What Do You Worship?
Everybody on the planet worships one thing. From essentially the most spiritual to essentially the most secular, all folks worth one thing excessive sufficient to construct their lives round it. It could be God, or it might be cash. However what makes it worship is the driving energy of some cherished treasure that shapes our feelings and can and thought and conduct. Into this common expertise of worship Jesus commanded, “Worship [God] in spirit and fact” (John 4:24). In different phrases, deliver your expertise of worship into conformity with what’s true about God, and let your spirit be authentically woke up and moved by that fact.
The Hour Is Coming and Is Now Right here
When he stated this, he was speaking to a Samaritan girl close to her hometown. She had challenged him in regards to the distinction between locations the place Samaritans and Jews worship. She stated, “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, however you say that in Jerusalem is the place the place folks should worship” (John 4:20). Jesus responded by turning her consideration away from geography to one thing astonishing that was taking place in her very presence. He stated, “Girl, imagine me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. . . . The hour is coming, and is now right here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and fact” (John 4:21, 23). This can be a radical assertion—to say that the hour is now right here when worship in Jerusalem would stop! What did he imply?
Jesus made the breathtaking declare to be the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. The lady stated to him, “I do know that Messiah is coming (he who is named Christ). When he comes, he’ll inform us all issues.” Jesus responded, “I who converse to you am he” (John 4:25–26). So when Jesus says that the time “is now right here” once we will now not worship in Jerusalem, he meant that the dominion of the Messiah has dawned and there may be going to be a radical break in the best way folks worship.
On this repackaged version of What Jesus Calls for from the World, John Piper walks by means of Jesus’s instructions, explaining their context and which means to assist readers perceive Christ’s imaginative and prescient of the Christian life and what he nonetheless requires right now.
“Destroy This Temple, and in Three Days I Will Increase It Up”
The reason being that Jesus supposed to take the place of the temple himself. In different phrases, the “place” the place worship would occur—the “place” the place folks would meet God any longer—can be Jesus, not the temple in Jerusalem. He communicated this in a number of methods. For instance, he stood within the temple and stated, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I’ll elevate it up” (John 2:19). The folks have been astonished and stated, “It has taken forty-six years to construct this temple, and can you elevate it up in three days?” However the Gospel author defined, “He was talking in regards to the temple of his physique” (John 2:21). In different phrases, Jesus meant that when he was raised from the lifeless, he can be the brand new “temple”—the brand new assembly place with God.
Jesus stated one thing nearly as startling when he was criticized for letting his disciples choose grain and eat it on the Sabbath. Jesus’s response to this criticism was to level out that David, the king of Israel, had fed his band of males with the bread of God’s home that was solely designed for the monks to eat. He made the reference to himself and his band of males by saying, “I let you know, one thing better than the temple is right here” (Matt. 12:6). In different phrases, “The Messiah, the son of David, is right here, and he himself goes to take the place of the temple.”
Not in This Mountain or in Jerusalem, however in Spirit and in Fact
So when Jesus stated to the Samaritan girl, “The hour is coming, and is now right here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and fact,” he meant that an entire new strategy to God in worship had include the approaching of the Messiah himself. Now not would geography be related: “Neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.” As an alternative, what takes the place of exterior geographic issues are inner non secular issues: “Those that worship him should worship in spirit and fact.” The exterior locations of Samaria and Jerusalem are changed with the non secular realities of “spirit and fact.” What issues now will not be the place you worship however whether or not you worship God in accordance with the reality and whether or not your spirit is authentically woke up and moved by that fact.
All Worship Ought to Be by means of Jesus and of Jesus
The important thing new fact is that worship now occurs by means of Jesus. He’s the temple the place we encounter God. That is true first as a result of he poured out his blood “for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28) and “gave his life as a ransom for a lot of” (Mark 10:45) and opened the best way by means of his personal crucified and risen physique for us to be reconciled with God (John 3:16, 36). There isn’t any manner that sinners may supply acceptable worship to God with out having Jesus’s blood as a go-between with God. It’s true that worship now occurs by means of Jesus as a result of he himself is God. He isn’t merely the mediator of worship between us and the Father; he’s additionally the one to be worshiped. He made this declare not directly and straight. He forgave sins, which solely God can do (Mark 2:5–11). He accepted worship from his disciples (Matt. 14:33; 28:9). He claimed everlasting preexistence with God: “Really, actually, I say to you, earlier than Abraham was, I’m” (John 8:58). He stated he was one with the Father: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). So all ought to “honor the Son, simply as they honor the Father” (John 5:23). Subsequently, all worship “in fact” will probably be worship of Jesus and thru Jesus. For “whoever doesn’t honor the Son doesn’t honor the Father who despatched him” (John 5:23).
Worship in Spirit
What in regards to the phrase “in spirit”? “The hour is coming, and is now right here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit” (John 4:23). Some interpreters take this to confer with God’s Holy Spirit. I’ve taken it to confer with our spirit. However in all probability these two interpretations usually are not far aside in Jesus’s thoughts. In John 3:6 Jesus connects God’s Spirit and our spirit in a outstanding manner. He says, “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” In different phrases, till the Holy Spirit quickens our spirit with the start of latest life, our spirit is so lifeless and unresponsive, it doesn’t even qualify as spirit. Solely that which is born of the Spirit is (a residing) spirit. So when Jesus says that true worshipers worship the Father “in spirit,” he signifies that true worship comes solely from spirits made alive and delicate by the quickening of the Spirit of God.1
The essence of worship lies in our thoughts’s true imaginative and prescient of God and our spirit’s genuine affections for God.
This “spirit” is important in worship. In any other case worship is lifeless. Or to make use of Jesus’s phrase, it’s “in useless.” “This folks honors me with their lips, however their coronary heart is way from me; in useless do they worship me” (Matt. 15:8–9). A coronary heart (and spirit) alive and engaged with God is important. Jesus is contrasting genuine worship in spirit and fact with exterior worship that focuses on Samaria and Jerusalem. What makes it genuine will not be solely that the worshiping thoughts grasps the reality of Jesus, but additionally that the worshiping spirit experiences awakening and is moved by the reality that the thoughts is aware of. An individual who has no affections for God woke up by the reality of Jesus will not be worshiping “in spirit and fact.”2 And an individual with nice affections constructed on false views of God will not be worshiping “in spirit and fact.” Jesus instructions each: worship in spirit and in fact.
All of Life Is Worship
One implication of this imaginative and prescient of worship is that it applies to all of life in addition to to companies of company worship. The essence of worship lies in our thoughts’s true imaginative and prescient of God and our spirit’s genuine affections for God. Because of this at any time when we show the value of God by phrases or actions that circulation from a spirit that treasures him as he actually is, we’re worshiping in spirit and in fact. We could also be at work or at dwelling or at church. It doesn’t matter. What issues is that we see the glory of God in Jesus (fact), and we treasure him above all else (spirit), after which we overflow by treating others with self-sacrificing love for his or her good. Few issues show the fantastic thing about God extra. For followers of Jesus, subsequently, all of life must be this sort of worship.
That is powerfully illustrated by the connection Jesus makes between worshiping God and serving God. When Devil tempted Jesus to worship him, Jesus responded, “Be gone, Devil! For it’s written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him solely shall you serve’” (Matt. 4:10). Serving was typically hooked up to worshiping as an outward expression of non secular ministry within the temple. However now the temple is Jesus. How is the “service” of worship reworked?
You Can’t Serve God and Cash
We get a shocking glimpse of what service3 to God means for Jesus in Matthew 6:24. He stated, “Nobody can serve two masters, for both he’ll hate the one and love the opposite, or he will probably be dedicated to the one and despise the opposite. You can’t serve God and cash.” The shocking factor right here is that serving God is in comparison with serving cash. However how do you serve cash? Not by serving to cash or assembly cash’s wants. You serve cash by treasuring it a lot that you just form your complete life to profit from what cash can do for you.
So it’s with God in the best way Jesus sees the service of worship. We don’t assist God or meet God’s wants (“The Son of Man got here to not be served,” Mark 10:45). Quite we serve God by treasuring him a lot that we form our complete life in order to profit from what he can do for us. And, not like cash, what God can do for us above all different treasures is be for us the whole lot we now have ever longed for.
The Infinite Price of God in Jesus
Subsequently, all of life is service to God. That’s, all of life is formed by our ardour to maximise our expertise of the supreme price of God in Jesus. So we finish the place we started. All of the world worships one thing. From essentially the most spiritual to essentially the most secular, all folks worth one thing excessive sufficient to construct their lives round it—even when unconsciously. Jesus instructions that each individual on the planet construct his life across the infinite price of God in Jesus. Take into account what you’re worshiping. Then ask Jesus to open your eyes to the fact of God’s supreme price and to awaken your spirit to treasure him above all.
Notes:
- This paragraph is customized from John Piper, Wanting God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, revised and expanded version (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 2003), 82.
- See chapter 3, “Worship: The Feast of Christian Hedonism” in Wanting God for a fuller protection of this assertion and the way it suits with the truth that our emotions are unstable, generally excessive and generally low.
- The phrase for “serve” in Matthew 6:24 (δουλεύω) will not be the identical because the phrase for “serve” in Matthew 4:10 (λατρεύω). The latter normally refers back to the spiritual exercise within the temple. The previous normally refers to what a slave does for a grasp. My level is that it’s exactly the novelty of Jesus’s state of affairs that makes plain how even the “slave” sort of service is worship in a brand new manner.
This text is customized from All That Jesus Commanded: The Christian Life according to the Gospels by John Piper.
