welcome to this episode of real Christianity my name is Dale Partridge reach week I offer 15 to 20-minute answers to tough theological and pastoral question this is 100% listener support audio Ministry of relearn. Org and for those who don't know our mission a tree learn.org is to educate and equip ordinary Christians to plant biblical confessional and missional house churches for more information just visit relearn. Org forward slash house
 when we think of worship our minds typically generate images of hands in the air singing Christian songs or people maybe if you're thinking about where to put another perspective from another religion may be bowing down worshipping a particular object but what is worship according to the Bible and how are we called it to offer it to God where to be discussing this and more Bubba for begin I want to make just too quick announcement the first is a few weeks ago I released a written version of my testimony and I titled it how God saved freed and reformed Dale Partridge and that has shown to be a very helpful piece an article for many of you who followed our ministry and followed me for some time if we actually had over 10,000 people read it in the first few days so
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 they're as well alright so today's question is from Tabitha in Oakland California and she asks Pastor Dale I was reading John 4 and verse 24 jumped off the page in this verse that Jesus says God is spirit and those who worship Him must Worship in spirit and Truth my understanding of worship is singing songs to God but his worship deeper than this is worship going by beyond my emotion does worship go beyond my physical actions I guess what I'm really looking to understand is what is biblical worship
 hey Tabitha this is a great question in fact I would say and I expected many listeners have had similar questions about this passage of scripture and about this topic so let me quickly addressed the music portion of this question and then we'll dive into the deeper theological territory behind worship we live in an era of the church where the Grandeur of worship has been reduced and confined to a small physical action as what you talk about which we all know in our generation is singing songs but they're not just songs they're highly emotional songs about Jesus now I use the words highly emotional really as a way to contrast the cost sorry contrast against being highly truthful songs about Jesus and as many of you know the vast majority of our contemporary Christian worship songs sound beautiful
 State they have wonderful harmonies and Melodies and catchy lyrics but sadly there they're really often not in alignment with scripture and I'm not going to offer examples of this we actually did that already in an episode is episode number 58 it's titled is your worship music teaching you false Doctrine however I will give you an example of the alternative a song that is faithful to scripture and many of you have sung this song before it's titled great is thy faithfulness and it's a highly truthful song because it's in accordance with God's revealed character in scripture what I mean by that is great is thy faithfulness is a worship tool that not only reflects accurately the doctrine of God in the Bible that it teaches Christians a correct Theology of God it's also a really great song so I'm going to read you guys just the first two stanzas to give you an idea of what I'm talking about it says great is thy faithfulness
 oh God my father there is no shadow of turning with me now change is not that compassion's they fail not as that has been now forever will be great is thy faithfulness Great Is Thy Faithfulness morning by morning new mercies I see all I have needed my hand has provided greatest I faithfulness Lord unto me
 I guess when you can use basically build a contrasting environment of the richness of these biblical truths in this song and many others that are like it against a plethora of poetic garbage that's out there that's being sung in our churches today you start to quickly realized that many churches are actually shepherding their flocks in the false Doctrine by way of musical worship on the relearn. Instagram account of the team recently posted a quote where I said quote a worship leader who brings an umbilical song should be treated the same as a pastor who brings in a Biblical sermon they need to be called out as to repent and required to correct the false Doctrine and false teaching whether my Harmony or by heresy is deadly to the church and quote the late James Montgomery boice if you don't know who he is you should you should know who he is he wants said the great hymns of the church are on the way out
 they are not gone entirely but they are going and in their place have come try it Jingles that have more in common with contemporary advertising Diddy's then the Psalms the problem here is not so much the style of the music note write words fit best with tri-tip tunes and harmonies rather it is rather it is the content of the songs the old hymns Express the Theology of the Bible and profound and perceptive ways and with a Winsome and memorable language today's songs are focused on ourselves they reflect our shallow or non-existent Theology and do almost nothing to elevate our thoughts about God worst of all songs are the ones that merely repeat at right idea word or phrase over and over again songs like this are not worship though they may give the church go or a religious feeling they are mantras which belong more in a gathering of new agers than a
 on the worshiping people of God and quote so one thing I want to make clear is that singing Christian songs is not worship it's the result of worship it's the outpouring manifestation of worship the source of worship however really begins in in the heart and the point of making here is that spiritual activity doesn't necessarily equal spiritual sincerity and then explain this another way Mathews 15:8 Jesus said in regards to the Pharisees these people honor me with their lips but their heart is far from me in vain do they worship me in other words they are doing the right thing the wrong way they're they're doing the right spiritual activity in the in correct manner right physical worship and the singing about God without sincerity of the heart is vein which is just a word that means
 no effect basically you can go and sing all the Christian songs and do all the Bible studies and be a religious person all day long but if your heart isn't getting over to the Lord you're just like the Pharisees your empty waterless cloud Who worship Jesus the way that you want to worship him and not the way that Jesus actually accepts worship which leads us to the houses that you use Tabitha and John for about what type of worship is accepted or not but before I touch on what Jesus deems quote acceptable worship let me first offer just a warning about false worship the false worship is is more common than we might think and in this generation it's worshiping God according to who we want him to be and not according to who he is and this isn't a new problem if I Jesus warns against this earlier Matthew 7:21 through 20
 free when he says 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 send me Lord Lord did we not prophesy. Cast out demons in your name and do Mighty works in your name and then I will declare to them I never knew you depart from me you workers of lawlessness now we don't have time to fully pay sposit this text but the the essence of this passage teaches us that doing spiritual things is not sufficient to save singing emotional spiritual songs are not sufficient to save either and if he's activities are are not really anchored by a heart that yielded to the lordship of Christ through genuine repentance and believe that it doesn't matter how high you raise your hands are you know how how loud you sing during worship it's insincere and unaccepted by God so let's let's look real quick
 at this verse that you brought up Tabitha. John 4:24 it reads God is spirit and those who worship Him must Worship in spirit and Truth this passage is taken out of the correspondence between Jesus and the woman at the well in Samaria he just got done being in Judea he's making his way up to Galilee he could have gone up the coast could have gone across the Jordan but instead he goes through Samaria has its interaction with the woman at the well but first and foremost we learn here in this passage that the only way to worship God is through Christ that's kind of the main point that's going on here the only way to worship God is is through Christ this is the only Channel or agent by which God has made worship possible and Jesus affirms this in John 14:6 when he says I am the way the truth and the life and no one comes to the father except
 stormy so secondly in worshiping God by way of Christ we must worship Christ by way of who he truly is and not who we want him to be and what I mean really is is that the sin affirming Jesus of the Progressive Church is not worshipping Christ in truth the perverted Jesus of the Mormon church is not worshipping Christ in truth the distorted Jesus of the Jehovah's Witnesses is not worshipping Christ in truth the false Jesus of the health and wealth Prosperity Gospel is not worshipping Christ in truth and in this again this is why doctrine of theology are so important were called to worship God from the heart according to truth years ago but people yelled at John MacArthur and said Theology and Doctrine or divisive I love his reply he said yeah
 they are divisive they divide the truth from are so bottom line Tabitha worship it is the natural result of gratitude for our Salvation in fact every time you worship it's a result of Revelation Revelation always comes before worship it's a beautiful concept but imagine those days that you're reading the scriptures and you see something that's so beautiful and you just go Oh Lord You're so good or after a sermon in a truth was revealed to your heart that just overwhelms you you want to worship so worship is the result of reaction to the Revelation in that could be your salvation and that very moment it could be a remembrance of that salvation it could be just further sanctification revelation of the scripture that the Lord is teaching you and conforming you to his image
 basically it's the Adoration of God that really stems from his infinite value to us but Jesus is Worthy of Our Praise he's very valuable he has chosen us he has redeemed us he has revealed himself to us he has given us a new hearts and he's done all of this because he loves us and if you don't feel like worshipping
 it's simply because you have forgotten who he is and what he's done for you and we all get to those places this is the following this of our flash that week we get to a place where we are our Salvation or story our Redemption goes out of you or out of focus and instead we replace our focus with other carnal things in my PR own desires in our own and needs but when we see the work of Salvation will we see the work of sanctification we see the love of God conforming us to his son and we see it clearly and again we usually see this almost exclusively actually through the reading of scripture where the hearing of scripture with the hearing of preaching it really should cause us to fall back to our knees a stripped of our pride and rebellion and shouts of love should really begin to pour out of us we should begin worshipping it this
 Billy is biblical worship it's the results of the revelation of the Salvation of the work that God has accomplished in us so it's an external thing we got to look at the fact that there's music and really historically that was called Praise right praising God with music but it's a way to worship to work to worship Jesus but worship begins and is inaugurated in the heart and it flows out of us in different manifestations some may be in their knees in their bedroom with tears in their eyes some may be outside looking at the Grandeur of creation some might be quietly on the side of a bed of a family member who's passing away in confidence of their salvation and the revelation of that and the beauty of God some it might be in the middle of singing hymns or singing worship songs
 you're all different opportunities in manifestations of biblical worship it again the worship itself starts with a heart that's yielded to God so hopefully that answers your question Tabitha of what is biblical worship I wish we had more time to discuss it but I am going to leave you guys with a few resources three resources that I think are going to be very helpful for everybody who's listening here and you can find these on the post page for this episode at relearn. Org this is episode number 109 what is biblical Worship in so you can just type in what is biblical worship you'll find it there the first resource is a documentary called spirit and truth and it's probably 90 minutes is covering the definition of biblical Worship in detail it's a really good documentary I highly recommend you watching it give you a healthy biblical doctrinal exposition of what is worship
 more extensively than what we discuss today the 2nd is a book called Sing in this is written by renowned worship leaders Keith and kristyn Getty I'm if you don't know Creek Keith and kristyn Getty you definitely know their songs and they wrote a really great book you can get it on audio or you can get it in print I've actually listen to it on audio and it was just really encouraging it also reminds me that I can sing even though I'm not necessarily a singer but any if you if you have a voice if you have a mouth and you can talk then you can sing and about the importance of congregational singing so that was a really good book the last thing I'm going to share them to put a link to my personal Spotify playlist called biblical worship and I have a collection of songs that I've I put together over the years and it's a really great and I keep adding to them so if you guys are Spotify user you guys can find that there
 and hopefully that'll be out of fine for you if your regular listeners to the show thank you we just passed two million downloads a few weeks ago to over two million times this episode has been downloaded a some device that's just amazing and humbling would you guys that are regular listeners consider doing something for me would you guys leave a review and you haven't left to review all I'm asking for is just for you to tap the Stars you don't need to write anything but if you do write something I'll read it I actually read every single one of them even the critical reviews and they are helpful even for those that are riding these critical reviews I'm trying to take those in with a humble spirit and bettering the show because of it but we love those reviews you can also remember to check out the testimony that I wrote on my story again not too available for you at relearn. Org forward slash testimony and again ultimate marriage.com
 for 6-week marriage program that's it for this episode guide my name is Dale Partridge and we will see you next weekend
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