Sermon at FFMC (9/12/12)

The 3 gifts of Christmas: The gift of frankincense – worship

¹⁹ The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” ²¹ Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. ²² You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ 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.” (John 4:19-24)

Introduction

Frankincense is part of the holy, exclusive anointing oil (Ex 30:34),

It is used in grain and food offerings (Lev 2:1-2, 15-16), but not in sin offerings (Lev 5:11) or offerings of remembrance to test a wife’s faithfulness (Nu 5:15)

The lovers in SS (3:6, 4:6, 4:14) are adorned literally or figuratively with it.

Frankincense signifies joyful offering to the Lord. Overtones of holiness/dedication. It is appropriate that it represent our worship this Christmas

Recall that the Samaritans were were the remnant of the northern Jewish kingdom who had intermarried with foreigners after the Assyrian invasion and exile in 729 BC. They were regarded as impure, and despised by the Jews. The Samaritans rejected all of the Old Testament except their version of the first five books of Moses. They had once built a separate worship place on Mount Gerizim. The Jews had destroyed this about a century before Jesus’ time. The animosity toward Jews was centuries old.

Some people think Samaritan woman was just asking about worship to change the subject from her personal life. But Jesus bothers to give her a full answer to the question. He was never tolerant of hypocrites. He must have seen in her a desire to hear spiritual truth. The role of Mount Gerazim was central to her people. This was a question that addressed the age-old division between Jews and Samaritans.

Jesus’ statement is not the answer she expected. She expected a good argument where a Jews defended Jerusalem as the focal point of worship, and she might defend Mount Gerazim. But Jesus rejects the whole argument. Instead He says we are on the brink of something new. He teaches about true worship, and true worshippers.

1.       True worshippers worship the Father who is spirit, through the Son (vs. 23-24)

God is Father. Prior to Jesus, the Old Testament had only spoken of God’s fatherhood in general terms, but Jesus taught his disciples to call God “Father”. Fatherhood means many things: protection and provision (Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation. Ps 68:5), love (Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”Jn 14:21). We may not all have had good earthly fathers, but God is the perfect Father. He does not stand afar off demanding worship. He is both infinitely beyond our understanding, and yet ever close to us. This is the wonder of worship – the Father is great above all we can understand (For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Is 55:9), and yet he is intimate with us. (For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” Rom 8:15) (For this is what the high and exalted One says— he who lives forever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite, Is 75:15)

God is spirit – Not that God is the “Holy Spirit”,  but He does not have a physical body. He is not bound by time and space. That’s why geography is unimportant. (1 Ki 8:27 “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!). So God being spirit whom we cannot see reveals Himself to us in various ways, (Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, ² but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, Heb 1:1). To have a relationship with this God who is spirit does not mean to offer Him material offerings. True worship is not given by external acts.

We worship only through the Son(Jn 14:6). Jesus says, “The hour is coming” twice (v. 21, 23) and “it is now here” (v.23) because He is the One whose coming to earth to save mankind on the cross enables this new depth and clarity of worship. John 2:19, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” In other words, He had already said that He himself was the new temple — the new meeting place with God. In His incarnation, death and resurrection He is our temple. It pleases the Father that every knee bow and every tongue confess the greatness of Jesus His Son our Lord, to His glory (Phil 2:10). Christ deserves the highest glory because He humbled himself to the lowest humiliation, starting with His birth in a poor stable. The apex of the grace of God is the Cross of Christ. The apex of the holiness and wrath of God is the Cross of Christ. The apex of the love of God is the Cross of Christ. All heaven worships the Lamb who was slain – foreshadowed before the world began (“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”Rev 5:12, 13:8)             

2.       True worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth

We commune in our spirit with the God who is spirit. Matthew 15:8–9: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me.” Worship counts for nothing if there is no inner dimension to it. You are not worshiping if it is all external and nothing is happening in your spirit toward God. 

In John 3:6 Jesus connects God’s Spirit and our spirit in a remarkable way. He says, “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” In other words, until the Holy Spirit touches our spirit with the flame of life, our spirit is so dead it does not even qualify as spirit. Only that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. So when Jesus says that true worshipers worship in spirit, he must mean that true worship only comes from spirits that are made alive and sensitive and vital by the touch of the Holy Spirit. Only true Christians can worship God.
We cannot do this if we do not know the truth about God. Jesus was unapologetic to the Samaritan woman (“You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.”v.22) Paul said that to the Jews “belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. ⁵ To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. (Ro 9:4-5) The plan of salvation was worked through the Jews and found its climax in Jesus, a Jew. Christian worship comes with a whole set of revealed truth about the Father, in the Spirit, through the work of Jesus. It cannot be divorced from objective spiritual reality. Vague spiritual feelings of awe and wonder are not worship without Biblical truth.

If we worship an idol of our own creation, we are not really worshiping God. Some people think God never gets angry and who “loves us unconditionally”, like a kind grandfather. Some have a harsh view of God as a demanding taskmaster who is never satisfied. We can have many ideas about God that come from out of our culture and experience, not Scripture. When we know God better through His word, we will worship Him more truly – in truth.

Right worship, good worship, pleasing worship — needs a right mental and emotional grasp of the way God really is. The word “worship” comes from the old English “worth-ship” – ascribing to God what He is worth. God is worth everything! So our hearts should be full of Him. Our minds should rejoice in truth. Sundays we dare not take God lightly, we dare not put on indifferent airs or hypocritical masks. We are to honour Him and treasure Him above all things.  So true worship is based on a right understanding of God’s nature, and it is a right valuing of God’s worth. Worship must have heart and worship must have head. Worship must engage your emotions and worship must engage your thoughts.

3.       True worshippers are sought by the Father

When we see the word ‘for’, we usually use it to mean ‘because’ (“I am hungry, for I did not eat breakfast”) and sometimes, to mean ‘as evidence of which’ (“I am hungry, for my stomach is rumbling”). Here in this passage, the first meaning applies:

the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth,

 for (because)

the Father is seeking such people to worship him(v.23)

That there should be children seeking the Father is the reason why there are true worshippers. It is the Father’s will that there be true worshippers, blood-bought followers of His Son. Three times in Ephesians 1 we are told that God “chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love ⁵ he^[b] predestined us for adoption to sonship^[c] through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will” to the praise of His glory.

This is our security! We are not able to be true worshippers through willpower alone. But we have the infallible plan of God for us, fulfilling in each one of us His good work (Phil 1:6). God seeks true worshippers, so He will keep us worshipping as we should. If you are truly a child of God, you can rejoice that God will hold you firm in all the storms of life – through illness and financial trouble and relationship setbacks. You will still worship through it all, because the Father seeks you as a true worshipper.

Conclusion

As we approach this Christmas let us then think of our Lord Jesus, humbly coming to this world. We hear His voice today, seemingly asking much of us. He asked the Samaritan woman for a drink, but in reality he gave her so much more than that in return. He knew He would be giving her His whole self on the Cross. He may be asking of us gifts this Christmas, but the truth is that He offers us all of Himself. Let us worship!

Audio link:https://1drv.ms/u/s!Avz_WAuy5EM4h_Na5dCEzKmAcriWaA