:09

    Are you saying that I've got a book this thick about the God of the universe and I can't find 10,000 reasons to worship him? He doesn't become the supreme expression of worship in my life. And that really is what worship is. It's the overflow of authentic delight in what we observe or experience in a person or thing.

25. 12:34

    That is worship. And it's not flattery. Flattery is different. Flattery is like when you want something, right? You say a nice thing about something. You're flattering them because you want something from them. That's not what this is. Worship doesn't want anything in return. It pours out those things for its own sake.

26. 12:58

    Do you worship God? Are you casual about it? Are you nonchalant about God? Well, my hope in this series is that I can shake the nonchalant out of you and we can really, really lean in to what makes God beautiful and special and try to understand and maybe find 10,001 reasons to worship him.

27. 13:35

    And maybe it's because we are afraid to feel. Maybe culturally we are afraid to feel. But we're not afraid to feel about some things that we might adore and worship. And I just want to ask you, like, are you nonchalant about God?

28. 13:59

    Well, I think we need this guy. Are you? Is that sound on? Is that sound? To someone who is nonchalant. You need to be more chalant.

29. 14:15

    We're telling you, like, you do not have emotions. I know the emotions are in there. And I can put them out of you. I'm forced out. And you're my gifted dog. You're my favorite dog. I have experienced every emotion ever invented. It's okay. It is not free. You're my favorite dog. I'm going to do a strong emotion to your growth.

30. 14:38

    Follow me. And I will help you to become as shalant as Timothy Shalant means. Okay. Okay. So, I'm Uncle James. And I would like to teach you how not to be shalant about God. And you don't have to show me a statement of faith or a song to see what someone worships. Just show me your calendar, your bank statement, and your browser history.

31. 15:04

    Archbishop William Temple put it this way. Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by his holiness. Nourishment of mind by his truth. Purifying of imagination by his beauty. Opening of the heart to his love. Submission of will to his purpose. And all of this gathered up in adoration is the greatest of all expressions of which we are getting old.

32. 15:52

    I think it's time to be shalant about God. I think so. So, how are we going to do that for the rest of this weekend? So, I've titled this this weekend, Worship God. And the subtitle is, Let My Life Song Sing. We'll learn more about that later as we go in the week.

33. 16:12

    Let My Life Song Sing. And I'd like you to turn to Psalm 86, verses 8 to 12. Because there, we are going to see if the goals in spiritual life were the target. Worship is the bullseye. Psalm 86, verses 8 to 12.

34. 16:37

    So, if we kind of had to have a theme verse, a theme target for where we want to be when we leave tomorrow. It's this. My heart's desire is for both myself and all of you to be able to own this passage. Feel that it's something you could authentically express yourself.

35. 17:02

    This one is a favor. There is no one like you among God's old Lord. Sorry. There is no one like you among the prophets, O Lord. Nor are there any works like yours. All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord. And shall glorify your name. You are great and do wondrous things.

36. 17:39

    You alone are God. Teach me your way, O Lord. That I may walk in your truth. Unite my heart to fear your name. Give thanks to you, O Lord my God. With my whole heart. And I will glorify your name forever. If only David would have had that on his heart when he sinned with Bathsheba.

37. 18:09

    Maybe Psalm 51 that we had read and sung would not have had to be written. And David learned the lesson of worship in a really, really hard way. Thanks guys for singing. You see, David lost the wonder. We heard them sing it. Restore your Holy Spirit from me. Make the bones you have crushed rejoice.

38. 18:38

    He had lost it. He had forgotten that God was his supreme affection. And he ended up worshiping lust. And he elevated lust and the fulfillment of that lust above God and loving his commandments. Instead of seeing God as wondrous and therefore wanting to walk in truth, he walked in falsehood on that roof.

39. 19:02

    And his heart was not united. It was divided. In fact, you may think one of the verses that really strikes me about David is it says that David did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord all the days of his life and did not go to the right or to the left of anything God had done all of his life.

40. 19:21

    Dot, dot, dot. Except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite. It's not that he never sinned, but it was the only time in his life where he just closed God out so he could do what he wanted. He blocked everything he knew about God out. He lost this passage. And so my hope is that we would worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

41. 19:53

    Because holiness and worship are each of the connected. You know, I'm sure you know Steph's song, and I'm sure it will probably come up at some point this weekend. Someone will request it and will sing it. But you think about love the Lord from a New Light album. Which, by the way, you can buy it on day and get it.

42. 20:12

    No. I remember when we were putting that album together, and this is one of the lines that really stuck me. There's a few other ones, but I think this is probably one of my favorite lines on an entire album. Live your life as a song to him. And that is the life song that I hope that we will learn how to sing this weekend.

43. 20:40

    So we are going to talk, we're going to get to the end of this talk and talk about spirit and truth. We're going to look at this interaction with the woman of Samaria. We are going to look at the patriarchs calling on the name of the Lord. Worship long before there was law.

44. 20:58

    Long before there was rules. When it was just people and God walking together. And then this afternoon we're going to really try to get practical. We don't live in that time. I don't live in the woman of Samaria's time. We don't live in Abraham and Enoch and Seth and Cain. We don't live in that time.

45. 21:17

    So what does that look like for us today? What does devotional life look like for us today? And then we're going to the Jewish portion. Now, what I'm hoping is by the time we get to tonight, you will feel the weight of what a life behind these songs means to God. And then tomorrow we'll think about Jesus as the ultimate epitome, that living sacrifice offered as a life of worship for him.

46. 21:43

    C.S. Lewis put it this way. Now, said nothing. The psalmists, in telling everyone to praise God, are doing what all people do when they speak about what they care about. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy, because the praise not merely expresses, but completes the enjoyment. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are.

47. 22:17

    The delight is incomplete until it is expressed. I'll talk a little bit more about that marriage, and for those married, once it's in the next class in the beginning, but this is a little hinted towards what we'll talk about with love languages. But fundamentally, is for you the idea of knowing all about God, taking all that information about God, knowing all about God, that delight that you have, when you express it, shallot, when you express it, you find so much pleasure, and it's pleasure that can conquer all of our fleshly desires.

48. 22:56

    We get worship rescues us to greater desires. Worship rescues us to greater desires. Now, Revelation, to tell you how I kind of came to this topic in the first place, when I was coming to the end of a year, I came to this point when I get to the end, it gets to Revelation 22, and you have this moment where the angel, John falls, they get this vision, John falls down, and he falls down before the angel, and what does the angel say?

49. 23:33

    What does the angel say? John falls down and worships the angel that's giving him this vision, and what does the angel say? Don't worship me. All right, Jake, you are the first person to get a lolly bag of prize. Well done, Jake. Awesome. Now you know how that works. All right, so he says, don't do that.

50. 23:51

    Don't do that. Now, Jake, for a second one, I'm just kidding. What does he say? He says, don't do that. Then what does he say? I'm worried you can't read this one. Worship God is... Yeah, I was going to say, I'll give you a hint. He says, worship God. And this actually happens twice in the book.

51. 24:09

    So let's turn to Revelation 19 and look at verse 10. And it caught me thinking, if this is one of the last lessons, right? You can read Revelation prophetically, and some of you in here are experts at that, and you can also read Revelation devotionally. And when you read it devotionally for moral and ethical and exhortational value, this is one of the last exhortations in the Bible, is to worship God.

52. 24:39

    So once in chapter 19 and verse 10, Then I fell down at his feet to worship him. It's the angel. And he said to me, you must not do that. I am your fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold the testimony of Jesus. Worship God. And then again in chapter 22, verses 1 to 4.

53. 25:08

    Sorry, let's get 1 to 4. Go to it again tonight. 1 to 4 is just to illustrate that it's God and the land here. But look at verses 8 and 9. I, John, am the one who heard and saw all these things. And when I heard about them, I saw them. I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed them to me.

54. 25:27

    But he said, you must not do that. I am your fellow servant with you and your brothers the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God. Now I find that quite interesting because if I was to say, I'm going to put up a diagram here. If I was to say there's God, the Lord Jesus Christ, angels, and us, I would put it like this and I would put myself all the way over here.

55. 26:00

    The angel draws it like this. God and Jesus unto God and to the Lamb forever and ever. And he puts himself with us. He says, I'm your fellow servant. I'm worshiping God. You've got to worship God. He is everything. He is the primary. He is the maximal being. I'm one of you. Now, is that right?

56. 26:22

    Do you feel like a fellow servant with the angelic host that you see in Revelation? Well, you might not feel that way. But when you look at what they do in Revelation, that is the bullseye of our lives in worship. That is the target of what we are supposed to do. Now, in Revelation, you know God has competition for worship, you know, in Revelation.

57. 26:48

    And that is stylized in Revelation as the beast. So if you look at chapter 4, we'll probably skip these for time, but here's a few verses that all talk about worshiping the beast. Who is like the beast? Nobody all is providing power to the beast. These are all things that we're supposed to be doing to God.

58. 27:07

    So when you compare what the saints are supposed to be doing to God, you have these two figureheads that are demanding to be worshipped. And it's one of them, holiness to the Lord across their foreheads, and the other, surrender to the beast. This is the ultimate choice, young people, that you have, that I have.

59. 27:33

    It actually doesn't matter what age you are, who you are, or if you're the angels. We have to submit to God. But you're going to worship something. You're going to ascribe to something, power and honor and glory, that's going to depend and demand things of your life. And that's because we are wired that way.

60. 27:50

    God made us that way. Ecclesiastes says that he set eternity in the hearts of man, so that we would just seek after him, that we would try to find him. And Paul kind of echoes that when he's talking, to the idol worshipers in Athens, he's saying, God's not far from every one of us.

61. 28:08

    I know you want that. You've got all these gods. Those were the beast system. And then we have the true and living God. And one of the places where I feel like, so this is Revelation. This is all kind of like the ultimate story. This is the checkmate. This is where everything is going.

62. 28:26

    But you go right back to Paul. When he's preaching to the Romans, he talks about it like this. Turn to Romans chapter 1, verses 20 to 25. Now, we generally go here to talk about apologetics and apologetic value. And I love that. I genuinely do. For those of you who don't know me well, or for those of you who probably do know me well, I'm an engineer.

63. 28:51

    And my brain in four colors, I'm a green quadrant. I'm a thinky things person. But I express like a blue. So I'm like a blue in like greens clothing. Something like that. Anyway. Or maybe I'm like an aqua or something like that. Something like blend. But anyway. But the thinky things for me really helps me.

64. 29:10

    And if I didn't do apologetics, I don't think I would have got through to me with the kind of conviction and commitment that I had. So I'm not saying apologetic value is not there. But that's not, I don't think, Paul's point. Romans 1, verses 20 to 25. Now here is the interesting thing.

65. 29:45

    He says, Although they knew God, or maybe they knew about God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. And because of that, like David in his moment of weakness, they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.

66. 30:14

    Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men and birds and animals and creeping plants. Therefore, God gave them up to the lusts of their hearts, to the impurity of dishonoring their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth of God for a life and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator.

67. 30:58

    who is blessed forever. Amen. You gotta love Paul. Did you see what happened there? He was shallant. He just, in thinking about the God that he was talking about, he bursts into praise. My daughter, who's 11, is like, Dad, you can't just like, burst out into song. I'm like, hold that water. Like, you know when you feel, when you're just like, you just, when you gotta sing, you can't help it.

68. 31:30

    And, and that's what happens here. Paul is just like, who is blessed forever. Amen. Like, he just, this little tiny worship prayer. He's right in the middle of apologetics and he bursts into worship. Like, that is just incredible to me. But, we can absolutely be caught in this exact same thing. Are you a person that exchanges the truth of God for a lie and worships the creator, the created, rather than the creator?

69. 32:01

    Many people don't realize this, but, when you look at that word where it says, the creature, a better translation for that is the created. So, it's like taking God, who is the ultimate creator, and worshiping the thing that he created. It obviously doesn't make sense logically, but we do it. We ascribe glory to, to things.

70. 32:26

    Now, look, in his context, obviously, he's, he's talking about, you know, birds and creatures, he's talking about idols, but exchange them for ours. What about our idols today? Are we exchanging the glory of the immortal God for, for stupid things like Tei-Tei is like worthy of like your time and your money and your idle thought, Dave Matthews, or for me, maybe, maybe it's work for you, people who are working people, or maybe it's, maybe it's some hobby that you have, or some, just something that's not God, that somehow is elevated into the position that only God should obtain, only God should hold that estate, and we put other things there.

71. 33:08

    That's idolatry today. I don't have to have a little, like, image. It's evident. I can. Look at my bank statement. Look at my browser history. Look at my calendar. Where do I spend my time? Where do I spend my money? What do I seek out? What am I looking for? Those are things that you worship.

72. 33:34

    And God's worship is exclusive. Let me ask you this question. We may even, this might be slightly scary for some of us to think about. You may even worship being a Christabelthi.

73. 34:01

    Let me tease that out. The experience, the camps, the friendships, the music, all of the awesome experience that we have, here's the test. Why do you want to be in the kingdom?

74. 34:25

    Maybe it's, you know, some of the things that you guys had on your list there earlier. Why do you want to be in the kingdom? Immortality. If you're my kid, bride, bride, lions, you know, whatever. I still want to do that.

75. 34:40

    Why do you want to be there? Well, what if I told you that you could have the kingdom, immortality, all of this, all of the things that you love about this, and God and the Lord Jesus were not going to be there.

76. 35:03

    Yet all the things, no God, no Jesus. just the servants. You still want to be in the kingdom? You see, God is the ultimate object of concern. Not this, not our songs, not our service, not our Bible study, not Novi. It's God. He is the ultimate object of concern. And sometimes, I think, like all religions, we can flip that on its head.

77. 35:38

    We can start to serve the actual serving itself. And that's what happened to Israel. They started, they started worshiping the actual system of worship. Anyone that was at, anyone that was at the School of the Prophets in 2020 when we, when we were in COVID and locked down in Melbourne, anybody, anybody was at that, that School of the Prophets 2020?

78. 36:02

    2020? I'm filming the age of this group here. Anyway, well, we talked about the one who built his house on a rock and sand. And the lesson of that was the person who dug deep to find the Lord Jesus and find God who is the foundation of everything, the Bible is a tool.

79. 36:24

    This camp is a tool. It's a mechanism. It's a means to interact with God. It's not an end in and of itself. And I think sometimes we need to make sure, as Tom rightly said last night, why are we here? Are we here for the experience or are we here to experience God?

80. 36:46

    Are we here for the experience or are we here to experience God? Because, young people, God is the gospel. He is. He is the good news. God and everything that He is is the reason why this matters. And we love Him and we give Him our praise and our worship. And not only that, He demands it to be that way because He knows if it's not that way, He will be allowing us to have less than His great desire for our hearts.

81. 37:23

    One writer put it this way, Worship is an end in itself. We do not eat the feast of worship as a means to anything else. Happiness in God, as in the heart of worship, is the end of all of our seeking. Nothing beyond it can be sought as a higher goal. True worship cannot be performed as a means to some other experience.

82. 37:51

    All genuine emotion is an end in itself. And God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. Because some of you, maybe you're not committed. Maybe some people here are not committed. Maybe you have this question. Maybe you're like, what is up with this God? Like, how can you love a God or anyone who is like always after His own glory?

83. 38:15

    Like, who would love such a self-centered, glory-craving God? That might be a question that you have. Or maybe you know someone that has that question. You know, like, does God have, like, NPD? Is God like a narcissist? Like, we hate this behavior when we see it in people. So, what's up with that?

84. 38:35

    Do we, do we like this extreme, grandiose view of one's, like, self? Like, and that's probably what some people are going to say to you at school or at work or at university. They're going to tell you, like, what's up with this self-centered God? It's, like, all about Himself. Well, Lewis went on to put it this way.

85. 38:56

    God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is not the act of a needy ego, but the act of infinite giving. The reason God seeks our praise is not because He won't be fully God until He gets it, but that we won't be fully happy until we give it. This is not arrogance.

86. 39:18

    This is grace. This is not egomania. This is love. And as He's desiring to create in us His image, it's no wonder because we become like the things that we worship. Psalm 115, first of all, it starts off and says, not to us, not to us, but to your name be the glory because of your love and your faithfulness.

87. 39:46

    This amazing start. But He goes on to talk about idols and He says this, those who make them, they have mouths but they cannot see, ears but they cannot hear, noses but they cannot smell. Those who make them become like them and so do all who trust in them. We become like what we worship because we elevate it to the supreme position in our life and then we become like it because we worship it.

88. 40:13

    And so when we become, when we are worshiping things that are not God, you're going to start to see your behavior change. You're going to start to see your character change and you're going to start to look more like the beast than you look like God. Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

89. 40:30

    Bow down before Him, His glories proclaim. Gold of obedience, incense of lowliness, truth in its beauty, love in its tenderness. these are the offerings that He lay on His shrine. And that is what David forgot. David lost the beauty and because he lost the beauty, he lost the holiness. And that is exactly the moral imperative Paul gives to young people.

90. 41:06

    He says, people sin and do things with their bodies that dishonor God like the world who knows not God. And so therefore, knowing God, knowing God becomes the way that we find holiness. Unfortunately, the woman of Samaria forgot that. The woman of Samaria forgot that. And so, she got all concerned about where do we worship?

91. 41:42

    And she got into a debate with the Savior of the world over whether or not you should worship in Jerusalem or in the mountain of Samaria. And I literally have been there. So I took this picture standing right there in Shechem looking at Mount Evil, looking at Mount Gerizim. And that is the place of choice.

92. 42:03

    It's the place of decision. And she had to make a choice. She was living an adulterous life. She was too concerned about the mechanics of religion. and the Lord Jesus gave her a little lesson about worship and that's what we're going to finish. So turn over to John chapter 4 and we'll just make a few reflections on the moment of Samaria.

93. 42:25

    here. So you know the story leading up to this section in verse 16. Jesus calls her out on the same thing that David was struggling with. Theoretically, she should have known, she could have known. The Samaritans and the Jews both were very similar. We could do a history lesson on that another time.

94. 42:59

    But they were in a spiritual division. And Jesus comes and he solves it for her. Look at verse 19. The woman said, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain. But you say in Jerusalem is where people ought to worship. Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when, and that undoes all the religion, neither on this mountain or in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.

95. 43:30

    You worship what you don't know. And that's why your life looks like that. Because you worship what you don't know. We worship what we know. For salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming. That's a huge transition. But, not Jews or Samaritans, but the hour is coming when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

96. 43:58

    For the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is a spirit. And those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. And of course she gets into another argument about him. And eventually he reveals himself to her by again unpacking her life. Don't wait until Christ has to unpack your life and undo your poor decisions for him to come into an experience with you.

97. 44:23

    Let's take his calling now. Now, what does he mean by spirit and truth? I've just done this little comparison and I think it's a great place for us to end this session. What does it mean therefore with everything that we said God is demanding our worship and we need to do it in spirit and in truth.

98. 44:41

    Well, to me one of the best ways in Bible study when you don't understand what something is look for another place where those similar things are expressed and see if there's some synodids and we have a few. The first one, Paul, when he's talking about worship in a communal context, he says this, what am I to do?

99. 44:58

    I will pray with my spirit but I will pray with my mind also. I will sing praise with my spirit but I will sing with my mind also. Heart and mind together. How I feel and how I think not trading one for the other. These things both help each other. Again, in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, he talks about this sincerity and truth and John puts it this way, little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

100. 45:32

     So worship in spirit and in truth, it's got to be a life song. It's both your deeds and what you believe to be true. It's your genuineness and your sincerity and in truth. It's your mind and your spirit working together because young people, when we honestly face up to the greatness and majesty of God, we will find ourselves face down in worship because God will then have been the object of our ultimate concern.

101. 46:30

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