The sermon titled 'Five Marks of True Worship' by Scott Brown explores the different aspects of worship in a church setting. Brown discusses the importance of delight, satisfaction, preparation, engagement, and change in true worship. He emphasizes that worship is about God and that it should be centered on Him. Brown also highlights the significance of being a delighted, satisfied, prepared, engaged, and changed people in worship. The sermon encourages individuals to approach worship with a heart inclined towards God and to follow the biblical prescriptions for worship.

Thank you, Abraham. These knit and join together sessions have a particular design to them. Our intention for delivering them is to explain church life, the various contours of it, and the things that we really hope the members of the church are locked in on as we go forward together as a church and we're spending quite a bit of time to do that. We have a number of new people in the church and we want sort of to inculcate them with the doctrine and the practices that we have here at this church. When we get to the end of the session, our intention is to just inquire if there are some who feel that they want to become formal members of the church.

But even if you're not a member, pray that these things are helpful in defining what church life is. And today the session is called a Worshiping Church. We've covered many subjects. We will talk about a worshipping church today and then the next session in our plan is to talk about singing, a singing church, and we are intentionally distinguishing the two because there's some differences And we do want to have a worshiping church and a singing church. And so I was grateful for this song that Abraham just led because it really does speak of the point of worship, and that is that God is seeking worshipers who will be in an environment of blessing and can, In their heart of hearts, they really can do nothing except to give thanks.

They're so happy. So, I'd like to cover five categories of a worshipping church, and you have them up there. I would like to walk through these one by one. First of all, a delighted people, and then second, a satisfied people, and third, a prepared people, fourth, an engaged people, and fifth, a changed people. So that will be my flow of the thinking here.

And I want to begin just by acknowledging a reality, And that is that all people on the face of the earth are worshiping today. God made humanity to be worshippers. And there's nothing that they can do about it. We will worship. We will adore.

We will adore something. We will adore someone. And we really cannot help ourselves. We've been actually created to delight in something or someone. And A book that I read recently, Reformation Worship by Jonathan Gibson, has this citation at the beginning, the story of human history from the beginning to end is the story of worship.

That is because God has structured his world that every person will worship through one or two men, Adam or Christ. And so the question is, you know, who are we worshiping and how are we worshiping? Now I'd like to begin with a definition of worship. I'll give you a short one, and I'll give you a longer one. The short one is this.

Worship is the adoration of an inferior being to a superior being. It speaks of honor and bowing and prostrating oneself toward God. Now the words in the Bible that describe worship indicate that kind of a disposition of the heart. So that's what we really pray happens when we come together here. Here's a longer definition.

Worship is the right, fitting, delightful response of moral beings, angelic and human, to God, the creator, redeemer, and consummator, for who is as one eternal God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and for what he has done in creation and redemption, and for what he will do in the coming consummation, to who will all praise and glory now and forever would without end. Amen." So with those definitions, it's really clear. Worship is about God. It is about fixing one's attention upon God. Worship isn't about us, it's about God.

And In the same way that there are two classifications of prayer, there's private prayer and corporate prayer. We find definitions and examples in the Bible of both. There is also private worship and there is corporate worship in this category that we're dealing here. And what I want to focus on is corporate worship. There are, there is overlap, private worship, and the things that are done there, and corporate worship and the things that are done there are connected and and there are many of the same things but there's there's a distinctive difference when God's people gather together for corporate worship and as it turns out God has given very specific instructions for how worship ought to be conducted among the people of God.

And it's not something that we ought to make up. And the Bible actually gives different categories of worship. In Matthew 15 verses 7 through 9, there's worthless worship. In Isaiah 1, there's rejected worship. In Acts 17, there's ignorant worship to an unknown God.

In John 4 there's true worship and true worshipers who worship in spirit and in truth. In James 4 verse 8 there's the nearness and the distance of God. James says draw near to God and he will draw near to you. And so worship together in the body of Christ is really the focus of what we're talking about here. Now I'd like to just draw back for a moment and give a number of passages of scripture and just walk through some of the things that we see in the Bible.

There are so many places we could go, and so I'll try to be very limited in this. But in Isaiah 6-3, you see that day and night, the seraphim are flying before God in the heavens and they're saying holy holy holy is the Lord God of hosts The whole earth is full of his glory." This is a scene from heaven. This is the backdrop to our worship here on earth. And since before the world began, worship was taking place. And it continues on in this world and it will continue on for all eternity.

In Revelation chapter 4 verse 8 you have four living creatures each having six wings were full of eyes and day and night all they do is to say holy holy holy Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come. Revelation is full of worship. Perhaps the most significant Text in the Bible on the practice of New Testament worship is in John 4, 24. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. We could talk about the aroma of worship from Exodus 30, where God tells Moses, and this is about his personal worship, to bring frankincense and all kinds of sweet smelling spices and put them together and then offer them up before the Lord.

His worship is like a perfume. You know, perfumers create a particular scent by the mixture of basic elements to make a perfume, and they put them together in a bonding agent. If you want to learn more about that, talk to Judith Davenport, her father is a perfumer, and he once created a custom one-off perfume for his wife and you know she was the only one and I I do believe that God God while he has brought his people together to provide a multiplicity of expressions of worship. He's created one formula for worship in the Word of God, and he's told us what to do. He's given us the formula for the perfume that is of worship.

You know, in the Bible, in Psalm 45, you have the garments of worship. In John 12, 3, you have the tears of personal worship. In 1 Chronicles 16, you have thanksgiving in worship. Read 1 Chronicles 16 sometime. It's just remarkably beautiful and helpful to your soul.

God wants us to praise him. And in that passage, you find the unity of worship. In verse 36 in 1 Chronicles 16, you read these words and all the people said amen You have the glory of worship in second Chronicles 5 when Solomon finished the temple and the house of the Lord was filled with a cloud of smoke, and they could not continue because the glory of God filled the house of God. So there are so many places that we could go that give us a sense of corporate worship and personal worship. But I'd like to now speak of five marks of a people who are engaged in true worship.

Five marks of a people who are engaged in true worship. And the first is that they are a delighted people. Because the call to worship is a call to be delighted here on earth in preparation for eternally delight. And, you know, the people who understand God's intentions for worship find themselves in a world of delight. And it's important to to make note of this because not all worship is true worship.

And there are different manifestations of what is not worship. And I think we've all experienced them perhaps at different times in our life. First of all, there's emotionless ritualism, where people are just going through the motions. And then on the other hand, on the other extreme, there's ritualistic emotionalism. But what makes you a Christian is the delight that you experience when you're engaged in the biblical forms of worship, when you have mixed the elements of true worship.

And with those elements, the element of your heart is added. It's the heart engagedness that makes true worship, and it's the doctrinal trueness that makes worship. And you can't have one without the other. They must be together. You know, there's, if you go to Psalm 16 11, you get a sense of this.

In your presence is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. The experience that we have here in our church really ought to be an experience of delight. When God is at the center there is a delight. That's why David says in Psalm 100 verse two, serve the Lord with gladness.

That's why in Psalm 100 verse one you read, make a joyful shout to the Lord. And that's why When the people of God were worshiping in Luke 24, they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. Joy in their worship begat joy in their life when they went back to their city. In Deuteronomy 26 verse 11, we read the results of this. So you shall rejoice in every good thing which the Lord your God has given to you and your house, you and the Levite and the stranger who is among you.

The chief feature of worship that is true is delight. And that's why in Psalm four, David says, you have put gladness in my heart more than in the season that their great gain and grain and wine is increased. In other words, he's more delightful than success. He's more delightful than abundance. That's why on the Sabbath day, we cease from working and we say, He's more delightful than any gain that we could have on that day.

Because worship and its center are our delight. And that's why we have guidelines for worship. So the first mark of a worshiping people is that they are a delighted people. And then the second mark of a worshiping people is that they are a satisfied people. And I make this point because one must understand what God is looking for in worship.

And in John 424, we have the most distinctive summary statement of that and I think this is sort of the the Rosetta Stone text in the Bible about worship it explains all everything else that the Bible says about worship. That God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. So True worship is manifested in a people who are satisfied by the things that God wants them to do. They want to sing. They want to hear the Word of God read.

They want the preaching of the Word. They want the fellowship of the saints. They want to hear and participate in the prayers for the saints. They want to be baptized. They want to take the Lord's Supper.

These are the biblical prescriptions of worship. And to be a satisfied people means that you're satisfied with those things. Now in the history of worship, the history of the world, you'll find people not being satisfied with what God has prescribed and they create all kinds of other manifestations of worship, candles, images, All kinds of things. In modern times, people are bringing in dramas, plays, video clips, things like that. God, however, has prescribed a very specific formula for this perfume, And it doesn't include those kinds of things.

Charles Spurgeon speaks of the reality that Christ does not need any new inventions. He says this, Christ needs no new inventions to glorify him. We have invented a new line of things, says one. Have you? We've discovered something very wonderful.

I dare say you have. But Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever, needs none of your inventions, discoveries, or additions to his truth. A plain Christ is forever the loveliest Christ. Dress him up and you have defamed him. Bring him out just as he is, the Christ of God, nothing else but Christ, unless you bring in his cross, for we preach Christ crucified.

Indeed, you cannot have Christ without the cross, but preach Christ crucified. He brings to mind the things of Christ himself. He brings Christ's own things to us and in that way glorifies him. The church should not be a place of man's inventions. It should be a place for God's intentions.

And it's critical that we're a satisfied people and that we love the things that God has loved. And then not only are we a true satisfied people, but that we are a prepared people. This is another mark of a worshipping people. They are prepared. They anticipate the worship, and they prepare their hearts for it.

They look toward it. They look forward to it. And you know, in the Old Testament in particular, and the whole doctrine of the Sabbath, you had the day of preparation. The New Testament also speaks of this, where on the evening before the Sabbath day, families would get all their work done so that they had no work to do on the Sabbath. And there are different ways that families do that.

But it's critical that we prepare ourselves. And there are three kinds of preparation. First, there is physical, logistical preparation. And I think this falls under the category of the day of preparation. But lack of preparedness, haphazardness, carelessness is one of the great causes for a church that is not experiencing true worship.

And often what you find is that if people complain, you know, that the music wasn't that good or the preaching wasn't hitting on too much, the heart of the problem often is just that the things they did on Saturday night were defiling or they were distracting and their hearts weren't being prepared like they weren't inclining their hearts. One of the words for worship in the New Testament actually is a word picture which means to kiss toward. It's that kind of, you have an inclination toward to kiss something that what you love. So the first kind of preparation is physical preparation, logistical preparation and often you have people running, they're late, it's very difficult, especially if you have a lot of children, a lot of you have a lot of children, getting people ready in time, you know Get ready early enough so that you're not crazed when you're trying to get to church on time. Come on time.

Here's my advice. Don't come five or ten minutes late. I don't know if you've noticed that. That's pretty much symptomatic of every church. Get here early, get settled, get ready to worship God.

Kiss toward, incline yourself, be prepared. Then there is heart preparation. And this has to do with spiritually inclining toward the Lord before we even gather on the Sabbath day. There's a remarkable statement in 2 Chronicles 12, which is at the very end of the testimony about King Rehoboam. And the very last thing we read about Rehoboam is this.

He did evil because he did not prepare his heart to seek the Lord. It was in the preparation that governed everything. And you know, you remember when we were in the book of Ezra, how different Ezra was, in Ezra 7-10, for Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel. So there's heart preparation. The preparation of the heart is the governor of everything in life.

What we learned about Rehoboam was that his problem was under the surface. It was in the preparation of his heart. And then the third kind of preparation, I'm just gonna call it family preparation. You know, when our kids were growing up, what we did on the way to the church is we said this, I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord. You know, Parents should prepare their children to come to the sweetest day of the week, where there's singing and prayer and fellowship and a meal together, breaking bread together.

These are such sweet times. And to consider how we, as families, enter into the time of worship, is it a casual time? Or are we acting more like we're in a coffee shop or a place of worship? I just think we have to be very careful in how we enter into the worship of God. It's a special moment.

God, it's not like every other moment in the week. God has provided and prescribed particular times, distinctively different times, where God's people come together and they do something together. It's different from every other part of life. It's a sacred time where there are boundaries and there are particular things that are required in it. And it's critical that we prepare not just our hearts, but we also prepare our families.

You know, David in a very difficult time in his life, in Psalm 27, when he had enemies all around him, and he had every reason to be distracted. You read these lines, When you said, Seek my face, My heart said, Your face, Lord, I will seek." And that really is the heart of worship. That's the heart of preparation. And so in worship, You have rightly ordered worship. You have a prepared people, and they're prepared both in heart and mind, in spirit and in truth.

And then we come to an engaged people, the fourth mark, an engaged people. And this is really an expansion, I believe, of the second part, and that is worship in spirit. The first part of John 424, Worshiping Him in spirit. What does that mean? And it has to do with setting apart moments for holiness, for truth.

And you know we do lots of things when we come together for worship. We pray and you know when you engage yourself in true worship, you engage yourself in each prayer that is prayed. It's an intentional and intentional action that you must take. You must say, I'm going to enter in to this prayer and I'm going to say amen to the prayer. And then we have singing and It's so helpful to the soul to hang on every word of the song.

I would just encourage you, as you look at the words that are up on the screen, that you hang on them. And each reading of the scripture the same way. Each week here, our practice has been, over the years, to recite a section of scripture in the book that we're studying. And you know, hang on the words. Look for the things that really touched your heart.

And in the preaching, there's no way you're going to remember everything from preaching, but you can at least remember one thing, at least take one thing away. You know, the scripture And the various texts that we deal with, they're so diverse, they cover so many issues, it's amazing. And you can't grasp it all. I don't think you're meant to grasp it all. But most of us can grasp one thing that we can take with us.

You know, each element of the Lord's Supper, these are, you know, entering into the Lord's Supper is so helpful because it engages all of your senses, the eyes, the ears, the taste, and the sense of touch. And God has given that to us so that we would enter in to the whole meaning of the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And So it's so critical that we are an engaged people. And then finally, a changed people. A people who are changed by the worship.

Now I dare say if a person with all their heart, in sincerity and in truth, if they hang on the words of the prayers, if they hang on the messages of the songs, if they grab onto the words of scripture that are read or recited and they enter fully in to the Lord's Supper, then they will be changed. And we often come in here distraught, maybe cold, maybe even hardened, but God has given us worship to crack away the ice, to soften our hearts, and to break away the ailments of our souls. And David experienced this in Psalm 73. It's a beautiful explanation of how someone, you know, had gotten to a place where his heart was just hard, and he was pitying himself. You ever had self-pity?

You ever walked in here with self-pity? David walked into the worship of God with self-pity. And he was not happy with how God was treating him and he was treating the wicked so much better. And he speaks of this and then he says, until I went into the sanctuary of God, then I understood their end. And he ends up saying, But it is good for me to draw near to God.

I put my trust in the Lord, that I may declare your works. And so this is a picture of a changed person. He comes into the worship of God full of self-pity and leaves praising God because God gave him strength to enter into the Lord's rest. So these elements, a delighted people, a satisfied people, a prepared people, an engaged people, and a changed people. May God give that to us in this church and that we would be the kind of people that really, that we worship in spirit and in truth and that our lives are changed and that this is a place of delight.

It's a place of humility and it's a place of seeking the Lord with all of our hearts. That's what we really desire to happen here in this church. Let's pray. Lord, Lord, we thank you that you have given us these moments together to worship you in your church, that you would pull us out of our pity parties, that you would pull us out of our fears, that you would pull us out of the great concerns and the difficulties and even pulling us out of our hardness of heart. Oh, God, we thank you that you're so kind to give us an entire day to re-craft our souls and to re-calibrate our thinking and our hearts.

And I pray that even today, It would be a day like that, that when we would go home, we would go home the happiest of people, because we've delighted in you, and you've met us here. Amen.