Worship In Songland - Part 3

Worship in Songland: Worship in Spirit and Truth

Pastor Cole Parleir

Main Scripture

John 4:1-42

“Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock." Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water." Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here." The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true." The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on 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. 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. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things." Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he." Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you seek?" or, "Why are you talking with her?" So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, "Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?" They went out of the town and were coming to him. Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, "Rabbi, eat." But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." So the disciples said to one another, "Has anyone brought him something to eat?" Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, 'There are yet four months, then comes the harvest'? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, 'One sows and another reaps.' I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor." Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me all that I ever did." So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world."”

‭‭John‬ ‭4:1-42‬ ‭ESV‬‬

The Point

Those who profess to worship God MUST do so in Spirit and in truth, coming into the light of Christ to do so. These are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks.

1) God is spirit, so we must worship in spirit

a) What is not worshipping in spirit?

i) Lip service and ministry won't cut it

(1) “"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'”- ‭‭Matthew‬ ‭7:21-23‬ ‭ESV‬‬

ii) Going to the right place at the right time won’t cut it

(1) “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.”- ‭‭John‬ ‭4:20-21‬ ‭ESV‬‬

iii) Circumcision, a Jesus tattoo, or a bumper sticker won’t cut it

(1) “Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law. For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.”- ‭‭Romans‬ ‭2:27-29‬ ‭ESV‬‬

iv) Good deeds won’t cut it

(1) “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”- ‭‭Romans‬ ‭3:20‬ ‭ESV‬‬

v) Money won’t cut it

(1) “"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.”- ‭‭Matthew‬ ‭23:23‬ ‭ESV‬‬

vi) Any ole Sacrifice/gift

(1) “"What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. "When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations— I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.”- ‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭1:11-13‬ ‭ESV‬‬

b) What is worshipping in Spirit?

i) The interior life, the “secret life” away from man’s approval

(1) Clean hands and Pure heart

(a) “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Selah”- ‭‭Psalms‬ ‭24:3-6‬ ‭ESV‬‬

(2) Our bodies as a living sacrifice

(a) “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”- ‭‭Romans‬ ‭12:1‬ ‭ESV‬‬

2) God is truth, so we must worship in truth as revealed through creation, the prophets of the Old Testament, and perfectly in the incarnation of His one and only Son Jesus the Christ.

a) The Samaritan woman was wrong in her understanding of the OT scriptures, wrong about God’s choosing of the Jewish nation to bring forth His Word, His prophets, and all this would lead her to ultimately missing the Messiah (the savior).

i) Because God Loves this woman Jesus had to correct her saying that Salvation comes from the Jews or she would not have recognized him as the savior.

3) God is light, so we must worship in the light

a) 1 John 1:5-10 ESV

i) “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” - 1 John‬ ‭1:5-10‬ ‭ESV‬‬

b) Darkness is not a thing, it’s the absence of a thing. It’s the absence of light. Death is not a thing, it’s the absence of life.

c) Jesus brought the Samaritan woman into the light so she could live and worship in Spirit and in truth

i) How did he do this?

(1) His presence just being with her. “The ministry of presence”.

(a) Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

(b) This in itself (Jesus being present) drove out shame because he was willing to associate with her until she was ready to surrender to the light of the truth of who He is and what that means for her as a sinner, as a Samaritan, and becoming a saint.

(2) His prophetic word of knowledge revealing her past and her present so that she can come into Jesus’ future of worship for her

(a) Jesus reveals the secrets of her heart disclosing her past and present so she will know that Father God sees her. She can ‘truthfully’ worship Him as the Son of God declaring that God is among them. This is Jesus ministering in the power of the Holy Spirit as described by the Apostle Paul in 1 Cor 14:24-25 ESV

(i) “But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you.” 1 Corinthians‬ ‭14:24-25‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Quotes

“Missions exists because worship doesn’t” - John Piper

“Don’t forget in the dark what God has shown you in the light”- Dan Staldorf

Application

Are you worshipping the Father in Spirit and truth? Do you have His Spirit in you guiding you into all truth? If not, or you’re not sure, prayer this prayer that King David prayed:

“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭139:23-24‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Now, tell your Heavenly Father you’re tired of being in spiritual darkness stumbling through life and that you want to be with Him in the light. Lay your old sinful and deceitful heart open before Him confessing you’ve been in the dark and that you now believe He sent His one and only son Jesus into the world to be the light of the world. Tell him you accept Jesus’ perfect life and sacrificial death on the cross in exchange for your sinful life and that God the Father raised Him from the dead. Tell Him you accept Jesus as Lord of your life moving forward. If you do, He promises to give you a new clean heart and the gift of the Holy Spirit TODAY to live inside of you and help you lead a new life worshipping Him in Spirit and truth.

More scriptures to meditate on

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭139:11-12‬ ‭ESV‬‬
“If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night," even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.”

https://www.bible.com/59/psa.139.11-12.esv

‭John‬ ‭8:12‬ ‭ESV‬‬
“Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."”

https://www.bible.com/59/jhn.8.12.esv

‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭4:3-6‬ ‭ESV‬‬
“And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

https://www.bible.com/59/2co.4.3-6.esv

Second City Church - Worship In Songland - Pastor Cole Parleir 2019

Worship In Songland - Part 2

Worship in Songland: Know the the One for Whom You Write

• Praise that Pleases the Lord

• Worship that Pleases the Lord

• Turning to the Lord

“I can safely say, on the authority of all that is revealed in the Word of God, that any man or woman on this earth who is bored and turned off by worship is not ready for heaven.” - A.W. Tozer

We Worship With:

• The Head

• The Heart

• The Hands

In the Studio - Why it's important what we do in praise and worship

Of David

Psalm 22:3-5
Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried and were rescued; in you they trusted and were not put to shame.

"It is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men." - C.S. Lewis

The Hands (You’re Body in Worship)

"Our entire being is fashioned as an instrument of praise. Just as a master violin

maker designs an instrument to produce maximum aesthetic results, so God

tailor-made our bodies, souls and spirits to work together in consonance to produce

pleasing expressions of praise and worship. When we use body language to express

praise, that which is internal becomes visible."

"A Heart For Worship" by Lamar Boschman

Praise that pleases the Lord

• Clapping

• Shouting for Joy

• Singing

• Playing Instruments

“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.” —Victor Hugo

• Dancing

CELEBRATION!!!

This is praise.

Of the Sons of Korah

Psalm 47:1-9
Clap your hands, all peoples! Shout to God with loud songs of joy! For the Lord, the Most High, is to be feared, a great king over all the earth. He subdued peoples under us, and nations under our feet. He chose our heritage for us, the pride of Jacob whom he loves. Selah God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. Sing praises to God, sing praises! Sing praises to our King, sing praises! For God is the King of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm! God reigns over the nations; God sits on his holy throne. The princes of the peoples gather as the people of the God of Abraham. For the shields of the earth belong to God; he is highly exalted!

Of David

Psalm 30:1-12
I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up and have not let my foes rejoice over me. O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me. O Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol; you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit. Sing praises to the Lord, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name. For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. As for me, I said in my prosperity, “I shall never be moved.” By your favor, O Lord, you made my mountain stand strong; you hid your face; I was dismayed. To you, O Lord, I cry, and to the Lord I plead for mercy: “What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness? Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me! O Lord , be my helper!” You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!

Worship that Pleases the Lord

• Bowing

"The first element in worship is adoration. The Hebrews expressed this by their posture

and not alone by their word. For they prostrated themselves before God. “O come, let

us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.” They did not come

with an easy familiarity into the presence of God, but were aware of his greatness and

majesty, and came with a sense of privilege to His house."

"Worship in Ancient Israel" p. 257

H.H. Rowley

• Kneeling

• Prostrating

“At the very least, they can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers; for they constantly forget, what you must always remember, that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls. It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds; in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.” - Screwtape speaking to Wormwood in C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters

• Humbling Ourselves

• Lifting Hands in Surrender

Holy of Holies before the awesomess and Majesty of God

I’m more focused on the glory (kabod) of God than who or what’s going on around me.

Intimacy (people act like if they don’t post something on Instagram, the life event isn’t validated or didn’t happen. This destroys the secret life and intimacy with Jesus and people that you love. Turn these moments instead to worship of God to testify to his life of blessing and deliverance Matthew 6; Revelation 12)

Getting off the phone - destroys intimacy with spouse, children, world around you. We are more irritable

• Exchange

• Crying out to God

“If this fails, you must fall back on a subtler misdirection of his intention. Whenever they are attending to the Enemy Himself we are defeated, but there are ways of preventing them from doing so. The simplest is to turn their gaze away from Him towards themselves. Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own wills. When they meant to ask Him for charity, let them, instead, start trying to manufacture charitable feelings for themselves and not notice that this is what they are doing. When they meant to pray for courage, let them really be trying to feel brave. When they say they are praying for forgiveness, let them be trying to feel forgiven. Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling; and never let them suspect how much success or failure of that kind depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired, at the moment.” - Screwtape speaking to Wormwood in C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters

Of David

Psalm 145:14-21
The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works. The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desire of those who fear him; he also hears their cry and saves them. The Lord preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord, and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever.

Turning to the Lord

“The purpose of this Christian society called “the church” is first to glorify God by our worship. We do not go to church just to hear a sermon. We go to church to worship God.” —Billy Graham

It’s not a matter of culture, it’s a matter of freedom

2 Corinthians 3:15-18
Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

The cross of Jesus and his Resurrection Give us access to this freedom. Repent and believe the good news for the forgiveness of your sins today!

Second City Church - Worship In Songland - Pastor Rollan Fisher 2019

Worship In Songland - Part 1

Worship in Songland: The Story Behind the Song

• Christ Our Song

• Before the Song

Before the Song

We all have a story. We don’t have a song until we realize who Jesus is and from that which he has actually rescued us.

Isaiah 42:10-17
Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise from the end of the earth, you who go down to the sea, and all that fills it, the coastlands and their inhabitants. Let the desert and its cities lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar inhabits; let the habitants of Sela sing for joy, let them shout from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory to the Lord, and declare his praise in the coastlands. The Lord goes out like a mighty man, like a man of war he stirs up his zeal; he cries out, he shouts aloud, he shows himself mighty against his foes. For a long time I have held my peace; I have kept still and restrained myself; now I will cry out like a woman in labor; I will gasp and pant. I will lay waste mountains and hills, and dry up all their vegetation; I will turn the rivers into islands, and dry up the pools. And I will lead the blind in a way that they do not know, in paths that they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I do, and I do not forsake them. They are turned back and utterly put to shame, who trust in carved idols, who say to metal images, “You are our gods.”

Today, people’s convictions are more emotional than intellectual, more populist than spiritual or submitted to God.

“To be right with God has often meant to be in trouble with men.” - A.W. Tozer

The attempt to normalize sin can deaden our convictions in regards to God’s character and the inner holiness that should be evoked in a life of worship to God (think about the commercials you watch).

Isaiah 5:20-23
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight! Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right!

The images being presented by our culture try to strip the understanding of our salvation, and thus the source of our joy.

“About a century ago, the Soviet formalist filmmaker Lev Kuleshov conducted a series of experiments with filmic montage. In the most famous one, he edited a short film consisting of short clips of various subjects: an actor’s expressionless face, a bowl of soup, a woman on a couch, a girl in a coffin. The same clips edited into different sequences produced different interpretive results in the viewer. The deadpan face of the actor appeared to take on different emotions depending on which image preceded or followed it—he appeared dolorous, for example, when seeming to “look at” the dead girl in the coffin. This effect of filmic editing has been called the Kuleshov effect, and it’s had an enormous influence on filmmakers including Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Francis Ford Coppola. It also forms the backbone of reality television, in which meaning is almost entirely produced in the editing room.

Kuleshov’s disciple Sergei Eisenstein would eventually call editing, and montage in particular, the key formal property of cinema (the famous Odessa-steps sequence in his 1925 film Battleship Potemkin is the canonical example). These traits allow film to link together seemingly unrelated images, relying on the viewer’s brain to make connections that aren’t present in the source material, let alone the cinematic composition.”

From: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/viral-clash-students-and-native-americans-explained/580906/?fbclid=IwAR0Y567YTbxPFLfY_0x8UOtca2okOPt8Xncq5FJ0Nh81P89PCpyCW7UEzLs

We are living in a culture where backsliding is affirmed by the majority, and lukewarm living will not evoke a second glance. What people need is to be born again.

“Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.” - Rick Warren

Christ, Our Song

You sing about the things that make you come alive.

When we realize who Jesus is and the destruction that he saved us from on the cross, He becomes our joyous, daily song of eternal salvation.

*Encourage our songwriters to write

Psalm 92:1-15
It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night, to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre. For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy. How great are your works, O Lord! Your thoughts are very deep! The stupid man cannot know; the fool cannot understand this: that though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever; but you, O Lord, are on high forever. For behold, your enemies, O Lord, for behold, your enemies shall perish; all evildoers shall be scattered. But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox; you have poured over me fresh oil. My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies; my ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants. The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green, to declare that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.

Christ is our righteousness.

“You stand before God as if you were Christ, because Christ stood before God as if he were you.” - Charles Spurgeon

Second City Church - Worship In Songland - Pastor Rollan Fisher 2019