Tonight, I invite you to turn with me to John chapter 4. John chapter 4 as we read the first 26 verses, which is the familiar portion of the episode of Jesus talking with the Samaritan woman. And also, if you would turn in the back of this altar hymnal to page 49, Lord's Day 35, Questions and Answers 96, 97, and 98. Lord's Day 35. This Lord's Day is dealing with the second commandment. Some time ago we dealt with the first commandment. Who is to be worshipped? Now tonight we give our consideration to the second commandment. Before we look at the Word of God or the Catechism, just a few comments. We all know, I trust, that the question at the center of the worship wars today is, How shall we worship God? How shall we worship God? It's not a bad question. It's a very good question. It's a very honest question, a question that must be asked. However, it's being asked in such a way from motives that really have nothing to do with what the Word of God says. Or with the way that God calls us to worship. The way this question is being asked, how shall we worship God, has to do more with, well, what style do we use? What is appropriate in our worship as we come together as God's people? What is it that will bring people in? Or what is it that we can do that will keep our young people? How shall we worship God with regard to these things? And we know that the evangelical church today has made worship into a business. It's a competition. Who can attract the most customers? Over the last couple of years, as I've seen one particular advertisement on TV with regard to one certain church in the San Diego area, it always strikes me that at the close of the advertisement, it ends with these words, where there is something for everyone. And of course, that sounds good. And there's nothing wrong with programs. We must have programs for our young people, for our children, for the people of the congregation, for the life of the congregation. But that's not the right approach when it comes to worship. That's the wrong focus. That's the wrong question. That's not why we come to church for worship, first of all. We don't come, beloved, to get something. And that may take some of you by surprise. But you and I are called by God, gathered for worship, in order to bring something to Him. We are gathered together to bring our worship to God. We come here for God, not for us, first of all. And we know, of course, that worship is essential to man's nature, man who is made in the image of God. We sang about that in the song service, and we also sang about the fact that in sin, man worships the creature and not the Creator, as Paul says. Man worships in a way that satisfies man's selfish desires, in a way that makes man feel good, instead of asking, what does God require? What is it that pleases Him? That's the right question. And the answer to that question is very simple. Our worship is to be simple. See, God doesn't demand a production. But God demands your heart and my heart focused on Him. Any other focus you see in worship is wrong. Any other focus is out of place. In the commandments, our God clearly spells out, He not only clearly spells out who is to be worshipped in the first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me, but He also clearly spells out how He is to be worshipped. The second commandment, you shall not make for yourself a graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth, you shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. And then in the Lord's Day 35, it gives an explanation of that commandment. Let's recite that together, okay? I'll read the questions together. We recite the answers on page 49. Question 96. What is God's will for us in the second commandment? That we in no way make any image of God, nor worship Him in any other way than He has commanded in His Word. May we then not make any image at all? God cannot and may not be visibly portrayed in any way. Although creatures may be portrayed, yet God forbids making or having such images if one's intention is to worship them or to serve God through them. But may not images be permitted in the churches as teaching aids for the unlearned? No, we shouldn't try to be wiser than God. He wants His people instructed by the living preaching of His Word, not by idols that cannot even talk. And in our Lord's conversation with the Samaritan woman, He addresses the issue of worship. We read together the first 26 verses, verse 24, serving as the text tonight. It's not my purpose to discuss tonight in this sermon everything that this passage of Scripture talks about, but to simply, clearly, I hope, look at what our Lord says about worship in verse 24. Hear now the word of God. The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, although, in fact, it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, Will you give me a drink? His disciples had gone into town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink? for Jews do not associate with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. Sir, the woman said, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds? Jesus answered, Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I 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 won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water. He told her, Go, call your husband and come back. I have no husband, she replied. Jesus said to her, You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true. Sir, the woman said, I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem. Jesus declared, Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. The woman said, I know that Messiah, called Christ, is coming. When He comes, He will explain everything to us. Then Jesus declared, I who speak to you am He. God is Spirit, and His worshipers must worship in Spirit and in truth. Oh, beloved in Christ, does God take the worship of Himself by His people seriously? Does He care? Does it matter to Him? how we worship. Well, I hope and I trust that each one of us here tonight would say, absolutely. Absolutely it matters to God. Absolutely it matters to Him how we worship. In fact, God has given to us in His history of revelation, especially as we look at Israel in the Old Testament, God has given to us proof of this. Think of the golden calf. As Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments written with the very finger of God, think about the golden calf. Aaron makes this golden calf and he places it before the people and says, this is your God. This is the one who brought you out of the land of Egypt. And of course, we know what happened. Many of them lost their lives because of that. Or think of Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, who the Bible says offered profane fire to the Lord. We don't know exactly what that profane fire was, but we do know that they offered worship that God had not commanded. In fact, that contradicted what God had commanded. And in an instant, their lives are snuffed out by the hand of God. Or as Pastor Gordon reminded us last week with regard to two different occasions in the history of Israel. One in which they venerated, they worshiped the Ark of the Covenant. They took it into battle with themselves. Ah! This is our good luck charm. And then later on, when they were bringing it back to Egypt or back to Israel, And then they devalued the Ark of the Covenant. They looked into it. And in both instances, both of those were violations of what God had said. And with regard to both of those instances, God wiped out 80,000 of His chosen people. Or remember King Saul, before he was going to go into battle, and he was waiting for Samuel to come and offer the customary burnt offering. But Samuel was long in coming. He just didn't show up. And so King Saul thought, I can do that. I've watched it. It's not so difficult. Anybody can do it. But of course, God had said, no, you are not to do that. I have not given you that task. And therefore, when Samuel did arrive, he announced to the king that he would lose his crown. He and his family would no longer be kings. And of course, we know what God said in Isaiah 42, verse 8. He says, I am the Lord. That is my name. I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols. I will not. It matters to God how we worship. You see, with all of these instances from the Bible itself, we are reminded that true worship is not according to what man desires. It's not according to what man thinks is right. It's not according to what man thinks is pleasing to God. But it is according to what God says is right. It's according to what God says is pleasing to Him. Now, in John chapter 4, the Samaritan woman asked Jesus to clarify where God is to be worshipped. The Samaritans worshipped on this mountain, on Mount Gerizim, and the Jews worshipped in Jerusalem. They both thought they were right. And, of course, we know that at that time the Jews were a little more right because God had chosen to place His name in Jerusalem. We know that there was no love lost between the Samaritans and the Jews. The Jews would have nothing to do with their half-brothers, we might call them. But throughout this entire conversation, you see, Jesus teaches a powerful lesson to this woman. He teaches her that He is God. He teaches her that salvation is only in Him. He is the living water. He teaches her that the time of the temple and of the Ark of the Covenant and of the sacrifices and of all the Old Testament ceremonies, all those things which God had given to set Israel apart as His chosen people, indeed to aid them in their worship, but things which were not Him, things which were not to be worshipped in His place, but all those things which God had given to Israel to set them apart, soon would be done away within Christ Himself. And although He doesn't specifically, explicitly say it here, we know that He is telling her, And as he is talking to her, he's pointing to the time when the Holy Spirit would be poured out and God's people would be gathered in from every tribe, every tongue, and every nation. And therefore, whatever divided the Samaritans and the Jews would no longer matter. Because that which would characterize God's people as it had always been is not where they worshipped, on this mountain or in Jerusalem. It's not the place that makes one a true worshiper. But what would characterize God's people, again, as it had always done, is how they would worship God. And when Jesus addresses the how, he's not talking about man-made styles. He's not talking about man-made thoughts and ideas. He's not talking about man-made methods. But he's talking about the how with regard to what is pleasing to God. Jesus answers the question, how shall we worship? He says, God is Spirit, and those who worship, and His worshipers must worship in Spirit and in truth. Beloved, how shall we worship? Well, first of all, according to God's nature, and secondly, as genuine worshipers. First, according to God's nature, God is Spirit, Jesus says. Now this, of course, we must confess, sort of flies over our head. We have a vague understanding of the Spirit world somewhat, but we don't really understand this. God is spirit, but He is uncreated spirit. He's not one spirit. He's not a spirit. He's not one of many like the angels which He created to be ministering spirits, but He is uncreated from eternity. He is the supreme and sovereign spirit over all. His very essence is spirit. In as much as we can understand that. And therefore we know that He is opposite the flesh. He is opposite our senses. And it is not our senses, if you will, that delight Him particularly in worship. He's not material. He's not physical. We cannot touch and feel Him with our hands. We cannot see Him with our physical eyes. He does not have a shape or physical characteristics. He is not limited to one time and one place. His very essence is Spirit. And as Sovereign and Supreme Spirit, He must be worshipped because He is God. He is eternal. He is Creator. He is independent. He is everywhere present. He is all that makes Him God. And again, we know that man was created for fellowship with God. He created us in order to correspond with Him. As the Heidelberg Catechism answers 6, says man was created perfect in God's own image. Why? So that he might write, he might truly know God his Creator, love Him with all his heart, and live with Him in eternal happiness for His praise and glory. He might know Him. That's talking about the mind. He might love him. That's talking about the heart. And live with him. That's talking about the will. And of course, we know that in sin, man still retains a sense of the divine as Paul makes clear in Romans 1. Even wicked man has a sense of something greater than himself. Or at the very least, an atheist worships himself. But the wicked, we know, turn to idolatry. The wicked turn to gods of their own imagination of their own making, but believers, by God's grace, worship God. They are called to worship God. Again, the call to worship we had tonight from Psalm 96, ascribe to the Lord, O families of nations, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name. Bring an offering and come into His courts. Worship the Lord in the splendor of His His holiness tremble before Him all the earth. He must be worshipped. And His worship must be fitting for His nature. It must be true worship. True worship, you see, recognizes the majesty and the greatness and the uniqueness of God. True worship recognizes the holiness of God. That He is totally and He is completely other than any creature. The true worshiper understands that true worship is not about what makes me feel good. It's not about what moves me. It's not about what affects my emotions. It's not about what I think is right. But it's about what pleases God. True worship is about what draws my every attention to Him. True worship is that which is genuine. Beloved, how shall we worship? First of all, according to God's nature, but secondly, as genuine worshipers. Jesus says, those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth. And that means, first of all, genuine worshipers are true believers. Only true believers can offer genuine worship to God. Again, God desires the things of the spirit of man, man's soul, man's heart, the things that makes man unique. Man has been given knowledge and reason and affections and desires. God has given man a mind to know Him, a heart to love Him, and a will to desire Him. Jesus teaches the Samaritan woman here that the day is coming when it's not that those who worship only in Jerusalem will be true worshipers, and that those who worship on Mount Gerizim or some other place are all false worshipers, But he's teaching that true worshipers worship with a born-again heart. True worshipers worship with confidence of the forgiveness of all of their sins and salvation full and free in Christ Jesus. They worship in the awe of God's majesty and undeserved love and mercy and that then results in heartfelt singing and praying and giving. And maybe you notice that the Samaritan woman was avoiding the fact that Jesus was confronting her with her sin. Did you notice that? He talks about her husband. I don't have one. You're right. You've had five. And even the one you're living with now is not your husband. He confronts her with her sin and she conveniently changes the subject to get him off on another track to talk about the place of worship. But Jesus, in essence, makes it clear that the place of worship does not give relief to her guilty conscience. The place of worship does not offer her pardon for her sin. This place of worship, just because you and I come here, beloved, does not cleanse our guilty conscience. It doesn't offer pardon for our sins either. She needed a new spirit. She needed what David prayed for in Psalm 51 when he prayed, Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Brothers and sisters, true worship is the activity of a redeemed heart that is occupied only with God and blocks out the cares of this world. Genuine worship is one of the three great marks that is evidence of being born again. As Paul says in Philippians 3, verse 3, we are the circumcision which worship God in spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. Now notice, three things that have nothing to do with looking at ourselves, but looking outside of ourselves. We worship God in the Spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. See, beloved, true worship does not seek or desire to have my emotions tickled by the music or even by a great speaker. Instead, true worship is when the spirit of man actually meets with God and finds itself praising Him for His love and wisdom and beauty and truth and holiness and compassion and mercy and grace and power, all of His attributes, because the spirit of a genuine worshiper has been transformed by the truth. A genuine worshiper is a true believer. And a genuine worshiper also worships according to the truth. The one and only truth. The truth of God. The truth of man. The truth of Jesus Christ as God has clearly revealed it to us in His Word applied to our hearts and lives by the Holy Spirit. And as the true worshiper worships according to the truth, he does so. He approaches God truthfully and honestly and wholeheartedly, unlike Matthew 15 where Jesus, quoting Isaiah, says, These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. They worship Me in vain. Their teachings are but rules taught by men. They go through the motions, but they don't mean it. They're following the things that men have said they should follow. We are not to come here, beloved, and to pretend to worship God, to simply go through the motions and think that we have done our duty, Because that does nothing more than to treat Him as if He does not care. As if it's no big deal. But that is offensive to Him. We must worship Him in the beauty of His holiness. Not in the beauty of ourselves. According to what is due to Him. With all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we are to tremble before Him. Again, worship according to truth is also to approach God on the basis of biblical revelation. all that God has revealed to us in His Word, that He is Almighty God. And by the very fact of who He is, He deserves to be worshipped. But also because of what He has done. Because He has rescued us from the deepest, darkest pit of hell through His Son, Jesus Christ. He alone deserves our worship. We worship, we approach Him on the basis of biblical revelation, not rules taught by man. Now we all know that there are many church growth techniques being marketed today. We get them in the office all the time. Ten ways to grow a healthy, happy church. And some of these things appear to work. Indeed, there are some churches that are growing by leaps and bounds. But I believe that with most, if not all of these techniques, if you look close, you will see that they have nothing to do with a worship that is pleasing to God and everything to do with self-centered, motivated, geared toward the praise of man kind of worship. The Bible reveals God as holy and majestic and as incomprehensible. That he cannot be represented by any visible means, not by a crafted image, not by a picture, and to try to limit him or reduce him to a sort of an image is to lie about him because it's simply not him. As the Catechism rightly says, God will not have His people taught by dumb images, images of creatures, things that He has made. But He will have them taught by the living preaching of the Word of God. Just as God taught in the Old Testament and by His apostles and by the writers of the epistles, as He taught with the very word of His mouth, still today the truth of God is best declared. It's best taught through words, through the living preaching of the Word of God. Oh, it may not always come in the way that you particularly like it. It may not always taste good to you. It may not always be as beefy as you would like it to be. Maybe be a little slim once in a while. But if it is faithful according to the Word of God, if it is faithful by the blessing of God, it is the living preaching of the Word of God through which the Holy Spirit works, by which God has chosen to save those who believe. David says in Psalm 51, verse 17, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. See, God doesn't need, nor does He want, man-made things and innovations. He just wants our repentant hearts. God despises worship that is self-centered and for the praise and the attention of man because we don't deserve it. He does. He despises that instead of lifting our eyes and hearts to Him. Our worship is not to satisfy ourselves, to make ourselves feel good. And the Word of God clearly reveals to us who is to be worshipped, how He is to be worshipped, and even why He is to be worshipped. Because He is God. And because He is saved as beloved. It is our blessed privilege as a saved people to come before God, to give Him. He says, you may come before me. I call you to come before me and give to me what I deserve. All praise and honor and glory to my name. But genuine worshipers also then approach God only in Jesus Christ who said, and we sang it again tonight, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. We do not come to God on our own terms, but only in Christ. And I want you to think about something with me as I thought about this, that we only come in Christ, not on our own terms. Much of what is called worship today excludes the law. Someone here gave me some bulletins a couple of weeks ago when you were on vacation, and I looked at those, and nowhere in some of them was the law ever read or referred to. Many people never, ever hear the Ten Commandments, whether from the Old Testament or the New Testament. But think about that. Well, the reason that's given is that they're negative. And the law of God, the Ten Commandments, hurts the feelings of those who may come in on any given Sunday. And we all know that you can catch more flies with honey than you can with water. But think this through a minute. If you exclude the law of God, therefore, you have also excluded the reason that we need a Savior. The law of God shows us our sin and misery, And if we don't know about our sin and misery, we don't know that we need a Savior. And if you exclude there then the reason that we need a Savior, then you have also excluded, you have wiped out the very reason for worship. Why do we need to worship? What has God done for us? It doesn't matter. But the bottom line, beloved, is that worship in spirit and in truth is to turn the attention of the worshiper away from himself, away from the things of this life and turn that attention to God and to God alone who has reached down in His love through Jesus Christ and saved us. Genuine worship is directed only to God and has no thought of oneself and one's desires and tastes. Well, then I have to say something about our liturgy that we practice in this church. Boys and girls, what that means is our ordering of our worship service. You will receive it in the bulletin every Sunday. This is the one for the morning service. You see, beloved, what the liturgy or what the type of service will be is not to be determined by whether or not we have praise teams or drama or special music or a certain style of music or whether we use the organ or the piano or a grand orchestra or whether we sing a certain number of songs or anything of that nature. That is not to determine what our liturgy ought to be. But our liturgy ought to be determined by what will draw our attention and bring our every affection to God. And when we are faithful to that, then that will then determine all those other details which we may or may not use, which may or may not be appropriate. We are blessed in that we have what we call reformed worship. And very simply, that is worship governed by the Word of God. We follow what is called the, or we use what is called the regulative principle of worship. And that is that the Bible, God, regulates our worship service. And that means that we only do in worship what God commands in His Word. What God has given to us in His Word. And when we do that, beloved, that removes all the guesswork. And if you look at our order of worship, again, I have the morning one here. We know that the Bible is filled with calls to worship. It's filled with calls for God's people to worship. We know specifically that the epistle writers, as they wrote their letters, their sermons to the people, they began with God's greeting, and they ended their letter with God's greeting. We know that the reading of the law of God is spread throughout Scripture, not just Exodus 20, not just Deuteronomy 5, but this morning as we read it from Ephesians. It was read in the hearing of God's people. Paul did that in Colossians. He did it in Romans. He did it in Ephesians. He did it in Galatians. He always put the law of God before the people. And that law of God, of course, was meant to bring God's people to confession, to repentance of their sin and confession. And then the Bible is filled with, you know what comes next, the assurance of pardon. The assurance that all of your sins are forgiven in Christ Jesus. And of course, in the Bible, We read about the Word of God being read. Ezra stood up to read. And the people, in reverence, stood up to listen to the law of God. And then, of course, the preaching of the Word is central. The preaching of the Word is central. God invites us. He calls us to worship that we might worship Him by listening to what He has to say to us. The preaching of the Word of God is central. That living preaching of the Word of God. And then we also know that with regard to our part, our response, the Bible commands us to sing our praises to Him. It commands us to offer our prayers to Him. It commands us to bring our offerings. That, too, was included in our call to worship. These are the things that the Bible regulates in worship. And then we order these things in what we call a dialogue. Boys and girls, a dialogue is very simply a conversation. We order them in a conversational way. Who's the conversation between? It's between God, and it's between His people. God speaks, and we respond. He speaks in the call to worship. He speaks in the greeting. He speaks in the reading of the law. He speaks in the assurance of pardon. He speaks in the reading of Scripture. He speaks in the sermon. He speaks in the benediction blessing. And we respond throughout with our singing, with our prayers, and with the giving of our gifts. It is vertical worship is, not horizontal. When we gather together corporately, it is not horizontal. This is not a social club for this hour. It's not about you and me. Indeed, outside these walls, our Christian living is every bit horizontal as we are called to live with one another, to strive for unity as we considered this morning. But inside, as we come for this hour of worship, we come as one with our eyes lifted to heaven to what God has for us as we bring Him our worship. Genuine worship is not man-centered. It's not about what I want or about what I don't want. It's not about what I like or what I dislike. It's about what I think is right. It's not about getting people in. And that may take some of you by surprise. It's not about getting people in. Worship is for God's true believers. We are called to take the gospel out. We are called to witness to our neighbors. God will take care of getting them in. It's not about getting them in, but it's about giving God the glory that is due to His name. Anything done in worship to praise man is offensive to God. John Calvin said that our hearts are idol factories. And that's true even when it comes to worship. We make worship into some sort of an idol when we let our senses and desires take priority. And worship like ours, what I'm talking about is what we try to exercise here, what we strive for at the Escondido United Reformed Church and many others do as well. Worship like ours is considered boring today, even by some of you. Some of you are quick to say, it doesn't do anything for me. It's not for me. It's not my style. And I have to ask myself, why? And as hard as it may be to hear, The answer is very simple, and it's because ours is God-centered worship here. All those other things, it doesn't do anything for me. It's not for me. It's not my style. It's all about you. But the worship that the elders strive to have here is God-centered. It is reverential. It's not about you. But if these sentiments describe you, then I must warn you in the name of Jesus Christ that you're on dangerous ground. I'm not saying you're an unbeliever. But I'm saying you do not understand true worship as God intends it and calls it to be. In the December 1995 issue of Table Talk on December 6, the author of the devotion says, if someone finds such worship, the kind we just described, boring, then they are looking not for God, but for an idol to titillate their emotions and appease their consciences. what they have done is made themselves an idol with their goal to satisfy themselves you see to claim to need a certain style of worship is to worship the idol called self but beloved a genuine worshiper does not desire worship that satisfies and gratifies the fleshly senses and desires but the genuine worshiper only needs God in all of his beauty, in all of his holiness because of what he has done in Christ Jesus. That's all the genuine worshiper needs to attract him to worship. And then that one will never ever leave a worship service saying, I didn't get anything out of it. But that one will always leave with a blessing, at least, of having put his whole heart into it by the power of the Holy Spirit. You see, you can always find a more interesting preacher you can always find music that you enjoy more you can always find a more comfortable style of worship but you see God will bless you where he has planted you if your desire is first and foremost to worship him I had a mentor one time who said people will stay in a church for the reason that they came and very simply that means if you come for the music for example you will stay as long as that style of music fits your tastes. But as soon as it changes, or your style changes, you will leave. But if you come for the Word of God, which is changeless, if you come to worship the God of your salvation, to give to Him the glory due His name, you will stay. You will stay. You see, those who offer genuine worship cannot out-give God. We come to give. But we cannot out-give God. And those who come to offer genuine worship will receive more than they could ever give to God. Proverbs 8, verse 17 says, The Lord says, I love those who love Me, and those who seek Me, find Me. In Psalm 34, verse 10, Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. God's people will receive much more than they can give. And I'm not just talking about some temporary spiritual high. Oh, some weeks we might leave a little more higher spiritually than other weeks. But I'm talking about something much more lasting. God will bless them with strength and faith. God will bless them with an increased assurance of salvation. God will bless them more and more with the comfort of forgiveness. God will bless them with the encouragement for this life. He will bless them with a greater love for God and for each other. And their satisfaction, beloved, is guaranteed. We know that in this life we will not be able to solve the war of worship styles. But may our prayer be that the Holy Spirit would constantly be reforming us, our hearts. That we would be faithful in our worship. That we would put away any idolatrous worship of our own ideas and be content to worship God as He instructs us in a way that pleases Him in the beauty of His holiness. You see, one will only desire worship God's way in Jesus Christ. Beloved, is this your desire? To worship God's way? Amen.