COMMAND #4: WORSHIP IN SPIRIT AND TRUTH
John 4:23-24 ESV But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. (24) God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."
Worship is a great word but greatly misunderstood and misused. In fact it is one of the spiritual disciplines in which we deceive ourselves and rob God of. We talked a little bit about what worship IS NOT.
1. WORSHIP IS NOT A PLACE:
2. WORSHIP IS NOT A MUSIC TEAM OR MUSIC SONG:
I have taught this for years and for the most part this teaching falls on deaf ears. WHY? Because the enemy is good at getting the church to either substitute God's perfect plan, desires, and Word for our life OR the enemy gets the church to add leaven to God's Word. When leaven, which can be sin or the traditions of man, are added to the Word then it makes the Word powerless in our lives.
Mark 7:5-9 ESV And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, "Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?" (6) And he said to them, "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, "'This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; (7) in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.' (8) You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men." (9) And he said to them, "You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!
Mark 7:13 ESV thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do."
Matthew 16:6 ESV Jesus said to them, "Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees."
Matthew 16:11-12 ESV How is it that you fail to understand that I did not speak about bread? Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." (12) Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Luke 12:1 ESV In the meantime, when so many thousands of the people had gathered together that they were trampling one another, he began to say to his disciples first, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
Galatians 5:9 ESV A little leaven leavens the whole lump.
That's right. This will be continued in part 7 tomorrow, as we see what true worship is. Line upon line and precept upon precept.