The Grove 10 Years – Week 5

All right. Good morning, everyone. So good to see all of you. I'm so glad that you're here with us. My name is Amir, I'm one of the pastors here at The Grove. And today, if you do not have a Bible with you, take a moment, raise your hand. We would love for you to have a Bible so you can follow with us today. One of our ushers would be happy to give one of those in your hands. The last few weeks, we've been working, since our 10th anniversary, through a series.

That's where we practically talk about the DNA of this church, right? Who we are, what has the Lord called us to be. I want to remind you our updated mission statement, which is The Grove exists to glorify God through making disciples who bear much fruit, and how we go about it is through four pillars. The four things that are the foundations of what we do here week in, week out. And those four pillars, biblical preaching, purposeful discipleship, persistent prayer, and intentional worship.

We spent a few weeks talking about biblical preaching, and last Sunday, Pastor Jason led us through intentional worship. Today, we're going to continue and talk more about this pillar of our church, intentional worship. So go ahead and open your Bibles to John 4, the Gospel according to John, chapter four. And as you go there, I want to remind you that last week, Pastor Jason, he did such a great job showing us from Colossians 1 that intentional worship flows from a heart that gives Jesus first place in everything.

He reminded us that worship is much bigger than singing, than just singing. He reminded us that every one of us is a worshiper. The only question who it is, the object of our worship. And he reminded us that Jesus is worthy of our entire lives. And this morning, I want to build on that and explore if Jesus deserves our worship, what kind of worship is he actually looking for? That's what we're going to try to explore today. So let's do this. Let's pray together, ask the Lord's blessing on our time, and then we'll dive into John 4 this morning.

Our Father in heaven, we thank you, God, because you are so good to us. And it's so good for us to be here and praise your name and worship you with our brothers and sisters in Christ, and we thank you for just this time that we can be here. We ask that you work in our hearts and in our minds, allow us to leave this place more like you than when we came. We ask that you just bless this time and use it for your glory alone. In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen. So we're in John 4, and starting in verse seven of chapter four, we see Jesus interacting with a Samaritan woman next to a well. Now, I want to bring just a little bit of a context regarding the Samaritans. That's who Jesus is talking to. Who were the Samaritans? Who are these people? 700 years before this interaction we're reading about in John 4, the Assyrian Empire conquered and exiled the northern kingdom of Israel. Assyria came from the north and took the northern kingdom of Israel.

Judah is down a little south where Jerusalem is, and Assyria come and take the 10 tribes, the northern tribes, to exile. And then some Assyrians moved into this land that was conquered and settled in that land, and then there were some Israelites that stayed, remained in that land, and those people intermarried. So Assyrians and some people from the northern kingdom of Israel intermarried and created this h********d Assyrian-Israelite group that became the Samaritans.

And let's say it this way, the Jews didn't like their half-cousins very much. They didn't get along really well. The Samaritans claimed to believe in Yahweh, but they only believed in the first five books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible. And they also adopted some religious practices from the pagan Assyrians, and they worshiped in a place called Mount Gerizim, which is right in the center of Samaria, while the Jews kept worshiping in Jerusalem, south of there.

And they were debating which one is the rightful place to worship the one true God. By the way, kind of interesting fact, even to this day, there remain a very small group, maybe a few hundred Samaritans that live in that region still and worship God on that same mountain to this day, and they call themselves the Samaritans, and that's where they come from. They are kind of practicing the same thing to this day. All to say, Jews and Samaritans in the days of Jesus didn't hang out very often.

But Jesus gets into a conversation with a Samaritan woman, and their conversation starts in verse seven, where Jesus and the woman discuss drinking water, and Jesus presents himself to her as the source of living water. And then in verse 16, when the woman asks Jesus for this special water that he's offering, Jesus asks her to call her husband. Look at verse 16. "He said to her, 'Go, call your husband and come back here.' The woman answered and said, 'I have no husband.'

And Jesus said to her, 'You have correctly said, "I have no husband," for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.' The woman said to him, 'Sir, I see that you are a prophet.' " By the way, here you see that she's not a Jewish woman, but a Samaritan, because if she was Jewish, she would have said, "Oy vey, sir, I see that you are a prophet." She is so busted. So busted. Jesus gets this lady good for her immoral lifestyle, right?

And because she's busted, and she doesn't use "Oy vey," she does what busted people do very often, which is what? Let me change the subject. The game of association. You said something, I'm going to try to jump on that and talk about... Let's not talk about my five husbands and the guy I'm living with right now. So in verse 20, she changes the subject and says, "Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship."

What does it have to do with what Jesus said before? Nothing, but she's changing the subject. But Jesus doesn't let her off the hook, because in the next few verses, this is where we're going to focus on this morning, Jesus sets up and redefines the meaning of worship in response to her. Look at verse 21. "Jesus said to her, 'Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither in 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 an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such people the Father seeks to be his worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.' " So again, Jesus exposed the Samaritan woman's sin. She recognizes him as a prophet, and she raises one of the greatest religious controversies separating Jews and Samaritans during that time, which is, where are we supposed to worship?

On Mount Gerizim or in Jerusalem? And Jesus' answer is just going to completely redefine the conversation. Here's our big idea for this morning. The one thing I want you to remember today, big idea is this: Be an intentional, true worshiper. Be an intentional, true worshiper. Now, before we jump into Jesus' answer, can we quickly again define the word worship to make sure we're on the same page? The most biblical way that I can think of to approach this word is a Hebrew word that...

Usually, I like to make you say those words because it's fun, but this one is just way too much, okay? And I understand that. So it's a Hebrew word. The word sounds like this, "histakhaya." Good job. Someone there just jumped on it. Histakhaya. This word means literally to bow down, fall down on your face. It's a complete surrender before Yahweh. That's what this word worship in Hebrew means, to literally fall on your face in absolute surrender. To reiterate what Pastor Jason said last week, it's not just singing, but it's becoming an absolute servant, falling on the face in complete submission.

And with this in mind, look back at verse 21. Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father." Verse 22, "You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews." A few quick observations about the beginning of Jesus' response. The first thing is that he's saying an hour is coming. Now, in the Gospel of John, this is a phrase commonly used to refer to Jesus' death and resurrection, the hour of Jesus.

It's the death and the resurrection of Jesus. In other words, it's the completion of the Mosaic law. Or in other words, when the hour will come, at the hour coming, their whole understanding of salvation, forgiveness of sins, godly living, and worship is going to change when the hour had come. Why? Because when the hour has come, Jesus' death and resurrection, there's no need for the sacrificial system anymore because Jesus' sacrifice fulfills all of it, and we don't need that anymore.

After the death and resurrection, Jesus is going to leave and send the Holy Spirit. That changes what godly living even looks like to the believer. Everything changes when the hour will come, and he's saying worship will change as well. Now, when Jesus talked to the Samaritan woman, the time had not yet come, and Jesus very clearly tells the woman that the Samaritans got it wrong in their worship. He said, "You guys are not true worshipers. You don't even know what or who you worship, for salvation is from the Jews."

Why does Jesus bring salvation into this conversation about worship at all? It's because back in the day, during the time of Jesus, if you wanted to find true worshipers, for the most part, you needed to go to Jerusalem. As Jesus said, the Jews worshiped what they knew, and true worshipers were found worshiping Yahweh in obedience in Jerusalem, in Yahweh's temple. And this is something important to think about. God called Israel a holy nation, and they were set apart, holy, as they had the scriptures, and they knew who to worship and where to worship Him.

And the Samaritans did not follow that. They were in the wrong place, adopting pagan customs as well and rituals. They were worshiping what they didn't know in the wrong place. Now, I'm not saying that Jesus was saying that every ethnic Jew was saved. That's not what he's saying. But salvation was from the Jews. The temple is where the faithful were worshiping, falling on their faces before Yahweh and repenting of their sins using animal sacrifices.

But an hour is coming, Jesus says, after his death and resurrection, when true worshipers would not be recognized by where they worship anymore, and this is our first point for this morning. The first point is this, worship God wherever. Worship God wherever. Again, in verse 21, "An hour is coming when neither on this mountain," Gazim, "nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father." This is the main argument of Jesus in his discussion with the Samaritan woman.

A day is coming when her question of which place is the right place to worship would become irrelevant. And the truth is, when you read the Old Testament, we know that about God already, right? I think about King Solomon. He's the one who built the great temple to Yahweh in Jerusalem. And when he dedicated that temple to Yahweh, he said to Him in 1 Kings 8, "But will God truly dwell on Earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you.

How much less this house which I have built?" A house can contain the Creator? Are you kidding me? Right? Here's what Yahweh says about Himself, our God. This is what He says about Himself in Isaiah, chapter 66. "Thus says Yahweh, 'Heaven is my throne, and the earth is the footstool of my feet. Where then is the house you could build for me? And where is the place that I may rest? For my hand made all these things. Thus all these things came into being,' declares Yahweh."

And if you look down at verse 24, Jesus explains exactly this point. He says, "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." God is spirit. Notice it's lowercase S. He's not referring to the Holy Spirit here, but God is spirit, meaning that God isn't a localized deity like all the other nations worshiped. God isn't a localized deity. He isn't contained by walls, by mountains, by temples, by cities, or by geography. And because God is not confined to a place, listen, true worship of God cannot be confined to a place either.

He's not contained in one place, and so true worshipers don't need to go to worship in one specific location. And this is important because unfortunately, a lot of people today still act like this. For a lot of Christians, worship happens only two hours a week at church. Worship is being confined in one place and one time. So here's what happens. We come to church, and we worship, and then we go home. We leave church, and we take worship, and we put it in the box, and we put it right here in the back of our mind, and we go on with our life.

And during the week, we worship all sorts of other things. Myself first, right? We love worshiping ourselves. But we worship our family, and we worship our job, and we worship our teams, and we worship our sports, and we worship our shows, and we worship whatever it is. Maybe if we're more faithful people, during the week, we'll take a sneak peek into the worship box because we will show up to women's ministry and men's ministry. You know where that takes place?

Back in this location, church. So you know what? I'm going to just grab it out, look at it for 45 minutes, bring it back in, and keep going with my life before Sunday comes, and I take the box back out. And listen, so some of us, maybe even all of us in different times in our life, we treat worship like the hour of Jesus hasn't come yet. Like worship can only happen in a church sanctuary, in a worship sanctuary. That's the only place worship can take place.

Is that you? Am I describing us? Be honest with yourself. Is my worship confined to this place and this time? What Jesus said to the Samaritan woman is that now we can have a portable sanctuary. A portable sanctuary, a sanctuary that we can carry in us and with us wherever, and we can worship in the portable sanctuary wherever. Imagine that I bought a new superior cellphone. I mean Android. I like to call it superior cellphone because it really gets the thought across of what this device is really about.

But imagine I bought myself a new Android superior cellphone, and I spent a lot of money on it because it's really good. Because the camera of it, there's just no device that even compares. The software in it, the technology, there is AI built in it that is just way beyond everything else, and it's just such a good device. And I get home, and I come to my kitchen, and I mount it on the wall in a box, and then Jackie comes to me and is like, "So why did you buy a cellphone to put it here?"

And I'm like, "Well, it's great. So when I come here, we can talk on the phone. That's why I did it. So I know that's the only place I want to talk on the phone. That's the only place I want." That was a great investment of my $1,500 to reinvent the landline, right? It's silly, but this is how sometimes we treat worship. Like, hey, God gave us a gift, a portable sanctuary that we can carry wherever, and we can worship Him wherever. But we're just going to mount it in this place here, this building, and not look at it the rest of the week.

The preacher, A. W. Tozer, he wrote this. Jesus said, "Don't you see that if God is spiritual, worship is spiritual? And anything spiritual has no location in space, and it has no location in time. Therefore, you don't get up in the morning and look at your calendar and say, 'Is this the time to worship?' And you don't go out, look around and say, 'Is this the place to worship?' But you worship God now, anywhere, any place, any time, because worship is spiritual."

Now, people have made a comedy of religion, a comedy of errors. It has been true because men have enslaved themselves to externals. They have enslaved themselves to objects. Listen, here's the deal. A church building isn't bad. A church building is wonderful. It's a wonderful place to worship God with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We want you here worshiping with us. But listen to this. A church is a terrible place if it imprisons our worship to God.

Church is important, but it cannot become the sole and only spot of worship in our lives. And this is the key argument Jesus makes to the Samaritan woman. And so, basically what Jesus is saying to the Samaritan woman is this. Before the hour is coming, you can recognize true worshipers by being in Jerusalem. That's the right place. That's where the true worshipers of Yahweh go to worship. But hour is coming where you'll be able to recognize true worshipers not by where they worship, but by who they worship and by how they worship.

It isn't about worshiping in Jerusalem that reveals a true worshiper. It's about who you worship and how you worship, and this leads me to our second point today. Worship God wholeheartedly. Worship God wholeheartedly. Look at verse 23. He's saying this phrase again, "An hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For such people the Father seeks to be his worshipers." Notice that Jesus is calling his followers true worshipers.

And this title suggests that there are also what? The opposite, false worshipers. This means that there are people who appear to worship who aren't truly worshiping. And again, the Bible clearly speaks about this. The Old Testament clearly speaks about this. For example, Amos chapter 5, Yahweh says this, "I hate, I reject your feasts, nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies." I don't delight in your church services. That's what He's saying. In your solemn assemblies.

"Even though you offer up to me burnt offering and your grain offerings, I will not accept them, and I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings. Remove from me the tumult of your songs. I will not even listen to the melody of your harps." I don't want to hear you even singing. I don't want to hear you singing my name. False worship. In Isaiah chapter 29, verse 13, just what's later as well in the Gospels, Yahweh says this, "These people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but they remove their hearts far from me."

What a sad description of people. God clearly claims that there is worship that is false, and I'm not referring to people who clearly worship false gods and idols. But people who call themselves Christ followers come to church and sing and serve, and God says He hates their worship because it's not the wholehearted worship. It's false worship, and He hates it. Two weeks ago, I got to go on a trip with Pastor Scott to Alaska for fishing, and it was amazing.

We caught a lot of fish, a lot of huge rainbow trouts, and the coolest thing about this is that we were surrounded by bear the whole time. So here's Pastor Scott with a grizzly behind him, and we were like this that whole time. There's just grizzlies everywhere as we fish. And now I want you to try... I'll explain to you what the day for us looked like, what it was like fishing with Pastor Scott. So the day begins, and we get our waders, and we get inside the river up to our hips or so, our knees or hips, and we cast.

We fly fishing, so we cast and cast. And the day starts, and after 10 minutes, Scott's already caught 15 fish. And then he catch a huge monster fish. And then he catches another couple fish, and then another huge monster fish. Meanwhile, I catch a couple baby fish. I'm really good at finding the nursery in the river. And the truth is, the guides get frustrated with me, the fishing guides, because half the time I'm looking at the bear, and the guide's like, "Set the fish!

Get that!" And I'm like, "I'm so sorry. I don't even know why I'm casting. I'm looking at the bear right now, and I don't know. I'm so sorry to create those false hopes in your hearts, because I'm really not in tune with what's happening here. I'm looking at other stuff." So at some point, about two, three hours into the day, the guide starts feeling bad for me, because they're like, "Here's his partner who's catching all these monster trouts, and you are catching very few little fish."

So what they do is they leave Pastor Scott alone, and they come to stand behind me, and they put their sunglasses. They can kind of see through the water, and they look, look, look, look, look, and then they go, "Come on, come on, come on. There is a huge trout sitting right there. Can you see it?" "No, I can't, but I'm going to trust you about that." And they're like, "Cast right over there." So literally, they walk me like a child to try to catch this specific fish.

So I'm going at it. I'm casting. It's going. I catch nothing. I cast, I cast, I cast 10, 15 times, and I do that until we hear, "Oh, yeah, that's a big one" from Pastor Scott right next to us. So I'm like, "Okay." I'm ringing, getting my phone out. Pastor Scott finds the fish, gets it. And now the guy feels even worse for me, because he's like, he's been trying to help me catch one. Meanwhile, we just got the biggest one of the week. So the guy comes back, we're going down the river, and he's pointing me to another fish, and I cast, I cast, I cast until, oh yeah, that's a big one.

And we do the same thing again, really, and we take a picture. So here's a good example of a day because Pastor Scott caught all these fish in one. This is not our trip. This is one day. Okay? This is one day of Pastor Scott catching big trout. Now, I'll add this to the equation of our trip. Growing up in Israel and living in Florida after did not set me up for success in Alaska weather. I'm just going to be very blunt about that. So standing in the water up to your hips when rain is coming down on you and it's 40 degrees outside, that's rough for someone from my background.

Anyways, I'm telling you all this because what's ended up happening is that every now and then, I just have to take some breaks and just stand on the shore and warm up a little bit, and just let Scott keep catching fish. And one of the days on the trip, one of the fishing guides, his name is Logan, we were standing on the shore, and he asked me if I have any suggestions for him about how he can start reading his Bible and pray. And he told me, "I'm a person of faith.

I'm a person of faith, but I struggle to connect with God. I'm a person of faith. I just struggle to connect with God." And then what happened is every time that I needed to get warm, I would get out of the shore, and I'll be talking to Logan, and we kept that conversation going. And I challenged Logan with this point that we're talking about this morning. I was telling him that, "Listen, the fact that you believe the Bible to be true doesn't make you a follower of Jesus."

Hear me out on this. The fact you believe the Bible to be true doesn't make you a follower of Jesus. And that's what I told him. I'm like, "Dude, God wants your whole heart. He doesn't want you to believe this about him and that you will have your whole heart. He wants your whole heart. He wants you to get off the throne, and he wants to be the king of your life. And it's great you believe the Bible to be true, but if you don't give God all of your heart, you are not a follower of God."

God doesn't care for you to draw near to him merely with your lips. He wants your heart, and he wants it all the time. Logan and I ended up praying together, and the Lord knows what happens in his heart. I hope that he'll make this choice to follow Jesus. But listen, this is the truth for us today, too. That's the question for you and for me, right? Where is our heart? Where is your heart this morning? Who owns your heart? Where is your heart before God today?

Even more important is who do you live for every day during your week? Not in the two hours here, but who do you live for every day of your week? Who do you worship in your portable sanctuary? You're worshiping someone. Who is it? Who are you worshiping in your portable sanctuary? Does God have your whole heart? And listen, give it to him because he deserves it. He deserves it because he's given you everything. See, that's what the scripture stated.

While we were still dead in our sins, before we even cared to fall on our face before him, before we even thought about worshiping him, he already died for the unrighteous. And he wants your heart in return. And he deserves it. You see, in verse 24 there... Sorry, in verse 23 at the end there, it says that, "Such people, the Father seeks to be his worshipers." And I believe the context of this verse is salvation-related statement. God is looking for true worshipers.

He is looking to save people. And listen, today, right now, I believe God seeks for new true worshipers. And you might be here today and realize, I'm not a true worshiper. I believe about God, but I realize I'm not a true worshiper because he doesn't have all of my heart. And today can be a day of salvation. Today can be a day that you become a true worshiper. Interestingly enough, the Samaritan woman, shortly after, gives Jesus her whole heart. She gets saved.

This can be your story, too, in this interaction with Jesus. And I want to remind you of this. Listen, I want to remind you of this. The Samaritan woman was not asking about worship on Mount Gerizim, right, because she really, really cared about the location of worship. She changed the subject, right? So she was asking a question about worship. She was asking a theological, doctrinal question to Jesus while living, obviously, in an adulterous relationship.

Not exactly a wholehearted worshiper kind of picture, right? Jesus could have really just answered her like, "Hey, you're asking the wrong question, lady." Right? Making a big deal about the location of worship while you're clearly living in rebellion to God. Really? That's what we're going to talk about? But to be honest, aren't we like her sometimes? Listen to this. Can you imagine openly rebelling against God, but then standing here worshiping him like everything is okay?

Like nothing else is happening in my life? It's wild, isn't it? Wild to think about that. But we do this sometimes, don't we? We live in rebellion against our creator, but we show up here and we play the game. Like everything is fine, just like the Samaritan is doing here. Here's what God thinks about that. In Isaiah chapter 1, verse 13 to 17, God says this, "Bring your worthless offerings no longer. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you.

Indeed, even though you multiply prayers, I'll not listen. Wash yourselves, purify yourselves, remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes. Cease to do evil. Learn to do good." God's like, "Come on, give me a break. You're coming to me knowing you're openly rebelling, actively rebelling against me, and acting, I'm going to raise my hands and I'm going to worship you like nothing happens? What kind of a relationship is that?" So go, repent, purify your heart, wash yourself, stop doing what's wrong, start doing what's right, and then come back.

Now hear me out. Listen. God doesn't look for perfect people. You are not supposed to be sinless in order to come and worship God. Because if that would be the case, none of us should ever worship God. But God looks for a repentant heart. God looks for a heart that is willing to stop the wrong and try to do what's right, a repentant heart. And listen, maybe right now, you came here today, this part is a little uncomfortable. And that's good for our hearts, that this part is a little uncomfortable.

Because listen, if you're here, but this week you've been rebelling against God, actively rebelling against Him, He's saying such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God's desires your worship, but He wants you to give Him your whole heart. Stop what you're doing. Stop the evil that you do and start do what is right. Today might be a moment, like when we realize God might not like my worship. That's a really kind of terrifying thought. God might not like my worship.

And if this is you today, today I'm calling you, give God your whole heart. Give God your whole heart. Repent of it, turn away, and do what's right. Come back to the Lord. You can be a true worshiper. Now look back at verse 23 with me again. It says, "But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers." So we talked for a while about what false worship looks like, but here's what true worship looks like.

I use the word worship God wholeheartedly. Wholeheartedly is my summary of the kind of worship Jesus describes here. It just gives us two much more precise words, and those words are spirit and truth. Worship in spirit and truth. True worship is worship in spirit and truth. Those are two sides of the same coin. One cannot exist without the other. And so a true worshiper, someone who worships God wholeheartedly, that there is some kind of a cycle of worship that begins, a cycle of worship in spirit and truth.

And I want to show you how these two words actually work together because I don't think Jesus is giving us two competing forms or styles of worship here, but he's describing two realities that feed one another. Two things every worshiper, every follower of Jesus should possess. So think about it as a cycle. Let's start, for example, on the worship in truth side. So I worship in truth. I worship God by learning about Him. I'm reading my Bible, and I'm being taught, that's like I'm sitting here in a sermon, or I'm listening to a sermon online.

I'm being taught the word of God. I worship Him in truth, and I learn sound doctrine, and I learn more about God and who He is and what He's done for me, and I meditate on His word, and I try to think how can I apply what I learn into my life. I meditate on where I am, and that is growing in me a burning desire to worship God even more. It ignites my heart to worship Him even more. We see a great example of this. You remember when after Jesus' resurrection, there were the disciples, they were walking down on the road to Emmaus, and Jesus comes to them, and they don't recognize Him.

And the Bible said that He was talking to them, teaching to them about Himself, opening the scriptures with them. And in Luke 24:32, they said to one another, after they recognized it was the resurrected Jesus, they said to one another, "Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was opening the Scriptures with us?" The time in truth ignited their spirit, and they got excited about Him, and they wanted to worship Him in spirit.

And now think about this. So we worship in spirit, so we pray and we surrender, right? Our soul surrenders before Him in our prayer, and we praise, we adore His name in song and in our words, and we serve other people. We're worshiping, we serve, we surrender, we give our time and our talent to other people to serve our Lord, and we surrender in our life, and we live in obedience. We sacrifice the things we want, and we say, "You are the number one in my life, Jesus," right?

And we live in obedience. In generosity, we give of our treasure to the things of the Lord generously. These are all ways we worship in spirit. And guess what? When we do this, what happens? We create a relationship with God in which we grow hungry to know Him more. Because look at what He's done for me. It's so good for my soul, and my soul want to know Him even more. Psalm 19:131 says, "I opened my mouth wide and panted, for I longed for your commandments."

Like I'm out of breath. I worship you in spirit, and I'm out of breath. I'm hungry. I need more. So I go back here, and I learn about how God saved me by grace. It was not what I've done. It's what He's done. And this ignites my heart, so I worship Him, and I pray, and I serve, and that creates a hunger in my heart to know more about this God who saved me by grace. So I come here, and I learn more about Him, and I learn about the eternal hope that I have in Christ, and I get so excited about what is come for me for eternity.

So it burns my heart, and I go and I worship Him, and I think about that, and I serve God's people, and that creates a hunger, and there's a beautiful cycle of worship of spirit and truth. That's what true worshipers are like. This is what a wholehearted worshiper looks like. Does this describe you? Does this describe us? Are we wholehearted worshipers? Now I want to bring it real quick to the time that we spend here at church, okay? We said this is one of our pillars, right?

Intentional worship. We said our big idea is be an intentional worshiper. So what does it look like in the two hours every Sunday, or if you come to both services, a little longer than that, every Sunday here when you come to The Grove? Being a wholehearted worshiper. This is what is our desire for every one of us to be, right? Wholehearted worshipers, true worshipers. So I would say this. It starts before we leave our home, hopefully. Maybe it's Saturday night.

Maybe it's Sunday morning. We prepare our hearts before we come to this place. We pray for the service. We pray that God will speak to us. We pray that we will be able to worship Him with no distractions. We pray that God gives us a spirit, or pray that God gives us a worshipful heart. And then we come. And it starts, listen, wholehearted worship on a Sunday morning starts right in the parking lot when we start interacting with people. So we're being selfless.

We surrender. We serve. You know we have guys that every Sunday go out there to the parking lot to serve? To help making sure people have where to park, standing in the sun, no fun in Florida in the summer. But they go out there and sweat, so just to serve. Wholehearted worship, that's what we hope it looks like. "Ah, man, it's my turn this week." "Oh, man, I'm scheduled this week. Why did I volunteer for this?" But no, wholehearted worship. I worship in the Spirit.

I'm so excited to obey the Lord. I'm so excited to serve my brothers and sisters. And then I come into the lobby, and there's so many of you who serve so fantastically in the lobby, welcoming people at the doors, giving them coffee, and welcome them into the sanctuary here. And we serve one another, serve the children. We show generosity. We have opportunity for that. We worship in Spirit, and then their song starts. That's the praise element of worship that we're doing while we're here.

It's the praise element. When we think about the praise element, and I want to focus on that just for a second a little more. We praise God, lift our voices up, and this is our commitment to you. We want to be very intentional about how this happens in this church. So, our worship team, Pastor Robert and Brandon, they take very seriously the words that we sing here, making sure that they have truth in the songs. This thing about the cycle, there's truth in the song that can ignite our spirit to respond to the truth, so it creates a hunger for us to come to the word of God later when a preacher comes up here.

We take the lyrics very seriously. We create moments in the service for prayer or moments where we read the word of God, so it ignites our heart, our soul desires to respond to that. And we want every one of us here to praise the name of God just because He's worthy. Praise the name of God because He's worthy of it. Practically what it looks like for each individual, that's between you and God. But here's what I want you to think about. In our approach to worship, be vertical, not horizontal.

Meaning, don't worry about what anyone horizontally thinks about you or judges you or whatever. Focus on God and worship Him. And don't horizontally look at other people and judge them. Think vertically. Just worship God. We're here to do that together. All to say, praying, praising, serving, all these things get our soul going, and hopefully by the time we finish praising in all these different ways, our heart is hungry for the word of God. You think about this, what is the response, right?

Are we reading the word of God, studying it as a response to the praise time and the worship in Spirit? I think so. But then after we grow in truth, hopefully, we have a desire immediately after to go and praise in Spirit, worship in Spirit as a response to the truth. That's what we hope Sunday morning looks like. But then again, that's a great example for what our portable sanctuary should look like the rest of the week. Sunday doesn't stop in two hours.

Or sorry, worship doesn't stop in two hours. This should be our lifestyle. So what does it look like for you at home? How are you growing in worshiping truth? How are you growing in worshiping Spirit during the week? Don't leave this cycle in this room. A wholehearted worshiper, that's the lifestyle. In church, that's what the Father is seeking. When it says, "The Father is seeking true worshipers," he's looking for faithful followers that worship Him wherever and with all of their heart.

Be an intentional true worshiper. Worship God wherever. Worship God wholeheartedly. And I want to close with this beautiful verse that summarizes our time this morning I think really well. Romans chapter 12, verse one says this: "I exhort you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice, living, holy, pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship." Not your Sunday morning, not a little bit, but your whole body, all of who you are, wherever you are with all of your heart.

With this, go ahead and close your Bibles. And I want to invite you maybe to right now bow down your heads and have just a moment to reflect. So we worshiped God in truth, and we're transitioning to worship God more in Spirit. So this is a great time to meditate on some of the things we discussed. This is a good time to evaluate my life, and I'm going to ask the hard question. Is my life one in which my worship is a sweet aroma to the Father? If I'm a follower of Jesus, am I acting like the true worshiper God has called me to be?

Do I live this way? Do I worship this way? And for some of us, if the answer is, "I'm not sure," this is a great time to repent of that. This is a great time to say, "God, I want to come back to the heart of worship that you have called me to come to because I've made my life about myself, I've made my life about all these different things. But it's all about you, God." This is a time to maybe recommit your heart like, "Hey, God, you can have all of me.

You can have all of my heart. Not once a week on Sunday, but wherever I go, I dedicate to you my portable sanctuary." Father in heaven, we come before you, and we're humbled by your love. We're humbled by your patience with us. You are such a good God to us, and we are so selfish. You call us to be true worshipers, and yet we make it all about ourselves. And so, God, I ask that you help us today to fall on our face before you. We ask that you take all of our hearts, not just our once a week here or a couple times a week when we think about you, but all of us, wherever we go, all the time, have all of our heart as you deserve because you are the King.

You are the Creator. You are our Lord and our Savior. And make us intentional, true worshipers the way you designed us. We ask that in the name of Jesus. Amen.